I was so angry when I read that first time. Now I’ll call out to you, Caroline. And I’ll say sorry, sorry for my anger, sorry for everything. And you’ll hear me from impossibly far away, from the other side of the virus, from beyond the blessing, from the bottom of a communal grave near Blackfriars Bridge. Wait for me. Oh, I will come.
Ridiculous fantasy. Girls’ stuff. And all I’ve got left of you.
Agnes
I meant to burn this book, tear it to light our cottage fire, such danger it has led me to. I meant at least to put it by and write nothing more in it. But my life has taken a new turn, and I feel its pages pulling my story out of me.
After the Reader had caught me spying on Roland, I lay in a fever of fear and agitation. At sunrise, mother looked in at my bedroom door. She said, ‘They’ll be wanting you at the Hall. The fires won’t be lit.’ I hadn’t slept but that would have been nothing if my spirit had been stronger. ‘Tell them I’m sick, mother,’ I said. But she looked fearful and shook her head. She doesn’t go to the Hall unless she must. ‘Then tell Bessie next door,’ I said. ‘And tell them to let the geese out.’ When she’d gone down, I heard words coming in through the window and dreamt soon after that they were speaking about my wrongdoing.
Later I woke to hear someone climbing the stairs and it was Annie. Her hands smelt sour from her milking. She put her hand on my forehead and said I was hot. ‘Does your head hurt? Is there aching in your joints?’ I thought I might cry, she spoke so kindly, and looked with such sweet concern. I wanted to tell her everything I had done, but there was a deep pain behind my eyes and my throat was sore, so I found it easy to lie back and say nothing.
‘I’d take care of you if you’d let me.’ I heard her breathing then and felt her milky hand on my face. When she spoke again there was more breath than sound. ‘If you told me your troubles, I could maybe tell you mine.’
And I thought, what does she know of troubles? I slept then, and when I woke she was gone.
I hoped Roland might come, but he stayed away. He’s a man now, of course, and not so free to come knocking on doors.
It was the Mistress herself who came for me at last. It was early morning and still quite dark. I had stayed home for three days and had slept off my fever. She brought lamb stew and told me that I should eat. She spooned the broth from the stew into my mouth and asked why Janet had not fed me. I might have said Janet has been more of a child than a mother to me since my father died. But I did not want the Mistress to pity me or to think I wanted pity.
She said if I was not too sick I must wash and dress and go with her at once to the Hall. She fed me, I thought, because she would not have me faint under the whip. But why wash for a flogging?
The sun was rising as we left and mother was in the yard. She whimpered at the sight of me, the Mistress gripping my arm, and she turned away to scratch the sow. I would have cried to her but she was as much in need of comfort.
When I was a child I would crawl into her bed to tell a dream but she would hum and stop my mouth. She said that dreams escaped at night from the place of madness and must be locked away again. And those who could not lock away their dreams were to be locked away themselves. And she would look at me with such fear in her eyes that I schooled myself to say nothing of dreams when she was there to listen. I saw that fear in the twist of her shoulders as she turned to the pig.
The air was moist, with a fresh sprinkle of rain. I knew I should be anxious for the grass, which would soon enough be ripe for cutting and in need of sunshine to dry it. But the grass meant nothing to me. Bessie next door was early at her spadework. She nodded at the Mistress and said she thought the sky would clear by noon. She caught my eye with a smile meant just for me as if to say this day would pass just like the rain, which I knew in my head but could not feel in my heart. I caught the laughter of the women fetching water below the bridge and wished it was only water I had to carry.
The Mistress led me in silence through the gateway and up the drive to the Hall. She is old, the Mistress, hunched and narrow, and sour as a cider apple. Already I’m taller than she is. I could have knocked her to the ground. But I walked meekly behind and knew I would stand as meekly for a beating.
The damp breeze grew stronger, and all across the lawn the grass dipped and straightened. Already the feathery heads reach higher than my knee, with pale pink flowers showing among the green. As I walked up the drive, half a step behind the Mistress, the near growth leaned out heavy with seed to wet my skirt.
She took me under the arch into the stable yard where the geese came to welcome me. The young children who waited to be called to the schoolroom were playing their circle game. ‘Sweat to pit, sweat to pit, free daze, you’re it.’ I would have joined them if I could. If I could be a child again. The children were silent, seeing the Mistress come. The geese followed me, to settle by the kitchen door with their necks twisting together and their soft warm bodies rising and falling like one living thing.
I thought she would make me wait while the village was called and I would be shamed in front of all my neighbours. The cellar door was open as we passed into the kitchen. Perhaps, I thought, if I offered to clean the cellar, gather up all the dust and cobwebs, that would be enough. If I scrubbed the stove. But the Mistress took me to the foot of the stairs. She said I was to go at once to the upper passage, up the half stairs to the turret, and knock on the Reader’s door.
There are no windows on the half stairs and only two doors. One leads to the red room, which has been locked and empty for as long as I can think, the other to the Reader’s room. In all my years working at the hall, I had never seen inside it. Only the Mistress sweeps his floor and changes his bedding. I leave food outside the door when I am told to and pick up the dishes, and sometimes the food just as I left it except for what the mice have eaten. And I take his piss bottle to the yard and empty it into the barrel for the leather making. Always I am quick up and down the half stairs, careful not to turn my back on either door, afraid that the Reader will come out of one, or something worse than I can name out of the other.
But this time the door was open. I could see a candle and the Reader’s face. I paused on the landing not daring to breathe, dizzy with the scent of apple wood and grass seed. I felt he was watching me and my skin was all spiders at the thought.
When I came in he asked me where I had been and I said, ‘Sick, sir, at home.’
He held a pipe to his mouth. It glowed in his fist and he breathed out the smoke. Some of the men smoke leaves this way, but I’ve never known smoke to smell so sweet. His voice rumbled when he spoke. ‘Should I light more candles?’
I said he might let the sun in and save his candles.
He laughed and said he had worked late and sat later, struggling with his thoughts, and had not noticed the dawn. He was out of his chair and across the room to pull the curtains open. He turned with the sunlight coming in and winked.
So this is the Reader, I thought. All my life he has been somewhere to the side of me like a smudge on the eye. I have caught sight of him in the shadows of the upper passage, turning away to murmur with the Mistress. He has ridden at night, this way or that, sometimes through the village. I have dropped my eyes at his approach. I have thought of him as old. But his face is open and alive.
He winked a second time, and I saw that it was not meant but only a twitch in his face. Otherwise his gaze was steady. ‘So you’ve been sick. Sick from thinking?’