The Book of Fires (13 page)

“What makes you suppose her to be here, wench?” he says, rudely. His voice is hoarse, and a smell of strong drink comes away from him. “There is a quantity of travelers pass through the Cross Keys any day you care to name.” He jabs his thumb at the busy yard as though I were slow-witted.

“But this is all I know of her,” I say, at a loss to describe her any further. Then I touch my neck above my collar.

“She has a gem here; not a diamond,” I say, and something like a grin goes over the man’s face, and he bends and says something that I cannot hear to the child, who giggles and runs away unsteadily into the street. Then he goes inside. Did he mean me to wait while the child went to find her? I sit on the mounting block in the freezing, bustling yard and pull my cloak about me; I wait until I am almost fainting with the cold, and still there is no sign of the child. Nobody speaks to me, and St. Dunstan’s clock strikes nine before I realize that she will not come. I am late for work now.

As I pass out of the yard, I look into the stables. It is rank and musty in there. I hear a whinny and the ring and clip of hooves. A boy is grooming a great coach horse, reaching up to pull his brush over the bulk of its flank. And as he glances up and meets my eye I see it is the coachman’s boy who took my guinea here before, and to my amazement he seems to recognize my face, and halts his brushing to shout for someone I cannot see inside the stable.

“Mr. Haines! Mr. Haines!” he calls, and shakes his hand out urgently as if to try to stop me.

In alarm I turn and hasten from the yard and then do not stop running down the street till I can go no farther. The air is so sharp that my quick breathing gives me a pain in my side. I look about, and thank God that no one has followed.

On my way back to the house I have a sense that I am watched, but when I look up I see only the fanned-out shape of a red kite hovering high in the sky above the streets, and I can almost feel its shadow crossing over me. There are so many eyes in the city.

I have missed breakfast, and how hungry I am, but there is no time for it now. As Mrs. Blight is not looking, I run my finger around inside the porridge pot and lick it clean.

“Lateness is an irritation I do not tolerate,” Mr. Blacklock says coldly, without turning around, when I try to slip into the workshop unnoticed. “You will not appear so tardily tomorrow, nor the next day, nor indeed any day henceforth in my employ.”

“I will not, sir,” I say. My heart pounds with awkwardness. I try to explain. “I was looking for . . .” Mr. Blacklock raises his hand.

“Spare me,” he snaps.

At the bench my ears strain for the sound of knocking at the door.

Why has nobody come looking for me?

Perhaps they have. My brother Ab? John Glincy? Or the headborough of the parish of Washington, having wind of the theft of Mrs. Mellin’s coins? I must be alert to any danger of discovery. But I fear I shall not know it when it comes.

 

 

Mrs. Blight is a talker. She fills the kitchen with noise as she works. Her teeth must be loose from the acid of her stream of words; it is a wonder that they do not fall out more readily. It is a relief when she nods off beside the fire in the early part of the afternoon. Her mouth drops open and I can almost hear her teeth rattling as she snores. She is quite fat, but like dough that has been proving for too long and sunk back into itself. Her chin hangs from her jawbone and has a life separate from the remainder of her face.

While we clear the plates, I ask Mary Spurren if she knows why Mr. Blacklock isn’t married.

She gives a slow blink.

“Mr. Blacklock had a wife four years ago.” She doesn’t look up from the sink. “She died.”

“She died!” I say.

“He had the doctors to her.”

“What did she have?”

Mary Spurren shakes her big head slowly. “There was blood, so much blood. I rinsed it away down the drain out there.” She nods into the yard. “At the end he was holding her up over the sheets and crying so loud it made your toes curl to hear it. Her arms was loose and hung out over the bed. I left the room until he stopped.” She sniffs and wipes her nose across her cuff. “When my mother died we just covered her up until the body could be buried.” A coal spits in the fire. “My father went to work the same as usual and then after a year or two had passed he married Alice Ebbs, who was next door a widow.”

I can’t help wondering whether they have discovered Mrs. Mellin’s body yet, sitting all cold in front of a cold grate. Perhaps she has flopped forward onto the floor. I swallow.

