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Authors: Linda Needham
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The page crumpled against Jack's chest.
The writing was a blur, as it always was at first. That startling fear of finding a name that was too dear, and with it a spiraling pool of emptiness. His hand shook as he went to the window with the report, where the light was better and the air was sweetened by the wisteria.
"You'll see, sir, that our operative has singled out a number of possibilities." Jack could hear the fear and hesitance in Greel's voice; relished it because it matched his own. "Odd spellings and such, as I said. Collected in potters' graveyards only because they were connected with the appropriate dates and locations. The unclaimed body of a woman your mother's age."
A body. Jack grasped again for his anger and found plenty of the sort bound up in helplessness.
It would do; it was heavy enough to weight him to the spot.
"What else have you got to show me, Dodson? I have three sisters: Emma, Clady , and Banon ."
"We know their names, sir."
"They would be twenty-eight, twenty-six, and twenty-one, respectively."
"We know their ages."
"Then why haven't you found them? I pay your firm thousands of pounds annually, have done so for nearly two decades—long enough for your father to die, Dodson, and your own son here to have grown out of knee breeches and take his bloody place as a partner—and in all that time you have yet to turn up anything of consequence. Not a single word. My family did not vanish from the earth!"
"It isn't easy, my lord," young Dodson said from behind his chair. "Perhaps if you could give us a bit more information."
"There must be a very hot place in hell for lawyers, Dodson. I've told you everything I know."
"Yes, yes. Without a doubt, sir," the younger man stammered, though Jack had spoken his curse to the senior partner. "Perhaps if you'd repeat it again. I'll check our notes."
"Do that. Check your damn notes. I last saw my mother the night my father died. I was on the deck of a smuggling ship that was sailing out of a dark cove off the coast of Furness ." Sightless darkness, the sting of salt in his nostrils. A fatherless son. The sea had smelled of desolation and betrayal and untimely farewell ever since. "It was the twentieth day of June, 1840."
Young Dodson's nose was buried in the file. "Yes, my lord, as it says here. When again did you last see your sisters?"
Jack swallowed the clod in his throat, tossed the report onto the table, and looked to the enormous map on his wall, the breadth of his domain. Lead, tin, copper. And for what purpose?
"I saw them that morning at breakfast, before they crawled back into the mines for another twelve-hour day of dragging coal sledges to the surface. That was the last I saw of them." But their faces still gleamed each night in his dreams, haloed in golden curls.
Young Dodson was still searching his notes. "That was a full two years before Parliament enacted the law prohibiting girls and women from entering the mines. Perhaps your sisters met their ends in an accident. If that were so… I mean…"
The young man inhaled sharply and raised his eyes, wary, obviously waiting for Jack to strike out. But Jack had never allowed himself to think of a cave-in or a fall, or the skull-cracking swing of an iron donkey.
Was it time to begin thinking that way?
Had his family's silence been so immutably real all along? Had he been alone from the beginning? He cleared his throat and steadied his hands on the back of his chair, wondering if he would ever be ready to hear that kind of truth.
"I suggest, Mr. Dodson, that if your operative hasn't thought to research mining accidents in northern Lancashire between
twenty June, 1840
and the autumn of '42, perhaps he should ."
A spark lit the young man's eyes. "Yes, my lord, immediately. I shall oversee the project myself."
Jack should have been grateful for young Dodson's enthusiasm, and for this new direction, but there would be harrowing pain in such success. A molten hotness pricked the backs of
The writing was a blur, as it always was at first. That startling fear of finding a name that was too dear, and with it a spiraling pool of emptiness. His hand shook as he went to the window with the report, where the light was better and the air was sweetened by the wisteria.
"You'll see, sir, that our operative has singled out a number of possibilities." Jack could hear the fear and hesitance in Greel's voice; relished it because it matched his own. "Odd spellings and such, as I said. Collected in potters' graveyards only because they were connected with the appropriate dates and locations. The unclaimed body of a woman your mother's age."
A body. Jack grasped again for his anger and found plenty of the sort bound up in helplessness.
It would do; it was heavy enough to weight him to the spot.
"What else have you got to show me, Dodson? I have three sisters: Emma, Clady , and Banon ."
"We know their names, sir."
"They would be twenty-eight, twenty-six, and twenty-one, respectively."
"We know their ages."
"Then why haven't you found them? I pay your firm thousands of pounds annually, have done so for nearly two decades—long enough for your father to die, Dodson, and your own son here to have grown out of knee breeches and take his bloody place as a partner—and in all that time you have yet to turn up anything of consequence. Not a single word. My family did not vanish from the earth!"
"It isn't easy, my lord," young Dodson said from behind his chair. "Perhaps if you could give us a bit more information."
"There must be a very hot place in hell for lawyers, Dodson. I've told you everything I know."
"Yes, yes. Without a doubt, sir," the younger man stammered, though Jack had spoken his curse to the senior partner. "Perhaps if you'd repeat it again. I'll check our notes."
"Do that. Check your damn notes. I last saw my mother the night my father died. I was on the deck of a smuggling ship that was sailing out of a dark cove off the coast of Furness ." Sightless darkness, the sting of salt in his nostrils. A fatherless son. The sea had smelled of desolation and betrayal and untimely farewell ever since. "It was the twentieth day of June, 1840."
Young Dodson's nose was buried in the file. "Yes, my lord, as it says here. When again did you last see your sisters?"
Jack swallowed the clod in his throat, tossed the report onto the table, and looked to the enormous map on his wall, the breadth of his domain. Lead, tin, copper. And for what purpose?
"I saw them that morning at breakfast, before they crawled back into the mines for another twelve-hour day of dragging coal sledges to the surface. That was the last I saw of them." But their faces still gleamed each night in his dreams, haloed in golden curls.
Young Dodson was still searching his notes. "That was a full two years before Parliament enacted the law prohibiting girls and women from entering the mines. Perhaps your sisters met their ends in an accident. If that were so… I mean…"
The young man inhaled sharply and raised his eyes, wary, obviously waiting for Jack to strike out. But Jack had never allowed himself to think of a cave-in or a fall, or the skull-cracking swing of an iron donkey.
Was it time to begin thinking that way?
Had his family's silence been so immutably real all along? Had he been alone from the beginning? He cleared his throat and steadied his hands on the back of his chair, wondering if he would ever be ready to hear that kind of truth.
"I suggest, Mr. Dodson, that if your operative hasn't thought to research mining accidents in northern Lancashire between
twenty June, 1840
and the autumn of '42, perhaps he should ."
A spark lit the young man's eyes. "Yes, my lord, immediately. I shall oversee the project myself."
Jack should have been grateful for young Dodson's enthusiasm, and for this new direction, but there would be harrowing pain in such success. A molten hotness pricked the backs of
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