I am safe from these dangers at least, for I recognise the signs, the way the unreliable earth seems to breathe, just barely.
You might think perhaps that becoming dust would level all citizens, make social competitions null and void, but no. Even here folk vie for status. Inside the cathedral, in the walls and under the floor, is where our royalty rests—the finest location to wait out the living until the last trumpet sounds. Where my mother sits is the territory of the merchant classes, those able to afford a better kind of headstone and a fully weighted slab to cover the spots where the dearly departed repose.
Further on, the poorer folk have simple graves with tiny white wooden crosses that wind and rain and time will decimate. Occasionally there is nothing more than a large rock to mark that someone lies beneath. In some places sets of small copper bells are hung from overhanging branches—their tinkling plaint seems to sing ‘remember me, remember me’.
Over by the northern wall, in the eastern corner, there are the pits into which the destitute and lost are piled and no one can recognise one body from another. These three excavations are used like fields: two lie fallow while one is planted for a period of two years. Lodellan does not want her dead restless, so over the unused depressions lavender is grown, a sea of purple amongst the varying greens, browns and greys. These plants are meant to cleanse spirits and keep the evil eye at bay, but rumour suggests they are woefully inadequate to the task.
In the western corner are the tombs proper, made from marble rather than granite, these great mausoleums rise over the important (but not royal) dead. Prime ministers and other essential political figures; beloved mistresses sorely missed by rich men; those self-same rich men in neighbouring sepulchres, mouldering beside their ill-contented wives, bones mingling in a way they never had whilst they breathed; parvenus whose wealth opened doors that would otherwise have remained firmly shut; and families of fine and old name, whose resting places reflected their status in life.
My father’s family has one of the largest and most elaborate of these, but he is banned from resting there—as are we. Even after all the scandal with his first wife and the kerfuffle when he set up sinful house with my mother, Peregrine had his own money. His parents saw no point, therefore, in depriving him of an inheritance and left him their considerable fortunes when they died. What they did refuse him was the right to be buried with them. They seemed to think this would upset him most, which caused Peregrine to comment on more than one occasion that it was proof they really had no idea at all.
Once upon a time I liked to play with my dolls in the covered porch that fronts the Austen mausoleum, imagining these grandparents I’d never met. But now I’m older, I don’t trouble with dolls anymore, nor do I concern myself with grands who didn’t care enough to see me when they lived. I feel myself poised for I know not what; that I stand on a brink. Grandma Tildy tells me this is natural for my age. So I simply wait, impatiently. I walk up the mould-streaked white marble steps and sit, staring into the tangled green of the cemetery.
Across the way a veil of jasmine hangs from a low yew branch, and something else besides. Something shining and shivering in the breeze: a necklace. I leave my spot and move closer to examine it without touching. There’s little finesse in its making, the blue stones with which it is set are roughly cut and older than old. The whole thing looks pretty, but raw. I know not to take it. Corpse-wights set traps for the unwary. There are things here the wise do not touch. Should you find something, a toy, a stray gift that seems lost, do not pick it up thinking to return to it for chances are its owner is already contemplating you from the shadows. There are fetishes, too, made of twigs and flowers, which catch the eye, but nettles folded within will bite. Even the lovely copper bells may be a trick, for many’s the time no one will admit to hanging them.
There’s a rustle in the boughs above me and I see a face, wrinkled and sallow, with yellowed buck teeth, the brightest green eyes and hair that is, in the very few parts that are not white, as fiery as Emmeline’s. The creature seems a ‘not-quite’—part human, part something else. Troll? My heart stops for a few beats as I stare up at the funny little visage; its gnarled hands hold the leaves back so it may peer at me clearly. Then it tries a smile, a shy strangely lovely expression, which I cannot help but return. I do not think this being is associated with the shiny temptation on the branch below it.
‘Rosie! Rosamund!’ My mother’s shout reaches me. I back away and race through the bone orchard, my feet sure.
