Children of Fire

by Paul CW Beatty

  ‘As far as I know runaway apprentices are not a police matter. It’s the parish Beadles that have to catch them. I suppose it might be my duty to tell Mr Hailsworth?

  She started to laugh again. ‘Oh you can tell Mr Hailsworth as much as you like. In fact I would encourage it, he’s not in much of a position to see for himself how our little joint enterprise works on the ground.’

  Josiah would not have said anything about the matter, even if Mr Hailsworth had not been Rachael’s accomplice. He was amused at the thought of the sense of irony Steven Hailsworth must enjoy listening to Caleb Arlon rant about the loss of his apprentices, at the same time being a conspirator in one of the main reasons for their loss.

  ‘How does the system work?’ he said to Rachael.

  ‘They usually come to us in ones and twos. They hear a rumour about us and just arrive, usually badly fed and sore footed. Sometimes people who are in the know see them and bring them to us. Sometimes it happens we have a large party like this one, then we house them in the cottage while we try to make arrangements for them.

  ‘Some are running away not because they do not like working in a mill as such, but they have been badly treated in a particular mill. For them we find mill owners that offer better conditions for their apprentices. For instance, the Gregs at Quarry Bank have found places for such children in the past. They issue new indentures and after a while, the authorities give up looking.

  ‘Some need other sorts of employment. Some take to working on the land. Steven Hailsworth is one landowner who has found decent employment for some of them. Mr Hailsworth thinks one of them will be his next head groom because of his natural affinity for horses.

  ‘Another, Frederick, was taken on as an office boy by Abram Hailsworth. He was unusual in that he could already read, write and add up when he came to us. Mr Abram was just setting up the powder mill and needed a reliable office boy. Frederick lodges near Hayfield.

  ‘We had placed most of this group by the time you arrived but when Elijah was killed I realised we had to move them on quickly.

  ‘They will all be gone by this evening. One group are going home to their families in Liverpool, accompanied by a local man who has done that work for us for several years. The others are going north to a settlement of the Moravian Church near Sheffield. They have a community of families where all children are cared for as a single group. A few extra are easy to fit in. We only send orphans to them and they receive a wonderful education as well as practical skills.’

  For the rest of the afternoon Josiah played games from his own childhood with them, teaching his favourites marbles and fives to a couple of the boys. The man for the Liverpool group came at about four o’clock and were waved off on the path into the woods to be set well on the road by carts from the Hailsworth estate.

  Led by the two older girls who had been doing the nursery rhyme when he arrived, a second group of younger children went off in the direction of Sheffield following the packhorse route.

  The fire was damped down and the cottage left with no trace of its visitors. Then Josiah, Rachael and James walked back to Long Clough. Josiah was greatly relieved that, in reality, Rachael new nothing about the woodpile store. He now knew that when he had seen her on the day he had found the weapons she had a secret but it was an honourable one.

  18

  The Mysteries of the Art

  The following day Josiah found it an easy walk to the powder mill. Almost as soon as he had got through the gates he was approached by a broad-shouldered man, aged about thirty-five, in a good quality frockcoat and black cravat. He must have been keeping an eye open for Josiah.

  ‘Mr Ainscough? I’m the mill manager, Matthew Bridges. Welcome to Furness Vale Powder Mill.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Bridges.’

  ‘Come over to my office and we can talk for a bit before I show you round.’

  He led Josiah over to a large wooden building set back from the gates. There was an outer office manned by a clerk and an office boy who must be Frederick. It had a counter with a flap that Bridges lifted.

  ‘Come into my inner sanctum,’ he said. Then he led the way through to a second office, with a carpet, a substantial desk, and a comfortable visitor’s chair.

  ‘Would you like some tea? I usually have a pot at about this time after I have done my morning rounds.’

  ‘Tea would be excellent,’ replied Josiah.

  ‘Please sit down.’ Bridges stuck his head out of the door into the outer office. ‘Can you make me enough tea for my visitor as well me this morning, lads?’ Then he came back to join Josiah. ‘Let me start with a question, Mr Ainscough. How much do you know about gunpowder?’

  ‘Not much. Invented by the Chinese; made of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Not many people know that much. If I gave you a mix of those materials in the right proportions and we set fire to them outside, they would burn fiercely with a satisfying flash.’

  ‘They wouldn’t explode?’

  ‘No. Loose gunpowder, what we call blackpowder, does not explode but burns very rapidly. If you want a bang you have to pack it into a confined space, such as in the barrel of a gun or in a hole drilled into rock. It’s the gases given off in the burning that cause the bang. The faster the powder burns the bigger the bang.’

  Josiah warmed to Bridges. He was an expert in his field and like all experts, an enthusiast and evangelist. To Bridges, Josiah was a potential convert to the church of explosives. In Josiah’s experience, listening to people like Bridges was never a waste of time. They might leave you lost in the detail but you always came away from conversations with them with new facts or perspectives. He nodded and smiled, all the encouragement an enthusiast like Bridges needed to tell him the accumulated knowledge of a lifetime in half an hour, not to show off, but simply so that by the end of it you too would share his wonder and pleasure in what he knew.

