9. The Gorgon's Head
It was a heavy group of buildings, this castle of the Marquis', with a big yard of small stones in front of the two wide stone steps curving from opposite sides up to the stone verandah in front of the big front door. All in all, everywhere one looked there was stone work, with stone cylinders in the fence around the verandah, big stone pots, stone flowers, stone faces, and stone lion heads. It was like the head of the Gorgon had looked over the place after it was built, two centuries earlier.
(*Gorgon was a woman from an old Greek story, who had snakes for hair, and who was able to turn people into stone just by looking at them.)
Up the wide steps the Marquis walked, with a torch being carried in front of him. It was so quiet that even the flame on the torch (and on the other torch waiting for him at the door) burned like they were in a closed room, and not like they were burning in the open night air. The only sounds were the sound of a bird in the barn, and the sound of water from the fountain dropping into a big stone bowl. It was one of those nights when the air would stop breathing for a long time, then breathe out very slowly before stopping again.
The big door closed loudly behind Sir the Marquis, and he walked across a room that was far from friendly. Many hunting weapons were hanging on the wall: spears, swords, and knives. It was even less friendly when one saw that there were heavy whips and sticks for hitting horses, which had also been used to kill some poor people when they made their lord angry.
Passing by the bigger rooms, which were dark and closed for the night, the Marquis, with the torch carrier leading the way, climbed the steps to the second floor, where his rooms were. There were his bedroom and two other rooms. They were tall cool rooms with no rugs on the floor, and big dogs sleeping in front of the fireplaces. They had the best of furniture and everything that a rich marquis in a rich country could ask for. At this time in French
history, when Louis the Fourteenth was leading the country, beautiful French furniture was at its best.
A table was set for two in one of the side rooms, a round room in one of the castle's four covered towers. The windows had thin parallel stone-coloured boards turned at an angle to stop sun or rain from coming in, but they did not stop the cool night air.
"For my brother's son?” said the Marquis, looking at the food on the table. "They said he hasn't arrived."
But the servants had understood that he was coming with the Marquis.
"I see! I don't think he'll come tonight. But leave the table as it is, and I'll eat in about fifteen minutes."
Fifteen minutes later, Sir was ready. He sat down to the best of food, looking toward the window as he ate. He had just finished his soup and was putting a glass of wine to his lips when he put it down.
"What is that?” he asked quietly, looking seriously at the horizontal lines of black and grey stone.
"Sir? What is what?"
"Outside the window. Open the window."
It was done.
"Well?"
"Sir, it's nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here."
The servant who was talking had opened the boards all the way, looked out into the empty darkness, and then turned to face his master.
"Good," said his master, without emotion. "Close them again."
That too was done, and the Marquis went on with his meal. He was half finished when he stopped again, his glass in his hand, because he had heard the sound of wheels. A coach was travelling quickly, and it stopped in front of the castle.
"Ask who it is."
It was his brother's son. He had been a few miles behind Sir early in the afternoon. He had travelled much more quickly, but not fast enough to catch up with him on the road. He had learned how close he was by asking at the post offices on the way.
Sir told the servants to ask the young man to come eat with him. He soon arrived. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.
The Marquis welcomed him with a cool smile, but they did not shake hands.
"You left Paris yesterday, sir?” asked the young man as he took a seat at the table.
"Yesterday. And you?”
"I came today."
"From London?”
"Yes."
"You have been a long time getting here," said the uncle with a smile.
"But I came straight here."
"Forgive me. I did not mean a long time travelling. I mean that you took a long time getting around to travelling at all."
"I was not able to come sooner because of...” and the young man stopped for a second before finishing, "...other business."
"As I can see," said the smooth uncle.
For as long as a servant was with them, they said no more. But when coffee had been served and they were alone together, the young man looked his uncle in the face and started the talk.
"I have returned, sir, as you must know, for the same reason I left. What I have been looking for has put me in great danger; but I hoped that I would have been brave enough even if it had ended in my death."
"Not your death," said the uncle. "You do not need to say, in my death."
"I do not believe, sir," returned the other, "that if it had taken me to the point of death, you would have cared to stop it."
