Say nothing. Not a word to anyone. Whatever you see. Whatever you hear. Do you understand? Say nothing. Ever.
Tip-tap. Like cracking a walnut.
Now and always Charles sees the blood. It runs down his cheek and soaks into his shirt. He licks his dry lips and tastes it, salty and metallic and forbidden.
He has fallen as he ran down the steep stairs. He’s lying on his back. He looks up. It is raining blood from a black sky striped with yellow. Blood glistens in the light of the lantern on the table.
There’s shouting and banging outside.
Inside, the blood is crying out. It’s screaming and shouting and grunting. The sound twists through his skull. It cuts into bone and splinters into a thousand daggers that draw more blood.
He scrambles to his feet. His shoes are by the door. He slips his feet into them.
There are no words for this, all he has heard and seen. There are no words for anything. There must never be any words.
Awake and asleep, here and anywhere, now and always. Never any words.
Charles lifts the latch and drags open the heavy door. No more 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 workshops and the big house beyond. Above the rooftops, though, the air 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 jangling fills 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 and explosions, with the clatter of hooves and the grating of iron-rimmed wheels.
Someone begins to knock at a door – not with a hand or a knocker. These blows are slow and purposeful. They make the air itself tremble. Glass shatters. Someone is shrieking.
Wood splinters. They are breaking down the door of the main 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 fumbles for them in the darkness, only to find that they are already open.
Of course they are.
He pushes the gate outward. Nothing happens. Locked, not bolted? In desperation he tugs it towards him. The gate slams into him with such force that he falls on the slippery cobbles.
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 other side of the yard. Shutters are flung open. The windows fill with 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 words inside 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 him out 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 women hurrying past him, daubed on the wall opposite.
At the corner of the street, the crowd has surrounded a coach. They are pulling out the man and the woman inside and throwing out their possessions. A hatbox falls open and the hat rolls out. A man stamps on it.
The woman is crying,