Soot

by Dan Vyleta

  This makes her laugh. Smoke jumps out with the sound.

  “So where is he?”

  “Already gone. We couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. Smuggled him out, actually, for the sake of public order. In a few days we will send some provisions after him, on the sly. In return, Charlie will try to convince those children who belong to Minetowns to return to their parents.”

  “The Council did this? But why?”

  “Oh, for once the Council and I are in total agreement. What else can we do? He will split Minetowns, don’t you see? Half the city will follow him—to rescue their children, or else to join them—and the other half will fight them over the food they will wish to take along. And just now we can’t afford unrest. We have contracts to fulfil. Bricks and steel for wheat and gunpowder and American cotton. It’s all disgustingly pedestrian.”

  Livia breaks off; makes fists of her hands; curls her lip.

  “And perhaps I’m telling you all this because, deep down, I even want it to rip itself apart. Like a little girl who has spent all week making a doll’s house and then kicks it over in one second because it isn’t as nice as she had hoped.”

  Balthazar does not reply, and for a while they are content to sit and share the silence. A drizzle starts up. Within moments it is replaced by sunshine. The English spring; almost summer. Balthazar thinks back to snow in Saint John.

  “I still don’t understand it,” he says at length. “Not this, I mean, but you. You, Thomas, and Charlie. Our Trinity. I always thought you would be together. Inseparable. What happened?”

  It takes Livia a moment to rouse herself out of her silence.

  “What do you think happened? We were like everyone else. We enjoyed our wedding. It’s the after that turned out to be harder than we’d thought.”

  She looks over at him, appears to sense his frustration, his need.

  “You really want to know, Balthazar. For your theatre? Or for yourself? No, don’t answer, it does not matter.” She sighs, looks up, speaks to the sky not him. “We stood on the riverbank, that morning, and walked into the Second Smoke. Holding hands. I remember the feeling: a mad joy rushing through my body. We did not walk, we skipped! The black plume of the Storm on the horizon; Smoke all around, in colours we had never seen. We breathed it in, became connected. God, it was intense: like being born again, rediscovering the world all over, the way it felt to others.

  “It wasn’t until a week or so later, when the Second Smoke had already grown more sporadic, that we first heard about the destruction wrought by the Storm. It missed us, thank God, danced its way through London, then headed north and east. When we heard the rumours, we looked for the path it had cut. We even followed it for a while. Thomas’s idea. He felt himself responsible and needed to see the full extent of his guilt. Once we’d seen what was left of Cambridge even he’d had enough.

  “After that we just kept walking. Weeks on the road: total chaos in the land, not a train running, not a soul working. And in every village and hamlet, every little town: a Grand Awakening. Priests taking off their vestments, shaken in their faith; farmers turned prophets, finding a new God. Stately homes burning wherever the servants found their betters hid small, dirty souls. Communes forming in one place, and people turning into hermits in another, looking for solitude high in the hills. Disease, too, and hunger. And words! Everybody was talking, trying to give meaning to what they’d seen! A thousand declarations—of freedom, self-rule, universal human rights. When news spread that the Queen had died, a thousand village halls voted to abolish monarchy all by themselves. Who’d known the country was so ready for a change?”

  Livia breaks off, transported by her words despite herself.

  “But you don’t need me to tell you, Balthazar. You, too, were here.”

  Balthazar nods but does not elaborate. It is her story he craves. “What happened then? The three of you—where did you go?”

  “Here. We helped found this, Minetowns, the city of the free. Took a cottage, played house for a while. I suppose it was just like any other marriage. Petty jealousies, ecstatic reconciliations. For a while it was…fun.” She bites her lip, smiles. “Those dirty poets—the ones who made up songs about that part—they are not entirely wrong.”

  “But it did not stay…fun?”

  “Thomas was riddled with guilt. With every report of the Storm springing up again—leaping the sea, putting waste to Norway and beyond—he became more convinced that we had made a mistake. His mistake. That’s the thing about Thomas: if there is a weight to be carried, he wants to carry it alone. Charlie, meanwhile, had made a religion of the Gales. If only everyone communed and knew one another. He had a notion that you would never really hurt anyone you’d taken in your blood. In the end, he left. To walk the land. Chase Gales. Also, to leave us alone, Thomas and me. He had decided that we would be happier without him.”

