One thing at least he’d learned in his time at school, though not from his teachers. Like many a boy before him, he’d befriended the local poachers for the sake of an occasional salmon or grouse to scorch over his study fire and eat with his fingers, with his friends. At the start of term he’d brought them bottles of brandy filched from his father’s cabinet; in return they’d taken him out more than once, shown him how to make a snare and where to set a night-line.
Those skills would feed him now. There must be fish in the lake; there were certainly rabbits in the wood’s fringe, he’d seen signs of them already. He hadn’t thought to bring fishing-line or wire, why should he? He wasn’t here for sport. But he could improvise. He had bootlaces, there were springy willow-shoots growing by the water. No need to visit the town, even to shop for what would ensure he need not visit again.
Sitting on the steps in the sunshine while water rippled before him, that water reflecting clouds and light and nothing of the great dark house, he reflected on the house; and almost felt he had a duty there at least, if none to family and reputation gone or a name that was meaningless now, himself the last shamed bearer of it. He should go to the solicitor, and ask how arrangements might be made. If he had to be honest, I shall be dead soon, and the house needs an heir, then so be it. He could do that, once. More than once, he thought not; but once would be sufficient.
Something screamed in the wood behind him, with the voice of a young girl. He started, shifted on the warming stone, and went to check his snares.
Already there was a rabbit kicking, held tight around the neck and its feet barely in contact with earth. He gathered wood for a fire, laid it in the portico and lit it with flint and tinder from his pack; then he fetched the rabbit. Carried it still living to his fire, though it lay still as a dead thing in his hands, only its eyes alive. Those he killed first, with a pencil. Contrary to all his tutors’ lessons he let it die slow and suffering, tutor himself now and pain all his lesson, the real world his theme.
“See it?” he whispered, poking with his pencil, digging gently. “See the light, little brother, see the light?”
What the rabbit saw, of course, was darkness: which was what he saw also, whichever way he looked, into the bath-house or out across the lake. Shapes woven from shadow moved in the shadows inside, avoiding the last of the sun’s fall across the floor; or they moved darkly in the water, under the glitter of light.
Ragged gunfire sounded through the wood and birds rose like smoke, screaming on the wind. A posse shooting crows, he thought; but he still thought himself alone in this valley, and he didn’t believe that anyone would shoot at crows with a.303.
Later, as his fire hissed under the rabbit’s dripping quarters, he heard sounds of soft knocking, dull and rhythmic.
Sat and listened; and no, not knocking after all. Sounds of kicking. Slow, steady, unremitting, a foot thudding into flesh and breaking bone.
He tended his fire, but his hands were trembling now.
Sitting in the twilight, licking greasy fingers — not wanting to go to the lake to wash, not while it was light enough to see what moved within the waters — he thought he saw words scratched black across the red disc of the sun.
Guilty he thought was said again, and other words he couldn’t read for the fire in his eyes, but they might have been names. His father’s or his mother’s, the girl’s or his own. It didn’t matter which. Any name was a betrayal.
He thought he should leave this valley before the games turned worse than cruel, before they remembered the real world and turned to blood. Not at night, though, he wouldn’t leave at night. The wood had been friendly to him once; but there was coming in and there was going out, and they were different. He felt a little like an eel in a basket, trapped without trying. Come the morning, he’d test that. Not now.
So he made his bed in the portico, on hard stone because there were too many shadows in the long grass moving, too many murmurs coming up. Between the wood and the water, even the bath-house seemed to offer something of protection.
Something, perhaps; but not enough. Waking in the cold night, he felt a moist warmth on his face and smelt sour breath, smelt blood.
Heard his own breathing change, heard his blood rush. Stiffened every muscle not to move, not to roll away; and thought there was no greater giveaway, no louder announcement, I’m awake!
An unshaven cheek brushed his, dry lips kissed him, and he held himself rock-still. A voice moaned in whispers, and he wouldn’t moan back. Then touch again and harder this time, hard to hold against such pressure as the man’s face stropped itself against his. Skin and stubble and the bone beneath: and something else he felt, wouldn’t open his eyes to see it but he felt coarse cloth, a blindfold.
And then there was nothing but the hard sounds of breathing, and the sounds of footsteps gone too quickly. He couldn’t hear water, but he thought the man had walked straight into the lake.
In the morning he found a thread of linen caught in his own soft stubble. He tied it in a coil and put it in his wallet for safe keeping, where he might have put a lock of someone’s hair; and no, he couldn’t think of leaving now. Too much of betrayal already, too much of guilt.
Besides, the wood would never pass him through. He tested that. He went back to the culvert, and tried to walk the path upstream; and tree-roots tripped him, leaves hid hollows underfoot where he fell and hurt his ankle, might have broken it. Where the path slid beneath his feet and he could barely scramble back to solid ground, watching earth crumble into water, there he gave it up, there he turned and came back; but it had been nothing more than a token in any case, he’d only meant to scout.
No escape from the valley, then. Not by the wood, at least. There must be a road, however ill-kept; but between himself and any road the house lay, massive and dissuasive. My house, he thought; but that was a legal fiction at best, and more of a brutal joke. Even at this distance, he was learning a little. The lesson was that D’Espérance didn’t belong, it wasn’t owned. It might, on sufferance, permit; but he was not yet ready to confront what that would mean, being accepted by D’Espérance.
So no, not that way. He wouldn’t even skirt the borders of the house; this was closer than he liked already, in its ambit even this further side of the lake.
Locked out of the wood, not ready for the house and no water-baby, never that, there was only the bath-house left him. This much he could encompass, heavy as it was, as it might prove to be. This much he could carry, for a while. For a brief while, his thoughts reminded him, and were still.
In the best of the light, with the doors wide, he went in with a pale torch burning and opened the door to the spiral stair.
Walking down in sinking circles, he smelt must and mould and dead air. The flame flickered, making shadows dance around him; but that was only mechanical, the action of light unfiltered by strangeness, he could understand that and not fear it.
Distant sounds of rushing, like a hard wind contained: he thought of the culvert, and the hurry of hidden water.
The stair turned one final time, and brought him into a high cold chamber lined with brick, dark with moisture. This too was dedicated to the mechanical, though, and nothing to fear. His weak torch showed him pumps and boilers, copper pipes and iron, gauges and valves. His eye traced the run of pipes, what would be the flow of the water; he followed it, he learned it, he loved it. This was how he wanted the world to be, all in order and all explaining itself.