“Yes, we are free down here,” he says at last. “But man is not meant to live in the dark.”

He reaches forward suddenly, encircles with his left hand the glass of his lamp, keeps it there. Shadows fill the room, swallowing her; his hand glowing red, leaking pink at the fingers; beyond it the light sits white in his twisted face.

It’s hot, she realises, the glass is burning his skin. But why. .?

As though in answer a cloud of dark rises out of Francis, his pain converted to sin. He lets go of the lamp, steps over to her, wafting Smoke threads at her like incense. She sees it but cannot smell it; remains unmoved in her blood. All at once she is back with Charlie, mouth locked to mouth, her body tingling with Smoke.

“It does not smell, nor infect,” she whispers. “It’s as though it’s dead. But how can that be?”

“We think it’s the coal dust. It filters it somehow. So it’s everyone smoking for themselves. Unseen, unheeded. Miners dying, fighting, making love. All alone.”

“But that’s good, surely. Better than on top.” She looks for the word, finds it. “Tidier.”

“Tidier? Yes, perhaps. My brother, Jake, he has a word for our life down here. He calls it ‘democracy.’”

Democracy. She knows the term, has read its definition in one of her father’s translations from the Greek. Democracy, Aristotle says, is the rule of the many: hence of the poor. It leads to chaos, greed, and desolation.

“Will you take arms?” she asks suddenly. “Rise up?”

“How can we? Yours is a race of angels. Fair cheeks, hands like marble; linen as white as the day it was spun.” He shakes his head, in wonder not anger. “Down here we can curse you and plot revolt. But up in the sun? Oh, there too we have our jokes. We laugh and mock. But who is so coarse not to be shamed by your skin? God chose you, made you special. You rule us not by force but through this simple fact.” He leans closer, eager now that she understand him; a quiet man talking. “We must cower underground, just to learn boldness.”

His voice is so earnest, his words so carefully chosen, he reminds her of one of her schoolmasters, Professor Lloyd, who teaches philosophical theology. But Francis is a commoner, a miner’s son, unschooled in Discipline. He has never studied Leibniz’s theodicy or Kant’s Three Discourses on Smoke.

“How long did you go to school?” she asks in wonder.

“Four years. Got my numbers and letters. They aren’t good for much, though. There’s no money for books.”

“And yet today you had a lesson for me.”

He smiles at that. “A time may come when we will need to understand one another. Your people and mine.”