Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

Nor were we ever so unfortunate as to have been visited by any other form of pestilential pollution. Nor was it required that we should withstand the incursion of marauding Outlanders, nor even the intrusion of a single rogue Beyonder who through individual initiative might seek to perpetrate some act of vandalistic destruction or highway robbery upon us. Nor did any other such harmful purposed calamity threaten our collective well-being, owing, we believed, to the trust that had been built between the tradesmen and ourselves — a trust which had been induratively cemented long, long ago. We came over time to believe that the Outland brokers were in some large way responsible for our protection, were men of probity and honour, were men dedicated to the continuation of our unique way of life. It is for this reason that our own brokers who contracted with these men trucked with the utmost caution and respect.

It is also for this reason that I made it known to my brother late on the Saturday night preceding their impending visit that this newly-hatched scheme of his for returning his son to loving parental embrace — a plot that required the unwilling participation of said tradesmen — was dangerous in all of its aspects and stupid upon an unprecedented scale.

“Not in one million years, Augustus. And for a myriad of reasons, let alone the fact that Muntle would never allow it. Nobody would agree to it, for that matter, given the grave risk it poses to us all.”

My brother slammed his ceramic mug down upon the table, the hot liquid spattering the cloth, and pinned me with a glare. “For what reason would we even tell him, Freddie? For what reason would we tell anybody ?”

“Even without confiding your ridiculous plan to a single soul, brother, how could you ever believe that such a scheme wouldn’t get out? Kidnapping a tradesman, holding him hostage. You don’t think that after the other tradesmen make it known to our own brokers that one of their number has been gagged and sedated and rudely dragged from the Summit, that our deed shouldn’t within a matter of minutes find its way to the ken of everyone in the Dell? Have you mislaid the very last remnant of your declining sanity and good sense?”

“Still, I believe the plan to have some merit.”

I looked at my brother as if he had suddenly grown horns. “What merit? Tell me.”

“The opportunity to extract information from the kidnapped tradesman — not only intelligence about Newman, but about everybody who has ever ventured into the Terra Incognita. It is my hope that should our captive be the sort of divulger who will be happy to cooperate with us in lieu of having his fingers bent back in a manner in which fingers do not generally go, we should find out a most amazing catalogue of things about those who have left us, and especially about those who have failed to return.”

Charlotte entered the room, pressing a moist cloth to her head. Fixing me with her pain-squeezed gaze, she asked what had got the two of us so noisy and overwrought.

“This stratagem of your husband’s to kidnap one of the tradesmen and force him to tell us what has happened to Newman.”

Calmly, because she was weary, but also because she was just beginning to succumb to the effects of the medicinal draught she’d taken, Charlotte asked if it was really necessary to kidnap the man to ask him such a thing.

I answered for my brother with a violent shake of the head. “Which is why I plan to go to the Summit of Exchange at the early hour of daybreak on Monday and do that very thing without complicating the matter with the sort of applied duress your husband puts forward as would a raving fool.”

“You compare me to a raving fool, simply because I wish to act ?” rejoined my brother.

I shook my head in silent rebuttal. Augustus’ irrational argument had tired me. The whole business was enervating and depressing, and I slumped more heavily into the lap of my chair. Although hope still had reason to abide with us on this night, yet I could not allow my brother to attire it in ways that did not serve. After a silent interval I resumed, “Consider this , Augustus: what if after the fingers have been successfully bent backwards the kidnapped tradesman still refuses to tell us what we demand to know? What then? Do we put him on the rack? Do we pour hot oil down upon his head? Think sensibly here, brother. How quickly would any such torturous act drive all of the other tradesmen permanently from our society? Is it your wish for every man, woman and child in this valley to die a slow and inconvenient death in want of those things the tradesmen bring us that are crucial for our survival?”

“No, it is not my wish,” my brother mumbled.

“Yet you sit here willing to violate that historic trust with an act of such foolhardy impetuosity as to rate amongst the most dangerous feats of irresponsibility conceivable. This is why highly trained, level-headed and seasoned brokers do our bidding — why they and they alone are responsible for the interaction of trade which sustains us.”

“Frederick is right, dear,” said Charlotte to her gloomy-faced husband. “It is madness. Don’t think of kidnapping an Outlander even another moment. I’m going up to bed.” With this, my sister-in-law took her yawning leave.

I thought that Charlotte’s summary ruling had put a finish to the debate. Perhaps it had. Perhaps what was subsequently delivered by my irascible brother constituted merely some form of grumbling afterthought: “I don’t purchase your theory, Freddie.”

“What theory is that?”

“The one that states with unequivocal certainty that we would flounder and die in the absence of outside trade. As I see it, nearly everything we take from the Beyonders could be relinquished without insurmountable difficulty. We could easily do without the bananas, the India rubber, the calico and…”

“And tea?” I interrupted. “I see, dear Gus, that you gulp yours down as if it were some life-sustaining elixir.”

“Yes, even my tea. And every other indulgence that makes our lives more agreeable and convenient.”

I was set to counter that not all of our imports could be categorised as superfluities, but my brother gave me no opening, continuing in the same vein, scarcely taking breath. “Why, every milk cow could drop dead to-morrow morning and we would still make our lardy butterine, which tastes exactly the same as the dairy version. No more cotton? We shall wear more wool! No paper? We shall turn our leather into paper-thin vellum, our sheepskin into parchment! We have come a very long way toward total self-sustenance, brother. Apparently you haven’t taken notice.”

I pushed my own cup of tea away, some of it sloshing over the rim. “Why not, then, kidnap the whole lot of the tradesmen, and exact every atom of the information you require?”

“Don’t mock me.”

“I am not mocking you, Gus. I’m attempting, however unavailingly, to demonstrate the ridiculousness of your position. And you should be grateful that Alice isn’t here to see her father in such a puerile state, so as to give further cause for her rebellion.”

“She’s rarely around, so the point is moot. This night is the third in a row that she has spent with her friend Cecilia Pupker. The two have become inseparable.”

A moment of silence ensued. I took breath and pursued in a now somewhat less vexed tone: “Gus. I cannot stress more strongly how grave the consequences should be if you attempt anything that endangers our trading arrangements with the Outlanders, setting aside the fact that you’d be thrown into a gaol cell and never let out again. Perhaps you’ve forgotten, by the bye, that it’s against the law for an unlicensed Dinglian to be found anywhere within the vicinity of the Summit of Exchange on fortnightly Mondays.”