The Lake Boy Read online

  The Lake Boy

  NewCon Press Novellas

  Set 1: (Cover art by Chris Moore)

  The Iron Tactician – Alastair Reynolds

  At the Speed of Light – Simon Morden

  The Enclave – Anne Charnock

  The Memoirist – Neil Williamson

  Set 2: (Cover art by Vincent Sammy)

  Sherlock Holmes: Case of the Bedevilled Poet – Simon Clark

  Cottingley – Alison Littlewood

  The Body in the Woods – Sarah Lotz

  The Wind – Jay Caselberg

  Set 3: The Martian Quartet (Cover art by Jim Burns)

  The Martian Job – Jaine Fenn

  Sherlock Holmes: The Martian Simulacra – Eric Brown

  Phosphorous: A Winterstrike Story – Liz Williams

  The Greatest Story Ever Told – Una McCormack

  Set 3: Strange Tales (Cover art by Ben Baldwin)

  Ghost Frequencies – Gary Gibson

  The Lake Boy – Adam Roberts

  Matryoshka – Ricardo Pinto

  The Land of Somewhere Safe – Hal Duncan

  The Lake Boy

  Adam Roberts

  NewCon Press

  England

  First published in the UK by NewCon Press

  41 Wheatsheaf Road, Alconbury Weston, Cambs, PE28 4LF

  July 2018

  NCP 161 (limited edition hardback)

  NCP 162 (softback)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The Lake Boy copyright © 2018 by Adam Roberts

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Ben Baldwin

  All rights reserved, including the right to produce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  ISBN:

  978-1-910935-85-9 (hardback)

  978-1-910935-86-6 (softback)

  Cover art by Ben Baldwin

  Cover layout by Ian Whates

  Minor Editorial meddling by Ian Whates

  Book layout by Storm Constantine

  One

  January 31st [1795]:

  The hill-streams mark the great slope with lines like tiger stripes, if that animal’s colouration were green and silver instead of orange and black. Lines so regular they seem designed, the work of mankind, and not the flow from Mater Natura herself. The sheep are congregated together upon the great hill, tho none but the wind be their preacher. They bow their heads, as we ours in church. They kiss the grass. I have the fancy the grass is a specie of hair, over which the wind works like a brush; and this in turn set another fancy into my brain, that this was the hair of the divine goddess. Did not Mary wash the feet of Our Lord with her own hair? Are sheep not his animals? Indeed, are they not Him, Himself? And so, I bethought me, they kiss, in reverence. I shared this fancy with my brother, and he looked concernedly and severe upon me – a look I had not seen since before Christmas. ‘A strange maggot,’ he said, ‘such as I hoped you had grown beyond. Repress it, Cynthia my love, or it is like to run loose in your head. Have a care, dear sister,’ he said, and straightened himself as I have seen him do a hundred times in the pulpit – drawing his preacherly dignity upon himself, to impress the seriousness upon him. I bowed my head, a sheep myself, and agreed with him.

  We completed our walk and took tea – the last of the batch, and Monday we must go along the road to Alfield and buy more if we wish it again.

  ‘Perhaps we should do without,’ said George. ‘As a discipline – God calls us to renounce, does he not? And it is an expense.’

  But in my heart, O brother, I thought: what God calls us to renounce is renunciation! God is the everlasting yea, not a black sun of no & no & no. I said nothing of that, of course. At home I took out my notebook upon the pretence of sorting my notae sermoni, but in truth to look again at the copy I have made of the poem of the The Tyger, which I bought as a small sheet, coloured most fine, when we lived in Clarkenwell. I wept at the beauty of the sentiment and force in this little lyric, and must stuff the bolster in my mouth lest G. hear me and grow concerned, for the house is so small and there are slits between the floorboards through which the slightest whisper falls like running water into the room below.

