by A. W. Exley
Dim, watery light couldn’t penetrate the thick glass of the single, narrow window. The floor was covered in decades of dust, and the looms looked like they belonged to a pre-industrialisation era. In one corner rested a broom with long bristles that looked like something a witch would ride to escape far away from Kessel.
Elijah ventured further into the room. He glanced up at the window. Long and slender, it was placed high in the wall to provide light, but workers wouldn’t be distracted by gazing out of it.
“A good clean and we’ll get more light in here.” He reached up and wiped a finger through the layer of grime obscuring the outside world.
Beatrice leaned over one of the looms. “These seem old, but in good order. Nothing looks broken.”
Elijah cast a critical eye over the looms. They just squeaked into the industrial era, but were an early automated model. “The shafts go up to the ceiling, and we can hope they can be reconnected to the main engine to drive them.”
Another loom sat to the side of the room, as though ostracised by the others with their ugly parts driven by a boiler elsewhere in the mill.
Beatrice ran a hand over the smooth wood. “A handloom. Perfect.”
Elijah snorted. Who would weave by hand anymore? Machines had dramatically increased efficiency. “We need to get these three working if you want bolts of silk to show your uncle.”
A sigh ran through her body as she turned her back on the ancient loom. “Yes. Although I will be limited in the number of colours I can use. But nothing will happen until we set to work and put this room in order.”
“I’ll find hot water and a brush to clean that window, for starters.” That would be a perfect opportunity to have a snoop in the rooms he passed on the pretence of looking for cleaning supplies.
“I shall start with the broom. Although by the looks of it, I will have to liberate it from the spiders first.” She reached out and laid a hand on his arm, where he was covered by his rough cotton shirt. “Thank you for agreeing to this. At least I will have you to talk to while we work.”
He stared at her hand, which seemed to heat his arm through his shirt. Then he nodded, unsure of what to say. Her words made it sound as though he had any choice in the matter. She wouldn’t thank him if she knew how he planned to use his new position to his advantage.
Elijah made sure to poke his nose into every room along the vast corridor, his visits masked by the noise of the shafts driving the looms and the clatter of weaving. An hour later, he found the storeroom that contained buckets, mops, scrubbing brushes, and an array of cloths. An enormous sink, bordering on the size of a small tub, dominated a bench along one wall. Pipes ran from the ceiling downwards and ended in taps.
A twist of the taps and he discovered that the mill had hot and cold running water. He filled two buckets and then dropped a scrubbing brush and cloths into each. The walk back to the disused weaving room involved a more direct route.
By the time he returned, Beatrice had shaken the broom free of cobwebs and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. She tackled the spiders clinging to the corners, winding the strands of web around the broom and pulling them away.
Elijah decided to clean the window first, so they could have some light. He dragged over a chair and fished the scrubbing brush out of the hot water. The glass seemed determined to cling to decades’ worth of grime and it put up a valiant fight. First, he scrubbed hard over the entire surface, until the grime began to loosen and the window looked as though it had been smeared with mud.
Then he moved from scrubbing brush to cloth. Inch by inch, he revealed the glass underneath. Much to his surprise, it wasn’t opaque. When he wiped off the last of the soapy water, they had a clear view of the sky beyond and a wide shaft of sunlight burst into the room.
“Oh, what a difference,” Beatrice said, pausing in her sweeping.
The sunlight illuminated the stirred-up dust motes, and she played with them, cutting her hand through the middle and making them spin in different directions.
“At least now we can see what we are doing.” He jumped off the chair and tossed the dirty cloth into filthy water. “I’ll go empty these and fetch clean water to tackle the looms and floors.”
Cleaning was slow work, further hampered by the constant need to empty dirty buckets, fetch clean water, and rinse out cloths. Much to his surprise, Beatrice Hamilton didn’t complain, nor did she abandon the work. She laboured just as hard as him. Fortunately her tweed skirt concealed dirty marks, but her blouse developed a new mottled pattern due to splashes of grimy water.
She had wiped her face at some stage and a dirty streak ran along the side of her nose. A single cobweb clung to her hair and sparkled as though she wore a delicate tiara.
“You’ve got a mark,” he said and tapped the spot on his face.
“Have I?” Beatrice rubbed with the heel of her hand and managed to smear the dirt further along her cheek. “Better?”
Elijah huffed a quiet laugh. “No.” He picked up the last clean cloth and dabbed a corner into the warm water. He stepped towards her, holding the cloth. “May I?”
“Of course,” she murmured, and she tilted her face up to him.
The world spun to a stop and silence dropped over the room as he reached out for her. The rational part of his brain screamed he was mad and to hand her the cloth and step back. But he had to know. He had to touch her skin just once, to see if it happened again.
With his left hand, he cupped the side of her face while he wiped away the dirt with the cloth in his right hand. Only the quiet rhythm of their breathing broke the silence, as though they were both struck dumb by the contact. The Cor-vitis squirmed into life between his palm and her cheek. A bright red tendril escaped from under his thumb and tickled her ear.
“That tickles.” She raised her hand and laid it over the top of his.
The plant practically leapt into the air and then dove across the back of her hand, drawing a line of glittering orange and red.
