by Dan Vyleta
A hiss from Thomas snaps Charlie out of his musings and beckons him to follow. The second room appears to be the laboratory proper. The walls here are lined with pharmaceutical equipment: jars and glass tubes, rows of chemicals in dark brown bottles. Several apparatuses are set out on tables, though none are currently in use. A microscope takes pride of place on a separate desk. Thomas stands stooped near it, his hands leafing through a pile of notebooks.
“All her notes are in French. And over there, there’s a library of scientific texts. Books in German, Italian, Russian—you name it. Most of them illegal, no doubt. And then there is this.”
Thomas pulls Charlie over to a glass case in one corner. Here, too, apothecary bottles are lined up. Each of them is carefully labelled with a person’s name and a date. Each of them contains a black substance, more liquid than powder.
Soot.
Thomas opens the door of the glass case and points to a few of the bottles.
“James Hardy, remember him? No? A legal clerk. Accused of murdering his wife and children. The newspapers went wild about him. Two or three years ago, in Hexham, it was, up north. He was hanged.” He points to the label. “On my birthday—that’s why I remember it. And here, Anne MacNamara. You know about her, surely?”
Charlie does. “She burned down a church in Ipswich. More than fifty dead. She said she got the idea from a book. I remember my parents talking about her trial.”
“Sentenced to death. I don’t remember the date, but I bet you it is what it says on the bottle. Early last summer.”
Charlie scans the many bottles. There are more than two dozen.
“You think all of them—”
“Yes.”
“And all of them criminals. Murderers.”
“Yes. She harvests their Soot when they are executed.”
Charlie winces at the word. Harvest. It’s what the devil is said to do with souls.
“What else have you found, Thomas?”
“Slides for the microscope. Soot, blood drops, bits of tissue. Grains from those cigarettes: she has sliced them open and studied the contents. Medical texts, anatomy charts. The only thing in English I saw is a handwritten treatise on some kind of surgical procedure. But it’s hard to read by moonlight. Then there’s this.”
Thomas takes the lamp out of Charlie’s hands, trains it on another shelf. Its beam finds a row of glass jars in which strange, mottled objects hang, as though weightless, suspended in a liquid too viscous to be water. It takes Charlie a moment to identify them as bodily organs. Lungs and livers feature prominently, familiar enough from the school dinner table, where offal remains a staple. Their spongy tissue looks pale and bloated in the preserving fluid.
“From humans?”
Thomas shrugs. There is no need to say it. What interest could Lady Naylor have in animal parts?
Livia’s voice carries to them from the front room. “We must go.”
“One more minute.” Thomas turns his back on the jars and pulls Charlie along, to the last of the rooms. “Just a quick glance.”
The beam of the light travels before them. They themselves never make it past the threshold of the door.
In size it is a room much like the others: square, wood-panelled, a narrow window closed upon the night. There are more desks here and more shelves; books, scientific tools, a dusty sheet that hides some bulky machine.
But what absorbs Charlie’s and Thomas’s interest is a sort of alcove or closet at the far end of the room. It is not quite big enough to be thought of as a room in its own right and is separated from the main space by a row of iron bars that turn it into a kennel. A door is worked into the bars, just large enough to admit a person. Inside stand a cot, a stool, a chamber pot. Incongruously, a thick little carpet covers much of the floor of the alcove, and its walls have been wallpapered with a design that shows the silhouettes of ladies in ball gowns, each arrested in a different posture, gold leaf on mauve. As the lamp flickers, these dancers appear to twitch and move. The cot, somewhat too short and narrow to be comfortable, is freshly made. At the height of neck, wrists, and ankles, its metal frame anchors leather restraints. A ring of steel is let throat-high into the wall.
The boys stare at this alcove for a full minute. Again and again Charlie focusses the lamp on the wallpaper, the cot, the chamber pot. It’s this chamber pot that somehow fills him with a particular horror. In the absence of a prisoner it concentrates upon itself all the evil, the humiliation of this cage.