Emmeline is standing, stretching her arms up to the sky. In her hand is her sun bonnet, which she wears less than she should, its ribbons fluttering. She smiles to see me. ‘Afternoon service will be finished soon.’
I’m almost there when my foot catches on a tree root I could swear was not in existence a moment before and I fall towards my brother’s grave. My hands hit the rough-polished granite and while one stays put, merely jarring the wrist, the right one skids across the surface, catching on the letters of his name. I feel the skin peel from my palm and let out a squeal of shock and pain. A slew of hide and a scarlet stain mar the stone. The ring my mother gave me, silver vines and flowers all entwined, is embedded into the flesh of my finger and I think I feel it grind against bone. I knock my knees against the sharp edge of the slab, too, ensuring impressive bruises in spite of the padding of my petticoats and skirt.
I may be almost an adult, but for all that I wail like a child while Emmeline fusses about with her lacy handkerchief.
‘Oh, oh, oh, my girl! Come along home, we’ll get those seen to. Your grandma will have something we can put on that.’ She helps me up and dabs at the seeping blood while I howl. My abused flesh stings and burns as we pass out under the lychgate. Shadows crowd above us in the angles of its ornate roof.
As we hobble away, I remember that I forgot to whisper good wishes to my brother.
***
My father has streaks of grey at his temples and furrows on his forehead. He says it’s because he is given to thinking deeply. Peregrine looks tired and gives me a weary smile as I kiss his cheek and go to my place at the table. The breakfast room is painted a warm lemon and the curtains are pulled back so as to catch all the natural light.
There is a sideboard loaded with food, but no sign of servants. Cook and her girl set out our meals, but neither Emmeline nor Tildy could get used to being waited upon. ‘No point pretending we’re better than we are,’ they said. I think Peregrine, only child of aged and proper parents, loves the chaos of this household. When he was growing up, he told me once, everything had a place, including him. Heaven forbid he should stick a toe out of line. ‘Your mother,’ he said, ‘rescued me from the tyranny of order.’
‘Bad sleep?’ I ask, refilling his cup and pouring tea for myself.
‘Emmeline was restless, so neither of us slept well. Or rather, she slept but didn’t rest.’ He stifles a yawn. ‘She kept kneading the covers and the mattress as if she would change their shape. I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t me.’
I, too, feel tired. Last night Tildy painstakingly cleaned the wounds and smeared them with a salve that reeked of lavender, before applying bandages. The three drops of Valerian she put in my milk ensured I slept without pain, but my slumber was fraught with dreams of mud and dirt closing over me, sucking the moisture from my skin and turning me into a cold dry husk. ‘She’s still abed?’
‘Preparing the boys,’ he grins. My parents take turns-about rousting Henry and Jacoby. It’s not that they are hard to wake, it’s that getting two nine-year-olds washed and dressed in the morning is a challenge. No one parent should have to deal with that every day. My younger brothers are wild but not bad, and Grandma Tildy (a twin herself) says they will calm down in a year or two. It should be noted, however, that she no longer takes the morning shift.
‘And you didn’t think to take her turn after she’s had such an awful night?’ I ask primly. My father throws up his hands in defence.
‘It
just so happens that I did offer, and it just so happens that your mother refused, Miss Bossy Boots,’ he grins and butters a piece of toast, then continues, ‘And shouldn’t you be getting ready?’
It’s a Monday and that means the pain of four hours at Miss Peach’s Academy for Accomplished Young Ladies. When I got too old for governesses, Peregrine insisted I be equipped with an education suitable for a young woman of Lodellan’s Quality. He said there was no need for me to become the wife of a rich man and even if I chose not to join society, I should at least know how to behave. Forewarned and forearmed, if you will.
Grandma agreed with the sentiment in principal, but she said I should have a trade, just in case life took me in a different direction. After all, today’s heiress is just as easily tomorrow’s guttersnipe—Emmeline’s path upwards might very well be a slippery slope downward for me. Peregrine replied there was enough time for me to learn a trade after a few years of becoming accomplished.
