Chapter 33 The Factory #4
If I was as angry as he claimed, surely decades of suppressed rage could not be simply vanished by a few lungfuls of bad air? Grimly, I held on to that one stale breath, burning in my lungs as my whole body screamed for air. I hated my anger—hated it—but surely it would at least be good for this.
A lady is sweet tempered and low voiced whenever possible , said the Quindley in my mind. I shoved him aside. Apologies, Harry, but for once in my life he was not what was needed—no, I needed what he had always tried to quench.
If Quindley could see my rage—a red, black, pulsing, spiked thing, as I pictured it—he would think me an even greater monster than Pike. One thing about monsters, though—they are hard to kill.
I knew Pike felt little, if any, pain. I could not make him recoil with a sudden slash of my nails or a well-placed kick, as I might with a normal man.
However, he’d cantilevered his body into an awkward angle to maneuver my head into the blue steam, so I might, if I caught him off guard, have a chance.
Just one. I waited till I felt him lean a little farther forward, then I went limp, as though I’d passed out.
He leaned down as though to lower me to the ground, and, when he was as far off balance as possible, I braced my lower body, grabbed the arm around my neck, and threw myself backward.
Archimedes once said that if you gave him a long enough lever and a place to stand, he could move the earth.
I do not know about that, but with a grunt from me and an oof from him, I managed to send Pike flying.
My back and shoulder muscles screamed in protest, but I did it, and he fell over his apparatus with a crash.
There was a tinkle of broken glass and a clatter of metal as his feet flailed wildly, then his head struck the ground with a crack that would have been fatal to a living man.
I did not stay to see what had become of Pike, because I was already sprinting for the exit.
The factory was dim beyond the pool of lamplight. I prayed that my mental map was accurate as I dodged dim piles of crates.
Suddenly, a hand closed around my ankle.
I looked down. Pike, dragging himself on the ground, had caught up.
All I could see in the shadows was the furious glitter in his eyes.
In panic I kicked out at him, but he held on.
His grip was as firm as iron, and as cold.
No one would mistake him for a gentleman now.
No one would think him a living man at all.
I could not break his grip. It was over. Judging from the feral snarls now issuing from him, I doubted whether his plan to carefully drug and preserve me had survived his rage.
Goodbye, Georgiana , I thought, as he jumped to his feet and his hands closed around my neck.
Whoosh.
There was a strange sensation on the back of my head. A sort of buzzing flutter. Then a scratch. Then a high, fluting scream of fury.
With a roar of irritation, Pike stumbled back. His grip loosened, and he wrenched free.
With a shriek of triumph that would have been more comfortable in the throat of a falcon than a songbird, Cariad fluttered after him, flying in his face, scratching and pecking at his eyes. Pike reared back and stumbled into a pile of crates, which tumbled over. I turned to make my escape.
Then I smelled it. Smoke.
I looked back over my shoulder. Flames licked from a pile of crates near Pike’s decimated machine.
When I’d thrown him into it, one of his boots must have knocked over a burner, or perhaps several.
A tiny calm part of me pointed out that having so many open flames on one machine had always been foolish on his part, especially in a fabric factory—such an accident as this was only a matter of time.
Even as I watched, a piece of canvas and the thread from one of the looms caught. It would all go up in no time.
I would be safe from the flames in the river. My heart screamed for Cariad, but I could not waste the chance he was giving me, and I sprinted back to the wheel room. I had one foot down the trapdoor before I remembered. Mairead. The others.
And I was almost free! Ah, well. I turned and ran back into the burning building. I raced to the other end and through the small corridor. Smoke was already stinging my lungs in the open air as I yanked at the door. It was locked.
I pounded at it with all my strength, screaming a mixture of English and the scraps of Irish I’d acquired. “Get up! Fire! Up, if you would live! Thuas! Amach, amach! Wake up!”
One pale, frightened face appeared at the window, then a second and a third. At first blinking in confusion, they quickly grew wide-eyed and awake. My poor Irish had little to do with it, I expect—by now I could see flames reflected in their eyes as they looked behind me at the factory.
“The door is locked,” I babbled uselessly. Why hadn’t my lessons included door and lock ?
The girls were screaming now, yelling something at me that I could not understand.
Why did they not unlock the dashed door?
Then my eyes followed their pointing fingers.
Scrabbling across the brick wall, my hand closed around a bit of string, tied around a metal hook.
From the string hung a key. I was not locked out. They were locked in.
If I had not already given up all hope of redeeming Mr. Pike, I did then. He’d locked them in, the—well, I had best not record here what I called him in my head, lest it fall into the wrong hands. But even Quindley would have to admit that he richly deserved it.
