The Book of Fires

by Jane Borodale

  A way after Godmark’s Farm we have to wait in the road to cross the river. I make myself eat dry bread from my pocket, my fingers stiff with cold. I make myself take notice of the way the road goes on, opening a distance up between some portion of my troubles and my circumstance. I see a man drinking from a wooden flask, his head strained back to take the liquid in. I see a hawk. I smell the tang of horses, and the straw of the fat woman’s bonnet. I see a team of oxen opening earth behind the blade of a plow. I see three new, pale wheels in a wheelwright’s yard, and hear the hiss of a spokeshave peeling at wood. I see the orange carcass of a fox.

  And over time the motion of the carrier steadies me and makes me sensible. Taking the chill air deeply keeps the sickness at bay. In truth there is nothing to do but observe the world unfolding behind the carrier and to the sides of the road as we progress. I see how the mud in the road behind us changes from a pale clay to a darker brown of silt, and then to clay again.

  The mud is shallow and white with chalk as the wagon heaves uphill to a gibbet on the crossroads. The man beside the driver cries, “Burnt Oak Gate!” But no one gathers up their bags in readiness to leave. As we approach, I see a glistening crow push itself away from the gibbet’s crossbar and fly heavily upward. It catches a breeze that we cannot feel here on the ground, and stays almost motionless on the movement of the air, skillfully floating, like a malevolent thought. It waits for our arrival. Its head turns as it surveys the landscape; we draw up alongside and inch slowly by. I don’t like to look, but somehow my head turns toward the gibbet anyway. I feel something prickle over my skin, as though spiders were crawling there. I grip my forearms tight with my hands.

  One of the irons has the last bits of a man’s body hanging in it; the head has slumped in the top cage and the rest is tarred bones held together with very little. Some threads of fabric hang down from what remains of his breeches. The other irons are empty and swing more loosely in the cold air. A creaking is just audible. There are some small dry yellow bones on the ground beneath, and white splashes of bird droppings. The fat woman nudges me, smiling with triumph.

  “See how they deserves it,” she declares. “A dreadful crime, no doubt.” I cannot find a thing to say, but another woman nods and points her finger toward the scene in case her daughter sitting beside her hasn’t heeded. The daughter’s head swivels round as we pass, drinking in the detail.

  “It’s a man, Mother.” Her childish voice is satisfied and lazy. A chill has settled in me, although I make myself nod faintly in agreement. I must appear an honest, law-abiding creature, even to myself. The fifth passenger in the back seat takes no notice of the scene, nor of any other passing by. He alternates between a dozing state and being occupied in eating something crumbly from a brown packet on his knee; a cascade of pastry falls down the front of his greatcoat.

  As we gain sufficient distance from the gibbet, the crow behind us drops and settles on the irons again, twisting its head sideways to reach its black beak through the bars. Another crow flies down, and I look away. They say that crows and rooks mean trouble, and there are always plenty of them.

  Lichfowl, my mother calls them. Corpse birds.

  And beyond here I am plunged into unknown country. Burnt Oak Gate marks the edge of what I know. How rapidly the world is changing; everywhere we pass new fencing and altered boundaries. Thorny hedgerows of quickset and blackthorn slice straight through the sensible, ancient lengths of land, taking no heed of the curve of running water or the shape of a hill, just spanning the breadth of the stubbled fields to form vast, unreasonable squares that make no sense of the terrain they apportion. We see a quantity of people walking out on the road, with packs and babies and pieces of furniture strapped to their backs. They have the shifting, dogged look of people uprooting and leaving behind them all that they know. They are looking for labor in towns, in the city. A woman looks up as we go by, and stares at me as she moves to the edge of the muddy road, making way. We pass so closely I could reach my hand out and touch the thinness of her jaw. I can hear that she murmurs a rhyme over her shoulder to the child tied to her back.

  Jack, he was nimble, Jack, he was quick,

  Jack, he jumped over the candlestick.

  “Which Jack is that, Mamma?” the child asks, twisting its little fingers in her hair, and there is a pause and then the woman replies bitterly, as if to herself, “Any man jack with an ounce of sense left in him.”

