The Skull

by Christian Darkin

  ‘Another s,’ she said. He handed it to her. ‘And a c.’

  ‘It must be dangerous,’ he said, nodding at the block on her lap. ‘This idea.’

  Whatever her pamphlet was about, it had resulted in her being hounded out of France and fleeing across the Channel in a boat never meant for the journey.

  She looked up from her work. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It is the most dangerous idea in the world. An i please.’

  He handed it to her. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘Truth,’ she began, starting to press letters into the block, ‘is like water in your hands. If you leave gaps in your thinking, it just trickles away, and you are left with nothing. You must be rigorous – rigorous in your thinking. In your investigation of the world. Look here.’ She picked up her lamp and placed it on the press. Its flame burned brightly. ‘Suppose I covered the hole in this lamp. What would happen?’

  ‘It would go out,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. You know that.’

  ‘Yes, it’s obvious.’

  ‘But how do you prove it? How do you make it such a truth that it cannot be disputed?’

  ‘I cover the hole,’ he said simply, ‘and the lamp goes out.’

  ‘Ah, but that is not enough,’ Marie said. ‘Then I can argue. I can say perhaps the lamp just ran out of oil. Perhaps there was water in the lamp. Perhaps the wick was at fault. Do you see? The truth – it trickles away like water.’

  He opened his mouth to object, and then shut it again. ‘Then how do I prove it?’

  She reached over and placed his oil lamp next to hers on the bench. The flames flickered together. ‘This other lamp. It was filled at the same time, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was lit at the same time. I saw that,’ she said. ‘And it is stored in the same place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The wick is from the same rope? The oil from the same source? They are the same size? The same shape? The same craftsman made them in the same workshop?’

  ‘I bought them together,’ he said.

  ‘Then they are the same.’

  ‘Yes, but – ’

  She held up her hand to signal his silence, and covered the holes in her lamp with her palm. The flame flickered and died. ‘So now, we have held all other things the same. We have control of every part of our experiment and we have changed just one thing.’ She smiled triumphantly.

  ‘So?’ said William.

  ‘So you cannot now blame the wick, yes? You cannot blame the oil or the lamp or suggest it was an older lamp or a newer one, or that the lamp went out because I had somehow treated it differently. You cannot avoid the truth. It does not trickle away. It stays in your hand.’ She sat back in the light of the single flame still burning. ‘That is rigour.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very dangerous to me,’ he said.

  ‘That depends on how it is applied,’ she said darkly. ‘If you can find a truth and not just know it but show it and prove it to be true – no gaps – if you can do that then nobody can argue that you are wrong.’ She paused. ‘Not a judge. Not a king. Not a god. You see now how this is dangerous?’

  William nodded. On his back, he felt a hot draft as though the creature in the wall was breathing, but when he turned, he saw it was the first light of the sun shining into the tomb.

  Elizabeth was waiting for him when he got home. She was sitting at the head of the table. She might have been there since he’d sneaked out of the room. In front of her, the little idol was standing on the table surrounded by seeds, just as he’d left it.

  ‘You’re going to have to go to France again and bring back the cart,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ She didn’t believe this nonsense about the idol, surely.

  ‘Juliana knows everything.’

  ‘She thinks she does…’ he started. Then he saw the expression on his mother’s face. She wasn’t talking about blessings and curses.

  ‘The boat. The tomb. The press. She knows everything.’

  ‘And me going to France is – what?’ He hesitated. ‘Her price for not telling her son?’

  Elizabeth nodded. ‘I don’t believe this blessing will work any more than you do. But we have to hope we’re wrong. We have no choice.’ She stood up. ‘It’ll take about three weeks to collect the money from everyone.’ William could tell she was nearly in tears, but she just smiled tightly and left the room.

  He stared down at the collection of objects in the centre of the table. He was full of fury. It was so clear to him. It was the seeds that would save the village, not the idol. He knew it. But he couldn’t prove it. And as he stared, one word kept reappearing in his exhausted mind: rigour.

  William had no idea how long he’d slept, but the moment he woke – still sitting at the table – he knew exactly what he had to do.

  He grabbed the little idol from the table and a handful of the beans, tipping them into a pouch and tightening the drawstring. Then he went to the kitchen and took three small bowls from the dresser. Finally, he opened the sack containing the paler dried beans they’d managed to keep over from the last meagre harvest for sowing this year, and put a few into another pouch.

  When he arrived at the tomb, Marie was curled up on the floor, sleeping next to the few paragraphs she had so far assembled of her pamphlet.

  On the wall, the skull was crossed with rays of dusty light. She seemed stiller than usual, as if waiting for something.

  ‘I need your help,’ he heard himself say in a loud voice. ‘I need to get this exactly right.’ Marie stirred and sat up. William wondered if he had been talking to her, or Her.

  Marie listened while he told the story of the last few years. The erratic weather, the failed harvests. The slow creep of desperation among the villagers, and with it the grasping for answers in superstition. It felt good to talk to someone who wasn’t caught up in it. When he told her about last night’s meeting, and its outcome, she understood his idea immediately.

