Bryony
Twelve days to the weld. Morning.
The boy at the foot of my stair had a Guild cap and a cold. He said it all in one go, to the third step.
"Captain says would you come to the yard at seven. And the sergeant at eight. He said that bit twice."
"What for?"
"A letter."
It was half past five. The sailmaker's loft was dark under me. The stair was wet. The boy had been running, and he stood there steaming while I stood in my shirt on the landing and did the sum. Me at seven. Him at eight.
"Tell him fine."
"He said you'd say that."
"Then he knows," I said, and shut the door in his face, and put my boots on.
I'd walked Gannet home last night, or he'd walked me, from the Ropewalk. Neither of us had said much. Behind the Bobbin there's a wall. We'd sat on it till they turned the lights out inside, with a yard of cold stone between us and nothing in it. He wanted to go in. I wouldn't let him.
"And if he asks me where I've been?"
"Say the Bobbin. Say a man in a jersey. Say what's true."
"That's all?"
"It's the whole of it. Don't say what I was."
"What were you?"
"A seller," I said. "I'm good at it. I had no idea."
We'd got to the sailmaker's. He stood at the bottom of my stair with his hands hanging. I'd stopped on the second step. It put my face level with his, and neither of us did anything about it. I had a rule. It was a very good rule. It held up the whole night like a prop under a roof. I said good night to it.
It was late before I stopped thinking of what I'd seen over the fire. A square shoulder and a glass. I left it where it was. If I opened my mouth about it I'd be opening it to the man who held the writ. I've never in my life kept my mouth shut for the sake of anything. It feels like holding a pin in a lock with your teeth.
The gate was still shut. The constable on it had a mug in one hand. He let me through the wicket with his chin.
"Captain said you'd come early."
"Everybody keeps saying that."
"It's what you're like," said the constable.
The yard was empty, grey, and wet. It had rained in the night and the cobbles were slick, and the horse trough was full to the lip with dirty sky. A single gull stood on the pump handle and looked at me like a customer. I crossed the yard under the office windows. The door opened before I reached the steps. Haverill stood in it in his shirtsleeves and braces, with a bit of grey paper in his hand.
I'd never seen him without the coat. It made him a thing you could see the shape of. Square, not tall, with thick forearms and a neck like a tree-stump, and a roll in his weight even stood still. He hadn't shaved. He had the spectacles pushed up on his forehead and he'd forgotten them there.
"Pask."
"You said seven."
"It's twenty to." He looked at me over the paper. "You've saved me a boy."
"What's that?"
"This." He held it out. I didn't take it. "On the step when the gate opened, with a stone on it. Nobody saw who put it. Folded in eight." He looked at it a while. "I'll read it you. It's short."
He read it. I'll give it as he did, with the stops where he put them, because he didn't hurry.
"The keeps are being robbed. Weld now. The Pask woman drank from door seven."
That was all.
I looked at it, upside down, since he hadn't let me hold it. Grey wharf paper, the sort every counting-house in the port wraps its string in. Pencil, soft and black, pressed hard enough to dent the page and show on the back. Printed. Every capital stood by itself, upright, with nothing joined, like the hand of someone being careful not to have one.
"Well?" said Haverill.
I had it ready. I'd put it together on the stair, as I put anything together. Take it apart. Look at what's left. Find the piece you can't spare.
"It's true," I said.
He didn't move.
"Door seven. At the low. My mother's bead was in the keep, the second one up. I took it. I drank it. It's mine to say. Write that." My hands were in my pockets and they were quite steady. "Nobody gave it me. Nobody stopped it. I took the bottle and pulled the cork and I drank it, and I'd do it again."
"Pask—"
"You can have me at the cells. I'll go quiet."
"You'll tell me why."
"It's my mother."
"It's the writ. You were under it."
"It was her. It was all I'd come for." I looked at the cobbles, because they were nearest. "I'd have taken the lot, from the first day, if you'd let me. You knew that. You knew when you gave me the post."
"I knew," said Haverill.
He said it flat. He folded the letter in four, then in eight, very small and exact, and put it in his waistcoat. The spectacles were still on his forehead. I watched him find them, and take them down, and look at them, and put them in his pocket. He didn't hold them in his fist. The hand came out empty. It was the first time I'd seen him without something in it to throw.
