The Mist in the Mirror (10 page)

The portraits that lined the walls were of little more interest – elderly men with sombre, hawk-like features, and bland clerics, though there were one or two frail, beautiful young men with flowing locks and mournful doe-eyes, poets who had been at Alton and died romantically young.

Though no one was there to see or hear me, I put out my torch and walked almost on tip-toe, cautiously, affected by the atmosphere and even half-amused at myself for such night-adventuring. I put my hand out to the latch of a couple of the other doors which I presumed led to similar sets to my own, but they were locked, as were those which sported the brass plates of Bursar, Chaplain, Provost.

I was losing interest and about to turn back, when I saw the door at the far end of the second long corridor – the Old Library – and at once made my way towards it.

It was as I was a few paces from the door that I began to have the sensation of being watched, watched and silently followed. I spun round and shone my torch behind me, for the windows had ended here and the corridor was pitch dark. There was no one. I went quietly back a few yards, stopped and waited, straining my ears through the silence. Perhaps the wood settled every now and again, perhaps a board creaked. Perhaps they did not. I waited again, and then said in a low voice, ‘Who is there?’ There was no reply and, impatient with myself and my imaginings, I turned back and went again to the library door.

I expected it to be locked, like the rest, but it swung open slowly to my touch, so that, involuntarily, I jumped back. The sensation of being watched was stronger and now my nerves were on edge and I cursed myself for a fool, not to have remained in my bed, where I would surely by now have been peacefully asleep. But my curiosity grew, for I was eager to examine the library, where I planned to be working for the next few days, and beginning to be fascinated by the grave, venerable beauty of this ancient place.

I stepped inside, and stood, letting my eyes grow accustomed to the change of light. I found myself in a room that stretched far ahead of me into the gloom. But there was enough of the soft, snow-reflected light coming in through the tall windows for me to have a view of a gallery, that ran the whole way around, rising towards the vaulted and elaborately carved ceiling. I felt no fear, but rather a sense of awe, as if I had entered some church or chapel.

Oak bookcases were lined on either side of the central aisle, with desks set in the spaces between, and as I looked up I could see more book stacks that rose behind the gallery, up to which iron spiral staircases led at intervals.

I went to a window, and saw that the library ran along the north end of the buildings framing the yard, at right angles to the chapel.

I turned away and began to walk softly between the bookcases, looking in awe to left and right, at the evidence of so much knowledge, so much learning, far beyond the level of school-age boys. I stopped to examine books on literature and the classics, the history of science, philosophy and theology, and then came upon rows of leather-bound archives of the school, magazines, journals, directories, lists. Somewhere within these, I knew, would be references to Vane, but I did not take out any now, I wandered on, with a growing and curious sense of being a king in some abandoned kingdom, with access to all the wisdom of the ages – such strange, grandiose thoughts flit into the
mind under the influence of impressive surroundings, solitude, and the small hours.

It was as I approached the last few bays that I heard what at first I took to be the soft closing of the door at the far end of the room, but which went on, even and regular, like the breathing of someone asleep, a sighing that seemed to come out of the air above my head, as though the whole, great room were somehow a living thing, exhaling around me. I glanced up at the gallery. Someone was there, I was certain of it. The wood creaked. A footfall. I was as far from my way of escape as I could have been, trapped alone in this empty place with – whom? What?

‘With nothing,’ I said, aloud and boldly, scornfully – but then started at the sound of my own voice. ‘Nothing.’ And went to the spiral staircase nearest to me, and began to climb, my steps echoing harshly in the stillness of the room.

The gallery was dark, high and narrow, with only a foot or two of passage between the bookstacks, and the wooden rail. I switched off my torch. The air up here was colder, but at the same time oddly dead, and close, as though the dust of years, the dust of books and learning and thought, was packed tightly, excluding any freshness.

The soft breathing came again, from a different place, in the darkness just ahead of me and I began to edge forwards, and then to stop, move and stop, but it was always just out of reach. I looked down into the great barrel of the room below. Every shadow seemed like a crouched, huddled figure, every corner concealed some dreadful shape. There was no one there. There was nothing. There was everything. ‘Who is there?’ I said. ‘What do you want of me?’ Or would have said had not my throat constricted and my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, so that no sound was possible. I wanted to run but could not and knew that this was what was intended, that I should be terrified by nothing, by my own fears, by soft breathing,
by the creak of a board, by the very atmosphere which threatened me.

But, after a time of silence and stillness, I summoned up enough strength and steadiness of nerve to walk slowly, step by step, around the gallery, glancing down now and then but seeing nothing, until I came to the last staircase, and by that descended to the ground again. As I returned to the corridor, closing the door of the library behind me, I caught sight of a light moving about irregularly on the opposite side, and, as I rounded the corner, I glimpsed a dark-coated figure walking slowly, and holding up a lantern – the porter, I supposed, on his rounds, and felt a wave of relief so great that it all but felled me and took my breath, and I was forced to lean against the wall for a few seconds, so giddy did I become.

He it had been, watching me, following me, perhaps standing in the darkness of the library below, going about his duty, and suspecting prowlers, come, silently and stealthily, to investigate. Whether he had recognised or even seen me I could not be sure, but if so he had decided to leave me to look after myself and for that I was grateful – I felt somewhat sheepish at having gone about, trying doors, entering rooms without invitation, and I preferred to return quietly to my set and not be accosted.

He had gone off through the baize door, before I reached the bend in the corridor; I saw no more of his flickering light. All was quiet. The portraits looked down upon me blankly as I went by but I had no other sense of being seen.

