The Cordwainer of Scarletwell Street in... Lucifer’s Boots

“There you! You little snob,” called out the loathsome, pipe smoking hag to the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street.

“Where’s my boots you makes for us and aint brought me yet?” she spat. “I’ll break my back, down at the well for what you costs to make me naught,” she said staring out of her piercing eyes and wiping her dirty hands on her already filthy apron. Oddly he never remembered meeting her before.

The cordwainer looked back embarrassed by his surroundings and considered his unfortunate position in life, for in 1869 he was not a rich man, and this street of shoemakers and their gentlemanly purveyors was one of those most un-aristocratic.

The cordwainer of Scarletwell Street considered himself a bit of ‘freethinker,’ and looking past the loathsome woman at the cobblers with their thick Albion beerded heads, he tried hard to think of another life, away from this grimy street of shabby houses, splashed with the muck and the reddish tan of the trade.

“Not ready yet, sorry,” he said, backing hastily away and almost tripping over a group of sorry looking servant girls squatting on the curbstone. “I’ll have them done just as…”

“Just as quick as you’ll av my foot in your belly if you aint careful,” the loathsome woman retorted, chucking her bucket of slops in his direction and into an already stagnant pile of swill.

At home the cordwainer locked the door of his workshop and with a heavy sigh leant hard against it. He had barely enough money to pay his rent, and the leftover of his stock was not sufficient to prepare the boots for this old trollop, even if he did remember her. A “little snob,” indeed; but her manner cast him as a tradesman above himself, which he new, since the death of his family, was not true. But he also knew that he would not get himself known unless he could establish his shoes as a standard for the gentry he read about avidly in The Illustrated London News every week.

He put down his leather satchel and thought about his father, now dead for nine years, working hard in the countryside making shoes for the farmers. Glancing through this edition of The Illustrated London News he remembered his fathers ambition to come to town to develop his business, and the difficulties this had posed for him. At least he had now managed that move, to broaden his horizons, but without the regular work from the farms, his finances were in a bad way.

Forgetting the day’s exchange with the loathsome woman, the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street put the paper down; he opened the cupboard of his workbench, he removed a half finished pair of shoes and set to work.

At midnight, the town was quiet, and the cold and damp air had almost stiffened the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street as taught as his hardest leather. His fingers ached from his work, a few candles flickered on his desk, and the crumbs from a small loaf of bread eaten as he worked were scattered across the table. However the shoes, earlier half finished, were now complete and from the darkness of one corner of the room; that nearest the door, a faint noise interrupted the silence as the final lace was fitted. Uncertain of its origin the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street looked up into the darkness and out of it a shape began to form.

Through the half-light the form seemed on one hand stately and on the other sinister. Its sinisterness derived from the fact that it had no depth and seemed to materialize from nothing and be made up of complete diabolical darkness. As the shape developed further, the depth of the ‘black’ in it’s apparent garments was total; with a hat and style he had not seen in this part of the world before. The form’s elegance now hosted cloths of the finest quality.

The cordwainer of Scarletwell Street peered closer as more definition appeared out of the black, and within its face emerged blindingly white eyes, as if blind themselves, outlined by a sore and hellish redness. The hands appeared white as bone (but as) with a texture of satin; a ring glistened on one of its fingers.

Without doubt this being was not from this world, he thought. The cordwainer of Scarletwell Street began to stand and then slowly move away from his bench when, as if prompted by his movement, a voice sounded and although the form was not yet complete, its clear, dignified tones were clearly understood.

“For many my form is more wretched than I choose for you now cordwainer. But for you I have not come,” spoke the demon, for clearly that is what it was and the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street trembled in the back of his shop, unable to escape for fear of his life, despite the reassurance from this entity to the contrary.

“If you’ll permit me sir, what is your intention?” He asked nervously, trying to look at his feet so not to engage those deeply blind but knowing eyes.

“Well, your shoes of course Cordwainer, why else; I have come for your first pair of shoes,” said the devil. “They are for me after all, are they not?” he continued.

The cordwainer of Scarletwell Street did consider himself a broad minded chap, but this was a client most unexpected; in all his time in this business he had never heard of such esteemed patronage, kings yes, but the devil, this was absurd. His fear held his tongue and only squeaks appeared where words should have formed.

“I I… I’m … dreaming.”

“NO your not!” retorted the devil in a quick deafening tone whilst leaning forward and clicking his cane with a sharp crack on the stone floor. “I am here for your first pair of proper shoes,” he repeated.

“And I am ready to wear them now! Bring them to me.”

The cordwainer now fixed his attention on the figure at the corner of the room thinking how well presented the devil was, for he had now completed his transformation and sat in front of him a pillar of community, a gentleman in every way. The devils piercing white eyes gazed with total awareness and it’s outstretched hand slowly beckoned the cordwainer forth.

“But why my shoes?” babbled the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street, fumbling on the table for the shoes now finished. “Because they’re a perfect fit,” replied the devil sardonically, inching his leg forward.

The cordwainer trembled as he moved closer to the seated figure, the room now seemed clouded as this devil appeared more real, and it was as if his old world was behind him. His room appeared diluted in the dark as if two worlds were blending into one. “How can this be?” he wondered, now kneeling as if possessed to do so, kneeling down as if before a king.

“Because I will it,” replied the devil, “and, because your trade is now my mark. Like the rest of my garments I set the trend and tastes and I choose you here in this regard.” Praise indeed for a cordwainer whose shoes had gone unnoticed and, as he said it, the devil brought out from within his trouser leg a cloven hoof.

It was with bewilderment then that the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street eased on a pair of shoes now unlike anything he thought he had made; strangely he knew he had made them, but now the shape was one of a hoof in the finest leather, with buckles of shining silver, and trimmed in scarlet satin. Its sole was nailed with the most exquisite of tacks, and its laces were as slender as hair. The devil (or Satan as he truly must be) relaxed and nodded slowly in contentment.

“My first pair of your shoes and the promise that from this day forth your success will be guaranteed,” the devil said to the cordwainer, who now looked on in wonder, admiring his work, and his seemingly forthcoming good fortune by the devil’s visit.

“However you will not always get to choose your customers. Many dark lords and wretches abide in my domain for whom you’ll now work and can not deny.”

In a voice now diminishing in clarity, the devil continued “For what I give you now I will take from you at the other end of your life, you little…”

Then as if waking from a nightmare, and bewildered by his experience, the cordwainer of Scarletwell Street saw on his workbench the finest of shoe, a shoe that he’d never seen before, but remembered making once in a different life, and to a design most unlike anything he had ever imagined before.

“One must have friends even in hell,” he thought to himself with a wry smile; and in his memory remained the devil’s final words, as did the words of a loathsome woman’s voice crying...

“There you! You little… snob.”

The End

All material © copyright Justin Neal