The Book of Fires

31
For what is left of the night, I dream of nothing. When I wake, it is quiet outside. The sky is faintly blue, as when a drop of milk falls into a glass of water and spreads out gently. I am late for breakfast. Mrs. Blight is clearing the plates away and smirking, and when I go to the scullery, Mary Spurren’s face is quarrelsome. All the while I am trying to work out if Mr. Blacklock has been down already. How many plates are there on the side? Mary Spurren slops the water about in the sink and makes her apron wetter than it was.
Then Mrs. Blight calls out from the kitchen, “Mr. Blacklock got a letter this morning, urging him to travel to Hertfordshire straight off.”
“Oh?” I say, as if it is no matter to me.
“So he’ll be gone for days, and just when I’d spent time deciding upon what to have for suppers all week. Aggravating, it is. An aunt is on the brink of death, his last remaining relative, he says, and he has gone to tie up her affairs, should that prove necessary.”
“He has no other relatives? ” I ask. “Not one? ”
“Not so he says of,” she answers, tipping coal on the fire. “Today at noon we shall have a batter pudding and no complaints.”
“How did he seem? ” I ask. “Before he left, what was his humor? ”
Mrs. Blight does not give this question enough thought. “He had no particular fondness for his aunt, he said, when I offered my condolences, therefore I doubt his mood went either way.”
“I mean, did he appear to be in any discomfort or distress?” I say.
“No, he did not. Pass me that bowl down from there,” she says, pointing up at the dresser.

I find my cloak folded neatly by the hob. In private I look closely at it, but it tells me nothing, though, when I hold it to my face, it seems to have something of his person about it. I bury my face in it for a moment and breathe deeply. Tobacco, perhaps. The smell of Mr. Blacklock’s garments. I wonder whether it could be his grief itself that I am smelling. I put the cloak about me, as if nothing had happened.
I go out to the grocer’s.
In the shop I buy a dozen brown eggs, and do not stop to chat with Mrs. Spicer. Going back to the house I do not look at anyone I pass; indeed, I do not see Lettice Talbot until I am almost upon her.
She is leaning in the whitewashed archway where I turn back into the narrow street to Blacklock’s. Her leather case is down on the cobbles between her feet, as though she had been waiting for me for some time. Her dress is very clean and fancy under her patterned shawl.
“Agnes!” she says, straightening up. “It is a beautiful morning.”
“How ever did you know where I could be found? ” I ask, uneasily.
“I asked about. It is not difficult to find a person, should you have a mind to do so,” Lettice Talbot says. She folds her arms tightly, as if to hold herself together. “How are you keeping?” she asks. I do not need to reply to this. She can see my belly, after all. It is strange; I have looked for Lettice Talbot for so long, and now she is before me, I do not want to speak to her. I glance past her to the house.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she says. She puts her head to one side and smiles coaxingly at me. “I became concerned when you did not come to Mrs. Bray’s at first, as I suggested, and then I thought that, unless you were in very bad hands or facedown in some ditch somewhere, robbed of your assets, then perhaps it was better. And then I forgot about you. I was thinking selfishly, of course.” It is as though she has prepared a speech.
“Selfish?” I say.
“I confess I liked the look of you. There was something, I could not have said what it was precisely, but I thought there was a freshness, a pleasant candor to your manner, which might prove worthwhile for companionship, and also good for business.”
“You mean you thought you could be friendly with me?” I ask. Perhaps I had not been wrong about her, after all. Perhaps she did not mean to turn her back on me.
“Of course I did, sweetheart, but I . . .” She looks at my belly again. “And then there you were at the Gardens, and I regretted it. I saw how your shape was changed—although you hide it well enough, the signs are clear.
“You do not want a life like this! ” she says suddenly, looking at me.
There is something odd about her face. What that is at first I cannot see, and then her head moves out of shadow and I can see a long bruise across the base of her throat. She has tried to cover it with some whitish paste or powder but the discoloration shows through in gray and purple. I do not want to stare, but my eye wanders there again and again, until the early morning wind blows chilly down the shady side of the street and she pulls her finely woven shawl more tightly about her neck.
“You see,” she says, “there is much to say for never falling out of grace.”
“With whom? ” I ask.
“With whoever pushes us along those paths we should have never taken. It is too hard to turn back. I know that now. It is for the best, perhaps, that you did not come and work with me. At the upper portion of the market in my trade there are gentlemen who expect . . . specialisms,” she says. I feel the breeze more keenly.
“Your trade? ” I say. “Is that what you call it? ”
She smiles. “I would have been glad to have taken you under my wing and taught you what I know, given you tips, a little guidance here and there when your instinct didn’t know which way to turn, Agnes. You are a clever girl. You would’ve made a good success of it, I’m sure.”
“Would I?” I say. “What . . . kind of specialisms?”
“There are those, Agnes, who are not satisfied by what is enough for other men.”
“And how—”
“They pay more,” she says quickly. “Willing to pay above the usual price, for things, techniques, that meet their more . . . unusual appetites.”
I look at her clean and lovely dress, at last grasping what the cost of it might be.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, clumsily.
She gives a pretty shrug. “Sometimes. But my power comes afterward, because they must pay handsomely for what they like to do. However, I did not come to find you to say all that. Only to tell you that there is a woman called Dilly Martinment who can help you, lodged at this address.” She holds out a scrap of paper with something written on it in an untidy hand. “She does not waste much vigor on any kindnesses, but her practice is effective.” As I do not say a thing, she adds, “There is often no infection, no . . . trouble, when she is done.”
“I see,” I say. I take the paper from her and hold it tightly this time.
“You have money, still?” she asks. “It will cost more than a little.”
I nod. “The coins are here,” I say, and move as if to take them out to show her.
“No! No! In God’s name, child!” She looks about to see if we are overlooked. “Keep all your secrets absolutely hidden. No one must see. No one! Do you hear?”
I look at her. What if another person knew my shame? How I have longed for that relief, for some acceptance or forgiveness. My guilt is tainting the child, I am sure of it. A horrible seething mass knots and unknots itself in the place above my belly, where my heart is. My heart is choked with it. “I stole them,” I burst out suddenly. “I stole those coins. And I am going to confess.”
Her eyes are as round as buttons. “Confess! To whom, you crazy girl?” she hisses.
“Why are you angry with me?”
“You are so stupid!” she exclaims. “As if you imagine so simple a thing could put right all that has happened to you. I have never met such an innocent!”
“An innocent!” I say. Of course I am not.
“Now you are cross with me,” she says, more gently. “You must move forward, Agnes, take up your life, just as it is. Move on. You cannot trust a soul—tell nobody.”
“But I must,” I say, trying to make her understand. She shakes her head.
“You cannot.” She leans toward me and speaks quietly now; her eyes are narrow and very bright. “You must curb that feeling, you must knock it dead in its tracks, Agnes.” Her voice is as clear as if it were shouting the words at me. “At best you would be transported at His Majesty’s pleasure to some barren hellhole two months’ voyage away over the high seas. At worst—you will swing from the triple tree at Tyburn.”
“It will not come to that,” I say stubbornly.
She puts her forefinger to my chin and raises it up lightly, almost as though she were about to kiss me, her fine face brushes so close. But she is whispering into my ear.
“How much would you care to feel that gallows breeze about you, Agnes? They say that the wind blows more freshly the higher you stand.”
“The nearer to heaven,” I mutter halfheartedly, though she does not hear. She is frightening me now. “Think of the roar of the crowd come to feast on your death,” she murmurs. “There will be many reasons why those in the crowd are there for it; there will be many who sympathize with your crime, such as it is, and with your suffering, but with relief that it was not themselves this time around, among this crop of unfortunates. ‘Poor beggar,’ they will say, as they always do. ‘And such a pretty face.’ Remember that their sense of holiday comes not from the sight of blood cooling in its flesh so quickly before their thirsty gazes, but from the gladness that it was not a sentence dealt to them on this occasion. Think of the crack of your neck as the cart rolls forward, Agnes, your legs free to kick in the cold air!”
“But I could plead my belly,” I say, swallowing. “They do not hang women who are with child.”
“They do not,” she says. “And after your conviction, how would you fare in Bridewell, grubbling in the dark for your waterpot, your clothes rotting from your shoulders while they wait for the child to be born so it can be removed to the workhouse? And then you will stand sentence, just as before.” She shrugs.
“I know a gentleman whose fantasy it is to see women strung up by the neck. Imagine, Agnes. And there are plenty like that—men with a streak of the Devil inside them whose predilection is for cruelty—and when a handful of these men have also law and order on their side, then they will use it shamefully. They like a pale face hanging from a rope. They like it regular, at each assize, and take it for granted, like some men enjoy a stroll in the park. Believe me, even the word execution affords them a little shudder of delight. I have seen men moaning with pleasure at the thought of pronouncing death upon a woman’s head.”
“It was to be a priest I told,” I say, thinking of Reverend Lindsay at St. Stephen’s, his kind, open face.
She looks incredulous. “And you can do that at the gallows, Agnes, as you will find churchmen there to lay a cast of sanctity over the proceedings, preaching to the damned to save you on your path to higher judgment. Small shame, sweetheart, that they do not spend their breath instead on saving the blighted souls of those who wield their strength so mightily.” She looks away down the street. “No, Agnes, take up your life, just as it is, and run with it.”
She seems somehow thinner than on the day I met her out in the fresh air on the carrier, and she does not meet my eye so many times. The joy in her eye is gone, though it is still as blue. There seems to be less of her substance, not of her body, so much as though her spirit itself were smaller, humiliated. I do not like to see her like that. I do not know what I can say.
“And are you well yourself? ” I ask uselessly, into the quiet of the lull in the traffic, and she brightens and straightens up and smoothes a hand down her silky skirts, which sheen and ripple like a tabby fur.
“Oh, I do not do so badly!” And her laugh is firm, like it was on the day I first met her. “My luck changed for the better—as yours will, Agnes—when I found a way to take what I can from life. I have no regrets about what I have done, having taught myself skills that most would shy from and applied them shamelessly, but always in command of the way I lived.
“Come and see me,” she shouts over the noise of a carriage passing, and I tell her that I shall, though I know that I will not. She embraces me then, very lightly, her fine clothes just brushing my own, and when she touches my hand to say goodbye I see a line of bruising about her wrist, as though some twine or rope had been bound and tightened there. She flinches away when I reach out.
“He did this to you? That soldier man?”
Lettice Talbot shakes her head and smiles at me, as if it is of no consequence. There is too much I do not understand.
“Go to the woman,” she urges me. “It is not a difficult undertaking, but neither is it easy. There is pain, and there is risk.” She shrugs lightly. “But there is always risk. You are simply choosing one risk over another.” She picks up her leather case and leaves me then, and goes away into the crowd gathered around a juggler on the corner of King Street. The crowd shouts and claps.
When she has gone, there is still a trace of her sweet smell in the fabric of my clothes, and it does not fade until the evening.