Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  [ 5 ]

  At long last, a procession of coaches appears on the little road that winds itself towards a rocky beach and jetty. They divulge a dozen figures. The soldiers are marked by the rifles that are strapped to their shoulders. Eleanor can make out Smith by his bulk and the golden glow of his whiskers; makes out Mowgli by the swarthiness of his skin. The servant is there, the one who serves her food, recognisable by the tidiness of his movements. He is attending yet another man, hunched and haggard and wrapped into a coat despite the mildness of the weather.

  She thought she would recognise him by his walk or the way he has of holding his head, but what she sees down by the pier is the figure of a stranger, shrunken and diminished, his identity disclosed only by the deference paid to him by all the others. Then, as he laboriously climbs into a rowing boat, he makes a private little movement: both hands digging underneath the coat to smooth down his shirt, making sure its skirts remain safely tucked within his trousers. Her own hands mirror the gesture and find in it a gateway to her childhood. It is he, Renfrew, master of this building and ruler of this kingdom: her strict, unsmiling uncle who would sit with her and read when she was lying sick with measles or with mumps.

  The next moment he has seated himself and turned up his overcoat’s collar, and the similarity is gone. He reverts to what he was before: a stranger of great prominence, a sick man shivering in the warm spring breeze.

  The oarsmen take him out to sea.

  [ 6 ]

  The ships stink.

  They stink of sewage and fish guts; of seaweed, Smoke, and unwashed bodies; of the rotting basking shark that dangles from a hook at the rear of the closest ship and attracts to it a swarm of seabirds and a maelstrom of dark circling shapes just beneath the surface of the water. With each stroke of the oar, the stink grows stronger. Nil finds himself puckering his nostrils and breathing only through the mouth. The soldier in front of him does much the same. He has risen, stands legs spread at the bow of the boat, and has cocked his gun. What he is aiming at, Nil cannot tell.

  As for the prisoners, they have begun to cluster ever more thickly on the decks ahead to watch their slow approach; watch in silence, for the most part, jostling for space. There is a familiar tenor to their stare. Not fear, not anger. Hunger: that hollow-cheeked greed. Many of these men are armed with clubs or nails or a shard of glass picked from a broken bottle. Few are smoking as of yet.

  Behind Nil, sitting with his back to the prison ships if occasionally turning for a look, Smith is chattering away at Dr. Renfrew. That’s what Smith calls him. Not “Lord Protector,” not “sire,” nor even “sir.” Plain Dr. Renfrew. Nil took it for insolence until Smith explained it was Company policy. Renfrew’s precise rank and legal status are a matter of debate. His academic honours are not.

  “Do they not try to swim to freedom? It does not seem a very long distance. Though I suppose there are tidal currents to negotiate and the water is rather cold.”

  Smith’s voice: as hale and affable as ever, speaking loudly into the breeze. He has brought along a little wooden suitcase that Nil was asked to carry for him and is now using for a seat. A rolled-up umbrella is strapped to its top and is tangling up Nil’s legs.

  “One of them will try, on occasion. We have soldiers on watch.”

  Dr. Renfrew. Speaking with distaste or perhaps boredom; the voice crisper than the shrunken body would suggest.

  “They shoot them, I suppose.”

  “They fish them out, cut their knee tendons, and return them to the ship.”

  “Ah.”

  Five more strokes of the oars and they draw alongside the nearest ship. The soldiers are nervous. They don’t wear uniforms other than a blue armband on which yellow lines mark their rank. Perhaps, thinks Nil, Renfrew is short on money and would rather spend it on arms. Or else he is making a point. His is a citizen army. Which, turned around, would mean that there are no civilians, no bystanders. Renfrew is waging a war in which everyone is involved, body and soul. He himself is wearing a dinner jacket and tie, and a lamb’s wool greatcoat tied at the waist. Nil is at a loss how to square the dinner party clothes with the pinched Puritan face.

