The Book of Fires

Aurora

21
From what you tell me,” I say to Mr. Blacklock, when we come to talk of the third ingredient of gunpowder, “sulfur is a kind of latent earth.” I look for his approval, to see that I have understood his meaning fully, and repeat slowly, in my own words, what he has already told me. “It is something waiting under the crust of the earth: a bright yellow under the darkness of the soil. It is old, as old as the hill that hides it. You say that sulfur comes from places where the very earth itself has bubbled out molten in cracks and craters.”
He nods gravely.
“But I cannot picture this at all,” I say. “It means nothing to imagine the innards of the living earth.”
Mr. Blacklock raises his eyebrows. “Indeed?” he says, scratching his head. “Then consider the earth’s shape to be round like that of a kernel, filled to the skin with minerals and unimaginable liquid fire.”
“But how can I be sure of what you say, sir? These things seem likely when you are describing them, yet . . .”
Mr. Blacklock looks at me intently.
He goes to the study and brings back a book, and shows me on the yellow page the diagrams of little round black balls like walnuts circling the sun on strings. And I pore over them with curiosity, as one would look at marks in the mud on the edge of a pond showing that certain birds had been there, or water rats, or the dogs of poachers, yet somehow not believing in them absolutely.
“I have a thirst for useful knowledge, Mr. Blacklock, sir,” I say.
We go on filling gerbes with common stars and silver rain. Later Mr. Blacklock looks at me. “You are right in some ways to raise questions.” He clears his throat. “But you must narrow your eyes and squint into the bright light of the world’s knowledge if you are to advance in understanding what I have to teach you. Do you want to learn from me?” he asks quietly. His dark face is very serious.
I blink at him. “I do, sir.”
“Then sometimes you must accept as fact some things that you cannot verify for yourself entirely.” He gives his head a light tap. “Take that leap forward. Have a trust in some sources.”
“I want to learn, sir,” I say.
And it is true. Lately, the need to know has begun to burn inside me like a small fire.


Soon after the church clock has struck two that afternoon, at last Cornelius Soul’s painted cart pulls up outside the door.
“Roll brimstone differs from flowers of sulfur,” Mr. Blacklock is saying. “It can be used for making stars, as it lacks the sulfuric acid that is present after sublimation, but it is quite a labor to crush and sift.” I cannot help but glance up expectantly, and Cornelius Soul opens the door and breezes into the workshop. “Can you think of anything particular about the properties of sulfur that should not be ignored, Mr. Soul?” Mr. Blacklock barks.
“It is the yellowest thing I can think of,” Cornelius Soul affirms, and winks at me as he puts a tub of powder on the floor.
I try to contest his flippancy by thinking of something that is yellower. A range of yellow things runs through my head: a buttercup, the yolk of an egg slimy cap fungus, one kind of rowanberry, yellow feathers on goldfinches, wagtails, yellowhammers, the tip of the beak of a dabchick, a grain of ready wheat in summer, various caterpillars and centipedes, half the stripes of wasps, a melted butter sauce, the general sense inside a beepot, the flowers of penny rattle, and then I have it.
“The sun!” I exclaim. I am triumphant. “The sun is yellower! ” I am laughing. “It is so yellow that we cannot even look at it!”
Cornelius Soul pretends to consider this. “Our own luminary,” he says, stroking his jaw as though this could make him think more clearly. His pale stubble rasps. And then he counters, “But we do not know that it is not made entirely out of sulfur anyway!”
He yawns. “You see, we are undone by knowing nothing at last. I like to know nothing.” He pushes at his hair. “Knowing nothing leaves so much space around one, for doing other things. I like a lot of space. I am a big fellow, am I not?” And he winks at me again, a sharp, dirty wink this time that makes my skin prickle with a kind of flush.
Mr. Blacklock stands up. “Sulfur has a bad, eggish smell that worsens upon ignition,” he says crisply. “That is a portion of its ugliness. No doubt you must be done with us now, Mr. Soul. Your schedule for delivery—or should that be deliverance, God help you—must be pressing at this juncture of the day.”
Joe Thomazin sits untwisting some kind of cotton for quick match.
“What is this? ” I ask, holding up a length, to fill the silence when the rumble of Mr. Soul’s cart has faded away.
