Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Face crimson, Angus spluttered out an incoherent reply that had Fitz laughing.

“What I’m saying, my friend, is that sometimes it is necessary to let go the leading-strings, no matter how your heart cries out against it. I’ll let Charlie explore knowing the dangers, just stand up here myself praying to every god I know.”

“Then I’ll pray too.”

Back came Charlie leading Jupiter, laden with rope, torches, bags. “Papa, this beautiful animal is game for anything! I wish I rode heavier! Then you wouldn’t have him. Such a gentle nature!”

“You’ll never have him, Charlie. He’s my last link to Ned.”

Fitz tied one end of a long rope around his waist with Angus three feet in front of him; the two men took the strain as Charlie descended into the depths holding a torch and a tinder box. At thirty feet the rope suddenly slackened; Charlie was on the floor of the cave, and safe thus far.

“Not too deep!” came his voice, thin but audible. “It’s the second-to-last cave, quite small. I think it must have been Father Dominus’s room-it has a table, a chair, a desk, another chair, and a bed. Like a monk’s cell, not even a rush mat on the floor. There are two openings, almost opposite each other. One’s sense of direction is uncertain down here, but I’ll look into the unscreened opening first.”

“Charlie, be careful!” was wrenched from Fitz.

The two men waited what seemed an eternity.

“It’s just a tunnel leading downhill,” came Charlie’s voice at last. “The other is curtained off with black velvet from above the top of the aperture-the material drags on the floor, as if he wanted to keep all light out. I’m going in.”

“The nadir of parenthood,” Fitz said between his teeth. “Take heed, Angus. No one can escape it.”

They waited then, speechless, ears straining for Charlie’s voice, dreading a vast rumble.

“I say, Papa, it’s amazing! Father Dominus’s temple to his God, I think. Utterly black. Haul me up!”

The Charlie who emerged from the hole was covered in dust and cobwebs, and minus his torch and tinder box, left below. He was smiling from ear to ear. “Papa, Angus, I’ve found Mary’s gold! The temple cave was small and absolutely round-it was a great help to be a classical scholar, for it leads me to think that he interpreted this particular cavern mystically. Round like a navel stone or a Roman temple to a numinous god, with its altar in the exact centre, and round too. It was covered with a black velvet cloth and it consisted of innumerable little bars of gold. An offering to his Cosmogenic God, I suppose.”

He reached into his shirt and withdrew a small brick which glittered with that magical glow only pure gold can achieve: fire without fire, heat without heat, light without light. “See? Ten pounds is about right,” he said, thrilled with himself. “And not a government mark to be seen! Or any other mark, for that matter.”

They sat down, both to recover from the strain of waiting for Charlie, and the shock of learning that Father Dominus had told Mary the truth.

“How many of these bricks are there?” Angus asked.

“Impossible to tell without dismantling the altar-is it hollow, or packed solid? He had made it round by putting each bar at an angle, so I hazard a guess that it’s solid save for the natural spaces this way of stacking produces,” said Charlie, eyes bright. “The whole altar measures about three feet in diameter, and three feet in height. What an offering!”

“Better that, than one of his children,” said Angus grimly.

“We have to think this thing through,” said Fitz, drawing a circle in a patch of dust with a stick. “First of all, we cannot make this find public, either now or at any time in the future. I will approach the government, of which I am a member until such time as Parliament goes into session.” He scowled. “That means we have to move the gold to Pemberley ourselves. Interesting, that lead has been mined in the Peak District for centuries! If we can lift it out of the temple chamber and wrap it securely on sleds, we can pretend it’s a hoard of lead from Father Dominus’s failed experiments to alchemise it into gold. Lead is valuable enough that it will seem good sense on our parts to garnish it on behalf of the Children of Jesus. We will simply say that it was already wrapped in job-lots, and we preferred to get it out of the caves ourselves for fear of more collapses.”

“Thus appearing responsible citizens,” said Angus with a grin.

“Quite. I’ll have the Pemberley carpenters make two sleds-they ought to suffice, given the dimensions of the altar. A pity the donkeys were killed. They would have been ideal.” Fitz turned to his son. “I am afraid you have to go back down the hole at this moment, Charlie. Would I fit?”

“I think so, but Angus definitely not.”

“Angus very definitely not! Someone has to remain up here to haul us out. Jupiter can do the work, but not without guidance. You and I are going down to count the number of ingots. On that figure depends the extent of our transportation.”

It was a gruelling task for two men not used to manual labour, but being together was a mental fillip; they could urge each other on, twit each other when one flagged, make a joke out of a trembling limb or eyes blinded by sweat.

“One thousand and twenty-three ingots,” said Fitz, lying flat out on the ground looking up at the twilit sky wherein Venus shone as Evening Star, cold, pure, indifferent. “Christ, I am a broken reed! No work for a man of fifty, let alone a sedentary one. I will ache for weeks.”

“And I for months,” said Charlie with a groan.

“We availed ourselves of a pair of scales in the old man’s cell and discovered that one ingot weighs a full ten pounds avoirdupois. For what reason I know not, Father Dominus chose not to use troy weight, which is usual for precious metals-only twelve ounces to the pound. At two thousand, two hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois to the ton, we have about four and a half tons of gold down there.”

Charlie sat up with a jolt. “Heavens, Papa, that means we have shifted over two tons each!”

“A mere matter of feet, and not the bottom layer,” said Fitz austerely. He looked at Angus. “Had we been forced to work in torchlight, it would have been intolerable, but we found two extraordinary lamps in Dominus’s cell, also a barrel of some kind of oil that fuels them. Mary is right when she says his mind was first-rate. I’ve seen nothing like them anywhere. It may be, Angus, that your company could patent and manufacture them if we bring one up after we’re done.”

“I think the patent should be awarded to the Children of Jesus,” Angus said.

“No, they will have all the gold except for a reward payable to Mary. Take it, Angus! Otherwise I’ll break both lamps and no one will benefit.”

“Then why not Charles Bingley?”

“It’s in my gift,” Fitz said royally, “and it goes to you.”

I will never break him of it! thought Angus. No one will. “Very well, and I thank you,” he said.

“Four sleds,” said Charlie, interrupting. “We’ll need some donkeys, not to pull the sleds, but to brake them.”

“How do you know about sleds, Fitz?” asked Angus.

“They’re used in Bristol, where the quays are hollow from warehouses beneath. The load is better distributed on a sled’s runners than on the four points where a wagon’s wheels touch the ground. Runners will help getting the load downhill too, where the subsidences are greater.”

“I take it we say nothing to the ladies?” Angus asked.

“Not even a hint of the most obscure kind.”

“But we will have help loading the wrapped packages onto the sleds?” Charlie asked anxiously.