The Apprentices

by Leon Garfield

  In itself his task was humble, but when Pallcat was mounted up some twenty feet above the homeward-hastening throng and saw that the daylight was going, he felt as remote and indifferent as the kindler of the stars.

  When he returned to Three Kings Court, it was already dark; the kindler of the stars couldn’t help feeling warmed by the thought of company. Possul was awake and sitting on the end of his bed; he hadn’t so much as lifted a finger to clean or tidy anything. Pallcat put down his empty oil can.

  “I’d ha’ thought,” he grunted, “you’d ha’ done something—’stead of just sitting and waiting.”

  “Didn’t like to,” said Possul, widening his peculiarly bright eyes. “Might have done something wrong.”

  “I left food out,” said Pallcat, baffled.

  “Saw it,” said Possul. “Didn’t like to eat any though. Just had some water.”

  “Too idle to eat, even,” muttered Pallcat. “You’ll ’ave to mend your ways if you stay ’ere.”

  Possul nodded and mended his ways to the extent of eating what had been provided. The lamplighter watched him half indulgently, half irritably; the boy ate everything, without asking if he, Pallcat, wanted any. He wondered how much nourishment it was expected of him to provide.

  “If you are going to stay,” he said harshly, “you’ll ’ave to do something for it.”

  Possul, his mouth so full that a piece of jellied veal was hanging out of it, looked up with bright, earnest eyes.

  “I’ll learn you,” said the lamplighter grandly, “to be me apprentice. Now a lamplighter’s apprentice is, very properly, a linkboy; that is, a nipper what lights the night folk their way ’ome. I done it meself—and I still do it; it’s a ‘oly thing to do. And the Lord went before them . . . by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light.”

  “The true Light which lighteth every man,” read Possul, off the wall.

  “Arise, shine; for thy light is come,” said Pallcat, handing the boy a length of tow that had been dipped in pitch.

  “I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame,” said Possul, reading from a text that was still in the stitching stage.

  “But not,” said the lamplighter, making for the door, “without proper payment. Pitch costs money, and tow don’t last for ever.”

  They went downstairs into the dark, cold court and walked to the Strand and along to the corner of Dirty Lane, where there was a coffeehouse with gambling rooms above. Here Pallcat kindled the torch.

  “I’ll show you,” he said, holding up the burning article, so that his reddened eyes streamed from the sudden clouds of smoke.

  Possul gazed at the lamplighter, whose flame-lit countenance resembled an angry planet in the gloom; then his eyes strayed to Pallcat’s lamps that winked in the obscure air down either side of the Strand. It took sharp eyes to make them out, they glimmered so feebly within the accumulated filth of the glass that enclosed them. Although they complied with the letter of the law and burned from sunset to sunrise, they mocked the spirit of that law and provided not the smallest scrap of illumination. If ever a world walked in need of light, it was the world under Pallcat’s lamps.

  “Light you ’ome,” shouted Pallcat, brandishing the torch before a gentleman who came stumbling by.

  “No—no. I can see, thank you.”

  “Fall in the river and drown, then,” said Pallcat to the gentleman’s departing back.

  He accosted several other passersby, but none wanted light, so Pallcat damned them all; at the same time he shielded his torch lest a stray beam might have given an advantage not contracted for.

  “D’you see? Like this! Stretch out thine hand . . . that there may be darkness over the land, even darkness which may be felt.”

  At length, three gentlemen came out of the coffeehouse. Their aspect was mellow, their gait airy.

  “Light you ’ome?” offered Pallcat.

  “And why not?” said one of the gentlemen affably.

  “A linkman with his spark!” said another, observing the boy beside the lamplighter. They all laughed and gave Pallcat lengthy directions to their homes.

  Pallcat walked on ahead, holding the torch high; Possul took it all in, walking beside the lamplighter and occasionally raising his own arm in what he regarded as a professional way.

