The Book of Fires (25 page)

“Gentleman here, Mr. James Smith, Your Honor,” the constable says, and even as he indicates the man I do not know, I begin to have a creeping sense that I have come across him somewhere before. “Has a claim against Mr. Cornelius Soul with regard to some counterfeited currency. We’ve been through this matter all morning, sir,” he reminds him quietly.

“Yes, yes, man,” the justice says. “But this woman stood before us.” He waves a silk handkerchief toward me, and I smell his musty odor of stale sweat.

“Agnes Trussel, sir,” I say, when directed. I am dizzy with fear. “Of Blacklock’s Pyrotechny, off Basinghall Street.” My voice sounds far away, like someone else’s, and the lump in my stays, where the coins lie, feels burning hot.

The justice raises his eyebrow. “John Blacklock’s place. The fireworks man. I like those toys. Saw some . . . huh! When was it? ”

“Maybe last week, Your Honor?” the constable ventures. “At the—”

“Stick to the point, man.” The constable looks at his shoes.

“How well would you say that you know this Mr. Soul?” the justice asks me.

I think of his fingers pressing my cheeks, of his hand sidling about my waist unbidden.

“I know him well enough,” I say. “He . . . comes to the premises with frequency.”

The justice presses the handkerchief to his mouth and coughs into the silk. “And would you vouch for his hitherto good character?” His large stomach growls again.

“I would, sir.” I do not dare to glance at Cornelius Soul’s face when I add, “He is a sober and industrious man, sir. I have never heard of a dishonesty connected with him.”

The justice stifles a hiccup, and I see suddenly that he is fairly in liquor, though he conceals it well.

The man called Smith spits on the floor. “You should search her!” he demands. “There’ll be evidence against him on her, I know there’ll be, if you’d only find it!”

I have to stand on my leg heavily to stop it shaking, because I have just realized that he is the man with the round, stubbled face who stared at me so oddly in the coffeehouse. Why did he follow me?

“What kind of evidence can you be meaning, James Smith?” Cornelius Soul mocks him. “You do not know! You have nothing on me, nothing—and you know it. They have searched my lodgings and found nothing.” He turns to the justice. “This man clearly has a private campaign against me. What is his motive? Perhaps, being made a cuckold of so lately, he labors under the misapprehension that I am the cock who is pleasuring his wife so rigorously.”

The justice snorts.

Cornelius Soul points provokingly at the man. “You! Known as Crooked Jim! It ought to be your own premises on Little Wild Street they should be searching with their warrants, on quite some other matter.”

“I’ll get you, Soul!” the man shouts. “You enrage me!” He is frothing at the mouth. “I’ll make sure you piss vinegar before the year’s out, you son of a bitch. I’ve got my eye on you and your friends. I have for months.” And he points at me. “Even watching where
she
works to get some dirt on you. Bold as brass up to the door, and you was lucky no one answered.”

Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, something forms on the face of the justice. He holds up a finger.

“Suddenly you speak on naming terms, when I distinctly heard you say that you were unacquainted with this man before this incident? I sense a loosening of what is what.” He draws out a watch with difficulty from his pocket. “And time is short today. They are making a fool of the law, which is inadmissible,” the justice booms. “Dinnertime is pressing upon us, Mr. Constable. I have an appointment I must not overlook, and do not want more blasted paperwork.”

He clears his throat.

“I sense a personal gripe in the bowels of the prosecutor here. This will not come to trial, unless costs are no object. Mr. Smith,” he demands, “can you face an acquittal, should it reach the next assizes, man?”

The man spits on the floor.

“No response from the prosecutor, sir,” says the constable.

“As I thought.” The justice hiccups again. “Pray, how has this come so far in its proceeding, Mr. Constable? ” he asks testily.

The constable sets his jaw. “My job is to apprehend those to whom I am directed as digressers, sir, not to judge the merits of a case. I present them swiftly, and take a pride in it. And the name’s Williams, sir,” he adds hopelessly.

“Your cause has failed for today, Mr. Smith,” the justice calls across to the man with the round face, and he goes to the door and flaps his hand in our direction. “Take them away, Mr. Constable.” With deliberation he pushes his hat onto his periwig, and turns about. “I do not want to see any one of you again, unless a case is watertight. Will there be a carriage to be had from here? Damn these delays, this city runs so poorly.”

