Upstairs, the late winter cold wrapped around me unnoticed. Fully dressed, I climbed under the quilt and pressed my eyes closed and, imagining Touch there beside me, began to whisper, once again, the story of how Captain Morgan transformed himself from the most feared buccaneer in the West Indies to the vice-governor of Jamaica. I told him every pirate story I could remember and tried to invent new ones when my memory ran dry. Above all else, Touch had loved pirates. As long as I was speaking, he was alive next to me. I could not bear to think of him under the cold ground.
When the others came up to bed, I feigned sleep, and the next day—my last at Black Hill—I was like a sleepwalker, going through the motions mindlessly. I only wanted to leave. I only wanted to lose the knowledge that I now possessed of poor, dead Touch, whom I would never in this life see again.
*
Early the next morning, North took me in the horse cart to the Four Bells, from where he had brought me to Black Hill five years before. In those years, I had never been to the village of Arnfield, there being nothing in that place that Mr. Lincoln thought worthy of our interest. Athena had packed for me two cheese pies, and I set them inside my cap and my cap on my head in order to keep them warm and my hands free. The same trunk that had come to Black Hill with me was filled with my clothes and what few other belongings I now possessed: a notebook full of jottings, a small Latin dictionary, two quill pens badly trimmed, a penknife, five or six rocks that I had gathered over the years for no reason that I can remember except that boys like to gather rocks. And, of course, the letter from my father. The guinea coin was in my pocket.
I had understood that the coach would come through Arnfield before noon, but far past midday I was still waiting. At the Four Bells I bought a watered beer and ate my cheese pies and would have eaten more, but I did not dare spend another farthing.
It was midafternoon when the coach arrived, but there was no room for me except on top, where I was forced to cling to the rail with one hand and my trunk with the other, trying not to shiver in the wind and the cold. I put my mind on Touch, who was lying in the still-frozen ground, though if there were a heaven, surely he must have been there instead; and on Carrot, who had left and never sent a letter. I had no idea where he might be now, nearly a year later, or if his father had really claimed him, and perhaps he was in London among all the toffs, at some party perhaps, dancing with a pretty girl, or drinking wine and laughing at some festive table. Or if he knew that Touch was dead. I did not remember Carrot’s real name: Carrot had been all the name we needed for him, as Jam was all anyone had needed for me. Hard as I tried, up there on the coach top, I could not remember anyone ever having called me Edward. And I thought, too, of Mouse, who was with us for such a short time, and who, despite our assurances to the contrary, had been so afraid of being beaten, and I wondered, as I often did and still do to this day, if things had at last gone right for him. In short, I thought of whatever I could that would take my mind from the cold.
Well after dark the coach pulled into the yard of the Royal Oak Inn in Maysbeck, and it took some effort for me to loosen my hand from the rail, for it had become nearly frozen in place. I was unceremoniously handed down, stiff all over, and my trunk after me, and I forced my legs into movement to get me inside. The crowd around the hearth made it impossible for me to warm myself, but at least I was indoors, away from the wind, and I blew on my hands in hopes of warming them. It was only then that I noticed a boy, younger than I by a few years and half a head shorter, who seemed to have come out to meet the coach and had followed me inside.
“Master Rochester?” he said in a voice that was an octave too low for his size.
“Yes,” I responded. “Are you from Mr. Wilson, perhaps?”
“I am. You are to follow me.” He reached for my trunk, but I picked it up myself, as I could not imagine his being able to carry it.
The boy led the way back out into the dark and the cold. The wind blew scurries of sleet across the yard, and I bent my head against it. We walked a few hundred yards or so along twisting streets and through alleys before I asked, “Is it much farther to Mr. Wilson’s home?” Surely it was not, or they would have sent a hack for me.
“We do not go to ’is ’ouse,” was the surprising response. “I am to take you to the mill.”
“What mill?”
“Mr. Wilson’s mill. The Maysbeck Mill.”
Mr. Wilson’s establishment is a mill? Surely there must be some mistake, I thought, but I had no chance to ask, because the boy was hurrying so fast ahead of me that it was all I could do to carry my trunk and keep up with him. When we finally arrived, my feet and hands and nose were back to ice again, and I imagine the boy was just as cold, since he wore fewer warm clothes than I. In the darkness the building presented an imposing mass as we approached it. The boy made straightaway to a heavy oak door and pounded on it until it was opened by a rough-looking man of forty years or so. He was carrying a lantern, which he held up to my face to get a good look at me.
“This is ’im?” he said.
The boy said, “Yes.”
“Well, come in, then,” he said, motioning us forward. “It’s bloody cold outside.”
Inside, I tried to glance around, but the light of his lantern spread only far enough to show a cavernous place filled with large, complicated machinery. I followed the man, and the boy came along behind, as we walked to a dimly lit room twenty yards or so away. I could tell it was an office of some sort. There was a desk and, additionally, a high table covered with neat piles of papers. In a corner, a coal grate glowed. The man put down the lantern and took a good look at me. “Rochester, they say your name is.”
“Yes, sir, it is,” I responded. “Edward Rochester. My apologies for the time, sir. The coach was late in coming. I’m sorry if I kept you up.” The man had not introduced himself; I could not imagine that he was Mr. John Wilson himself, but I could hardly be sure, as so much strangeness had already occurred.
“There is a cot for you in the corner,” he said, waving his hand vaguely toward a darkened part of the room. “You will sleep there tonight. I have no idea what will become of you after that. Mr. Wilson will be deciding that. But be sharp: they come promptly to work. You will need to be up and ready before six o’clock in the morning.”
“How will I know the hour?” I asked.
He laughed. “You will know,” he said. “And, in case you are a very ’eavy sleeper, the frames start up promptly at six. There is no doubt you will ’ear them.”
“The frames?” I asked stupidly.
“Boy, what do you know of this place?” he asked.
“I know nothing,” I responded, “except that it’s a mill, I think. But what kind of mill? And what are frames?”