The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor extract

8/9/2019 The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor extract

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ANDREW TAYLOR

The Silent Boy


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HarperHarperCollinsPublishers1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2015

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 20141

Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2014

Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right tobe identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this bookis available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-00-750660-6

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it,

while at times based on historical fact, arethe work of the author’s imagination.

Set in Sabon LT Std by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain byClays Ltd, St Ives plc

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bereproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the priorpermission of the publishers.

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from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and

ecological needs of present and future generations,and other controlled sources.

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment atwww.harpercollins.co.uk/green


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For James


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Awake and asleep, here and anywhere, now and always.Never any words.

Charles lifts the latch and drags open the heavy door. Nomore words.

Hush now. Say nothing.

Tip-tap.

Charles darts out of the cottage and pulls the door shut.The cobbled yard is in darkness. So are the workshopsand the big house beyond. Above the rooftops, though, theair flickers orange and yellow with the light of torches.The noise is deafening. He wants to cover his ears.

The tocsin is ringing. There are other bells. Their janglingfills the night and mingles with the host of unnatural sounds.The street on the far side of the house is as noisy as by day– much noisier, with shouts and screams, with barks andexplosions, with the clatter of hooves and the grating of

iron-rimmed wheels.Someone begins to knock at a door – not with a hand ora knocker. These blows are slow and purposeful. They makethe air itself tremble. Glass shatters. Someone is shrieking.

Wood splinters. They are breaking down the door of themain house. In a matter of minutes they will be in the yard.

Charles stumbles towards the big gates beyond the cottage.

Two heavy bars hold them shut, sealing the back of the yard.In one leaf is a little low wicket.

At night the wicket is secured by two bolts. He fumblesfor them in the darkness, only to find that they are alreadyopen.

Of course they are.He pushes the gate outward. Nothing happens. Locked,

not bolted? In desperation he tugs it towards him. The gateslams into him with such force that he falls on the slipperycobbles.


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The cottage door is opening.Panic surges through him. He is on his feet again. The lane

outside the gate is in darkness. He leaps through the wicket.The lane beyond runs parallel to the street. The warm air

stinks of decay. The city is so hot it has gone mad.In the confusion, he is dimly aware that the hammering

from the house has stopped. There are lights on the otherside of the yard. Shutters are flung open. The windows fillwith the light of hell.

Chains rattle, bolts slide back. A dog is barking with deep,excited bellows.

Through the open wicket he sees the house door opening.He glimpses the black shape of a huge dog in the doorway.

Charles covers his mouth with his hand to keep the wordsinside from spilling out. He turns and runs.

There is so much confusion in the world that no one gives

Charles a second glance. They push past him. They cuff himout of their way as if swatting a fly.He is of no interest to them. He is nothing. He is glad to

be nothing. He wants to be less than nothing.He shrinks back into a doorway. He sees blood everywhere,

in the gutters, on the faces and clothes of the men and womenhurrying past him, daubed on the wall opposite.

At the corner of the street, the crowd has surrounded acoach. They are pulling out the man and the woman insideand throwing out their possessions. A hatbox falls open andthe hat rolls out. A man stamps on it.

The woman is crying, great ragged sobs. The gentlemanis quite silent. His eyes are closed.

The baker’s assistant, who is a burly fellow half a head

taller than everyone else, tugs at the woman’s dress. He pawsat the neck. The thin fabric rips.

Charles slips from the doorway. He does not know where


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the Tuileries. The screams and shouts. The clatter of wheelsand hooves.

On the Quai d’Orsay and the Quai Theatines people arewatching the battle on the other side of the river as if it is

a firework display.In the Rue Dauphine, his mind clears, not much but enough

to realize where he is going. He has been here only oncebefore, and then it was daylight and everything was normal.It takes him nearly an hour to find his way, casting to andfro in the near darkness, avoiding the crowds, avoiding thepeople who try to sweep him into their lives.

