by Louis Bayard
The bird, disturbed in its roosting, has wandered down the branch and squatted by my right hand, from which position it glares at me with a pestilential rage and pecks an angry circle round my knuckles. The plumage has been retired for the night; all the bird’s colour and force are distilled in its glinting eyes, which, even through the fog, resonate with the plainchant of Griffyn Hall:
Nothing. Nothing.
It must be the simple desire to escape that sound that at last pries my fingers loose. I drop. I drop without a thought or care or hope, without a sound, and the earth rushes pell-mell to meet me, and it is over sooner than I could have imagined, I am flat on my stomach, my face daubed with frost and leaf-paste, my hands twitching by my side. Everything, everything still in working order.
Philomela is considerably more graceful in her dismount. Only the complications of her dress keep her from staying upright, and even as she lands on her backside, there is an almost musical element of surprise to her.
We both of us jump to our feet and stare up into the canopy of fog, waiting for Colin. A half minute passes, another half minute…no Colin.
And then, from some upper region, comes his stifled cry, and shortly thereafter his body, plummeting to earth. A transformed body: arms aflail, hair bristling with feathers.
Lord Griffyn’s peacock, outraged by our presence, has exacted its revenge by fastening itself to Colin’s head. These are no longer the overtures of a lover but the predations of a schoolyard bully, and as the boy struggles to free himself, the bird points its beak towards the sky and issues a squawk of triumph. A rallying cry, as it turns out, for within seconds, the rest of the platoon has arrived, and the air is exploding with blues and purples and greens, and our ears ring with screeches and flapping wings rising to an ungodly crescendo, and now the portico stirs with sounds of its own—human sounds—and there is no time for cogitation, nothing to do but tear the peacock from Colin’s head…watch the tufts of his hair fly free…and hurl the creature at the rest of the colony like a cannonball scattering a horde of infidels.
I grab Colin’s and Philomela’s hands and sprint for the yew hedge. The birds, howling with fury, rush after us, and from the front of the house comes an unmistakable cry:
—A lantern!
No hope of eluding them this time. We must simply outrun them. Squeeze through the hedge and back to the safety of our cab before they have mobilised their forces.
But in our brief absence, the hedge has become unutterably foreign. Only after an endless interval of searching does Colin find our original path, now even less passable than before. The branches claw with a vengeance this time, and a stream of robust Italian oaths pours from Philomela’s mouth as she drags her dress through the brambles. By the time we get to the other side, the dress has been slashed nearly in half—nothing below the waist but petticoats and dangling shreds of silk—and as she pauses to survey the wreckage, an almost tactile relief emanates from her. She has shed her charmed skin.
Through the lattice of the hedge comes the now-familiar nimbus of the lantern, growing larger and larger, and alongside the light, a voice—Rebbeck’s voice—shouting:
—Fetch the carriage!
No need to hear more. We’re running: Colin in the lead; Philomela, barefooted, right behind; and me, as usual, trailing a yard or two back. We scale the wrought-iron fence and dash down the street, whipping the fog before us. As our feet echo against the pavement stones, a new litany resounds in my head:
Let Adolphus be there. Let Adolphus be there.
At first he is nothing but a bit of effulgence in the fog. Only when we draw nearer does the shape of a lantern resolve from the gloom…then a hand…and finally the doom-laden features of our cabman himself, regarding us as the confirmation of every dark prediction he has ever entertained.
I call up to him:
—Put out your lantern!
—What’s he goin’ on about?
—Your lantern! Snuff your lantern!
It is as loud as I dare speak, but as soon as the three of us have clambered inside and pulled the door shut after us, Adolphus obliges us by summarily expunging the light.
I rap on the roof of the cab and call up to him:
—No words now.
Some reflexive grumbling, to be sure, but in the end, Adolphus does hold his tongue and leaves us to crouch there in the darkness of the cab, a welter of arms and knees and rocking hearts.
