Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

  “It is all right, Anna,” she whispered. “You can breathe. There is air. You must school your mind and not let your fears be your master.” As I struggled to my feet I felt a blackness closing in on me and, fearing I would faint, sat down again. Elinor kept speaking, gently but firmly, and made me match my breaths to the calm rhythm of her own. In a few moments my head cleared and I was able to go on. And so we inched and slithered, sometimes on two feet but stooped, other places,’ where the cavern narrowed, dropping to hands and knees, and sometimes, where the rock swooped down unwelcoming, skidding on our bellies.

  The flickering tallow light showed walls that had been picked and cleft, and we followed the line of the delvings. These told the tale of the diminishing family, for at first the face was well-worked and clean of ore, and the places where George Wickford had plied his pick gleamed slick in the candlelight. Then, farther along, the pick-work became rough, shallower, and less thorough, as Cleath and her boy had carried on alone. When we got to the last pick-stroke, Elinor and I, kneeling side by side, unslung our tools and set to work hand-to-fist, and the effort of landing the blows drove my fears from the front of my mind. I have worked hard all my life, hauling water, chopping wood, and bucking hay. I can’t count the number of times I’ve chased a tup and caught him by his hind hoof, and last year I managed the whole shearing of my flock between sunup and the noon bell. But this labor—this tearing of rock from rock—was the hardest thing I had ever set my hand to. Within a half hour, my arms were trembling. For Elinor it must have been much worse. I could see how soon the strain of it began to cost her, as she paused longer and longer between each stroke. At one point, she struck her thumb with the hammer and cried out, and I could see the blood and the instantly blackening nail. She would not have me tend her, but waved me on with my work as she tied a bit of rag around the wound and went back to her toil. She swung slowly on, her face, mud-streaked and sweat-stained, set as hard as the stone. The sound of her ragged breathing was so terrible to me that I was glad for the clang of iron to mask the noise of it.

  For myself, the greatest effort was to keep my panic banked. I tried to manage my terrors by concentrating only on the work and not on the walls of slimy darkness that seemed to advance and recede with every movement of my candle, neither on the choke-damp air that tasted as if all the good had long ago been sucked out of it, nor on the weight of the soil and rock piled thick and heavy above me. Each time the pick landed I felt the jarring all through the bones of my arms and up into my very teeth. It took me many, many blows to open a little crack, just sufficient to give the wedge a start. Once I had the wedge in, I had to raise the heavy hammer and let it fall with all the force I could, hoping thus to splatch off large pieces of rock. But more times than not my blow landed wide or else glanced off the wedge and sent the thing flying out of its crack and down into the cold mud, where I would have to grope blindly for it in order to start all over again. The mud made the wedge and my hands slippery. The cold cluzened my fingers so that instead of gaining skill with practice, my numb hands fumbled more and more. As the hours passed I felt like weeping with pain and frustration, for as hard as we plied the picks, the pile of bouse beside us grew only by inches.

  It was Elinor who voiced it before I had heart to do so. For all her effort, she had managed to loose a pitiful few pieces of stone. She sat back on her heels and let the pick clang heavily on the rock beside her. “At this rate, we will not draw a dish by day’s end.” Her whisper fell dully in the cavern.

  “I know it,” I said, flexing my numb fingers and rubbing at my aching arms. “We were foolish to think we could learn skills in one day that strong men toil for years to master.”

  “I cannot face the child,” Elinor said. “I cannot bear to see the disappointment in her.”

  For a long moment, I pondered what next to say. For while part of me was disappointed that we had not succeeded, a lesser part was mightily gladdened that Elinor was about to abandon this wretched quest. The worse part of me won. I said nothing and gathered my tools. Silently, we made our way back through the tunnel. My arms were so tired I could barely clutch the stem-pies, and as I gulped gratefully at the cool air, I told myself that in our already exhausted state, we would never have succeeded, even if I had confided to Elinor what more I knew.

  It was Merry’s face that undid me. Her look was so hopeful as we climbed out of the tunnel. And then, when she saw the miserable amount of bouse we brought up, her bright smile disappeared, and her lip trembled. And yet she did not cry, but schooled her small voice, and thanked us profusely for our efforts. My cowardice shamed me.