  Balthazar ponders this, his head already composing a scene. Charlie packing his knapsack: all his clothes Soot-stiff, but folded neatly all the same.

  “And were you? Happier?”

  Livia hesitates over her answer. “Without Charlie…there was a lot of passion, not all of it good. We moved Downtown, trying to quiet ourselves and make a life in the shelter of the coal. For a while it almost worked. Then Mother got in touch by letter. She even used her old seal. She said she had grave news to impart. I told Thomas it was nonsense, a ploy. But Thomas insisted on going to see her. I think he just wanted to get away. Next I heard, he was bound for Hindustan. He sent me a two-line note.”

  “And the rumours about a child—”

  Livia hushes him.

  “Leave me some secrets, Balthazar. At least for today.”

  [ 5 ]

  Their conversation seems to have run its course, yet neither of them moves. The sun remains out and directly overhead. It is warm all of a sudden, the light golden. Perhaps it is this that brings Balthazar’s thoughts back to the Angel.

  “Who is he?” he wants to know. “What is he up to?”

  “That I don’t know. All I can tell you is this: Charlie Cooper has his dream. ‘Universal Communion.’ The end of all strife. Perhaps the Angel, too, believes in this dream. He is waiting for Charlie in Cumbria. They are heading south: to convert it to the Smoke. And when they get there, Renfrew will kill them. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Then you do not believe in Charlie’s dream.”

  Livia snorts at that, replies with a question. “Have you been in many Gales, Balthazar?”

  “Only during the Second Smoke.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Most people are afraid of losing themselves within a Gale; or of having their secrets exposed—the nasty little things they love, the pettiness with which they hate. But the biggest secret is this: that we are flimsy things, made up of air and need. Sometimes all a Gale leaves you with is just one little kernel that’s unquestionably you. For Charlie that kernel is kindness. For me—pride. So how can I believe? I am too shabby for Charlie’s dream.” She pauses, looks over at Balthazar, half serious, half in play. “How about you, Miss Black? What would I find at the bottom of your Smoke?”

  “Confusion. Vanity. Spite. A prune for a heart, and a soul as shallow as a pauper’s grave.”

  Livia laughs at that, genuinely pleased with the answer; embraces him and kisses him on the cheek.

  “I forgot to thank you for your play. That toff in his dirty underwear making speeches about democracy—it’s been years since I’ve laughed like that!”

  “Thank you.” But even as he says it, he works himself out of her embrace; rises and turns to leave. “Good-bye, Livia.”

  “Where are you going, Balthazar?”

  “I’m going after Charlie.”

  This stings her. “Why?”

&nb
sp; “Curiosity. I hear the Angel works miracles.” He wrinkles his nose over the silliness of the phrase. “Perhaps I want to learn to believe. Adieu.”

  When he reaches the stage at the bottom and looks back up into the stalls, Livia is still sitting there, alone in the bright almost-summer sun.

   DRAGON

  [ 1 ]

  The maid is young, perhaps only a year or two older than Eleanor. It makes the approach simpler somehow. Eleanor waits in the corridor until the young woman steps out of the room she has been tidying and begins to lock the door. She looks up at the sound of Eleanor’s steps, the key still in the lock. Then that familiar double take at the sight of the harness; a note of awe entering that plain young face. Renfrew has told Eleanor that the stories about her arrival have already adjusted; that she is now said to have worn the harness even then. There are even some who hold that it is more than just an apparatus; that it has grown into her flesh. In the chambermaid’s eyes there is a simpler speculation. Here she is, face-to-face with Renfrew’s ward.

  She wants to know why.

  Eleanor considered using a ruse to explain her request; some cover story that might fool the maid. But standing face-to-face with her—stepping closer now, so her words won’t carry in the corridor—it does not seem right. You must choose whether to treat people as tools or as equals. Renfrew told her that—the old Renfrew. He said he had it from a man called Kant.

