The Widow's Fire

by Paul Butler

  Arriving now at the house of the lady friend in question, I rang, as I had been instructed, not upon the tradesman’s entrance below but upon the front door. Although I resisted the urge to look around at who might be watching, standing between the porticoes in the grand street of pale stone, the distant clop of a horse and the flutter of wings close by, I felt that the street itself might swallow me up at any moment.

  After a moment, the door was opened by a short woman dressed in dark grey — the housekeeper, I supposed. Close behind her hovered a maid. As the housekeeper stepped aside and gestured me through, the maid multiplied into two and then three. The additional young women had been shielded by the first. The housekeeper, again wordless, pointed to the winding staircase within. I felt suddenly as though I had entered some kind of game. Was I, perhaps, the master returned unexpectedly to take his children by surprise? Or might I be the doctor called to the sickroom? One of the maids giggled and another pressed her fingers to her lips, and then all of them — housekeeper and three maids — followed close behind as I mounted the staircase.

  Once on the landing I was motioned towards a large oak door but before I reached it, the housekeeper overtook me and pointed to a spot where I was to wait. She knocked and then slipped inside and closed the door after her. The maids, now unsupervised, became livelier, one prodding another and chasing her in a circle around me; another, paler than her peers, first giggling, and then shushing them, and then giggling again. The parcel in my hand — I had no idea what it was — became warm to the touch. One of the maids prodded me, by accident, I thought, though it led to stifled laughter as the door before me re-opened. The housekeeper beckoned me inside.

  Despite the hour, the curtains within were closed with just a strip of morning like a long blade between them. The main sources of illumination were the broad blazing hearth and six large candles on the mantelpiece above it. Upon the bed reclined not the young beauty the Lord’s excitable breath had conjured in my imagination, but rather a woman at least half a century old. It was difficult to judge her age more precisely as the lady’s skin was white and powdered in the style I remember from my earliest boyhood. Clearly, she had no interest in keeping up with fashion.

  The whiteness of her face was startling. Even in the indistinct light, I could see cracks by her mouth and I wondered at the sores that might lie beneath the crust, erupting as they would from a skin that never saw the sun or felt the air. It was as though I had wondered into a crypt to gaze upon a corpse.

  Her rheumy eyes, pooled with gold from the flames, watched me keenly as I approached. A not unfamiliar panic rose in my chest. I had been received like this before, several times in fact, since taking on the first of Mr. Dawkins’ commissions. But now the stifling atmosphere of the bedchamber and the whispering from the maids who had followed me in and now stood by the door made me suspect something. I came as near as I dared and placed the gift upon the silk spread, all the while sensing that the attention of the room was not upon the parcel, but upon me.

  Desperate now to taste the cold air of the street, I bowed, backing away. The bedclothes hissed and, like a bird of prey awakened, the lady moved forward as though to claw me back; I sensed not only disappointment, but also anger. There were soft gasps of a similar disapproval from the servants behind us.

  I thought of the elderly peer with the sky blue eyes. “Here,” he had said. “I wish I had your commission!” So it wasn’t just chivalry. He had meant something else, something specific, and the expectation around me now provided a clue as to what the commission might be. I backed away slowly, wondering if the housekeeper and her maids would try and stop me from leaving. When I turned, however, they parted, sullen and disappointed. I caught the housekeeper’s indignant stare as I passed onto the landing.

  I left the building in some haste, clattering down the stairs and leaving the door gaping behind me. The same urgency propelled me all the way to Westgate Buildings, and within a quarter of an hour I stood outside looking up to those windows closest to Mrs. Smith’s parlour.

  The world had forever been a mystery to me, but the greater mystery was myself. Why had I come here of all places? Perhaps it was the sense that life had become fraught with misunderstandings — between the Assembly Room manager and the elderly peer; between that same elderly peer and myself. By extension of logic surely something similar had been miscommunicated between Mrs. Smith and me. There had to be some argument, some method as yet untried, for prizing the information I needed from Captain Harville. The task could not be as onerous as Mrs. Smith seemed to think. Surely I had given up on her too easily. She was still my mentor. The tasks she had set me had never involved the kinds of indignities I had just experienced. And even if she had not employed me of late, I still had her ear. She still dwelt at the meeting point of a thousand avenues of human intercourse.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Nurse Rooke appearing at the open doorway. Her manner was not entirely unfriendly, but she gazed distractedly up and down the street. A crow pecked upon the cobbles at her feet.

  “Is Mrs. Smith expecting someone?”

  “We have reason to believe there may be a visitor this morning.”

  “’Reason to believe’? Did you read auspices in the wind or did you sacrifice a goat?”

  “What?” She lifted one side of her apron, and scattered some breadcrumbs for the birds. The crow was joined by a companion.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Has Mrs. Smith a moment?”

  “I think so, but you must leave straightaway if another comes, and don’t try any of your clever remarks.”

  I followed her inside as she closed the door to the street. We mounted the stairs side by side. “I promise not to offend you by saying anything intelligent, Nurse Rooke.”

  “Good,” she said, breathless as we reached the second landing.

