At the start of the journey they had called to one another, called out their best wishes, laughing at the oddity of their lives, elated by their adventure. But then Tomas’s chatter fell away, and after that Lucy’s, and lastly Mr. Broom’s, and now did the trial of their escape truly begin, and they set to work with wholehearted diligence.
The water was never any more than waist-deep, and the current was not particularly strong, but the fact of their constantly battling against it was enough to wear them down, and they soon found themselves humbled, woefully fatigued, each of them sheltering in his heart a fear of death which was acute, and acutely real. Later their flesh went numb, which on the one hand dimmed their pain, but also made them clumsy, so that they tripped over unseen rocks and boulders and were dunked frequently; each would lurch up from the water with a great, heaving inhalation of sheer discomfort.
Time and again they arrived at a fork in the river, identified by the bisection of sound before them, and time and again the fish performed without hesitation, yanking agitatedly on the lace, which Lucy had tied to his finger. There was no telling if it were day or night but the men walked on just as far as they could, until on the verge of collapse, when they located by touch an outcropping of sand and rock; they crawled onto this and laid their weary bodies down. The fish had no desire for relaxation, and the lace quivered with a relentless pressure Lucy found maddening. Lest he not sleep at all, he tied it to a rock. When they awoke they couldn’t guess at how long they had rested, only that they hadn’t rested enough. In spite of this they stood, and stretched their aching muscles, resuming the trek upriver, for they knew their time was limited. They could be injured; they could starve; their will might give out; they might freeze—it was paramount to move while they still had their strength, and the unspoken fact was that the chances of survival were shrinking away with each moment gone by. The darkness was so complete that when Lucy blinked his eyes there was no discernible visual difference, which struck him as fantastical or impossible, as one clapping his hands together and finding that this action produced no sound.
Save for sleeping, they paused only to eat; they had two fish apiece on their persons, one in each trouser pocket. After these were consumed, then did their mood grow all the more peculiar. As is typical of long journeys, they lost their desire to communicate with one another, and lapsed into silence; they were as good as alone now, and each found his thoughts more inclined to wander abstractly. This brought about periods of peaceful calm in Lucy, moments where he forgot his hunger and miserable cold, moments when the fish, as though likewise dazed, did not yank on the lace but moved more slowly, so that Lucy could forget the fact of its existence and purpose, as well as his own. These transient instances were merciful but fleeting; soon enough, Lucy’s woes would return, announcing themselves cruelly, loudly, inarguably.
Days came and went when finally Lucy crossed some nameless threshold, and began to find everything about his situation very funny indeed. He supposed this was the signal that the end was near, a notion which was of no great concern. When it occurred to him he hadn’t felt any tension in the lace for a while, he drew his hand back, and now he discovered it was no longer attached to his finger. This sobered him temporarily, and he called out to Mr. Broom and Tomas, but heard no answer. He ceased walking and waited, thinking they would soon catch up with him, but they never did. The swirling sound of the river encircled him, and confused his equilibrium. He had the sensation he was standing on a steep incline, though he knew this wasn’t so; when he closed his eyes it felt as though he were sleeping standing up. What if he were to simply fall away, into the water, to be led back to the safety of the sandy island? But if he were to do this, mightn’t he die, his skull dashed on some jagged rock? No matter, he thought, and his body was tilting backward when he realized that when he’d closed his eyes, it had become ever so slightly darker. He opened and shut his eyes several times to make sure this was an actuality; and finding it so, he located a hoard of resolve from the innermost region of himself. He took a moment to regroup, and continued apace. The light was increasing.
XII
LUCY, LIBERATED
1
It was a sunbright, late-spring morning, and before Lucy was a level field of tall grasses, and in the center of this, an apple tree. He walked toward it, collapsing at its base. The sun spilled through the branches, and the earth itself was warm; he allowed this warmth into his blood, then his bones, and there were apples on the ground all around him which he ate one after the other, and his life felt a fantasy of luxury. Soon, he slept; waking around noon-time, he returned to the mouth of the cavern and called to Mr. Broom and Tomas, waiting there for an hour and more before walking away, to the east, in the direction of the castle. Possibly it would have been best to re-enter the cave and attempt to locate his friends, but this didn’t occur to Lucy until later, and then only dimly. He liked to think the men had been deposited unscathed back upon the sandy bank, and were chattering away yet in their voluble fashion, but in his deeper heart he knew they were corpses, now.
There was a peculiar foreignness to all the world around him which made Lucy feel wary. Some hours later the village came into view, and he thought of Klara, which summoned an anguish in him. Everything he had been through of late, what difference did it make? What was it for that he had survived, even? When he saw her shanty in the distance he knew he had to go there at once, and he located and hefted a heavy stone in his hand, this to nullify Adolphus’s skull. Lucy had no plan beyond this, but there was the sense in him that once this was accomplished, then other avenues and possibilities would present themselves.
2
Mewe was sitting out front of his shanty, staring at nothing, a drawn look on his face. When he saw Lucy, he startled and sat upright. “You’re not dead?” he said wonderingly.
