Mr. Rochester by Sarah Shoemaker (5)

Carrot left the year I turned twelve. He was fifteen then, and he departed in high glee at the prospect of coming under his father’s care at last. I could not imagine how life at Black Hill would be without him. I had never gotten over the loss of Touch, and now, with Carrot gone as well, I felt I was really on my own.

By that time, I had spent a third of my life at Black Hill, and much more time with Mr. Lincoln than I had ever spent with any member of my own family. I was thoroughly used to his ways. He could be stern, but occasionally one could catch a knowing glance or a proud, subtle smile when one had done an especially good job.

Perhaps because I had lost both Touch and Carrot, it was in that year that I became more interested in modern, everyday life, as opposed to historic battles and heroes and explorations. Sometimes I managed to get my hands on a newspaper of Mr. Lincoln’s before he removed it to the forbidden territory of his own room. He did not encourage us to read newspapers; it was as if there was no reason for us to study a subject that did not appear in a book. Nevertheless, he answered my questions the few times I put one to him, more generously if he could illustrate his response with a map. Most often, as he had done on my very first day, he would send me to his library to discover the information for myself. But I was intensely curious to know what real life was like for real people in our modern times, for I was beginning to understand that I had never actually experienced such a thing.

With Carrot gone, the fun of replaying battles had dimmed for me—as I suspect it sometimes did even for Mr. Lincoln—so it was not with a great deal of disappointment that I greeted the letter that arrived on my thirteenth birthday. I had almost forgotten the significance of the date, it never having been celebrated in my time at Black Hill. But at tea that evening Mr. Lincoln handed me an envelope. It had been opened already, yet Mr. Lincoln gave me the rare courtesy of letting me read it for myself:

Maysbeck. Not Thornfield. I had only a vague idea where Maysbeck was, but at least, by then, I well knew how to find out. Mr. Lincoln’s gazetteer showed it to be a town of fair size, but of no particular distinction. Still, it was exciting—exactly what I had hoped for, because I would actually be out in the world. It was as if my father, all those miles away in Jamaica, or wherever he was, had read my mind, and, because of that, I felt an affinity for him that I had rarely experienced before, and I became certain that the next step would be joining Rowland and my father in Jamaica.

“It will be a new kind of life for you, Jamaica,” Mr. Lincoln said. “I trust that you will make the most of it.”

“I will try to, sir. My father is counting on it.”

“Yes, he is indeed,” he said, “and it is best that you keep that in mind.”

He turned away and rose from the table with his usual difficulty, to go to his room. It was a departure from his normal evening activity to go to his room so early, and in my childish self-absorption I imagined he was devastated to have me leave. I glanced around the table at the others: Pox, who had come to us a month before, and who had yet to accomplish even the shortest sentence in French; Buck, who was large and clumsy, and whose smile was infectious; Tip, who was small and quick of mind and body. He would be the next leader of the boys when I left. That thought caught me up—it was true: I had, almost without realizing, become the leader after Carrot’s departure. But I would be going to a new place now, and I would be the new boy and I would have to learn my way around the others, as well as learning the ways of a new tutor.

The next morning at breakfast, Mr. Lincoln behaved to me as if nothing had changed, as if there had been no letter from my father, no impending departure. He rolled out the map of Russia and placed the tokens for the Battle of Borodino, a battle I had enacted more times than I cared to think about, and it was clear that his thoughts were not of me on that day, but on the boys who would be there after I left.

At tea I broached the subject that had teased me all day. “Sir,” I said.

Mr. Lincoln did not look up at me. “Yes,” he said.

“Might I have Touch’s real name, that I might visit him one day? I know his village; it’s Mapleton, is it not?”

This brought Mr. Lincoln’s head up and his eyes on me. It seems astoundingly strange now, but in fact we never used our real names at Black Hill. It was further evidence that Black Hill was a place of its own. Yes, we were properly introduced when a new boy came, but only our nicknames were used beyond that, and I had no memory of Touch’s second name, though I recalled his Christian name was William.

