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Brenchley, Chaz - The Keys To D'esperance.txt
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The Keys to D'EspΘrance
a short story by
Chaz Brenchley
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, by the time the keys came, he no longer believed in the house.
It was like God, he thought; they oversold it. Say too often that a thing
is so, and how can people help but doubt? Most facts prove not to be the
case after all, under any serious examination. Even the Earth isn't round.
One day, they said, D'EspΘrance will be yours. You will receive it in
sorrow, they said, and pass it on in joy. That is as it is, they said, as
it always is, as it should be.
But they said it when he was five and he thought they meant for Christmas,
they'd never make him wait to be six.
When he was six they said it, and when he was seven and eight and nine.
At ten, he asked if he could visit.
Visit D'EspΘrance? they said, laughing at him. Of course you can't, you
haven't been invited. You can't just visit. You can't call at D'EspΘrance.
In passing, looking at each other, laughing. You can't pass D'EspΘrance.
But if it was going to be his, he said at twelve, wasn't he entitled?
Didn't he have a right to know? He'd never seen a painting, even, never
seen a photograph...
There are none, they said, and, Be patient. And, No, don't be foolish, of
course you're not entitled. Title to D'EspΘrance does not vest in you, they
said. Yet, they said.
And somewhere round about fifteen he stopped believing. The guns still
thundered across the Channel, and he believed in those; he believed in his
own death to come, glorious and dreadful; he believed in Rupert Brooke and
Euclidean geometry and the sweet breath of a girl, her name whispered into
his bolster but never to be uttered aloud, never in hearing; and no, he did
not believe in D'EspΘrance.
-------------------
Two years later the girl was dead and his parents also, and none of them in
glory. His school would have no more of him, and the war was over; and that
last was the cruellest touch in a long and savage peal, because it took
from him the chance of an unremarked death, a way to follow quietly.
Now it must needs be the river, rocks in his pockets and thank God he had
never learnt to swim. There would be notice taken, that was inevitable; but
this would be the last of it. No more family, no one more to accuse or cut
or scorn. The name quite gone, it would simply cease to matter. He hoped
that he might never be recovered, that he might lie on the bottom till his
bones rotted, being washed and washed by fast unheeding waters.
Quite coldly determined, he refused to lurk withindoors on his last long
day. At sunset he would go to the bridge, rocks in my pockets, yes, and no
matter who sees, they shan't stop me; but first he would let himself be
seen and hissed at and whispered about, today as every day, no craven he.
It was honour and honour only that would take him to the river; he wanted
that clearly understood.
So he walked abroad, returning some books to the public library and
settling his accounts with the last few merchants to allow him credit. He
took coffee in town and almost smiled as the room emptied around him, did
permit himself the indulgence of a murmured word with the cashier on his
way out, "Please don't trouble yourself, I shan't come back again."
And so he went home, and met the postman at the door; and was handed a
package, and stood on his doorstep watching as the postman walked away,
wiping his hand on his trousers.
-------------------
The package was well wrapped in brown paper, tied with string and the knots
sealed. It was unexpectedly heavy for its size, and made softly metallic
noises as he felt its hard angles shift between his fingers.
Preferring the kitchen in his solitude to the oppressions of velvet and
oak, of photographs and memories and names, he went straight through and
opened the package on the long deal table under the window.
Keys, three separate rings of keys: brass keys and bronze and steel, keys
shorter than his thumb and longer than his hand, keys still glittering new
and keys older than he had ever seen, older than he could believe, almost.
For long minutes he only held them, played with them, laid them out and
looked at them; finally he turned away, to read the letter that had
accompanied them.
An envelope addressed to him in neat copperplate, nothing extravagant;
heavy laid paper of good quality, little creased or marked despite its
journeying in with the keys. A long journey, he noted, unfolding the single
sheet and reading the address at the top. His correspondent, this remitter
of keys was apparently a country solicitor; but the town and the company's
name were entirely unfamiliar to him, although he had spent two months now
immersed in his parents' affairs, reading everything.
My dear lad, the letter said - and this from a stranger, strange in itself
- I believe that this will reach you at the proper time; I hope you may
learn to view it as good news.
In plain, you are now the master of D'EspΘrance, at least in so far as such
a house may ever be mastered by one man. The deeds, I regret, you may not
view; they are kept otherwhere, and I have never had sight of them. The
keys, however, are enclosed. You may be sure that none will challenge your
title, for so long as you choose to exercise it.
I look forward to making your acquaintance, as and when you see fit to call
upon me.
Yours, etc.
-------------------
His first impulse was to laugh, to toss the letter down, his resolution
quite unchallenged, quite unchanged. Just another house, and what did he
want with it? He had one already, and meant to leave it tonight and
forever.
But he was a boy, he was curious; and while he would welcome death, while
he meant to welcome it, come, sweet Death, embrace me, he was very afraid
of water.
