Flowers From The Storm (8 page)

“Given to me? What—”

“Papa! I’ll explain, but I must go back as quickly as possible! Just tell me—a periodic function, like Monsieur Fourier’s? How is it written? Beginning with sin
x
equals?”

“The sine function series. Or is it the cosine thou’lt have?”

“And the graphs are different, aren’t they? For this one—” She bit her lip and closed her eyes, conjuring the scars in the varnish. “The curve begins… at the intersection of the axes.”

“That would be the sine function. Sin
x
equals
x
, minus
x
cubed over the factorial of three, plus
x
to the fifth over the factorial of five, minus
x
to the seventh over the factorial of seven, and so forth.”

“Yes. Yes!” Maddy scribbled down the familiar symbols, making them large and clear. “Oh, Papa, thou’lt never imagine! I’ll be back to tell thee!”

She ran through the Baroque, marbled front hall and up the staircase. The carpeted floors creaked and thudded beneath her feet. When she came to his barren room, she found that her pleas had been ignored.

Larkin and another attendant had Jervaulx shoved with his face up against the wall, holding him there as they finished tying off the sleeves of a strait-waistcoat.

As Maddy stopped in the doorway, they let go of him. He didn’t turn or move or struggle, only lowered his head, resting it against the wall, a white figure in the shadowed corner.

“I wish thou hadst not—”

“Cousin Maddy!” Edward turned. “Are you quite recovered? Do you wish to lie down? What a calamity! Inexcusable for Larkin to leave that razor within his reach! When we’re using minimal restraint, absolute prudence is required at all times. I should never have allowed you in here.”

“It’s all right. It’s a sine function! Oh, I wish thou hadst not put that on him.”

Jervaulx leaned his shoulder on the wall, turning, and Maddy felt that there was accusation in the look he gave her.

“The figure he drew,” she said, flourishing her paper. “It’s a sine function.”

“Yes—as I told you—instruments of writing, of any sort, overexcite his brain. You mustn’t expect to wring sense out of what he’s done.”

“But it is sense! This is the infinite series that signifies it!”

“No. No, I must insist that we leave him to a tranquil atmosphere now. Don’t—Cousin Maddy!” His voice became stern as she started past him with the paper. He plucked it from her hand and crumpled it.

“Do not show him anything that will cause him further distress.”

She stopped. Jervaulx watched her.

“It’s a sine function,” she said to him, in defiance of her cousin.

If she had expected a reaction, or understanding, she got none. He just looked at her as if there were a wall of glass between them and he couldn’t hear her voice.

Gone away… gone… all gone but ruffian shave, dog out-the-doors, sleep room, no privacy,throw down floor… made stuff food throat… eat or no.

Cuzzmad.

Cuzz-mad.

Bed, tied hand foot trussed… trussed like pa
—
ba
—
animal, fat pink… curly tail. Word vanish,vanish, always just… far
. His head hurt to chase the name.

Cuzz-mad
. He tried to say it silently, get his tongue around the sounds.

He was afraid of how it would come out aloud.
No, no, no
—that was how it would come out.

Not speak, refuse.

The rage and fear went endlessly around inside him. They all talked too quickly, that was what; they mumbled, they babbled, they wouldn’t give him a chance to understand.

Lay hands
—
ME! by God, no right. Dumb beast, prod force; scheme bath blood, manacles gardenstrangers watch; fury, fight, SHAME; tied chair; revolting, noisy, ranting madmen
—robbed of his friends, his own house, his life.

He lay staring at the dim shadows of the finely plastered ceiling, following the oval pattern to where it met the wall and was sliced rudely off by the partition that created this cell from what must once have been an elegant chamber. Across the hall, one of the madmen was groaning, a sound that terrified Christian somewhere far deep in his throat and chest, because it was the same sound he wanted to make, the despair that only pride and cold fury held inside.

Lock here long enough… long enough… lunatic.

Sometimes he’d tried to reckon it, to identify who held him here, who it was who wished to drive him past the brink of sanity. He remembered faces; sometimes he could put names to them, and sometimes he could think of the same faces, but the names weren’t there.

That had happened with Cuzz-mad. He’d looked at her:
starch white… thing
… the word for what she wore on her head danced away.
Talk thee, thou. Know; know
.

Listen. Listen hard, hard, hard.

Cuzz-mad seemed right and not right. Truly, the more he considered it, the more bizarre it seemed, but when he tried to think about it too much, tried too hard to drag the answer out of the emerging and dissolving maze in his head, he felt nauseated.

Footsteps creaked in the hall, a familiar sound; alarming, when he never knew what they were going to do to him next. The light bobbed, casting the barred shadows from the door in wild swings across the ceiling. He heard the sound of the lock, and the thick noises of his warden waking up.

A feminine whisper, then her profile in the candlelight as she leaned over the cot in the corner. She spoke to the shambling form that sat up there. The two of them prattled incomprehensibly for a minute, then the Ape got up and shuffled out of the room.

She set the candle on the windowsill, turning toward him. It was intolerable to be seen by her in this state of abject humiliation, this utter enslavement; he closed his eyes and feigned sleep, willed it all away—

wake bedroom; dogs, name, self, WORDS! Words understand, words speak
—this crazy dream

would be over.

“Ervoh,” she murmured. “Wilthwak?”

She touched his shoulder. Shame made him set his jaw and turn away from her; pride made him clench his fists and jerk once, hard, at the bonds.

The ringing noise startled her; she pulled her hand back and looked down at him nervously. He felt a certain satisfaction in her alarm and stared at her with insolent malevolence.

