Nr. Telverton, June 182—
Last night I could hear them again. They make so little noise that I do not understand how it can carry through the corridors of this house. But carry it does. It is hard enough to sleep, gravid and swollen as I am; and once I hear it I cannot turn my thoughts away from it. So when that silken whisper began to tug at me I dragged myself to my feet to answer the summons. I drew on a wrapper, because the half-hearted English summer night did not warm me past the top of my skin, and padded on naked feet down the stairs and through the dim passages until I came into the orangery. The moon was full, dazzling among the foliage of the olive and lemon trees, glinting through the stinking juniper. If it had not been for the walls and windows I might have thought myself transported—and I caught myself thinking: home. But that Mediterranean island was not home; it was never home, no matter how much I longed to belong there, no matter how I yearned to lose myself forever in the midday shade of the evergreen forests. I should have remembered that I am an Englishwoman, a Christian, alien and pale-skinned and above all James’s wife. If I had held tight to those undeniable facts—if I had kept faith—then . . . Oh, but it is done, it is over, it is no good now.
I stood shivering and barefoot on the threshold, staring at the shimmer of reflections at the far end of the room, where the glass cases stand half concealed by the greenery. The moonlight and shadows were so deceptive that I could make out nothing but my own wan face peering back at me through leaves, my thin shoulders and bony neck above the shocking mass of my breasts and belly. It was not until I stepped forward into a band of darkness, erasing myself, that I could make out the contents of the nearest vivarium: the branches dry on the dead stones, the scatter of fallen pine needles, the scabrous bundles that hung like limbed fruit from the webs that spanned from one side to the other. I could smell putrefaction. The sound that had woken me grew louder—or did it? Perhaps it was an illusion, perhaps it is always, ever, an illusion—and seemed to swirl about the room, coming from new directions or from every direction at once. It is neither a song nor a susurrus, not a call nor a creak nor a command; and yet it is all of those. It cut my breath and made my innards roil. I found my legs carrying me toward the tank, until I was barely a hand’s width from the glass.
Within the tank, something moved. At first it was hardly perceptible, a little trembling in the cobweb, a glint of moonlight too brief to fix my gaze upon. Then, with its peculiar darting rush, the spider was poised in front of me. Its abdomen glistened like a polished mineral; its precise legs were dotted with vivid red at the joints. I was glad of the pane between us. But as I kept my gaze steadily upon it, I grew conscious of more movement, from every side: until at last I glanced up and across, and saw that in each tank a spider was emerging from its corner or crevice, advancing into the dense heart of its web. It must have been my footsteps across the floor, or some other variation in vibration, temperature, or humidity—indeed, let us be rational, James would cry! But to my sleepless mind, it had the deliberate improbability of a nightmare. I could feel the hostility, the reproach in every eye—and there were so many of them. So many eyes, and each one turned on me . . .
I said, although not aloud, Forgive me.
I said, I did not mean to bring you here.
I said, Are you hungry? I shall bring you more food. I shall bring it to you alive. And I meant it, even though it made my gorge rise to remember the long sea voyage, and the looks that the sailors turned on me when I begged them for live rats at any price. I had not known I could be so fierce, so devoid of womanly tenderness; I had not imagined that I could sacrifice my finer feelings so entirely. A rat’s panic is surprisingly like a man’s, I discovered, and yet if it was necessary to lean over the opened lid of a glass tank and drop a wriggling, squealing, scratching, and biting victim to certain death, I found that I could do it without blenching. I saw in James’s expression what I had become. He would have said that he approved, that he had commanded me to keep the spiders alive, that it was the least I could do to atone—but his frown belied him. He never said so, but I think he looked
at the rats, caught in their cauls of silk and sucked dry, and wondered whether, under different circumstances, I would balk at greater crimes.
I said, What can I do?
The roaring in my ears rose. It was like the sound of the surf against the shore, the night we left. I know perfectly well (yes, let us be rational!) that the noise is made not by the spiders themselves, but by their silk—and indeed that it is not exactly the silk either, that the sound is a mere reflection, no more innate in the silk than the colors of iridescence can be distilled out of a beetle’s shell. But that did not protect me from the shuddering impression that the spiders remembered that night, too, the night we left Kratos—that they could follow my thoughts, that they were deliberately imitating the hoarse crash of the waves on the sand, in furious reproach.
