Hudson, knowing full well he was being buttered, laughed hugely. As always, John warmed to his charm and magnetism. The man was a rogue, no doubt of it. A rogue, a genius, a loyal friend, a terrible adversary, a quietly ruthless competitor. But the world was warmer and the air somehow more vibrant when he was near. "If only all the world's rogues were such men as Hudson!" he often said to Nora, the "business side of business" might become more enjoyable to him then.
"Were you coming up to look at it?" John asked, jerking his head toward Portobello, where the trouble lay. He heeled and pulled Hermes around on the spot.
"No," Hudson said. "Not now I have your assurance. But I'll go with ye as far as Burythorpe." They spurred forward into a trot, to get their horses' blood moving again. "Does Mrs. Stevenson keep well? And the children?"
"Indeed. And your people?"
"I think there's only one person in England can rival me at figures-in-thehead, and that's Mrs. Stevenson."
"Oh, you're safe there."
But Hudson shook his head. "If all shareholders were chalkheads like her"—his mouth fell to a dour, inverted U—"railway business would become impossible." He sniffed at the air and repeated: "Impossible."
Why did he come out to meet me?
John wondered.
Hudson fell back, casually, a foot or two. And just as casually he said: "I'll wager she wishes you had your ironworks already."
"Already?" John asked in surprise, before he realized that the question should have been: Ironworks? "Did you say iron or ironworks?" he added to repair the blunder.
Hudson was carefully not smiling, carefully neutral. "I know I wish
I
had bought a works last year. Trade was so bad I had the chance."
"You'd be comforted now, that's certain," John said. He wondered whether Hudson, despite this disclaimer, had not in fact bought an ironworks.
"I did well enough," Hudson said coolly. "As chairman of the Newcastle and Berwick, I advised them to buy ten thousand tons of iron rail when it was down to six pound ten a ton. They refused, so I bought on my own account."
John whistled. "It's thirteen pound now. Cent per cent!" Hudson nodded, gratified. "They shall have it for twelve pound—and wish they had let me do them the bigger favour."
John was glad of a large standing puddle to negotiate at that point. What Hudson proposed was certainly illegal; he wished the great man would guard his tongue more carefully.
"I suppose you bought then?" Hudson asked. "Iron in plenty. You're too astute not to."
Does he want rail from me?
John wondered.
Or to sell at arm's length through me?
He began to worry. "Plenty of iron," he answered, assuming a smugness to match Hudson's. "Aye. But little rail, of course."
"Of course," Hudson echoed. His eyes scanned the horizon in rapid jerks. He was trying to work around to something. "I met Mrs. Stevenson at the station," he continued, and then lapsed into thought.
"Recently?" John prompted.
"Uh? No, no." He frowned. "Last year. December. When the price was still down. I advised her then: Tell you to buy iron. You have no notion." He came alive again. His eyes shone and he spoke rapidly and with emphatic conviction. "No notion. Even I have no notion. The railways that will be built these next five years. I tell you, Stevenson, we shall double the track miles. More! We shall double the
route
miles. Think of that!"
It was fool's bait, John decided; all this golden talk. He felt the first impulse to confess his plans to Hudson, to flatter him, to ask his advice. He laughed. "Oh, I think of it, Hudson. A great deal. And if you go into any foundry business, I'd be happy to take shares in it."
Hudson, watching him like a fox, pretended to chuckle.
"For one thing," John continued, "if there was ever a glut of rail, you'd conjure railroads out of marsh, mountain, and desert to sop it up."
Hudson loved that. He threw back his head and roared with laughter, making a pheasant a hundred yards ahead dart early for the hedgerow. "And then I'd amalgamate them," he said. He looked impishly at John. "Talking of which—ye still have the GNE shares?"
John nodded warily. Hudson had given him two hundred fifty-pound shares in the Great North of England Railway on condition that Stevenson kept the tender on this Scarborough line down to Hudson's miserly estimate of less than six thousand pounds per mile. "Aye," he said.
