“I think I did,” I tell Nan.
“Then you have suffered from death.”
I can tell that Nan’s being wily with me. She has only answered a question very like my question but not my question at all.
The path through the house is long. There aren’t any branches in the path, no need to navigate — only the task of setting one foot in front of the other. We pass through the domus, which includes the pantry, and the sitting room, and the bedrooms, each one marginally smaller than the last.
“Would you come along the rest of the way with me, dear?” Nan asks in a kindly voice, for I’ve begun to fall behind her. I’ve never gone beyond the eleventh chamber before and the prospect of further travel frightens me a little although I can’t rightly say why. And Nan has never asked me to before. In fact, she often distracts me from the thought, saying I must learn the Latin, and then the Greek, and then the Egyptian afterward. Perhaps I’m progressing beyond her expectations.
Or perhaps it is something else. The grocer’s mother was much younger than Nan is now, and I’ve seen the hump growing upon her back. The way it twists her spine.
“Don’t fret, Caroline—”
“Caro,” I remind her.
“—I shall manage well enough without you, I suppose. The grocer’s wife isn’t so large as some of the others. But am I warm enough, do you think? It gets so very cold . . .”
Nan glances down at the grocer’s wife, and, for a moment, I’m a little frightened that she’ll snatch the sheets away. Her hands are trembling.
“Take my shawl, Nan, I won’t need it. Not today. The weather hasn’t turned yet.”
“That’s nice, dear,” she murmurs as I tuck my shawl around her shoulders. She pats my arm very gently.
The days pass easily after that, almost indistinguishable from one another. Soon I’ve produced passable translations of Apuleius, Pseudo-Quintilian, Marcellus Empiricus, and Pliny the Elder — and then Nan tells me it is time to return to the village again.
The weather’s been growing colder and darker and so I must begin the climb early in the morning as soon as there is light. To avoid thinking of the fall, I repeat to myself another conundrum: If when I dream I can see figments, then is it possible those figments may also dream? And if so, isn’t it possible that I’m a figment of another’s dreams? This is very like the problem Plato proposed to Glaucon about the prisoners who saw shadows upon the wall of the cave for the shadows are very much like dreams. And yet Plato never asked if the shadows themselves perceive — but it’s certainly possible that they did!
I feel quite clever in coming up with this conundrum. I wonder if, perhaps, no one else in the world has ever thought this particular thought before.
“Hello, miss,” says Tom as he begins to count out my share of potatoes. He has on a black jacket, which I’ve never seen before. I confess it shows off his broad shoulders rather well. He has slim black trousers too and black shoes that shine as if he has polished them with his sleeve.
“You look uncommonly fine today, Tom,” I say to him with my best smile. “I would not have taken you for the grocer’s boy at all, but rather for a prince or perhaps for a duke!”
“That’s very kind of you to say, miss.”
It’s the second time he has said that to me. And, indeed, he has said nothing about my best smile. Perhaps he’s in a mood, and I may draw him out of it.
“May I ask you a question, Tom?”
“If you’d like.”
“It’s a problem, really, a very difficult one. One that takes ages and ages to solve. But I’ll tell you my conundrum because—” And now I feel quite shy I’ve begun this line of talk with him. “—because you yourself made me think of it.”
I won’t tell him the rest. I won’t tell him that sometimes I dream about him and that the things he whispers to me are very nice. Instead, I try to explain to him the conundrum about the dream and the dreams and the cave and the shadows but try as I might I can’t make it exactly clear what it is I wish to say.
But Tom seems not to notice my missteps. “We solved that one years ago,” he says carelessly. His eyes are a very delicate shade of blue. I’ve not noticed this before, but then I’ve not noticed how peculiarly changeable Tom’s moods may be.
“Will you give me the answer?”
“I’m near shocked you haven’t solved it for yourself, and you being so learned too, miss!” His tone is cruel. “We are the dreamers.”
“And me?” I’m trembling.
“You’ll see, won’t you, when we wake up! And we will, you know, we shan’t be so dozy about what goes on below us forever.”
His smile is quite terrible. He will not look at me, he only counts the potatoes, one by one and places them into the sack for me.
“Are you very angry with me?” I say softly.
“You’re a murderer,” he hisses
“But how can you say that, Tom? I’ve never murdered anyone!”
He glances at me, all sly now, like he’s playing a trick. “You wake in the night, don’t you? So there’s someone you’ve murdered, there must be!”
“Please don’t be so unkind, Tom, I can’t bear it, not from you!” I’m clutching at the hem of my dress now, just like Nan does. And then, softly: “I’m so sorry about the apple. I shouldn’t have taken it from you.”
“What apple, miss?” he sneers. “You didn’t carry off no apple of mine, did you? So there’s no debt between us, nothing exchanged except that which was promised. My mother’s gone to visit you, she’s gone down and down and into the mouth of that awful beastie. You’ve done with her what you’ve done with all the others, it’s monstrous!”
“It’s not monstrous what Nan did, I promise and I promise!”
“Oh, go on and take your potatoes,” he says, “go take them and feast on them, Caroline Eve Arkwright.” He’s shoving the potatoes into my arms and his mouth is so twisted, it’s evil looking. “But just think on this, will you? I got these potatoes from deep underground, I dug them out special for you. These potatoes, they been growing amongst the worms and spiders and every nasty thing, and I just pray some of those nasty things’re living in there still, small and deadly, just like you, like you and her!”
I stumble away from him with my arms all full of potatoes. How I want to cry, but I mustn’t cry because Nan has told me I must never show the villagers I’m afraid of them. But what am I to do? Oh, Tom! I turn away from him very quickly. For a moment he looks as if he might strike me! And thinking that, I start to run — I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself. Dum, dum, dum go my feet as they hit the cobblestones but the noise is very little, almost nothing. I run for at least a mile before I can stop myself from running any longer.
It is only once I’ve reached the edge of the village that I remember he has not given me the onions at all.
Nan is disappointed with me, I can tell from the way that she scowls ever so slightly and clutches at the hem of her cardigan but she’ll not tell me that I’ve done badly.
“They’re a vicious lot, absolutely vicious! But they daren’t harm you, dear, not an Arkwright, whatever that boy might’ve said.”
“Then— you don’t think he might’ve put something in the potatoes? He was so angry!”
It’s this thought that has been haunting me, that perhaps he’s poisoned them.
“It’s not a thing to be worried at.”
“But you didn’t see him, Nan. Not his face, or his— his eyes! I’ve never seen him like that before. And he might’ve put something in them, mightn’t he? And if he did, what could we do? There’s little enough left from before and I didn’t even remember the onions, there’d be nothing at all to eat for days and days!”