by Jim Crace
It is no different in the gallery upstairs. The walls have been stripped. The fittings have been thrown aside. Even the side room where Master Jordan made his den and where I and possibly the Beldams spent a night has been plundered of every piece of cloth, each coverlet, each cushion and arras. Lucy Kent’s old riding cape has gone. Again, the heavy mattressing has been slashed.
I can’t imagine that the man played much of a part in all of this. Such anger at the trimmings and the trappings of a house not worth the salvaging is woman’s work, I think. A man takes vengeance on the flesh; a woman lashes out at anything that cannot bleed—unless it is an animal, of course, a Willowjack, let’s say. Many times I’ve listened to the tantrums and the arguments of married neighbors in our cottages. The men were woundless come the dawn, though their best breeches or favorite jugs, or possibly their dinners, had been thrown out along the lane with terrifying force. But many of the wives appeared next day nursing their twisted wrists or showing bruises on their faces, or even on one occasion—the Kips again—a scorch mark where William had snubbed out a burning candle in the center of his wife’s forehead. He’d branded her, he boasted. While he was out, she snapped his smoking pipe in half and stamped on all the pieces.
I find myself for the first time in many months in the lobby room at the far end of the long gallery. The spiral staircase here leads up to the attic and the turret, the hideaway where I once made my nest in my first season, before I met my Cecily and moved into the village. Or at least it would lead to that lonely suite of sloping lofts if the supporting timbers had not collapsed into the well with age and rot, and from disuse. The middle section has no treads or flights at all these days. The lower steps are treacherous. There are very few dependable balusters. Only last year at Master Kent’s bidding I roped off the access, just in case any visitor was tempted to ascend—and then found himself descending rapidly, headfirst. Today I see that someone with a knife or sword has cut the rope away. The fibers have not been neatly severed but hacked aggressively. I imagine it will be the work of one of the sidemen, bored perhaps at being stuck in this dull house or, possibly, just trying out his blade after a tedious session with his whetting stone. I would not want to chance those stairs myself but it is clear that someone has, and recently. One of the treads is freshly splintered and I can see where hands have gripped the newel for support leaving traces, of what? Blood, or gravy, or even some of those preserves that have gone missing from the larder downstairs. I reach and touch. I cannot say that the traces are still damp, but they are sticky certainly. I hold my fingers to my nose. The smell is neither sweet nor savory.
I stand in silence, or at least in as much silence as these creaking floorboards will allow. It’s hard to isolate the sounds, to separate the ones coming from my own weight on the boards from those caused by the house itself. A timber house of several stories such as this is seldom absolutely quiet. The building shrugs and breathes. It’s like an old man shifting his hips to make his back more comfortable. A creak might denote not a footstep in the room above but the shifting of the roof frame or the settling of the wood. Still, it’s too late for such sensible opinions. I have already alarmed myself with several possibilities, the main one being that the Beldams have not left the manor yet as I thought but have heard me entering their door and—fearful that the masters have returned—taken refuge in the highest rooms. They’ve left the smudges of their hurriedly abandoned meal on the column of the unsafe stairs. I call out just as I imagined calling out last night when I was hunting for their company, “It’s only Walter, Walter Thirsk …” But of course they do not reply. They would have gone beyond the attic and up the wall ladder into the turret, too far away perhaps to hear my shouts. They will be huddled in the corner of that space and fearful for their very lives.
If I was feeling fitter and less damaged by the only food and drink I’ve had all night and day—the pots of ale, the fairy caps; I haven’t had a crumb besides—I might make a quicker and less noisy job of climbing up these stairs. At least, I could be less fearful. But as it is I feel nothing but foolhardy. If I fall or if the wood gives way, who’s to hear me tumbling and who’s to run down to my aid? And if my clumsy efforts are heard above, what’s to stop the Beldams mistaking me for someone other than myself and standing in the shadows at the top of the stairwell until my head comes into view clearly enough to invite the welcome of a well-aimed kick or a blow from a length of wood? Nevertheless I climb, using the treads and strings at the edges of the stairs as my supports, and always gripping the central newel with at least one hand. I keep on talking too, as I go up, repeating my name, promising that I mean nothing but to forge my peace with them, to thank them even—if they truly were responsible—for getting ready my possessions for the journey out.
The worst part of the stair is the blind stretch reached neither by the downstairs lobby window light nor by the sharper attic light. I have to test each footing with my toes, searching for the most solid timber and then chancing my full weight on it. Only once does my footing fail me. My ankle’s caught in splintered, wormy wood. I hear a piece of it clatter through the maze of stairs below. But after that either the going is easier or, having scared myself enough, I find the courage to proceed with more resolution. The pair of attic rooms is entirely empty except for some of Master Kent’s abandoned junk: a broken chair, broken not by the Beldams but by the weight of Master Kent himself, as I remember, and long ago; some leather riding tack; the great, long travel chest in which I once stored my clothes; the painted child’s cot which sadly was never put to use; a rusty brewing pan. Unlike in the downstairs rooms, however, these items have been left in peace. No one has upturned them, or thrown them about the place.
