The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale

candlelight and my damp bundle into the chamber, and the latch flicks shut behind me.
    I hold the candlestick high to see about the room. There is no bolt on the back of the door. The room is full of the kind of still, slow cold that builds when no one has been in it for a long time, and has a sharp odor of mice. When I open the cupboard under the washstand I see a pile of chewed cloth and droppings. The bed looms solitary in the corner; it must have been made up months ago, and the sheet and blanket are damp and dusty under my fingertips. There is a hole where moths or mice have nibbled away at the wool. The bed creaks as I sit on it heavily to remove my wet boots.
    I take off my outer garments and my stays, and spread out the rest of my belongings over the furniture in the hope they will dry in the night, but it is shivery cold in here. Perhaps tomorrow I will hang them in front of the grate downstairs. I nearly cry when I find that my second petticoat is quite dry, having sat at the bottom of my bundle under the other things, and I press my face into it to breathe in the smell of home.
    “ No ,” I whisper aloud, and put it aside.
    I will not think of home.
    There is a plain chair by the bed. I am in a strange house with strangers; I could move the chair before the door to stop intruders coming in while I am sleeping, but what use would it serve? It is flimsy and light. Instead, I climb into the bed half-clothed and lie uneasily.
    The journey spins around in my head like a jolting sickness still, as though it were not quite over yet, as though my spirit were still out there traveling along the turnpike, straining to catch up with me. How disappointed the lovely Lettice Talbot will be to find my absence at the lodging house, and what a shame it is to lose a special friend so soon. What would she think of me for walking into any stranger’s house upon the street, and going to sleep there when I had promised to be careful? At the earliest prospect I must go to look for Lettice Talbot. I shall seek her out and tell her where I am.
    What is this place?
    The flame of the candle bends and flickers in the draft. Outside, the rain is drumming at the windowpane. The curtain shifts.
    There is a noise above me, and some powdery dust falls down from a crack in the ceiling and onto the bedcover. I pull up the cover and squeeze my eyes tight shut. I pray that my mother won’t work herself into an illness without me, now I have left her, and that Lil is not fretting and crying the night away. I can’t pray, though, that the trouble I hold inside me now will dissolve away and leave me be. I can’t even think of that. I won’t. And I can’t help that tears come out and run down the sides of my face into my ears. The coins are a lump in my underskirts as I turn in the bed to blow out the flame.
    Later I dream that John Glincy is pushing gold into my mouth with his dirty fingers, and I am choking on it: choking on the waste it is to swallow Mrs. Mellin’s coins.

9
    I go down at first light and the kitchen is empty, though the coals in the hob grate are smoking briskly. Through a small window at the back of the house I can see the rain streaming over roofs, pouring and splashing into the yard. The glass of the panes is thick and greenish, like ice lifted from ponds in winter, but I can make out weeds growing through cracks in the brick paving, and a spindly tree that might be a linden. The thick glass makes these things far off and crooked. High up, a bird stands hunched and small by a cluster of chimney pots. How sick I feel. I look down at my familiar hands in these strange surroundings. The curious smell pervades the house; it is everywhere. I see that my fingertips are blackened with grimy circles from touching the sill; the dirt is an odd, gritty layer on the furniture, the banisters, the cups and plates.
    Mary Spurren comes into the kitchen with a dustpan and broom.
    “Late for breakfast, you are, but you can take small beer