The driver climbed down and pulled my trunk from the cart, leaving me to get out in darkness as he walked to the door. He did not pull a bell but just walked in, and as soon as the door opened I could see a faint light—enough to follow him by. He preceded me into a room with a fireplace burning low and a lump of something seen dimly in the glow of a single candle.
As we came closer, the lump stirred and I could make out that it must be a man sitting in a chair, and I stopped. The cart driver dropped my trunk unceremoniously and left. “Come closer,” said the man in the chair. “Let me see you in the light.”
I stepped as close as I dared, shivering from the cold or from anxiety, or both.
“Closer,” he said, and I took another step. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
“Mr. Hiram Lincoln?” I responded.
“You are young Edward Rochester,” he said. It was not a question, so I did not reply.
“Are you not?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir, I am,” I said.
“You are very late.”
“I had to wait for the cart. I did not know how to come otherwise.”
“Hmm,” he said. I had gotten a better look at him by then—he seemed a huge man, both tall and heavy, and his voice was unusually high. “We go to bed with the sun here at Black Hill,” he said.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” I said.
“And we rise with the sun.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gazed at me for a time without saying anything. There was something about him that I sensed, a kind of latent power, and I realized that not only was I powerless—a feeling I was used to anyway—but I had little idea of where I was, or for how long, or what was to become of me afterwards. “There are three of you boys now,” he said. “The other two share the big bed. You will sleep on the cot. Did you bring your own bedding?”
“No, sir, I did not know—”
“You should have known. Your people should have told you.”
I said nothing, dismay rising in my throat.
He sighed heavily. “It’s up the steps,” he said. “Just the one room. You will have to sleep in your clothes tonight, then.”
Standing, he proved to be the biggest man I had ever seen, even in the semidarkness. “Are you waiting for a candle?” he asked. “You won’t need one; the cot is just at the top of the steps, next to the wall on your left.” He turned away, taking the one candle with him, and I scurried to the steps before the candle glow fully disappeared, leaving my trunk where the driver had dropped it.
Chapter 3
A thumb and forefinger lifted my eyelid. “He’s dark,” said a voice.
I shook my head away from the fingers, opening my eyes on my own and raising myself on my elbows. There were two boys. One appeared to be three or four years older than I, with flaming ginger hair; the other was small, with a freckled oval face and light brown hair.
“What’s your name?” asked the ginger-haired one.
“Edward Fairfax Rochester,” I said. “What’s yours?”
“Edward Fairfax Rochester? That’s far too much of a name for a boy your size.”
I blinked at him. I had little experience with boys my age—only Rowland, who was not my age, and the two stableboys, with whom I had sometimes played horseshoes when their duties allowed.
“How old?” he demanded.
“Eight.”
“Eight,” he repeated, in a tone that implied I had affirmed his suspicions.
“And how—”
But he was interrupted by a woman’s voice from below: “Boys!”
The two immediately began throwing on their clothes. I rose from my cot—despite the cold and my fears of this place, I had slept like the dead—and I set myself to straightening my rumpled clothes and running a hand through my hair and putting on my shoes, and I hurried downstairs after the others.
Mr. Lincoln was already seated at the table, drinking the first of, as I was later to learn, many cups of coffee, a huge globe on a stand beside him. He glanced up as we tumbled down the steps. “You have met Rochester, I presume,” he said, as if new boys appeared all the time.
“We have,” the ginger-haired boy said. The smaller one nodded silently.
“And,” Mr. Lincoln continued, “has he met you?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, and Mr. Lincoln spoke into it. “I thought not. That one is Thomas Fitzcharles,” he said to me, “but for obvious reasons he’s called ‘Carrot’ in this place. And the other one is William Gholson; we call him ‘Touch.’ As for you”—he leveled his eyes at me—“I shall have to see. In the meantime, sit down, the three of you, and put something in your stomachs.”