The Boy Who Could See Death

by Salley Vickers

  A man, one he’d never liked because he had once kicked Dash, moved towards him and in reaction he moved still closer to his mother, so that he could feel the quickened rise and fall of her breathing through her birthing stays.

  ‘Mamillius. Leave us, sir.’

  ‘I will not, Father.’

  The man glanced at his father, who gave a nod, and the boy felt his right wrist caught in a burning grip.

  ‘Let me go!’

  ‘Let him go.’ His mother’s voice, unafraid, authoritative, coldly commanding. The man loosened his grip and stood back.

  His mother looked down at him. Then she bent and placed the palm of her hand delicately against his cheek. On her own cheeks a hectic red was dancing, belying the coolness of her tone. ‘Do as your father asks, Mamillius. We’ll go on with the story later. I shall look forward to it.’

  He hesitated, not wanting to leave her. Not wanting to leave her for his own sake but also for her sake too, because he was suddenly, and dreadfully, afraid.

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You go, chick. Go and play and I’ll come and find you soon.’

  ‘Promise?’

  A laugh like a fox’s bark exploded into the hushed room. ‘A promise from a whore? For that is what your mother is, my son. Leave her with the child in her womb that is –’

  ‘No!’ He spun round to meet the livid features of his father. He knew very well what a ‘whore’ was. A bad woman. A vile woman. A woman without honour.

  ‘Mamillius, sweetness, please leave us.’

  His mother was the daughter of the Emperor of Russia and she never cried, but the look in her eyes was now so full of grief that his own filled with sharp responsive tears.

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘Mamillius, my own love, for my sake please go.’

  He could not refuse this plea and so fled from the room and saw nothing of her, or anyone, for most of that day.

  There were raised voices and comings and goings and no one came to care for him or to see that he was fed. Unused to a neglect he had often longed for, he went down to the kitchens to forage for food. The kitchen staff stopped what they were saying when they saw him there. There was a moment of awkwardness, a distinct unease, and then one of cooks came forward with a smile and a cold pastie and some small beer and invited him to stay and eat at the kitchen table. He was grateful for their company.

  Very late that night, as he lay unable to sleep, still fully clothed, his Aunt Paulina came to his room.

  He didn’t much like Aunt Paulina, although she was his mother’s best friend (not an actual aunt any more than ‘Uncle’ Polixenes was really an uncle), but he knew that she was good. ‘Good as a purge for the bowels is good,’ his father had remarked once, and his mother had cuffed him playfully.

  Aunt Paulina was tall, like his mother, but there the similarity ended. She was bone thin and her face was a mass of creased leather lines like those on the old bindings in his father’s library. Her hands were long and bony too and her nails yellow and not always clean. Her tongue was notoriously sharp, but there was no sharpness in her tone when she spoke now.

  ‘Mamillius, child.’

  ‘Where is my mother?’

  His aunt looked bothered. She was, he knew, a truthful woman and he could tell she was struggling to speak honestly to him.

  ‘She has been detained.’

  ‘Detained? Where? Why?’

  Again, his aunt hesitated. ‘They, your parents, have matters to attend to. Meanwhile your mother would wish you to rest.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Maybe later, Mamillius.’

  He was obliged to obey. Powerful as he might one day be, he was still a mere eight-year-old child. There was only so much he could ask, or challenge. Unwillingly, he changed into his nightgown, resenting his aunt’s continued presence as he did so, and climbed with the appearance of obedience into bed.

  ‘Will I read to you?’

  He was not a baby that he needed to be read to. ‘No, thank you, Aunt.’

  ‘I’ll stay awhile until you sleep.’

  But he did not sleep. He lay with his eyes shut, breathing deeply, until he felt Paulina bend down to listen to him and kiss him, which itself was disturbing as her cheeks felt bristly and she wasn’t the kissing kind, then move quietly to the door.

  He waited long enough to be sure she had descended the stairs and then rose again, pulling on breeches into which he tucked his nightgown. With night fallen it was colder still, so he put on the bearskin waistcoat which Uncle Polixenes had brought as a gift for him when he arrived from Bohemia.