Tildy got that look she sometimes gets and took me to the bakery anyway. It’s run now by Kezia and Sissy, the ’prentices she took on when Emmeline stopped baking. My uncles, George and Artor married them, so when Grandma finally admitted her hands no longer had the strength for the work, the business stayed in the family. Tildy concedes with gloomy pride that everything seems to be running smoothly without her.
She tried to teach me how to make the fancy bread for which she and her daughter had been famous. Alas, even though I was most willing, I showed very quickly that I had no talent at all. I think Tildy was more disappointed than she let on, but she shrugged it off.
When Emmeline, who’d been apathetic at best about Peregrine’s plan, heard about my first attempt at a trade, she was not happy with her mother. My fate at Miss Peach’s was sealed.
The door to the breakfast room is flung open and the twins fly in, clean and dressed, but no less frenetic for it. They aim themselves at the platter of bacon, from which I have already taken more rashers than is considered proper for a delicate young lady. Emmeline follows them, dark circles under her eyes, a tired smile on her lips. She stands in front of the sideboard, contemplating the breakfast options with something like confusion. Peregrine, rising, steers her to sit down while I put a mix of munchables onto a plate for her. She gives us a look that says I’m quite capable of doing this for myself, you know, but eats what she’s been given and asks, ‘How is your hand, Rosie?’
I display the offending limb: apart from a few pale scars there is no trace of yesterday’s injury. Tildy, at a loose end when her baking days ended, started brewing things instead—not beer, although she’s a dab hand at wheat ale. She took lessons from an old friend who used to do her best business after the real doctors had paid their expensive visits to patients. My grandma takes a particular pride in the things she can now do with herbs and mixtures, ointments and potions.
Emmeline nods. ‘You grandmother will be pleased with herself.’
***
With the twins safely delivered to the hands of their schoolmaster (private tutors do not last too long with them), I continue towards Miss Peach’s. A few streets away, I can hear the noise from the market at Busynothings Alley, siren-song subtle but strong. Any absence from school will be reported (as I know from bitter experience), so it’s hardly worth the trouble. Lateness, however, although frowned upon, isn’t generally met with anything more than a tut-tut from the principal’s pursed lips.
I hesitate at the corner of Gisborne Street and Whortleberry Lane and contemplate my options.
Today is needlework. Tuesday is charity day, when we all troop down to the kitchen and make meals for the less fortunate (but I have a theory that all those dinners end up on Miss Peach’s very own table). Wednesday is painting. Thursday is healthy outdoor activities: walking to a park and sitting under trees to protect our complexions. Friday is deportment. The older girls have extra classes to learn beauty and styling techniques, how to manage households and how to best have and raise children. Apparently, accomplished young ladies don’t need to know anything else. Trifles such as literature, science, history, maths and geography are taught to me by Peregrine, or I pick them up by my own reading in our impressive library at home.
I think of needlework and how many times I am likely to prick my fingers, how much blood I am likely to spill on the fine sampler fabric. I am early, and I also know that while forty-five minutes is counted as ‘absent’, thirty minutes is merely ‘late’. My decision is thus almost made for me.
Whortleberry Lane is where books are born.
There are three tiny printeries, which never seem to lack for business. Two specialist paper-makers inhabit long, thin shops and will create a paper for whatever purpose you require: invitations, thank you cards, sympathy cards, sketch sheets, even the special black-edged paper for the desks of those in mourning. Three bookbinders have premises in the Lane and they will cover your books, fix old and ill ones or make you your very own journals and diaries for writing, stamping your initials on the cover in gold or silver flake. An ink-maker has strange, ill-ventilated little rooms in which it can be hard to breathe. And then there are the bookstores proper where you might find all manner of ordinary and extraordinary tomes.
