The Apple-Tree Throne Page 4
“Do not give me cause to turn my recommendations for troop health into an order, Cunningham,” said Wickersley, as dignified as any man could be with black splotches all down his shirt-front. “What precisely is your objection?”
“Well, sir,” Cunningham said dryly, the wag, “I am firm in my belief that there are some, shall we say, degenerate practitioners of the Greek arts amongst us, and as they have used these communal items, I would prefer not to, as it is to my mind indistinguishable from brushing my teeth with another man’s cock.”
There was a silence of such magnitude that for a moment I thought Wickersley and several others had turned to stone, and then Matthews spoke up: “Oh, that’s quite true, sir. That’s science, that is.”
“Yes, the man has a keen analytical mind,” Clark said gravely. “I cannot find a flaw in his logic, sir.”
Wickersley said, briskly, “Well, at least you know the cock has resided in a well-scrubbed mouth; stop your grousing this instant, and brush your teeth. Your oral hygiene is of greater import than your moral hygiene.” And we all laughed till we were fit to piss, except that no one had enough spare water to do so, and we had to hammer Ramansingh on the back because he started coughing, and for a moment we were just lads playing soldiers on a sunny day, and our privations and hardship seemed as naught, and anyway, as Wickersley always said, if being an invert was good enough for Achilles and Alexander the Great, it was far too good enough for the likes of us, poor imitation warriors of their ilk.
I shake my head, and keep walking. A faint, sweet smell lures me to an apple tree that has been mostly picked, a few red-gold orbs still clinging to the upper branches where the gardeners could not force the ladder. I don’t want to eat the apples but I do want to pick them, and while I am examining this impulse I begin to climb, carefully, the soles of my boots slipping on the damp bark. I cannot remember the last time I climbed a tree. Perhaps two years ago, when we needed a look-out for the enemy camp?
Able to ascend no further without peril to my person, I stuff two apples into my coat pockets and knock several more to the ground; they will be bruised, but still good for pie or sauce. Mrs. Boyle strikes me as someone who knows how to manage windfalls of all types; she manages me well enough, after all. The magpies rise shouting at my climb, laughing it seems, and I am startled for a moment at the colour of their feathers so close to my face — the precise black of the Wickersleys’ hair, particularly the two sons, a black so very black that it has room within it for violet and blue and green, where Mrs. Wickersley and her husband have the plain black of chest-feathers. They perch again and watch me, nodding as I pick one more apple; it seems they are not too possessive of the fruit itself, and are more interested in the worms they might find here.
I find a fork of sturdy branches and balance carefully, looking down upon the big red-and-grey house, the other outbuildings, a lake I had not known was there, or perhaps just a pond — a small rowboat bobbing upon its glassy surface — and the hedges, the spiked walls, the stables. Outside the gates the neighbourhood is quiet, all the streets slightly too narrow for motor-traffic, the noise of hooves on the stones ringing. I am the ruler of this tree, king of a small kingdom that sways in the wind.
And I am not the first: as I turn to climb down, I see something carved into the wood - initials, clumsily done, as if in haste. TEW. What was Wickersley’s second name? Perhaps he will tell me, if he comes back. I somewhat hope he does, but at the same time I hope that I have sufficiently insulted him that he will not. I do not rightly know what I hope for any more.
My leg sends up a thunderbolt of pain as I climb down, and I fall the final few feet, landing on grass and apples. Somewhat indignantly, I return to the house and sleep in the library, till I am interrupted by Mrs. Boyle coming in to prepare the evening meal. I feel very strange. Almost alive.
At dusk, I take another turn about the garden, and encounter the gardener turning up the compost-heap; it emits a powerful, though not unpleasant, scent of soil and mushroom. “Evenin,’ young sor,” he says, and rests a forearm on his fork. “Need something?”
“No! I wished only to introduce myself. I live in the guest-house now.”
His eyes glitter in the dim light - without censure, though, it seems. “Good,” he says. “Shouldn’t stand empty too long. Invites fell spirits, y’know; visitors of eldritch aspect.”