His hands came back to the keys and played upon them, a silent music, a
song of summoning. Death could surely wait a day, two days. So could the
river. It was going nowhere; he'd be back.
-------------------
And so the train, trains, taking him slow and dirty into the north country.
Soon he could be anonymous, no name to him, just a lad too young to have
been in the war, though he was old enough now. That was odd, to have people
look at him and not know him. To have them sit just across the compartment
and not shift their feet away from his, not lour or sniff or turn a cold,
contemptuous, ostentatious shoulder.
One woman even tried to mother him, poor fool: not knowing what a mother
meant to him, bare feet knocking at his eyeballs, knocking and knocking,
knock knock. He was cold himself then, he was savage, gave her more reason
than most had to disdain him, though still she wouldn't do it.
And at last there were sullen moors turned purple with the season, there
was a quiet station with a single taxi waiting and the locals hanging back,
no, lad, you take it, it's only a ten-minute walk into the town for us and
we know it well, it's no hardship.
He wouldn't do that, though. Their kindness was inappropriate, born of
ignorance that he refused to exploit; and he had no need of it in any case.
It was after six o'clock, too late to call on the solicitor, and he didn't
plan to seek lodgings in town. His name was uncommon, and might be
recognised. Too proud to hide behind a false one, he preferred to sleep in
his blanket roll under whatever shelter he could find and so preserve this
unaccustomed anonymity at least for the short time he was here.
-------------------
Leaving the station and turning away from the town, he walked past a farm
where vociferous dogs discouraged him from stopping; and was passed in his
turn by a motor car, the driver pausing briefly to call down to him, to
offer him a ride to the next village. He refused as courteously as he knew
how, and left the road at the next stile.
Rising, the path degenerated quickly into a sheep-track between boulders,
and seemed to be taking him further and further from any hope of shelter.
He persevered, however, content to sleep with the stars if it meant he
could avoid company and questions. Whenever the path disappeared into bog,
he forced his way through heather or bracken until he found another; and at
last he came over the top of that valley's wall, and looked down into an
unexpected wood.
He'd not seen a tree since the train, and here there were spruce and larch
below him, oak and ash and others, secret and undisturbed. And a path too,
a clear and unequivocal path, discovered just in time as the light faded.
He followed the path into the wood, but not to its heart. He was tired and
thirsty, and he came soon to a brook where he could lie on his stomach and
draw water with his hands, fearing nothing and wanting nothing but to stay,
to move no more tonight.
He unrolled his blankets and made his simple bed there, heaping needles and
old leaves into a mattress between path and brook; and only at the last,
only a little before he slept did he think he saw the girl flit between
trees, there on the very edge of vision, pale and nameless as the light
slipped.
Pale and nameless and never to be named; nor seen again except like this, a
flicker of memory and a wicked trick of the light. He closed his eyes, not
to allow it passage. And breathed deeply, smelling sharp resins and the
mustiness of rot, and so cleared his mind, and so slept.
-------------------
Slept well and woke well, sunlight through trees and a clean cool breeze
and no fear, no anger, nothing but hunger in him. With the river's
resolution to come, all else was resolved; there was, there could be
nothing to be afraid of except that last great terror. And why be angry
against a town he'd left already, a world he would so shortly be leaving?
Breakfast was an apple from his backpack, eaten on the march: not enough
for his belly, but that too was no longer the driving force it had been. He
had higher considerations now; with time so short, a grumbling gut seemed
less than urgent.
Oddly, with time so short, he felt himself totally unhurried. He would walk
back the way he had come, he would find his way into the town and so to the
solicitor - but not yet. Just now he would walk here, solitary among trees
and seeking nothing, driven by nothing...
-------------------
Which is how he came to D'EspΘrance, called perhaps but quite undriven:
strolling where others before him had run, finding by chance what was his
already, though he meant to take only the briefest possession.
The path he took grew wider, though no better cared for. Tree roots had
broken it, in places the fall of leaves on leaves had buried it; but logic
and light discovered its route to him, not possible to lose it now. It
turned down the slope of the valley and found the brook again, and soon the
brook met something broader, too shallow for a river, too wide for a
stream. The path tracked the water until the water was suddenly gone,
plunging through an iron grid into a culvert, an arch of brick mounded by
earth. Steps climbed the mound, and so did he; and standing there above the
sound of water, he was granted his first sight of D'EspΘrance.
-------------------
Never any doubt of what he saw. He knew it in that instant, and his soul
sang.
The house was dark in its valley, built of stone washed dark by rains and
rains. Even where the sun touched, it kept its shadow.
A long front, with the implication of wings turned back behind, though he
couldn't see for certain even from this elevation, with the house full-face
and staring him down. A long front and small windows, three storeys and
then a mansard roof with dormers; in the centre a small portico sheltering
a high door, and he wasn't sure even the largest of his keys would open
such a door. Wasn't sure that it deserved to.
