What Lies Beneath

Chapter 31

Edirne, 1912

‘The rules are different here,’ said Gil as he and Crispian stood in a corner of the courtyard, horrified at the sentence just pronounced on Jamie. ‘There’s a war raging and we’re in the East, and this is the old Eastern way of tailoring the punishment to the crime. In some areas if you’re caught stealing they cut off your hand. But for them to do this… this mutilation to Jamie without a proper trial, without letting him even try to defend himself…’

‘Raif, what do we do?’ said Crispian in a low voice, his eyes on the men around the table, who were now in earnest conclave.

‘There’s nothing any of us can do,’ said Raif, but he looked shaken. ‘Even if we could call out the entire military personnel from the fortress, by the time they got here it would be too late.’

‘They said sunset. That’s more than an hour away. Surely there’s time to get help? Can’t we at least try?’

Raif frowned, then said, ‘Yes, all right. You two had better stay here, though. I’ll go faster on my own and I might be able to get in to see one of the Pasha’s aides. But don’t hope for too much. Also,’ he said, ‘while I’m there I can collect some medical supplies to bring back.’

‘Raif, if we don’t free him – if they carry out this sentence – will they drug him first?’

‘I don’t know. They probably would do if the crime was anything other than spying. Or perhaps if he wasn’t a foreigner. I’m sorry,’ said Raif, ‘but being English won’t have helped him.’

Gil, seeing Crispian’s expression, said, ‘You can’t blame them. Imagine how we’d feel if England was about to be invaded and someone from Turkey or Greece sold military secrets to the enemy. You wouldn’t fall over yourself to rescue him and nor would I.’ He looked at Raif. ‘Do the best you can,’ he said.

Jamie had been taken back into the stone-faced building. Crispian had tried to gesture to him, implying they would rescue him somehow, but he had no idea if Jamie understood or had even known they were there. After the door banged shut, he went to speak to the interpreter, hoping he and Gil would be allowed in to see Jamie.

But the interpreter was implacable. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No visitors to the prisoner allowed. We do not know you; we have no cause to trust you.’

They returned to the courtyard and sat in one corner, watching everything that happened.

‘I still don’t believe Jamie’s guilty,’ said Crispian. ‘But if he is, what was his motive?’

‘Money, I suppose. Isn’t it at the root of everything?’

‘But he doesn’t need money.’

‘Don’t be naïve, Crispian. Everyone needs money.’

‘But he had only to ask me – I’d have given him anything he needed.’

‘Perhaps that’s why he wouldn’t ask,’ said Gil. ‘But if he did do it, it was more likely to be to find a way to get back to England.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps there was some offer of forged papers or something of that kind. I’m only guessing, though.’

Gradually the shadows lengthened and the first glow of the setting sun began to colour the ancient stones. The Englishmen were hot and exhausted, thirsty and hungry, but they did not dare leave the courtyard.

The sun was setting in a blaze of crimson and amber when Crispian suddenly said, ‘Something’s starting to happen,’ and pointed to where several of the men who had formed part of the makeshift jury were lighting small bronze lamps set high on the stone walls. The flames leaped up in the hot dry air, tinting the night sky, and the scent of rancid oil drifted across the courtyard. Four men carried out a rectangle of wood, about ten feet long and half as wide. Chains were driven into each corner.

‘Manacles,’ said Gil softly. ‘They’re going to chain him down.’

Crispian glanced towards the courtyard entrance. ‘Raif’s not coming back, is he?’

‘It doesn’t look like it. We’re on our own, Crispian.’

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Crispian, suddenly.

‘Believe me, I’d rather be a thousand miles away.’

The men tilted the wooden rectangle and, as they did so, a single plangent note from somewhere inside one of the buildings rang out. Crispian’s skin crawled with fear and repulsion.

‘Jesus Christ, that’s the grisliest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said Gil.

‘What is it?’

‘It sounds like the Last Trump. In fact—’ He turned sharply as there was a flurry of movement from beyond the main entrance. Raif, accompanied by a young man, came in, half-running.

‘He hasn’t done it,’ said Crispian, sick with disappointment. ‘No soldiers, nothing.’

Raif ran across to where they were sitting. ‘I couldn’t get anyone to help,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not that no one cares, but a spy in wartime…’ He gestured, indicating the indifference of the Pasha’s men.

‘Yes, I see,’ said Crispian. ‘He’s going to have to endure it, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will it kill him?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not a… an injury I’ve ever encountered. There’ll be considerable blood loss, and the shock to his entire system will be immense. There’re quite a lot of nerve fibres in the tongue, and also muscle.’

‘It’ll be very painful,’ said Crispian, conscious of the lameness of this remark.

‘Yes. But I’ve brought what I could to help him afterwards.’ He indicated the small bag he had with him, then said, ‘Mr Cadence, I had a moment to look at your father. He still lives, but the coma is deepening.’

