A Horse Called Hero

by Sam Angus

  Wolfie stood his ground, shook his hand free.

  At the far end, a flood of men poured down the passage that crossed the stables. Wolfie heard confused shouts, more men running, still more shouting.

  ‘To the pit bottom! Get to the bottom!’

  ‘By the haulage road of the second intake airway.’

  ‘Don’t stop. Keep moving. Keep moving.’

  A door was jammed fast. Someone was forcing it with an iron bar.

  ‘Get to the junction and out-by,’ someone shouted, but Jo was arguing, urging, ‘No! Get along haulage road, into four-intake airway, to t’junction and out-by!’

  Wolfie saw, as if in a dream, a train of lamps recede down the tunnel like a file of bobbins. Jo was running back to Wolfie. He grabbed Wolfie and shook him.

  ‘For the love o’ God, get out – there’ll be an explosion . . .’

  Terrified, Wolfie did nothing. He heard the squealing and shrieking of the animals, he saw their rearing and striking at the air, he saw their bared teeth.

  ‘Get out – get out – I’ll not stay with yer if you don’t,’ Jo said.

  Wolfie turned and calmly undid the knot that tethered Hero. Jo was pulling at him, Hero was squealing and tugging at his rope, sweating, trembling, shoulders and neck wet with lather. Wolfie had the rope in his hand, was turning Hero round.

  Jo was screaming at him to get out, to tie the horse up, to run to the far end, to follow the men, that he was mad, that no one would stay with him.

  Wolfie’s world had slowed to a standstill, everyone grown swimming and dreamlike and otherworldly. He saw himself as if detached, from another place.

  ‘No. No,’ he said slowly. ‘I will never leave him again.’

  Jo was suddenly at his side again, exasperated, yanking the rope from Wolfie’s hand, fury and fear in his eyes as he tied a knot in Hero’s rope and pushed Wolfie from the stall.

  With immense and sudden force, Hero reared. The wooden bar of his stall cracked and splintered, whirling, dragging jagged wood in his rope, and he careered away, ears flat, the whites of his eyes round and wild.

  Wolfie and Jo ran after him to the far end of the stables, where the rough roof hung in a low dark curve. Jo was shouting that they’d be killed – that they’d all be killed by a frightened horse in a dark tunnel – but Wolfie caught at his rope, and whispered to him, whispered and whispered, promising soft, sweet promises of grass and wind. Wolfie put an arm under Hero’s neck, and looked into his eyes and made more promises he knew he could not keep.

  ‘Come, come, Hero, come with me . . .’

  Hero’s eyes were large as night, the trust in them as stark, to Wolfie, as blood from a wound.

  An almighty noise, like the sound of the sea, was gathering, a thundering like the roll of a wave. Then a blast of air, like an explosive force, broke and crashed through the chamber, rolling and echoing in waves after it, like a monster.

  Wolfie was hit by the blast, picked by it as if by a hurricane, and hurled down to the side of the tunnel. The drums of his ears were bursting, the air itself fluttering, his brain pounding with blood, his nose stinging, his limbs paralysed.

  He fell unconscious, a tremendous weight pinning him to the ground.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ‘No, like this.’ Dodo took the charcoal. ‘Get the shape of her first.’ She sketched the head and neck, flank and quarters. ‘Afterwards you do the detail . . .’ Lost in reverie, Dodo was drawing, not the horse that stood before her, but a different horse, dark-eyed, deep-necked, all white and grey and silver.

  Meriel, fidgeting, held out her hand for the charcoal.

  ‘Steady, Shannon, steady . . . still, now,’ said Ryland.

  The seventeen-hand chestnut, all lacework vein and shivery skin, tossed her slender head. The girls took up their charcoal again. Ryland held out a handful of hay.

  ‘Thank you, Ryland,’ said Dodo, checking the time. ‘And thank you, Shannon. Time to finish.’

  There was a distant muffled burst. Ryland started, turning to the distant chimneys. Shannon tensed, ears pinned pack, pulling at her lead rope.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Dodo, looking at Ryland.

  Ryland’s eyes were fixed in horror on the distant horizon. A steam horn sounded a loud, long signal, six short bursts, a long signal, and six more short bursts.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked again, taking up Cecily’s charcoal.

