The Book of Fires

19
It is not far from springtime, even in London. I see in the yard the linden tree has new buds now, and the milder weather means great drenches of rain between the sunshine. The clouds roll over the rooftops.
At home in Sussex the great tit will be sawing at his endless, tuneless song from the edge of the apple tree. Spikes of bulbs will be breaking into crocus cups and the fingery spread of anemones. There will be the crack of squirrels in the dry branches, and the earthy sap smell of spring about, as distinctive as the scent of a small child: a smell that quickens the step and causes songs to loosen in the throat. The magpie and jay and jackdaw will be flying across open spaces with twigs in their beaks, or scraps of yellowing wool from the backs of sheep. The babies will be outside playing in the mud and dabbling wet fingers in the water trough. There will be eggs for cooking with again, and the prospect of fresh butter not too far away. The water in the pail will not freeze nor need to be broken for the pig to drink from it, though there may yet be some frosts.
And then I remember that this year there is to be no pig. And I begin to worry again. How I long for some word of my family, of Ann and Lil, of little William, who will be taller and advancing in his boyhood.


“At home we use saltpeter for curing pork, sir,” I say, when Mr. Blacklock puts a dark glass jar in front of me. “One spoonful mixed into half a peck of common salt is enough to keep the meat from spoiling.”
“Indeed, saltpeter, not a common salt, has many qualities,” Mr. Blacklock says. “There are many kinds of salt; for instance baker’s salt, salt of lemon, salt of hartshorn, salt of wormwood, Glauber’s salt, Epsom salt, salt ash, salt of amber, salt of lead, salt of crab’s eye, salt of oxbone, salt of lime, digestive salt of Sylvius.” He stops to cough.
“Saltpeter, being potassium nitrate, is more usually known in the trade as niter.”
I think of how my hands become sore with rubbing the salt on the meaty flitches of ham. Wet and fractious under the skin of my palms, the sharpness of the salt dissolves steadily into a briny, bloody liquor in the base of the trough. The kimmelling tub was what my grandmother called it, though I never knew why. That tub must be four times older than I am.
Excessive use of saltpeter turns a pickling salt green and the resulting meat will be dark and hard.
“Pig meat is fresh pork,” I remember telling William. “But pork means salt pork, strictly speaking. Sometimes the meaning of a word can shift with what we say or how we say it.”
“What a trouble it is then, not to make a mistake!” William had said. His face was thoughtful.


The hatted man called Mr. Torré comes to talk of business, and he emerges with Mr. Blacklock from the study after an hour, just as I pass down the corridor with a message from another customer. The empty study smells of coffee. Mr. Torré turns at the front door on his way out.
“By the by, Blacklock,” he says, like an afterthought, “those Roman candles you supplied last week were of exceptional quality. Exceptional.”
Mr. Blacklock sees me standing as I wait to speak to him and he nods his head in my direction. “My new assistant made that batch from start to finish,” he says.
Mr. Torré’s eyes widen, and he looks at me closely. “Those were good works, Blacklock, good works.” I glance quickly at my boots to hide the small flicker of pride I feel. How grubby they are.
The wind makes the door shut loudly as he leaves.
“I am sorry for him,” Mr. Blacklock remarks when he is gone. “It is hard not to take on something of his loneliness after a morning in his company.”
I am puzzled.
“What do you mean, sir? He has a wife!” I say. “I saw him walking with her once on Sunday, toward the park. She wore a shawl under her hat, as though feeling the wind would give her an earache.”
Mr. Blacklock coughs. “There are many different kinds of being alone,” he says. “His wife is ill. They say she may not see another winter.”
I look up. Mr. Blacklock is pasting seals of St. Barbara onto finished candles. Outside, the yard is flooded with the song of the wren. He looks critically at his work, squints at a case against the light from the window and then puts it in the half-filled crate. His chair scrapes the floor as he gets up.
“Do you still suffer from the loneliness of losing your family?” he asks me, without warning.
I hesitate.
“Blood is what ties a family together in hours of want, sir, and . . . sometimes that is all we have to share,” I say slowly, not quite answering his question. I do not want to lie to Mr. Blacklock anymore. “I am not alone,” I add. “I have my sister Ann, and she has me.” The homely thought of Ann’s face makes tears spring to my eyes and I blink down at my work. How are you, Ann? I imagine myself calling the great distance. How are you all, so far, so lost to me?
