The Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  I wasn’t bitter against Mr West, though. When he visited I was polite. We all were. There’d be tea made for him, properly set out in one of the parlours, for we might have been poor, us almshouse folk, we might have been brought low by ill-fortune or sickness, but we knew the correct way to behave. We took it in turns to offer him hospitality, and the matron always helped. There’d be a fine old flurry of preparation, baking and suchlike, so you’d think it was royalty coming, instead of a man who bought and sold cups and saucers and bits of pottery from foreign parts.

  Usually Mr West came on his own, but this afternoon he brought his boy with him. Esmond, his name is, and a nice-looking boy. He’s what Dr Brodworthy calls a mute – not able to speak. But he’s intelligent, you can see that from his eyes and the tilt of his head. I’d say there’s not much that Master Esmond misses.

  I took a bit of a fancy to him. The damaged attracting the damaged, people probably said if they noticed. But I never cared overmuch what people said, and I liked the way Esmond West didn’t let his own affliction get in his way, just as I’ve tried not to let mine. I told him to sit by me and I talked to him about the village and the people. He listened, and nodded, and after a while he drew out a writing slate and chalk. He wrote, ‘I like living here,’ and I asked if he had lessons, and what he liked to do, trying to word the questions so it wouldn’t make it too difficult for him to reply.

  He wrote, ‘I play my piano. I draw pictures.’

  I said, ‘I’d surely like to see those pictures,’ and his little face lit up so much you’d have thought I’d promised him fifty pounds.

  He wrote, ‘If I come back I will bring them,’ and I said that would be grand and I’d look forward to it.

  Later, my wife said who did I think I was, inviting the son of Mr West to visit, and did I expect her to wait on him hand and foot. I said, peaceably, that I liked the child, and she could please herself about waiting, for I wasn’t so maimed I couldn’t make a pot of tea or pour a glass of milk for a child.

  She said, ‘He won’t come, of course. Not to see the likes of us.’

  I didn’t think he would either, but we were both wrong, for one week later, Esmond, accompanied by a young man I had never seen, knocked at the door.

  The young man introduced himself very politely as Mr Bundy, Esmond’s tutor. Esmond, he said, had asked if he could be brought to visit us again; he had promised to bring some of his drawings for me to see – this was right, was it? And was this a convenient time to call?

  ‘Indeed it is right, and a very convenient time as well,’ I said, pleased the boy had remembered and pleased that Mr Ralph West had consented.

  ‘Then, if it suits, I’ll come back for him in about an hour,’ said Mr Bundy.

  ‘That would suit very nicely. Come along in, Esmond.’

  And if only I had known that with those words, the nightmare woke and flexed its bloodied talons.

  He came several times, young Master Esmond. I liked seeing him. I liked telling him my memories of Caudle Moor and the work I had done here, and he seemed to find it all interesting. One day, I took him to see the forge. We walked well together, his small legs suiting my halting gait. I showed him everything and explained how it had all worked, and he nodded vigorously in the way he always did when he was interested. Then he wrote that he would make a drawing of it for me.

  ‘That’d be very good,’ I said. ‘I’d put that on my mantelpiece – just over there, you see it? – for folk to see, and I’d tell them, “Master Esmond West drew that especially for me”.’

  I told my own son all about it when he came to visit.

  ‘A clever young man, that Esmond,’ I said. ‘He could go very far if he works hard and keeps to his studies. They seem to have schooled him well before he came here.’

  ‘Derby,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I was forgetting you’d know. Sad for a boy to have lost his mother like that, isn’t it?’

  I remember thinking my son suddenly became very still, like a watchful animal that knows it’s being hunted. When it’s your own, you know.

  Then he said, in a voice I’d never heard him use before, ‘Does he talk about it? That’s to say – does he write down anything about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t think though,’ he said, ‘that you should let him come to see you again.’

  ‘Why not? I like the boy. He likes coming here.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Samuel, in a soft voice that sent an icy prickle across the back of my neck, ‘I’d like you to stop.’

  He was staring into the fire, and it might have been the firelight that reflected redly in his eyes . . . But I knew it was not. I knew I was seeing the madness I had seen in him all those years ago. When Isobel Acton was tried for the murder of her husband.

  Samuel was twelve years old when Simeon Acton died, but he was not your usual twelve year old. Not how I ever thought a son of mine would be. I never understood him, not then and not now, although I hope I tried.

  He used to come into the forge after school, or of a weekend – when his mother would let him, that is, for she was one who believed children should be given plenty to do, and she was always finding tasks and errands for Samuel. He’d have to help her if she was called up to Acton House to help with one of the house parties they had, or to Bondley Manor, old Sir Beecham’s place for the shooting. Samuel always did what was asked of him and as far as I can remember he never had to be punished for anything. And that’s a bit strange – you’ll admit that, you who might one day read this. What child doesn’t occasionally need a brisk smack on the bottom, or sending to bed without pudding after its supper?

