The Book of Fires (10 page)

“I mean I have, sir.” My voice dries up into a tight swallow. “I mean, I’ve been with cows, sir, and couldn’t catch it if I tried.” I have a sense that someone is watching me and turn quickly round. A rat skitters along a drainpipe and disappears into the shadows behind some barrels, and outside on the street I hear someone shouting angrily. I realize how close it is to nightfall. The tall man in the doorway reaches out and unhooks the notice.

“The work is gone now,” he says curtly. “Yesterday a new housekeeper was engaged.”

My insides tighten up with disappointment. I can see that he is irritated to be disturbed. He has already begun to close the door, but fear and thirst give an edge to my voice.

“Are you Mr. Blacklock?” I call swiftly at the narrowing crack. “I am a good worker, sir. I’m used to working hard at weaving, and I can turn my hand efficiently to most things you could conceive of.”

The crack in the door opens again and he takes a step forward to lean out into the rain toward me. His face is older than I thought, or is made so by the lines and shadows round his eyes.

“But what
qualities
do you possess?” he asks. His voice is dark and the words come out abruptly from him. I don’t know what he means, and hear myself say anything that comes into my head.

“Firm fingers and quick fingers, sir,” I say. I hold them out dizzily before me in the rain as evidence. My plain cuffs are dirty, and limp with water. His eyes inch over my hands and back to my face.

“Today I could have made use of some spare quick fingers,” he says, gruffly. “God knows they are hard enough to come by. I was pressed to finish what I’d planned.”

I try to return his gaze steadily and to stand with my back straight, though the bundle drags at my shoulder like a dead weight. Still he says nothing. I want to turn around and walk the whole way back to Sussex, but I cannot.

Where will I go? I am tired. The rain that drips down from the sign above is seeping into the nape of my cloak, and suddenly a boy is rushing toward us holding a flickering light ahead for two men in coats, their voices strained and angry. A smell of burning tar comes away from the torch, and their shouts echo in the empty street. They are going to fight, I think, trying to step out of the way as one of the men starts to shove at the other, but I am roughly jolted as they pass. We hear the boy’s voice saying thinly, “It’s this way, sirs,” and they duck down an alleyway. When the brightness of his light has gone it leaves the beginning of a thick and terrifying dusk.

And then Mr. Blacklock moves his head once.

“I will decide,” he says bluntly, “how much you shall be paid after one week of working.” I am amazed. He holds the door open a little wider and stands back to let me pass.

T
here is a strange smell inside the house. The place becomes dingy as Mr. Blacklock closes the door on the noise of the street and goes ahead of me along the corridor. He has broad shoulders that tilt slightly to one side, as if carrying a weight. Another door is standing ajar, on our left, and the smell seems stronger as we pass: a disturbing odor of many notes.

“You will bring me items I need from traders and shopkeepers,” Mr. Blacklock says, coughing heavily. “You will prepare the equipment and observe closely what I do, in order to be of use to me.” There is something about the way he says the words that makes me think that perhaps he is from another country, but it is hard to be sure. I can make out that the corridor is dark with paneling and tapestries. It is an old house, perhaps as old as the manor house at Steyning. We go into a kitchen, which is dirty and cluttered.

As I stand beside him, he seems even bigger than before. His tallness is stark, like a tree in winter.

“Sit down,” he says, jerking a finger at a chair, and as I do so a sleepy cluster of flies rises from a pot upon the table. An oil lamp casts a circle of light upon the pages of a large book lying open. A low, unkept fire is dying in the grate. Along one wall there is a high dresser with plates and pots upon its shelves. I blink in the lamplight and look about.

“I cook but plainly, sir,” I say in haste on seeing the hob grate, which is huge and complicated. “I can stew a good wet soup and make pies, and cook an egg in the wood ash of the hearth.” I look doubtfully at the reddish cinders as I say this, but continue. “I can churn butter, and press and salt it; I can bake a tasty loaf of quality, and prepare a pot of porridge as you like.” But Mr. Blacklock interrupts me with a raised, impatient hand. The burn is an open wound on his face. I see it glisten in the light, and his shadow is huge on the wall behind him.

