A Horse Called Hero (21 page)

Dodo reached the stark black tower where the crowd was concentrating, a dark clot already pressed to the pit-head gate. Below, to the seaward side, more figures were rushing up the streets that
climbed from the harbour, a whole community running.

‘Two shifts down there,’ someone at her side was saying, ‘those going in-by those going out-by.’

‘One hundred and fifty of them down there,’ another answered.

‘Shaft’s burned out.’

Dodo saw what they called the shaft, the smoke pouring from it, nearby a cabin, and three men in suits talking. The crowd was pressing behind her, more than five hundred perhaps. She forced her
way through to the cabin, straining to hear what the men in suits were saying.

‘Shaft Two?’

‘Destroyed.’

‘Three?’

‘Wasn’t working before and won’t be working now. No way for ’em to get to it anyway.’

‘They’re trapped then.’

‘Aye . . . We ’ave ter wait for new cage.’

‘Get volunteers for a rescue party.’

Wolfie, Dodo was thinking. Wolfie . . . Oh Wolfie.

‘A’most three miles, the fire’s near three miles from the down-take shaft. If Shaft Two isn’t working, they’re trapped – there’s no way out . .
.’

Dodo heard someone speak the words as if through a pounding sea,asifthe sea were in her head, churning and crashing.

‘They’ll be trapped . . . it’ll be a wall of fire down there and they’re behind it . . . No way out.’

Wolfie trapped behind a wall of fire. Trapped in an exploding mine two miles from land, a hundred fathoms below the surface of the sea . . .

When Dodo came to, she had a blanket over her shoulders. Someone put a cup of tea in her hands.

‘My brother—’ began Dodo.

‘My son,’ said the woman with the cup of tea.

The sun was setting across the harbour. The woman told Dodo that a replacement cage had arrived.

The sky darkened. Soft drizzle began to fall. Still more people were joining the crowd on the brow. The foreman called for a party of volunteers, for eight men. Ryland was the first to step
forward.

Dodo went to his side. ‘Take me down with you,’ she begged.

‘No, miss.’

‘If you don’t return within an hour, a second rescue party will be sent down,’ the foreman said as the men stepped into the cage.

The cone of light showed an opening in the side of the tunnel, now bricked up. Behind it lay an old coalface.

‘There’s no other way,’ said Jo. ‘From there it’s two miles to the old shaft.’

Wolfie leaned in to Hero’s neck, feeling the horse’s uncertainty. He held his head to Hero’s muzzle and breathed deeply, slowly, in with Hero, out with Hero.

‘Can we get through?’ he asked when the horse was calm.

‘Aye, an’ it’s the only way we’ll get out . . .’

Jo took up his metal bar and crouched. Wolfie held up his light for Jo to see. Jo forced the bar into the crumbling mortar and prised out a slightly loose brick. He ran his hand around the gap,
then prodded the space behind with his bar, tapped the brick behind.

‘Two,’ he said. ‘Two bricks deep.’

Whispering to Hero to stand, Wolfie crouched. One by one, brick by brick, they unpicked the face of it, leaving the second layer.

‘Go careful, slow and careful . . . Might be firedamp on t’other side. An’ if there’s damp . . .’

Jo paused and wiped his brow.

‘Then what?’ asked Wolfie.

Jo shook his head. ‘We brick it up quick.’

Wolfie poured some water from his bottle into the palm of his hand for Hero. Hero snuffled and snorted. Water ran over the edges of Wolfie’s palm. He remembered the dark stable where a
small foal had slurped milk and honey from the palm of his hand.

‘How much water do you have?’ Jo was asking.

‘Half,’ said Wolfie. ‘Half my bottle.’

In the light of his lamp Wolfie saw Jo’s smile, a sad, charmed, exasperated smile.

‘Don’t go givin’ it all to the horse.’

‘How high is the tunnel, Jo?’

‘High enough. It were one o’ the main road workings – where the big horses worked. The condition of it’s maybe going to be more o’ a problem.’

They set to again with their picks.

‘They knew,’ Jo said when they paused again to drink and rest. ‘Management always knew it were prone to spontaneous combustion. Seven hundred men killed, that day, the day my
grampa died . . . it were like today, two shifts in t’ pit . . .’

‘What will happen to us, Jo?’

Jo stretched a cut and bleeding hand across his face, rested his head against the wall. ‘I’ll bore a hole and test for damp. If the air’s all right . . .’

Wolfie was outside, seeing himself as if from far away. A boy in a mine, with a horse. A wall of fire to their backs. The only way out down a road on which seven hundred men had once died, a
road that was liable to explode suddenly and violently and unpredictably.