She smiled tentatively. “Wasign fucshun,” she said. “Brotanifiti serees.”

She held up a paper. In the candlelight, the ink was dark and clear.

YES!

Yes, yes, yes
, he wanted to shout.
You heard me, you understood; I’m here
!

But he did nothing. Suddenly he was afraid to move, afraid that he would frighten her away after trying to do it an instant before. She became precious, priceless, a jewel beyond measure; he could not,
couldnot
hazard doing anything wrong now.

He realized he’d begun breathing too fast. He corrected that, contained himself. With a conscious effort, he relaxed his arms and opened his fists, resting his bound hands back against the bed. He looked into her eyes and risked a short, emphatic nod.

“Sign fusha,” she said, with a little stress. “Yes?”

Yes
, he thought.
Yes
. He thought he might say
yes
, and then didn’t chance it. Cautiously, he nodded again.

“Sighn,” she said. “Sighn fu shon.”

Sighnfushon. Fushon sign
. The words went around in his head,
sign fun, fuhn sighn, sign funsignshon, mix tumble, two dice, wheel… dizzy
.

“Sign funshun,” she said again, kneeling beside him, rattling the paper.

He looked at the symbols. He knew what the series made, he understood its meaning—

And the revolving words fell, dropped into the cup, settling.

Sine function.

Of course.

Sine function
. He gave a faint, bewildered chuckle. The candlelight guttered, casting pulsing shadows on her face as she knelt,
prim cap, siren lashes, virtue, Miss
.

He wet his lips. “Sine,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes!”

“
Yes
.” The word came explosively, as if he had to push it through, to break a wall. “
Sine
, yes.”

She smiled. It was like morning in the shadows; it razed his heart; he found himself in love, in an agony of passion.

“Sine… func… tion,” his beloved said.

Child, not child, silly prim, not child repeat.

“Secant,” he grated. “Cosecant.”

“No. Sine.”

“Tangent. Cotangent. Angle.”
Easy. Mathematics, trigonometry
. “Parallel axiom; congruence, co-planar lines, perpendicular lines.” God, geometry was easy; why hadn’t he remembered how easy?

He tried something hard. He gripped the chains above his wrists, fighting to say it. “
Ah
…” It was so painful; he knew it, it just wouldn’t come. “Ah…
she. She
! Cuzz-mad.”

He loved her. He didn’t want her ever to go away and leave him alone in this place.

She tilted her head quizzically. “Who?”

His open fingers barely brushed hers. He moved his hand to the limit of the chain and stroked his thumb gently up and down the side of her palm. He gazed into her eyes, trying to say it that way. Every word was agony to accomplish:
cling twist slide away silvery fish grab
—shove through the wall. “
Name
!” It burst out of him. “
Name
! She?” He gripped her hand, squeezed it once.

She smiled again. “Maddy.”

Yes, that was it. Maddy. Maddy girl. Maddy. “
Mm
—,” it came out, and he gritted his teeth in frustration.

“Maddy,” she said.

He nodded. He was afraid that wasn’t enough, that she wouldn’t know he’d understood. “Sine, yes.”

He repeated his one success. “Cosine. Tangent.” His fingers caressed her hand. He wanted to say “don’t go,” and instead it emerged, “No… no.”

She gave a little sigh and started to stand up; he realized she was leaving and shook his head violently.

Don’t! Stay here, don’t leave yet, not now
!

“No, no, no, no,” was what he heard himself uttering, and cut it off, tilting his head back and yanking at the bonds in wrath.

“Peasdon sethee! Clietcliet!” She put her forefinger up to her face, the tip just beneath her nose.

He gazed at her. It meant something, that gesture; he knew it meant something, but he couldn’t think what. The echo of the noise he’d made died away, a mere ripple of disturbance in this house full of howling beasts.

Her hand lay on his shoulder. He shifted his head, pressed his cheek against the back of her palm.
Stayhere, Maddy. Don’t leave me
.

All that got out was, “No.
Mnnh
. No!”

He groaned, turning from her.

She took his face between her cool fingers. She stroked his hair back from his forehead. He closed his eyes, shuddering inside, holding back the tide of feeling. He lay still.

“Weebwell,” she whispered. “Vreethin wilvee well.”

Wilv well. Will well.

Vreething will well.

Everything will well.

He hadn’t really comprehended it; it came after his mind seemed to sift down through the sounds, settling finally on an intuition.

But it was something, anyway. It was something to keep as she turned away and took the candle and paper. One small glass ball to float when he was drowning: she thought everything would be all right, and he’d almost understood her when she said it.

Maddy pursed her lips, carefully folding the brochure about Blythedale Hall into the letter that Cousin Edward had dictated to a Lady Scull, describing in glowing terms the kind and loving treatment that her sister might expect at Blythedale, referring discreetly to a rate of six guineas a week, and inviting Lady Scull for a visit at her convenience. On the brochure, the engraving of the house looked completely serene, with couples strolling beside the willows and the lake and the swans.

Nothing in the letter or brochure hinted at the pounding sound of metal that reverberated through the halls, that had woken everyone this morning and lasted throughout Cousin Edward’s stiff and angry lecture on Maddy’s folly in sending Larkin away on a made-up pretext and visiting the Duke of Jervaulx in secret, that went on while Cousin Edward read his mail and she filed letters, that went on still while Maddy wrote out her dictation with trembling fingers; the sound and fierce shout that went on and on and on: crash—
Tangent
!—crash—
Distance
!—crash—
Squared
!—crash—
Minus
!—crash—
Yone