by David Liss
Unfortunately, this new feeling of hopefulness had a price. Now that she could dream of other prospects, no matter how distant, the idea of marrying Mr. Olson had become odious. She did not love him. She did not like him. How could she promise before God to be bound to him forever? It seemed to her madness, madder even than agreeing to run off with Jonas Morrison. He, at least, had been handsome and charming. He had made her feel pretty and clever and delightful. Mr. Olson only made her feel … she hardly knew what. He made her feel, at best, nothing.
Prior to visiting Miss Crawford, she had, per her uncle’s demand, sent Mr. Olson a note in which she explained Lord Byron’s confusion and her innocence. She had done so as coolly as she could, but she had nevertheless expressed that she yet desired the marriage might proceed. It had been painful to write, for she wanted no such thing. She could hardly remember a time when she did wish to marry him, even though that time had been yesterday. Lucy understood, however, that it would be prudent to make no firm decision at present. If Mary Crawford could achieve nothing with her father’s will, then it would be best to have Mr. Olson available. Did it make her a vile person that she considered her options with such a mercenary eye? She suspected it did, and yet what choice had she? She must survive. She must have food to eat and clothes and somewhere to sleep. And certainly no one judged a penniless peer who married for wealth. Why should she be held to a different standard?
All of her dreams burnt off like morning fog when, as she ascended the stairs, she heard Mrs. Quince calling for her in a birdsong voice. Lucy prepared a flimsy story of taking a walk to clear her head, but Mrs. Quince had no questions about where she had been. When Lucy followed her voice to the kitchen, she stood by a basket packed with food and a bottle of claret.
“I want you to take this to Mr. Olson at his mill,” she said.
Lucy looked at the basket, not wanting to look into Mrs. Quince’s pale eyes, which bore down on her with menacing intensity. “Perhaps that is not wise.”
Mrs. Quince showed no inclination to listen to nonsense. In two quick strides she came to Lucy and took her jaw hard in her pale hand, her long fingers gripping tight. “Your uncle wishes it.”
Lucy attempted to step back and pull her head away, but Mrs. Quince pulled her closer, digging into her flesh with her fingernails. “You will go where I tell you, and you will marry whom I say.”
Mrs. Quince let go. Lucy turned away, knowing she had no choice but to bide her time. There could be no ruptures, no major conflicts.
Choosing her battles, she nodded. “I will go.”
Mrs. Quince harrumphed in triumph. “Better for you to have been good from the first.”
Lucy took the basket and set out for the half an hour or so it would take to walk to the mill. It was a mild day, but still cool, and Lucy wore a long blue coat that she thought becoming, and it did a fine job of keeping her warm so that she could enjoy the stroll. She walked by Grey Friar Gate and over the footbridge and then along the rural ways that wound along the far side of the Leen, now swollen with spring abundance. She passed the hill the children called the “fairy mound,” but there were no children playing there today.
She had visited the mill only once before, and that was with a large group from town and before it had been populated by machines and workers. Nevertheless, she had been down this road many times, and had often enjoyed the quiet, peaceful walk. Scattered along the way were rural cottages where the bulk of Nottingham’s hosiery had once been made by artisans. When Lucy had first come to live in the county, these cottages had been vibrant places, full of comings and goings and the ceaseless noise of the interior looms. She had walked by to see children playing, women sitting together peeling turnips or sewing, men gathered to smoke pipes after a day’s labors. Now all was altered. The cottages were dark and silent, or if she saw their inmates, they sat inert before their houses, watching her with hungry eyes, like wolves considering uncertain prey.
At last she approached Mr. Olson’s mill, a large two-storied rectangular structure whose base was built of stone but the rest formed from unpainted lumber. A massive chimney belched dark smoke. When still fifty feet away she could hear the clattering of dozens of stocking frames—it sounded like an endless torrent of pebbles tumbling upon a wooden floor. There was a chorus of coughing and the muted sound of a single child crying.