“Well, that is something, but we do not need a list of virtues at the moment! I cannot abide chatter,” he stresses curtly. “I do not need the debris of your mind to furnish mine. Excessive vocal activity within the throat causes the stomach to bloat with air and nonsense. And hearing such causes unnecessary discomfort in the ear of the listener.” He leans toward me and stabs at the air between us with a blackened finger. “Clarity! Accuracy! Think of your words as a key to fit into the lock of your meaning. Cast them with precision. That key should then be swift and perfect in achieving its aim: well-shaped talk at its best is a release from the indefinite. It is explanation. Preparation. Nothing more.” His gaze is severe.

I look at him confusedly.

“Sir,” I say, and then squeeze my mouth shut. I dare not even lick my lips in nervousness. His requirement, I understand, is for the presence of a quiet character that does not fluster. Inside myself I vow I could be that.

He picks up a tub by the hob and shakes out pieces of black coal onto the embers, and the fire begins to hiss. I have seen coal before, but never burnt or cooked upon it. Perhaps it is coal that makes the atmosphere smell so strangely bitter. I glance at the book upon the table. I can see dark pictures and words stretching over the yellow pages, but even when I frown with concentration the swarming letters make no sense at all.

“Italian,” he says, suddenly towering above me, and presses at the page. His hands are lithe and knuckly, with long spreading fingers, though with a jolt I see that on the right hand he has only a damaged stump where the forefinger should be. Without warning he reads aloud, fiercely, “. . . this power alone makes metals grow and revives half-dead bodies. Half dead!” He snorts. “Perhaps.”

I look up and his black eyes are fixed on me. He has an intent, seeking kind of look that is hard to hide from.

“What is your name?” he asks abruptly.

“Agnes, sir, Agnes Trussel.”

“They are all making claims, Agnes Trussel. The world is awash with claims for knowledge.” He smiles grimly. “Knowledge is like time: it forges a way forward but must look back over its shoulder to remember where it has come from. The only certain way to forge new understanding is to carry out investigations for oneself.” I jump as he snaps the book shut.

“Where have you come from, Agnes Trussel? ”

I hesitate before I answer. “Sussex, sir,” I say. The room has a chill to it despite the fire, and I am trying to conceal from him that I am shivering. I can barely hear, I am so faint and tired now.

“And what are your
circumstances
?” he asks, sharply.

I think rapidly of what to say. A hot piece of coal falls with a tick through the grate onto the stone flags. It glows fiery red and then cools and fades.

“I have no family,” I reply. “They . . . died in a fire, sir, just a few months ago.” It is the truth indeed that they are lost to me now, I think, as though this makes my lying any better than it is.

There is a silence.

“Do you need a bite or drink?” Mr. Blacklock asks.

“I am as parched as tinder, sir,” I say. He nods and stands up. Our interview is over. Somewhere in the house a clock chimes into the stillness. I don’t add that my clothes are wet and an ache in my head is mingling with the ache in my heart, making a sickness.

Mr. Blacklock takes the book under his arm. “I will call for housemaid Mary—Mary Spurren,” he says. “Good night.”

“Good night, sir,” I say.

He leaves the room, and I hear him talking in a low voice to someone outside in the hallway. Then the door opens again and Mary Spurren enters the kitchen. Her gait suggests a girl possessing some ill-humor: drooping shoulders over a long, bony figure bent into a shape resembling a kind of pothook. Clearly she is not pleased to be roused, and mutters to herself while she cuts at something in the meat safe and slaps a slice of cold boiled beef onto a plate for me. She looks suspiciously at the floor by my feet while I try to eat as she waits to clear the table. Her neck is drawn out and hangs forward, as though the weight of her head were too much to carry. Her mouth is large, and makes a tutting noise from time to time. The meat she has served has an unpleasant flavor, but I am more than glad of the ale, which helps a small warmth grow back into the pit of my stomach. My ears buzz with strangeness and traveling. Then she takes a new candle out of a box and lights it for me with a spill of wood at the hob.

