by Diana Norman
Entombed, getting smaller, God oh God oh God, not like this, nowhere, I must, I can’t, a worm wriggling, it was coming in, God help, stop, she was a fossil, a smudge pressed into rock, thin, thin, they were stuffing her throat with black velvet, covering her nose . . .
She opened her mouth to scream herself into the blessed release of madness.
‘Stop it.’ Through the blackness and compression, not a voice, a jagged hook of sound. ‘Breathe, you . . . silly bitch.’
‘I can’tIcan’tIcan’t.’
‘Breathe when I breathe.’
She took in air from him, and again. I can’tIcan’tlet me out.
‘Breathe.’ He was her lungs. Her mind kept sliding so he nailed it to himself, whispering like a lover, terrible things. ‘Breathe, fuck you . . . hear me? Hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Breathe . . . There’s . . . air . . . Breathe it, you little bugger . . . Breathing?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll not . . . let you die.’
She had no identity; like one organism they took in air together and let it out. For hours. He wasn’t anybody, just her oxygen. Only his words were corporeal, less something spoken, more a rope she clung to as it pulled her through the ocean of panic.
It wasn’t bad, this end of the fall, hear him? Yes. Wullie’d come, they’d clear it, hear him? Yes. You’ll not die, I’ll not let you go. Hear him? Yes. Any moment they’d hear the picks. Hear them? Yes.
And then she did. A needle of sound so far away, so ineffectual, the panic began again.
‘Stop it. Breathe.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘We’re going to live, pet.’
‘I know.’
She felt his muscles make a gigantic move to free his arm, causing him to grunt with pain. His hand was against one side of her face, his thumb smoothing her cheek. ‘Good lass.’
They were separate beings now, a feminine and a masculine again, very feminine, very masculine.
Life oozed back and with it a lust like no other, blood-red, wriggling, salt desire. She felt a hard swell against her pelvis and if she could have inveigled herself onto this new hook she would have. Of all bloody times not to be able to move. There was no past, probably no future, but Lord let there be a Now. I want, I want. I want him . . .
The hit of the picks was nearer; somebody was shouting.
Another effort from him: ‘Here, Wullie.’ There was a vibration in the chest against hers; God, was he laughing? Or dying? She heard him say sleepily: ‘Don’t go ’way, pet.’
‘I’m here.’ But it was dead weight on her now, the life had gone out of him and she was shouting for the rescuers.
Somewhere there was light. When they got through and lifted him away from her, they got blood on their hands.
Jamie’s voice: ‘God Jesus, Wullie, is he deed?’
‘Not him.’ They threaded him like a baby through the hole they’d made to where other hands took him and put him on a stretcher, then they came for Makepeace. ‘All right now, pet.’
‘Will he be all right, Wullie?’
He grinned. ‘Andra?’ She’d asked a silly question, but when she wanted to follow the stretcher, he held her back.
Jamie stayed with them so she knew it was serious. ‘See, lass,’ he said, gently, ‘the second fall . . . it spread down the tunnel a way.’
She wanted to go with Hedley. Wullie kept a grip on her arm. Jamie said: ‘He’ll be all right, pet, Ginny’s wi’ him.’ He reached out a hand to pat her and then let it drop as if she was too delicate to touch. ‘See, he heard the first fall an’ down he coom, we tried holdin’ the sod back but it were like hinderin’ a bull . . . He were goin’ to get to you no matter—an’ the second fall tuk him.’
Who? Hedley had been with her. She didn’t know what they were blethering about until they led her to the side of the tunnel and light from the candle that Jamie held fell on a broken white feather.
They’d cleared the rock off him and straightened him out. He was alive still, breathing fast and shallow.
‘No,’ she said, ‘oh no.’ She went to her knees and put her arm under Tantaquidgeon’s head to raise it. ‘No.’
‘Don’t shift him, lass,’ Wullie said. He knelt beside her. ‘He were still tryin’ to move but a bloody great block were crushin’ him, we had a job liftin’ the bastard off him. Let him go easy.’
‘No.’