  Presently Pallcat became aware that they’d attracted a non-paying customer, a wretched, gin-sodden devil who was lurching along, taking advantage of the free light to avoid the posts and projecting steps with which the streets were endlessly obstructed.

  “Watch this,” muttered the lamplighter to his earnest spark. “This is the way we does it.”

  Pallcat took off his hat and, waiting for a sharp corner, whipped it before the torch, thus neatly plunging the stinking drunkard into an eclipse. There was a thump and a staggering crash as the wretch collided with a post and fell with a howl of pain.

  “Cast out into outer darkness,” said Pallcat powerfully; “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

  After that they were troubled no more, and each of the three gentlemen, deposited at his home, gave Pallcat a sixpence for the guidance. Pallcat bit the coins and stowed them in a bag hung around his neck; then he and his apprentice went back to the Strand to see out the rest of the night.

  Shortly before dawn, when Pallcat’s torch was becoming superfluous, he and Possul returned to Three Kings Court. On the way the lamplighter pointed out those corners and alleys where pitch might be had for a farthing a dip, when a man’s torch had burned through.

  Before going to bed, Pallcat made Possul a bowl of soup, feeling, at the same time, that the boy ought to be waiting on him. But no doubt that would come in time. Possul was simple-minded; he needed careful training—like a dog. And when all was said and done, he was company. . . .

  For an hour or so after Possul was asleep. Pallcat stitched away at his unfinished text, which was always his bedtime pleasure and task and somehow made his world seem larger; then he too went down as the blaring sun came up and rendered his room a mad and dirty horror of too-visible confusion.

  They slept the day through; Pallcat woke first and went out for food and more oil. When he returned, he found Possul peaceably on his bed, having done nothing but wake up.

  “Tonight,” said the lamplighter peevishly, “you’ll work, my lad.”

  Possul smiled contentedly and Pallcat could have clouted him with the length of tow that was to be his torch. The boy should have offered, instead of just waiting to be told, with his bright eyes going right through Pallcat like a pair of pokers.

  “You go where we was last night. I’ll go more towards Charing Cross. ’Ere’s a penny, ’case you run out of pitch before you gets paid. Remember what I showed you; remember about keeping your light for the lawful customers. Best take me cocked ’at; only don’t scorch it.”

  Possul, feeling immensely important—as became his occupation of linkboy—flamed outside the coffeehouse on the corner of Dirty Lane. The warmth of his torch kept out the bitterness of the night, and his transparent-seeming face made a hopeful island in the black pool of Pallcat’s hat.

  “Light you home, ma’am?” he called out to a flower-cheeked woman who hobbled the street with eyes like cups of ashes.

  “Shove off!” she said, and shrank from the damaging light.

  Next, a pair of basket women approached.

  “Light you home, ladies?”

  They drew near, smiling and shaking their heads.

  “Just come for a warm, love.”

  They held up their hands and drenched them in the heat of Possul’s fire. The boy was nonplussed. Light he must not give without payment; but Pallcat had said nothing about warmth. On account of the basket women and several other freezing souls, Possul lost several likely customers.

  All in all, he earned but a single sixpence that night—and then spent nearly half of it on fresh pitch for his waning torch. Pallcat was indignant when he’d got over his pleasure and relief at seeing P
ossul come back. Though he’d never have admitted it, he’d been haunted by the dread of Possul abandoning him as lightly as he’d joined him. He couldn’t quite believe that Possul was real; that is, when the boy was out of his sight. . . .

  He berated Possul soundly for his extravagance in pitch and warned him to mend his ways. He sent him off to bed with—as the saying goes—a flea in his ear, which doubtless found company in Possul’s horrible bed. Then he set about finishing his text and beginning a new one, especially for Possul: He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.

  Next night, with many warnings, Possul went out again to set himself up in business on the corner of Dirty Lane. With mingled feelings of suspicion and pride, the lamplighter, who accompanied him as far as the Strand, watched him flame his way towards the coffeehouse. The boy stalked along with such an air of self-importance that one might have supposed he was holding up the sun and moon and all the fledgling stars.