  The dormant hound began to struggle loyally to his feet but he whispered, ‘Lie down, Dash. Sleep, boy.’

  Then, carrying in his hand his soft leather boots, he went quietly from the room.

  Light refracting from the candle-lit sconces in the hall below brought the long stretches of the upper corridors dimly into view. He doubted that his mother was still in her room, but he made his way there, up the second staircase, through the tapestry-wadded silence to be sure. Nothing but the tiny silk frock she had been making for the baby flung on to the long settle gave any sign of her recent presence. She must have left the room in a hurry. She was nothing if not tidy, his mother. He picked up the morsel of soft fabric and pressed it to his face, smelling the familiar apricot scent of his mother’s skin.

  Where had she gone? And what had occurred to bring about that awful accusation? There could be no truth in it. His father must have been misled, told a tale by some villain. Was it Uncle Polixenes?

  As he stood there in the half-dark, holding the unborn baby’s dress, he heard a wild voice from below.

  ‘I tell you by all that’s holy the child is Polixenes’.’

  And following that another voice, also raised but this time a woman’s.

  ‘No, my lord. The baby is yours.’

  Mamillius ran from the room, down the corridor and one flight of stairs to the top of the great stairway, where he proceeded to shift himself carefully downwards on his bottom. At the bend in the stairway he stopped, peering over. The voices came from the great hall, where formal banquets were held.

  At the threshold of the hall Paulina stood nursing a small bundle in her arms and his father stood before her, his face, in the glimmering light, still lividly pale.

  Paulina took a step towards his father, who started backwards and put his arm up across his eyes.

  ‘I have no wish to see the bastard. Or her mother the whore. Get away, witch, or by the gods I shall commit this whore’s bastard to the flames and you along with it, hag.’

  ‘Then it will be the torturer who is the heretic, not the burned. Look here at the child’s face – your nose, your eyes, your lips, even your trick of frowning at the world. The gods know, the poor babe has reason enough to frown.’

  ‘Polixenes’ features.’

  ‘A madman’s words … my lord.’ The title came as an exaggerated afterthought to the words that cut through the cold air. Mamillius gave an involuntary shudder. Were they going to fight? Paulina’s thin form couldn’t possibly worst his father’s bulk.

  But behind Paulina another presence appeared.

  ‘Antigonus, rid us of your damnable shrew wife or by the gods I’ll dispatch her for you.’

  Paulina’s husband took an uncertain step towards her, but Paulina, ignoring him, moved swiftly towards his father and laid the baby down before his feet. His father looked at her as if he might at any moment throw her to the ground beside it. Paulina stood rigid as a spear and very still in the candlelight. Then, as his father turned away, she too turned and walked past Mamillius, who had crept down the stairs and was crouching in the shadows of the stairwell. She came so close he smelt sweat. So Paulina was afraid.

  Mamillius’ heart was banging in his chest as, still barefoot, he followed Paulina down the long corridor that led to the courtyard. Crossing the wide space, he felt the freezing flags on his feet and the air bit hi
s cheeks and tears smarted his eyes. He knew there were tears of emotion behind those conjured merely by the cold, but by concentrating hard he forced the sorrowful ones back. He moved stealthily towards the stables, and just beyond them, over a low wall, came Paulina’s voice.

  She was calling to Emilia, his old nurse, who had helped to bring him into the world and who would have been attending his mother as she gave birth for a second time.

  ‘Emilia.’

  ‘My lady?’

  A smaller, dumpier presence joined the shadowy shape of Paulina.

  ‘How is it with her?’

  ‘Her body is weak, of course, but her heart and mind are strong. But the loss of her little girl …’

  So his mother was alive, that was something. But not with her baby, and because he knew her, he knew how desperate that would make her feel.

  ‘Will they let me see her?’

  ‘No one but me can see her. Since you took the baby, my lady, you have been forbidden further entry.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Especially not the boy, on pain of death. Dear gods, madam, how will this end?’

  ‘My husband has begged him to consult the oracle. We must pray that Apollo can bring enlightenment. You will take a message?’

