The Black Country

“No!” Day said. “Please don’t!”

“I hurt him!”

“He didn’t hurt me! But please, don’t anyone else jump on me!”

“Can you see anything down there?” Kingsley said.

“It’s very dark!” Day said.

“Take one of the lanterns!”

“Don’t throw it!”

“No!” Kingsley said. He stood and looked around. “No, that wouldn’t do, would it?”

“I have an idea,” Anna said. She squatted like Peter had at the lip of the chasm. Kingsley and Jessica both reached out and grabbed her shoulders. “I’m not going to jump in there. I’m the smart one. Peter’s the impulsive one.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted down at Day and Peter. “Stand well back! I’m going to try something!”

She stood and walked back from the fissure and squatted again, putting her arms out in front of her, bent at the elbows so that her forearms were straight across her face. She moved forward, pushing the snow ahead of her, using her arms as a plow. By the time she reached the hole in the ground, she was sweeping a high pile of snow. It went over the edge and fell into the dark with a soft plush.

Kingsley grasped what she was up to and grinned. “Come, Henry. Let’s help her.” He blew out the fire in his lantern and set it next to the hole to cool, then he and Henry moved out into the drifts of snow. They mimicked Anna, who was already pushing another heap of snow toward the chasm. Jessica followed them, knelt in the snow, and plowed it ahead of her just as the others were doing. After a few minutes, they stood and brushed themselves off, blew warm air into their cupped palms, and returned to the hole.

Anna peered down at her invisible brother and the inspector. “Did it make a cushion down there?”

“It did!” Peter said. “Good job! It must be a yard high at least, but I don’t think we can climb up it! Too soft!”

“Soft is good!” Anna said. She took the cold lantern and clicked her tongue at it. “I’m afraid we may lose some of the oil.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t talking to you!”

“What are you doing?”

“Stand back and let me just do it!”

She lay on her stomach and crawled out as far as she dared, then dangled the lantern over the edge and let go of it. It landed like a whisper somewhere below. A moment later Peter’s voice drifted up to her. “Got it! Brilliant!”

“Did it leak?”

“I don’t think so! Not very much!”

“We need to get matches for you now!”

“I’ve got matches!” Day said.

She listened to a rustling sound in the dark, and then there was a small flash of light and the sound of metal on metal as the lantern opened and was lit. And all at once she could see her brother and Inspector Day, standing in the snow and looking up at her. Their faces were yellow in the lamplight, and their bodies faded out into nothingness below their chests. They looked almost close enough to touch.

“Henry might be able to reach you,” Kingsley said. There seemed to be no need to shout anymore, now that they could all see one another.

“I don’t think so,” Day said. “It’s farther than it looks.”

Henry reached out anyway, reached his long right arm far down into the ground, his fingertips still far above Day and the boy.

“It’s okay,” Peter said. “I can lead us out. I know the way. I think I do.” He seemed eager to please, and Anna understood why. Both of them had a lot to make up for.

“We’ll be okay,” Day said. “It really is warmer down here than up there. You lot must be freezing. You look wet.”

And, suddenly, they were freezing. The initial rush of adrenaline had faded and they weren’t moving, just kneeling in the snow. Henry reached into his overcoat and found his little wooden box. He opened the lid a crack and squinted inside it, then closed it again and held it over the chasm.

They all heard a piercing peep.

“Henry!”

“Catch,” Henry said.

“Henry, no!” Day said.

“He can help you, little Oliver can.”

“How is that?”

“Like a canary. It’s a coal mine you’re in. They take canaries into coal mines to protect them, don’t they?”

“That they do,” Day said. He doubted whether Henry understood why miners carried canaries, that the birds’ deaths were meant to warn men of gas leaks and pockets of poison in the underground air. “Thank you, but I doubt it’s necessary. You need to keep Oliver safe with you.”

Henry frowned, but tucked the bird back into his coat.

“Right,” Kingsley said. “We’ll head on to the depot and see about warming up. You get out of there and make your way to the depot, too.”

“Or somewhere,” Day said. “If we can find a safe place, we’ll wait for daylight. I’ll find Sergeant Hammersmith. Or Constable Grimes.”

“The train will come once the storm lets up.”

“We hope.”

“We do indeed.”

“I want to send the sergeant home as soon as we can.”

“We will.”

“Peter,” Anna said, “take care.”

He nodded up at her, the lamplight catching highlights in his hair and a glint in his eyes. She knew he understood her. She didn’t want to spell it out. She needed him now. She had a horrible feeling that they had no one else left.

65

Well,” Day said, “lead the way, young man.”

Peter bit his upper lip and preceded the inspector down the long black tunnel. Day held the lantern high, and shadows bounded ahead of them over the craggy walls and the beaten-down floor, the ceiling with its rough timbers meant to keep the village from crashing through and failing miserably at that task.

“How is your arm? Does it hurt much?”

“No,” Peter said. “Perhaps it’s the cold, but I can’t feel it at all now.”

The boy trotted along barefoot, his arm in a sling made from a torn shirt, his hair plastered to his head. He and his sisters had spent days on their own, wild children, their father stalking these same tunnels and their mother hiding in a tiny hole under a church. Peter Price had been attended by a housekeeper and a schoolteacher, but he had gone without a parent, had most likely taken the role of parent for his sisters’ sake, and there was something new awakening in Day as his wife grew larger, as their baby grew larger inside her. He was a father, or would be very soon, and he was astonished by the depth of feeling that this simple fact inspired in him. He wanted to be an example for his child, whether that child finally presented itself as a boy or a girl. And, like generations of men before him, he also wanted to take a train in the other direction and never set his eyes on that child. Granted, this latter emotion was a false one, gnarled and stunted, a poisoned apple offered up by a part of himself he had never listened to, but it shamed him and he aimed that shame at Sutton Price, who had actually left