  ‘So the trick is to make powder that burns very fast. There are nine separate processes in making blackpowder. Most are about making powder that burns as quickly and evenly as possible.’

  There was a knock on the door and Fredrick brought in a tray with two cups, a milk jug and a china pot. He put the tray carefully on the desk in front of them. He was a lad of about twelve or thirteen with a tousled mop of curly black hair. He reminded Josiah of himself at that age but this boy was working for his living whereas at the same age Josiah was receiving an education. He wondered if there would ever be a world where all children got the sort of education he had been given.

  ‘Thank you,’ Bridges waited until the boy, had closed the door behind him. ‘Very good lad that. He’s an orphan who was recommended to us. He’ll have my job one day.’

  Bridges poured the tea. After sipping in silence for a moment, Josiah put down his cup and took out his notebook.

  ‘Nine processes all very dangerous.’

  ‘Not really. Blackpowder doesn’t burn when wet so by keeping things damp we reduce the possibility of accidents. The dangerous processes are those where the powder is dry and being squeezed in some way inside machinery. There are three processes like that. The least dangerous is the one unique to our main product.’

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you isn’t your main product simply blackpowder?’

  ‘Of course you won’t have seen the product.’ Bridges went over to a safe in the corner and opened it with an impressive key. Then he brought out what looked like a short stick, six inches long and about an inch in diameter wrapped in paper. He gave it to Josiah. Along the paper was printed “The Furness Patent Blasting Charge – Easy as lighting a candle”. The wrapping formed a tube open at both ends. One end was solid, charcoal black, with a texture rather like a block of salt. The other end of the candle was similar except that there was a small hole at the centre that disappeared into the core. Josiah weighed in his hand. It was surpri
singly heavy, probably a pound to a pound and a half.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s blackpowder. All that has happened to it is that we have taken it, dampened it a bit and compressed it into these rods. We don’t know why but because it’s solid it burns better than the lose powder it’s made from and gives a better bang. It doesn’t even need sulphur in the mix?’

  ‘I’m sorry I thought sulphur was essential in gun powder?’ interrupted Josiah. Did I hear you correctly?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with you hearing Mr Ainscough. We have no sulphur anywhere on the site. We don’t use it.

  ‘But it’s in the original Chinese formulae.’

  ‘It is true it is commonly used but it’s not essential. The Chinese didn’t know, but all the sulphur does is reduce the temperature at which the powder ignites. In powder for muskets and canon sulphur is used because reduces misfiring during battles. We don’t make military grade blackpowder. Our product is for use in mines and quarries, so no sulphur.’

  And not having to import sulphur from abroad makes the product more economical, thought Josiah. He continued to his next question.

  ‘Was the explosion in March due to one of the dangerous processes?’

  ‘Yes it started in the corning-mill where up to a thousand pounds of dry gunpowder is ground up by toothed metal rollers. With the rotating rollers there’s always the possibility of something extraneous, like a small stone or piece of metal getting into the process and causing an explosion.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘Almost certainly. There was not much left to examine to be sure but it’s the most likely cause.’ There was another knock on the door. ‘Come in,’ shouted Bridges. It was Fredrick again.

  ‘Please, Sir, shall I tidy up the tea things?

  ‘Please do,’ said Bridges. ‘Mr Ainscough, if you want to know about the explosions in the spring then I think you see where they happened.’

  They left the office and walked down a steep hill towards the river. The mill was made up of a series of small buildings spaced 400 to 500 yards apart. Between them ran a small railway track, which linked them together. As they walked wagons, some being pulled uphill by ponies and some going downhill under their own weight passed them. As they walked Bridges pointed out and named the various sheds none of which Josiah could distinguish from another. They were close to the river when they came to a high, solid stonewall.

  ‘Here’s the corning mill,’ said Bridges, as they walked round the wall revealing a large but insubstantial lean-to. ‘The wall we have just come round is a blast wall and as you can see there are two others, one behind the building and another opposite the first. The only place we can’t build a blast wall, due to the trackway, is protected by that earth bank over there. The purpose of the bank and walls is to contain flames and debris to the vicinity of the corning mill in the event of an explosion.’

  ‘So why did they not contain the explosion in the spring?’

  ‘Pure bad luck. It was a still day with only a light breeze. That meant that the fireball from the explosion here could form quite slowly without being dispersed. But once it got above the level of the blast walls, what breeze there was pushed it down the hill, to the press house.

  ‘What happens in the press house?’

  ‘That is where most of the water in wet powder is pressed out in machines rather in the way you squeeze juice out of apples for cider. It a tossup if the press house or the corning mill are the most dangerous. A press house went up on its own in one of the Cumbrian powder mills and devastated pretty much the whole of that factory. In our case it was even worse. Two other buildings went up.’

  ‘From the flames?’

  ‘No. I think the blast from the press house brought down the roofs on them and set them off. Then we only had blast walls round the watch house and the corning mill. When the most dangerous processes are running, the men stay in the watch house.’