“And what of marriage? ” John Blacklock says abruptly, sitting down before the filling-box. “What do you think of marriage? ”
“Marriage, sir?” I say.
I do not know what kind of answer I should make. It is a strange question that I do not understand. Does he mean that he has seen through my plan to capture the hand of Cornelius Soul? Does he disapprove of it? My heart races at the thought of that. I wish that I could ask for his advice. I open my mouth and close it tight shut again. It is my own business. Why does it make me so uncomfortable? My heart beats faster still. I touch the skin above my stays and press at it. What of marriage? The puzzling question wavers in my head.
And then I realize that he is thinking of his dead wife. I do not answer then, as I cannot think of anything to say, and it would seem that he forgets to wait for a reply as he bends and works upon his rocket with deeper concentration and does not mention it again.
I would have said, if pressed, that new blood is forged by marriage in the making of children.
The tap, tap of his wooden hammer goes on all morning.

“I have a mind to show you the method for making a more complex firework, a rocket for which I hold particular regard,” Mr. Blacklock says later. He goes out to the safe across the yard and returns with a strange double firework in his hands, like a cross.
“A Caduceus rocket must always be brilliant white. In ancient times, the Caduceus was a white wand, borne aloft by heralds declaring peace on battlefields,” he explains. “It represents therefore the first stride toward the resolution of conflict. It is a powerful symbol that must be used respectfully and sparingly to preserve its magic.” The cough rattles in his chest.
“I like a single Caduceus rocket to commence a display,” he goes on. “Blazing its message across the sky as a sign that our explosives are not to demonstrate or threaten of destructive might or forces.”
“Are you making your peace with the world?” I interrupt, without a thought before I speak. My face flushes instantly. I meant no disrespect.
Mr. Blacklock looks at me without smiling.
“Perhaps I am,” he says.
“The construction of the Caduceus rocket takes the form of the crux decussata, or cross on the diagonal,” he continues, holding it out. “You can see that a Caduceus rocket is not a single unit but two rockets fastened together at the waist in a shape like the letter X.”
Yellow flax is twisted firmly about them in a solid, waxy binding.
“The propelling action of the rockets means that they proceed at variance with one another, and there is a remarkable tension produced by the counterthrust, which causes the whole to rotate fiercely and results in a beautiful screw of fire across the sky.
“It is not an easy rocket in any sense; neither to make, nor to fire, nor in motion. At no point in its arc can it coast smoothly on its own velocity. It is always endeavoring, always straining. Like two notes sounding a harmonious conflict, its balance is perfect, never slack or uneven.”
Finally Mr. Blacklock tips the rocket upside down to show the foot of the cases. “It is fired by a conjoined length of quick match inserted in the end of each.” Something occurs to me.
“When you say it must be white,” I ask curiously, “what do you mean? Do you think that colored sparks and flames are possible to make? ”
Mr. Blacklock seems to stiffen. He turns aside and waves his hand dismissively. “That is talk for another day,” he says.
I want to make sure that I have grasped his implication fully, so I try as best I can to sum up what I know. “You have taught me how to make golden, silver, brilliant and ruddy fires with degrees of warmth or coldness or intensity within a range of hues lying between white and orange, sir. But you have never mentioned color before. Color is green, crimson, violet: rainbow colors. You have not said a word about colored fire.”
“I would not have,” he says shortly.
“But is it possible?” I ask, timidly. I would like to know.
“Enough talk, I said!” he barks, and he puts down the rocket and strides from the room. He is irritated by my questions.
“Imagine!” I breathe aloud to Joe Thomazin when I hear the door to the study slamming shut. “If there could be fire like a rainbow! ”
Perhaps I did not understand him properly.

Outside in the yard the light becomes blue with approaching dusk. When Mr. Blacklock returns we speak of other matters. He takes a paper from his waistcoat and asks me to prepare two dozen rocket cases for a small, private order he would like completed within a day or so. He comes closer and stands beside me. His nine fingers spread out firmly as he leans them on the bench. I notice there is a neat packet by my tools that, now that I come to think of it, has sat there for days. Whatever it is, he must have forgotten to put it away. He tells me the bore of rocket he requires, and the strength of powder needed. “You have much to learn,” he says. “And so, it seems, do I. Life throws up matters when you are least prepared for them.” He looks at me, and then, as though he cannot keep it to himself a moment longer, begins to tell me something altogether unexpected.