No lights, no movement: only dark windows in a dark wall, and the sun
striking brightly around it.
Between himself and the house there were formal gardens wrecked by growth,
rampant hedges and choked beds; but the hedges and beds stood only as a
frame to water. Long stone-lined pools were cut strict and square at the
corners, though they were green and stagnant now and the jutting
fountainheads were still; and below the gardens, lapping almost at his feet
now lay the deeper, darker waters of a lake. No need for the return journey
after all. No need for anything more, perhaps, now that he'd seen the
house. He could run down the slope before him, twenty yards at a good
flying sprint and he'd be too fast to stop. And so the plunge into cold
cold water and the weight of his pack, the saturated blankets, even the
keys helping to drag him down...
But this side of all that water, on the verge of unkept grass between trees
and lake stood a building, a small lodge perhaps, though its weight of
stone and its leaded dome spoke of higher ambition. Ivy-clad and strange,
seemingly unwindowed and halfway at least to a folly, it must look splendid
from the house, one last positive touch of man against the dark rise of the
wood. And it would be a shame not to have set foot in any part of
D'EspΘrance, all this way for no more than a glimpse; shame too to go on an
impulse, on a sudden whim, seizing an unexpected opportunity. No, let it at
least be a decision well thought through, weighed carefully and found
correct. Nothing hasty, no abrupt leap into glory or oblivion. He needed to
be sure of his own motives, to feel the balance of his mind undisturbed;
there must be no question but that it was a rational deed, in response to
an untenable situation.
So no, he didn't take the chance to run. He walked carefully down the steep
slope and turned to parallel the lake's edge as soon as the ground was
level, skirting the last of the trees, keeping as far from the water as he
could. Looking across to the further shore, where the gardens' gravel walks
ended in a stone balustrade and a set of steps leading down into the lake,
he saw a man he thought might have been his father. Blindfold and
blundering in the bright dry light, the man teetered on the steps' edge, on
the rim of falling; and then there was dazzle burning on the water as a
soft breeze rippled the sun, and when his eyes had cleared he could no
longer see the man.
-------------------
It is a truism that anything seems larger as you get closer, that you lose
perspective; but here he thought it was the other way, that his eyes had
made him think the lodge small because they couldn't credit the house with
being so very large. It must be so, although he wasn't looking at the house
now to make comparisons. This near, the lodge took everything. Squat and
massive it sat below its dome and drew him, dragged him forward; he thought
that it was so dense it made its own gravity, and that he was trapped now,
no way out.
The lodge had double doors that faced the water, too close for his liking,
only three low steps and half a dozen flagstones between them. In echo of
the house, there was a small pediment above the high doors, with columns to
support it in a classic portico. Still no proper windows. He could see a
thin run of glass at the cupola's foot, between lead and stone; but even
with that, even at this season with the sun low enough to strike through
the doorway at the height of the day, it was going to be dark in there.
No lock on the doors, though, no need to struggle with the keys. He climbed
the steps, laid his backpack down, set his shoulder to one of the doors and
pushed.
-------------------
There was rust in the hinges, and it spoke to him: its voice was cold and
harsh, it said "Guilty," and then it squealed with laughter.
He jumped back, sweating, clutched at a column for support and looked out
across the lake again. Saw nothing, no movement, no man.
Stood still, listened; heard the blood hiss and suck in his ears, heard his
heart labour behind his ribs, eventually heard birdsong and the soft
lapping of the lakewater, a more distant rushing which must be the
underground flow to feed and freshen it.
The door stood ajar, silent now, its greeting spoken and its accusation or
its judgement made. He stepped forward and pushed again, and it swung wide
with no sound beyond the grating of rust in its hinges.
-------------------
Not a lodge, then. Surely a folly after all.
He stood in the doorway, and the sun threw his long and slender shadow
across an enamelled iron bath. One of eight, all set in a circle,
radiating; and at the centre a square tiled pit, a plunge-bath large enough
for a dozen men to share.
There was nothing else in the great circular chamber except for wooden slat
benches around the sides, dark with mould and damp. The walls were adorned
with intricate murals, figures from history painted in the Pre-Raphaelite
style, though the light was too dim for him to identify the scenes
portrayed.
A bath-house, he thought, a bathing-house. This vast construction, and it
was only a place to bathe, ensemble or en famille; and that with the lake
outside, just there, wide and deep and surely more attractive...
Perhaps there'd been a club, a bathing-club, the local gentlemen anxious to
preserve their modesty or their ladies' blushes. That or something like it:
nothing else could explain so much labour, so much expense to such
frivolous effect.
But frivolous or not it was here, and so was he. If D'EspΘrance could spawn
a structure so large and strange at such a distance, then he thought his
keys could stay where they were, safely in his pack. Something he lacked,
to take him up to the house. He'd settle for this, at least for today. The
child is father to the man; there were lessons here to be learned, aspects
of the parent surely reflected in its idiot son.
