The Quickening Maze Part 15

The quiet was very calming. It was pleasant not talking. After a while Rawnsley said, 'Would you allow me to show you something?'

'Of course. I'm intrigued,' she said politely.

They plodded on along soft paths until Thomas Rawnsley halted them. He turned with bright eyes and a finger pressed to his lips. Hannah's day continued to work its elaborate stage machinery with another peculiar revelation. What Rawnsley then pointed to through the trees, and clearly in some way delighted him, was a gypsy camp. A fizzing, wet fire, dogs and horses and caravans, that unbounded, illicit life she had been taught always to avoid. They would steal from her. They might even steal her. The sight of them, at a safe distance and while she was protected beside Rawnsley, filled her with a lovely, crisp-edged fear and pleasure. She smiled at Rawnsley, who smiled back. They sat on their s.h.i.+fting horses and stared a moment longer, then rode quietly away.

Winter

The bishop's chair was a church in itself: high-backed, winged, with projecting arms bearing candlesticks to afford illumination for reading and a shelf in its side for books. A small table with a lamp and gleaming spectacles stood close to this edifice.

Matthew Allen's chair, set across the patterned rug at the other end of the fireplace's breadth of stone, was less grand, but nevertheless deep and supportive. Not that he was getting the benefit of it. His body was still rocking with the ghostly motions of his long journey, the train and jouncing carriage, and he was not at all relaxed. He gripped the armrests and smiled.

The bishop had a kind and dignified face, of the grand and pa.s.sionless type of piety. His pale eyes were set in large orbits, his lips were full and set back beneath a long, arched, nacreous nose. His sideburns were a rich white trim. He looked well fed, well kempt. The cracked brown portraits of previous bishops Matthew Allen had pa.s.sed on his way through the palace had included many harder, more austere faces set on stiff ruffs.

The palace inspired violent emotions in Dr Allen. He felt goaded by the fierce, thin ghost of his father, could hear his voice pouring scorn on the complacent wealth of the established church, its spiritual torpitude. The relentless Sandemanian would not have admired the large cross of chased silver on the mantel shelf, or the painting of Christ that was in the line of Matthew's gaze: a varnished, dark Italianate Jesus, head bowed, with strong, sensual shoulders and the doleful dark eyes of a deer. His father's Christ had been like himself: lean, definite, endlessly imparting the truth, presumably with the same spittle-flecked lips and reddened throat. He was a narrow lever inserted into ancient Palestine to turn the whole world over. Nothing here was turning over. Everything was still, solid, polished and would outlast the flesh of the two men now seated there.

The palace reminded him also of university and provoked both a pa.s.sionate recoil and a desire to stay there, to be welcomed. His debts had forced him from university. After that had come a shop and evening cla.s.ses. If the bishop agreed to more time for the manufacture, Allen would love the place and belong there. If not, he would know he had been right about it all along.

When a servant entered bearing tea, Allen bent forward in his seat. The servant was instructed to pour immediately because, unfortunately, the bishop hadn't much time.Allen watched as the bishop's tea was poured through a strainer into the porcelain cup and a short ribbon of milk was added. He accepted the same service for himself, the calming, intimate, impersonal ritual, like a visit to the barber, and felt afterwards cleaner, better equipped to continue the conversation.

'So, I am sure you understand, your grace, that these technical difficulties represent an entirely surmountable obstacle. I am perfectly confident that I will be able to inform you that I can supply the carvings required in one or two months.'

The bishop, blowing on his tea, answered, 'That is good news. I have seven churches in my diocese, doctor, that as you know are awaiting their fittings. In this part of the North Country, with the new industrial parishes, we have great need of them.'

'And they will be supplied.'

'In one month?'

'In one or two months.'

'In one month?'

'a.s.suming that the technical difficulties are . . . the required refitting has occurred . . . the part of the machine that needs replacement has been replaced, replaced, then yes, in one month.'

'I'm afraid I heard rather a lot of dependent clauses in that sentence.'

Matthew Allen moved his teacup from hand to hand. 'I cannot guarantee that everything will be ready in one month.'

