Ether & Elephants (9 page)

Lead? Why the hell was someone secretly mining lead? Sure, like any metal it had its uses, but it was pretty widely available. It certainly wasn’t anything with enormous intrinsic value.

Unless… Tom could nearly feel gears turning and cogs locking into place in his mind. Of course,
lead.
They’d called the man who masterminded the deadly “cure” for black lung
The Alchemist.
Perhaps they’d been more accurate than they’d known. Lead to gold, after all, was the legendary definition of alchemy. Could it be that simple?

Ducking behind the cart, Tom followed the two men. If they separated at all once they were out of the tunnel, he had a chance to take both of them out of the equation.

As expected, they pushed the cart toward the storage barn. There was no modern technology here, no coal-fired lifts or conveyor belts like one would see at a legitimate commercial enterprise. Instead the slimmer man stepped aside to open the barn door, while the bruiser grunted and shoved the cart inside.

While the two were separated, Tom crept up behind the smaller man and coshed him over the head with his pistol. The man went down, but unfortunately not before he got off a shout.

“Oy!” The bruiser dropped the cart handles and came running out of the barn, fists raised.

“None of that, mate.” Barnaby stepped from inside the barn, a pistol leveled at the bigger man. “Just have a seat right there on the ground, shut your gob, and I won’t have to put a hole in your skull.”

The bruiser complied and Tom made short work of tying him up, then doing the same with his unconscious friend. He and Barnaby dragged the pair into the shed while Tom filled Barnaby in on what he’d learned.

“Right. Let’s go get the kids out.” Barnaby gestured toward the hillside, and Victor, Connor and Fergus emerged from the scrub.

“I’ve got an idea.” Connor ducked into the barn and returned with the bruiser’s cap. He rubbed dirt and coal dust from the ground on his coat. “I’m the closest to that one’s size. Barnaby?”

The old salt grinned and roughed himself up a bit as well. “I’m game if you are.” They grabbed one of the empty carts from the group outside the mine shaft. “Hop in, the rest of you. They won’t be expecting a load coming
into
the mine.”

The others looked at one another in agreement. “Not a bad plan,” Sir Fergus said. “But I don’t think there’s room for all of us. I’ll follow and guard the rear flank.”

Tom and Victor obediently squashed themselves down into the wooden cart, jostling for just enough room to be able to leap out and fight when needed.

“Let’s do this thing.” Tom forced himself to breathe and hoped to heaven that Charlie was safely inside. Whether or not he was Tom’s son could be determined later, after the boy was safe.

Connor and Barnaby began to push the cart forward into the mine, keeping their faces down and caps pulled low over their foreheads. The ride was rough as the cart bumped and rattled, but both Tom and Victor managed to remain silent, despite the helpless feeling engendered by not being able to see where they were going. Tom knew Fergus was following, but even with his superior hearing, was unable to detect a single footfall. He hoped he and Connor could someday be half the Knights that Fergus and Merrick had trained them to be.

Once they moved into the active shaft, Tom gripped his pistol and let his ears guide him. Dim torchlight on the walls showed a rough-hewn tunnel perhaps eight feet high.

“What the bloody hell took you so long?” The voice Tom assumed belonged to the overseer demanded. “Get that cart over here and get back to work.”

“’Ad to piss,” Barnaby muttered. They inched forward, then stopped.

“Now,” Connor yelled as he gave the cart a mighty shove. Tom and Victor gripped the rim of the cart and stood, their pistols ready. Shouts and curses filled the air as the cart slammed into a man holding a bullwhip, knocking him flat.

“You bastard!” A club barely missed Tom’s head. He ducked and slammed his fist, pistol and all, into his attacker’s solar plexus. Connor coshed Tom’s attacker in the head with a lump of rock and the man fell like a cut tree.

The children began to cheer. By the time Victor leaped out of the cart, the man with the bullwhip had been mobbed. Victor shooed the children away and trained his pistol on the leader.

The fight was over almost before it had begun.

“All right, let’s get these little ones out of here,” Fergus called over the excited babbling. “One of those two must have the keys to the shackles.”

