Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  “Where is Charlie?”

  “Stubborn! Ah well, you are in luck, my dear. As a matter of fact, a little bird told me only this morning that he has returned to Minetowns. Apparently, he has been living with an encampment of runaway children. They are starving, the dear little mites, so he has come to Minetowns to appeal for food.

  “I was going to mention it to your uncle,” Miss Cooper finishes, and reaches for another little pastry. “It might be of strategic interest. Dr. Renfrew, I am bursting with all this food. Why don’t you and I take a little walk in the fresh air? Then we can continue talking business, just us two.”

  [ 5 ]

  It leaves Eleanor alone with Livingstone. She knows the old servant relishes these moments: his darkness muffled by the sweets that he is constantly replacing; her horror at him hidden in the depths of her by a painful act of will. Like sharing one’s room with a snake; watching it sleep, curled up underneath the chair. The man is clearing up around her, arranging the dirty cups and plates upon a tray. Soft, fluid movements. When he speaks there is the same bland fluidity. As though a voice is but a tool, like a hand, or a knife.

  “You don’t know why you are here.”

  It takes Eleanor a split second to realise that these are her own words, echoed back at her. It strikes her that far from being oblivious to all that goes on in Renfrew’s study, Livingstone is always listening, recording, turning things over in his mind.

  “He needs a witness,” he continues. “A conscience. He is afraid of what he is about to do.”

  “I won’t absolve him.”

  “Of course not,” says Livingstone. “He wants punishment, not…the other thing.”

  He picks up one of the cups, holds it up to the light. The china is so fine, it seems translucent. A smear of lipstick is visible upon its rim.

  “He used to speak to me,” Livingstone carries on. “He would stand here, his back to me, and address the window. Talking to God, I suppose. But God is only a story, and I was there, right behind him. But now he has you.”

  His voice is quiet, his breath sweet. Eleanor cannot tell whether he is jealous of her usurpation. For all she knows he is relieved; or planning her murder as he speaks.

  “Where did he come by you?” she asks.

  “You mean, why does he tolerate me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he’s righteous, and I’m a villain?”

  She recalls their encounter on the day she found the harness: spitting his sweets into his open palm; trying to tar her in his Smoke.

  “You’re ugly inside.”

  Livingstone seems amused by this: the ghost of a smile on his placid features. He is still holding the china cup. In a moment he will smash it, she thinks. Crush it in his fist. But Livingstone merely runs a fingernail over the lipstick, scraping it off.

  “I was your uncle’s nurse. It’s true. After he was attacked, they sent to Oxford, to a famous surgeon. I was the man’s coachman. And assisted in the operation. There was nobody else, you see, and I didn’t mind the blood. What a way to meet a man: my fist inside his stomach, pinching close arteries; his guts around my wrist.

  “The surgeon left me with him when he had to go, promising he’d send help. But it wasn’t a nurse that came; it was the Second Smoke. So we smoked together, your uncle and I. You would have thought we were burning alive.

  “I think it saved him; he was bleeding again, but all the fresh Soot must have plugged the wound. We painted his sickroom black. And found something, in the depths of each other. Kinship. You see, he and I are just the same; down in the depths of us, in our livers. So now he keeps me around and I carry his knife for him, his whip. I smoke for him, even. Together we are the most feared man in Britain.”

  He says it stolidly, not as a boast but as a matter of fact, then raises his lipstick-stained finger and sniffs at it with great intensity, as though sniffing the woman who wore it, rooting her out. It could not be more indecent if he attached his nose to Miss Cooper’s rump.

  “But you needn’t worry, Miss Renfrew. You’ll have your uncle to yourself. I am going away soon. On a mission to the North. I am to find an angel—imagine that.”

  They say no more until Renfrew returns. Miss Cooper is no longer with him. The walk has winded her uncle and he sits down heavily upon the bed.

