by Dan Vyleta
“No need to worry. The scar will make you look tough. Like a dog that’s had a good scrap. Half the ear missing. All the boys will love it.”
“Oh,” he says, “I wasn’t really thinking of the boys.”
Six days she has barely talked to him, has avoided his eyes. Now they are looking at her hard and level. She bends down to blow out the lamp.
“Better get ready, Mr. Argyle. We are leaving. Soon.”
“Good. I have said my good-byes. And I know where we go next.”
It irks Livia then that he—wounded, feeble, risen from the dead—so naturally presumes to take charge.
And even more that she is willing to follow.
LIZZY
Lord Spencer comes to the village the same day they ask me to go down the mine. They need me to look after an injured comrade, Mr. Mosley tells me. I know Mr. Mosley well. He’s one of the Union Men, a Voice in the Dark: the one who asked me will I join when I was only fourteen. They had use for a nurse and my father, dying, vouched for me. But then Mother sent me away before the year was out.
When we stand near the mine shaft waiting for the cage to arrive, I see a rider on the hillside, sitting tall in his saddle, looking down. Dark hair, that’s all I can see. I remember thinking: that’s what Mr. Argyle would look like, riding a horse. Thomas. It’s first names for us, now that I have washed him and sewn up his head. It wouldn’t do to kiss a “Mister.”
By the time I returned from the pit, it was the talk of every kitchen. Lord Julius Spencer, Lady Naylor’s son, come to visit us. Asking questions. And bringing news: that the lady’s coach has been attacked, and the lady’s daughter kidnapped, along with two young gentlemen. Only it might be that they’ve escaped their attackers and were wounded, lost in the wilds. Did we know anything?
They told him about the rowing boat they found smashed at the bottom of the rapids and he asked to see it; walked both sides of the riverbank, heading upstream, his dog digging its nose in the grass. It found something, near the cottage of the Mosleys. He questioned Mrs. Mosley most patiently, they said in the village pub that night. Spent a full hour in her cottage. And left her with a good bit of money. For her trouble. She put it all in the village alms box on the Sunday.
Lord Spencer returned to us the next morning. And the morning after that, and the one after that; came at dawn, alone on his horse. He liked the village’s “prospect,” he said; was interested in the mining business. Each day, he spread more money about. Talked to the drunks, the urchins, the village roughs. Tuppence for anyone who had a tale to spare; a pint of bitter at the pub. In his purse, a more precious kind of coin for anyone who had any real information. He’d make sure to flash it wherever he went, let people hold it, to see how heavy it was. Everyone was very impressed. We had none of us handled gold before.
I doubt the young lord learned much that was of any use. He heard hints, no doubt, about the union. That’s what he’d come for, most villagers assumed. To check up on us. Though from the smile on his face, you’d think he’d come to woo the village beauties. And they came out for him, too, in their Sunday frocks, hitching their skirts up when they passed him in the street, flashing their plump calves. He doffed his hat at them, Lord Spencer did. They all talked about it for days on end.
But as to the three people we were hiding, down in the blackness of the mine, nobody said a word. Only the Union Men knew, and of them only the inner circle. I didn’t tell a soul myself; snuck down the mine, night after night, with Mr. Mosley’s help. It weighed on us though, our secret, all the more because we didn’t know what we’d got ourselves involved in. Nobody dared ask why they were hiding from the girl’s own mother. It wasn’t done to ask questions. Not down there. Against our rules and the union’s spirit. Besides, it was safer that way. The less we knew, the less we could be held to account.
All the same there were theories about our charges. There always are. An elopement, an estrangement, a fight amongst nobles. The one I heard most often (whispered, in the darkness, far from Lord Spencer’s ears) was this: that the three were running from the law. That they had committed a mighty crime, the worst crime of all. Treason Against the Crown. Now it was the noose for them. If they were found. The way these whispers made it sound, they were as good as dead already.
The thing is: sooner or later, everyone gets found. There’s not one miscreant in the village who ever gave the bailiff the slip. You can hide for a week, a month, a year. But the law don’t forget. Or so my mum always says. She would know. She has a brother in jail somewhere and an uncle that was hung.
