Chapter 9 #2
“Ember?” Katherine beckoned her pet closer, bending down to speak to her once she’d trotted over. “Look after him, will you?”
Ember gave Katherine’s skirt a playful swish with her tail. You can count on me, mistress.
She rejoined Ruben and this time, after hopping onto the bench, curled up in his lap and began to purr. Ruben shifted a bit under her but, of course, would have found it impossible to stand now even if he’d wanted to. A cat on one’s lap, as everyone knows, commits a person to sitting indefinitely.
You go on, my love, Ember addressed Mr. Scruffles, who was now ambling over to the bench. We’ll be perfectly cozy here.
You sure, my dear?
Of course. Let me know what you find.
What we find, Mr. Scruffles said as he sped past Katherine’s legs and bumped into Tilly, sending her briefly into transparency. Come on, Tilly!
Tilly coughed and cast the doorway an uncertain look.
Ember regarded her kindly. You needn’t always follow the mistress, she said. You could stay here with the old man and me.
Tilly rose from her crouch and huffed. Needn’t—?! But I— She flattened her ears, turned away from Ember, and slunk off after Katherine.
The ramp Mr. Scruffles had ascended was indeed a rather steep grade, but Katherine felt assured in her Elvish boots as she started her way downward.
Mrs. Chrysler placed a steadying hand against the tunnel’s soggy walls but otherwise seemed untroubled.
Here and there wooden supports interrupted the flow of her fingers, but they were very welcome, a sign of engineering aforethought.
“It really is quite strong, isn’t it, Imogene?” Katherine said, drawing her own scarf over her face as they descended. “The smell.”
“Yes, Katty,” Mrs. Chrysler said with watering eyes. She accepted gratefully the spare handkerchief Katherine offered and tied it over her face, sighing as she breathed in the sweet scent of lavender from her bureau sachet. “Ah, that’s better. Thank you.”
A faint green glow beckoned them on. Where the grade of the tunnel leveled out, they found the source of the green light.
One of the wooden supports bore a hook, from which hung a glass-paned lantern, stained yellow where it faced them and red on the opposite side, with more of the blue bugs within.
Mrs. Chrysler’s kerchiefed face reflected the green glow as she examined it, and Katherine, upon plunging ahead and turning around, was bathed in purple.
“More of those bye-oh-loomins, Katty,” Mrs. Chrysler said.
“Made into a signpost,” Katherine added. “Directions. Purple means out, clearly. Green means… deeper, I guess. But what are they for? Who would be wandering around down here? And why?”
“I don’t know. This place gives me the creeps, though, I don’t mind admitting. Mysterious caverns should have flaming torches and dripping stalactites and bats, not squishy walls and a bad smell.”
Katherine nodded. The stink of the place was getting stronger, even through her scarf, and the pungent, whispering air was constantly moving, gently pushing past her toward the entrance they’d left behind in the little sham house. “Shall we go on a bit more?”
“Yes. We’re here. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Pro bono sleuthing, though, is shaping up to be a bit less satisfying than straight-up thieving, I will say, Katty.”
“I know, Imogene. But it is less taxing, so far, than the old days.”
Mrs. Chrysler put her foot in something particularly foul smelling and withdrew it awkwardly, scraping her sole on the tunnel wall. “Is it?”
“Less bloody, then.”
Mrs. Chrysler shrugged. “So far.”
After a short while, they came upon a branch in the tunnel, marked by a pair of lanterns, each glowing green on one side and purple on the other.
“We must be near one of those other little buildings,” Katherine said, rounding the lanterns studiously before following a green glow farther onward.
“Sounds about right. But, hold up, what’s this?
” Mrs. Chrysler had stopped at the junction, and Katherine turned to see her kicking at the ground with her foot.
There was something wooden lurking in an alcove cut into the side of the tunnel, and Mrs. Chrysler was smoothing the mud away for a better look.
“It’s a wheelbarrow, Katty,” she said, drawing it out by the lip; its handles soon came into view at the rear of it.
“And it’s got a shovel in it, a pickaxe…
Splint did tell Sister Agatha he wanted to harvest something from the bog.
I’d say we’re in some sort of mine, don’tcha think? As unlikely as that may seem.”
A mine under an old folks’ home? Mr. Scruffles said. A mine for what?
My guess is for whatever reeks so bad down here, said Tilly. She was carefully trailing Mr. Scruffles, placing a paw delicately in each of his prints so as to not sully the spaces between her toes. This really is quite disgusting.
“Now what in the world could be mined under an old bog?” Katherine said.