  Meriel didn’t look up from her easel. ‘They sound that whenever there’s an explosion,’ she said.

  Still the steam horn sounded, over and over.

  ‘What explosion? Where?’

  ‘In the pit,’ said Meriel, scrubbing out a mark with her forefinger. ‘Don’t worry, miss, it’s only in the pit.’

  ‘Oh, God . . .’ Ryland was saying, white faced, turning to Dodo.

  ‘Is he down there, Ryland?’ she said, going to him, taking his arm. ‘Is your Jo down there?’ She stretched out a hand to take Shannon’s rope. ‘Go, go, you must go . . .’

  ‘No, miss,’ he whispered. ‘Yes – that is . . . Jo is, an’ your – your wee brother—’

  ‘Wolfie?’ breathed Dodo, aghast.

  ‘Go there, miss,’ said Ryland. ‘Run an’ I’ll follow.’

  ‘Wolfie?’ she whispered. ‘Wolfie?’ She clutched at Ryland’s collar. ‘Why . . . ?’ she whispered, then she was screaming. ‘Where – where is he?’

  Ryland had turned, was running towards the yard, Shannon trotting airily at his side, Ryland calling over his shoulder and pointing, ‘Two miles, miss, it’s two miles!’

  Dodo picked up her skirts and ran.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Someone was pulling him to his feet. His head was going to burst, his tongue was a plank, he couldn’t swallow – there was no power in his lungs – he couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Not hurt, s’alright, you’re not hurt,’ a voice was saying.

  The groaning and the roaring – was it the walls? Was it the very walls of this place? The floor of it beneath him, the whole workings – were they trembling and groaning? Was that Jo that was dragging him somewhere?

  The beam of a light darted and jumped over the ceiling. When Wolfie’s sight focused, he saw the quivering of a prop, a girder blown out and twisted, the gaping mouth of the roof, the stone fall behind.

  ‘The haulage rope,’ Jo whispered. ‘It’s off the overhead pulleys . . . Stay where you are.’

  Hero? Hero? Wolfie was groping through the dark.

  ‘Hero! Hero!’ he yelled.

  Jo put a strong hand on his shoulder. ‘He’s here, Wolfie. Behind you, right here. He wasn’t hit. Stay here a minute.’

  Wolfie tried to breathe, slowly in and slowly out, in and out, deep and slow.

  ‘They’ll be trapped like rats down there,’ Jo said. ‘The old workings’ll be the only way to the mother gate – the old gate . . .’ He grabbed Wolfie’s hand, swung him round. ‘Drag the horse. He won’t like it, but we’ve got to get in there.’

  He pulled Wolfie through the dark to what Wolfie thought was the entrance by which they’d come. Wolfie was tugging at Hero, feeling the resistance and the fear in him. He heard the screams of the tethered animals, hobbled and trapped and terrified. Jo had found a pick shaft, was telling Wolfie to take one from the rack by the door. He was bending and beginning to work at a closed door on the left side of the entrance-way. Hero was whinnying and pawing the air.

  ‘Get yer jacket off, tie it round ’is eyes – it’s the shadows – ’e’ll be calmer maybe if ’e can’t see the shadows.’

  ‘The others, Jo – the other horses—’

  ‘Help me,’ was Jo’s answer. ‘Got to get to the escape shaft of the old section – to the old road network.’ He put his pick down. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Keep the horse back an’ hold the light high.’

  He prised the door open.

  A rush of stale air hit them with a blast, solid and rancid as the breath of a tomb. They reeled in the
force of it, recoiled, choking in the stench of it.

  After a minute Jo uncovered his face and stepped gingerly into the opening.

  ‘Hold the light up,’ he said. ‘Shine it on to the roof.’

  Wolfie ran his torch over the sagging ceiling, the twisted girders, a way away a pile of fallen rock.

  ‘It were bricked off, long ago . . . there was a fire – they bricked the face of it off to starve it an’ it burned itself out. Come on,’ Jo urged.

  Wolfie hesitated, eyeing the entrance, measuring its height.

  Jo saw him and pulled him on. ‘Aye, high enough . . . horses used to work this road.’

