alcove, its pinnacle sprouting a wide metal tube that led, braced on brackets, to the outside air behind the falls. Whatever its principle, it was efficient, for there was hardly any smoke in the cavern. Near it were condensers for distillation, and a whole table devoted to filtering liquids through cheesecloth or cloth. The Children of Jesus laboratory, wherein Father Dominus made his cure-alls!
In this dim environment the children had pulled off their cowls-all boys, Ned decided, for they all bore the little bald spot of a tonsure on the crowns of their heads. Girls were never tonsured that he had heard of. Almost thirty of them, with a big lad roaming from table to table-features coarse, eyes pitiless. They were afraid of him, and flinched or shuddered when he approached. Not Mary’s Brother Ignatius, he decided. This one had no heart.
Getting past Brother Jerome (for so one boy had addressed him) was difficult, but Ned succeeded when the youth went to the fire and roared for more coal-that must be an exercise, the lugging of sacks of coal! At its rear the cave tapered down to a high, quite wide tunnel. A short passage, it opened into another vast, artificially lit cavern, in which were more tables. These contained bottles being filled through funnels from ladles dipped into ewers-the girls! Longer hair, no tonsures. They were working in a frenzy, though no one supervised. That meant Brother Jerome must have charge of all of the children. Where was Father Dominus?
The air was filled with odours, all sorts from disgusting to sickly-sweet; did Father Dominus make women’s perfumes as well as the traditionally foul things that cured ailments? Somewhere in the mйlange Ned’s nose identified one particular smell, a smell he knew, sniffed regularly.
Where was the gunpowder? Then he saw that the passageway between the laboratory and the bottling cave was wider than it looked; its sides were stacked with small barrels. But where was the trail of powder that led to the detonating cask? Gunpowder was black as pitch, the floor covered in black dust-was the whole floor the trail? No, it would fizzle. Though air got in, the bottling cave felt more stifling than the laboratory one. Producing noxious fumes and smoke from a big fire, the laboratory would have to be closest to the outside air.
First thing to do, he decided, was to eliminate Brother Jerome. Sooner or later he would come down the passage to see what the girls were doing. Ned moved into the most lightless spot near the end of the short corridor, and pulled out a knife. It would have to be quick and efficient; let the youth shout once, and Father Dominus might appear. Brother Jerome would be easy to deal with, but Father Dominus was as intelligent as he was crazed, and until he could find the fuse trail, Ned wanted the old man oblivious to his presence. For he had to get the girls out; that was what Fitz would want him to do above all else. The boys were on the far side of the kegs of explosives, and would fare at least a little better. The girls would either be buried under falling rock or immured in blackness to perish slowly, perhaps in agony from injuries. An insupportable thought.
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
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
