Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  “Have you ever been tempted, Eleanor? No, perhaps not. Not truly. I used to imagine it very simply, the devil showing up with an offer, reading the weakness of your heart. Not literally the devil, of course, but someone more mundane. A woman with a smile; perfume on her throat. But it’s much cleverer than that. It comes in pieces, often quite by chance. You are given a scrap of metal here, a trinket there; a pin, a screw, a bullet; a silver hammer, tiny like a toy. And before you know it, you have assembled a gun, cocked and loaded, with just the right heft. And, of course, your cause is just. It would be different if you found evil lurking in your heart. It’d give you pause.” He smiles, wanly, without humour. “I am dying, Eleanor; starving to death, little by little, ounce by ounce. It’s as though I am eating myself. And when I die this country will fall into disorder. I am running out of time.” He rises, pushing himself up with his arms. “Enough of this. We shall speak more tomorrow. Livingstone will escort you back.”

  But before she can so much as move or say good-bye, her uncle carries on, still in the same flat tones, like a puppet winding down its clockwork, a puppet with a cold.

  “I received a telephone call this morning. There is only one line—the Company put it in. The only place I am connected to is some office of theirs in Cherbourg: my single window onto the world. I pick up and am told that Thomas Argyle has been captured. In India. When I ask for particulars, the man tells me it is all he knows.” He pauses. “If it’s true, they will ship him here. Do you know how it makes me feel?”

  “Triumphant?”

  “Tired. If it’s true I must try to have him strangled before he reaches this shore. It’s like I said, dear niece. I have grown practical. I will see you in the morning.”

  [ 13 ]

  Livingstone walks behind her; soft, weightless steps. He unlocks the door to her cell, then enters after her, watches her notice the box upon her bed. All at once his evil is palpable, filling the room: a hard-faced man in need of a haircut. She recoils by instinct and watches him follow, penning her in between bed and wall.

  “You drank the Black Storm.” His voice is flat, quiet, confident. It’s not unlike his master’s. “I find that hard to believe.”

  His fingers dig around the inside of his mouth and retrieve five, six, seven sweets, some dark and opaque, others still clear. It is as though he’s removed a stopper from a tub. Smoke pours out of him, from the palms of his hands and the back of his collar, in intense, pressured jets. She meets them without moving, takes them in; returns a curl of sadness and disgust that puckers the man’s face. Hastily turning away from her, he shoves the sweets back in his mouth, then scrubs his hands clean in her washbowl. A moment later he is gone and she is alone, lifting the lid off the box.

  REPORT MARKED “FOR THE LORD PROTECTOR’S EYES ONLY.” BRISTOL, 29 APRIL 1908.

  Dear Sir,

  As instructed, we made a survey of London and surrounding areas. The primary object of our mission—to wit: to identify the point of origin of the first Black Storm as described by various stories and witness statements—has been a failure. No definite point of origin could be ascertained. Without a map or a more detailed witness statement, I believe any such search to be doomed to failure. As instructed we also searched the sewage system built in the closing years of the 1800s under the architectural guidance of the traitor Sebastian Aschenstaedt (also known as Ashton). Here we were successful in identifying a chamber with pool-like receptacles that broadly matches the description disseminated in (illegal) songs and stories. The place was rat-infested and abandoned. We did not encounter any Gales in the sewers or anywhere else in London. We abandoned our search when our food supplies ran out. There is nowhere in London that would have allowed us to replenish them.

  Signed: Captain Peter Goodfellow; sent by military courier.

  [Filed together with nearly identical report of a repeat mission from 3 June 1908, also signed by Goodfellow.]

   PIGEONS

  [ 1 ]

  The longer he stays in Minetowns, the more attention Balthazar is paying to the way people dress.

