The Silence

by Sarah Rayne

  Acton House, when finally we reached it, was a dark shape against the night sky, and I remembered that all the servants had left after Isobel was arrested, and that since the trial she had lived there alone. A desolate place it looked, with the windows dark and the chimneys silent. A house needs light, warmth, people, or it dies. I had the curious feeling that Acton House had died – that all I was seeing was an empty shell.

  I had expected them to go into the house, and I thought that would be my opportunity, but they took her around the side of the house and through the gardens. Those gardens were filled with rustlings and slitherings and the scuttlings of all the nocturnal creatures that inhabit any garden.

  I didn’t know Acton House, but my wife sometimes talked about a game larder where they’d pluck poultry or hang game for house parties, and I thought this was where they were taking Isobel. I was right; they went towards a small row of stone buildings, and opened the door of the furthest one. I edged nearer, but before I could step out from the concealment of the trees, Anne-Marie and Samuel came out by themselves, and walked across the grass. I heard Anne-Marie say, ‘Food once a day. And she’ll only have bread and water. It’s all the bitch would get if she was thrown into Newgate.’

  ‘Bread and water, yes.’

  ‘We’ll each have a key to the padlock. Nothing can go wrong.’

  ‘How long will we leave her there?’

  ‘Until I decide she’s been properly punished.’

  They were still talking as they went back to the house. Their voices died away on the night, but I had heard enough. I let them get out of sight and hearing, then I ran to the outbuildings, and dragged at the door of the far one. I saw at once it was indeed the game larder; there were marble-topped shelves and hooks driven into the walls and hanging from the low ceiling. It was larger than I expected, and set into the far wall was an inner door with a grille at the top, barred and covered with mesh. Isobel Acton, muzzled and helpless, was staring at me through that grille. Her eyes were wide and filled with terror, and even in the uncertain light I could see there was blood around the lower part of the brank, where she must have resisted it, and perhaps tried to speak against the spiked stave that held her tongue down.

  I said, ‘I’ll get you out.’ There were thick heavy bolts across the door, one near the top, one lower down. But as I reached up to the higher one, I saw the stout padlock holding the latch down.

  They must have unchained her hands because her fingers were curled round the bars as if she was trying to tear them away, but each time she moved I heard the slither of a heavier chain, and although I could not see into the room I guessed they had left the chain around her leg, and secured it to the wall. Like an animal. If she had poisoned a dozen people she did not deserve this.

  I must have torn half the skin from my hands trying to break that padlock, but in the end I had to admit defeat. The padlock was made of thick steel, and only a hammer and heavyweight pliers would snap it. And there was the chain inside to deal with as well.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I can’t break the padlock off. But I’ll go back to my forge and get tools that will snap it open. It won’t take me very long, and I promise I’ll come straight back. Do you understand?’

  She nodded, and I reached out my hand to her in a gesture that I think was meant to be one of reassurance. Her hand came up like a mirror repeating an image, and she nodded again. She trusted me.

  I ran most of the way back to the forge, my mind racing ahead. I would need a strong hammer and the large pincers I used for fashioning cold iron. They had strong jaws that would snap through the steel padlock. I thought about this as I ran, because it kept at bay the knowledge of what my son – my son – had done and that memory of his eyes glinting with insanity.

  Even through the windows I could see that the forge was still glowing, and when I turned the latch, the door was unlocked. That angered me at another level, for I had taught Samuel to be careful and never to leave the place unattended when it was hot. But once inside, the scents of hot iron and burning coals met me – they were familiar scents and they steadied me slightly. I crossed to the rack of tools against the wall, reaching for the deep leather apron, intending to put that on, the better for carrying the tools.

  I was just reaching for the large hammer when I heard them come in. Samuel and Anne-Marie Acton. They stood in the doorway, and their furnace’s glow washed over them, bringing back the earlier images of hell’s caverns.

  Anne-Marie said, ‘You know what we’ve done, don’t you? You saw us. You followed us.’

