Dan Vyleta - Smoke

A few steps from the engine room, Thomas’s hands find another bolt and, beneath it, an icy metal wheel, five turns of which open the room ahead. Only the drip of water disturbs its silence, echoes coolly in the air. A large room, then, a hold. Livia has held on to the gas lamp and now lights its wick. A scramble of shadows, then the room comes into focus, an iron-walled hall supported by girders, only half full with cargo. Crates and barrels mostly and, beyond them, an array of metal parts: articulated pipes, gear wheels, fan blades, and giant perforated disks, like overgrown pieces of plumbing, stacked into a mound and secured to the floor by heavy chains. Not waiting for Thomas, Livia walks the lamp down the length of the hold and takes an inventory, placing a palm on each item, one by one. As she walks deeper into the space, the lamp dislodges movement at the edge of its shine. A hard bony clicking, claws on steel. Livia’s movements are flushing the sounds towards him. She is walking boldly in her circle of light, her eyes on the cargo, never looking about. He supposes this means she has heard the rats, too. Her return causes a second wave of scrambling, inverted now, back into the far reaches of the hold.

“Whatever we are looking for, it isn’t here,” she reports. “All items have customs stamps. Some of them have several. Brazil, Portugal, France. England.”

“And it would be hard to hide anything down here.” Thomas scans the room again. His eyes are drawn to the giant metal parts. “Machinery. You wouldn’t think they’d be allowed to import it. Not with the embargo in place.”

“The seal on them is a different colour. A special licence, perhaps. What do you think they are for?”

“Don’t know. Come, it must surely be midnight now.”

As he says it a sound carries to them from the quay, a whistle. It reaches them faint and tinny, down here under the waterline.

“The watchman. Something’s happening.”

Without needing to discuss it, they rush to the door and reenter the corridor outside.

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A light has been lit. It is far away, broken up by stairwells and corridors. But as they scramble their way back down the corridor by touch — their own lamp long extinguished — and reach the first sets of stairs, they catch a hint of it, enough to suggest a direction. It seems at once foolish and inevitable that they should follow it, making haste, hungry for answers. A moment later — a corridor, a bend — and it is gone, leaving them stranded, disoriented.

Then a voice sounds. Another voice answers. They are too far away to make out either words or speaker.

“Above.” Livia whispers it, close to his ear. She must be standing on tiptoe. “They are on deck.”

“Your mother?”

“Not sure. What now?”

The light makes the decision for them. There it is again, moving purposefully now, towards them, trailing the sounds of steps. Unwilling to be caught out, they back away from it. A junction forces a decision: left or right. They choose badly, the light following and their path cut off by a door. It stands ajar. They slip through, into a room cluttered with shadows, conscious that they will be caught. There are not enough yards between them and their pursuers to find a likely hiding space. Then the light relents; pauses; slips a wedge through the half-open door, like an angular toe. It finds a carpet, and a sliver of wood-panelled wall. At the same time a voice can be heard, distinct now and foreign.

“Look now,” it says, its accent thick, tilting the vowels and giving an odd sharpness to the k , “before we go in, we must talk about the money.”

“You have been paid, and generously.”

In other circumstances it would be a shock to hear it again. Lady Naylor’s voice. A wonder of a voice, actually: composed and reasonable; at once amiable and aloof. But Thomas is busy, scanning the room for a hiding place. Shapes peel themselves from shadows. A bed, a desk, some chairs. The bed is built into the wall, the chairs too small to cower behind. At one side, two portholes glow with a lighter shade of dark. The clouds must have lifted and the moon come out.

“There have been complications. I had all sorts of problems getting past the authorities. And then the refitting costs! Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find a suitable carpenter in La Rochelle?”

“We can discuss all that once we have seen the merchandise. After you, Captain.”

A new voice this, also accented, if differently. Shy and precise. A man used to talking, but not about himself. Thomas pictures him to himself even as he finds the wardrobe, built into the wood panelling in such a manner that only its key protrudes. Livia sees it at the same time. It’s deeper than expected, but low. They cower amongst shirtsleeves, their limbs entangled, her hair in his mouth. A fingertip inserted into the keyhole, a sharp little pull, and the wardrobe door closes behind them just as the cabin door is pushed wide open and light floods the room.

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They take turns at the keyhole. The door is not locked and hangs open a tiny crack: they must not lean their face against it, lest it move. Then, too, the key is in the keyhole: does not quite block it but leaves to them only a curved sliver through which to observe.

Three people. The captain is plump, soft-faced, balding beneath light blond curls. He is turning away now, bending, lighting an additional lamp. White trousers underneath a short-cut pea coat. A picture-book sailor, with a wide, fleshy rear.

Lady Naylor stands close to him, looking pale and thin; handsome, thinks Thomas, a stretched, pinched version of her daughter. The third man is at the edge of Thomas’s field of vision: not old, fine-boned. An umbrella in his gloved hand. Both he and milady cast about the room. They have seen us , it comes to Thomas. Her face — backlit now, the lamp a halo at the back of her head — is taut with impatience. Somewhere behind Thomas and Livia, as though in the wood itself, a rat is scraping, digging channels into the wardrobe’s back.

“Where—” Lady Naylor begins to ask but is interrupted by the captain’s eagerness.

“This is just what I mean. It took the carpenter a month to get it right. It had to be seamless . And just like the old cabin, in case one of the customs people remembered. Some men have a surprising memory for that sort of thing. The same cabin, exactly. Only we shrank it by forty cubic feet.”

He paces nervously as he speaks. Thomas recognises the sequence of steps. Four steps, four steps. Then he stops at a machine, a little box with a fluted bell, like the head of a lily made of brass.

“I had to hire a whole new crew. Just to be safe! The old ones might have noticed something. Good men, too, hard to replace! And then the journey. Days at sea, lying here in my bunk, and the devil restless behind the wall. Played music through the nights, just to drown out the sounds. I aged twenty years, I swear.”

“You followed my instructions minutely?”

It is the man with the umbrella who asks. He has stepped closer to the wardrobe, as though sensing them there. Livia pushes Thomas’s head aside, takes charge of the keyhole. He leans back, hears again that scratching at his back, pictures the rodent squatting in the dark, its claws an inch from him, fanned out and eager.

“Yes, of course. We used the lead lining, just as instructed. And I kept a sweet in my mouth, even at night. Nearly choked on it more than once. And feeding times. .”

Thomas hears a crash and, pressing his cheek into Livia’s, catches a glimpse of the captain retrieving a stick he has dislodged from its perch. It is stout, the length of a broom handle, and has an oddly shaped metal hook at one end.

“I got quite adept with this, fending it off while pouring your concoction down its throat.”