The Butcher's Hook

by Janet Ellis

  As much as her battered body will allow, she turns and looks at me. ‘Why?’ she gasps, her voice thick with her own blood. As if I will answer. I go to the door and a gust of air rushes in as I open it, fanning the flames all the more. She begins to burn like an effigy, her arms stretched wide. ‘Anne!’ she wails, the only time she’s ever said my name. Though she should be tethered to the bed by fire and pain, she begins to rise. The sheets are alight now and the curtains go up in flames. She lumbers towards me, as unsteady as a child learning to walk. She babbles like a baby too. Her progress is so slow it’s almost comical. Either the fire or her wound will kill her and they fight to be first. I watch, transfixed, from the doorway, as if I had a bet on the outcome. Her first creator did well with her, but I am proud of her leaking head and stiffening limbs.

  With a thrill, I realise that I might soon see the exact moment of her end, a transformation that Dr Edwards with his sudden haste and the boy with his flying absence denied me. I clap my hands together in joy, something which, of course, she can no longer do. She can still point her arms towards me though and as they swing together she is suddenly so close they touch my sleeves. I cough as the smoke thickens, sticking in my throat and pricking my eyes. Her flesh roasts and reeks like any other beast’s. If I do not make haste, the fumes will choke and blind me and Margaret will smother me in her blistering embrace.

  I dart behind the door, then hold it tightly shut between us. I hear her hands brushing against the wood, she cannot make fists of them any more. Only when there is no sound from her do I realise the handle is getting hot and I let go. There are other noises, though: the shattering of glass and splintering of wood as the fire seeks more fuel. Smoke spirals from underneath the door and out between little cracks in the wood. I had not thought the fire would take hold so greedily once it had done its bidding. I can smell my own singed bonnet where I got too close and my costume is peppered with ash. I creep down the stairs, though the blaze’s roar would let me leave safely unheard even if I was wearing my father’s heaviest boots.

  There are already a few people outside, shouting for help and water and attempting to break down the door. I go through the slaughter room to the stable door beyond. Both bolts are slid shut and I wrestle with each ineffectually in turn, there must be a trick to their opening I do not know. ‘I cannot die here,’ I say aloud. A plaintive cry answers. A calf, penned in and frightened, senses the conflagration and my panic and kicks against its prison. I crouch down and speak through the slatted wood to where its dark eyes peer back at me. ‘We will get out together,’ I say, ‘neither of us will be roasted today, one carcass is enough.’

  One bolt gives, then another and the door opens at last on to the narrow alley. There’s a runnel full of red liquid in the middle. This is where the slaughter waste must be sluiced away – it is dyed with animal blood. I let the calf free from its pen. It sniffs, its wide nostrils trembling, and takes only a few tentative steps, scarcely getting itself through the doorway. It fears this new freedom. I push hard at its obstinate rump, then prod it with my toe for encouragement. ‘I cannot wait all day for you to leave,’ I say. It walks into the alley then begins to trot briskly away. ‘Thank you,’ I mock, dropping a curtsey to its retreating rear.

  The sound of shouting is louder now, they must have got into the shop and be searching the rooms.

  I find myself in a maze of unfamiliar passages and ginnels. It is beginning to grow dark – great, red streaks stripe the sky. An orange glow marks the place where Levener’s still burns. I think I can smell cooking meat in the air but I might be mistaken. I walk in a wide circle, checking my pace so that I do not appear hurried or anxious.

  Emerging into the street after what I consider an appropriate interval, during which I sing several verses of Margaret’s last song to pass the time, I am surprised to see there are still flames and smoke rising. Little is left of the butcher’s. I had thought myself foolish to leave the candle and stick behind, but the fire has obliterated the scene so completely I could have left a signed confession with no fear of discovery. They will scarcely even know that Margaret was there, and her little hat will be all ashes by now, too.

  Neighbouring buildings are alight. The concerned occupants have formed a chain along which they pass buckets. Each one’s contents lands on the flames with a small hiss, smoke spurts briefly, but the fire burns on. Where is the Dutchman’s cart, to begin the extinguishing? There’s a flurry of bright cinders in the air and when one lands on my skirt it leaves a grey mark, despite my furious brushing. I am scarred with the song in my head, too. It is stuck as firmly as if it has taken root, and though I try and be rid of it with singing other tunes, it is to no avail.

