The Book of Fires (41 page)

“She can ask about for you, though, surely? ”

Mary Spurren doesn’t reply.

Heavily I climb the stairs to my chamber, where a half hour of silence turns into an hour. The mice gnaw, undisturbed, at something beneath the washstand as if I were already gone. I have been sitting motionless upon the made bed in my chamber for quite some time. I am ready to leave after the funeral this afternoon. My belongings are packed once more into the oilcloth; the dress that was my sister’s that no longer fits me, my small linen, my Bible with the strip of grass between the pages keeping mark of where I am.

I have scrubbed at my boots with the blackening brush.

I have combed my hair and tied it neatly beneath my cap. Everything is washed. The lid of my hand salve is pushed in tightly so it cannot leak.

I will not take off Mrs. Blacklock’s good black dress after the service, I decide; somehow I cannot. I am owed one week’s wages, and though four shillings would scarcely pay for this garment’s cuffs, let alone the silky fabric or the stitching of it, I reason that it was not new.

I look at the bundle. I suppose I am in a kind of shock that my life here is all over. Outside, someone whistling passes down the street. The early morning sun is shining out there.

All my learning in the art of pyrotechny, pointless now, I think, angrily. All his endeavor to advance the art toward a blaze of color, lost, wasted. I feel ill with unhappiness when I think that I will never put a taper to my own perfect rockets, candles, gerbes. My stupid face flushes to think I ever imagined I could have the luck to be engaged in such skilled enterprise. For nigh on six months I had forgotten who I am, thought myself better than I really am: a country peasant girl, the daughter of laborers. I blink to see more clearly through the tears.
Self-pity
, I say viciously inside my head, kicking my heels against the bed.
Who did you think you were, behaving in that way as if you were better than you are, than you deserve?

My heart beats in sharp rushes of blood until I feel faint. Lying down, I do not sob but grit my teeth together as if my life depended on it.

Here on the bed my head booms with nothing.

What shall I do?

I can’t turn about, return home now, the great bulk of my body brimming with impending motherhood. If I stay here I will not find work. No one will take me.

In truth, I can scarcely believe it.

Glancing up to see if the latch is tight on the closed door, I pour Mrs. Mellin’s coins out upon the blanket and push them about, as if they might harbor some ideas.

But St. Mary’s or St. Dunstan’s strikes ten. I should go down. And before I do, I hide the orpiment that I have taken from the workshop, the little jar of yellow poison.

In the kitchen I look about the shelves and pantry, but know there is no food prepared, and we have found that Mrs. Blight also took with her the ham that was kept in the meat safe. But there is fat, and flour. I am ashamed to think of eating on the morning of a funeral but a hunger gnaws inside me, and soon Joe Thomazin will be sidling in like a shadow. I go to Mary Spurren and touch her arm.

“Make us a pudding,” I suggest, because I cannot think what else to say. “When it is cooked we can arrive at a plan. It would be better to take stock of our predicament with a filled stomach, as the plans we make will prove less desperate, not so impetuous.” We should eat what we can, I think; it is not stealing to make the best of what we have. It is not stealing to take a dead man’s victuals, as after all the dead cannot eat them for themselves.

The muffled thump at the door startles us both.

A
fat solicitor has come. He acts strangely at the door, bowing to me, very polite, as though he has mistaken me for someone else.

“My name is Boxall, madam,” he says, removing his hat and bowing again, so that he has the mildly busy figure of a wood pigeon.

Why has he come? Does he not know that Mr. Blacklock has died? I stare at him.

Mary Spurren stands outside the kitchen, wiping the pastry from her fingers onto her apron. Mr. Boxall glances down the corridor at her, then holds his hat against his chest, as if to make his voice more quiet when he leans forward.

“Could I suggest,” Mr. Boxall asks me, “that we withdraw to somewhere more private? ”

I look at his hat in confusion. Perhaps he means the noise from the street distracts him here. It is a warm day to be wearing such an overcoat, and I see he is sweating at the sides of his head under his wig. Perhaps he needs to sit down. In time I remember the white flour all over the kitchen table. His overcoat is so clean that I must take him to the study.