“We must go,” Livia calls again, softly, across the darkness of three rooms.
Without a word, the boys turn around and walk back to her, their faces grim with anger.
ф
They extinguish the lamp before Livia opens the door. Outside, the long corridor lies dark and silent. She turns, locks up, tension leaving her frame. It is as though she’s stepped out of a corset.
As she curls the key into her fist and leads the way back towards their room, a light is turned on, or rather the hood is turned back on a lamp already burning, arresting them in a beam focussed by its parabolic mirror. They freeze, blink blinded into the glare, see the outline of a figure behind the lamp, ten steps away. Then, as quickly as it was opened, the lamp hood is shut. Steps move away from them, into the freshly thickened darkness of the house. It all happens so quickly that there is no time to decide between flight and pursuit. By the time their eyes have recovered enough sight for them to consider either, it is too late. They walk back to their rooms with exaggerated slowness.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie says to Livia when they part ways. Sorry they got her into trouble. Sorry they mixed her up in their felony and weren’t clever enough not to get caught.
But her face robs all force from his words, her features flitting from self-reproach to a nunnish kind of pride: pride at how thorough the punishment will be that she has already begun devising for herself.
“There will be no need to assist me with my father tomorrow, Mr. Cooper. Good night, Mr. Argyle.”
The words have all the formality of a coroner pronouncing death.
ф
They cannot find sleep. Lying in their beds in darkness, separated by two steps and the walls we all erect around our thoughts, they listen to each other breathing. Their conversation is halting, interrupted by long minutes of silence.
“Who was it with the lamp?”
“Lady Naylor. Or Thorpe, or Julius, or Price. Does it really matter? One way or another, it means she knows.”
There is a rustle in the room, as of something creeping along a linen sheet. It might be Thomas running his fingernails over the pillow or a mouse scraping at the foot of the mattress. Charlie wants to light a candle and find out. But the room is cold around him, and his limbs leaden. He speaks to say something; to silence the sound.
“What’s all the Soot for?” he asks.
“Don’t know. But she likes it fresh, from killers, the moment they are dead.”
Thomas’s voice shifts with the next breath, grows younger somehow. In the darkness it is easy to imagine him as a child, twelve years old, eyes burning fiercely with fear and defiance.
“She is collecting Soot, the blackest she can get. Then who is the cage for, Charlie?”
Charlie does not answer at once. He pictures the iron collar screwed in the wall, high above the cage’s too-short cot. It seems too slender for Thomas’s neck.
“She wouldn’t,” he says at last.
“We don’t know the first thing about what Lady Naylor would or wouldn’t do.”
“Then we must do what we promised. Leave. This very day.”
Thomas responds by lighting a candle. He holds it close to his face, shadows chasing upwards, past his swollen cheeks and brows. His voice is calm, pensive.
“If that’s what it takes, you know…To defeat Smoke, I mean, once and for all. If all she’s missing is the last bit of Soot, the right sort of Soot, tainted from birth…I mean, if that’s what is growing in me, and if she asked me t
o—I’d do it, Charlie, I would. Even if it comes with that collar. Or with a rope.”
Charlie watches the thought unfold in Thomas. He doesn’t try to dissuade him. All he says is “She hasn’t asked.”
“Maybe she’s working up to it.”
“Maybe. If so, she can write you a letter.”
Thomas’s expression is stony. Then a smile crawls over his face.
“A letter?”
“Yes. Kindly request your volunteering yourself to be killed. Much obliged. RSVP at earliest convenience.”
They both giggle. It’s the sound of relief.
“You’re right, Charlie. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Then: “Where will we go?”
“Home. My parents set off for Ireland today. But Lady Naylor doesn’t need to know that. We will have the house to ourselves.”
Thomas is quiet for a moment.
“She might not let us,” he says at last.
“No,” Charlie concedes. “But then we’ll know what she is about.
“I am a Cooper,” he adds after some thought. “Firstborn son of the eighth Earl of Shaftesbury. It’d be hard to make me disappear.”