The Indian’s eyes were wandering; she cupped her hands round his face so that they could find hers. ‘Don’t go.’ Her tears were plopping onto her fingers. ‘What would I do without you? Oh, my dear, stay with me.’ Terror was making her mouth into ugly shapes; his was as firm as ever and she tried to smile at him. ‘Don’t be brave, does it hurt? Stay. Oh, no.’
Beside her Wullie said: ‘The Lord’s ma shepherd, He teks care o’ me. Ah lie in pastures of tranquillity . . .’
‘NO.’ She watched the light recede from the dark eyes as if they were too tired to hold it.
‘ . . . for His namesake the paths of righteousness Ah tread wi’ soul restored, nor could care less when Deeth his shadows ower the valley crowds . . .’
‘He’s gone, pet,’ Jamie said. His hand came over her shoulder and his thick fingers closed Tantaquidgeon’s eyes with a touch like swansdown.
‘Heor in the midst of dangers Ah thrive, me table strewn wi’ plenty. As Ah live, me cup runs ower wi’ its thankfulness that all me days your love each hour will bless . . .’
She leaned down so that her cheek was against the poor chest, feeling the warmth go out of it.
Remorselessly, quietly, Wullie Fergusson finished his psalm: ‘ . . . Me hairt ’n’ mind ruled by a peace divine. For goodness, grace ’n’ mercy will be mine, An’ when my spirit flights to thee, wi’ ye Ah’ll dwell through all etornity.’
Tantaquidgeon was buried in the graveyard next to the ruins of Headington House. Apparently it was still sanctified, though no Headington had been interred there for seventy years.
Jamie and Ginny, with Wullie Fergusson and some of the other hewers, cleared it, weeded it and scythed the grass, while Makepeace kept vigil in the Factor’s House parlour by the body on its catafalque of a trestle table.
She and Betty had washed the dragon-embroidered wall hanging that Dapifer had given him and wrapped him in it. They’d brushed his hair so that it shone like a rook’s wing. When Betty had splinted the broken eagle’s feather and stitched it on a new band, they put it round his head.
‘Oh God, I don’t know what to do for him, I don’t know Huron customs.’
‘Don’t need ’em, chil’,’ Betty said. ‘He’s a Christian.’
Jamie came to tell them the grave was dug. ‘Now, pet, are tha certain sure tha’ll not have a proper priest?’
‘I want Wullie to do it,’ Makepeace said.
Even if they could have afforded a coffin, she wouldn’t have put him in one, so Jamie and the hewers laid him on a wooden stretcher and carried him up the track on their shoulders with the sun coming through the beech leaves onto the still, bronze face.
All the hewers, the fillers and putters were there in decent black and a Huron Indian was laid to rest to the murmur of Northumbrian voices praying for his soul.
Makepeace wouldn’t allow the body put into the grave until the service was over. Better to have left him in a tree in the open air than in a hole in the ground, the only thing he’d ever been afraid of. In the end she couldn’t speak the word so it was Wullie who covered the face and gave the order for the stretcher to be lowered. Philippa and the two other children scattered flowers over it.
There were no hymns; instead George, one of the hewers, piped the lament for the passing of a champion.
Hedley was there, against doctor’s orders. As Betty and Makepeace went by him he said: ‘I’m sorry, pet.’
‘Thank you,’ Makepeace said. She paused. ‘I’m going to London to raise more money, as we discussed. When I’ve done that I’ll set up in Newcastle for a
while, to get the business going. You can contact me through your son. I won’t be living back here.’
She nodded to him and went on down the hill.
It was perfectly clear. She had betrayed her husband and his cause in lusting after that man and she had been punished by the death of her oldest friend. There was a long way still to go—she must not be deflected again.
Chapter Eighteen
IT was as if Newcastle upon Tyne had pricked its finger on a spindle and, instead of going to sleep for a hundred years, had been catapulted into a time of extreme wakefulness.
Constructionally, it still belonged to the Middle Ages. With twenty thousand busy souls constricted by walls that had been built to contain four thousand, it bulged out of its seven medieval gates like flesh wobbling through rips in a too-tight corset, tilting down to its one great thoroughfare, the River Tyne and a solitary bridge of houses and shops that were unchanged since the fourteenth century. Streets were virtual tunnels through overhanging houses and its lanes were worm-holes, most of them so steep they had to be cobbled or stepped. It smelled of lime from its kilns, salt from its pans and the sea, and sewage from the common midden of Dog Loup Stairs.