“Nothing but common cotton, of the kind used as a wick by candle-makers,” Mr. Blacklock says sharply.
I cannot understand what can have made him angry. I wonder why he finds Mr. Soul so vexing; he is too confident, perhaps, too full of life.
“And pay no heed to his licentious filthy tongue,” he adds, but I do not know what he means by that at all.
Mrs. Mellin’s coins inside my stays are yellow, but somehow different. I think of her face reflected tiny on the surface of each coin she handled.
How mild this sunshine is for April, and how late it shines on in the afternoon. My woollen shawl seems almost too warm about my shoulders as I go around the house, but I dare not take it off; it is covering my shape. My bodice is let out to its furthest span, but the ribbons will go no further and soon I fear I must leave off my stays. When that day comes, my condition will be clear to anyone who casts an eye upon me.
“God damn my carelessness!” Mr. Blacklock says suddenly, under his breath, and he sweeps the invoice aside on the dusty desk.
“What is it?” I ask.
“When I made out Mr. Soul’s last order for gunpowder, I failed to calculate for Mr. Torré’s display at St. James’s. As a consequence we have only one box of powder left, which will not be enough.”
“No,” I say. The long list of works needed is pinned up on the wall. “We have not even started on the Roman candles.” Mr. Blacklock begins to scribble on a scrap of paper.
“It is almost four and I have an appointment here with a new client in half an hour that I cannot miss,” he says. He looks about distractedly.
“Joe! Joe Thomazin!” he shouts. “Where is that boy!”
“He is just out, sir, on messages already.”
“Damnation twice!” he says. “There is an urgency to this!”
“Shall I go at once to Mr. Soul’s lodgings and ask for more myself?” I suggest. Mr. Blacklock stands and glowers at the list as if lost in thought, and does not seem to hear me. I begin to speak again.
“Should I—”
“It is hard to say where he may be,” Mr. Blacklock interrupts. “He moves between a number of places, I believe, and I admit I do not have a fixed address for him. He draws his stock from several warehouses, so there is no point in chasing him about the town.” He coughs heavily into his fist. “Most likely he could be found at Child’s, but I am unwilling . . .” He hesitates, clears his throat, then seems to change his mind. “No. You must go there at once and explain our position, or I will not rest easy this afternoon, knowing as I do how low that barrel’s going to be.”

The coffeehouse is a fug of smoke and shouting, full of men. Nobody pays any attention to me and I cannot see Cornelius Soul in among them anywhere. The only woman in here is a wan girl listlessly wiping at a table with a cloth, and I go to ask her for his whereabouts.
“Who’s asking?” she says, without interest.
“Mr. Blacklock, Mr. John Blacklock,” I say, and with an effort she slopes to the back of the shop and leans on the jamb. The door is ajar on to the yard.
“Cartright! Housemaid from Blacklock’s here,” she bawls, which makes me bristle. “Wants Cornelius Soul. Wasn’t he here, not long back? Where’d he go again? ”
A man replies but I do not hear it. Then he appears at the door, doing up his breeches.
“He’s up at his mother’s place, wench,” he says, not unkindly, when he sees me standing there. “You know the way to Curtain Court, on the edge of St. Giles?” I listen to the man’s directions with care.
On my way out, a man seated by the door leans forward and studies me closely, as though he has mistaken me for someone else. He is scruffier than the men around him, and has a round, stubbly face. He puts down his long pipe and seems to be about to speak, but I pull my shawl tight about me and do not catch his eye. It is a relief to close the door quickly upon his leery gaze. The sour smell of pipe smoke clings to my clothes for half the walk across the district, and then I forget about him. It is a warm day; I am glad there is no rain.


The house is thin and shabby, with a peeling front. I knock twice, until a woman’s voice calls, “Will you get that!” and a girl lets me in. A small, neat woman looks up, startled, when she sees a stranger.
“I have a message for Cornelius Soul,” I say.
Her eyes flick to the open door. “From . . . ?”
“From Blacklock’s Pyrotechny.”
“He’s up in the chamber, fixing the casement again,” the woman says. “That rain we had last night—came pouring in.” Her voice is very quiet, so that I have to listen hard to what she says.
“Cornelius!” she calls out softly.