I was too sick, afterward, to set it down here: but perhaps I will, now. All that I can remember, at least . . . I remember a wallowing bed beneath me that became the hard slats of a dinghy; I remember vast nausea that overcame me as I raised my head, so that I vomited helplessly into something that I only began to realize was the sea. And I remember dim shapes of stone overhanging the water as we went further along the shore, and James sitting rigid opposite me, a whitish blur resolving slowly into his double-flickering face, wearing a smile that I did not yet understand. Behind him, a dark figure moved like an automaton, and I heard the dip and splash of oars. I do not recollect whether I was obliged to gasp out an inquiry, or whether James was pleased to volunteer, as I retched, the information that we were, at last, on our way back to England; that I should become a good wife again, or reap the consequences; and that it was not only his intention but his absolute conviction that he should become a wealthy and respected man. I do not think that any of those pronouncements made much impression on me, at the time. I was too bewildered, too absorbed in trying to fix my eyes upon the lurching cliffs. I had not said farewell to Hira. I felt as though some deep root of me had been wrenched from the anchoring rock and was withering already in the salt air. I wish I had launched myself out of the boat, desperate and ill as I was: I would have made landfall, or drowned. But I had not the presence of mind. I was carried, like a good wife, on the tide of another’s desire, even though it bore me away from everything I held dear. Well, not everything, I suppose; but I did not know then what else the tossing boat carried. I could not even keep a steady gaze on the line of the shore; a moment later the nausea took hold of me again, and everything about me blurred and spun.
Perhaps James took pity on me, for when the spasms receded and I was able to catch my breath, he took my hand. “Let us pray,” he said. “Almighty God, look upon your servant Sophia and lead her to repentance. Chastise her as a father would, until the black taint of sin is washed away by her tears. And carry us both in your
hands, back to your blessed land of England.” He looked at me for a moment; when I began to retch again, he said, clearing his throat sharply, “Amen.”
“I must go back,” I said, when I could speak. “I must see Hira.”
He shook his head.
“James,” I said, “please, I cannot leave like this, without a word. I cannot. It is wrong—it would be unbecoming.”
I landed upon the word without thinking, for it is one of his own favorite epithets; how many times has he condemned the villagers for their lack of proper English decorum and manners? But he jerked his head as though it were a bee sting. “You dare to say so!” he said. “Well, pardon me if I do not quite believe in your high feelings. You will come to understand the depth of your transgressions in time, I hope. As for seeing that—for seeing her again . . . ! No, naturally we will not turn back now. We are fortunate to get away just before the autumn storms. Wipe your face, hold your tongue, and bend your thoughts on Him who sees and judges you.”
“A farewell,” I said, “only a farewell . . .”
“It is out of the question.”
I could see from James’s face—which hung as flat and white as a mask—that no pleading, no abasement would make him relent; but I cried, in desperation, “Then if not for a farewell, then because I am sick! Can you not perceive that I am not fit to travel? Give me a day—an hour—to recover, on dry land—”
“It is nothing,” he said. “It will soon pass. It is only the after-effects of a soporific. I was obliged to ensure that you would come with me without fuss.”
He was looking down at me as I have seen him look at whores. I could not bear it. I closed my eyes, and against the weltering flesh-dark of my eyelids I saw him as he was when we first came to that shore: full of energy and grace, a little ambitious to be sure, but a good man. That man was long gone: murdered, I thought, by this one. And I was filled with such rage and hatred that I leapt to my feet in the swaying boat, not knowing what I intended.
Perhaps, after all, I am glad that a wave flung me down again; I do not want to dwell on what might have happened, if I had struck out. (Am I, as James would have it, a woman who would give in to a terrible impulse, a woman who must be protected from herself? Oh, it does not matter, it does not matter.) I crashed backward, and found myself rolling in the foul-smelling water at the bottom of the boat, while the pain in my ribs took my breath away. James said, “You will hurt yourself if you do not master your agitation.” He did not offer me his hand, this time.