Lucy had never before been inside a working mill, and did not know what constituted proper etiquette. Did she knock as though it were a private house or walk in as though it were a shop? Her indecision was answered when she observed one of the two main doors—for they were built like those of a barn—was open, and so Lucy merely stepped inside. What she saw left her breathless. The entire floor was an expanse of stocking frames—each one a rectangular machine as tall as a man and half as wide, fitted with twenty or more needles and wires into which quick moving hands fed the wool that produced the celebrated Nottinghamshire hosiery.
It was not the kind of work or the number of machines that horrified Lucy. It was, first of all, the gloom of the mill. There were few windows, and those were up high, letting in only thin shafts of daylight. These highlighted the amount of linen dust and debris in the air—the reason why nearly every worker paused several times each minute to cough. Even though she but stood at the threshold, Lucy’s lungs grew leaden. Then there were the workers themselves: women, children, and the elderly. Three or four large men roamed the floor, looking for signs that a worker was not keeping a proper pace. Such a worker would receive a warning rap on the side of his or her frame from a cudgel. Lucy stood observing only a moment before the overseers beat an old man on his thigh and a child upon his back.
She did not mean to cry out, but upon seeing the brute hit the child, she could not help herself. One of the overseers, a tall man, and an extraordinarily fat one, of early middle years came over to her. He was nearly bald, with only a little fringe of orange hair about the back of his head, which was both oversized and ruddy.
“What’s here?” he asked. “Come to bring me what to eat, have you, missy?”
Lucy held herself erect and thrust out her chin. “I am looking for Mr. Olson.”
He grinned at her, showing a mouth full of strong yellow teeth. “So’s every girl in the county. A grim enough gent, I reckon, but now that he’s got coin upon him, it’s a different story, ain’t it? But never you mind it. You want Olson, you come with me, miss.”
Lucy followed him into the mill, and at once she felt her lungs constrict, as though someone had put a heavy woolen cloth over her mouth. The workers looked up at her as she passed by, and she noticed the cloth covering the basket’s contents had come somewhat loose, and she felt dozens of eyes upon the bread that poked through. One little boy licked his lips.
“Something to eat, miss,” he said.
The overseer struck his frame, and the boy returned to work.
At the far end of the building, the overseer knocked upon a single door set into the wall, and opened it without waiting for a response. Inside, Mr. Olson sat behind an expansive desk, writing out a letter. There were numerous other letters drying upon the desk, as well as ledgers and open books. Behind him, a door that he might come and go without crossing the mill, and a very large window allowed natural light to brighten the closet.
“Found this lassie looking for you,” the overseer said.
“Yes, yes, send her in and close the door. I don’t want that filth getting in here.”
The overseer all but shoved her inside, and then shut the door tight behind him, leering at her as he did so. Lucy did not love being shut up alone with Mr. Olson like this, but the air was much cleaner and purer in here and the light was bright.
“Miss Derrick,” said Mr. Olson. There was something peculiar in his expression. It was not precisely pleasure, for that would have been out of character. Nevertheless, Lucy detected a distinct lack of displeasure, and an attentiveness that she had not before seen in him. For an instant he appeared almost attra
ctive.
“I know you are occupied,” she said, feeling her face grow hot, “so I brought you your dinner.” The words sounded forced and stiff.
He looked at the gift, which she set down on his desk. “It is an unexpected kindness.”
Smiling somehow caused her throat to hurt, so she soon abandoned the effort.
“Please sit,” he told her, and gestured to the chair across from his desk. “Though my mill is no place for a young lady.”
“It seems an unhappy place,” Lucy said, listening to the clacking, the staccato coughing, and the occasional thud she now understood to be the overseers’ cudgels. She thought of her father’s claim, that mills were a blight upon the land. She wished she could leave right then. It seemed to her urgent that she do so, but she could not think of how she could flee without humiliating herself, so she closed her eyes for a moment and tried to breathe. Perhaps Mr. Olson would not notice her distress.