  February 22nd:

  Die sabbati requies est. Church three quarters full, George in good voice, coughing but little, and clearing his throat after every sentence. The weather had slipped a little, from Saturday’s brightness, and a sleet the colour of lard was falling from the sky. But George held fast to his intention to preach his first spring sermon, and so he chose the verse For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land; the fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. I grew over-excited, I confess it, and was compelled to unpin my brooch and press the point into the heel of my hand to stop me from crying out in joy. Yet such life there is, in Solomon’s Song – such vivacity of physical sweetness. Tho I was in church, yet I am shamed that I pushed my reticule under my hindquarters and took the ecstasy of Saint Theresa as G. preached, and saw her lovely face in my soul’s vision at the moment of most sweetness. I do not think the other congregants observed me in this, or if they did perhap they suspected me only of a secret ranter enthusiasm in my worship. At any rate, most of the congregants, being unused to Graham as a preacher, distracted by his coughing hardly observed me at all.

  G.’s theme of the sermon was The things which are seen are types of the things which are not seen. The works of creation are pictures to the children of God of the secret mysteries of grace. That evening I took notes upon his own manuscript, as ever, and filed it with the select. Tomorrow I shall go to Alfield to buy tea (not trusting Molly with the commission) and shall call upon Mr. Hebblethwaite the Printer too, to urge him with such will as I possess to the task, that the world be given the chance to read my brother’s holy words.

  There was a strange thing in church, after the hall was emptied and G. stood to bid each soul farewell at the archway – they pausing not to converse, but dashing through the downpour to their carriages, or along the lanes to their homes – I, returning inside to fetch my reticule, saw a figure by the altar staring at the glass above. I bethought me it was Old Harry, who serves the church as churchwarden tho he’s so old and so near to stone-blind that G. must do the labour. But Harry is a man and this figure a boy of slender frame, and clad not in Sunday cloathes, but poor gear indeed.

  It is a fine piece of work, the window: clear glass at the edges but a fine red and green portrayal of Saint Richard Rolle in the middest, and the boy was absorbed in it. I was not angry, in truth not, to see the urchin there, but puzzled as to how he came in, for I had not noticed him in the service, and he had not passed the main door as G. and I stood there. He might, I supposed, have come in at the back. He looked at me, and there was loveliness in his face, for all that he was ragged. But then I looked again, and saw that in fact his face was puckered and scarred on the left side, as if he had been burned with a brand. I recoiled to see this, but he maintained his smile.

  ‘It is a fine likeness,’ he said, in a voice like a girl’s.

  ‘How came you here?’ I demanded of him, with more asperity than I intended. Say but that I was surprised.

  ‘How we all come, by God’s structuring grace,’ he said. I recall this phrase exactly, for that it was so odd, and so odd to hear from a young boy’s mouth. For who talks of structuring grace? I have never come upon the phrase, least of all from so young a one. His speech was neither Cumberland not Lancashire, but came upon my ears as London, if anything. ‘Mistress,’ he said, meeting my gaze, ‘only affirm.’ The clouds parted and sunlight came through like a highway of brightn
ess and the red of Saint Richard’s tunic became the full wine-glass with a candle behind it, and the green of Saint Richard’s tunic became like the emerald ice of deepest December when the brumal winter light glitters on it. The clouds closed again and dullness became the quality of the light once more.

  ‘Begone,’ I said, afeared.

  ‘I am the boy, neglected and abused,’ he said; ‘and I am Saint Peter, who holds the door open for you.’

  I put my face in my hands, tho only for a moment. Yet when I looked again he was not there. Sleet shuddered upon the glass. There was but one way out of the church save the front door, and, being startled, I chased down to it: through the vestry and to the side door. It was locked with the key inside the lock (which was just like Harry’s carelessness) so I deduced the boy had gone out that way; but when I strove to turn the key it was so stiff as to shriek like a kicked dog. It took both my arms full labour to turn, and I would swear it had not been beyond the strength of a child – besides, the noise it made, unoyled, and the time it took me. Then the door, which is massy wood, took my shoulder to swing. The view is over the little churchyard, and so across Blaswater itself, smoaked and shrouded in sleet. I could not see where the boy had gone.