I groaned and covered my face. As I drew my knees toward my belly my feet struck
against something with a peculiar resonance. It made a hollow wooden sound, but with an elusive, harmonic edge, like the knell of a sunken ship’s bell. James snapped, “Careful, there!” and slapped my ankle away. As I raised my head I discerned several boxes wedged under the seat of the dinghy: they were about the size of my clasped hands, or a little larger, and all were wrapped in sacking and tied with leather thongs. James pushed his leg forward to protect them, contorting himself as though he was at once afraid for, and afraid of them; as though they were both precious and loathsome. I think it was not the sound they made, but the expression on his face, that revealed to me—like a curtain being drawn aside—what they contained.
“What is in those boxes?” I said, although I knew.
“I am taking as many specimens home as I can,” James said, and coughed suddenly as though he had swallowed a fly. “For the most part I have commanded them to be loaded at the port where we will board the Prosperity. I have high hopes that they will survive in the West Country; the climate is kinder than Sussex. I intend our garden to be renowned among both landscapists and Classical scholars.”
“But they are not seeds, in those boxes,” I said.
“There were a few species that are too localized to be ordered and collected elsewhere. Come, come, Sophia, there is no need for histrionics. I have merely taken a few of either sex, to breed . . .”
I do not think I answered. I do not think I was capable of it. I wondered how James would respond to the trampling of religious texts underfoot—to the burning of Bibles . . . No doubt he would think the analogy sacrilegious.
I bent my head.
“They are only spiders, for pity’s sake, Sophia! Interesting ones, I grant you. But it is mere superstition . . .”
I should have asked him the difference between religion and superstition, except that the former is what he believes, and the latter what I believe. I should have—
Oh, let it go. Let it go, Sophia. It is bootless, it is gone, it is over. He followed me to the sacred place, and looked with hateful eyes upon what happened there; and then, later, he drugged me. He strode into the forest and plucked the spiders from their webs as though he had every right; he stuffed them into boxes as if they were inanimate trifles; he took them miles from their proper place without a second thought. But there is nothing to be said, because no Englishman would regard this as extraordinary. If I myself, ten years ago, had encountered a white woman who objected to the reasonable collection of specimens for the education and enlightenment of the English public (who are surely more interested in the lands of Homer and Ovid than those who actually live in them)—well, I should have blinked and bitten my lip, and marveled a little at her benighted views. Now . . .
Sometimes I think I cannot bear it. How much I miss Hira! As I stood in front of the
spiders last night I wrapped my arms around my belly, trying to conjure her solid female strength. Perhaps all she felt for me was pity; but I would rather have her pity than James’s esteem. Even now—no, especially now. Now that I am—as James might say—in a delicate condition, or, as I prefer, pregnant: pregnant as a prophecy is pregnant, brooding as a romantic hero broods. If she were only here to rub my back with oil, to murmur those half-songs that promise an easy deliverance, to feed me segments of lemon to quell the churning of my innards. And, when the time came, to take my hand and lead me to the silk tent where I might cry as loud as my lungs would let me—and emerge, as Misia did (or was her name Mila? already my memory betrays me), gingerly into a new-made world, a baby wrapped between my milky breasts . . . I should not have written that. It makes me think too clearly of what lies before me here: confinement and strangers and cold hands forcing me apart. I remember an aunt telling me once that they would not open the box that held the doctor’s instruments until she had been blindfolded.
I am afraid. There is no way out. There is nothing to do but wait.
I reached out and laid my hand against the glass. Perhaps the touch of flesh against the pane stilled some resonance, because the ocean-roar in my ears quieted to a kinder hiss, like slow spring rain. I said, We are all exiles.
The eyes went on looking at me, all of them. If the tank that I was touching had been large enough I might have stepped into it, dragged the cobweb up and around my shoulders like a shawl, and lain down. I might have stayed there, singing to the spiders, singing to the child that weighs like a stone in my womb, until I fell asleep, drunk on the echoes. What would I have dreamt of, before they drained me dry? What would my child?
Wait, we must wait. I have so few things left to which I can be faithful. I can count them on my fingers, as though I am looping a thread over each in turn: the child, the spiders, the memory of Hira. And—perhaps—the memory of the island itself, hot and wild as the beginnings of the world, and its skies and pines and the smell of the sea. In comparison England is cold and bare as a painted nude, keeping her arms crossed over her narrow breasts—breasts meant to be coyly glimpsed, to please men’s eyes, not to nourish. Hira would despise this country, the men who own it and the women who love them—or, no, she would only be mystified, amused, and a little sad, as she often was when she understood where I came from and who I was.
