Dangerous Seduction: A Nemesis Unlimited Novel (8 page)

Steps leading to different structures had been gouged out of the ground. Men were already emerging from the change house, where they’d donned their rough, dirty work clothes, some still damp from yesterday. A transformation from men to miners. They wore helmets with candles affixed to their fronts with lumps of clay, like creatures from folklore. Nothing magical about the work they were about to perform. As they readied to go down into the shaft, down into the darkness, many took one last look at the sun feebly poking through the morning haze. Hours would pass before they’d see its light again, feel its warmth. Down below, it was infernally hot, dank, cramped. Dangerous.

God—to do that day after day, climb down into the depths of the earth, uncertain whether or not there’d be a collapse or flood, and never see daylight again … Respect for these tough men swelled in Simon’s chest. Maybe they didn’t have the means to fight their corrupt masters, but they had bollocks of steel to earn their living this way.

Simon headed across the hard-packed dirt toward the engine house. He nearly stopped short when Henry Carr passed by, throwing him a suspicious glare. But then Henry’s attention turned elsewhere at the sound of men arguing.

“It’s been three damn months, Ralph,” one man angrily asserted. In contrast to the coarse, dirty clothing worn by the miners—including Ralph—this man sported a relatively clean white coat.

“I’m telling you,” Ralph answered, just as heated, “I gave it back.”

“Then it’s turned invisible, hasn’t it? Because I can’t bloody find it.”

People nearby, miners and laborers, stopped what they were doing to watch the row. Any moment now, and the two men would start swinging at each other.

To Simon’s surprise, Henry walked over to the men. Without hesitation, he clapped a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Lads, why the fuss?” he asked calmly.

The men shouted in unison, until Henry said to the man in the white coat, “Owen, let’s start with you.”

“Ralph borrowed my best pick. ‘Just for a few days,’ he said, ‘until I can buy myself a better one.’ Three months it’s been, and where’s my damned pick? I’ll tell you where. The bugger’s gone and nicked it.”

“I gave it back,” Ralph shouted. “Isn’t my fault that you’ve got granite for brains, and can’t remember. Besides,” he added sulkily, “you’ve been promoted to underground captain, and haven’t got a need for a pick anymore. You just watch us work and strut around like a bloody prince. Like you’re not one of us anymore, but one of
them.
”

The disease of mistrust and anger between management and workers had spread deeply through Wheal Prosperity.

Owen opened his mouth to fire back a retort, but Henry spoke first. “You’ve made your family proud by getting that promotion, Owen. It’s true, though, that you haven’t got much use for a pick anymore.”

Ralph looked smug, until Henry said evenly, “Maybe you ought to search your tools once more, Ralph, just to be sure you didn’t overlook Owen’s pick. Who knows? Perhaps you thought you returned it, but it slipped your mind. We’ve all got heavy burdens right now. Tough to keep the thoughts straight. Easy to think you took care of something, but actually forgot to do it.”

Both men made grudging, grumbling sounds, as men are wont to do when caught in the snares of their own egos and sense of righteousness.

“Who knows?” Henry continued, still clasping the men’s shoulders. “Ralph might find that pick, and maybe Owen might let him borrow it for a while longer. Everyone’s satisfied.”

The men muttered again, but with less animosity.

“An agreement then.” Henry smiled amicably. “Go on, lads. It’s a long day ahead of us, and we’re only making it longer.” He let go of their shoulders, giving them each imperceptibly slight pushes to send them in opposite directions.

Masterfully done. Simon nearly congratulated Henry on diffusing the situation, but held back. The man wouldn’t want his commendation. For a brief moment, the shadows beneath Henry’s eyes deepened, and his face sagged in exhaustion. Clearly, he’d been playing the role of peacemaker for a long time. Like wearing a heavy suit of armor, such responsibility was a burden, dragging him down.

Without acknowledging Simon, Henry walked on to the change house.

Simon glanced over toward the area where the bal-maidens and some men waited, holding their hammers and shovels in preparation for breaking up the ore. A warm feeling like the stroke of a hand passed over him, unexpected in the cold morning. He turned around, searching for the source. And found Alyce looking at him. She didn’t turn away from him this time, instead tipping up her chin, as if in a dare.

