The Telling

you have learned.’
    He said this as if it were a simple instruction such as any employer might give, such as clean the stair carpet, or straighten your cap.
    ‘Is it right, sir? To do such a thing? I shall have to go into his room.’
    ‘It is not only right, it is essential.’
    ‘What if he is there?’
    ‘Then I must speak to Mr Oversby about keeping him more fully occupied. If you are not fortunate today, you may leave early again tomorrow. If he is there tomorrow, then you may leave early the day after; you may go every day until you get the opportunity to make a close examination of that box.’
    I nodded. He still looked at me, expecting something more.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, but I did not feel at all thankful. Mr Moore, when he arrived, he’d talked of weapons, of people arming themselves, of cities on the verge of conflagration. That was Lent, and now it was just past Whitsun, and Sunday just gone was Trinity Sunday, and he was holding meetings in our house, and had had a box delivered to our front door, and the Reverend had demanded to know what was in the box. I recalled the dark flowers of Mr Moore’s eyes, his words, the press of his fingertips into my hand. The first warning of tears stung my eyes.
    ‘Can I ask, sir, what has he done?’
    ‘It is not so much what he has done,’ the Reverend said, ‘but what he intends to do.’
    This seemed all the answer I would get. I thought myself dismissed; I curtseyed and turned to go. I heard the Reverend draw breath to speak again; I turned back. He stared at me so determinedly that I knew he must have found it hard to look at me at all.
    ‘I can trust you, can I not, to keep this between ourselves?’
    ‘You can sir.’
    ‘I have your word on that?’
    ‘You do.’
    I turned away, and left the library. My slippers trod soft on the wooden floor of the hall. It seemed to me as though I walked a narrow path indeed; a moment’s loss of balance, a single misstep, would send me reeling into the abyss. This was more grave, more strange a circumstance than I had imagined. The Reverend should not have asked me for my word, a servant’s word; he should not have needed to.
    To be out in the open light and fresh air and without anything to carry, going to fetch nothing, expecting to carry nothing back, was stranger still. It was as if a gust of wind might lift me and carry me away, like a dandelion seed or the fluff of old-man’s-beard. Circumstances had changed so profoundly, so swiftly, that I could no longer be sure of the earth beneath my feet.
    I shut the door carelessly behind me, pulled off my clogs and dropped them on the stone flags, trying to make as much warning noise as possible. The house gave no sound back: it seemed empty. Upstairs, I stood and listened, breath held, at his door. Nothing. I knocked, hopelessly. Be there, I was thinking. No matter that you would think me a fool, be there and save me from doing this. Save me from knowing.
    There was no answer. I knocked again, louder. Still nothing. I lifted the latch, my hand trembling. I slipped into the room.
    My room. The patchwork curtains hanging from the windows, just as ever. The same china-blue and white rug on the floor beside the bed; sun streaming in through the windows as it always had, the boards that warm rich honey-colour beneath my feet. But a bag lay on the floor, slumped, dark, unfamiliar, with the smell of worn leather and smoke about it. There was a man’s jacket slung over the back of my old chair. And on the far side of the room, sitting just where its shadow had been last night, was the box.
    The straps hung loose like dogs’ tongues, the lid was flung back, and the contents were spilled out onto the floor. Books. My heart softened with relief, and then with pleasure. I had crossed the room, knelt down, and picked up the first volume that came to hand before I could even think about it. The book was a creamy block of sewn pages, unbound. I leafed through it and weighed it in my hand. It was not a rifle, or a pistol, or gunpowder , or a sword. It was a book, unbound, innocent and naked as a newborn baby.
    It was as though all the treasures of Spain had been flung up from the seas to land on my old bedroom floor. I lifted book after book from the box. There were works by men called Thomas Paine, Homer, William Shakespeare, Charles Lyell; some were familiar to me from the vicarage library, some I did not recognize at all; but I could tell the Reverend about