“I’m sorry that your mother died,” I say. Mary Spurren doesn’t reply; she swills the water over a pot and turns it upside down to drain. There is a silence, and then Mrs. Blight’s chair gives a little creak. When I glance at the shape of her beside the hob I see that her breathing is shallow and too quick for someone sleeping. Her eyes are open a slit and watching our movements around the kitchen. I must be careful about what I say in front of her. She is like a lizard, a fat cold lizard wanting gossip and particulars to feed on. I am glad to go back to the workshop when we are done, away from her nosiness.

“Completed fireworks are kept in the safe,” Mr. Blacklock says as I go in. “Come!” he barks, and I follow him out across the yard to a low brick building behind the spindly linden tree. Mr. Blacklock opens the door with a large key. It is gloomy inside. “Step carefully,” he warns.

“The safe is lined with lead,” Mr. Blacklock says, and unlocks a huge cabinet as tall as myself. The door is like a well-oiled jaw dropping wide. At first I do not understand what I am peering at. It is as ordered as a bee’s nest: lined with rows and rows of square compartments like a honeycomb and filled with packets. He opens another safe with the same great key.

“Rockets,” Mr. Blacklock says. It is bristling with sticks.

“A bouquet can be as much as six hundred rockets in a display, or even more for royalty or particular occasions. In Green Park three years ago, the Ruggieris’ pyrotechnic show to celebrate the peace sent up flights amounting to a figure greater than ten thousand rockets.” I am amazed, although I do not fully understand what it is a rocket does.

“In favorable conditions, a six-pound rocket will reach its apex at two hundred feet,” Mr. Blacklock says.

“Does it burn as it goes?” I ask, trying to picture it.

“A sudden upward rush of sparks and flame,” he says. “Which eases to a coasting to the high point of its flight, then, dependent on the garniture within it, a break of common stars with a report, or tailed stars, or fiery rain, and then a natural fall to earth, as all things fall, sparks fading and winking out: the equilibrium of the propulsion and burn demonstrating a remarkable balance of forces between release and tension.” He coughs.

“The gunpowder lies in the third safe. We receive delivery of powder from Soul and Tibbet about twice a month. There is not much; powder should be fresh.” He returns to the first safe and reaches for a large, tubular package.

“This is a Roman candle,” he says, placing it upon my palm. “A Roman candle does not leave the ground when fired, but breaks into a plume of sparks and is charged with stars that spit out like vivid balls of fire into the sky.”

It is twice as long as my hand.

“See how neat and perfectly it is bound,” says Mr. Blacklock. “How every work should be. The innards, too, the garniture, are flawless: precisely measured and evenly packed, whole stars layered with bursting charge and blowing powder and dark fire, which is a fire that burns invisibly to give pause and space within a burning time.” I don’t say a word, but I nod when he looks at me. The packet is curiously light for such complexity. It is dry and dangerous, like touching the body of a very large dead wasp: a papery crisp cylinder with a sting in its tail.

I look closely at the small printed image in an oval shape placed on the outer paper of the firework, about as large as a florin. The figure of a woman holds a prickling light like a bright thistle up against an inky darkness.

“Who is this? ” I ask Mr. Blacklock as he shuts the second safe.

“Barbara is the patron saint of firework makers. It is judicious to acknowledge her.” Smoothly he turns the key in the lock.

“Do you go to church on Sundays, sir?” I ask.

“I do not,” he replies brusquely. “St. Barbara comes from the print-shop by the thousand, to be glued onto each packet with a dab of boiled rabbit skin, sealing it up at the very last.”

How many times has she been propelled into the blackness, I wonder, with a tail of sparks behind her before she is burnt up or exploded apart? Perhaps there have been times when she has stayed undamaged, fluttering to earth like a printed petal. Mr. Blacklock motions me to put the firework back. “There is much to do,” he says. As we cross the yard to the workshop, a striped cat runs by with a damp rat stuffed into its jaw.

“Tell me,” Mr. Blacklock asks suddenly, later that day. “Do you find the smell in here disturbs you? ”

I am measuring sulfur into the beamscales as I have been shown. I let weights drop out of my fingers and click into the copper pan until it balances and swings free. Six ounces troy. “I’m not sure, sir,” I reply, with hesitation. I try to find the words to say just what I mean.