“By chance I was in the Mitre Tavern near the Royal Society at Crane Court last night,” he begins. “And a herd of men of science poured in, freshly puffed up from their lecture.” He snorts with contempt. “The loudness of their superior knowledge was the only thing audible as they filled up the room with tobacco smoke and opinions. I was poked in the ribs in the crush and vowed to leave, but as I swallowed down the last of my drink, I caught an exchange that sharpened my ear at once.” He leans toward me. “Hearing the words ‘artificial fireworks,’ I turned to see a man in a thick hat boasting of something that he had seen with his own eyes. I heard him say ‘on my return from Moscow.’ Then I distinctly heard him say ‘a bright and spirituous green fire.’ ”
“Green fire!” I exclaim. “So it is possible!”
“I became rooted to the spot and strained my ears for more, but the hubbub increased, and by the time the man had finished his little speech he was so walled in by backslapping confederates I could not approach him.”
“What can you do about it?” I ask. “How can you—”
“Do?” he interrupts. “Look for the precedents. I read that language well enough.”
He turns to his work again, and there is no sound but that of the fire roaring softly inside the stove.
“Blasted Russian secrets,” he mutters to himself.
And without warning, as though it, too, is listening to him, the child moves distinctly inside me, like a dark feather creeping about in my belly. There it is again. And a dread that he will despise me soon breaks over me like a flood coming down from the hills. I am awash with fear. I am quite cold with it.
The child is almost all that I have. And its existence will ensure that anything else will be taken away from me.


Later I have to go to him and ask him to repeat his instruction. He glances at me strangely then.
“The listening ear should always be left ajar to possibility,” he rebukes. I look down at my yellowing hands.
“I am sorry to appear discourteous,” I say. “It is only that . . .”
“You are thinking of your family?” he asks me unexpectedly.
And I hesitate before I say, “I suppose that I am.”
“There is something for you,” he adds, and I realize that he is pointing at the packet on the bench.
“Is there? From whom?” I ask. “From . . .” It must be something left by Cornelius Soul, I think, and my heart gives a leap. My plan is working.
“Myself,” he says abruptly. He lifts on his greatcoat and then seems to hesitate, as if to watch me open it. Peeping inside the packet, I see that he has bought me a pair of brand-new gloves. I take them out, amazed. I pull them on and bend and straighten all my fingers one by one. Their supple creamy kidskin is like a second skin on me.
“Thank you, sir,” I say, looking up, but find the door has shut and he is gone out already.
I am sorry I cannot work in them.
They look too perfect. It is disrespectful to dirty them with chemicals and paste and charcoal dust, though I do not want to seem ungrateful.
Mr. Blacklock seems disappointed when he returns and sees that I have taken the gloves off and laid them down on the bench. At first he does not say a thing. Later he asks me if there is something wrong with them.
“Are they too tight, too coarse?” he asks earnestly.
“Oh no,” I say, thanking him. “It is simply that they make my fingers stupid.”
His face falls when I say that. I suppose he must have spent two shillings on them.

The week is calm after this anomaly. For days I make stars, dry stars and choke rocket cases and then charge them. I work alongside Mr. Blacklock, watching him from time to time to see the skill with which he works, but we do not often speak. On rare occasions Mr. Blacklock leaves the workshop on some business. Today he has to meet with Mr. Torré in the coffeehouse, and then he is going south of the river to a large estate on the other side of Southwark. For the first time, he has left me with a list of fireworks to complete by the end of the day.
“I need mutton chops this afternoon,” Mrs. Blight announces as we clear the breakfast. But Mary Spurren cannot go to the butcher’s shop, as once again Mrs. Nott did not come this morning and Mary has to make a start upon the laundry. She is in a sour mood already, scrubbing the soap viciously into the weave of the linen, slapping the wet cloth into the bowl of water. Mrs. Nott seldom seems to come as promised, but instead a week later when nobody expects her and the wash is half-completed anyway.
“Indeed it may be expedient, Mr. Blacklock, sir, to look elsewhere,” Mrs. Blight had declared at breakfast.
“No, no, woman!” he said roughly. “Be good enough not to waste time seeking a replacement.”
“She is a low class of female,” Mrs. Blight said, grumpily.
I could tell that Mr. Blacklock was irritated by this, but Mrs. Blight burst out, “Not as if she were one of your staff that you take it so badly; she is a woman as turns up to scrub at clothes. Turns up at her leisure, it seems to me.”