Crispian tried to focus his mind on his father, lying in his dark silent world, but his whole awareness was for Jamie. They were bringing him out at last, and a drumbeat had started up from somewhere – a dreadful hollow rhythmic tapping that made the hairs lift on the back of Crispian’s neck. He thought he had never heard anything filled with such menace. The torchflames burned up, throwing huge elongated shadows across the courtyard, so that for a moment it seemed full of monstrous prowling creatures.

Jamie was not manacled this time and he was struggling fiercely, but Crispian could see the men were holding him tightly. The drumbeat increased and a thrumming tension built up in the square. Crispian was aware of sweat prickling his scalp and sliding down between his shoulder blades.

The guards snaked the chains round Jamie’s wrists and ankles, pinning him to the wooden board. Then they fastened an iron brace round the upper part of his head, like a travesty of a coronet, then a second, smaller one, round his neck. The ends were driven into the board, holding his head absolutely immobile. The neck circle seemed almost to be choking him and Crispian found himself swallowing convulsively.

One of the men moved to stand behind the board, reaching around it and thrusting his fingers knuckle-deep into Jamie’s mouth, dragging it wide open. Jamie jerked and let out a cry of mingled surprise and pain, and a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. The other man stood in front of him, and Crispian saw for the first time that he was holding a jagged-edged clamp with serrated edges.

‘They could have spared him the sight of that,’ murmured Gil. ‘My God, I’d like to tear their own tongues from their mouths.’

They were inserting a wedge into Jamie’s mouth, forcing it impossibly wide. His eyes were straining from his head and sweat was running down his face, gluing his hair to his forehead. Even in the crimson light his skin had taken on a grey pallor.

The single trumpet note rang out again and, as if a signal had been given, the man with the clamp stepped forward and thrust it down into Jamie’s mouth. Crispian could no longer see what they were doing because they were bending low over their prisoner, but he could see Jamie struggling against the manacles and he could hear him choking and gagging and trying to cry out for help. He flung himself against the restraints, but they held firm.

And then there was a cold snapping sound and Jamie screamed with dreadful high-pitched screams. Like an animal, thought Crispian with sick horror.

‘They’ve done it,’ said Gil softly. ‘Oh God, they’ve really done it.’

The men stepped back but Crispian could not see them properly because his eyes were streaming with helpless tears and sweat was pouring down his face, half-blinding him. When his vision cleared he saw that Raif and Gil had both crossed the square and were kneeling at Jamie’s side. The chains that had held him in place seemed to have been removed, but he was slumped against the wooden board. Crispian was not sure if he was conscious. The lower part of Jamie’s face was covered with blood, but it was possible to see that his mouth was bruised and dreadfully swollen, distorting his face.

Crispian was horrified to feel his mind swing between pity and shameful repulsion, because in those moments he had the eerie feeling that it was no longer Jamie who lay there, no longer the cousin he had known since they were both small, but someone quite different. He shook his head to dislodge this feeling but an image stayed with him: an image of Jamie shying away from the world and living the rest of his life in some dark, dreadful half-existence.

After Raif and Gil had applied the remedies Raif had brought, the Pasha’s men found a cart, onto which they lifted the barely conscious Jamie.

Crispian had expected resistance to this, but Jamie’s captors simply turned their backs and they were left to wheel the cart away.

‘They have inflicted the punishment,’ said Raif, as Crispian glanced back at the little knots of watchers. ‘They have no further interest in him, and they will return to fighting the war now.’

When they reached the fortress infirmary, Jamie was taken to a narrow room near the main ward.

‘There’s not a great deal we can do except try to ease the pain,’ said Raif.

Crispian, staring down at his cousin, forcing himself not to flinch from the swollen distorted face, said, ‘I should go to see my father, shouldn’t I?’

‘Yes.’ Raif glanced at Crispian. ‘Sir Julius may rouse a little near the end. Don’t let that upset you. And on some level he might understand you’re there. If so, that would be a great comfort to him.’

Entering his father’s room was, Crispian thought, like going from one nightmare into another. Both Jamie’s room and this one were dimly lit, but where Jamie had been moaning with the same dreadful formless sounds he had made in the square, Julius lay still and silent. A nurse was with him. She smiled at Crispian and indicated to him to sit near the bed, then went out. A low lamp was burning in the corner, shutting Crispian and his father into a dark intimacy in which he could hear his father’s light, regular breathing. After a moment he took Julius’s hand. It lay cool and unresisting against his palm.

The night dragged on. Several times a nurse looked in, and Gil and Raif both came in as well. Occasionally soft footsteps went past the door and Crispian’s mind strayed from his father to Jamie, lying at the far end of the corridor. Jamie, mutilated and damaged for ever, because the Turkish extremists believed he had spied on them and sold information to the Bulgarian army waiting outside the city. Do I believe he did that? thought Crispian, and still did not know.

Shortly after 2 a.m. he became aware of a change in his father’s breathing. It was slowing, becoming laboured. Did that mean he was dying? Crispian went to the door and managed to signal to a nurse, who appeared to understand what he was trying to tell her because several minutes later a doctor Crispian half recognized came into the room. He examined Julius briefly, then shook his head and patted Crispian’s shoulder comfortingly. Crispian took this to mean his father was sinking into death and the doctor was sorry but there was nothing that could be done.

