The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

apprentice, returning to his home village of Waterbeach for the funeral of his mother. Below, cocooned in the luxury of windows, side panels, and a roof, sat six further passengers, none of whom deigned to speak to the three seated, so to speak, on their heads.
    My family lived some distance from London, in the village of Cottenham, some ten miles from Chelmsford in the county of Essex. Consequently since settling in London I had made coach journeys on numerous occasions, though never before had I ridden on top in the depths of winter. My dear mother had expressly forbidden me to travel thus between the months of November and March, and I, in my fondness for her, had always observed the prohibition. Nonetheless, for a man such as I, whose achievements were measured by the fineness of a dovetail or the delicacy of a crossbanding, the position held rare delights. Whenever I sat astride the coach, I become oblivious to mere discomfort. The racing clouds and changing landscape, the sensation of my teeth shaking in my skull as the vehicle lurched over hills and ditches and rumbled through ramshackle settlements, and the impression of prodigious speed far removed from the snail’s pace of my daily life never failed to revitalize me.
    For my second fellow passenger, the young knife grinder, who had never adopted this mode of transport before, the journey proved a fearful ordeal. The carriage was still stationary, and he had scarcely clambered up to the platform when he developed vertigo and the unwavering conviction that to release his grip on the side rail would doom him to certain death. The vehicle pulled out of the coach yard and began to gather speed past the Shoreditch Turnpike, jolting over potholes, ruts, and boulders. With each toss and sway of the chassis, the boy’s face turned more alarmingly pale, and before long, to the chagrin of those below, he was retching profusely over the side. When at length we stopped in Bishop’s Stortford, I was struck by the indifference of our fellow passengers. At the first sign of the boy’s distress they drew the leather curtains of their compartment, and not one of them expressed any concern for him.
    I suppose it was because I am an only child and often longed for the company of a younger brother that I did what I could to assist him. There was no room within the coach—by this stage his misery was such that I would happily have paid the extra shilling to ease it—but I suggested that he might feel more secure riding in the luggage basket. He gratefully agreed, although even there his terrors continued. I had not considered the movement of the poorly secured crates and boxes stowed there, and after half an hour he was half buffeted to death. Hearing his whimpers and mounting distress, I whistled to the driver and postilion to slow down, then lowered an arm to retrieve him from the basket and haul him back on top. For some time afterwards I continued to hold his arm, as much to calm him as to prevent him from falling. He now regarded me as his savior and settled himself close beside me, trembling violently from the dual terrors of death by squashing or falling from which he had so narrowly escaped.
    It began to snow at three in the afternoon, around the same time we drew into the town of Royston to change the horses. There the knife grinder’s apprentice quit the coach, swearing as he did so that he would never forget my kindness. I ruffled his hair, told him it was nothing more than anyone should have done, and gave him a shilling from the traveling purse Mr. Chippendale had supplied. The snowfall was light, but the driver, anxious to reach Cambridge before the road became impassable, would allow us no more than ten minutes to drink a glass of sack in the warmth.
    The bonesetter and I returned to our position while the remaining passengers settled themselves back inside the carriage, burying their feet in straw and covering their knees in blankets the driver provided. We had