  I say no more of the prickly sense it gave me in my plexus solaris, or how the hairs on my head trembled as ’twere with electricity at the encounter, for as G. says, I must learn to read such symptoms in the body for what they are, precursors to my mental disarrangement, and so to be stifled at once. I did not mention the boy to G.

  A famous astronomer has come to stay in the village: but I did not catch his name.1 There are strange doings in the skies, it seems! – and he hopes to see them.

  Monday.

  Hard rain all day, too wet to journey out. I worked at my text of the Liber de secretis naturae; I have reached the fourth section. G. again urged me to some apostolic or patristic work, but the Church Fathers are all translated already, and what more would I bring?

  I asked Molly the name of the boy with the burned face, but she claimed there was none such who lived in the locality. Surely so remarkable a thing, as a half-burned visage, would be remembered! Could he have come from further away?

  Tuesday.

  Mr Withers called, and at his insistence accompanied me to Alfield. Went up the pallade and over the tops of the hills, till we came by Mr W.’s direction to a new and very delicious pathway, which conducted us to the summit. Sat a while upon the high heath, Mr W. upon a flat rock, me with my legs crosst beneath my skirts. How the whole hill did seem alive! – its skin restless and glittering with the motion of the short grass in the wind, and the spiders’ webs thick-woven as cloth, some flapping as flags in the air. Far below was Blaswater Lake, with mist still upon it, as muslin. At the heighth of the hill I stood in my toe’s ends, and saw sunlight upon the land, and a miles’ slope of grass shimmering, and the insects passing.

  The path down took us past certain oaks that grow on the further ridge, whose bark is grey as granite. The shafts of the trees show the columns of a Gothick ruin. At no point did Mr W.’s speech exceed the bounds of mildest courtesy, and I reassure myself that G. is mistaken concerning his intent. G.’s worrit will grow as the date for M.’s arrival approaches, of course; for he hopes to see me settled – tho (for him) it is but clutching straws, and (for me) the narrow escape.

  At Alfield: Mr Heb. the Printer neither at home nor his shop (in Burnside); Bohea tea was 3/- a pound, a full threepenny dearer than before; the shopkeeper spoke some blather concerning the war to explain. I paid, withal, for I know G. likes his tea, for all that he urges us to forego it.

  The gossip in the street is of strange stars, like Magi beacons, seen over Blaswater. I for one have seen none such.

  G’s cough worse today.

  2nd March (Mon).

  Went to Harrison’s for a late supper. We discussed the likelihood of the Franks intervening in the new-declared Batavian Republic, and I may flatter myself that I contributed good sense to the discussion. Retired to closet to relieve my waters, and wept for some minutes, but returned to company in good chear. God save me from the sin of pride.

  Returning home with G. and Mr. Stark, whose way lay with ours a mile or more, there was cloud in the sky like the finest Lebanon gauze thro which the moon shone with a light like white milk poured, and all the earth was chessboarded with shadows and silver. There came a moment of peculiar splendour, when the clouds were cloven asunder as (it seemed) by the sheer force of the lunar light, and left the moon at the apex of a black-blue vault. She processed in regal form, attended by myriads of courtly stars, tiny, and bright, and pin-sharp. The fire was out upon our return, and G. scolded Molly, but I was tyred and went upstairs. Here, with no bed-warming-pan, I was compelled to writhe under the covers to heat the cloathes of the bed, and this action grew as the sheets twisted between my thighs, and so the moonlight bathed me through to my soul, and I saw the lustrous face of the White Goddess of the Moon, and bethought me almost to feel the softness of her white bosom pressing against me, and the tenderness of her kisses, and so I passed into that brief trance of bliss. But as soon as after I felt the mortification of shame pour through my innards, for when I rested again, my breath short, I heard silence below me, and then the resumption of low voices as G. rebuked Molly for letting the fire die. I fear they heard me at my serpentine writhing in the bed, and were shocked to silence, only resuming later. The vexation of shame almost brought me to tears – yet the morn (as I write this) G looked only kindly upon me over breakfast. His cough seems much improved.

