“A water mill? Here? I don’t remember.”
“We rarely use it now. I can show it you if you like. It might jog your memory.”
* * *
Spark and John Stone stroll through gardens and dappled woodland. Presently they can see the river glinting through the reeds. John Stone points out the old blue boathouse with its hammock; he tells her that if she ever goes there she must watch out for the decking because some of it is rotten. They take the river path and soon arrive at the water mill. John Stone opens the door for her and she steps into the dark interior, where splinters of light pierce the gloom through cracks in the wood. The giant water wheel looms up in front of her, but it is the smell that hits her, a particular combination of dust and damp hessian sacking, and it works like a key to unlock a long-forgotten memory. A mouse the color of soot scuttles across the dirt floor into deep shadow.
“Are you all right?”
“I think I do remember. . . .”
Inside her head there is the residual echo of thundering water and the creaking of a great, rotating wheel, that same movement of moist air that you get at the foot of a waterfall. She watches John Stone peering upward. It would be a long way to fall from the top of the wheel. Today all she can hear is a songbird on the roof.
“Martha said she found you clinging on by your fingertips, little feet kicking,” he says. “She prized you off but you both fell backward and she caught her shoulder on something on the way down. Jacob has always acted like a guard dog around her. I was away when it happened, but I suspect it gave Jacob more of a fright than Martha.”
“Is it that . . .”
“Go on,” John Stone encourages.
“Is it that Jacob is anxious that Martha will get too attached to me again?”
Spark sees something in John Stone’s eyes that makes her want to cry. “Yes.”
“You can’t run away from life because you’ve been hurt by it,” she says.
“And where did you glean that piece of wisdom, young Spark?”
But Spark doesn’t want to talk with him about her mother. Not yet, at any rate. John Stone doesn’t know her. He wouldn’t understand. So Spark shrugs her shoulders, not trusting herself to speak. Returning through the wood John Stone, echoing Martha, tells her that she mustn’t worry: Jacob’s bark is far worse than his bite.
Spark is tempted to say: So he does bite, then? but restrains herself.
All at once Spark stops in her tracks. A short way ahead, she sees first Jacob and then Martha climb up the trunk of a large tree as fast as if they were climbing up the rungs of a ladder. They are soon clothed in foliage, but Jacob’s legs and stout boots are visible as he walks across a sturdy horizontal branch. Then she sees Martha’s bare feet tripping along behind him. Wide-eyed, Spark directs a questioning look at John Stone.
“Martha and Jacob are both excellent tree walkers. I don’t recommend that you try: It’s harder than it looks.”
Spark notes how careful he is to react as if there were nothing unusual about this activity. “I’ve seen them do that before!” she exclaims. “When I was little. I thought they were giant birds—”
“Well, we won’t disturb them. It’s a kind of meditation. There is no place for anxiety or sadness when one false move will send you crashing to the ground.”
Spark’s mind reels. What kind of anxiety and sadness are these people trying to escape? “Do you think it would be all right for me to eat in my room tonight? I’d like to walk up the road to call Mum, and there’s a letter I have to write.”
She catches the merest suggestion of disappointment on John Stone’s face. “Of course. Would you like me to let Martha know?”
A pang of guilt pricks at her. On top of having a flaky housekeeper and a grouchy gardener to deal with, now he’s got an antisocial intern. “I don’t mean to be unfriendly.”
John Stone takes her hand for a moment. “It can’t have been easy to leave home and come here by yourself. Well done for today.”
“Thanks,” she says, and out of nowhere comes the thought that if she can’t hack her holiday job, and runs back home, Mum will be cross because there’ll be nowhere for Ludo to sleep.
“Tell me, do you like the sea, Spark?”
“The sea? Yes, I love the seaside. I don’t go often.”
“Good. Then tomorrow morning—early—I’ll drive us to the coast. It’s not far. We can all start the day with a swim.”
As they draw closer to the house, Spark has the feeling that there is something not quite right with John Stone’s left arm. He clutches it to his side as he marches away. Spark returns, a little reluctantly, to the archive room and wonders how long it would take to transcribe all these dusty manuscripts.