  They have brought their own ladder: a six-foot wood-and-iron structure that bends into a U at the top. It was rowed over by the second boat and is now hooked over the ship’s railing. The first soldier soon ascends. The other soldiers are nervous, watching their comrade climb the rungs. It requires both his hands, which means he cannot hold a gun. As he reaches the railing, he draws a pistol from his belt and shouts at the men on top to step back. Five further soldiers soon follow him up. Only then does their own rowboat moor at the bottom of the ladder. Renfrew’s servant is the next one up. Then his master. He shivers like a leaf while climbing up the ladder, his shrunken body lost in his too-big coat. Smith and Nil make up the rear. Nil pulls up the suitcase with the help of a rope.

  The deck is shiny with fish scales, grease, Soot: specks of silver, rainbow puddles, and dark muck. The soldiers have cleared a crescent of space by the side of the railing; are standing, twitchy, rifles pointing into the crowd. Now that Nil can see them more clearly, the prisoners look more pitiful than he expected. Starved peasants, tradesmen, petty thieves: most as shrunken and sickly as the man who condemned them to their fate.

  There can be no doubt that they have recognised Renfrew. Their eyes are on him, some in deference, some in anger. A few of the prisoners have fallen to their knees but are still holding on to their clubs.

  It strikes Nil what a risk Renfrew is taking by coming here in person. Smith will have insisted, no doubt, and clubs and glass shards are no match for rifles. Even so, the Lord Protector must have great courage. And be desperate. Negotiations, Nil understands, have not gone well. The Company sells Renfrew all manner of things: food, fuel, textiles, drugs. Sweets. But Renfrew is out of money and the Company’s line of credit is stretched to a point “where our risk assessors advise against further extension.” Nil chewed on this phrase of Smith’s awhile before he understood it. “Risk assessment” is a term from the insurance business, which Nil understands is a form of gambling. The Company is staking a bet on Renfrew. The potential gains are good but the fear of losses very real. Renfrew might lose; might die and his debts not be recognised by his successors. Nil wonders whether the Company has another Smith, sent north, selling the Miners goods against a similar line of credit. But no, it is said the Miners do not deal with Capital. Which may be the only reason the Company condescends to contemplate further loans to Renfrew at all.

  For a moment, all is static, like a tableau: the soldiers standing with rifles cocked, bayonets mounted on the barrels; the press of prisoners, made impassive by their ignorance about the purpose of this visit. Then Smith takes charge. He turns, says something to one of the soldiers, who in turn whistles down to one of his mates remaining with the boats. It appears that other than the ladder, the second boat carried two stools, a small tabletop, and a sawhorse that can serve as its base. These are quickly hoisted onto deck and then assembled. Smith takes a seat on one of the stools and gestures to Renfrew to join him. The Lord Protector does but only after whispering an order to his servant. At his gesture, with a haste that speaks of relief, the soldiers open a knapsack they have brought, distribute what is inside, and quickly slip it over their heads.

  Smoke masks.

  The smooth leather skulls, brass-rimmed goggles, and dangling snouts lend the men something insectoid and strange. Their humanity has fled. Renfrew’s servant, too, dons a mask, then offers another to his master. Renfrew shakes his head. Unsurprised, the servant then offers it to Nil. He sees it and recoils against the railing, retching up Smoke from deep within his throat; stands for a moment in the swell-rocked darkness of another ship, eight years old and treated like a monster. His Smoke is caught by the breeze. It whips towards the prisoners; spreads from skin to skin like the spar
k of a flame in a summer-parched forest, kindling fear of execution. Soldiers’ guns are pointing at their chests.

  But it is not for the purposes of killing that Smith has mounted this venture. He bends instead to retrieve his little suitcase; lifts it to the table and opens it wide. There are plates inside—bone china—bottles, crystal glasses, and a silver chandelier, all safely strapped into lined cavities. Also: a ham, a jar of mustard; a grilled kidney wrapped in paper; roast beef, already sliced; a jar of pickles, an assemblage of pork pies, a dozen boiled eggs. He puts these out as though he were at a picnic, licks clean his fingers, stuffs a napkin behind his collar. The umbrella he bids a soldier hold, to serve as a parasol. It is true, the day is uncommonly bright.