  “There is one other way to get the ore out,” I blurted. “Sam used it betimes, when his seam vanished into toadstone. But it was the doing of it cost him his life in the end.” I turned to Elinor then and told her all I had heard of the way fire and water, the power of opposites, could be harnessed to do the work of many miners’ hands.

  Elinor leaned back against the stowes and brought her raw hands up to cover her eyes. She stayed so for a long moment. “Anna, these days, all our lives hang by a thread. If we are spared today, we may well be felled by Plague on the morrow. I say we should take this risk, and try ... but only if you are willing.”

  Merry looked concerned. Miners’ children are quick to learn what miners fear. And there are so many fears that go with fire-setting. The fumes from the smoke, added to the choke-damp, can steal the last breathable air out of the cavern. The cracking can free hidden water, letting in a torrent that floods the mine. Or, as happened with my Sam, the very bones and sinews of the Earth can break under the strain, and instead of freeing out a fother of ore, the entire weight of the ground above can come piling down to bury you. So dangerous is fire-setting, and so unpredictable in its effects, that its use is prohibited unless one gains the consent of all miners working in neighboring parts. But there were no neighbors to this lonely mine, and so we had only our own counsel to take.

  I gathered the greenwood as fast as I could. Dry tinder was more difficult.to come by, since it had lately rained, and in the end Merry ran all the way back to her croft to fetch the seasoned kindling from her own hearth. When I climbed back down the shaft, Merry let down the cold stream water in a leather bucket. I spilled the first of it, crawling through the cavern, and had to waste precious time sending her for more. The second time, Elinor and I managed the bucket between us.

  I ran my hands then along the rockface, feeling for cracks and working with the wedge to widen them. When I had a large enough line in the rock, I showed Elinor how we needed to stuff the greenwood boughs into every crevice, hammering each as hard as we could deep into the crack. Then, I laid the dried tinder for the fire all along the rockface. “You must go back above now,” I said then to Elinor. “I’ll tug on the rope to summon you if we have any success.”

  “Oh, no, Anna. I’ll not leave you down here alone,” she said, and I could see the start of a long argument. It was going to take a desperate measure to move her, and so I spoke sharply.

  “Elinor! We don’t have time for this. Do you not have the wit to see that if this goes awry you’ll do me more good outside, digging, than in here, smothering companionably?”

  Even in the uncertain light I could see the bright glint as the easy tears of the exhausted sprang to her eyes. But my words did their work. Her head drooped. “As you say,” she replied and began the long crawl out. As the sound of her scuffling subsided I was left then to silence broken only by the slow drip, drip of unseen water making its way through the stone. I worked quickly then, to light the wood before it became too damp to catch, but my hands on the flint and tinder shook and sobs caught in my throat.

  I’d rather die bespotted from Plague venom, I thought, than end my life down here, buried alive in the dark. But then the fire flared, and it was dark no longer. The greenwood began to heat. The sap hissed, and then came the first sharp report as the expanding pressure cracked a rock. It was hard, so hard, to wait, as t
he smoke filled the air and choked me. I held a wet rag over my mouth and crouched, trembling, waiting and waiting, forcing myself not to make the next move before the time was ripe. We had only one chance, after all. Time was too short to try this again. If the rock was not sufficiently heated, the entire effort would be wasted, and our day’s work entirely lost. Finally, as my chest began to feel as if it would explode from the breathing of the burnt air, I blindly reached for the bucket. I hurled icy water against hot rock. There was a sizzle, and steam, and a sound like a dozen muskets firing. And then the sheets of ore began to fall.

  I slithered and stumbled to get out of the path of it, blinded by the smoke and coughing so that I thought my throat would tear. A sharp shard struck me on the shoulder and then a heavier slab landed hard on my back, slapping me facedown into the mud. I writhed to get out from under it, pushing myself up on forearms with muscles like jelly from the morning’s delving.