The two marks in the Marquis' nose moved, and the lines of his cruel face grew longer in answer to what he heard. He made a movement with his hand as if to say that he would not have been so cruel as to let his nephew die, but it was so clearly being done to look good that it did not change the young man's belief.
"Truth is," said the nephew, "I am not sure that you would not have acted to put me in even more trouble than I was in."
"No, no, no," said the uncle kindly.
"Whatever the truth is," the nephew went on, looking at his uncle with little faith in anything he might say, "I know that you would have done anything you could to stop me."
"My friend, I told you so," said the uncle with a small movement in the two marks. "Do you remember me saying so, long ago?"
"I remember."
"Thank you," said the Marquis, very sweetly.
The sound of his voice would hang in the air, much like the sound of a musical instrument.
"In effect, sir," the young man went on, "I believe it has been your bad luck and my good luck that I have not been put into a prison here in France."
"I don't quite understand," returned the uncle, taking little drinks of his coffee. "Can I ask you to say what you mean by that?"
"I believe that if you were not in trouble yourself with the government, and had not been under the shadow of that cloud for years, a secret letter would have put me in a prison for good."
"It's possible," said the uncle, at perfect peace with what he was saying. "For the good name of the family, I could see the point in doing that to you. Please try to overlook that."
"I see that, happily for me, your meeting with the Governor the day before yesterday was a cold one."
"I would not say happily for you, my boy," answered the uncle, with friendly good taste. "I am not so sure that it would not truly help you to have time alone to think about where your actions are leading you. But it is a waste to talk about such a thing because, as you say, that door is not open to me. These little instruments that can be used to protect the good name of a family, these ways of controlling people like yourself come now only by begging and by knowing the right people. So many ask for such help, but so few get it. It was not always like that, but France is changing for the worse in all such things. Our fathers and grandfathers had the power of life and death over these evil people. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged. In the next room (my bedroom) one man that I know of was stabbed to death for being so proud as to speak up for his daughter. His daughter! Can you believe that? We are losing so much of the power that should be ours. A new teaching is coming in. Just trying to do what is our right could (I am not going so far as to say that it would) bring serious problems. It's all bad, very bad!"
The Marquis breathed a small measure of tobacco dust in through his nose, and shook his head. He was as proudly sad about where the country was heading as it was possible for him to be without forgetting that he was still a part of the country, and that, as such, there was still much hope for the future.
"We have tried so hard to do what we think is our right to do, both in the past and in the present," said the nephew, sadly, "that I believe our name is the most hated name in all of France."
"Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Hating the high is how the low show their place... and ours."
"There is not," the young man carried on, "a face in all of this country around us that looks at us with any feeling better than fear... as our slaves."
"And this is a good thing," said the Marquis. "It shows how great our family is. Only through this fear, and through them becoming our slaves, have we been able to become as great as we are. Ha!"
With this, he breathed in another measure of tobacco dust, and crossed his legs.
But when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes sadly with his hand, to think about what was being said, the thin mask looked at him differently, and with a stronger mixture of hate and interest than the wearer was comfortable with.
"Control is the only teaching that is eternal. This look of fear that you talk about from these slaves," pointed out the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obeying the whip as long as this roof," looking up at it, "shuts out the sky."
And that might not have been so long as what the Marquis believed it would be. If he could see this castle, and fifty like it, in a few years' time, he might not have been able to even find where his room used to be in the coals of the burned out building. As for the roof that he talked of so proudly, he might have found it shutting out the sky in a different way, when the metal in it was melted down and turned into bullets, that would be used to close the eyes forever of the bodies that thousands of guns would fire into.
"For the present," said the Marquis, "I will fight for the good name of our family even if you will not. But you must be tired. Shall we end our talk for the night?"
"One minute more."
"An hour if you like."
"Sir," said the nephew, "We have done wrong, and now we are paying for it."
"We have done wrong?” the Marquis asked with a smile, quietly pointing, first to the young man and then to himself.
"Our family has. Our wonderful family, whose name is important to both of us, but in such different ways. Even when my father was alive, we did a world of wrong, hurting everyone who came between us and what we wanted. But why do I need to speak of my father, when you are equally wrong? Can I separate my father's brother, who will now lead our family, from himself?
"It is only death that has made me leader!" said the Marquis.
