If he hadn’t heard the shout, he would have guessed a dog or cat had wandered into their midst.
He turned his horse in that direction, though there was no path visible in the rapidly dwindling moonlight. The horses had been picking their way along an old, rutted packhorse road, as they followed the signs of recent passage: the grooves a pair of wheels had made in the dirt, the marks of feet and hooves, and fresh droppings.
Here, in the swiftly dimming moonlight, Alistair distinguished nothing like a trail or path. But the uneasiness he’d carried for all these long hours deepened into anxiety, and he urged his tired animal to more speed.
Yet by the time he and Mirabel reached the patch of woodland, the birds had settled again, and all was silent.
They halted and listened. They were well ahead of the others and heard no voices, only the wind sighing through bare branches and whispering among the pines.
And then a scream broke the quiet, a man’s scream, short and terrible, and near at hand.
They dismounted and ran toward the sound.
THE warning shout stopped Alistair in his tracks.
“Have a care, have a care.” Mr. Oldridge’s breathless voice came from nearby.
“Papa!”
Mirabel would have rushed toward the sound, but Alistair held her back. “The sound is coming from below,” he said. “Wait here.”
He walked forward cautiously, straining to see the ground ahead. Thick clouds were swallowing the moon and releasing a cold drizzle.
“Here, here,” Mr. Oldridge called. “An air shaft. Have a care, I beg.”
Alistair got down on hands and knees and crept toward the voice. He paused when he saw the hole, a ragged shape, only a shade darker than the surrounding darkness. He drew as near as he dared and peered down. He could see nothing.
“Mr. Oldridge,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, yes, certainly.”
“We’ll fetch a rope and have you out in a trice.”
“I fear it is more complicated than that.”
Mirabel crept up beside Alistair. “Papa, are you injured? Is anything broken?”
“I think not, but it is difficult to be sure. Caleb Finch fell on top of me. He is…dead.”
Nausea welled up. Alistair took a deep breath, let it out. He remembered. The mud. The cold, stiffening body keeping him down. The stench. He thrust the memory away.
“In that case, I’ll come down to you, sir,” he said.
“Alistair.”
He could not read Mirabel’s face in the darkness, but he heard the fear in her voice. “If you both are trapped there,” she said softly, “how shall I get you out?”
“We won’t be trapped,” Alistair said. “I must go down.” More audibly he said, “Mr. Oldridge, can you tell me anything more? It is difficult to see.”
“I saw the telltale depression in the ground, and hesitated,” Oldridge said. “Then Finch caught me, and when I tried to warn him, he thought it was a trick. It is one of the old air shafts. The hill is honeycombed with them. This one has succumbed to age, weather, and gravity and—in short, it is caving in. We seem to be resting upon a heap of debris that partially blocks the hole.”
“You are not at the bottom, then,” Alistair said.
“Oh, no. We are wedged over the opening.” He wasn’t sure how deep the shaft was, he added. Given its position on the hillside, he estimated at least another twenty feet to the bottom.
“I am not sure it would be wise for me to attempt to break through to get to the bottom,” Oldridge said.
“No, most unwise,” Alistair said. The shaft must lead to an old mine tunnel, but that was more than likely blocked with debris or flooded. Which meant that if the lump of debris supporting them gave way, the two men would fall to the bottom with it. If the fall didn’t kill the one still alive, he’d be buried alive or drowned.
“I think it would be best to send for help,” Mr. Oldridge said. “I am quite prepared to wait.”
And if the rain increased, and became one of the sudden torrents, like the one Alistair had experienced weeks ago? The walls of the shaft could give way, to bury Mr. Oldridge alive or send him to the bottom. They would never be able to extricate him in time.
It had to be now, and Alistair must do it.
“We’ll need a good length of rope,” he told Mirabel.
ALISTAIR tied the rope around the nearest sturdy tree and dropped the other end into the hole.
The rain was building steadily.
He climbed down, fingers tight on the rope. It was slippery. If his grip failed, he’d crash through the unstable pile of debris and fall to the bottom, taking Oldridge and the corpse with him.
With every move, clumps of dirt and rock gave way. The rain beat on his head and spattered mud in his face. As he went lower, he became aware of the smell that wasn’t wet earth. It was all too familiar. Blood. And excrement. The smell of sudden, violent death. A very different matter from a quiet passing in bed.
He wanted to retch, but he wouldn’t let himself. If he gave way to sickness or panic, the woman he loved would lose her father and her future husband at once. Even now she might be carrying his child.
The thought of the child—his child—steadied his nerves and took him down to the uncertain pile of debris where the two men were wedged. He could hear one’s breathing. His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and he made out the shape of Mr. Oldridge’s genial face.
“Can you reach my hand?” he asked, bending down toward Oldridge. He heard a shuffling sound, then dirt and gravel clattering to the bottom. Was that a distant splash he heard? In the rain, it was hard to tell.
“I must get him off first,” Oldridge said.
“Let me see if I can help,” Alistair
said.
He inched down nearer. Still holding onto the rope, he felt with his free hand until he found an ungiving limb.
“I’ve got him,” Alistair said. “Which way do we move him?”
“To my left.”
“Together now, then, on three, but gently, gently. One. Two. Three.”
He tugged and Oldridge pushed, and they shifted the corpse to one side. Another clump of earth gave way.
“We’d better make haste,” Alistair said, glad the beating rain drowned out the pounding of his heart. “Take my hand.”
Oldridge grasped his hand.
“Can you climb onto my shoulders?” Alistair said. The ground was sliding away from under his feet. He edged back from the crumbling dirt. “You’d better do it now,” he told Oldridge.
For any other man, even a much younger one, this would have been next to impossible: The hole was cramped, its sides unstable, the ground beneath their feet threatening to give way any minute. Oldridge was far from young, probably bruised and stiff, and that might be the least of his troubles. But years of clambering over the Peak’s hills and dales and negotiating slippery paths had kept him strong and nimble. Though he moved more stiffly than usual, the botanist managed to climb onto Alistair’s shoulders.
Alistair carefully straightened. “Can you reach?” he gasped.
“Ah, yes.”
At the top of the hole, the blackness lightened to dark grey. He saw Oldridge’s head mere inches now from the top. Then Mirabel’s face. She lay on her stomach, her hand outstretched.
“Come, Papa,” she said.
With her help, Oldridge shimmied and heaved himself up and over the edge.
Alistair then turned to deal with the corpse. But as he bent toward it, the body slumped and the dirt—turning to mud—beneath Alistair’s feet shifted and slid away. He edged back, tightly clutching the rope, and listened to the rattling dirt and rocks falling into the darkness below.
“Alistair,” Mirabel called. “Please.”