Tom studied the children for the first time. As he’d suspected, there were a dozen or so, mostly boys, with two or three girls in the mix, all looking to be between the ages of ten and twelve or thereabouts. It was too dark and they were too dirty for him to identify any of them, but there didn’t seem to be a blind boy in the mix. Worst of all, they were all chained together, like a prison work gang. Fergus and Connor searched the two men and found a set of keys on the one with the whip. Connor set to unlocking the children while Tom and Victor locked the men into their own shackles.

Barnaby, the least frightening-looking of them all, led the urchins out into the sunlight. “Billy Smith, is that you?”

“Mr. Hatch!” One of the biggest boys ran up to Barnaby and wrung his hand, turned to Victor and pumped his fist in the air. “Lord Blackwell! I told them you’d come for us. No one believed me.”

The other urchins mumbled.

“Well, we did.” Victor clapped the boy on the shoulder. “What happened to your friend? Arthur, wasn’t it?” A quick glance at the children in daylight showed that none of them were African.

Billy scrunched up his face and spit on the ground. “The boss-man took Art away. Said they had another use for him.”

There was a general clamor among the children about how they’d come to be there and what had happened when they’d been taken. All agreed that they’d been somehow evaluated by a middle-aged or older gentleman and his dark-skinned servant before being placed at the mine. Apparently each child had been chosen for a specific task, and not all of them were used at this particular site.

“Let’s get everyone back to Black Heath,” Victor said. “We’ve got food, plenty of soap and water there, and even a doctor. Some of us can get started returning the children to their homes, while the others have a little chat with our prisoners.”

“I’ll ride ahead and come back with wagons.” Tom took off up the hill toward his horse at a sprint, wanting a few minutes alone to clear his head. No Charlie. But apparently there were other jobs—ones some of the stolen children had been singled out for.

Of particular note was that none of the children at the mine had been supernaturally gifted, while Barnaby believed the African boy was, and Nell thought the same of Charlie. Was this criminal singling out talented youngsters, or culling them? Either way, it looked like the chase was only beginning.

* * *

Nell left Wink and Melody to the Babbage engines and assisted Geneva, Belinda and Mrs. Ritchie in seeing to the rescued children in the large servants’ hall, right off the kitchen. Slaving in the mine hadn’t been easy on their young bodies. Most of them had infected wounds on their hands, arms, even faces, and several had nasty coughs, not unlike Londoners who were constantly exposed to coal smoke. Belinda hauled out her supply of homemade herbal remedies along with Mrs. Ritchie’s stock of strong lye soap and hot broth.

Nell held a twelve-year-old girl in her lap while Geneva patiently set the bones of two broken fingers. Looking the youngster in the eyes to distract her, Nell asked, “Where are you from, Nancy?” One of the jobs she’d been assigned was compiling information so the children could be returned to their families.

“Plymouth.” The girl’s eyes flickered as the broken finger bone snapped into place, but she didn’t scream. She cast her eyes down. “Mum worked…the docks. When she died, I stole scraps from behind the tavern until those blokes found me.”

“So you don’t have anywhere to go back to?” Nell held the girl tightly as she sobbed.

Nancy sniffled. “No, my lady. Just back to the streets.”

“We’ll find something.” Nell would be damned before
that
would happen. “Either school, or an apprenticeship. What would you like to do?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Nancy sat up straight and wiped the tears from her face. “Me mum was a whore. S’pose I’ll be one too.”

“Not unless you want to,” Nell said, brushing Nancy’s tangled hair from her forehead. She stopped short of saying,
so was mine.
“The people in this house don’t care what your mother did. It’s all about what you want to do. We’ll find you a good situation. I promise that, even if I’m not a
milady
. I’m just a schoolteacher.”

Or at least she had been. But she would be again, so it counted. An idea began to form. Her father had said he’d build her a school. He hadn’t specified a school for the blind. What if she could take in other children like Nancy, who simply had no place to go? Nell wasn’t sure she was up to the task of running it all on her own, but with Roger beside her they could make a world of difference in so many young lives.

“What can I do to help?” a bright, cheery voice asked from the doorway.

“Mum!” Nell squealed, wanting to rush into Caroline’s arms but unwilling to let go of the child in hers. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too, dearest.” Caroline Merrick, still pretty despite nearing forty, ran over and kissed the top of Nell’s head. She laid a hand on Nancy’s shoulder. “And who have we here?”

