The Book of Fires. Jane Borodale

or breathe deeply. All that I have, I could lose, I remind myself.

      On the heath before Horsham, two men hail the carrier and ride the tailgate. They thump their boots on the floor of the cart so that it shakes and they are loud and troublesome and smell of liquor. I am relieved when after a mile or so they are forcibly turned off. A quarrel ensues and then one of the men falls to the ground. I can hear the growl of the driver’s terrier at the front of the waggon for a long time afterwards, and I fall asleep to dream of a man with a chafed, red neck walking along the edge of the road, alongside the carrier. His strides are purposeful and angry. I awake with a start to find he is not there.

      The hedges wind along beside us until my eyes are glazed with staring. A young rabbit bolts across our muddy wake and disappears into the undergrowth. I see that the light is beginning to fail, and there is a stillness to the cold air, our white breath rising as though we were all smouldering quietly on fire.

      After the bustle of Horsham the afternoon dies quickly around us. We pass lit windows in the walls of dwellings, and men returning from work on foot, their faces caught in the carriage lights as they stand aside. I hear the thump of wood being split with an axe. We go by a low cottage with a taper burning in the kitchen where a woman bends forward at the waist; she is raising her hand and shaking something at a man seated by a table. It is a curious matter, I think to myself, the seeing of things and yet not understanding.

      We halt for the night some time towards Dorking. The Red Lion is a dingy place. I order broth that comes in a broad swilling plate of pewter that makes it cold upon arrival, and I cannot tell what meat has given it its flavour. I finish it as best I can.

      ‘Cheap beds?’ The woman in the tap-room repeats my words too loudly, as if to feign offence, then calls an older woman to take me to the back chamber. The woman has brown spots over her neck like the burnt parts of a griddle-cake. When she reaches out to take the payment her eyes widen just a little at the sight of all my yellow coins together. I push the rest back into my stays, and look about. There are other beds in the room but it would seem that I am the only lodger here tonight. A musty odour of old upholstery and unwashed bedding hangs in the air. There is no fire. The woman lights a dripping candle for me from the one that she holds, and turns to leave.

      ‘I should sew that gold into your skirts, young woman,’ she observes from the doorway, her spotted hand on the latch. I look at her.

      ‘I should?’ I say.

      She pokes her head back into the gloom of the chamber, and lowers her voice to a conspiratorial rasp.

      ‘Tuppence for the use of a needle and threads, and three shillings for the excessive trouble I shall be put to in not telling a soul,’ she says. ‘My mouth does run away with itself sometimes, about tidy, shiny sums tucked up in warm corners, here and there.’ Her eyes glitter as she casts a meaningful glance round the empty room. ‘I knows individuals, and what they can thirst for.’ My heart sinks, and I nod in dismay.

      Later I sit and pull uneasily at the needle she brings me; the thread is red and garish and looks out of place against the weave of my plain fabric, and my fingers are clumsy with cold. The woman had bitten the coins that I gave her and chuckled horribly to make her point all down the corridor until a door closed somewhere and the noise was muffled.

      When the sewing is done, the needle lies on the sill in the candlelight like a sharp little knife.

      I do not sleep at first, there is so much din and clatter from somewhere nearby, so that when sleep comes to me eventually I dream of rats the size of dogs chewing at something I cannot see. It is cold all night. When I wake in the morning I see that the needle has gone. Though I look to see if it has rolled away on to the dirty rug or between the floorboards, I cannot find a trace of it.

       Five

      IN THE MORNING I TRY TO SWALLOW BREAD to quell my sickness, and when the bell rings at eight I take my bundle outside and join the carrier. The passengers have swelled in number, and I find I have to squeeze my way up on to the bench at the back of the waggon. When we leave the town the morning light shows a countryside choppy with hills, dotted with brightly golden copses and small farms and hamlets. Spiders’ webs catch at the damp between the stems of dead hemlock and milk-parsley. Plumes of smoke climb into the air from abundant chimneys and we see many people working the fields and driving goats and oxen. We stop for carts more frequently, even at this hour. The land seems teeming with its population.

      One of the new passengers sits very upright on the bench. There is a glossiness about her. She has a fine, fancy patterned shawl over her shoulders, and her mantua is made of silk bearing woven sprigs of flowers and birds. She seems tall and narrow, with a head of brown curling hair under her bonnet. Her face is pale as a china cup. High on the cheekbones two luscious spots of blush are painted on like raspberries. She is fresh and bright. I cannot stop watching her, until her eye catches mine and she smiles directly at me. I look away hastily, my own cheeks flushing in ordinary patches on my face.

      Her hands are long and bony, which she knocks together through her white kid gloves from time to time as though she were eager to reach her destination, or as if she were filled with an impatient kind of song or energy that must escape by any means. Under her boots is a small leather case. I have a feeling that her eyes are on me, but then she turns and begins to listen to the fat woman talking to the unpleasant woman with the daughter. I fold my arms carefully across my stomach and do not hear them. I pray no one will speak to me. I am bad, spoilt, I think. I am best not spoken to; I am like an apple rotting slowly away once the worms have got in. A rotten apple touching the skin of a good one in the store will taint the others till they fester together.

      The day is milder than the day before.

      There is no sunshine, but the clouds are high and pale, and the air has about it the nameless sweetness that earth gives off before the great frosts begin.

      After some time the woman pulls off a glove and eats some fruit with her bare hand, swallowing quickly and not letting juice drip on her dress. I am startled when she leans across to me, her long fingers reaching out to offer me a plum. I take it gratefully and bite. It is late in the season for such a good one, sour and pleasant at once. The bloom on it is like a mildew on its perfect skin. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I say.

      She pulls on her glove.

      ‘My name is Lettice Talbot,’ the woman says, as if to set up conversation. The voice she has is light and coaxing, like a child’s. ‘Some people call me Letty.’ I spit out the stone of the plum and throw it on to the road.

      ‘What an uncommon name,’ I answer, out of manners.

      ‘I like it very much,’ the woman replies, which is a strange answer, and makes me think somehow that she has chosen it herself.

      I cannot think of any other thing to say to her. A curious smell comes away from Lettice Talbot’s clothing when she moves about; as sweet as beeswax, or the dusty odour of roses that have been kept to dry inside a cupboard, or something else I cannot place. It is a good, intriguing smell that makes me want to sit a little closer to her.

      At noon we roll over White Down Hill and descend into the village of Leatherhead. The inn is adjacent to the blacksmith’s, and as we pass I look into the darkness of his shop and see white-hot coals flaring and dulling with the roar of the bellows. From the yard of the inn we can still hear the regular metallic clang and ring of a hammer on hot iron against an anvil. In the silence that follows I know well the hiss of a horseshoe going into cold liquid, and the smell of a scorched hoof as the warm shoe is nailed on.

      The jolting slows and stops.

      ‘We can take something to eat here.’ Lettice Talbot gets down immediately over the tailgate and calls up to me, brushing dirt from her palms. The harnesses clink as the ostlers unbuckle the horses. The horses are sweating and breathing heavily.

      ‘How stiff we become on the back of this cart, our legs stuck