ф
They broach the subject with Lady Naylor at lunch. They could not locate her before, ate breakfast alone in the smaller of the three dining rooms. It is Charlie who takes the word. He explains how his sister’s recent letter included a note from his parents requesting he come home with his friend; how his mother in particular is keen to meet Mr. Argyle about whom she has heard so much; and adds that his father is desirous that they come as quickly as possible so that he can introduce them to a cousin visiting from Ireland.
Thomas interrupts his flow of eloquence.
“In short,” he says, “we will leave today.”
Throughout all this Lady Naylor sits impassive, stiff-backed, her fork embedded in a piece of cold pork.
“It’ll be dark before you get to the station. The roads aren’t safe. Besides, you are too late for the express.”
Thomas is about to argue, but she has already turned to her butler.
“Thorpe, please talk to the coachman. And help the gentlemen pack. They leave at dawn.”
ф
They spend the day in their room, only venturing forth for necessities. Neither of them says so out loud, but it’s because they are scared. Scared of something going wrong, someone stopping them, thwarting their escape. When they arrived, ten days ago, the house bored them. Now it feels like a trap. As they sit, counting the hours, Charlie finds his thoughts wandering to Livia. He feels like he owes her an explanation, or perhaps she him. About what exactly, it is hard to say.
After dinner Lady Naylor asks Charlie and Thomas to join her in her study. She sits down behind her desk and makes them swear “not to speak or otherwise mention any of my research or any of the historical insights I have shared with you, on your honour as gentlemen.” The phrase is so cumbersomely legalistic that Charlie half expects her to pull a sheet of paper from her drawer and require their signatures. Before they are dismissed, she rises to press their hands.
It’s Thomas’s turn first.
“I regret you are in such a hurry to leave, Mr. Argyle. I had high hopes for you.”
“I often disappoint.”
She smiles. “I imagine so.” She looks over at a letter lying on her desk. “There is news from Parliament today. I only just received it. They held a special session early this morning. On New Year’s Day, would you believe? It’s quite unprecedented. The Speaker called for a vote on the proposed amendments to the Purity of the Realm Act. Most of the delegates were out of town, of course. The amendment has been voted down. There will be no changes to the embargo. It’s a perfect Tory triumph. I am afraid your good Dr. Renfrew will be rather crushed.” She gives them a look of pain and scorn. “We live at a fateful time, gentlemen. The future of our country hangs in the balance. And you choose to behave like children playing hide-and-seek.”
She lets go of Thomas’s hand with a brusqueness bordering on violence. It’s Charlie’s turn next. Up close her face looks drawn, almost haggard. He has not noticed it before.
“You will, I trust, refrain from mentioning any details about my husband’s condition to anyone, even your family. It might be best to suggest you never saw him. He is bedridden. Let that be enough.”
She gives his hand a final squeeze, turns away from them, reclaims her seat.
“That is all. Good-bye, gentlemen. Bon voyage.”
“We won’t see you in the morning?”
“I have work to do.”
That is the last they know of her, bent over her desk, dipping her pen into a vat of ink. In her mind they seem to have already ceased to exist.
ф
Outside Lady Naylor’s office, they find Livia lingering. It is obvious she has waited for them, but as they approach she suddenly starts walking, away from them. Charlie runs after her for a few steps, stops, calls.
“We are leaving at dawn,” he calls.
She turns, and at the same time starts running. A twitch cuts a wrinkle through the fine composure of her face. And then the impossible happens: a drop of Smoke, blue-grey and almost liquid, pours from her nose onto her upper lip. The next moment she turns the corner. From far away a word reaches them, muffled, though she must have shouted it.
“Adieu.”