  “I need to go in there,” Eleanor says now. “I promise I shan’t steal anything.”

  The maid blushes at this, confused and embarrassed. But her answer is firm. “I can’t…You’ll have to ask the mistress.”

  She is taller than Eleanor, her simple uniform hangs loose on her. Eleanor does not argue but reaches up with one hand, to cradle the girl’s cheek; rises to tiptoe, brings her eyes level with hers.

  “Please.”

  A curl of Smoke comes out with the word, travels from breath to breath: Eleanor’s shame is in it, her worry that she will get the maid in trouble. But so is her need. The maid recoils, shocked at the strength of it, of the depths hiding in Eleanor’s girlish frame. She does not hesitate but simply nods; reverses the action of the key and opens the door wide.

  “Thank you,” says Eleanor, no longer sure whether a ruse would not have been more honest. I have talent, she thinks. I use it to frighten those who should be my peers. “You can come back in half an hour and lock the door then.”

  [ 2 ]

  Drab brick-and-mortar walls and the same narrow window. Miss Cooper’s room is a cell like all the others, spartan and functional. Only her personal items provide a touch of colour, of femininity. There is a hairbrush with an ornate silver handle; a desk mirror and a second, larger looking glass that she has leaned against one wall; a rosewood writing case; a porcelain vase vivid with irises. The wardrobe is full of dresses in bold colours; a chest of drawers holds undergarments, white and stiff with starch. A row of little crystal bottles adorns the writing table. Eleanor bends to sniff at them and finds in them different accents of Miss Cooper’s scent. Slung over the bed’s footboard, recently straightened by the maid, is a pair of gloves made of such fine leather it has the weight of cloth.

  Eleanor starts to search the room. It is the desk she searches first, then the travel chest whose lid proves to be unlocked. Papers interest her: correspondence, money orders, private notes. It is a shabby business, this riffling through another’s affairs, but she performs it without impatience or guilt, reading every scrap of writing, making a note of every addressee and foreign stamp. A photograph—no, a daguerreotype—is buried amongst personal effects. It is a formal family portrait taken in a drawing room. Charlie and Ursula are perhaps fifteen and thirteen years of age, respectively. Their mother is plump and strikingly handsome, the father whippet-lean and heavily freckled. He died during the Second Smoke, Eleanor has heard, killed in a dispute by his own valet. The mother is alive and has a hand in the Cooper business; up until five minutes ago Eleanor had assumed she was planning a tranquil retirement at the Coopers’ ancestral home in the West Country.

  She replaces the photo, not without another look at a childish Charlie, whose nose seems too big for his boyish face; then resumes her study of some older telegrams that Miss Cooper has collected in the back of a pocketbook filled with dollar bills and Indian rupees. And as she stands there, wallet and money in her left hand, the papers in her right, the door swings open, and in a cloud of lace and perfume Ursula “Teddy” Cooper returns to her room.

  [ 3 ]

  She gives a little yelp of surprise, Miss Cooper does, and raises a mist of Smoke from ears and throat. Then she quickly regains her composure.

  “Good God, but you scared me!” she exclaims, already herself again and charming-sweet. “I suppose I shall have to sack the maid. A nuisance, Miss Renfrew—do you have any idea how hard it is to convince any of the village girls to come and work in this place?”

  Miss Cooper sits down on her bed—flops down, really—and unbuttons her coat.

  “So are you here on orders of the Lord Protector or on your own account? Your own, I wager. Renfrew would not risk displeasing me, not at this juncture.”

  Eleanor has said nothing thus far; has hardly moved. Now she replaces the pocketbook in the travel case, then turns to Miss Cooper.

  “If you tell my uncle, he will punish me by killing an innocent.”

  “Will he now? And will it have been Renfrew who has killed that innocent, or you—or I, as you imply? Or perhaps we will all be accomplices in murder. But come, why talk about death and killing, there’s no need for any of that. Sit down, I beg you. There! Oh, but how stiffly you perch in that monstrous thing he’s making you wear! And how pathetically your dress pokes out from under it—you’re like Cinderella stuck inside a parrot cage.”