Alyce and Henry Carr—two different sides of the coin. One, a firebrand, trying to rouse the workers of Wheal Prosperity to action. The other, a peacemaker, seeking the path of least resistance in order to ensure calm.

Both stances were admirable, but Simon was himself a rabble-rouser, always had been. He’d never have created Nemesis if he had been satisfied with the status quo. Surely there were times when Henry’s cautious approach worked, but not always, and not for Nemesis. Slow, gentle progress didn’t fit their modus operandi. They wanted results. The best way to get those results: action.

It gnawed at him again, the idea that Alyce might have been the one who wrote to Nemesis. If she did, she might have access to more information about the owners and managers of the mine. That information could help him find the means of taking the corrupt structure down.

The company would have to be replaced with something else, however. Hundreds of men and women could lose their only source of employment. A conundrum, that was. One he knew he’d be able to reason out. But it’d take time.

So, was Alyce the mysterious correspondent? It had been written on a typewriter. Even if he had a sample of her handwriting, he couldn’t make an analysis. And typewriters were costly. Maybe she’d sneaked into the mine’s offices late at night and used one of theirs. A damned courageous thing to do—if she’d done it.

One of the other bal-maidens elbowed Alyce. He realized then that he and Alyce had been staring at each other across the yard. They both turned away at the same time.

He walked up the hill, toward the engine house. He’d faced some difficult missions before, but this one was going to be a long, tough voyage

*   *   *

Simon introduced himself to the weary night-shift men monitoring the pumping engine. He’d never expected water to be one of the biggest problems when it came to mining, but so it was. The deeper they dug, the more ground water seeped into the shafts. The lapse of even an hour could be a bloody disaster—making shafts and chambers flood. So men were there at all hours, operating the pumps. The three men seemed more than happy to meet Simon, offering rough, grease-stained hands to shake. Feet dragging, they hauled themselves from the engine house for the long walk home.

Two men entered the engine house. One of the chaps had a full, dark mustache, and introduced himself as Abel Lawrey. The other was Bill Dyer, with a face as cragged as a rough morning. His fellows on the day shift. Three more men attended to the boilers, shoveling coal to keep the engine and its pumping rods in continual motion. Everyone made quick introductions and exchanges of history before getting to work.

He’d been in this building yesterday, but had been focused on getting the job more than scouting the location. A massive pumping engine dominated the building, one of the marvels of this modern era. It towered over Simon and the other men, a titan of brass, pipes, and moving parts. Two hundred years ago, what would men have thought of such a creature? Did it herald the beginning of a new, glorious era for humanity or the end of it? He’d seen the mills and factories of the north, the smokestacks that pointed accusing brick fingers into the air as if to blame the spirit of progress that smothered England in coal smoke.

The world changed so quickly now. There were fortunes to be made, new horizons to explore. And tens of thousands of people to be crushed beneath the machinery of progress.

“Won’t do you any good to be woolgathering this early,” Abel called to him from the other side of the pumping engine.

“I’ll be sure to drink more coffee tomorrow,” he answered, and made himself useful.

The labor itself alternated between mindless and complex. Attend to the valves. Bleed the pressure. Tighten what loosened and loosen what seized up. Thank God he’d done his research ahead of time, and that he had a good head for remembering things. He could perform his tasks without hesitation. Soon, his jacket was off, his sleeves rolled up, as he kept a careful eye on the pumping engine.

It didn’t matter how often he wiped his hands on the cloth tucked into his back pocket. Grease and dirt were inexorably part of the job.

A old conversation with his father flashed through his mind.

Our family has responsibilities,
Horace Addison-Shawe had lectured a seventeen-year-old Simon. Simon hadn’t been looking at his father’s face, but was studying the patterns of the Turkey carpet on the study’s floor. Someone had made that carpet, an unknown craftsman joined to England by the remarkable power of steamships. Simon’s thoughts had often spun off into such tangents, about how the world was separate and yet connected by a massive web.

A reputation,
his father had continued.
We don’t simply stick our arms into the mud because it amuses us.