  ‘Anything. My poor lady.’

  ‘Tell her the babe is with her father.’

  ‘Oh, madam, was that wise?’

  ‘It is best, Emilia.’

  It is not best, Mamillius reflected. The look in his father’s eyes had reminded him of a dog they once had that had gone mad. The dog had had to be drowned.

  The two women stood murmuring but he ceased to try to listen. He was thinking hard. Should he try to see his mother or was it a better plan to try to find the baby and maybe rescue her? He preferred the former course but the latter would more likely be what his mother would want. Carefully, he moved back across the courtyard and re-entered the palace.

  His father was in the great hall, still talking to Antigonus. Mamillius liked Antigonus. He was kind where Paulina was stern. Once, when he was still only six, Antigonus had given Mamillius a small bow and some arrows for him to shoot with, and the two of them had spent an enjoyable afternoon shooting crows. Paulina had scolded her husband and taken away the bow and arrows and Antigonus had winked at him behind her back and made a clacking motion with his hand. He was a good mimic and often made Mamillius laugh with his impersonations of various snooty courtiers; ‘lickspittles’, Antigonus called them. But there was nothing even faintly humorous about him now, standing before his father, holding a baby in his arms.

  The baby began to yowl faintly and Antigonus began to rock stiffly back and forth on his heels.

  ‘Take the bastard brat and burn it.’

  ‘No, my lord. I cannot.’

  Antigonus’ voice, while still respectful, conveyed a note of firmness, which surprised Mamillius even as it heartened him.

  ‘You disobey me?’

  Mamillius waited for the answer but, perhaps wisely, the older man said nothing. Mamillius suddenly remembered how he had said nothing when Paulina had scolded him over the bow and arrows and saw for the first time that this was maybe a kind of strength.

  In the scant light of the candlelit hall his father’s face looked desperately ill. Mamillius had a sudden awful premonition that his father was about to die.

  And then down the stairs there came a pattering and into the hall bounded Dash. His father visibly started. ‘Back, sir, back to your room.’

  Dash stood with his legs stiffened and simply stared at his father. And then a very weird thing happened. The dog gave a great howl and the baby in Antigonus’ arms began to yowl in turn.

  Together, the hound and baby made the most melancholy chant that Mamillius had ever heard. It echoed down the great corridor as his father clapped his hands over his ears.

  ‘Oh, gods, I am a feather blowing in the wind. Very well. Take the bastard as far from my dominions as you can and leave it as prey for kites and ravens. And be assured, if you deviate a whisker from this command in any respect, you, your wife and this wretched bastard child shall be put to a long torture before an assured death.’

  And he turned and swept into the long darkness of the hall.

  The hound stood stiff-legged, taut-backed, staring after him. Then his fine muzzle moved questingly. Mamillius uncurled himself out of the shadows, mutely putting out a hand to his dog, who nuzzled him cautiously.

  Antigonus said not a word until the footsteps of the King had died away. Then he, in turn, put out a hand towards the boy, who moved into the protective curve of his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, my boy, that you should have had to witness that.’

  Mamillius looked down at the stone flags and then, taking some obscure courage from this, up into the older man’s face, grey in the half-light. ‘Will you take her away?’

  ‘Your sister, yes. I must.’

  ‘And my – our mother?’

  ‘Mamillius, I cannot afford to let her see your sister.’

  ‘But why?’ He was crying now and the baby began to cry faintly too, with a snuffling sound like the baby hedgepig he had found and fed last summer.

  The older man bent down. ‘Would you like to take her for a moment?’ Clumsily, he rolled the little bundle into the boy’s outstretched arms.

  The baby looked up at Mamillius with wide blue eyes, eyes that were set off by a pair of eyebrows that made two quizzical dark semicircles, fine as if drawn by a pen. A candle guttered above and the child’s eyes slid towards the flicker of light. Mamillius put out his forefinger and a tiny hand caught at it, clasping it tight.

  ‘My sister,’ the boy said. ‘My little sister.’

