The Fire That Was Not Lit for Warmth

"A man who has been waiting a long time to die does not always see the hand that is waiting for him."

The sweep was a boy of thirteen named Ned Tolliver, with a face like a slice of burnt toast and a voice that cracked in the middle of every sentence.

He was brought up at three, grumbling, with his brushes over his shoulder and a coil of rope round his waist, and he surveyed the Duke's fireplace with the expression of a surgeon examining a bad leg.

"It's a narrow 'un, sir," he said to Roderick. "Foot square at the throat. Her Grace's grandfather, he built it for a small fire, and a sparing sort of fire at that. I can do it, sir. I done narrower. But I'll want a lamp."

"You shall have one."

"And I'll want it quiet, sir. Soot's loose. If anybody knocks it comes down."

"Nobody will knock."

The boy nodded, spat on his palms, and went up.

It was an extraordinary thing to watch. He disappeared into the black throat of the chimney like a thread into a needle, feet first, and for a moment there was nothing to be seen but a pair of grimy bare soles and the scrape of a brush. Then even the soles vanished. A small dry hail of soot fell into the hearth. Somewhere high above their heads, a muffled voice said, "Cor."

"What is it?" Thalessa called.

"There's a thing up here, ma'am."

"What sort of thing?"

"A plate. A great iron plate, across the flue. At the second bend." A pause, filled by the scrape of metal. "It's a damper, ma'am. For the draft. It's set at an angle, see, so's you can turn it with a rod. It's stiff as a boot."

"Is the chimney clear above it?"

"I can't get past, ma'am. It's wedged. I done what I could." A cough. "There's a lot of soot on the top. But it's all dry. I can feel the sky."

"Come down, Ned."

He came down in a rush, with a long hiss of soot, and tumbled out of the fireplace on his hands and knees, black as a Moor, grinning with the pride of a man who has stared into the abyss. He wiped his face and made it worse.

"Clear to the damper, sir," he reported. "I'd say you could light a fire, sir, and she'll draw. The damper's open. It's rusted that way."

Thalessa knelt at the hearth.

She put her head into the fireplace and looked up. In the lamplight the flue went away above her into a square of utter blackness. She could see the first bend, and a glimmer of rust where the iron plate showed, high up, tilted like a lid. A fine dust of soot hung in the air. It smelled of ancient fires.

"A damper," she said aloud. "There is nothing sinister in a damper."

"No, ma'am."

"It is a very ordinary piece of ironmongery."

"Yes, ma'am."

She drew her head out. She was aware of an obscure uneasiness, such as one feels on leaving a room in which a clock has stopped. She looked at the portrait. She looked at the boy. She looked at Roderick, who was counting out a shilling for the sweep.

"It's all right," said Roderick, seeing her face. "It's a chimney, Thalessa. I've seen a thousand."

"Yes," she said. "I'm sure."

She did not believe it. But she could not have said why.

…

The Duke woke at four, and demanded his chair.

He said it with such a flash of his old authority that neither of them dared to refuse. They helped him out of bed, a frail dry weightless figure in the crimson dressing-gown, and across the room to the great leather chair that stood before the hearth. They settled him in it, with a rug over his knees and a cushion at his back, and a footstool for his feet. He sighed and closed his eyes and said "Ah."

The fire had been laid. The cook's boy had brought coals and kindling in a scuttle, and Ned the sweep had built it, a neat little pile of dry sticks and cobbles on the clean black iron. A box of matches stood on the mantel. Thalessa picked it up.

"I'll light it."

"No," said the Duke.

She turned.

"No, my dear. Let me do it." He opened his eyes. "I have lit a hundred fires in this room, in the dark, and have not once been able to hold my hands to one. I should like to try."

"It is dangerous."

"It is a fire in a grate."

"Your Grace is not strong."

"I am stronger than I look." He held out his hand. The fingers were thin as sticks, spotted and veined and trembling, but they closed round the matchbox with perfect firmness. "Please. I have not asked for much."

Thalessa looked at Roderick.

He was standing by the window with his back to the light, and his face was unreadable. He gave a small, slow nod.

"Let him," he said.

She gave the matches to the Duke.

…

He did not light it from the chair.

He rose slowly, with his hand on the arm, and shuffled forward across the boards in his bare feet. He knelt on the hearth. It took him a long time. His knees cracked. His breath whistled. He settled at last on the cold stone, on one knee, like a knight at an altar, with his silver head bent and the box of matches in his lap, and she saw that his eyes were wet.