"Is it Ivo?" I said.
"Is what?"
"The letter. He heard me. On the quay."
"Forty men heard you on that quay, Pask, and a boy with a bucket. It went round the dockyard by two and the Row by four. It's on the lips of every fishwife in the port." He rubbed his face. "It's anyone."
"It's his pencil."
"It's a pencil."
"He had the blanks. He had the key. He went white, and he said it was his, whatever it is, what he wants out of one of them—"
"And you'd say it's him."
"I'm saying he heard."
"So did I," said Haverill.
He said it mildly. I couldn't read his face. I looked at his shoulders instead, which is where I look. They'd come down an inch.
"Drank your mother," said Haverill.
"Yes."
"Well." He put his hands in his braces. He turned the folded letter over, as if the back might say different. "The court can have you at the close."
I'd have said I'd had it all worked out. I'd had the cells. I'd had the cold floor, and the bucket, and the little window. The sergeant outside in the passage with his eyes shut, not being asked.
"That's all?"
"I've a weld to run. It's not been my habit to lose a hand to a cell in the middle of one."
"I'm not your opener. You said."
"Then I've lost a locksmith. I'll keep the loss in the yard."
"The writ says cells for a drop."
"It doesn't say when. I'll not ask the sergeant." He looked past me at the gate. "You've never been anything but plain with me about what you were after. I'll ask nobody. It's done."
It had gone by like a cart in a lane. My hands were still in my pockets and my shoulders were up at my ears.
I heard him before I turned round.
Nobody else drops a heel like that. A big plain smack on the stone, a man built like a barn coming up a yard at a trot and trying not to. He'd come through the wicket a little after seven, with the constable saying something behind him, and he hadn't slowed for it. His coat was buttoned wrong. There was a smear of ink on his face where he'd rubbed it with the wrong hand.
"Sir," said Gannet.
"Not yet, Sergeant. It's not eight."
"I know, sir. I came early. I don't—" He'd seen me. I watched the whole thing arrive, first at the eyes, then the mouth, then the shoulders. "What's she said?"
"She's said what's true."
"What's she—Bryony."
"I told him," I said.
"You've not."
"I told him. Door seven. I drank it."
"Bryony." He said it low. His hands had come up in front of him and were doing something helpless in the air, as if he'd been handed a tray. His face had gone wide open, all of it at once, like a door with the pins out. I'd have known that one if it had been chalked on a wall. "I'd have told him myself."
"I know."
"I'd have said it plain. I'd have said, I stood there and I watched her, and I let her, and I'd not take it back—"
"That's why," I said.
He stopped.
"Sergeant," said Haverill.
"Sir."
"You're not to speak. Not about seven. Not on this. I've her word and I've taken it, and I'll not have you made to stand in this yard and swear the other thing. That's an order."
"Sir, with respect—"
"With none. I'll have it as I've said." The captain turned his head and the light caught the grey in his stubble. "Are you asked, Sergeant? Is any man asking you?"
"No, sir."
"Then hold your tongue. It's a rest."
Gannet said nothing. He stood there with the ink on his face and his mouth working on a word. He found it, and put it down.
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Both of you stand easy." Haverill went up a step, and then another. He turned on the top one with the light behind him and the sky coming up pale behind the office roof. "I've a thing to say to the yard, and I'll say it now, as there's nobody in it to hear but a gull. The weld's moved."
I didn't look at Gannet. I felt him not looking at me.
"The thirtieth's too far. Every day a door stands, some fool pays it. We've eight counted, seven's keep found empty the morning after the clerk drew it, and the ninth to come, and somebody's been through the glasses like a fox through a coop, and I'd as soon have the lot in the iron before there's nothing left to weld." He wasn't speaking to us. He was looking out over our heads at the gate. "Dawn in four days. Every door. The smiths will start at the Hook Street stair and go round. Nine the same morning."
"Four days, sir?" said Gannet.
"Four."
"And the clerk's counts? His chest—"
"He'll count from his bed. I'll have the glass carried. Dawn in four days, every door, and I'll be glad to hear the hammers."