But it nursed a product and ideas that, it knew, would change everything: landscape, thinking, ways of living—and in Newcastle were already doing it. The future streamed from Tyneside, not just to London but Europe, Scandinavia and Russia, while the town itself waited for the rest of the world to catch up.
It was dirty, it was undemocratic, it was an anachronism, it was wonderful.
And it was male.
‘Item Six,’ said the secretary, ‘a plea by Mrs Burke of Raby for permission to use the Tyne for shipment of her coals. Gentlemen, there is a drawing before you showing the location of Raby and its environs.’
There was, but not one of the ten men round the table bothered to lean forward and look at it.
An enormous painting on the far wall behind them was of the Court of the Hostmen in session during the time of Charles I. There’d been a reduction in the size of wigs and the number of ruffles since then, but both painted and living faces showed the same studied indifference; they might have been blood related—and probably were.
The fifteenth-century hall had been built to overawe. The overmantel of its fireplace alone was so magnificent, so heavy, so carved with Biblical bas-relief, bosses and scrollwork that it seemed as if it threatened to fall on Makepeace and young Oliver Hedley as they passed beneath it to stand at the foot of the long, beautifully polished conference table like the petitioners they were.
These were the hostmen, kings of the coal trade, men who had fought for monopoly of their river for centuries against kings, the Bishop of Durham, Oliver Cromwell, Stuarts and Parliament, when necessary changing tactics, sides and religion to do it.
‘The vicar of Bray’s got nowt on Newcastle,’ Hedley had once told Makepeace. ‘But you want to ship from the Tyne, you get the hostmen’s permission.’
‘Bit medieval, isn’t it?’ she’d said.
‘Mebbies, but you still need their permission.’
His son now produced a lump of coal and placed it on the board, which reflected it. ‘Honourable sirs, Ah am Mrs Burke’s spokesman in this matter. Ah represent her, the landowner, an’ t’partnership she’s formed with me father, Mr Andra Hedley, to mine the coal. If tha’d care to examine this piece, gentlemen, tha’ll find it of foremost quality, good as Wallsend’s.’
He’d broadened his accent, Makepeace noticed. He’d told her to let him do the talking; he didn’t think women were allowed to speak in the hostmen’s court.
‘No precedent for females usin’ Tyne, ’cept to do their laundry,’ one of the men said, looking straight ahead. A cauliflower wig surrounded his large, pale face and his eyes were like slugs. Alderman Sir somebody.
And they want their washing turned black, Makepeace thought.
‘Ah think tha’ll find exceptions, sirs,’ Oliver said—he’d anticipated the difficulty and done his research, ‘Early sixteen hundreds, Mrs Dorothy Lawson of St Anthony’s—’
‘She were eccentric,’ said the first hostman.
‘An’ wealthy, and a damn Roman,’ said another, ‘but there weren’t nothin’ foreign about Dot Lawson.’
‘Ay, salt of the earth, old Dot. Proper Tynesider. I remember we gave her a municipal funeral.’
God help us, thought Makepeace, whoever the woman was she’s been dead one hundred and fifty years, and these men refer to her like their auntie.
‘An’ she were elderly. A respectable married woman.’
Now we’re getting to it.
‘Mrs Burke is a respectable widow . . .’ protested Oliver.
‘How’d she come by Raby then?’ From, his tone, Makepeace knew Alderman Sir somebody’s wife stayed home and didn’t go around collecting properties like a scarlet woman.
There was a sudden burst of viciousness.
‘Ah heard she got it throwin’ dice.’
‘Ay, who were her husband?’
Makepeace had taken enough. She leaned forward and put her hands on the table. ‘He’s dead, that respectable enough for you?’
Oliver put a warning hand on her arm. ‘Mrs Burke’s an American, sirs—’
‘I surely am. It’s my land fair and square. There’s a grand seam there and I want it shipped—from the Tyne if I can, but if necessary I’ll bring keels up from Ipswich to my own waterfront and ship the damn coal from there.’ She’d been doing research of her own. ‘Do you gentlemen want my revenues or not?’
She heard Oliver issue a long sigh and slump in defeat. But the atmosphere had altered.