  “Escort Eleanor back to her rooms, Godfrey. And fetch me Smith. Tell him no more excuses. We require a sample of his wares.”

  “You mean I am to sample it.”

  “Yes.”

  “As preparation for the journey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” says Godfrey Livingstone. “All these sweets are rotting my teeth.”

  [ 6 ]

  Smith is in a flap. It shows in his attire as much as in the state of his room. The latter is a mess of maps, notes, letters, and books; of laundry, bedding, half-eaten meals. The man himself is thinning, his lustrous whiskers uncombed, bristling on his cheeks. Food stains down his shirtfronts; his collars soiled with sweat. Much of the time, when Nil comes to call on him, all Smith is wearing are his bathrobe and stockings; meaty toes showing in their holes. Today, though, he is dressed to go out in a double-breasted chequered suit. The fabric is expensive but rumpled; the shirtfront unironed, the bow tie askew.

  “There!” he greets Nil. “I was waiting for you.” Smith waves him closer with something of his usual ebullience, bends down to him across the barrier of his stomach. “It’s time for action. We have been given an ultimatum.”

  We.

  Nil and Smith.

  It is not quite as absurd as it sounds.

  Indeed, it has become increasingly difficult for Nil to define his relationship to the Company man. In principle, of course, it is unchanged. Smith has the beetle. It is there, in the room, in a bolted metal chest too heavy to lift by oneself, secured with a lock too complex even for Nil’s skill. Smith has the key: not just to this chest and the storehouses kept by the Company not far from the Keep, but to Nil’s past, to the boy they called Mowgli whose real name is forever lost. And so he remains, chained by his need for answers and by the complex feelings that bind him to Eleanor.

  In principle, then, Smith is an enemy or rather a mark, someone to be tricked and robbed. The fact that Smith knows very well that he is a mark—that Nil wishes only to steal from him and that his servility is feigned—does not change this, only complicates it. But of late Smith’s conversation with Nil has been increasingly intimate. He has been sharing his thoughts and memories with remarkable freedom, to the point where Smith will read out his letters to his wife and child, or confide his doubts about his place in history, or confess to the social rancour he feels towards the members of the high aristocracy who “infest” the Keep and Company alike.

  The truth is the man is isolated. Sure, there are about a dozen Company clerks who administer and guard the nearby storehouse. But they are men with limited horizons who are visibly discomfited by Smith’s manner. In the Keep, too, there are men who grow sick of its austerity and go in search of diversion in nearby villages—but these do not invite Smith to come along; nor would he want to risk a prolonged absence from his chamber.

  And thus he talks and shares himself with words, this man cut off from Smoke. Nil plays his role, insinuating himself: has become confidant, valet, protégé. It is in the nature of the deception that he struggles to distinguish between the role and his true feelings.

  I will know when I betray him.

  There is a surprising sting to the thought.

  [ 7 ]

  The ultimatum, then. Smith has been challenged to provide a sample of his “cure,” or, if he won’t submit it for study, to inoculate a volunteer. Or else the deal is off.

  Nil listens to this unmoved.

  “Do it then. Did you really think he would bu
y it without testing it?” And then Nil adds, secure enough in Smith’s need for him to prod him in his tender spot, “Renfrew’s been seeing Miss Cooper. Long, intimate meetings. Perhaps he’s trying to decide who has the better product. Or who asks the cheaper price.”

  Product. That’s what Smith has been calling Miss Cooper’s secret. He has been frantic in his attempts to find out what it is. Now, though, he barely reacts to the words but rather studies Nil. A thought runs through his features, a weighing of risks. Then Smith snorts and rises, decided: a man with more pluck than patience. Turns, walks over to the heavy metal box, digs out a key chain from his pocket and sets about opening a complex series of locks. A moment later the beetle is in Smith’s hands. He passes it over like a relic, cupped hand to cupped hand. The dance of feet on Nil’s palm; emotion welling up in him, a physical thing, pouring red and lilac from his throat. Smith sniffs at it with his usual obtuseness. Even so, his eyes are moist with the moment.