  A rush of tenderness overtook him. Never in all his born days had he felt such loving warmth for any creature. Not even his pet hedgepig, Snout, whom he had reared by hand, or the baby kestrel he had fed with grubs and beetles. Not even Dash when he was a half-bald pink puppy. This rosy little creature was his own blood.

  ‘Where will you take her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The man sighed and Mamillius felt his worried misery. ‘I don’t know. Somewhere far away. I must do as your father commands or …’ He let the meaning trail away.

  ‘You die?’

  ‘As to that, I would prefer death to myself than to your sister. But I am afraid that if I do not do as your father orders then, then …’

  ‘He might kill my mother?’ Mamillius suggested. He could see now that that was possible. And then, a new prospect striking him, ‘He might kill me?’

  ‘I think not. But’ – Antigonus’ hand rested on the boy’s shoulder – ‘but it is true that your father is ill and not in his right mind. And when a man is not in his right mind, there’s no knowing what ill patterns his mind may work in.’

  ‘Let me come with you,’ Mamillius said.

  ‘No, my young madcap.’

  ‘But why not?’ Mamillius asked. ‘I am forbidden to see my mother. My father is not himself. This – she – is my blood and my mother would want me to be with her.’

  ‘Your mother would be worried sick and I –’

  ‘You could say I stowed away,’ said Mamillius with perfect logic. ‘I could leave a note, if you like, to say I had run away until my parents made friends again. And then I could come with you. You could hide me until we’re gone,’ he said simply.

  Antigonus reflected. It might be for the best. Impossible to say how the madness in Leontes might develop.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will speak to my wife and make sure your mother knows what we are doing. You go and write your note and leave it where you can be sure no one finds it till we have left.’

  Mamillius, who had sailed often round the coasts of Sicily, was unprepared for the swell of the open sea. But he loved the sense that there was nothing but water on all sides and no sight of land. Despite Antigonus’ fears, no seasickness assailed him. Indeed, he made friends with the cabin boy, Matteo, who taught h
im to climb the mast to look out for dolphins and porpoises.

  At night he slept in a cabin with his sister beside him in a little box bed, fashioned by the ship’s carpenter, who had frankly fallen in love with the child. Indeed, so had most of the crew, who looked upon her not as any form of undesirable but a kind of lucky amulet, a changeling child, almost it seemed.

  Mamillius had taken charge of his sister and Antigonus was patently relieved that he should do so. Having no children of his own, he found caring for a newborn baby, and a girl child at that, was not a skill that came naturally to him.

  To Mamillius, however, it seemed to come as second nature. He cradled the little creature easily in his arms, brought up her wind and wiped her bottom with no disgust when she shat. The baby shit smelt, he announced, when a sailor with ten children asked if he would like the job taken off his hands, of no more than the watered goat’s milk he fed her from the yield of Bella, the white-and-tan nanny goat which supplied the ship.

  Mamillius often took his sister to see Bella, for some part of him felt the goat might offer some resonance of mothering to the baby, who had been so hideously parted from her own.

  He missed his mother and spoke of her constantly. ‘She loves you, little one. Don’t fret, she may not seem to be here but she is with us. I dreamt of her again last night.’

  The tilting ship and the interrupted nights, during which he tended the hungry baby, had lent a new quality to his dreams. Very often he dreamt of their mother – and always she was active, running, dancing, laughing, sometimes with his father too in the garden his father had had designed for her by a grand horticulturalist from Milan. A garden of roses and lilies, of sweet herbs and sparkling fountains. And a dovecot.

  Mamillius told the baby about the white doves with the delicate coral feet which he fed on bread and milk.

  Once he dreamt they were all flying in a strange device, like a bird but with wings of parchment. Mamillius thought: When I am older I will make such a machine. He thought often of Dash too and hoped the hound wasn’t missing him too much. But he never dreamt of Dash.

  Antigonus kept a certain distance from the pair. His parting from his wife had been painful, and not merely because he’d had to leave to undertake a task for which he had no stomach. Her rage against the King was so intense he feared she would use his son’s departure in some vengeful way, and she had made it plain to him that were he to fulfil the King’s command it would be the last he would see of her as a wife.