The Book of Fires

30
I am to go to the Gardens today, with Cornelius Soul.
The sky is a clear blue. Outside the city I imagine the sudden flush of growth, a silvery gray sheen on the leaves of the poplars, the soft punch of the cuckoo’s call over the May blossom and cow parsley frothing like yeast in the greening hedgerows. In the meadows many buttercups must be open in the grass like yellow flour sprinkled there, in drifts.
Here inside the city walls we have the high hum of bees at the linden flowers in the yard, and the stickiness of the bricks beneath the insects’ speckled misty ooze of honeydew. These days it almost seems to me as if the sap were rising in my own limbs, too.
He is late to fetch me.
“There’s plenty of dogs goes barking up the wrong tree,” Mrs. Blight says, sharing her unwanted opinions freely as she lifts the stockpot away from the fire. A fat, dry housefly pads up and down the table. There is a strong smell of boiling chicken bones filling the kitchen.
I pull myself up straight and act affronted. Mrs. Blight laughs out loud at me then, showing her teeth, so that I go and wait for Cornelius Soul in the hallway instead. I smooth the edge of the cap under my hat once more. It was a temptation to spend some of Mrs. Mellin’s coins on new lace to trim it with, but in the end I had satisfied both vanity and conscience by washing it instead, and by pressing my clean clothes with the flat iron last night when everyone had gone to bed. I don’t sit down now lest I crease my garments overmuch, and my legs begin to ache with nerves.
Joe Thomazin sidles into the hall while I wait. At first I think he has something to say, he stares at me so much. But then he sits hunched up on the bottom stair and scuffs his feet together, as if upset. “What?” I ask him. But of course he says nothing, and Cornelius Soul has come at last. I turn to wave goodbye to Joe Thomazin, but he has suddenly gone. The hallway is empty.
And then we are out of the house and hailing a hackney carriage out on the street. I can hardly look at Cornelius Soul, I am so shy. The cab is musty inside; the window is small, so that it is hard to see where we are going.
“Here,” he says, grinning, “I’ve brought you gingerbread from Tiddy-Doll’s in Mayfair.” It is flat and gleaming like a brass plate, a baked shape of a woman.
“It’s golden!” I exclaim.
“Gilded.” He chuckles, turning it over. “Look, it’s very thin. Go on,” he says, “eat it.” And I break off the head and pass it to Cornelius Soul. He chews and swallows it down. We eat the rest of the body between us, breaking the skirt and the bodice up into pieces. It is firm and delicious, and leaves a warm spicy taste in my throat.
The carriage rolls and jerks along.
“Where are we now?” I say. Cornelius Soul puts his head out, blocking the light.
“Gone over the river by the new bridge at Westminster,” he says, sitting back on the seat in front of me. “Just going through the thicket beyond the turnpike gate.” I can hear a gull crying, over the roar and chatter of wheels. “There was a robbery here of late that I saw in the papers. But you have a stout fellow beside you, no call for unease,” he says, winking at me, and he holds out his hand when we climb down from the carriage. I am wearing the new kid gloves that I have never worn for working in, the ones that Mr. Blacklock gave to me.
A gaudy woman snatches Cornelius Soul’s shillings from him at the gate. She is so whitely painted up and powdered I cannot see her face at all behind it. “When you’re done staring, get through the turnstile,” she yelps at me, rolling her eyes at the people behind us. Only when I turn away from her do I think that she must be a man dressed otherwise. How confusing the world is.
And we are here in the open air, walking beneath an avenue of elm trees so neatly ordered I can scarcely believe it. To either side of us are graveled, dusty walks, stonework, grand arches and pavilions. It is like a foreign place. A sparrow chirps.
Stretching as far as the eye can see in the evening light are beds of early roses and twisting sweet peas in pinks and whites. The earth is pale and sandy. I can see asparagus, gooseberries. Bees knock about between the blossoms and a musky, creamy scent of flowers fills my head like a spell.
I steal a glance sideways at Cornelius Soul, when I think he is not looking. His nose is small and sharp, and his silky white hair moves about in the lightest of breezes as we walk. Is it really trickery, I wonder, this trying to catch a man’s attention?
“Does Blacklock treat you tolerably?” Cornelius Soul asks. He shakes a coin on his palm, flips it into the air and catches it. “Your conditions are adequate? Your victuals? Your arrangements?”
