Is (17 page)

‘Then
why
have you been asking questions about a boy called David Stuart?’ suddenly thundered Uncle Roy. Taking advantage of her startled silence, he jumped from his throne, nipped across one of the bridges to the gallery, and ran down a flight of steps to ground level.

He walked up to Is, stared her in the face (his eyes were very bloodshot, she noticed, and he smelt of rum and peppermint), then roared at her:

‘I think you know more than you say. What can you tell me about King Richard? What is his state of health?’

‘I can’t tell you a tuppenny thing, Uncle Roy,’ answered Is calmly.

‘Why are you searching for his son?’

‘I’m a-looking for my cousin Arn Twite, Uncle. Son of my Uncle Hose, you remember him? Uncle Hose lost his boy Arn and he was real cut up about it, missed him something crool (goodness knows why, for he said himself he never spoke to him when he was at home). Anyway, with his last dying breath he ast me td look out for Arn. Which I am a-doing, as best I can. Arn had a friend called Davie and – with luck – if I can find one, I kin find t’other.’

Heaven help me, she added inwardly.

‘Davie Stuart is not the son of King Richard?’

‘How the dickens should I know that?’ asked Is. ‘Stuart’s a common enough name – specially up here in these parts.’

Uncle Roy looked at her long and hard.

‘You had better not lie to me,’ he said. ‘For if you do, I can – I can send you to a place you won’t like at all.’

Well, and if you send me to the foundries, thought Is, if that’s what you mean, you nasty bully, maybe that’d suit me down to the ground.

She did not utter this thought aloud, but it almost seemed as if some inkling of it had penetrated into her uncle’s mind, for he went on, very menacingly,

‘You think yourself mighty clever, don’t you, riding about with Lemman on his visits, doling out drops and drams to his patients, asking questions about lost boys. Well – you take a look at this!’

Out of his bulging breeches’ pocket he dragged, with some difficulty, a kind of small sledge-hammer. It had a short handle and a massively heavy head. ‘You see this hammer?’

‘Can’t hardly help it, can I, Uncle Roy?’

‘I could get one of my wardens to strap your hand to a bench, and another one to bring this hammer down on it –
hard
! Yes – ’ as she flinched, ‘you were asking questions of a boy without a hand the other day in the foundry; asking him about Davie Stuart. Weren’t you? So you know what it would be like to lose a hand. You’d not be so handy then at helping the doctor, would you?’ He laughed, most unpleasantly. ‘Now – ’ as her mouth opened to answer, ‘I don’t want to hear any more from you. Not at present. You go home and think over what I’ve said. Maybe there’s some more information you can give me about King Richard. Information that would be useful to me. Or about the boy. Go home and give my regards to your grandfather and your aunt. You’re fond of them – eh? You wouldn’t want any harm to come to
them
?’

‘
Grandfather
– and Aunt
Ishie
? You
wouldn’t
– ’

‘You don’t think I got to be Moderator of Humberland by fooling around being kind to my aunts and cousins, do you?’ he yelled at her.

No, I certainly don’t think that, Uncle Roy, she silently responded. But still, you got a
use
for Grandfather – you don’t want to lose him. Or do you?

As the thought struck her, she came out with it.

‘Did Grandpa
tell
you, then? When he was plastered – ginnified?’

‘Tell me what?’

‘About what keeps him ticking over; why he’s lived for sich a tarnal long time.’

One glance at his face assured her that this information was still Mr Twite’s own secret.

So, she thought thankfully, Gold Kingy’s got plenty of reason for wanting to keep Grandpa alive and kicking.

‘Gower! Take the girl away!’ yelled Uncle Roy.

The man who had silently appeared during the interview and stood behind Is now gestured to her with a jerk of his head to follow him.

So he must be the husband of that poor worried lady, thought Is – she said he was an important government official, the Deputy Moderator. He’s the dad of little Coppy.

‘I seen your little boy, your little Coppy the other day, Mr Gower,’ she told him chattily as she turned to leave the Audience Chamber. ‘He’s a real nice, bright little fellow. Too bad you gotta send him off to school, all the way to Scotland!’ She received a look of fury in return from Mr Gower: a tall, thin, black-haired man with a closed, shut-in face and such a small, sour mouth that, thought Is, he’d have a precious awkward job opening it far enough to swallow a cherry.