  In truth, Possul had a soul no less than Pallcat; the sense of consequence given by being a minister of light had its effect on the boy no less than the man.

  “Light you home, sir?”

  “Take me to Clifford’s Inn, child. D’you know it?”

  “’S off Chancery Lane.”

  The gentleman nodded and Possul set off. Presently a low noise in a cleft between two houses distracted him. He held out his torch. A woman and nearly naked child were huddled together in an attempt to get warmth from each other. The woman, half blinded by the sudden light, looked savage at the intrusion on her misery. Possul paused, as if to give his gentleman full benefit of the sight.

  “Get a move on, boy,” he said. “It’s no business of ours in there.”

  Possul withdrew the torch and left the cleft in decent darkness. A little while after, he stopped again. A legless beggar, who squatted on a porridge pot and got about by dragging himself by fist and fingernail over the cobbles, squinted up from the entrance to an alley. Every detail of his misfortune was pitiless in Possul’s leaping fire.

  “Get along with you,” said the gentleman. “Find something better worth looking at.”

  So Possul looked and found a pair of lovers sitting on a doorstep. Furiously they bade him take his light away—which he did to his gentleman’s protesting disappointment.

  Just outside the gate to Clifford’s Inn, a youngish woman was humped against a wall and crying. Possul lingered, and his torchlight shone on her tear-stained face, revealing harsh bruises and dried blood.

  “That’s enough,” said the gentleman. “When I want to be shown the miseries of the night, I’ll employ you again. Till then, my lad, keep out of my way.”

  He gave Possul only threepence and dismissed him. The linkboy had two more customers that night, and, as if by design (though it was not so at all), he led them likewise on pilgrimages through the horror and despair hidden in the dark.

  Even as moths are drawn to a candle flame, so was every cruelty and misfortune drawn into the circle of Possul’s torch. Or so it seemed. Consequently, he got a bad name, and all his customers swore they’d never seek his light again. They’d sooner go home in the dark, relying on the lamplighter’s feeble glimmers rather than the linkboy’s bitter fire.

  When he returned to Three Kings Court at dawn, he looked weary, but nothing to worry about. A night’s work naturally wore a soul out. Pallcat took his apprentice’s earnings, made him soup, and packed him off to bed.

  Next night, encouraged by his beginnings, Possul found other customers—and uncannily led them through similar ways, loitering his torch over all manner of luckless sights. Men crying in corners, dead children, thieves lit up in sudden, horrible terror . . . Human beings everywhere abandoning themselves to a despair that the darkness should have hid, abruptly seen in their crude nakedness.

  Thus Possul’s torch shed its light. . . .

  Sometimes it seemed that he took pleasure in what he saw; his face was always so earnest and bright. But no one giving him a second glance and catching his eerily solemn eyes could really credit him with so unnatural a pastime.

  Although many of the sights he lit up would have been unremarkable enough by day, by night—picked out of the blackness like little worlds of total hell—they were vile and disgusting. The only explanation was that Possul lacked sensitivity and taste.

  Pallcat of course knew nothing of this; Possul never talked much—and then only when spoken to. It never seemed to occur to him that he, Pallcat, had ears that liked exercise. Still, the boy breathed and ate so that one could hear him, and he was a living soul in the lamplighter’s dingy lodgings. Pallcat even got a contrary pleasure out of feeding him for no thanks and being taken for granted as an ever-present father. If only, the lamplighter thought, he’d flesh out a bit and not look so shamefully skinny and pale. There was no doubt that each dawn when the boy returned, he looked whiter and more transparent, so that Pallcat had the feeling that sooner or later he’d come back as plain bones.

  The lamplighter kept his apprentice on the go for a week; then, on the seventh day, it rained, so Pallcat told Possul not to stay out beyond midnight as no one would be about after that.