“He is a fair employer,” I say. “Look at those women strolling! Their dresses are so elegant! ”
“And trade is good?”
“It is,” I say. I can see brocades, satins, watered silks.
“And your new supplier is a worthier man than I?” I cannot help but laugh when he says this.
“Is your trade elsewhere so bad you must be bitter?” I answer, mocking him, and he grins quickly then and takes my hand up and puts it beneath his arm. I do not pull away. I can feel his warmth inside the velvet. I see that the coat is worn at the cuffs, as though he has owned it a long time. His arm is slender for a man’s, yet there is a wiry strength to it. I remember the gentle calmness of his mother, the loaf cut into five.
“I dislike losing any deal or battle. Show me a man that doesn’t,” he says. The ground crunches dry under our boots, and they scuff up dust. The May air is warm, and the tightly coiled springs inside my chest are unwinding like green shoots of bindweed in the sunshine. A sound of music comes faintly through the trees; then it stops and there is a drifting patter of applause. Am I in love? I am not dizzy with it. No, I know I am not, although when I think of it my stomach clenches in a nervous state of agitation at the thing that I am planning.
“You cannot pick them!” I protest to Cornelius Soul when he leans over the clipped hedge to snap off a bloom, and holds it out to me. I do not know its name—a city plant.
“I do not like those flowers,” I say, shaking my head. “They have something of the smell of fresh blood about them.”
“Take it!” he insists.
I laugh, but I will not take the flower from him, so finally he pushes the stalk through his own coat’s buttonhole.
“That was no defeat,” he says, shrugging. “The gain is mine, all mine ! ”
The late sun casts a bronze sheen over everything, and the shadows are long on the ground. When we stop at a fountain purling a soft jet of water, I see how it catches the light and the droplets sparkle in colors. The water looks fresh and clear.
I imagine jumping in feet first, sinking, letting the skin of the water meet and close above my head, feeling my hair floating upward like a brown silky weed. The heaviness of my swelling body would dissolve into the pool, and if I opened my eyes into the wetness of the water, all I would see, stretching on and on above me, would be the vault of the high blue evening sky.
“There is a star!” I say, pointing.
Cornelius Soul leans back against the fountain and breathes in deeply. I dip my hand near the star’s reflection, and stir it about.
“Did you know, Miss Trussel,” he asks, “that nightingales sing here?”
I take my hand out of the water and dry it on my skirts. “Nightingales?” I say, perturbed. “In birdcages? ”
Cornelius chuckles. “No, they perch in the cherry trees, singing their hearts out to the punters until closing time.” He buys sugared almonds from a booth, though I say I am not hungry. He opens the bag and holds it out, bending closer.
“There was a woman had a passion for nightingales, they say.” He speaks quietly into my ear.
“What woman?” I ask, slipping the unwanted sweet about in my palm, like a pebble.
“Used an oil made from the pressed tongues of nightingales to perfume her wrists,” he goes on, the sugar cracking between his teeth. “Think of that! They say she said it made the sounds of love come all the sweeter.” His voice is warm, and smells of almonds. He has let out the words slowly, so that each one slides agreeably into my head. He leans away again.
“Now such cruelty would seem barbaric, wouldn’t it,” he declares lightly, in a different tone, as though I had imagined how he spoke before. I put the sweet into my mouth and suck its smoothness. As we walk on, his words turn over slowly in my mind, as even a slight trickle of water down from the leat will turn the mill wheel round on its axle. His hand arrives at the small of my back; his fingers climb the ridge of my spine, pressing over the crests of the bone and the flesh between.
“I hope you do not mind me complimenting you upon your healthy form,” he says in a low voice. “Quite a spare and bony miss you were the first time I clapped my eye on you, and yet now you have a goodly contour. Clearly they did not feed you in the countryside.” He laughs at me. “And a full blush rises in your cheek so easily! I like a rosy girl.”
The sunlight dips lower and lower and then is gone, leaving only a trace of a deep redness in the sky to the west. As the air grows blue with twilight it is tinged with expectation. Hundreds of lamps, strung between the trees, begin to glitter in the branches eerily, like marsh lights, unearthly baubles. Beneath them I have never seen so many people thronged and circling together. The unfolding scene is like a tangled, many-colored cloth weaving and unweaving itself at once in front of me, the threads of their paths moving through the light and shadow, so that I grow dizzy watching them. The noise of the crowd is like the hum of a hive. Everyone is talking, laughing. I know this world is not quite real.
