Dan Vyleta - Smoke

“Wait here,” the man orders, then walks briskly down the quay. After five steps he is no more than a shadow. After ten, he is lost in the night.

Lady Naylor rushes to the shelter of a tollbooth, beckons to them. Thomas hesitates. “I did not try to kill you,” she told them. Thomas finds that he believes her. Does that mean she is their friend? Her steps are hasty at any rate, the boot heels loud on the empty quay. She is nervous , it comes to Thomas. Impatient. Afraid. But perhaps he is simply projecting his own feelings, his heart too large in his chest, clenching, unclenching like a swollen fist.

Again she beckons, and still he remains out in the open, Livia by his side.

“So it’s all about this child,” he calls over, taking pleasure in the noise. “Where are you taking him?” Then it dawns on him. “The cage. The cage in your laboratory. It is meant for him.” He shudders. “I thought it was for me.”

“For you?” Her surprise seems genuine. “Yes, of course. It’s Renfrew’s fault. He told you that you had murder in your heart. He scared you, did he? And true enough, your Smoke has a certain quality. It is attuned to Julius’s in quite a startling manner. A phenomenon worthy of further study. Once upon a time I might have found a use for you.”

In the dark, across the distance, all he can see is the pale oval of her face. The eyes are deep pools, devoid of expression.

“Poor Thomas. All this time you thought you were special. At the centre of events: your Smoke the key to all the secrets in the world.” The words are mocking. But her voice carries sympathy. “Here is the coach. You have a decision to make. Are you coming or not?”

Thomas and Livia look at one another. There is no need to discuss it. They can stay and remain ignorant. Or they can go along and get answers. One after the other they squeeze into the little fly that has pulled up in front of them, an unknown coachman on the box. If they had wanted to leave, they would have done so already.

The next moment they race off, down the quayside and through the metal gate, still unmanned. A quarter mile on, they slow to a less conspicuous speed. The clip-clop of hooves half drowns their conversation.

ф

“Talk! Explain yourself. Who are you? Who is the child?”

The stranger is unfazed by Thomas’s anger. He is sitting across from him, holding the child in his lap, his umbrella hooked into his elbow and tangling up their feet.

“Patience. Call me Sebastian. Here is my hand. How do you do? Mr. Argyle. Miss Naylor. You take after your mother, my dear, if you don’t mind my saying. Exquisite bones. Lady Naylor has told me all about you two, and about Mr. Cooper, too, of course. Now first things first, if you don’t mind. We have to make an adjustment to our plans.” He turns to Lady Naylor, his voice precise, even, confident. “Where are we going, Katie?”

Lady Naylor hesitates over the answer. “Are your lodgings being watched, too?”

“No, they don’t know about me yet. But it will be noticed if I bring guests. And there is no easy way of smuggling in the child. You do not have another apartment in town?”

“I have two more. But Trout will be onto them already.”

“Very well, we have no choice then. All the inns in the city will be searched, and we need shelter fast. We must leave the city and go to my country cottage. We shall leave via Moorgate.” He pauses long enough to close his eyes then open them again: a gesture more deliberate than a blink. “What about these two?”

The man’s voice and eyes remain soft. And yet there is a threat to the statement.

We know too much. Witnesses, that’s all we are to him. Peripheral. Disposable. The thought startles Thomas, recalls his earlier humiliation. All this time you thought that you were special. At the centre of events.

So perhaps he is nobody after all. An angry youth: his father’s child. But Livia’s with him, and he must protect her. There could be a blade in the shaft of that umbrella, a gun hidden in those trouser pockets. Lady Naylor appears to sense Thomas’s thought. She speaks to him rather than her daughter.

“It’s like this,” she says. “Either you betray us, and everything stays just as it is. The lies, the sweets and cigarettes, the whole hypocrisy of power. Or we end it all. Send it crumbling into dust.”

“An end to Smoke.” Livia’s voice is thick with something. Hard to say whether it is suspicion or hope. “Is that what you have been working on? A new world of virtue?”

Lady Naylor nods then gathers her daughter’s hands in hers, a scooping gesture, like pushing together the crumbs scattered on a table.

“Yes! A new world of virtue. Of justice. I am doing this for your father.”

Justice. The word is like a call to arms. It triggers a yearning in Thomas. He struggles to contain it.

“What about the child?” he asks gruffly. “Will he come to harm?”

His eyes seek out the shapeless lump of limbs and coat on the stranger’s lap; he thinks of the scratching in the wardrobe and the captain brandishing his twisted hook. It is hard not to see that the child has come to harm already.

The man who calls himself Sebastian follows his gaze.

“The child will come to further inconvenience. But not to harm.”

“Then where are his parents? You stole him. And here he is alone and frightened.”

“We had him stolen. But the place he comes from. . Please understand that his life was not a good one.”

“Would you have stolen him if it had been?”

“Naturally, yes. All the same, we saved him from deprivation. Though you will say that we imposed starvation on him all over again.”

There is something disarming about Sebastian. He appears to have no capacity for hiding behind self-deception. At the same time there is to him a calculation that reminds Thomas of Renfrew. He too has made a god of reason. Just now Sebastian’s mind is moving seamlessly from the ethics of child theft to the layout of London.

“Ah, I see we have passed Spitalfields Market. Time to alert the coachman to our new destination. Alas there are grave risks in leaving the city. The gates may already be watched. It may prove difficult to return.”

Sebastian is about to rap at the little window that separates them from the box, when Livia stops him. Her hands are still in her mother’s fists.

“We know a place. You won’t be found there.”

She hesitates, her eyes fierce with a kind of angry hope.

Don’t , Thomas thinks. We have no right.

But Livia does not seek his advice.

“We are staying with some people. A man and his wife. We met them by chance. You can trust them.” A beat, a twitch of the mouth. “If we can trust you, Mother.”

“But of course. I swore it, did I not?” Lady Naylor looks at Livia in pleasure. “These people you met — they are poor?”

“Yes, very.”

“Good. Then we can pay them. Tell us the way.”

ф

When they pull up at a corner not far from Grendel’s house, Thomas is still trying to figure it out. They set off that evening to spy on an enemy. Now they are leading her home : the only place in the world where, for the moment, they have reason to consider themselves safe. And so, in the course of a few hours they appear to have changed sides. There wasn’t even a great deal of talk to it. All Lady Naylor has told them is that she bears them no ill will. She is fighting the Smoke. And has kidnapped a child, with the help of a stranger with doe-like eyes.

It is not much to build one’s faith on.

And yet: here they are, abusing the trust of a man who suffers from kindness as though from the flu. They wait until the coach has disappeared out of sight, then rush through the dark streets, Sebastian carrying the child wrapped in his coat and slung over one shoulder. The child is unnaturally still. Drugged, Thomas surmises. Their new friends are not picky about their methods.