Dark Age

by Robert T. Bradley

  IV

  A soot cloud loomed dead ahead of the Moth.

  ‘Mr Shanks, go around it,’ Madeline shouted.

  The vessel cracked as it tilted over to avoid the smog. The side of the ship reflected green from the land. She grabbed a deck handle and clasped in her shoulder. The cloud behind them parted, and the light from the sun cast a shadow of the Moth onto the landscape below, trailing over rocks, tors and woodland.

  ‘There’s nothing else like this, Maddy, cherish it while it lasts,’ said her father, bracing the deck next to her.

  No other shadows on the landscape apart from the Moth. It didn’t belong there, and neither did she.

  CHAPTER 11

  Rain stuck to Baxter’s clothing, covering him in black sludge. He grabbed Tabitha’s arm.

  ‘There’s a covering over there by those buildings.’

  They ran across the road and took shelter.

  ‘It’s thinner here,’ Baxter shouted over the rains thuds.

  A nearby gentleman, also sheltering under the canopy, noticed their clothing. ‘Out of town?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Baxter replied. ‘Just got here.’

  ‘This rain is horrendous!’ Tabitha pulled in closer to Baxter.

  ‘We call it Sootrail. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it. Where you from, Prussia?’

  Baxter knew Sootrail and the damage it could do, but not like this. ‘No, we’re from the Beechcroft Village.’

  ‘Where?’ he shouted, leaning in a little further.

  ‘The Moors,’ Baxter said, pointing out over the wall.

  ‘Oh, Moorlanders, how exciting is this?’

  Baxter looked at Tabitha.

  ‘Two Moorlanders here in the Middles. How do you find it so far? Do you like it?’

  Tabitha shrugged, Baxter smiled.

  ‘I used to know a girl from the moors, she was ever such a delight. A bit too spirited for me, though. Say, girl, are you spirited?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she replied, looking at Baxter.

  ‘She is.’ Baxter pushed her behind him, and clenched his fist.

  The man smiled. ‘Here, An umbrella for you both. I’m sorry it’s a little old and tatty. I thought all of the Moorland villages got Sootrail as bad as this?’

  Baxter took the umbrella and opened it up. ‘Very kind of you. Would you happen to know of anywhere we can get food?’

  ‘The market is just a few yards away.’ He pointed toward a main cobbled street. Horses pulling carts filled with stock and covered in canvas blankets rattled along. ‘You can get pretty much whatever you want from down there, but hurry. I think it closes at five o’clock today and with this Sootrail, they might have already left.’ He tipped his hat and headed back out to the rain.

  ‘See, he was kind,’ Baxter said. ‘He didn’t need to do it.’

  Tabitha trembled. ‘We need food. Let’s get going.’

  They both ran out from under the cover, Tabitha’s grasp tighter than ever around his hip, he wiggled under it.

  ‘Tabs, not so tight. You won’t slip.’

  A few of the market stores were packing up early due to the Sootrail. Folk had headed to the other buildings, waiting to get to the higher sheltered platforms running directly above in a spider’s web of walkways.

  ‘Over there.’ Baxter pointed. ‘A baker, her store still looks open. Do you have those shillings?’

  ‘Yes.’ She counted them out. ‘Bax, we have about ten pounds.’

  ‘What?’ he replied, pulling her hands closer to take a count for himself. ‘Wow, we’re rich!’

  Tabitha stood still, her face sunken.

  Baxter noticed and calmed his reaction. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s ok,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Do you think we should give some of this back to the train people?’

  ‘What? No, absolutely not.’

  ‘Okay, I just think it’s a bit much.’

  ‘A bit much?’ Baxter looked around him amazed at what he was hearing. ‘Tabitha, you were raped.’

  ‘Alright, keep the noise down, I don’t want anybody hearing.’

  ‘He deserved it,’ said Baxter, ‘you have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  She fell silent under his gaze and nodded.

  ‘Give me five shillings, and I’ll get us some pastries.’

  She handed them over.

  ‘Then once we’ve eaten, let’s get you some new clothes.’

