ON THE WAY BACK to the mill gates, Charlotte looked for Hopkins amongst the gentlemen going about their business. She searched the tide of dark grey and black frock coats, hoping for a glimpse of burgundy, but there was none.
She was disturbed by how disappointed she felt. When she’d collided with him in the street in the midst of the crisis with her father’s debt, she’d been furious with him for his interference. Now she craved it. She felt jittery and unfocused, her heart a starling, fears blooming in her stomach. What if she had broken the loom? What if her grip on her abilities wasn’t as secure as she’d thought? In London, at the end of her last lesson with Hopkins, he’d actually complimented her on it.
She’d beaten him in a game of bagatelle, having successfully controlled the small metal balls with enough finesse to move them around the wooden pegs and into the little holes on the board to score the highest points. None of the balls in play had been engraved with their respective marques, to make it fair. As a Fine Kinetics magus, Hopkins would have won hands down if the balls had been fully under his command. When they totted up the final scores and Charlotte was declared winner, she’d squeaked with delight.
“You could be one of the most powerful magi in the city,” he’d said, with no little admiration. He so rarely complimented her, it had made her blush.
“Well, I have an excellent tutor.”
“My dear Miss Gunn,” he’d said with one of his devastating smiles. “Your power has nothing whatsoever to do with me. Your ability to control it, however, does. You do understand the risk we are taking, don’t you?”
She’d nodded, solemn. “Won’t you tell me what you have in mind for me, Magus Hopkins? You said that I’d be your eyes and ears, and that we’d take down Ledbetter together. When can we start?”
The way he’d looked at her then had made her feel most strange. It was as if he were reluctant, but there was something else in his eyes that she could not fathom. She found it hard to read him, distracted as she was by how unreasonably handsome he was. He’d gotten up and crossed the small garret where they always met, hidden at the top of the Henrietta Street clock tower. There was a small window that looked down over Covent Garden. Their lessons always took place against a backdrop of shouts from the vegetable and flower sellers. “Soon,” he’d finally said, though she suspected that many other thoughts had gone unspoken. “Perhaps I have been overprotective.” He’d twisted round sharply then. “Of the general public, you understand. Sending you out to investigate something, perhaps even using your esoteric skills, feels like sending a fishing boat laden with gunpowder out onto the Thames.”
She’d deflated at the fact that he wasn’t confessing to being overprotective of her, and had immediately felt another sharp pang of guilt. How absurdly selfish of her, to wish that he’d want to keep her safe for any other reason. She was engaged to be married to a man she loved dearly, one who loved her, too. George had a respectable job and an admirable character. Hopkins was a magus of the Royal Society, forbidden to marry, like a Catholic priest. She’d tried so hard to think of him that way, like a man of the cloth there to guide her, rising above thoughts of the flesh. It was almost impossible, when he had a face that could have been carved into marble and admired for all time. And those blond curls . . . How many times had she sat on her hands to stop herself from discovering how it would feel to let them play through her fingers? And his lips . . . How many times had she imagined how they would feel upon her skin?
Then she’d remembered what he’d said. “I am no fishing boat, sir!”
He’d laughed. “My apologies. A royal barge, perhaps.”
“Oh, so I am wide and lumbering?” She’d stood, grabbing her bonnet and shoving it onto her head. “Thank you very much.”
“It amuses me that you take offence to the type of vessel rather than the gunpowder,” he’d said, with that maddening glint in his eyes. It was as if he enjoyed seeing her cross with him. What a perverted creature he was. How glad she was to be engaged to her sensible, kindly George.
She’d tied the ribbon of her bonnet so swiftly and with so little care that she caught a pinch of her skin in the bow. She’d ignored the sting, not wanting to show how he unsettled her. “Thank you for your lesson, Magus Hopkins,” she’d said tersely. “I bid you good day.”
“Don’t forget to leave by the tunnel,” he’d reminded her. As if she would forget! It was the only entrance she ever used. She couldn’t be seen going into a clock tower in broad daylight!
“Do you think me entirely stupid?” she’d snapped, and then he was in front of the door, scooping up her hand as was his way, bending to kiss the back of her glove tenderly. She’d gritted her teeth as her toes curled inside her boots.
“Far from it, Miss Gunn,” he’d said, finally releasing her. “Good day.”
Charlotte was so absorbed in her memory of him that she almost bumped into a lady crossing her path. Stopping just in time, Charlotte said, “Oh, I do beg your pardon! My mind was quite elsewhere!”
“I could see that, love.”
It was Mags, from the mill, and Charlotte blinked at her in surprise. “Oh, Mags, hello! Are you going back to the dorm?”
“I was ’opin’ to speak to you first, lass, if y’don’t mind? P’raps we could walk the long way round to our gate?”