  And she is right. I can hear the words, even after the carrier has rounded a corner and she has gone from sight. We should all be snatching our chances if they show themselves to us. The old ways are gone now. The carved-up countryside is filling fat men’s pockets with more than they need, while working men like my father are broken down and weakened and made small as their choice and independence are removed from their reach. Enclosure is a tightening around their necks, making slaves of them. It is a length of cord held only by some men of wealth. Enclosure drives them into corners like rats. My blood starts to boil with fury, and I clench my thumbs inside my fists. For my family there can be only misery ahead. For my family next year there will be no pig. There will be little but trouble, I fear, for them and so many like them, hunger making their bellies tight, day after day.

  Good men like my father, feeding his family, taking what dismal employment he can, to pay off the baker, the shopkeeper, the miller. Bad men like him; all in the same sorry plight. What is a good man, though, I start to think, or a bad one? As the carrier rattles on these thoughts begin to open up and drift about like smoke inside my head.

  As I say, I am not myself, and I can hardly pronounce on morals or goodness. I picture myself entering St. Mary’s Church with my belly swollen, round as a mare’s in the very shape of shame, and my face flushes with humiliation.

  I will not think of these things.

  Instead I make myself notice that the sun is a flat disk of white light, more like a hole in the clouds. I see that the hedges are filled with berries and drupes of ivy. I notice the twist and crook of the road. And then, gradually, my fists unclench and I slip into a drowsy state with my head nodding forward onto my chest, until the cold wakes me again. The clouds thicken as the morning passes. It is a long journey, in countless ways.

  Halts occur at intervals to water the horses, to take up a passenger or set one down. Uneasily I eye my bundle, strapped with the rest of the baggage, at every stop. Mrs. Mellin’s coins are tucked inside my stays securely; I feel them there against my ribs when I lean forward or breathe deeply. All that I have, I could lose, I remind myself.

  On the heath before Horsham, two men hail the carrier and ride the tailgate. They thump their boots on the floor of the cart so that it shakes and they are loud and troublesome and smell of liquor. I am relieved when after a mile or so they are forcibly turned off. A quarrel ensues and then one of the men falls to the ground. I can hear the growl of the driver’s terrier at the front of the wagon for a long time afterward, and I fall asleep to dream of a man with a chafed, red neck walking along the edge of the road, alongside the carrier. His strides are purposeful and angry. I awake with a start to find he is not there.

  The hedges wind along beside us until my eyes are glazed with staring. A young rabbit bolts across our muddy wake and disappears into the undergrowth. I see that the light is beginning to fail, and there is a stillness to the cold air, our white breath rising as though we were all smoldering, quietly on fire.

  After the bustle of Horsham the afternoon dies quickly around us. We pass lit windows in the walls of dwellings, and men returning from work on foot, their faces caught in the carriage lights as they stand aside. I hear the thump of wood being split with an axe. We go by a low cottage with a taper burning in the kitchen where a woman bends forward at the waist; she is raising her hand and shaking something at a man seated by a table. It is a curious matter, the seeing of things and yet not understanding.

  We halt for the night some time toward Dorking. The Red Lion is a dingy place. I
order broth that comes in a broad swilling plate of pewter that makes it cold upon arrival, and I cannot tell what meat has given it its flavor. I finish it as best I can.

  “Cheap beds?” The woman in the taproom repeats my words too loudly, as if to feign offense, then calls an older woman to take me to the back chamber. The woman has brown spots over her neck like the burnt parts of a griddle cake. When she reaches out to take the payment her eyes widen just a little at the sight of all my yellow coins together. I push the rest back into my stays, and look about. There are other beds in the room, but it would seem that I am the only lodger here tonight. A musty odor of old upholstery and unwashed bedding hangs in the air. There is no fire. The woman lights a dripping candle for me from the one that she holds, and turns to leave.

  “I should sew that gold into your skirts, young woman,” she observes from the doorway, her spotted hand on the latch. I look at her.

  “I should?” I say.

