An opportunity—the conspirators
His first meeting with Waller came about, it seemed at the time, by chance, when they found themselves in the same inn, one journeying north, the other south. Waller introduced himself, expounding in the most gratifying manner on HM’s achievements and innovations, before progressing to the opportunities in that county. This was a new world for the new century now beginning, Waller said, a second Eden, a vast, untilled garden of minerals waiting to be cultivated by a man of wisdom and experience, a man of energy and insight, a man with the genius to raise the necessary capital.
It was a barbarous region, the natives without schooling, without speech almost, clothed in rags. The land was rock and fen and bog, not worth enclosing. The rain fell unceasingly, turning gullies to streams and streams to rivers, making marsh of every flat place.
Yet here thrifty nature had chosen to lay up her stores of silver and copper and lead, stacked and sealed and ready for use.
The numbers were beguiling. In the great mine that Waller compared to Potosí, the sun vein was eleven foot wide, with seven foot six inches in ore, yielding more than fifty ounces of silver to the ton. The east vein was four foot wide at its narrowest, and in places eight foot in solid ore. The bog vein, of potter’s ore, was four foot wide. There were further veins, each at least a yard wide, of silver lead, green copper (three tons of copper to every twenty of ore), and brown copper (five tons to every twenty).
And that was but one mine of more than a score available for leasing.
Waller had calculated that in the first year, having drained the water from the main veins, fifty miners would raise one thousand tons. By the fifth year, eight hundred miners would raise sixteen thousand tons. The washed ore was merchandisable at 3s. and 7d. a ton. After subtracting the cost of bone ash, casks, candles, buckets, storage, and the mending of bellows, the lessees would clear an annual profit of £171,970 9s. 9d.
* * *
—
HM brought in his cousin and a number of other gentlemen with whom he had done business, and the Company of Mine Adventurers was formed. Like conspirators of less worthy causes, they exchanged letters and documents, met in inns and private rooms, the flames lighting their faces as they plotted ways to fund their enterprise.
“A prospectus,” one would say, “advertising the benefits to the investor and to the nation.”
“Stating the portion to be set aside for charitable uses,” another would add.
“A plan of the mines.”
“Accounts to show their future value.”
“A lottery,” said one—later they wouldn’t remember who.
Lotteries were the entertainment of the age. The crowds flocked to them as to fairs and executions. The more distant the prize, the more certain they were of winning.
The Company would issue twenty-five thousand tickets. Prizewinners would receive shares. Those who drew blanks would be entitled, when the mines ultimately turned a profit, to their original outlays. There was no risk, no loss.
The Company advertised the scheme in newspapers and handbills. Subscribers included nobles and aldermen, a former lord mayor of London, a director of the East India Company, grocers, cobblers, widows and orphans, the poor of the village of Empingham. A fifth of the tickets were sold on the first day, all within two months.
And there, nature put her pert nose in the air and turned her back on them.
In this wild country, it was the dead work that was the problem: blasting, tunneling, propping, draining, draining, always draining. Whole years were spent pumping water. Even the newest, most costly engines struggled. The floods always returned.
A little ore was raised here, a little there. But after the drilling and the draining, certain necessary payments to friends and accomplices, and such transfers and long-term loans as, having examined his conscience, HM judged himself entitled (only those purchases required by his position: minor lordships, a second, very modest estate), there never seemed to be anything left to repay the investors.
He did what he could to put good news in place of bad. There is a difference between lying and presenting the best possible outcome, which no reasonable man could call fraud. Yet even HM, feeling queasy, found himself pleading with Waller to somehow speed the works—employ more men, buy more engines, open more levels, any by-our-lady thing.
As the creditors started to bleat, the Adventurers conspired again. They made more shares and sold them to more shareholders. They borrowed money. They lent money. They set up their own bank to issue bills (hadn’t the Goldsmiths and the Hollow Sword Blade Company done the same? Hadn’t the king himself when he needed money for war?), scant months before the Bank of England, like a jealous wife, seized all such activities for herself.
