The Iron Master

by Jean Stubbs

  ‘We must mint our own coins,’ said William, thinking aloud.

  It was a secret regret within him that they could not inscribe them with WILLIAM HOWARTH IRONMASTER around a portrait of himself, but must use the name and picture of the Foundry, and something in the nature of clasped hands as a symbol of partnership.

  ‘Let us earn the value of the coins first, my friend,’ said Caleb, and though he smiled he intended to rein in the wilder of William’s fancies.

  ‘Oh, I was but remarking,’ said William, halted by the smile, ‘that since industrial wages are well in excess of national coinage we should do as others do, and make our own tokens.’

  ‘Aye, and drive a four-in-hand as Ironmaster Crayshaw doth, and have folk running out from here to London to watch us pass!’

  ‘Nay, none of that!’ cried William, laughing, but he flushed up just the same, for he had dreamed all of that and more besides.

  ‘We should have been born earlier,’ Caleb went on, determined to root out this worldly pride, ‘and then King Louis of France could have invited us both to Paris, as he did Boulton and Watt. And perhaps, hearing of our fame, Queen Catherine of Russia might visit England and stay with us in our country retreat. Though I imagine she would find the smithy at Flawnes Green somewhat crowded!’

  But here he put his arm about William’s shoulders, for he saw he had wounded him; and began to lead him towards the office, where their dinners awaited them in pudding basins.

  ‘You mock me, Caleb, but I believe in us and in Belbrook. I do not picture myself cutting a fine figure at Court, but I confess to more practical day-dreams, it is true.’

  ‘Then tell me thy practical fantasies, Will, for I would indeed hear those!’

  They walked on, close as brothers.

  ‘Well,’ said William, laughing at himself again, ‘I think how Josiah Wedgwood walks through his workshops every day, and breaks every imperfect pot he sees. And how he writes in chalk, upon the benches of careless workmen, This won’t do for Josiah Wedgwood! For I love that in the man. He lives like a gentleman and toils like a slave. And I would do likewise.’

  He looked for approval, but Caleb grinned and made one observation.

  ‘Thee would have some difficulty in breaking an iron bar!’

  Then they laughed, and pretended to spar, and cuffed each other’s head, and raced each other to their wooden office: boys rather than ironmasters.

  Caleb’s letter was waiting for them, addressed to them both, written to them both, and he thrashed them both in spirit. He wielded words as if they had been swords, cutting his offenders down with accusations of treachery, hypocrisy and dishonesty. He referred only once to the triumph of the firing ceremony, and that at the end of the letter in a postscript.

  ‘So thou hast begun work at the Foundry? Then get thee about thy Business, for there is Much to be Done.’

  They could not eat their dinners that day, but worked on in silence.

  *

  Even the weather was oppressive. From being very wet it had turned very hot, and the Foundry was not the best of places to work in such conditions. The men glistened with sweat as they laboured in their various crafts and trades. Tempers were short and appetites poor. The greatest need was for water, and at dinner-time many of them preferred to plunge into the dirty river rather than sit at its bank and eat their hunk of bread and bacon. Ignatius Riordan and his navvies toiled on, unmoved by such frivolities. Naked to the waist, every giant worked smoothly and silently, raising his ten tons of soil a day, filling his seven wagons. And the men in the casting house laughed at the lot of them, for the stoves in there were heating to the boiling point of mercury, and they said that they only came out into the molten sun for a breath of fresh cool air.

  Heavy of heart and spirit, William and Caleb mingled with their labour force at every level. The silence from Somer Court was complete. No word, even from Catherine, who usually acted as mediator in these times. At Kit’s Hill there had been some sympathy, but William felt it was for the unknown Zelah rather than their son. And though Ned Howarth had not the temperament of old Caleb, he managed to compress a marked disapproval of the whole affair into one comment.

  ‘Why the hell not come out wi’ it at the first? Instead of taking his money and courting his daughter on the sly!’

  Charlotte and Dorcas were concerned lest Belbrook suffer, but Caleb Scholes was too fair-minded to vent his rage upon their business as well as themselves.