He struck the first match.

It flared, and went out. He struck another. It flared, and held. He put it to the paper in the heart of the fire, and a small bright flame ran up the twist of newsprint and caught the kindling. A thin gray smoke curled upward. A crackle. A pop. The sticks began to take.

The Duke sat back on his heels and watched.

"There," he said, softly. "That's a good one."

"It is very good," said Thalessa.

"Do you know what I used to think, when I was a boy? I used to think there was a little man who lived in a fire. A very small man, in a red coat, who ran about among the coals and tended them." He smiled. "I used to talk to him. I told him things I told nobody else. And when the fire went out I thought he had gone to bed."

"Where is he now?"

"I think he has been gone a long time." He held out his hands to the flame. They shook. "But I should like to think he has come back tonight. Just for an hour."

The fire grew. The coals caught, one by one, with soft explosions of sparks. The light spread over the hearth, over the Duke's bowed head, over the folds of the crimson silk. He sat with his hands held out in front of him, palm up, as one holds them out to receive something.

"Oh," he said. "It's warm."

"Yes."

"It's quite warm." His voice cracked on the word. "I had forgotten. I had forgotten that it could be."

Thalessa found that she was crying again, quietly, without noise. She wiped her face with her sleeve. Roderick had come and stood beside her. He did not touch her, but she felt the heat of his arm along hers.

"Gabriel," the Duke whispered.

They stood very still.

"I'm sorry, Gabriel. I'm so very sorry. I have been a long time coming. But I've come." He bent his head. "I'd like to be forgiven now, if it is possible. I'd like very much to be warm."

And in the chimney, high above them, something went click.

…

It was a tiny sound, hardly louder than a drop of water falling. A soft dry snap, such as a seed-pod makes in the sun. It came from the throat of the flue, from the black space beyond the glow, and for an instant Thalessa thought she had imagined it.

Then she smelled the tallow.

It was a sharp greasy smell, faint, unmistakable. It came down the chimney on the draft, mingled with smoke, and her mind reached for it and found nothing, and then, with a lurch of horror, found everything.

A damper, set at an angle. Stiff as a boot. Held in place by a wax plug that melted in the heat.

"Alastair!" she screamed. "Get back!"

The Duke raised his head.

"Roderick, the chimney!"

He understood in the same instant. She saw it in his face, a flash of white understanding, and then he was moving, hurling himself across the hearth, his good arm outstretched. His fingers closed in the crimson silk of the Duke's sleeve. He wrenched. The old man came up off the stone like a sack of straw, and for one perfect heartbeat the two of them were outlined against the leaping firelight, a tall man and an old one, as in a painting.

Then the roof of the fireplace fell in.

It came down all at once with a roar. A great iron grating, a rake of blades, six feet across and thick with rust, dropped out of the flue like a guillotine, and behind it, in a thundering avalanche, fell soot, bricks, iron, ash. A cloud of black smoke burst out across the room. The fire went out as though a hand had closed on it. Thalessa was thrown backward across the boards. She struck the legs of the bed and lay there, choking, blinded, with a ringing in her ears and the taste of iron on her tongue.

When the smoke thinned, she saw.

Roderick was on his knees, ten feet from the hearth, white with ash from head to foot, coughing. His good arm was extended, clutching a torn scrap of crimson silk.

The Duke was lying on the hearthstone.

He lay on his back with his arms flung out, and the great rake of blades across him. His face was perfectly calm. His eyes were open, and fixed on the black ceiling of the chimney. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. There was a look of mild surprise on his features, as of a man who has been called suddenly from a pleasant dream.

She crawled to him.

"Alastair."

His eyes moved.

They found her face, slowly. They were clear, blue, entirely lucid. He looked at her as he had looked at her in the crypt, when he said he would like to die.

"Warm," he whispered.

"Don't speak."

"It was... quite warm."

"Hush."

"Tell the Inspector." His lips shaped a faint smile. "Tell him. He was right. About the... Pity."

"Alastair—"

"Thank you, child."

His eyes closed.

She felt the faint pulse in his throat flutter, and hesitate, and stop.

She knelt on the hearth with her hand on the dead man's neck. The rake of blades lay across his chest, black with soot and rust. Soot sifted down from the open flue like gray snow. The ruin of the fire smoked at her knees. And down through the dark of the broken chimney, drifting, turning, slow as feathers, came a soft pale shower of petals.