He pulls me in a little closer.
“Cornelius Soul!” I say, laughing, almost losing my balance, and put him away from me.
We are swept along with the crowd to see the gentry eating in the supper boxes.
“How loud and boastful they appear,” he says cheerfully. “Basking stupidly in our attention, like sheep will laze about in sunshine, plumply satisfied with their taste of the world.” I watch two gentlemen cutting at cooked chickens, brandishing the pieces. They raise up bumpers of wine to each other noisily. A lady picks at salad on her plate, her wig and feathers trembling as she turns her head to listen to the shuttle of their conversation.
“Let’s go to the rotunda and hear a song or two to free our spirits!” Cornelius says, winking. We find a bench. “Sit here,” he says, and fetches arrack punch in a pair of thick glasses.
“What is this? ” I ask him, tipping the glass to see its color.
“Rum made tasty with grains of benjamin flower,” he says. I sip at its sweetness until the lights in the supper boxes begin to spin.
A woman sings like a bird from the rotunda, her voice trembling, soaring as she reaches the edge of her melody. I feel the child loop once in my belly as if it were listening, and see the glisten of a tear slip down the cheek of someone in front of me. I remember the cracked hands of Mrs. Nott.
“Imagine making a living with your own skill and magnificence, like her,” I say in excited wonder when she takes her last bow and the clapping dies down.
Cornelius Soul nods. “She has a gift,” he says.
The punch has made my head hot and peppery. “But I expect, Mr. Soul,” I tease him a little, “you do not think a woman’s place can be in serious professions, but is concerned with suckling babies and making sure of a meal on a white-scrubbed table for her husband’s weary return from his work?” I have another sip of my drink. “And when she has done with mending shirts and washing the grease from the pots, if she has a head for figures, no doubt she could save herself from idle moments by totting the accounts held with the butcher, or the seed merchant, or the collector of taxes.”
Cornelius Soul is frowning now.
“Wrong, Miss Trussel! There is no reason that I know of that should prevent a woman being occupied by business, if she has the head and stomach for it,” he declares.
“What kind of business?”
“A man I know called Walter Johns, who owns the Abbey powder mills in Essex, inherited the business from his mother, Pip, who ran it for years as a strong concern. In peacetime that woman oversaw production of six thousand barrels of powder annually, and four times the quantity would have been needed if there was war, and no doubt she’d have had that admirably in hand.” He leans forward. “It is the trading classes with the power to change things,” Cornelius Soul says, defiantly. “You did not expect that, did you?” he adds. And I shake my head in frank astonishment at his ideas.
“I did not,” I say. How John Blacklock would recoil at their outlandishness. “And your own mother—what does she do?” I ask.
“My mother . . . manages. She holds the house together in its shabbiness, in its falling apart.” He takes out a coin again and flicks it in the air. “Heads or tails, Miss Trussel?”
“Heads,” I say.
“Heads it is!”
I smile at him. How well this seems to be going. The gold tooth glints in his mouth as he grins back. The orchestra begins to play. Cornelius Soul orders ham, and a boy brings it over. And then, clean from the blue, something makes me turn my head aside and I find my gaze meets that of Lettice Talbot.
As startled as I am, she stops in her tracks for a moment, and her eye goes straight for my belly, although I try to hold my shawl to cover it. She looks at Cornelius Soul, and back to me. The gem at her neck sparkles colors in the bright light. I had forgotten how beautiful, how radiant, she is. Yet as I get up eagerly, she shakes her head, and turns stiffly away from me when I raise my hand in greeting. I am certain that I see her mouth say, No!
I am baffled.
She is escorted by a middle-aged man in a military uniform. She tucks her hand under his elbow, the tassels of his epaulettes gleaming and dangling like glossy catkins at his shoulders. A younger girl is clinging to his other arm. I hear her giggling, and they all move off down the walk together. Lettice Talbot giggles, too. She is pretending that she has not seen me.
Cornelius looks to see what I am doing. “You know that tart?” he exclaims, following my stare. “You do not want to associate with a woman sold to whoredom like herself!” he says in a loud voice. “How is it that you know such baggage? ”
I watch Lettice Talbot’s silky slippers stepping away so neatly on the gravel. It is a wonder that she does not attract more attention than she does, she is so beautiful. “We were traveling together once by chance,” I say, and turn to look again at the orchestra. I blink. “But her journey was a different one to mine.”