  ‘You thought we didn’t know you were there,’ said Samuel, and there was a dreadful glee in his voice. ‘But we knew.’ He began to walk round the edges of the room, his face sly and calculating. I couldn’t look at him. I turned to Anne-Marie.

  ‘I don’t care what you knew,’ I said. ‘You can’t leave that woman there.’

  ‘We can. We will.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to free her.’ I turned back to take down the hammer, and it was then that one of them shouted, ‘No.’ The word sliced across the hot forge like a spear of lightning, and with it came the scent of burning metal.

  Samuel ran towards me, and in the wild, hot light, he was a strange creature, a dwarf-demon scuttling across the fire-washed floor. He still wore the thick gauntlets and I saw that he carried a pair of long pincers, glowing with white-hot heat. In those confused moments I suddenly understood that while my attention was on Anne-Marie, Samuel had crept round to the open forge, and thrust the pincers into the heat. And the forge was still searingly hot . . .

  ‘No!’ he cried, again. ‘You shan’t free her! She’s got to be punished.’

  He ran straight at me, lunging with the pincers – lungeing low. Pain – screaming, burning agony – sliced through my leg and I stumbled back. There was a dreadful stench of burning on the air, but it was no longer burning iron, it was flesh, human flesh – my flesh that was burning and charring, and the pain was tearing me apart so viciously that I fell down into a sick unconsciousness and knew no more.

  TWENTY FIVE

  Nell laid this page of Jack Burlap’s journal down, her mind filled with the nightmare images he had described. Samuel, she was thinking. That boy, that man who had wanted to build a beautiful house, and who saw images of fiery steeds, and flame-shod stallions in the forge when he was young. How dreadful. But how immeasurably sad.

  Clipped behind this section of Jack’s memoirs was another of the sheets of headed paper from the original almshouse trust.

  CAUDLE MOOR ALMSHOUSES, CAUDLE MOOR, DERBYSHIRE

  ADMISSION OF NEW RESIDENT

  NAME:Jack Burlap

  FORMER ADDRESS:The Forge, Caudle Moor

  DATE OF BIRTH:Unknown. Resident, on being asked, said his age was no one’s business but his own, and if being granted the residency of an almshouse meant he had to tell folk how old he was, he would go and live in a gypsy wagon and be damned to everyone.

  [Matron’s note: apologies here for reproducing the offensive language].

  REASONS FOR GRANTING

  RESIDENCY:Mr Burlap worked as village blacksmith for many years, making a good living for himself, his wife and his son. Following a tragic accident in the forge – sadly witnessed by his young son who had been helping him with some smithing work, Mr Burlap’s leg was severely damaged. The injury was so severe that the lower part of the leg was later amputated, resulting in Mr Burlap no longer being able to pursue his trade. He therefore becomes entitled to assistance under the terms of the Acton Trust, viz. to wit, “for people who have suffered hardship and are unable to work,” and which was created for “the shelter, succour and sustenance of the old or the frail.” No 4 Almshouse being presently unoccupied, this cottage has been granted to Mr Burlap and his wife.

  NEXT OF KIN:Mrs Constance Burlap (wife). Master Samuel Burlap (son), who cannot live at the almshouses under the terms of the Trust, but who will reside with the Gilfillan family for two y
ears, after which, in accordance with Mr and Mrs Burlap’s wishes, will be apprenticed to a firm of master builders in Ashbourne.

  Anyone reading that Almshouse form will probably think that was the end to my story – that I’d have no more to tell, that I’d close these notes, and live out the rest of my days in whatever peace I could find.

  But there’s a great deal more to write, and coming to live in the almshouses wasn’t the end at all. The real nightmare was still to come.

  They were very good to me in the infirmary where I was taken after Samuel sliced the red-hot tongs into my leg. They did what they could to ease the pain – I thought afterwards, when I could think again, that they gave me something laced with laudanum if not opium, for I dreamed vivid dreams. Time ceased to exist – or to matter – and I imagined myself travelling among the stars, and exploring strange byways of the heavens.

  (I make no apology for that flight of fancy, for if a man cannot allow his imagination to slip the reins of reality in such a circumstance, it’s a sad thing.)

