17
May men say, “He is far greater than his father,”
when he returns from battle.
HOMER, The Iliad
THE BAND OF RIOTING workers appeared to be heading for the road that led to the mill, so Theo set out across the fields in the same direction, hoping to reach it ahead of them. Exactly what he would do when he got there was unclear; still, it behooved him to do something. He could only hope some plan of action would have presented itself to him when the time came.
He reached the mill to find it dark and quiet. Stepping up to the nearest window, he cupped his hands about his eyes, pressed his nose to the glass, and peered inside. Moonlight shining on the rows of machines cast weird shadows onto the sanded planks of the floor, but there was no sign of any movement, and no sound. Clearly, he had got there ahead of the mob, in spite of having twice lost his way and once wrenched his ankle by stepping into a rabbit hole. He had not long to wonder at this curious circumstance before a faint orange glow over the hill, accompanied by a murmur of sound like a swarm of angry bees, announced the approach of his adversaries. But surely the glow was brighter than it had been before. Or was it merely an optical illusion, a trick of the moonlight as its source rose higher in the sky?
Then the first of the torches began to crest the hill, and Theo’s thudding heart dropped into the region usually occupied by his stomach. What had been surely no more than fifty men had increased to two—three—four times that number. What could any one man do against such an army?
“Buck up, old boy,” he admonished himself under his breath. “You were already outnumbered fifty to one. What’s a couple hundred more?”
Setting his jaw, he stepped away from the window and positioned himself before the door.
LADY HELEN BRUNDY, exhausted from three days on the road, leaned her head back against the squabs and attempted, without much success, to sleep. Well-sprung as it undoubtedly was, her husband’s traveling carriage was no substitute for the goose down pillow that awaited her at the end of the journey. Her glance rested briefly on the rear-facing seat, where her son lay curled up with his head on his father’s lap, and she envied him the easy slumber of the young.
Her husband, correctly interpreting her wistful expression, gave her a look that might have been a caress. “Not much longer now, love.”
“No,” she concurred, summoning a weary smile.
Her gaze shifted to the window, beyond which familiar landmarks might occasionally be glimpsed in the light of the carriage’s swaying lanterns: a signpost indicating the direction and distance to Manchester; a thatched cottage distinguished, incongruously, by a tiny square window of stained glass; the silver gleam of moonlight on water as they crossed the bridge over the River Medlock. Then another sight, less familiar, met her eyes. She sat up straighter, peering out the window for a closer look at the faint orange glow in the distance.
“Ethan, something is burning. You don’t suppose—the house—”
He shifted Willie’s limp form and leaned forward, almost pressing his nose to the glass. “It couldn’t be the ’ouse; it’s not far enough to the north. All the same—”
He rapped sharply on the overhead panel, and ordered the coachman not to spare the horses.
“STOP RIGHT THERE!” Theo bellowed as soon as the mob was close enough to hear. He took a step forward, out of the shadow of the hulking building at his back, and drew himself up to his full height.
“Lookee here,” came a jeering voice Theo had no trouble identifying as Wilkins. “It’s Thee-o-dore.”
“Step aside, Tisdale,” someone else warned him. “You don’t want to get hurt.”
Theo was in complete agreement with this statement, but held his ground nonetheless.
“We’ve got no grudge against you, so long as you’ll not interfere.”
“Are you with us, or not?”
Now they were near enough that he could pick out faces, their features distorted by shadow and flame, but recognizable nevertheless. Perhaps it was nothing more than a trick of the light, but while some of them looked angry and ready to torch the mill at a word from Wilkins, others looked uncomfortable and ill at ease. He decided his best course lay in making his appeal to these.
“I’m with you,” he assured them. “I’m with you so much that I’ve come to urge you not to do anything you’ll regret.”
Wilkins gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, we won’t regret it, although Brundy might. He’s had it coming for years.”
“Has he? What has he ever done to you?” Theo looked beyond Wilkins to address the group at large. “What has he done to any of you?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Living like a king—”
“—that big house of his—”
“—standing for Parliament—”
“Aye, while we sweat and slave for him—”
As Theo listened to their catalog of grievances, it struck him that they were reciting lines they’d learned by rote—learned from Wilkins, he had no doubt, at Sir Valerian’s instigation.
“All right, so he’s rich,” he said, conceding the point. “But can any of you honestly say that he’s never ‘sweated and slaved’ himself?” Seeing them momentarily silenced, Theo pressed his point. “Right after the war, when the price of bread was so high and the cost of cotton plummeted, did he reduce your wages by so much as a farthing? Or let any of you go, so he wouldn’t have to pay so many workers? No, he canceled the trip to Paris he was to take with Nell, er, with his