  II

  Later the same afternoon, they’d found a female tailor and had bought Tabitha a set of leathers and a few new shirts, and booked lodgings close to one of the tall chimneys which disappeared beyond the cloud cover. Baxter stood at their room’s window, studying the chimney.

  ‘It’s a shame the clouds are hiding the top. I wonder how high they are?’

  Tabitha sat on the edge of the bed. ‘They’re called Brunel Ducts.’

  ‘How is it your father knew so much about the City?’

  She pulled her new leather trousers over her hips. ‘He’s from here.’

  ‘Really? When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was important for you to know.’

  Baxter came away from the window. ‘Your father was here the same time as my father? Do you have family here?’

  ‘I don’t know. Father only really used to speak about the City itself, the people and its way. Never his father or any of his family.’

  ‘What age was he when he left?’

  ‘Eighteen, I think.’

  ‘So, the same as you are now? How, oh, what’s the word?’

  ‘Coincidental.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’ His face tightened.

  ‘Baxter, ‘I’m twenty, I’m older than you.’

  ‘Could have fooled me.’

  She hit his arm. ‘You can be a real swine sometimes, Baxter Beechcroft.’

  ‘It’s Nightingale here, Tabitha.’

  ‘I’m not so sure you want to be using that name.’

  ‘Why not? It’s my real name.’

  ‘What of the man who came to the village? He was looking for the Nightingales.’

  ‘Yes, he needed their help for his daughter. It’s why father left, I’m sure of it.’

  Tabitha made small steps to the bed away from him. ‘You’ll always be a Beechcroft, at least to me.’

  Baxter shook his head. ‘I’m going to get a shower. Then I’m going exploring.’

  ‘Can’t you stay here?’ She ran over to him and stroked his arm.

  She was preparing to say something she knew he wouldn’t like.

  ‘Baxter.’ Her voice was a distant expression.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you for saving me.’

  ‘What are you talking about? It was you who pulled the trigger not me.’ Baxter threw a her old torn top on the heap with the other clothes Tabitha had discarded.

  ‘It wasn’t for you Bax, I’d be dead, thrown off the train, you didn’t need to come and check on me, but you did and that counts for–’

  ‘Nothing. That beast still did what he did. It’s my fault you were hurt and I should have been the one to pull the trigger.’ His thoughts returned to his uncle, to the moor and to the wolf. He could hear Tabitha walking toward the bathroom door, he was quick to close it.

  III

  Tabitha smiled at the door. She walked over to her bed and opened one of the drawers in the bedside cabinet. The Mother’s Guide’s blue binding glimmered back at her. She picked it up and thumbed a few of the pages.

  If your relationship to God outweighs your desires for the fanciest fashions, know your desires for those fashions will be fed from the love you have for God.

  A knock at the door, Tabitha jumped.

  ‘Open up please, it’s the Royal guard.’

  Her heart sunk deep in the confines of her chest.

  ‘Just a second,’ she bound over to the bathroom. ‘Bax,’ she whispered, ‘some guards are here.’


  The door broke open, and four tin-covered men rattled in. ‘Is this her?’ asked one of them to a man stood behind the group.

  Stepping between them, a slow moving figure approached. A man with a bandage wrapped around his head turned the room cold. Tabitha’s body stiffened and she froze. Her gun was under the old clothing on the bed a few feet away but it might as well have been miles. The conductor from the train smiled a row of brown gums.

  ‘It’s her,’ he said, looking her down his red nose with his beady eyes. ‘Your companion, where is he?’

  IV

  Baxter stood motionless on the edge of the building’s ledge as the guards stormed in. He saw one of them poke their head out of the window, investigating the street below.

  ‘He’s escaped,’ he shouted. ‘He won’t have gotten far.’

  Baxter waited for the men to leave, then climbed back in the bathroom and grabbed his things. He slowly opened the door to the room and checked his belongings.

  ‘Damn it, they’ve taken the guns.’

  Tabitha screamed, and he ran to the window and hid sideways. She was putting up quite the fight as the guards took her away down a side alley.

  He scanned the ledges outside, several tiered downward to the street. He climbed back out, dangled down one then the other until landing square on the pavement.