He rested his head against Hero’s neck and whispered, ‘You’re two miles out to sea, a hundred fathoms below the waves, and you must break through a brick wall into a tunnel.
You don’t know if there’s firedamp in there but it’s your only way out . . .’

It felt better to say it.

‘’E trusts you, an’ all.’ Jo smiled, watching. ‘’E – look at him, so calm ’e is – ’e trusts you to get him home safe . . . an’
’e’s looking into the belly of you, so get that pick – hold your lamp up for’s – best keep going, quick and steady, no panicking or rushing at it.’

Later, while they waited to catch their breath, in the stillness they heard a distant roar.

‘The others . . . everyone else?’ asked Wolfie.

Jo shook his head slowly.

The sky over the sea deepened. Grim lines were carved on stern, lamplit faces, all eyes following the dense smoke that poured from the shaft.

As the cage was winched to the surface the crowd started forward. Immediately it was pushed back to make way for the stretchers to be carried out.

Two bodies.

The rest of the rescuers stepped out, black-faced, coughing and choking. Dodo saw Ryland among them. Wiping his face with the back of his hand, he spoke to the foreman, shaking his head
slowly.

‘Ten at the foot of t’ shaft . . . too late – bodies . . . cage mangled . . . can’t get through. Tubs off the rails – roof props blown out—’

The foreman shouted over him. ‘More volunteers needed to bring ’em up.’

People surged forward – men, women and children.

‘No, Don’t go – No!’ Ryland was shouting, waving at them, pushing between the crowd and the shaft. ‘There’s a change in the air current. I tell you,
don’t go down.’

The younger men looked at him and shook their heads. The foreman picked fifteen men. They grabbed at helmets, loaded timber and rescue gear.

‘I tell you, don’t go down!’ Ryland was still shouting at the crowd.

The men in the cage looked at him silently as it began to drop. Ryland rushed to the foreman, grabbing him by the shoulders. ‘Any survivors will be at the bottom – you can’t
get to ’em now – there’s a change in the air current. Get everyone out, get ’em out, I tell you, man, get the cage up!’

Dodo was forcing her way forward to Ryland, grabbing at him. ‘What does it mean? What’s a “change in the air current” mean? What’s going to happen?’

Ryland watched the cage drop and said quietly, ‘Each one of ’em’s a brother or a father or a son down there . . . they’ll not listen.’ He turned back to the
foreman.

Dodo pleaded with him, tugging at him, begging him to tell her what would happen, but Ryland turned to the foreman.

‘I tell you, man, get ’em out. Get ’em to bring up bodies at the foot o’ t’shaft and go no further.’

The Salvation Army were setting up trestles, handing out tea, coffee and blankets. Dodo, shivering with fear, found her hands were trembling so much that she couldn’t raise the mug to her
lips.

‘Dodo.’

It was Hettie. Dodo fell into her arms.

‘Wolfie?’ Hettie asked.

There was a violent boom. The earth shook under their feet. Flames shot a thousand feet into the sky. Fumes bellied out. The crowd fell back in horror and fear.

‘What’s happened? Hettie – what’s happening?’

Ryland’s hands covered his face.

After a while he said, his face ashen, ‘There’s no hope, no hope for any of ’em, miss . . .’

Wooden beams and archways, snapped or twisted out of shape, appeared and disappeared in the swinging arc of Wolfie’s lamp.

‘A mile thereabouts to go. Shade the light – the further the horse can see, faster he’ll go, an’ if he puts a hoof on the rails he’ll slip and fall and break his
knees. Make ’im go careful. Swing the light up to the ceiling now for me.’

‘Collars are all right, mostly they’re high – ’e won’t have to bend . . . an’ men prefer the old beams to the new iron ones. Wood creaks, creaks an’
groans like an ol’ tree afore it collapses, them new iron ones just snap out, sudden, like bullets.’

Wolfie kept a hand on Hero’s neck, the warmth and strength of it a comfort.

‘Half a mile, near enough, to the old shaft.’ Jo said.

There was no firedamp in the tunnel, Jo had said, but the thickness of the dark was sinister and uncanny.

They moved on through it, on and on. Hero was beginning to tire perhaps, or finding the ground difficult. Beneath the palm of Wolfie’s hand, the skin of his neck was growing hot and
sweaty, his occasional refusals to budge the more frequent. Wolfie whispered to him, but the skin under his hand was as tremulous as the surface of a stream.

