Sir Oswald's Peculiar Letter

Chapter 6: In Which Burslem Attends a Perfectly Ordinary Ball

Burslem was unsure how long he had been at the ball. To own the truth, he could not clearly recall how he had come to be there.

Thankfully there was little time to dwell on defects in his memory; his surroundings were far too diverting.

There was a strong smell of overripe diamonds. Where one might expect to see walls was a constant ripple of movement. Here a monstrous creature, some bird of sticks and leather, flapped up from beneath the floorboards, then dissolved into upwards-rolling tar and flowed into a great inferno and burned. There, a green shoot sprouted, grew into a mighty oak, pulped itself into a book which flapped its pages then cast itself into the flames. Above the crowd, great roiling brown clouds of smoke took the place of a ceiling.

"What a place for a ball!" Burslem thought to himself. "A dining-party, yes, but a ball!" The thought struck him as odd in some way, but it did not concern him overmuch.

He was dressed in unfamiliar livery, of colours he was quite sure he had never seen before, the silk embroidered with patterns of turning wheels and screaming wraiths; he carried a tray of delicacies, metallic globules with limbs and tails. Braised salamanders in copperplate sauce, he remembered.

A succession of fine ladies and gentlemen passed by, smiling graciously and plucking salamanders from the tray; though he found he had no need to replenish his supply from the kitchens. Two gentlemen in wigs of twigs and cogs stood by for some time, chattering in some foreign language that sounded like ticking clocks, and eating rapaciously. A young lady in a fine gown of coal dust embellished with miners' bones collected great handfuls of salamanders and carried them back to her friends. Still, the tray remained full.

A sallow, pale girl passed through the crowd with a similar tray of crude oil champagne, averting her eyes. Burslem guessed that she had once been a great beauty, and her grey silk gown was sumptuous indeed, but she moved with the crawling fear of a long-overworked servant.

None of this discomfitted Burslem; it seemed the natural order of things. What fascinated him so was his master's behaviour.

Had he not waited on Sir Oswald at any number of balls? His master was ever predictable. He would seclude himself in a corner until he spied an opportunity to insinuate himself into the company of some important personage. He danced reluctantly and stiltedly, and retired early.

Was this truly the same man? Sir Oswald whirled through the thick of the dance, beaming like a young bride.

The music of thudding machinery and twanging harps wound him up and up and set him spinning ever faster, with energetic grace and, impossibly, with true abandon. Somehow he contrived to switch partners again and again in the course of a single dance. One moment he twirled with a delicate lady whose turban terminated in a puffing chimney; the next he was cantering up the hall with a stout dowager bedecked in cannonballs and gunpowder pops; then a young lad made all of flapping linen would shoulder her aside and snatch up his hand.

Still Burslem noted that Sir Oswald returned always to one particular partner: a laughing young man in exquisitely embroidered silk and brass. The boy's face was of a metallic cast, and rust shifted across his face to best compliment his expression. Strands of moss drifted in his loose russet hair. He gazed at Sir Oswald with great admiration; on Sir Oswald's face, the admiration was redoubled as rapture.

Burslem was rather relieved that he himself was not expected to dance. His sense of rhythm was best described as monstrous. What was more, the threads in the Persian carpet transformed periodically back into silkworms, and the pop of worms crushed under boots must have been terribly distracting for the dancers.

From the vaulted windows there was a fine view of the manufactory. Burslem found himself unaccountably disturbed by how each window showed it in a different state of repair; from one window he observed a trail of sullen workers trudging in; in another, ivy crawled over the rubble.

"Quite charming, is it not?" exclaimed a musical voice from his shoulder. "Such a lovely place for a ball. The moment when the artistry of man defiles nature is so easily accessible, really, one can reach it from almost any place or time, and the ambience is simply delightful! Don't you agree?"

Burslem had started in surprise when the woman – for woman she was – appeared. She seemed unmoved by the fact that the man she spoke to with such exhuberance was a mere servant. And what was more, like most of the guests, she possessed that special quality of beauty that tends to cause men to start in surprise.

Her gown was woven of words, letters intertwined tightly as threads but occasionally slipping free and drifting away. He spotted the words "pulchritudinous" and "monoxide" rising like smoke from the hem of her sleeve, and dissipating. Her hair was all scraps and narrow strips of newsprint, and below it was a face of perfect harmony and amusement.

"Of course there are other marvellous places," she continued, with utter assurance that Burslem was as delighted with her words as she was. "The instant that infatuation is punctured by despair is very popular, though I prefer the moment when you escape one danger only to fall prey to another – why, it is quite a thrilling location. But of course the defilment of nature will remain my firm favourite and I insist on holding as many parties here as I possibly can." She broke off here with another tinkling laugh. "But you will of course be able to make your own mind up on the matter! You shall be seeing them all in time!"

Burslem blushed deeply and begged the lady's pardon; perhaps she had mistaken him for someone else; he and his master were here only for a handful of days, to conduct business with the mistress of the factory on Cokehouse Lane.

The young lady threw her head back and laughed with great pleasure, this time so hard that a variety of technical terms for metalworking tools fell loose from her dress and scattered on the floor. "Oh, but I am most certainly not mistaken, for I am that very mistress myself!"

A lock of hair dangled over her face, and on it Burslem observed the phrase "the bombardment of Canton", which as far as he could tell was utterly meaningless. The teeth were white in the lady's face, the whites of her eyes wide, and everything about her was lovely. "So it is you who wrote to Sir Oswald, madam! I do hope you and he manage to reach some amicable agreement about the debt; he seemed quite disconcerted when he received your letter."

This was impertinent; Sir Oswald would have scowled; the lady invited impertinence and smiled broadly.

"Oh, but the debt is already paid!" she cried, clapping her hands. "It was quite simple, really. Many years ago my cousin and I paid a visit to Sir William and agreed to guarantee his lifelong wealth and prosperity in exchange for a youth or maiden to serve us and attend our revels for a few centuries. One would have been quite enough; two is a most handsome payment! And see how your friend has so pleased my cousin already."

"A few... centuries..." Burslem was overcome with a certain light-headedness, yet he was certain that what the lady had described was a quite normal business practise. Why then the panic tweaking at his soul? The smoke billowed and shifted above; golden faces flashed in and out of view; laughter and music grew louder, and boomed in his ears. His free hand, in an automatic movement, reached for the sprig of St John's wort, tied with rough string to his wrist –