The Silent Boy. Andrew Taylor
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Название: The Silent Boy
Автор: Andrew Taylor
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780008132781
isbn:
‘Someone coming up the drive, sir,’ Gohlis said. ‘We have a visitor. In a cart, of all things.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
Fournier glances at the Count. For a moment the men do not move or speak. Everyone is listening. Rain patters on the long windows at the end of the room. Dr Gohlis laughs, a high, nervous giggle. Monsieur de Quillon scowls at him.
‘Charles,’ the Count says, ‘go upstairs. Go to your room and stay there until you are summoned.’
Fournier says nothing. He watches them with his bright eyes.
Someone knocks on the front door.
‘Use the main stairs,’ Monsieur de Quillon says to Charles. ‘Go. Go now.’
Fournier accompanies Charles into the hall. Joseph the footman is moving towards the front door.
‘Just a minute,’ Fournier says to the servant in English. ‘Who is it? Do you know?’
The footman changes course. He goes to a small window that commands a view of the forecourt in front of the house.
Charles climbs the stairs. He turns at the half-landing and continues up the next flight.
‘It’s Mr Roach’s cart, sir,’ he hears Joseph say. ‘And there’s a man sitting beside him. Don’t know him from Adam.’
‘You may open the door now,’ Monsieur Fournier says.
Charles hears the click of the library door closing. He glances down the stairs but he can see little of the hall below. What he can see, however, is the great mirror that hangs at the turn of the stairs so that the ladies and gentlemen may look at themselves as they go to dinner. The mirror is set in a gilt frame that is no longer golden but a dirty yellow brown. The glass is spotted with damp. The silvering near the bottom has quite worn away. Charles has hardly noticed the mirror’s existence before because usually he uses the back stairs.
In the foggy world of the reflection, a boy wavers in the depths of the mirror. Ignoring the voices in the hall below, Charles steps up to it and stretches out his right hand towards the boy he sees there. In the mirror the reflected boy mimics his action.
Charles’s right hand almost touches the boy’s left hand. The mirror glass is all that divides them, that and the layer of candle grease and dust that has settled along the bottom rail of the frame and spread slowly higher over the years.
‘Gentleman’s had a mishap on his way here,’ he hears a man say below in the rolling, comfortable voice that the peasants use in this place. ‘His chaise turned over in Parker’s field.’
Charles wonders whether he has lost his reflection as well as his voice. He does not recognize the boy’s face, his ragged clothes or his untidy hair – he is a stranger. Yet it is he, Charles. But he looks like someone else, not the boy who used to examine himself in Maman’s looking glass.
‘My name is Savill,’ says another voice, a man’s. ‘The Count de Quillon is expecting me.’
Charles turns and runs up the stairs.
Two manservants, a French valet smelling of scent and an English footman smelling of sweat, converged on Savill. At a nod from Monsieur de Quillon, the valet peeled away his outer garments.
‘My dear sir, you are soaked,’ the Count said in French. He glanced at his valet. ‘Make sure they’ve lit the fire in Mr Savill’s room.’
‘You are most kind, sir, but I cannot possibly—’
‘Nonsense, sir. You will stay with us.’
Fournier smiled at Savill. ‘Monsieur de Quillon is right,’ he said in English. ‘You will be doing us a kindness, sir – indeed, we have been counting the hours since your attorney’s letter arrived. We see very little company. Besides, the inn is quite intolerable.’
The two Frenchmen were both richly dressed but it was their manner rather than their clothes that proclaimed their station. Monsieur de Quillon was the elder of the two. His features were too irregular, and his face too marked by good living, for him to be accounted handsome. His German physician, Dr Gohlis, had been introduced but kept himself in the background.
‘Do you have a man with you?’ Fournier asked.
‘No,’ Savill said. ‘My chaise was hired in Bath and the groom will return there.’
‘No matter. We will find someone to look after you.’
‘Were you injured in the accident? I cannot help noticing …’
His voice tailed away, but his fingers fluttered, indicating the streaks of mud and cow-pat on the left side of Savill’s greatcoat and breeches.
‘It is nothing, sir. No more than mud and a few bruises.’
The footman brought in Savill’s portmanteau and set it down near the stairs.
Fournier glanced at it. ‘I see you are an old campaigner, and do not encumber yourself with baggage. Joseph will show you to your room.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Count said. ‘So we shall meet again at dinner.’
He and Fournier retreated without further ceremony, and Gohlis trailed after them with the air of a dog uncertain of his welcome. Joseph the footman conducted Savill to a bedchamber on the first floor. According to the clock on the landing, it was nearly half-past five.
‘His Lordship and Mr Fournier dine at six, sir,’ Joseph said, as he laid the portmanteau on the bed. ‘I’ll fetch a jug of hot water for you after I’ve unpacked.’
Savill unlocked the portmanteau. The émigrés dined at a fashionably late hour which, in view of his late arrival, was fortunate. Joseph laid out a pair of darned stockings, a clean shirt and a black-silk stock. Apart from a pair of light shoes and the clothes he stood up in, Savill had nothing else to wear.
Joseph brushed and aired Savill’s breeches and then helped him to wash and dress. By the time they had finished, it still wanted ten minutes to dinner. Savill told the man to bring him the leather portfolio from his bag.
The footman obeyed and then left the room with the cloak and greatcoat over his arm and the muddy boots in his hand.
Savill sat by the fire and opened the portfolio. Here were the papers that Mr Rampton had provided him with.
Only now, as he glanced through them again, did it strike him as strange that no one at Charnwood had yet mentioned Charles. The boy was Savill’s reason for coming here. The two Frenchmen and the German doctor must have known that as well as he did. But none of them had said a word about Charles. Nor had the servants.
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