‘American,’ a hostman said, sadly.
‘Boston, Ah wouldn’t wonder.’
‘Red-haired.’
They’d placed her. As a good-looking woman trying to compete on their territory she was nothing, an amateur, had probably earned her land by opening her legs; she could use the Tyne when it—and Hell—froze.
But as an eccentric—and she’d just proved herself that—with some knowledge of the game they played—she’d proved that too—she might one day make a worthy successor to the formidable Dot Lawson.
They still didn’t ask her to sit down, but . . .
‘Pass bloody loomp along table then.’
The coal was tapped, sniffed, passed from hand to hand—most of them a good deal whiter and smoother than Makepeace’s own, and nearly all beringed with the jewels of rajahs.
You frauds, she thought. You could buy the throne and put it in your pocket—you probably have. They could speak genteel English when they had to. Their determined Northumborness—pass bloody loomp, indeed—was a . . . what was it Pip used to call it? . . . a langue de guerre. They assumed it among themselves out of pride and a contempt for those who had a contempt for them. They sent their sons to Eton, might even have been there themselves, and there were as many titles around this table as there were in the Cabinet. When did you hypocrites last go down a coal mine?
In that she did the hostmen of Newcastle an injustice. They might send their sons to Eton but they married them to the daughters of families like their own, the ones they knew to be the real power in England, the aristocracy which made the land work, not the one that merely took its rents.
And they knew coal, had known it for five hundred years.
‘Ah hear Hedley’s usin’ rectangular corves,’ one said.
‘What’s that he’s done wi’ the Newcomen?’
So they’d been aware of her and the activities at Raby all along; probably a leaf didn’t bud in Northumberland without telling them first.
She heard Oliver plunge into the opening they’d given him, explaining his father’s improvements and inventions and offering them free to the local collieries should the honourable gentlemen see fit to include Raby among Tyne users.
Makepeace wouldn’t have done that; she and Hedley had argued about it. ‘Let them invent their own braged conductors,’ she’d sa
id, ‘or use ’em under patent.’
Hedley had borne her down; if his work improved coal production and made life easier and safer for miners, he worn’t bloody standin’ in the way.
No horse sense, that man, she thought, and battled with a treacherous languor in her body as she thought it.
Oh, but she needed the Tyne. Ipswich did indeed have boats capable of carrying coal—it had once been a serious competitor to Newcastle’s keels but, like all Newcastle’s competitors, was now being crushed out of the trade. And its extra distance along the coast would cost her a great deal.
God, why was she still standing? The hell with them, she wasn’t a prisoner at their damn bar. There was a flunkey of sorts standing by the door and Makepeace beckoned him with a finger to bring her a chair.
Alderman Sir somebody’s eyes made a slow crawl in her direction as she sat down but he said nothing.
The negotiations went on for some time. Oliver fought valiantly. For all his air of vague gentleness the young man had a sharper sense of expediency than his father (again that disgraceful sweetness). He did well.
At last. ‘Howay,’ said Alderman Sir somebody, ‘mebbies we’ll give . . .’ He looked down at his agenda so that she’d know he’d forgotten her name. ‘ . . . Mrs Burke a temporary licence but coal’s for them as understands it. There’s been a fair number o’ Southor-ners cumen and gannin on Tyne and they usual end up drownin’ in it.’
I can swim, you buggers. But she said: ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’
Outside on the steps, Hedley’s son picked her up and swung her round. ‘You’ll get a metropolitan funeral yet.’
She grinned back at him. ‘Let tha and me go lay some flowers on Dot Lawson’s grave, pet.’
At first Makepeace rented a tiny office in Merchants Court on the quay so that she could keep an eye on the keelmen and what they did with her coal.
Oliver virtually abandoned his practice and worked with her, partly to protect her decency and even more because there was so much to do. Her lodging was a room in the Side, a weary climb at nights when she was tired. Again for respectability’s sake, she had to have a female companion and so she took on her former marra, young Hildy, as attendant and maid—a good attendant, terrible maid. They went to St Nicholas’s on Sundays, her foot tapping at time wasted by the lengthy and vacuous sermons, with Alderman Sir somebody—it turned out to be Atkinson—watching her with his slug eyes.