Behind the desk, facing into the room, is a stout gentleman whose face is in shadow. He looks up as Monsieur Fournier enters, and Charles recognizes him.
I thought youd be halfway to The gentleman sees Charles behind Monsieur Fournier. He breaks off what he is saying.
This is more important, Fournier says.
What the devil do you want with that boy?
Fournier advances into the room with Charles trailing behind him. One of the piles of paper is weighted down with a pistol. Charles wishes that he were back with Marie, lying in her bed against her great flank and smelling her strange, unlovely smell.
You dont understand. Hes Madame von Streichers son.
Charles knows that this man is very important. He is Count de Quillon, the owner of this house, the Hotel de Quillon, and so much else. The Minister, Maman says, the godson of the King and once the Kings friend. He sometimes came to see Maman, though more often he would send a servant with a message and Maman would put on one of her best gowns and go away in his great coach.
Only now, when the Count rests his elbows on the desk, does the sunlight bring his face alive. He is a broad, heavy man, older than Fournier, with a small chin, a big nose and a high complexion.
This is Augustas son? the Count says. This? Are you sure? Absolutely sure?
Quite sure, despite the dirt and the rags.
How does he come here?
He ran away and went to an old servants. She brought him a moment ago.
So was he with his mother when
Fournier interrupts: I dont know. He was covered in blood when he turned up at the old womans house.
It is of the first importance that we discover what happened. Where is the servant? She must know something.
She ran off as soon as we came through the gate.
The men are talking as if Charles is not there. He might be invisible. Or he might not even exist at all. He cannot grasp this idea. Nevertheless, part of him quite likes it.
Come here, boy, says the Count.
Charles steps up to the desk. He makes himself stand very straight.
What happened at your house that night? The the night you ran away?
Charles does not speak.
Dont be shy. I cant abide a timid boy. Answer me. Who else was there? I must know.
The woman said he simply wont speak, says Fournier. No reason why he shouldnt, of course hes perfectly capable of it. I remember him chattering away ten to the dozen.
Answer me! the Count roared, rearing up in his chair. You will answer me.
Tears run down Charless cheeks. He says nothing.
Fournier shifts his weight from his left leg. Give the lad time to get his bearings, he suggests. Gohlis can see him.
We dont have time for all that, the Count says. He adds rather petulantly, Anyway, hes not some lad or other his name is Charles. I should know. He beckons Charles closer and studies the boys face. Were you there? Did you see what happened to
My friend, I think this
The Count waves Fournier away. Did you see what happened to your mother? Did you see who came?
Charles stares at the pistol on the pile of papers. Is it loaded? If you cocked it and put it to your head and pulled the trigger, then would everything stop, just like that? Everything, including himself?
It is most important that you tell us, the Count says, raising his voice. A matter of life and death. Answer me, Charles. Who was there?
But Charles is still thinking about the pistol. If he shot himself, would St Peter take one look at him and send him down to the fires of hell? Or would there simply be nothing at all, a great emptiness with no people in it, living or dead?
Oh for Gods sake! the Count snaps.
The boy recoils as if he has been slapped.
Very well, then. The Count tugs the bell pull behind him. Well talk to him when hes past his absurd shyness. Someone will look after him and give him some food.
Fournier rests a hand on Charless shoulder. But what about later? If we leave?
Then he comes with us. Monsieur de Quillon bends his great head over his papers. Naturally.
Chapter Three
Charles is placed in the care of an elderly, half-blind woman. She lives in a room under the roof over the kitchen wing. Opening out of her chamber is a smaller one, which has a barred window. This is where Charles sleeps.
On the second night, he has bad dreams and he wets the bed.
On the third day, Monsieur Fournier summons him. He is in a salon overlooking the great courtyard at the heart of the Hotel de Quillon.
He is not alone. Dr Gohlis is there. He is another gentleman who used to call on Maman in the old days. He is young and stooping, a German from Hanover. He has cold hands.