Mrs. Chrysler shrugged and shoved the wheelbarrow back in its alcove, but not before giving the pickaxe an experimental heft. “Ugh, too heavy,” she muttered. “My Chauncey’s lighter.”
Onward they walked over the soft ground, still uncertain about when to stop, meeting junction after junction deserted in the darkness, until Mrs. Chrysler decided she’d had enough.
“Well, if this is an active mine,” she said after a while, “I’ve yet to see the proof of it.
Why don’t we just head for purple at the next crossroads, Katty, and get out of this stench? ”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Katherine. They’d come across a few more barrows, more tools, but nothing to indicate what product was being extracted or hauled, or that any of it had been lately.
The next set of dual lanterns was longer than usual in coming, but when it did emerge out of the shadows, it was accompanied by a burbling hum.
“What’s that?” Mrs. Chrysler whispered.
“It sounds like talking, Imogene.”
Round the corner that indicated upward, they craned their necks and stole a glance up the passage. A sudden, singular voice pierced the unintelligible babble.
“All right, men! I said, all right! Set it down! Yes, there!”
Not far away from their corner, a string of unattended barrows, heaped high with something dark and angular, lined the spur, disappearing at intervals into shadows punctuated by more lanterns.
The pair could make out very little of the commotion at the head of the procession, although the movement of multiple people was hinted by hulking, changing shadows in a blue glow far away at the top.
“What is this stuff?” Katherine asked, hugging the wall and approaching the nearest barrow at a semi-crouch, then poking its contents suspiciously.
“Is it charcoal?”
Doesn’t smell like charcoal, Mr. Scruffles said, covering a paw with his nose. Smells like a litterbox.
Smells like that big crate we passed earlier too, Tilly said with intrigued disgust.
A multi-voiced grumbling, growing louder, suggested that several people were now making their way toward them from the top of the spur.
“Quick, grab some, Katty. Grab a sample. They’re coming.”
“Ugh, it’s so heavy, Imogene.” Katherine shoved around the great lumps with effort, struggling to find one of manageable size.
“Here, here. Look, look.” Mrs. Chrysler spied another pickaxe, loitering in the shadows near the line of barrows. She darted over and tried to lift it. “Here, help me with it, Katty.” The two women, united in their haste and determination, awkwardly managed to wield the heavy instrument.
As they strained, a pair of stocky workers appeared from the mouth of the spur, chatting in growly voices and wearing smeared overalls and miners’ helmets, complete with built-in bioluminescent lamps.
The nearest man abruptly stopped, his eyes widening as he beheld the two unexpected figures, their shared pickaxe waving unsteadily in the air.
The second man bumped into the back of him.
“What gives, Ernie?” he muttered distractedly.
“Who are you?” the worker named Ernie asked, ignoring his companion and drawing instinctively back in the semi-darkness.
Katherine and Mrs. Chrysler exchanged glances, their eyes barely visible over their makeshift masks.
“Thieves?” Mrs. Chrysler ventured with an attempted shrug.
The gesture threw her off balance and she angled her body to shift her weight and Katherine’s closer to the nearest barrow, then brought their shared pickaxe heavily down on its contents.
A fist-sized fragment spun away from the main block with a thunk, and Katherine reached for it, leaving Mrs. Chrysler to wrestle alone with the pickaxe, which she immediately dropped on the closer miner’s foot.
“Aaargh!” Ernie screamed, crumpling in pain. “Bandits! Bandits!” The cry was picked up the length of the spur, in varied tones of disbelief and concern, as the uninjured miner fled for help.
“All right, I got it!” Katherine tucked the fragment she’d nabbed into her pocket.
“Let’s go, let’s go. Mr. Scruffles, stop that.
” Mr. Scruffles abandoned his survey of the barrows’ contents from farther ahead and leapt over the injured miner, who was still nursing his foot with a grimace.
“Sorry about that,” Katherine told the miner, then spun on her heel, and the harried party high-tailed it back the way they’d come.
Shambling as fast as she could over the squishy ground, Mrs. Chrysler stole a glance behind them.
Her inadvertent victim was rising to his feet now, and he was no longer alone.
“They’ll be catching up soon, Katty,” she said.
Katherine, grateful as ever for her Elvish footwear, stole a glance too as she swept, comparatively swiftly, up the passage.
Mr. Scruffles was sprinting ahead, Tilly’s puffed purple tail jolting along behind him.
Agitated voices were growing louder now: “Which way did they go, Ernie?” and “That way!”