  4th March.

  I saw him again, on the Hattonhill road. He smiled at me, with a man’s smile tho he be but a child – if he be that. Smiling made the scars upon his face pucker and gurn, in a most disagreeable fashion. When I came over to him to ask his name he was not there.

  8th M.

  Die sabbati requies est. G. managed almost all of his sermon without coughing, which he afterwards ascribed to God’s mercy.

  10th March.

  Mr Withers called on us at breakfast, on his way to the Estate of Sir Harald, where he has business, and along too came his aunt Elizabeth – yet, tho she be his aunt she cannot be more than four or five years his senior, so I must assume she be the younger of his grandparents’ children. She is a well favoured woman, only a little taller than I, but broader and more buxom; her face is clear white complexion, with a nose perhaps too long and sharp to be accounted handsome, yet with light expressive eyes and a sweet mouth. Her hair is dark umber, and her neck long – perhaps her loveliest feature. She is married to a tax collector in Broughton West, with whom she has two sons; the boys at school, and when they are away she often stays (she says) with her nephew in Alfield, for she does not like the sea air. She seemed to me altogether a charming and amiable woman, and I was pleased that she embraced me upon departing – tho we had but met – so much so, in truth, that I wept, and could not stop weeping after they had gone, which caused George to rebuke me, and with good cause.

  I took to my bed the afternoon, and chastised myself, and marked again the via appia sanguina upon the inside of my arm with the pin of my brooch. My thought was aye and still of the pressure of Mrs Elizabeth’s breast upon my own as she embraced me, and where she has only purity and decency about her, I could not prevent the heat in my lap at the thought. Up and down the brooch pin marched, and I only stopped because the blood became to run clear and I feared to sully the bedcloathes. O, disgusting, I am!

  11th.

  Up early. A thick fog obscured the prospect, but from the front door the church was a square shape, and the nearer trees; beyond was opaque, until ten by the hallclock, when the whiteness thinned and the mist could be seen as moving. Exquisitely beautiful in its purity. I walked until my shawl was sopping. The mist passed upon the sheep and over them and it seemed to me that it possessed more of life than those quiet creatures, whose only thought was to chew the grass. The unseen birds singing in the mist. The dampnes
s doth not conduce to good breathing in my brother’s bronchitis.

  14th March.

  A Saturday. I completed the fifth section of Liber de secretis naturae. I regret, somewhat, casting the English as blank verse. How far my numbers fall short of Shakspere and Milton!

  In the afternoon a strange thing: I sent Molly out to shoo sheep from the graveyard, tho she scowled at me at the commission – but I had the strange intimation these innocent creatures were sucking up the substance of the dead bodies beneath, as through straws. So I stood at the window and watched the girl push the sheep away and chase them, and I felt my brother come close behind me, and lay a hand upon my shoulder. Oh, but then I saw George outside, walking up along the lane, and recalled that he had gone to call on a parishioner.

  The breath in my own lungs became as winter mist. The light dimmed. I could feel aye the pressure of the arm, and yet I was in too great a terror to turn and confront my companion. There was a shudder in my hands that would not leave me be. G. came up the path and saw me at the window and smiled, and passed, and all through this the pressure of the hand was on my shoulder – more, in sooth, as if a finger or thumb were pressed into the central point of the blade of my shoulder. And then the sound of the latch turning, and the groan of the door as it opes, and I turned in a panic to cry out to my brother – but there was nobody there, and I was alone in the parlour.

  17th March.

  Letter from Mr. Bubner, the Printer, in London town, declining my verses for publication, which fact occasioned the despondency in my soul whose true cause is wicked pride, and which I have yet to mortify out of myself. Yet did he agree to passing over the poem on the soul to Mr. W. H., and commended them to at least magazine appearance: