The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Read Free Page B

appearance of any given object. My childish eye viewed every lock plate, drawer front, or clockface as a question. How did it turn? What made it operate? Why did it appear thus? I was full of queries, restless for answers, which I believed I’d secure only by inspecting the guts behind each exterior.
    I was thirteen when my parents conceded defeat. My hunger for undoing had continued for years, despite reddened ears, bowls of water gruel, and hours of practice in mortise and tenons, the simplest method of joining two pieces of wood. Thus was I dispatched to London to be an apprentice to Thomas Chippendale, master in the craft of cabinetmaking. This was, I well knew, no punishment—an honor rather. Thomas Chippendale was lately settled in St. Paul’s Yard, in the heart of London’s furniture trade, and ranked high among his fellow cabinetmakers.
    Chippendale was a canny Yorkshireman whose reputation permitted him to pick and choose his apprentices as the rest of us select apples at market. He viewed his apprentices as inexpensive labor and a means to profit handsomely. Most masters required £35 for their apprentices’ indentures. Chippendale demanded my poor parents pay him £42, a high sum which he claimed was entirely justified by his elevated position. They should understand, he said, that when the time came for me to set up in business, my links with Chippendale’s august establishment would enhance my prestige and add to my earnings. Was it not just that this advantage should be reflected in his price? My parents could find no argument. Thus, in the belief they were doing their best for me, they scraped together the exorbitant sum and I embarked upon my new life.
    I settled quickly to the city. Within a year or two I left off sweeping floors and carting wood and began to experiment with all manner of construction. I learned to fret and plane fragments of timber no larger than a butterfly’s wing. As well as these skills I encountered the distractions of the back stairs and bedchamber. Thus challenged in both quarters, I learned to relish fabricating rather than destruction, to enjoy making caddies and dovetails and amour. Within seven years I had much to crow about. I was journeyman to a master by then the most esteemed in the city, whose newly opened premises in St. Martin’s Lane drew gasps of amazement for their grandeur. In my professional capacity I called at the grandest mansions, which frequently led me to the company of the most alluring chambermaids, cooks, and lady’s maids imaginable. In short, I enjoyed an existence as busy and lusty as any man.
    As a journeyman I am accustomed to visiting fine saloons to hobnob with gentlemen of Lord Foley’s caliber, though only on such subjects as the advantages of mahogany over oak, the appropriateness of a cabriole leg over a straight or a carved chair splat over a plain. Yet when it came to general conversation with the upper gentry, I was green as a toad. Herein lay my dilemma. How should I explain my involvement to Lord Foley? How much detail did he require? Should I be frank and open, or distant and brief? How in my present muddleheaded state was I to decide what was relevant and what unnecessary? Even while I wrestled with this concern, I knew I had little time to waste. Lord Foley had demonstrated he was a man of unpredictable temper. Thus, with little confidence in where my tongue would lead me, I hastened to begin.
    The events that brought me to Horseheath Hall had started innocently enough, on Christmas Eve, in London.
    I’d been out on important workshop business, returning in time to pass some moments in the arms of a fair, high-spirited upholsteress of my acquaintance, Molly Bullock. She was in the feather room filling mattresses in a blizzard of goosedown when I found her. No sooner had I kissed her lips and burrowed my hand in her petticoats than she giggled and spread her dimpled thighs to let me between them. A while later, Molly’s mushroom