He thrust the door as wide as it would go and then opened the other also,
to let in as much light as he could, and to allow the breeze to freshen the
musty air. Some few cracks in the domed roof added a little further light
to what the door gave, and that high circle of glass below the dome, but
this must be the most it ever saw by nature. He thought they would have
needed lamps, those who used it. Whatever they used it for.
Still, there was enough to see by. Stepping inside, he could see a gallery
now, circling just at the wall's height, below that ring of glass and the
dome's first curving: all wrought iron, the gallery, and likewise the
spiral stair that led up to it from behind the door. That must have been
for strangers, he thought, for observers, non-participants.
Now he was concerned about the murals, he thought at the very least they
must be lewd. Some provincial Medmenham set he imagined building this
bath-house, ambitious to reproduce the Hell-Fire Club in their own gardens.
But lowering his eyes tentatively to look, expecting grave disappointment,
expecting a grand fancy rendered simply sordid, he found nothing like it.
King Arthur and Excalibur he found, Oberon and Puck he found, Wayland in
his smithy and other men or fairies that he couldn't identify, but all
surely harmless even to his nervous sensibilities.
And all flaking, too, some cracking as the plaster bulged behind them or
staining darkly from beneath. Seeing one crack too long, too straight for
nature, he went closer and found the outline of a door within the picture,
found a painted leather strap to tug it open.
And tugged, and first saw the mirror that backed the door, that showed him
his own shape marvellously moving in this still place. Then saw the closet
behind the door, with its hooks and bars for hanging clothes, its slatted
shelves for towels and other necessaries.
Closed that door and looked for others, found them regularly spaced around
the chamber; and none hid anything more than an empty closet, until the
last.
On the other side of the double doors was the iron spiral leading up; here,
as though in secret reflection behind its concealing door, was a stone
spiral leading down, leading into darkness.
Bold he could be, curious he certainly was; but he needed a light in his
hand before he ventured those narrow steps. And hot food in his belly, that
too.
-------------------
One thing at least he'd learned in his time at school, though not from his
teachers. Like many a boy before him, he'd befriended the local poachers
for the sake of an occasional salmon or grouse to scorch over his study
fire and eat with his fingers, with his friends. At the start of term he'd
brought them bottles of brandy filched from his father's cabinet; in return
they'd taken him out more than once, shown him how to make a snare and
where to set a night-line.
Those skills would feed him now. There must be fish in the lake; there were
certainly rabbits in the wood's fringe, he'd seen signs of them already. He
hadn't thought to bring fishing-line or wire, why should he? He wasn't here
for sport. But he could improvise. He had bootlaces, there were springy
willow-shoots growing by the water. No need to visit the town, even to shop
for what would ensure he need not visit again.
Sitting on the steps in the sunshine while water rippled before him, that
water reflecting clouds and light and nothing of the great dark house, he
reflected on the house; and almost felt he had a duty there at least, if
none to family and reputation gone or a name that was meaningless now,
himself the last shamed bearer of it. He should go to the solicitor, and
ask how arrangements might be made. If he had to be honest, I shall be dead
soon, and the house needs an heir, then so be it. He could do that, once.
More than once, he thought not; but once would be sufficient.
Something screamed in the wood behind him, with the voice of a young girl.
He started, shifted on the warming stone, and went to check his snares.
Already there was a rabbit kicking, held tight around the neck and its feet
barely in contact with earth. He gathered wood for a fire, laid it in the
portico and lit it with flint and tinder from his pack; then he fetched the
rabbit. Carried it still living to his fire, though it lay still as a dead
thing in his hands, only its eyes alive. Those he killed first, with a
pencil. Contrary to all his tutors' lessons he let it die slow and
suffering, tutor himself now and pain all his lesson, the real world his
theme.
"See it?" he whispered, poking with his pencil, digging gently. "See the
light, little brother, see the light?"
What the rabbit saw, of course, was darkness: which was what he saw also,
whichever way he looked, into the bath-house or out across the lake. Shapes
woven from shadow moved in the shadows inside, avoiding the last of the
sun's fall across the floor; or they moved darkly in the water, under the
glitter of light.
Ragged gunfire sounded through the wood and birds rose like smoke,
screaming on the wind. A posse shooting crows, he thought; but he still
thought himself alone in this valley, and he didn't believe that anyone
would shoot at crows with a .303.
Later, as his fire hissed under the rabbit's dripping quarters, he heard
sounds of soft knocking, dull and rhythmic.
Sat and listened; and no, not knocking after all. Sounds of kicking. Slow,
steady, unremitting, a foot thudding into flesh and breaking bone.
He tended his fire, but his hands were trembling now.
