The Reckoning (27 page)

Rosamund shook her head doubtfully. 'But Marcus –
Marcus wanted to marry her. He didn't just want to eat her –
and he wanted to kill people who insulted her.’

He shrugged. 'You must forgive him for that – he was very
young and inexperienced, and he mistook – for a very little
while – what he was feeling. He knew nothing of women, you
see. He had come from a protected background, straight out
of the schoolroom and into the army. That, I grant you,' he
said with a grin as though she had interjected, 'is enough to
pitchfork some young men headfirst into experience, but
Marcus is not like that. He's one of those shy, serious, good
hearted men who regards women as rare and delicate crea
tures from another species – goddesses to be worshipped. He
would find it very difficult to think badly of Bel until she
forced him to – which in the end, she did.'

‘
Yes, she did,' Rosamund remembered.

‘
She got bored with him,' Hawker explained simply. 'Later,
of course, she wanted him back, but it was too late. Men like
Marcus trust for a long time and against all the odds, but once they stop, they never forgive. Now I – I can forgive
anyone anything, any number of times. But then, you see,' he added with charming frankness, 'I don't really care about any
of them.'

‘
Except Fanny.'

‘
Excepting always Fanny. That was my once-for-all weak
ness. So you see you may trust what I tell you – I have no
need or desire to tell you anything but the truth.'

‘
I don't quite understand,' Rosamund said slowly, 'why
you are telling me any of this. It is kind of you to educate me,
but why should you bother to be kind, if you don't want
anything of me?’

He laughed aloud, making one or two heads turn. 'Well, I
have certainly convinced you of my utter selfishness, haven't
I? But I'll tell you – I like you, Lady Rosamund. You remind
me of your mother, and I like her very much. She and your
stepfather were very kind to me and Fanny in Vienna, and I
don't forget kindness. And I like Marcus, too. He is good, and
good people fascinate and rather puzzle me, for there are so
few of them. And finally, I don't like Bel de Ladon. Yes, I eat
her up, but I don't like her – she's bad and destructive, and I
don't want her to have the satisfaction of having destroyed
you and your Marcus. He truly loves you, and I think,
because of her, you don't believe it. So here is my good deed
for the day — perhaps for the rest of my life! — to persuade you
to forgive him for making a cake of himself in Brussels. Every
man is allowed to do that once in his life, you know: it is
traditional.’

Rosamund listened to all this in silence, her thoughts
tumbling as she tried to absorb it all and make sense of it. She
felt confused, almost dizzied by the amount of new informa
tion that needed to be fitted into the spaces of her mind. The
large, simple shapes that people had had for her from child
hood upwards were changing, growing blurred and compli
cated, and she was not sure she liked it.

She looked directly into his eyes. 'You wouldn't want to
marry me, would you?’

Not for any consideration,' he said solemnly. 'You may
trust me absolutely, my child. I am fifteen, sixteen years older
than you, and though I am an expensive man, I have at
present other ways to keep myself less troublesome than
marrying twenty thousand pounds attached to a passionate
young woman. You would tire me out! I don't say,' he added
thoughtfully, 'that in five years or so, as a married woman, you might not have attractions; but for the moment you are
quite safe from me.’

She coloured indignantly. 'If I were a married woman, you
would be quite safe from me!’

He smiled lazily. 'That is exactly how you should think,
and just what I would have expected from you. And to
convince you further of the purity of my intentions, I shall
make a point of calling on your mother when I get back to
London to explain how it is that I have dined alone with you
here, so that she won't hear it from someone else and draw
the wrong conclusions.'

‘
Thank you,' Rosamund said, though rather absently. He
had given her too much else to think about to have time to
worry about her reputation.

 
Héloïse and John Anstey were taking a walk together around
the moat. The sky above was clear blue, the sunshine hot — it
was like a different world from the grey, wet one they had
grown used to.

‘
Ah, this is good, this is peaceful,' Lord Anstey said, looking
around him. 'It's good to get away from my problems for a
little while.'

‘Poor John,' Héloïse said. Was it very bad?’

Not as bad as it might have been, but bad enough. And we
got the bodies up — that was one blessing! I remember back in
'74 we had a collapse at Tunstall where we lost forty people,
and we never recovered them. We just had to close off that
part of the mine in the end. I was only a child at the time, of course, but I remember my father coming in exhausted night
after night and telling my mother about it. I heard him say
once that the thing that puzzled him was that the survivors
seemed to mind more about the bodies not being brought up
than about the actual deaths: and do you know, it's still the
same? The lower orders are extraordinary.'