THOMAS
I do not sleep. There is another place, of not-sleep, that I can freely enter where one may dream but find no rest. It is like a room with a door that leans open. I try to resist it, but time and again am drawn there, poke open that door, slip my face (only my face!) around its frame. Inside sits another me, an iron ring around his neck, and the wallpaper stages a ball of a thousand grandes dames dancing. Gold leaf on mauve. As the Smoke pours out of me (the other me, the one I am watching), I burn my own silhouette into the wall. It discommodes the dancers. When dawn breaks through the open curtains, I am exhausted, my face still swollen like a pumpkin. Outside, the pheasant whose steady patrol was so much a part of our stay here is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he is no longer with us. We had pheasant soup last night.
The morning does not go to plan. The coach is there, and Thorpe has sent servants to have our luggage loaded, but up on the box sits not Harrington, the coachman who drove us here, but Mr. Price, a heavy shotgun thrown across his thighs. When I ask him what he thinks he is doing up there, he spits some phrases into his muffler.
“Lady’s orders. A band of Gypsies. Sighted not ten leagues from here. Job calls for someone good with a gun. Just in case.”
He cuts himself a plug of tobacco, sets to chewing it. Thorpe opens the door for us, his face blank of emotion. Charlie climbs in first.
“In a few hours we’ll be on the express,” he says.
A jolt of envy runs through me. Charlie’s soul is knit for hope. Mine’s stuck in the mud of the things that may go wrong.
Nobody waves us off. The moment the door is closed, Thorpe turns away, climbs the stairs to the manor. The sun is coming out, chasing mist along the ground. The crunch of gravel as the wheels start turning. There is a window at the back of the carriage; both Charlie and I press a brow to it, watch us pull away. We leave a pile of horse dung in our wake. Some dogs bark, a rooster hails the morning. Then we pass the gate.
Within two hundred yards of the manor house we stop. Before we can open the door to see what is going on, we hear Price’s voice, remonstrating with someone.
“Impossible. I’m not instructed to—” and “Does your mother know?”
“Drive,” says Livia, entering the coach in a skirt and jacket made of dark wool. “I am seeing the gentlemen to the station. Quick now, or we will miss the train.”
Reluctantly, Price puts the coach in motion. Livia sits down across from us and stares at us in grim pallor.
If we expect her to explain her actions, we are mistaken. But then, it’s obvious, really. She and Charlie haven’t said good-bye. They like each other, but she
’s the type of girl for whom that sort of thing is a big fuss. Only now there’s three in the coach, which is one too many for this sort of talk, so she looks at me grimly, while Charlie asks her shyly how does she do, and has she slept soundly and well. I could climb out, leave them to it, but the box only has one seat, and Price is on it, holding a shotgun as thick as my arm. So I settle into my coat and pretend to doze. I find the room without any difficulty. The door is only leaned to. I can feel the wood against my cheek, the handle in my fist. What harm can it do, just to take a peek?
I wake—if that’s what I do—when the morning sun falls into the coach window and finds my face. Blinking, I lean out, see a windmill grow out of the long stretch of its shadow and have a sudden sense of déjà vu. I have seen the same windmill in the same sort of light before, on the way to the house; then, too, in the moment of surfacing from the depths of dream, its currents and tides still tugging at my limbs. Then I realise it is not just the sun that has woken me. We have stopped.
There is a muddle to the things that follow, a violation of the laws of sequence that troubles me as much as the events. It starts with the birds, an explosion of birds, spat out of the windmill as though it is a cannon. Starlings. There must be a thousand of them, a spray of ink stains in the sky, clotting, thinning, shrouding the sun.
Then (but how can it be then and not before?) the whip-crack of a shot, followed—anticipated?—by a scream, a whinny, a sound so poised between the equine and the human tongues that I cannot place the screamer. The coach quivers, buckles; Charlie shouts and my hand can’t find the bloody handle of the door. I open it in time to see the second horse shot. The word does not capture it. It’s like a hatchet has been taken to its neck. A fist-sized chunk just disappears, is torn out in a spray of meat and bone, then the beast crumples in its harness. I see Price, leaping off the box seat and landing hard in the mud; see rather than hear him screaming to take cover. Behind him the first of the horses that was shot froths in wonder at the deadweight of its hoof dangling from a thread of skin.
