Doves Will Peck: Foundry Trilogy, #3

By W. Jan Lockwood

When Anne sabotages a scheme to entrap the renegade strikers, she at last gains the power to challenge the scabs' oppression at the hands of the union, mill, and militia. But as this precarious balance slowly totters and falls, Leonhard resorts to what were once unthinkable betrayals of even the closest of his allies. The repercussions ripple all through the mill and city, until they drive the outcast Slaide to an act of lonesome desperation. It may finally bring about a long-overdue end to the crisis, but at a cost far greater than any of them ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. Jan Lockwood
• Release date: Sep 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386538868

Book preview

in safeguard of their brood

To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?

Not to the beast that would usurp their den...

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,

And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

—William Shakespeare

a rompish sort

AFTERNOON SUNLIGHT reflects off the bathroom mirror that, for the moment, lies on the floor beneath the rowhouse’s windowsill, shining up onto the underside of the roof. Framed within that bright diamond, Slaide fits a new strut between the purlin and the ceiling-joist, and then holds it firmly in place. Deirdre stands next to his ladder, her feet straddling the seats of the twin’s old highchairs, moving with slow deliberation as she sets a nail to that strut’s bottom and hammers it through. Sweat glistens on both their faces, for although it’s a coolish day, the shingles are sunbaked, and the windows are closed against the dust raised by the militia’s motions.

She calls down to Goldwyn and Sterling where they sit under the breakfast table, poking with a rusty nail at the dryrot and worm-scores of the old strut, Can one of you please hand me another nail?

Sterling climbs onto the ladder’s bottom rungs to give her one, and she passes it and the hammer up to Slaide. But before he takes his first starter tap, the front door flies from its hinges with a splintering crack, clatters across the floor, and swipes the legs out from under the ladder. Both he and Sterling slam down atop it, knocking Deirdre from her highchairs. Only Goldwyn stays afoot to bolt screaming into his bedroom, away from the men swarming in the doorway.

Still smarting, Slaide scrambles hands-and-knees for the hammer, but a black boot kicks it scraping across the room. So he launches shoulder-first into the kicker’s gut, lifting him off the floor and bashing him into his cohort. Their scrum slews over the rocking chair and conks the stove hard enough to unseat its chimney-pipe. Warm soot trickles onto Slaide as his fists pummel whatever of the two men falls within his reach. But before he can beat them down he’s leveled by a wallop to the back of his head. He comes to with the teeth of his handsaw pressed hard against his throat.

Once they’ve dragged the family into a cowering huddle, a broad-shouldered and lissome young man glides into the room. His black hair and beard are combed to the dull, depthless texture of fine-waled corduroy, which makes the emeralds of his rheumy eyes and the porcelain sheen of his sculpted cheekbones stand out all the more. Stranger yet is his suit, whose gray fibers are shot through with silvery threads that don’t so much cast back the light as infuse themselves with its hues, much as a sheaf of cloudy ice might. He seems almost blurry when stared at straight on.

Slaide says, Don’t you dare hurt them.

"Huh. Now he cares who gets hurt."

Always did. It’s the mill that doesn’t. It’s the militia that doesn’t.

They cared enough to send me.

Browbeatings like this are a big part of what proves otherwise.

It’s the small parts that are more of my concern.

Small like what?

You’ll learn soon enough. He steps over the mirror. Such as, did you know that this strike will kill more men than the steelworks ever did?

Not a chance. Not even close.

Well it isn’t over yet.

Years would need to pass at this rate.

Years might, at this rate.

Only if outsiders like you drag it out for your own personal gain.

Huh. Keeping that close a tally, are you?

I’ve fought for enough widows’ pensions not to need any tallies.

Keep on testing my squad like that and there’ll be one widow more.

Slaide slumps down to show his submission. So what do you want?