One thing’s for sure. If Lord Spencer was trying to find me, I would be hiding too. There is something crazed about his endless ream of questions, something forced about his constant smile. The third day he came to the village, the butcher slaughtered a pig in his honour. Lord Spencer went to watch. We have all of us done it, every child in the village, from curiosity, or on a dare, or because the screams drew us there: climbed the fence and taken a peek. And we all of us smoked; got good and filthy and went home to a hiding, for ruining our clothes. There is something about blood and offal freshly raised that sets it off. It takes many months to get used to it, till you can put down a sow with the same calm you tuck in a babe. That’s what Mr. Dillon told me, who is the village butcher and once had his eye on me, though he is fifty years old and I was fourteen then and still given to blushes. It’s why Mother sent me off into service. To protect my innocence. Well, the manor house took care of my innocence soon enough.
Lord Spencer, in any case, held to village custom; showed up at the slaughterhouse in his shirtsleeves and was hastily ushered to a stool; sat, pale and sweating, a quiver in his cheek; and was seen to swallow deep when the blood poured out into the bucket. But he did not smoke, his shirtsleeves stiff with starch and lily-white.
There are other oddities, other reports. Little Beth, the Kendricks’ daughter, says she saw him crying, walking hatless down the bridle path. And old Todd swears blind he saw him out riding after dusk, wearing a devil’s face made of rubber and steel. I myself watched him whip his dog with its leather leash for straying after a squirrel or rat: his mouth moving as though in admonition, but not a sound passing his lips. He did not smoke even then.
Lord Spencer has not always been like this. I first saw him a month or two after I had been taken into service. The Naylors’ cook came from our village. She was a childhood friend of my mother’s and recommended me. I arrived in May, a six-mile walk, my good clothes folded in a basket that got sodden with rain. Milord came in his summer vacation. They made a big fuss before he arrived: the servants, I mean, not his kin. Baron Naylor was already “unwell.” I didn’t know what they meant by that word just then. When the coach pulled up, we all assembled outside, with much giggling.
I liked him, in a way. He was dark and skulking and wore tan leather gloves, even around the house. Ate a lot, especially pudding. Slept in, went hunting. Blackened his sheets more than he should’ve done, considering his station. He was very full of himself even then, but so what? He was the future Lord of the Manor. Handsome. Rakish. Always teasing us girls.
Then he started changing. It was towards the end of the summer. Talk in the servants’ kitchen was, Lady Naylor had started paying attention to him. Called him to her chambers; kept him locked in with her for hours at a time. Nobody could quite work it out: what they were to each other, how they felt. I mean, he is the fruit of her womb. But he’d been raised by her first husband’s parents, people she would not consent to see even once a year. As Mother would put it: a proper rich people’s shambles.
In the course of the summer, Lady Naylor did for Lord Spencer whatever those schools of theirs are supposed to do to all them noble-born: she chilled his blood. Beat the Smoke out of him, and put it on a leash. The few gentryfolk I have seen in my time at the manor, they always looked a little sickly. Like they had their bowels full and didn’t have no prune juice. Though, of course, the vicar says it’s the only way to g
et to heaven.
With Lord Spencer it was different, though. Not one of us ever saw him smoke again. Not a mark on his linen. But whatever was dark in him only kept on growin’. You could almost feel it, when he walked past you in the hallway; the way a girl knows a man’s looking at her, Smoke curling out of his skin, even if he’s ten steps behind and walkin’ against the wind. The horses felt it too, grew skittish around him, unless he’d ridden them before. Broken them in. Same with the dogs in the kennels. Only his own bitch could abide him. It’s a smell, some of the stable hands said, too fine for our human noses. It’s like his Smoke has become invisible. Scratch him, though, and I swear he’ll bleed Soot.
ф
Six days in our charges announce they want to leave. Quickly. Just as soon as we can get them out.
