As far as Childermass could tell, no one stirred out of bed that night, but he also knew that such good behavior might only last so long, and despite what small reassurance he'd received from his cards he thought he would do well to learn more of Mrs. Pryer.
Even before dawn was a threat on the horizon, Childermass set out to track down the coachman that had delivered their housekeeper the previous day and learned that she'd come from a ladies' boarding house in Stepney. So he made his way to the place (known as Woestalls) and spoke to the proprietress, who was very tightlipped until he passed her palm with a guinea, after which she was quite free with her speech.
Mrs. Pryer - whose Christian name was Twyla - had taken a room at Woestalls four months before and paid for her room up front every week, and never caused anyone the slightest amount of trouble. When at home, she often confined herself to her room and spent little time in the common areas with the other women, but she was also out quite often, though none could say where she went or how she came by her money.
"Surely, she cannot have much money," the proprietress went on, "for I never saw her in any but two dresses and the same of everything else each time I saw her, though she was in her cups as often as she could be. Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr…?"
"No," Childermass said, "but I'd hear aught else of her you know."
"Well, tis very little. She confessed her father came from up north somewhere and her mother was from Prussia or some foreign place and she'd been in service all her life."
"And where was she situated before she came to Woestalls?"
"Well," she said, (as she began nearly every sentence she spoke) and this time leaned in with an air of conspiratorial confidence, "she would not say, but I had it from the boy who carried her valise when she arrived that she had lately come from a house in Kensington and was dismissed under very mystifying and secretive circumstances."
"Thank you," Childermass told her, and left before the woman could ask any questions of him.
In the market gardens of Kensington, Childermass found any number of folk willing to speak what they knew, some for a coin and others freely, and Childermass had to sort out the truths from the fictions. Finally, he found his way to the back door of an affluent townhouse, and he watched the comings and goings there until a young footman came out on some errand and Childermass loomed into his path.
"Your Mrs. Pryer-- why was she dismissed?" he growled at the youth, who stumbled backwards into a shrubbery.
The youth quaked in terror and stared owlishly up at him.
"It-it-it-it was a gentleman acquaintance s-s-s-s-said she'd borned a child out of wedlock. Th-th-the master turned her out that day."
"And the gentleman's name?"
"L-Lascelles."
"And how long had she been at service here?"
"Three y-y-y-y-years, sir."
"And how was her work?"
"B-b-but it was e-e-e-e-e-excellent, sir."
"All right," Childermass said, dropping a coin in his lap. "You may go."
The boy took off like a fox hounded from its den.
= = = = =
That night after dinner, Childermass was sure to casually open a bottle of wine, which excited Oliver and Dido greatly, was of mild interest to Lucy and Lucas, and which Davey and Hannah politely refused. Sarah requested to try it, and Childermass only narrowed his eyes at her.
When he came to Mrs. Pryer, he asked, "Care for a drop?"
Mrs. Pryer looked at the bottle and then gave a small nod. One bottle of wine did not divide generously between six people, but Childermass poured as evenly as he could and Davey passed out the glasses.
"Sarah," Childermass then said, "you know you are too young yet, even for but a taste of wine. So we shall sing whatever you like this night."
"'Pratty Flowers'!" she instantly demanded, bouncing in place.
Everyone looked to Oliver, who began the choral song, and which everyone shortly joined in, singing it through once before taking it again from the beginning to let Sarah sing the first lines of each stanza before everyone else joined in the four-part harmony, and in the end Sarah held the last note longest, her little voice ringing through the hall. She clapped with glee and then sat quietly in her chair, waiting to see what would be next.
"Sarah, run and get my fiddle," Oliver told her.
"Yes, sir!" she said at once and jumped to her feet.
When she returned, he played a joyful jig and smiled around the table at everyone as he did.
They clapped along and applauded him when he finished, but then Oliver turned to Lucy and said, "Why don't you sing for us tonight, Lucy? So fine, your voice is."
"I will, if you like. Sarah, what should I sing?"
"Sing that song about the pink, the violet and the rose."
"All right," she agreed, but then when Lucy began to sing in the most haunting way, a solemnity drew itself like a pall about the room.
"When I was in my prime I flourished like a vine. Along there came a false young man And stole this heart of mine… And stole this heart of mine."
As she sang the final 'mine', Dido and Hannah joined in with a soft and wavering 'ah' that sucked the soul from the room with its mournfulness as the note fell.