When he closes the study door behind him, it is such a strange thing to do that for a moment I think that he is going to try to take advantage of me. It is quiet in here. But he stands awkwardly and after all he does not even sit, so I take a chair myself. It is something of a relief to take the weight from my feet. The warm air makes me dizzy and top-heavy, and sometimes my ankles feel as if they cannot take another ounce upon them. I try not to rub at my belly when the child presses on my ribs, altering the way it lies. The good dress gathers in folds about me where I sit before the unlit fire.

“With regret, madam, these melancholy circumstances . . .” he begins vaguely, shaking his head, so that the sweat glistens. “May I offer my condolences.”

I open my mouth to reply, but he interrupts me. “I will be brief,” he says, fumbling inside his case. “I am here to tell you of the contents of Mr. John Blacklock’s last will and testament.” He clears his throat and draws out some spectacles from a little pouch, and smoothes a paper he has opened in front of him. “In short, you are the sole beneficiary, Mrs. Blacklock.”

“No, no, I am not . . .”

“It gives you the full meath of the business.” He sweeps on, heedless of me.
“Touching such worldly estates as God hath been pleased to bless me with I do dispose of the same as followeth. I do hereby devise and bequeath unto the said Agnes Blacklock nee Trussel my said wife all my goods, chattels, money, bills, bonds and my personal estate whatsoever of what nature kind or quality soever upon this consideration nevertheless and my mind and will is that my wife Agnes Blacklock shall after my decease out of my real and personal estate pay and discharge all my debts and funeral expenses. Item I give to Mary Catherine Spurren my servant the sum of eight pounds.”
He looks up. “I do not need to read on; I can see you are weary. In conclusion I daresay it is no surprise to learn that Blacklock’s Pyrotechny, the house and premises, will belong to yourself, madam.”

“No, no,” I say again. I am embarrassed. “You mistake me! Mrs. Blacklock is dead!”

He mops his damp temples with a white handkerchief. “I am afraid you may have to speak up, madam, my hearing is not as it was once. Keen as a cat’s it was; in my youth I could hear the shriek of a fishwife at Billingsgate from the site of London Stone!” He titters ruefully; the light shines on the pink of his forehead.

“What is the date of the will, Mr. Boxall?” I say loudly, attempting to disentangle the error before us.

He pushes his spectacles back on his nose and consults the document. He reads aloud again. “
This twelfth day of May in the year of our Lord God seventeen fifty-three
. Mr. Blacklock drew this up with me nigh on three weeks ago, Mrs. Blacklock. Three weeks ago.” He looks down at his papers again. “Indeed, I note it is the day subsequent to the happy occasion of your marriage vows, Mrs. Blacklock.” On seeing my frown he looks again. “Yes, that is correct, the certificate of marriage is here and clearly has it as the eleventh of May.”

“The marriage certificate!” I say, incredulous at the turn this is taking. I refuse to look at the paper he holds out to me. “I do not know how an error of this proportion can have gathered like this!” I say. He cups his open palm to his ear. “I beg your pardon, madam? Are you suggesting that Parson Speke of Fleet Lane did not conjoin you in matrimony on the day described? That would be most irregular.” He smiles in sympathy at me. “May I suggest, respectfully, that your memory has become exhausted under the strain of the circumstance? It is most easily done in a state of grief. A day lost here, a day lost there.” He lowers his voice to the whisper of a man sharing a trade secret. “I assure you that it would not have been written, were it wrong. In ink!”

“But it is impossible!” I say. “Mrs. Blacklock has been dead for four years!” I am in despair. I repeat, more clearly this time, “There has been a mistake! There is something wrong with your document! A mistake!” But he does not hear me, shuffling his papers about in his ledger. What is wrong with the man! I grow impatient that he does not listen to me. “Mr. Boxall!” I say sharply, at which he turns to me.

“Madam, I understand,” he says, smoothly now. “You do not wish to talk of business matters so close on the heels of your great loss, but Mr. Blacklock petitioned me strongly to come directly to his premises and speak with you upon his death.”

“You do not understand,” I begin. “There has been—”

“Oh, madam! But I do. My own wife passed lately away; the loss is like a sore wound in me still. Forgive my intrusion.” He raises his hand before him in deference when I try to speak. “There is a deal of legal matters that we need to work through, but we do not need to discuss this here today. Of this I shall remain quite firm! You have other pressing matters to attend to.” He beams at me apologetically, and looks about him for the door.
What is the use?
I think.