Notebook 3
VIII
The Spaniard feared for my safety, otherwise I should not have traveled. He had obtained—from a Turkish scholar of his acquaintance—a small quantity of dried, cinnamon-colored root. As he had been instructed, the Spaniard ground the root into a smooth paste, then, pulling away my lips to expose my teeth, rather in the manner of a farmer looking to buy a horse, he rubbed the paste into my gums with the back of a small metal spoon. It had a bitter, faintly perfumed aroma that was not unpleasant, and on account of its powerful and long-lasting sedative effect, what would have been an unbearable journey given my injuries, I experienced as if it were happening to someone else. I was unconscious of any pain; I was unconscious of the passage of time. If I dreamed, it was of Isabelle, of following her through the interminable corridors of Versailles, of longing to see her tender face, but never being able to catch up with her. At some point my father laid a moist cloth on my forehead, and when my eyes flickered open he forced a smile, which failed to conceal his anxiety. We traveled continuously, I later learned, for three days and three nights, stopping only to change the horses which pulled our carriage-and-six, the two postboys taking it in turns to walk ahead with a lantern during the hours of darkness. My strongest recollection of the journey was the smell of the paste, and the cold caress of the spoon on my gums.
I awoke in an airy chamber I did not recognize. A high window gave me a view of azure sky; a current of air—it was hot and dry—swelled the bed curtains so that they breathed in and out like lungs. I felt safe, yet on the verge of alarm at the same time. Comforting sounds drifted into the room: someone was sweeping the path below; a cockerel crowed; there was bleating, and a bright metallic clinking of distant bells, the type worn around the necks of goats. This was the South. I could smell it. I could sense the difference in the air. Half-concealed by the billowing curtains, was that the Spaniard who sat in old green armchair at the bottom of my bed? The book, balanced precariously on one knee, I recognized as his treasured copy of the works of Baltasar Gracián. Was it my fate to be knocked down by life and his to pick me up again? I lifted my head to speak. The intense pain that seared my skull rendered me unconscious once more, though not before I heard the Spaniard cry to my father: “Jean-Pierre is awake!”
The following dawn, though my head was still pounding, I was recovered enough to prove to my father that I had not lost my wits: He had me say my name, and his name, and the Spaniard’s name, which was difficult enough to remember at the best of times, Don Vincencio Miguel de Lastimosa, then he asked me to count to twenty and name the months of the year. As for how I came to be in this pitiful condition, I admitted that I had no recollection. My last memory was of nodding, scarlet poppies.
My father fed me some broth, scraping my chin with the spoon to collect any escaping drips. When I explored my face with my fingertips, I discovered that my nose was numb and alarmingly swollen, and that a strip of my scalp had been shaved. My head was wrapped in a turban of bandages. I asked for a mirror, a request that my father refused, while assuring me that I would regain my looks soon enough. When I demanded to know what had happened, he put me off and called, instead, for the Spaniard.
Through the half-open door, I watched the two men embrace in th
e corridor. “The Lord be praised,” I heard my father say. “He is able to form his words at last.”
“Does he recognize you?”
“Yes! It is as if he’s just woken from a long sleep.”
“What did he say?”
“That he wants a mirror—and that he wishes to know what has happened to him.”
“He can have a mirror if he likes but explanations can wait—”
“No!” I called through the door. “Tell me!”
The Spaniard laughed out loud as he drew near. “Jean-Pierre! What trouble you have caused us!” I watched him examine my face, paying close attention to my eyes. I gathered he found me much improved, for he stood back up and flung his heavy black wig across the room, as was his custom when he was particularly pleased.
“You have been injured—badly,” he said, rubbing his hands joyously back and forth over his shaved head. “But now I can see that you will recover. That is all you need to know for the present.”
“Please, what happened to me, Signor?”
“There is little to say and little to know. Alas, you were found in a pool of blood in front of the Church of Saint Symphorien. You had been robbed. The thief’s identity remains a mystery.”