Charlotte nodded, hearing something in the woman’s voice that put her on edge. “Of course.”
“What y’got there?” Mags nodded at the little bundle.
“Currant buns,” Charlotte replied. “I thought we could share them out in the dorm.”
“Well, there’s a kindly thought,” Mags said. “Did y’fancy fella give them to yer?”
Charlotte reddened. “I beg your pardon?”
“The bakery closed before the end of our shift, so y’couldn’t ’ave bought them yerself.” Mags, hands on hips, tilted her head as she examined Charlotte’s face. “Who are you really, Miss Baker?”
“What do you mean?”
Mags scratched her chin. “I’m not the sorta woman who plays games. I like it all out in the open. I can’t be arsed with tricks or with bloody bible bashers sendin’ in their soft daughters to try and do God’s work in t’mill.”
“Bible basher? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” As she denied it, Charlotte tried desperately to think of a good excuse for the buns, but it was clear that was the last thing on Mags’s mind.
“Who are yer? Who sent yer?”
“No one, don’t be silly! I told you, my husband died and—”
“Oh, go on with yer. I’ve never ’eard such a load of bobbins in my life. There’s no way you’ve lived through that. Look at yer. All fresh faced and plump cheeked. You’ve never ’ad to scrimp nor scrub to survive. Did that Ben send yer?”
The flush that crept up Charlotte’s throat was enough to heat a small room. “Were you eavesdropping?”
Mags nodded. “I’ll come clean. I followed you, cos I knew y’weren’t what you said y’were. I wanted to know who sent yer. Who’s that Ben? Did he send you t’work at t’mill?”
How much had she heard? For a moment, all Charlotte could do was steady her breath, panicked by the thought of what she and Ben had discussed. But then she remembered him opening the window late in the conversation. That might have saved her. Surely if Mags had heard anything about the Royal Society, this conversation would already be going very differently. There was no point denying it; she’d obviously heard enough to know that Charlotte was spying.
“Ben is my brother,” she said, not wanting Mags to think she was the kind of young lady who would sneak off to meet her lover in a seedy cottage, despite the fact that she was actually a young woman who regularly sneaked off to meet a magus. “He’s not a ‘bible basher.’ He’s a writer.”
Mags nodded and the tension eased. “Ah, someone who wants to expose what life is like for us common folk, eh? But too high and mighty to do it ’imself? Or did you just draw the short straw?”
“No, it’s not like that,” Charlotte said, settling more comfortably into this lie, it being much closer to the truth. “I do the illustrations for him. In secret. He passes them off as his own. We’ve been working together for a couple of years now.” It was easy to say, because it was what she’d always wanted as a child. She and Ben had talked about it as he lay in bed, sick, as life passed him by. Charlotte would read to him and they’d talk about him writing stories that she could illustrate. But he never had the energy to create anything, and as soon as he was well again, the last thing he wanted was to sit at a desk. “We want to expose how bad the conditions are in the mill.” That was true, for her, at least.
Mags sighed. “Yer not the first, y’know. Listen to me, lass. It’s clear you’re a delicate one, and this ain’t the place for yer. Y’need to go back to that brother of yours and tell ’im you’ve ’ad enough. There’s no shame in it.”
“No shame? I beg to differ. What sort of person would I be if I ran away after only one day?”
“The sort of person who ’as somewhere to go,” Mags said. “The only people who work in places like this are the ones who ’ave no choice.”
Charlotte grasped Mags’s arm. “But that’s exactly the reason why I must stay! The people who don’t have to work here simply don’t care. And that’s wrong.”
Mags arched an eyebrow. “It’s the way of the world, lass. In’t that what yer brother said? For people like us?”
“Well, it shouldn’t be,” Charlotte said. “And anyway, what he said was thoughtless and rude and desperately unfair.”
Mags smiled at her and rested her hand over Charlotte’s. “Ee by ’eck, I knew you was more than you look!”
Charlotte couldn’t understand the change in the woman’s demeanour. “Have I missed something?”
Mags laughed. “I wanted to see if y’were goin’ to give up, y’know, when I found you out. But yer not, are yer? There’s a fire in y’belly, and y’might be a slip of nothin’ but yer just the sorta person we need.” She linked arms with Charlotte and they started walking again. “Thing is, love, there’s been a few of us that’s been tryin’ to get people to pay attention for a long while. We’ve tried all sorts of things, but the magi are vicious sods, and they don’t like anyone standin’ up to ’em. I was lookin’ out for yer because the last time someone got into t’mill to spy on workin’ conditions, she got caught by the Royal Society, and it didn’t go well for ’er.”
Charlotte’s blood chilled. “What happened to her?”