"The gardener standing by He made three offers to me: The pink, the violet, and red rose, To which I refused all three… To which I refused all three."
This time, as the women sang out their mourning 'ah', Oliver joined with a graceful draw of the bow upon the strings of his fiddle, reverberating a physical ache through the room.
"The pink's no flower at all; Its blossom withers too soon. The violet has too pale a hue. I think I'll wait till June… I think I'll wait till June."
Nearly every voice in the room found that falling, hollow 'ah' that rang out in perfect sorrow.
"In June the red rose blooms But it's not the flower for me. It's then I'll uproot the red, red rose And plant a willow tree… And plant a willow tree.
"And plant a willow tree.
"And plant a willow tree."
After the final 'ah' faded from their ears, a sweet silence filled the hall like the glow of the fire in the grate.
Mrs. Pryer dabbed discreetly at her eyes as Childermass shooed Sarah out to begin her evening chores.
Shortly after this, Lucy, Dido, and Hannah said their good nights and filed upstairs.
Childermass gave Oliver a subtle look and gesture and the cook rose to fetch a bottle from his room.
Lucas and Davey sought their beds as Oliver returned with a bottle of brandy, which was served up to Childermass, Mrs. Pryer, and Oliver himself.
Between sips of the brandy, Oliver would pick up his fiddle and scrape out a song or some melody he half-remembered. Childermass droned a heavily accented version of 'On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at', which made his listeners smile.
"Have you any favorite songs, Mrs. Pryer?" Oliver asked.
"Oh, not as such," she said. "Most houses I've been in don't have such singing as this. Does it not bother the master?" she asked, looking to Childermass, draped all in his shadows at the end of the table.
"If you were to ask him," Childermass said slowly, thoughtful with his words, "Mr. Norrell would have that it gives him the most trying headaches, and he would lay claim to how vexatious it is to have servants always yodeling about below stairs. He might complain that Lucas and Davey ought to drive the carriage and not sing away like fools as they do, or that Lucy could as easily tend to the dusting in silence as in song."
"That's what he would say?" she asked.
"Oh, yes."
"But sir, you smile so knowingly."
"I do."
"And why?"
"Because when he does not think I'm watching, he turns his head to listen. And once, he plain forgot I was in the library with him, and he got up to go to the door, and I felt sure any moment he'd go yelling down to tell them to stop their racket."
"And didn't he?"
"Nay," Childermass said, still smiling. "He stood at the door and listened. That's all."
Mrs. Pryer smiled back at him, but tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes.
Any number of things could have been said about loneliness then, but all was silent until the night was late and the brandy dwindling.
After Mrs. Pryer went to bed, Oliver - with a rather deliberate look at Childermass - pointedly went to bed in a direction that firmly was not his own.
Childermass shrugged and went about securing the house a final time before stopping outside the boys' room downstairs. He had to be content that he could hear only very little before heading to bed himself.
= = = = =
Mrs. Pryer had Sunday mornings for church and Wednesday evenings to herself.
For three weeks, Childermass mostly ignored her, but on the fourth Wednesday, he donned his hat and heavy coat, his shadows and his vigilance, and followed her out the back door.
He trailed her at some distance along Hanover Street, and then a bit closer as she joined the thicker foot traffic on Regent Street. This long path she followed until Regent became Coventry and then she cut across Leicester Square Garden to Irving Street. From there, Charing Cross Road took her to St. Martin's Place and William IV Street and then George Court to the Strand and finally to Fleet Street. At the last, she turned down the narrow Cheshire Court to the public house that was her destination.
It was not the most direct route, but Childermass well understood that a woman alone may not take the same back streets he felt so at home in.
Lingering in an opposing doorway several storefronts down, Childermass waited. Not even an hour had passed since leaving Hanover Square, and all the churches round about rang out the hour of six. St. Bride's, being nearest, was the loudest, but he could hear the nearby St. Paul's ring out down the way.
Childermass eyed the people roundabout going along their various ways on their various businesses and allowed himself to be seen.
It was not long before a young beggar approached him, hoarding his attention while a small hand slipped into his pocket from the other side.
Childermass grabbed the thieving wrist in an unrelenting hold. The little boy who'd had his hands cupped out before him took off like the hounds of hell might be after him and swiftly disappeared into the crowd. Childermass turned to regard the lass who'd tried to pinch the wrong pocket.
She was about sixteen, gaunt with hunger, with lank brown hair and wide brown eyes, glassy with fear. She did not speak.