-------------------
Sitting in the twilight, licking greasy fingers - not wanting to go to the
lake to wash, not while it was light enough to see what moved within the
waters - he thought he saw words scratched black across the red disc of the
sun.
Guilty he thought was said again, and other words he couldn't read for the
fire in his eyes, but they might have been names. His father's or his
mother's, the girl's or his own. It didn't matter which. Any name was a
betrayal.
He thought he should leave this valley before the games turned worse than
cruel, before they remembered the real world and turned to blood. Not at
night, though, he wouldn't leave at night. The wood had been friendly to
him once; but there was coming in and there was going out, and they were
different. He felt a little like an eel in a basket, trapped without
trying. Come the morning, he'd test that. Not now.
-------------------
So he made his bed in the portico, on hard stone because there were too
many shadows in the long grass moving, too many murmurs coming up. Between
the wood and the water, even the bath-house seemed to offer something of
protection.
Something, perhaps; but not enough. Waking in the cold night, he felt a
moist warmth on his face and smelt sour breath, smelt blood.
Heard his own breathing change, heard his blood rush. Stiffened every
muscle not to move, not to roll away; and thought there was no greater
giveaway, no louder announcement, I'm awake!
An unshaven cheek brushed his, dry lips kissed him, and he held himself
rock-still. A voice moaned in whispers, and he wouldn't moan back. Then
touch again and harder this time, hard to hold against such pressure as the
man's face stropped itself against his. Skin and stubble and the bone
beneath: and something else he felt, wouldn't open his eyes to see it but
he felt coarse cloth, a blindfold.
And then there was nothing but the hard sounds of breathing, and the sounds
of footsteps gone too quickly. He couldn't hear water, but he thought the
man had walked straight into the lake.
In the morning he found a thread of linen caught in his own soft stubble.
He tied it in a coil and put it in his wallet for safe keeping, where he
might have put a lock of someone's hair; and no, he couldn't think of
leaving now. Too much of betrayal already, too much of guilt.
Besides, the wood would never pass him through. He tested that. He went
back to the culvert, and tried to walk the path upstream; and tree-roots
tripped him, leaves hid hollows underfoot where he fell and hurt his ankle,
might have broken it. Where the path slid beneath his feet and he could
barely scramble back to solid ground, watching earth crumble into water,
there he gave it up, there he turned and came back; but it had been nothing
more than a token in any case, he'd only meant to scout.
-------------------
No escape from the valley, then. Not by the wood, at least. There must be a
road, however ill-kept; but between himself and any road the house lay,
massive and dissuasive. My house, he thought; but that was a legal fiction
at best, and more of a brutal joke. Even at this distance, he was learning
a little. The lesson was that D'EspΘrance didn't belong, it wasn't owned.
It might, on sufferance, permit; but he was not yet ready to confront what
that would mean, being accepted by D'EspΘrance.
So no, not that way. He wouldn't even skirt the borders of the house; this
was closer than he liked already, in its ambit even this further side of
the lake.
Locked out of the wood, not ready for the house and no water-baby, never
that, there was only the bath-house left him. This much he could encompass,
heavy as it was, as it might prove to be. This much he could carry, for a
while. For a brief while, his thoughts reminded him, and were still.
-------------------
In the best of the light, with the doors wide, he went in with a pale torch
burning and opened the door to the spiral stair.
Walking down in sinking circles, he smelt must and mould and dead air. The
flame flickered, making shadows dance around him; but that was only
mechanical, the action of light unfiltered by strangeness, he could
understand that and not fear it.
Distant sounds of rushing, like a hard wind contained: he thought of the
culvert, and the hurry of hidden water.
The stair turned one final time, and brought him into a high cold chamber
lined with brick, dark with moisture. This too was dedicated to the
mechanical, though, and nothing to fear. His weak torch showed him pumps
and boilers, copper pipes and iron, gauges and valves. His eye traced the
run of pipes, what would be the flow of the water; he followed it, he
learned it, he loved it. This was how he wanted the world to be, all in
order and all explaining itself.
Until his torch went out; and this was not how he wanted the world to be,
utterly dark and cold and empty, nothing in reach of his groping hands.
Groping, his hands found nothing but his eyes did. Knock knock, cool and
stiff like fingers but not that, not fingers: lightly knocking against his
eyes and knocking again like crooked fingers while he only stood there, too
much knocked upon.
Moaning, he heard his voice say "Mama"; but all moans sound more or less
like mama, and he hadn't called her that since he was a child, not since he
was very small indeed.
He stepped backwards, away from the knocking; and kept his hands rigidly at
his sides not to grope again, not to feel.
Not to find.
His feet found a wall for him, and he kept his shoulder against it until
they came to the rise of the stairs. And so up, still in darkness and that
rushing sound in his ears changing now, turning rhythmic, turning to kicks;
and the door closed at the top but his barging shoulder crashing it open
and his stumbling feet carrying him out into the cool and shadowed
bath-house which was so much warmer, so very much brighter than what lay
below.
