The Resurrection Fireplace

by Hiroko Minagawa

  The children’s tussle of last night seemed to have continued unabated.

  “Shut up!” cried Barrett. “Here—this’ll give us some peace and quiet.”

  Nathan watched as the man poured some gin into his children’s mouths.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  Barrett nodded. His wife sighed.

  “There’s oatmeal if you want it,” she told him. “For threepence.”

  Nathan declined the offer and left the house.

  Shoreditch looked even shabbier in the light of morning. Nathan made his way back up the road he had taken the night before, the sounds around him getting louder as he approached the livelier parts of town.

  There were push-carts and stalls piled high with wares close to the river. “Steamed dumplings!” cried the itinerant vendors. “Sharp’ning! Sharp’ning done cheap!” “Brooms! Get yer brooms here!” Chimney-sweeps moved through the crowds, tired boys black from head to toe.

  Nathan breakfasted on a bowl of frumenty bought at one of the stalls. Just wheat boiled in milk with a pinch of sugar added, it was nevertheless far more appetizing than the charred oatmeal stuck to the bottom of Mrs. Barrett’s pan.

  He came to a square he felt he had seen before. Consulting Nigel’s map, he crossed to the other side in search of Tyndale’s bookshop. Still frowning at the map, he walked straight into a sign sticking out on the pavement; looking up, he realized that this was the very place he was looking for.

  A few fine leather-bound volumes were on display in the window, but these were not for sale. The shop’s wares were all on tables and shelves inside, still in the form of unbound or temporarily bound signatures. Once a customer decided that a book took his fancy, he would have the shop bind it for him properly.

  Towards the back of the place, Nathan could see someone leafing through a temporarily bound book at a reading desk. He looked like a wealthy merchant, perhaps in his late forties. Because bookbinding was expensive, it was quite usual for customers to peruse a book’s contents before placing an order. In some cases they were even permitted to take copies home to read. For bibliophiles, however, mere reading did not exhaust a book’s value: to display it as a splendid leather-bound volume in their library was a further purpose.

  A middle-aged man stood before a bookshelf, tidying the signatures. Nathan made his presence known, and the man looked his way. “What is it you want?” he asked discouragingly. His face was weak and pinched, which only made his curved nose more prominent.

  “My name is Nathan Cullen. I wish to see Mr. Tyndale. Do I have the pleasure?”

  “Mr. Tyndale is in his office. What is it about?”

  “Please convey to him that I have arrived. I am sure he will see me. My parish priest sent a letter of introduction in advance.”

  “Nathan—what was it again?”

  “Cullen.”

  The man huffed, before disappearing somewhere at the back of the shop.

  Did he actually intend to summon Tyndale, or not? Nathan waited anxiously, taking a signature from the shelf. This one hadn’t even a temporary binding. The title was in French: Histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. The author, one Antoine François Prévost d’Exiles, was familiar even to Nathan. He had once been ordained, and so was sometimes simply called the Abbé Prévost. Nathan remembered the time an adult had caught him at the age of seven or eight reading Moll Flanders, a book by someone widely considered Prévost’s peer, Daniel Defoe. The person had slapped Nathan so hard that later his face was swollen. Moll Flanders was the tale of a woman born in prison, who married five times in a series of attempts to enter the ranks of fashionable society. One of those marriages had been to her own brother by blood; the man she truly loved was a thief; and she too became well known for breaking the law, eventually being thrown into prison and becoming even more notorious there.

  Nathan’s education had included reading and writing in French, but at the moment his eyes could only follow the words without absorbing a thing. All he could think of was the prospect of someone buying this volume, having it put in some sumptuous binding—morocco leather, perhaps, or shagreen—and placing it on a massive bookshelf. It was exciting to imagine his own poetry being printed and put up for sale here to receive the same treatment.

  Just then, he heard angry voices outside. Drawing closer to the window, he peered out to see two chairmen, still bearing a sedan chair, arguing with a pedestrian. Nathan could not be sure of the cause of the disagreement, but every chairman he had seen so far was a rough sort of character, barging people out of the way as they went.

  The pedestrian—who presumably had been sent flying—approached the man at the front and jabbed him in the chest.

  The latter signalled to the fellow behind, and the two of them charged forward, ramming the pedestrian’s chest with the end of one pole.

  Nathan saw the curtains in the window of the chair itself sway, and heard a woman scream from inside. Their passenger was still on board.

  Swinging his walking stick, the pedestrian then smashed the window.

  Sedan chairs were delicately made to keep them light. The whole chair fell to pieces at this single blow, pitching a woman, whose dress suggested not inconsiderable social standing, into the street.

  At once, Nathan dashed outside. There, he helped her up and led her back into Tyndale’s shop.

  By now the chairmen had pushed the pedestrian against a wall, looping the leather thongs on their poles around his neck and shoulders. This kept him pinned in place as one of them kneed him repeatedly in the crotch, while the other, who had let go of his end of the poles so that their weight was borne entirely by their victim, moved in with a club. Sinking down, the pedestrian managed to seize the first man’s ankles and heave him up and over backwards just as several burly officials rode on horseback through the gathering crowd. These, Nathan assumed, must be the Bow Street Runners Edward and Nigel had mentioned.

