I was angry with her for not coming to the school gates to make a fuss of me like every other mother.
‘Well? Let’s see … ?’
I stuck my arm out for her, just as I’d done for Master Tatlow, and as I’d doubtless have to do for Beth and my father. It was a minor enough wound compared to the things I’d done to my knees and elbows, and ubiquitous amongst us guildspeople, but my mother studied the sore for longer than I’d have expected. Despite all her talk about a lot of fuss over nothing, she really did seem interested. In the light of our dull kitchen, the aether was still glowing. Finally, she straightened up, steadying herself against the cold range as she let out a long and surprising gasp, like a surfacing swimmer.
‘Well, it’s a big step. Now you’re like all the rest of us.’
‘Rest of what?’ I squeaked.
My mother bent down again. She laid her warm blackened hands on my knees until I finally looked up at her and she gave me an unfathomable smile.
‘You should be pleased, Robert. Not disappointed. It proves—’
‘What?’
I was shouting, and close to tears. Normally, I’d have been a candidate for a swift smack and a long hour upstairs while I bucked up my ideas, but this afternoon my mother seemed to understand that my mood was deeper, and—despite all outward appearances—somehow not entirely pointless.
‘Testing is part of what we all are, here in England, in Bracebridge. It shows that you’re fit to be a guildsman like your father, just as it shows that I’m a guildmistress. It shows …’ But my mother’s blue eyes were slowly drawing away from me. The dull glint of the fire at my back pooled two red sparks beneath her irises. ‘It shows …’ She drew herself back a little, and rubbed at the corner of her mouth with her knuckles because her fingers were grubby with tarnish. ‘It shows that you’re growing.’
‘And what about all the stories you’ve told me … ?’
‘Those are for summer nights, Robert. And look outside—can’t you see? Winter’s coming.’
Then there was Noshiftday, and Father Francis stood at the door of St Wilfred’s church nodding to his congregation as he passed out white sashes for us spit-dabbed children to wear. Jammed together into the front pews, we elbowed each other and examined our raw wounds. Ahead of us, clumsily executed in marble by a local craftsman, a robed and bearded statue of God the Elder, the greatest guildsman of them all, gazed down at us. And then the singing began, and I gazed up at the gilt ceiling and the dull scenes in stained glass along the walls. George endlessly slaughtered his dragon with a look of bored disdain. Saints suffered terrible tortures in the name of their guilds.
Father Francis’s sermon must have been the one he gave at every Day of Testing, and his sing-song voice was familiar as a lullaby as it wafted over the pews. Then, one by one, we children were summoned to the altar. I squeezed along the bench when my time came, and managed not to catch my sash on the altar rail, but my thoughts were remote as I grasped the beaker of hymnal wine for the first time and Father Francis recited the promises of heaven. I could feel the eyes of the congregation around me, and the pounding of the earth beneath. I could see the smears that the other children’s lips had left on the beaker’s silver rim. I wondered what would happen if I spat it out. But I shuddered as I swallowed the tart red fluid. It was just as everyone always said: I saw a vision of heaven, where there is but one great guild and no work to perform, and where pure silver trains run through endless fields of corn whilst winged ships sail the clouds. I could easily see how regular church-attending could become addictive, but I knew even as I witnessed these scenes that they had been stirred into the alcohol of an aethered vat.
II
I WAS BORN ROBERT BORROWS in Bracebridge, Brownheath, West Yorkshire, late one August Sixshiftday afternoon in