“No, I’m not dead. Hello.”
“But where in the world have you been?”
“Away.”
“Where are your shoes?”
“I lost them.”
“Why is your suit in rags?”
“I have suffered through an era of unluckiness.”
“Yes, as have we,” Mewe said, leaning back. He pointed at the stool beside him and Lucy sat.
“Why do you have that stone in your hand?”
“I’m going to kill Adolphus with it.”
“That would be quite a trick.”
“You don’t believe I’ll do it?” asked Lucy.
“I don’t believe you will, no. Because Adolphus has already died.”
Lucy said, “What?”
“He’s died. They’ve exploded him.”
“Who has?”
“They have.”
“What does that mean, exploded him?”
“It means that he is no longer of a piece.”
“Where is he?”
“Here and there—that’s what I’m telling you.”
“Where is the main part of him, Mewe?”
Mewe pointed to Klara’s shanty. Lucy stood and entered. Adolphus lay on the table in the front room, naked to the waist, and his head was not on his shoulders. It had been taken off cleanly, to the base of the neck. There was a charring at the edges of the wound but his body was otherwise unmarked, and Lucy stood by, considering the incongruousness of this specimen: healthful yet headless. He had no feeling in him as he stared at the corpse, no relief, no sense of triumph. In a little while he laid the stone on the table where the head should have been. Mewe came into the shanty and stood next to Lucy. “It was a cannonball, do you know? A cannonball took his head off.”
“Oh,” said Lucy.
“They say his body stood awhile without the head, and that when it collapsed, it folded, as though he were lying down to go to sleep. After, they brought him back here, to Klara. Only she’d already gone.”
“Gone?” said Lucy.
“Yes, the Baroness has taken her away.”
Lucy shook his head. “What does that mean?
”
“Klara went to the castle to see if there was any news of you. She and the Baroness met there and came to some agreement. Klara told me she would work for the Baroness as her lady-in-waiting. Anyway, they’ve left.”
“Where did they go?”
“West, is all Klara said. They took Rose with them, too.”
“Where is Memel?” Lucy asked.
Mewe pointed to Memel’s door and Lucy entered to find Memel lying atop his mattress in suit and vest and boots, hair combed and parted, hands folded across his heart, and his flesh was gray, for he too was deceased. There were candles burning about the room, and long-stemmed flowers had been cast over his body and onto the ground around him. Lucy stood at the foot of the bed, breathing in the scent of the blossoms. Mewe was in the doorway, looking at his old friend with a mournful expression.
“Let me understand it,” Lucy said. “Memel has died, and Klara and Rose are gone, and the Baroness has also gone, and Adolphus has lost his head.”
“All true,” said Mewe.
“Will you explain to me just what happened while I was away, please?”
Mewe cleared his throat. He said, “Adolphus came here claiming you’d tried to kill him. We couldn’t picture it, but then you’d disappeared, and when Klara and I went up to the Very Large Hole to look for ourselves, we found your pipe there.” Mewe pulled the pipe from his pocket and tossed it to Lucy. Lucy caught it and held it in his palm.
“And so Klara thought I’d died,” he said.
“Yes, when we saw the pipe, we knew that you had, and were very sorry for it. Actually Klara was more than sorry for it. Adding to her upset was Memel’s decline; after he passed away, Adolphus was always hovering nearby. He got it into his mind that he and Klara should marry at once, and he wouldn’t let this alone, so that finally she had to explain it was impossible.”
“Impossible,” said Lucy.
“Yes.”
“And why was it?”
Mewe said, “But of course she didn’t love him in that way, Lucy. Not since she met you.”
Lucy watched Mewe carefully after he’d said this. He wanted so badly to believe that it was so.
“Adolphus took the rejection poorly,” Mewe continued, “so that when there came news of an attack against his troops up the mountain, he hurried off to do his part. The soldiers who brought his body down said he was fighting with something more than bravery. At last he simply ran toward their cannons, and that was the end of him.”
Lucy returned to the front room and stood again before what remained of Adolphus. Flies were socializing at the thickly clotted neckhole and he experienced an obscure pity for his antagonist. “I wonder what they were fighting about,” said Lucy.
“Some men just like to kill each other, I expect,” said Mewe. He had remained in Memel’s doorway, and was looking over his shoulder at Lucy. “And what now?” he asked. “Will you stay on at the castle, do you think?”
“I don’t think I will, no.”
“Will you return to your home?”
“No.”
“When will you leave?”
“Just now, I suppose.”
Mewe had turned away from Lucy; he was hiding his face, and Lucy asked,
“Are you all right?”
When Mewe looked back, Lucy saw that he was silently crying. “Everything is ending,” he said. He hurried out of the shanty and Lucy watched him leave, afterward standing in the quiet, cool stillness. Thinking of the time he had passed in the space, there entered into his mind an accumulating hum, and now Lucy was struck with a bolt of the most splendid sadness. It overcame his spirit, his breath ran thin, and his legs went stringy from it.
Revisiting Memel’s room, he folded back the dead man’s lapel, tucking the pipe into his coat pocket. He had never enjoyed using the pipe, and it felt correct for Memel to have it in his permanent possession.
