Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

A week went by and the moon waxed to full, still in relatively cloudless weather; so bright was the beautiful silver orb that one could read by it, and that despite the belching chimneys of Manchester, not far away. As luck would have it, the wind favoured them by blowing the smoke eastward into Yorkshire.

Then the moon, rising later each night, began to wane, and no child had yet been seen. That made it more likely that the poor Children of Jesus were now imprisoned; despair began to invade the hearts of the searchers, so buoyed up with enthusiasm when the search had begun.

Ned Skinner wanted none of search parties; he preferred to work on his own, and had his own theories as to where to look. While the three groups of men were still what he considered too far south, he was mounted on Jupiter and prowling high up the Derwent, particularly where a strong tributary fed into it. Fitz hadn’t wanted him to ride, protesting that his outline against the starry sky would give his presence away, but Ned took no notice. That was the chief problem with the three search parties as far as he was concerned: they went on foot, leading their horses, and it made them far too slow.

He had his own spyglass, a more powerful instrument than any Fitz owned; it had belonged to a sea captain much attracted to voyaging into the kinds of places where a sailor might need to check whether the natives on a beach were carrying human heads. From horseback height its range was over long distances, yet at close quarters it was crisp and clear, for it telescoped for accurate focus, and this was by no means the first time it had come in handy during Ned’s nocturnal adventures.

The moon was waning now, so it was rising later. However, the twilight didn’t fully bleed away until shortly before the moon came up, and Ned had no intention of leaving his hiding place until twilight was gone. He had taken over a cave, but it was a simple, probably wind-hewn declivity in an outcropping of soft rock. It had room for him and Jupiter, and he had made several trips to stock it with food for him and the horse. No sweet grass on the moors!

Full darkness had fallen when he ventured out, the eastern sky already silvering to herald the imminence of moonrise. Perhaps at no other moment would even his sharp eyes have discerned the white glint of falling water on the tributary, miles to his west. His thumbs pricked; he stiffened in the saddle enough to transmit his change of mood to Jupiter, which shook its head. He reached forward to pat its neck.

“Easy, old man,” he said quietly.

They moved at a trot until the waterfall came entirely into view: about fifty feet high, and containing a good volume of water that widened at its base into a broad pool. Its only possible source could be a large spring, probably not far above the cliff over which it tumbled. Were it closer to other spectacular attractions it would have drawn visitors, but it sat amid some miles of uninspiring hills, gorges and moors. The Peak, away to the south, was about as far as visitors went unless they were poets, writers, painters or other peculiar folk enamoured of desertion wherein to rove and roam. At night, suchlike were usually tucked up in a warm bed at an inn or a farmstead. Certainly none such were abroad this night. He had it all to himself.

Finding a patch of shadow from an overhang, Ned slid from Jupiter’s back and prepared the animal for one of the waits he inflicted upon it occasionally. Then, quieter than a stalking cat, he edged toward the pool, keeping in the shadows.

The pool’s margin was limestone, polished to a slight sheen in a yard-wide ribbon that led from the side of the waterfall to the grass, in which it persisted for about a hundred more yards before dwindling to invisibility. A path worn by little feet! On the border between the grass and the limestone he paused, head cocked, listening, but could hear nothing alien over the sound of the falling water. He reached into the left pocket of his greatcoat, and into the right, to make sure his pistols were ready, and his knives. Following the path to the edge of the waterfall, he discovered that it dived behind the curtain of water, and was dry because the wind blew the spray eastward.

He passed through a huge opening to enter a vast cavern lit by amazing lamps as well as candles reeking of tallow. Fairly level, the floor was filled with plain wooden tables at which little robed figures stood over basins and bowls, mortars and pestles, apparently engaged in mixing substances together, or grinding them to powder. At one side of the cave and close to the entrance was a huge alcove containing a very hot coal fire, iron rods holding iron cauldrons and pots over the shimmering, shivering surface. A strange-looking cupola blocked off the top of the alcove, its pinnacle sprouting a wide metal tube that led, braced on brackets, to the outside air behind the falls. Whatever its principle, it was efficient, for there was hardly any smoke in the cavern. Near it were condensers for distillation, and a whole table devoted to filtering liquids through cheesecloth or cloth. The Children of Jesus laboratory, wherein Father Dominus made his cure-alls!

In this dim environment the children had pulled off their cowls-all boys, Ned decided, for they all bore the little bald spot of a tonsure on the crowns of their heads. Girls were never tonsured that he had heard of. Almost thirty of them, with a big lad roaming from table to table-features coarse, eyes pitiless. They were afraid of him, and flinched or shuddered when he approached. Not Mary’s Brother Ignatius, he decided. This one had no heart.

Getting past Brother Jerome (for so one boy had addressed him) was difficult, but Ned succeeded when the youth went to the fire and roared for more coal-that must be an exercise, the lugging of sacks of coal! At its rear the cave tapered down to a high, quite wide tunnel. A short passage, it opened into another vast, artificially lit cavern, in which were more tables. These contained bottles being filled through funnels from ladles dipped into ewers-the girls! Longer hair, no tonsures. They were working in a frenzy, though no one supervised. That meant Brother Jerome must have charge of all of the children. Where was Father Dominus?

The air was filled with odours, all sorts from disgusting to sickly-sweet; did Father Dominus make women’s perfumes as well as the traditionally foul things that cured ailments? Somewhere in the mйlange Ned’s nose identified one particular smell, a smell he knew, sniffed regularly. Gunpowder! Ye gods, what was the old bugger up to? The moment he inhaled it, Ned knew why the caves in the south had subsided: Father Dominus in the guise of Guy Fawkes had blown them up! That meant he must have been using them too, and realised when he met Charlie that he would have to abandon them. What better way than gunpowder? He was an apothecary, he would know how to make it. Even I, thought Ned, could make it if I knew the correct proportions of the ingredients, which are just sulphur, saltpetre and powdered charcoal. So simple, so destructive…

Where was the gunpowder? Then he saw that the passageway between the laboratory and the bottling cave was wider than it looked; its sides were stacked with small barrels. But where was the trail of powder that led to the detonating cask? Gunpowder was black as pitch, the floor covered in black dust-was the whole floor the trail? No, it would fizzle. Though air got in, the bottling cave felt more stifling than the laboratory one. Producing noxious fumes and smoke from a big fire, the laboratory would have to be closest to the outside air.

First thing to do, he decided, was to eliminate Brother Jerome. Sooner or later he would come down the passage to see what the girls were doing. Ned moved into the most lightless spot near the end of the short corridor, and pulled out a knife. It would have to be quick and efficient; let the youth shout once, and Father Dominus might appear. Brother Jerome would be easy to deal with, but Father Dominus was as intelligent as he was crazed, and until he could find the fuse trail, Ned wanted the old man oblivious to his presence. For he had to get the girls out; that was what Fitz would want him to do above all else. The boys were on the far side of the kegs of explosives, and would fare at least a little better. The girls would either be buried under falling rock or immured in blackness to perish slowly, perhaps in agony from injuries. An insupportable thought.