'That is disappointing. I had hoped to be able to rely on you and conclude our work together, but given this delay I am sure you will understand if we approach an established workshop.'

'I can fulfil the order.'

'Not in time. You have just said that you cannot. I'm sorry, I have no wish to argue with you. Can you guarantee delivery in one month's time?' The bishop regarded Allen with raised eyebrows, the fine ridge of his nose lengthened and s.h.i.+ning.

'No.'

'Very well, then. That is a disappointment. Now, if you will excuse me.'

'But we have a contract.'

'I hope you are not intending to haggle with me like an Israelite merchant. I believe we had an agreement and not a contract, as a matter of fact. I am very sorry that this journey has been wasted for you, and I do wish you success in the future for your enterprise. As you have explained it to me, I cannot see how you would not succeed. Now, if you would excuse me.'

The bishop rose from his elaborate chair and Matthew Allen stood also, as was required. Holding his teacup in both hands, with nowhere to set it down, he bowed to the bishop as he left the room.

With her father still away, her mother gone with all the servants to deal with the laundry in Fairmead House, it was Hannah herself who opened the door to Thomas Rawnsley. He looked startled at the sight of her, flinched a little more upright, but cleverly melded the motion with the sweeping off of his hat.

'Hannah,' he said. 'These . . .'

'Yes?'

'These roses . . .'

'Yes?'

'Well, they're for you, aren't they?'

In his room at the inn, Matthew Allen stood in his s.h.i.+rtsleeves by the window, looking down at the rain spluttering on the cobbles of the courtyard, the maids hurrying from door to door.The dark-beamed ceiling was low over his head. Brandy had softened him. He stood in this box and thought. The money coming in and the money going out.The demands for dividends and the orders placed. They were colliding. He was being crushed between two columns of a ledger. The hope and air were being crushed out of him. He drank more and decided that, being realistic, the whole thing was over and they would lose everything. People did not know what it meant to lose everything, but he did. He'd been in a debtors' prison, between dark walls, denied the liberty to act, made an infant, an inmate, between dark walls. To have to beg money to start over - who would dream of lending him money now, after this? There was no light. He was crushed.

He wondered if it was possible to kill yourself by drinking a whole bottle of brandy in one go and decided to try. He raised the bottle to his lips, tipped his head back and drank, watching big bubbles flip up to its base. He shouted as he thumped the bottle down on the table and wiped his eyes, burping a sickening hot vapour. 'Not enough,' he moaned. It would take three or four. 'Not enough. Or. Or.' He stumbled over to the mirror, catching the wall with an outstretched hand, and stared at his face, his wet, scorched lips and hard, hostile eyes. 'No,' he said. 'No, no, no, no, no. Not yet. Not yet. Can be done. b.l.o.o.d.y. By me. Don't die, old fellow. Here's what . . . what'll . . .' He walked erect, then fell forwards onto his bed, reaching for his portfolio, for pen and paper, to write to Tennyson.

He lay there, with the room circling slowly around him and phrases forming in his mind. 'Immense,' he said out loud. 'Immense.' He sat up and wrote.

. . . We shall have an immense business.All is hope, fear is gone and I feel happy. We are all safe. If you knew the proportion of anxiety that I have gone through and the feeling of relief that overwhelms me and often makes my head swell to bursting with grat.i.tude and relieved only by tears scampering over my eyelids, you would see the depth and sincerity of the heart of the man who calls himself your friend, and who trusts in G.o.d, that he will be able to give the lie to all those who were suspicious, but far be it from me to boast, far be it from me to say a word against anyone.Orders are flowing in from all the great ones. The Bishop of Chester has added four chairs to his order. Never was anything more promising. All things are a lie and all things are false if this fails. The world and human nature might be changed, but it is not so and will not be so.