No doubt she is not amused anymore. What did they do, when they saw that the holy places had been desecrated? Did they blame James? Did they blame me? Did Hira think that I had crept away willingly, that I deliberately kept my silence when I should have cried
out to wake and warn them all? Or worse, that I helped James, that he knew the way there not because he had crept after me but because I had shown him? Did she curse me?
That is the only thing for which I pray: that she did not curse me. I do not know to whom I am addressing that prayer. It is not James’s God, that ever-judging, ever-merciless father like an Englishman in his celestial study. Neither is it the vindictive raptor gods of the old stories. Sometimes I wonder if it is the spiders. Please, I say to them, please. Please do not let Hira hate me. If there is a curse, turn it aside. Do not let it touch me, or the child. Or you. It is a paradox, to pray to them for their own safety: it must mean that I do not truly believe they have any power. That my prayer is only superstition, and James is quite right.
And last night, I said to them again, what can I do? I will do anything.
They did not answer. I put one hand on my belly and willed the child to quicken, but she is obstinate, she waits for something, some voice that she has not yet heard. With the other hand I leaned hard against the glass—certain and yet not certain that I would not press hard enough to break it.
I said, I will keep you alive. Whatever comes, you and your children will stay alive. I promise.
One
Henry was polishing the whorls of a silver ear when the shop bell jangled; or, rather, he was holding the ear and a smeared rag while he stared at the rain falling against the windows. He watched the dusk close in, his thoughts very shallow, noticing only the tracks of raindrops on the panes and the slow darkening of the sky above the crowded London roofs. It was only the chime of the bell that hung above the door and the noise of the traffic in the street outside that returned him to himself. He jerked upright. As he did, he fumbled the ear and it skittered over the counter to fall at the feet of the man who had entered.
The man stooped for it and straightened up, turning it over in one hand while he took off his dripping hat with the other. From his gait, Henry had thought him young; but now, in the lamplight, he could see that he was in late middle age, although his head of hair was still full and his eyes were as merry as a boy’s. He said, “What an extraordinary thing. A hearing aid, I suppose?”
“An historical one,” Henry said, “designed to replace the natural pinna of the ear, if it is absent. It’s decorative, really.” He wrapped the ear in the grimy rag, and put it in a drawer under the counter. When he looked up again, the visitor was pivoting slowly, his dripping coat leaving a circle of water on the carpet.
“What a charming establishment. I feel as though I have stepped into a collection of curios.”
It was true that the ranks of mahogany and glass cabinets looked at their best in the warm gleam of brass and lamplight. In the shining cases every object was set apart from its fellows, as though it should be touched only with reverence; and certainly many were both outlandish—the auricles, the audinets, the cornets, and the apparitor auris—and ostentatious, plated or thinly veneered or lacquered, so that to the uninformed eye they would seem both rich and strange. It was the sort of shop where asking for a price was generally a roundabout process, if money were mentioned at all. Argyll had often said, “It is not a shop, Latimer, it is an emporium.”
“Mr. Argyll would be very glad to hear that you approve, sir,” Henry said.
“Your father?”
“No,” Henry said. He was too weary to feel the old flash of resentment when he thought of the & SON that Argyll had had added to the gold lettering on the frontage, without consultation. “My father-in-law, as it happens. My name is Latimer.”
“Ah,” the man said, and smiled. It was a wry, complicit sort of smile, and for a moment an answering spark of warmth jumped in Henry’s chest, not quite strong enough to ignite. “Well, it is very intriguing.” He put his hat on the counter and strode to the furthest corner of the room, tilting his head to scrutinize the conch-spirals of an elaborate French trumpet. A few seconds later he moved on, while his breath lingered, evaporating slowly from the glass. He stopped in front of the shelf of invisibles—the nearest set were gold-plated—and tapped on the case as though the little objects might squirm on their bed of crimson plush. “What are these? These things like buds on a stem?”