"Running about Fleet Street with your eager hands… must be one of Pyewacket's gang."
"How-- how did you know, sir?"
He ignored this question to ask one of his own, "Should you like a pound?"
"A… a whole pound, sir?" Her fearful look turned mutinously suspicious. "For what?"
"I may have a job for a cunning young lass who can go about unnoticed. If I release you, and you do not run away, I shall give a shilling, and we'll talk then, yes?"
She stared him in the face for a long moment before agreeing with a single sharp nod.
Childermass released her and she rubbed her wrist and gave him a foul look, but did not run away.
Childermass produced a shilling, though from where she did not see, and handed it to her.
"Do you know the place?" he asked, with a nod down the street.
"Ye Olde Cheshire? O'course. But they don't let such as me in."
"I doubt they'll turn away a paying customer, howsoever… untidy she might be."
She looked across the street at the place and at the customers who came and went, and then at the barrel organ player down the way, and at the folk coming and going all about. She looked back to Childermass.
"A'right, then. What would ye have me do?"
"An acquaintance of mine is inside. I suspect she is meeting someone. Stand here with me awhile and we shall see."
The girl crossed her arms and gave him a sulky look. He did not see what she had done with the shilling.
"What's your name?" he asked, as he looked down the ends of the street at the passing carriages, Cheshire Court being itself too narrow for all but the smallest dogcarts.
She eyed him thoughtfully.
"No need to lie," he told her. "I'll know if you do."
"Edlyn."
"And I'm John."
She blinked at him.
"Ah," he said as a fancy carriage stopped at the Fleet end of the Court. "Stand back and hold still," he instructed, laying a hand over her wrist as though to inform her how to be so.
They watched as a well-dressed man descended, donned his hat, and sauntered down the center of the narrow street, forcing those before him to part to one side or the other. He looked neither left nor right as he made his way and entered the public house they'd been watching.
Childermass released his light hold on the girl and told her, "That is Mr. Lascelles." He held out a pound. "Go in. Order whatever you like to eat. Keep as close to that man as you can without being noticed, and report back to me when all is over. I'll give you whatever I think your information is worth, so long as it be truthful."
Edlyn nodded and pocketed the coin and dashed off across the street without question.
Re: Fill: What the Master Doesn't Know (6.1/?)
Even before dawn was a threat on the horizon, Childermass set out to track down the coachman that had delivered their housekeeper the previous day and learned that she'd come from a ladies' boarding house in Stepney. So he made his way to the place (known as Woestalls) and spoke to the proprietress, who was very tightlipped until he passed her palm with a guinea, after which she was quite free with her speech.
Mrs. Pryer - whose Christian name was Twyla - had taken a room at Woestalls four months before and paid for her room up front every week, and never caused anyone the slightest amount of trouble. When at home, she often confined herself to her room and spent little time in the common areas with the other women, but she was also out quite often, though none could say where she went or how she came by her money.
"Surely, she cannot have much money," the proprietress went on, "for I never saw her in any but two dresses and the same of everything else each time I saw her, though she was in her cups as often as she could be. Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr…?"
"No," Childermass said, "but I'd hear aught else of her you know."
"Well, tis very little. She confessed her father came from up north somewhere and her mother was from Prussia or some foreign place and she'd been in service all her life."
"And where was she situated before she came to Woestalls?"
"Well," she said, (as she began nearly every sentence she spoke) and this time leaned in with an air of conspiratorial confidence, "she would not say, but I had it from the boy who carried her valise when she arrived that she had lately come from a house in Kensington and was dismissed under very mystifying and secretive circumstances."
"Thank you," Childermass told her, and left before the woman could ask any questions of him.
In the market gardens of Kensington, Childermass found any number of folk willing to speak what they knew, some for a coin and others freely, and Childermass had to sort out the truths from the fictions. Finally, he found his way to the back door of an affluent townhouse, and he watched the comings and goings there until a young footman came out on some errand and Childermass loomed into his path.
"Your Mrs. Pryer-- why was she dismissed?" he growled at the youth, who stumbled backwards into a shrubbery.
The youth quaked in terror and stared owlishly up at him.
"It-it-it-it was a gentleman acquaintance s-s-s-s-said she'd borned a child out of wedlock. Th-th-the master turned her out that day."
"And the gentleman's name?"
"L-Lascelles."
"And how long had she been at service here?"
"Three y-y-y-y-years, sir."