  She pokes her head back into the gloom of the chamber, and lowers her voice to a conspiratorial rasp.

  “Tuppence for the use of a needle and thread, and three shillings for the excessive trouble I shall be put to in not telling a soul,” she says. “My mouth does run away with itself sometimes, about tidy, shiny sums tucked up in warm corners, here and there.” Her eyes glitter as she casts a meaningful glance round the empty room. “I knows individuals, and what they can thirst for.” My heart sinks, and I nod in dismay.

  Later I sit and pull uneasily at the needle she brings me; the thread is red and garish and looks out of place against the weave of my plain fabric, and my fingers are clumsy with cold. The woman had bitten the coins that I gave her and chuckled horribly to make her point all down the corridor until a door closed somewhere and the noise was muffled.

  When the sewing is done, the needle lies on the sill in the candlelight like a sharp little knife.

  I do not sleep at first, there is so much din and clatter from somewhere nearby, so that when sleep comes to me eventually I dream of rats the size of dogs chewing at something I cannot see. It is cold all night. When I wake in the morning I see that the needle has gone. Though I look to see if it has rolled away onto the dirty rug or between the floorboards, I cannot find a trace of it.

  5

  In the morning I try to swallow bread to quell my sickness, and when the bell rings at eight I take my bundle outside and join the carrier. The passengers have swelled in number, and I find I have to squeeze my way up onto the bench at the back of the wagon. When we leave the town the morning light shows a countryside choppy with hills, dotted with brightly golden copses and small farms and hamlets. Spiders’ webs catch at the damp between the stems of dead hemlock and milk parsley. Plumes of smoke climb into the air from abundant chimneys and we see many people working the fields and driving goats and oxen. We stop for carts more frequently, even at this hour. The land seems teeming with its population.

  One of the new passengers sits very upright on the bench. There is a glossiness about her. She has a fine, fancy patterned shawl over her shoulders, and her mantua is made of silk bearing woven sprigs of flowers and birds. She seems tall and narrow, with a head of brown curling hair under her bonnet. Her face is pale as a china cup. High on the cheekbones two luscious spots of blush are painted on like raspberries. She is fresh and bright. I cannot stop watching her, until her eye catches mine and she smiles directly at me. I look away hastily, my own cheeks flushing in ordinary patches on my face.

  Her hands are long and bony, and she knocks them together through her white kid gloves from time to time as though eager to reach her destination, or as if she is filled with an impatient kind of song or energy that must escape by any means. Under her boots is a small leather case. I have a feeling that her eyes are on me, but then she turns and begins to listen to the fat woman talking to the unpleasant woman with the daughter. I fold my arms carefully across my stomach and do not hear them. I pray no one will speak to me. I am bad, spoiled. I am best not spoken to; I am like an apple rotting slowly away once the worms have got in. A rotten apple touching the skin of a good one in the store will taint the others till they fester together.

  The day is milder than the day before. There is no sunshine, but the clouds are high and pale, and the air has about it the nameless sweetness that earth gives off before the great frosts begin.

  After some time the woman pulls off a glove and eats some fruit with her bare hand, swallowing quickly and not letting juice drip on her dress. I am startled when she leans across to me, her long fingers reaching out to offer me a plum. I take it gratefully and bite. It is late in the season for such a good one, sour and pleasant at once. The bloom on it is like a mildew on its perfect skin. “Thank you, ma’am,” I say.

  She pulls on her glove.

  “My name is Lettice Talbot,” the woman says, as if to set up conversation. The voice she has is light and coaxing, like a child’s. “Some people call me Letty.” I spit out the stone of the plum and throw it onto the road.

  “What an uncommon name,” I answer, out of manners.

  “I like it very much,” the woman replies, which is a strange answer, and makes me think somehow that she has chosen it herself.

  I cannot think of any other thing to say to her. A curious smell comes away from Lettice Talbot’s clothing when she moves about; as sweet as beeswax, or the dusty odor of roses that have been kept to dry inside a cupboard, or something else I cannot place. It is a good, intriguing smell that makes me want to sit a little closer to her.