“Those are not especially effective,” Henry said. “They are designed to hold open the walls of the external auditory canal, but in fact that is very rarely a solution to the problem.” As the man moved on, he added, “I take it you are not—That is, are you looking for yourself, sir?”
“On behalf of my daughter.”
“Then, perhaps over here . . .” Henry gestured to the case that held the ladies’ auricles, with their flowered headbands and coiled nacreous shells.
The man nodded, but he did not move in the direction Henry had indicated. He took out his watch, consulted it, and put it back in his pocket. “Do you ever feel as if they are all listening to you?”
“All the time,” Henry said, “but I never say anything worth remarking.”
The man laughed. “I find that hard to believe, somehow.” He went on looking at Henry, and although his grin faded, the light in his eyes did not. “Funny, isn’t it? You sell sound, and I sell silence. We are two sides of the same coin.”
Under that intent gaze Henry felt his face grow warm; and yet it was oddly exhilarating. He cleared his throat. “You sell . . . ?”
“Oh, did I not . . . ? Forgive me. My name is Ashmore-Percy. I have an appointment with Mr. Argyll.”
Henry fumbled for the memorandum book that was kept beside the till. The man had announced his name as if it should be familiar, and in fact Argyll had said something at luncheon—and there it was, Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy at half past four o’clock. Henry should have been expecting him. “I shall find Mr. Argyll directly. Will you come through to our consulting room? Shall I ring for tea?”
“Thank you.”
He showed the man—Ashmore-Percy—through the doorway into the consulting room. It was dimmer in here, and in spite of the fire in the grate the air was chilly. He gestured to the deep winged armchair, set a lamp on the table, and turned to leave, letting his eyes slide past the shrouded piano with its empty stool and unlit candles. Argyll was already in the doorway. “Get some tea,” he said, sotto voce. “I sent Townsend to post a letter.” But as soon as he stepped forward his voice changed, taking on a new unctuousness: “Sir Edward,” he said, “this is a pleasure. An honor. I do hope my son-in-law has not kept you waiting long.”
Henry did not hear the reply. By the time he returned, bearing a loaded tray, they had clearly got down to business. He caught the end of Ashmore-Percy’s sentence: “. . . love her dearly,” he said, and Argyll responded with a mm-hmm that dripped with sympathy. “She simply must learn to speak. She must! Otherwise she will be a prisoner in her own life. You can imagine my feelings, as a father—”
Henry stooped to pour the tea and passed a cup to Ashmore-Percy.
“Thank you,” he said, with a swift look at Henry. “So, you see, Mr. Argyll, I must do everything I can for her. I would like to know what you suggest.”
“Well, Sir Edward, I am very glad you have come to me. Doctors are useful people, of course, but their range of solutions is limited. It has sometimes happened that apparently incurable cases have been helped immeasurably by mechanical means—and we are the experts in those. I can promise nothing, you understand—but there is still hope, oh yes, I venture to say that you may continue to hope.” Argyll smiled.
“That is excellent news.”
“The only difficulty is that the young lady is not here for me to assess. Our service tailors the auricle to the ear, you see. It is a skilled job. Thank you, Latimer, you had better go and watch the shop.”
Henry felt both men’s eyes follow him as he went. Behind him, he heard Ashmore-Percy say, “Ah. I see. There is no use my buying anything now, then. Well, never mind. Thank you anyway.”
“That said, I am sure some arrangement might be made—”
“No, indeed, I understand your point entirely. How can you tell what would be effective, unless she is in your presence? I appreciate your candor, Mr. Argyll.”
“Ha,” Argyll said, and Henry heard a note of ill-concealed regret in his voice. “I am a professional, Sir Edward. I pride myself on my integrity and rigor. But we can certainly find a way. Many of my clients prefer to receive me in their own homes—”
“I will not occupy any more of your time today. We are both busy men, I dare say.” There was a rustle of upholstery as the visitor got to his feet. “Good afternoon, Mr. Argyll.” Then he strode out into the main shop. He paused when he saw Henry, as if he might add something, but in the end he only nodded a farewell. He opened the door with a jangle and stepped out into the rainy blue dusk.
“Blast it!” Argyll said. He stood in the doorway of the consulting room, grimacing. “I thought I had him. A man like that—money to spend, and high hopes . . .”