He did not. “It is a place of business and not meant for amusement,” he said slowly, as if explaining one of life’s unavoidable distresses to a child.
Lucy swallowed hard, trying to fight back the feeling of nausea that was overtaking her. “But conditions appear so beastly for your workers.”
“They must be so,” said Mr. Olson, “if I am to make money. It is the nature of a mill. I cannot change how such matters are ordered, so I do not see why I may not profit from them.”
It was certainly true that she knew little about the ways of business. The world was full of things better kept hidden—war, slavery, subjugation—and crying out against them would do nothing to stop them. And yet, for all that, she did not know how she could be wed to someone who chose to perpetuate what any feeling person must agree is wrong. It is one thing to accept that one is powerless to stop the suffering in the world, but quite another to benefit from what brings misery to others.
She said nothing, for three years at her uncle’s house had taught her the futility of arguing with a man a point that ran contrary to his interests. Instead, she said, “I hope you like cold chicken.”
“I do,” he said with the seriousness that suggested he liked cold chicken a great deal. “And whatever pleasure I derive from this meal, it will be nothing in comparison to that I take from your having brought it to me. I am not at all displeased that we are to be married.”
Lucy struggled to think of a response. As she considered what combination of words might best extricate her from this situation, she noticed that something had changed. It took her a moment to find the source of the alteration, but then she realized what it was. The quiet. There was no clacking of looms. There was no coughing. She heard only the muffled cries of the overseers and now the near-perpetual thump of their cudgels.
“Has work ended for the day?” asked Lucy.
Mr. Olson removed and examined his watch and, seeing the time, appeared grave. He pushed himself from the chair, and ignoring Lucy completely, threw open the door to the office. The dust from the mill filtered in at once, as did the gloomy silence and the heat of so many bodies in close proximity.
“Get back to work, you mutinous bastards!” cried one of the overseers.
Lucy saw the balding red-haired man shouting and swinging his cudgel at the shoulder of a child not twelve years old who sat perfectly still, his hands in his lap. The cudgel struck with a dull smack, but the boy did not respond. None of the workers moved or spoke or so much as turned their heads. They sat entirely motionless, rows of them, silent and still as the dead, a mute audience with glassy eyes.
“You must make him stop it!” Lucy cried. She could not believe what she saw. The strangeness. The cruelty. This was not the world as she knew it, but some terrible, alien place, and she wanted no part of it.
Mr. Olson did not hear her. “What goes on here?” he demanded.
None of the workers spoke. The overseer stepped forward. “They on a sudden stopped. No reason, and all at once.”
“I can have replacements for every last one of you before sunup,” said Mr. Olson. “Do not think to test me.”
No one answered. Somewhere within the building, a bird took wing. Mr. Olson balled his hands into childish fists. “This is Luddite business. These people have been put up to combining against me.”
Lucy managed to take a step closer. One of the women in the row closest to her suddenly turned her head in a sharp and twitchy gesture, like a startled squirrel. She studied Lucy briefly and then opened her mouth. She paused for a moment and then spoke. “Gather the leaves.”
The fear that had been building within Lucy now gathered its forces and engulfed her. The words spoken by the mill worker had been enough to stagger her, but there was far more here to terrify. Everywhere in the mill were dark corners, pockets of shadows. Every one of these seethed and pulsed with insubstantial creatures such as the one Lucy had seen when she’d removed Lord Byron’s curse. Like that shadowy presence, these beings were composed of darkness, but they had distinctive shapes. She saw legs, spindly hands with wispy fingers, flickering tails, and vile teeth that rose from open mouths to dissipate like smoke. They were visible only from the corners of her eyes, and the instant she gazed directly at one of these forms, it vanished in the shifting light. Still, Lucy sensed them moving and throbbing and swarming like great clusters of slick and pulsating insect larvae. Instinctively, she understood that she alone could perceive these awful creatures. She had been touched by something, and now she could see what others could not. Perhaps what frightened her most was that she understood these things had always been there, lurking and watching and pulsing, and she too had once been oblivious.