“Keep it upright as you walk upstairs and blow it out as soon as you’re in bed; it’ll need to last all week and there won’t be another.” Her mouth is a ridge of disapproval.

Out in the hallway she points up to where I am to sleep and then she leaves me, her disappearing back making a thin shadow briefly before she turns the corner. I carry my juddering ball of candlelight and my damp bundle into the chamber, and the latch flicks shut behind me.

I hold the candlestick high to see about the room. There is no bolt on the back of the door. The room is full of the kind of still, slow cold that builds when no one has been in it for a long time, and has a sharp odor of mice. When I open the cupboard under the washstand I see a pile of chewed cloth and droppings. The bed looms solitary in the corner; it must have been made up months ago, and the sheet and blanket are damp and dusty under my fingertips. There is a hole where moths or mice have nibbled away at the wool. The bed creaks as I sit on it heavily to remove my wet boots.

I take off my outer garments and my stays, and spread out the rest of my belongings over the furniture in the hope they will dry in the night, but it is shivery cold in here. Perhaps tomorrow I will hang them in front of the grate downstairs. I nearly cry when I find that my second petticoat is quite dry, having sat at the bottom of my bundle under the other things, and I press my face into it to breathe in the smell of home.

“
No
,” I whisper aloud, and put it aside.

I will not think of home.

There is a plain chair by the bed. I am in a strange house with strangers; I could move the chair before the door to stop intruders coming in while I am sleeping, but what use would it serve? It is flimsy and light. Instead, I climb into the bed half-clothed and lie uneasily.

The journey spins around in my head like a jolting sickness still, as though it were not quite over yet, as though my spirit were still out there traveling along the turnpike, straining to catch up with me. How disappointed the lovely Lettice Talbot will be to find my absence at the lodging house, and what a shame it is to lose a special friend so soon. What would she think of me for walking into any stranger’s house upon the street, and going to sleep there when I had promised to be careful? At the earliest prospect I must go to look for Lettice Talbot. I shall seek her out and tell her where I am.

What is this place?

The flame of the candle bends and flickers in the draft. Outside, the rain is drumming at the windowpane. The curtain shifts.

There is a noise above me, and some powdery dust falls down from a crack in the ceiling and onto the bedcover. I pull up the cover and squeeze my eyes tight shut. I pray that my mother won’t work herself into an illness without me, now I have left her, and that Lil is not fretting and crying the night away. I can’t pray, though, that the trouble I hold inside me now will dissolve away and leave me be. I can’t even think of that. I won’t. And I can’t help that tears come out and run down the sides of my face into my ears. The coins are a lump in my underskirts as I turn in the bed to blow out the flame.

Later I dream that John Glincy is pushing gold into my mouth with his dirty fingers, and I am choking on it: choking on the waste it is to swallow Mrs. Mellin’s coins.

I
go down at first light and the kitchen is empty, though the coals in the hob grate are smoking briskly. Through a small window at the back of the house I can see the rain streaming over roofs, pouring and splashing into the yard. The glass of the panes is thick and greenish, like ice lifted from ponds in winter, but I can make out weeds growing through cracks in the brick paving, and a spindly tree that might be a linden. The thick glass makes these things far off and crooked. High up, a bird stands hunched and small by a cluster of chimney pots. How sick I feel. I look down at my familiar hands in these strange surroundings. The curious smell pervades the house; it is everywhere. I see that my fingertips are blackened with grimy circles from touching the sill; the dirt is an odd, gritty layer on the furniture, the banisters, the cups and plates.