Susanna GREGORY: A Vein of Deceit

August 1357, Haverhill, Suffolk

It was a glorious summer afternoon, with fluffy white clouds flecking an impossibly blue sky, trees whispering softly in a gentle breeze, and the lazy sound of bees humming among the hedgerows. Cows lowed contentedly in the distance, and the air was rich with the scent of ripe corn and scythed grass.

There had been a fierce heatwave earlier in the year, followed by torrential rains that had devastated farmland all over the country. Fortune had smiled on the parish of Haverhill, though: its crops had survived the treacherous weather, and the harvest was expected to be excellent – its villagers would not go short of bread that winter, and the fat sheep dotting the surrounding hills indicated they would not be short of meat, either.

But the three men who stood around the little tongue of exposed rock in the middle of the wood saw none of this plenty: their minds were on another matter entirely.

In the centre of the trio was Henry Elyan, lord of the larger of Haverhill’s two manors. He was a slim, elegant man who took considerable pride in his appearance – he loved clothes, and spent a lot of money ensuring he was never anything less than perfectly attired, from his fashionable hat to his stylishly pointed shoes. His weakness for finery exasperated his wife, who was always reminding him that while Elyan Manor was not poor, it was not exactly wealthy, either, and they had a duty to their tenants to use their profits more wisely than frittering them away on extravagancies.

‘Are you sure, Carbo?’ he asked of the man on his left. ‘You cannot be mistaken?’

Carbo gave one of his peculiar smiles, the kind that made Elyan wonder whether it was wise to place so much trust in the man – it was common knowledge that he was insane. Of course, Carbo had not always been out of his wits. He had been a highly respected steward for many years, and his descent into madness had been fairly recent. No one knew why he had so suddenly lost his mind, although Elyan did not accept the widely held belief that grief for a dead mother had tipped him over the edge. He was sure there was another explanation, although he could not imagine what it might be.

‘I am not mistaken,’ Carbo said in an oddly singsong voice. ‘It was God who brought me to this place and told me what lies beneath. And God is never wrong.’

The last of the three men was Elyan’s neighbour, who owned Haverhill’s second, smaller manor. Hugh d’Audley was thin, dark and pinched, and everything about him suggested meanness and spite. Elyan had never liked him, but money would be needed to exploit Carbo’s astonishing find, and d’Audley was the only man in the area who might be in a position to lend some. So Elyan had set aside his natural antipathy towards the fellow and was trying his damnedest to be pleasant.

D’Audley, however, was sighing impatiently, making no attempt to hide the fact that he thought his time was being wasted. ‘Of course Carbo is mistaken! He is deranged, and you are a fool to set stock by anything he says.’

‘Coal is God’s most special gift to the world,’ chanted Carbo, kneeling to rest a reverent hand on the narrow thread of dark rock he had found on his seemingly aimless wanderings. If he was offended by d’Audley’s curt words, he gave no sign. ‘He calls it black gold. Black gold.’

D’Audley rolled his eyes, and Elyan despised him for his stubborn inability to look past Carbo’s lunacy and see what might lie beyond. He felt like grabbing the man and shaking some sense into him. Did he not know that coal seams were unheard of in Suffolk, so finding one in Haverhill was a fabulous piece of luck? And Elyan knew, with every fibre of his being, that it was going to make him rich – that he would never again have to listen to his wife carping on about the price of fine linen, or begrudging him the cost of his soft calfskin shoes. The prospect of such unbridled luxury made him giddy, and it was only with difficulty that he brought his attention back to the present.

‘How do you know about coal and mining so suddenly?’ d’Audley was demanding of Carbo. ‘You have lived in Haverhill all your life, so how can you possibly claim expertise about minerals?’

‘God told me,’ replied Carbo distantly. ‘He explained about the black gold.’

‘You see?’ said d’Audley, turning rather triumphantly to Elyan. ‘The man is addled!’

Elyan did not reply. The copse in which Carbo had found the lode was dense with brambles and alder, and no one had bothered to forge a path through the prickly tangle before. There had to be some reason why Carbo had done it, so perhaps God had guided him there. Or was d’Audley right, and grubbing around in the undergrowth was just something madmen did?

‘It is very fine,’ crooned Carbo, ignoring d’Audley as he stroked the rock. ‘The best black gold.’

‘Actually, it is not,’ countered d’Audley. ‘I used the bucketful you gave me last night, and it smoked and spat like an old kettle. Good coal burns quietly and cleanly, but this stuff is rubbish.’

‘Perhaps it was just wet,’ suggested Elyan, refusing to let d’Audley’s sour humour spoil his burgeoning hopes. ‘But regardless, it will make us wealthy – assuming you want to be part of it, of course? I shall need money to excavate, and if you invest, you will share the profits.’

‘But I am not convinced there will be profits,’ said d’Audley, looking disparagingly at the thin line of crumbling black rock.

Elyan shrugged, feigning indifference to his neighbour’s scepticism. Unfortunately though, mining was expensive, and he could not finance such a venture alone; he needed d’Audley’s help.

‘It is your decision,’ he said with studied carelessness. ‘I asked you first because you are my friend, and I wanted you to share my good fortune. But if you are not interested, I shall approach Luneday instead – he knows a good opportunity when he sees one.’

He would do nothing of the kind, of course – the lord of neighbouring Withersfield Manor was only interested in pigs, and was unlikely to spend money on anything else. But d’Audley hated Luneday with a cold, deadly passion, and was blind to reason where he was concerned.

‘Wait,’ snapped d’Audley, as Elyan started to walk away.

Elyan smothered a smirk before he turned; just as he had predicted, d’Audley was appalled by the notion that Luneday might benefit from a venture he himself had rejected. ‘Wait for what?’

‘Wait for me to mull it over,’ replied d’Audley sullenly. ‘I cannot make such a decision on the spur of the moment. I need time to think about it.’

‘Then do not take too long,’ warned Elyan. ‘I want to begin operations as soon as possible.’

They both turned when Carbo started to sing. The ex-steward was lying on top of the seam, treating it to a popular ballad about love and devotion. D’Audley’s eyebrows shot up, and Elyan took his arm and pulled him away before Carbo’s antics lost him an investor.

‘My wife is well,’ he said pleasantly, flailing around for a subject with which to distract d’Audley. ‘After twenty years of marriage, Joan and I had all but given up hope of an heir, yet our baby will be born in December.’

‘Congratulations,’ said d’Audley flatly, and Elyan realised, too late, that this was not the subject to win d’Audley’s good graces. If he, Elyan, were to die childless, then d’Audley was one of three parties who stood to inherit his estates. A child would change all that and, unsurprisingly, d’Audley had not greeted the news of Joan’s pregnancy with any great delight.