  And Charlotte said curiously, ‘How did you come to act as messenger, Caleb? You must have known what trouble that would cause?’

  Whereat young Caleb said unhappily, ‘Well, I love Zelah and I love William, and they love each other. And who else could they have asked to go between them?’

  ‘We pray your sister do not break her heart,’ said Dorcas at last.

  Therefore they worked in leaden duty. The sun poured down, the cupola fires blazed up, the cranes carried their ladles of incandescent iron, the liquid metal ran in tongues of fire into the sand pig bed. From the bellows house came the eternal roar, the god-like drawing of breath, the hissing cry. Into the mouth of this underworld the boys emptied their baskets of fuel, seeming like insects on the top of the furnace. And above the works hung great dark clouds of choking vapour, for there was no wind to drive them away.

  The tension increased, as though the atmosphere were a balloon blown to capacity, its skin about to burst. With aching heads and smarting eyes men found fault with one another, were abusive, savage. Then Ignatius Riordan thrust up his shaggy head to the heavens and shouted, ‘Rain, will you? You … ’ followed by such a stream of profanity that they feared to see God look out upon them, and damn their souls to all eternity.

  The sky grew livid, startling. The light was thick and bright and dense, as though filtered through a metal screen. Then a pair of cosmic scissors ripped across the tight silk, followed immediately by a thunderclap so loud that it drowned the noise of the ironworks.

  ‘You roused Him, Riordan!’ one man cried, and there was an uneasy ripple of laughter.

  The sky drew in upon itself in a great scowl and then exploded again.

  ‘It is directly overhead,’ said Caleb.

  The massed black clouds were illuminated suddenly, beautifully, fearfully. God’s drums rolled from end to end of the valley.

  ‘They’ve a bigger works up there!’ said William, grinning.

  He had always enjoyed thunderstorms. They seemed to him to come from some pagan forge. He thought of the Grecian gods, and of lame Vulcan. He and Ned had viewed such holocausts from the heights of Garth Fells when he was a boy. But Dorcas and Charlotte used to sit on the stairs with the house cat, afraid.

  Now the rain came in fat warm drops, and they could hear the spitting of the coal-hearths, where forty-ton fires transformed coal into coke. The rain ran, it poured, it roared like a river. And overhead the sky cracked and lit and cracked again. Ignatius considered the result of his oaths for a few more minutes, and then, seeing that further work would be hopeless, he threw his spade into a heap of earth and strode towards the big hut. The other labourers followed his example.

  William and Caleb had been about to ride back to Flawnes Green for supper, but they stayed now, feeling a need to watch over the ironworks, though there was nothing anyone could or should do. The evening shift of men tramped up the road, sodden with rain, and changed places with the tired shift which had marched in that morning. The storm raged and abated, raged again.

  ‘There’s nowt we can do, Mr Howarth,’ said Jim Cartwright, ‘and it’s all running right and running to time. A storm’s a storm, sir. We canna stop it, nor mend it. I should go home if I was you.’

  So when it was ebbing to a growl they mounted their horses and trotted back. But not to rest or to sleep. All night they lay awake, listening to the rain beating on the roof of the smithy. And when they rose next morning the valley drooped beneath a weight of water, and the river ran high up the bank and lipped the
wharf, heavy and swollen, bearing upon its swift current small wreckages which spoke of other places along its course.

  Caleb Scholes, the ironmaster, stood by Zelah’s bed and looked upon the work of his will. She had lain there a week, at first unspeaking and then feverish. It was as though all her strength had gone into the waiting. Now there was nothing to wait for she left the world: went somewhere else, to a place no one could follow her. Catherine had stayed with her night and day, relieved by maids only that she might rest herself for an hour or two. Finally, she had gone into her husband’s room and brought him back with her to the bedside.

  ‘It is his fault,’ cried Caleb. ‘It is William Howarth’s fault.’

  Zelah stared past and through him. They had remarked that she was quiet when anyone other than Catherine was there.

  ‘Well then,’ said Catherine, ‘it is his fault. But what shall thee do about it?’

