Plumes of black smoke hung above the trees and they passed deep scores in the rocks, some raw and new, others overgrown. ‘Rakes,’ Cal said. ‘They are where seams of minerals come to the surface – silver, although there’s not much of that, zinc, lead, some iron. They mine coal over to the east.’ As he spoke an empty wagon appeared, coal dust coating its side and base. The driver stared at them but did not stop.
‘I hear water,’ Sophie said and the sound became louder as they rode on.
‘Look.’ Cal urged his horse up the bank beside them. ‘This is a dam, diverting the flow that way – see, that is where the stream used to go.’ He pointed down to where a dry ditch went under the road and vanished. ‘That must have run into a swallow-hole over there and would have come out somewhere near the castle.’ He dismounted, knelt and dipped his hand in the water, took a cautious sip and spat. ‘This tastes as the old spring’s water used to, of some mineral or other. But it is pure, there is no smell and it is quite clear.’
He remounted and they rode on, the diverted stream bubbling and chuckling beside them now, and were suddenly in a village. Sophie gasped at the shock of emerging from the greenery of the woodland into mud, dirt and industry. The low cottages huddled around mired lanes and smoke and noise filled the air from the workshops all around.
Children ran out as they approached, most of them, Sophie saw with distress, dressed in rags and barefoot. All of them appeared to have been distracted from some kind of labour, judging by the shouts from the workshops that sent them scurrying back inside.
Cal reined in at the edge of a rough plank bridge. It had been made across the stream where it crossed the largest lane in a sea of mud before emptying into a circular basin, half choked with rocks. More were being dumped in as they watched and some men were agitating them with long poles and brushes.
‘That’s a buddle,’ Cal shouted to her above the din. ‘For cleaning ore before it is smelted.’
Men started to come out of the workshops, sweaty, filthy and, to Sophie’s eyes, hostile.
‘Stay behind me.’ Cal nudged his horse into a walk and crossed the bridge. For once Sophie did not feel inclined to dispute his orders. The last thing they needed at the moment was a fight breaking out because Cal took exception to the way the men looked at her.
‘You wanting someone?’ the biggest man asked.
‘Just riding past. That’s a good flow of water you’ve got there. Had to divert the stream, I see.’
‘Aye, many years back. And what’s it to you?’ The man narrowed bloodshot eyes. ‘We’ve got rights for mining all over this hill.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Good day to you.’ Cal let the horse move off at a walk and she trotted up to ride beside him. The hostile gaze of the villagers felt like a physical pressure on her back. The stream emerged from the buddle and ran on, discoloured and sinister now. The horses splashed through liquid running down from some sheds to join the brook and Sophie gagged at the smell.
‘Cess pits and a pig sty, I imagine.’ Cal urged the horse into a trot until they were clear of the stench and round the corner out of sight of the village. ‘If this is our stream, the source of the spring, then it’s a wonder I was not dead after one mouthful. Look, it goes off down there.’
He dismounted, tossed the reins to Sophie and pushed his way through the bushes, emerging a few minutes later, hat in hand, with leaves in his hair and a long smear of mud down his sleeve. ‘I think that this is it.’ He took the packets of bluing from the saddlebag and went into the bushes again. When he came back he wiped his powder-dusted hands on the grass, leaving long blue streaks. ‘I do not fancy washing
it off in that water.’ He looked faintly nauseous.
‘I am not surprised.’ Sophie found she was shivering with reaction. ‘That filth – and I suppose there is stuff in the ore that is poisonous as well.’
‘I imagine so. Certainly the fumes from lead are, and I have no idea what else gets washed off. I imagine that it has built up deposits all the way through the underground system over the years and that it is stronger now than it was in the beginning. No wonder it killed Ransome.’
‘But not you.’
‘I have picked up some pretty exotic things in my travels, been as sick as a dog in a lot of places, so have Flynn and Hunt. I think it toughens the system up. And I only had that one mouthful this time. Ransome was feeling pretty rough, I imagine, and must have downed most of the carafe before he realised how foul it tasted.’
‘Now what do we do?’
‘Meet the others who should be coming along this track from the opposite direction, go home and sort out a team of watchers for the spring. If it doesn’t flow blue in two days, then we’ve got the wrong stream, but the diversion is too much of a coincidence if that’s the case.’
They rode on in silence, Sophie in a muddle of relief, lingering horror over Jonathan’s death and growing concern for Cal who seemed lost in some dark daydream, his shoulders rigid, his face grim.
Finally, as they rode through a glade so utterly different from the grim little village that it seemed like another world, she could bear it no longer. ‘What is it? Why aren’t you relieved?’
‘I am,’ he said bleakly. ‘Relieved and feeling damnably guilty. How the hell can I apologise enough to my uncle and to Ralph without telling them what I believed for so long? And I can’t tell them and yet I cannot let go of the feeling that I should confess the whole damnable mess.’
‘Of course you must not tell them,’ Sophie said crisply. ‘You hurt them enough by leaving, you can’t salve your own conscience by confessing what you suspected – they would never recover from it. What you thought was understandable, given all the evidence and the fact that you were in no position to investigate further. You can feel regret that you were forced into the position of suspecting them, but wallowing in guilt is self-indulgent. And confessing would make everyone unhappy.’
‘Ouch. You can hit hard when you want to, Sophie. Have you been talking to Jared?’
‘To Hunt? No, why should I? I am not at all sure I like the man, although I believe he is utterly loyal to you.’
‘He thinks I am too prone to feeling guilty. I was stupid enough, in my cups, to wallow – as you so painfully put it – over my feelings for Madeleine and got a rollicking from him on the subject of misplaced guilt.’
‘What – Cal, what were your feelings for her if they made you feel so guilty?’