  But Samuel never did. I used to think back to my own childhood, and I’d hear tales of other children in the village who got into trouble and childhood scrapes – even that preaching old nuisance Edgar Gilfillan was caught stealing apples one autumn. So Samuel’s goodness worried me. Children need to be naughty. They need to find out what the rules are and where the boundaries are. Young people need to rebel a bit. (Old ones too, but that’s another story.) But Samuel never stepped over any boundaries or broke any rules.

  He liked coming to the forge, though. He liked it when the forge was fired and the fierce heat would belch out in huge glowing waves. And he enjoyed watching the making or repairing of carriage wheels – the way I fired them, then cooled them, and hammered them into shape. And the forging of shoes for horses, of course. I let him try his hand at the simpler tasks and showed him how to work the bellows to control the forge’s fires. He picked it all up wonderfully well. But I didn’t want him to become a blacksmith.

  Don’t mistake that statement. The craft of the blacksmith is an ancient and honourable one. Blacksmiths are the only men who work with the four elemental substances: fire, earth, air and water. My father, who taught me my trade, told me the ancients believed those four things were put together to create the world. I used to remember that when I was working.

  But it’s a dying trade nowadays, and I believed Samuel, with his clever mind and his interest in houses, would do better in the building trade. I’d get him properly apprenticed, I thought. I had a little money laid by, and we’d manage it.

  But in those days he was content to help me and I was content to let him do so.

  Until, shortly after his twelfth birthday, the contentment ended.

  Samuel had been almost bewitched by Isobel Acton. It’s a strong word to use about a twelve-year-old boy, but that was what it was. And perhaps children are more open to bewitchment than adults. They’re still fresh from God in their early years, still wrapped about in the celestial light and the dreams and stars. Still trailing clouds of glory, as the poem says. And if that sounds a strange, fanciful thing for a blacksmith to write, I’ll add that since my affliction I’ve found time for reading and studying poetry and suchlike.

  So I saw and accepted that Samuel was spellbound by the Acton woman – mostly by what he didn’t say, rather tha
n what he did. I saw that he listened to all the accounts of her trial, and I knew he sometimes hid himself and eavesdropped on conversations discussing it. I didn’t like to see such a thing in my own son, and I tried to give his thoughts a different direction. But I believed he would grow out of it. We all become bewitched at various times in our lives – usually by a woman.

  When the verdict of Not Guilty was given and Isobel returned to Acton House, I thought Samuel would return to normal. I didn’t realize that the spell had turned inside out for him – that where once he had almost worshipped, he now hated. But he did. He hated Isobel for having feet of clay, he hated her for not being the beautiful sinless creature he had believed. He hated her because she was Jezebel of the Old Testament – a murderess and an adulteress. I almost wonder if, at that stage, he was entirely normal.

  But I also believe he would have returned to normality if he had not fallen in with another who hated Isobel in the same way, and who, also, was no longer sane. Anne-Marie Acton.

  Anne-Marie Acton came to Caudle Moor after Simeon died. She was a thin woman with a face that made you think she might have some hungry disease inside her, although that might have been the effects of grief. Rumour said she had a powerful affection for her brother.

  Anne-Marie was convinced of Isobel’s guilt, and when the verdict of Not Guilty was given, she vowed that if the law would not punish Isobel, she would do it herself. That’s not repeating idle gossip. Miss Acton said this in full view of upwards of a dozen people, not once, but many times. Nehemiah Goodbody, who never missed a thing that happened in Caudle, said she went stravaging about the place like the wrath of God, but Nehemiah was always very strong about the wrath of God, especially since he had taken to repenting of his misspent youth, so nobody paid this much heed.

  What was true, though, was that Anne-Marie took to prowling out to Acton House, and watching Isobel through its windows after dark. I know that to be true, for Eliza Stump, who had been housekeeper at Acton House for several years, told my wife. A lively, spirited girl, Miss Stump. Later, she married young George Poulson at The Pheasant, and it was generally thought it was Eliza who made The Pheasant so profitable. I suspect she led George a fine old dance at times, but he always looked well on it, and they had several sturdy children.

  There was a change of ink and also of paper before the next entry. Nell checked the time again and thought she could probably just about finish reading the whole thing before scrambling into something suitable for dinner with Emily. If necessary she would phone Michael and ask him to put the reservation back for half an hour or so.

  I finally come to that dreadful night in early autumn. I’ve spent some time making up my mind to write it all down, but it’s festered inside me all these years, and perhaps setting it down will lance the boil.

  I had been out that evening – it doesn’t matter who I’d been with, but we had spent a very agreeable hour in her bedroom. I was walking back through the village around ten o’clock and everywhere was quiet, except for The Pheasant from which came sounds of laughter and modest revelry. Caudle doesn’t indulge much in blatant revelry, but it does enjoy a modest glass or two of ale and a bit of a sing-song.

  I wondered whether to look in on the taproom for half an hour, but I could hear they had started singing, I’d choose to be a daisy if I could be a flower, so I thought I wouldn’t.

