The Book of Fires. Jane Borodale

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СКАЧАТЬ me as though she has not heard, or as though she were thinking hard about something different and could not leave that thought alone. Her face is serene. ‘I have…’ she looks about ‘…an acquaintance in this county. I was here to do business.’ That is all she says for a long time.

      The clouds keep gathering and thickening in the sky, but no rain falls.

      ‘Mild day it is, for November,’ the other women nod and comment hopefully, as though by that wish alone they can forestall the rain, their heads bobbing and quaking with the roll of the carriage going over the ruts. The unpleasant woman and her daughter break a cake between them on their laps and share it. The daughter chews, dreamily, and I catch the fat woman eyeing the cake, her mouth turned down a little at the corners, as though by rights the cake was hers and they had stolen it from her.

      Lettice Talbot yawns and rubs her narrow shoulders. ‘It is not so far now,’ she says to me.

      Stretched out on our left we see the marshes. Smelling of low-tide, salty mudflats, these marshes and hamlets seem a desolate beginning to a city. Shabby tufts of reeds and sedges give a green-grey colour to the wet land draining to ditches. I see birds like snipe and red-leg. I see a heron, trailing its untidy legs beneath its flight. We go through another hamlet and mount a rise. The houses are made of brick instead of flint, and many have neat gardens round them. And suddenly, as the road climbs and takes a turn to the right, the city comes into view below us. I am amazed. I stand up unsteadily and try to see ahead of us over the load of the carrier, grasping on to the rail.

      ‘I can hardly believe it!’ I exclaim aloud, turning to Lettice Talbot.

      ‘It is nothing more than a great stinking town,’ she says, amused.

      ‘And that river is the Thames!’ I breathe. Shimmering water like a snaking sea reflects the sky, its surface wrinkled with tiny swarms of boats and ferries. I stand on tiptoe to see more clearly, though the waggon jolts and rocks along. There are so many houses that on the far bank the city is clustered down to the edge of the water. Thorny spires and domes rise up from its mass.

      The orange sun flashes on the water.

      I am impatient. We enter Southwark, and our progress along the high street is impeded by the crush of traffic around the butchers’ shambles. I see a butcher wipe a bloodied cloth over a cleaver as we pass. I see another butcher pressing his fingers along the length of a dead pig’s spine as he looks for the soft place to put his knife between the bumps. I have never seen such a quantity of meat hanging together at one time; rows of pigs, yards of limp poultry slung from their own tied feet, the head of a calf with its eyes wide open, a brown bucket of livers. One gutter is red with blood where a washing has happened.

      ‘This is London Bridge! Bridge!’ the driver’s voice shouts at last from the front of the carrier. The other passengers begin to shift and talk in their seats. The fat lady daubs something white from a small pot on to her face. London Bridge is wide and chaotic, like no bridge I have ever seen. It is as broad as a street and lined with shops, and men are working in gangs between the premises amongst piles of rubble, where broken bits of building stick up into the air like blackened ribs. I stare astonished when I see that, in a corner between two walls, an unkempt man has made his habitation. He is squatting before a hearth, feeding a small, fierce fire with sticks. Smoke drifts a thin choking column into the traffic’s path. It smells tarred and bitter, making my eyes sting, and as the carrier passes, the man struggles up abruptly from the flames to turn his head towards us, as though it were his duty to observe all entries to the city. His coat is dark.

      Below us the river smells of low-tide weed and mud and foul waste.

      The road crackles with the noise of iron wheels turning over cobbles. Traffic knots and unknots itself in all directions. I have never seen so much at once: horses, carts, coaches weighty with passengers, quick squeaking gigs and traps, boys running with sedan chairs on handles, even one man driving two white heedless oxen down the very middle of the street. I am deafened by it and hold on to the side of the carrier as if it were a pitching boat on a rough sea.

      Lettice Talbot shouts out the names of streets as we drive on.

      ‘Fish Hill Street, Gracechurch Street, Cornhill, Poultry,’ she says, above the noise. Cheapside is a broad, fine street lined with shops, where the afternoon light gleams on the glassy fronts, and shoals of people pour in and out. I see the ghoulish whiteness of so many of their faces, and their greyish powdered heads.

      ‘They wear so many clothes!’ I exclaim to Lettice Talbot.

      I am startled by the noise of breaking glass beyond us up the street; there is a roar of drunkenness and the pound of running feet.

      ‘A hanging,’ she shouts. ‘There was a hanging today. Most of the crowds go off calmly when it is over, but there is always disorder left in the districts along the route, and fights break out in taverns and on street corners. It can be very unruly.’ She turns her head away. ‘The smell of sudden death infects a violent man with bloodlust.’

      ‘What?’ I say, trying to hear her.

      ‘Violence!’ she shouts. ‘Make sure you head swiftly to the safety of your relative.’

      ‘Along what route?’ I ask, trying to get nearer to her so I can catch her words. The carrier lurches. ‘Where is the trouble?’

      ‘The way the condemned cart goes between Newgate prison and the gallows tree at Tyburn.’

      ‘ To where?’

      ‘The gallows tree!’ She laughs merrily. ‘Justice, my sweetheart!’ And I shiver and pull my cloak about me.

      We turn into a dingy lane, and draw into the great yard of the Cross Keys Inn. I am alarmed to see so many people jostling to reach the carrier. Lettice Talbot leans forward.

      ‘Have we arrived?’ I say.

      ‘Disembark here, Agnes,’ she advises, kindly. ‘This is where I get down.’ I shrink from the idea, wishing I could make myself small as a mouse or sparrow-sized, and go back at once to Sussex on the dusty floor of the carrier under the horsehair seats, by people’s shoes. But of course I cannot, as my journey is the kind of journey that cannot be undone, and so I find myself descending with difficulty over the wheels, and my feet standing on London cobbles, my lungs breathing in the tarry smoke that hangs over the yard. It is as though I were quite another person arriving in another place called London, in a dream. I keep imagining that someone might call out, ‘Cease that, Agnes!’ but of course they do not. I can hardly believe it. I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering in agitation while I wait for my bundle to be untied from the rest of the baggages by the loaders and flung down on to the pavement.

      Lettice Talbot draws me gently aside and speaks low in my ear with a sudden urgency.

      ‘You cannot trust a soul, Agnes,’ she says. Her eyes are serious and blue in her thin face. A man is thunderously rolling empty barrels out of a hatch and up on to a painted cart. There is a strong smell of stale beer coming up from the cobbles.

      ‘You should not let your guard down, Agnes. Always presume that there is no one to trust. You must look out for tricks all of the time,’ she whispers, watching my face. ‘People taking advantage.’

      ‘Tricks,’ I repeat. I am so tired suddenly.

      ‘You have nowhere to go, do you?’ Lettice says. She is still standing close to me. Fine soft hairs on the side of her cheek are catching the СКАЧАТЬ