They were left with one bleak calculation: To raise ore required money. To raise money required ore.
He faces more troubles
The bay drops a forefoot in a hole, throws Shiers to the ground, and pulls up, trembling, on three legs. Shiers is bruised and pettish, but the horse is useless and must be shot. It is decided that Shiers will follow the path back to the mine, where he can find some conveyance to the inn. HM will continue on alone. That is, with Tall John.
In the very moment they part company with Shiers, it seems to HM that the rain becomes wetter, the wilderness wilder, himself more mortal. He feels a greasy sweat beneath his cold clothes and considers that he may have a touch of fever. He reminds himself again that he is an Adventurer, a genius richer than the mines below, knighted by His Royal Majesty, et cetera, et cetera.
As they climb again, the track fades into the surrounding thin tapestry of moss and sedge. Soon there is nothing more to see than the subtle byways left by savage creatures on their errands.
Tall John marches ahead as if a line of beacons blazes before him, leading HM down a hill so steep that Cassandra and her rider grunt, and along a valley where the marsh coalesces into a small river. Raindrops stipple the surface, reminding HM of the flies dancing at evening over the fishing pond on his father’s estate, and then of the time Richard pushed him into that pond and ran home laughing. HM, green with duckweed, dripped slowly after him, intending to creep in unseen. But Richard had forethought him. Every member of the household who could be called from his duties was assembled to point and mock.
They ascend to a high plateau where reeds huddle in slaty pools. Cassandra’s mood has become stoical, with a touch of resentment, like one of the less successful martyrs. When Tall John drops back to ride beside HM, she barely bothers to flick her tail.
“The mare thinks herself too good for our paths,” says Tall John.
“The mare cost nearly thirty guineas,” says HM (rounding up from twenty-two).
Tall John gives a fancy-gentlemen-and-their-fancy-horses shrug. “The best servant is a trusty companion,” he says. “Spratt knows where to put his feet. Does not mind getting them wet.”
HM glances at Spratt’s woolly round flanks and decides not to pursue this topic. “How much farther is it?”
“The farthest point of a journey is its end.”
“And what is that in by-our-lady miles?”
“Have no fear. I have led other gentlemen to a just reward.”
HM chews on this for a moment. “A well-lived life is its own reward.”
“I’ve heard that in the city, merchants catch the rain before it falls to the ground. That the poor must pay for even the air in their streets.”
“What low people do in their muddy hollows is of no concern to me.”
“There may be mud on the highest mountain,” says Tall John, and, before HM can conceive of any kind of retort, moves on ahead, Spratt putting his wet feet wheresoever he chooses.
* * *
—
As they advance, the vegetation is alchemized t
o bronze and pewter, ocher and lead. Dwarfish worts and spurges drown in every hoofprint. Great plashy expanses of dark bog grass are topped with quivering white flags. If this is not the realm of goblins nowhere is.
And these goblins are well known among miners and Adventurers—the tapping of their hammers signals the vein. A modern man like HM may scoff at such superstitions, but the method is proven. There are many cues that a rustic is more fitted to detect than a gentleman. Underlying minerals influence the spring herbage, planting directions for those who live close to the ground—just as in winter, heat rising from the ore to the frost writes letters only the unlettered can read.
And HM needs to believe that, with or without the help of goblins, Tall John has made a find. Because even such ore as the Company has been able to raise is yielding a paltry four or five ounces a ton. Because the debts are thirty times the remaining capital. Because the creditors will not accept promises, pleas, or yet more shares, but, like overindulged children, demand everything right now. Because they are taking their case to Parliament. Because HM’s defense is to lay the blame with Waller, who plotted from the beginning to cozen him. Because Waller has in his possession correspondence containing certain unwise statements that might, if made public, throw a poor light on HM’s actions, on his knowledge, and on what he has subsequently said about his actions and knowledge. That might, if taken in an ungenerous spirit, cast HM as unscrupulous, crooked, a liar, a thief even. Because if he is found guilty, he may lose the Company, his sons’ inheritance, his very freedom. For all these reasons it is essential that Tall John has located a seam of finest ore, right on the surface, fat and firm as floorboards.