  There are codes and fashions. Leather caps are favoured by those the Miners call “Commissars.” Most of these are not city officials but simple busybodies and enthusiasts, fanatics of the Smoke. The cap must not be clean but rather stiff and shiny with Soot so as to appear almost lacquered. A cotton suit, a wide leather belt, and bulky worker’s boots complete the outfit. These are the vanguard of Minetowns, guarding against “pretentiousness” and “bourgeoisification.” Many of the city intellectuals and former members of the gentry are attracted to their ranks. They spend much of their time composing panegyrics to the simplicity of the Miner. Those Commissars who are elected onto the Council blacken their faces with Soot.

  At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum are those collectively referred to as the “Foremen.” Many of these used to think of themselves as skilled labourers before the Second Smoke; were lathe operators or textile cutters, engine technicians and welders. They dress in wool, wear donkey jackets and brimmed hats with little trinkets thrust into their headbands. Above all they are recognisable because of their advocacy of soap; some go so far as to scrub down their house walls once a week. The women may wear skirts or trousers and hold much respect within this community—it is from here rather than from amongst the Commissars that the push for the integration of married women into the workforce was first made. A type of bonnet goes with this brand of politics, and a particular variation of the Mark of Thomas: finer, more ornamental, dyed with rouge.

  There are other groups. Proclaimers, who remain Topside during Gales and spurn Downtowners as retrograde sceptics of the Smoke. Dark Miners, who only rarely venture out from underground, and favour the rational darkness provided by their coal-dusted existences. Shock Workers in colour-coded coveralls, whose exploits in the factories are broadcast like sports results and celebrated across town; Mutes, who make little use of the spoken word and attempt to communicate only in Smoke. There is a loose alliance of forces arguing for decisive preemptive aggression towards the South, and a loose alliance of others advocating a more defensive stance and even peaceful coexistence with Renfrew’s de facto republic.

  Minetowns has politics and codes it with cloth.

  He cannot help but think that all these dress codes would make lovely costumes.

  [ 2 ]

  Balthazar is working on his play. He has a simple concept: a collection of scenes from everyday life, depicting different social groups within Minetowns. A comedy of manners, played out in Smoke and mime. Ekklesia seems too big a stage for long oration. What he pictures for the grand finale is something unprecedented: a whole city laughing at itself. Laughing in Smoke, rainbow billows rising from the hole in the ground that is its sacred meeting place as though from a giant chimney; the sheep grazing in the hills looking on confused as they are bathed in many-hued Soot. Balthazar hopes it will dye their wool for good. He wants a miracle; an event so remarkable, Shovel will have to put it in the next edition of his book. To achieve it, he requires Smoke so supple and quick, it will race from skin to skin like a hummingbird darting between flowers; a Smoke so subtle, it will carry emotion notes normally drowned out by the dross of everyday life.

  In short, he will need a little help.

  Balthazar spent his first week here avoiding the man who sold him the vials that can quicken the Smoke. It’s why he came to Minetowns in the first place: to stock up. The last time he was here, he did not really know what he was buying. Farts in a glass, he remembers thinking. I’m being had like a fenland virgin. But there was just enough in the man’s manner to convince him that the bottle he bought was filled with something more than air; and even to keep his promise not to sample its goods till he was a day’s ride hence. Balthazar should have returned then, and bargained for more, but his ship was sailing and, truth be told, he was a little afraid. A G
ale in a bottle. It wasn’t just Renfrew’s government that might decide that knowledge of such a thing was reason to throw you in gaol.

  But now that Balthazar is looking for his seller, he cannot find him. Balthazar asks around. He does not know the man’s name but remembers the house; knocks on the door but learns only that he has moved. He works in the sausage factory, Balthazar is told, but when Balthazar asks there, he finds the man has changed jobs. At least Balthazar learns his name. Martin. Miners don’t like to use last names but, like everyone else, they have need to distinguish one Martin from another. This one is Martin from Spennymoor, recently of Red Brick Lane.

  When they say it like that, they make him sound like a prince.

