Ingenious pain, Andrew Miller [little red riding hood ebook .txt] 📗

head from side to side on the top of a bush. James looks at the shadows to see how long he has been asleep. Two hours at least. The sunlight surprises him. He has been dreaming of snow, a world of snow, and a voice, calling him, closing on him.

He clambers to his feet. He sleeps so much now, so deeply, as though his body were preparing for another life. He claps his hands; the bird flies off, takes the dream with it.

In the evening air the house is splendid. The pale stone soaks up the pink and honey of the light; each window bears its own unique sun. Generous Palladian arms stretch out on either side of the main house. As he approaches, his feet crunch on the raked gravel. He walks up a flight of shallow steps to a double door. He does not need to knock. Invisible eyes have always seen him. Hands, tightly gloved, admit him. Servants in yellow coats.

This is the door through which he entered when he first arrived, the green-eyed man beside him, his hand sometimes brushing the boy's shoulder as though to reassure him. The gentleman had passed James into the care of a servant and James had followed the

man beside a swirl of banisters, through corridors broad as roads with doors leading off as far as the eye could pierce. There were voices in the air, a language he had not heard before, a leisurely, expressive chatter, and looking up he saw men on scaffolds, dark-haired with elegant faces, long brushes in their hands. They were working on a frieze above one of the great windows. They paused in their work, looking down at James, grinning, shaking their heads. 'Ah, povero ragazzoP

He was shown into a room with a curtained bed and a fire burning quietly in the grate. The servant had looked at the boy then, his expression no longer deferential, like an actor stepping suddenly out of his part.

When you wants to eat you pulls that wire there.'

And James had asked: Will the man come? The man I came here with?'

'Mr Canning?' The servant shook his head. 'He'll send for you when he wants you. He's a busy man. You're not the only one, you know.' The door was already closed before James thought to ask: '"Only one" of what?'

No one comes to see him other than servants, though not the same as the one who led him up on that first day; not as familiar or sly or informative. They order the room and bring trays of food. After the greens and bacon and penny loaves of his life with Grace and Gummer, the diet is gamey and sweet. A rich diet that makes him restless. He cannot decide if he is a prisoner or a guest. Certainly no key is ever turned in the door, and no one stands on the corridors playing gaoler. He begins to explore, candle in hand, going out when the house is quiet, his own footfall swallowed in the plush of the carpet and nothing but a stream of cream-coloured light to betray him.

The first time he meets nobody; the house is ostentatiously empty. After an hour, he becomes lost, deceived by symmetries.

and only recovers his room towards dawn, his candle long since gutted, his door suddenly appearing before him when still he thinks himself on the wrong floor, the wrong corridor.

The next night he goes further. Two servants, the light of their candles draped over their yellow coats, cross ahead of him through some large stately space, linger an instant to look towards the finger of James's flame, then disappear. What secret lives these people lead, secret as eels. When James tries to follow them there is no sign of where they have gone, no betraying glow.

It is the third or fourth night before he encounters anyone with whom he can speak, a night so sharply lit by the moon its light penetrates even into the windowless corridors, lying like sheets of new paper under the doors. He has been walking the greater part of an hour when midnight chimes from clocks in a hundred rooms and he hears a voice, soft yet querulous, and traces it to a great door that stands just wide enough to admit him. He enters and sees by moonlight a man, the silvery shape of a man, standing in a kind of pulpit at the side of a shelf of books. The man, reaching up to replace a book, turns and peers at the boy.

'What are you, eh? And what do you want in here? This is a library. Boys, I find, do not care for libraries. Perhaps you were looking for the kitchens.'

With a grunt of effort he slots the book in its place and clambers down. He seemed quite tall. Now it is evident he is no taller than James.

'Come, then, now you are here. Let me show you about. I am Collins, Mr Canning's librarian. I was with him in Spain and Italy. Oh, indeed, we were in Italy for many years. He speaks the language like a native. Can recite Dante by the hour. These shelves are history. Herodotus, Pliny, Tacitus. Homer. Here is philosophy. Aristotle, Bacon, Newton, Erasmus . . . Hobbes, Locke ... In this place, for which only Mr Canning and myself have the key, are certain rare and . . . particular volumes. How old are you, boy?'

'Thirteen.'

'You have amorous thoughts?'

'Amorous?'

'Ay. Hot thoughts. Lewd. Are you a peeper through keyholes? Are you inflamed by the heave of a bosom?'

James considers a moment the bosoms he has seen. Liza's once, white puppy-heads as she Ufted her shift one night in summer. The actresses at Farmer Moody's place. Grace Boylan's when she gave them to be squeezed by Gummer. He shakes his head. The librarian shrugs.

You won't be pestering me for the key, then. Where had we reached to? Philosophy? These shelves here are poetry, a particular favourite of