  The rain was not heavy; it was more of a fine drizzle, a weeping of the night air that made the torch hiss and spit and give off smoke in thick bundles. Several gentlemen emerged from the coffeehouse but, having had their bellyful of the loitersome linkboy, waved his offers aside. In accordance with Pallcat’s example, Possul wished them in the river. The curse, coming from his soft lips and attended by his bright, earnest gaze, seemed curiously terrible. Yet he uttered it more as if it were a charm to bring him the customers he lacked.

  As if in response to this charm, a man came out of the coffeehouse on his own. He’d had no experience of Possul, so he was not driven to choose darkness instead of light. He was a huge elephant of a fellow, untidily dressed and wearing a frown as if he’d bought it as suiting his particular cast of features. He squinted balefully at Possul’s fire.

  “Light you home, sir?”

  The man grunted ill-temperedly, searching his capacious mind, and came out with: “Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.”

  He sniffed and wiped his nose against the back of his hand.

  “Well?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll take heed. Where to, sir?”

  “Red Lion Square. D’you know it?”

  “Off High Holborn, ain’t it?”

  “Thereabouts. Lead on.”

  Possul lifted up his torch and went; the large man lumbered after. The rain, although not increasing, had soaked the streets, so that the torch, reflecting upon the streaming cobbles, ran along like a river of broken fire. Bearing in mind his customer’s strict injunction, Possul kept to the middle of the road and watched where his light fell. He could hear the irritable fellow quite distinctly, muttering and rumbling to himself like distant thunder over the trials of a bad night. The linkboy would be lucky to get a penny from such a man. At last they turned into Grays Inn Passage; the torch flickered across a bundle of rags heaped against a doorstep. As if unable to help himself, the linkboy paused. The huge fellow lurched and swayed to a halt.

  “What d’you think you’re doing, boy?”

  “Nothing—nothing, sir. It’s just me torch . . . shining, shin’ng on—” He jerked the light apologetically towards the doorstep. The bundle of rags leaped out of the night; it contained a twig of a woman with arms and cheeks as thin as leaves. She was either dead or so close to it that it would have taken a watchmaker to tell the difference.

  Possul remained perfectly still while his torch flames plaited themselves ceaselessly round the melting pitch and fried the soft rain. The huge man’s complaints had died away into a heavy sighing; he swayed from side to side as if he found difficulty in managing his bulk.

  He carried a stick—a heavy cudgel such as might have been used to beat off a footpad. He poked at the rags with it. There was no response. Possul brought his torch closer to the w
oman’s face. Her skin was blotched and covered with open sores that the rain had made to shine. Her eyelids stirred as Possul brought the fire closer still.

  Suddenly a twist of blue flame—no bigger than a finger—danced up above her mouth; then it vanished with extraordinary rapidity. It was as if the spark of life had been made visible, departing.

  “Get back,” grunted the man, pushing Possul away with his cudgel. “She’s full of gin. You saw it? That gasp of fire above her lips. The torch set it off. Get away. It’s not for you and me to burn her before her time.”

  He gave Possul another shove, swore malevolently at the night—and bent down, so that every stitch of his clothing protested at the effort. He picked up the gin-sodden, diseased creature as easily as if she’d been a frayed old coat; then he heaved her on his back.

  “Move on,” he said to Possul.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “My house. Would you have me carry this unwholesome burden farther?”

  “What will you do with her, sir?”

  “Eat her. Plenty of pepper and salt. Then I’ll give her bones to my cat.”

  The creature that was flopped across his back emitted a raucous moan.

  “Peace, ma’am, peace. Presently you’ll have comfort and warmth. Hurry, boy, hurry, before we’re all poisoned by the stink of her gin.”

  In a moment, Possul’s fire broke out into Red Lion Square and cast the large man’s shadow with its misshapen double back against the fronts of the stately houses; it seemed impossible for those within not to feel the dark passing. Possul himself, holding the torch, cast no such mark; the intensity of the light seemed to have eaten him up altogether; to shadow fanciers, the lurching monster with the grotesque hump upon its back was quite alone save for a steadily marching fire.