  [ 3 ]

  He finds him at last. Martin from Spennymoor, recently of Red Brick Lane, has moved a half mile from town, into a shed cresting a hill. Martin is in the field behind the shed, looking after his goats. It looks like the sausage factory worker is making cheese for a living now; the money can’t be good, but his skin is ruddy from sun and wind. Even so there is a sadness that clings to the spare little man. No sooner has he seen Balthazar than he invites him into his home. Balthazar takes it for hospitality but at once revises his opinion. They are up in the hills, out of scrutiny of town. Even so, Martin is nervous about being seen with the playwright.

  They talk over mugs of hot water; Minetowns is out of tea. The man knows why Balthazar is here, of course, and it is not long before he leans forward and explains in urgent whispers that he’s afraid he “cannot help”; that he has “nothing” and, in fact, “never had anything”; and that even if he did have something at some point, “it was only that one time”—all the while looking about himself as though expecting a spy to be lurking in a corner. Balthazar takes it for sales strategy and makes sure to prune his face.

  “Come off it, Martin. You know yourself you sold me a bottle. ‘The Breath of a Gale’—you’d even given it a name! I paid you in cloth, good tweed that I was using for costumes. Look at your breeches, they are cut from my wool.” He pauses, sips at the water, burns his lip. “And now I’m back to buy more.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve got none to sell. I only had the bottle quite by chance.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  The man falls silent, brow furrowed in thinking; gets up, decided, and throws open the door as though getting ready to throw Balthazar out; then closes it again and returns to his chair; sits dumb and rooted, chewing on a thought. Balthazar looks from him to the narrow camp bed, the clumsy attempts to make homely this miserable little shed.

  “You are alone,” he says, quietly, sensing the man’s loneliness, his need to talk. “Last time I came you lived in a house. There was a boy. And a wife. You were wearing mourning; your father had died.”

  Balthazar hesitates over the next part, aware that it is important he gets the words right.

  “Do you want to tell me what went wrong?”

  Martin starts, smokes: anger and need. He rises a moment later, still drifting between these two poles, then slumps back into his chair.

  “Our Sammy,” he says. “He left us.”

  “Your son died.”

  “No, no. He ran away.”

  “Where?”

  “Where they all run, all the little bairns. North to their Angel and his fool religion where they freeze and starve.”

  [ 4 ]

  It is not the first time little Sammy has run away.

  They call them Smoke Children, the boys and girls who leave to live amongst the Gales. It all started two or three years ago, with a rumour. A children’s crusade, is how the rumour ran, like in the Middle Ages, only they are not marching on anything, just walking in the countryside, without apparent aim. A ragtag mob with no permanent abode. Always on the move, living off the land. Like locusts, say those who know their Bible and are put in mind of plagues. There is some sort of leader, a prophet who calls himself the Angel of the North. He’s sending out child preachers, to spread the word, or perhaps he doesn’t send them and they simply take it upon themselves to go looking for converts. They find them across the whole of the North. Children as young as seven or eight. Many are orphans; others are running from parents too liberal with the rod. Others yet are happy, loving, loved.

  Little Sammy first left when he was nine. It was summer, long days and warm. He finished his porridge in the morning; left a drawing: himself, walking up a hill, a winged creature up on top, bathed in its Smoke. Martin went after him but could not find him. Four weeks later, the boy returned, bringing with him a glass bottle. It was filled, Sammy explained—after he had received and recovered from a hiding—“with the living spirit of communion.” He said it very proudly, as though he knew what it meant. The boy had taken it into his head that he would open it, in the centre of Minetowns, and release whatever was inside. Naturally, his parents took the bottle away from him.

  “I nearly threw it away, I did, carried it out onto the moor and buried it. But Pa was dying and I didn’t want to leave his side. So I just locked it away.”

  “But surely you must have tried it out? After all, it might just have been air. Child’s play, some foolish game.”

  Martin starts denying it, then stops himself short. Balthazar can see joy in him now, the joy of unburdening to someone other than his goats.