My favourite of these is run by the pretty Misses Arbuthnot, two sisters who will find you any book you care to ask for, or may suggest something you just might like—should you be in the mood for a suggestion. The place, although very neat, has crooked staircases and leaning bookshelves and the smell of old knowledge embedded in the walls. Some days Tildy asks me to request the Misses Arbuthnot to find her a particular book. Invariably I will bring it home wrapped in brown paper with string tied tightly about to keep the busybodies out. She’s a good library in her rooms, does Grandma.
Today, the younger Miss Arbuthnot (the one with the blonde curls) is minding the store. She gives a smile when she sees me slip in, but otherwise goes on with her inventory. The newly arrived books are in small wooden crates, some with the lids already jemmied off, presumably with the small lady-like crowbar lying on the counter. As I go past, I can see some of them have their spines marked with a fine golden ‘M’. The younger Miss A subtly moves her body to obscure my view and the message is clear: too young for these ones.
I take the first flight of stairs, then the second, then the third and am puffing, just a little, by the time I reach what should by rights be an attic. There were customers on the lower floors, but this one is empty, the aisles between the shelves all deserted as far as I can see as I scamper up one, down the next to check. This level exists in a kind of clever déshabillé, seemingly disorganised unless you know the system. These are the books about books. They are arranged in what might be called Birth, Life, Death—the making of, caring for and disposal of books too injured to go on.
This is my favourite place.
Carabhille’s Birth of the Book waits just where I left it. I hide it away on a lower shelf, out of its ostensible order so no one else might buy it before me. Moneyed family or no, I still have to earn my pocket money and nothing by Carabhille is cheap. It will be another good month before I can make an offer. This one has a tooled leather cover in blood-red, the lettering on its spine and front is silvered. Open it and you find a hand-illuminated manuscript in brilliant colours with gold leaf highlights; no woodcuts, no moveable type. The frontispiece depicts a great tree from which hangs strange fruit: more books, each one tiny and beautifully detailed. The edges of the pages are rough—hand-cut by their first owner, whoever that may have been. The book smells old. It’s weighty and I feel as if I’m holding knowledge.
‘How’s your hand?’ a voice asks. It’s a pleasant enough voice, not quite broken, but I still shout in fright. I turn around and see a tall, handsome-looking lad, dark-haired, pale-skinned, green-eyed.
‘What?’ Strictly speaking, I know it should be ‘Pardon?’ but he’s taken me by surprise.
‘Your hand. I saw you leave the churchyard yesterday with your hand all bloody.
I wondered if you were all right?’
I’d not seen him, nor anyone else, but then I suppose I was not at my most attentive.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Fine.’ I show him. He looks impressed and gives a low whistle.
‘Someone’s clever.’
‘My grandma.’
‘Not your mother?’
‘No, not yet. Maybe one day she’ll ask Tildy to teach her.’
‘What’s she do now, your mama?’
‘Paints.’
‘Houses?’
‘Portraits. Pictures of rich people and their unattractive children,’ I say and poke out my tongue like a brat. My manners, thus far, have not been up to scratch, so why change tack now?
‘Naughty,’ he says. Before I can reply there’s a scuttling at his feet. A fox comes out of the shadows of the shelving and weaves about his boots. He seems to think there’s nothing unusual about it. It spits out a bark and gives me a long measuring look. I crouch down and offer my hand, hoping it will let me stroke its pretty red fur. It moves toward me as if it will, but then tries to nip my outstretched fingers and runs away, back into the shadows.
‘Not very friendly.’
‘Picky things, foxes.’
I look up and find the boy is gone. I wander between the shelves, searching for him, but he’s nowhere in evidence. I put the Carabhille back in its hiding place and make my way down the stairs, a little shaken. I check each of the floors to see if he made it down before me, but there’s no sign. He must still be hiding upstairs, in some spot I don’t know—although I cannot imagine where that might be.
Sourdough and Other Stories Page 20