  Wolfie stepped into the catacomb, retching almost with the stench. A sheen of moisture hung in front of his eyes. He pulled at Hero’s rope, and the horse followed him in quietly, bending expertly beneath the entrance lintel.

  ‘Always had faults in its geology. Even afore the fire, men always hated it more than any other district . . . Roof was always falling. Go on,’ he added. ‘Move on so as I can close the door.’ He took Wolfie’s light and checked the battery. ‘I’m leaving mine here on t’other side, so as they’ll see . . . anyone’ll see, if they come, to follow this way.’

  He dragged the door to behind them.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Other figures, white-faced and haggard, converged on the road to the top of the hill. Hundreds more were running up the brow towards the pit yard and winding gear.

  Dodo reached the stark black tower where the crowd was concentrating, a dark clot already pressed to the pit-head gate. Below, to the seaward side, more figures were rushing up the streets that climbed from the harbour, a whole community running.

  ‘Two shifts down there,’ someone at her side was saying, ‘those going in-by those going out-by.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty of them down there,’ another answered.

  ‘Shaft’s burned out.’

  Dodo saw what they called the shaft, the smoke pouring from it, nearby a cabin, and three men in suits talking. The crowd was pressing behind her, more than five hundred perhaps. She forced her way through to the cabin, straining to hear what the men in suits were saying.

  ‘Shaft Two?’

  ‘Destroyed.’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Wasn’t working before and won’t be working now. No way for ’em to get to it anyway.’

  ‘They’re trapped then.’

  ‘Aye . . . We ’ave ter wait for new cage.’

  ‘Get volunteers for a rescue party.’

  Wolfie, Dodo was thinking. Wolfie . . . Oh Wolfie.

  ‘A’most three miles, the fire’s near three miles from the down-take shaft. If Shaft Two isn’t working, they’re trapped – there’s no way out . . .’

  Dodo heard someone speak the words as if through a pounding sea,asifthe sea were in her head, churning and crashing.

  ‘They’ll be trapped . . . it’ll be a wall of fire down there and they’re behind it . . . No way out.’

  Wolfie trapped behind a wall of fire. Trapped in an exploding mine two miles from land, a hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea . . .

  When Dodo came to, she had a blanket over her shoulders. Someone put a cup of tea in her hands.

  ‘My brother—’ began Dodo.

  ‘My son,’ said the woman with the cup of tea.

  The sun was setting across the harbour. The woman told Dodo that a replacement cage had arrived.

  The sky darkened. Soft drizzle began to fall. Still more people were joining the crowd on the brow. The foreman called for a party of volunteers, for eight men. Ryland was the first to step forward.

  Dodo went to his side. ‘Take me down with you,’ she begged.

  ‘No, miss.’

  ‘If you don’t return within an hour, a second rescue party will be sent down,’ the foreman said as the men stepped into the cage.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  The cone of light showed an opening in the side of the tunnel, now bricked up. Behind it lay an old coalface.

  ‘There’s no other way,’ said Jo. ‘From there it’s two miles to the old shaft.’

  Wolfie leaned in to Hero’s neck, feeling the horse’s uncertainty. He held his head to Hero’s muzzle and breathed deeply, slowly, in with Hero, out with Hero.

  ‘Can we get through?’ he asked when the horse was calm.

  ‘Aye, an’ it’s the only way we’ll get out . . .’

  Jo took up his metal bar and crouched. Wolfie held up his light for Jo to see. Jo forced the bar into the crumbling mortar and prised out a slightly loose brick. He ran his hand around the gap, then prodded the space behind with his bar, tapped the brick behind.

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘Two bricks deep.’

  Whispering to Hero to stand, Wolfie crouched. One by one, brick by brick, they unpicked the face of it, leaving the second layer.

  ‘Go careful, slow and careful . . . Might be firedamp on t’other side. An’ if there’s damp . . .’

  Jo paused and wiped his brow.

  ‘Then what?’ asked Wolfie.

  Jo shook his head. ‘We brick it up quick.’

  Wolfie poured some water from his bottle into the palm of his hand for Hero. Hero snuffled and snorted. Water ran over the edges of Wolfie’s palm. He remembered the dark stable where a small foal had slurped milk and honey from the palm of his hand.

  ‘How much water do you have?’ Jo was asking.