They fell on the Duke's silver hair. They fell on his open palms. They fell on the iron, and the ash, and the crimson silk, hundreds of them, thousands, a violet snow, light as breath. And one of them, in the midst of the drift, fell on the hollow of his throat and lay there quietly, curling at the edges.

She picked it up.

It bore a single black letter.

D.

…

Roderick was at the portrait before she could speak.

He seized the sword-hilt in his good hand and wrenched, and the great frame swung out, and he plunged through the gap with the revolver in his fist and a cry that was not a word. She heard his boots on the stone stair, going down. She heard the clang of the iron rail. She snatched up the lantern, thrust the petal into her bodice, and followed.

The tunnel was empty.

At the bottom of the sixty steps, in the brick passage, the dust lay smooth. There was no footprint. There was no sound. Only the long dark arch of the roof, and the iron brackets, and far away, thin and clear, and growing fainter with every breath, a voice.

Come home, come home, when the dark tide's turning...

"There!" said Roderick.

"Wait—"

He was gone, running, a tall shape in the dim light, with his sling flapping and his shadow lurching on the wall. She ran after him. She lost him at the first corner. She found him again, standing quite still at a junction with his head bowed, listening. The song had stopped.

"Which way?" she panted.

"I don't know."

"She went left. The prints—"

"There are no prints." He turned. His face was sooty, and streaked with sweat, and shining with fury. "She has swept the passage, Thalessa. Look. The dust is combed. She walked backward with a brush. She has been all the way down here, since yesterday, preparing for this."

"The chimney."

"She had it ready. She had it ready for the moment he sat down." He struck his fist against the wall. "She knew. She knew he would ask for the fire. She knew we would send for the sweep."

"She sent the sweep."

"What?"

"She sent the sweep. Ned. She told him to say it was clear." Thalessa's voice shook. "He said the damper was stiff, and rusted, and open. He said it twice. She taught him to say it."

"The boy is thirteen."

"The boy is an instrument. As Uriah was. As the Duke was. She does not use her own hands, Roderick. She never has." She drew breath. "That is how she has done it. She has taught the whole house to carry out her will, and not one of them has known."

He said nothing. The lantern flame wavered. From a long way off came a soft sound, a rustle, a stone moving on stone, and a faint cold draft stirred the hair at her temples.

"Another door," she said.

"Yes."

"Into the sea cave, or into the cellars. She is leaving."

"Or she is circling." He rubbed his face, leaving a long streak of white. "No. She wants us to follow. That is the thing. She has always wanted us to follow. She sang, Thalessa. She sang until we heard her."

"To draw us off."

"To draw us off from what?"

They looked at each other.

And from far above, through the stone, through the sixty steps and the painted door and the thickness of the walls, they heard something that made her blood run cold: a sound like a woman's laugh, light, soft, and strangely sweet, and the faint distant slam of a door.

"The chapel," said Thalessa.

She did not know why she said it. It was only that she had seen it, as a clear picture in her mind: a long cold room hung with black, and a row of trestles, and a row of sheeted shapes. And on the end trestle, laid in the dusk, a thing that she had not yet unpacked. A glass case. A flat box of lint. Six small bruised petals in a row, which she had set there herself.

"The petals," she said. "The evidence. She has not come for us. She has come for the word."

"It is in your chest—"

"It is in the chapel! I left it there when we went down. On the end trestle, in the glass case, with the letters in order." She was already running. "Roderick, if she burns it..."

"It's only paper and flowers."

"It is the only proof we have!"

He ran after her.

They went up the steps two at a time, and burst through the portrait into the smoke-filled bedchamber, past the dead Duke on his hearth, and flung open the door. They went down the north gallery like a pair of hunted deer. They raced along the cloister under the streaming gray sky, and down the three steps to the chapel door, and wrenched it open.

The chapel was empty.

The candles burned on the altar. The sheeted shapes lay in their row. And on the end trestle, in the cold gray light, the glass case stood open, its lid thrown back, its bed of lint scattered across the velvet.

Seven petals had been laid there in a straight line. Six had been set in order. S. T. A. R. V. E.

And at the end of the line, laid with great care beside its fellows, with its black initial pointing up at the roof like a finger, lay a seventh. Not the one that lay against Thalessa's ribs. Another. Its twin.

D.

STARVED.

And beneath them, written in a square clean hand on the white velvet, with a finger dipped in ink, was a single line.

Thank you for bringing him home.