Tennyson sat by his fire sinking into the grief that will make him famous. When the grief was total and full of questions, full of words, was a world itself, when he'd written it, when the young queen's young husband had died and she'd let it be known that Tennyson's poem was the great a.s.suagement and elaboration of her own grief, then Tennyson will be laureate, will be rich, will be one of the great men of the age, known and praised throughout the Empire. He will meet the queen at her residence on the Isle of Wight. Before he goes, his wife will brush the sand from his boots, brush his clothes and his hair.Then he will find himself standing by a fireplace, hearing a door open and turning to see his queen enter, or half-see it. His eyes will be even weaker and they will fill instantly with tears of admiration and joy. 'I am like your lonely Mariana now,' the queen will say to him, and Tennyson, not knowing what to say, will blurt, 'What a king Prince Albert would have made.' He will fear having spoken grossly, but she will nod and agree. Tennyson will feel an understanding there between them in that room, a mingling of lonely, frail, slow spirits like the merging of clouds. But at present it was simply grief, coa.r.s.e and brackish and tiring. It did not feel like success. It did not feel like an illuminated future. It felt like loneliness and a slowly throbbing rage and confusion.

He had not lit the lamps and in the gloom of the early winter evening his long fingernails shone with the fire's red, a warmer red than the sunset's crimson, which, if he turned, he could see broken by tree shapes, blotting the surface of the frozen pond. Gules, he thought, all gules. That heraldic blood-red. That was something. His mind moved towards it. On the forest floor the shattered lances. The shattered lances lay on the hoof-churned mud. An ancient English wood where knights had ridden, where Queen Elizabeth hunted, where Shakespeare rode, according to the doctor's daughter, to play out his Dream in an aristocrat's hall. Twilight in that place, soft decay, the soft sun finding some scattered remains. There was something there: an English epic, a return of Arthur. An English Homer. Blood and battle and manliness and the machine of fate. He could hear its music, ringing, metallic and deep with inward echoings. His mind approached it, felt along the flank of this thing. It would be worth the attempt, if he ever had the strength. The logs hissed and smoked. The forest outside was again dreary, darkening, factual. There was n.o.body there.

His friends were elsewhere. Septimus was in the doctor's madhouse. His brother Edward was in another. His father was dead. Arthur Hallam, his friend, was dead and had taken out of the world with him energy, air, life. The greatest mind Alfred had known: widely commanding, clear and quick, inventive, adult, poetic. Arthur had loved Alfred's poetry, had defended it in print, he had loved Alfred and he was dead. He would have married Alfred's sister, would have become the best element in his family, but he had died and left Alfred alone.

Images of Arthur came and went, but no words came. Words would come, he might have known that, but presently they did not. He was dumb and alone. He lacked the energy even to read other people's words or get up from his chair. He stared at the fire. He was alone.

Dr Matthew Allen sat at his desk with a cup of coffee and a pen in his hand. He had a new ledger open in front of him and carefully entered invented numbers that would appease his investors.At moments he looked down at his solidified lies and it made his scalp tighten, but he reminded himself of their honourable and logical purpose.When dealing with the mad a virtuous dishonesty is sometimes required. So with his investors: he would mislead them to ultimate rewards. His heart beat light and fast with the pleasure of his own cleverness.

Still, the need for actual money remained. Fortunately he had thought of somebody to ask before the last resort of writing to his brother Oswald. Humming to himself, he got up, smoothed down his beard and set off for their room.

He knocked softly and heard nothing. He opened the door and entered. Septimus, fully clothed, lay curled on his bed, his knees up to his chest, his hands hugging his knees.'Good morning,' said Matthew.'Just the man.'

Lord Byron awoke with a fearsome headache, in soiled garments. He knew he only had himself to blame, but without such dissipations how could he disperse his animal spirits and find rest? The pages he had written! There had been weeks of thousands of lines, his hand scurrying across the page hurrying to set them down, his lip fluttering, his head a b.u.t.ter churn of beating poetry. His family would be snoring before he fell asleep and he would awaken when the stars were just beginning to sink into dawn's flood of light and the first people were trudging out to the fields, his lips already moving with lines he had to set down. Poems had formed in his dreams, had become louder and clearer until they had formed a solid bridge into wakefulness. They would force him awake to serve them. Sometimes he would creep out of bed into his corner chair, find an unused sc.r.a.p of paper and start scratching them down before he realised that he'd written them already. Weeks of this frenzy. No wonder John Barleycorn was called upon to loosen the grip of words, to set him back on his a.r.s.e and out of the violent machine of poetry.

