‘Haul them up! Get them up out of the water!’
Men were splashing around, desperate to save the cargo. Will did his own splashing as barrels were pushed towards the pebbled shore. He ignored his hurt shoulder. It was harder to ignore the memory of the flying rope and Murphy in the way of the crash. It could have killed him. He tried to focus on the wreckage. How badly was the cargo damaged? Cork floated, and the rum barrels were airtight, but saltpeter dissolved in water. When they crowbarred open the barrels of gunpowder, would they find it ruined?
To lose a bargeful of gunpowder – what would that mean? Would Crenshaw’s business fold, his wealth floating in the river?
Accidents were common on the docks. Just last week Will had seen a plodding draught horse shy unexpectedly as it pulled a barge along the canals, breaking its ropes and overturning its boat. Abney had a story of a snapped chain that had killed four men and sent a boatload of coal to the bottom. Murphy had two missing fingers from badly stacked crates. Everyone knew the daily reality: hazardous skimping, corners cut.
‘A bloody rope’s slipped!’ swore Beckett, an older labourer with a faded brown waistcoat fastened tight up to the throat. ‘There.’ He pointed at the broken tether. ‘You.’ He turned to Will, who happened to be closest. ‘Get us some more rope, and a crowbar to open up these barrels.’ He gestured to the warehouse with his chin. ‘And be quick about it. Any lost time comes out of your pay.’
‘Yes, Master Beckett,’ said Will, knowing better than to argue.
Behind him Beckett was already ordering others back to their work, directing the flow of sacks and crates around the dripping barrels on the bank.
Will hurried towards the warehouse.
One of many large brick buildings that lined the foreshore, Crenshaw’s warehouse was filled with merchandise in barrels and crates, resting for a night or two before it found its way into drawing rooms, onto dining tables, and into smoking pipes.
Inside, the air was cold, and sickened with the stench of sulphur in yellow bins, and hides in stacks, and barrels of cloyingly sweet rum. Will hid his nose in his arm as a pungent whiff of fresh tobacco in stacks was obliterated by the throat-itching scent of rich spices he’d never tasted. He had spent a half day hauling crates inside a similar warehouse two weeks ago. The cough had stayed with him for days and been a nuisance to hide from the foreman. He was used to the foul smell of the river, but the fumes from the tar and the alcohol made his eyes water.
A labourer with a coarse, bright-coloured handkerchief around his throat paused in his work stacking timber. ‘You lost?’
‘Beckett sent me in to find some rope.’
‘Down back.’ He gestured with his thumb.
Will scooped up a crowbar that lay alongside a few older barrels and a heaped pile of lines smelling of tar. Then he looked around for a spare coil of rope that he could sling over his shoulder and take back to the barge.
Nothing here, nothing behind the barrels … To his left he saw an object partially covered in a white sheet. Anything there? He reached out and tugged the dusty sheet, which slipped off and pooled on the floor.
A mirror was revealed, leaning against a cargo crate. It was made of metal, and it was old, an antique from an ancient era, before mirrors were made out of glass. Warped and streaked, it scattered his reflection in choppy glints across its metal surface, hazy glimpses of pale skin and dark eyes. Nothing here either, he thought, and was about to return to his search when something in the mirror caught his eye.
A flicker.
He looked around sharply, thinking that the mirror must have caught the reflected movement of someone behind him. But no one was there. Strange. Had he imagined it? The warehouse at this end was deserted, long corridors between stacked crates. He looked back at the mirror.
Its dull metal surface was tarnished with age and imperfections, so that it was hard to make himself out. But he still saw it, a movement in the mirror’s hazy surface that stopped him in his tracks.
The reflection in the mirror was changing.
Will stared at it, barely daring to breathe. The dim shapes in the metal were re-forming before his eyes, into columns and wide-open spaces … It wasn’t possible, and yet it was happening. The reflection was changing, as if the room the mirror faced was a long-ago place, and there was no one to tell him not to come forward and look across the years.
There was a lady in the mirror. That was what he saw first, or thought that he saw, then the gold of the candle beside her, and the gold of her gleaming hair, caught in a single plait that fell over her shoulder and all the way down to her waist.