  He looked at his wife and scowled. He walked away. Catherine sat by the bed and wrung out a cloth in clean water, and smoothed it on her daughter’s forehead. Presently, sensing that they were by themselves, Zelah began to ramble on again. And Catherine cried silently, and watched by her.

  On the second night of the rain William pushed his supper to one side and reached for his coat.

  ‘I shall go back to Belbrook,’ he announced.

  ‘What concerns thee so much?’ asked Caleb, concerned himself

  ‘The dam,’ said William.

  ‘It could not be safer,’ said Caleb, endeavouring to calm him. ‘Thee knows that better than I. Thou wast there when they rebuilt it. What, then?’

  ‘A feeling,’ said William. ‘A feeling that something is wrong.’

  ‘Then I shall come with thee, when I have ate my supper. So thee must eat with me, William. If thee need thy strength thee must eat.’

  So, sensibly, he prevailed upon his partner, and they finished supper together in a quieter state of mind. Then set forth in the dank green twilight.

  The new excavations were awash with water. Water was swilling soil down to the wharf, leaching the earth from under the rails on the inclined plane. Steam rose in clouds as dense as smoke where heat met moisture. But against the downpour Belbrook thrust up its mighty towers, and lit the sky with its own eerie fires, and thundered back at heaven with its incessant roar. And in its midst, stripped to the waist, its slaves ministered to it, and fed its fires and received the molten iron and transformed it into humble utensils.

  ‘So much for so little,’ said William to himself. ‘We should be casting cannon. The mountain brings forth a mouse else.’

  For he had been studying drawings of Wilkinson’s boring-drills, and felt himself more in sympathy with ordnance than pots and pans. But the Quakers had financed him, and he was but a cog in his own machine as yet.

  ‘Besides, I have done them harm enough,’ he murmured, thinking of Zelah.

  They mounted the side of the hill, threading their way through this fiery town until they reached its upper slopes.

  There they stood, as they had done not long since, before the old furnace.

  ‘Everything all right, Lem?’ William asked the night foreman.

  ‘Everything’s grand — except t’weather, Mr Howarth.’

  ‘No more explosions in the moulding rooms?’

  ‘Nay. There were but one or two, and nobody was hurt. Just covered wi’ dust. Th’air hadn’t enough discharge, and didna take fire until t’mould were filled. It’s common enough, Mr Howarth, at first. We’ve getten it sorted, now.’

  ‘Come,’ said William to Caleb, still uneasy, and they mounted to the top of the furnace which was filled, as usual, with its toiling human ants.

  The vast black stretch of water in the upper furnace pool seemed tranquil, in spite of the rain that pitted its velvet surface. Yet William could not rest. He sensed a mindless evil somewhere, and descended in no better spirits than he had come up. And to him, out of the gathering dark, came Ignatius Riordan, hands in pockets.

  He was dressed shabbily as usual, in his working clothes, but his bearing seemed resplendent in the pelting night.

  ‘What now, Riordan?’ William asked. ‘What do you do here, man?’

  The heavy face could have been hewn from granite. ‘Somethin’, sor,’ said Riordan. ‘Somethin’ wrong.’

  They understood each other.

  ‘Yes,’ said William. ‘I’m worried about the dam.’

  Riordan walked past him then, up to the dam wall, and inspected it minutely and at length. Shook his dirty felt hat from side to side, and returned to his master.

  ‘I’m going to tell the men to get out while this downpour lasts,’ he said on an impulse.

  ‘But what about the iron?’ Caleb asked

  ‘I want them out,’ William repeated. ‘Go back, Caleb. Go to the hut and wait for me.’

  ‘My men,’ said Riordan slowly.

  He meant that their hut was in the line of water, should the dam go.

  ‘I’ll send everyone out,’ said Caleb, suddenly convinced, but of what he could not say, and he ran off, shouting orders.

  ‘You, Riordan,’ William said peremptorily, ‘go with him.’

  But the Irishman shook his head. He had helped to build Belbrook. It was his responsibility too, or that is how he saw it. They stared at each other master and man both adamant, both leaders.