  “I need to know, Mowgli,” he says into red mist, “how much you remember of your past.”

  [ 8 ]

  Smith offers to answer some questions first. He unrolls a colourful map of Brazil and points to a patch of inland jungle: his fingers denoting an area so large it would take a lifetime to explore it. “Eleven, twelve years ago, there was a rumour that there existed a tribe, deep in the forest, that did not smoke. Sebastian Aschenstaedt heard it and sent a man to fetch him an exemplar, making sure not to infect it in the process. They captured you.”

  “I know this.”

  “Yes, of course. How about this then: Aschenstaedt’s was not the first expedition to find your people.”

  “Impossible. If someone had found us before, we would have been infected.”

  “Not if it happened before the Smoke.”

  Nil ponders this. “When?”

  “The early sixteen hundreds. An explorer by the name of João Vasconcelos. A Portuguese.”

  “He made the drawings I found on the ship!”

  “Yes. I was wondering whether you would recognise your birthplace. And react to it; spill the beans on your memories. Oh, it was done in the spirit of play, largely. After all, I had not counted on your being there. But when you showed up on the ship, I at once saw the value of what you might remember!”

  Smith beams at his own far-sightedness, and from the sheer joy that here they are, Company mogul and thief, their heads thrown together like two boys playing marbles.

  “On the picture you can see the natives wearing beetles. Like jewellery. He collected some specimens, Vasconcelos did: a handful of villagers, several dozen beetles. And plants, a whole range of plants, including a most curious flower that was like nothing he had seen before. Then they fought their way back through the jungle, all the way to the coast, and boarded their little fleet of ships, the São Martinho, the São Pedro, and the Madre de Deus. And headed home, to Porto.”

  With these words and the vision of the three ships crossing the black ocean, something falls into place in Nil, a truth both momentous and simple.

  “They brought the Smoke.”

  Smith smiles, excited by his own telling. “The crew on two of the ships soon developed a strange fever. It was, Vasconcelos writes, as though their insides were regrowing themselves. Some had a curious rash here, above their livers, ‘black and speckled, fading after two or three days.’ Most of the infected crew died. Those who did not recovered but started ‘emitting a pungent, many-hued fume.’ Soon both ships were down to a skeleton crew of Smokers.”

  “And Vasconcelos?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. The disease started on the São Pedro. A few days later the São Martinho reported its first case. The sailors had no grasp of the laws of infection, of course, but even so they were careful not to mingle crews: no boat went across from one ship to the other, all communication was by flag signal or else shouted across a twenty-yard gap in calm seas. Naturally, Vasconcelos expected to receive a report of the sickness being spotted on the Madre de Deus: he had the crew assembled twice a day and examined for symptoms. But the strange fact of the matter was that not one of them grew sick.

  “As they were drawing towards Porto, he came to the difficult decision to order the other two captains to turn around and head for an isolated island. The devil had touched them; they must not be allowed to land. The other captains—both new in their posts, having replaced the dead incumbents—refused. Vasconcelos decided he must sink the other ships and ordered his crew to fire on them. A naval battle ensued, just a few leagues off the Iberian coast. He sank the São Martinho and damaged the second ship, but took heavy damage to his sails himself. Vasconcelos watched the São Pedro escape. In a few days it would be home.

  “Afraid of what might await a crew associated with this new plague that had been carried into Porto by its sister ship, Vasconcelos patched his sails and made south for Madeira. They only stayed long enough to resupply and complete the most urgent repairs. He was nervous the illness would show itself within his crew, or that their stories would spread in town and lead to their arrest. Vasconcelos decided it was best to disappear somewhere far away; a safe haven, under Portuguese control, where a merchant-explorer like himself could quickly blend in. Soon the Madre de Deus sailed again, heading south and around the Cape of Good Hope. They were headed for Goa.”

  “India!”