Mr. Lincoln stared at me for several moments. Then he said, “William Gholson is not to be visited. Not in this realm at least. He went to meet his Maker less than a year after he left here.”

I did not think: No, it can’t be. Nor did I think: Why didn’t you tell us? I could not think anything.

He watched me struggle for a time before adding, “It was the fever, Jamaica. He was of a delicate constitution, as you know.”

But I did not know. I did not know when we ran across the fields, when we snuggled together in bed against the winter’s cold, when he did not complain as I leaned on him so heavily after straining my ankle, he who was so much smaller than I. It seemed there was still too much I did not know. “May I be excused, please, sir?” I asked, refusing to acknowledge the tear that was running, unbidden, down my cheek.

“I was going to read Caesar’s Commentaries,” he said.

“Please, sir.” I was begging by then, for I could not bear to face any more talk of war.

“Very well. You are excused to go to your room.”

I escaped the table and ran up the stairs, Mr. Lincoln’s voice following me. “Life is cruel, Jamaica. All one can do is tread on and make the best of it.”

Upstairs, the late winter cold wrapped around me unnoticed. Fully dressed, I climbed under the quilt and pressed my eyes closed and, imagining Touch there beside me, began to whisper, once again, the story of how Captain Morgan transformed himself from the most feared buccaneer in the West Indies to the vice-governor of Jamaica. I told him every pirate story I could remember and tried to invent new ones when my memory ran dry. Above all else, Touch had loved pirates. As long as I was speaking, he was alive next to me. I could not bear to think of him under the cold ground.

When the others came up to bed, I feigned sleep, and the next day—my last at Black Hill—I was like a sleepwalker, going through the motions mindlessly. I only wanted to leave. I only wanted to lose the knowledge that I now possessed of poor, dead Touch, whom I would never in this life see again.

Early the next morning, North took me in the horse cart to the Four Bells, from where he had brought me to Black Hill five years before. In those years, I had never been to the village of Arnfield, there being nothing in that place that Mr. Lincoln thought worthy of our interest. Athena had packed for me two cheese pies, and I set them inside my cap and my cap on my head in order to keep them warm and my hands free. The same trunk that had come to Black Hill with me was filled with my clothes and what few other belongings I now possessed: a notebook full of jottings, a small Latin dictionary, two quill pens badly trimmed, a penknife, five or six rocks that I had gathered over the years for no reason that I can remember except that boys like to gather rocks. And, of course, the letter from my father. The guinea coin was in my pocket.

I had understood that the coach would come through Arnfield before noon, but far past midday I was still waiting. At the Four Bells I bought a watered beer and ate my cheese pies and would have eaten more, but I did not dare spend another farthing.

It was midafternoon when the coach arrived, but there was no room for me except on top, where I was forced to cling to the rail with one hand and my trunk with the other, trying not to shiver in the wind and the cold. I put my mind on Touch, who was lying in the still-frozen ground, though if there were a heaven, surely he must have been there instead; and on Carrot, who had left and never sent a letter. I had no idea where he might be now, nearly a year later, or if his father had really claimed him, and perhaps he was in London among all the toffs, at some party perhaps, dancing with a pretty girl, or drinking wine and laughing at some festive table. Or if he knew that Touch was dead. I did not remember Carrot’s real name: Carrot had been all the name we needed for him, as Jam was all anyone had needed for me. Hard as I tried, up there on the coach top, I could not remember anyone ever having called me Edward. And I thought, too, of Mouse, who was with us for such a short time, and who, despite our assurances to the contrary, had been so afraid of being beaten, and I wondered, as I often did and still do to this day, if things had at last gone right for him. In short, I thought of whatever I could that would take my mind from the cold.

