Mother Lode

by E. Rose Sabin

  She spotted Teddy as soon as she stepped outside. He hadn’t gone far. Still soaking wet, he stood a short distance away, on the path leading to the vile latrines the children had been forced to use on their way to and from the mines. His back was to the house, but when she called, he turned and headed toward her.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said on reaching her. “I’ve been so worried about the peacekeepers discovering the corpses of Mother Cooper and Vee that it didn’t occur to me to wonder—until now when I came out here—what happened to the bodies of the children who’ve died here. Where are they buried? They’d be proof of the Coopers’ cruel treatment. But what was done with them? I’ve never seen any graves, and the ground around here is stony and hard to dig in. I’m fairly certain they weren’t delivered to the mortuary in Marquez. I think the Coopers kept the deaths secret, so where did they put the bodies?”

  Her relief that Teddy hadn’t been brooding about Lina’s scolding slowed Bryte’s reaction to his question. Then its implications hit her with startling force. “Gods, yes! What could they have done with them?” She considered. “Could we get the peacekeepers to look for them rather than for the Coopers? But they could still find the Coopers’ bodies unless—do you have any idea what they might have done with the bodies of the dead orphans? Anything to point the peacekeepers toward and away from the cairn where the Coopers are buried?”

  Teddy nodded slowly. “It’s pretty awful,” he said. “But I can think of one place. I’m thinking they might have dumped them into the latrine where we emptied our chamber pots every morning and our waste buckets from the mine every evening. The place stinks so bad it would hide the smell of the bodies, and you don’t want to look down into it. It’s too nasty. They do shovel sand into it every day or so, and lye once a week, supposedly to make it more sanitary. But it could be to conceal what’s down there. Besides the obvious crap, I mean.”

  Bryte shuddered. “How horrid! But I wouldn’t put it past them. The peacekeepers won’t like the idea of having to look there. I doubt we can get them to do it.”

  “Yeah, I thought about that. The cairn’s so obvious, they’ll insist on checking it out before they even consider digging down into the latrine. And when they find those bodies, they won’t bother to look anywhere else no matter what we say.”

  “You’re right,” Bryte said. “So that means we have to make certain they don’t find those bodies.”

  “And how can we do that?” Teddy asked, clearly not expecting an answer.

  Nor did Bryte have one.

  Torby led Lina into the bedroom that had been Mother Cooper’s. “I’m good at searching,” he said proudly. “I got a high commendation for it in the training sessions.”

  “So what have you found,” Lina demanded, not bothering to hide her impatience, not caring what kind of commendation he got, only hoping but scarcely expecting that he’d found something worthwhile.

  Oblivious to her irritability, he walked to one wall and ran his fingers over its paneling. He pressed something that opened a panel, exposing a small alcove, just large enough to stand in. He stepped into it. “This is where I hid while the officers searched the room. It was a bit hard to breathe, though a little air gets in. I had to stay completely still, not make a sound. But when they left and I could move, I went to get you to show you what I found in here.” He reached up and Lina saw a small shelf from which he took a packet wrapped in oilcloth. He handed it to her. “I think the documents in this might be important.”

  She opened the packet and pulled out the papers it held, while he stepped away from the alcove and slid the panel back in place. It took Lina little time to see the importance of what he’d found. One paper was the deed to the house, showing it to be the property of Mistress Sorell Cooper. That would be Mother Cooper. Another was Sorell Cooper’s will, leaving everything she owned to her only son, Vomer Cooper; Vee would be the nickname for Vomer. The will contained no provision for the possibility that Vee, or Vomer, might predecease his mother. Actually, he hadn’t. He had outlived her by a good part of an hour. But if the bodies were found, there would be no way of telling that. Vee Cooper had a wife, one of the guards in the mine. She could claim ownership of the house on learning that her husband and mother-in-law were dead—a fact she probably already knew or strongly suspected.