  ‘So why weren’t the men from the corning mill safe in the watch house?’

  ‘Because the explosion occurred very soon after they started the corning mill running. They hadn’t time to get to the watch house. The others who died ran from the watch house to try to help their mates. They were caught in the open by the second blast. Two were killed outright. The third, who got to the river to snuff out his burning clothes, initially survived but died two days later.’

  ‘Of burns?’ said a horrified Josiah.

  ‘Of a smashed chest. He was badly burned but his blast injuries killed him.’

  Frederick came running down the path. ‘Sorry to disturb you Mr Bridges, but the cart from Poynton Mines is here. The driver needs you to sign out the consignment before he can take it.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be right there.’ Bridges turned to Ainscough. ‘I’m sorry I will have to go back and sign it out. The regulations involving transporting blackpowder are strict and it is my responsibility to see that the load is secure before it leaves the mill. You are welcome to have a look round on your own but don’t go into any of the sheds unless someone can provide you with the correct safety clothes and shoes.’

  ‘One last question before you go,’ said Josiah. ‘Could one of the workers in the corning mill have made a mistake that caused the explosion?’

  ‘I think that is what I have to assume, though they were both very reliable lads.’

  ‘Could it have been deliberate?’

  Bridges looked very pensive. ‘I would not want to think that, but there is no way of distinguishing between an accident and a deliberate attack. All it would have taken was some one to drop a bit metal into the rollers.’ At that Bridges went back up the hill towards the office.

  Josiah pondered what he had learned. The issue of motivation for such an attack came to his mind. He remembered from his latin classes at school that the great Roman lawyer Cicero had coined the phrase cui bono – to whose benefit? – as a principle that helped find guilt. But who could possibly have benefited from blowing up the powder mill? The powder mill had no commercial rivals for miles around. But if the explosions earlier in the year was the result of a deliberate attack, the corning mill was the target and that suggested some sort of expertise. Though, because of its blast walls, of all the buildings Josiah had seen that morning, it would have been the easiest to recognise, even by someone as ignorant as himself.

  He walked over to the corning mill and looked in. It was dim, cool and quiet inside. He called. His voice sounded muffled in the dusty interior. In the half-light all he could make out were the massive shapes of the machinery. He pictured them as sleeping dragons, ready to belch searing fire and death at a moment’s notice.

  But since there was no one about to show him round, he started to follow Bridges and stroll back to the site office. Beyond the blast wall, outside a nearby building, a gang of men was unloading charcoal. Idly he walked towards them.

  One of the men came over to him. He touched his forehead respectfully.

  ‘Can I do anything to ’elp’e, Sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Bridges said to ‘elp ‘e if you needed anything.’

  ‘Is there anyone who can show me the corning mill?’ Josiah asked.

  ‘Sorry Sir. The grinder’s as we calls ’em have gone to the press house. You’ll find them down there.’

  As he had talked to the man, Josiah had become aware of the revolting smell emanating from the store next to the one for charcoal, a miasma of urine and excrement seeped out of it.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ he said to the man and turned to go. Then in curiosity he looked into the store to see just what was causing such a stench. He was somewhat taken aback that the source were no more than piles of a rather innocuous looking grey powder. He covered his mouth with a handkerchief but it still made him retch.

  ‘What is this awful substance,’ he said to the man.

  ‘Saltpetre, Sir. ’


  ‘What a sickening smell.’

  ‘Tis that, Sir. But if you think the store smells bad ’e should niff the beds where we meks it. Me sel I wonders ’ow somet made from ’orse shit, piss ’n limestone smells as good as it do.’

  ‘Are the beds by the river by any chance?’

  ‘Aye, beds need water.’

  It sounded as if it was the saltpetre beds that had polluted the river and killed the fish. The thing Elijah had condemned Abram Hailsworth for in his last sermon.

  The men were still off-loading the charcoal. Over to his left there was another shed half hidden by a bank. He strolled up to the building. It looked unused, its windows opaque with dirt. It was the first locked building he had seen on the site. It was on a spur of the trackway but the rails were polished by use, not rusty as one might expect if this store was deserted.

  Then he noted a splash of bright yellow on its step. He bent down, licked the end of his finger and picked up a small sample to taste. The flavour was intensely evocative. As a small boy he had had a bad case of colic and was prescribed a mixture of flowers of sulphur and treacle as a laxative. Even mixed in with the sweet treacle the bitter taste of sulphur was plain. On this step were flowers of sulphur; so much for Mr Bridges protestation that there was no sulphur anywhere on the site.

  19

  Deflagration

  When Josiah got back to the site office and went in, he was greeted by Fredrick.

  ‘Please Sir, Mr Bridges sends his compliments but he has been further called away and will be some time. He says if you have any more questions for him, would you be kind enough to write them down and he will send you a reply or come to see you at Long Clough. I am also to say that Mr Abram is here and is ready to answer any questions you may have. He is in the inner office. Do you want me to show you in?’

  ‘Please do,’ said Josiah.

  Abram Hailsworth was sitting at the desk. ‘Ah, Mr Ainscough. Has your visit been rewarding?’