  My way home took me past my forge, and I was just in sight of it when I saw, with alarm, that there were signs of activity inside. This was worrying, for I always locked up very carefully – apart from the valuable tools and equipment, the forge fire could stay hot for hours on end. My first thought was of burglars, but I thought it would be sensible to look through the windows to see what was happening before rampaging inside.

  The windows of any forge get grimy with the smoke and the soot – my wife regularly takes hot water and turpentine to them, but they’re as dirty as ever within a few days. So what I saw that night was smeared with a film of dirt. I suppose it distorted what I saw, because at first it seemed as if the window was a greasy, black-rimmed maw, through which I was seeing an Old Testament vision of hell. It was all there – the fiery furnace, my furnace – the clanging iron of the pitchforks, the moving to and fro of Satan’s demons. And the squirming struggles of the damned . . .

  The damned. She lay helpless across the anvil where I had hammered out countless horseshoes and numberless wheel spokes and dozens of various other things. Her arms had been stretched out and chains wound round her wrists then looped firmly into the thick staves behind her, where my tools were stacked in frames. Her ankles were tied tightly together by more chains. She did not shriek as the damned souls are said to, because a thick rag had been thrust into her mouth, but her eyes were bolting from her head, and the veins and muscles of her neck stood out like thick whipcords as she fought to spit out the gag.

  Isobel Acton, chained and gagged, and at the mercy of the two people who hated her. Anne-Marie Acton. And my son, Samuel Burlap.

  I was already tensing my muscles, ready to bound inside, but in the last moment I saw the madness glaring from Miss Acton’s eyes, and I saw the same madness reflected in Samuel’s. He was wearing the thick gauntlets I use for lifting heated pieces of iron from the fires, and in his hands he had a pair of tongs. Anne-Marie had a long hammer. Behind them the forge belched out its glowing heat, washing the old walls to crimson. When Anne-Marie moved, she trailed her shadow after her across the walls, dense black and grotesque. Samuel’s shadow was smaller, more thickset, his hands huge and grotesque in the gauntlets. His eyes glinted crimson in the furnace’s light.

  I thought: they’re just frightening Isobel. They won’t do anything. I considered and rejected half a dozen courses of action in the space of as many heartbeats. My first instinct had been to run inside and put a stop to their macabre activities. But there was that madness, filling up the forge like a thick clotted fog. And they say the mad have the strength of three . . .

  My second thought was to run for Sergeant Neale, but this was my son, and I defy any man to denounce his own child to the forces of law. Samuel might taunt Isobel and threaten her – and I would take him severely to task for that – but he would not cause her any actual harm. So I thought: I’ll wait and I’ll watch my chance. And if that sounds like the action of a coward, I can’t help it, for coward I was when it came to facing two people with madness in their eyes and their souls.

  Anne-Marie said something – I could not hear what – but Samuel nodded and reached for something that lay near the anvil, doing so cautiously as if fearing it might be hot. But it was not, and he smiled – a terrible smile – and held it up, nodding as if pleased. I couldn’t see what it was from where I stood, but it was small, perhaps the span of a man’s two clasped hands, and it was curved and hinged. With Anne-Marie’s assistance, Samuel clamped it firmly over Isobel’s face, and pulled the gag from her mouth. There was a moment when she let out a scream, but the scream was cut off at once. Her eyes widened in fresh terror, and as her two assailants stood back, I saw what they had done to her.

  They had forced onto her mouth a brank. An iron muzzle with a curb that presses down the tongue. A vicious, brutal device of humiliation, it is, once used to silence nagging women or even women suspected of witchcraft. If Isobel Acton tried to speak, the spike would tear her tongue to shreds.

  They pulled her off the anvil, and Anne-Marie opened the door. Isobel’s wrists were still bound with the chains and her ankles were free, but they looped some of the chain around her waist and pulled her across the floor, and out into the night. But still I hung back. I’m not proud of that, and you might say I was an arrant coward not to be able to face one skinny woman and a twelve-year-old boy. But I think anyone who had seen that glaring madness would have hesitated before approaching those two.

  They did not go through the village square. Instead they led her around the side of the forge, across Pickering’s Meadow and over the stile into Gorsty Lane. T
he image of a tethered beast being dragged to the slaughterhouse was impossible to avoid. I went after them, keeping to the shadows, watching for my chance to get Isobel away from them. I knew her for what she was and she sickened me, but what these two were doing to her was wrong by any reckoning.

  As we went along Gorsty Lane, the trees dipped and sighed in the night wind. It was a chill, unreal sight to see those three figures. Anne-Marie and Samuel looked more or less ordinary, although Samuel still wore the huge smith’s gauntlets and they gave him a deformed look. But far worse than that, was the woman they led. She looked like something from a nightmare. Her face, when she turned it from side to side, as if to escape the painful iron muzzle, looked like something from one of those children’s storybooks. It looked like an animal – like a human whose face had been transformed into that of a half-beast. Once I thought she uttered a half-groan, and Anne-Marie thought so as well, for she turned sharply, and studied Isobel closely. But she appeared satisfied, and the grim little procession continued.