  Other papers of great interest were documents authorizing Mistress Sorell Cooper to be the legal guardian of orphans named in them. Lina scanned the documents, finding the names of the orphans they had rescued and, along with them, other names she did not recognize. Those must be the orphans Teddy said had died in Mother Cooper’s harsh care and the even harsher treatment they had received in the mines. She looked through the rest of the papers for death certificates and found only one, giving a name from the earliest dated list of orphans and stating that the young girl died of an illness from which she had suffered from early childhood. She had apparently been buried in the Marquez pauper’s cemetery.

  Perhaps she had indeed suffered from a prior illness, so that the Coopers could claim they bore no responsibility for her death. But finding no other death certificates, Lina concluded that the other deaths had not been reported to authorities. Where were those bodies buried? Or disposed of in some way? Could they use these lists to prove that orphans under the care of the Coopers had not merely suffered but died unreported deaths?

  “I found important papers, didn’t I?”

  Lina looked up, Torby’s boastful question interrupting her thoughts. “Maybe,” she said.

  He looked a bit disappointed at her noncommittal response, but said, “I’m sure you’ll find this important.” He held out a leather bag, tied shut with a knotted drawstring. “I didn’t open it, but it feels like it contains rocks—or gems.”

  She took it from him; its weight seemed out of proportion to its size. It could indeed hold gems, or gem-bearing rocks “This was also in that secret alcove?”

  “Yes. On the floor in a corner where it was hard to spot because its color blended with the color of the walls. But I have sharp eyes, and I spotted it.”

  At that she finally rewarded him with the smile he clearly anticipated. “If this does hold gems, you’ve earned your keep here.” Her long nails made short work of the knot. She opened the bag and spilled its contents out onto one of the papers she’d spread out on the bed.

  At sight of them Torby let out a low whistle.

  The gems were uncut and unpolished, but they had been removed from their stone matrices, so they were readily identifiable to Lina’s practiced eye: garnets, amethysts, beryl, topaz, green feldspar. And four flambyans of varying sizes. Torby’s find represented a small fortune in gemstones! That Mother Cooper had secreted them in the hidden alcove probably meant that she’d acquired them by stealth. Perhaps not even her son knew of them; almost certainly the other miners did not. How Mother Cooper could have gotten so many of goodly size and quality, Lina couldn’t imagine. Had she had a confederate among the miners? Could Vee have smuggled them from the mine? He might well have shared the knowledge of their hiding place. Did his wife know about the gems or had the secret been kept even from her?

  With a last appraising look at the gems, Lina gathered them up and poured them back into the bag. “This find could solve our financial problems, but only if we can find a buyer for them who won’t ask questions,” she told Torby. “That won’t be easy. I’ll give it a lot of thought. In the meantime, though, the bag better remain our secret.” She put the bag into the pocket of the trousers she wore for working around the house.

  He frowned. “Secret from Dr. and Mistress Metheny and the Wilcoms? And Bryte?”

  “For now,” Lina said firmly. “They’ll have to be told eventually, but with the peacekeepers nosing around, the fewer who know about it, the better.”

  His frown told her he was uneasy and somewhat suspicious. She didn’t blame him, but she knew too well how tempting the thought of the wealth the gems represented could be. She also sus
pected they might not find an honest dealer in Marquez, given the hold the miners seemed to have not only over the peacekeepers but also over the city council and probably over the financiers as well.

  This was mining country for gems and also for silver. The Coopers and their crew were not the only miners who brought wealth to the area, but she hoped they were the only ones who used child labor and abused their laborers. She suspected they were the worst and were probably the only ones who recruited and enslaved orphans. Their cruel tactics gave them an advantage that honest miners didn’t have. They didn’t have to pay their workers, and they spent as little on food and care for their orphaned charges as they possibly could. So their profits were higher than those of most miners. They had wealth to spread around to ensure protection for their nefarious operation.