  ‘We must make everything the same,’ she said. ‘Everything. And just change one factor at a time.’

  ‘No gaps.’

  ‘No gaps.’ She smiled.

  On the floor just in front of the skull’s huge eye socket, William laid out the three bowls. Each he filled with soil.

  ‘The same soil?’ she asked.

  ‘Dug at the same time from the same part of the same garden,’ he replied.

  In the first bowl, he placed a sprinkling of the French seeds, which he carefully covered with earth. In the second bowl, he planted seeds from the family’s own store. In the third bowl, he planted the same local seeds, but once they were covered, he took the tiny wooden idol from the pouch and planted it in the bowl beside them, turning its veiled face so that the spirit, or goddess, or whatever she was supposed to be, could look over the seedlings. Together, he and Marie measured out equal amounts of water and poured them into each bowl.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Finished.’

  ‘No,’ Marie said. ‘This is not good enough.’

  William looked at the bowls. Everything was the same for each, surely. ‘What?’

  ‘Your witch. She said there was dancing, no?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s just foolishness.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Marie shook her finger at him. ‘It does not matter what you think. You must hold your friend to the same standards as your enemy. You must treat your beliefs as if they are as false as those you find foolish… until the experiment is over. Then you will know.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘We must dance.’ She held out a hand and he took it. ‘I used to love this song when I was a girl,’ she cried, and started to sing.

  And there, under the gaze of the tiny idol and the giant stone eye, they danced. William was faltering and embarrassed at first, but Marie was confident, and as she showed him the steps, he gradually started to move to the rhythm of her voice. Soon, they were both stepping joyfully through the simple dance, spinning around, touching fingertips, step
ping away from each other, and then suddenly close, and then away again. Once they stepped past each other, and he held her waist as she turned.

  When she finished the song, they sat on the steps and giggled together like children. William felt it had been a long time since he’d laughed like that. Then Marie reached up through the gap in the tomb wall, picked a tiny flower from the overgrown roof of the tomb, and they solemnly placed it into the bowl in front of the little veiled lady.

  For a moment, they were both quiet. The dancing. The singing. The solemn ritual. The sacrifice of the flower. It all seemed right somehow. Powerful. As if something warm and strong and good was seeping into the tomb. Perhaps there was something in it after all.

  ‘Now, remember. Everything the same,’ Marie said. ‘The same sunshine. The same water. Every day. Everything the same. We will see the truth.’

  William took the bowls home and placed them beside the sunniest window. All three were aligned to get the same amount of sun as it passed over. Each day, he fed the seeds with a carefully measured portion of water, always from the same source. Always at the same time of day.

  Every day, William went to the villagers to collect whatever they had put aside for him to bargain with over the goddess in the cart. Whenever he could, he stole away to sit in the shadow of the stone skull and hand metal letters to his exile, hiding in the secret library.

  Within a week, a single green sprout was rising above the soil in the pot containing the wooden idol. It curled upwards, pale, almost white at first, but growing stronger as it reached towards the light. A tiny leaf seemed to grow and unfurl as William watched. The idol was winning.

  But by the tenth day, all three pots had sprouted, and by the time all the payments had been collected and the boat had been prepared to leave, the result of the experiment was clear. Two of the pots had modest crops of sprouts. Two or three shoots tentatively probed the air above their soil. But the third – the darker seeds from the French side of the Channel – were exploding. They had almost all germinated, and they brimmed over the top of the bowl, leaves spreading to hide the soil, jostling for the light like hungry chicks.

  It was time to present his results. Not to the whole village this time. He spoke to Elizabeth, and she gathered a few farmers that she thought might listen, just before he was ready to leave for France. William had hoped to go up and say goodbye to Marie, to see if he could bring her back anything from her old country, but there was no time. At least he would only be gone for a few days.

  The farmers sat quietly and listened while William explained what he had done. They were as suspicious, to begin with, as they had been before. The village was proud of its seeds, and when they sold their crop, it sold well because it had a reputation. A new seed was a big risk. But William spoke slowly and clearly, and when he had finished, he placed the three bowls next to each other on the table.

  His audience leaned in. The green shoots told a story no one in the room could afford to ignore. William answered their questions one by one. Yes, they had had the same amount of water. Yes, the soil had been the same soil. Yes, they were planted together.

  Elizabeth nodded at her son, almost smiling. It was going well. Then Old Jack, the quietest of the farmers, and the one who’d tended his land for the longest of all of them, slowly sucked his breath through his missing tooth, and nodded at the bowl containing the wooden statue.

  Everyone turned to listen. He was no great friend to new ideas, and still dug with the lucky spade his grandfather had used. He was held in great respect by all the other farmers, and he knew the land inside and out. He smacked his lips thoughtfully.

  ‘Tell me, son.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately. William held his breath. What had he forgotten? What had he overlooked? Old Jack nodded at the idol again. ‘Tell me, did you do the dance?’

  William laughed as a wave of relief swept over him. He flushed slightly.

  ‘Yes, Jack. I did the dance.’

