The Silent Boy. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ because he knew that she and Luc were poor. Marie was Charles’s nurse when he was very young and later stayed as a maid. But then she was dismissed and the boy cried himself to sleep for nearly a week.

      Now the brother and sister live in one room. Their bed is in a curtained alcove by the stove.

      When Charles has had all the water he can drink, she brings in the chamber pot and watches him urinate. Afterwards she makes him kneel by the bed. She kneels beside him and says the prayer to the Virgin that she always says before he goes to sleep.

      He knows that he is meant to join in. When he does not, she looks sharply at him and pokes him in the ribs. When she begins the prayer again, he moves his lips, mouthing shapes which have no words to them.

      She watches him closely but does not seem to mind. Perhaps she does not know the difference between words that have shapes and words that do not.

      Marie puts him into bed, blows out the candle and climbs in beside him. The mattress sinks beneath her weight. His body has no choice but to sink towards her and to mould its contours to hers.

      It is very hot and it grows hotter. Now he is big he does not care for the way she smells or the way she looms over him like a mountain of flesh.

      Soon she drifts into sleep. She snores and twitches.

      The snoring stops. ‘Tell me,’ she whispers. ‘What happened? Where is Madame?’

      He does not answer. He must never answer. Say nothing. Not a word.

      Marie prods him again with her finger. ‘What happened?’

      Tip-tap. Like cracking a walnut.

      When he does not answer, she sighs noisily and turns her head away.

      He listens to her breathing. He closes his eyes but then he sees what he does not wish to see. He opens them again and stares into the night.

      Luc does not come back for three days. When he does, he is drunk with blood and brandy. The single eye is bloodshot.

      He does not see the boy at first. He calls for wine. He calls for food. Marie tries to press her brother into the chair but he resists.

      Charles is in the alcove, in the bed. He rolls a little to the left, hoping to conceal himself behind the half-drawn curtains. But Luc’s single eye catches the movement.

      ‘What the devil is that?’ he says in a voice so hoarse he can barely raise it above a whisper.

      ‘Madame von Streicher’s boy. He came the other night.’

      ‘Who brought him?’

      ‘No one.’

      Luc advances towards the alcove and stares at Charles, who looks back at him because he doesn’t know what else to do.

      ‘Where’s your mother?’ Luc demands.

      The boy says nothing.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Marie says. ‘He was covered with blood.’

      ‘Take him back. We don’t want him here.’

      ‘I tried,’ Marie says. ‘I sent a message to the Rue de Grenelle but Madame isn’t there any more. The concierge said she and the boy moved out a month ago.’

      ‘They are traitors,’ Luc says suddenly. ‘She’s been arrested. If we shelter him, they’ll arrest us too. You know where that ends.’ Luc makes a blade of his right hand and chops it down on the palm of his left.

      He means the guillotine. Charles has heard his mother and Dr Gohlis talking about the machine, and Dr Gohlis said that it is a humane way to execute criminals. But, he said, the people do not like it because it is too swift and too clean a way to die. They prefer the old ways – hanging on wooden gallows, or death by sword or breaking on the wheel. They last longer, Dr Gohlis said, and they are more entertaining.

      ‘They’ve set up the machine at the Tuileries now. At the Place du Carrousel.’

      Marie pours her brother wine. She stands, hands on hips, in front of the alcove, with the boy behind her.

      Luc takes a long swallow of wine and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Throw him out. In the gutter. Anywhere.’

      ‘I can’t. He’s only a child.’

      ‘If they find out he’s here, it’ll be enough to bring us before the Tribunal.’

      ‘But he couldn’t hurt a—’

      Luc throws the beaker of wine at his sister, catching her on the face. She gives a cry and turns. Charles sees the blood on her cheek.

      ‘You will do as I say,’ Luc says. ‘Or I’ll break every bone in his body, and in yours.’

       Chapter Two

      Marie holds tightly to Charles’s arm. She pulls him from the shadowy, urine-scented safety of the alleyway leading to the court and into the crowded street.

      She tugs him along, jerking his arm to hurry him up. He is a fish on a line, pulled through a river of people.

      It is the first time he has been outside since the night he came to Marie’s. Everything is brighter, louder and noisier than it should be – the clothes, the cockades, the soldiers, the checkpoints, the swaying, seething parties of men and women. There is urgency in the air, an invisible miasma that touches everyone. He wants to be part of it.

      Before they came out, Marie combed his hair. He is wearing his shirt and breeches, which she washed the day before, though her best efforts could not remove all the blood from them. They do not go north towards the river but west. They pass Saint-Sulpice and turn into the Rue du Bac.

      Marie drags him across the street, threading their way through the coaches and wagons by force of personality and a steady stream of oaths. She stops outside a great house with black gates, studded with iron.

      The black gates are shut. Marie mutters under her breath and tugs on the bell handle with her free hand. She does not let go of Charles with the other hand. She grips his wrist so tightly he fears it will snap.

      The bell clangs on the other side of the gates but no one comes. Marie bounces up and down on her little feet. She rings the bell again. A passer-by jostles Charles, wrenching him from Marie’s grasp. He sprawls in the gutter and grazes his knees. Marie swears at the man and hauls him to his feet. She pulls the bell a third time, for longer and harder than before.

      A shutter slides back in the wicket. A man’s eyes and nose are revealed in the small rectangle.

      ‘The house is shut up,’ he says. ‘Go away.’

      ‘Where’s Monsieur the Count?’ Marie demands.

      ‘Gone. All gone.’

      The shutter slams СКАЧАТЬ