  “Torby, we aren’t safe as long as the miners control so much of Marquez. None of us here can just go into town and use these gems to establish credit. We have to get outside help. I have connections in Tirbat and in Stansbury. I need to get word out to them about what’s been happening here and get investigators from the national government to come here and take action.”

  Torby’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”

  “Yes, if I can reach the right people. I have to write letters and make certain they are sent out. I’m not sure I can even trust the postal authorities here in Marquez.”

  Torby’s brows wrinkled. Lina waited while he struggled with an idea. After a few moments he said, “If you give me the letters, I can take them to Vernor to be posted there. It should be safe, and even though it’s small, it’s on the train route to Harnor where there are connections to all major points east of the Soileau River. Your letters would reach Tirbat and even Stansbury in just a matter of days. I can get to Vernor and back in a day.”

  “We may not have days, but I suppose that’s our best recourse. I’ll write the letters this evening and send you off with them the first thing in the morning.”

  Torby scuffled his feet. His face reddened. “I’ll need money, Miss Lina. For the train ride to Vernor and back and for the postage. I’m really low on funds.”

  “I’ll give you what you need for the trip. And I’ll also get Bryte to write a letter. She dislikes having to ask her father for anything, but in this case I think she’ll understand the necessity.”

  Torby’s jaw dropped. “She’s not an orphan? Her father really is a government bigwig?”

  “Absolutely,” Lina affirmed with a grin. “He’s Lord Stavros Hallomer, Minister of Commerce.”

  Torby let out a low whistle. “She said he was somebody important, but I didn’t much believe her. Even if it was true, I never thought it would be anybody like that.”

  “Better not tell her I told you or mention it to anyone else. She doesn’t want it known. She left Tirbat rather abruptly, and her father isn’t happy about it. She’s written to him explaining her reasons, but, well, let’s just say he’s not the most understanding of fathers. I wouldn’t ask her to involve him in this situation, but mining does come under the purview of the Commerce Ministry.”

  “Wow!” was all the normally voluble young man could say.

  Lina glanced out the window. It would be dark soon, but she thought they had time for an unpleasant but necessary chore. “I need to ask you to do something else, Torby. I’ll get Teddy and Petrus to help you. It won’t be an easy task, and I hope you’re up for it.”

  “Miss Lina, I’ll do whatever you need done,” he said with a fervor that brought another smile to Lina’s lips.

  “You’d better hear what it is before you swear to that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is,” he vowed. “I’ll do it.”

  “All right, let’s find Teddy and Petrus, and I’ll explain to the three of you what needs to be done.”

  That evening, Lina wrote the promised letters describing the plight of the orphans, from which she and her companions had rescued them, and explaining the danger they were still in from the miners. She addressed one to her parents, asking them to take up the matter with the Stansbury authorities, and another to Lady Myrtice Webler, a member of the ruling triumvirate of Arucadi, who was also a friend of her mother’s. She had, with difficulty, persuaded Bryte to send a letter to her father explaining their situation and begging him to send examiners to Marquez to investigate the conditions under which the orphans had been forced to work. Bryte also wrote to her half-sister, knowing Ileta could persuade their father to help out in case he balked at fulfilling a request from Bryte.

  Lina had a long conference with Doctor and Mistress Metheny and the Wilcoms regarding the documents Torby had found—where to keep them and what to do about them. She told Dr. Metheny about the letters she and Bryte had written and would send Torby to post first thing in the morning. Dr. Metheny wrote a letter to add to theirs. He addressed it to the head of the National Ministry of Health, explaining that while he was not personally acquainted with that person, he felt confident that the letter would draw his attention.

  When Lina finally retired to her bed in the room she shared with Bryte, a room adjoining the girls’ wing, she felt satisfied that she had done all she could to protect her charges. That satisfaction allowed her to fall asleep immediately.