Well after dark the coach pulled into the yard of the Royal Oak Inn in Maysbeck, and it took some effort for me to loosen my hand from the rail, for it had become nearly frozen in place. I was unceremoniously handed down, stiff all over, and my trunk after me, and I forced my legs into movement to get me inside. The crowd around the hearth made it impossible for me to warm myself, but at least I was indoors, away from the wind, and I blew on my hands in hopes of warming them. It was only then that I noticed a boy, younger than I by a few years and half a head shorter, who seemed to have come out to meet the coach and had followed me inside.

“Master Rochester?” he said in a voice that was an octave too low for his size.

“Yes,” I responded. “Are you from Mr. Wilson, perhaps?”

“I am. You are to follow me.” He reached for my trunk, but I picked it up myself, as I could not imagine his being able to carry it.

The boy led the way back out into the dark and the cold. The wind blew scurries of sleet across the yard, and I bent my head against it. We walked a few hundred yards or so along twisting streets and through alleys before I asked, “Is it much farther to Mr. Wilson’s home?” Surely it was not, or they would have sent a hack for me.

“We do not go to ’is ’ouse,” was the surprising response. “I am to take you to the mill.”

“What mill?”

“Mr. Wilson’s mill. The Maysbeck Mill.”

Mr. Wilson’s establishment is a mill? Surely there must be some mistake, I thought, but I had no chance to ask, because the boy was hurrying so fast ahead of me that it was all I could do to carry my trunk and keep up with him. When we finally arrived, my feet and hands and nose were back to ice again, and I imagine the boy was just as cold, since he wore fewer warm clothes than I. In the darkness the building presented an imposing mass as we approached it. The boy made straightaway to a heavy oak door and pounded on it until it was opened by a rough-looking man of forty years or so. He was carrying a lantern, which he held up to my face to get a good look at me.

“This is ’im?” he said.

The boy said, “Yes.”

“Well, come in, then,” he said, motioning us forward. “It’s bloody cold outside.”

Inside, I tried to glance around, but the light of his lantern spread only far enough to show a cavernous place filled with large, complicated machinery. I followed the man, and the boy came along behind, as we walked to a dimly lit room twenty yards or so away. I could tell it was an office of some sort. There was a desk and, additionally, a high table covered with neat piles of papers. In a corner, a coal grate glowed. The man put down the lantern and took a good look at me. “Rochester, they say your name is.”

“Yes, sir, it is,” I responded. “Edward Rochester. My apologies for the time, sir. The coach was late in coming. I’m sorry if I kept you up.” The man had not introduced himself; I could not imagine that he was Mr. John Wilson himself, but I could hardly be sure, as so much strangeness had already occurred.

“There is a cot for you in the corner,” he said, waving his hand vaguely toward a darkened part of the room. “You will sleep there tonight. I have no idea what will become of you after that. Mr. Wilson will be deciding that. But be sharp: they come promptly to work. You will need to be up and ready before six o’clock in the morning.”

“How will I know the hour?” I asked.

He laughed. “You will know,” he said. “And, in case you are a very ’eavy sleeper, the frames start up promptly at six. There is no doubt you will ’ear them.”

“The frames?” I asked stupidly.

“Boy, what do you know of this place?” he asked.

“I know nothing,” I responded, “except that it’s a mill, I think. But what kind of mill? And what are frames?”

“Ah,” he said in a more kindly tone, “well, it’s a broadcloth mill. The finest woolen goods you can buy. Beyond that, though, you shall be told what you need to know in the morning.” With that, he turned away from me, taking the lantern with him as he put his arm across the shoulders of the boy. They walked closer to the coal grate to warm themselves for a few moments, and then they left.

The room was not nearly as cold as it had been outside, and I lifted my trunk once more, carried it over to the cot, and took off my shoes and lay down, digging my hands into my coat pockets and wondering if there had been some kind of mistake. This was not a school. Mr. Wilson seemed not to be a tutor. But it must be the place my father had intended me to go, for they had known my name; they had been expecting my arrival. Still, what was I doing there?