“She were transported. To Australia, y’know. They still do that, especially to thems that don’t like the way the magi do things. So you think on, lass. If you and y’brother are really plannin’ to write somethin’ about this mill and ’ow things are, you might end up on one them ships, too, if yer not careful.”
The thought of transportation was almost as frightening as being taken by the Royal Society’s Enforcers. “We’ll be careful. What did you mean about being the sort of person you need?”
“Like I said, me and a few others ’ave been tryin’ to make things better for a while now, but no one listens to us. There are thousands like us who need work, and if we don’t like it, the magi can tell us to bugger off and give our place to someone who won’t complain. Ledbetter prides himself on givin’ us food and beds, but you’ve seen what it’s like. I ’eard what you said to y’brother and you were spot on; once yer ’ere, yer trapped. Once all the food and board and whatnot is paid for, you’ll be lucky to have a shillin’ a week spare. I’ve tried to organise savin’ schemes for people, you know, savin’ up to get out one day, but it’s bloody hopeless. Most just want a bloody drink at the end of the day, and I can’t say I blame ’em. We’re supposed to feel lucky, when them magi and that bloody Ledbetter swan about in their fancy clothes, livin’ out in t’country in their fancy houses, earnin’ a fortune from our labour. Kids are crippled and we die young. It’s not right.”
Charlotte nodded earnestly. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“We need someone like you, someone who can bring the middle class on side. That’s where we keep fallin’ down, y’see. No one in parliament is goin’ to listen to a bunch of buggers like us when they’ve got them rich magi tuckin’ banknotes in their pockets and givin’ ’em cigars, are they? But if nice young ladies like you went ’ome, spoke to yer friends who spoke to their ’usbands and they spoke to their bosses, well . . . well, maybe someone in Parliament might actually listen.”
The more Mags said, the more Charlotte realised that there was more to the woman than she’d assumed. She wasn’t talking like an unhappy employee—she was talking like someone who was part of a movement. Bringing the middle class on side? Only someone who saw a bigger picture than just the conditions in their own mill would say such a thing.
“Maybe,” Charlotte said. “I’m going to do everything I can to draw attention to this, I promise. But please, don’t tell anyone else who I really am.”
“Of course I won’t!” Mags said, squeezing her arm. “Though y’do stick out like an orange in a barrel full of apples. Nowt to be done about that, though.”
“Something happened today, to one of the looms . . .”
Mags nodded. “Aye, I didn’t see much, I were on t’other side. I ’eard y’got a strappin’, though.”
Charlotte tugged her shawl forwards, making sure the welt was covered. “The foreman is a horrible man.”
“Better than the last one, believe me.”
Charlotte tucked that grim thought away for later consideration. “He said I shouldn’t talk about it with anyone, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Mags . . . the loom . . . it lifted into the air. It smashed itself up!”
Mags nodded, eyes ahead as the street grew darker. They passed a man lighting the gas lamps, but it did little to make it feel safer. “Aye, I ’eard that, too.”
“Has it happened before? What could cause that?”
Mags was silent as they rounded the corner to walk down the edge of the mill site. She looked behind her before speaking. “That’s only ’appened the once, an’ it’s proof that things are gettin’ worse. The first few times, the looms just crumpled up. When the foreman asked who did it, there were no one to blame, so he accused us of lyin’ to protect the ones in charge of those looms. Then it ’appened again, and the foreman thought it were a conspiracy. Then last week, when that loom lifted up like that, the foreman saw it with his own eyes. He were right shaken up, and not just cos he realised we’d been tellin’ the truth. He went to Ledbetter and told him what he saw, but Ledbetter said he were a socialist conspirator, as bad as the rest of us. He were found dead in t’gutter the next day. Drank himself to death, apparently. Bunch of arse, that is. That’s why the foreman told yer to keep quiet. He’ll do the same, see? He don’t want to be ‘drunk to death,’ either, if y’know what I mean.”
So Ledbetter had been told the truth and simply didn’t believe it? Ben’s socialist conspirators didn’t even exist. But how could she persuade him of that, when he suspected it was her, turning wild? “Have you seen it happen?”
Mags nodded. “I were down the other end of a row when it ’appened last week. Killed a boy, it did. The loom landed on ’im, poor bugger.”
Charlotte bit her lip. “That’s awful.”
“Aye. And nothin’s bein’ done about it, either. But then, short of gettin’ a priest in, I’m not sure what could be done.”
“What do you mean?”
They reached the gates and Mags stopped. “Well, it’s obvious, in’t it? Them looms weigh half a tonne. There’s only two things that could lift them into the air, and the magi aren’t goin’ to do anythin’ that risks their income, are they? So there’s only one thing it could be. Ghosts.”