“Robbed? I had nothing worth stealing!”
“To those with nothing, anything is worth stealing.”
The effort of listening and speaking was making my head spin. I lay back on the pillow, bands of pain squeezing my brain. My father saw and laid his cool hand on my forehead, as he used to when I was feverish as a child. His touch comforted me.
“Where am I, Father?”
It was the Spaniard who answered. “I have brought you to my own house, close to the gorges of the River Tarn, thirty leagues south of your father’s estate. It is an ancient country. When you are recovered I will show it to you.”
I had imagined that his home was in Spain. When I said as much, he commented that he had several homes and that I would be safe here. The Spaniard fetched an ebony hand mirror, inlaid with mother of pearl, which he said I could keep by my bedside to watch how quickly I healed. My father held it for me as the Spaniard gently lifted an edge of the dressing. I could not recognize myself! Two rat’s eyes peered out of whorls of swollen purplish-red flesh; my nose was bent and twice its normal width; where my hair had been, bristles poked out of a pale scalp. The beginnings of a tightly sewn seam, a lurid scarlet line, peeped out from under the bandages. The skin was puckered and weeping.
My father tried to be lighthearted. “There, you see? Not so very bad!”
“You were fortunate that you lost no teeth—”
“I am a monster,” I cried, wondering if Isabelle would ever again be able to stomach the sight of me.
“No, Jean-Pierre,” said my father. “Trust your body to heal itself.”
* * *
I was lucky to have survived the attack, but it was a long time before I could walk unaided, or speak without feeling that my next sentence was slipping away from me. At the end of two weeks my father announced that he needed to return to our estate, and would then travel on to Versailles to meet my brothers. In my weakened state I became tearful, and even jealous of my brothers. I begged my father to stay longer. Why, I asked him, could he not have taken me back to our estate so that I could have recuperated in the house where I grew up?
“You are almost a man, and no longer my own. Though I hope you will continue to think of me with affection.”
“What are you saying to me, Father?” I cried, wringing the bedsheet between my hands. “Have I done something to displease you?” I watched a vein appear in the middle of his forehead. “Please take me with you!”
“You are not well enough to travel.”
“You brought me here when I was worse!”
“Honor the Spaniard, my boy. You have more to thank him for than you know.”
Then my father kissed me on the forehead and, in so doing, accidentally caught the edge of the long dry scab that traversed my scalp with his stubbly chin. I flinched, and before we both pulled away, our eyes met and each perceived the pain the other felt. “I’m sorry!” I exclaimed, at the same instant that he said: “Pardon me, Jean-Pierre.” For a moment he looked down at me, slumped on my sickbed, dabbing tearfully at my oozing wound with a handkerchief. Then my father turned abruptly and left. I could only think that he was punishing me for my behavior in the Colonnades. Had my treatment of Montclair brought such shame on our family? I wept, and tasted the salt of my tears, though I hid them from the Spaniard.
IX
Summer was sliding into autumn and my precious rectangle of sky was often filled with banks of purple, rain-laden clouds. I suffered the fitful sleep of the invalid: Dreams and feverish imaginings filled my nights, and leached into my waking hours. I experienced again the cruelty of my brothers, heard Montclair’s hissed threats in the Colonnade, witnessed my father’s melancholy in the bosquet of the ballroom. Sometimes, in the silence of my bedchamber, I imagined I could hear the music of fountains. How tired I grew of my own company, tired of beef and chicken broth, tired of staring out of my small window at the stars, tired of waiting for the Spaniard to announce that we were returning to Versailles.
Reading caused my head to ache. Words refused to reveal their meaning, stubbornly remaining shapes on the page. At first, even holding a book was more than I could manage. To keep up my spirits, the Spaniard read to me every day. He was fond of Don Quixote, particularly the earthy humor of Sancho Panza. He read the role with such comic flair that I would cry with laughter, causing the Spaniard to stop midsentence in order to observe me with his sensitive, dark eyes, fearful for the state of my damaged skull. For his wisdom and humanity, we read the essays of Montaigne. In my darkest hours he has saved me: I read him still. Another favorite author, though for very different reasons, was François de la Rochefoucauld. The Spaniard knew all his maxims by heart, admiring the precision of his language and his cruelly insightful wit. I recall that if ever I tripped, or hurt myself, he would unfailingly quote him: We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of others.