“He’s a good son,” she adds unnecessarily, in almost a whisper. A cat jumps up onto the empty sideboard and licks at its tail.
“Will you sit and wait?” she asks me. “Get up, Nat, and let the girl sit down,” she coaxes, and a little boy squats politely on the ground beside the hearth, though there is no fire lit. He stares at me, winding thread upon a spool.
The woman does not say much but goes on stitching at the man’s coat stretched on her lap. She hums for some time.
The room is plain and clean, though the bad, bitter smell of lye boiling at the soapmaker’s comes in from the street. There is little in the way of chattels, though several garments hang across the crooked beam over the fireplace. She glances up and seems to read my mind.
“The dishes are out at pawn, though no doubt I’ll get them back come wages day.” She fingers the half-stitched lapel. There is a pot of something cold like stew or broth upon the table, with a fatty skin across its surface, and a quartern loaf cut into five.
“Less to wash up once supper is over,” I suggest, and her face breaks into a surprising, crinkled smile, so that her eyes quite disappear.
“You could say that,” she says, in almost a whisper. “One tiny blessing.”
She tugs at her needle.
There is a noise upstairs and Cornelius Soul clatters backward down the ladder, in his shirtsleeves. “All done, Mam,” he says briskly, turning about. “Though that won’t last another season.”
And then he gives a start to see me in the kitchen, as though he has been caught out, and a boyish flush spreads over his face. I get to my feet.
“Your mother has explained what an attentive son you are,” I say. He laughs loudly, as though he thinks that I am mocking him. “Mr. Blacklock needs more stock,” I say. “More gunpowder, and more meal.”
“So many surprises to be had, Miss Trussel,” he replies, recovering quickly, as though from a stumble. “What a long way you have walked to tell me that.”
“It is urgent,” I say.
“I see,” he says, and grins as if he does not believe me. “First light tomorrow, then,” he says, with a dramatic bow.
As I go to the door I have a little rush of courage. “It is delivery we want, not the start of a battle!” I retort, and take my leave. My heart beats in a flutter of panic all the way down the street; sauciness does not come easily to me. Beyond the court and out of sight on Turnmill Street I check my shawl and tuck it again in the way that I have devised to cover my belly properly from view. And by a curious chance I look up to see the man from the coffeehouse who had observed me so steadily. I am sure it is the same man. But though I pass quite close to him he gives no sign of having recognized me, and steps up into the alehouse on the corner.
How warm it is.
I give the meat market a wide berth and come back instead by Snow Hill.
At the house Mr. Blacklock sits inside his study when his new client has gone, and does not come to supper. Mrs. Blight has finished up and taken herself to the Star before we are done with eating, which has stirred up some kind of grumpiness in Mary Spurren quite at odds with the way I feel today.
“Are you unwell?” I ask cheerfully. Perhaps she has her head cold back again. She gets up from the table to see to the pudding.
“Funny ideas you’ve got, Agnes Trussel,” she hisses, unexpectedly. “Don’t you know how to behave in service?”
“What do you mean? ” I say, startled, but she turns back to the hob to lift the pudding from the scalding water and does not hear me, as though anger has stopped up her ears. The steam smells good. I watch her slow fingers fumble with the pudding cloth as she unties it on the plate. I am so hungry I do not care until we finish eating. My swelling belly makes my appetite a monstrous thing.
“Slipping off here and there,” she adds. “Think nobody notices?” The pot she has scrubbed to the point of cruelty gleams on the side.
“But I was taking messages for Mr. Blacklock!” I protest, but she does not reply, and her mood gives a different cast to the remains of the evening. I like it better when Mr. Blacklock eats with us at supper.
What can he be working on that he misses meals so often now? Is it for urgency, or secrecy? Has he found something new? Perhaps I could ask him, I think, but I find I dare not. After all, he might not say.


Early light floods into the workshop as Mr. Blacklock pins the shutters open the next morning. “I must go down to the timber yard,” he says.
“Why, sir?” I ask.
“Deal sawdust for fiery rains. Mr. Torré plans a volcanic eruption for the display at St. James’s,” he says. “And what Mr. Torré wants, he will have, whatever we may think about it. The sawdust must be deal, for the rosins feed the sparks in the fire.” I nod. I think of putting a pine log on the fire, how it spits and whines, the gummy bubble from the end of its cut limbs. It occurs to me that Mr. Blacklock may be planning something special for this occasion, a new style of firework, perhaps one that does a loop, or shoots out a brilliant star, the like of which has never been seen before in London.