We need not wait long. First comes the sound of a carriage—a forest-green brougham with salmon filigree, if I recall correctly—hurtling past in the darkness, the flash of lantern sweeping from side to side. This is followed by a pilgrimage of ambulatory light, coursing down the far side of Portland Place: lanterns and candles, bobbing in the miasma. The scraping of boots, the muttering of men, and rising above it all, in raspy descant, the tones of Miss Charlotte Binny:
—They can’t have got far. Not in this weather.
Beside me, Philomela stiffens, and a part of me, too, freezes over at the sound of the missionary’s voice. Better to say it calls me back to a true understanding of our position. In our haste to elude our pursuers, we have allowed ourselves to be encircled. To the north stands the impassable citadel of Griffyn Hall. To the south, a search party, busily combing the avenue, no doubt waylaying each vehicle and pedestrian in turn. How long before the noose closes round us?
We have, as I see it, but one weapon: surprise. And we have but one chance, which is to do the very thing they least expect us to do.
Opening the door, I creep round to the back of the cab and incline my head towards the driver’s box.
—Adolphus, can you hear me?
—As if I got any choice.
—I want you to light your lantern again.
—Oh, it’s on with the lantern, is it? Off again next minute. No consistency, no principle….
—Adolphus, do be quiet a moment. I am going to entrust you with a task, and if you repay my trust, I will place enough money in your palm to buy your own damned horse, do you hear?
Adolphus says nothing. Leaves it to the horse to nod assent in a snort of steam.
—We are going to part company with you now.
—Well, that’s a—
—But only for a short time. In the meantime, I want you to drive up the street. Northwards.
—North.
—In a hundred yards or so, you will pass a place called Griffyn Hall.
—Griff—
—You shall know it by the cluster of men in front. Amongst those men will be two police officers.
—Christ! Oh, Christ!
—You needn’t worry, Adolphus, so long as you follow my directions to the letter. As you pass, they will almost certainly hail you. They will ask you if you have seen anyone. Specifically, three people answering to our general description.
—Go on.
—You will tell them you have seen no one of the sort. You will tell them, quite truthfully, you have been off duty for the last two hours and are now wending your way home. Do you understand?
—Hmff.
—Repeat after me, then.
—Off duty. Wendin’ home.
—Very good. Now, they may insist on looking inside the carriage. Allow them, by all means. A single glance should be enough to persuade them you are telling the truth, and in that event, they should have no choice but to let you pass.
—No choice.
—That accomplished, you are to make directly for the next intersection, is that clear? That is where we will be waiting for you.
—Waiting.
—You needn’t fear, Adolphus. If you keep your head about you, you’ll be a richer man in ten minutes, and we’ll all be in our beds within the hour. Just give us a moment to gather our belongings, then off you go.
Philomela has used the interval to wrap herself in the comforter I brought along—Father’s comforter. Not too far removed from the garb in which I first saw her, prowling through the courtyard. But tonight…a fun
ction, perhaps, of her newly coiffed hair and scrubbed face…the way she listens, without falter or flicker, as I delineate the plan…tonight she has the air of something antique and vanished.
She stumbles slightly on the shreds of her dress as she quits the cab, but she rebuffs our proffered arms, pulls the comforter a bit closer round her neck and waits as Colin gathers up the knapsack.
We are about to set off when a new thought occurs to me. I run round to the back of the cab. I tap the driver’s boots and whisper into the air.
—If you were to have a notion to turn us over to the police, Adolphus, I’m afraid I should have to name you as our accomplice. It would be unfortunate, it would be disagreeable, but you would leave me with no choice.
Shades of the prison-house gather round his already shrouded face. He nods roughly and, with an irritable jerk, strikes a match to light his lantern. That task discharged, he takes the reins and grunts:
—Off we go.
It is hard to say who moves at a more rapid clip, the cab or the three of us, darting down the far side of Portland Place. Alongside us, the horse’s hooves sound strangely muffled against the pavement, and around us, the fog grows heavier and heavier with our breathing. It is as if we were all respiring from the same lung, and this lung oscillates faster and faster as the cab inches down the road ahead of us…works faster still as the cab slows…then squeezes shut entirely as Adolphus’s voice, strained to an unnaturally hearty pitch, rings through the night air.