“I should hope so!”
Lettice Talbot and her companions disappear behind the bandstand. Then he shrugs.
“Pricey whore, cheap whore—all the same.” He tips punch into his mouth and swallows. “You can dress a dog up in fine flounces and ruffles and charge highly for its services; yet still it has the bones of a dog, fur of a dog, foul breath of a dog.” He looks down at the table in front of him. His face has a look of distaste upon it, as though he has found something rotting on his plate instead of ham.
I do not feel like eating anymore. I feel sick. I do not think this thin ham is worth the shilling he has paid for it, but do not say a word. I do not like him speaking of her in that way, no matter what she does to make her living. I can see the pattern of the china clearly through the ham’s pinkness ; it is like a piece of skin upon the plate. Why did she not want to talk to me just now? Cornelius folds the last slice and chews it down. He orders more punch for both of us, although I cannot finish mine, it is so strong.
“A poor way to earn a livelihood,” he says with contempt.
“Perhaps that is the point,” I rejoin, timidly. “It is a livelihood, not a mortal choice. God knows, we slip into our paths unchosen.”
“You don’t get as good as she if that way of life is not your vocation.” And he changes the subject, as though it disgusts him to speak of Lettice Talbot any more. Right inside, a soft part of me I did not know I had has toughened up. The orchestra strikes up a march, and he taps his foot. The brisk, exacting notes drum in my ears. “Watch your pockets ! ” a man bellows nearby. A woman squeals above the thrum of the milling crowd about us.
“It is almost time for the fireworks,” Cornelius Soul says. “If we take ourselves a small distance away from the crush we will have a good view. If we go now, we may even hear the nightingales before the first flight of rockets goes up. Shall we proceed, Miss Trussel?” he says, pressing me forward.
And as I go with him I have a sudden image of my uncle paddling the big pig down the lane with the flat of his ash stick, the pig breaking into a stubborn trot because it did not know where they were headed. Somehow it seems to matter whether I can remember if there was a dawning of terror in its eye as it shambled along, its view hooded by the flap, flap of its ears that were pink with the low winter sun shining through them, on its way to be slaughtered.
Why should I find it hard to submit willingly? It is what I wanted.

We stand away from the crowd, and wait for the fireworks. Leaves rustle in the elms behind us.
“I cannot hear the nightingales,” I say, pulling my shawl about me, afraid to hear what he is about to say. Cornelius Soul seems larger in the darkness. He moves himself closer, and then closer still.
“I tell you, they’ll sing, if you can wait!” he says. And he begins: “I will be honest, Miss Trussel. It made me happy when I saw that you could find some warmth inside yourself for me.”
I swallow. “Did it?” I reply, faintly.
“And tonight is a pleasure,” he says. “Were the Gardens as you hoped they’d be?” He puts his hand around me, and runs it slowly up and down my spine.
Confused, I keep my eyes fixed on the bright lights of the rotunda in the distance. “I did not think it would be like this,” I whisper.
“When the autumn comes, Agnes,” he murmurs suddenly, “should we be married ? ” It is the first time he has called me by my name. But that is too late, far too late. What do I do? His face widens to a grin.
“Agnes?”
I can hear a woman’s voice close to us, in the shadows. “My little puggy,” she is murmuring, her voice slurred with drink or fondness. “Mmm, my little puggy.” Then a man’s voice says something that I cannot hear, and she gives out a throaty, drunken snort.
“Need we wait until . . . ?” I begin to whisper back, but my words are drowned out by the first volley of maroons and sharp reports. I turn to look, and the firework I see is like the flash of an axe falling.
Cornelius Soul pulls me toward him and kisses my neck, which I do not like. I pull away to tell him so. I feel a panic in me. The autumn is too late, I am thinking, over and over. Too late. Too late. In the light from the lamps in the trees above us, his eyes seem as though they are lidded half-shut and his teeth look long and yellow, like the teeth of a fox or scavenger.
“I am cold,” I say inaudibly against the whine and crackle of the rockets, shivering.
And then he bends suddenly and picks up the hem of my skirt, and rubs at the weave of the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. What is he doing? I know my underskirt is exposed; the chill in the air has reached the bareness of my legs. It is hard not to pull away from him. The trunk of the elm tree presses at my back. I realize that he is not the kind of man to take refusal lightly. He seems much stronger than I thought. I swallow. His big arm encircles and presses me against him harder. He is breathing fast. And then his other hand is reaching in under my skirts, pushing them back, and the air is cold on my thighs as he pulls back to unbutton his breeches. This is not what I meant. “No!” I cry, against the roar of the firing. Behind me I hear the collective pop and fizz of the Roman candles, and the admiration of the crowd.