“Shall I come with you, to carry the bags? ” I ask hopefully. Perhaps he might tell me as we walk along.
He scowls. “Indeed no, Joe Thomazin will do. The timber yard is crawling with rogues and foul-mouthed scoundrels; it is no place for a decent woman to hear talk. That extra powder is due from Mr. Soul this morning,” he adds.
When he is gone, I make sure my cap is on straight. I have scrubbed my fingers very clean. I work diligently for a while, but my mind begins to wander and then I cannot help but scan the room for clues, just an inkling of what Mr. Blacklock is about. His bench today is uncommonly tidy and tells me nothing. The tools are laid in a row, only a worn-down sash-brush out of place. There are five one-ounce cases waiting to be filled, a short discarded length of quick match, a pot of dried-up paste. There are no scraps of paper with mysterious plans sketched out, nor unusual apparatus. But then I look again more closely at his bench, and notice a faint, bright shadow on its surface, as if a large amount of reddish powder had been brushed hastily away. I don’t dare to touch, and when I sniff it cautiously, there is no particular smell I recognize.
Outside, the church clocks strike ten. I can hear the mild rasp of someone scrubbing nearby.
Turning my attention to the shelves, I climb upon a stool and lift down the dirty jars of chemicals one by one, carrying them into the light to examine them.
They are newly opened.
When I first arrived at Blacklock’s Pyrotechny, all these jars of substances were sat unused, untouched for years, covered in filthy cobwebs. And suddenly, perhaps this week, the seals are broken, corks taken out, some jars left carelessly unstoppered. Others lie empty, on their sides. Almost every single jar is opened now.
When did he do this? I look over at the apparatus on the far trestle. He has been using them in his experiments. He has been using all of them.
I find rose vitriol, and manganese. I find king’s yellow or orpiment. A sulfide of arsenic, a note in Mr. Blacklock’s writing says. There is yellow ochre, which is iron oxide and clay; there is telluric ochre and tungstic ochre and yellow prussiate, none of which I know and which sound like foreign diseases of the flesh.
Holding my breath, I pick up the dark jar of yellow orpiment and take out a piece upon a spoon to look at it closely. The orpiment is greasy and pearly, and brown on the outside where the air has got to it. The side that has been cut is yellower, fresher. Just looking at it tells me nothing.
“Poison, that is.” Cornelius Soul’s sudden voice makes me jump. “Dead in a day or so, you would be, should you have swallowed it, with a terrible purging and a sweat.”
“I know,” I lie quickly. “How did you get in? ”
He grins. “The housemaid gave me entrance by the front door as she was there washing the step. Don’t lick your fingers,” Cornelius Soul says, chuckling. “Clots the blood in your heart right up. Though I daresay you’ve a little pink tongue I shouldn’t mind a glimpse of. Very wholesome, I’d imagine.” And he comes up closer and tries to fondle me about the waist.
“Oh no!” I say, stepping backward in embarrassment and knocking the stool over with a clatter.
“Good for a man to see that kind of tongue,” he says, as I bend with difficulty to put it upright. “Very nourishing indeed.”
I keep my mouth tight shut and do not reply, even when he asks where he should put the powder that we need. He looks at my face.
“Don’t mind me, Miss Trussel,” he says, and puts it anywhere. “Forgive my manners. I am a lout,” he says at the door. But he does not mean it.
I do not move until I hear his horse’s hooves start up. Then I return the array of jars to their places and wipe the dirt crossly from my fingers before I go to the filling-box. Why did I push him away like that? I have an uncomfortable sense inside when I think of how I am cheating him. Perhaps I had not expected him to like me. I had not thought that the plan could be effective. But it surely must. And when he finds out my condition, it will be after the marriage vows are said and done. They are all I need to save me from ruin. He will know that the child is not his—but that is another thing to think of, later.
