Фрэнсис Хардинг - A Skinful of Shadows

Makepeace’s simmering cauldron of resentment needed an outlet. Instead of complaining about the night trips, Makepeace found herself arguing with Mother about other unrelated things, pushing back and asking forbidden questions in a way she never had before.

In particular, she started to ask about her father. Until now Mother had crushed all such questions with a look, and Makepeace had settled for hoarding the tiny details her mother had let slip. He lived far away in an old house. He did not want Mother or Makepeace with him. Suddenly this was not enough, and she felt angry that she had been too scared to ask for more before.

‘Why won’t you tell me his name? Where does he live? Does he know where to find us? How do you know he doesn’t want us with him? Does he even know about me?’

Mother did not answer such questions, but her stormy glances no longer cowed Makepeace. Neither of them knew what to do with each other. Since Makepeace’s birth, Mother had decided everything, and Makepeace had gone along with it. Makepeace did not know why she could no longer be docile. Mother had never needed to compromise before and did not know how to start. Surely if she battered Makepeace with the force of her own personality everything would return to normal? No. It would not. Everything had changed.

And then, two years after her first ‘stick-sharpening’ expedition, Makepeace returned from a particularly bitter, sleepless night in the chapel shivering uncontrollably. A few days later she was burning with fever, and her muscles ached. Within a fortnight her tongue was speckled, and an unmistakable rash of smallpox pimples was spreading across her face.

The world was hot, dark and terrible for a while, and Makepeace drowned in a choking, abysmal terror. She knew she would probably die, and she knew what dead things were. She could not think straight, and sometimes she wondered whether she might already be dead. But the black tide of the disease slowly went out, leaving her still alive, with just a couple of pockmarks on one of her cheeks. Whenever she saw them reflected in her water pail, they gave her a little spasm of fear in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine a skeletal figure of Death reaching out to touch her face with the tips of two bony fingers, then slowly withdrawing his hand.

After her recovery, three months went by without Mother mentioning the graveyard, and Makepeace assumed that the smallpox, at least, had frightened Mother out of her project.

Unfortunately, she was wrong.

On a blandly sunny day in May, Makepeace and Mother ventured into the city itself to sell some of Mother’s lace. The spring was mild, but London had been crackling like a storm cloud. Makepeace wished they were not there.

As Makepeace had been changing and becoming angrier, so had Poplar and London. According to the gossip of the teenage apprentices, so had the whole country.

At prayer meetings, red-nosed Nanny Susan had always been full of visions of the end of the world — the sea brimming with blood, and the Woman Clothed with the Sun from the Bible walking down Poplar High Street. But now others were talking in the same way. A couple of summers ago, it was said that during a mighty storm vast clouds had taken the shape of two great armies. Now there was an uneasy feeling that two such armies might really be forming across the land.

The Poplar folk had always prayed hard, but now they prayed like a people besieged. There was a feeling that the whole country was in danger.

Makepeace could not keep track of all the details, but she understood the heart of it. There was a devilish Catholic plot to seduce King Charles, and turn him against his own people. The good men of Parliament were trying to talk sense into him, but he had stopped listening.

Nobody wanted to blame the King directly. That was treason, and might get your ears lopped off, or your face branded with hot irons. No, they agreed that it was all the fault of the King’s evil advisers — Archbishop Laud, ‘Black Tom Tyrant’ (also known as the Earl of Stafford), and of course wicked Queen Mary, poisoning the King’s mind with her French wiles.

If they were not stopped, they would persuade the King to become a bloody tyrant. He would turn to false religion, and send out his troops to murder all loyal, God-fearing Protestants in the country. The Devil himself was abroad, whispering in ears, curdling minds, and shaping the deeds of men with sly and subtle hands. You almost expected to see his singed hoof-prints in the roadway.

The fear and outrage in Poplar was very real, but Makepeace sensed an undercurrent of fierce excitement as well. If everything did fall apart, if a time of trials did come, if the world did end, the godly of Poplar would be ready. They were Christian soldiers, ready to withstand, and preach, and march.

And now, walking through the London streets, Makepeace could feel a tingle of that same excitement, that same menace.

‘There’s a smell here,’ she said. Mother was her other self, so it was natural to voice her half-formed thoughts.

‘It’s the smoke,’ said Mother curtly.

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Makepeace. It wasn’t a smell exactly, and she knew Mother understood. It was a warning tingle of the senses, like that before a storm. ‘It smells like metal. Can we go home?’

‘Yes,’ said Mother drily. ‘We can go home and eat stones, since you don’t want us earning our bread.’ She did not break stride.

Makepeace always found London oppressive. There were too many people, buildings and smells. Today, however, there was a new fizz and fierceness in the air. Why was she even more nervous than usual? What was different? She glanced from side to side, noting the dozens of new placards stuck to doors and posts.

‘What are those?’ she whispered. It was a pointless question. Mother could not read any more than Makepeace could. The bold black letters looked as though they were shouting.

‘Ink-lions roaring,’ said Mother. London was awash with raging pamphlets, printed sermons, prophecies and denunciations, some for the King and some for Parliament. Mother always jokingly called them ‘ink-lions’. All roar and no claw, she said.

There had been a lot more silent roaring over the last two days. Two weeks before, the King had summoned Parliament for the first time in years, and everyone Makepeace knew had been ecstatic with relief. But two days ago he had dismissed Parliament again in a right royal rage. Now gossip had an ominous rumble, the pale sun seemed to teeter in the sky, and everyone was waiting for something to happen. Whenever there was a sudden bang or shout, people looked up sharply. Has it started? their expressions asked. Nobody was sure what it was, but it was unquestionably coming.

‘Ma . . . why are there so many apprentices out on the streets?’ Makepeace murmured quietly.

There were dozens of them, she realized, loitering in twos and threes in doorways and alleys, crop-headed, restless, their hands calloused from loom and lathe. The youngest were about fourteen, the oldest in their early twenties. They should all have been labouring away, doing their masters’ bidding, but here they were.

The apprentices were weathercocks for the mood of the city. When London was at ease with itself, they were just lads — dawdling, flirting, and jabbing at the world with crude, clever jokes. But when London was stormy, they changed. A dark and angry lightning arced unseen between them, and sometimes they broke out into wild, passionate mobs, breaking doors and skulls with their boots and cudgels.

Mother glanced around at the little loitering groups, and she too began to look worried.