In heavily accented French, the doctor asks Charles his name, and Charles does not answer. He asks Charles how old he is. Then he asks exactly the same questions in English and German, and all the while Charles stares out of the window at the weeds in the courtyard and imagines the words rising into the sky like startled birds.
Dr Gohlis examines him, looking at his teeth and poking at his belly with his forefinger. He walks behind Charles and claps his hands, making Charles twitch.
There is no physical cause for his silence that I can see. Everything is perfectly normal, he says. You tell me he eats and moves his bowels. I could try purging or bleeding, but I doubt it would answer.
He has sustained a great shock, Fournier says, throwing an unexpected smile at Charles. Could that have disturbed his faculties and made him mute?
Indeed, sir that may very well be the case. If the hypothesis is correct, then it follows that the best course of treatment may be another shock. If one shock has removed his powers of speech, then a second may restore them.
They say he wet the bed the other night.
Really? Was he beaten for it?
I do not know.
If it happens again, I would advise it, for his own good. He will achieve nothing without discipline.
Thank you, Doctor, Monsieur Fournier says after a moment. I wont detain you any longer.
Dr Gohlis bows and leaves the room. He does not look at Charles, who is still standing by the window.
As the door closes, Fournier opens a bureau. He takes a sheet of paper from one of its drawers and a quill from another. He puts them on the flap and uncovers the inkstand. He places a gilt chair in front of the bureau.
Sit, dear boy. Take the quill.
Charles obeys. He dips the pen in the ink without being asked.
Good, says Fournier. Your mother told me that you are an apt student. Pray begin by writing your name.
Charles bends his head. He writes. The quill scratches on the heavy paper.
Now write my name.
Charles writes.
Excellent. And now write the names of those who visited your mother in your cottage in the Rue de Richelieu.
The pen moves again. The tip of the feather brushes Charless chin.
Monsieur Fournier comes to stand at his shoulder. Let me see what you have written.
Monsieur Fournier comes to stand at his shoulder. Let me see what you have written.
Charles hands him the sheet of paper, the ink still glistening. He has answered each question with lines that go up and down, across and diagonally. They are black marks on white paper. They reveal nothing other than themselves.
The following morning, Charles wakes with the light.
Before he opens his eyes, he is aware of rustles and small movements which he thinks must be rats and mice, which come and go at will and treat the place as their own. He opens his eyes.
Without warning, his stomach gives a painful twitch as if someone has punched him there. He gasps and sits up in bed.
A boy is standing beside the window, his outline clearly visible in the light filtering through the cracks of the shutters. He is smaller than Charles and he is very still. He has his back to the room. He stands upright, his shoulders squared like a soldier on parade.
Just for an instant for a hundredth of a second Charles feels joy. He is not alone.
His feelings are no sooner there than they are gone. His lips move. They form the words: Who are you? But the words have no sound so the boy cannot hear them.
Charles is afraid as much as excited now. He swings his legs out of bed.
The boy does not move.
The boards are cold. Draughts swirl around Charless ankles and rise up his legs under his nightshirt. He shivers, partly from fear.
He takes a step nearer the window, nearer the boy. Then another, and another. Between each step he pauses. It is like the game he used to play with his mother when he was very, very young.
The strange boy does not even twitch. Step by step, Charles draws nearer to him. Still the boy does not move. He has been turned to stone, Charles thinks, he is a statue. He feels pity, though he knows the boy cannot really be like this; but, if he were, surely that would be even worse than losing your voice?
Charles takes a deep breath, stretches out a hand and touches the boys shoulder. It is cold, a little damp and hard hard like wood, not stone. Charles walks around him and opens one of the shutters. The light from the window falls on the boys face.
Or rather the light falls on the place where the face should have been.
The boys eye sockets are empty. There is nothing but a hole where the nose should be. The cheeks are sunken. The lips are almost gone. He still has some of his teeth. He is grinning. He will always grin because he can do nothing else.