The mist descends—the other realm
The rain has thickened to a dense curtain. If there is danger ahead, it will arrive without warning. Spratt seems eager to meet it, is speeding up, pulling away. HM spurs Cassandra, who for a few begrudging moments concedes a faster amble. (She will be ambling to market next week, HM vows.) The gray pony glides on, a two-headed centaur, round a ridge and out of sight.
When HM rounds the same ridge, he pulls up short. A few yards ahead, the land plummets into a great bowl of white mist. There is no sign of Tall John.
HM cannot see any path down into the bowl and is not keen to improvise one. He nudges Cassandra forward to take a closer look, but she digs her front feet in and, when he whips her on, wheels her rump around, stating that she has no intention of venturing that slope.
“Halooo!” he calls. And then again, “Halooo!”
Cassandra rolls an eye at him, contending that his shouts are as likely to attract wolves and footpads as Tall John.
“They will reach you first,” he says. All the same, he checks his pistol and regrets leaving the musket with Shiers.
He calls once more.
Tall John cannot be out of earshot already. This is some knavery. The man has tied cloths through the pony’s harness, as tinkers do, and is creeping away, leaving HM to face an unknown peril.
The list of his enemies is long. Waller. Those in the Company who support Waller. The Company’s creditors. Its rivals. The laborers. The ex-laborers. His envious neighbors, who, not content with digging up his wagonways, went so far as to plot an attempt on his person.
He calls yet again, anger propelling his voice a little farther.
It occurs to him then that perhaps he is misjudging Tall John. Perhaps the lout has merely fallen to his death. Perhaps he and the gray pony lie at the bottom of an abyss with broken necks.
The mist is surging over the ridge behind him, islanding him on this shelf like a mariner on a foreign shore, with only his wits to guard him from death or humiliation.
He listens. He hears Cassandra’s breath, her creaking harness. The primitive croaking of a moorland bird that has never apprehended music. Water seeping from every surface, oozing and dripping and trickling, and a gurgling like the laughter of small children setting nutshells to sail and watching them bob and founder. Grasses sighing, and beetles and worms crawling among the stems and burrowing down between them. Roots pushing into the thin soil and sliding around pebbles and rocks and seams and veins, knotting them in place, hoarding them, hiding them.
HM did not achieve his current position by sitting impotently, waiting for deliverance. He will not succumb. He has taken “paths before untrod.” It is his right and his destiny to enter nature’s abode, “the smiling offspring from her womb remove, and with her entrails glad the realms above.”
He points Cassandra toward the rim of the bowl and unleashes upon her such an almighty thwack that his whip slips from his grasp. For a moment it seems she will resist again, but she is too tired or bored, too habituated to complying with decisions from on high.
Down they go, through a white tunnel that leads to more white. The mist rolls and buffets, like a jeering crowd. The slope is steep and faced with loose, wet scree. The mare skids, recovers, skids again.
“You must be kidding me,” says Cassandra.
It is clear what has happened. Like those travelers of tales old who bargain with the devil, they have crossed to another realm, an enchanted, purgatorial kingdom where men babble and beasts speak, where time moves by inches. Outside, years pass, then centuries. Wars are fought, empires spread and contract, fortunes are lost and recovered. The world is changed utterly.
But HM knows how this future will be, for it is he who has molded it, he who can see it even now, through the billowing drapes of tomorrow.
