Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“You can’t do it,”said Sol in sober assessment.“I knew that you couldn’t.”

Then Gradgrind did something quite authoritative; he accepted Sol Scadger’s dare and fired his gun directly into that man’s chest. As the loud cracking report of the shot echoed throughout the lane, the air was pierced as well by the screams of some of the wives. Solomon’s own wife Nell did not scream. Instead she fell insentient into the arms of her sister-in-law Barbara, who watched in horror as the oldest of the Scadger clan clutched at his fast-crimsoning breast and then fell to the ground. Susan Fagin rushed to his side. Solomon Scadger’s eyes remained open, but all life had fled from them.

“Right through his very heart,” said Susan somberly and clinically, though her own eyes were filling with silent tears. Deputy Gradgrind did not lower his gun. He kept it trained on the other five men, each of whom wore seething expressions of murderous revenge.

No one moved with one exception: Susan Fagin, who went to the medical bag, which Harry had a moment before set down next to his feet. She unbuckled the straps and opened the bag, even as Harry said to her in a low, crippled voice,“There’s nothing that can be done for him. Can you not see that he is already dead?”

“There is at least one small thing that I can do in his memory,” said Susan. And then she did her small thing; she pulled the Taser from the bag, engaged it as she had seen Nurse Wolf do, and shot the deputy with it, the electrified wire striking the young man in his chest at very nearly the same spot where his bullet had entered the body of Solomon Scadger. Gradgrind fell forward, just as Solomon had fallen, crying out in anguish from the pain of the voltaic attack.

The pistol having dropt from the deputy’s hand, Melchisedech Scadger swept it up from the ground. “See if there are other bullets on his person,” Harry instructed his brother. Gradgrind, stunned by the electric shock and unable to move, put up no struggle. Mel retrieved a box of bullets from one of the deputy’s coat pockets.

“Hurry on,” said Susan to Harry. “Allow me to stay behind and pay the price for my actions.”

“We will not leave you here. Nor will we leave my brother Solomon behind. Brothers, lift up your slain oldest brother and let us be on our way. Susan Fagin, you will come with us.”

Susan Fagin thought over her choices for a brief moment, then nodded and cast her lot with whatever fate awaited the Scadger clan. A man was dead, another man brought to his knees by a diabolical but efficient Outland weapon. A third man — Williams Skettles — had disappeared into his apothecary shop and was, no doubt, crouching and quivering behind his counter, having fully soiled his under-trowsers.

“Where are we to go?” asked Zephaniah, as he bore the motionless right shoulder of his lifeless older brother.

“To Fort Lumbey,” replied Harry.

Deputy Gradgrind’s pistol was not the only one to be fired that night. In several separate incidents, arrests were made amongst citizens in the East End, but not without engagement of the Outland guns that had been distributed by Sheriff Boldwig to each of his deputies. Judge Fitz-Marshall had taken it upon himself with nodding approval of several members of the Petit-Parliament to declare a curfew for this and every one of the succeeding nights until the time of the Summit evacuation so as to better keep the peace in the remaining days of valley occupancy.

There had been concerns by certain members of the Petit-Parliament that such a reining in of personal liberty amongst Dinglians would have the opposite effect — would incite anger and panic and chaos — and it was this faction that had accurately foreseen the quickly-ensuing results of the judge’s actions, for there was now just such a reactive backlash afoot and growing more conflagrative with every moment, with each newly retailed rumour circulating through the streets like bellowed flame. The reason was this: that every fear which had dwelt within the breast of the vaguely and perpetually-fearful Dinglian, passed along from generation to generation for 121 years via an ethos of indeterminate unease and doubt and unanswered enquiry, now gave way to the sudden realisation that anything could be true — that everything could be true — that the sky was indeed falling— that the Dell was now in its dying throes.

Rose saw it for herself as she returned to her jewellry shop. There in the street was a gathering of merchants and tavern-keepers and hostlers and blacksmiths and barbers, and other men and women of middle-class burgherdom, assembled to know what was to be done with so many arrests and so much foment in the streets. At least a dozen shops had been forcibly entered and vandalised in just the last hour. And arrests had not been limited only to the criminal element. Had not the jeweller Herbert Fagin himself been hauled off to gaol; and the writer Frederick Trimmers; and the young doctor, Mulberry Timberry; and the successful businesswoman, Antonia Bocker; and even the former sheriff, Vincent Muntle? What was the charge? Conspiracy? Conspiracy to do what? To stop whatever force now overshadowed the land? Those gathered together avowed to make an enquiry of the Petit-Parliament at the earliest opportunity, but they must first get themselves through this perilous night in which angry East Enders had begun to cross the bridge to roam the streets of the prosperous West End and to break windows and to steal from the shops that had long been closed to their patronage, their having heard rumours that Dingley Dell was now become a lawless province and every man must fend for himself. Sharing those streets were armed patrolling deputies wielding Outland weaponry and arresting whatever man had his name put upon a warrant, and some men and women whose names were not put upon warrants, but who (as in the case of Rose Fagin’s husband) dared to protest too loudly a constabulary action. These too were placed under swift arrest.

Rose Fagin listened to the ringing, echoing voices of concern and apprehension in the street, and then she repaired to her shop to take to her lodgings above. But once within her showroom she learnt a most terrible thing: she had been robbed, the culprit (or culprits) having taken nearly every ring and broach and choker in her shop. “It’s the end of the world,” she said to herself, sitting down upon a stool, but she did not weep, for hunger quickly called her to her kitchen, wherein she put some cold boiled mutton with caper sauce upon a plate and devoured it with sad little moans.

aggy stood at her window in her small sleeping quarters off the kitchen. She had put on her dressing gown and had even spent an unproductive interval in bed, tossing and turning and wondering why the man to whom she had given her heart must first lose his position as sheriff and then find himself sitting within a dark and damp gaol cell. Maggy’s former state of bliss had been brought to an abrupt end only a few hours earlier when her employer, Mr. Chowser, took her aside after supper and conveyed the most recently disturbing news about Muntle.

Maggy vowed that she would go and see her fiancé as soon as her employer gave her leave. Vincent could not be kept incarcerated forever, and perhaps it was time to ask Mr. Chowser if he had need of another labouring man to help round the school. Then the two could marry and be happy together ever after.