"And that death has left me tied to a family that preaches fear," answered the nephew. "I am a part of that family, yet I can do nothing to change it. I am trying to obey the last thing my sweet mother said, and the last look in her eyes, which were begging me to show mercy, and to be fair to the people we have hurt. I am tortured by the truth that I cannot do anything to change this family."
"Trying to get those changes from me, my nephew," he said, pointing his finger into the young man's chest, as they stood beside the fireplace, "will be a waste of time. Believe me."
Every line in his white face was cruelly and closely squeezed together as he looked quietly at his nephew with his tobacco box in his hand. Once again, he touched him on the chest, as if his finger was a sword and he was running him through with it, and said, "My friend, I will die fighting for things to stay as they are for us."
When he had said that, he took one last measure of tobacco and put the box in his pocket.
"Better to be a thinking animal," he added, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and to take what God has given you. But I see, Mr. Charles, that you are lost."
"This land and France are lost to me," said the nephew sadly. "I don't want anything to do with them."
"Are they really yours to throw away? France maybe, but what of this land? It is a small thing, but is it yours?"
"I was not trying to say it was mine yet. But if it passed from you to me tomorrow..."
"Which I am proud to say will probably not happen."
"But even if it came to me in twenty years..."
"You give me that long?," asked the Marquis. "But still, I like that better than tomorrow."
"... I would leave it and live somewhere else and in some other way. It is nothing to throw away. What is it but a desert of sadness and pain?"
"You think so?” said the Marquis, moving his eyes over all the wealth that was around them.
"To the eye it is nice enough, here; but when one looks at the spirit behind it, in the open light, and through the eye of God, it is a broken tower of waste, pain, debt and hunger, that is built on robbing and hurting others.
"You think so?” said the Marquis again, in a way that showed he was happy to have it be like that.
"If it ever becomes mine, I will put it in the hands of someone who is better able than me to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that holds it down, so that the children of the poor people who cannot leave it and who have long been squeezed as far as they can go, may not have it so bad. But it is not for me to do. There is a curse on this land."
"And you?” said the uncle. "Forgive my interest. Do you plan to keep living without all of this?"
"To do that, I must do what others in France have had to do, even with people like you at their backs, and that is to work."
"You mean in England?"
"Yes. That way, the family name is safe, sir, from me in this country. And it cannot be hurt in any other country, because I don't use it in any other country.
The bell had the effect of putting a light on in the next bedroom, and it could now be seen through the door between the two rooms. The Marquis looked in that direction and listened for the steps of the servant leaving.
"You must love something in England, for you have not made any wealth there," he said, turning his quiet face to his nephew with a smile.
"As I have already said, it is partly because of you that I live there. But I find it a safe place to hide as well."
"Those proud English people say that there are many who hide there. Do you know another French man who is hiding there? A doctor?"
"Yes."
"With a daughter?"
"Yes."
"Yes," said the Marquis. "You must be tired. Have a good night."
As he bent his head in his nicest way, there was a secret smile on his face, and a secret meaning in his words that were clear to his nephew. At the same time, the thin lines of his face and the markings in his nose moved in a way that was not so different from a very good-looking devil.
"Yes," answered the Marquis. "A doctor with a daughter. Yes. And so the new teaching starts. You look tired. Good night!"
It would have been as easy to change one of the stone faces outside the building as it would have been to get the Marquis to change his feelings. The nephew looked at him and saw nothing as he passed him on the way to the door.
"Good night!" said the uncle. "I look forward to seeing you again in the morning. Sleep well!" Turning to the servant, he said, "Lead my nephew to his bedroom there!" And then, to himself he added, "And burn my nephew in his bed if you will," before ringing the bell and calling another servant to take care of himself.
When his servant was finished and had left, the Marquis walked around his room in his robe, preparing himself for sleep on that hot, quiet night. He was wearing soft house shoes, and so his walking was as quiet as that of a tiger; and he himself looked like an evil person in a story who could change himself into a tiger.
He walked from end to end of his very big bedroom, going over the happenings of the day's trip. The slow climb up the hill as the sun was going down, the sun going down at the top of the hill, looking down on the windmill, the prison on the tall rock, and the little village at the bottom, the poor people at the fountain, and the road worker with his blue hat pointing to the chain under his coach. That fountain there had made him think of the fountain in Paris, that dead child lying on the step with women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead!"
