As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)
Alan Bradley
PROLOGUE
IF YOU’RE ANYTHING LIKE me, you adore rot. It is pleasant to reflect upon the fact that decay and decomposition are what make the world go round.
For instance, when an ancient oak falls somewhere in the forest, it begins almost at once to be consumed by invisible predators. These highly specialized hordes of bacteria lay siege to their target as methodically as an army of barbarians attacking an enemy fortress. The mission of the first wave is to break down the protein forms of the stricken timber into ammonia, which can then be easily handled by the second team, which converts the smelly ammonia to nitrites. These last and final invaders, by oxidation, convert the nitrites into the nitrates that are required to fertilize the soil, and thus to grow new seedling oaks.
Through the miracle of chemistry, a colossus has been reduced to its essentials by microscopic life forms. Forests are born and die, come and go, like a spinning penny flipped into the air: heads … tails … life … death … life … death … and so on from Creation to the farthest ends of time.
It’s bloody marvelous, if you ask me.
Left to the mercies of the soil, dead human bodies undergo the same basic 1—2—3 process: meat—ammonia—nitrates.
But when a corpse is swaddled tightly in a soiled flag, stuffed up a brick chimney, and left there for a donkey’s age to char and mummify in the heat and the smoke—well, that’s an entirely different story.
? ONE ?
“BANISHED!” THE WILD WIND shrieked as it tore at my face.
“Banished!” the savage waves roared as they drenched me with freezing water.
“Banished!” they howled. “Banished!”
There is no sadder word in the English language. The very sound of it—like echoing iron gates crashing closed behind you; like steel bolts being shot shut—makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it?
“Banished!”
I shouted the word into the tearing wind, and the wind spat it back into my face.
“Banished!”
I was standing at the heaving prow of the R.M.S. Scythia, my jaws wide open to the gale, hoping that the salt spray would wash the bad taste out of my mouth: the taste that was my life so far.
Somewhere, a thousand miles behind us over the eastern horizon, lay the village of Bishop’s Lacey and Buckshaw, my former home, where my father, Colonel Haviland de Luce, and my sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, were most likely, at this very moment, getting on nicely with their lives as if I had never existed.
They had already forgotten me. I was sure of it.
Only the faithful family retainers, Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, would have shed a furtive tear at my departure, but even so, they, too, in time, would have only foggy memories of Flavia.
Out here on the wild Atlantic, the Scythia’s bow was hauling itself up … and up … and up out of the sea, climbing sickeningly toward the sky, then crashing down with a horrendous hollow booming, throwing out great white wings of water to port and starboard. It was like riding bareback on an enormous steel angel doing the breaststroke.
Although it was still early September, the sea was madness. We had encountered the remnants of a tropical hurricane, and now, for more than two days, had been tossed about like a cast-off cork.
Everyone except the captain and I—or so it seemed—had dragged themselves off to their bunks, so that the only sounds to be heard as one reeled along the pitching, rolling corridors to dinner were the groan of stressed steel and, behind closed doors on either side, the evacuation of scores of stomachs. With nearly nine hundred passengers on board, it was a sobering sound.
As for me, I seem to be blessed with a natural immunity to the tossing seas: the result, I supposed, of seafaring ancestors such as Thaddeus de Luce, who, although only a lad at the Battle of Trafalgar, was said to have brought lemonade to the dying Admiral Nelson, and to have held his cold and clammy hand.
Nelson’s last words, actually, were not the widely reported “Kiss me, Hardy,” addressed to Captain Thomas Hardy of the Victory, but rather, “Drink, drink … fan, fan … rub, rub,” whispered feverishly to the wide-eyed young Thaddeus, who, although reduced to tears at the sight of his mortally wounded hero, was doing his best to keep the great man’s circulation from crystallizing.
The wind ripped at my hair and tore at my thin autumn coat. I inhaled the salt air as deeply as I dared, the sea spray running in torrents down my face.
A hand seized my arm roughly.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?”
I spun round, startled, trying to wriggle free.
It was, of course, Ryerson Rainsmith.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he repeated. He was one of those people who thought that the secret of gaining the upper hand was to ask every question twice.
The best way of dealing with them is not to answer.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Dorsey is beside herself with worry.”
“Does that mean there are now two of her to put up with?” I wanted to ask, but I didn’t.
With a name like Dorsey it was no wonder he called her “Dodo”—or at least he did whenever he thought they were alone.
“We were afraid you’d fallen overboard. Now come below at once. Go to your cabin and put on some dry clothing. You look like a drowned rat.”