  When we reached the top, Nurse Rooke tapped on Mrs. Smith’s door and entered ahead of me. I followed at her nod and moved into the room.

  Close to Mrs. Smith’s knee sat a half-embroidered pillow and some coloured thread. She had been in the process of laying it aside in anticipation of a greeting — with someone else, obviously. When she saw me, she drew it onto the centre of her knee again.

  She glanced over my shoulder at Nurse Rooke. A small gesture seemed to indicate the nurse should resume her vigil. In a moment the door had closed and Nurse Rooke’s footsteps were descending.

  “It has to be someone important,” I said and I knew this to be the case. Mrs. Smith had no interest at all in any kind of craft except to present the illusion of a respectable woman living in straightened circumstances.

  “You have come upon us at the most delicate stage, Plato. Much as I like to see you, I would appreciate it if you could keep your visit brief.”

  I held off speaking for a moment, resenting her in advance. How many tasks had I performed for her for comparatively little money? But here I was asking for something she could quite easily produce and offering to erase a thirty-pound debt.

  “It’s about Elsie,” I said, at last.

  Mrs. Smith sighed and laid her embroidery aside properly this time.

  “I must find out this information for my Lucy’s sake. If I do not, I will do something desperate.”

  A flash of something came into her expression. I knew her by now, what she was likely thinking; she was trying to measure the likelihood of a desperate act of mine having an adverse effect upon her. This was the trouble with power, I imagined, certainly the kind of power Mrs. Smith possessed. One had to always be considering the many ways it can be lost.

  “Such as?” she said.

  “I will force it out of Harville, at the point of a knife if necessary.” My hand made a fist and Mrs. Smith saw this.

  She relaxed and picked up the needlework again, drawing the thread this time with exaggerated care. “I wouldn’t do that, Plato. Look what happened to your
brother. His crime was far less serious than threatening a gentleman of Captain Harville’s reputation. And, Plato,” she said softly, addressing the needle and thread, “Have you even considered what you would do with this knowledge once you have gained it? Even if the young woman were happy to accept the child, which obviously she is not, otherwise…” she raised a thread to her lips and bit — a curiously unfeminine gesture, I thought, “why would she have relinquished the child in the first place? But even if she were to embrace the child, what do you think the world would think of them? Have you thought of that?”

  “Believe me Mrs. Smith, there is no thought I have not had on this subject.” I was surprised at the passion building inside me. It felt dangerous, like an over-spilling cauldron. I forced my voice to remain calm. “I have thought the issue through from every conceivable angle, Mrs. Smith, I assure you. Elsie may want nothing to do with Lucy. You are right. She may look with horror upon the thing she has brought into the world. Still, Lucy will need to know how to find her. I don’t expect you to understand, Mrs. Smith, because it is rarely an issue with people of your kind.” Mrs. Smith’s pupils had become pinpoints all of a sudden. My heart thumped hard, each beat rushing in my ears. “But it is every person’s birthright,” I said more calmly, “to know from whence they came.”

  There was a pause during which Mrs. Smith stopped working and laid her hands on her needlework. “Indeed it is, Plato.” She tilted her head in the way I had seen her do with “clients” before they knew they were being blackmailed. It was intended to demonstrate sincerity but had quite the opposite effect upon me. “But, as I have already said, you must be patient. Plato—” I had looked away, but her voice claimed me back. “Soon, Plato, very soon, I may be in a position to demand a great deal more from Captain Wentworth and through him from Captain Harville. But I cannot overplay my hand. I cannot push too hard, not until everything is exactly where I want it. And you would be equally ill-advised to act on your own as you threaten.” She held my gaze for a moment and suddenly she seemed most serious and most sincere. “You know I make it my business through reliable people like Nurse Rooke and yourself to acquaint myself with the servants of each household in which I have an interest.”

  I made no answer but she required none.

  “I happen to know, Plato, that a letter has been delivered to Captain Wentworth this morning and that the sender is a certain Captain Oliver Mason.” She paused, watching me carefully. “If I have correctly divined Captain Mason’s character from the various sources we have gathered, I imagine this letter might make rather lurid reading. And if I have also correctly estimated the degree to which Captain Wentworth has come to trust me, I do believe the letter may well come into my possession in the not very distant future.”

  “You planned this from the beginning?”

  “Something of this nature, Plato, but it was a hope. I only pray it will all come to pass. And, if it does, we may be on the verge of something quite momentous, a doubling or tripling of the power I have over the man with the most power to help us all.”

  “But we already know about Wentworth and this Mason. How does this development make things any worse?”

  “Hearsay, Plato. Vicious rumours. Nasty enough, but Captain Wentworth only worries about it because of his marriage, because of the great contrast between fulfilment and disgrace. He knows there are limits to the damage such rumours can do. Documents, Plato, are different. Documents build scaffolds. Documents tie nooses.”

  My hand reached towards my collar. It wasn’t so much empathy for Wentworth that prompted me as a sense of defeat. These plans were grand and long term, akin to defeating an army and burning the sovereign’s castle in order to procure a jewel. I needed something specific and urgent. As though reading my thoughts, Mrs. Smith’s eyes flashed in impatience.

