The Book of Fires

20
In the morning Mary Spurren does not look so well. “I feel sickly,” she groans, rubbing her head.
Mrs. Blight is slouched beside the hob and flicks the greasy pages of her recipe. “A big joint like that needs to be got early, to be cooked for noon,” she says loudly. “Agnes, you’ll go for the meat today.”
“Again?” I say in dismay. “But I have to—”
“You’ll squeeze it in,” she says, in a hard voice. “Just don’t expect Mr. Pinnington to be so robust with you today.”
“Why? ”
“The hanging. You’ll have heard the bell last night? They say George Nigh was his acquaintance of some long standing, fell on hard times. Served their apprenticeships together side by side like kinsmen, and shared a stall at Smithfield for close on a year before they parted company. Seems that while Pinnington’s Meats to the Nobility became a fixture in the high-class victuals trade, George Nigh’s luck fell on the other side of the fence and he slid into the mire of debts and turned to crime.” She tuts. “Robberies is always bound to get found out. Violence like that, on the king’s highway.” She quivers with relish. “ ’Tis bound to want punishing in the end.”
“But if the man had debts,” I venture, “what could he do? ”
“Seems a shame, I must say, when a man has to make his way by stripping well-off, middling folks of what they has and causing bodily fear.”
“And did he kill a man or do injury to anyone?” I ask.
“Not as is heard of,” she says. “But ’tis the principle, and besides, there’s no smoke without some kind of thing ablaze somewhere. Thrusting his pistol into carriages and making threats. Loaded, no doubt, with shot supplied by the likes of your Mr. Cornelius.”
“He is not . . .”
“And two unmarried women to swing alongside George Nigh and his crowd this morning; should in all be quite a gathering. Pleaded their bellies, but when matrons examined them they found them both to be without child.” She heaves herself onto her feet.
“I’ve heard someone’s been stealing plate from churches over Westminster way. Very low, that is. You’re not going to tell me that shouldn’t go unpunished, neither! Crime’s everywhere. These days even God has to resort to lock and key to protect what’s rightly his, and that’s not in the Bible, is it? Thou shalt lock up the churches at six o’clock? On cutting him down,” she adds, “they’ll take this one away to the Surgeon’s Hall to be anatomized, quite took apart in the name of science. Dissecting him up to strike fear of the law throughout all of the populace.” She shakes her head with a show of regret. “Disgrace for his family.”
I go to the butcher’s in dread.
Saul Pinnington is not there behind the counter. The shop is packed with customers and the boy is full of his story, his face flushed with talking as he tries to serve.
“Mr. Pinnington’s not here, ma’am, he’s off to the hanging, to lend his weight and pull on his legs to hasten the end. George Nigh’s not a big man now, is he? I’ve seen a hanging, quite a sight.” He flusters about.
“You’re making a mess of that hog’s cheek, young man,” a woman calls impatiently. My back aches. The boy raises his piping to be heard over the hum of chatter and gossip in the shop.
“Lord, the prayers they mouth before they pull the cart from under them. I went to a hanging once, did I say that? Oh, Mr. Pinnington was in a terrible way through yesterday. Cursing and kicking the cats about all day, he was. Kept saying, ‘The foolish son of a bitch’ . . .”
An old woman pushes forward to the counter. “You hold your tongue,” she chastens him, jerking her crooked finger at his chest. The hubbub in the shop dies down and people turn to stare. “That’s someone’s father swinging on the tree this morning,” she spits. “You’ll speak respectful of him, if you speak at all.” And she turns and pushes her way angrily toward the door.
Behind the counter the boy’s face is drained of color, and I see that his hands shake as he wraps the joint for Mrs. Blight. He cannot be more than twelve years old, and looks as if he might cry, though with great effort he does not. He rubs the back of his hand on his white forehead, leaves a streak of blood. “That’s one shilling and tuppence,” he says in a small voice, not looking at me. The joint is as thick as a man’s leg, and I feel sickened at the thought of eating it at noon.

“Lessons it is, I’d say,” Mrs. Blight makes clear later, sucking her teeth. She has grown boisterous and unsteady since I saw her this morning. “They says drink leads to crime. Hah! I’m not averse to knocking back a glass or two of orange shrub,” she cackles. “But you don’t find me going off like a delinquent.” She looks at me and hiccups. “Lessons for all of us to keep on the straight and narrow. Should be requisite to go to hangings. Should be the law.”
I shift uncomfortably.
Mrs. Blight snorts. “Look at her.” She points at me. “So worried someone’ll make her go and see the next.” She tries to explain: “It’s more the . . . atmosphere you goes for. The final act itself doesn’t last so long.” The smell of roasting pork is everywhere.
“Sometimes there’s a bit of ruckus when they cuts them down, the families fighting for the corpse to take for burial against the surgeons hoping for a bit of flesh to practice on, but ’tis never so bad as you’d think. Once you’ve seen a couple, well”—she shrugs—“you’ve seen them all. Sometimes, like today, they does a cluster all at once, say six or seven punished side by side. Daresay that would be a comfort, a bit of company in your final moments.”
I put the knife into the round of the bread upon the board and slice up the whole loaf steadily. I am quite light-headed. Mary Spurren’s cold is worsening and I can hear her sniffing to herself, hunched over the scullery sink, scrubbing at a dirty pot.
Mrs. Blight frowns at me.
“Hope you’re hungry, madam,” she comments sharply. “Wasting all that bread.”
“Oh, yes, very hungry. I suppose I could be starving; any of us could, given a wrong turn here, a wrong turn there,” I retort, putting the knife down. “Even Mr. Blacklock says the city’s gutter is always but a step away.”
Mary Spurren comes out of the scullery, wiping her nose on a crumpled handkerchief. “Don’t much hold with crowds,” she says congestedly, and I nod my head.
“You needs hardening up,” Mrs. Blight opines. “You’ve been shielded from certain things in life. I don’t mean you have not felt the bite of hardship or the gall of someone else’s wrong, but you don’t know how badness makes up half the world and how it follows that we’ll rub shoulders with it in the natural flow of life.”
She gestures advice broadly with an empty bottle.
“Keep out the way of trouble and lift your chin when it finds you, as it no doubt will from time to time. Evil’s not something that’ll be brought to account. Much of it, nigh on all of it’ll slip by unnoticed, doing its willful business in due course as it fancies.”
“Don’t you have faith in justice? ” I ask. “Why do you like your pamphlets so much?”
“Justice!” She chuckles. “Hear how the girl speaks! What is this justice?” Her eye narrows at me.
“What of divine justice, then? ” I say.
“It’s a whipsaw world,” she goes on, “cutting both ways, and sometimes there is redress, sometimes there isn’t. And you know my feelings about the Lord’s House; I’ve said before it’s not for me. Anything that’s built with bricks and mortar’s made by man and can’t represent a higher cause. Each man to himself.”
She taps her head. “I’ve me own counsel,” she says.
“As I have a conscience,” I reply, under my breath.