-------------------
And still he couldn't leave, and wouldn't. Not if she were here too, and
the girl somewhere in the wood, perhaps: that early glimpse no trick of
light or memory, those sounds of kicking no folly of his mind.
He saw his father again across the lake, bound and blindfold, a khaki
figure in an early light although the sun was setting.
Beset by his own senses, he struggled for that numb normality he'd worn
like a cloak before. Horror was unexceptional, pockets were a proper place
for rocks, one deep plunge and never rising after was a fit deed in a
nothing, nothing world.
But poking at a rabbit's eyes wouldn't do it now, wouldn't keep him. Not
where his father's eyes were too much on his mind, where his mother dangled
always in his thoughts, where the girl might be watching from the wood.
What could keep him, the only thing that might keep him from the slip, from
sliding through terror and into its undermath, would be to walk that slip's
edge, to hang on terror's lips against its speaking. To go back into the
bath-house and take possession of the dark below, where his mother
currently possessed it.
-------------------
Gathering cobnuts and filberts at the wood's edge, his back turned to
whatever threatened in the water, he heard a snuffling that might have been
tears and saliva backed up in a sobbing girl's throat. He heard a
scratching that might have been a girl's desperate nails digging furrows in
the path, and then a steady heavy thud-and-scrape that sounded like nothing
so much as a boot falling and falling, and its metal studs scraping on the
path between falls as the foot drew back and lifted to fall again. He could
hear breathing too, hard grunts tied to the same rhythm.
He lifted his head expecting to see her, expecting to see her kicked; and
saw instead a bloated pink-brown rump swing and rub against a tree, hard
enough to shake the trunk. And it swung away and swung back, thud and
scrape, and it was only a pig after all: a great sow twice or thrice his
weight, let forage in the wood or else - more likely, he thought, out here
where no one was - escaped its sty and living feral. Unless D'EspΘrance did
this too, throwing up animals unexpectedly and when they were most desired.
He needed this sow badly, and lacked the means to take her.
-------------------
Means could be made, though. Made or found.
He slipped away quietly, not to disturb her at her scratching, not to
startle her off into the depths of the wood where he might not be allowed
to follow. If this was her current rooting-ground, then above all he wanted
her to keep to it.
He blunted his knife cutting at ash-saplings, hacking them away from their
roots. With the blade given an edge again on the granite steps of the
portico, he spent the evening trimming and whittling until he had an
armoury of sorts, three straight poles each sharpened at one end. He
hardened the points in his fire, remembering an engraving in a book that
showed cavemen doing the same; and the work absorbed him so that he forgot
to look over the water before the light failed, to see if his father were
there.
He still listened for the creak of rope in the bath-house or sounds of
kicking in the wood, as he turned his spears in the glowing ashes; but he
heard neither tonight, only the sow's noise among the trees. He might have
chased her then, but that he was learning to fear the dark, or those things
that were couched within it. Instead he trusted her still to be there in
the morning, and lay all night fretting in his blankets, doubting her.
-------------------
Up at first light, he found the sow moved on; but didn't need his acquired
skills to track her. A blindfold man could have followed this trail, the
broken undergrowth and the furrowed earth.
He caught up with her quickly, and with no hindrance from the wood: no
tripping roots, no hanging branches tangling in his hair. There was
hunting, apparently, and there was trying to leave, and they too were
different.
Slowing as soon as he heard the sow's heedless progress, he crept close
enough to sight her rump again; and ah, he wanted to do this hero-style,
one mighty cast to fell her swift and sure.
But this wasn't sport, there was no one to applaud, and his spears weren't
made for throwing. Silent as he knew how, as he had been taught, he slid
forward into the wind and the sow never heard him, her great flap ears
trailing on the ground as she snouted under leaves and bushes, eating nuts
and acorns, eating insects, eating frogs.
At three yards' distance he set two spears to stand against a tree, and
hefted the other in both hands above his head. The sow moved one, two
casual paces forward, blithe in her size and strength, and oh she was big,
she was just what he needed; and he took a breath and ran and thrust, all
his strength in his arms as he stabbed down, driving the spear's haft deep
as he could into the sow's flank.
She screamed, as he was screaming as he stabbed: high and shrill both of
them, vicious and unrestrained. But he thought she'd run, or try to; and
she didn't run. She turned, although her hind leg failed her where the
spear jutted from it, and her eyes were red in the shadowed wood, and her
festering yellow teeth were snapping at him; and he tried to jump
backwards, and he fell.
Sprawled on his back, he looked up into a canopy of branches baring
themselves before winter, and he saw his mother twist above his head,
lolling at the rope's end. Her bare feet swayed and turned, one way and the
other, feeling in the absence for his eyes.
