Obsession (11 page)

“What’s wrong, love? Now that I have dirt on my hands, I’m not fit to touch you?”

“I’m appalled by your abusing your station in life.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Ah. It’s all right that I sully my family’s name and the peerage by gambling, whoring, and general debauchery, but laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with commoners threatens to destroy the sanctity of my heritage. Christ, you’re a snob.”

She yanked her hand away. “Aren’t we self-righteous now, Your Grace? You, who would once step over a child beggar and not look at him twice. Do you think that if you brutalize your body, God will forgive your past transgressions and miraculously reward you by healing your little nurse?”

“I don’t need you to remind me that I was once a son of a bitch, Edwina. The memories of it crawl in my conscience like maggots.”

With a rustle of her skirts, she moved to the door, then paused. She tipped her haughty little chin and smiled.

“I’ll have Herbert warm you a bath. You smell disgusting, you know. Oh, and one more thing. If you think this dreadful sham will uplift you in some way to the status of your philanthropic brother, you’re sadly mistaken. You’ll never be Clayton. You’ll only be a laughingstock…more than you already are, of course.”

T
HE NEXT THREE MORNINGS
H
ERBERT WAS
forced to help me out of bed, to dress me and undress me when I returned home, too exhausted and sore to do it myself. Yet as I labored in the pit, questioning my sanity, fighting the screaming voice to give up, it was Edwina’s words that inspired me to drive the pick harder, to only stumble when I might have fallen.

And always, there was Maria.

I counted the hours until my shift was over—when I could sit among the relaxing men and watch her, waiting for the moment when Bertha would give me a sign that Maria was ready to receive me.

The impatience I expected to feel over the wait was sweated out of me, replaced with an equanimity that was as foreign to me as the strength that infused my body. I would wait forever for Maria, if I had to.

By the end of the second week, my ravaged hands were becoming hard with calluses. My shirts fit snugly across my chest and arms, the muscles tight and bulging.

Yet none of these personal accomplishments pleased me more than placing my wages into Louise’s hands. She wept and gripped my hand to her cheek, the appreciation in her eyes making a knot form in my belly.

When had anyone ever looked at me with anything other than disappointment or mockery?

Aye, and there was more. Much more. I had made friends among the men. Those who had first regarded my efforts with amusement had come to respect me for my tenacity. I had come to know each man by his name, and I knew each family. I came to learn, with some concern, that the company’s future was in question, and therefore also the livelihoods of the miners.

As we sat one eve after our shift, I listened to their concerned conversation.

“Production is down from last month,” Thomas said, staring into his ale. “The company ain’t pleased.”

“They ain’t ever pleased,” Myron Heppleborn said.

Thomas stared through the dark toward the mine. “Down from last month; down every month—down, down, down.”

Craig Gosworth tossed his empty pint cup to the ground. “We’re done, ya know. The demned pit is ’bout to give out. They’ll shut us down, just like they’ve done the others last year, and then wot’s to be of us?”

“I’ll speak to Warwick,” Thomas said. “Convince ’im to give us more time.”

Myron Heppleborn shook his head, his shoulders stooped and weary. “Why bother, Thomas? We’ve seen it comin’ for months. We’ve tried to deny it to ourselves, but there ain’t no denyin’ it any longer. I give us another two, maybe three months, and that’s that.”

With a low curse, Thomas stood and walked away into the dark. I waited a moment before following to where he leaned against a tree and gazed up at the fire-belching stack.

“What will you do?” I asked.

“I’ll speak with Warwick, aye. I’ll convince him that she ain’t done yet. Not yet.”

He shifted his gaze to mine, his eyes bright with the flames burning overhead. “There’s ore there yet, sir. I can smell it. Taste it. I feel it here.” He punched his belly. “I vow to ya, Trey, the vein is there. A big one. Enough to keep these men set and secure for the rest of our miserable lives.”

11

I
AWOKE SUDDENLY, FROM A STRANGE AND
disturbing dream—the pit again, bottomless and fiery, my face looking up at me, twisted in torment. But there was something else—something more disquieting.

Someone had shouted my name.

The clock chimed in the distance, echoing through the house. Hours yet until I was to rise and traipse over the lea and fell to the mine.

Rising from the bed, I moved to the window. The smelt fire lit the gloomy night, a pale gold veil shimmering above the horizon.

Hurry!

The voice again. I spun and searched the room, dark but for the remaining glimmer of embers in the hearth. Cold touched my face, as if from a wind. It crept up my legs and spine, a whisper brushing against my ear.

Maria! Hurry!

I dressed quickly, led by some instinct of dread that sluiced through me. Something was wrong. Something had happened. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, unnerving, rattling. It made my heart run with the sudden need to see her, to convince myself that she was all right.

By the time I topped the swell I was breathing hard, gasping in the frigid air that made my lungs burn. The cluster of houses below were dark, only an occasional glimmer of light from a distant window. There was no lamp burning in the Whitefields’ cottage.

I sat against a tree and closed my eyes, took deep breaths, and imagined myself foolish to have been rattled so by a dream.

At first, the vibrations were subtle—a tremor so faint, I thought it only my own body shivering with cold.

Then again, stronger, running through the tree at my back.

I looked up to see the dying leaves shimmy and rustle as if fingered by wind. Only there was no wind, just a low growl of what sounded like thunder beneath me.

Christ, what was happening?

Stumbling to my feet, my gaze swept the landscape. Before me the distant fell began to buckle, to open, and suddenly it seemed the world began to disintegrate.

The growl became a roar and an explosion that sent a rush of foul smoke and stench rushing from the mine shaft, as if all the demons of hell had been loosed, and with it, a plume of fire suddenly erupted from the crumbling smelt chimney.