“Like what?”
“Like who knows what,” he says darkly. “Them’s that know wouldn’t tell the likes of me; or you either, sor. Greene,” he says, and we shake. The fragrance of his work clings to my hand as I put it back in my pocket.
“Braddock. Oh, mind your step there.” A magpie, surely the last one awake in the entire county, has landed by his fork, and in the fading light spies quickly the worms trying to evade its beak in the compost pile.
“I like magpies,” Greene says. “I know most folks don’t. How’s the rhyme go again?”
“One for trouble, two for tears,” I say. “I suppose it’s not their fault. Three for courage, four for fears…”
“Five for a journey, six for a home, seven for a ha’nt doomed ever to roam. Well, there’s our one.”
“Go on, shoo,” I tell it, and prod at it with my boot. It hops aside and pecks at the compost again. “But you hardly see them alone, when you come to think of it.”
“Tears in the spring, when they’re a-courtin,’” he says. “But that won’t be for a while yet.”
We fall silent. I wonder if he is remembering Wickersley the younger, if he knew him at all, or whether he was simply the former ‘young sor’ who lived in the guest-house. I don’t associate with enough of the upper-crust to know how they speak to their help. From novels, you’d think they didn’t even know each other’s names, and only called each other ‘Sir’ and ‘You there.’
But the old man’s cheeks wetly gleam in the last of the twilight, and I bid him good-night and return to my bed.
***
Mrs. Wickersley visits the next morning while I am attempting to breakfast, knocking perfunctorily on the front door before letting herself in. I would say that she bustles in, but she is small and neat in stature and it would be more precise to say that she slips in. “Mr. Braddock! I have brought sundry supplies to make you more comfortable here,” she announces, setting a basket on the table. “It occurs to me that a young bachelor like yourself, lacking a maternal companion as well as a matrimonial one, may not be properly equipped in the manner to which a gentleman is accustomed.”
“Thank you kindly, Mrs. Wickersley. How thoughtful.”
It does not seem as if she is upset being here, in her son’s space. Perhaps the sweet balm of charity soothes her pain — taking me in like a stray dog, and plumping me up with milk and beef-steak, and parading me about with my newly shiny coat, my newly-locked collar. Or perhaps, with the older son so long out of the house, she simply wants someone to mother.
She’s looking at me closely, as if I have something on my face, and I automatically reach for my neckcloth to wipe it, but I am not wearing one.
“Mr. Braddock, are you…feeling all right? You look quite pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sleeping, though, my dear? Are you eating? I keep reading about this epidemic of nerves that young soldiers are suffering, now that they have returned.” She studies my plate, the nibbled remains of a scone with jelly. I could not manage any more; it was a terrible night, and whatever is happening in my leg makes my stomach churn. “You should go back to bed — unless you have any appointments today? I can send Alastair to town to manage your business…”
“No, Mrs. Wickersley, I have no commitments today. I am quite all right, truly. Just…settling into the place.”
She does not believe me, but continues, “Well, if you are not too ill to socialize on Saturday, perhaps you would be interested in attending a small fête? It will be at the house of our friends the Pondsmiths — do you know them? O
f course, I do not wish to tax you unduly if you are not feeling well…”
“No no, I would be honoured to attend,” I lie, and she clucks happily at me, and leaves the gold-embossed invitation on the table, and vanishes again before I can offer her a cup of tea.
Maybe it is that I, having lost my mother when I was a lad of eleven, have not been the recipient of a sufficient lifetime allowance of maternal affection, but I find I cannot deny her — cannot force myself to be the cause of any more pain, since she has already been dealt so much by the public, and much reviled, death of her son. The fact that I have no appropriate dress for an evening affair, nor the ability to converse with those of high breeding, nor indeed acquaintance with a single soul except for the Wickersleys, has been put temporarily by the way-side. I will go, and repay the kindness of her invitation, even though the very thought of leaving the house now exhausts me. I will go.