It is happening now; I cannot stop it.
Oh, God help me, his hands are touching the roundness of my belly, the base of the undressed belly, where there can be no mistaking it for plumpness or too many garments.
“You are big with child!” he says, incredulous. His eyes in the yellow light are wide and stare at me.
And then he turns away and laughs and spits on the ground. I can see the muscles in his jaw move as he clenches it tight.
“You sly devil, Blacklock, and after all your sermonizing at me!”
“No, no—” I begin.
“Small wonder he had no appetite for whoring or gaming! He had it so cozy, so convenient at home. And what did you think, Miss Trussel, when it all went wrong and you knew you had his bastard child? That you would fob it off on to me? That I would be your saving? Did you think of this between you? As if I were some sop to be made a fool of? How he must be laughing at me, watching me take his damaged goods like the fool I am, all unawares. Damn him. Damn his eyes. Assuming it is his.”
“It is not how—”
“I have a good mind to finish what I started here, but I will not taint myself,” he says, buttoning his breeches and spitting again, as if to rid himself of a bad taste in his mouth. “Or God only knows what I may contract.” His lips are thin. He puts his hand into his coat and brings out some coins, which he drops one by one at my feet.
“Your journey home,” he says stiffly, and turns his back and in an instant disappears. I can hear the crunch of his heels on the gravel for a moment longer than I see his shape.
I am a disgrace.
I bend with difficulty and grope for the dusty shillings in the dark, for how else will I get back unless I use Mrs. Mellin’s coins?
The cold lights are dazzling as I go to the turnstile. The woman who is a man leers at me as I push my way out. “Not good enough for you then, darling?” she shouts after me. “Or did he go off with another?” and her shriek of laughter fills my head.
I have made a ruin of my life.


In the carriage I realize that I had not even heeded the close of the fireworks display. My bones feel weak with distress. I did not see the fireworks. I did not see them. I close my eyes tight shut and try to think of fire pouring silver, white. And then I hardly think of anything until the carriage slows and stops, discharging me into the night.
The noise of the hooves of horses fades. The night is as black as pitch. I cannot see my hand before my face.
I make my way to the yard at the back, and enter the house by the scullery door. It squeaks open. I grope for the tinderbox on the high dresser and strike a light. There is nobody there in the kitchen; the fire is banked up for the night and the retainer put on. Mary Spurren’s candlestick is gone from the shelf, so she must be in her bed.
I do not know how late it is, but I see that lamplight is still shining under the door of Mr. Blacklock’s study as I go past it to the stairs. I make my treading light and even as I go by; indeed I hardly breathe at all, lest he should hear me.
When Mr. Blacklock calls out, my hand jerks with surprise, so that hot wax spills and runs down my fingers. “Who’s . . . there?” he says, gruffly. His voice is strange.
“Who . . . ?” he calls again.
“Only me, Agnes,” I say quietly, my fingers burning as I hesitate outside, but because his voice is so strange and the door is ajar a little already, I push it open further and look into the room.
Mr. Blacklock has fallen to the carpet before the fire.
“What is it! Are you ill?” I say, rushing to him, and then at once I see by the flush of his face and the overturned and empty bottles by him that he is deeply in liquor. He tries to get up as I grasp his shoulders and attempt to lift him to the chair, but a drunken man is heavier than someone sober twice the height, and when I let go he slumps to the floor again. His face is wet, as though he has been weeping.
I sink into the chair before him. I cannot think what else to do.
“Fireworks?” he mutters from the floor, so thickly that I have to lean forward in the chair to hear him.
“I tell you again, they were not as good as those you promised me,” I reply bleakly. It is all I can say. Mr. Blacklock does not drink prodigious quantities like other men, yet here he is, quite full of liquor. How long can a man keep mourning for his wife and stay healthy in his soul?
I could fetch Mary Spurren and perhaps between us we could take him up the stairs and lay him in his bed, yet . . . somehow I do not want anyone to see him in this state. But I dare not leave him. He might knock his head on the hearthstone, or a spark could catch at his coat and flare up.