  Inside the shop, the man at the reading desk was still engrossed in his book. He gave no sign of having noticed the commotion at all.

  Abruptly, two men emerged from the back room. One was the unfriendly employee; the other was plump, wore a pince-nez, and was approximately half-way to being completely bald.

  “Madam!”

  “What happened?”

  The young woman’s taffeta dress was torn. It was customary for women to faint in situations like these, emphasizing their fragility, but she sat calmly on a nearby chair.

  “My usual chairmen being ill, I made the error of engaging the services of two I found at a crossroads,” she explained.

  “You came without even a servant to accompany you? That will never do!” cried Pince-nez, waving his hands about.

  “I was anxious to make haste,” she told him, “after hearing that the Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut had arrived.”

  “It has indeed, madam,” said Pince-nez. “A copy was finally included in our latest shipment from France, and so I took the liberty of dispatching a messenger boy to your residence. The book is selling so briskly that it has been reprinted yet again, it seems. The Abbé Prévost may have passed on several years ago, but the popularity of his work has not waned—especially with younger members of the fairer sex.”

  “May I see the book, Mr. Tyndale?”

  “Of course, of course. It was to fulfil your order that we obtained it, after all. I fear that it is still in signatures, however, without even a temporary binding.” He rummaged through the shelves. “Of course, one’s concern about what your excellent parents might think of your reading such an unwholesome romance cannot be entirely… I was quite sure that I put it here. Let me see…”

  The unfriendly clerk picked up some papers scattered on the floor and handed them to Tyndale.

  “Whatever was it doing on the floor? Was this your doing, Farrow?”

  “Absolutel
y not. I am well aware of its value as the only copy in our possession. Mr. Evans, over there, is clearly absorbed in Robinson Crusoe’s tale of life on a desert island; he has not moved from his chair. It was this youth here.” The clerk—Farrow—jabbed his finger at Nathan. “It can only have been his doing. Upon my oath, he is to blame!”

  Nathan had to admit that Farrow was quite correct. Seeing a young woman in danger, he had cast aside the papers he was holding in order to run to her aid.

  Mr. Evans, the other customer, now abandoned Crusoe’s island long enough to glance at Nathan and the girl.

  Tyndale adjusted his pince-nez and peered at Nathan. “And who are you?” he demanded.

  “Nathan Cullen, sir. This man should have announced me earlier.”

  “I did not think his arrival from God knows where worth mentioning to you at such a busy time,” Farrow maintained.

  “This gentleman rescued me from the disturbance outside,” said the young woman. “Like a knight in shining armour.”

  Nathan placed one hand on his breast and bowed to her. Then he turned to Tyndale.

  “A letter from Fr. Pelham—my parish priest, that is—should have preceded me.”

  “Oh? I couldn’t say,” said Tyndale. “We receive so many letters.”

  “Fr. Pelham assured me that the proprietor of Tyndale’s Bookshop was the most trustworthy publisher in London—or anywhere else, for that matter. With a discerning eye for literature.”

  None of this was intended as lip-service; he was only saying, if fervently, what he believed to be true. But it was with a wry smile that Tyndale replied.

  “Thank you. I recall Fr. Pelham’s letter now—not, I hasten to add, because of your praise! As I recollect, he mentioned that you had discovered a rare work of fifteenth-century poetry?”

  “I have indeed,” said Nathan eagerly. “An astonishing discovery, as I am sure you will agree. I brought it with me today, hoping that you would do me the honour of examining it.”

  Tyndale’s expression was more than a little sceptical. In fact, he seemed on the verge of laughing Nathan out of his shop, but was prevented from so doing by a lingering trace of curiosity. Could this boy’s discovery possibly be real?

  Nathan placed his prized sheaf of parchment on a table.

  The words “fifteenth-century poetry” seemed to have had the power to call Mr. Evans away from his desert island. Nathan heard the scrape of the older man’s chair as he rose from the reading desk. “Let me take a look, if I may,” he said, peering at the leaves of parchment.

  Nathan pointed at the final page. “As you can see, it says ‘Wroten bie Godes servant Thomas Howard the .iii. daye of Novembre in the .m cccc lxxx v. yere of our Lorde God’—which is why I believe it to be the work of a churchman.” He decided to press his case still further. “In fact, Mr. Tyndale, I write poetry myself. I should be honoured if you would examine some of it too.”

  “You hope to publish it?”

  “Yes. I believe it merits as much.”

  “Both matters will need to be considered at length,” said Tyndale. “For the time being, let us attend to the business on which Miss Roughhead has so graciously come.”

  Farrow handed the carefully re-sorted signatures to his master. “They should be in order now—after this youth’s manhandling of them.” He then turned to simper at the young woman. “But what luck that the floor had just been cleaned! The pages are quite unsoiled.”

  “In view of their maltreatment, however,” Tyndale added, “I shall, of course, reduce the price as much as I am able.”

  “How scrupulous of you,” smiled the girl. Like a cloud of butterflies taking wing, thought Nathan.

