Читать книгу How to Stop Time - Matt Haig - Страница 26

Jeremiah Cartwright had read the sky and declared, with a dark seriousness, that it was going to rain later and that he must go for iron while it was still dry. He wouldn’t be back for another hour. I was alone, by the forge, watching the metal as it glowed red, then orange. Yes, as in life, strike while the iron is hot, but not just any heat. You had to wait until the orange was starting to brighten, become that raw bright pink-yellow-orange. This was forging heat. The heat of change. The yellow quickly became white and as soon as it was white hot it was all over, so you had to watch and grab the moment before it was too late.

It was only when I took the metal and placed it over the anvil to begin to strike it that I realised someone was standing there.

A woman. A peculiar-looking woman.

I can still picture her, vividly, the way I first saw her. She looked about forty years old.

She was dressed in a long skirt and blouse, both black, and her face was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. An outfit far too hot for the late June day, let alone for the hellish temperature of the forge. It took me a second, because of the shading over her face, to realise that she was wearing a jet-black silk eye patch over her left eye.

‘Hello there. How can I help you?’

‘You will find it is the other way around.’

‘What do you mean?’

She shook her head. She was wincing a little from the heat of the place. ‘No questions. Not just yet. Your curiosity shall be satisfied, I assure you. You must come with me.’

‘What?’

‘You can’t stay here.’

‘What?’

‘I said: no questions.’

The next thing I knew she was pointing a small wooden pistol straight at my chest.

‘Blazing fuck. What are you doing?’

‘You have outed yourself to the scientific community. There is an institute . . . I haven’t got time to explain this. But, if you stay here, you will be killed.’

The heat of the forge often made being in there a kind of delirium, a fever dream. For a moment, I thought this was a waking dream.

‘Dr Hutchinson is dead,’ she said. Her voice was composed, but there was a quiet force to it, as if not just stating a fact but an inevitable one.

‘Dr Hutchinson?’

‘Murdered.’

She let the word stay in the air, with nothing but the sound of the roaring fire for company.

‘Murdered? Who by?’

She handed me a news item that had been cut out of The Times.

Doctor’s Body Found in Thames.

I skimmed the piece.