I shoved the key into the lock and turned it with trembling fingers (trembling with rage! Thank you for the insight, Pike, you X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X?X? X?X?X?X?X?X?X? ). A dozen girls in their nightdresses came running out, and just in time, for just then the roof of their dormitory caught.
We stood in the woods for a time, huddled together, me in my soaked, smoky boys’ clothing, them in their damp nightdresses and bare feet.
We could feel the heat even twenty feet off.
There was a collective moan when the roof fell partially in.
I kept expecting to see a dark figure stumble from the flames, but there was none.
Nor did a little bird come fluttering out.
My throat burned harder. I wished I could cry. Thank you, Cariad. God rest your little soul.
Bang! The moans turned to screams as the fire suddenly exploded with a brilliant flash of red.
Bang! Hands covered eyes as there was another brilliant flash of light, green this time.
The barrels. That fool Pike had packed his factory with cloth, thread, wooden crates, and open flames, and now that the inevitable had happened, the barrels of serum were heating up into bombs.
“Get back,” I said in useless English, pulling them farther into the woods. “Do not breathe it in. Back.”
They followed my urgent movements, probably more out of fear of the explosions than from anything I said. A hand gripped my arm. I turned. It was Mairead, her dark eyes hooded in the light of the flames.
“Gliondrach,” I said awkwardly. “Gliondrach tu abhus.” I hoped she understood my broken words as I meant them: I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re alive.
She said something, too quickly for me to catch. She turned me by the shoulders toward the road to Meryton. The church bells were tolling. Others would be here soon.
Still upbraiding me incomprehensibly, she gestured to my shirt, tugged at my trousers.
Oh.
I could not be seen here. Not like this. I took a step back and then hovered uncertainly.
Surely I oughtn’t to leave them this way.
Mairead seized me by the shoulder again and gave me a shove toward the road.
She shouted something in which I could discern the word go .
I started away at a slow jog, quickly growing faster as my full situation dawned upon me.
If Miss Mary Bennet of Longbourn was found, in the middle of the night, dressed as a boy, at the site of her fiancé’s presumed fiery death, it would make Lydia’s scandalous elopement a mere footnote compared to my infamy.
I found myself at home just as the sun was beginning to bleach the horizon. A column of smoke rose from the woods. I stared at it, mesmerized, until I fell asleep against my windowpane.
No one knew quite what to make of the fire. It erased most evidence of Pike’s sinister apparatus, and the barrels of serum had all burst by the time the good people of Meryton arrived.
Luckily it had been a damp autumn, so the woods did not catch, but Pike’s factory burned quickly and thoroughly. When he failed to reappear, he went down into the parish record as perishing in the flames. Miss Figg, too, was lost to the disaster.
The factory girls were housed in the church for a few days. Then a collection was taken to send them home. They left with no protest.
Did Meryton know that something terrible happened out there at the old mill?
More terrible than just the fire, I mean?
Perhaps they suspected. However, they had no wish to know more.
No one spoke the girls’ language but I, and no attempt to find a decent translator was made.
I tried once to speak to Mairead. Her eyes went right past me as if she did not know me.
I do not know if she was angry with me or still trying to protect me.
If they knew where in the woods their sister weavers’ bodies lay, they told no one. I suppose I cannot blame them for that.
Pike is spoken of now with some sorrow, as a promising young gentleman who was felled by a tragic stroke of bad luck.
The lack of much actual sorrow makes me suspect that they knew at least a little of what went on.
However, Meryton has never had the words to talk about Septimus Pike, in life, death, or anything in between. I suppose that will never change now.
No one knows quite what to make of me, either. But I suppose no one ever did.
I am a bit ashamed to admit it, but the one I grieve the most is Cariad.
For days, I hoped to hear his little beak tapping at the window, but I never did.
I suppose I deserve that much for my role in all this, but I could wish it was not my valiant little friend who paid the price.
I find myself absently reaching up to my shoulder to stroke a feathered little head that is no longer there.
That is all, Harry, I believe. Everyone has left me—Cariad, Miss Darcy, even Pike’s poisonous obsession is laid to rest at last—but that is no more than I deserve.
Two monsters, me and Pike, and between us we have caused so much sorrow.
Now one of us is dead, and the other is alone.
I shall do my best to be grateful for that much and to live quietly for the rest of my days, doing no more damage.
The scarlet rage of my nature will never erupt to the surface ever again.
A sorry tale, all in all, Harry. I daresay if you were real you would despise me. At least it is over now.