Read Online The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence - Free Book Online Page B

at both ends. The bowl was full of them—little cylinders with rolls of paper inside.
    “Look close, then,” said Mawgan, and I leaned forward. “Closer, lad.”
    With a flourish, Mawgan rapped the tube on the edge of the table. It shattered, scattering glass. And in the instant, the thing burst into flame.
    I pulled back—it had nearly set my hair alight—and Mawgan laughed delightedly. It was the paper burning, with a furious flame and a stench of sulfur. He held it to the bowl of his pipe, puffing smoke like a dragon.
    “A phosphorus candle.” He held it until the flame dwindled, then tossed it into a brass pot on the floor. It fell with a tinkle of glass. “Straight from France, that is, and the first to reach England, I daresay. Take one, lad. Take one.”
    I stepped forward and helped myself from the bowl. The floor around him was gritty with tiny bits of glass.
    “The paper’s coated with phosphorus,” said Mawgan. “Burns like the devil and nothing puts it out. But the best thing about them”—he tapped the pipestem on his teeth—“is the fact that they float, you see.”
    Mary brought a candle and walked through the room lighting lamps and tallow dips. The faint, fizzly smell of the phosphorus vanished in a reek of fish oil. Nowhere had I seen so many lamps. There was no need to carry one from room to room, as I would in London; they filled the house with a glow of yellow light.
    Mawgan laughed. He was in a fine humor now. “Everything should float,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be all the easier, hmmm, if gold could float?” Then he sat back, blowing smoke rings that floated like wreaths to the ceiling. He took the pipe from his lips and picked off a piece of tobacco.
    “So,” he said to me. “What’s this I hear about your father?” I must have blanched, and he laughed. “Don’t look so shocked, lad. Mary told me everything.”
    I saw her shoulders twitch, but she didn’t look back. She was carrying her candle from one light to the next, guarding the flame with her hand.
    “So he’s alive, is he?” asked Mawgan.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Yet you told me there was nobody else. I asked you outright, and you said it straight to my face.”
    “I told you there was no one I
saw
.” I blushed at this, the weakness of it.
    “So,” said Mawgan. He tamped the tobacco in his pipe. “You were going to let your father perish in some lonely prison rather than worry yourself about it?”
    I turned the match end over end in my hands. “That’s not the way it was.”
    “Oh, but that’s just how it was. You lied to me, John.”
    “I had to,” I said. “Stumps—”
    “That won’t do, my son. I give you safety, clothing, I give you food and shelter. Yet you repay me with lies. Why, boy? Why?”
    It was Mary who answered. “He didn’t know that he could trust you, Uncle. And is that such a wonder?” She snuffed the candle between her fingers. “His shipmates are dead, his father’s a prisoner, and how should he know whom to trust?”
    Mawgan blew a perfect ring of smoke that drifted up and hovered over him like a halo. He nodded. “Right you are, Mary. Right you are.”
    I found it hard to believe that this was the same man I’d seen only hours before, livid with rage as he lashed at Eli with a riding crop. Now he sat like a saint, with a charming smile. And I still didn’t know whether to trust him or not. He seemed quite harmless, yet every man in Pendennis obeyed his commands.
    Mary blew out her candle. “I thought you could help him,” she said. “Or I would have kept quiet.”
    “I understand,” said Mawgan. “But you haven’t told anyone else, have you?”
    “Of course not,” said Mary.
    “No one at all?”
    “Uncle, please.”
    “ ’Course you haven’t.” Mawgan smiled his gentle smile. “But the problem, you see, is what can I do?”
    “Why, ride to Polruan,” said Mary. “Bring the coast guard. Bring the excise men.”
    “Oh, I wish I could, Mary.” Mawgan