His accusers are buried with their lawsuits in long-neglected graves. His sons and his sons’ sons have nurtured his legacy through the generations and carried it to every corner of the domain. Forests and pastures and all such wastes as they have passed through today are sown with mines and mills and workshops. Nature herself is employed to break open her treasury. No rock is too hard to breach, no material too elusive to extract. Her engines run day and night, needing only one man to oversee and perhaps a few boys to carry messages. Every valley, every mountain, every high street is lined with rails carrying kettles and coins and candles. Where wind is lacking, great bellows worked by lungs of fire blow into the canvas.
And where are the idle wastrels and the coneyheads? All such men are properly employed now, not in mines and fields, where nature’s powers have supplanted them, but in countinghouses and chanceries and stockrooms. Every village and hamlet has its school and library and coffeehouse. Every manor house has its university. Even the poorest are provided with all the learning necessary to make them useful. In well-tended rows, they bow their heads to their tasks.
And past their windows, at the command of her masters, the earth’s wealth flows. No longer curbed by whining investors or petty regulations, commerce runs swift and smooth and ceaseless, unfeeling, untiring, a machine of perpetual and profitable motion. The rails gleam in the dawn like spiderwebs, and the song of gears drowns the birds. At night, the stars, the planets, the moon herself are dimmed by the glitter of furnaces.
* * *
—
Faint noises can be detected through the mist, and an enticing, almost familiar scent. Cassandra lifts her muzzle, cheered by the possibility that their destination may be near. She had a stableboy once who, in lieu of good-bye, gave her warm bran mash with cider and sliced apples, and ever since, she has hoped for such reward at the end of each journey. In her narrow skull, experience and speculation are pressed together, the days that have disappointed layered with those more frequent imaginary ones that have not, and compounded by increments into a single substance in which the main element is sweetened, hallucinatory mush. She lengthens her stride and hurries toward whatever lies ahead.
Tristan Hughes
Up Here
THE DECISION HAD BEEN MADE the night before, though I’d played very little part in it. We’d been lying in bed and she’d said it had to be done. And because the day had been
long and we were tired and a bit drunk, I thought it might not stick, and hoped it wouldn’t. It seemed like the kind of thing you decided at night and safely forgot in the morning. But it wasn’t forgotten. We were going to shoot the dog. Or rather, I was going to shoot the dog.
That didn’t have to be spoken of at all. Up here, it was the kind of thing you did for your lover. In other places, you might be expected to do other things. I had never shot a dog before, but I was determined to now because I’d never done any of those other things in those other places. I wanted to show—to her, to myself—that I was getting better at being in love. I wanted to show her how committed I was. I couldn’t bring her twenty-thousand-dollar bills, but I could shoot her dog for her. “I’ll do it,” I’d said, before she’d even had to ask. That was my part of the decision.
* * *
—
The sun wasn’t fully up yet and the mosquitoes were bumping frantically against the screens on the windows. They were always at their most bold, or desperate, during these early hours; it gave an added, grating octave to the high, whining hum of their wings. My girlfriend, who worked as a naturalist in the park that surrounded us, had explained to me they were mainly crepuscular insects. “Crepuscular,” I’d said. “They use that word in biology?” Up until then I’d never heard it outside of a poem. It was like that with words here sometimes: they turned up in ways and forms you didn’t expect. For instance: what exactly did park mean in a place where they were as big as countries?
“Fucking crepuscular insects,” I whispered.
My head was hurting. I’d been more than a bit drunk.
“They’re only doing what they have to do,” my girlfriend said, turning around to face me.
She must have been awake for a while, but I hadn’t noticed because she’d been lying with her back to me. Now I could see she’d been crying and knew that what she’d decided had been remembered, and that it had stuck. After a second or two, she turned her back to me again and I reached over and gently touched her head and we ended up making love in that slow, muffled morning way, at once coy and intimate, where your bodies touch but your stale breath is carefully exhaled in other directions. It began slowly, but then she started pushing herself back onto me, strongly and roughly, as though it was after midnight and we were making a different kind of love. Afterward, she jumped out of bed and held up her hand so I wouldn’t follow her.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018 Page 32
