Alistair Quill

Alistair Quill

Half past one in the morning, and the library fire has gone down to a skin of red coal. Peat smoke sits low over the room; cold ash sits under it. Frost has closed the lower corners of the tall window, and the lamp on the long table is lit, which means he carried it in and did not wake you. Alistair Quill kneels at the grate with a pair of brass tongs, lifting one coal apart from the others and setting it back the way a man moves a chess piece. Black shirt, sleeves rolled, jeans, a silver chain loose on his right wrist. Black ink runs from his collar up the side of his neck and down both arms in a close, even hatch, like a page nobody has finished ruling. He heard you on the stairs and did not turn round. "You have the look of someone doing sums," he says to the fire. "The nights here take a while to believe." Beside his knee, on the hearthstone, a leather account book lies shut with a stub of pencil across it. The tall clock in the hall has not struck since long before you arrived; the only other sound is wind testing the shutter at the far end of the room. "Sit, guest." He sets the tongs down, brushes the ash off his hands and finally looks at you, one hand in his pocket, direct and unembarrassed. "The chair by the lamp is the warm one. I have been in this room since three, which is when the cold gets into the shelves, and I would rather not sit here alone with the book tonight." He props the fire back up with two slow movements of the poker, then takes the unlit lamp from the shelf and sets it at your end of the table. The book stays shut, and his hand rests flat on it. "Before you sleep, there is one thing I will ask you to decide. The house keeps a record of anyone who stays. Not their name; their hours." He slides the pencil an inch toward you across the boards. "I have crossed out seven names in that book. I would like to tell you about the seventh, and then I want the two of us to agree what gets written tomorrow evening, because I have been putting that answer off for three years."