Bruce Holsinger - The Invention of Fire

“Third week of Advent, could be,” Hawisia said in a low voice, so as not to wake the babe. “We are backed up near to Mile End with all the orders, and down a metalman or two. Even Greyfriars can’t expect a quicker bell, I fear.”

At her foot, near the hearth, sat the low cradle Stephen had crafted some weeks ago. It was designed with a small nook for Hawisia’s shoe, allowing her to rock it easily while standing or sitting nearby. At the moment her right toes were wedged beneath one of the rockers, and as she spoke to the friar she pushed up gently to move the cradle forth and back, forth and back in a soothing motion. Stephen felt a nip of annoyance that Hawisia was failing to take advantage of the nook, though the infant seemed calm. He would bring it up later, perhaps.

“A long wait, Mistress Stone,” said the friar.

To Stephen the cradle looked a bit close to the fire. Hawisia moved her foot away as he approached. He inched the crib back a few nudges, then squatted and peered down into the wooden box.

“Aye, but can’t be helped, not if you want a Stone’s bell.”

The infant was swaddled tight, perfectly still.

The friar sighed. “The doctors of the studium are indifferent to the music of bells, though the warden is quite particular. We shall wait patiently on you, Mistress Stone.”

Stephen reached for the babe’s nose, the finest pearl.

“You will not regret it,” Hawisia said. She concluded her business with the friar, who left the shop on a rush of cold and clatter. Hawisia went out front to take in the foundry sign. Once back inside she barred the door, closing the shop snugly on the ending day. Stephen sensed her looking at him, that new fondness in her gaze. He felt it, too, and the warmth of her trust.

“I will watch her for a time, mistress.”

“Very well,” said Hawisia. “I’ll see about the coals.”

When Hawisia was gone he loosened the swaddling around the infant’s body, allowing her hands and arms to escape. They no longer performed those strange jerking motions they’d made in his early weeks when she was loose like this. Her movements had become more deliberate, still excitable but also artful in that curious way her hands swam through the air, grasped for the world and its shapes.

Her name was Mary, after the Blessed Virgin. Mary Stone, quite a name to live with, though Stephen had quickly come to cherish it in the babe’s first moon. He ran a finger along one of Mary’s forearms, no longer than the head of a smithing hammer, or the rod of a short awl. The babe’s fingers grasped the smallest finger of Stephen’s left hand. A powerful grip for such a tiny creature, a soft coil of muscle, bone, and fat. He stroked the closed fingers. An infant is a perfect machine, like a woman’s birthing parts, he thought, remembering Hawisia’s labor. Knuckles. Joints. Skin. Ears impossibly, horrendously small. Lips and a mouth and ways to make the strangest of noises.

Stephen settled into Robert Stone’s old chair by the hearth and lifted little Mary out of her crib, his finger still in the babe’s fist. She would not let Stephen go, though he tickled her under the arm, stroked her skin. She burbled, gripped harder. Stephen tried to pull his finger from the babe’s hand and still she would not release him. Stephen laughed, trying again, yet Mary was fiercely strong, wasn’t she, a human pincer. She raised Stephen’s finger to her mouth and gummed contentedly, her small eyes fixed on his own.

Remarkable, Stephen thought with an almost painful burst of love and pride, and the strong tug of Mary Stone’s grip aroused his imagination to a sudden and unprompted vision. A new device, fitted for these wee hands. His eyes widened at the absurdity of it. Ludicrous, unthinkable. Yet he had thought it, after all, and as it worked on his mind he saw no reason such a thing could not be done, and in this very shop. He had made a hundred guns by his own hands and orders, after all, only to destroy them all in the end with a small plug of lead in the chamber. Who was he to deny further such inventions to the frail and defenseless? Why, the king’s armorer himself had said it, by God’s body and bread. The handgonne is the ultimate weapon of the weak .

Stephen Marsh brought his nose to the top of Mary’s little head, taking in her pure scent. His eyes closed, and he saw a child, a girl of eleven or twelve years. She was somewhere along the bounds of a city or a keep. She stood on a wall or peered through a slit. All her mind was on defending what she had, the people she loved, the place she lived, her virtue and the very sanctity of her flesh, and in her silken arms she cradled the smallest gun the world would ever know.