London - Edward Rutherfurd [486]
“Goodbye Silas,” the standing figure said softly.
The other, for a moment, made no response; when he did, his voice was deep as the river, thick as the fog that shrouded it. “What’ll you call her?”
“The baby? Lucy.” His wife had chosen the name. He liked it.
“So you don’t want to join me, Will?”
“I don’t like what you do.”
“You ain’t getting rich yourself, are you?”
“I know.”
Silas spat between his feet, and began to shove off. “You’ll never go nowhere,” he grunted, and a moment later he and his dirty old boat were swallowed up in the mist.
But I still wouldn’t care to go where you’re surely going, William Dogget thought, as he started to make his way home.
Penny’s instructions from his father had been specific: as soon as he arrived in London, he was to go at once to the house of his godfather, Jeremy Fleming. But, judging that the fog made this impossible at present, Eugene decided to spend the night at the inn. He was cheerful enough. This inconvenience, he told himself, would only delay the start of his new life by a few hours.
What Eugene did not yet realize was that the fog which covered London was an integral part of the new life he was seeking. For no sooner had England resumed the standards of its Roman past than it had forged ahead into the great expansion called the Industrial Revolution.
It is often supposed that Britain’s Industrial Revolution was a matter of huge factories manned by armies of the oppressed; and it is true that in the north and Midlands big iron foundries, steam-powered cotton mills, and coal mines which sent children underground did exist. But in reality, the Industrial Revolution was led by England’s traditional woollen cloth trade and followed by cheap manufactured cottons. Though mechanical spinning and weaving made vast expansion possible, this manufacturing was mostly carried out by small masters with modest works and sweatshops. But they all used coal: and the volume of smoke and soot from the city’s now myriad fires became so great that in the right atmospheric conditions its dark vapours settled like a blanket, trapping even more fumes below; and then, as a mist arose, thickened into this choking, impenetrable horror in which men muffled their faces and a thief could walk beside you a hundred paces unseen. So was born the ‘pea-souper’, or London fog.
In the warm glow of the George’s main parlour, Eugene could forget about the evil presence of the fog outside. The innkeeper brought him a steak and kidney pie and a bottle of porter, as dark beer was often called, and chatted to him from time to time. Eugene looked eagerly at the faces around him. Being a coaching inn, there were all kinds of travellers there – coachmen in their heavy coats, merchants, a brace of lawyers, a clergyman, a gentleman returning to the country, together with numerous locals, mostly shopkeepers.
It was about nine o’clock that the curious figure entered. He came in alone and ordered a tankard of porter, carrying it silently to a corner of the room where he sat by himself. There was a momentary hush as he entered. The smooth surface of conversation seemed to open, and people edged away from him; then it closed as quickly as possible in his wake. He was somewhat shorter than most men, but very heavy-set and he moved with a surly slowness. His big, heavy coat was of an indeterminate colour; and on his head he wore a high, black and shapeless woollen hat folded into a rim which touched his thick, black eyebrows. His eyes were big and angry; under them, the skin gathered into dark rings. The overall effect was one of deepset menace. And whether it was the pallor of his skin, or the strange, webbed hand which held the tankard, it seemed to Eugene as if this apparition had emerged from the depths of the dark and foggy river itself.
“Who is that?” he enquired of the innkeeper.
“That?” the man replied, with a look of disgust. “He is called Silas Dogget.”
“What