Geneva wrapped the girl’s fingers. “A brave young lady, who now requires a bath but needs to keep that hand out of the water.”

“I think I recall how to manage that,” Caro said with a chuckle, her green eyes twinkling. “Nell, do you remember when Jamie broke his arm sliding down the bannister?”

Nell chuckled. “The day before you came to Hadrian House. How could I ever forget?”

“You don’t look like her mum,” Nancy said as Caro led her over to where a copper tub had been set up behind a curtain for the girls. “Your hair is yellow and hers is black.”

“Well, now that’s a long story.” Caro kept a hand on Nancy’s shoulder. Very few people knew about it, but Caro had a gift for healing. Nancy’s fingers would mend quicker than they otherwise might have. “She had another mother, you see, but that one died. So we adopted her and I was lucky enough to get Nell for a daughter.”

“It works like that?” Nancy asked, wide-eyed.

“Sometimes,” Nell said. “But I’m the lucky one.” She let her mother take Nancy while she returned to assist the doctor.

Next, Geneva set stitches on a young boy’s forehead while Nell held his hand and elicited his information. Benjie had living parents, not far away, and could be taken home by nightfall. One by one, each of the rescued children was seen to, bathed, fed and found something to wear from Black Heath’s attics and storerooms. By midafternoon, only two were left who had nowhere to go. “Could use a new boot boy,” Mrs. Ritchie said to the homeless boy whose dead parents had apparently been farmers. “Fair wages, room in the attic, training to move up in the household. You interested?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The towheaded urchin nodded. “Beats mucking stables or smashing rocks.”

“Come along.” Barnaby led the young man off to his new quarters.

“And what about you, Nancy?” Nell smiled at the girl. “I suppose someone here could use a new housemaid, but there are other things, too. What would you do if you had a choice?”

“I like to sew,” she said. “And draw.”

“I think, for now, Nancy will come with us,” Caro said. “There’s always room for a guest in the nursery, and it will do Sylvia good to not be the oldest for a change.”

“A nursery maid, ma’am?” Nancy’s eyes widened. “That would be smashing.”

“We’ll see.” Caro winked at Nell. “For now, let’s just introduce you to the other children as a friend, shall we?”

Geneva stood. “I’ll take her up. Come along, Nancy.”

Caro linked arms with Nell. “Let’s catch a breath in the garden, dear.”

Nell looked down at her blood-and-coal-stained dress. “I should probably go change.”

Caro grinned. “In a minute. I haven’t seen you for ages.”

Unable to say no to her mother, Nell walked out the kitchen door to the herb garden.

Caro wrapped her arm around her daughter’s waist. “Your father told me you’ve left Glenbury.”

Nell slid her arm around her mother. “Yes.”

“What are you thinking of doing now?” Caro spoke lightly, with no pressure for Nell to respond in any particular manner. “The Season? Another teaching position? Perhaps a trip abroad? Aunt Dorothy and Margaret are planning a journey to Rome, I think. They’d love to have you join them.”

Merrick’s aunt and her lifelong love, Miss Margaret Julian, were two of Nell’s favorite people in the world, but she wouldn’t want to travel with them even if she didn’t have other obligations. Best to get the big shock over with first. She paused and turned toward Caro. “You must have missed the gossip when you arrived. Mum, I’m here with my fiancé, Roger.”

Caroline took Nell by both shoulders, looking into her eyes. “Do you love him?”

Nell shrugged. “I think so. He’s a brilliant mathematician. Athletic, brave and kind. He was a soldier for a while, so I know he’s loyal to his country. He also loves children and isn’t the kind of man to ever be unfaithful. I could do a lot worse. He has property in Sussex. I thought maybe we could open a school there together, and maybe take in a few children like Nancy who have nowhere to go.” The more she thought about that idea, the more she liked it.

“He’d be willing to let you continue to teach?” Caro sat on a stone bench and drew Nell down beside her. “That’s a rare man, even in these modern times. But you haven’t answered my question, darling. Do you love him? Deeply, with all your heart?”

Nell sighed. “Not like you and Papa, at least not yet. But I don’t want to be alone, Mum. I mean, I love all of you, all my brothers and sisters, but I want my own family someday. And I’m not getting any younger. Roger’s a wonderful man. I’m so fond of him, and more importantly, I trust him. He’ll never break my heart.”