“Thank you, Mr. Boxall,” I say.

He holds up the marriage certificate one last time and then closes the ledger. “He put the document into my hand himself,” he says. “He was more than insistent that I contact you promptly should misfortune befall him; he impressed upon me its importance; indeed he wrote not once but twice about the matter, as though he thought I might not do so otherwise.” He pauses.

“I am distressing you, madam, forgive me,” he says, on seeing my face. “If you need to talk after the funeral this afternoon, I will be there.”

Mr. Boxall bows and lets himself out. I do not move. My mind is being drummed with thoughts, like a hailstorm in April will batter the blossoms away from the pear tree.

 

What is it? What is that silence?

There is something wrong in here, and it is only after a while that I remember that Mrs. Blight has stolen the clock, so that I do not know how much of the hour has passed when Mary Spurren comes into the room.

“What in heavens are you doing, sitting down in that chair?” she says. “What of Blacklock’s business did that man want with you? Mr. Blacklock’s business is surely the concern of his solicitor.”

I look at her. “That was Mr. Blacklock’s solicitor,” I say.

Mary Spurren stares uncomprehending. She has flour on her white face.

“I have to go out,” I say.

T
he stench in the street tells me how close to the Rules of the Fleet I must be. A cluster of children are scooping for fishes in the Ditch, the putrid channel that flows sluggishly along the edge of Ludgate Hill, discharging itself into the Thames at Blackfriars. It runs fitfully, and scarcely at all in the summer: a runnel of excrement and bloody butchers’ waste from the Smithfield slaugterhouses. They say, among the comfortable, that there is much talk of the need to cover it over, but in the meantime the resourceful poor make what use of it they can. I heard of a man who skinned dead dogs in the Ditch for their pelts, but who drowned down there, caught out by the tide.

As I turn toward Fleet Lane, a movement catches the corner of my eye. It has been two days since something solid passed my lips. I must be faint, I think. I go to a barrow woman selling pies on the corner.

“Excuse me, madam,” I say. Why do I call her madam? She will think me odd as I wear a fine dress and look like a person of some means at least, but no matter. “I am looking for a Parson Speke . . . Did I see a pig?” I add. She looks stonily at me. “Give me one of your pies,” I say.

The barrow woman becomes promptly genial. “You may have caught a glimpse; there can be hogs, down on the slime. They feed on what they find there, God help them, then come up out the Ditch and run amok from time to time.” Her voice is rough but easy. She leans on the handles of her barrow.

“Are they . . . wild? ” I ask stupidly. She looks more closely at me and then scornfully up and down Mrs. Blacklock’s mourning dress in a way that shows me that she has no more regard for ladies in good dresses than for others. Being a little too long for me it has soaked up dirt and damp from the gutter. She cannot see my shoes.

“Wild? They are as owned as you or I.” She nods up the street. “Speke’s wedding place is just up there, past the Hand and Pen. Business, is it?” she pries. “Or something more . . . personal? ”

“A private matter,” I reply.

“Ah,” says the woman as though she knows, and she does not.

“He is dead. My husband is dead,” I retort, to shut her up. “He is to be buried today.” The ridiculous words fly from my mouth and the space that they leave behind in there floods over with a bitter taste.

There is a lull in the carriages rattling by. The coins all look the same inside my palm. When I look up I see in her face just a morsel of pity, and that is worse; it brings her too close, and lends her satisfaction. She wraps the pie and puts Mrs. Mellin’s coin up to her mouth to bite at and examine it. Her teeth are black and stumpy.

“Ah well, then,” she concludes with a shrug. “Some say that better off we are without a master.” Mrs. Mellin’s coin makes a yellow glint as it slips into her pouch.

I do not wait for any change from this woman. How heartless and exact is her presumption, and how I wish it were not so.

I do not see the pigs again. Turning the corner, I discard the revolting pie at once, shaking the contents of the packet out into the street, and rub my fingers against each other to remove the grease. Two rooks fly down noisily to fight and pull at the crust of the pie and the cooked stale meat. How I hate rooks and their black feathers dropping out. I hurry on until I see on my left the mouth of a mean alley and a faded sign that bears the image of a pair of stiff hands clasped together by the fingers. The lettering reads
Marriages Performed Within
.