—Sorry, Officer. Off duty.
A rough voice answers back.
—Wait a bit. You taken any fares recently?
—Not for two hours past.
—This is official business, now.
—’Course it is.
—We’re looking for three persons: man, boy, ’n’ girl. The girl’d be in a white dress.
—Ain’t seen ’em, officers.
That last statement sounds, to my ears, a bit too rushed, too prepared, and the ensuing silence seems to crackle with suspicion. There we stand, the hunted party—frozen on the opposite side of the street perhaps thirty feet from our pursuers—and the only thing still pulsing is our skin: our chapped hands, the puckered pomegranate surface of Philomela’s bare foot, all of it prickling with dread.
The policeman clears his throat, a long, luxuriant rasp.
—All right, carry on, then.
That’s as much as Adolphus needs to hear.
—’Night to all!
We hear his fierce “Gedya!”, we hear the cab’s wheels turn half a revolution…and then we hear another man’s voice.
—Stay where you are.
A sickeningly familiar voice. The silence stretches round it, and in this anticipatory moment, the smallest expressions stand out as clearly as the most florid oratory: Colin’s teeth grinding in rhythm; Philomela’s hands reaching for her absent beads….
And now, of a sudden, it seems intolerable, worse than intolerable, to stop here for another second. We must run. We must run and keep running until the last dram of oxygen has leached from our blood.
It is a hard matter, though, to convince the other two. Without benefit of words, I can only tug on their sleeves—with a gentle persuasion at first, and then a brute force when that fails to answer. And even when they are at last tramping alongside me, their heads keep wheeling back towards Adolphus, as though they might by dint of concentration rescue him from his plight.
In short order, we arrive at the promised intersection. A true crossroads, if ever there was one: Colin and Philomela, still inclining their heads back; me casting my eyes forward; everything else compassless.
And then, like the alighting cry of a raven, comes Adolphus’s high, nerve-strangled call:
—Thank you, Officer. Good night, I’m sure, Officer.
The relief of it is almost more than we can bear. Colin’s mouth twitches upwards, and Philomela’s shoulders unclench, and even the cab itself, as it approaches us, seems to move at a lighter, easier clip, its iron wheels slicking across the wet stones, its lantern bouncing for joy.
Only Adolphus fails to enter into the general merriment. His head is bowed sulkily over the reins, and he is mumbling truculent sentiments to his knees, and when I ask if he will take us back to Piccadilly, he waves us in with a fretful swipe of his hand.
—Grr, blff, mmrr.
This is what we have reduced him to. No remonstrance, no litany—just consonants. It will take a handsome sum indeed to restore those soliloquies of woe.
But that, after all, is the least of our worries. We are back in our cab, with Philomela perched rather awkwardly on our knees, and every hoofbeat takes us farther from Griffyn Hall and closer to our future. And as Adolphus bears right and then right again, back towards the center of town, all of London seems to clear a path for us.
It scarcely matters now that the seat chafes, that Philomela’s elbow is jabbing my ribs, that Colin’s knee knocks against mine. An uncanny serenity has stolen over me, as if we have left this city altogether and passed onto a smoky plain that grows more expansive the more we consider it.
And in this new environment, the whole prospect of the future loses its sinister air and begins to assume entirely new forms, forms not yet fully decipherable but enticing nonetheless. This much is evident: in some fashion, and half against our will, Philomela and Colin and I have thrown in our lots together. And if tonight is any indication, we are more powerful jointly than singly, and that being the case, why need we ever part again? Better, surely, to join hands against all obstacles, spurning Society’s outstretched arm, drawing only on our native craft and will.
And if this prospect be a dream, why, pray, does it resonate more powerfully than the phantom obstacles raised against it?
Income. Behold, I have two strong arms. My companions, the same. Among us, we may certainly scratch out a sufficient living in the modern economy. We may even be the engine of its transformation.