I tell you this because I do not wish to imply that I was always unhappy during my enforced stay at the Spaniard’s house. Nevertheless, as my body regained its strength, my spirits flagged. The delight I took in taking my first wobbly steps and exploring a new place, soon evaporated like summer rain. When can we return to Versailles? was my constant refrain. Be patient was always the reply. I was blind to the beauty of the landscape and deaf to the Spaniard’s kind words. Even after a night’s good sleep I awoke tired and was rarely good company. If the Spaniard asked me to accompany him on one of his long walks I would invariably refuse.
It saddened me that Isabelle had not written to me, although I comforted myself with the thought that she had been forbidden to do so. When I was well enough to form words with a quill, I wrote to her. I dared not express my deepest feelings but said that I was recovering and thought only of returning to Versailles.
* * *
Early one morning, I encountered the Spaniard in the hall. I caught him covering the contents of a large straw pannier with a piece of cloth. At the sound of my voice he stood up and positioned himself in front of it. The basket had a curved bottom, and he was obliged to press it against the stone staircase with his white-stockinged calves to prevent it from toppling over. From the pressure he needed to exert I guessed that the basket was heavy. “Good morning, Jean-Pierre,” he said. “I am happy to see you up so early.” I did not want to ask him what he was doing.
The following dawn, a gust of wind slammed shut the heavy front door. The deep boom resonated like canon fire through the house, waking me up and prompting me to rise from my bed to look out of the window. Down below, the Spaniard was walking up the path that led toward the river. On his back, fastened tightly around his shoulders with leather straps, was the same pannier. The weight of it made him stoop forward.
Curiosity lifted me from my melancholic frame
of mind, and when the Spaniard returned at dusk, I walked out into the gardens to greet him. His face was pale with fatigue, and he hardly lifted his feet from the ground as he walked. The basket, I noted, was now empty, and swung on his back from side to side. Pieces of twigs and dry leaves clung to his clothes.
“Have you had an agreeable walk?” I asked.
“Yes, thank you, Jean-Pierre. This country air is—”
“Exhausting?” I suggested.
He gave a wan smile but did not volunteer any further information. That evening he excused himself and supped alone in his room.
When the next day followed a similar pattern, I asked his valet where his master had gone.
“I could not say, Sir.”
“He was carrying a heavy load.”
“Indeed, Sir?”
There wasn’t a more discreet man alive than the Spaniard’s valet, and if he knew his master’s secret he was clearly not going to divulge it to me.
* * *
When my teacher set off with his basket the following morning, hat jammed over his flowing black wig, I decided to follow him. It was a more difficult task than I had supposed. I needed to leave a considerable distance between us, which meant that the Spaniard was forever disappearing from view while I, anxious not to take my eyes from him, constantly stumbled over tree roots. The first leaves of autumn were falling and they fluttered through the air like a rabble of yellow butterflies, creating a scene in constant movement. I found it easiest to focus on the pale flash of the Spaniard’s stockings, which, little by little, took on the appearance of two white sticks luring me giddily onward to who knew where. We walked quickly, and if it was hard for me, it must have been harder still for the Spaniard, who carried a heavy burden.
The Spaniard’s house stood in woodland some ten minutes’ walk from the dramatic cliffs that rose up above the River Tarn. I soon found myself standing on a precipice above a calm stretch of the river. An extraordinary shade of turquoise, and smooth as a pond, the Tarn sparkled under a bright sky. When the Spaniard stopped to rest, I pressed myself to the side of the path, hoping that if he were to turn around I would be hard to spot. Below me, stunted trees sprang from crevices in limestone cliffs the height of a cathedral. The deep canyon shifted constantly from sun to shade and back again as fast-moving islands of cloud scudded across the sky. The effect, as I looked down at the river, was dizzying.