‘I hope you’ll just slide out of life gently,’ he said very softly, taking Julius’s hand again after the doctor had gone out. ‘I don’t know if you’re even aware I’m here and you probably can’t hear me. But if you do know and if you can hear, I want to tell you I’ll miss you because I love you and I always did.’ A memory of his father’s robust character made him add, wryly, ‘Even when you were at your most difficult and cantankerous.’

Incredibly there was a flicker of movement in the withdrawn features on the pillow. Crispian’s heart jumped, and he glanced towards the door, wondering if he should summon the doctor again. He felt an unmistakable pressure from his father’s hand and Julius’s head turned slightly on the pillow, as if searching for something – for the light?

Very softly, in a whisper so fragile it sounded as if it could dissolve into nothing at any minute, Julius said, ‘Crispian?’

Sight and hearing had failed Julius before they had come to Edirne, but Crispian said, ‘I’m here,’ and pressed his father’s hand firmly.

‘Good son, Crispian,’ said Julius faintly. ‘So proud.’ He turned his head again, as if trying to see. ‘Always so proud of both my sons,’ he said.

Both my sons? Crispian stared at his father, not understanding.

The fragile whispering came again. ‘Don’t think Colm ever knew,’ Julius said. ‘Hope not. Fay wouldn’t have told him – she promised she never would.’

Fay. The lady of the faded photograph on the desk at Cadence Manor. The lady who had been Jamie’s mother and whose name had always seemed to Crispian to belong to a rose romance. Horrified comprehension was unfolding. The long-ago, long-dead Fay – the woman Crispian’s own mother had thought frivolous and unsuitable – had been his father’s mistress, that was what his father was meaning. It was the only thing he could mean. And he had said ‘both my sons’. Did he mean Jamie had been his own son and that Jamie was Crispian’s brother? Crispian’s mind was reeling.

‘Tragic the way Fay died, though – never forgotten it,’ whispered the frail voice. And then a dry gasping came from Julius’s lips, and his head fell to one side.

Jamie Cadence’s Journal

When my memories of those weeks inside the fort at Edirne come back to me, they do so in crimson and black images, streaked with clawing agony and filled with the deepest, bitterest anger and despair any man ever knew.

At first I thought I was going to die. For a long while I wanted to die. I believe I tried to do so. I remember that Raif and the nurses tried to feed me cold liquids. I have no idea if they were a form of anaesthesia or simply for sustenance, but whatever they were I turned my head away from them.

‘It will heal,’ Raif said to me. ‘Jamie, the wounds will heal – they’re healing already. Your face is dreadfully bruised and swollen still, but that will get better in time. As for the other aspect – well, the human race is remarkably adaptable. Remember you can still see and hear, both huge blessings. Speech can be made in other ways. You’ll find a way to talk to your friends, your family.’

Family.

Julius died shortly after my punishment by the extremists. Crispian came to tell me. He hated coming to visit me, I saw that at once. He found me repulsive. I knew if I looked in a mirror I would find myself repulsive, as well. But they kept mirrors away from me and I was glad of it. I was afraid I might recognize the reflection that looked at me from a mirror. I had the deep conviction that what had been done to me would have brought that other deformity to the surface – that the darkness would be stamped on my face for ever and the world would finally see it.

Crispian said they had buried his father in the courtyard and after he went I lay thinking about Julius, wondering what his will would contain. Would he have left everything to Crispian, perhaps with some kind of trust fund for Crispian’s mother? Or would he have left something to me – the son he had never acknowledged – the son born of a long-ago affair that my mother tried to surround with moonlight and roses and a noble forswearing of true love?

Which is utter and complete rot, of course. By the time I was seventeen and had sorted the pieces of the past into their right order, I guessed the truth about my mother and Julius Cadence. A case of simple lust, probably in more or less equal measures on both sides. I may as well be honest and say she was a bit of a slut, my mamma, although to look at her photographs you’d never know it because she looks like the Lily Maid of Astolat or an unawakened Victorian heroine. As an aside, I always suspected that in his early teens Crispian had a romantic admiration for her. Several times I caught him gazing at the photograph, looking moonstruck. He was inclined to be a touch mawkish when it came to the emotions; I often wondered how Gil Martlet dealt with that. Assuming he did deal with it, of course, for I never knew the truth about those two.

One truth I do know is that Julius and Fay gave their affair a spurious air of morality by wrapping it up in protestations of love and devotion and implausible rubbish about being soul mates. Julius’s thoughts were more likely on the lines of: let me have a few nights in your bed, my dear, and we’ll preserve the decencies by telling each other we’re wildly in love. Fay probably thought, I’m married to somebody who’s the next best thing to impotent, I’m going mad with frustration, and you’ll do as well as anyone.

They wouldn’t have used those exact phrases, but I’m fairly sure that was the burden of the song. Over the years I’ve tried to see my mother in a favourable light, but when I remember what she did to me, it’s impossible.