Food. Every corner of London teems with meat and fish and produce. What we cannot procure through money, we will procure otherwise. What we cannot procure, we will do without.
Shelter. Why, that is the most easily arranged of all: Mrs. Sharpe’s. And if her lodgings fail to satisfy, we will move on to the next place, even if it means residing on God’s green earth. The stars will be our lantern, the sun our clock, the grass our pillow. We will wake with the dew on our lashes and the wind’s breath in our nostrils, and we will give thanks for each new day that drops in our laps and for the strength to embrace it in all its plenitude.
In all our plenitude. That is theme that resounds most clearly in my mind. We have no need of anyone else. There is no need! We will fortify ourselves. We will hold the world at bay, till the end of our days, if necessary. Welcome to the Cratchit family, present and future.
Ah, it is pretty, yes? My little soothsaying vision—most pretty and most fragile, too! See how quickly it evaporates at the first touch of reality: Colin’s head flopping back against the seat; Philomela’s unnaturally hard face, her dry, sleepless eyes.
And this, too. This square of white lace, protruding from the India-rubber matting beneath our feet.
Unmistakable in its provenance: a fragment of Philomela’s dress, torn off as she left the cab. We were in too great a haste to notice it, of course, but surely no one else—no one who gave the cab even the most cursory inspection—could have failed to see it. Or to guess its origins.
And just then, Colin’s voice filters into my ear.
—Mr. Timothy.
—Yes?
—Ain’t we back in Portland Place?
Strange to think we are anywhere at present. The fog has transformed every house-front into a fading fresco. And yet there is something direfully familiar about this space—this feeling of grandiloquent silence on all sides. Either we have left London altogether or we are back again on London’s widest street.
And that nugatory patch of grey—just ahead on the left—is either an empty parcel o
f land or the commanding front lawn of Griffyn Hall.
I don’t know why it is that every sensation of alarm should be smothered in its rising. I think it must all go back to Adolphus. The notion that Adolphus could turn the cab all the way round and bring us straight back to our starting point, without our ever noticing: that’s quite beyond his capacities, isn’t it? And what better proof than this? The first figure to emerge from the fog is Adolphus himself—slumped on the kerb, shorn of cloak and hat and whip, his face tilting upwards at the sound of our approaching wheels, and a curious lightness enveloping his features: not relief but a kind of diabolical corroboration. Everything he most feared is at last coming true with a vengeance. He couldn’t be happier.
I bolt upright in my seat, I leap out onto the dashboard and hoist myself up by the brass rein guide and pop my head above the compartment roof. And there, in the chiaroscuro of lantern light and fog, sits our driver—head no longer bent, eyes now fixed on a point just to my right, his voice calling out in that loud, unutterably familiar timbre:
—Now!
From every side, gesticulating black shapes swarm towards us, but in this frozen interval, they are but shadows, and only two things impress me with the fixity of truth: the terrible, erect form of Willie the Slasher atop our cab, and the flying, quicksilver form of young Colin, who, understanding our circumstances better than I, has already abandoned the comfort of his seat and hurled himself straight onto the horse’s back.
It is the rashest of all possible acts—so crazed, so foolhardy that the converging shapes halt in a kind of stupefied admiration, and even Rebbeck loosens his grip on the reins.
—Hee-yaa! cries Colin.—Hee-yaa!
Seizing the horse by its harness, he pounds its flanks, kicks its arse, and heaps curses in its ear…until the horse pushes through to the other side of its confusion…whinnies and stomps and half rears and then bursts forth in a stream of outrage.
The acceleration is so sharp I am thrown back into the cab’s interior, and as I scramble to my feet, I can see, on our periphery, the black shapes shouting and falling back—all but one, a small man with a bare head, pumping his arms manfully and staying abreast of us for a good ten or fifteen yards until the horse, goaded beyond endurance by its human gadfly, lets loose with another burst of speed and leaves our pursuer sinking to his knees in the street.