  She rose early in the morning, and after a quick breakfast, saw Torby off to the train station with the packet of letters tucked safely in a waterproof pouch attached to his belt and concealed beneath his jacket. From her own dwindling funds Lina had supplied him with journey money and one silver trium to cover the cost of postage, as the letters would be crossing several provinces to reach their destinations, and so had to be paid for in national currency rather than provincial coppers.

  Mistress Wilcom had just put breakfast on the table for the children when the front door slammed open and Lina heard Torby’s voice, yelling for her. She rushed into the front room. “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you at the train station?”

  “I was on my way to it,” he said, panting. “I saw Emmy Cooper and Rale and a couple of the others with a group of Peace Officers, heading this way. They didn’t see me, but I’m sure they’re headed here. I ran all the way back here to warn you. I had to take back ways to keep them from spotting me.”

  “Oh, gods! I knew things were going too well. Thanks for the warning, Torby, but you need to get those letters safely posted. If they catch you here …”

  “I know, I know. I won’t let them catch me. I still have time to make the train, I think. If I don’t, I’ll stay at the station and take the afternoon train. I had to warn you so you could be ready.”

  “All right, go out the back way. Make sure they don’t see you. If they stop you, they’ll confiscate the letters. Hurry!”

  He nodded and headed out.

  Torby had cut it dangerously close. He had to make it safely to the train station with the letters. He’d taken a big chance coming back here to warn them, and she should be grateful. She was grateful. But their fate could well depend on those letters reaching their destinations.

  Lina went to warn Bryte and the children. If she could hide them somewhere … but where would they be safe? How much time did they have?

  Not enough.

  They stood on the brink of disaster.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DISASTER STRIKES

  Teddy helped Petrus herd the younger children into the back room, the one that had been Vee and Emmy Cooper’s bedroom. They passed through the room where Mistress Metheny was stationed next to the bed in which Melusine lay. They’d planned to let her get up and join the others for lunch, Dr. Metheny having judged that she’ had regained enough strength to be up at least for a while. Teddy wondered how this latest turn of events would affect the fragile girl.

  Nia held Cara in her arms, comforting her little sister. Cara in turn held Sara, her beloved doll. She whispered into her sister’s ear, and Teddy’s sharp hearing picked up her words. “Should I call rain?”

  “No, Cara. Not this time,”
Nia said. “We’ll have to leave this up to Miss Lina and the other adults.”

  “And Bryte,” Cara whispered back. “And Teddy, too. But Miss Lina said I’d maybe find other things I could do besides making it rain. When I got older, she said, but maybe I’m old enough now.”

  That last suggestion gave him a chill. What could a six-year-old do against a company of peacekeepers and miners? And what could he do? A three-legged coyote wouldn’t be much use against armed men.

  Bryte was scared. She’d been back in the girls’ wing, seeing what could be done to make the room more cheerful, less like a barracks, so she’d missed Torby’s hasty return and equally hasty departure. Now along with everyone else she heard Lina pass on his report and waited in dread of what was coming. Teddy came back from having left the younger children under the care of Petrus and Nia in the back room. The Wilcoms and Doctor Metheny had joined her and Lina and now Teddy in the front room. Mistress Metheny stationed herself by the locked back door, prepared to raise the alarm should anyone tried to break in from the rear of the house. She kept nearby the meat cleaver that had severed Teddy’s arm. No time to make additional plans; they had only moments before the delegation of miners and peacekeepers would arrive.

  Despite knowing it was coming, they all jumped at the knock on the front door. Lina opened the door. A uniformed Peace Officer, not one Bryte recognized, stepped into the room. Crowding in behind him came Emmy Cooper, with Rale directly following. And then three more peacekeepers. Bryte noted with regret that Beck Sagist and Bo Puckley, both of whom were supportive of the orphans, were not among them. All the peacekeepers were strangers whose faces held no trace of sympathy. Lina stepped back to make room for them all. Through the open door Bryte could see other peacekeepers and at least two of the miners, the male guard Webb Warvine and his wife Zilla, standing outside.