"And how was her work?"
"B-b-but it was e-e-e-e-e-excellent, sir."
"All right," Childermass said, dropping a coin in his lap. "You may go."
The boy took off like a fox hounded from its den.
= = = = =
That night after dinner, Childermass was sure to casually open a bottle of wine, which excited Oliver and Dido greatly, was of mild interest to Lucy and Lucas, and which Davey and Hannah politely refused. Sarah requested to try it, and Childermass only narrowed his eyes at her.
When he came to Mrs. Pryer, he asked, "Care for a drop?"
Mrs. Pryer looked at the bottle and then gave a small nod. One bottle of wine did not divide generously between six people, but Childermass poured as evenly as he could and Davey passed out the glasses.
"Sarah," Childermass then said, "you know you are too young yet, even for but a taste of wine. So we shall sing whatever you like this night."
"'Pratty Flowers'!" she instantly demanded, bouncing in place.
Everyone looked to Oliver, who began the choral song, and which everyone shortly joined in, singing it through once before taking it again from the beginning to let Sarah sing the first lines of each stanza before everyone else joined in the four-part harmony, and in the end Sarah held the last note longest, her little voice ringing through the hall. She clapped with glee and then sat quietly in her chair, waiting to see what would be next.
"Sarah, run and get my fiddle," Oliver told her.
"Yes, sir!" she said at once and jumped to her feet.
When she returned, he played a joyful jig and smiled around the table at everyone as he did.
They clapped along and applauded him when he finished, but then Oliver turned to Lucy and said, "Why don't you sing for us tonight, Lucy? So fine, your voice is."
"I will, if you like. Sarah, what should I sing?"
"Sing that song about the pink, the violet and the rose."
"All right," she agreed, but then when Lucy began to sing in the most haunting way, a solemnity drew itself like a pall about the room.
"When I was in my prime
I flourished like a vine.
Along there came a false young man
And stole this heart of mine…
And stole this heart of mine."
As she sang the final 'mine', Dido and Hannah joined in with a soft and wavering 'ah' that sucked the soul from the room with its mournfulness as the note fell.
"The gardener standing by
He made three offers to me:
The pink, the violet, and red rose,
To which I refused all three…
To which I refused all three."
This time, as the women sang out their mourning 'ah', Oliver joined with a graceful draw of the bow upon the strings of his fiddle, reverberating a physical ache through the room.
"The pink's no flower at all;
Its blossom withers too soon.
The violet has too pale a hue.
I think I'll wait till June…
I think I'll wait till June."
Nearly every voice in the room found that falling, hollow 'ah' that rang out in perfect sorrow.
"In June the red rose blooms
But it's not the flower for me.
It's then I'll uproot the red, red rose
And plant a willow tree…
And plant a willow tree.
"And plant a willow tree.
"And plant a willow tree."
After the final 'ah' faded from their ears, a sweet silence filled the hall like the glow of the fire in the grate.
Mrs. Pryer dabbed discreetly at her eyes as Childermass shooed Sarah out to begin her evening chores.
Shortly after this, Lucy, Dido, and Hannah said their good nights and filed upstairs.
Childermass gave Oliver a subtle look and gesture and the cook rose to fetch a bottle from his room.
Lucas and Davey sought their beds as Oliver returned with a bottle of brandy, which was served up to Childermass, Mrs. Pryer, and Oliver himself.
Between sips of the brandy, Oliver would pick up his fiddle and scrape out a song or some melody he half-remembered. Childermass droned a heavily accented version of 'On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at', which made his listeners smile.
"Have you any favorite songs, Mrs. Pryer?" Oliver asked.
"Oh, not as such," she said. "Most houses I've been in don't have such singing as this. Does it not bother the master?" she asked, looking to Childermass, draped all in his shadows at the end of the table.
"If you were to ask him," Childermass said slowly, thoughtful with his words, "Mr. Norrell would have that it gives him the most trying headaches, and he would lay claim to how vexatious it is to have servants always yodeling about below stairs. He might complain that Lucas and Davey ought to drive the carriage and not sing away like fools as they do, or that Lucy could as easily tend to the dusting in silence as in song."
"That's what he would say?" she asked.
"Oh, yes."
"But sir, you smile so knowingly."
"I do."
"And why?"
"Because when he does not think I'm watching, he turns his head to listen. And once, he plain forgot I was in the library with him, and he got up to go to the door, and I felt sure any moment he'd go yelling down to tell them to stop their racket."