  I turn for home. My heart almost bursts from my chest with a rush of happiness. It is done. The slow cold of approaching autumn nips at my toes and leaks in at my collar and cuffs, but I am as warm as if my bones were molten.

  The fire in the hall hearth is small, a tame cat compared to the tiger I unleashed. I hold my hands to it for a moment, more to consider my next plan than for warmth. Above the mantel, I am reflected in the cloudy glass. There is a line of dark spots on my temple and cheeks. I peer at them: they are little marks of ash, so I lean more closely towards my reflection to wipe them away.

  ‘Mistress!’ Grace grabs my arm and pulls me back. She points to where the hem of my dress spills over the grate like water. ‘You may burn your costume,’ she says. ‘Take care.’

  ‘How do you do, Grace?’ I ask. She is outwardly as milky and sweet as Margaret, though a great deal more sharp within.

  ‘I am well,’ she says carefully. Since I threatened her, except for when I fainted and was safely comatose, she has been wary of me: skirting the edges of rooms when I enter them and hugging the banister if we cross on the stairs. If I were her, I should have pushed me into the hearth just now instead of saving me from harm. Margaret melted like a waxen doll, but I suspect there would be a black heart left uncharred in my ashes.

  ‘Are you well, Mistress?’ Grace is a picture of concern. ‘I was afraid for your health when you fainted.’

  I feel aggrieved that she saw me so vulnerable and unguarded. ‘Oh, I am quite recovered. In fact, I feel as well as I ever did.’

  She smiles. ‘And the baby sleeps,’ she says, as though that will be our next topic. ‘She is in the nursery, of course, now that she is named.’ She lies in the very same cot where my brother died. The same curtains pull shut around it, the same soft blankets moult. I shiver. As if I’d found a maggot in an apple, a thought worms into my brain, wiggling insistently whichever way I turn. The baby is in the way, it murmurs as it slithers, she is in your way.

  Grace is frowning, looking at the clock face and counting on her fingers. ‘She sleeps too long,’ she says. ‘I must have been dozing too, and forgot the time.’ She yawns at the mention of her slumber.

  ‘There was much coming and going today and many visitors; the excitement will have tired her,’ I offer helpfully.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says, looking wary at my explanation – it is all the right facts but the wrong person delivering them.

  ‘I will go to her,’ I say. ‘I’ll soothe her if she grumbles.’

  She looks astonished. ‘Will you, Mistress? No, I cannot let you do that. I should see to her.’

  I seize her arm, holding a handful of her coarse woollen sleeve. She freezes in the act of leaving, torn between her duty and her weariness. ‘Yes, yes, I shall do it, you may go, Grace.’ I shoo her away. She hesitates for a moment more, waiting to see if I might change my mind, then scampers off. I’ll bet she cannot wait to get to Jane with this news.

  Babies are not silent when they sleep. Evelyn snorts and snores like a piglet. She stirs at the sound of the door. I pause, holding my breath in case even that sound disturbs her and she is still for a moment, then a floorboard creaks under my foot and the bedclothes rustle as she moves
again. ‘Hush,’ I whisper, but she does not know my voice and begins to whimper. ‘Hush,’ I say again. On tiptoe, I approach the crib. She cries now, a thin mewl punctuated with drawn gasps. I listen carefully. She cries again and hearing it makes my own breath catch in my throat with panic. This is a new sound: urgent and unhappy.

  I creep to the crib and peer in. She has kicked off her covers – her fat legs flail against the air and her mouth is open wide. Her black eyes meet mine and she stops crying as she examines my face. Instinctively, I place my hand on her forehead, to calm and reassure her. She wails again, but there is no power in it: no wonder neither Grace nor my mother come. She burns beneath my fingers. She is so hot that her skin feels dry and crisp as paper. ‘Hush,’ I tell her, but in her distress she is deaf to any soothing. She is consumed by fever. I slide to the floor beside her crib.

