Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

N: The hidden garden. This is what you call it?

F: The secret garden or the hidden garden, yes. Or Sir William’s garden. We still use that name sometimes.

N: Because he was the only one who went there?

F: No one else had a key to it. Not even Lady Alice.

N: And now it was she that you saw waiting by the closed door?

F: Master William also. Some of the other servants were standing there too. None of them spoke when I arrived with my ladder across my shoulders, so. [ Here Francis mimes the porting of a ladder. ] It was dusk on a spring evening. It had been a fine day, a warm day, but now the air was cold. And I felt my skin prickling, like, at the cold. I shivered, I remember that I shivered.

N: What were you told to do?

F: Lady Alice said something like, ‘Francis, I’m rather troubled about Sir William. He will get cold if he’s sleeping in there. I think he should be woken up before it grows any later.’ But I knew that she was not just thinking of his sleep.

N: How did you know?

F: I have seen my lady Alice in many moods. I have seen her angry and soft, and gentle and uppish, and. .

N: Yes?

F: I mean no disrespect to her, sir, but there is a saltiness in her looks sometimes — you understand what I say?

N: Yes.

F [ here the good honest servant starts to gulp his words ]: I mean even towards me, or so I have thought, sir. I am sure she does not know she is doing it but there is something salt in her, and it is leftover in her expression sometimes like the lees is left in a glass of wine, and her voice falls away all low even if she is giving me a command only, and I have to bend forward to catch her words, and I am uncomfortable, and I hope you can understand me if I have misspoken, sir.

N: Perfectly, thank you. What you are saying is that she is a lady of many — how shall I put it? — moods. But you were mentioning her appearance by the garden door. .?

F: I’ve never seen her look as she looked then. It was getting dark but I could observe her face and features sort of moving around, and she was troubled as she said, pacing about and twisting about.

N: Why do you think she was certain her husband was in there, in the hidden garden?

F: Where else would he be?

N: In the house?

F: I believe they had looked for him, sir. All about the place and around.

N: Outside the house then. In the town? Why should he not be anywhere from Westminster to Shoreditch?

F: But he wasn’t, was he, sir? He was in the garden, and he was dead, and it was I who found him.

N: No one disputes that, Francis, but you miss my point. What I mean is, before you found out for certain that Sir William was in the garden, why was everyone else so sure that he must be there?

F: Janet saw him go across the outer garden and open the door into his orchard, as was his custom. She saw him in the afternoon.

N: I see. But mightn’t he have left the orchard again without anybody noticing it? Didn’t he occasionally go out — on business or pleasure? He hardly had to obtain your permission to leave his own house.

F: Hardly, sir.

N: Well then?

F: This is a large household, Master Revill, there are plenty of people here, and it would be very difficult for Sir William to slip out without being noticed. And Sir William never slipped anywhere. He made proper exits and entrances, just like you players do.

N: But it’s possible that he did ‘slip’ out?

F: Almost anything is possible if you want to put it like that, sir. But none of his city clothes, not his cloaks or his boots, not a thing was taken, and that seemed proof enough to us simple folk that he hadn’t wandered beyond these doors.

N: Very well. As you say, the garden is where he was found anyway. Now tell me what you did next.

F: I placed the ladder carefully against the wall. Then I climbed up it hand over hand, so.

N: What did you see from the top?

F: Nothing. I thought to call for a light from those down below-

N: They had torches?

F: I think not. When they first went into the garden it hadn’t grown dark. And now it was dusk. The secret garden is bounded by high walls and shadowed by trees, and I was unable to see anything but shapes from my post at the top of the outer wall. So I straddled the wall, and Lady Alice, she says ‘Well?’ and I say to her what I’ve just said to you, which is that I can see nothing. And then she says ‘Go on, go and look for him, Francis, please.’

N: Was there anything — did you notice anything — about the way she said that?

F: A strange voice, you mean?

N: Yes.

F: No. I did as she bade me. I turned about so that I might grip the top of the wall with my hands and I hung there for an instant before I fell off into the dark. Then I dropped to the ground on the far side and groped my way about the orchard. I felt that something was wrong. Lady Alice and Master William on the other side of the wall, they felt something was wrong too. One of the master’s bitches had set up a great howling that afternoon, you see, sir.

N: Yes. Proceed.

F: You’re very curious, sir, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.

N: I’m a player, Francis.

F: I know, Master Revill.

N: We players are curious about everything. Human behaviour is, as you might term it, our lifeblood. Humani nihil alienum.

F: If you say so, sir.

N: Not I say so but the Latin author Terence. Go on with your story if you please.

F: Where was I?

N: In the garden, the inner garden.

F: I move slowly about with my hands stretched in front of me, and the branches and leaves, they brush at my face and clothes. [ Francis suits his actions to his words. ]

N: You should have been a player, Francis.

F: Is it a respectable trade, sir?

N: We are crawling slowly towards respectability. Please continue with your account.

F: Something rustles close to my foot and I stand stock still with my skin prickling and, though it is only a night animal, I wish that Lady Alice had not requested that I climb the ladder and jump down on the other side. The dusk is dangerous, sir. It confuses. In the dark of the night, at least you know where you are — even if you don’t know where you are, if you see what I mean.

N: Ha, very good, yes.

F: I felt too that I was. . not alone in the garden.

N: And in a sense you were not, Francis, for Sir William was there also.

F: I don’t mean that. I felt someone was looking over my shoulder. I jerked my head round sharp, so, and I did it quick to catch them at it before I could grow afraid. But I saw nothing save the heads of the trees. Still my shoulder turned cold. This person. . his eyes were up.

N: Up? Who? Whose eyes? What do you mean?

F: I don’t know, sir. But Sir William, he was not up, not up anywhere. He was lying down.

N: What did you do?

F: At first I am afraid to make a noise but after a while I begin to whisper, ‘Sir William, Sir William’, like this, soft as can be. In a while too I am able to see better, for it is not so dark as I thought. I can make out the apple trees and the pear trees although there are dark pools of shadow lying underneath them. I had been crouching a little as if I was going to meet an enemy and wrestle with him, but now I stand upright. I say ‘Sir William, Sir William’ in a stronger voice. Then after a time I hear Lady Alice’s words come vaulting over the wall. She says something like, ‘Have you found him, Francis?’

N: Were those her very words? ‘Have you found him, Francis?’ Are you certain?

F: Yes, Master Revill.

N: You’re very sure.

F: I was there. I turned my head and shouted back over the wall, ‘No, I ha-’ when suddenly I saw him and broke off speech. So that instant there in the garden is, as it were, branded in my memory.