In my bedchamber, I unpack the basket, trying to remember what Little Red Riding Cloak gave to her grandmother — the storybook I had as a child contained a quite specific list, and the illustrated basket precisely resembled this one, dark brown wicker lined with blue muslin. Tooth powders in lavender, mint, and lemon; a tin of pomade; shaving soap and a new brush. They are all from a manufacturer I do not know, in black enamelled tins with silver crests upon them. I am bothered by the smell of the pomade, though I cannot think of why. It is pleasant enough, but makes my head ache and my skin creep as if I were outside in cold weather. I can’t use it anyway; pomade makes my hair look like a butter sculpture.
Wait. I remember. She had a pot of butter, and a loaf of bread, and a boiled chicken, and a great string of smoked pork-sausages with pepper, and a dozen eggs, and a jam-cake with hazelnuts, and a jar of cream. Rich food for an invalid grandmother. A siren’s call to a wolf, I suppose. I would have once followed someone clear through a dozen forests for even the chance to smell those sausages. I am accosted by a sudden, clear memory of being thirteen or fourteen, sitting outside a butcher’s shop and watching as a lovely woman with a meekly-dressed servant emerged, hand-feeding a tit-bit of something red and juicy to her hound. I had a few shillings on me, which I knew must last me the rest of the week, and it occurred to me that she might have just spent twice or three times that on meat for her dog. And not only that, but meat of such quality, I despairingly believed at the time, that I might never taste, unless I magically came into some great fortune and could afford to keep myself on more than bread, stirabout, and the occasional pilfered apple or streetman’s pie, or fall-downs bought for a ha’pence from the shops. At the time, I could not even join the army simply to fill my belly.
It was a blessing when the draft came, I now reflect. I did not realize it at the time, but I would surely have been just scraping by, starving by inches, for who knows how long. Decades, perhaps. Now, with three years worth of pay packets mostly banked — for there was very little to purchase in Gundisalvus’ Land — I am close to well-off. But the old terror remains, like a fearsome though much-faded tattoo. I suspect I will never be completely free of it. And the Wickersleys, I think, have never even considered it.
I remember speaking to the Major-General once, in the dust and the heat, waiting for the supply caravan that we thought might never come, and inquiring about our enemy — the army formed of poor men, not drafted but hired, men who believed their poverty could be alleviated by this war, men supplied by no government and never knowing where the invisible lines had been drawn on the map. And he turned upon me the full light of his pale eyes, sadly, and said, “Well, Braddock, it is my considered opinion that they all have parasitic wasps in their brains.”
“That’s fair, sir,” I’d said, and we laughed, but had I not privately resented him for it, suspecting that he’d never known such hardship as would send him into battle with nothing more than the promise of eventual riches?
***
What…what is known of the fate of our enemy?
“Captain Eleutherios? He was captured the day after you…after…sir. The 514th Regiment made a surprise sortie.”
And now?
“He is imprisoned in the Bastille, awaiting trial. The Disputed Territory remains in turmoil, but it’s expected that the Federation will mop up shortly. The enemy forces are in disarray.”
Because without a leader, the mercenaries will not be paid.
“Yes, sir.”
The villain. And yet I remember nothing about the end. I find that quite curious.
“Nothing?”
I remember the last moments. The beard, silky, not coarse as I had thought. His breath sweetly stinking of starvation, like ours. His white, powerful hand over my face.
“But not the…”
No. I think that is probably for the best, don’t you?
“A blessing, I would say.”
He is calm tonight, and has said nothing of my living arrangements, or Miss Meyers, or the slaughter, or the funeral. His voice is stronger now, so I can hear that his tone is neither conciliatory nor bubbling with poorly-suppressed rage, and he has somehow determined a method of repairing his appearance, so that the great ragged wound in his neck is noticeably smaller.
We have been speaking in civil tones of other things — the “post-war” economy, which in GRoB seems all the time; the upcoming harvest at Lindow House; how his mother and father look; whether his brother is well; which medals I have received. At his request I held the two little plaques against the glass by their ribbons for his inspection, and we did not speak of his serried ranks of his own awards, reposing in his mother’s jewelry-box. He received nothing for his final campaign, and I got one simply for surviving. Unfair; best therefore not to discuss it.