  ‘Half,’ said Wolfie. ‘Half my bottle.’

  In the light of his lamp Wolfie saw Jo’s smile, a sad, charmed, exasperated smile.

  ‘Don’t go givin’ it all to the horse.’

  ‘How high is the tunnel, Jo?’

  ‘High enough. It were one o’ the main road workings – where the big horses worked. The condition of it’s maybe going to be more o’ a problem.’

  They set to again with their picks.

  ‘They knew,’ Jo said when they paused again to drink and rest. ‘Management always knew it were prone to spontaneous combustion. Seven hundred men killed, that day, the day my grampa died . . . it were like today, two shifts in t’ pit . . .’

  ‘What will happen to us, Jo?’

  Jo stretched a cut and bleeding hand across his face, rested his head against the wall. ‘I’ll bore a hole and test for damp. If the air’s all right . . .’

  Wolfie was outside, seeing himself as if from far away. A boy in a mine, with a horse. A wall of fire to their backs. The only way out down a road on which seven hundred men had once died, a road that was liable to explode suddenly and violently and unpredictably.

  He rested his head against Hero’s neck and whispered, ‘You’re two miles out to sea, a hundred fathoms below the waves, and you must break through a brick wall into a tunnel. You don’t know if there’s firedamp in there but it’s your only way out . . .’

  It felt better to say it.

  ‘’E trusts you, an’ all.’ Jo smiled, watching. ‘’E – look at him, so calm ’e is – ’e trusts you to get him home safe . . . an’ ’e’s looking into the belly of you, so get that pick – hold your lamp up for’s – best keep going, quick and steady, no panicking or rushing at it.’

  Later, while they waited to catch their breath, in the stillness they heard a distant roar.

  ‘The others . . . everyone else?’ asked Wolfie.

  Jo shook his head slowly.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The sky over the sea deepened. Grim lines were carved on stern, lamplit faces, all eyes following the dense smoke that poured from the shaft.

  As the cage was winched to the surface the crowd started forward. Immediately it was pushed back to make way for the stretchers to be carried out.

  Two bodies.

  The rest of the rescuers stepped out, black-faced, coughing and choking. Dodo saw Ryland among them. Wiping his face with the back of his hand, he spoke to the foreman, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘Ten at the foot of t’ shaft . . . too late – bodies . . . cage mangled
. . . can’t get through. Tubs off the rails – roof props blown out—’

  The foreman shouted over him. ‘More volunteers needed to bring ’em up.’

  People surged forward – men, women and children.

  ‘No, Don’t go – No!’ Ryland was shouting, waving at them, pushing between the crowd and the shaft. ‘There’s a change in the air current. I tell you, don’t go down.’

  The younger men looked at him and shook their heads. The foreman picked fifteen men. They grabbed at helmets, loaded timber and rescue gear.

  ‘I tell you, don’t go down!’ Ryland was still shouting at the crowd.

  The men in the cage looked at him silently as it began to drop. Ryland rushed to the foreman, grabbing him by the shoulders. ‘Any survivors will be at the bottom – you can’t get to ’em now – there’s a change in the air current. Get everyone out, get ’em out, I tell you, man, get the cage up!’

  Dodo was forcing her way forward to Ryland, grabbing at him. ‘What does it mean? What’s a “change in the air current” mean? What’s going to happen?’

  Ryland watched the cage drop and said quietly, ‘Each one of ’em’s a brother or a father or a son down there . . . they’ll not listen.’ He turned back to the foreman.

  Dodo pleaded with him, tugging at him, begging him to tell her what would happen, but Ryland turned to the foreman.

  ‘I tell you, man, get ’em out. Get ’em to bring up bodies at the foot o’ t’shaft and go no further.’

  The Salvation Army were setting up trestles, handing out tea, coffee and blankets. Dodo, shivering with fear, found her hands were trembling so much that she couldn’t raise the mug to her lips.

  ‘Dodo.’

  It was Hettie. Dodo fell into her arms.

  ‘Wolfie?’ Hettie asked.

  There was a violent boom. The earth shook under their feet. Flames shot a thousand feet into the sky. Fumes bellied out. The crowd fell back in horror and fear.

  ‘What’s happened? Hettie – what’s happening?’

  Ryland’s hands covered his face.