Peter Ransley - The King’s List

‘Go to my mother, Mary,’ the youth said. ‘The doctor has just cupped her.’

Mary came out of the shed with a flounce and saw me before I could reach the gloom of the entrance. She gave me a curtsey, followed by a look of curiosity. She was staring at my ring. In the dimness the glittering emerald eyes of the falcon seemed to produce their own light.

‘Sam!’ she called.

‘See to my mother,’ Sam ordered, emerging from the shed.

Hastily, clumsily, I pulled on my gloves. Sam brushed coal dust from his breeches. There was a smear of coal across his cheek. His nails were as engrained with filth and coal as mine used to be with ink.

‘Were – were you looking for me, sir?’ he said, with a slight stammer.

I was struck dumb by being such a fool as to come here. I clasped my hands behind my back as if afraid he could see the ring through the gloves. My initial warmth at seeing him was swept away by close sight of this gawky youth whose head seemed too big for his body, and the creaking old house, whose gable seemed about to topple into the courtyard. Was this really where I had come from? Where I had been brought up? Anne, who had a more pitilessly realistic memory than me, had been right never to come back here. It was little more than a hovel.

I was about to ask him directions to get to Holborn when he said: ‘Are you the g-gentleman Mr H-Hooke said might call?’

‘Mr Hooke?’

‘Mr Boyle’s laboratory assistant?’

I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about but there was something so eager, so hopeful in his manner, I began to relent a little from my summary dismissal of him. And curiosity bit me. Laboratory? What on earth was he getting involved in?

‘I might be,’ I grunted.

He must have taken my hesitation as a reaction against the squalor of the place, since he apologised for it, saying his father had recently died and he was only just putting the house to rights.

‘He was a candle-maker,’ I said.

He stared at me. He had the peering eyes of someone who does much close work. I pointed to the sign of the candle swinging from the gable.

‘He made candles after the war,’ he said, seeming ashamed of candles. ‘When things were bad. P-people always need candles. He was trained as a glass-maker and he taught me. He was a w-wonderful –’

He turned away as his voice caught. I was both touched by this feeling for the man he thought his father and felt an obscure stab of pain for something I had lost, although how could I have lost something I never had? Mixed with it was a twinge of jealousy. Would Luke have anything like this reaction for me?

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Won’t you come in?’

I could feel the heat from the kiln as we approached the house. From upstairs came a murmur of voices.

‘Who? What sort of cove, Mary?’ The voice, coming from upstairs, was weak and querulous but the strong Spitalfield accent came back to me as if it was yesterday. I stopped on the step. The last person I wanted to see was Ellie.

‘He’s a customer, Mrs Reeves.’

‘That’ll be the day!’ Ellie laughed. ‘I told him to stick to candles. Candles is secure, candles is.’ She broke out coughing and could not stop.

Everything suggested that whatever had replaced candles was not secure. Half Moon Court had fallen on hard times. A window frame was rotting and the wall round it damp and mildewed. On the kitchen table was a piece of rye bread of the poorest quality.

Sam, hearing his mother’s bitter comments, had gone as red as the mouth of the kiln.

‘I do not want to disturb your mother,’ I said.

‘My – my mother is ill, sir. The maid is looking after her.’ Sam rushed over and shut the door which led to the stairs, cutting off their voices. ‘Please let me show you. I could equip you a whole laboratory, if that is your desire.’

He had the occasional odd choice of word or phrase, as if selecting what he thought a gentleman would like to hear.

‘A whole laboratory,’ I murmured, on edge at the thought of Ellie upstairs, but unable to overcome my curiosity.

We went into the shop. The stone kiln was where the printing machine had once stood, its flue going into the back wall. It used to be hot when we were printing. This was like stepping into an oven, although he apologised for the kiln being ‘down’, as he put it. The maid had put in the wrong coal and he had to let it cool and start it up again before he blew any more glass. Light from the still glowing coals fitfully lit up the room which seemed much larger. I could not work out why until I suddenly realised.

‘This is where the office used to be!’ I exclaimed, without thinking.

He stared at me. ‘You have been here before?’

I cursed myself. I pointed to the ceiling in a shadowy corner. ‘I can see the line of alteration.’

‘You have sharp eyes, sir.’ A compliment, or was there a trace of suspicion? ‘This used to be a printing shop.’ His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘A hotbed of radicalism.’

‘Was it indeed!’ I pretended to look shocked, intrigued and amused that, brought up in such modest surroundings, this youth should have such pretensions. ‘You are a Royalist, sir?’

‘A Royalist?’ He laughed. For a moment I could see myself in him at his age, full of arrogant certainty, that the world was wrong, must be changed and he had the solution. ‘A p-pox on both their houses! B-both the King and Cromwell destroyed this country!’

‘They did?’

He crumpled suddenly, running his hand feverishly through his red hair. A flake of coal fell from the tangled mop. He might not have been on either side, but his change in manner, his body dipping in deference, told me he had abruptly remembered one should always be on the side of the patron. He gave a stumbled apology for what he called going beyond his station. Before he could continue, the stick thumped violently on the ceiling. He gave me an agitated, apologetic wring of the hands before running to the door at the bottom of the stairs and opening it.

Ellie might be ill, but her voice was as sharp and inquisitive as ever. ‘How can I get to sleep when you make such a noise? Who are you talking to?’

‘I’m s-sorry, Mother.’

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s business, Mother.’

‘Come here.’ Her voice weakened and trembled into a wheedling tone which I did not remember, and which she must have fashioned during her trade as a whore.

Sam stood at the door for a moment, twisting and turning, before telling her he would be up in a minute, and hurrying back to me. I told him he should see to his mother and I would return later.

‘She is –’ His lips tightened in frustration. He never finished the sentence, rushing over to a long trestle table behind the kiln, on which were a number of drug bottles and cheap-looking tumblers, the glass thick and foggy. He drew back a cloth, almost tenderly, showing an array of tubing and flasks such as you might see at an alchemist’s. The glass was thinner and clearer, albeit with a greenish tint.

‘I can make you pipettes, sir, b-beakers and bottles of course. Chemicals do not rot glass as they do metal and l-leather –’

I saw that, in his eagerness, he was going to stumble. I knew the raised stone in that treacherous, uneven floor, having caught my foot in it many times, ruining work by dropping wet proofs or a forme. I moved almost before he tripped and, as the bottle slipped from his grasp, caught it, then caught him. He apologised profusely, floundering for support against me and the side of the kiln. Coals settled as he knocked against it, sending a bright flicker of light from the open kiln door which fell full on my face. I suppose it was the first time he had had a good look at me.