He screamed again, and rolled; and though he only sought to roll away from
his mother, he was sprayed with slaver from the sow's jaws as her bite just
barely missed him. Gasping and shaken he scrambled away, and the sow
strained to follow, hauling her weight unsteadily on three legs, slipping
and rising again, squealing in pain and fury.
Up at last, he wanted only to run; but his eyes snagged on his two spare
spears, and this was what they were for, after all, he'd never expected to
finish her with one. So he snatched up one of them, holding it two-handed
again against her sheer mass; and as she came at him open-mouthed, he
rammed its dark point into what was soft at the back of her throat.
And barely released his grip in time as her jaws threshed about its haft,
jutting out between them; but she was a spent force now, crippled and
gagged, blood colouring her leg and frothing out between her teeth. He
could take time to recover his last spear, time to consider his aim before
thrusting.
Trying for her heart, he didn't find it. She fell away, though, all her
efforts on breathing now, no fight left in her; and he could work the spear
deeper, turning and thrusting and leaning on it like pushing a stick into
the earth. At last something vital gave, be it her heart or her spirit. One
last shudder, and then the slow moan of leaking air with no breath behind
it, and she was dead.
And he lifted his head, ready to howl if he needed to; and his mother was
gone, there was no body dangling, wanting to knock, knock knock against his
eyes in this dappled daylight.
-------------------
He butchered the sow where she lay, bleeding on a bed of dead leaves. There
was no other choice; he couldn't possibly have dragged her back to the
portico for a cleaner dismemberment.
He hewed at her with his short-bladed knife, and this was butchery indeed,
up to the elbows in blood and ankle-deep in the run of her spilt guts with
the stink of her rising all about him. The knife slipped often in his slimy
hands, so that he added his own blood to hers; but he worked all day, and
at last had all the pieces of her laid out on cool clean stone under the
shelter of the pediment. Then he could wash, he could strip his fouled
clothes off and wash those also, naked under the cold sun; and briefly he
had no fear of the lake, he watched only with exhaustion and no hint of
terror as dark shapes rose to question his shadow only a little further
out, where the lake-bed suddenly fell steep away.
-------------------
Because he had no other way to do it, he built a slow fire beneath one of
the iron tubs in the bath-house, and laid pieces of pork inside it on a bed
of well-scrubbed stones. As the bath and the stones heated, so fat melted
and ran down to spit and hiss on hot enamel; and this was what he needed,
not the meat.
While the lard rendered, he made crude pots from clay he'd dug with his
fingers from the lake's edge. Baking in the fire's ashes, several of them
cracked or flindered; but some survived well enough to use, he thought.
Pork for dinner, roasted dry but he wouldn't heed that. The skin had gone
to crackling; as he crunched it something roiled and stirred the water, far
out in the centre of the lake. He heard his father cry out in the darkness,
and he heard a staccato rattle of gunfire; and he heard his mother's slow
choking; and louder than any, louder than all of those he heard the sounds
of kicking.
-------------------
His father came to him again when he should have been sleeping. Wet serge
warned him, smelling strongly in the damp air; cracking his eyelids barely
open showed him an outline against the sky, the glint of moonlight on
buckles.
He heard boots shift on stone, he heard each separate breath like a groan.
But no kiss this time, no touch at all; and after his father was gone, what
he heard until he slept was his mother's rope creaking in the wind, as she
dangled somewhere close at hand. He wouldn't open his eyes again to look,
but he thought perhaps she was up between the pillars of the portico, that
close.
-------------------
In the morning, he scooped a potful of lard from the bath and set it to
melt by his cooking-fire outside. Threads drawn from his blanket and
plaited together made a wick; he laid that across the pot and let it sink,
with ends trailing out on either side.
When he lit them in the shadows behind the bath-house door, they made more
soot and smell than light; but they made light enough to work by, Light
enough to reclaim the cellars from his mother, perhaps, though she could
dangle as well in light as darkness.
She couldn't knock, knock knock at his eyes in the light, and that was what
counted.
-------------------
He made as much light as he could, three lamps each with two wicks burning
at both ends, twelve guttering flames to save him. He carried them down one
at a time, and even the first time there was no body swinging at the head
of the stairs, nor any at the foot, nor in the chamber below: only the
boilers and the pumps and the constant rushing sound of water.
By his third trip down, coming from light into light with light right there
in his hands, he felt secure until he looked more closely at the machinery.
All the surfaces were coated in a sticky black mixture of dust and grease,
generations old; but two words gleamed out at him in the light he'd
brought, shining where someone had written them with a finger in that
clagging muck. One of course was Guilty, and Coward was the other.
One quick sobbing breath, staring, seeing the finger in his mind - fine and
delicate for sure, trembling a little perhaps with the enormity of it all -
and then he turned abruptly, and saw the box of tools in the corner,
half-hidden under dark and heavy piping.