‘
I suppose they accept that death can come at any time,'
Héloïse offered, 'but the funeral is their comfort.'

‘
Yes, I suppose so. Well, there'll be a funeral this time, all
right. I shall pay for it myself, of course.'

‘How many people died?'

‘
Two men, three women and four children. And one of the
women was with child. Bad enough, in all conscience.' He
sighed. 'But it's the men's own fault, you know. They won't
prop up properly as they go along, so we're bound to get these collapses.'

‘
But why won't they? It seems extraordinary that they risk
their lives unnecessarily.'

‘
They say it takes too much time. While they're propping
up, they're not actually getting coal, and so not actually
earning any money. They're paid by what they get out, you
understand; so they take short cuts, and leave things undone.
I suppose they think the risk is worth it.'

‘
No-one ever thinks an accident will happen to him,'
Héloïse said.

‘
True. And then, you know, sometimes they leave a column
of coal as the prop, and at the last minute greed overcomes
them and they don't want to leave it behind. So they take the
chance the roof will hold without it. I understand that's what
happened in this case. With the price of coal so low at the
moment, they have to get out more each day to make the
same money. And there was the coal prop, all nice and ready
to hand, better than clearing a new gallery – so they thought.’

They walked on a moment in silence. Then Héloïse said, 'I
don't like to think of the women and children working under
ground.’

Anstey shrugged. 'It isn't what anyone likes to think about.
They're a dreadful sight, you know, those women – naked to the waist and dragging a tub along by a belt and chain. Espe
cially when they're with child. We had a woman last month
gave birth underground on one of the ledges – brought the
baby up hidden in her apron, afraid she'd be turned off if
anyone knew. It died though. Probably a blessing in disguise: it wouldn't have been much of a life for it, in the mines. They
go down sometimes as young as four. We don't encourage it,
but the parents insist.'

‘
But how frightened the little ones must be, going down
into the dark!'

‘
Only at first. They soon get used to it – the women too.
Someone must draw for the men; and if the children didn't
work the traps, everyone would suffocate.'

‘Couldn't men do those things?’

He shook his head. 'It isn't like that. The men who cut the
coal want their women and children to work with them, to
make up the family's wages. Usually the miner himself
compounds for the whole family to work – you can't take him
on without taking his drawer and his little stackers and trap
pers as well.'

‘
Yes, I see,' Héloïse said hesitantly. 'It's like the weavers,
with their wives spinning for them, and the children
scribbling and piecing and threading.'

‘
Precisely. And you know yourself that weavers' children
begin work at four years old, or even younger.'

‘
But it is different, going down the mines from working in
your own home.'

‘
No-one makes them do it. Every day there are queues of
them at the office, begging for work – men, women and
children – far more than I can employ, with trade so slack just now. And look,' he went on, though she had not inter
rupted, 'someone must employ them, or how would they live?
I know there are people nowadays agitating for laws to be
passed to prevent women and children working down the
mines, but I can't see the justification for interfering with
people's freedom like that. Besides, it's a dangerous precedent
to set, giving the Government that kind of power. You see
where it got the French! No, no, let people alone to choose
their own way of life, say I. It's no bed of roses for the men
underground, either, you know; but it's not for me to tell
people they may not sell their labour how and where they
wish.’

Héloïse nodded, seeing the sense of it. 'Yes, that's true. It is
what Edward was saying the other day – that freedom is
worth a little inconvenience. But death is rather more of an
inconvenience than most people would bargain for.'

‘Sometimes that's what it costs.’

They turned the corner of the house. The moat was full
almost to overflowing, and the sunlight was dancing on the water and throwing a shifting pattern of light on the wall of
the house. This was the kitchen wall. Héloïse glanced up
automatically at the black stain on the brickwork high up,
where the chimney had caught fire last year. It was a gigantic,
mediaeval chimney, rising twenty feet above the roof, and so
wide that the sweep didn't need to send a boy up – he could
climb up it himself quite easily. It should never have caught fire in a thousand years, and investigation proved that it had
only done so because it had not been swept in nine years:
every time the sweep came, Monsieur Barnard had told him it
was not convenient to be letting the kitchen fire out that day.