  But there was a little piece of memory on the edge of the pain and the dreams, depicting a woman’s face clamped inside a cage. A woman who had gripped the bars of a small stone prison, and who could not cry out for help. I tried to tell the doctors and nurses about her. I struggled against the laudanum they gave me and against the bone-wrenching pain, and I tried to say there was a woman trapped.

  ‘Acton House – you must send someone out there – Acton House.’

  But the hospital was some miles from Caudle Moor and I don’t think they had even heard of Acton House. They thought I was seeing visions because of the laudanum, and that I was worried about someone being trapped in the forge. They said things like, ‘Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe. Your son came out of the forge with you, and he’s at home being comforted by his mother.’ The younger nurses said what a terrible thing for a young boy to witness, and told one another how Master Samuel had behaved very well indeed, running for help to the village police constable, shouting and sobbing that his father had dropped white-hot tongs on his leg. A son to be proud of, they said.

  But for much of the time the pain swamped me. Somewhere at its height they told me they would have to remove the lower part of my leg. They used words like ‘unhealed flesh’, and ‘tainted muscle.’ They did not use the words putrefaction or gangrene, but ill as I was, I knew what had happened. When a portion of your own body stinks in your nostrils, you know it’s rotting.

  I’ll just say the amputation took me to pain on a wholly new level. But I’ll also say it was clean pain, if there can be such a thing. And they gave me a double, if not triple, dose of the laudanum and a gag to bite on. I didn’t manage to float away from the dreadful infirmary room with its bone saws and knives and the leather straps at each corner of the table, but I managed to remember that the stars would still be there for me to travel to after it was over.

  But although I came through those hours of agony, a different agony was waiting for me.

  After the amputation they sent me home. ‘Your wife will look after you,’ said the doctors. ‘A sensible woman, Mrs Burlap, and Dr Brodworthy will keep an eye on you.’

  My wife had decreed that I should have our room to myself. I was still suffering considerable pain, and for us to have shared a bed – even a room – at that time would be intolerable for both of us. So Constance moved herself into Samuel’s room and Samuel was sent to stay with the Gilfillans, Anne-Marie having left their house after the trial. Better for Samuel to be out of a house of sickness anyway, and we would pay the Gilfillans, of course. Everyone thought this a very sensible arrangement. The Gilfillans only charged a fraction of their normal lodging fee and were so puffed up with pride at being good Christians I should think they nearly exploded. Samuel went obediently enough, although I knew he disliked Edgar Gilfillan. But I thought, as much as I could think at all, that Samuel was glad not to have to face me and in truth I was glad not to face him.

  Dr Brodworthy called the first day I was home, and I resolved to tell him what I had seen, and ask him to go along to Acton House, and see if Isobel was there. But Samuel foiled me. He came with the doctor, eager to help ‘A very good son,’ said Brodworthy as my wife and Samuel carried basins of hot water and towels up the stairs. He stood in the doorway while Brodworthy dressed the wound, and his eyes never left my face. When I started to ask about Acton House, Samuel crossed to the fire, which my wife had lit in the bedroom hearth, and picked up the coal tongs.

  Brodworthy, seeing this, said approvingly, ‘Mending the fire, boy? Very good indeed – your father needs to be kept warm.’

  But I knew Samuel had no thought for the fire. He had deliberately picked up the tongs as a reminder. Tell anyone what I did, and you’ll suffer it again, he might as well have said. And, helpless and weak as I was, I gave in. I merely said, ‘What news is there of the village, Doctor? I’ve heard nothing all these weeks, and it’ll take my mind off the pain to hear some gossip.’ I glanced at Samuel, still standing by the grate, and risked asking about Isobel. ‘What happened to Mrs Acton, for instance? Is she still at the house?’

  Dr Brodworthy said, ‘The word is that she left to travel. France and Italy, they say. No one’s seen her for weeks. The house is shuttered and empty.’

  I met Samuel’s eyes again, and I knew – I knew without the smallest sliver of doubt that however much the house might be shuttered and empty, Isobel was not travelling anywhere. She was still locked away in that stone room.