"I am cool enough now," said Sir the Marquis to himself, "and so I may go to bed."
Leaving only one light burning on the stones in front of the fireplace, he let the thin curtain down around himself and listened to the night breathe out deeply after being quiet for a long time. He rested there before falling asleep.
The stone faces on the outside wall looked without seeing at the black night for three heavy hours. For three heavy hours the horses in the barn made noises and they hit against their feed boxes, the dogs barked, and the night birds made sounds that were quite different to the sounds poets say they make. But it is the way with such birds never to say what we tell them to say.
For three hours the stone faces of the castle, faces of both lions and people, looked blindly out at the night. Darkness as deep as death covered the land, adding its own quiet to the quieting dust on all the roads. In the darkness one could not tell one pile of dry grass from another where the poor dead people were buried. The shape on the cross could have come down off it, and no one would have known. In the village, taxers and those who were taxed were all fast asleep. Maybe they were dreaming of food, as hungry people often do, or of rest, as slaves and cows in a yoke must do. In their sleep, the thin people of the village were full and free.
Water went on coming out from that fountain in the village, and from the fountain at the castle too, over those three hours, like the minutes that had been melting away from the start of time. Then the grey water in both turned to the colour of ghosts, and the eyes of the stone faces started to open.
The sky became lighter and lighter until, at last, the sun touched the tops of the trees and poured its light over the hill. In the bright light of the sun, the colour of the water turned to blood, and the stone faces became red. The song of the birds was loud and high; and outside the great window of the Marquis' bedroom one little bird was singing its sweetest song with all of its strength. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to open its eyes wider, drop its mouth open, and look with great surprise.
Now that the sun was fully up, movement started in the village. Windows opened, and the bars were taken off doors, as people stepped out into the cold sweet morning air. The work of the day started. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and look; men and women there to care for the animals, and to take their thin cows out to the side of the road to look for food. In the church and at the Cross, one or two people were on their knees, while the cows, doing what they could to answer those prayers, ate on the grass at their feet.
The castle was later to wake, as always was its way. It was slow about doing so, but it was also sure. First the hunting knives and spears turned red, and then they just became very bright in the morning sunlight; now doors and windows were being thrown open; horses turned around in the barn, looking over their shoulders at the light pouring in through the door; leaves moved in the wind at the bottom of windows with iron bars on them; and dogs pulled hard at their chains, waiting to be let free.
All of these little actions were part of life each morning. But that was surely not true of the big bell that was ringing in the castle. And it was not true of the people running up and down steps. It was not true of the people standing on the verandah, or running in different directions, or putting saddles on horses and riding away.
It is not clear what wind carried the news to the old road worker who was already at work on the top of the hill on the other side of the village. His cloth-covered dinner (not much to carry) was lying on a pile of stones, with not enough in it to even interest the crows. Had the birds, carrying the grains of news from the castle dropped one on him, as they often did with seeds? It is not clear; but he did start running down the hill like he was running to save his life, kicking up dust all around him; and he did not stop until he reached the fountain at the bottom.
Everyone in the village was at the fountain, standing about in their sad way, and whispering quietly, but showing no emotion apart from some surprise and a sad interest. The cows were back in the village, tied to anything that was near, or lying on the ground, chewing at anything they may have been able to find before the bell started ringing. Some people from the castle, and some from the post office, and all those who did the taxing had weapons now and were on the opposite side of the road not really knowing what they should do. Already the road worker was there in the middle of about fifty friends, hitting his chest with his blue hat. What was the meaning of this, and what was the meaning of Mr. Gabelle being lifted up onto a horse behind another rider, and the two of them, not worrying about the extra weight for the horse, racing off together?
The meaning was that there was one stone face too many up at the castle.
The Gorgon had looked at the building again in the middle of the night and had added one more stone face, one that it had been waiting for two hundred years to add.
That face was lying on Sir the Marquis' pillow. It was like a thin mask, with a look of surprise turned to anger, and then turned to stone. In the heart of the body that was joined to that face was a knife; and around the handle of it was tied a piece of paper with these words on it. "Drive him quickly when you take him to be buried. This is from Jack."