The Black Country

by Alex Grecian

  “There’s your man,” Hammersmith said. “Why don’t you ask Mr Rose for a bite of something?”

  “We want you to come,” Peter said.

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “We like you,” Anna said. “We’d like to spend more time with you.”

  Hammersmith pulled away from them and stopped in front of Rose. “The children are hungry,” he said.

  Rose nodded and left his rag where it was, wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers, and sulked through the door, headed toward the kitchen. Anna shook her head. “You come, too,” she said.

  “I’d rather stay near your father.”

  “It’s no good if you don’t come,” Peter said.

  “I’ll be here when you’ve finished. Go with Mr Rose.”

  “I’m not hungry, after all,” Anna said. “Let’s have a chat.”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “Let’s have a chat.”

  “I’m sorry, children. I’m a bit run-down at the moment. Perhaps we can talk later.” Hammersmith walked rapidly away from Peter and Anna, but he could hear them scurrying after him. They seemed terribly nervous.

  As he drew near Sutton Price, he stopped, surprised by the expression on the miner’s face. Or rather, by the expressions, because Sutton’s features reflected a kaleidoscope of horror, shock, grief, pain, and anger. He picked up his youngest daughter by her shoulders and shook her. Her feet flopped back and forth almost comically, dancing in air. Hammersmith rushed forward, ignoring the two other children behind him.

  At that moment, the floor shook again as another tremor hit the inn. Hammersmith was running, his head and shoulders too far out over his feet. There was no possibility of regaining his balance. He saw a flash of light as his jaw smacked hard into the planks of the floor.

  He blinked hard and, just as his vision began to return, he saw Sutton Price, weirdly distorted, tall and out of perspective, stride confidently toward him, perfectly adapted by decades of experience with tremors, able to walk without a trace of difficulty. Price had Virginia by one arm, dragging her along after him. Hammersmith raised himself up as Price approached and opened his mouth to speak just as Price pulled back one steel-toed boot and kicked Hammersmith squarely in the forehead.

  There was another flash of light, brighter than the first, and then there was darkness and, strangely, a sharp whiff of sulfur as the world shuddered away from him.

  From far away, he heard Peter Price yell, “Father, no!” And then there was nothing.

  55

  Jessica woke with a start, and it took her a minute to get her bearings. She had heard Peter shouting, but associated his voice with a dream she had been having in which children were climbing up the walls and across the ceiling of the schoolroom, calling out to one another as they jockeyed to get into position above her head, planning to drop down on her like spiders. There had been a dark figure watching from the corner of the schoolroom, an evil man with a hideous face from a children’s rhyme. Despite the crackling fire in front of her, she was still shivering. She rubbed her goose-bumped arms and yawned.

  She craned her neck to see over the chair back behind her and saw Sutton Price, his daughter Virginia tucked up tight under one arm, march out into the snow, leaving the inn’s door wide open behind him. Peter and Anna followed their father as far as the threshold, but stopped there, reluctant to brave the storm again. Sergeant Hammersmith lay facedown on the floor, unmoving.

  Jessica jumped out of the chair and ran to Hammersmith. He was bleeding heavily from a scalp wound, but he was breathing. She strained to roll him over and shouted over her shoulder at the children.

  “Close the door!”

  Peter jumped as if he’d been burned, and then hurried to obey. The wind didn’t seem to be blowing as fiercely now, and the door shut with a bang. Bennett Rose came running from somewhere at the back of the inn. He was holding a small ceramic pot of groaty dick, with a pewter spoon sticking out of the top of it. He set it on the bar top and scuttled over to Jessica’s side, where he easily flipped Hammersmith over. He untied his apron, rolled it up in a ball, and stuck it under the sergeant’s head as a makeshift pillow. He used a corner of it to dab at Hammersmith’s wound, but that was clearly ineffective.

  “Anna,” he said, “go bring me a rag. And be quick about it, girl.”

  Anna opened her mouth as if to object, but changed her mind and ran to the counter where the fragrant groaty pudding steamed. She reached underneath and rummaged about a bit before producing a handful of rags. Jessica wondered whether they were clean, but decided it wasn’t the right time to be choosy. Anna brought the wad of threadbare fabric back to Rose, who pressed it tight to Hammersmith’s head.

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,” Rose said. “Heads bleed horrible bad, and I’ve seen my share of ’em every time something goes bad at the mines.”

  Jessica nodded. Of course she’d seen her share of head injuries, too, many of them fatal, but she appreciated the innkeeper’s optimism.

  “Too bad Dr Denby’s not here,” Jessica said. “He might . . .” She broke off and smacked herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. “I’m not especially clever today, am I? Anna, run upstairs and fetch Dr Kingsley. He’ll know what to do.”

  Anna bobbed her head and ran to the staircase. She turned back when Hammersmith moaned and she stood on the bottom step, watching as he sat up and grabbed his head. Blood soaked through the wad of rags and trickled out between his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Where?” he said.

  “Price?” Rose said. “Did he hit you?”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He left,” Jessica said. “He took Virginia. I don’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid I do,” Hammersmith said. He wrestled himself up off the floor and stood, swaying slightly. “I’m afraid Mr Rose was righter than we knew.”