  I lay there that night, and tried to think what to do. I was not yet strong enough to even get out of my bed, never mind walk anywhere. The doctors had promised me a wooden peg leg when the wounds healed, but that was far in the future.

  I kept seeing that imploring face staring through the grille, and those frightened trusting eyes. Isobel Acton had trusted me to go back to free her, and I had not done so.

  It was after midnight when I was reaching the decision to call my wife and ask her to fetch Dr Brodworthy back. I wouldn’t waste time telling my wife the story for she wouldn’t believe me, but Brodworthy would. And I trusted him.

  The old clock in St Mary’s was striking one – I heard it clearly. Immediately after it I heard other sounds. Shouts and people running through the village street. Cries of, ‘Fire! A fire at Acton House! Everyone to Gorsty Lane to help put it out!’

  They all went out there, of course. All the village went, most to help form a chain, passing buckets of water, the rest to join in the excitement. My wife went, of course, telling me she would not stay long, but that her help might be needed.

  Would the fire reach that grisly stone room? If it did, no one would regard a few ramshackle outbuildings as of particular concern. They would all be intent on saving the house and they would leave the outbuildings to burn. Were they burning now as I lay here? Was Isobel hammering to get out?

  It was nearing dawn when my wife returned, full of how they had formed a chain and passed buckets of water along, but how the flames had such a hold of the house they had consumed almost all of it.

  With her was Dr Brodworthy – kind, good old man – who had brought several of the villagers home in his trap, and was, he said, looking in to make sure the upset had not disturbed me.

  He listened to my heart and looked in my eyes and did all the incomprehensible things doctors do. I was trying to think how best to ask about the outbuildings, when he said, ‘Terrible thing tonight, Jack. We thought the entire Acton place was empty, but when the men managed to get through the rubble, they found a woman’s body.’

  Then, seeing my expression, he said, soothingly, ‘I dare say she’d have suffocated from the smoke before the fire actually reached her. Probably it was some vagrant who was taking a night or two’s shelter.’

  After he had gone, I thought: the entire Acton place. That must mean the outbuildings. Then it’s over. That poor woman is dead. I no longer need to dream about her trapped there in the dark and the silence – that dreadf
ul silence created by the brank. It’s at an end.

  And yet somehow it was not at an end at all. Isobel stalked my dreams every night. Sometimes she was a scheming murderess, cold-hearted and merciless, offering her husband the poisoned cup, but most of the time she was a pitiful figure in the dark lonely silence of her prison. Other nights she was a wild tormented thing, choking on the stench of her own burning flesh, the brank tearing her tongue to ribbons as she screamed through it for help. I often woke believing I could hear her screaming, but that was ridiculous, of course.

  Three weeks later, Dr Brodworthy told me that by some curious freak of fire or of wind, even though the whole of Acton House had burned, the outbuildings, set apart in the grounds, were unscathed.

  ‘And we’ve identified that woman’s body they found,’ he said. ‘The police aren’t making it generally known yet, because they don’t want to stir up local feeling all over again. But I don’t think there can be much doubt. There was a gold locket around her neck with two pictures in it. The pictures were charred but the gold casing had protected them enough to tell who they were. Simeon and Anne-Marie Acton.’ He straightened up from securing the fresh dressing around my leg.

  ‘But that means—’

  ‘It means the woman who burned to death that night was Anne-Marie Acton,’ said Brodworthy.

  I stared at him like the stupidest fool in Christendom, and all I could think was that Isobel must have been trapped inside that stone room and no one had known.

  Nell laid the page down, her thoughts in a turmoil. So Samuel, that strange long-ago boy who had grown up to build Stilter House, had been the villain of the piece. And Anne-Marie, that tormented and yet tragic figure had burned to death.

  But what about Isobel? What had happened to her?

  There were three or four more pages left, but it was already a quarter to seven. She reached for the phone and dialled Michael’s number. Hardly giving him time to answer, she said, ‘Michael, I’ve found what I think is the end of the story, but I need another half an hour or so to reach the final details.’