  ‘In that case, son, I’ll take some of your seeds if you can get ’em.’ He paused and then added sternly, ‘But don’t go getting any ideas. You’ll bring us that statue too. It’ll take more than a bowlful of sprouts to change most of their minds.’

  Chapter 5

  William Marchant, 1693

  It was a clear night as William and his mother pulled the little boat from its hiding place and pushed it into the water. He could feel her standing on the beach, watching him long after he lost sight of her in the darkness. The water was calm, but he knew she hated sending him alone, and would worry until he returned.

  ‘The sea can turn,’ she always warned him. ‘It can turn so quickly!’

  He knew he could handle himself on the water, but he didn’t blame her for worrying. His father had been able to handle himself too, and the sea had still taken him.

  There was enough wind for the sail, but he couldn’t risk raising it, not until he was well out of sight of land. Night was a busy time at the shoreline. The game of hide-and-seek played out between the customs officers, the navy and the big smuggling gangs was barely less than a war. Either side would kill him before they asked who he was, and being a small, dark dot on a huge dark sea was the best defence he could hope for.

  He dipped his oars silently into the sea, and pulled the tiny dory slowly and smoothly out towards deeper water.

  The moment he passed the tall outcrop of cliffs that marked the end of the cove, he knew he was in trouble. He jammed his oars into the water and pushed hard to bring himself to a halt.

  The naval lugger had its sails ready, but was barely moving. Not patrolling, not chasing, just waiting. For him? He didn’t think so. It was a big, fast ship to send after a boy in what was little more than a rowing boat. But if they saw him, he’d have no chance. And the ship was very, very close. He could see the figures milling about on deck. He could see the buttons on their uniforms shining as it loomed out of the darkness above him.

  He quickly and silently brought his boat around, and looked up at the sentries. They were scanning the horizon for smugglers’ vessels. Luckily, nobody was looking straight down.

  William thought quickly. If he could get back around the outcrop of rock without being spotted, he could loop around to the other side of the cove. By then he’d be too far away for his little boat to be seen.

  Wincing at the sound each oar made and the noise of the water slapping against the hull, he rowed as quietly as he could back around the cliff. The moment he was out of sight of the naval lugger, he sunk his oars into the water again and rowed with all his might.

  It was a race against time now. The ship was not in full sail, but it was catching some wind, and it would only be a few minutes before it rounded the cove and he came fully into its view. His boat had seats and oars for two more men, and was heavy enough to need them to get up any great speed, but on the way back, there would be no room for helpers, so he was on his own. His arms and legs burned with the effort as he raced the little boat across the cove.

  Just as he reached the outlying rocks marking the boundary between the cove and the next beach along the coast, he saw the lugger’s bow appear like a dark shadow. It was in sail and gaining speed.

  What now? He pulled the boat around, and started into the next cove. Perhaps he could find somewhere to shelter until the ship had passed. But as he skirted the final rock, he realised his problems were much more serious.

  Where the shallow waters of the cove shelved off into the deeper channel, another boat was waiting. Bigger than the revenue ship, and older. Patched, scratched, splintered, and painted black, with dark sails. He knew it well enough. It belonged to the Harkler gang, and you did not mess with the Harkler gang.

  The ship was low in the water, and that meant it was full of cargo. That in turn, meant it had just arrived, so as well as the thirty or so smugglers on board who would be ready to kill him on sight, there would be another hundred or so on the beach or rowing cargo to and from the ship, ready to kill him if he tried to land.<
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  William did the only thing he could do. He tested the wind, hauled up his tiny square sail, yanked it tight, and headed straight out to sea. The wind was not strong, but he caught it well and started to pick up speed.

  The shout went up almost immediately. First from the big ship, then from somewhere in the water behind him. He squinted into the darkness where he could just make out a small rowing boat. The rower had arms like tree trunks, and the boat’s bow lifted out of the water as it sped towards him.

  He frantically dipped his oars in the water, adding his own strength to the power of the wind, and the boat picked up a little more speed. It would not be enough to pull his heavier boat away from his pursuers, but it didn’t need to be. He just had to stay alive until the smugglers and the navy encountered each other and he could slip away from them both.

  He heard a shot from the big ship, and a hole punctured his sail. He ducked, but carried on rowing. The tub-boat was gaining on him now, and he could see the rower clearly. A huge, heavy-set man with a bald head that seemed to be nothing but a growth on the heaving muscles of his shoulders. To his left, the smugglers were running to the side of their ship. He could see them shouting and pointing at him. Those with guns were aiming them. Those without were signalling his position to the other tub-boats.

  Away to his right, where the smugglers still could not see, the naval ship had also spotted his sails and was in full chase. It would be on him in seconds. Against all his instincts, he steered left towards the gunfire. It had the effect he wanted, and as the shots seared into the water around him, the big rower in the tug-boat lost his nerve and broke off the chase.

  William turned back to the right, rowing hard and trying to get back out of range of the guns. They were firing randomly and in the dark, so as he headed away from the coast, he tried to keep his range from the big ship constant – just far enough that the chances of being hit were slim, just close enough that the swarm of little rowing boats now shadowing him would fear being hit themselves. It was a dangerous game, and he was running out of time.