‘You
have a boy, Gower?’ demanded Gold Kingy sharply. ‘Why was I not told? Do I know your boy?’

‘Oh, I am quite certain that I have told you about him, sir – at one time or another. He is young as yet – barely three I understand – still wholly in the nursery, sir.’

Gold Kingy nodded, then suddenly flung the hammer on to the floor so that it cracked a pink marble paving stone.

‘We need them smaller in the mines
every day
, remember!’ he said ominously. ‘He could be a trapper – he could be an opener!’ And, turning, marched off to the back of the chamber.

Does Uncle Roy have a wife – children? wondered Is, as he vanished through a door. It seemed unlikely. Where could he be going now? What to do? Practise the flute? Read? Play cards with somebody?

Mr Gower angrily escorted Is to the street.

‘You go home and behave yourself, as the Leader said,’ he snapped. ‘And I advise you to behave much more respectfully towards your uncle from now on, or you will find yourself in very bad trouble.’

‘Yus. I can see that,’ said Is. And then she thought: I’m sorry I gabbed about little Coppy. I done it to tease that prune-faced Gower, but I shouldn’t have spoke out about him in front of Gold Kingy. He seemed a real decent little nipper. That was a stupid thing to do.

7

If I ever let Gold Kingy guess that he frightens me, thought Is, I’ll never get anywhere.

She could see that his whole power was built on fear – everybody who worked for him was afraid of somebody else, so nobody dared make any protest, even when terrible things were done. And people had grown accustomed to the terrible things.

‘We need them smaller in the mines every day!’ Gold Kingy had shouted at Mr Gower; that had put Gower in a cold sweat, because he was terrified for little Coppy. Was Uncle Roy planning to pass a law that four-year-olds might be taken for work in the mines?

The best thing I can do, thought Is, will be to disobey Uncle Roy;
not
go home, like he told me, but nip straight to the foundries and ask some more questions. That’ll show him I don’t care for him and his threats.

The shortest way to the foundries from Gold Kingy’s royal residence was through the smaller, darker streets that lay to the rear of the palace, and past the entrance to the mine. The mine gates were, as usual, locked and heavily guarded, and the approach to them illuminated by a blaze of white light shining down from the rock roof overhead.

Opposite the gate was another statue of Uncle Roy, mounted on a horse, wielding a pick-axe, and much larger than lifesize. The horse, in particular, was enormous; big as a small elephant, thought Is, who had once seen an elephant trundling along in a circus procession. The horse was rearing up on its hind-legs and Uncle Roy sat in the saddle with a nonchalance that made Is chuckle each time she passed the statue, for she felt sure that he had never ridden a real horse in his whole life. The statues of horse and rider, and the big rocky base on which they balanced, cast black shadows over the ground, and as she walked nearby Is thought she saw something – someone? – scurry into the shadow and vanish in the patch of inky black. What – who – could it be? Holdernesse swarmed with rats and mice, but it was too big for one of those; big enough for a dog, or a small person. A child? The guards, yawning at their posts, had observed nothing. They pounced on Is and made her show her pass; now she wondered why Gold Kingy had not confiscated this. You’d think he’d do that right away, she pondered, walking quickly and lightly along the road that led to the town’s dockside entrance. The lights here were scanty, between them lay long patches of shadow. Now and then Is thought she heard footsteps behind – but that might have been the echo from the tunnel roof.

Still, it was a relief to come out of the cave into daylight – even if only the grey light of a murky December afternoon – among the slag-heaps of the dock, the drums of tar, piles of firebricks, rail wagons filled with coke, coal, or ingots.

It’s all so ugly here, Is thought sorrowfully, and a great wave of longing nearly choked her – longing for the frosty silence of Blackheath Woods, for the mist rising, the drowsy bedtime whispers of the birds, the glisten of toadstools in wet grass among layers of dead leaves – for her cat Figgin, bounding ahead towards the gleam of light that would be Penny simmering a kettle on the hob.