  “Come to the fire,” Jessica said. “Sit.” She glanced at Anna, who still stood watching. “Anna, what are you doing? Go. Get the doctor.”

  Anna scampered up the steps, turned the corner at the landing, and hurried out of sight. They could hear her footsteps on the floor above.

  Hammersmith lurched toward the door. He grabbed for the knob, missed it, and fell against the jamb. Jessica pulled at his arm gently, physically suggesting that he listen to her, but he shrugged her off, found the knob, and wrenched the door open. An icy wind rushed into the room, and the fire wavered, flickered, protested.

  “Get word to Inspector Day, if you can,” Hammersmith said. “Tell him . . . Tell him I’ve gone to the seam.”

  “Why the seam?” Jessica said. “Sutton won’t go back there now.”

  “Where else would he go?”

  Hammersmith waited for a second, as if hoping she might have an actual answer, then he grabbed the side of the door with his free hand and propelled himself out into the storm. Jessica watched as he was swallowed by the snow and disappeared from sight, then she shut the door and leaned heavily against it as another tremor hit the inn and the air filled with a groaning sound, echoing down through the chimneys, shaking the air, and sending a shower of sparks into the room.

  Jessica heard something thump hard against the floor above her.

  56

  Dr Bernard Kingsley stood back up and looked down at the body of the little boy. Three tremors in the last few minutes had knocked him down, but he had spent long minutes staring at the boy, and he couldn’t blame the trembling earth for his hesitation.

  The boy’s mouth was a delicate pink bow, pursed as if about to smile, and his fine pale hair swept gently across his high forehead. His eyes had been dulled by the water, but Kingsley could imagine them in life, wide and flashing with curiosity as Oliver tottered about, learning to walk and to talk. But, of course, he would not learn anything more, would not grow up to take his proper pl
ace in society. He would be a child forever.

  It was Kingsley’s job to deal with corpses, and yet he was still shocked and dismayed every time a little one came across his table. (The most exacting portion of his mind offered up a correction: The boy was lying on an unmade bed, not a proper sterile table.) He thought of his own children, his two daughters.

  There was a soft rap at the door and he turned, pulled a sheet up over the boy’s body before speaking. “Yes?”

  The door swung open slowly, an inch, two, three. Finally a little girl’s head poked through the narrow opening. “Are you the doctor?”

  Kingsley stepped away from the bed and pulled the door open the rest of the way. He did his best to compose his expression, erase the sadness he felt must show there, and smiled down at the girl. “I am. My name is Dr Kingsley.” He held out his hand.

  The girl brushed her fingers delicately against his palm, barely touching him, in lieu of a handshake. “I’m Anna. Your policeman was kicked in the head by my father.”

  “I see.” But Kingsley didn’t see. Had no idea what she meant.

  “It’s bled quite a lot, but he can talk and move about like anything. I believe he may have gone.”

  “Does someone need my help, child?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Kingsley frowned. He looked around the room and located his satchel, checked it to be sure he had the basic necessities if someone had been injured. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but there seemed to be a possibility that either Hammersmith or Day had been kicked in the head, and a head injury was never a thing to take lightly. He smiled at Anna again and went to the door, but the girl stepped farther into the room, her gaze fixed on the shape covered by the sheet.

  “Is that Oliver?” she said.

  Kingsley nodded. “Did you know Oliver?”

  “He was my brother.”

  Kingsley moved back into the room and took a tentative step toward her. Hammersmith or Day, whichever had been injured, could probably wait a moment. The girl hadn’t imparted any real sense of urgency. He set his satchel down on the miniature round table by the door, but didn’t know what to do with his hands. Living, grieving people were much more complicated to deal with than the dead. He assumed the girl needed to be comforted, but wasn’t sure how to go about that tricky process. His wife had tended to their daughters’ emotional lives. He had always concentrated on the relatively simpler tasks of teaching.

  “I shouldn’t say that,” Anna said. She spoke to the dark corner of the room above the boy’s body, and Kingsley couldn’t see her face. “He wasn’t really my brother. Not properly. He only came along after my mother left. What did that make him?”

  “I’m not sure,” Kingsley said. “Did he live with you as a brother?”

  The girl nodded. Her hair bobbed and swung, heavy and clean and still slightly damp from melted snow.

  “What’s your name again, child?”

  “Anna. Anna Price.”

  “The boy shared a name with you.”

  “Yes.”

  Kingsley waited, looked nervously at the black bag on the table, aware that time was passing and that someone might be bleeding downstairs. But he was loath to interrupt whatever Anna was experiencing and equally uncomfortable about leaving her alone in the room with the body of her brother.

  “He could talk a little bit,” Anna said. “Only some words. And he could walk a bit, too, but he fell down a lot. He said my name. But he was sick. He coughed and he cried too much. He said my name when he was crying, but I didn’t help him.”

  Kingsley reached out and laid his hand lightly on her shoulder, and she turned and buried her face against him and he felt her small body convulsing with grief. He hugged her and felt his throat constrict with the memory of Fiona, sobbing, inconsolable at the death of her mother. He had felt useless then and he felt useless now. Anna said something, but the folds of Kingsley’s waistcoat smothered her words.