  At noon we roll over White Down Hill and descend into the village of Leatherhead. The inn is adjacent to the blacksmith’s, and as we pass I look into the darkness of his shop and see white-hot coals flaring and dulling with the roar of the bellows. From the yard of the inn we can still hear the regular metallic clang and ring of a hammer on hot iron against an anvil. In the silence that follows I know well the hiss of a horseshoe going into cold liquid, and the smell of a scorched hoof as the warm shoe is nailed on.

  The jolting slows and stops.

  “We can take something to eat here.” Lettice Talbot gets down immediately over the tailgate and calls up to me, brushing dirt from her palms. The harnesses clink as the ostlers unbuckle the horses. The horses are sweating and breathing heavily.

  “How stiff we become on the back of this cart, our legs stuck out over the road like a crate of dead fowls!” She looks doubtfully toward the pullets at the front of the wagon, and then laughs, as though something wicked had occurred to her. A dog barks.

  “Are you not hungry?” she asks. I suppose I must eat. “I’ll bet your last fair meal was another life ago. Am I right, sweetheart?” She beckons me to descend.

  “There is abundant time for an inn-dinner at the Rose and Crown,” she reassures me, as if she traveled frequently this way, and the sun breaks through the clouds as we cross the yard.

  Inside, my eyes accustom to the darkness. There is a fire blazing in a broad hearth, and a savory smell of woodsmoke and ale. Two men glance up at us and then back to some papers spread out on a table. The girl drawing ale from a barrel at the hatch directs us to a bench. We have our backs to the sunlight that falls through the leaded window, blue with smoke from the fire. The brick floor is swept. The miserable man wearing the greatcoat takes a solitary seat on the far side of the room, opening his mouth to order something made with beef, then rubs his belly. He keeps his coat on. There is loud laughter from the porch and then the room seems filled with stir and levity.

  How has my life changed so quickly? I feel small away from home. I feel dizzy with it.

  “What shall we have?” Lettice Talbot says brightly. “Why not oysters!” The girl wipes a cloth over the table and brings some for us, with hard sallow cheese and bread. There is a lot of greasy red hair escaping from her cap. She looks at me as she puts them down, then goes away. The food is salty and good, and we eat hungrily without conversation. The girl comes back to remove the dish of empty shells, and Lettice
Talbot claps her hands.

  “Brandy!” she suggests.

  “Brandy?” I say doubtfully. I don’t mention that I have never tasted it. The girl brings a jug and pours out one glass. The liquid is a bright brown as it catches the sunlight. “Drink up,” Lettice Talbot coaxes, pushing the glass toward me and smiling kindly.

  “But you have none,” I say.

  “No, no,” she says, “it is for you—you look as though you need it! ”

  So I swallow it down. It is hot, as though it had within it something of the fire itself.

  “Where are you headed, sweetheart?” Lettice Talbot asks. I cannot think at first of what to say. As she leans forward, I see a little locket is tied at her neck on a piece of yellow velvet, flashing in the light. The gem set upon it breaks up the brightness sharply into separate colors, as a drop of water might, catching the sunshine after rain. Her neck is smooth and white above the ribbon. She sees me looking and her hand goes to the locket as if to hide it with her fingertips.

  “How did you come by such a lovely thing?” I exclaim.

  “It’s not real,” she says quickly. “Not a proper diamond.” And then she smiles and asks again where I am going. She stares at me when I do not answer, and so I have to embark upon the story I have been making up inside my head.

  “I am traveling at a day’s notice up to London,” I say, “to stay with an aging cousin suffering from an illness of some gravity.” My voice sounds like it is reciting lessons.

  “Where does she live? ” Lettice Talbot asks. I think quickly.

  “Within the city walls. She has rooms in a small house, and the servants do not like her and all of them have left her service. She is quite alone.” I make my face look sorry and anxious as I talk, which is not difficult. My fingers touch my lips as though they know that I am telling lies.

  I add with effort that she needs someone to carry water from the pump and cook up broths and sago, and take the slops away; in short the heavy, bending, stirring tasks she cannot do.