  The prisoners smoke. They smoke from hunger, from outrage, from humiliation. Soot soon spices the food. It does not halt Smith’s relish. He eats with his fingers, ignoring the silver cutlery, dabbing rolled-up slices of roast beef in mustard, cramming them whole into his cheek. Renfrew sits across from him, not eating, shivering, pale; fighting his body’s response with nothing but his will.

  Just as it seems that the crowd’s Smoke has reached a tipping point where even the guns won’t prevent a riot, Smith rises. The napkin he has stuck into his collar flaps in the breeze. He pulls it out and, still chewing, shoulders in amongst the soldiers’ half circle so that he can address the crowd.

  “Hungry?” he says, not jeering but as though he genuinely wants to know. “Fancy a luncheon with the Lord Protector? Well, I say, I will fight you for the privilege.”

  Without further ado he begins to strip, taking off his shirt and climbing out of his trousers, which leaves him in a one-piece cotton undergarment, starched and white, clinging disagreeably tight to his bulky form. He’s kept on his footwear, which turns out to be soft wrestling boots laced up well beyond his ankles. The prisoners watch him with curiosity and distrust; their Smoke has lightened, is carrying new flavours, not excluding hope.

  “Well then,” says Smith. “Pick your champion. If he wins, you all eat.”

  A murmur goes through the throng. There must be social structure to the ship—a king of rogues, a ruling council, gangs locked in rivalry and feud—but no one takes charge. Most of the prisoners seem unfit for fighting, and unschooled. Only here and there does the stance of a man suggest an acquaintance with violence, handed out and received. After a few moments, a man shoulders through. His thinness cannot quite disguise the size of his frame. What muscle remains on him resides in his powerful legs and the sunburned stump of a squat neck. He does not strip but simply rolls up his sleeves. His hands are the size of spades.

  Smith sizes him up and nods.

  “Look here, soldiers, give us some space.”

  [ 7 ]

  They fight in the no-man’s-land between the muzzles of the soldiers’ rifles and the press of the crowd. A circle has formed between these two groups, not quite closed but familiar enough from schoolyard brawls. At the centre, the two combatants stand, legs spread, hunched forward, their wrists tied together by a two-yard length of rope. Immediately it is obvious that both men have wrestled before: they tug at the rope, trying to pull one another off-balance; watch their distance and make sudden, controlled lunges for each other’s legs. Nil, observing the fight from the railing he has climbed to see over the top of the crowd, is transported back to the New York gym: the spectacle of Smith crucifying himself high in the air between two swinging rings and forcing his big body into slow gyrations. Now he leaps forward, takes hold of his opponent’s thigh, slams him hard into the decking, only to receive his opponent’s knee into his groin.

  They tumble across the ground. The prisoner comes out on top, his big hands spread across Smith’s face, fingers probing for his mouth, his eyes, something to hook and pop. Smith twists onto his belly, stabs an elbow into the man’s ribs, grunts when a fist rains down onto his neck. Already the prisoner is smoking, the purple froth of triumph and hate. The crowd catches it and, on a turn of the breeze, feeds it back to their champion. He’s got hold of Smith’s whiskers now and is slamming his head against the deck. Blood squirts from a cut near the eye. The crowd roars and smokes.

  Then Smith makes his move. He must have been preparing for it all this time, so smoothly does it come off; must have wriggled into position even while being beaten, taking advantage of his opponent’s rage and attendant sloppiness of technique. He pushes with one arm, twists, rolls; heaves his opponent off his back and in the same smooth movement rolls on top of him, the rope looped around the prisoner’s neck and one of the man’s legs so bent between his own that it seems it must break. The next moment it does: pops at the knee, so that calf and thigh no longer align. At the same time the rope turned noose tightens, cutting off the man’s scream. The eyes soon bulge within their sockets.

  If the man smoked before, he is now burning. Hurt and panic pour out of him, yellow and black, snake their way into the crowd. For a moment, it seems certain they will charge and a massacre will ensue. But something stalls them: takes the sting out of their anger, transforming it to fear.

  Smith.