I turn at once toward the ladder mounted on the wall and climb the twenty rungs up to the trapdoor which will allow me entrance to the turret space. I half expect the trapdoor to be resistant to my push, weighted possibly on its upper side by Mistress Beldam and her husband standing on its boards, opposing me. But it swings open easily and showers me in dust. My eyes, once I have rubbed away the grit, are flooded with the full daylight of the unshuttered turret windows. I pull myself onto my feet, a little breathlessly. The floor is covered with the usual fallen scuff of under-roofs and with the undisturbed remains of bird nests and a waspery. It’s obvious that no one other than myself has been up here for years. The view is mostly chimney pots and roofs. I cannot see into the courtyard, as I intended, to check that my stick and the two travel bags with my glinting silver spoon are safe and where I left them. But I can see out to the orchard and the unbuilt church beyond, and I can see our village roofs and fields.
WHAT STARTS WITH FIRE WILL end with fire, I’ve heard it said. At first I do not spot the plume of smoke which, reluctant to rise on this almost windless day, has gathered on the tool-barn roof. I think at first it could be just a cloud of blackened dust—but dust does not behave as if it’s weightless, dust does not billow or form up in rounded shapes such as those that are now lifting from the roof. Another plume of smoke has started up a little further down the lane toward the cottages, this time from the whitehouse roof. I am as yet not able to make out the unsteady burst and blaze of actual flames or even, from this high vantage point, hear their crack. Now the first of our twenty or so inhabited—let’s say recently inhabited—cottages begins to offer up its smoke. It is the pretty home where Thomas Rogers played his pipe and Anne, his mother, raised her finchy voice. So far the smoke is so thin and undramatic that, if this was only chimney smoke, I might have taken it for nothing more than what was normal for teatime in our village lane, with cooking and a row of blazing hearths. But by the time the fourth and fifth cottages have been set afire, the tool barn and the whitehouse are leaping with orange light, and flames are running up their sides, blackening the wood. And by the time the fourth and fifth cottages are doing the same, the widow Gosse’s home is breathing black and mine is coughing smoke.
I do not need to guess who’s settin
g fire to us. Indeed, I see the evidence all too clearly. The Beldams have found themselves a cart and the pair of oxen that we used to plow our final mark into this summer’s barley field. The husband has evidently taken me at my word. “I’ll make the pair of you rich,” I’d promised, and, so far as I can tell, looking down at their great load where they have left it in the clearing by the pillory, they have pillaged us exceedingly and have assembled quite a cargo for themselves, both from the village homes and from the manor house. I recognize my master’s tapestries, his better chairs, his wife’s old loom. I can even make out the several parts of the plow we assembled together yesterday. Was that just yesterday? I only shrug. Their father’s death has paid for this, it must be said.
For the moment I can see and hear only the husband. He is sizing up the pillory, the great unwieldy cross of wood where he has spent the most part of a week. He proves himself to be as clever with an axe as he has been with a plow. His first strike is a little high. The oak of the upright is too hard for him, but lower down, where the timbers have been dampened and the surface worn away a bit by weather and by time, his axe bite takes a mouthful at first try. He cuts out the chip with a sideways blow, and then addresses his old resting place from the other side, until even I can see the hollow where the axe has landed. I hear his every strike. I do not think it takes him more than thirty, but I am no longer watching him. I have caught sight of the Mistress herself, my eyes drawn to her by the skittering of a narrow thread of smoke, the burning faggot she is holding as she hurries in and out of the final cottages, checking there is nothing left to steal and then setting fire to anything that is dry. Her head and shoulders are wrapped in velvet, to protect her from the smoke, I guess. She has my short-bladed sword in her free hand. I have forgotten how small she is. Her smoky trail is like a moth’s, erratic, willful, spirited.
I know I have to drag myself away from this high window. I do not believe that Mistress Beldam intends to part from here leaving the manor intact. When she reaches the last house of the village and has satisfied herself that everything is beyond rescue, she is bound to scamper down the lane, together with whatever livestock has been panicked by the blaze, to where her husband is now resting from his exertions, with the pillory as dead as mutton at his feet. Then they will continue through the orchard’s apple strew to finish off the manor farm buildings left by Brooker Higgs, the Derby twins and their moonball. If there’s to be a fire started in the dry wood of the downstairs rooms, I could not be in a worse place—in the high turret of a timber house with a wooden ladder, a collapsed staircase and a wide stairway to hurry down before I even reach the flames. Indeed, I wonder if this has been her plan all along, to lure me, through some sorcery beyond my understanding, to this upper space and then to bake me here.
I do not know what makes me pause when I reach the attic rooms. I do know that going down into the lobby should be speedier and less dangerous than coming up. Descents are not as weighty as ascents. I can simply slip and slide and keep my fingers crossed. I’ll reach the safety of the courtyard very quickly. Then I’ll gather up my things and be on my way before the woman catches me. All neighborly and more-than-neighborly feelings I’ve ever had for her are gone. She frightens me. She only frightens me. That woman carries blade and fire. But pause I do. I’m anxious suddenly, alarmed, and not by the prospect of a manor fire. Something else has caught my eye so thinly that, when I stop to check, I don’t at first know where to look. Then I spot it for a second time. The oblong of dark that first I took to be a wedge of shadow under the great, long travel chest is looking now more like a seeping spill of blood.
