Chapter 57

The first thing to come back was the counting.

In Ashgrove I had counted everything—stairs, strokes, the turns of Petra’s key in the smokehouse lock—because a thing you have counted is a thing you have some hold on. On the third morning after the Ball I woke at five, the hour the Ashgrove bread had to be set, and found that my hands had picked the counting up again without consulting me.

Two rooms. A bedroom over the rose walk, with a window that did not open. A sitting room with a desk, a chair, and the only door, oak, locked from the outside, with a brass plate round the keyhole polished so often the edges had gone soft. One tall window facing the gate, which opened the width of a hand and no further, because on the second day a carpenter had screwed a block of wood into the frame. Thirty-one boards from the door to the window. I counted them twice, because I did not like the number. It did not change.

***

By the end of the first week I had a ledger.