But it had been better with his friends, a companionable riot through London's streets. They would hate to see him now, alone in his room, hungry, abandoned, in a soiled s.h.i.+rt and excremental undergarments. And in flashes, with sudden clenches of shame, images of the past night's debauch recurred to him. Had there really been again such ungentlemanly fighting? And fornication? He remembered shrieks and heard more of them from other parts of his house.

His servant opened the door. 'Time for your exercise, ' he said.

Byron looked at him, remembering. 'Yes,' he said quietly and stood, still staring at the man. His servant's face changed as he stared, or rather, stayed the same, became the same. Around that face the air seemed to be splitting, dragging back. It was excruciating to watch. The face pushed into a new element, as though through water, until it was absolutely there, in the room with him. Finally, Byron recognised the man.

'I know who you are.'

'I know who you are.'

'I know what you do.'

'Do you, now?'

Behind the man, his double, himself, face glossy with sweat, b.u.t.toning his trousers, merging into the back of himself.

'You're Stockdale.'

'And who are you?'

'Lord Byron. I know what you do.'

'You don't know anything, your lords.h.i.+p.'

'You did it again last night.'

'Your lords.h.i.+p is mistaken. You've been locked up these past three days.'

'Three nights ago, then. You violated . . .'

'Come, come. Don't be foolish.'

'Give me my liberty and I won't tell.'

'Your freedom is for the doctor to decide. And anyway, who would believe you?'

'The doctor.'

'Which doctor?'

'Dr Allen. He is a friend of mine.'

'Put you in here, though, didn't he? Your friend.You see, you are mad.'

'I'm not.'

'Who are you?'

'Don't think . . .' Byron held his head.

'Who are you?'

'Ow.'

He had to, he had to pull himself back inside himself. Stockdale had hold of his s.h.i.+rt, was shaking him. He clenched his teeth. Inside his skull, a crus.h.i.+ng, a drowning. He forced himself further. He had to. It was an exchange of pains and he had to accept the greater. Stockdale shook him. John felt his flesh come off in the attendant's hands leaving his bones bare, like a dead beast's bones tacky with remnant flesh where the wind and sun had burned. Only his head remained the same. He heard the knocking of dogs' jaws busy around his entrails that hung and fell into a pit. Stockdale dropped him. When he landed he saw himself briefly on a road, fleshless, exposed, a dead rabbit. He heard the clatter of carts and voices. Alone. The road stretched for miles in each direction. The wind softly blew on him. He'd woken up so far from home. He knew who he was.

'I'm John,' he said.

'Who are you?'

'I'm John Clare. I'm John. I'm a celebrated poet. When the doctor makes his rounds I will tell him what you did, unless you tell him to release me, that I am better.'

'You don't know who you are. Shakespeare, is it? Nelson? Who are you?'

'You know who I am. You will tell him to release me. And her. You let her go, too.'

'Who?'

'Mary?'

'Mary? There is no Mary here.'

'Not Mary. You know who. You know.'

Winter was ending in a long ceremony of rain, rain with hardly any wind beyond the drifting cold breath of its downrush.Vertical and loud, it flattened the gra.s.s and shone in all the trees.

Dr Allen stepped out into it, raising his umbrella. He was late and hungry. He hadn't eaten that morning. He hadn't dared, what with the pain in his stomach and the lightest of meals causing violent expulsions. He lacked regularity. He lacked sleep. He lacked money.

A figure on the path, also under an umbrella.

'Dr Allen,' he shouted over the noise of the rain.

'Yes.' Dr Allen squinted at him, holding his collar.

'You are Dr Allen?'

'Yes.'

'Then you're the devil I want,' he shouted.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Yes, you will.'

'I'm sorry, are you a patient?'