At last, not far from the Café Corazza, he stumbles onthe narrow mouth of the alley. It leads to a paved court. Theonly light comes from an oil lamp on a second-floor window-sill. The lamp casts a faint dirty-yellow fragrance. The courthas trapped the sun’s warmth during the day. It is even hotterthan the street.

For a moment he listens. He hears nothing nearby exceptthe scramble of rats, a sound grown so familiar he barelynotices it.

He finds the door with the help of his fingertips not hiseyes.

The wood is old and scarred and as dry as a desert. Charleshammers on it until his knuckles bleed. He hammers on it

until it opens.

Marie is not much taller than he is. She is almost as wideas she is tall. She looks like a bull in a faded blue dress andcarries with her a smell of sweat, garlic and woodsmoke,mingled with a sour, milky quality that is hers alone. Hersmell is as familiar to Charles as anything in the world.

She draws him over the threshold and squeezes him in herarms so tightly that he finds it hard to breathe.

‘What happened?’ she says. ‘Where is Madame?’


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he is going but his feet know the way. He has nothing withhim except the shirt he was sleeping in, his breeches and theshoes on his feet.

The sign of the Golden Pheasant hangs above the shop

that sells poultry. Someone has draped a petticoat over it.Old Barbon, the porter of the house five doors down, is

lying on the ground. He is pouring wine into his mouth andthe liquid runs over his cheeks. Barbon once gave him a plumso sweet and juicy that Marie said it came from the angels.

Madame Pial, who keeps the wine shop in the next street,is dragging a sack along the road. She has lost her hat andher cap. Her grey hair flows in a greasy tide over hershoulders.

The Rue de Richelieu is seething with people. Their facesare twisted out of shape. They are no longer human. Theyare ghouls in a nightmare. Charles pushes through them inthe direction of the river. The street ends at the Rue Saint-

Honoré. He means to turn left and cross the river at the PontRoyal. But the crowd is even denser here, clustering aroundthe Tuileries like wasps round a saucer of jam. He will notbe able to force his way through.

Besides, lying on the road not three yards away from himis one of the King’s Swiss Guards. The man has no headand he has lost his boots and breeches. His entrails coil out

of his belly, gleaming in the torchlight, still twitching.Charles slows. He weaves eastwards towards the Île du

Palais. He crosses the river at the Pont Neuf. National Guardsare on both sides of the river and also on the Île du Palaisitself. But they are taking no notice of the people who streamnorth over the river towards the Tuileries. He slips amongthem, against the flow of the tide. He smells sweat and

excitement and anger.There are fewer people on the Rive Gauche. But the noise

is almost as bad. The sound of artillery and musket fire near


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She asks him questions over and over again and he cannotanswer any of them. In the end she gives up. She brings waterand a cloth and rinses the blood from his face and hands.

The only light in the room comes from the stump of a

tallow candle and a rushlight on the unlit stove. That is whyshe does not see the clotted patches of blood in his hair. Buther fingers find them. She makes the smacking noise withher lips that signifies her disapproval of something. Withsudden violence, she strips off his breeches and his stainedshirt. She drags him, white and naked, into the court.

There is a pump in one corner. She holds him under itwith one hand and sluices water over him with the other.She runs her fingers through his wet hair, over every surfaceand into every crack and cranny of his slippery body. Sherinses him again. With a hand on his neck, she pushes himin front of her into the room and bars the door behind them.

Despite the heat, Charles is shivering. She wraps him in a

blanket, makes him sit on a stool and lean against the wall.She brings him water in a beaker made of wood.He drinks greedily. She is humming quietly. She often does

this, the same three notes, la-la-la, low and soft, over andover again.

He is glad that Luc is not there. Luc is Marie’s brother.He is a kitchen porter. He has only one eye, owing to a

frightful accident in the slaughterhouse where he used to work.Though she did not witness it herself, Marie has describedthe accident to him many many times in graphic detail.