I am surprised to hear Cornelius Soul speak up as we come out into the brightness of the street. He edges closer to the justice.

“Need any fowling powder, my lord, at a special price?” he flatters him, with a wink at me. I can hardly believe it. “South coast quality fineness, this lot just in, fresh as a baby, for your sporting requirements.”

“Get out of here, man,” the justice says.

“Lead shot?”

“Are you a half-wit? ” the justice barks. I pull at Cornelius Soul’s arm to come away.

“Mr. Soul, this is a serious matter,” I say quietly. “Try to be sensible.” And thank God but a hackney carriage rolls up and the justice heaves himself in.

“Westminster!” we hear him bellow importantly, and he raps at the floor with his cane. As he drives away, the man Smith shouts from across the street.

“Damn your eyes, Soul. I’ve been following you. You’ll slip up soon enough and I’ll have you tucked up yet! I’ll make it my business.” And he turns away down an alley and is gone. What can Cornelius Soul have done to make this man dislike him so?

We are outside the Prince of Orange, and the smell of smoke and stale sweet beer drifts out as a man pushes his way inside.

“It was worse than a pigpen in there, in the roundhouse,” I say, my legs weak with relief. My fingers press at my stays to make sure the coins are secure.

“You want to see the inside of Newgate, if you think that is bad,” Cornelius Soul says.

“I do not want to see Newgate.”

“It is a mistake to have enemies,” he admits ruefully.

“It must be,” I say. That at least is one problem I do not have.

“Drink a dram with me, Miss Trussel,” Cornelius Soul suggests, touching my shoulder.

“I should get back,” I say, hesitating, and he shrugs his velvet coat and takes a step closer to the tavern’s open door.

“And that’s it, is it!” I say, nettled, now that the immediate danger seems to be gone. “You’ll just amble in there and leave me to return home at my own pace with no protection. Will you not even say sorry to me for all the trouble you have caused today? ”

“You would have come to no harm there in the roundhouse, Miss Trussel,” he says easily. “My clean little acquaintance in her neat working apron and fresh rosy cheeks come to save my bad character.”

“You do not know . . . me,” I blurt out, and stop myself. I nearly said,
You do not know what I have to hide.

He grins as if he knows, but he does not. He lowers his voice, leans toward me and touches my chin lightly with his finger. “I would be obliged if you could refrain from mention of this matter to John Blacklock. He is a steadfast maverick, but I do not know if he would be tolerant of such . . . irregularities, inconclusive or otherwise.”

“He may get to hear of it,” I warn, holding his gaze. “Though not from this mouth.” There is a shrill mew of a kite overhead. “We are always watched by some sharp eye somewhere, Mr. Soul.”

“Let me make it up to you soon, Miss Trussel,” he says as I turn away and go down the street. And he calls out suddenly:

“I am indebted to you, indebted, do you hear!” And I realize that he is right, and I cannot help but smile to myself about it. It is something in my favor.

I walk alone back to the house and come to no harm, as he predicted.

 

That night I heave my unbalanced bulk into bed and lie back, almost choking with the weight upon me now. In my worn cotton shift I look surely like a great sow, though when I lift my shift to my chin and turn to study my bare blind swollen belly in the cracked and spotted looking glass upon the washstand, it could not be more nakedly a shocking human sight, smooth and ripe inside my skin. I see that a faint, dark line that I did not have before is creeping up from the base of my belly. I try to remember whether my mother carried such a mark when she was bearing children, but I cannot. I look and look. It is not vanity that makes me stare so concentrated at myself I am trying to believe that this thing is happening to me, as I have realized that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot take it in.

And how sharply alone I feel when I do that, staring at my own shape. I do not even know myself now: the self I knew, was sure of knowing, being lost behind me in the past, somewhere in the hills perhaps, still running up the slope with Ann that hot afternoon not long before she left, flinging ourselves down on the short nibbled grass at the top of the ridge, at the top of the Downs where I belong.