  Perhaps I should place a pillow over my sister’s face. It would surely be a blessing to us both. We suffer in our different ways simply because she is alive. She will be too weak to struggle much, I would not need to use any force. I lean against the cot’s wooden side, my eyelids itching with weariness; I long to close them and sleep. My arms ache where I held the door shut against Margaret’s escape and my legs are heavy, too. I haven’t the strength to fight even a baby. She sobs and her breath grates. I begin to breathe in and out in time with her rhythm and it is too shallow and quick for comfort. This runt is not a proper adversary and, besides, what is the use of my ending what I didn’t start? I may well change my mind in the future, but I have no plans for her tonight.

  I sigh to myself, resigned to an act of kindness. ‘Now, now,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘What’s all this fussing?’ I lift her hot little body from her bed. ‘Come along,’ I say, wrapping her shawl around her. On the landing, I call out and the bedroom doors fling open like traps. When my mother sees Evelyn in my arms she smiles, but as she takes her from me, the baby’s burning fever scalds her, too.

  Chapter 27

  Where is Fub? I have rehearsed his discovery of the scene. I have imagined pacing the roads between our houses with a cartographer’s eye for detail and still he does not come. Everything is burnt, he has only himself to bring – and I am sure he kept all his coins in his britches for safekeeping, both those that I stole for him and his small earnings.

  The doctor fusses about; each aspect of Evelyn’s recovery is reported to me now I have seemingly enrolled myself in the sisterhood of concern, and I imitate relief well enough. I think more of my mother’s horrified, fearful expression at her baby’s peril than I do of the child’s welfare – I do not want to see her so unhappy again. She embraced me so hard and for so long when the doctor pronounced the fever subsided, that I can still feel where she held me several hours later and it is a good bruise.

  Jane beckons to me as I sit with my hands in my lap, watching the window. ‘The butcher’s boy is here,’ she says. She doesn’t call him ‘Fub’. She bites her lip in concern, and takes my arm as we go to him. Neither of us pulls away. I like the little warmth of her and the slight pressure.

  Fub leans against the door as he did when I first saw him, but that is all that is the same. His eyes are bloodshot and the lower lids sag to reveal a livid inner rim. He is stooped. If you had marked where his head reached on the door frame that little while earlier, you would make a much lower mark now. He holds a hat in his hands and twists it in a miserable circle as he waits. It falls from his grasp when he sees me.

  ‘Anne,’ he says, not noticing that he uses my name in front of Jane. It is only the second time he has done so. Then he had fresh sap in him, clattering his hammer and springing to his feet. Now he droops like a flower out of water.

  Tears leak from each eye. I have never seen him cry and it makes my arms stick to my sides. I look around for Jane, but she has left us alone, which is uncharacteristically considerate of her. I am disappointed – I want a witness to this terrible exhibition.

  ‘Anne,’ he says again, hoarse and low. I go to him and put my head on his chest, though my arms still hang down. I can hear the gurgle of his guts and the steady thump of his heart. He puts his arms around my back. For a moment we stay silent, then I grip my hands in a fist behind his back and squeeze till he splutters. He is saying something into my hair but when I try to lift my head to hear him, he pushes his jaw down to stop me. The top of my skull aches with the pressure. ‘Fub!’ I protest and pull clean away from him. He looks damaged, as though he had been broken down to his constituent parts and reassembled ineptly. If it weren’t for the smell of him and his brown smudged eye, I might think him an impostor.

  ‘Lost, Annie,’ he says, and waits for me to speak.

  ‘Tell me what is lost,’ I say, wondering where he’ll start.

  ‘Levener’s place.’ His head hangs, he mutters as if he had food in his mouth. ‘The trade. Margaret.’ With this last word, his voice rises to a faltering treble.

  My thoughts gallop like a pack of dogs – I must be careful not to let them bite. ‘How are they lost?’ I say, as if they might perhaps be roaming in some woods.

  ‘All gone in a fire, Annie. A terrible destruction.’