  “Stop now!” I prayed. “Oh, please, stop now!” But the cracking did not stop, just continued, on and on, and with each crack came a new rain of rock. My arms flailed wildly, my fingers scrabbling on the hard stone. But the load pressed and pressed and pinned me still at last.

  And so, I thought, it ends here after all. Dead in the dark like Sam. The crushing slabs pushed down upon me, heavier and heavier still. I felt the whole weight of the hillside shifting as rock slid against rock and earth oozed and sifted into every newly opened crevice. Wet mud pressed into my mouth like a disgusting kiss. I heard the beat of the blood in my ears—hammering, roaring-louder, finally, than the crash of rock.

  And then an odd thing. The panic drained away from me, and my mind filled up with images of my boys. It had become hard for me to call up the exact details of their faces: the fall of Jamie’s curls across his brow or Tom’s sweet, serious frown at feedings. Now they were before me, vivid as in life. I stopped fighting for movement and exhaled the breath I had been hoarding. There was no air now to give me another. I relaxed my cheek into the rocks that would be my cairn and my tombstone.

  It’s all right, after all. I can bear this ending. A dark rim formed around the picture of my boys, and I willed it back. Not yet. Not yet. Let me see them a few moments more. But the blackness feathered inward and their bright faces dimmed. With the darkness came blissful silence: a sudden stop to the beating of blood and the great roaring of rock.

  I SUPPOSE THAT I would be dead, and no one left to make this accounting, if Elinor had abided by my instructions and gone back up the shaft as I had bidden her. And perhaps I might also be dead if Merry, too, had not disobeyed the both, of us. Elinor had crouched by a column of rock just a hundred yards from where I did the fire-setting. Merry had lowered herself to the cave entrance just off the shaft. Both of them, when they heard the great crashing, had rushed to save me. I came to consciousness still buried to my neck but with my face freed by their frantic scrabbling.

  The silence that had closed in upon me as I lost consciousness had been real: the roaring had stopped, and with it the rock fall. I had not, after all, brought the entire hillside down upon me. As the smoke slowly lessened, the three of us were able to see what had been done, in fact: my work had loosed a pile of the even-sided, gleaming cubes of ore that would give Merry Wickford her dish of lead today, and many more days if she needed. Elinor and Merry together heaved the rock off me, slab by slab, and then, with their help, I crawled painfully to the shaft and toiled my way slowly to the surface.

  I do not know how I stumbled back down to the village. I ached all over, and each step brought a fresh spasm. But somehow we made our way with what haste we could, racing against the fading light. Elinor supported me with one arm and with the other held the end of the burlap on which she and Merry between them dragged the ore. We did not stop at the Wickford croft to retrieve our dress but went as we were straight to the cottage of the Barmester, Alun Houghton. Had I been able, I would have implored Elinor to spare herself the indignity of being stared at in such a state, but she hushed me when I muttered something about this. “After all we’ve gone through to get justice for this child, Anna, I intend to be there to see that justice done.”

  If old Alun was shocked by the sight of us-mud-bedaubed, rock-grazed, smoke-blackened, and sodden—he recovered himself quickly and executed his office, summoning David Burton and as many of the elected men of the Body of the Mine as could be gathered to the Miner’s Tavern to bear witness. While the miners assembled, Elinor sent word to the rectory.

  It was not very many moments before I heard the sound of Anteros’s high-stepping hoofs. If I could, I would have slipped away into the yard rather than confront the rector. But Elinor had set me down before Alan Houghton’s hearth and was bathing my grazes with warmed water. She had not troubled with her own toilet, and so when the rector entered the cottage, she rose to greet him just as she was. For an instant, I do not think he recognized her. She had lost her hat sometime during my rescue, and she stood now bareheaded, her fine hair all mud-caked and falling about her face in hard brown strands. The leathers, too, were daubed with soot and soil. She had a filthy, blood-soaked rag bound around her injured thumb.

  The rector stood, arrested, just inside the doorway. There was silence from him for a long moment, and I feared he was struggling to contain his temper. Instead, he gave a great laugh and opened his arms to Elinor. I thought he would embrace her. But then, perhaps mindful of me and the child, or perhaps of his fine white jabot, he stepped back and simply clapped his hands together ; when he asked for a full account of our day’s work, his voice brimmed with pride.