“It is like that particular smell of boiling a hen’s egg in a pot on the fire,” I suggest. “No, it is almost like that, but more powerful.” I am thinking hard. The sulfur is a dirty, sharp yellow against the polished warmth of the copper and the broken-up lumps are uneven.

I have explained it badly, and he is looking at me as though my answer is not enough.

“The smell in here leaves a dark, backward taste in my mouth,” I say.

I don’t try to add that the smell sets off ripples on the hairs on my arms, that it makes my mouth into a cavernous place where whole shapes of tastes explode and fade as I breathe in.

I realize that still he is looking at me. Why does he look at me so hard? His eyes seem to burn right through me. What a stupid thing I must have said, and my fingers go hot and big with clumsiness as they tip the sulfur out of the pan and into the mortar. Some of the pieces fall over the rim and onto the bench. He turns back to his work and his face, when I glance at it again, is flat with concentration.

Mrs. Blight comes to the door of the workshop and peers in.

“Mr. Blacklock, sir?” she warbles. “Can I borrow Agnes to run to the shop for me as I needs butter and with Mary being out all afternoon I’m up to my elbows, sir, quite frantic, and I shan’t want supper to be late.” She refuses to step inside.

Mr. Blacklock scowls. “Be quick then.” He jerks his head at me. “But don’t make a habit of it, woman.”

“Oh, thank you, sir,” she simpers.

Spicer’s Grocery is just across Mallow Square and around the corner, but the weather is cold and I am glad of my cloak. The shop is busy and crammed with goods.

“Just butter, please,” I ask shyly, looking about. Mrs. Spicer is large and neat, with reddish, webbed hands, like a goose.

“Working at Blacklock’s, aren’t you?” she says, friendly enough, waddling to the slab to cut the butter.

“I am,” I say.

“Half a pound? ” she asks. I nod.

“Always spot a new face around here, we do,” she says, wrapping it up. “See everyone going by and hear all the gossip. No chance for tedium! On account for Mr. Blacklock, and bought by . . . let me see if I can remember . . . Agnes!”

“That’s right,” I say uneasily, taking the packet. I am surprised that someone knows my name already.

“Eccentric, that man,” she says, wanting to chat. “Though talk has it he was an ambitious man four years ago, then when his poor wife died like that, so sudden . . . the spark seemed to go right out of him.”

It is true there are many eyes in the city. But as I turn to go, something occurs to me.

“Do you know a girl called Lettice? Lettice Talbot?” I ask, hopefully. “I am looking for her.”

Mrs. Spicer frowns. “Lettice Talbot. No, I don’t think so, love. Wait a minute. Spicer!” she shouts out suddenly, and a small man appears from a door at the back. “Do we know of any girl called Lettice Talbot? ”

Mr. Spicer pushes his spectacles further up his nose and shakes his head. “Not Talbot, no,” he replies. “There’s the Tallets, up by Cripple-gate, but they haven’t got daughters.”

“I thought not,” Mrs. Spicer says. “More than a ten-year we’ve been here, and know most people roundabouts. Never heard that name, love.” She smiles at me and turns to serve another customer.

“Good afternoon,” I say politely then, and leave the shop.

 

At the end of each day I am exhausted. My right arm aches like a heavy load from my shoulder as I spoon the supper into my bowl. Sometimes Mr. Blacklock prefers to take his evening meal after we have brushed the crumbs away and left him by the fireplace. He reads his heavy, leather-covered books, often without turning the pages. Once, as I stood up to leave, he looked up as if startled to see me there. The hallway seemed a lonely space outside as I walked through it to the stairs. Sometimes he stays in his study and we do not see him.

In the night I am often woken from a deep sleep by the sound of his footsteps creaking the tread of the stair outside my room, a weak circle of candlelight stretching under the gap in the door as he passes.

Other noises wake me, too. I hear the church bells about the house, each of their various clamors becoming known to me now.

But I freeze with terror when one night a strange deep bell tolls out above the others as they begin to chime midnight. It is like an omen.
God help us
, I am muttering as I scramble from bed and pull my shawl about me. What can it mean? At home when the church bell tolls unexpectedly at night it can only portend disaster of one kind or other. I rush from my chamber and fly up the crooked attic stairs to rap at Mary Spurren’s door.