Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

She wondered if she might gather pebbles, or wood enough to lay herself a trail. Miss Scales had told her a story once about a man who stopped himself getting lost in a maze by letting a thread out behind him. She had none. Could she unpick the seams of her dress? She shook her head. The little bits of thread would be too weak and short, and she would be dead before she had the chance to make anything stronger and long enough to be of any use. She must trust to her luck and her prayers then. She got down onto her knees and crawled over to the far side of the tunnel. If she kept her left hand on the wall, and swept out with her right, she should be able to cover the ground where the arrow had most likely fallen. If the tunnel split again, if the wall to her left turned off. . She would fret over that when she need. Putting her hand against the rough earth wall, she began to crawl forward, pausing every moment to sweep her right arm out across the ground with her fingers spread as if she were broadcasting seed in her father’s fields.

As Harriet emerged from the museum behind Ham, she felt Crowther pause beside her and lifted her head. At the bottom of the steps a crowd had indeed gathered. She recognised the landlord from the Royal Oak and one or two of the other faces, but most were strangers to her. These were the weavers, labourers and craftsmen who lived on the other side of the velvet rope. At home in Hartswood she would recognise their faces, see them at church, visit their homes with Rachel when she went among them with her salves and ointments. Here they were as foreign to her as Saracens. For a moment they examined each other across the short distance that separated them. A couple of individuals seemed to be shoving Mr Postlethwaite forward. He took off his hat and looked up at them.

‘Good morning, Mrs Westerman, my lord. Forgive us, but the word is that Mr Askew is dead.’

Harriet laid her gloved hand on the railing of the museum steps. It was strange how the people here moved between using Crowther’s given title and the name he used. When they met him on the street they might be happy to address him as Mr Crowther as an indulgence to his eccentricity, but now, looking up at him and with the smell of blood in the air they reminded him in this way that his title still bound him to the place.

‘Yes, Mr Postlethwaite,’ he said. ‘Mr Askew is dead.’

A sorry sort of whisper ran around the crowd. A girl turned towards the matron at her side and buried her head in the older woman’s shoulder.

Harriet and Crowther began slowly to descend the steps and the crowd shuffled back a little till a sharp-faced woman with full lips and her dark hair escaping from under her cap spoke up.

‘Is Sturgess saying our Casper did this too? Because he didn’t. Didn’t do for the other one either, however he laid him out. And Agnes Kerrick is missing. We need Casper to find her.’

Crowther turned to her. ‘I do not know what Mr Sturgess thinks at this moment, but he wishes to speak to Mr Grace, as is natural.’

She tucked her hair under her cap. ‘Wishes to carry him off and hang him in Carlisle, you mean.’ Her cheeks were red. ‘And we will not let him.’

The air was very still. Harriet looked at the faces around her. Only the woman was willing to meet her gaze. The others looked angry or afraid, but their eyes flicked to her and away as if looking at her scalded them.

Crowther spoke, clearly enough to be heard throughout the little crowd. ‘I believe there is no evidence to hang Casper as yet.’

‘Will that be enough to stop Sturgess blaming him though? How many men have hanged that did not deserve it?’ The woman had come close enough for Harriet to taste her breath, sour in the haze.

Crowther looked at her very steadily. ‘Too many. I assure you Mrs Westerman and I will do everything to make sure that does not happen this time.’

She studied him a second or two longer, then took a step back. ‘I am glad to hear you say that, my lord.’

Crowther made to move forward again, but felt a hand placed on his sleeve. A young man with wide eyes, his skin browned with field work, said, ‘We need Casper, my lord. Don’t let them take him from us. He is our Luck-keeper.’

Harriet frowned. ‘What did you say?’

He looked embarrassed and tried to back away. ‘Our cunning-man, madam. We need him.’

Crowther looked carefully into the faces around him. ‘I will do all that is in my power, I assure you.’

He stepped forward and the crowd made way. There was a reluctance in their movements as they did so, and Harriet did not think all the whisperings were friendly, but move aside they did.

When Harriet found herself in the carriage and pulling away to travel the short distance to Mr Leathes’ villa, she let go a sigh of relief.

‘I thought they would scalp us, Crowther!’

He looked a little shocked. ‘I doubt that — not today at any rate. But my class rules with the consent of the people, Mrs Westerman. If they decide they can tolerate us no longer, they will have no mercy in their revenge for the bill of petty tyrannies we have run up.’

She turned her head to take in the sight of Crosthwaite Church against the hillside. ‘Luck-keeper. . I have not heard the phrase before. Curious.’

‘What are you thinking, Mrs Westerman? I fear my thoughts on the Social Contract are of no interest to you.’

She smiled. ‘I like it when you talk like a revolutionary, Crowther. And I agree. But you are right, my mind has been picking at that phrase. What use is a Luck-keeper if the Luck is lost? Yet it must be if our speculations, wild as they are, about your father’s wealth are correct.’ She fell silent for a while, rapping her fingers on the leather of the seat beside her. ‘Oh good Lord!’

‘What is it, Mrs Westerman?’

‘That chest of Mr Leathes that contained the letter warning your father! With the forced lock. Did you not think it a strange place to leave a letter? And it was covered in soil!’

‘Hardly covered, but certainly dirty. .’

‘The Luck would have fitted in that, would it not?’

Crowther nodded. ‘You make me recall that phrase of Lottie’s when I asked her about the concealed strongbox. She said it contained nothing of value by then .’ He closed his eyes.

‘What is it, Crowther? You have thought of something further.’

‘Mrs Westerman, I made very rare enquiries into my father’s business interests. I knew he had discovered untapped mineral deposits on a parcel of land, so always assumed, when he said. .’

‘Crowther, please, explain before I tear my own hand off in frustration.’

‘I did ask once on what our prosperity was based. He said it was founded on buried treasure.’

Old Mr Leathes was waiting for them by the garden gate looking very solemn, and with no more than a bow, led them to the rear of the house, where a gentleman in his middle years was examining the aviary. He made the introductions, then returned to the house to leave Mr Hudson, Crowther and Harriet to examine each other to the trillings of his canaries.

‘This is a matter of the greatest delicacy, sir, madam,’ Mr Hudson said. ‘I hope you do not think badly of me for emphasising that. I asked Mr Leathes if I might speak to you alone and without his walls, as even in the household of my old friend I fear that we might be overheard and someone might, in all innocence, learn something that should not be learned.’

He reminded Harriet of her father as she remembered him from her youth. A man, softly spoken and inclined to be agreeable, though his expression now was the same nature of worried concern that she remembered when her father had some hard duty of his office to perform.

‘I think we understand, sir,’ she said.