Renfrew has approached the little gatehouse. He produces a letter. Even the paper it’s on looks important; a red rubber stamp circles the signature. The stationmaster reads it carefully, then performs a head count. The boys have fallen silent by now. All boisterousness has left them. As they are finally waved through the barrier, a scream sounds, from somewhere deep in the train, an animal bleating out its distress. It sounds like the train itself is screaming. The workers withdraw as they see the schoolboys coming, watch them board from afar. Grains of Soot drift in the air. One such flake settles on the sleeve of a boy near Charlie; he wipes at it but only manages to smear it.

“Master!” he calls, tears in his voice if not on his face; afraid of being punished.

Renfrew turns briefly, pushes him along.

“It does not matter,” he says.

The statement unsettles Charlie. They are entering a realm with an unknown set of rules.

They reach the train, walk alongside, towards the front. For a moment it seems to him that it has been painted a matte black. Then he realises it is literally encased in Soot. He reaches out a finger, touches it, recoils.

“Soot is inert,” Thomas mutters quietly.

Charlie is not sure what it means.

Inside, the train is freshly cleaned, cozy. They are travelling in an open passenger coach, in shape and dimensions not unlike the inside of the horse omnibuses he saw in Bath the previous summer. Sitting on the hard benches it is almost possible to pretend one is in school.

ф

It takes about a half hour until the landscape starts to change. Then the perfect blanket of white begins to give way to dark blotches of grass more black than green; puddles of meltwater reflect a murky version of the sky. Within two miles the snow stops altogether. Winter oats stand low in the fields, flanked by leafless sycamores and oaks. Everything has a stunted, sickly appearance.

“Has the weather changed?” Charlie wonders aloud.

“I doubt it,” says Thomas.

“Then London is hotter than Oxford?” Charlie chews on the idea. “All the people. And all the factories, I suppose, running their engines.”

“That. And the Smoke.”