Charles’s one visit to this house, nearly a year ago, wasso that he might see in person the angry red crater that wasthe site of Luc’s lost left eye. It was not as impressive inreality as in imagination. For the sake of his hosts, he acted

out a polite pantomime of shock and horror. In truth, however,he was disappointed.

When Marie took him home again, he left a sou on the


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stove, because he knew that she and Luc were poor. Mariewas Charles’s nurse when he was very young and later stayedas a maid. But then she was dismissed and the boy criedhimself to sleep for nearly a week.

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

When Charles has had all the water he can drink, shebrings in the chamber pot and watches him urinate. Afterwardsshe makes him kneel by the bed. She kneels beside him andsays the prayer to the Virgin that she always says before hegoes 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 shebegins the prayer again, he moves his lips, mouthing shapeswhich have no words to them.

She watches him closely but does not seem to mind. Perhapsshe 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 climbsin beside him. The mattress sinks beneath her weight. Hisbody has no choice but to sink towards her and to mouldits contours to hers.

It is very hot and it grows hotter. Now he is big he doesnot 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.


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

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

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

Charles is in the alcove, in the bed. He rolls a little to theleft, 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 hecan 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 elseto 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 sheand 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 thatends.’ 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


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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 cleana way to die. They prefer the old ways – hanging on woodengallows, 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 bloodon her cheek.‘You will do as I say,’ Luc says. ‘Or I’ll break every bone

in his body, and in yours.’


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Chapter Two

Marie holds tightly to Charles’s arm. She pulls him fromthe shadowy, urine-scented safety of the alleyway leadingto 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 hecame to Marie’s. Everything is brighter, louder and noisierthan it should be – the clothes, the cockades, the soldiers,the checkpoints, the swaying, seething parties of men andwomen. There is urgency in the air, an invisible miasma thattouches everyone. He wants to be part of it.

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

Marie drags him across the street, threading their waythrough the coaches and wagons by force of personality and

a steady stream of oaths. She stops outside a great housewith black gates, studded with iron.

The black gates are shut. Marie mutters under her breath


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and tugs on the bell handle with her free hand. She does notlet go of Charles with the other hand. She grips his wrist sotightly 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. Sherings the bell again. A passer-by jostles Charles, wrenching himfrom Marie’s grasp. He sprawls in the gutter and grazes hisknees. Marie swears at the man and hauls him to his feet. Shepulls the bell a third time, for longer and harder than before.

A shutter slides back in the wicket. A man’s eyes and noseare 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 home. Marie rings the bell again. She

hammers on the door. Nothing happens.She knocks again. By now a crowd has gathered, watchful

and silent.Marie turns from the gates and asks the bystanders whatthey think they’re staring at. Such is the force of her authority,of her anger, that they drift away, shamefaced.

Muttering under her breath, Marie leads Charles awayfrom the gates in the direction of the Grand École. He startsto cry.

A slim gentleman is coming towards them on foot. Hisleft leg drags behind him. He is dressed plainly in a darkgreen coat. Charles recognizes him and so does Marie.

She leaps forward into the man’s path and pushes the boyin front of her. ‘Monseigneur!’ she cries. ‘Monseigneur!’

He stops, frowning, his face suddenly wary. ‘Hush, hush– I am plain Monsieur Fournier now. You know that.’

‘Monsieur, you came to Madame von Streicher’s.’He frowns at Marie. ‘I am sorry. There is nothing I can

do for you. Whoever you are.’


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He won’t tell me anything. I can’t keep him at home. Mybrother will throw him out.’

‘You did well to bring him.’ Monsieur Fournier takes outa handkerchief and wipes his face. ‘We can’t talk here. Follow

me.’He sets off in the direction he came from, walking so

rapidly despite his limp that Charles and Marie have to breakinto a trot to keep up. He takes the next turning, a lanerunning along the side of the house. There are no windowson the ground floor, only small ones high up in the wall, farabove Charles’s head. These windows are protected by heavygrilles of iron bars, painted black like the gates.