  He ran down the alleyway to a small flight of uneven steps, and there at the bottom were the guards and Tabitha bound with a sack over her head. She stood shaking as the men prepared a jail cart.

  The alleyway teemed, sludge covered anything potentially useful. The large shire horse and a cloaked driver of the cart took her away down the street. Baxter followed, stayed at a distance, keeping to the shadows.

  His jacket hung from him like a slab of wet meat, heavy with Sootrail. After a few streets, the cart stopped the guards tossed Tabitha out of the cell like butchers slapping about beef.

  They unlocked a large iron door to what looked to Baxter like a castle keep, thick grey to black stone, bars on the windows, he watched as the guards entered a spiral staircase taking them underground into some sort of dungeon.

  The street was narrow and filled with old junk, newspaper and tin cans. Filling them with rocks to clobber over heads came to him, but no rocks anywhere and little else to offer any kind of elaborate invention for a daytime jailbreak. He shuffled to the door, it was locked shut.

  Baxter returned to the shops, feet shambling as though the failure made the world thick. He checked his watch, two hours until nightfall, two hours until he’d come back and save her.

  V

  Limited shops around the square were still open. Tailors for the most part, a few candle stores, a hat maker and a lot of haberdasheries. His pace slowed as he approached the base of one of the Brunel Ducts. Gaslights ran up each side of the snaking structure, rows of bright orange. Baxter’s head tipped parallel with the sky and flexed back as he tried to count the fire spots pouring from the serpent’s mouth. The eastern steel under-structure was excavated and hollowed out for pubs. Chatter and laughter rang from them, together with the sound of piano jig music. He walked closer to the windows. The main doors flew open, and men blundered onto the street their arms wrapped around each other. Most were clean-shaven types, wearing jackets which didn’t fit them. A few held cigar nibs, long-smoked, between their fingers. With a quick glance in the closing door, Baxter caught sight of a couple sharing a jig, folk surround them and clapped, spurring them on.

  ‘Oh, she does know what she knows, and what she knows she didn’t know, who? Our regretful Mother!’

  Tripping over each other outside, drunken men sang a spoofed version of Our Dear Mother as loud as their worn vocals could muster.

  ‘She was a bit of all right, that barmaid,’ one of them said.

  ‘Father, you’re thirty years her senior,’ said another.

  ‘I used to have fight girls off me. I’d walk in a pub like that, click and...’

  ‘They’d come flocking, wouldn’t they, father?’

  ‘Aye.’ The older man stumbled with the curb, and two of them grabbed him. ‘Come on lads! Help your pissed-up pops back to the brothel.’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Sorry, quarters, his quarters. Dearie me chaps, why’d I ever want to go to one of them?’

  Baxter negotiated around them.

  The pub was packed with folk laughing so hard they spat on each other.

  ‘You old enough to be in here lad?’ The man’s words cleft out of his strained throat. He was wide and as serious as his tone. ‘Papers?’

  Baxter prodded around his body, checking pockets inside and out. ‘Sorry sir,’ he slanted, ‘but I don’t–’

  ‘Right out with ya!’ The man pushed Baxter back through the double doors and onto the street. He slipped, landing his foot right in a puddle of Sootrail. ‘Perfect. And don’t you be trying to sneak in through the back door,’ said the doorman, ‘I know a lock picker when I see one.’

  VI

  Baxter collected himself together as the words slowly seeped in. Walking back up the street, ahead a bell rung out. Baxter looked up and watched as a man with a tape measure around his neck took a coat off a gentlemen as he entered his shop.

  Trying desperately to clean off his clothing Baxter slowed his pace, and nearly by the doorway, he peered in. The front of the shop looked empty, he tried the door, and it opened. The shop was large, with an elaborate till to the right, various fabrics and a changing room at the back. He carefully pushed the door open, keeping the doorbell steady.

  In front of him in the next room over, between thick red velvet curtains, two men armed with tape measures around their necks fussed around a gentleman like a pair of Morris dancers. On the opposite side of the first room, a worktable held host to sharp shining objects. Baxter scrabbled for them.