The man saunters along the walls, peeking behind the calendar and picture frames, pinching along the hems of the curtains with a seamstress’s scruple, patting the undersides of the tables he passes. What few books lie about he opens to their markers and reads a sentence or two before shaking their spines and checking what scraps of paper flutter out. At the cupboard he lifts the lids from the pots and pans, and tilts the pitcher and tea kettle to look inside. His measured calm is broken only by the distant shouts and banging of the militia. You know why I’m here.

I get blamed for so much, I couldn’t guess.

Let’s start with where you keep your papers.

What papers?

Deirdre says, Hatbox in the bedroom closet. Top-left corner.

Lady has some sense. He jerks his head, and one of his goons goes in. For a negress.

While they wait, Goldwyn and then Sterling lapse. The gunmen give them no more than a glance, their carbines never wavering from Slaide’s and Deirdre’s chests.

The man tips the hatbox onto the table, and its ordered stacks fan out. He toes a chair aside, bellies up, and fingers through the receipts, union slips and statements, flicking each off the table when he’s done with them, until the floor is tiled like a chopped-up checkerboard. After tugging open the knot on a bundle of letters, he picks out a few and scans them. Care to try again?

Didn’t care to try once.

Deirdre says, If it isn’t in there, I’ve burnt it.

Huh. She burns them.

The stove needs tinder. Greenish wood is all we’ve got left. It’s stubborn to catch.

Stubbornness is indeed chaffing. He scans a third letter. No chance you missed even one?

If I knew about it, I wouldn’t have missed it.

Well then let’s see what you don’t know about?

At this cue the goons wrest Slaide up by his elbows, careen him through the doorway and gate, and pitch him onto the walkway that runs between the rowhouses’ foreyards. The other tenants gawk from behind two gunmen more. Their concern loosens some when Deirdre carries Sterling out, only to tighten again when the man exits cradling Goldwyn infant-like against his wide chest. But the worst he does is rub the boy’s back and mutter gentle comforts as he hands him tenderly to Hortense.

She asks, You all okay?

Slaide rubs the knot on his head. Just bruises and scrapes so far.

I’ve delivered to him. Name’s Statler. He’s just started on with Kent.

Hardly matters who he is. They’ll find nothing.

Dierdre checks Sterling for injuries from his tumble. But it’ll still cost us just the same.

Upslope, the pointed clamor of the militia smoothes into the widespread grinding of hooves and wheels. Downslope, Squeeze Play whinnies every few seconds in seeming rapture to join them. Closer by, the clapping of cabinets being thrown open and slammed shut loudens into drawers being ripped from their slides, dumped out and tossed down. A ball of cherry-red yarn wobbles out of the front doorway as if pawed by a kitten.

When Statler is handed a locked booklet, he simply tears the cover off.

Deirdre pleads, Do they really need to break so much?

That’s just a perk to them. They’re a rompish sort. A thin-lipped smile splits his beard like a slowly rending wound as he thumbs through the handwritten pages. Then he reads aloud, Believe it or not, I don’t begrudge myself to have married him. But to have borne children with a man whose character I knew didn’t rise above the common failings of intemperance and adultery — and all the lies those unfailingly beget — speaks to a greater failing of my own.

The flints of Deirdre’s eyes bore into Statler’s. Is that the kind of small part that’s your concern? For all my neighbors to hear?

He hands her the journal and yells. Step it up.

The clash of furniture toppling and the clanging of wares tumbling spreads deeper into the house. After some whoops of laughter, the master bedroom’s curtain-rod is torn down, exposing the ransacking within for all to see. It slowly tints to creamy under a thick, creeping swell of the militia’s dust-cloud, and when that triggers Sterling’s and Goldwyn’s near-simultaneous sneezes, the gunpoints flinch. A single crumpled sheet of paper is finally brought out.

After smoothing it as best he can, Statler dangles it before the Culvers. Huh. Does your racket not keep better books than this?

They’re a child’s scribbles, Deirdre says.

Look closer.

Slaide leans in to squint at the faint, thin figures underlying the dark, thick strokes. That’s just notes from the finishing mill. Me trying to keep track of all its comings and goings. Never once got shorted after starting those.