  “I tried it just the once. Pa was going fast. Coal on the lung, struggling to breathe. We sat at his bed, my boy and I. This was just after he’d come back, when we didn’t yet know about the bottle. Then the boy dug in his knapsack and pulled it out. I thought it was gin at first, then realised it was empty. He opened the stopper, just for a moment, and then we just sat there, on the sickbed, holding hands. The things that crawled out of Pa!” He shakes his head at the memory, fights off a smile, his eyes wet and cheeks very pale. “Frisky, he was, like a lad of fourteen. On his deathbed! Then the pain came and we felt that, too: his anger at the pain. And our fear at his dying, and all the anger I held for his leaving Mam—all of it standing in the room like a ghost.” He pulls up his snot, wipes his mouth with the back of one hand then waves it about as though dispersing the memory in the room. “I opened the window then. Couldn’t take any more. Took the bottle away and hid it out of reach of the bairn.”

  [ 5 ]

  Now that his tale is told, Martin wants Balthazar to leave. It shows in his body, the way he has sat back on his chair when before he was leaning forward; shoulders squared, the teacup now a barrier between him and his guest. Balthazar does not stir. He has questions and knows Martin will answer them. The man has put his faith in Balthazar; entrusted him with the pain of his loss. It binds them together. Not like Smoke, thinks Balthazar, with its knotted tendrils of emotion. More like a ledger listing credit and debt.

  “Why not give it to the Council?” he asks. “You must have realised the bottle was important. Valuable. They’d have taken it off your hands.”

  “I thought about it. But who can say what they would’ve done? Might have made my son a hero, or thrown him out of town. And they certainly wouldn’t have paid us. No, I just locked it away in a box. Tried to forget about it. And then you came along with your players, and I thought here’s a man who’ll make it disappear.”

  “And pay.”

  Balthazar tries to think himself into the man’s situation. Being handed a miracle; something unheard of. Hiding it, hoping only that it’ll go away. Afraid he might be held responsible; the father dying in his bed upstairs.

  “How did your son get the bottle? How was it…harvested?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You didn’t ask? How can that possibly be?”

  But Martin has turned stubborn and won’t say. Balthazar waits five breaths before changing tack.

  “And Sammy’s back with the Smoke Children now? Where are they?”

 
“Who knows? Scotland, some say, up in the tip, though I wonder why they’d go there. No Gales that far north, or so people say.”

  Balthazar thinks back to the beggar child they met on their march from coast to town. What did she say again?

  “They chase the Gales,” he says out loud.

  “So everybody says. Christ knows what the hell it means.”

  [ 6 ]

  And that’s all Balthazar gets from Martin. He is what he is: a little man hiding from history. Now he fears for his boy. His wife, he explains, went looking for him and has been gone nigh on two months.

  “And you?”

  “Someone’s got to look after what we have.”

  Martin colours with his answer, then stands up with a puff of Smoke. Balthazar rises with him, sniffing the air; finds something in it that rattles him.

  “You’re afraid. It’s not the journey; not even of the Gales or the fear of losing property. You’re afraid of your own child.”

  Martin starts, makes to deny it, forms a fist.

  “What do you know?” he barks, anger winning out. “It isn’t just our Sammy but all of them. The children born in the Second Smoke. They are different.” He spits onto the well-scrubbed floor of his hut, watches it sizzle and smoke like a piece of burnt bacon dropped from a pan. “Everything’s changed. Sometimes I wish things would go back to how they were before.”

  “Leave then. Head south.”

  “And live with the Idlers?”

  He says it with disbelief rather than distaste; it is not so much that the notion is unpalatable as that it is unthinkable. Balthazar is not surprised. Everywhere he’s gone in Minetowns the same shorthand rules, the world reduced to simple terms, Miners and Idlers; the North, the South. The South is a bogeyman, the world of pampered toffs. This is a split land, hollowed out, stuck in the past.