Hudson reined in and took out his watch. "I'll leave you here," he said, though they were still short of Burythorpe. "I was ever too ambitious where time is concerned. Hang on to those shares. They're about to do a great deal better. Just as I promised they would." He leaned forward, speaking as if every yard of the hedge concealed an eavesdropper. "I've formed six companies into the Newcastle and Darlington. We're going to lease the GNE and then amalgamate with it."
John, who had heard the news from his own informers over a week ago, hoped he looked sufficiently surprised and impressed. "What terms?" he asked.
"The ones you're interested in: Two years from now you can be paid off at two hundred and fifty a share!"
John whistled.
"Aye," Hudson said. "That'll be fifty thousand pounds clear to you. Nothing to sneeze at." He always wanted people to know the precise value of his largesse.
"Think you can do it?" John asked.
Hudson frowned at that. "Why ever not?"
"You know damned well it's not legal. You're not going to tell me that—just by the happiest coincidence—all seven companies happen to be already vested with powers to amalgamate with the other six."
Hudson laughed again.
"You think the Railway Board will wink?" John pressed.
"The
Board !"
Hudson was a master of scorn. "The Board will nudge Parliament and Parliament will jog the Judiciary Committee of the Lords and their lordships will say that it's illegal but that Parliament has granted no one the powers to stop it."
At that John laughed and shook his head. "You're the man all right, Hudson," he said. "That's really so, is it?"
Hudson nodded smugly.
"Illegal but none can stop it!" John savoured the thought.
"Then," Hudson concluded, "I'll tell them it's in the public interest. Which is also true. And then they'll yawn and all go back to sleep. Leaving us to look after the public and"—he leaned forward to pat John's arm—"our shareholders."
The word "shareholders" must have stirred something within him for, as he reined around to go, his visionary, public face came over him—the face John had seen him wear at many a shareholders' meeting. "Amalgamations are the thing, Stevenson. Look what I did." He counted them off dramatically with jack-inthe-box fingers. "Midland Counties. North Midland. Birmingham and Derby. Bristol and Birmingham. They're all one system now, thanks to me. Four hundred miles. Hundred and twenty-six stations. York to Bristol. All on a common timetable. Man—it used to be hell on earth, just trying to get from Sheffield to Derby. Aye!" He tested the wind with an orator's finger. "Amalgamation." Then he chuckled, and public Hudson was swiftly replaced once more by good-friend Hudson as he reached his hand across to shake farewell. "Stevenson! I wish you all the very best! My dear fellow! And every success!"
"Ye need no reciprocation from me," John said. "But ye have it nonetheless."
Hudson set off at a fast trot that quickly broke to a canter. John watched him fondly until he passed from sight.
Hell on earth,
he thought.
That's rich.
The one man who had made it hell on earth, in order to weary or frighten the others into amalgamation and force the acquiescence of Parliament, was George Hudson.
He still did not know why the man had come out deliberately to meet him. The puzzle, or rather his inability to solve it, nagged at him on and off all day.
At Portobello he reined in at the hilltop and dismounted. The new railroad came winding up the valley of the Derwent, Yorkshire's extraordinary wrong-way river, which rises on the North Moors a few miles from the sea and then flows steadily west and then south for sixty miles, ever farther from the coast, until it joins the Yorkshire Ouse, where at last it sweeps seaward into the Humber.
Just south of Portobello, the line crossed the river, coming over to its east bank, above which John now stood. Beneath the line and swelling either side of it in a long lens shape, he saw the telltale darkening of the marshy land. They had built the line continuously over it, for it was strong enough to take the light construction traffic, and the main party had now pressed beyond Malton. Five men had stayed behind to keep this section open. Today, because of John's visit, Ferris, his deputy for this working, had come back to join them.
It was Ferris who saw him first. But he stayed by the line while the rest cheered and hastened uphill to meet John. Three ran all the way. He led Hermes down, smiling as he went until his cheeks ached. Of all men, his navvies were still closest to his affection; there were none whose company he would rather share.
"Eay Lord John, 'ere's a do!" one said.
In his days among them, his nickname had been Lord Muck, for he had once loaded as much muck in a day as two champions together. It had quickly become Lord John, but nowadays he suffered no one but navvies to call him so.
