When the three of them were alone, Savill said, ‘Forgive me for raising the subject, my lord, but we have business to discuss.’
‘Of course we do.’ Both the words and the tone were obliging but somehow the Count contrived to suggest that Savill had committed a breach of good manners, for which of course he was forgiven. ‘But it’s growing late,’ he went on, ‘and we’re all tired. You especially, sir, no doubt after your terrible journey. We shall leave it until the morning when we are fresh.’
He spoke pleasantly enough but he left no room for manoeuvre.
At that moment there was a knock on the door. Joseph entered with a letter on a salver, which he handed to Fournier with a murmur of apology.
The latter broke the seal and skimmed its contents. With a snicker of laughter he tossed the letter on the table.
‘Something amusing?’ the Count asked. ‘Can it be shared? Or is it a private pleasure?’
‘The letter is from the Vicar – Mr Horton.’
‘He will not call on us,’ the Count said to Savill. ‘I fear he disapproves of us.’
Fournier smiled. ‘But this is different. It is by way of a professional matter.’
During the evening, the wind freshened, bringing draughts throughout the old house with its warped doors and creaking floorboards, and sending flurries of rain to beat against the windows.
They met again for supper. Afterwards the Count retired early to write letters. Savill sat with Fournier and Gohlis in a small parlour with a smoking fire.
The doctor had given Savill a dose of medicine – four drops in a glass of warmed water flavoured with brandy. Within half an hour, he felt better than he had for weeks. The toothache subsided and a sense of well-being spread throughout his mind and body. The medicine’s benevolent glow allowed him to ignore the faint – and surely unjustified – fear that he might have been unwise to trust himself to the ministrations of the Count’s personal physician.
‘The man who understands pharmacology,’ Gohlis said when Savill thanked him, ‘understands human happiness.’
‘Then it’s regrettable that pharmacology does not provide a drug to cure the dumb,’ Fournier said.
‘Not yet, sir,’ the doctor said eagerly. ‘But we make great strides every day. We have come a long way since poor Dr Ammam, who ministered to the dumb in the last century. He believed that to be mute was to be spiritually null, since man needs to be able to speak, for otherwise he does not resemble God the creator and God the son.’
‘It’s curious that the Ancients touch so rarely on the subject,’ Fournier said. ‘The affliction of being dumb, that is. The blind often have a heroic stature ascribed to them – consider Oedipus, for example. Or they have a peculiar wisdom, as Tiresias does. Even Samson, one might argue, does not attain his full moral stature until he has been blinded.’
‘Perhaps the Ancients sensed a truth that Science is now confirming,’ Gohlis said. ‘Mutes are often brutish creatures, less than human. Buffon mentions a case in his Histoire Naturelle of a young man born mute who learned to speak suddenly when he was twenty-four years of age. Despite having been trained in the outward observances of religion, he was found to have no conception of the soul or of salvation.’
Fournier smiled. ‘Is having no conception of the soul necessarily a sign of being less than human? One might even say it is a sign of a superior type of humanity. A type that transcends a need for a personal god.’
‘Indeed, sir.’ Gohlis was growing heated. ‘But in this case, it seems, the young man’s external piety concealed the mental faculties of a mere animal. And this is but one case among many. Herder records the story of a dumb boy who watched a butcher killing a pig and then promptly killed his brother, in the same way, for the simple pleasure of imitation. He felt no remorse whatsoever.’
‘But surely Charles has not always been dumb?’ Savill said. ‘Only for a few weeks.’
‘True, sir. But how long will the condition last, that is the question, and what will be its effects? Speech, it seems, is the wellspring of civilization, of our moral and intellectual life. Why, when I was last in Königsberg, I heard Professor Kant remark that the dumb can never attain the faculty of Reason itself, but at best a mere analogy of it.’
‘Then what treatment do you recommend, sir?’ Savill asked.
‘The continuation of what we have been following: a strict regimen, together with the occasional short, sharp shock to the system.’
‘Why?’
‘The shock, sir?’ Gohlis said. ‘Because it was the shock of his mother’s death that rendered him mute. Consider the mind and body as a complex mechanism – a sort of clock, if you will. Just as a clock may stop if it receives a jar or knock, so it may start again if it suffers another.’
‘But now,’ Fournier said, almost purring with pleasure, ‘just by way of contrast, we shall see how the Vicar proposes to treat it.’
‘The Vicar, sir,’ Savill said, more loudly than he had intended. ‘What has he to do with this?’
Fournier smiled. ‘You recall the letter I received while we were at table? Mr Horton is a clergyman who tends towards the Evangelical persuasion. He has a charming faith in the simple power of prayer to make the dumb burst into speech. In short, my dear sir, he desires to cure Charles with a miracle.’
From the safety of the darkened second-floor landing, Charles watches the gentlemen leaving the dining room. Their shadows leap across the floor. One of the gentlemen is the stranger.
Charles knows that the visitor is English; his name is Savill and he is come on business. The servants don’t like him being here because it means more work for them.
It is completely dark now. Charles crosses the landing and goes down the back stairs, which come out between the kitchen and the servants’ hall. He knows these stairs well. He has counted them many times, so the number of stairs is a fact that can never be doubted. He does not need to take a candle but feels his way with his hands.
The corridor at the bottom is dimly lit. The door of the servants’ hall is open. Standing at the foot of the stairs, Charles listens.
Joseph is talking to one of the maids. Charles understands most words he hears in English now.
‘That man,’ the footman is saying, ‘grim-faced devil, ain’t he, with that scar? Like walking death.’
‘Oh, Joseph,’ says Mary Ann. ‘Get on with you.’
‘Know what I think? He’s come for the Frog bastard.’
Sometimes they stare warily at Charles as if fearing that he might bite them if they let their guard down. He doesn’t belong with them, he doesn’t belong with the gentry, he doesn’t belong with the animals. He doesn’t belong with anyone. He belongs in a category all of his own.
‘What’s he want him for?’ Mary Ann says in her slow, thick voice like the cream in the dairy. ‘The boy’s an idiot.’
‘Damned if I know,’ Joseph says. ‘But that’s gentry for you. And foreigners makes it worse.’
When Charles sleeps at last, the nightmares come, as he knew they would. He sees the blood dripping like gentle red rain.
Say nothing.
The whisper sounds in his head like the wind under the door.
And