More of the close tallies you keep?

Times being tight as they are, we let the twins practice their writing on them before twisting them up for tinder.

You’ve already told about the kindling. Statler points at the boys’ new clothes, two sizes too big, their hands and feet poking twig-like from the sleeves and pantlegs. Times don’t look too tight for them youngsters.

Deirdre tucks Goldwyn’s shirttail back in. They’d outgrown last autumn’s clothes. I sewed these myself from fabric bought years ago.

What of that shiny saw and fresh-cut lumber.

Slaide answers, Rotten struts like what we’re replacing wouldn’t hold up against the snow that’s sure to burden them in the coming months. Being shrewd doesn’t make us moneyed.

"I’m all for finding out what does make you moneyed."

After working at the mill six days a week for the whole of my adult life, I don’t need notes like that to do whatever it is you think I’m doing.

Huh. It’s more what my boss thinks that matters. Statler folds the paper with as crisp for creases as its crinkles allow.

I’m sure he’ll frame however best suites his cause.

Thumps rattle the sashwork one after another. Then glints streak up the living room window moments before a shattering crash throws a frostwork of glass and ceramics against the front threshold. Deirdre buries her face in Hortense’s shoulder. Her sobs have settled into a gentle weeping by when the militia’s rumble fades and the last of their dust disperses into the cobalt sky.

When the head goon comes out emptyhanded, Statler says, My compliments on running such a tidy shop.

I run no shop.

We all run one shop or another, though we give them different names.

I couldn’t name yours. Not of a Sunday.

Not of any day, if you’re so shrewd as you claim. Then to his goons, Pack it in.

Deirdre lunges after him, but Slaide holds her wrist fast even when she thrashes it like a snared varmint. You just up and leave after wrecking my home?

But Statler doesn’t so much as turn his head towards her as he and his goons round the rowhouse, mount up, and ride onto the almost vacant ridgetop. His horse is a magnificent creature with windswept muscles that move with an ease much like his own. And although its effortless canter raises almost no dust, what of it the others do seems to cling about only Statler, soon reducing him to no more than a smudge.

While Hortense leads the twins over to feed Squeeze Play, Deirdre crunches onto the twinkling grit covering the living room floor. She stands stock still and silent for minutes on end.

Slaide too keeps quiet as he reaches between the bathroom’s copper tub and wall to check that their money is still tucked inside the false outer drainpipe that houses the actual inner one. Clothes from the crushed whicker hamper fill the tubwater with their kelpish tangle, and the medicine cabinet’s door dangles aslant, its shelves as sparse as the endgame of a chess match. After he rights the living room’s shelving, his eyes close in deep thanks that its hidden drawer withstood the fall. Then he wipes up the spilt gel, and saves those of the figurines that aren’t broken beyond repair. The lone surviving dove flares with hairline fissures as the yellowing sunlight plays through its solid glass bulb.

She finally speaks. Now will you admit it?

If that keeps this short.

Your gambling, your spying, your scheming...

He didn’t say a word about those.

Take your pick, because this was about all of them.

Like they need a reason to snag you in their dragnet. They’ve been raiding homes all over town for weeks now.

That doesn’t make the reasons you gave them to raid ours any better.

And they found next to nothing.

You can’t possibly be fishing for thanks right now. Look at this place.

He regards the mess as if he recognizes it from some place long ago and far away. We’re still coming out ahead.

That door could’ve crippled your children.

They’ll be over it in a few hours.

How can you call this coming out ahead?

The creaky floorboards in their bedroom have been pried up, but reveal nothing beyond dead earwigs, mouse droppings, and bare earth.

Slaide wiggles them back into place and taps fresh nails home. Let’s get this swept up so they can come help.

And see firsthand the troubles wrought by their father’s misdeeds.

Would this be any better if you didn’t think I deserved it?

At least then I wouldn’t hate you.