  “Do I correctly surmise, Miss Roughhead,” said Mr. Evans, looking up from the parchment, “that you are the daughter of Sir Charles Roughhead?”

  When the girl did not reply, Farrow answered in her place. “Quite so, sir,” he said. “Miss Elaine Roughhead.”

  Evans approached her and bowed, hand respectfully on his breast. “I have the honour of doing business with your esteemed father,” he said. “I thought I remembered having seen your face while visiting your home. Guy Evans, at your service.”

  Elaine gave a perfunctory bow.

  “How shall we bind the book?” asked Tyndale.

  “French morocco with gilt dentelle,” said Elaine.

  “Very good. Let us discuss the colour of the leather and the design of the dentelle in more detail once you have seen some samples. Farrow! Fetch the dentelle patterns and leather swatches. Some end-band samples, too, while you are at it.”

  Patterns and swatches—Nathan felt as if he they were discussing the binding for his own poetry collection. Dentelle was a new way of decorating the covers of books, invented only this century, in which delicate, lace-like designs were embossed around the borders of the cover in gold leaf. The centre was left empty, or sometimes adorned with floral designs or a family crest. It was much more elegant than the pointillé style that Le Gascon had popularized in the previous century, or the earlier “fanfare” and monastic bindings.

  “The artisan to whom we were accustomed to entrust the gold leaf work for your bindings has, I regret to report, fallen ill. His lungs, I am told. Not to worry, however—there are others just as skilled.”

  Nathan stood behind Elaine, watching as she looked through the samples. Mr. Evans was still examining the fifteenth-century poem; Robinson Crusoe, it seemed, would be permanently marooned.

  Finally Elaine selected a French morocco leather dyed a deep scarlet. As she was considering the design for the spine, however, she began to look rather unwell.

  “Pray excuse me a moment,” she said, pressing a handkerchief to her mouth as she rose to her feet. “Is there—er—a closet I might…?”

  Nathan grasped the situation at once. Stripping off his jacket, he moved to her side and caught the vomit in it as she hunched down. He then wrapped it up and put the bundle in a corner before leading her to a couch.

  “You must rest for a time,” said Tyndale, hurrying over. “Farrow, some water for our guest. Then call at her house to tell them that she has taken ill and have someone sent to escort her home.”

  “No escort will be necessary,” she protested in a weak voice. “I shall recover presently.”

  “I see. In that case, please rest as long as you need.”

  Elaine beckoned Nathan to her. “I should like to loosen my garments,” she said. “Would you be so kind as to close your eyes and assist me?”

  Nathan did as he was asked. Once her bodice was open, her slender fingers guided his hand to the laces of her whalebone corset. Behind Nathan’s closed eyelids, her body burned bright as phosphorus.

  While Elaine was reclining on the couch, he quietly asked Tyndale if there was somewhere he could wash his jacket.

  Tyndale glanced at the bundle in the corner with obvious distaste. “Throw it away,” he said dismissively.

  “But…” It was his only jacket, though he couldn’t say as much for fear of undermining his image.

  “Throw it on the dust-heap outside.”

  Nathan complied. By the time he returned, Elaine’s eyes were closed.

  “How did a boy like you come into possession of an old document like that?” Tyndale wanted to know, peering over his pince-nez.

  He was not a boy. He was seventeen. He was often mistakenly thought younger due to his slight frame.

  Mr. Evans was also watching him now.

  “I thought the circumstances were described in the letter from Fr. Pelham,” he said.

  “I wish to hear it from you directly.”

  “It was among the effects of my late father. He taught at a parish school. He liked to read, and had a library of rather more books than our family’s finances justified. He was also an antiquarian, with a fondness for anything of great
age. The discovery of the poem happened long before I was born, when our church was renovated.”

  Mr. Evans nodded, listening intently. Nathan began to warm to his tale as well.

  “When they put the parish records in order, they set aside a pile of old parchment that was no longer needed. The verger was about to make a bonfire of it when my father intervened and took possession of it instead. I happen to share his love of reading. I worked my way through the collection he left behind to gather dust in the attic. My mother and brother have no interest in books, and they would have been used for kindling without my protection.”

  “Fr. Pelham’s letter mentioned that you had an interest in old books that belies your age,” recalled Tyndale.

  “I found this poem among the bundle of parchment my father rescued from the flames. Most of the documents were simply records of observances or financial matters, and of no lasting interest—but I am sure you can imagine my excitement when I discovered this poem.”

  “Were you able to read it? The language is quite archaic.”

  “I was. I did resort to the assistance of a dictionary of old English, but I read it all in the end. Indeed, the exercise left me with some understanding of the earlier forms of our language.”

  “I shall borrow it for a while,” said Tyndale. “Forgeries are so very common. My examination must be thorough.”

  “As you wish,” Nathan said. He removed one leaf of parchment and handed the remainder to the bookseller.

  “Why hold back one page?” asked Evans.

  “As insurance against the rest being used without my permission.”

  “How impertinent!” said Farrow. “To suggest that Mr. Tyndale cannot be trusted!”

  The latter restrained his employee with a pained smile.

  “Might I impose on you to read the poems I have written myself as well?” asked Nathan.