  The dogs nip at my ankles. ‘Is Margaret . . . dead?’ I must have it confirmed just in case some foolish heroism prevailed. He nods. I hope I am not smiling. His manner suggests that I do not. The butcher’s shop will leave a great cavity like a pulled tooth. I had not given any thought to how the Leveners might deal with this gaping wound. I expect Titus will shrink with grief and it will be a great sorrow to him that he cannot conserve his own useful fat. Bet’s mournful ‘Ayees’ will deafen everyone for miles around.

  Suddenly, I remember the little dogs, squirming blindly under their mother. ‘The puppies!’ I say, and I begin to cry.

  Fub stares at me oddly, as though my tears run black. ‘You weep for them?’ he says, incredulous.

  ‘They would have burned where they were,’ I say, picturing them huddling together against an enemy they could not understand.

  Fub frowns. ‘You did not shed tears for Margaret, did you? Your heart is a strange thing: stone cold on one side and melted on the other.’ She built her own pyre, that one, I think.

  ‘They were innocent,’ I say.

  I wish I had not. Fub says the word over and over, along with ‘Margaret’ and ‘the good-hearted Leveners’ and suchlike. This interlude must finish soon. I wish I could go away and get on with something useful, returning when he’s done.

  ‘I’ll have to go back to my family now,’ Fub says. ‘I have nothing. No bed, no lodging, no work. Titus and Bet stay with her sister, but there is no room for me there.’ He looks away to some point in the distance as though he watched the disaster still unfolding.

  ‘Another employer would take you. Will you not stay? ’ I say in a whisper. I know the answer he will give, which made it easy to ask.

  ‘Annie, I must go home.’ He is still looking away. Then he turns to me and draws in his breath, looking nervous, as if he’s about to make a difficult speech.

  ‘Perhaps you would come with me? There are families you could work for, in service, till I am able to get a house for us.’ I have no answer for that. I realise that I never did. ‘It smoulders still,’ he says, because I do not speak.

  ‘The fire took hold quickly, did it not, and the cart was much delayed.’ I am thinking of the bright orange sky.

  ‘It was,’ he agrees.

  ‘When it did come, it was of no use then? The Leveners probably hadn’t the insurance mark displayed, so the men wouldn’t put their hoses to it.’

  He looks at me with sudden appraisal. ‘How did you know? I never told you that.’

  I shrug. ‘I am only guessing from what you say. If it is still going, then it can’t have had water sprayed.’ He continues to stare. ‘I know very little of fires,’ I finish, plaintively.

  The room is pregnant with silence
.

  ‘You know very little of fires,’ he repeats, quietly. ‘What do you know of, Anne?’

  He is an amateur mathematician, adding up numbers incorrectly in his head. I go nearer. He flinches, but I kiss him, flicking my tongue into the corners of his mouth and finishing with a nip. ‘I know of that,’ I say. ‘And this.’ I go to his britches, but he stops my hand.

  ‘Enough.’ He leans against the wall, looking sullen. ‘What did you think would happen?’ he says. ‘That we could keep our secrets together?’

  ‘Yours are so small you could hide them under your tongue with your mouth open. My secrets are big enough to choke me if I even try to speak of them.’ I stand with my hands on my hips, challenging him to fight back.

  He picks at a hang of skin on his thumb. ‘You are childish,’ he says, sounding like a little boy himself. ‘It is what children do, Anne,’ he explains, patiently. ‘They claim random actions as their own planning. You must have thought me foolish to believe you capable of such things. Or as wicked as you would like to seem.’

  ‘I did not think you the former. I hoped you had a modicum of the latter.’

  ‘Eh?’ He stretches his arms upwards then folds them behind his head. We might be in sunshine in an open field with him resting by a tree. He still has the expression of a superior wearily examining a junior, trying to cajole me into an apology. ‘Did you think I would come running to you with a knapsack, grab you by the hand and shout: ‘‘Come! Nothing stands in our way now! We shall run away together’’.’

  Now, that’s a beguiling picture. What would he have brought? Enough food for the journey and a stout blanket? He’d have to have bought them on the way here, otherwise he could only offer me a bag full of cinders. But I could carry provisions, instead. I look about the kitchen to see what I might take. I am hungry already.