They turn another corner into a narrow street parallel tothe Rue du Bac. Here is another, much smaller gate set in thewall of the house.

Monsieur Fournier looks up and down the lane. There isno one else about. He knocks twice on the gate, pauses,

knocks once, pauses again and then knocks twice again.The shutter slides back. Nobody speaks. On the other sideof the gate there is a rattling of bars. The key turns. The gateopens – not to its full extent, merely enough to allow a manto pass through.

Fournier is the first to enter. Marie pushes the boy afterhim. As she does so she ruffles his hair.

They are in a cobbled yard with a well in one corner. Afat old man in a dirty brown coat stares open-mouthed atthem. Fournier limps towards the great grey cliff of the house.The old man jerks with his head towards the house, whichmeans that Charles must follow.

Charles breaks into a run. Behind him, he hears the gateclosing.

It is only when he is inside the house, when he is followingMonsieur Fournier up a long flight of stone stairs that he


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realizes Marie is no longer there. She has stayed on the otherside of the black gate.

The room is almost as large as a church. Despite the sunshine

outside, it is gloomy, for the shutters are still across thewindows. Light filters through the cracks. One of the shuttersis slightly open and a bar of sunlight streams across thecarpet to a huge desk.

The desk is made of a dark wood ornamented with goldwhich sparkles in the sunshine. Its top is as big as his mother’sbed and it has many drawers. It is covered in papers – somein piles, some lying loose as if blown by a gust of wind.

Behind the desk, facing into the room, is a stout gentlemanwhose face is in shadow. He looks up as Monsieur Fournierenters, and Charles recognizes him.

‘I thought you’d be halfway to—’ The gentleman seesCharles behind Monsieur Fournier. He breaks off what he is

saying.‘This is more important,’ Fournier says.‘What the devil do you want with that boy?’Fournier advances into the room with Charles trailing

behind him. One of the piles of paper is weighted down witha pistol. Charles wishes that he were back with Marie, lyingin her bed against her great flank and smelling her strange,

unlovely smell.‘You don’t understand. He’s Madame von Streicher’s son.’Charles knows that this man is very important. He is

Count de Quillon, the owner of this house, the Hotel deQuillon, and so much else. The Minister, Maman says, thegodson of the King and once the King’s friend. He sometimescame to see Maman, though more often he would send a

servant with a message and Maman would put on one ofher best gowns and go away in his great coach.

Only now, when the Count rests his elbows on the desk,


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does the sunlight bring his face alive. He is a broad, heavyman, older than Fournier, with a small chin, a big nose anda high complexion.

‘This is Augusta’s son?’ the Count says. ‘This? Are you

sure? Absolutely sure?’‘Quite sure, despite the dirt and the rags.’‘How does he come here?’‘He ran away and went to an old servant’s. She brought

him a moment ago.’‘So was he with his mother when—’Fournier interrupts: ‘I don’t know. He was covered in

blood when he turned up at the old woman’s house.’‘It is of the first importance that we discover what

happened. Where is the servant? She must know something.’‘She ran off as soon as we came through the gate.’The men are talking as if Charles is not there. He might

be invisible. Or he might not even exist at all. He cannot

grasp this idea. Nevertheless, part of him quite likes it.‘Come here, boy,’ says the Count.Charles steps up to the desk. He makes himself stand very

straight.‘What happened at your house that night? The – the night

you ran away?’Charles does not speak.

‘Don’t be shy. I can’t abide a timid boy. Answer me. Whoelse was there? I must know.’

‘The woman said he simply won’t speak,’ says Fournier.‘No reason why he shouldn’t, of course – he’s perfectly capableof it. I remember him chattering away ten to the dozen.’

‘Answer me!’ the Count roared, rearing up in his chair.‘You will answer me.’

Tears run down Charles’s cheeks. He says nothing.Fournier shifts his weight from his left leg. ‘Give the lad

time to get his bearings,’ he suggests. ‘Gohlis can see him.’


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The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor extract

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