  To his left, unbeknown to his heist, a boy sat silently on a small stool.

  ‘Hello,’ said the boy, giving Baxter the fright of his life, ‘what’s your name?’

  Baxter turned his ear to the direction of the sweet voice.

  The boy got up. Baxter froze as he watched the boy grab a bunch of needles and handed them over to him. ‘Here you go mister, I’m sure they won’t miss them.’

  Baxter adjusted his posture. ‘Thank you, kind sir.’

  ‘No problem sir, have fun making your new clothes.’ The boy held in a concealed laugh at Baxter’s ruined attire. ‘You need them!’

  VII

  Retracing his steps through the streets back to the Guard’s keep, Baxter twisted the pins around each other. A few snapped, but larger ones worked, he twisted them in place and using a nearby wall, pressed the tip giving the end a small hook.

  He hung around an extra hour, waiting in an alley’s cove for the graveyard shift of guards to appear. One by one they came and left before he approached the door he checked the pins strength between his fingers. Satisfied he inserted the picks, twisting and turning, listening for the tiny irons to lift in place. One by one the latches locked in position and the iron door came free.

  Stepping inside, he looked for something to hold the door shut but hesitated: so far it was their only escape route. The spiral staircase descended to the dungeon level, drops of water dripped from leaks in the old masonry, and large puddles reflected the little amount of light coming from the small letter-box windows in the cells. The corridor of the dungeon was dark with black and grey outlines which made the empty table ahead look menacing. Baxter felt the death like the stone walls absorbed the pain of past inmates. His nerve dwindled on an edge as narrow as the pinheads he thumbed between fingers. A step felt like a decade, the pace needed, he decided, if it meant evading capture. The first cell, he peered in, empty apart from an old leather boot missing the other pair. He wondered where it was: he dreaded to think and let the thought escape as quickly as it came. The next cell was also empty, with just two more to go.

  VIII

  Royal Guard Glen Rodgers sat on his stool with hi
s back to the wall, astonished.

  Four feet away a man had walked the cells, right past him; he was tiptoeing across the corridor and peering into each cell.

  Glen hid his duck-down pillow under the table, he’d been kipping and hadn’t heard the intruder enter. Thoughts about the punishment ran loose like a runaway mine cart as he grabbed his leather bat and stood as silently as his stupid tin uniform allowed.

  The intruder took a step.

  Glen took a step.

  He took another, and so did Glen.

  Eventually, Glen was right behind him.

  ‘Tabs! Tabs!’ whispered the man. ‘Tabitha, wake up.’

  Glen held the bat above his head and prepared to strike.

  IX

  Tabitha’s hands were chained to the walls, and her head hung limply.

  ‘Tabs!’ Baxter whispered. ‘Tabs, wake up, it’s me, Ba...’ but as the words left Baxter’s mouth the dungeon accelerated to a darkness Baxter couldn’t describe as he was suddenly unconscious.

  CHAPTER 12

  An empty glass spun in a waltz on top a wooden bar, creating all manner of original geometric patterns. The show captured Alfred’s interest for no longer than a beat, replaced by the smell of expensive perfume. Someone slammed a pistol on the polished wood close to Alfred’s glass.

  ‘Sir, don’t be banging your pistol...’ Alfred saw through drunken vision a beautiful young girl dressed in black leather aircrew regalia. She said something about a young man, the Moor and had he seen him. Alfred lost interest in the conversation and swivelled round in his chair. He grabbed the glass and took another swig; empty?

  Tables of miserable miners resembling the donkeys they overworked, with haggard mouths only good enough for laughing and spitting, creating sounds only goats could find attractive, trapped Alfred.

  ‘Innkeeper,’ he said, ‘fill my glass if you may, kind sir, I need to see a man about a train,’ he sniggered, sending his head a wobble and eventually land safely on something soft, cold but comforting. The spinning was still there though, and then came a shove. He slid off the stool and landed in a bundle next to the bar. Three attractive young women pointed a gun at him. ‘I’m sorry, madams.’ He tried to clap his hands together.