Henry said nothing. He had felt his own pulse of chagrin when the door shut, but he could not exactly identify why; certainly he did not care very much about the loss of business. But now the shop seemed colder.
“Blast,” Argyll repeated, but more softly. As he passed Henry to go back into the office, he glanced sideways into the consulting room. There was a fractional hitch in his step, and a sudden fixity in his expression. Henry followed his gaze: he was looking at the piano, with its unlit candles and empty music-stand. For the first time that afternoon Henry felt something other than resentment for the older man. But before he could speak—if he had thought of anything to say—Argyll had already mastered himself, and a moment later he had disappeared through the door behind the counter.
Henry passed his hands over his face. The bell jangled again. He drew a weary breath and raised his head.
“My hat,” Ashmore-Percy said, pointing to where it still sat beside the memorandum book. His hair was wet, and a streak of moisture was running down his temple.
Henry fumbled for it. “Here.”
“Thank you.” He took the hat from Henry’s outstretched hand, but he didn’t put it on his head. Instead he was looking at Henry’s sleeve, and the black armband. When he met Henry’s eyes, he was not abashed—as most people were, when they were caught staring—but quite self-possessed. “Was it your wife?”
“Yes,” Henry said. Of course, he would have seen Argyll’s armband, too.
“I’m sorry.”
Henry had heard that
sentiment, or variations on it, more than he cared to remember. Even if anyone truly was sorry, it made no difference, it was no consolation, Madeleine would still be dead . . .
But Ashmore-Percy was watching him, his mouth a little quirked, his gaze level; and to Henry’s surprise it came to him that after all it was something, it was like meeting someone else on a road that had seemed the loneliest in the world.
“Take heart.”
Henry opened his mouth to reply; but suddenly, humiliatingly, he felt his throat tighten, and he did not dare acknowledge the other man’s unlooked-for comfort. He said, grasping desperately for a new subject, “You said, sir—you said you sold silence. What did you mean?”
There was a little silence then: as though the word silence were a flask that had broken, and let its essence spill into the space between them.
Ashmore-Percy said, “But I thought—?” and broke off with a rueful grimace. “Perhaps you haven’t heard of me,” he said, “and why should you have done? One becomes accustomed to being recognized, but of course outside one’s own petit monde hardly anyone knows or cares that one exists . . . I do sell silence, quite literally! But you needn’t look like that, I’m not a blackmailer or an assassin. No, I own the factory that makes Telverton silk.”
Henry raised his eyebrows. He was conscious that he was expected to show some definite reaction to this, and already he did not want to disappoint this man. “I see,” he said.
“Ah, you haven’t heard of that either. A pity. I wish more people had heard of it, and saw fit to drape their drawing rooms with it, too. But let me enlighten you.” He laid his hat on the counter, fumbled in his pocket, and drew out a square of glimmering white fabric. He pushed it into Henry’s hand. “Now,” he said, with an intent, smiling look in his eyes, “what do you think of it?”
For an instant Henry had the sense that he heard high notes in the air—or rather, had heard them, like the aftermath of a dream. Obediently he looked at the little scrap of silk in his fingers. It was so thin he could hardly feel it; supple as oil, light as air, and with a lovely watery luster that made the coils of silver and mother-of-pearl on the shelves around him seem suddenly dull in comparison. It was as if the light around him had been quenched; and a different, unearthly radiance was welling through the threads of the silk. He said, “It is beautiful,” but before the last syllable had left his lips he started and glanced over his shoulder: he was sure he’d heard an answering whisper, just at the edge of audibility.
Ashmore-Percy laughed. “Put it to your ear,” he said. “No, the other way up. Here, let me.” He turned it over in Henry’s palm with warm fingers. “Now try.”
Henry lifted it, cupping his hand. He did not know what he was expecting: perhaps the shh-shh of a seashell, or a softening as though a curtain had been drawn between his mind and the outside world. In spite of what Ashmore-Percy had said, he was not expecting silence.
Or, at least, not this silence. Not utter nothingness; not an absence as complete as an earful of clay . . . He jerked it away, and the familiar noises of traffic and rain flooded back. “What is it?”
“Astounding, isn’t it? ...
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