Elijah coughed and stepped away, bunching the cloth up in his hands as the Cor-vitis dissolved into dust motes. “We can’t have you looking working class.”
Mid-afternoon, they had nearly finished cleaning when the door banged open and Archie Lawson appeared. The salamander wore a three-piece suit, with a tie around his starched collar. He frowned as he stepped into the room. “I have been searching for you for hours, Beatrice.”
Beatrice looked up from the loom, where she had been wiping all the parts with a damp cloth. It needed to be clean before they could set up the thread. If they wove cloth on a dirty loom, the grime would transfer to the fabric.
“I have been here all day, cleaning. They would have told you that in the office, Archie, if you had asked.” She wiped the cloth over her hands and dropped it into a bucket at her feet.
His eyes blazed and his top lip curled at the sight of mops and buckets. He glared at Elijah, as though this were somehow his fault. “Cleaning? Really, Beatrice, you take this game of playing with mill employees too far. We have a dinner party tonight and you look a complete fright. You should be home, preparing to meet your guests.”
“This is more important than changing my gown, not that it takes particularly long to change clothes.” A hand towel was tucked into the waistband of her skirt and Beatrice pulled it free to dry her hands.
“You need a bath and a thorough scrubbing, Beatrice. You’re covered in filth like a sow that’s been wallowing in mud all day.” He leaned closer and sniffed, his nostrils flaring. “Good grief! You even smell working class.”
Elijah didn’t see anything wrong with Beatrice’s appearance. The woman looked and smelt like an honest labourer, but he guessed that would be unfamiliar to the Soarer. It was hard to ignore her, or keep her at arm’s length, when her enthusiasm kept scrubbing his objections away.
Archie gestured at Elijah with his walking cane. “Leave the yokel to do the cleaning. Come along, old girl. I have the carriage and I will take you back to the
house. Although, perhaps you had better sit up front with the driver.”
Elijah continued sweeping and bit his tongue. It wasn’t his place to point out that she would rather be here cleaning a loom than at any fancy soiree. He dug the bristles of the broom into a particularly dirty corner and then swept the dirt and dust out a little too enthusiastically. A dust cloud billowed towards Archie and his impeccable dark blue suit. Tiny motes of brown settled over one arm.
“Careful, you dolt!” He jumped backwards, as though embers threatened to burn the fabric. He brushed at the sleeve before the dust could settle.
Elijah widened his eyes to mimic innocence. “So sorry, sir. It is rather dirty in here.”
Archie grabbed Beatrice’s wrist and pulled her towards him. “Your uncle will not tolerate filth at his table and nor will I. I am going to insist, Beatrice, as your future husband. Life will be easier for you once you have learned to obey my commands.”
She gasped as the man’s fingers bit into her skin and squeezed the delicate bones in her wrist. “Let go, Archie, and I shall accompany you,” Beatrice hissed between clenched teeth.
Elijah tightened his grip on the broom’s handle. It would be remarkably satisfying to hear the piece of wood smack against the salamander’s head. Except it wasn’t his place to intervene between the two.
Nor did he want to lose his job before he had found the Esmeralda and the men who’d killed his father.
9
The next day, Elijah went in search of a mill engineer to see about hooking up the old looms. The mill had been converted in the last decade from old-fashioned beam engines to horizontal shafts, where power was transmitted through the main vertical shaft with bevel gears. The looms in the small room had been left out from the conversion, although Elijah was hopeful that it wouldn’t take too much to get them working. The Lancashire Loom was an old piece of equipment, having been invented back in the 1840s, but it was still a staple machine for weaving, even in 1880.
He enjoyed talking with the engineer and climbing through the access shafts to see if the looms could be made operational again. It was dirty work, poking and greasing old wheels and pistons, but he didn’t mind. Mechanical work seemed to unite men whatever their background, as they worked to free up long-seized metal and add new connections.
Beatrice appeared at noon, with dark circles under her eyes. He wanted to quip about late nights or early mornings, but her sombre mood made the words dissolve on his tongue.
“Good afternoon,” he said instead. “I’ve spoken to the engineer and we have investigated up in the shafts. Everything appears to be in working order still, just seized up from disuse. The engineers and his lads will get the looms connected and working in the next day or two.”
She perked up a little and flashed him a weary smile. “Oh, that is brilliant news. Thank you, Eli.”
To give himself something to do, he had spent the morning oiling and greasing every single working part on the looms for when they were connected. “There’s not much to do until then. Shall I report to Mr Baxter in the warehouse?”
“No. I need your help. I thought today we would go outside. The fresh air might revive my senses.” In one hand she carried a large straw hat and she used it to gesture to him.
“There is work I can do elsewhere.” The woman was daft or perhaps overtired and should go back to bed. He couldn’t lounge around outside.
She blew out a sigh. “I would like to paint and the light isn’t good enough to do that in here.”
The mill was a commercial business, not a finishing school for young women who learned deportment, music, and painting. He grunted and crossed his arms. Perhaps if he ignored her she would go away and stop bothering him.
“I need you to carry my supplies, please.” She reached out and laid a hand on his bare forearm, below where he had rolled up his shirtsleeves.
