Dan Vyleta - Smoke

Thomas feels his heart pound in his chest. The enormity of it all comes crashing down on him, squeezing the air out of his lungs. He searches for something simple, some corner of it he can understand.

“What did you do in London, Lady Naylor? What is it for, that woman’s Soot?”

“Experiments.”

“You are looking for a cure. For Smoke.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She laughs. “How? That’s a very long story. Too much for one night.”

Panic grabs Thomas. Panic that he will wake, and it will all have been a dream. “But you will tell me, won’t you? Everything!”

“As much as I can. But not now. I need my sleep.” She looks in his face, finds a plea written there. “One more question then. Something quick.”

Thomas chews his cheek, afraid to waste his question, like those people in fairy tales who part with their wishes like fools. Then he knows.

“Sweets,” he says. “Beasley and Son. We ate some but nothing happened. What are they? How do they work?”

ф

When Charlie wakes from pleasant dreams in the early hours of the morning it is still quite dark outside. It takes him some minutes to realise he is alone. No sound issues from Thomas’s bed. Curious, he rolls off the mattress, tiptoes forward in the dark until his shin bumps into the other bed. He feels the pillow and finds it quite cold. As he stands, pondering this fact, a light passes the door. It slides through the crack like an inverted shadow, licks a yard of floorboard, and is gone.

By the time Charlie has stepped out into the hallway, the light is seven or eight steps ahead. The figure that holds it is moving briskly. It blocks the bulk of the glow and hence is visible only in outline, a darkness traced in hues of gold. Fittingly enough, this halo is most radiant around the head.

Charlie recognises her by her hair. As his eyes adjust, Livia gains solidity, transforms from lamp-sketched apparition into a more corporeal sort of ghost. If the previous day her dress was plain it is now austere: an apron worn over an ankle-length smock, both garments startlingly white. Her hair is honey-thick by gaslight. From her hand swings a porcelain jug.

Charlie follows her without hesitation and has taken three steps before even being conscious of his decision. He does so neither furtively nor wilfully announcing his presence, but simply follows, his nightshirt fluttering as he rushes to keep step.

She leads him to stairs: the main stairwell first, then — a long corridor later, lined with portraits, vases, animal heads — a narrower flight that leads them to a barren corridor under a slanting ceiling. The attic. It isn’t clear to Charlie whether Livia has noticed his pursuit. She has not slowed or turned but when she stops before a door ten steps ahead, it appears to him that she is tarrying just long enough to make sure he won’t mistake it for another. Then she disappears inside. A sound greets her, an animal braying, and slows Charlie’s step.

It is the sound of a beast in pain.

The room beyond the open door is dark, despite the gas lamp. At first Charlie thinks the walls are painted black. But when his hand brushes one side, the black smears and crumbles and leaves his fingers dark with Soot. The room is large and furnished only with some chairs, a table and dresser, and a large, iron-frame bed. On the bed lies a figure, manacled at wrists and ankles with wide leather straps. Again the strange braying sounds, filling the room. Charlie’s skin puckers when he realises it issues from this man, his arms and legs tugging at the leather binds.

“He gets agitated in the mornings.”

Livia’s voice is calm, matter-of-fact. She stands at the table between bed and window, pours water into a washbasin. Already her apron is stained with Soot. When she bends down to run a wetted washcloth over the man’s forehead, he cries again and his body exhales a dark-green burp of Smoke. Slack-mouthed, leering, he wears a mask rather than a face. Whatever features he might call his own are cancelled out by his condition.

“Mother thinks we must keep it a secret,” Livia goes on, still in the same nonchalant tone. Her eyes are on her work. All the same Charlie has the sensation of being closely watched by her, his every move registered, analysed, judged. “But I say we must accept Providence humbly, without shame.”

It is only now, as she says it, that Charlie understands.

“Baron Naylor,” it tumbles out of him. And is followed, with an alacrity that clearly pleases her, for Livia’s eyes light up within her small, finely drawn face: “How can I help?”

“We must wash and feed him.”

It proves an awkward, difficult procedure, in part because it necessitates the removal of the leather restraints. Baron Naylor fights them. He is not a young man, perhaps as much as twenty years older than his wife (though it is possible, too, that his illness has aged him, for he is thin and dishevelled, and his molars are dark within his mouth, there at the back where they are hard to clean). For all that he is as strong as an ox and the presence of a stranger appears to upset him. No sooner have they freed his right hand than he snakes it around Charlie’s wrist. Again the baron brays and thick, viscous Smoke crawls out of his skin and works its way up Charlie’s arm. A moment later it is in his nose, his lungs. He begins to struggle with the man, begins to loathe him; disgust floods Charlie and when the madman’s hand reaches up, searching for his throat, Charlie slaps it away with coarse brutality. It is only then, spitting out his anger, that Charlie realises he, too, is smoking.

Shame cuts through him, winds him, stoppers his Smoke. He backs away, to the wall, where the man’s infection does not reach; stands panting, pressing his back into the wall like a burglar caught red-handed; looks over at Livia and hangs his head.

“I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.”

Livia returns his look. Her hands remain upon her father’s body, she is buried to her elbows in the old man’s Smoke, but her head turns and he can see how difficult it is for her, how magnificent her self-control. Her own Smoke is minimal, fine white wisps that escape her lips and colour them grey. It is as though she’s been spoon-fed ashes. Her gown is white, Charlie realises, because she wishes to test herself. Nothing must be hidden. It makes him marvel at her: a feeling not unlike fear. She, for her part, does not hide her disappointment in him; lets go of her father’s limbs and reaches over to the table where she finds a tin box and throws it across to Charlie with a quick, disdainful flick.

“Here. Mother uses them when she is up here. Take one.”

Charlie opens the tin and finds a dozen sweets inside. Clear, knuckle-sized, stamped with the familiar symbol: B&S underneath a three-pronged crown. He fishes one out, shakes his head.

“What do I do? I’ve tried one before but nothing happened. All it did was taste of soap.”

She does not turn with her answer.

“Put one in your mouth. Don’t chew it. It’ll pull the Smoke out of your breath and blood, and bind it, long before you show. Before it can infest your mind.”

Charlie does as instructed, then gingerly, not quite trusting himself, steps up to the bed. Livia has her hands full: her father is fighting her every movement, is spitting, biting, kicking. But this time Charlie’s blood remains cool and his mind clear, almost detached. He takes hold of Baron Naylor’s arms and pins them very gently, speaks to him in low, soothing words, much as one would speak to a frightened pet or an infant; takes the cloth from Livia and cleans his face, his neck and ears. Within minutes the old man calms down, becomes pliable and almost childlike, his features composed. The face that emerges is not unlike Livia’s, fine-boned, heart-shaped, and noble, if old.