He’s lying facedown, covered only with the chest’s loose lining. But I do not need to turn his face to verify his name. I recognize his finer clothes. He’s wearing what he wore the last time I laid eyes on him, hurtling in pursuit of Mistress Beldam at the midnight pillory. Here are his gentlemanly boots, his decorated jerkin, his townsman’s breeches and his plain, unfeathered cap. His fingers and his knuckles are still blue and green with paint. I recognize his wealthy beard and see how waxed and shaped it is, a trowel-shaped wedge of hair. I even think I can see some proof of his enduring smile from the creases on the back of his neck. I can’t believe he would be parted from his smile, even in death. The body is crunched up, of course. Full stretched, it would be longer than the chest. But this is not a body I have ever seen full stretched. This is a body that appears as I’d expect it to, lopsided, stiff and out of line. He’s died exactly as he stands, off-kilter as if he has been struck by lightning. The heavens opened and a tongue of light gave him the body of an old gnarled tree. I have no doubt that this is him, the stumbler, the Chart-Maker, the man who was too oddly brave to turn his back on us.
So far as I can tell from my brief examination of the body before I close the lid on him and tumble downstairs to run along the gallery, more fearful for myself than I have ever been before, his wounds were inflicted by a sword, the same one, I presume, that cut the ropes away at the access to the stairwell. He has been run though with great force and commitment. The blade has entered at the front a dozen times and exited behind his back, piercing his main organs and his chest. The blood has blackened and stiffened in his clothes. I do not know enough about a corpse to tell how long it has been here, or when his killing took place. It could have been last night, or equally it could have happened on the night of torture when the women named him. What’s probable, given the poor repair of the attic stairs, is that his killing took place in the upper rooms and close enough to the travel chest for the victim to be toppled in before he bled too much. Who should I hold responsible? Apart from the Beldams or the Jordan men? I have to say that for a moment I hold myself responsible. I feel that I have failed the man. I feel that I am failing him again, because I have to leave him here. By rights I ought to carry him to Turd and Turf to join the other corpses of the week, and mark his grave with a proper monument of piled stones and within sight of his beloved longpurples. He liked it there. He liked the blossoms and the light. He liked its solitude. He would have liked to listen to the juking of the birds until the end of time. But I cannot carry him, not on my own, not down those stairs, not with the fire maiden pressing down on us with her revenging flame.
The odd thing is, she does not come. Perhaps her husband has decided that she’s burned enough or he is impatient to depart before the evening and the darkness close in. He knows it’s wise to get away, to pass beyond our parish bounds before they’re stopped by someone coming back or asked for their account of where the oxen were acquired and why their cart is so loaded down with property beyond their station. Perhaps she’s tired of it herself. Her grief and anger have been spent. What is the point of taking down the manor house? What is the point of burning it with Mr. Quill inside to haunt its attics and its roofs? Maybe she has no idea that he is there, and she’s not the murderer. Whatever is the truth of it, it’s clear that I will never know. I step out of the courtyard with my bags, and there I glimpse the back of them and their great haul of plunder disappearing down the lane. The husband leads the oxen from the front, and she sits riding on the cart, her skirts pulled up to her thighs, the short sword resting on her knees and her bare legs swinging over the back. Her shoulders are draped in velvet, naturally. She’s getting even smaller now as they retreat behind the hedges and the walls, as they retreat into another world.
I’ll follow those Beldams, of course, but now only in dreams and without the emboldening of fairy caps or ale. I see myself trailing them by fifty paces, say, a neighbor in their wake, and free to close the gap only when she calls out to me and says that I am welcome to travel at their sides, that it is safe to bridge the space between us, that she does not wish me any harm. We can be reconciled. But I don’t want to dream of them just yet. I want to watch the manor burn. What starts with fire will end with ash; it has to end with ash if I am to give Mr. Quill an honorable cremation rather than abandon him in the chest for woodworms, rats and attic birds to f
eed upon. Is this at last the courage that I sought this morning and last night and which I intended, at the very least (and at the very worst), to invest in redeeming mischief of some kind? Will this hotheaded deed make it too unsafe for me to stay on here as Master Jordan’s trusted winter man? Will this satisfy my seven witnesses? Will I be satisfied? Apart from wanting that one day behind the plow, I genuinely have not had a plan till now, but I have come to understand that I should finish what the Beldams have begun. I have a sudden, dutiful desire to set some further timbers cracking in the heat and to watch the ginger cats of flame, which have already put an end to all the other village homes, licking at the milky air of the manor house, licking through the many rooms and treading lightly up the several flights of stairs. I want to see the turret flaring like a beacon with flames higher than the pinnacle of any steeple.