  “What did you say, Anna?”

  She pulled her face away from him and looked up. Tears streamed down her cheeks and snot coated her upper lip. Her eyes were bright pink, bloodshot and swollen. “I put him there,” she said. “Peter and I did that.”

  “Put him where, child?”

  “In the well. We threw him into the dark, and he never liked being in the dark. But we did it anyway. He was gone already and we didn’t know what to do.”

  Kingsley pulled back, horrified and confused. He put his hands on the girl’s shoulders and pushed her away, held her at arm’s length and looked at her livid eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, to try to understand what she was saying, but then the world opened up and collapsed around them.

  The roof broke open with an earsplitting roar, and the wind and the snow and the ice banged into the room and filled it, and the spidery black sky came crashing down. Anna was torn from Kingsley’s grip as something hit him hard in the back and sent him stumbling across the room. He heard her screaming from somewhere nearby. He hit the wall and spun around and gasped as a tree thrust itself at him too fast for escape.

  Icy branches punctured the plaster wall all around him and pushed through into the next room, and Anna Price stopped screaming and the world became curiously silent.

  57

  It sounded like a freight train bearing down on him, and Hammersmith was half turned, off balance, when the tremor reached him and threw him face-first into a drift. It buried him completely as snow shook loose and caved in over him. It was womblike under there, but cold crystalline light filtered through the white blanket. Hammersmith panicked and windmilled his arms, pushed himself up, and shook himself off. The handful of bloodstained rags that Rose had given him lay partially buried at his feet. Hammersmith touched his fingers to his head. They came back clean. No fresh blood. The wound was healing already. Or was frozen stiff. He turned and tried to see the inn with its giant protective tree through the falling grey sky, but it was invisible. He was alone.

  It was possible that something had happened at the inn. The majority of the noise had come from that direction, not far behind Hammersmith. He remembered what he’d been told, that the villagers routinely shoveled snow off their roofs in the winter before their buildings became dangerously heavy. Nobody had done much shoveling in the past two days. He shook his head and turned and continued on the way he had been going. He left the rags in the snow, the red turning to pink and slowly disappearing under fresh snow.

  Somewhere ahead of him was the killer of Oliver Price. He was sure of it.

  —

  Vicar Brothwood threw himself upon the altar as the entire church tipped and dropped several inches into a tunnel.

  The building weighed nearly three hundred tons, a fact the vicar wasn’t privy to, but he had known for years that it was only a matter of time before the ground gave way under much of the village. It was, after all, a coal-mining village. What could one do except trust in the Lord and pray for the best?

  The pews, which Henry had hastily put back in place, now slid across the center aisle and tapped against the pews on the other side of the sanctuary. The latter pews were fastened to the floor and held their ground against the heavy tide. Brothwood counted three sick men who had been knocked to the ground. The others, perhaps a hundred people, had stayed in place, even as pews and candlesticks and bibles skated smoothly past them. Brothwood smiled to see that a handful of people had slept through the disaster.

  He ran to help the three men back onto their pews and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Then he crossed his fingers, hoping the building would stay put just a little while longer, just until the people of Blackhampton were back on their feet.

  —

  A small tree, bigger than a sapling, but not more than five or six years old, had fallen across Day and knocked him into the snow. Its trunk was as big around as his leg, and he lay there,
catching his breath. Henry reached down and grabbed the tree, flung it aside, took a fistful of Day’s torn overcoat in his massive paw, and pulled the inspector to his feet.

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  “What happened, do you think?”

  “This village. They’ve dug tunnels all under it, chiseled out the coal in the ground. Everything’s sinking now. There’s nothing to hold it all up.”

  “That tree didn’t sink; it fell.”

  “Its roots weren’t anchored. It was top-heavy.”

  “Other trees fell, too. Look.”

  “Indeed.”

  They had left the road, cut cross-country toward the train depot, hoping to make better time, but the snow was deeper here and it had been a hard, slow slog. Day had lost count of the tremors they’d felt, but the tree line was a shaggy crosshatch of felled trees, their roots now exposed to the air like some other hidden forest made suddenly visible and vulnerable.

  “Look.” Henry pointed through the grey at the village on the other side of the road, not far, but in another world, on the distant horizon, made so by the storm.

  Day squinted and saw a fuzz of smoke. He galumphed along through the snow hoping for a better view. “Henry, is that the inn?”

  “It’s a tree, sir. A big one.”

  “But under the tree, Henry?”

  “Under the tree, that’s a house, but it’s all gone now, isn’t it?”

  “Henry, that’s the inn. Nevil’s in there! And Dr Kingsley!”

  Day galloped ahead, sending sprays of powder up on either side, but not moving very quickly despite the energy he was expending. Henry opened his overcoat and checked the little box inside. Baby bird Oliver looked up and chirped, snug in his nest, warmed by Henry’s body heat and the tangle of straw in the box. Henry closed the box again, made sure it was securely tucked away, buttoned his coat, and then strode along easily after Day.