What was all this? Michael had the sensation he’d been cut adrift somewhere between this homely kitchen and the fine engraved world of the tiles, a gleaming china landscape rendered in the hues of billiard chalk with all of time reduced to thin blue strokes on white enamel. Though he knew that he was being helplessly pulled into each new image that he gazed upon, he found he couldn’t stop himself from looking. The euphoria that had accompanied the tea and cake surrounded Michael like a deep and fluffy blanket, dulling the anxiety that he would end up trapped amongst the painted curlicues. He let his scrutiny slide upwards to the next representation in the sequence. It looked …
It looked eerie, the diffusing morning mist, white on the sapphire brambles of the country lane; the travelling minister who’d paused to talk with a young woman clad in cross-hatched tatters, her eyes wide and bright against an almost imperceptible slate wash in the bucolic byway. Reverend Doddridge, passing through the villages about Northamptonshire and speaking to those congregations where he was invited, sat astride his patient mare and marvelled at the sallow and unearthly-looking girl who blocked his path. Her name was Mary Wills, and she was a respected prophetess from nearby Pitsford, a hedge-seer and a mystic who had called out to the pale, much-in-demand young preacher as he went upon his way. She seemed a thing assembled from the fog that trickled in the ditches, built with weeds or sodden deadfall, and she claimed that in her sight the future was a book already writ, a sculpted form encased within the iron mould of time. “ ‘And when he would not be persuaded, they ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done.’ Those are the words of the first sermon you shall preach in the poor boroughs of Northampton, where it is that you shall be a pastor.” He would meet the ragged oracle again across the years and would come not to doubt her visions, yet upon this first occasion he was twenty-six years old and thought her prophecies a sham, though he was not unkindly or offhand to her in his behaviour. It was the business of a ministry here in Northampton, Doddridge thought, that gave the lie to her predictions. He had only just agreed to the entreaties of his colleagues within the Dissenting congregation, Dr. Watts and David Some and all the rest, who’d begged him to take up the running of the Dissenting academy at Market Harborough, a post made vacant by the passing of its former minister, the much-missed Reverend John Jennings. Wagons had already taken Doddridge’s belongings to the Harborough residence where Mrs. Jennings would continue managing household affairs, and Doddridge further entertained the hope of an affectionate relationship with Jennings’s delightful daughter, Jenny. The idea that he might be prevailed upon to sacrifice such an illustrious position for some draughty shack in the benighted districts of Northampton was therefore a senseless fancy that, he was assured, should never come to be. He thanked the weird child for her warnings and continued with his journey. There was …
There was no escaping the implacable progression of the tiles once Michael had surrendered to the tale’s compelling undertow. Drowning amongst the glassy blue-white breakers he gave up his feeble thrashing and went under, tumbling in the current of the narrative from one scene to the next. He didn’t really know …
He didn’t really know why he was doing this, leading his horse through delicate lace curtains of descending snow on Christmas Eve, towards the warm lights of the meeting-house on Castle Hill. He crunched through the crisp drifts over the burial ground, a stew of paupers’ ribs and plague-skulls somewhere underneath the ice crust and the frigid, powdery depths that it concealed. He had been settled into his academy at Market Harborough but a month or two when he’d received the earnest imprecations offered by the people of Northampton, that he should take up instead the ministry at Castle Hill here in the lowliest, western quarter of the town. The district was a crumbling eyesore that had been denied the pretty renovations undergone by the remainder of the township after the great fire, and he was anyway committed to his work at Harborough. He’d gracefully declined the offer, but the humble congregation were persistent. Finally the popular young reverend had chosen to deliver his refusal personally, gently conveying to his would-be flock that they should cease from their entreaties, by means of a sermon. This began “And when he would not be persuaded, they ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done”, and yet he had not thought of Mary Wills or her prediction until halfway through his sermon, where he found himself fulfilling it. The folk of Castle Hill, moreover, had seemed filled with such good will towards him that his thoughts were all in turmoil as he’d walked back to his lodgings at the foot of nearby Gold Street. Passing by an open door he’d heard a boy reading aloud from scripture to his mother, as the troubled reverend himself had done so many times, declaring, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be”, in a clear, true voice. The sentiment had been impressed upon him in that instant with great force, so that it seemed a revelation: all his days were part of Doddridge, part of his eternal substance, and he was comprised of nothing save those days, their thoughts and words and deeds. They were his strength. They were his all. He had decided there and then to give up his academy in Harborough and to accept instead the less promising post here in Northampton. His fellows, Mr. Some and Samuel Clark, had been outraged at first and begged that he should reconsider but had both reluctantly decided that, so strange were the events, a higher cause than theirs may have decreed the outcome in accordance with its own inscrutable agendas. And so here he was on Christmas Eve, trudging towards his destiny through blue-black shadows flecked with falling white. Only with difficulty could …
Only with difficulty could Michael remember anything about the kitchen or the cake. The blue-etched episodes were coming thick and fast now. He knew he was …