The Silent Boy. Andrew Taylor
had ordered the curtains drawn and the candles lit, shutting out the blue sky and the swallows. Even in the country, he lived in some state. There were two manservants to wait at table. The food was good and the wine was better. The presence of the servants kept the conversation on general topics.
‘And how is your little daughter?’ he asked as Savill was helping himself to a delicately flavoured fricassee of chicken.
‘Lizzie?’ Savill glanced down the table. ‘Your goddaughter is in good health, sir, but she is not so little now.’
‘Good, good.’ Rampton nodded and looked pleased: it was as if the excellence of Lizzie’s health was something he himself had worked towards, something for which he could take credit, had he not modestly waived his right to it. ‘Is she like her mother?’
‘Yes. In appearance. Her face is softer, perhaps, gentler.’
‘As long as her character does not resemble her mother’s. Let us pray it does not.’
Savill said nothing.
‘Her mother was very beautiful at her age. If Elizabeth takes after her, she will have plenty of suitors. I dare say she will soon be of an age to marry.’
‘Should she wish to, sir, yes. If she finds a man who pleases her.’
‘If you take my advice, sir, you will encourage her to do so as soon as possible.’ Rampton dabbed his lips with his napkin. ‘Though it’s an expensive business, of course. Marriage, I mean. However one looks at it.’ He applied himself to a dish of lamb cutlets.
Savill sensed something unsaid here; he caught the ghost of its absence. ‘Is this your main residence now, sir?’ he asked.
‘Alas, no – I am much at Westminster. I must own I wish it were otherwise. I find I have a taste for country life. Of course this is little more than a cottage, and there’s barely fifty acres with it. But it’s enough for my simple wants. I’m building a wing to accommodate my library with bedrooms above, with a fine prospect over the garden. In the spring, I shall improve the prospect still further by sweeping away those old hedgerows and farm buildings to the west of the drive. Then it will be perfection.’
If this is a cottage, Savill thought, then I am a unicorn. The house had been refurbished since he had last been here. It now sat in grounds that were in the process of being newly laid out; on the east side of the drive, a great expanse of grass swept towards a small lake that had not been there before. As for the house, the new wing would increase its volume almost by half as much again. The work was nearly finished. Earlier in the day, carpenters had been fitting the French windows that would open from the library to the terrace.
‘Will you retire here, sir?’
‘Retire?’ Rampton smiled. ‘I doubt my masters would permit me to do that, not while this crisis continues in France. And God knows how long that will last. I tell you frankly, sir, I see no sign of its ending.’
‘You do not think that the King and the National Convention will come to an accommodation?’
Rampton’s smile did not waver. ‘That is for wiser heads than yours or mine to decide.’ He turned the subject smoothly. ‘But when I do retire, it will be delightful to be here.’
‘Will you not find it sadly dull?’
‘Not in the slightest. I shall have my books, of course, and I have a mind to turn farmer.’ Rampton crooked his finger at the servant who sprang from the shadows to refill Savill’s glass. ‘I have bought two or three tenanted farms nearby. I may take them into my own hands. A toast, sir – to your Elizabeth. May she find herself a husband that suits you both.’
Savill drank. He had once been a civil servant, and in those days he had known Mr Rampton’s ways as a dog knows his master’s. Rampton had not been talking idly during the meal. He had been making sure that Savill understood him.
‘I am rich,’ he was saying, ‘and I have the ear of powerful men, so you would be wise to oblige me. For your daughter’s sake as well as your own.’
With unnatural reverence, the servants removed the cloth and set out the wine, the nuts and the fruit. Rampton signalled for them to withdraw. The two men were sitting side by side now.
Savill bit down on a walnut and a stab of pain drove into his jaw. He twitched on his chair but managed to avoid crying out. He must find time to have the offending tooth pulled out. The truth was, he told himself, he was a coward where his teeth were concerned.
‘A toast, sir,’ Rampton said.
Savill pushed aside his plate and took up his glass with relief. They drank His Majesty’s health. Avoiding each other’s eyes, they drank to Augusta’s memory. Then the conversation faltered.
‘His name is Charles,’ Rampton snapped, as if Savill had said it was something quite different. ‘He must be about ten or eleven years old. Thereabouts.’
‘Do you know who his father is?’
Rampton cracked his knuckles, in the old days a sign of calculation; his clerks had mocked him for it, but only when they were safely out of his way. ‘I have not been able to ascertain that. I believe Augusta had left the Bavarian gentleman by then and was living in Rome, but my information is not exact.’
‘Does Charles speak English?’ Savill said.
‘The question had not occurred to me. I suppose, if he was born in Italy and he has spent the last few years in France …’ Rampton turned away and stared up at a portrait of himself. ‘Still,’ he went on in a quieter voice, ‘at his age it hardly signifies. The mind of a child is as porous as a sponge. It soaks up whatever you pour into it with extraordinary rapidity.’
‘If his father cannot be found, no doubt his mother’s friends will care for him. Where is he staying?’
‘The Embassy will let me know as soon as they hear.’
‘He’s nothing to do with me,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘He’s Augusta’s bastard.’
‘Pray moderate your voice, sir. You do not want the world to know your business.’
‘But it is not my business, sir. That’s my point.’
Rampton refilled their glasses. ‘The law would say otherwise. Augusta was still your wife at the time of her death. You and she were not divorced. I understand that she did not even leave a will, which makes you her heir. The child’s paternity is not established, and probably never will be. In sum, this is one of those cases where the law and common sense point in the same direction as a man’s duty as a Christian. The boy is your responsibility.’
‘Nonsense.’
To Savill’s surprise, Rampton smiled. ‘I thought you would say that. And, that being the case, my dear sir, let me propose a solution.’
‘You may propose what you wish, sir. It is nothing to do with me.’
Rampton leaned closer. ‘What if I take the boy myself?’
Charles dreams of the boy called Louis.
He, Charles, is lying on his bed and Louis is standing by the window. This is similar to what actually happened when Dr Gohlis came at dawn that morning. But, in the dream, Charles already knows Louis’s name. He also knows that Louis is alone and naked in the world.
In the dream the light is much stronger than it was in real life. It floods over the doubly naked body of Louis. The colours glow like the stained glass in Notre Dame. Who would have thought there would be so many colours under a boy’s skin?
Charles glances down at his own body. He discovers that, though it is daytime, he is