Without thinking, she grabbed one of Mr. Olson’s arms, but he shook her off as though she were an ill-behaved dog. The absent cruelty of that gesture helped her to clear her thoughts.
One of the other laborers, a little girl, also turned her head. “You must gather the leaves.” She spoke the words, and the shadow creatures writhed and shifted and leapt from rafter to rafter, like clouds of darkness that passed over Lucy’s head.
More mill workers now spoke. Gather the leaves. You must gather the leaves. Their sound was a cacophony, each speaking over the other, but all fifty of them said it again and again. An entire mill full of workers had ceased their labors to tell her something desperately important, and she had no idea what it meant. And while they spoke, the shadowy forms circled above them, all moving clockwise, as though forming a vortex that would suck them all upward, flying into oblivion.
“This is utter rubbish,” Mr. Olson told her, “but it is Luddite rubbish, and therefore dangerous. You must go.” He took her arm with an impatient grip and opened the outer door to his private room. Lucy cast one more glance at the mill workers, calling out as though mad, as though lost in religious ecstasy. She took in one more peripheral glance of the frenzied creatures, and then helplessly and gratefully let Mr. Olson lead her away. The cold air rushed into her lungs, the safety of the woods invited her. Lucy wondered if he had a private door for convenience or to allow for an escape should he ever face such an uprising.
“Have no fear,” Mr. Olson said. “The mill will continue to produce.”
He spared a brief look in her direction and then closed the door without further ceremony. Lucy stood in the cold, unable to determine what to do. The sudden silence, the stillness in the air, the absence of the host of insubstantial creatures now seemed odd and inexplicable. The quiet felt unnatural, like an accusation. How could it be that all those people spoke the exact words Lord Byron had said? How could those creatures be real? Was this truly—and she hardly wished to use the word, even to her herself—magic? It was like that moment, in the inn in Dartford when she’d seen her father standing by the fire, tears running down his face, and she’d understood, all at once, that the world was far different from what she had always supposed. Then, she had discovered the world’s sadness, and today, she had discovered its darkness.
Lucy forgot to breathe, and then, against her w
ill, she sucked in a thirsty gulp of air.
With nothing else to do, Lucy began to walk from the mill. She was afraid, but also curious, and so she swallowed her fear and circled around to the still-open front door. As she grew closer, once more she could hear the mumbled chanting, the rustling non-sound of the creatures’ frenzied circling.
Frightened, but too curious to turn away, Lucy approached the front of the mill. The dirt and dead leaves and twigs crunched under her feet. She heard the distant hooting of an owl. The overlapping voices repeated their refrain until she was no more than twenty feet from the open door, and then, all at once, the chant stopped. For a moment there was only silence, and then came the clacking of a single loom, joined by another, and then a loud cough, and the busy thrum of a fully functioning mill. Lucy had the strange idea that if she were to step only a little closer the work would cease once more, the chanting would resume, and the shadows would again quicken. She believed it as much as she believed anything, yet she dared not put this notion to test lest she discover that she was right.
A hundred feet up the path, with the declining sun now in her eyes, Lucy saw a figure—still and straight and tall with wide shoulders. She could not see his face, so glaring was the sun, but she had the distinct impression that he stared at her, that he waited for her.
Lucy thought of retreating to the mill, but she could not go back there, not with those workers, with their dead eyes and their monotonous chants. And this man had not threatened her. He might only be a farmer or a laborer on his way, wanting nothing more from her than to tip his hat and wish her a good afternoon.
The figure did not move. She could see almost nothing of him, and put a hand to her forehead in an effort to shield her eyes from the sun’s glare, but it did little good.
