“It don’t matter down below” is all he says. “You know it don’t.”

“That’s true enough,” answers the father. “It don’t matter down below.” And then he turns to Livia, screws up one eye, and asks, firmly but not unkindly, “What do you think, miss, about all this?”

She hesitates. Truth be told she is surprised: not only by the content of the words but by the fact that these people — farmers, miners — will discuss Smoke so readily, at the dinner table, wondering at its mystery. It had been, in her mind, an inquiry conducted only by her parents and their peers. By well-bred minds, as her teachers might have put it. By those who rule.

“Smoke is the incarnation of sin,” she says at last with all the meekness she has bred in herself through long years of practice. “It’s a dark mark from God. But it may be that we have been too eager to use it as an excuse for the sufferings of sinners.”

The eldest son snorts at this we. It excludes him and his whole family besides. But his brother, unspeaking, nods and attempts to spear a pickle. It eludes his knife point, jumps off the plate, rolls over the table leaving a trail of vinegar. On impulse, Livia picks it up and bites on it. It is so sharp it makes her eyes water; she coughs and coughs. Somehow it takes the tension out of the room. In the end even Jake is standing, laughing, slapping her back with the flat of his hand. Ten minutes later, their dinner finished, the men get up to walk to the village, have a pint at the pub.

There is nothing to do but hope that they won’t talk about the gentlefolk they are hosting for the night.

ф

They are back inside two hours. Mrs. Mosley remains busy in the kitchen, making preparations for the morrow. Livia is at her prayers. She would like to go to bed but does not know where. The cottage seems too small to hold them all. Charlie has nodded off on a chair, his face peaceful in sleep, his mouth fallen open around a half-formed smile. The men’s entrance wakes him. His first look darts to her, his second to Thomas. Making sure they are safe. It shouldn’t, but the sequence of those looks makes her flush with pleasure.

“Back already?” Mrs. Mosley greets her men. “And sober, like Christian men should be.” But her husband and son do not take up her bantering. “What’s wrong?”