The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds [64]
‘No, no, not at all.You mustn’t think that. But, you see, you wouldn’t be the first young gentleman of rank to be here for that reason, and clearly you aren’t a lunatic.’
‘I see. Perhaps it would be better if I were,’ he said vaguely.
‘Don’t say that.’ She was warming to her role as fearless interlocutor. Now she offered important advice. ‘I think that the thing is to be definite and courageous, to be strong with yourself. If I may claim any experience.’
He widened his eyes. ‘May you?’ She said nothing, confused and reddening. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He hung his head and thought for a moment, then looked up, inhaling sharply. ‘Would you like to pick any more?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Hannah leaned forward to do so.‘Will you remain here much longer?’ she asked, facing away from him.
‘I am to be kept here for a while yet. Her family believe me mad, but the fear, you see, is elopement.’
‘I see. And would you?’
‘Really you are an extraordinary girl - discussing such things alone with a gentleman. I suppose your situation is extraordinary. Talking to lunatics all day.’
‘I suppose it is. It doesn’t feel extraordinary. And I rarely talk to lunatics although, unless my . . . circumstances change, I will be expected to work with my mother soon enough.’
‘Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.’
‘Yes, let’s.’
‘But to answer your question, I suppose, now that you’ve asked it, it is . . . it is difficult to establish a household with nothing. She has nothing. I would be cut off. Do you think that ugly and prosaic? I think you do. Nevertheless . . . good day!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Good day.’
Hannah turned to see another rider approaching. Thomas Rawnsley on a well-brushed bay. He lifted his hat.
‘Good day to you.’
‘Do you two,’ Hannah stuttered, ‘do you often collide?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Rawnsley answered, wearing an expression of humorous confusion.
‘You have flowers,’ Seymour said, patting the horse’s neck with a rider’s firm slaps.
‘I do, I do,’ Rawnsley answered, swivelling in his saddle to take them from the saddlebag.
‘Roses,’ Hannah said. ‘At this time of year.’
‘Yes. I had them from a friend’s glasshouse. Here, why don’t you take them?’ He handed them down to Hannah. Yellow roses, with a cold, fresh fragrance, wrapped in paper.
Hannah held them, was silent. Thomas Rawnsley saw that they pained her. He eased her mind.‘I thought you might give them to your mother. I imagine they might brighten a corner.Well, I won’t keep you. Good day.’
When Hannah returned home, a note was waiting for her. ‘Dear Hannah, the roses were for you. I hope it does not distress you to learn this. Perhaps you will look on them and think of me. Respectfully, Thomas Rawnsley.’
Lord Byron was awoken.The bolt of his chamber door was lifted, slapped across. The door swung open. He wiped his mouth and sat up, then scratched himself thoroughly through warm, soiled clothes.
Lights bounced in the corridor outside, the servants’ swinging lanterns as they opened other doors.
In truth, Byron did not greatly enjoy these nighttime revels. The tumult of high spirits around him sharpened the sensation of his own solitude, his lofty and painful isolation. But he liked to step out if his door was opened, not only because if he did not do so of his own free will, a servant would return and grab him and damn near throw him down the stairs, but because he liked to sidle round and test whether the front door had also been unlocked. If it had been, he could slip out finally, finally escape into the night.
People slouched past his door to the stairs, moaning and shuffling. He stepped out to join them. Their voices were quieter than those of the people still in their cells yelling to be let out. At the bottom of the stairs, bottles were being opened. A fiddle, unwrapped from a blanket, was put in the hands of one who knew how to play. Lord Byron, who played himself, felt slighted, but recalled that he kept this talent a secret here, that he preferred to play among gypsies and free men.
He stepped through the throng, carefully