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

of snow. The bird unfolds itself, flies low over the ground, wingtips almost touching the snow. Then it climbs, caws, circles over him and disappears over the trees. He falls back, face to the sky. Now perhaps, in the light, someone will come to help him, take him to a warm place, heal him. The sky turns red; he hears

footsteps; he raises his eyes. The woman is there. She crouches by his head and places a hand over his eyes. She smells of smoke and feathers. He sleeps.

A small flame weaves near his face. Over the back of the flame he sees the woman, stirring a pot. She looks round at him. He speaks to her but does not understand what he has said. They are in a room, a small wooden room. There are no windows. He is lying under a pelt. Under the pelt he is naked. He is too weak to move, too afraid to start the burning again. The woman feeds him from a horn. The liquid tastes of earth. He swallows. Later she takes his hand and leads him from the room. The burning is all around him, a cloud in which he moves, but it does not make him suffer as before. When they are outside she points. There is a man, spreadeagled, face down in the snow. James goes closer, naked over the snow. He does not feel the cold. He kneels beside the man, turns the body over, touches him, the cold-pleated face, the stubble like splinters in the skin, the dark lips showing dark teeth. In Gummer's eyes golden lights are moving. The lights are flames carried in the dark. James bends closer. He sees the face of his mother, tiny, young. Above her the stars are raining over the moor, the village, the hill-fort. He sees a mass of strangers, and a boy lying calmly on a bed. And there is Joshua Dyer in his best coat, frowning, red from sun and drink; and Jenny Scurl, petals in her hair; and Amos Gate, rubbing his chin. Charlie stands at the door and Sarah peeps past his arm. Liza is there, sat on the bed beside him. She is crying for him.

James lays his head against the dead man's chest, curls against the cold body, holds it in his arms. Howls.

Ice mirrors tell him of what he has become. They show him the blur of a man, beard matted with drool, the dark band of his eyes like a blindfold. Often she makes him drink from the horn, the

liquor that tastes of must and earth, that tastes of cellars. Then he is a ghost and sees ghostly sights, talks with the dead, or the wandering spirits of those who are yet living. At night he sometimes hears devils; they are like men whispering at the far end of an enormous room.

And he finds a word for the burning. A word that springs from the lips as it is spoken; that is spoken as if it were a seed to be spat from between the lips: pain. It throws out wind enough to stagger the flame of a candle but not to extinguish it, not at first, not unless the flame is feeble, the candle all but gone.

His flesh remembers; every break, every beating, every stab of the needles, every burn from the candle. In pain he discovers his history, and the air grows truculent with voices. The night is not long enough to answer their accusations, nor to shed the tears they demand of him. He had thought his hours were like bonfires that consumed themselves, leaving only the palest ash. Now he learns that time trails men like a killer, thorough, even-handed, collecting the evidence of the years. Nothing is lost. That was all arrogance and ignorance. Nothing is lost and the silence was not silence but merely his own deafness.

'Who are you?' 'Answer!' 'Why does he not answer?'

'He has not spoke to us at all, sir.'

'Where is he from? What papers does he have?'

'Mr Callow read the papers, sir. He is called Dyer, an Englishman run mad in Russia.'

'Mad from what cause?'

'The cause was not set out. Only the name and that he is come from Russia.'

'I wonder they could not keep him there. Who was it sent him?'

'Mr Swallow, the ambassador.'

'And was there money sent, for his maintenance?'

'There is money. Mr Callow has it.'

'Tell Callow to charge him at seven shillings a week. I knew a Dyer once. Dyer!'

'Answer!'

'Do you know where you are, sir? This is the Royal Bethlehem hospital in Moorfields. We shall make you well, sir, or one of us shall perish in the attempt. Why does he wear a restraining jacket?'

'Sir, he kicked at one of the keepers when he was stripped.'

'Who was that?'

'Mr O'Connor.'

'Did O'Connor vex him?'

'No, sir.'

'Very well. Tomorrow I shall begin the treatment. We shall loosen your tongue, Dyer. It is naughty to be to be so stubborn. Who is that screaming?'

'I think it is Smart, sir.'

*Why is he screaming?'

'I cannot say.'

'Well, we shall go to him.'

'And this one, sir, shall he wear irons?'

'Upon his legs. Until we know him better. Then we shall see.'

'Dyer!'

'Answer!'

'Nay, do not kick him. He is still a Christian. How do you like your new home, sirrah? Does he speak yet?'

'Some words, sir.'

'Portending?'

'Sir?'

'What does he say?'

'It was mad talk, sir. It was nothing.'

'When you hear him speak you must make some note of it, or if you cannot, remember the words in your head.'

'I shall.'

'How does he like his irons?'

'He does not complain.'

'He is to go to the water today.'

'Ay, sir.'

'He is to vomit.'

'Ay, sir. And shall we bleed him?'

'Keeper!' 'Sir?'

'Sit him up upon his pallet. Does he take his food?' 'We put it in his mouth, sir. He will not always swallow it.'

If you are casual with your food, Dyer, I shall have Wagner here force it down your gullet with a stick. Ay, like a French goose. How did he like the