Page 28

The hall has been handing my claps back to me for two days, hard and late, off every wall. This clap comes back with a piece missing. He is standing in the middle of the sound, and it goes round him and leaves a tall dent, all wet wool and cold.

“Oh, that’s better,” I say. “You’re worth two hangings.”

He says nothing. He does not move from the spot.

“I need a voice in it as well.” I nearly tell him to say something, and he will answer “Something,” because he has done it twice. “Say my name.”

He looks up at me. His face does not change.

“Enora.”

It crosses the flags and comes up the ladder and stops at me, low and close. It is the voice from the counting room with no mask on the front of it, and my foot comes off the rung.

I get it back on. I hold the upright with both hands and look hard at a hook.

It was you. Say it. He is standing right there.

“Good,” I say. “That sat well. Move the bench a foot toward the fire, would you?”

He moves the bench. Then he comes to the foot of the ladder and takes hold of the upright to steady it, beside my ankle, and the cold of his knuckles goes through my stocking.

The tapestry is on its hooks. I have no reason to be up here. I stay up here.

“What do you hear?” he says. “When you clap?”

Nobody asks me that. People ask me to stop.

“How long it takes to come back, first. That tells me how far off the wall is, and how hard. Then what’s gone out of it by the time it does. A good room keeps the low end and loses a bit off the top. This one keeps the top and throws the rest away, which is why your boots sound like somebody dropping plates.”

I look down. He has not looked away.

“Then I listen for the note the room wants. They’ve all got one. Yours is low, under all the clatter. It’s a good note. Nobody’s ever let it out.”

He turns his head toward the far wall. He is trying to hear it. I have told people about room notes all my life and not one of them has ever tried.

“Can you let it out?”

“With enough cloth. I want to. I’ve wanted to since I walked in.”

His hand is still on the ladder. My ankle has gone warm all the way round the place his knuckles are. I want him to move his thumb. I will not be responsible for what I say if he does.

“Madam,” Malo says, from the kitchen door. “There is a pan.”

“I’ll do the pan.”

“Yes, madam.” He looks at the tapestry, and the bench, and his employer holding a ladder. “If I may. Two hangings will not quiet this hall. It will take fifteen. The room was built too tall for its width, and cloth can only do so much.”

“Nine.”

“Fifteen, madam.”

“I’ll wager you. If nine hangings do it, you light my fires for a week.”

“And if nine do not?”

“Then you choose.”

Malo considers. “A week in which you stay out of my kitchen, madam.”