Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Sure enough, here came Brother Jerome. He never knew what had happened to him, so quick the knife that went in under his rib cage and twisted up to the left to pierce his heart. He dropped like a stone, voiceless.

Ned stepped out of the shadows and walked up to the nearest of the tables, at which six little girls were counting pills into small round boxes. The pills were lavender in colour, a sure sign they were for kidney trouble. Everyone knew that.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly, “and don’t cry out. I’m here to save you. Do you see those kegs stacked in the passage? They’re full of gunpowder. If you’re here when it blows up, you’ll die. I want you to go among the other tables and tell the girls to move into the waterfall cave-truly, I mean you no harm!”

They stared at him round-eyed, never having seen a man so big or so burly, and perhaps something of his strength resonated within them as comforting, for none cried out, or tried to run. A more ruthless man than Ned Skinner would have been hard to find, yet in that moment he radiated truth as well as strength. What he could not know was that they were hideously aware of gunpowder and its dangers, for they had made it, seen two of their number die, and suspected that they would all become its victims. They had noticed the change in Father Dominus, and feared him desperately. Father had taken to calling the girls wicked, unclean, polluted, and ranted that women were creations of Lucifer. Sister Therese had vanished; at first they had thought she had gone to Mother Beata, but then Brother Jerome began to boast that he had twisted her neck, and that they believed implicitly.

Soon all the little girls were hurrying through the keg-lined corridor, spilling out of it among the boys, who looked bewildered, though some looked displeased. When Ned appeared in the wake of the last girl, they bleated and milled about, a few boys trying to slip past him into the passage. But he could always deal with boys.

Out came a pistol; he brandished it. “Go on, get out into the fresh air! This place is going to come down! Stay here and you’ll be blown up. Out! Out!”

Since the only path to freedom led into the open air, they began streaming under the waterfall and into the night, while Ned went back to locate the gunpowder fuse.

As he walked he cocked his pistol, flipped the frizzen back off the powder pan and into position for the spark, then curled his finger around the trigger, carrying the firearm straight and fully horizontal; once the powder in the pan was exposed, the weapon couldn’t be tilted in case the hole carrying the spark to the charge became blocked.

Some paces short of the passageway stood Father Dominus, face twisted up in fury and frustration, a blazing torch in his left hand.

“You interfering fool!” the old man screamed. “How dare you steal my children?”

Ned shot him in the left chest, deeming that the easiest way out of an invidious situation. But Father Dominus had a fanatic’s strength, and hurled the torch backward into the passageway despite his mortal wound. “I am dead, and you will die with me!”

No, thought Ned, unperturbed. I’m too far from the blast, and moving at a run toward the waterfall. But the vagaries of cavern design carried some of the stupendous explosion forward into the laboratory cave, which collapsed together with most of the hill, honeycombed by Father Dominus’s caves. Ned felt the boulder strike his legs and pelvis, and a colossal agony; I am done for after all, he thought, but it is worth it, to have done this one last good turn for my dearest Fitz.

The explosions echoed across the moors and came clearly to the searchers working their way slowly around The Peak.

The three leaders had gathered for a conference when the great booming noise reached them.

“That’s no cave subsidence,” said Fitz. “Gunpowder!”

They had horses with them; Charlie and Angus ran to get their parties mounted while Fitz rode north grim-faced, his own men after him as soon as they could. Ned had intended starting at this end, Fitz was thinking-pray God he’s all right! Pray God the children are all right!

Leaderless and rudderless, the children hadn’t fled the scene save to run beyond the range of falling boulders; they were huddled together, weeping, when Fitz and his group rode up, and let themselves be wrapped in blankets the men carried, given water liberally laced with rum.

Fitz moved among them in search of a cognisant face, and chose a little girl about ten years old because she was acting rather like a mother hen toward the others.

“I’m Fitz,” said the man who never let people outside the near family use his Christian name. “What’s your name?”

“Sister Camille,” she said.

“Have you seen a very big man named Ned?”

“Oh, yes! He saved us, Fitz.”

“How did he do that?”

“He said the passage was stacked with gunpowder and we would die unless we ran outside. Some of the boys tried to stop us, but Ned waved his pistol at them and we all ran. The gunpowder exploded just the way it did when we were making it. Sister Anne and Brother James were killed then, and my eyebrows got burned off. So when Ned told us it would blow up, we knew it would. I think Ned didn’t expect us to believe him.”

Fitz’s heart had plummeted. “Is Ned still inside, Camille?”

“Yes.”

Charlie and Angus were riding up with their men, rejoicing at the sight of all those little brown-robed figures.

“Bad news,” Fitz said to the other two. “Ned found this cave, and got the children out just in time. Father Dominus had stuffed it with gunpowder-he actually forced the children to make it! A boy and a girl were killed in the process. Can you credit the depth of his villainy? Ned hasn’t come out.” He drew a breath, balled his hands into fists. “I must go in to look for him. Charlie, tell Tom Madderbury to ride to Pemberley. We’ll need the barouche for Ned-I doubt we’d get him into a fully closed carriage. Also carts and wagons to bring the children. Hot food in hay boxes for the children. They’ll sleep after water laced with rum, but we can’t keep them here. The best place to put them is the ballroom-have Parmenter light fires at that end of the house to make sure it’s dry. And tell Madderbury to make sure everybody knows the children will be part-blind from living in dim light. Their full sight will come back, but it will take time. We must have the wooden stretcher with the slight curve for Ned in case his back is broken, splints of other kinds, bandages, wadding, compresses, laudanum as well as the strongest opium syrup. Make sure Marshall is waiting for us. He can see the children too.”

Charlie went off at once; Fitz turned to Angus. “It wasn’t difficult to shed Charlie, but now I must ask you to step back, Angus. I must go in alone.”

“No, I insist I go with you.”

“Angus, you can’t! There’s no point in losing more than one man if more landslides are to come. It wasn’t a natural convulsion, but the result of an explosion, and we don’t know enough about the effects of explosions in enclosed places to run unnecessary risks. If I think it’s safe, I’ll tell you. And keep Charlie out.”

Seeing the good sense in this, Angus waited outside, and when Charlie would have rushed in after his father, persuaded him that one death, if death there had to be, was preferable to two. Only reminding Charlie of his mother deterred him.

The waterfall was gone, though the pool was still there, and the cavern entrance was revealed as yawning. A torch in his left hand, Fitz entered a world of rubble and rocks; like most Peak District caves, it was dry and wind-blown, of little interest to sightseers. He didn’t understand that it had been hidden by a waterfall, so wondered why no one had ever noticed it.