A galvanised iron bucket, and a wooden box of tools: hammers and
screwdrivers and wrenches, everything he could possibly need. No can of
grease, but he didn't need grease now, he had his bathful of rendered fat.
He could sieve that through his shirt to get the grit out. Not first,
though. Cleaning came first; and first for cleaning were the boilers that
bore those two accusations, those truths.
-------------------
Days he worked down there, days and into the nights sometimes, cleaning and
greasing and taking apart, sketching plans and patterns of flow with
charred sticks on the tiled floor. His parents left him largely
undisturbed, his father no longer crossing the lake, his mother only
distantly dangling. If they were making room for the girl, if it was her
turn now, she was being slow to show; and he wasn't waiting.
Not consciously, at least. Consciously, he was learning how to plumb.
-------------------
At last, the turn of a great brass stopcock brought water gushing through
the pipes. The furnace burned hot and fast on gathered wood; and as soon as
pressure started to build, the first leaks showed where rubber had perished
and his rabbitskin-and-porkfat improvisations wouldn't hold. He patched as
best he could, and set the bucket to catch the worst of the drips. It
didn't matter, he was only testing the system, and there was a drain in the
floor in any case. If it wasn't blocked.
Sweating, he refilled the furnace and threw a lever, and the pump started
to knock, knock knock. Knocked and failed, and knocked again. More leaks,
jets of steam now, clouding out the light; briefly he thought the show was
over for the day, knock knock and nothing more.
But again a knock, and a faster knocking; the rhythm changed abruptly, hard
and steady and unfaltering now, and he thought of course of kicking; and
the girl came walking to him out of the steam and oh, she was so afraid.
She wore white, as she had when last he saw her. Her fingers plucked at the
fabric of her dress, her eyes were wide and panic-lost and all her body was
trembling. Her mouth shook so much, at first she could say nothing.
There was nothing he could say, and nothing he wanted said between them;
but she tried, and tried again, and at last,
"They shot your father," she said. "They took him out and shot him. For
cowardice," she said; and she had said all this before though not like
this, not so dreadfully afraid. "There was a court martial and they found
him guilty, and they shot him."
Her voice had been hard before, hard and accusatory. You lied to me, it had
been saying, you're a coward too. There had been no tears then, and none of
the pleading, none of the terror he saw in her pallid face.
Then as now, he had been unable to speak at all; then as now, she had gone
driving heedlessly on, far past what was honourable or decent. And yes, he
was an expert on honour by then, he'd seen it from both sides and knew it
better than any.
"Your mother," she said, though she clearly, she so much didn't want to.
"That's why she, why she hanged herself," she said. "For shame," she said,
"she hanged herself for shame."
Let herself dangle in the dark for him to find when he walked clean into
her, her bare toes knock knock against his blinded, desperate eyes.
"You should do that too," she said, "why not? Why don't you? A coward and
the son of a coward, and your mother the only honourable one among you all,
why don't you just jump in the river? Too scared, I suppose," she said,
answering herself. "I should have known then, when I realised you were a
water-funk. Once a coward, always a coward. Like father, like son..."
And that was all she said, because it was all she had said the first time.
After that it was only crying out, and grunting.
And now as then, and this was what she'd been so afraid of: that it would
happen again as it had, that it would have to.
And of course it did. He swung wildly, and felt the solidity of her against
the back of his hand as she sprawled at his feet; and feet, yes, already he
was kicking.
Kicking and kicking, but not to silence her this time, not for shame. Only
because she was there, as his parents were intermittently there, in their
intermittent deaths; and the thing was there to be done, and so he did it.
Felt better, second time. Not good, never that; but better. She cried, but
not he cried. No choking, no fire in his throat or eyes, neither anger nor
grief could find him. Fear might have found him, perhaps, but he wasn't
afraid of this.
Neutral at last, he kicked until his feet lost her in the steam, until she
was entirely gone from there.
And then he felt his way up the stairs and out into the bath-house where a
couple of taps were hissing and spitting, scalding to his hand as he turned
them on.
He scrubbed one of the baths as best he could, and washed every piece of
clothing that he'd brought. He laid them out on the portico steps, and came
back naked to fill the bath again.
Lying back with his eyes closed, with burning water lapping at his ears and
the corners of his mouth, he thought that nothing was finished, even now;
but it didn't seem to matter. Let his father stumble blindfold against
death, let his mother dangle, let the girl come for kicking when she chose.
Or when he called her. The world was wider, much wider than this; and here
he was only on the fringes of it yet, he hadn't even been up to the
house...
-------------------
Later, in the darkness, when his clothes were dry, he thought he might walk
down to the lake and into the water. He would be borne up, he thought, and
carried over, because in his pockets he carried the keys to D'EspΘrance.
-------------------
But actually, he slept; and in the morning he walked the other way, he
walked into town looking for the solicitor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
⌐ Chaz Brenchley 1999
This story first appeared as a chapbook published by Subterranean Press.