When the boys return, they blink at the tilting and mismatched stacks of dishes, the crooked stove, the snarled yarn, and the strut hanging like a stilled pendulum into the middle of the room. The ladder is propped back up against the roofing’s joists, rising from the bestrewn piles of winter wears, baby clothes, and other keepsakes which are usually stored atop the plyboards lain across them. All four of the family lift in unison to square the master bedroom’s mattress upon its frame. Emptied drawers lie beside the twins’ highboy, so they slide them back in, swapping out those that stick or wobble until they’re close enough to their proper slots. Then they shake out the clothes one piece at a time and fold them away.

Later, as the boys watch Slaide pluck the split wood from the doorjamb, check its hinges for bends, and pry the splinter-husks from its screws, Goldwyn’s nostrils and eyes suddenly flare. He ricochets around the living room in a craze of sniffing, spiraling inward, and finally kneeling in seeming prayer in the slatted shadows of the shelves, to lick the tacky maroon stain on the floorboards.

by main force

IT’S FROM WITHIN THE dank, dark hold of some storm-tossed dream-galleon, that a hammering on the leaky decking inches above Leonhard’s head jars him awake. He gazes dumbly about for several seconds before the ceiling fan, canopy bed, and landscape painting of his bedroom return him mostly to the here and now. The front knocker hammers again, harder. And so too does the hull’s wooden groaning resolve into Percival’s growling. After a deep breath, he swings his legs off the mattress to tussle his tinkling feet into his slippers, and fumbles his arms into his robe’s sleeves.

A crease of candlelight brightens beneath the hallway door before falling back to black. He’s standing in that hallway, squinting at the right-pointed hands of the longcase clock, when the candle returns with Oko’s sheet-creased face floating above the folds of her new nightgown. The cold of Percival’s nose touches the back of his hand, so he scratches his snout.

She says, It’s that General Norris. I let him just inside.

That cannot bode well. Not one bit. You had better start dressing. Leonhard looks aside before flicking on the living room lamp, and then slowly turns his squint towards Vance.

Tucked into his upturned collar is a wry smirk. Otherwise, his appearance is as immaculate as usual.

Leonhard motions him into the light. Harper took my housekeeper.

No need to make excuses for me — glass houses being what they are.

Then please desist from your suggestive looks.

Perhaps guilt clouds your impressions.

More likely sleep does.

I do regret the unseemly timing.

And I have had quite enough of all suggestions, clouded or not.

Necessary evils though they often are.

Out with your purpose already.

Vance removes his gloves to brush a stray curl from his eye. You probably didn’t notice my reinforcements arriving.

Should I have?

They being so cunningly spread out over several weeks and multiple locations. Dribs and drabs.

Well bully for you.

Now that they’re all here, however, they’ll be assuming total control of the mill—

Confound that Kent.

—this coming dawn.

As in hours from now?

As in.

This is precisely what I told him would happen.

Oh he’ll be just as surprised as you are.

Leonhard draws back in a confusion that borders on disgust. If not by his authority, then whose?

My own.

You are declaring martial law?

I’m declaring law. This town is slipping into anarchy.

You, sir, abuse your powers.

Strong words from somebody who ships in petty crooks to work as slave-labor. Black pot.

I have Kent’s official sanction for that.

Once he calms down, he’ll officially sanction this too. The poor fellow will have no choice. It’s going to happen with or without you. Help it come off without a hitch, and I’ll generously share the accolades.

One must question any truce which requires a complete and immediate surrender under the threat of violent overthrow.

There’s none better. Vance tips his hat to leave. It’s up to you which side you’re on.

As if token gestures negate grand affronts.

Daybreak at the barbican.

Leonhard tightens the robe against the chill of the room. Might I conclude from your overcoat that the front has passed through?

Indeed you might. And the weather has turned for the colder too.

Leonhard locks the door behind him, but remains there, head down, hand on the latch. The dirt Vance tracked onto the linoleum seems to ripple beneath his slippers. When he hears Oko return, he says, Can you believe this?