  “Understand, Plato, that if my sphere of influence were to expand, so would yours. You will have more coin than you and Lucy could ever want. And you will find means to ask any question you wish and have it answered because, if we are discreet enough for long enough, one influence builds upon another.”

  I backed to the door now, the burn of urgency returning. This would happen and that will happen. The words meant nothing. Nothing would happen. Or if it did, it would happen without Lucy and me. We were already outside Mrs. Smith’s circle. I knew this in the tilt of her head and in the soft tones of her voice. I knew it in the absence of recent work. She was letting me go. And, more important than anything, she’d promised to find me Elsie and she hadn’t. A broken promise from Mrs. Smith was more significant than it would have been from any other person. Mrs. Smith was so outside the laws of common men and women, so beyond the moral standards, that there was an unnatural reliance placed upon the delicate mechanism of trust that lay between her and those with whom she did business. Something dark and resentful had lumbered its way through that delicate mechanism and I knew we were lost to each other.

  “Go now, Plato,” Mrs. Smith told me. “We will talk again soon.”

  It was something in the way she said it; her words had eased through the room just as her thread eased through the fabric following her needle. My hand was already touching the door behind me but I knew I could not meekly step from the room.

  “Wentworth trusts you now, Mrs. Smith, but I can tell him the truth.”

  It’s rare indeed that one sees any colour on Mrs. Smith’s cheek, but when, still facing her, I opened the door and moved onto the landing, a curious kind of sunset was playing upon her skin, hues of peach, orange, and crimson vying for the upper hand. Her eyes and her fingers remained upon their task, though the movement of her hands became more swift and sudden. I closed the door to this spectacle and stared at an oval knot in the oak door.

  I had defied her. This was very different indeed from the way I had always been. This was not sardonic and playfully evasive. This was a battle. My eyes traced the circles radiating from the knot and a true interpretation of those previous encounters came to me: I had been a mouse fencing with a cat. I had been fooling myself that the game was on equal terms. The cat had been happy to play along because, until this moment, the cat had never been threatened by the mouse.

  My heart thumped wildly and the floor beneath my feet seemed to jump to its beat. Half of me wanted to rush back into the room and apologize; the other half wanted to strike hard and ruin her before she could crush me. But who would believe my word against that of Mrs. Smith?

  Nurse Rooke rushed passed me to the door and I had to take a step backwards. She tapped and entered in the same movement. Something was whispered. The nurse re-emerged, eyes alive with some fresh conspiracy. With only the merest glance in my direction, she closed the door again and clumped down towards the street.

  I turned from the door at last and moved down the staircase like a chain-laden ghost. Half way down, I passed Captain Wentworth coming up. He looked at me strangely and gave me the hint of a nod. This was my chance, I thought. If I wanted to tell him the truth and prevent him from turning over his letter to Mrs. Smith, I should act now. But the chance was behind me already, climbing the stairs two at a time. In another moment, he was on the landing above. I had allowed the chance to slip from my grasp without protest or whimper.

  Why had I moved so quickly from defiance to utter defeat? I had no excuse save the conviction that the star of my fortunes had fallen. I could almost hear its mournful tune as it arched and dipped through the heavens. All the time I had believed myself an equal in this world of espionage, but now I knew differently. I was only a spark from Mrs. Smith’s comet. I knew nothing of subterfuge save what she had taught me. I had no autonomy in this world, no freedom to act. All the while I had been a cog, blind to my reliance on the machine that surrounded me, blind to my extraordinary luck.

  The knowledge of this was bound to come sometime, but it had come today on Mrs. Smith’s stairway and it had come in the recent memory of a face �
� white-masked and powdered with cracks near the mouth. The white-faced woman’s expectations had unmasked a clown, and the clown was me. That beribboned present had been an afterthought; I had been the gift, but of this fact I had been quite unaware until the moment I had stepped into her room. Something else only occurred to me now. How often had this happened to me before?

  I thought of the first time I’d met Mrs. Smith. She, too, had paid no attention at all to the parcel in my hands. And her smile had become broader and more open as fire lapped around the logs. She’d been sharing a joke with herself, a joke at Lord Asham’s expense. “Tell Lord Asham,” she had said, “that it was a nice thought.”

  A stair creaked as I moved down slowly. All of my errands for Mr. Dawkins were based on a misunderstanding that no one had the courage or vulgarity to correct. Everything that had constituted my success outside my association with Mrs. Smith — the Assembly Rooms duties, the envy of my peers — was based on the assumption that I indulged in pleasures of the flesh and was in turn the means of providing such pleasures.

  I came out into the street under Bath’s muddy skies. In her way, Mrs. Smith had protected me. I saw that now. She had given me errands of a very different sort. How much had she guessed about me? It was a nice thought was all she had ever said. If she saw as far as I thought, she was quite alone in her knowledge. Mr. Dawkins didn’t know or he would have ceased to send me on these errands. David and the other attendants had not guessed or they would have ceased to envy me.

  In truth, I had an aversion to touch. Socrates, younger than me by two years, escaped; our master’s appetites had declined by the time my brother was of age. But I would forever be set apart from the general desire for procreation. Lucy was my charge. I would never have another.