Instead I get up to put some lumps of coal upon the fire and rake the embers. The fire begins to liven up and pour out smoke. At the window the shutters have not been drawn, and in the crooked glass my disheveled face stares back at me. The reflection is so broken up, at first I do not recognize myself.
Outside I can hear the clatter of a rat or cat or vagrant knocking something over in the yard. I do not even care, and leave the shutters folded open as they are.
Mr. Blacklock has propped himself against a chair before the hearth. When I sit down once more and look at him, I see again the orange fire reflected in the darkness of his eyes as though it were burning inside his head. I lift the stopper from the decanter on the table next to me and pour more wine into his half-filled glass and drink from it myself. It is a red wine, dry and fruited and faintly metallic like blood. I drink another glass, until my body does not feel my own. I tip back my head and swallow more. I do not want to be alone with it, my ugly, swollen body that is not my own.
I let the tears I feel run down my cheeks, without a sound. I do not sob, but the tears come anyway. We are a sorry pair, I think. The fire bursts into flames beside us, and it stirs him, so that he raises himself up a little and, swaying, sits almost insensible before me at my feet. He looks up and meets my eye, and his face is gaunt with disappointment.
I cannot bear to see him so sad. I cannot bear it. I reach out and touch his shoulders. I touch his head. I hold his head, I lean forward and hold it tight against me and I rock him as I cry in sympathy for him and for myself and the ruin I have made of everything.
“John Blacklock, John Blacklock,” I hear myself say, over and over.
“I have made a mistake,” I whisper. “A great mistake.”
I rock and rock, his head on my chest, so close to my belly. I am almost begging him to notice what is wrong with me. But now his face is pressed into my hands. His mouth is on my fingers; I can feel the roughness of his shaven skin. I have never touched a man’s face before. It is large. He holds my fingers on his mouth, pressing them there fiercely with his own hands. When he speaks, I feel the heat and dampness of his words against them. I feel the tremor of his words rise through his throat.
“Agnes,” he mutters. He is kissing my fingers.
“You must . . .” he says, and his voice is so hoarse I can hardly hear him. “You must . . . forgive me.”
I do not loosen my hold upon him. I do not know what else to do. His head is warm and comforting against my lap. He must be quite confused with grief, I tell myself, over and over. And I go on rocking John Blacklock before the hearth until he sleeps.

The night moves on, and the fire dies down to embers once again.
A thin light creeps about outside in the yard and a wind stirs the leaves. His breathing is deeper now, stronger as he rests against me. How close he is to the child inside me, unmoving, too, perhaps asleep, inside my belly—but he does not know it. His eyelids are shut tight over his eyes, shadowed purple with tiredness.
How well I know the conduct of men in this condition. They drink, they talk nonsensically, sometimes with songs or rambling tales, then they become morose or ill, then they fall down in a stupor and take a corpselike slumber out of which they inch with a stiff neck and a bad humor in the morning, and they do not recollect a thing about the way the night before was passed. John Blacklock will remember nothing of this night.
Besides, it will be days now, I suppose, before my belly becomes impossible to hide beneath my shawl, and I will no longer have employment here.
I am finished.
Everything is coming to an end. So what do I have to lose now? Nothing.
His head is warm. The clock ticks. A coal falls in the grate. I hear the scratch and patter of a mouse in the wall behind the paneling. The shallow glorious glitter of the Gardens seems far away.
Mr. Blacklock slumbers soundly, unknowingly, against my lap. It does not matter that I touch his dark hair. Nobody knows. And nobody knows when I bend and kiss him, just once, gently, closing my eyes as I taste his skin.

I am exhausted by the time the fire is out.
I rise and untangle myself from Mr. Blacklock’s arms, gone slack with sleep, ease him down to the hearth rug without disturbance and lay my woollen cloak unfolded over him. He grunts but does not stir; his breathing comes and goes with labored steadiness. I turn the lamp down but do not blow it out lest he wake in a daze before dawn. And I take up what is left of my candle and go to my chamber.
The narrow bed seems so cold after the warmth I have just had, yet as I drift into sleep, I can still feel the shape and the weight of his head in my hands. It did not seem wrong to have held it. Sometimes when I look at John Blacklock, it is as though I were looking at my own dark self, as though there were no difference between us. But then a look in his face reminds me of how he remembers his dead wife, and I am still suddenly, inside, as when a wind drops and the wrinkled surface of a pond becomes smooth like glass and shows the sky.