Better to be dirty and immersed in life,
Simon had retorted,
than stuck up here in this airless tower of privilege and turn into dust.

His father, as always, had been unrelenting.
Just because you’re a second son doesn’t absolve you of your obligations to this family or to Society. You will go back to Oxford, and we’ll talk no more of apprenticing yourself to some ruddy gunsmith. Coming home every day with oil beneath your fingernails—my God, your mother wouldn’t leave her bed.

She doesn’t now, anyway. Why should she? She’s bored senseless.

That had earned him a slap across the face.

It hadn’t been the first or last time he’d been called before Father. It was a wonder his ears weren’t permanently scarred from all the blistering lectures he’d received.

Fortunately, Horace Addison-Shawe was safely tucked away in his club in London, and couldn’t see his son now, in a working man’s clothes, hands grimy, and sweat filming his back. No ornamental society bride on his arm.

What would Alyce Carr make of the other Simon—not Simon Sharpe, machinist, but Simon Addison-Shawe, who knew all the sacraments of fine Society? House parties, shooting parties, dinner parties with ten courses and enough wine to drown a horse. The Season, with its debutantes in white tulle and men in their bride-hunting uniforms of black wool and starched shirtfronts.

She might not know such a world existed. But if she did, was it something she longed for? Or maybe she sneered at it? Maybe it was a complex mixture of both for her. The devil knew Simon’s labyrinthine feelings about his different lives.

As he made an adjustment on a valve, the nerves along the back of his neck tightened. Someone—a man—approached him. It took all his willpower not to give in to ingrained habit and spin around, brandishing his wrench like a weapon. Instead, he continued on with his work until he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Sharpe, is it?”

“Constable Tippet,” he answered, turning around.

“
Chief
Constable Tippet,” the man reminded him sharply. He gripped his badge-adorned hat with thick fingers.

Abel and Bill stared from the other side of the pump engine, their own tasks momentarily forgotten.

“Something you need,
Chief
Constable Tippet?” Simon glanced past the lawman. Two other constables stood off to the side. He recognized one from the other night, the one with the blockish, thick jaw and eagerness to hurt someone. The other constable had his hands clasped behind his back. Simon didn’t remember him from last night. He wore his uniform like someone forced to attend a fancy dress party, and his gaze continually shifted to the side, as though avoiding looking at an old man dressed like a Casanova—embarrassed for both of them.

“You’re a long way from the village,” Simon noted. “I thought the mine had its own men for keeping order.”

Tippet’s face darkened. “I’ve got permission from the managers to patrol here, if I think it necessary.”

“If you think there’s something threatening or dangerous.”

The constable gave a clipped nod.

“So you’re here,” Simon went on, “in the pumping engine house.” He glanced over at the giant machine. “Just take a look around, Chief Constable. Everything’s in working order. Nothing a bit threatening or dangerous.”

“It needs to stay that way.” Tippet’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Simon. “Things have a certain order here at Wheal Prosperity and in Trewyn. For everyone’s safety. When things don’t function right, if, say, one little cog decides it’s got other ideas about how the machine works, then everything falls apart. People get hurt. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“The cog winds up getting crushed, too,” Simon noted.

The constable gave a thin smile. “No wonder they hired you, Sharpe. Got a good understanding of how these things operate.”

“Naught to trouble you over here, Chief Constable. A man can get clumsy, but that doesn’t make him foolish. You and me, we want the same things.”

Simon’s glance moved to the other constables.

“That’s my deputy, Oliver,” Tippet said, “and the other one’s Bice.”

Bice’s attention whipped to the constable, just as his posture snapped upright. The chief constable added, “Reports anything dodgy to me.”

Bice’s mouth pinched into a line, and once again his gaze danced around the interior of the engine room, keeping from focusing on any one item.

Wonder if they have a typewriter in the constabulary’s office. And who uses that typewriter most often.

“You’ve made a long walk from the village for no reason,” Simon finally replied. “As I said, I have no intention of letting anything get out of line. I’m just doing the job they hired me for.” He kept his expression pleasant, inoffensive. But this was a part of the job he always enjoyed. Letting the target believe one thing, when Simon had his own ideas.