  For the moment, Miss Cooper appears to have quite forgotten that Eleanor is a spy and an intruder. Good nature comes easily to her, a family trait. In her, it sits side by side with something else, calculating and dispassionate, appraising the world for what it’s worth.

  “So tell me, Eleanor, what did you learn about me this morning? What were you hoping to find?”

  Eleanor does not answer at once. In truth, there isn’t much she has learned. Just this:

  “You are leaving. You have sent for a ship. First it will collect your mother. Then it will come for you. A fast ship. You’re in a hurry to get away.” Eleanor pauses, looks over at Miss Cooper’s smiling face. “What is it you are selling Uncle? That’s what I came here to find out. It’s almost here, isn’t it? It’s why you are rushing off.”

  “So that’s what you’ve pieced together! Not bad.” Miss Cooper seems genuinely impressed. She sits forward and studies Eleanor, as though she were a mathematical problem, demanding subtle calculation. “Tell me, Eleanor, what do you think of your uncle these days? I need an honest answer, mind.”

  Eleanor’s mind races back to a recent conversation. “Your uncle’s a paper person,” Lady Naylor had mocked. “All his ideas come from books. The one time he looked into a mirror, he found that he was ugly. And now—the mirror has to be destroyed!”

  “He is sick,” Eleanor says now.

  “Yes, of course. He cannot digest. He’s wasting away.”

  “No, it’s not just his body. He…used to be a good man, in his way. Principled. Now he has convinced himself that principles can wait. Must wait. And at the same time, he knows he has fallen. So he must punish himself, just as much as he must win.”

  Miss Cooper nods. Eleanor’s judgement tallies with her own.

  “The thing I am selling him—how much do you know?”

  “I know that it is evil.”

  “Evil! How laden a term. Let’s say it is dangerous. Like a dragon—a sleeping dragon, all curled up into a little scaly knot. We found it in its mountain lair, on the other
side of the world. Actually, it was Renfrew who first thought of it. You see, our dragon had a little brother—or perhaps something like a child, or even just a toe clipping. Eleven years ago, an expedition had stumbled on it and brought it to England. To Oxford initially, for scientific study—defying the embargo, the mavericks! But after only a few weeks, this little dragon was moved to London—not because it was judged dangerous, mind, but because it was judged to have commercial value. You see, the dragon’s skin looked, in some respects, just like petrified Soot. Very, very pure Soot—the purest anyone had ever seen. A thousand times purer than the kind used in the manufacture of cigarettes. If it could be quickened—well, the market for cigarettes was booming just then. An Oxford college wasn’t a place for a treasure like that. But the experiments proved futile; the baby dragon slept and slept. Until, that is, my brother and his two friends set off Lady Naylor’s little bomb.”

  “It woke the dragon,” replies Eleanor to Miss Cooper’s expectant look. “And started the Black Storm.”

  “Bravo! That’s just what your uncle concluded. The first thing he did was send some men to London to look for that toe clipping—the place where the first Storm originated. But they could not find it and he concluded it had been consumed. So he had his servant pick through what remains of the Bodleian in Oxford in search of some record of its origin. The trail led to the Raj. Renfrew has no influence there—he needed a partner. So we began to correspond. It’s funny, isn’t it? They used to be arch-enemies, my father and Renfrew, a Tory aristocrat and a liberal upstart. But the present age pays little heed to such niceties. We got into business easily enough, the Lord Protector and that little corner of the Company where we Coopers were making our mark. There! Does that answer your question?”

  “It tells me why you are running. You sold Uncle a weapon. Now you are scared of it yourself.”

  “Scared”—Miss Cooper pulls a face at the word. “Well, perhaps I am at that. You see, all this time I thought Renfrew wanted the dragon simply as a threat: once woken, nobody will be able to control it, so I never dreamt he would want to wake it up. But as a threat, the ultimate weapon, buried deep in some coalmine perhaps, kept in reserve—it might prove a powerful tool. It could be used to bring the country in line; scare the North into submission.