And then I heard something else. It came from behind another door, an oak one set well back into the wall, with a green curtain pulled half across, and partially concealing it.

I stood up close to it and waited, listened. It came again, faintly, from somewhere deep within, and was quite unmistakable. What I heard was a boy weeping, the sobs now muffled slightly, now clear, as though he were raising and then burying his head again, and in between there was
every so often a catching of breath, like a gasp, followed by more weeping. It was a sound so desolate, and of such loneliness and despair, that I felt outrage and anger and the urge to rescue him, to comfort, help, protect, and I put my hand to the door handle, ready to fling it open and burst in. But the lock did not give, the door was bolted and barred and, though I pushed against it and rattled the knob and even banged at it twice very hard, I made no impression, nor did I still the weeping, which continued without pause until I could bear it no longer. I could not break my way in to reach him, but there was someone who surely would.

I made off swiftly down the corridor towards the baize door. The snow lay thick, soft and undisturbed by any mark or footprint in the school yard, the surface gleaming faintly blue in the moonlight. It was intensely cold, the air crackling with frost. I was in such a state of anxiety about the distress of the hidden boy that for the moment I did not think anything about the pristine state of the snow, only plunged directly across it, sinking down and having to push my way forward with a great effort. I was breathless and desperate to find the porter – I would have to look for him first in the lodge, to which I prayed he had just returned – otherwise, he might be anywhere among these unfamiliar buildings, still on his night rounds.

The lodge was in darkness. I peered between cupped hands through the small windowpane, and saw that the fire had been banked up so that no glow or flame showed through.

I knocked twice, urgently, on the door, but then turned away and looked about me, trying frantically to plan which way I should go. I could not see the bobbing light, and the main gate by which I had first entered the school grounds was locked and barred. Where then? Where to go? My mind was confused. Until now, I had not so much as paused to ask who the boy might be; the school was down, he must be the child of some resident, a master or caretaker,
I had no idea, and in any case it did not matter, he had been in such terrible distress, I had only the urge to reach and comfort him, rescue him from I knew not what. To my right lay the chapel, ahead the way to the cloisters and the upper corridor. I must go left then, take a chance that some door or passage would admit me to what the porter had called Scholars’ House. But, as I pulled my coat collar up higher again and prepared to wade back across the snow, I heard a bolt being drawn in the door behind me and, turning, saw that the light had come on in the lodge.

‘Sir? Mr Monmouth is it? You hammered fit to wake the dead.’

I stared. The porter stood before me, tousled and half-awake, an old waterproof pulled on over his nightshirt. It was quite clear to me that he had been asleep when I knocked a few minutes before.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you when you have only just returned to bed – I would have hurried to catch up with you …’

‘It is four o’clock in the morning, sir!’

And indeed, as he spoke, the clock in the tower began to chime, and in the distance, near and far, others sounded behind it through the cold still air. We were silent until the last strokes, and the echoes of them had died away and all was silent again.

‘What did you think, sir?’

‘Think?’ I asked stupidly.

‘The time, sir. That I should have only just gone to bed?’ I did not reply, and he looked at me with a patient smile.

‘Four o’clock, sir,’ he said again, as if to a small, dull child.

‘I’ve been sound asleep these six hours past!’

As he spoke and I registered what he had said, I turned and looked at the single line of footprints across the snow and realised that they were my own and that there were no others, before me the snow had been quite undisturbed, no
one else had come this way for hours – certainly not the porter, going steadily on his night rounds, carrying a lamp.

Dr Valentine Dancer was a man who matched his name. He was young, very lean, very slight, very bright, and he danced about on the balls of his feet a good deal as he spoke – indeed, he scarcely seemed able to stand still, but was now here, now there, dancing lightly as we went through the snow across the school yard.

It was a most glorious morning, the sky blue, the frost hard, the sun up, and he had arrived in my rooms as I was trying to make the best of the breakfast, brought to me by the porter after I had somehow slept through the last hours of a wretched night.

In the end, I had not told him about the crying boy, but only muttered that I had heard ‘odd noises’ along the corridor, and feared intruders. My nerves, I said, were not at all steady, after years living in remote and dangerous parts of the east. The man had given me an odd, sideways look.

‘You’re not used to the old buildings, sir, especially at night. It’s easy to lose your nerve when alone. Now I am well used to it, sir, the odd creaks and bumps, none of it bothers me.’

‘And that is all?’

‘What exactly did you mean, sir?’

‘There are only – odd creaks and bumps – nothing more – specific?’

‘Not when the school is up, of course, sir, then there’s all manner of them, sir – noises, I mean to say. Larks! But it’s nice and quiet now, sir. You’d have been dreaming, that was it. Are you much given to dreaming, sir?’

He had walked back with me across the snow-covered yard and through the cloisters, his manner willing and cheerful, despite the hour, so that I felt quite myself again, only ashamed and rather foolish.

Now, we were at the door leading to my set.

‘Now then, sir, here we are – quiet as a mouse. You’d have been dreaming, sir.’

‘Yes. Yes, I suppose that I was. Thank you.’

‘Goodnight again then, sir – or rather, good morning.’

‘I do apologise.’

‘Oh, I shall sleep again heavy enough, sir, don’t you worry.
I
am not at all a man for dreaming.’

He had left me. I had not mentioned the sobbing, or the figure with the lamp. Both were gone, and I wanted to banish them from my thoughts too, wanted everything to be quiet and calm and normal, for what remained of the night.

He had not brought up my breakfast until just after ten o’clock, clattering the dishes and cutlery breezily, as I washed and dressed. The table was laid beside the window, from which I had a view of little more than sloping roofs, and the blue sky.