“Enough!” he barks.
Mrs. Blight is quite put out, and at noon cooks the spinach to a pulp almost on purpose.
“She does not rinse to a point of clarity,” she hisses, slamming the colander down. “Too much lye unrinsed between the threads of linen makes a body itch. Not to mention her being completely lacking in moral fiber.” She glares across as though this were somehow to do with me.
“That’s some folks for you,” Mary Spurren says, sourly.
I have a mounting fear that Mrs. Blight thinks I should be made an example of. She has a way of looking at me that cuts right to the heart of what I’m hiding.
“Mr. Blacklock don’t like too much change,” Mary Spurren says, squeezing out a wet shirt.
“It is ridiculous,” snaps Mrs. Blight mutinously. “No way to run a household.”
“Too much change by far these days,” Mary Spurren adds, the shirt dripping on the floor.
I scarcely know how Mrs. Nott manages to lug the quantity of water from the pump in Mallow Square, the tendons in her scrawny neck straining against her knuckle-grip.
“Perhaps he likes to hear her singing,” I suggest. “It is so sweet and clear.” Mary Spurren sniggers, looking sidelong.
“You’ll go for the chops, Agnes,” Mrs. Blight says. “And cook them up.”
“But I do not know how,” I say anxiously, thinking of all I have to do for Mr. Blacklock today, yet mindful that I have to keep her sweet. She looks bad-tempered, seeing her drinking time at the Star being cut by half if she has to go herself.
“Rarely we ate fresh meat at home in Sussex,” I say. “That is why I am so fat now!” I exclaim, taking my chance. “We eat so very well here.”
“I’ll take a gamble,” Mrs. Blight says sarcastically, “on what ability you have with meat and tell you again to fetch chops and onions before you go into that workshop this afternoon.”
“But . . .” I begin to protest, but she jabs at the open recipe with her finger. As soon as she is gone I rush upstairs to relieve myself. I hope she has not noticed how often now I have to use the chamber pot.
I know that Cornelius Soul is due with a delivery today.
I must hurry or else my plan may begin to fall apart. Already I feel that time is slipping away from me.
I must try harder.
Today the butcher’s shop is filled with blue tits, flitting to the beef, hanging upside down and sticking their bills into the white fat, all over the sheep’s kidneys, nipping the suet from them. The butcher’s boy does nothing about it. When he yawns I can see to the back of his throat. Saul Pinnington is bringing an uncut ham in over his shoulder from out the back. He sets it down, sweating with effort, and sees the birds.
“Get!” he shouts at the birds, enraged.
“Pests, they are,” an old woman says, waiting before me. She waves her crabbed hands toward the meat. “Everywhere.”
“It’s that tree,” Saul Pinnington says, glowering out of his shutters at the great linden tree on the corner of the street. “Harbors little beggars like these.”
“Chop it down, I should, Mr. Pinnington.” The old woman points out which bit of liver she is wanting from the slab.
A girl wearing a checked apron comes in. “Full of bees, that tree. Can’t abide bees,” she says. “Had one in my hair last summer, stang me here and here.” She tilts her chin up for the butcher to examine. “You want to look out for your custom, Mr. Pinnington, do something about it.” Her fingers ruffle at the lace that ties her neckerchief.
The butcher winks at her. “What am I selling to you today, young lady? ”
“Sliver me up some Dutch beef, Mr. Pinnington.” She widens her eyes. “They like it done finely.”
“Mrs. Bray fatting her girls up, is she?” Saul Pinnington asks, smirking. His arms are bloody to the elbow. “I’ve got good common forcemeat ready down here. Would they not prefer a taste of that? ”
“Didn’t think you had that kind of money, Mr. Pinnington,” she replies. Her voice is crisp. Saul Pinnington lets out a dirty red butcher’s laugh. His belly shakes with it.
“Pert little madam, that one,” the old woman mutters under her breath, as the girl leaves the shop. “Chop it down, I say. Doing nothing, that tree is.” Her face is shriveled with crossness. “What other use is there for it, save providing somewhere tall for the likes of her associates to lean upon at night? Dirty girls.”
Bray. Mrs. Bray. I cannot think where I have heard the name before.
Saul Pinnington serves me and I take the pound of mutton.
