IN THE MORNING Madeleine finds, lying on the ground, three sausages. Not wrapped in brown paper, or set on a plate, but poking out from the spiky grass that grows alongside the barn, as if the earth itself had offered them up overnight. They are good-looking, and smell quite deliciously of garlic. Madeleine knows that some further investigation is probably required, but she is hungry, and blessed, according to her mother, with the stomach of an ox.
All that's needed is a little knife, some radishes. Without thinking, she pushes her hands into the soil and feels about. It is not a wishful or improbable thing to do. Her father once found a coin. Another man, a pale blue bottle. Why not a knife? Or, for that matter, a copper tub, a flask of wine, a rolling pin? A king's kitchen could be waiting down below, all flashing utensils and giant vats, the cook with her cleaver raised, the scullery maid weeping, their poor old mouths filled with dirt.
What's that rumbling then, but the heave-ho of the earth sending up its lost city, its thoroughfares and byways, its traffic jams and slop jars, broken hearts, stillborns, waiting rooms, concert halls, card games and night terrors, its quick-witted children, its constables and beggars, usurers, pilots, its laughing women, its libraries, its collection of familiar, half-forgotten lives? It could be the sound of a girl's empty stomach. Madeleine sinks her ear into the ground and listens: yes, there it is, beneath the tumult of her blood, a tapping. From the city down below, a sound; a sign. The knife against the chopping board? The cook putting down her cleaver? Tap-tap, it says, then hesitates. A blind man's cane. A teacher's ruler. Tap-tap, it says again and all at once she knows: stacked heel. Worn floorboards. A hesitation in the step, a stutter. Should he draw the sword here? Or wait until the final line? Should he pause before the 'O'? The tap-tapping of an actor, pacing. He turns his eyes to the soil-black heavens and sighs; she hears now only the anguish of the 'O!' And in this very place, she knows, there was once a stage.