"I know thee," John said. "Tar Wash. On the Paisley and Cathcart, 1841."
The man called Tar Wash was delighted to be remembered, as were two of the others, Plug Billy and Cider Dan, whom he also remembered from earlier contracts. He shook hands with the remaining two, Fussy Peters and Smoked Trout, who had not worked for him before. He asked where they had been.
"Lancaster and Carlisle," Peters said. "Both on us."
"Wild country," Trout added.
"For Mr. Brassey," John said. "What was the rate there?"
"Ah, 'twas good, except the land was hard and bad. The rate had to be good."
They wouldn't be exact. John guessed it would be close to three shillings a day. "Any bog?" he asked. "Any trouble like this?"
"Worse," Trout said. "Though it was better—bein' worse, like. The bog 'ud swallow what ye fed it. Brushwood faggots. Everythin'. Ye could soon make a bottomin' for the road."
"And this won't?" John asked generally. They began walking back to the site, where Ferris waited still.
"Take a week, like, to swallow one faggot," Tar Wash said.
"But it does swallow?" John persisted.
"It's more claggy nor a bog," Dan said. "More of a claggy ooze."
"It stands like clay yet sucks like a bog," Billy said, having thought longest.
Thus, before John shook Ferris by the hand, he knew exactly what sort of land he had to deal with.
The five navvies manhandled a wagon laden with several tons of muck back and forth over the twenty offending yards while John and Ferris watched the ties, bedded on brushwood faggots, sink fraction by fraction of an inch into the clay.
"How many faggots sunk already?" John asked.
"Only two," Ferris said. "We could be 'ere a blue month before we touch bedrock. We should of dug it out. I would've, but for the river bein' so nigh and floods threatened."
"Nay," John said. "Thou did right." He watched several more passages of the wagon without comment.
Something was nudging his memory. Somewhere before he had met this problem; but the memory was more that of a dream than of history. Had he read it? Or had someone told him of it? "It's a primeval clay cistern," he said, not quite knowing where the words came from.
Then he heard the words repeated in his mind in Walter Thornton's accent, and suddenly he knew exactly where this problem had occurred before and why his memory was so remote. It had happened at the Summit tunnel of the Manchester & Leeds, his first contract; but it had happened while he had still been only a navvy ganger on the site. There, they had struck a big silt basin. He remembered Thornton describing it. And how they had made it as good as living rock by sinking tar barrels and piles.
"Tar barrels," he said, and held up a hand for the navvies to rest.
"What about tar barrels?" Ferris asked.
"Something of this nature happened at Deanroyd on the Manchester and Leeds. I was workin at t'other end o' the tunnel so I never saw the way of it. But they cured it with piles and tar barrels. We'll not need piles here. But tar barrels, now. And there's a man here on this contract, too, was there. At Deanroyd. His name'll come to me in a minute." He fidgeted, jogging his memory.
"Tar," Ferris said, and looked at the clay.
"Ye'll get all ye want at York gasworks, I daresay. See Mr. Clayton and mention Mr. Hudson. Oh, he was a short tyke. Like a gorilla."
"Mr. Clayton?" Ferris asked in surprise.
"No! Him who was at Deanroyd and is now here. Has a hole in his cheek. Sups gin through it for a farthing."
"Oh!" Ferris said. "I 'ave 'im. Brandy, Barry, Ba…begins with a B."
"Bacca!" John said, triumphant. "Bacca Barra. He'll tell thee just how it was done. Fetch him back here."
"Tar barrels," Ferris said speculatively. "'Appen it's worth a go."
John grinned, liking a skeptical mind. He gave Hermes to Tar Wash to ride to the Cross Keys at Malton; he and Ferris set out to walk the track, through Malton and out as far as Scagglethorpe, where the permanent way ended at present. Though only five miles or so, it took the best part of three hours, for John would tap every fifth or sixth oaken rail key to see it was secure in its chair; he checked cambers and ballasting, stopping in several places to dig down a foot or so; he checked for telltale oozes from embankments that would show where top soil had been wrongly incorporated; and every now and then, he would put his ear to the rail while Ferris walked on, tapping it with a hammer to reveal flaws in the metal.