Her touch was flint to stone, and sparks flew across his skin and left a trail of heat. She kept her hand on his skin while she met his gaze. Her amber eyes searched his face even as the tiny Cor-vitis tickled his arm as it sought to wriggle out from under her palm. When she stared at him with such an open expression, he couldn’t refuse her, even though he knew he should. He trod a dangerous path letting her get close.
Neither of them had mentioned the fiery plant that appeared when the hand of one encountered the bare skin of the other. Had she even noticed? Each time now she had been looking elsewhere, and there was a chance only he saw it.
“Very well, Miss Hamilton.” He was fooling himself if he thought she genuinely wanted his company. She no doubt expected him to act as her butler, fetching and carrying at her behest.
A little of the fatigue disappeared from around her eyes as she clapped her hands together. Then she shooed him along the corridor to her office where an easel, folding stool, and paint case waited.
She picked up the case and left him to wrangle the awkwardly shaped stand, stool, and large sketchpad.
“I need to find the right tree,” she muttered as he followed her along the corridor and out a rear door.
A tree? She was definitely daft. But then, what did that make him for doing her bidding?
The rear of the large mill opened out onto a sweep of lawn and the gurgling river. The land sloped away and the back was lower than the front of the building. The large, sliding barn doors were closed, but a narrow track ran from the doors, across the lawn, and disappeared around a bend through the trees.
“A rail track,” he murmured.
“It used to be for coal deliveries to the boilers, before my uncle moved them up next to the main building.” Beatrice pointed to the squat building with the smoking chimneys next to the mill. “It hasn’t been used for some years now, except as storage. Rather like an attic in a house, except in the basement.”
Boiler rooms. Of course. It wasn’t just a mill that had a boiler room with engines; steamer ships had them, too. Could the answer to the missing Esmeralda be as simple as parts that were used to drive the mechanical looms? But then that didn’t explain why they’d falsified invoices, or why Dawn’s parents had died to stop an investigation into its finances.
He glanced at the rail tracks as he carried the equipment across the lawn. For something that was disused, the grass around the lines was short, and there was the glint of metal where rust had been removed by friction. Something was still being transported into the disused coal storage facility.
“None of these trees are right.” Beatrice tugged on his shirt and led him away from the track and closer to the river.
“What sort of tree are you looking for?” He knew he would regret asking the question, but he said the words without thinking. She had that effect on him. He found himself relaxing and talking to her as if she were his aunt Lettie or another person close to him. He needed to be on his guard.
As they approached the river, a rat ran up the bank and disappeared into dense undergrowth. A seeker perhaps, sent to watch Beatrice and monitor her conversations. Anything they said could be reported back by the rat to the Soarers. They used mice, rats, and stoats the same way Warders used ravens.
She grinned at him. Fatigue vanished to be replaced by humour and mischief. He wished she’d stopped doing that and revert to the role he had cast her in—surly, petulant, and arrogant. The light-hearted side she kept displaying made his palm itch to touch her.
“You think I’m mad, don’t you?” She grabbed at her hat as a light breeze lifted the brim and tried to peel it from her head.
Yes. “No. I am simply curious as to why you need the right tree, or any tree for that matter.”
“I want to use the old handloom to create an exclusive piece using my own design. But first I need to paint the scene, and then the weaver can follow it as a pattern. It’s going to be a bird in a tree. But a very particular bird and a very particular tree. I need something that looks ancient.” The smile dropped and her gaze with it. As though she had said too much.
Now he unde
rstood why she wanted the old loom cleaned up.
“What about that one?” He pointed to an oak standing by the riverbank. The bark on its wide trunk was gnarled and twisted in spots where it had grown around knots and holes drilled into it by birds. It didn’t look ancient and was probably only a hundred years old, but it had more gravitas than the slender willows or upright birches.
Beatrice cocked her head to one side to regard the tree. “Oh, yes. That one might do. I wanted a more spreading canopy, but I can make a start.”
She paced the lawn until she found a spot a suitable distance from the tree and with the sunlight over her shoulder. Elijah opened up the stool with its canvas top at a spot she indicated. Then he set up the easel and sketchpad.
“Could you fetch me water for my brushes, please?” She removed a glass from the case and handed it to him with a large smile on her lips.
Elijah walked to the edge of the river and filled the glass with fresh water to rinse her brushes, and then placed the container in the holder on the easel.
“Anything else, miss?” He couldn’t help smiling as he asked. Her good mood was infectious and he couldn’t stay grumpy or indifferent around her.
“Tea would be wonderful, if you have the time. The kitchen will prepare a tray.” She dropped her hat to the grass and selected a pencil. She drew long strokes across the blank page as she made a start.
Tea? He really was the butler. “Of course,” he said and bowed at the waist.
As he walked back towards the mill, he stared at the closed barn doors. The throb of machinery was a constant buzz through the ground and soles of his feet. He wished he had the ability to see through brick and wood. What would he find if he peeled back the layers and followed the small track to its destination?
At least he now had a direction for his search. Somewhere in the mill building would be another access point to the storage below. He only needed to find the right corridor that would lead to the basement.
