The Book of Fires. Jane Borodale

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СКАЧАТЬ push itself away from the gibbet’s crossbar and fly heavily upwards. It catches a breeze that we cannot feel here on the ground, and stays almost motionless on the movement of the air, skilfully floating, like a malevolent thought. It waits for our arrival. Its head turns as it surveys the landscape; we draw up alongside and inch slowly by. I don’t like to look but somehow my head turns towards the gibbet anyway. I feel something prickle over my skin, as though spiders were crawling there. I grip my forearms tight with my hands.

      One of the irons has the last bits of a man’s body hanging in it; the head has slumped in the top cage and the rest is tarred bones held together with very little. Some threads of fabric hang down from what remains of his breeches. The other irons are empty and swing more loosely in the cold air. A creaking is just audible. There are some small dry yellow bones on the ground beneath, and white splashes of bird droppings. The fat woman nudges me, smiling with triumph.

      ‘See how they deserves it,’ she declares. ‘A dreadful crime, no doubt.’ I cannot find a thing to say, but another woman nods and points her finger towards the scene in case her daughter sat beside her hasn’t heeded. The daughter’s head swivels round as we pass, drinking in the detail.

      ‘It’s a man, Mother.’ Her childish voice is satisfied and lazy. A chill has settled in me, although I make myself nod faintly in agreement. I must appear an honest, law-abiding creature, even to myself. The fifth passenger in the back seat takes no notice of the scene, nor any other passing by. He alternates between a dozing state and being occupied in eating something crumbly from a brown packet on his knee, a cascade of pastry falling down the front of his great-coat.

      As we gain sufficient distance from the gibbet, the crow behind us drops and settles on the irons again, twisting its head sideways to reach its black beak through the bars. Another crow flies down, and I look away. They say that crows and rooks mean trouble, and there are always plenty of them.

      Lichfowl, my mother calls them. Corpse birds.

      And beyond here I am plunged into unknown country. Burnt Oak Gate marks the edge of what I know. How rapidly the world is changing; everywhere we pass new fencing and altered boundaries. Thorny hedgerows of quickset and blackthorn slice straight through the sensible, ancient lengths of land, taking no heed of the curve of running water or the shape of a hill, just spanning the breadth of the stubbled fields to form vast, unreasonable squares that make no sense of the terrain they apportion. We see a quantity of people walking out on the road, with packs and babies and pieces of furniture strapped to their backs. They have the shifting, dogged look of people uprooting and leaving behind them all that they know. They are looking for labour in towns, in the city. A woman looks up as we go by, and stares at me as she stands into the edge of the muddy road, making way. We pass so closely I could reach my hand out and touch the thinness of her jaw. I can hear that she murmurs a rhyme over her shoulder to the child tied to her back.

       ‘Jack, he was nimble, Jack, he was quick, Jack, he jumped over the candlestick.’

      ‘Which Jack is that, Mamma?’ the child asks, twisting its little fingers in her hair, and there is a pause and then the woman replies bitterly, as if to herself, ‘Any man-jack with an ounce of sense left in him.’

      And she is right. I can hear the words, even after the carrier has rounded a corner and she has gone from sight. We should all be snatching our chances if they show themselves to us. The old ways are gone now. The carved-up countryside is filling fat men’s pockets with more than they need, while working men like my father are broken down and weakened and made small as their choice and independence are removed from their reach. Enclosure is a tightening around their necks, making slaves of them. It is a length of cord held only by some men of wealth. Enclosure drives them into corners like rats. My blood starts to boil with fury, and I clench my thumbs inside my fists. For my family there can only be misery ahead. For my family next year there will be no pig. There will be little but trouble, I fear, for them and so many like them, hunger making their bellies tight, day after day.

      Good men like my father, feeding his family, taking what dismal employment he can, to pay off the baker, the shopkeeper, the miller. Bad men like him; all in the same sorry plight. What is a good man though, I start to think, or a bad one? As the carrier rattles on these thoughts begin to open up and drift about like smoke inside my head.

      As I say, I am not myself, and I can hardly pronounce on morals or goodness. I picture myself entering St Mary’s church with my belly swollen, round as a mare’s in the very shape of shame, and my face flushes with humiliation.

      I will not think of these things.

      Instead I make myself notice that the sun is a flat disc of white light, more like a hole in the clouds. I see that the hedges are filled with berries and drupes of ivy. I notice the twist and crook of the road. And then, gradually, my fists unclench and I slip into a drowsy state with my head nodding forwards on to my chest, until the cold wakes me again. The clouds thicken as the morning passes. It is a long journey, in countless ways.

      Halts occur at intervals to water the horses, to take up a passenger, set one down. Uneasily I eye my bundle, strapped with the rest of the baggage, at every stop. Mrs Mellin’s coins are tucked inside my stays securely; I feel them there against my ribs when I lean forward 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 СКАЧАТЬ