I go down with Mr. Mosley when he goes to fetch them, deep in the night, no shift due for another four hours. I asked to come, so I can change the bandages one last time. Only they don’t need changing. The bleeding’s long stopped. I just want to see him one more time. Thomas. For six days I have nursed him. And got a kiss for my trouble. I know myself he does not like me the same as I like him: it’s there in his eyes when we light the lamp. But it was a good kiss all the same. He squeezes my shoulder when we part, and I wag a finger. Sister and brother then. I can live with it. It’s better than naught.
Before they set off, the others, too, wish to say their good-byes. They line up like they are waiting for service at the grocer’s. We are still in Thomas’s sick chamber, what we so grandly call our Union Hall. I shan’t be taking the lift with them, will stay behind to destroy any trace they was ever here. Mr. Cooper goes first. He steps close to me and shakes my hand. “Thank you,” he says. He even gives a little bow. If he’d kissed my hand on top of it, I would have died laughing. Despite my best attempts, I have grown fond of Mr. Cooper. He is hard to dislike. The trouble though is that he is awfully posh. Well-bred, down to the vowels of his “Thank you.” It’s not his fault, mind, but he can’t open his mouth without it reminding me what he is. And what I am. Not of his class. A servant, a miner’s daughter. Common as sin. He tried to wash his clothes one day, in a bucket, and it was so pathetic I did it for him in the end. But only when Miss Naylor was out. The young milady.
I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.
But she too tries to say good-bye. Tries to pay me, in fact, taking a silver cross off her neck and holding it out on her open palm.
“For your trouble,” she says.
I suppose she’s trying to be gracious. In the dark, I might have taken it and worn it against my breast. But in the beam of the lamp I can see the stiffness of her bearing, those meek, I’m-a-saint-because-I-know-I’m-a-sinner eyes. Like she’s standing portrait for a bust of Jesus.
“Please accept it as a token of our gratitude.”
I hiss my answer.
“Can’t,” I say. “People will see and assume I’m a thief. The justice of the peace will have me flogged.”
Miss Naylor looks aggrieved at that. And also a little cross. But she fights it down, takes off the collier’s jacket she’s sporting, tears off the whole of the sleeve of the dirty blouse she wears underneath, and hands it over to me.
“It’s French lace. You can resew it. Turn it into a handkerchief, or a baptismal wrap. When you have children, I mean.”
The coal-streaked rag hangs limp from my hand. I suppose she can see what I am thinking, because she grows embarrassed, tugs it out of my grasp.
“Forgive me. I’m sorry.”
And just for a moment she sounds real. Almost a little desperate. Trying in earnest to reach across the chasm between us. God knows who’s dug it.
It makes me feel sorry for her.
“I’ll keep it,” I say. “It’s very nice.”
We share a smile. Then she quickly slips back into her jacket, so the boys cannot see her, in her state of undress. And just like that she is her old self again. Distant. Cold as the dew.
“Mr. Argyle owes you his life,” she closes our transaction. “We are all in your debt.”
I nod, wave the rag in front of her face.
“That you are. But look here, you’ve already paid.”
THE LIBERAL
Dawn breaks and Charlie thinks his heart will break for joy.
They have been walking for several hours already, tottering along in the dark, taking breaks every few minutes when Thomas grows dizzy and can no longer keep pace. Then a ribbon of predawn light appears on the horizon, hazy and pale. But what miracles are revealed by this pallid smear! They are walking on a muddy path: rectangles of fields stretch on both sides, parcelled up by enclosure walls and dotted with barren trees. Above them sits a leaden sky, so overcast that the clouds have no contours. It is a world of browns and greys. But what greys! How many shades of brown!
Charlie cannot believe his eyes; stops in his tracks, blinking tears from his eyes. Then, rising from the knolls of lowly hills, a smear of orange paints itself across the east. Theirs is not a picture-book sunup, a fire-red balloon slowly mounting the world’s edge; sitting on it; then lightly bouncing up, to scale the sky. And yet it is the most beautiful thing Charlie has ever seen. By increments the world gains in contour. And when the cloud cover breaks, momentarily, he feels the light on his face like a physical touch, searching his features. He stares down, at himself, his hands, his legs, and laughs from pure joy, marvelling at how even the sound is different under an open sky.