Lucy left the shanty and struck out for the castle.
3
All was quiet as Lucy climbed the stairs to his room. The state of his suit was past repair and so he shed this, putting on the clothes he’d arrived in. The trousers were blowsy at the knee, the stockings had gone thin, and the buttons on his coat were missing save for one. He pulled on his sheepskin cap and was, for better or worse, himself again. After packing his valise, he set out in search of the others, finding Agnes at the table in the servants’ quarters, a cup of tea in one hand, her chin rested in the other. Lucy greeted her and she swiveled to face him.
“I’m leaving the castle, ma’am,” he told her. “I thought you should know.”
“Leaving?” she said. “But I thought you’d left already.”
“I was gone, but I’ve returned.”
“Only to leave again?”
“That’s right.” Lucy sat opposite Agnes. “Where is everyone else?”
“The Baroness has run off once more, and so the Baron is hiding away in a sulk somewhere. I don’t know what’s the matter with Mr. Olderglough, but he’s gone sulky also.” There was a stiffness to Agnes’s movements, as though she were in pain; when Lucy asked her if she was feeling all right, she said, “I don’t believe I am all right, Lucy, no.”
“And will you tell me what’s the matter?”
In a tone of confidentiality, she told him, “It would seem to me, boy, that we are all of us getting smaller, here.”
“Smaller?”
“Less full, yes.”
“I’m not sure quite what you mean, ma’am.”
“We are—emptying. Becoming empty.” Brightening, she said, “We are draining. That’s it. We are all draining away, and soon we will be gone.” She took a sip of her tea, then studied her cup with a look of mistrust. “Cold.”
“Would you like me to boil you more water, ma’am?”
“Why bother? Indeed, it will only grow cold again.” She began muttering to herself, and now Lucy noticed the state of the larder: stacks of unwashed crockery teetered here and there; the table linen was blotched with stains; trampled ash decorated the floor.
“Well, ma’am,” he said, “I just wanted to say thank you for all your help.”
“Did I help you, though?” she asked absently.
“You did.”
“And how did I?”
“You were generous with me, and so I felt less alone here.”
She looked at him as though she thought he were being foxy. “Do you still have the coin I gave you?”
Lucy patted his pocket. “It is here, ma’am.”
“And now, will you use it?”
“I will.”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it?” She took another sip of the tea, and scowled.
“Goodbye, ma’am,” he said.
Lucy left the servants’ quarters; Agnes resumed her muttering.
4
Mr. Olderglough sat before his vanity in his rumpled sleeping attire, his cap askew, his face unshaven. He was speaking to Peter through the bars of the bird’s cage, this resting upon his lap. When Lucy greeted him he peered up in the vanity mirror. “Oh, hello, boy,” he said. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“Hello, sir. I apologize for my disappearance, but I fell down the Very Large Hole, and was forced to fight tooth and nail to reclaim my freedom.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You fell all that way but lived to tell the tale?”
“I have lived, sir.”
“And you stand before me now as one who has cheated death?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“One who has rerouted the fates?”
“Perhaps, sir.”
“And was this a very difficult exercise for you?”
“It was, sir, yes.”
“Was it tedious?”
“I don’t know if I would use the word tedious specifically, sir.”
“Well, it certainly sounds tedious. But, what do I know, eh? With my head full of stuffing? Happy to have you back, at
any rate.”
“Thank you, sir. But I’ve not come back.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No, sir. In point of fact I’m here to tell you I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” Mr. Olderglough said, as if the very thought were an eccentric notion.
“Leaving, sir, yes, and just now.”
“But why would you do that?”
Lucy said, “It seems to me there is no longer any reason for us to stay, sir.”
“Oh, but that’s not true at all, boy.”
“Is it not correct that the Baroness has left again?”
“It is correct.”
“Then is it not likely the Baron will once again devolve, as before?”
“It is more than likely. But I don’t see what that has to do with the abandonment of my position, and so no, I shan’t so much as entertain the thought.” Mr. Olderglough shivered and sniffed, and he returned his attentions to Peter, who had, Lucy noticed, gone quiet once more.
“Has he misplaced his tune again, sir?”
“Hmm,” Mr. Olderglough replied. He shivered and sniffed a second time, and in looking at him, Lucy could see that all sense had left the man. He was making a kissing noise at Peter now; and as if speaking to the bird, he said, “I will perform my functions. I will do right by my master.”
“But if your master cannot do right by you, sir?” said Lucy.
“That is none of my affair.”
“It is every bit of it yours.”
Mr. Olderglough shook his head and lapsed into silence. Lucy could think of nothing more to say, for there was nothing more, after all, and he was turning to go when Mr. Olderglough called after him, and in a tender tone of voice, “Do you know, Lucy, I’ve come to think of you as the son I never quite knew.” Now he set the birdcage onto the vanity, and folded his hands on his lap. Looking out at the village, and the green-forested hills running away and to the horizon, he said, “I believe I could spend the rest of my days simply peering out a window, boy.”