  The workers were moving, quickly but in an orderly fashion, out of their shops and down to the road, headed by Caleb and the foreman. One of them alerted the navvies, and they joined the throng to the iron gates.

  ‘We shall look pretty foolish,’ said William grimly, ‘if it’s for nothing.’

  But Riordan said, ‘No, sor.’

  In the immediate flare of cupola fire he was illuminated, and in the light of that same flare he looked and shouted and pointed to the dark trickle in the dam wall.

  ‘Dear God,’ cried William, cold in spite of the heat. ‘Run, man. Run!’

  And he set off pell-mell down the hillside. While the workforce, hearing him shout and seeing him run, themselves began running and shouting.

  The trickle was stronger, making a little bulge in the wall as though a tongue were stuck into the side of a cheek. The bricks were swivelling outwards as though on pivots. The trickle had a neighbour, and another, and another. The wall bulged like a lower lip, like a giant pout.

  William could not forbear looking over his shoulder as he ran, and then saw that the Irishman had not followed him.

  He had taken charge of that wall and it was letting him down, making a fool of Ignatius Riordan. And beyond the wall was a blind force in the dark which had always been against him: something he had fought, dumbly, obstinately, uncomprehendingly, all his days. He had known he could not win, but he would not be beaten either. It could overcome him, but he would not yield. It must take him on his own terms. So, for a few moments, he attempted to stop up the trickle with his great body, and hold the wall. And as he exerted the might of his muscle he swore defiant oaths out of the night of his soul, and against the weight of black water.

  Now it was Belbrook’s turn to give a cosmic firework show. From the far side of the river William and Caleb and their cohorts had a ringside seat, as the pool dam flooded the furnace, and the furnace blew up. Situated as it was, almost in the centre of the valley, that explosion blasted the ears and widened the eyes of all Wyndendale. Old ladies in bed woke with a start and screamed for the constable. Card-players dropped good and bad hands alike, and forgot them after. Horses panicked in stalls. Women near their time went into premature labour. Men ran and shouted and swore. Even work in the cotton mills stopped until they had ascertained what was afoot. And yet only one was killed.

  No woman would come near the navvies’ living quarters, so they washed him and laid him out themselves; and someone sponged his best clothes and dried them and brushed them, until they were as good as new; and dressed him in them, top hat and all.

  *

  William pai
d for his funeral, and commissioned Joe Burscough of Garth to make him an oak coffin, and Joe said it was the biggest coffin he had ever fashioned. Then they asked a priest to bury him, supposing that he had been born into the Catholic faith, but as he had never been near the church or proved his faith in any way, none would do it. Nor did any holy place want Ignatius Riordan lowered into its sacred soil. So in the end they buried him in a corner of Belbrook, near the river, and William and Caleb said a few words over him. And navvies came from all over the valley, and formed into an orderly procession without being warned or told, and marched behind his coffin, linking hands. As a mark of respect they had tied black handkerchiefs about their bull necks, and wore their Sunday clothes.

  ‘ … receive thy child, O Lord,’ Caleb prayed, ‘and be merciful to him. The light that thou kindled in him was small, and he could not make it bright.’

  He spoke with supreme compassion, and Riordan’s mates gave him credit for his feelings, but it was William who reached their hearts.

  ‘O Lord,’ William prayed, ‘Thou knowest this man better than we, for Thee fashioned such a one in Samson: strong and fearless and yet blinded by lust. Yet in his captivity was his freedom found, and in his blindness his greatest strength, and his last moments were his mightiest. Therefore, Lord, redeem his spirit. For if it serve Thee as his body hath served us, then halt Thou a great and goodly steward in Thy heavenly mansions.’

  And they cried ‘Amen!’ to that.

  Caleb the ironmaster had not been established in The Royal George for above half an hour when he called for a horse, and made his way down to Belbrook despite a night and a day travelling. The two young men were working with their labourers on the site, clearing debris, and there was no fear left in them when they greeted him. They had reached a limit of suffering. He could inflict no more, whatever he did. But he had not come, upon the heels of their letter, to add to their tribulations. His handshake was warm and firm. His smile kindly. His unshaven cheeks bore witness to his concern.