Charles draws in a long, shuddering breath. His face contorted, he breathes out: a silent scream.
The door creaks. A current of cold air sweeps into the room.
Dr Gohlis is on the threshold.
I see you have found my little friend, he says in his strange, thick voice. His name is Louis.
As he speaks, he comes closer. Charles cannot move.
Who knows who this boy was? the doctor says. Were you aware that before the Revolution, the poor were so desperate that they sent their children to prison they sold them on the streets they disposed of them like unwanted kittens?
Charles stares at Dr Gohlis over the boys shoulder. He wishes with all his heart that the boy was still alive, that he was not alone with the doctor.
But even dead boys may be worth a few sous. In life they were quite useless to society. But in death, the lucky ones are granted the chance to serve a higher good.
Dr Gohlis is standing by Louiss shoulder now. He throws back the second shutter. More light floods over the boy. Charles covers his mouth with his hands when he sees what has been done.
So their parents take the money and drink themselves senseless in the nearest wine shop, the doctor continues. And a man of science takes the boy. He stretches out a surprisingly long arm and grips the right wrist of the figure. The dead boy. The man of science conveys the boy to another man, a man skilled in the art of flaying skin from a body. Believe me, it is not easy to do it properly, to do it well. It is one thing to remove the skin. It is quite another thing to do it without harming what lies beneath.
The doctor releases the wrist. His fingertips play on the arm of the boy, patting it gently, rising from the wrist up to the elbow up to the shoulder and then to the neck. He points at a place on the neck.
See? This is the line of the great artery which carries blood to the heart. This is bone, here, and here the humerus, and here we have the scapula. The hand flutters higher. Note the cheekbone. Do you see how some of the skin is still attached? The man who did this was truly an artist.
The doctors hand sweeps down and grips Charless neck. Charles tries to pull away but Dr Gohlis tightens his hold. His hand is as cold as a dead thing, colder than the flayed boy.
After this boy was flayed, shall I tell you what happened then? He was covered in plaster, every inch of him. When the plaster was dry, they cut it open and there is a mould of the dead boy. When you have a mould, you can make many copies. The copies are painted, in this case by another artist who is trained in the work of portraying what lies beneath, the inner mysteries under the skin. See how the muscle and tendon and bone stand out in their proper colours. Is it not a marvel?
His grip is painfully tight. He forces Charles to move around the boy and to come closer. Now he is looking at the boys back.
These poor simulacra of humanity are called écorchés, Dr Gohlis says, the flayed ones. Isnt that droll? They assist in the instruction of students of medicine and drawing who are obliged to learn about the inward architecture of the human body. Observe.
He picks up Charless right hand with his own left hand. Charles wills himself not to resist, not to pull away. The doctor forces him to extend his index finger. He runs the finger down the spine of the écorché.
Here are the cervical vertebrae, the doctor announces. And below, in the middle of the spine, here are the thoracic ones. See the natural curve of the spine. Is it not elegant? And further below still, here are the lumbar vertebrae. They are much larger than the cervical ones, are they not? That is because they need to be, for they carry a greater burden.
The doctor lowers his head to the same level as Charless.
You see? he says. You will never forget this lesson, will you? Not while you live and breathe. You will always remember what lies beneath.
He stares into Charless face. Charles stares back and thinks of nothing but the blank grey sky beyond the window.
Above all, you should draw this conclusion from it. You should remember that a boy who is useless in life may at least be useful in death. Dr Gohlis releases Charless neck and pushes him against the écorché boy. You are no use at all to us if you will not talk.
As he is speaking, Dr Gohlis moves towards the door. He pauses on the threshold.
I should examine him carefully if I were you. If you do not find your voice, you may be like that yourself one day.
Chapter Four
On the very night before the letter arrived, Savill thought of Augusta. He had not thought of her for months, perhaps years. These were the dog days of the summer. Perhaps that had something to do with it, for the heat bred unhealthy desires. The long scar on his right cheek itched.