The Invention of Fire. Bruce Holsinger

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      ‘Two bells formed like this one, Father,’ Stephen said, removing his gloves as he walked toward the foundry’s newest customer. The parson of St Paulinus Crayford, a parish to the southeast of London, here at the beck of the churchwardens about a commission for the new belfry. ‘The first tuned at ut, the second at re. I sound them myself after the moulding, and I have the ear of Pythagoras, so you needn’t worry about a symphonious match. If our bells are not well sounding and of good accord for a year and a day, why we’ll cart them back here to the city, melt them down from waist to mouth, and cart the new ones to you out at Crayford. All at Stone’s own expense, and all inside a month.’

      The parson looked sceptical. ‘And reinstall them in the belfry?’

      ‘Aye, and reinstall them in the belfry, hiring it out to the carpenters ourselves,’ said Stephen. He removed his apron, a heavy length of boiled leather, and hung it on its posthook. ‘I poured side-by-side for five years with the master, bless his memory, and now am chief founder and smith retained at the widow’s will and pleasure. Your wardens shall be satisfied, I promise you that.’

      The parson asked a few more questions then Stephen took him up front to the display room to settle sums. An advance of two pounds on six and thirteen, with the balance due upon delivery to Crayford, where the bells would arrive before the kalends of—

      ‘And installation,’ said the parson, raising his chin, clearly fashioning himself a shrewd businessman.

      Stephen nodded briskly. ‘And installation, Father, with clapper and carpentry entire. Clean-up as well, and Stone’s will be pleased to throw in a cask of strong ale for the company.’ The parson’s eyes twinkled at this. Stephen had seen it before, the way that last, trivial detail worked on the pastoral mind. How pleased my flock will be with their good parson, for getting them an extra day’s work and a free drink in the bargain!

      The note was signed, the deal waxed, sealed with Stone’s lozenge stamp. Stephen was watching the parson leave the shop, preening over his bit of successfully transacted London business, when Hawisia Stone came in from the house passage. She stood there in her frozen widow’s way, her mouth a flat line on the hard rock of her face. She had thick, muscular hands for a woman her age, which was a year shy of thirty, or so Stephen thought, and her swollen middle mounded out obscenely beneath her bulky blacks. No confinement for Hawisia Stone, no feminine modesty for this steely widow, convention be damned.

      ‘Mistress Stone,’ he said, and never knew what to say next. How does the good widow fare this day, Mistress Stone? What thousand tasks do you wish me to perform in the smithy today, Mistress Stone? And what new curses have you called down upon your servant’s murderous blood, Mistress Stone?

      ‘The parson’s to buy, then?’ she rasped.

      ‘He will,’ said Stephen. He nodded at the note and coin on the board counter. ‘A solid commission.’

      ‘Fine.’ She went to the ledger and tucked the note into the book’s back lining. The coin went in her purse.

      He stood there, acting the thrashed whelp, Hawisia the grey bitch of the place. In the months since Robert’s death he had become newly familiar with her little noises, all those telling grunts he’d once been happy to ignore. Disapproving murmurs, low growls of contempt, long-suffering sighs in place of words withheld.

      ‘You’ve work to do?’ she asked him without looking up from the ledger.

      ‘Aye.’

      ‘Go then.’

      Stephen backed and turned, slinking through the door to the foundry yard. He kicked a bucket, scaring off a yard dog, his gut clutched with all that might have been, and all that might still be.

      Only six months ago Stephen had been looking ahead to a full and verdant future. Robert Stone was on the verge of making him partner in the foundry and smithy, giving him his daughter’s hand to bind it all tight as you could like. Stephen’s master had worried often about losing him to a house of his own, where he could keep a greater share of his made coin. Why, if we lose our Stephen, he’d say to his wife, half our men’re like to go with him to start up a rival shop. We need him here, Hawisia, with all his cunning and craft. She had agreed.

      For Stone’s was a sprawling operation: a foundry, a smithy, an ironmonger all in one, and though Robert Stone had been its rightful master, it was Stephen Marsh at the artful centre of this world of metal, bending, twisting, tapping, his adept hands shaping bronze and lead with the delicacy of a king’s silversmith, finding ways to swirl the hardest irons into the most intricate forms and configurations. ‘There is surely something of the devil in you, Stephen Marsh,’ Robert Stone would say, always with a smile, and Stephen would smile with him, even as he inwardly spurned such talk of demons. His skill was inborn, a thing of kind wit, the work of Lady Nature at her forge, as much a part of him as his very tongue; the devil had naught to do with it.

      By his nineteenth year Stephen Marsh had won a reputation as the fellow to see for the subtlest metalwork to be had between Bishopsgate and the river. Magnates’ men would come to Stone’s to commission new armorial bearings for a bishop’s door, or to repair the hinges on an earl’s ewer, and Stephen would take up every job with a swiftness to match his skill. With the coming arrangement Stephen could keep his mind on his craft without a care for the management or upkeep of the shop, leaving these to Robert, who was more skilled at such things as recording accounts and filling supplies, or maintaining good relations with the guilds and the parish. God’s grace, the curate would say, grazing in the fields of our hearts.

      Then he dies, and everything changes. Hawisia Stone inherits the foundry and cruelly weds Robert’s daughter off to a vintner’s son, while Stephen is bound with ten full years of servitude to Stone’s, and all for an errant cauldron. A large job, a rushed pour, Robert’s arm aflame like a torch as he holds it aloft and screams those terrible screams.

      Now Stephen was bound to the place like a wheel to a mill, his labour and his hand the due property of Hawisia Stone.

      Ten more years of service to the widow and her shop: such was the sentence of the wardmoot after the incident, the result of Robert’s exhaustion and Stephen’s impatience – though was it simply haste? Or something malign, a demon’s breath on his hand, tipping the cauldron too early, bringing a death some dark part of him desired, despite everything his master promised him?

      For it often seemed that Robert Stone still haunted the foundry, as if part of his soul inhered in each cast, his deep voice moaning from the hollows of every founded bell, calling out Stephen’s blame, a worm feeding at his conscience.

      ‘Fill the cooling troughs, and quick,’ he ordered an apprentice. The boy scurried off, two buckets yoked over his narrow shoulders.

      Stephen went to the central forge, slipped on an apron, stomped the bellows, took up a steel bar. These days he found his sole consolation in his craft, the strength and spirit of the metals. If his fortunes wheeled from high to low these things of the earth would remain ever the same, constant and receptive in their beautiful predictability. Good Sussex iron, smelted in the furnaces of the Weald. The dearer Spanish ore, purer and more responsive to hammer and heat. Cornish tin and Welsh copper, the prices argued back and forth with the crown’s stannaries. Lead from the Mendip Hills. All of it ripped and drowned and raped from the bowels of the world, and now stacked here, some of it dull, some of it bright, all of it solid and silent, ready to do the bidding of his hands. He grasped his hammer and tongs, and soon enough was lost in the burning engine of his craft.

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