  Nil looks up at Smith’s flushed, expectant face; picks through the details of his story, pieces it together. At length he asks:

  “What cargo did the Madre de Deus carry?”

  “Clever boy! Yes indeed: what did one ship carry that the others did not? Well, they had split the spoils. The Martinho and Pedro were carrying precious metals and minerals; seeds, exotic feathers, a pair of captured jaguars, two dozen exotic birds, and and and. But the things they had taken from your birthplace—the natives, the beetles, the strange, dark-petalled flowers—those were all on board the Madre de Deus.”

  “And did they make it to Goa?”

  “Barely. They had escaped one disease but got ravaged by others. Scurvy, dysentery, influenza—it’s hard to make sense of the notebooks. What is clear is that he arrived with barely enough men to sail the bloody ship. Vasconcelos’s cargo had no commercial value and he had very limited resources. He seems to have settled in the hills: a small house lent to him by a distant relative who had business interests in Goa. The natives all died, he writes, as did the beetles. But Vasconcelos planted a little garden. The flowers he had brought did not take to the soil, not until he bred in a strand of a local flower. The hybrid plant did better, though it seemed to suck all nutrients out of the ground within a few growth cycles. He completed his travel journals, drank a lot of brandy, and went a little mad. But his garden survived. It was not until much later that his flower’s properties were discovered. And later still until it was given a common name.”

  “The ‘Smoke Poppy.’ So it isn’t Indian at all.”

  “Not originally.”

  “And you found the Portuguese’s notebooks!”

  “I did. As well as a specimen beetle, remarkably preserved, that had made its way all the way from Goa to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. But this was later, after my own expedition. Initially, I had little interest in bugs. I was looking for the ur-poppy. The original flower. I thought perhaps it was more potent. A super-poppy. Hence, a business opportunity.”

  “And?”

  Smith smiles. “Your turn, Mowgli. We are trading, after all. Like for like. Tell me what you know.”

  And Nil would like to trade, is desperate for information; is willing at this moment to strike any bargain with this man if it but solved the riddle of who he is. He stands, groping around the dark cave of his memory. Smoke soon sketches his frustration.

  “I can’t remember. Help me—I need more.”

  Smith le
ans close, plucks the beetle from Nil’s palms that all this time has sat twitching in their cup. “Are you playing games with me, boy?”

  Nil shakes his head, feels a connection break with the removal of the beetle; a loss of identity, an un-belonging, as though Smith had taken a sponge and used it to erase his face. “Please,” he begs, humiliated, lost.

  “Did you notice how plump it has grown since our crossing?” Smith returns unheeding, the beetle between his forefinger and thumb. “I thought I had killed it. But it fed on the Storm.”

  [ 9 ]

  Smith takes Nil to the storehouse. He does so reluctantly: Nil can see the risk of it written into the flush of the man’s face. Nil, for his part, follows him eagerly, his obedience more than mere expedience. It is only when he imagines Eleanor watching them from her narrow window, Nil chasing Smith’s coat-tails as a duckling chases its mother, that a pang of shame runs through him.

  The storehouse is a compound, actually: walled and gated, dogs barking in the inner yard. Smith is known at the gatehouse, but even so he has to sign a number of forms before he is allowed entry. Only then is he presented with a key that the clerk recovers from a strongbox behind him and let through the reinforced door. Nil enters without any additional precautions. It has often struck him that in the world of the rich, a flunky is no person at all.

  They cross the yard, dogs barking at them from behind wire fences; unlock the door to a low, barrack-style building with a second interior gatehouse and a second guard. Again Smith has to sign. Then they enter the warehouse proper. It is a wide-open space lit by sparse electric lighting. Massive crates are stacked on top of each other, creating corridors within the single enormous room. Here and there the gap is wider, marking a thoroughfare, a route through which goods can be moved. The crates themselves are chalk-marked and studded with customs seals. The Company logo is everywhere.