I dunno how folk can
stand
it here, thought Is, taking a long, resentful breath of the sharp, thick air that always smelt so strongly of burnt milk. And she stood still for a moment, trying to squeeze her homesickness into a manageable size, collecting it into a kind of solid lump inside her chest, so that she could bear it and go on. If
I
feel so, what about all them poor devils on the train, who believed – the silly nuddikins – that they were due for a lifetime of larks in Sugar-Candy-Land; now they’re slaves in the mines or mills, and no way to get out. At least I’m free, and can go where I like.

But oh – don’t I jist wish I were in Blackheath Woods this very minute!

The Touch came to her again: the long, cold, piercing finger of contact. We share it, the voices told her. We feel that too, all of us. And it is not so terrible if it is shared.

Is looked round her in bewilderment, almost expecting to see a huge host of companions marshalled over the waste spaces of the dock; but the spaces were empty, except for herself. In the distance, the foundries roared and glimmered. Sudden gusts of flame spurted upwards as fuel was tipped into the furnaces; the clang and thud of the steam hammers recalled Gold Kingy saying, ‘
You know what it’s like to lose a hand
.’

‘I’ve come to see the ones that were burned in the blow-out,’ Is announced boldly, stepping into the flaring, gas-tainted, dusky confusion of the main area. And she showed her pass to the overseer.

‘Most of ’em’s back at work now. There’s only two left out in the butteker – and I reckon they’re past crying for,’ he told her indifferently. ‘You can go and look at ’em if you’ve a mind to.’

She made her way to the storage shed where the hurt workers had been taken, and found that the last two were indeed past crying for; both were cold and dead, and had probably been so for a day at least. A little snow had fallen on them, through gaps in the roof, and had frozen. One of the two – a girl with badly burned hands and arms – still seemed to clutch something in one of those burned hands.

What can she have set such store by? wondered Is. Something that might give a name to her – be sent back to her family? Or a bit of bread?

Hating the task, she pried at the stiff, frozen fingers.

‘There’s naught now,’ said a voice behind her. At the overseer’s orders, two boys had followed her. ‘Tha’ll find naught, luv.’

The second boy said, ‘T’gaffer gave orders to drop ’em in t’river if they’re done for. T’lass did have like a keepsake i’ her hand, but one of t’others took it.’

‘What kind of keepsake?’

‘Kind of a bootten, like,’ he said indifferently.

‘Did it once belong to a boy called David Stuart?’

‘I’d not knaw that. Ann used to keep it i’ her mouth.’

The second boy said, ‘T’lass as took it off Ann is called Nettie. A red-haired lass. Reckon she’s still aboot – she was workin’ as a sampler, last time Ah see ’er.’

‘Where?’

‘In t’main building. Can’t stop now, luv, or t’gaffer’ll have our hides.’

Without more ado, they dropped the two frozen bodies in the river, which was tidal here, frothy and swift-flowing.

Is went back to the main building.

The samplers were equipped with long-handled ladles. It was their job, Dr Lemman had told Is, every time a load of molten ore was discharged down the trough, to dip out a sample, allow it to cool a bit, and take it to the engineers’ office to be tested for impurities. The task was fairly dangerous, because of the heat of the white-hot metal running down the trough and the sparks that cascaded out from it, but the work was not heavy, so it was mostly done by girls.

Red-haired Nettie was there, neatly dipping out a ladleful of white-gold ore. Like giants’ jewellery, thought Is.

While she stood waiting for it to be cool enough to carry, Is asked her, ‘Did you take a token off a dead girl called Ann?’

Nettie glared at her suspiciously, then recognised the doctor’s helper and nodded.

‘Ah, I did. But it weren’t for mysen. A gal called Tilda wanted it, but she couldn’t no way get there; she’s on the bellows, see, at the blast furnace, working all the time.’

‘Why did she want it? Was it like this?’

Is showed a corner of her own token, through a gap in her jacket-seam.

‘Ah! That it were! Tilda wanted it ’cos she’d been friends with a lad who’d been friends wi’ the cove as had it.’

‘Davie?’

‘Ah dinna knaw.’

‘Is Tilda still here?’

‘Look, lass, I must flit, or he’ll toss me in t’runner.’

She tipped her red-hot ingot into a metal pan with a wooden handle and ran off with it.

Is felt a hand on her shoulder. The overseer was glaring at her with black disapproval.