I must work swiftly now; there is much to be done if we are to fulfill our orders. And I cannot put aside the thought of all those opened jars of chemicals. I charge eight rockets of a quarter-pound bore. I hear Mary Spurren cursing to herself as she slips on the wet doorstep when she leaves for the fruit market. The house is silent when she is gone, no sound from any other quarter. Mrs. Blight is on her half day. A fly buzzes dryly against the windowpane. I can smell the leather of Mr. Blacklock’s working apron lying flat in a patch of sunlight where he left it on his bench. I charge two more rockets, until I can bear it no longer and go back to the shelves and stare at the opened jars again, as if they might tell me something. And then there is a knock at the door. A harsh, demanding kind of rapping, made with the head of a cane or stick.
My heart hammers almost as loudly in my mouth.
I do not go to answer it.


When Mr. Blacklock returns he shows me how to boil the sawdust in a kind of soup with saltpeter, then drain it of liquor with a slatted spoon. The stink it makes clams up my throat.
I do not say a word about the knocking.
Again Mr. Blacklock does not take supper in the kitchen this evening but instead goes into the study. An oblong of light from the lamp he has on the table falls under the shut door. When I pass as I retire at ten o’clock to bed I can just hear the scratching of a pen upon paper, and the chink of the nib touching the rim of the inkpot. I mean to tap and ask if he would like a bite or a glass of wine to see him through, yet somehow I cannot. The nib seems to pause as though I had already broken in upon his thinking.
At the stairs, something makes me turn around and I see that the study door is open a crack and Joe Thomazin has slipped out into the hallway. He is watching me without a sound.
“What is it, Joe?” I whisper, but his great dark eyes do not answer me.

After some days, I spread out the damp sawdust, sprinkle over equal measures of mealpowder and sulfur and stir it about.
“Now fill those candles and your flowerpots, and you have a red shower,” Mr. Blacklock says. “A large enough quantity, I think, for Mr. Torré.”
“A red shower?” I ask, surprised. “Really red, sir?” He nods without looking up from the bench. I close my eyes and imagine a light, brushing kind of scarlet rain, a fine drift of crimson sparkles turning on the air, flurrying out of the sweep of the sunset on the horizon’s light westerly breeze, almost like snowflakes in their shape and beauty. I imagine the sweet scent of their burning, winking out as they touch the ground, and the soft resinous warmth of the smoke that would linger on their wake.
I have a fright when I open my eyes again, and see Mr. Blacklock staring at me. Most probably he cannot believe the cheek of it, just drifting off in my own dreaminess in the middle of work. His black eyes are quite fixed upon me.
“So sorry, sir,” I mumble, and bend my head over my work and try to seem industrious. “Those dogs kept me awake half the night with their barking; did you hear them yourself, sir? Strays, probably. Such a racket.” He does not reply. He does not like chatter, I remind myself, nor excuses. Sometimes I think it must be the child growing inside me that makes my head so apt to slide off sideways these days into its own little place of nonsense. And then again I wonder if it is the thought of fireworks. They promise so much glitter, so much magic, it is surely no surprise that they make me dreamy.
For the rest of the day I make sure my ramming at the filling-box is efficient, and when the church bells strike six I do not even look up from my bench, until Mr. Blacklock announce himself that the day’s work is done.
“You must watch a full display before too long,” he says, when the workshop is locked up and we are walking down the gloom of the corridor to the steamy kitchen. “To demonstrate quality.”
I feel a surge inside.
I almost choke with the effort to keep my composure. “That would be useful, sir,” I manage to mumble, but cannot help a smile creeping over my face as we sit down to eat the boiled beef and greens that Mrs. Blight sets on the table. A display! Rockets, candles, squibs! I can hardly believe it.
“Sawdust can also be used in cautious measures for silver rains and golden rains,” he adds later, his mouth full of beef. “But there is no need for boiling.”
I nod happily and pour some ale, and Mr. Blacklock leans over and points into my mug abruptly. “Do you see how the colors change and spin over the surface of those bubbles? ”
I hold the mug up to my gaze, and with delight I can see this. “The colors are shivering across almost like rainbows, sir! ”
“I thought that would please you,” he says, gruffly.
Mary Spurren stares at me, and then at Mr. Blacklock. Nobody speaks after that; there is just the scraping of knives and forks against the plates. I do not have to look up to know that Mary Spurren’s scowl is darkening at the far end of the table.