I hadn’t listened.

It just keeps getting worse.

She cups his shoulder from behind. You still got the sleep in your head. Once you wake up, you’ll get the better of this. Same as you got the better of all what’s come before.

If only I too held your favorable opinion of my past. However, you are spot-on about my head. My sleep directive has become a lost cause.

You going out then?

To my office. The guards need to be alerted immediately. Then ... I am not sure what.

I’ll saddle up Nonesuch and hitch him out front.

There is no hurry, he will not be needed until dawn. So you both may as well get a little more rest. It is certain to be a long day for all of us.

Breakfast and Nonesuch at the crack of dawn it is. Taking the crisp air on a brisk walk over to headquarters should do you wonders.

Leonhard turns to face her. What did I do to deserve you?

Nothing but get the better of me too, mister sir.

He pauses on his way to the bedroom, And do bring your pistol.

He knuckles the new-hung glass of the courtyard window to better gauge the weather, and then dresses in the coarsest of his autumn wardrobe. Out in the hallway, he knocks on the door next to the parlor until Farrell answers it wearing a silken nightshirt so short and sheer it exposes most of his pasty thighs. Egads. Faith preserve me.

Come a-calling at this hour and you get what you get.

Emergencies do not adhere to predefined timetables.

Nor clothing to chance emergencies.

What if I had been someone of more delicate sensibilities?

I peeped the Judas hole first.

How fitting. Now get your camera and meet me in my office. Bring Maggie too. Both fully clothed, if at all possible.

Several suites away, another door cracks open, and Iris rasps, What’s this ruckus all about?

Look no closer or be transgressed. Leonhard pivots to shield Farrell’s body with his wider bulk. The militia is seizing the mill by main force in the coming hours.

Should I telegraph Royce?

If you wish to spite me, there would be no better way.

My only wish is that the mill be stewarded by the most skilled hands possible.

Hampering me with his incessant barrage of interruptions is a fine way to achieve exactly the opposite.

Hands not yours, my meaning being.

I took your insult’s meaning. Continue with them and I shall step abruptly aside.

Farrell says, I’d heard more troops had arrived, but nothing about this.

Your skills must be waning.

Yet still you seek them.

Only because your camera should dissuade the soldiers from any wanton escalations. And besides, why not share with you some of the incessant indignities that this lockout continually foists upon me.

The even breeze carries on it the thunderous collisions of a switch-engine coupling cars in a distant shunting yard, as well as the chug of some overburdened freighter plying against the tightened current of the lowering river. Late-season night-blooms in the plaza’s gardens sweeten the boiled-cabbage reek that wafts in from a water truck flushing the gutters beyond the fenceline. High above it all, streamers of the smokestack’s steam spread into a single gauzy sheet covering the downstream Narrows. The ridgeside lies perfectly clear though, and its legions of flickering streetlamps reveal hints of the immeasurable intricacies of this careworn city.

DAWN FINDS LEONHARD on the headquarters’ marble steps again, this time facing outward at the graceful curves of the plaza’s footpaths and its poppling fountain. With the nightflowers’ fragrance now trapped inside their folded petals, and the gutters’ stench washed down the storm sewers, the air is pleasantly odorless. But not at all soundless, however, for on the landing above him Farrell and Maggie are belting out a raucous showtune while assembling his camera. Gradually the gut of the city jells from its fractured, colorless geometry into a sweeping mosaic of padlocked storefronts, shuttered windows, and alley-end ashcans. And here and there, strung across miles of the slope’s tortuous lanes, march snatches of militiamen in their almost mechanical descent.

The sun’s shooting its first beams over the horizon when Vance appears at the chin of the barbican. He rides to the hitching-bar, dismounts, and jangles his stirrups up the stairs. Everything’s ready for the handover, I trust? Touch and go.

As ready as your woefully late notice allowed.