  It’s nothing that he’s said or done. Rather it’s his very muteness that hushes them so, the muteness of his skin. It isn’t catching. Smith is smeared with his opponent’s Soot; is bloodied, coughing, retching in the fog of raw emotion; strains, grotesque and murderous, in his too-tight, one-piece toddler’s suit—but his skin exudes not the faintest wisp of Smoke. The man beneath him is now nearing death, his face dark and swollen, the eyes glossy and distended like boiled eggs trapped under the pressure of a fork. Then Smith relents; rises and, filled with the heat of his victory, thumps his Soot-black chest; stalks up and down before the hushing mob like a farmyard rooster and subjects them to his crow; then shoulders his way back through the soldiers and towards Renfrew, raining sweat and blood down on the sitting man, his mouth wide open to show it isn’t hiding sweets.

  “There—this is how you’ll win your war!”

  The Lord Protector looks up at him, dabs away the sweat and blood, then rises to return to the boats.

  [ 8 ]

  It is an orderly retreat. First Renfrew and his personal servant; then Smith, still breathing heavily, who has climbed back into his trousers but has yet to button up his shirt; then Nil and the soldiers, one by one. They leave behind the little table and the stools. The moment the last soldier has climbed onto the ladder, Nil expects to hear a roar, a charge, the noise of people fighting over food. But there is no immediate sound and within four strokes of the oars they are out of earshot. Soon the cluster of people on deck are too far away to interpret with certainty their movement. The soldiers have ripped off their Smoke masks by now, half suffocated by their charcoal filters. When Nil turns from the ships to a sweating Smith, he finds him calmed and fully dressed, studying Renfrew. Nil expects a look of satisfaction, a salesman’s joy at a pitch well made. What he finds instead in Smith’s gaze is an expression so new to those bluff features that it takes all the way to shore until Nil has made sense of it. Disappointment. Doubt. A sulk, even—a child getting the wrong present at Christmas. Chin jutting, the eyes soft and moist, his tongue overactive in the pocket of one cheek.

  The boat bumps quietly into the side of the jetty. With the help of his servant, the Lord Protector rises, steps onto dry land, and walks his invalid walk back up to his Keep.

  [ 9 ]

  Renfrew has another offer.

  This is the thought that Smith returns to, again and again, as he stands in his little broom cupboard of a room, stooping over a ceramic basin filled with water. He has taken off all his clothing other than his underpants and is in the process of sponging himself down with a wet washcloth that covers his right hand like a mitt. Dyspepsia constrains his movements, the result of exercise on a full stomach. It is calmed by sips of milk straight from the bottle, only to flare up again with sudden vengeance. W
hen he washes the swollen bruise along the left side of his ribs it is not the pain but the sudden uprush of acids that makes him crumple to the floor. Plain floorboards, no carpet, not a cushion in the room. No comfort, no vanities. He even had to send for a mirror from his ship. It is in this that he watches himself now.

  Smith’s body is a curious thing these days, the fatty tissues of his stomach, flank, and back marbled by black lines. These are not unlike veins but finer and many-branched, clustering most thickly near liver, kidneys, and heart. His flesh has always been quite pale and smooth and the contrast is not unpleasing. His neck is affected but not yet his throat and face. He does not fear the moment: he has seen photographs of New Zealand aboriginals and admired the virile charm of their darkly patterned cheeks. But it will be best if his business is concluded before such a transformation. Smith is too much a realist not to understand that Renfrew may balk at negotiating with a man who has black tendrils growing in his face.

  Which brings his thoughts back to the Lord Protector and their lunchtime excursion. Well, of course his performance had been theatrical, even melodramatic. Nor had it been strictly necessary. Had he, Smith, not survived a Black Storm and come to Renfrew’s shore in a ship repainted in Soot? But it seemed important to have Renfrew see for himself and, in doing so, shed all possible doubt. Smith had had the idea no sooner than he saw the prison ships moored out in the channel: Smoke-shrouded and isolated, they made for the perfect site for a demonstration. The slow approach by sea, the precautions, the Smoke masks and guns—they all just added to the drama. As for the picnic, did not each bite and swallow prove his cheeks were not hiding any sweets?