Even the air was blissful that particular day, just before the trouble started. The sheep were lazy and made scarcely a noise. The September sun was hot and baking the grasses and thyme and the flat creeping spans of thistles by our heads. At first I thought that there were no birds singing, and then I heard a lark, winding the tidy thread of its song up and down between heaven and earth. It was higher than us. We lay with our mouths open, drinking the sun in while we could.

“What are you afraid of, Agnes? What thoughts make you shrink in terror when you have them? ”

I scratched my head. The blue sky went up and up above us.

“I am afraid of the dark, and of the Devil,” I said, turning and laughing at her for asking such a question. “Why, what thing scares you? ”

Ann said, “I am afraid of childbed. I am afraid of being married, and of being someone’s wife.” She picks a stem of sorrel and twirls it about before she chews it.

“Mother is,” I said. “Somebody’s wife.”

“I know,” was all she said.

“I would like a shop,” she went on, surprisingly. “Like Mrs. Langley’s shop in Pulborough, selling ribbons and buttonhooks and yards of muslin.” I didn’t need to reply. We lay there in the sunshine on our backs, comfortable and knowing that this could never be.

“What would you like to do, in time?” Ann rolled over suddenly onto her belly and looked at me, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun.

“I don’t know,” I said, sitting up and looking toward the haze where the sea was a strip of blue in the distance. “I cannot see the future. There is no point in trying to; it will never be as one imagines. What dreams can women have in this life that are not battered down by experience?” I laid my fingers on the warm prickle of grasses, on the flat of the earth.

“Think harder,” she urged. “Picture yourself there, ahead in the unknown, doing something—what are you doing? You are so clever, Agnes, you could do anything.”

I tried this, to please her.

“No. Nothing.” I laughed aloud. “It is blank. And why are you asking me ? ”

“No proper reason,” she said, looking away.

A cloud went over the sun then, and something of the warmth of the afternoon was already gone. We picked ourselves up, brushed off the bits of mosses and made our way down the steep slope to the cottage.

At suppertime my father asked abruptly if Ann would share her intentions with the rest of the family. I had no notion of what he meant. I looked at Ann. She lifted her head and looked at the back of the room. I stared at her. There was a long red scratch on the side of her face that I hadn’t noticed earlier.

She said loudly, “I’m going away. On Monday. I am going to work at Wiston House.”

“You can’t!” I said, appalled.

Her face looked away into the fire, so that I could no longer see the scratch across her cheek.

My spoon slammed down on the trestle.

“But you did not . . . you did not say!” I stood up. “All afternoon, it was so sunny, and you did not say!” I tried to keep my fury from bubbling up. Fury that Ann was leaving me, that she was able.

“How could you hide that from me?” I shouted out, like an idiot, and looked toward my mother in despair. I jabbed my finger at Ann, but still she would not turn her face to me.

“I don’t know why you should be so upset now, Aggie love,” my mother said, almost so I couldn’t hear. “These things do happen. That’s how it is. Finish your broth.” She nodded at my half-finished bowl and wiped at spat-out broth on Hester’s chin with a piece of rag.

Hester started to cry, her mouth square with misery.

“You’re scaring the babies, Agnes,” my brother Ab said. I could tell by his voice he was angry, too. William’s eyes were huge in his head. I was ashamed. After all, I should know that nothing I could say would make a difference. The round spoon swam before me, and the flames of the fire behind grew huge and wobbling and dazzled me as I blinked back the tears and stifled them.

“You’ll get those beans in tomorrow from the bottom field,” my father commented into the silence that followed, picking at his teeth with his thumbnail.

“Beans?” I said.

“That’s right.”

“But it is a Friday!” I cried, and my voice shook. “The afternoon I have my lesson.”

My father shrugged that he did not care. “They’ll not keep, not in this heat.”

 

 

That night when we were laid down on the ticking and trying to sleep, Ann’s fingers reached out and looked for mine in the dark. How cold they were, which made her seem already far away. Selfishly, because I did not know what else to do, I pulled my hand from hers and did not speak. My unsaid thoughts rose up inside and choked me. I was afraid for her. I was afraid for all of us. I was afraid of having nobody to speak to in the way I spoke to her.