Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

I got to my knees, steadying myself on the door, and whispered that I was ready, that it was time. My eye searched for his and saw movement, then light, then darkness as the key slid in.

‘You see the blood,’ I said. ‘It’s time. You can let me out.’

I heard his tread on the staircase and shouted, ‘Tell them it’s time.’

I thought I might wait until morning, but it was still dark when the Reeds came. They led me down the backstairs, through the stables, and out into the High Wood, careless of my weakness and my bare feet. I asked them were they taking me home, told them this wasn’t the way, asked if the Mistress had seen my blood. They said nothing, but I felt the hardness of their hands.

There was a fire burning in the clearing among the birches and a pot steaming over the flames. I was dizzy with hunger and the summer air and the smell of the broth. They knelt me on the ground and let me sink back on my heels. One of the women took a ladle and filled a cup. I raised my hands to take it, but they kept hold, pouring faster than I could swallow and I coughed some of it back. Sweet and sharp it was with a taste of earth. They poured more and my mouth was all peat water and fungus. They threw a blanket round me and for a while I watched the flames rise and weave and spit sparks as big as fireflies.

Then I was pulled up again and led stumbling in among the trees to another clearing, where ancient oaks towered above me. They sat me on a chair facing a dark figure, thickly veiled, and behind her, like blossom on a bush, a blaze of candles to blind me. She made a movement with her hand and we were alone. Everything moved oddly. I saw all the blades of grass where the light caught them, the different ways they curled and twisted, and the caterpillars climbing.

Her eyes were covered but I felt her looking.

I asked her, ‘Why have you brought me here? What is this place?’

Her answer was no more than a whisper. ‘The dialogue box.’

‘What is the dialogue box?’

‘My domain.’

‘What happens here?’

‘A window opens.’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Your home is the red room.’

‘I was to stay until I bled. The Mistress promised.’ I felt the tears coming, I felt so sorry for myself. ‘I am Agnes daughter of Janet. Agnes daughter of Walt who died when I had seen only eight summers. My home is Walt’s cottage – my cottage. I want my own bed.’

‘You are a cry from the red room, a knocking on floorboards, a scrape at the door.’

‘I am Agnes.’

She leant towards me and murmured at my ear, ‘Pass a word and use a name.’

‘Agnes, daughter of Janet. I work at the Hall, chopping wood, lighting fires, sweeping staircases and passageways, studying the Book of Air.’

‘Figuring the task bar.’

‘I feel strange. Am I dreaming you?’

‘They’ve put you in a sleep state.’

‘Where is Brendan?’

‘Lost in the Book of Windows.’

‘Where is my mother?’

‘Your mother is dead. Why did you speak like that at her burial?’

‘She lived all those years. She wasn’t nothing. If Jane why not Janet? Where is Janet’s book?’

‘There are four books. Everybody knows this.’

‘Cooking and scrubbing, sweeping the ash from the fire grate, feeding the pig.’

‘Four books with the Book of Death.’

‘Food for the pig is all she is now. No more talking in her sleep. No more pain. No more sighing. No more stinking of piss.’

‘Can you be trusted with a secret, Agnes?’

‘Yes, anything.’

‘I don’t think so. You spoke at your mother’s burial about the Reader.’

‘Where is he? Where is Brendan? It was wrong of him to let them take me.’

There was a sound then and a movement of the head and I knew who this was. Not a Reed at all, not a woman even, but Brendan himself. I would have known him at once if they hadn’t fed me mushrooms.

‘Can you be trusted to be good,’ he said, ‘if the Mistress lets you out? Will you stop your mouth at burials? Will you keep these wild thoughts to yourself?’

‘Will she let me out?’

‘If she does.’

‘This is blood on my skirt, look. You can tell her. And tell her I’m sick. My throat is sore. It’s too cruel to lock me up. My feet are bruised from pacing.’

‘Show me, Agnes.’

I raised one foot towards him and he took it on his lap. So soothing it was to be held, to feel his hands on my ankle and on the aching sinews of my calf. He reached for the other foot. There was such steadiness in his touch, and so firmly he held and stroked me, drawing my skirt above my knee and pulling me towards him, that I felt my whole body grow slack and the tears come freely to wet my face.

Then such sorrow and compassion in his sighing. ‘And this will be our secret, Agnes?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘our secret.’ And I was so lost to myself that there was only pleasure as the hands strayed higher, opening me to the cool night air, so content I was to know nothing and to think nothing and to let my body become servant to another’s will. I had no sense of danger, until I remembered my book held tight against my back by the belt at my waist.

I moved suddenly to straighten myself and to hold his hands from reaching around and underneath me.

I said, ‘I have a bigger secret, anyway, bigger than this. Bigger than riding to see the scroungers.’

He stopped and looked at me, ‘What secret?’

I wouldn’t have said these things. I would have kept everything hidden. But the broth the women fed me had moved me sideways from myself.

‘What secret, Agnes?’

‘I have a baby.’

‘But you bled.’ He made no more effort to soften his voice.

So I cried to him directly in his own person. ‘Why have you done this to me, sir? Locked me away to hear voices and go mad?’

‘Not me. The Mistress. The women.’

‘Why did you let them?’

‘It’s been cruel for me too, to lie so close to you, night after night, and think I only had to unlock your door and have you. I’ve fought myself to leave you alone. And all the time thinking it wouldn’t be so long. You’d bleed and they’d let you out.’

‘I wanted to bleed. I wanted to so badly.’

‘And you did. I saw the feather. I see the stain on your skirt.’

‘I knew I wouldn’t, so I cut myself.’

I heard him breathing noisily in the dark and felt him pull away. He said, ‘This is worse.’ Then he asked me, ‘What will you say about this baby?’

‘Whatever you want me to say.’

‘Promise then.’

‘And you’ll make them let me out?’

‘Promise first.’

‘I promise.’

‘To say what I tell you to say.’

‘I’ve promised. What then?’

‘That you were made to. By a scrounger.’

‘Oh. But I can’t.’ I knew all in a rush that there would be a child, a child to grow up in the village and be scorned because she was a scrounger’s litter. I couldn’t let them think that. Her life must be more than mine, even if I must make mine nothing. ‘Please sir,’ I said, ‘something else.’

‘What something?’

‘That it was my fault. That I came to you while you were asleep. Or drunk on gin. That I milked you while you snored. Because your soul cried out to mine in your dreams. Because I am without shame like a sow in heat. Because I want… Because I want my child to be your child, to know all the secrets of the Book of Windows.’

‘There are no secrets.’ He pulled the veil from his head and I could see the dark outline of his face. For a moment he tugged at the neck of his shirt as if he couldn’t breathe. ‘The Book of Windows,’ he said, ‘has no secrets because it has no meaning. It was left to us to make us howl and gibber.’ He spoke so urgently, so angrily that I felt the warmth of his spit.