Only then does he turn to his friends.
It has been, for Charlie, a lonely week, stuck in a hole in the earth. He spent many hours sitting with Thomas, unable for much of the time to reach him through his fever, listening to his dark ravings, cut off even from his Smoke that appeared to have no smell in the dark, nor any power to infect, and danced aimlessly before the timid light on the few occasions when they dared to light a lamp. He talked to Lizzy, of course, but the girl was taciturn with him, jealous of sharing her time with Thomas. And Charlie talked to Livia: touched her, kissed her, took her breath in his. But even this was an adulterated joy in a world without sight; a love affair conducted by shades. In the dark, Charlie felt, they could not be fully present to one another. It was a world without smiles. Without beauty. He would wake from sleep and be beset by the fear of not having woken; would reach around himself and find no one; or a stranger; or a friend—a lover?—whose emotion he could not read.
The dark did something for Livia, though. Something important, a kind of tempering, something smiths do to their steel. Charlie looks at her now, his first look since their kiss, and finds her changed. Thinner. Dirtier, of course. Holding herself differently. It makes him shy and awkward with her, and shier yet, more awkward, when she looks back at him and does not mirror his smile.
If Livia is thin, Thomas is emaciated. Cleaner than the rest of them (Lizzy saw to that, with the constant application of bucket and sponge) and pale underneath the speckling of coal dust. Out of the lip of his bandage crawl the tendrils of a dark blue tattoo, touch his eyebrow and the corner of his eye, where coal has grown into fresh scar tissue. His face is a mask of concentration: on the muddy path, on each step, keeping himself going by a sheer act of will.
By the time dawn has given way to midmorning they see it before them: not so much a village as a train supply station. Freight trains stop here to take on goods. Apparently, one can hop on a freight car for pennies, and ride with pigs or chickens or black mounds of coal. Mr. Mosley advised them to come here; it would attract less notice, he said, than going to town. It is a place tramps come, in the hope of transport. Tramps. Well, thinks Charlie, we certainly look the part. His trousers and jacket are stiff with filth. A drizzle has started and is leaving patterns on his dirty skin. As though on command, they stop in the shelter of a hill. It is time to make decisions.
ф
And yet the words won’t come right away. Overwhelmed by a world without a roof, they have spoken little all morning and an odd timid
ity clings to them yet, as though words will put in motion something irrevocable; will put a close to one part of their lives and commit them to a new one.
It’s Charlie who accepts it first.
“Do you want to go home?” he asks Livia. “To your mother?”
The girl shakes her head. She has come this far, assuming her mother’s complicity in the attack. Now she will see it out. Charlie knows better than to argue with her.
“To London, then.”
As Charlie says it, he hears the question in his own voice. It is directed at Thomas. He is their leader. They did not vote on it, nobody picked him and yet it is true, even now—especially now—that he is wounded and weak.
“I mean, if we can’t go back to Lady Naylor’s and want to do more than just sit around, it’s the only real option. ‘The Tobacco Dock, midnight, the twelfth of January.’ That’s what the ledger said in the laboratory. ‘Collect in person’: Lady Naylor will be there. She is working on something, something important, and she paid a fortune just for this one item.”
Thomas has clearly been thinking the same thing. Nevertheless there is a hesitation to his response.
“What day is it today? We were attacked on the second, and went down the mine on the third. Six days down the mine. The morning of the ninth?”
Both Charlie and Livia confirm his calculation.
“Then we have four whole days. Time enough.” He shudders slightly, squats down on his heels, steadying himself with one hand. It comes to Charlie that Thomas is very close to fainting. That he does not have the strength even to stand.
But his voice is firm.
“What we need is to talk to someone who can shed light on everything. The laboratory, the experiments, Lady Naylor’s theory of Smoke. Fresh information; some other perspective. Without it, we will continue tapping in the dark.” He juts his chin out, his mind made up. “You two go to London. I will go and see Renfrew.”