“Sir?”
Yes, Braddock?
“I hope you do not find my question too impertinent,” I begin slowly, “but it seems to me that there should be more ghosts about. But you are the only one I have ever seen.”
I see many.
“Oh.”
Many, many. In some places the air is like pea-soup at night. They go back and forth along the secret ways, and there are very few amongst the living who can see them.
“Why am I able to, then?”
You know why.
“No. I know nothing of ghosts.”
You know why. You know why. Damn you!
He reaches towards the glass, but as I know he cannot penetrate it, I wait for the thump as his insubstantial fingertips meet the surface. Instead, they pass through and reach for my face, and I cry out and leap back.
My foot catches on the rug and almost as I realize that I am going to fall, I am on the floor, hands up to protect my face. Something has twisted in my bad leg and in my effort to not simply scream from the pain I bite down on my lip till I taste blood.
I slowly rise by gripping the leg of the bed-frame, my vision narrowed to a tunnel ending in a hot disc of light no bigger than a coin. Through it I see scarlet spots descending onto my sleeve, hand, and coverlet. My leg feels as if it has been set afire from the inside, barely covered by too-scanty flesh, like a smoldering peat-bog beneath an inch of dirty water.
Braddock? Are you —
With my last ounce of strength I slam the shutters and drag the curtains shut. Then I lie on the bed too weak with pain to even writhe, feeling blood meander down my cheeks. It occurs to me too late that having proven that he can infiltrate glass, the shutters should provide no obstacle. But he does not attempt to enter again.
***
The day of the fête is bright and chilly, and as I have for two days failed to leave the house to purchase a new outfit, I end up attending in my dress uniform. It is of a specifically dreary shade of cream, official army terminology “Bisque #8,” and it emphasizes the ‘long streak o’ piss’ moniker I patiently tolerated in the field. However, as it has not been worn overmuch, it makes an undeservedly smart impression.
Dress whites are accompanied, officially, by a silly hip-length cl
oak conspicuously lined with violet silk, which detaches by means of two brass clips under the shoulders. As I enter the ballroom I am grateful to find that I am not the only one in the cream outfit, nor am I the only one who’s chosen to wear the cloak. I am unsurprised to discover that the Wickersleys like to surround themselves with friends very much like themselves — military hangers-on, so to speak. Many of the other ex-soldiers meet my eye resignedly, as if they have been invited under circumstances similar to mine. I would like to go have a glass of punch with them and commiserate about the uniform, but Mrs. Wickersley is having none of it.
She tugs me through the crowd, presenting me to all and sundry. I nod, bow, shake hands, salute, kiss fingers, repeat pleasantries, and smile, whilst Mrs. Wickersley is wrenching my arm from its socket and my leg begins to tune up for the evening. There are so many attendees to meet and so many correct forms of address that my head begins to swim, and it is only as I look up into the amused face of a brigadier-general whose hand I have just kissed that I realize I am overwhelmed.
“Now now, a salute would have been perfectly adequate,” he says, and in a moment has appraised the situation with Mrs. Wickersley and smoothly detached her from my arm. “You’re one of Wickersley’s Irregulars, aren’t you? A Burantai Pass survivor, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
He places a hand beneath my elbow, a seemingly casual gesture, but his grip is like iron. “Do excuse me, my dear,” he says to Mrs. Wickersley, “but I have need of some military intelligence that requires me to borrow your escort for a moment.”
She narrows her eyes at him so swiftly that I wonder that I saw it at all, then laughs merrily. “O, who could begrudge you a moment, Frederick? But mind you return him promptly — and in the same condition!”
The old man steers me towards the sideboard, bowed in the centre with refreshments, and forces a glass of champagne upon me. “Get that down,” he says brusquely, “and then we’ll have a conversation about placing some supper within you; can the woman not see that you are nigh-on a starless night?”