  The rector accompanied us to the Miner’s Tavern, and I was relieved at it, for odd as the times were, I did not rightly know how Elinor Mompellion’s reputation would weather this day’s doings, falling as they did so far outside what is considered fit for a woman, much less a gentlewoman. But the men, scattered around the courtyard rather than packing the taproom as they would in former times, stood up from their benches as they saw us. “A cheer for the new miners!” called a voice from the rear of the yard, and almost to a man they gave us their huzzahs. Only David Burton looked sour and was silent. The Barmester hung up his great brass measuring dish—as long as a tall man’s leg and about as wide as a well-muscled thigh—and Merry came forward, struggling to drag the burlap laden with ore. The Barmester helped her up onto a tavern table, so that she could reach the dish. Carefully, her small face serious, she piled up the ore until the dish was full, and at that, the company cheered again.

  “Friends,” said Alun Houghton, “young Merry Wickford retains the rights over Burning Drake vein. It is hers until such time as her stowes be thrice nicked.” And then he stared around the room from under his impressive, bushy eyebrows. “And while I’m saying nowt about his right to do it, I’d be a man thinking long and hard about cutting any nicks on this child’s stowes any time in the near future, within our code tho’ it may well be.”

  I had to sleep that night lying on my grazed face, since my back was abloom with a great bruise where the rock slab had caught me. My arms and shoulders ached worse than my back, and it would be many days before I ceased to feel the weight of the pick each time I lifted so much as a fork. Still, I slept better that night than I had since the nights of the poppy dreams. There had been so much futile effort expended since the coming of the Plague, so many lives that could not be saved and hurts that could not be healed. For one time, at least, in that hard season, I had the satisfaction of having done a thing that had come out right.

  The Body of the Mine

  IN THE DAYS that followed, I tasted what life would be like if I survived through this dying time to see my own old age. It is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it. For many days, my healing body ached at every move. To reach down a crock from a high shelf was a vast effort; to draw a pail of water an agony, and so I had to contrive new ways to go about the simplest of tasks. Sometimes, if she espied me
struggling, Mary Hadfield would help me, but I was loath to add my needs to her already ample burdens.

  So I was uncommonly glad, one morning as I went out to battle with the well bucket, to mark my father approaching, for I could not think he would grudge me a hand. He was staggering, which was not unusual, but not, this day, from drink. As he advanced, I saw that it was the weight of what he carried that unbalanced him—a large sack that clanked as he walked.

  He was so bent by the load that I think he might have passed without marking me but when I gave him a good day, he raised his head and hailed me in turn. As he set down the sack, I heard the clang of metal plate.

  “Eh, girl, and it is a good day, for Widow Brown has paid me in pewter for the graves of her man and boy. I suppose I should thank ye, for learning me the lesson that there’s a profit in the hole-digging trade, these days.”

  I did not know how to make an answer to that, and so I asked his help to draw water, which he did, though not without pausing to note that my face “looked worse than a cow pat,” bruised and swollen as it was. When he hefted his sack and went on, I stood and stared after his retreating back, wondering what kind of ill thing my good intentions might have hatched.

  All that week I began to notice that neighbors would break off their conversations when I drew near them, and gradually I became aware that they were speaking of my father, and sourly.

  He had, as he had said, set himself up as grave-digger to the desperate. From those too ill or weak to bury their dead, he demanded a high fee. He would take whatever in the house or field had most value, be it the barrel of herring the children counted on for their winter nourishment, the gravid sow, or the precious brass candlestick passed father to son for generations. Sometimes he would take his trophies to the Miner’s Tavern, set them upon the bar, and brag on his cleverness; when even his cronies began to remonstrate with him, he bought off their ill opinion by paying for their ale with the shillings of the dead. He would end every day there, drinking until he could barely stagger home. When I had suggested that he do this work, I had expected that he would take at least some pains about his person, so as not to expose Aphra and his children to the Plague seeds that he might carry from the corpses. But day by day I saw him come and go in the same earth-crusted breeches, and I wondered that even he could be so uncaring.