"And didn't he?"
"Nay," Childermass said, still smiling. "He stood at the door and listened. That's all."
Mrs. Pryer smiled back at him, but tears glimmered in the corners of her eyes.
Any number of things could have been said about loneliness then, but all was silent until the night was late and the brandy dwindling.
After Mrs. Pryer went to bed, Oliver - with a rather deliberate look at Childermass - pointedly went to bed in a direction that firmly was not his own.
Childermass shrugged and went about securing the house a final time before stopping outside the boys' room downstairs. He had to be content that he could hear only very little before heading to bed himself.
= = = = =
Mrs. Pryer had Sunday mornings for church and Wednesday evenings to herself.
For three weeks, Childermass mostly ignored her, but on the fourth Wednesday, he donned his hat and heavy coat, his shadows and his vigilance, and followed her out the back door.
He trailed her at some distance along Hanover Street, and then a bit closer as she joined the thicker foot traffic on Regent Street. This long path she followed until Regent became Coventry and then she cut across Leicester Square Garden to Irving Street. From there, Charing Cross Road took her to St. Martin's Place and William IV Street and then George Court to the Strand and finally to Fleet Street. At the last, she turned down the narrow Cheshire Court to the public house that was her destination.
It was not the most direct route, but Childermass well understood that a woman alone may not take the same back streets he felt so at home in.
Lingering in an opposing doorway several storefronts down, Childermass waited. Not even an hour had passed since leaving Hanover Square, and all the churches round about rang out the hour of six. St. Bride's, being nearest, was the loudest, but he could hear the nearby St. Paul's ring out down the way.
Childermass eyed the people roundabout going along their various ways on their various businesses and allowed himself to be seen.
It was not long before a young beggar approached him, hoarding his attention while a small hand slipped into his pocket from the other side.
Childermass grabbed the thieving wrist in an unrelenting hold. The little boy who'd had his hands cupped out before him took off like the hounds of hell might be after him and swiftly disappeared into the crowd. Childermass turned to regard the lass who'd tried to pinch the wrong pocket.
She was about sixteen, gaunt with hunger, with lank brown hair and wide brown eyes, glassy with fear. She did not speak.
"Running about Fleet Street with your eager hands… must be one of Pyewacket's gang."
"How-- how did you know, sir?"
He ignored this question to ask one of his own, "Should you like a pound?"
"A… a whole pound, sir?" Her fearful look turned mutinously suspicious. "For what?"
"I may have a job for a cunning young lass who can go about unnoticed. If I release you, and you do not run away, I shall give a shilling, and we'll talk then, yes?"
She stared him in the face for a long moment before agreeing with a single sharp nod.
Childermass released her and she rubbed her wrist and gave him a foul look, but did not run away.
Childermass produced a shilling, though from where she did not see, and handed it to her.
"Do you know the place?" he asked, with a nod down the street.
"Ye Olde Cheshire? O'course. But they don't let such as me in."
"I doubt they'll turn away a paying customer, howsoever… untidy she might be."
She looked across the street at the place and at the customers who came and went, and then at the barrel organ player down the way, and at the folk coming and going all about. She looked back to Childermass.
"A'right, then. What would ye have me do?"
"An acquaintance of mine is inside. I suspect she is meeting someone. Stand here with me awhile and we shall see."
The girl crossed her arms and gave him a sulky look. He did not see what she had done with the shilling.
"What's your name?" he asked, as he looked down the ends of the street at the passing carriages, Cheshire Court being itself too narrow for all but the smallest dogcarts.
She eyed him thoughtfully.
"No need to lie," he told her. "I'll know if you do."
"Edlyn."
"And I'm John."
She blinked at him.
"Ah," he said as a fancy carriage stopped at the Fleet end of the Court. "Stand back and hold still," he instructed, laying a hand over her wrist as though to inform her how to be so.
They watched as a well-dressed man descended, donned his hat, and sauntered down the center of the narrow street, forcing those before him to part to one side or the other. He looked neither left nor right as he made his way and entered the public house they'd been watching.
Childermass released his light hold on the girl and told her, "That is Mr. Lascelles." He held out a pound. "Go in. Order whatever you like to eat. Keep as close to that man as you can without being noticed, and report back to me when all is over. I'll give you whatever I think your information is worth, so long as it be truthful."
Edlyn nodded and pocketed the coin and dashed off across the street without question.
= = = = =