As if time were horribly grinding to a stop, the stones of the chimney began to disintegrate one by one, flying into the sky in fiery streamers to drift back through the cloud of gray smoke and falling debris and settle upon the thatched roofs of the houses that, suddenly, looked pitifully tiny beneath the monstrous enveloping black smoke clouds.

The mine. Dear God, the mine!

I ran, slid, stumbled down the fell, eyes burning, nostrils singed by the hot air and the rank odor, the earth still trembling under me. From the corner of my eyes I could see the hills undulating like a living thing, then disappear in on themselves as if some giant maw was opening and devouring creation itself.

By instinct I ran into the road, unable to see anything but the bright flare of fire rising out of the ground, the streaks of light that looked like shooting stars through the smoke.

Then the screams—women, around me, but I couldn’t see them—wails of horror and grief. The rooftops aflame added to the bilge of smoke, the thatch snapping and crackling like tinder.

I came face to face with Bertha, her flesh gray with shock and fear, and the soot of lead dust and smoke. Her glassy eyes stared at me as she clutched her throat with her hand and made a horrible sound—her husband’s name.

“Thomas, Thomas! Someone help me hoosband!”

Beyond her, the roof of the Whitefields’ house roared with fire.

“Maria!” I shouted in Bertha’s face. “Where is Maria?”

She stumbled away. I tried to grab her, to pull her back from the oncoming billows of choking smoke. Driven by fear, she flung me aside and dissolved into the haze.

Maria squatted in the corner of the small room, much as she had the day I had found her at Menson. Fragments of burning thatch rained down around her, and the hem of the dress smoldered.

I fought my way through the smoke and flames, swept her up and out of the house, clutching her in my arms, curling her into my chest to protect her from the sparks and spewing smoke.

Running blindly through the blackness, I labored up the fell and along the footpath, lungs burning, legs cramping. I paused upon reaching the summit and looked back, down into the fiery hollow. The rumbling and roars had stopped, all but the snapping of burning thatch.

Gently, I lay Maria on the ground, took her face in my hands, and searched her for injury. Her frightened eyes looked up at me, and her hands clutched at my shirt. For an instant…

Turning, I ran back down the hill into the melee of screaming men and women. The cottages blazed, and I fought my way through the press of bodies who were frantic to reach the decimated mine. At last, I reached Richard’s cottage.

Flames rose from the roof in snapping, lapping tongues, and even as I watched, it began to disintegrate.

Shielding my face with one arm, I kicked open the door but was driven back by the wall of fire that appeared to have consumed the tiny house.

“Lou!” I shouted, desperate to find some way in.

She was curled up on the bed, holding her husband. Her head turned and she fixed me with stoic eyes, her face without fear, but with a calmness that lent a beauty to her features and hinted of the woman she had been in her youth. A smile touched her lips, then she was gone, beneath the hail of flaming timbers and thatch.

“T
HEY’RE ALL DEAD.
A
LL OF THEM.
N
O HOPE OF
recovering them.”

I stared out my bedroom window, at the pitch-black horizon that brightened occasionally with threatening weather. I thought of my grandmother and how pleased she would be about the mine. No more stench in the air.

My body covered in soot, my hands singed by hot ash, I turned back and looked down at Maria.

I had done everything humanly possible to help the buried miners and the men who had arrived for work shortly after the explosion. Alas, there had been nothing humanly possible that could be done to help. Thanks to a spark and a pocket of gas, the world one hundred feet below ground had ignited to turn the miles of shafts into oblivion.

“I did what I could,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

“Of course you did, darling.” Edwina took up a wet cloth and began to scrub my black hands. She looked as pale as I had ever seen her.

“I don’t think you comprehend, Edwina. They’re dead.”

“I understand.”

“Thomas. Myron Heppleborn—he has four children and a little farm near Haworth. Craig Gosworth just got married. And John Milford’s wife is expecting their first child in another few weeks. Lou and Richard. All gone.”

“Thank God you weren’t among them. You might have been, do you realize that? Had that explosion happened a few hours later…dear God, I shudder to think about it.”

She tossed the filthy washcloths aside. “I’ll have Herbert bring you up a hot bath.”

“I don’t want a bath. I want…” I shook my head and blinked.

My eyes burned. The women’s faces had been seared into my grainy lids and their screams rang in my ears. The sense of helplessness continued to curdle in my stomach. But more than that—fear that I had almost lost Maria again. I shook with it.

Not for the first time I thought of the dream, the voice that had roused me from bed and driven me to the mine. Coincidence, certainly.

“Christ,” I whispered. “If I hadn’t been there, Maria would be dead as well.”

Edwina sighed. “That, of course, would have been a shame.”

I cut my eyes to hers in a murderous look.

She backed away, her eyes wide and as blue as the dressing gown she wore. “Get some rest. You’re exhausted. I’ll have Herbert bring up some tea with your bath.”

As she left the room, I walked to the bed and stared down into Maria’s eyes. Disappointment weighed on me. Frustration closed off my throat.

“I thought…Out there on the fell, I thought for a moment that you recognized me. I suppose not.”

I raked my hands through my hair, feeling as if I were going to explode as violently as the gas that had sent sixty men to their deaths. For a moment—a very brief one, I envied Thomas, Myron Heppleborn, and Craig Gosworth—no longer burdened with life’s cruel twists and heart-rending disappointments.

Thunder crashed in that instant, followed by an explosion of bright light in the sky that wrung from the clouds yet another catastrophic crack, rattling the windows and shaking the floor.

Maria shifted, and her blank, emotionless expression became one of fear and confusion.

“Paul?” she whispered. “Are you there?”

I moved closer. “Maria?”