Plague Child. Peter Ransley

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СКАЧАТЬ yelled and threw myself about the cellar until they released me. Mr Black had forbidden George to lock me in again. Until now.

      Now, exhausted, I tried to thrust what had happened then from my mind. I was a man now, I told myself. Had not Mr Black said so? I took some courage from his unexpected praise, going over and over it in my mind. The light would eventually come, filtering through the cracks in the ceiling.

      I buried my face in my hands for what seemed an age. Rats whispered and scuttled. I opened my eyes, but it was still dark as pitch. We had worked long into the night. Surely the sun should have risen by now? Perhaps it had already risen! Nonsense, I told myself. God could scarcely be punishing me now for not reading – I read all the time. But then I was struck by a fresh panic. George had wished the same punishment on me for striking him. The panic mounted. Perhaps George was dead. Whatever there was of a man in me fled and I became that screaming child again, jumping up at the ceiling, tearing at the plaster with my nails.

      The cellar was under the printing shop, thus isolated from the bedrooms. Even so, I thought Mr Black must hear me, however muffled. As I clenched my fists to hammer on the door, I heard a scratching sound. It came from under the door. More rats. Trying to get into the room. I stamped my foot down. There was a cry. I jumped back in terror. Not a rat – some kind of spirit, George’s spirit, muttering behind the door. Then the muttering became words.

      ‘Stupid Monkey!’

      Never had that hateful word sounded so beautiful. ‘Anne?’

      ‘Be quiet, for God’s sake!’

      ‘Is George alive?’

      ‘Of course he’s alive – no thanks to you.’

      ‘Is it light?’

      ‘Can’t you see it’s not light, stupid? Why do you think I’ve brought you a candle?’

      I thanked God as I caught the acrid smell of tallow. Bending low, I could just glimpse the faintest glimmer of yellow from a candle which she must have set down on the steps. She told me George had been bandaged and given a cordial to help him sleep as she pushed another unlit candle under the door. She followed this with a flint.

      ‘Thank you, Anne.’

      ‘Miss Black. And don’t thank me.’ Her voice was cold and brusque. ‘I only did it to stop you making such a row. Crying out like a baby in the dark.’

      ‘You would cry here.’

      ‘Indeed I would not!’ she said, with such contempt ringing in her whispered voice my cheeks burned.

      The thin band of light under the door began to waver and disappear, like the will o’ the wisps dancing away on the marsh. My panic rushed back.

      ‘Wait – the flint is damp!’

      ‘You haven’t tried it.’

      I scraped my boot against the wall. ‘Not a spark! Please, An— Miss Black. Give me a light from your candle. Under the door.’

      The light, the blessed light under the door grew stronger. Prone on the floor, I could see the flame, tallow dribbling, glimpse her thin delicate fingers. The flame wavered and almost went out. She gave a little cry and I could hear her scrambling up, waiting until the flame grew again.

      ‘I cannot. There is a draught – it will go out.’

      ‘Are you afraid?’ I mocked, then quickly, as I heard her step away: ‘I’m sorry, Miss Black. Miss Black – is there a key in the lock?’

      There was a silence. I felt I could see her there in a long willow-green nightgown which I had glimpsed before, a shawl wrapped round her shoulders, those thin fingers cupped round the flickering flame.

      I tried to make my voice sound as weak and humble as possible. ‘Miss Black . . . it would be easier if you were to open the door a little.’

      She laughed, the contempt coming back into her voice again. ‘Do you think I’m such a fool, Monkey?’

      Now the word had its old, hateful ring. I only just stopped myself from flinging myself at the door in anger and frustration. I clapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from shouting.

      I did not understand how I could love her one moment and hate her so much the next. My hopes for her were as much a fable as looking in a mirror and pretending I was handsome. Add to the feet and the red hair my nose, sharp and inquisitive as a bird’s beak, and you have a pretty full picture. Only my eyes, large and black as ink, drew me any kind of attention – that and my use of words which, from hating when they tried to drum rhetoric and writing into me, I had grown to love.

      ‘Open the door?’ she mocked. ‘You’ve run away before.’

      ‘I will not!’ I cried out with a sudden passion which must have taken her with as much surprise as it took me. ‘I want to run away, but I cannot run away from you!’

      ‘What rubbish! What nonsense! How can I trust you? No one can trust you! My father says you have the devil in you. I pray for you every day.’

      ‘Do you?’

      ‘Ssshh.’

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘Be quiet!’

      I became as still as the stone flags under my feet. I could hear nothing but the shuffling of rats and, distantly, the wind rattling the panes and the crack and creak of wood; the house, like the ships in the docks, always seemed to talk to itself at night.

      ‘Do you?’ I whispered.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Pray for me.’

      ‘It is only Christian charity to do so,’ she said, quietly, earnestly. ‘To pray for a lost soul. To stop you from doing such things. Writing such things.’

      Writing? She must mean a poem I had once dared to write to her. Had she read it? The thought, as unexpected as Mr Black’s praise, pricked my eyes with tears. The idea that she had taken any notice of me at all, except as a figure of fun and mockery, was a revelation.

      ‘Are you crying?’

      ‘No. Yes.’

      ‘Perhaps you are not quite lost, Monkey.’

      Was there something softer in the mockery, or was it just my hope? There was no doubt about the sweetness of the next sound: the key turning in the lock. I sprang to open the door, but before I could do so the key turned back.

      ‘How can I open the door when you wrote such a poem to me?’

      ‘Did you read it?’

      ‘Indeed I did not. My father said it was full of such vileness –’

      ‘Vileness?’ I said hotly. ‘You think it’s vile to write: “The windows of thy soule –”’

      ‘Stop it!’

      ‘“That when they СКАЧАТЬ