A worthwhile trade-off, surprise being the quivering linchpin of most successful military maneuvers.

Our guards have been instructed to surrender on sight, any quivering notwithstanding.

Surrender is such an ugly word.

It is even uglier for those of us doing it.

Having never borne the indignity myself, I’ll have to take that on faith. In answer to Maggie’s throaty hallooing, Vance winks and waves his hat. I see you’re capturing the occasion for all posterity. Good thing my steward groomed me accordingly.

Was there ever the slightest possibility otherwise?

But perhaps I won’t be their main subject.

Sometimes the full importance of an event is not wholly unrealized until after the fact. What a pity it would be then, to not have its details faithfully preserved for the historical record. Details such as my total capitulation to your every request, no matter how petty, and in spite of these grossly extenuating circumstances.

Such a rare event as your capitulation is surely worth preserving. Blue moons ain’t in it.

When Oko hitches Nonesuch and Flashover’s next to Vance’s stone-horse, the pair gush in a revel of nickering and lip-curling. She’s wearing one of Quinevere’s old, outgrown dresses, which throws Leonhard into a momentary bafflement, and then a lingering transfixion.

Vance says, It’s lurid looks like that one which draw the clouded suggestions you so badly disdain.

One cannot expect better from horses.

Nor their riders, apparently.

Oko pulls a thermos and lunchbox from the saddlebag.

Any longing I betray is solely on account of the breakfast she is delivering me. As Leonhard nibbles on a blueberry muffin, he taps the slender bulge of his shoulder holster.

In answer Oko taps her dress at calf-level.

The synchronized snap of the militia’s bootheels on the cobblestones rings out above the low hum of the waking city. Shutters fling open, families dribble onto stoops and balconies, and soon the sidewalks flash with strikers running in all directions. When the first file of soldiers turns onto the avenue leading to the barbican, Vance descends the stairs to ensure that their procession doesn’t falter a single step as they enter through the sally port and parade between the headquarters and plaza, as if for Leonhard’s grand review. Tens of minutes pass before the last of them take their places at the rear of the human grid now filling the clearing.

After Vance’s inspection and orders, several battalions detach to surround the nearest, abandoned building. Grackles, ravens, and several screech owls spew out of the broken windows and cracked chimneys. Seconds later cats scamper across rusty pipelines and sagging conveyors. Then dogs spill from collapsed chutes and vanish into weed-choked culverts. And lastly, from a side-door there staggers a clan of children, clad in rags that hang from their scrawny frames by little more than the seams. The oldest is a teenaged girl whose left nipple stands stark and hardened from the dry cold. The youngest is a toddler of uncertain gender who wears nothing more than an oversized shirt and a coating of diarrhea that’s peeling like sunburn from the inside of both its scrawny legs. All are sobbing.

Aha, Vance declares, We’ve flushed the lair clean of exactly the villains I knew we would. Look at those low criminal brows, those cagey motions, those beady eyes. Devils at our doorstep, every last one of them.

Despite Leonhard’s years of exposure to the various dialects of the mill, what words the children mutter are of a language unknown to him. It seems more of their own making, closer to the utterances of crows than humans.

Oko breaks off morsels of muffin and banana for them. There there now, my little darlings. I’m sure it came as a scare, those big, noisy men waving their guns like that.

When she cuddles the toddler, Leonhard says, Be careful with them. Who knows what diseases they harbor.

Indeed, their knuckles look gnarled with arthritis, their shoulder-length hair hangs tangled and mangy, and their skin is wrinkled and blotchy as though soaked for too long in scalding water.

When Oko ignores him, he raises his voice, Please deliver them to the stables, and inform Iris that she and the other wives should provide baths, meals, and whatever clothing might be made to fit. Farrell, do get a picture now, and then another once they are properly groomed.

Oko ushers them away, and she has only just rejoined Leonhard over an hour later, near a converting mill, when a feral stallion, mare, and foal spook from its opening. Their crazed galloping scatters the battalion to the lane’s walls