Bred to Be His

The entry I finished the morning of the sale was Sive’s. She had gone north in the spring to a house past the moor, and she had written to me twice. The first letter was in the drawer under the book, where I kept the things that were mine, and the second I had folded into the back of the book the week it came and had not taken it out since. I wrote the date beside her name. Then I closed the ledger and tied the cord and put it under my arm, where it lived.

Downstairs they were polishing the good chairs. That meant money was coming, and money expected to be served.

I knew the shape of a sale. Three days of scrubbing, the cook making the sweet bread she made only for buyers, Mr Orrell changing his coat twice before noon. Then a girl came down the stairs, and a man looked at her, and coin crossed the table, and she went out of the door with him, and the door shut behind them, and nobody in the house said a word.

I was the last one. Six of us had come through the winter and five had gone out of that door, and I had written all five of them down, with the men who took them and the sums they paid. There was a column in the book for where they went. There was a column for whether they wrote.

Sive had written twice.

They came for me at the second bell and took me to the blue room, which was the one they used for men who paid. I had been in it twice in my life, both times at eleven. A man from the coast had wanted a wife who could read. He looked at my hands, then at my teeth, then put a shipping record in front of me and asked me to read it aloud. I read it. He told Mr Orrell he wanted a girl who could read and also keep her mouth shut, and Mr Orrell laughed and said I was only one of those, and they sent me back upstairs.

He bought someone else. I have her name.

The man they brought to the blue room that day came in with the sea on him. Salt in the coat, salt in the hair, the grey of a man who has slept on a boat. He was younger than the men who usually came. He looked at the chairs, the window, the two Orrell men against the wall, and he did all of that before he looked at me.

Most of them started with me.

“Mr Orrell,” he said. “You keep a ledger.”

Mr Orrell has a smile that begins at the mouth and stops there. “Every house keeps accounts.”

“You keep a particular kind.” The man took his hat off and held it and stayed on his feet, though a chair had been set for him. “How many girls have gone out of this house since you took it over?”

“That is a strange question from a man who came to be married.”

“It is the question I asked.”

Mr Orrell looked at me the way he looks at a thing he is about to put a number on. Then he said my name, and my age, and the two families I was bred from, and the word he always used, which was sound.

“Sound,” the man said.

“Sound in the blood. Sound in the body. Twenty years old. Reads and writes. A clean hand.” Mr Orrell spread his own hands. “There is not a girl in the north to match her, and you will not find one south of the sea either.”

“I will see the ledger.”

“You will see the girl,” said Mr Orrell.

“I have seen the girl.” He said it without turning his head. “I will see the ledger.”

“Then you have seen what you came for,” Mr Orrell said, “and we can talk about a price.”

“I came for the book.”

The room changed. One of the Orrell men came off the wall and stood in the middle of the floor with his hands folded.

“You keep it,” the man said.

It took me a moment to understand he was speaking to me. In that room, questions went to the men.

“Yes,” I said.

“How long.”

“Since I could read.”

“And before that.”

“Before that I carried it.” The words came out before I had decided to spend them. “When I was small they put it in my arms, because I was the only one who would not drop it.”

He was quiet. Then he said, “How many names.”

“Two hundred and eleven.”

Mr Orrell said, “The girl is tired. We will discuss the terms.”

“Two hundred and eleven,” the man said, to me. “Where did they go.”

“I wrote the men who took them. Most of the men said where.”

“And afterward.”

I said nothing. There was no column in the book for afterward.

Mr Orrell said, “We will talk terms.”

“There are no terms.” The man put his hat on. “I am not buying.”

He went to the door. The Orrell man on the wall shifted to let him pass. I stood where I had been put and thought about what this house does with a girl who has been shown to a buyer and turned down, which I had watched once before, and which is not a thing I want written down.

At the door the man stopped.

“Mr Orrell.”

“Sir.”

“If you sell her to anyone else, I will hear of it.” He had his hand on the frame. “And when I hear of it I will come back, and I will not come back to the blue room.”

The door shut. The house breathed out.

They took me back upstairs and locked me in, which was usual. I sat on the bed with the ledger across my knees. He had asked how many names, and where they went. He had asked nothing about the sums, or the families, or the health of the stock, and every man who came to this house for a wife asked about the sums before he asked about the girl.

I opened the book to the last page I had written. Sive, and the date beside her. Above it, in my own hand from the spring: the name of the house past the moor, and the name of the man who had paid.

I wrote that page myself. I knew it better than any page in the book.

The key turned in the lock at the eleventh bell.

Mr Orrell came in with a lamp and stood in the doorway and looked at me for a while before he said anything.

“The man from the coast,” he said. “He paid.”

I had heard him say he was not buying. I had heard it in the blue room with his hat in his hand.

“He paid for the book,” I said.

“No,” said Mr Orrell. He set the lamp on the chest. “He paid for you.”

He went out and locked the door again.

“He is sending for you at the tide.”