The horse’s fear transmitted itself to Wolfie and surged like a hot current through his own veins. Suddenly Hero yanked up his head and pulled back, dragging Wolfie with him. He whinnied
wildly. The shriek echoed and spiralled in the black cavern. He spun round, snatching the rope from Wolfie’s hand, metal hoofs clattering on metal rails, the bulk of him a whirling mass,
sudden and terrifying. Wolfie glimpsed the rump of him, then the flanks, catching Hero’s neck now in the arc of his lamp, a feral, flaring colossus, unpredictable and terrifying in the
confined darkness of the tunnel.

Wolfie’s calls to Hero, the ringing of metal hoof on metal, and the horse’s squealing whinnies all whirled and eddied in the black.

‘It’s all right, ’s’all right, Hero.’

The arc of his light found the horse and Wolfie saw the whites of Hero’s eyes, his head high, almost to the ceiling, electrified, febrile and overwrought. One foreleg pawed and struck the
air.

‘Shh, it’s all right, Hero, s’all right,’ he said again, but his own voice wobbled and shook.

‘Shh, hold ’im still,’ said Jo. ‘Quiet . . . an’ listen.’

Jo took Wolfie’s lamp and walked on carefully, the beam of it swinging, disembodied and ghostlike, in the wall of dark.

‘Stay still – don’t move.’

They waited, Wolfie and Hero distant from Jo by twenty or so feet.

‘Stay still,’ Jo said again, creeping back towards Wolfie. ‘Stay where you are.’

They waited a while, together in silence, on either side of Hero.

Suddenly there were running steps, voices, two lights coming from behind them.

‘Thank God,’ Jo said. ‘Thank God . . . some of ’em’ve come this way.’

Five figures appeared, one wounded in the legs, supported on either side, all of them weak and coughing their eyes large and white in their grimy faces.

They exchanged a short, grim greeting with Jo, nodded to Wolfie and Hero.

There was a distant boom, a muffled, faraway roar.

‘Did you hear that – did you hear?’ Wolfie asked. ‘What’s happened? What’s happening?’

‘Another explosion – at the main shaft head perhaps . . .’

Jo shook his head slowly from side to side. The men were silent, heads bowed for many minutes. When one of the older men looked up, his black cheeks were streaked with tears.

After a while, Jo rubbed his eyes and looked up. ‘That’s what were bothering ’im,’ he said. ‘Horse knew it were comin’. Wait for a bit, then we’ll go
on.’

An hour or so passed, then one of the older men nodded to Jo and they all went on in silence. Wolfie’s hands trembled on Hero’s neck. His legs were shaking, tripping and stumbling as
he followed on behind Jo and the men. Hero was light on his hoofs, live and wary.

‘Come on, steady the horse, calm ’im, we ’ave to keep going,’ Jo called.

‘Come on, Hero, come on,’ Wolfie whispered, watching their lights, scared of being left behind, of the men going on ahead into the darkness and leaving them alone. He pulled again at
Hero, but the horse was hesitating, pulling back on the rope. Wolfie breathed deep and slow to stop the pounding of his heart. The men’s lamps were growing smaller. Wolfie tugged again.

Hero pawed and snorted and pranced, striking the air with a foreleg. Wolfie’s arm quivered as he tried to pull him on.

‘Come on, Hero, it’s OK. The explosion was by the main shaft . . . a long way away.’

Again the horse demurred.

Wolfie waited. His body quaked from top to toe. He heard a faint and sinister creaking, like the creaking of a ship. He held his lamp up to the ceiling. Nothing. He took a step back, still
holding the lamp to the ceiling, then another step, and another, the horse moving quietly back with him. He saw a long and vicious crack.

‘Get back!’ he yelled. ‘Get back, get back!’

Hero whinnied, a piercing scream of terror that stretched and echoed like a wild thing down the tunnel. His hoofs struck the rail, again and again, pawing and jabbing.

‘Get back!’ Wolfie was shouting. ‘Get back, get back!’

There were running footsteps, men shouting and calling to one another, Jo’s voice screaming, ‘Get back! Get back far as you can – Run!’

Hero was huge and whirling, monstrous and sudden. Wolfie tried to steady his lamp, still calling out to the men, but Hero was plunging up and down now, swinging his head from side to side, a
gleaming colossus, all running sweat, eyes bulging and glinting. Suddenly Wolfie was thrown backwards, hit with force in his side by the great bulk and bone of Hero’s head, and flung to the
ground.

Men were shouting and screaming and running past him. Wolfie lay, coiled in pain against the wall of the tunnel.