“Bray,” I say, aloud this time, out on the street. What is that name? It niggles at me. I am perplexed as to the nature of the jokes he made, but it is clear he was suggesting, as no idle insult, that the girl worked in the kitchen of a bawdy house or brothel, and neither did she make a fight about it.
I turn to Lamb’s Conduit Street toward the herb market to get some early onions from the skinny market woman there, whom Mrs. Blight declares the only garden trader worth the shilling. “Her things is fresh and firm, that’s all I asks for in a vegetable.”
The market woman has a large baby with her. It sits propped up beneath the trestle on a grubby blanket spread over the ground, playing with a spoon tied to a string. The baby’s nose is running.
“I shall have to tether him, too, soon as he gains the use of his legs.” The market woman laughs. Though she is young, her face is so thin that when she laughs the skin around her mouth looks stretched. Her fingernails are stained and rough, and the silver coin I give her looks bright in her palm.
Mrs. Blight had said today as I picked up the basket, “No wasting your coinage on the first barrow boy that shoves his radishes at you. Their flavors is bound to be tainted with smoke from sea coal. Nasty, that is. You can’t trust everyone, Agnes Trussel, most particularly in the way of purchases.”
I go stiff with recollection.
“You cannot trust a soul,” I was told, when I arrived here.
It was Lettice Talbot who had tried to send me in the way of Mrs. Bray’s establishment. Mrs. Bray who must be a madam, or a procuress. Lettice Talbot’s eyes were wide and blue when she spoke. Lettice Talbot’s teeth were good and white. She looked nothing like a prostitute. Not like dirty Martha Cote, back home, with her long lank hair, who would lie with anyone in the fields for fourpence. Surely Lettice Talbot did not think that I could work with her?
“Get on, will you!” A woman pokes me sharply in the back where I am stopped on the pavement. I look about. The street is seething with people I do not know.

As I turn into the dead end, toward Blacklock’s, I see with relief that the cart is not there. Perhaps Mr. Soul has not been yet.
I am not sure why, but at the front door something makes me turn and look back to the archway. I am surprised to see a man there, standing in the shadows. And though his head is not turned directly to me, I have the sharp sensation that it is me he looks at.
Why would that be?
I shield my eyes with my palm, against the brightness. His back is turned now, and his feet shift about as though uncomfortable or lacking patience.
How hot it is.
I blink, the sweat making my sight swim for a moment, so that I put down the basket and rub my eyes with the heel of my hand. And when I look again, the man is gone.
I let myself in and as I pass the workshop door I see two new tubs of gunpowder on the floor already. I have missed Mr. Soul.
Despite the heat, a shivery chill goes through me when I think of that strange man again. His dark clothing, the oddness of his stance, his very ordinary appearance being somehow the reverse of what it seemed.
He was a pale-skinned man taking shelter from the harshness of the sun, I reason. Or stopping heedlessly to attend to failing embers in his tobacco pipe. Or waiting to chance upon a hackney carriage. Or he mistook me fleetingly for someone else before he realized his mistake.
And yet the chill persists, even as I try to cook the meat, and only when Mrs. Blight waddles back, in the unsteady temper that tells me she has sat out an hour or more drinking at the Star, can I begin to shake it off.
“I want that oak white scrubbed, d’you hear!” She points at the table strewn with peelings.
“Beech,” I say, without thinking, and bite my tongue. I do not want to provoke her crossness any more today.
“Pardon me?” She turns to make sure that Mary Spurren is looking over, and puts her hand on her hip.
“It’s beech,” I mutter, and try to make my voice sound sorry about it. “The tabletop is made of beechwood.”
“You little—” she begins, but I do not get to hear what she has to say about me, as Mr. Blacklock has walked abruptly into the kitchen.
“Oh! Mr. Blacklock, sir, I thought you was—”
“I returned by an earlier coach from Southwark,” he interrupts. “What is Agnes doing in the kitchen today? She had clear instructions to finish an order.” He glares at the squat little clock over the fireplace that Mrs. Blight does her timings for meat by. “It is late.”
I leave the bowl of muddy peelings at once and go in haste down the corridor. And I hear her saying, in the shrill tone that she saves for moments of crisis, “. . . just does as she fancies, sir, whatever shall I do? ” But I cannot hear how he replies.
Mrs. Blight has begun to keep a bottle of gin at the back of the cupboard, which she thinks is a secret.
My own secret has grown fourfold this month. I begin to feel its weight inside me.