Miners and Empire

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  A new shape appeared from beside Turold's shelter, a dark hooded form like a shadow in shadow. Aedelbert started to drop to his knees. The figure raised one hand, stopping his obeisance. "I am a priest of the Scavenger, Master Aedelbert, not the lord of mines Himself." More than a hint of laughter came with the male voice from the hood. "Young man, I have heard your oath and witness it. I will speak with the girl when she wakens. No point in terrifying her now and having a panicked child and great-hauler both running through the woods in the dark."

  "Other news tomorrow. You get some rest," Winfrith ordered. Aedelbert had no compunction about obeying that command!

  By the time he could move easily the next morning, and Caedda's hands agreed to cooperate, Mildthryd had fed Bonna and tidied up her leavings, gotten a fire started and water heating with tea, and was cooking something she'd caught in a snare she set when she woke. "If I didn't kill enough crop-robbers, Father fussed," she explained, ducking a little. As they ate, she tidied the shelter and set about making a broom. If she wasn't so young, Aedelbert might have considered inquiring further into her skills and dowry. She'd been right about promising to work for her keep.

  "So, you now have fresh great-hauler dung, less cartage," Caedda informed Winfrith.

  "Good. The first smelter will work with tuyeres, the third shouldn't need them. The test run has gone well with the second smelter." Winfrith stared down the long slope to the valley below, watching the trees move in the wind perhaps. "We do the initial full run of the second smelter in two days, once we have enough dung to make a crucible."

  Once more unto the trench-digging, Aedelbert groaned. His back and shoulders whispered unkind things about the inventor of the mattock and whoever put rocks in dirt. Rocks belonged with rocks, and dirt with dirt, not intermingled. At least it wasn't as bad as picking rocks out of fields, he reminded himself a while later as he looked at the results of the morning's labor. He could see results, even if the results were a long hole. Fields grew more rocks as you watched, which was why farms had rock walls around the fields. He drank from his water skin and stretched back, shoulders, and hands, then resumed working. After noon, he and Caedda traded jobs and he marked the smelter site again, deepening Caedda's initial marks and confirming measures and locations. It would be bigger than the other two, and with that in mind Aedelbert took a moment to go to the rock pile and find a stone long enough to bridge the trench. He set it where the trench would enter the chimney, marking the place. Caedda looked up from digging and grinned, showing lots of teeth. Then he heaved up and down, the mattock blade chewing into the soil.

  "Good Bonna. No, not that way." The men both looked over to see Mildthryd shaking her finger at the great-hauler as the bird wove back and forth, pulling a load. Two pieces of roughly even and straight wood hooked to her harness, and two more made a triangle with a pile of brush for a platform of sorts. Stone, wood, and the miner's back-basket rested on the platform. The girl had changed back into proper clothes, even though the blouse looked to be more patch than blouse. "Good Bonna."

  Trrrwsss. The great-hauler ducked her head, then resumed walking.

  The men shrugged and resumed work. The smelter men seemed confused by the girl's presence, but Turold and the priest had let it be known that she was under the care of the Scavenger's Temple. That should keep trouble down to manageable levels, perhaps. And if she kept working as hard as she'd begun, well, she might have offers of marriage even without a dower portion. She'd pushed her sleeves back and all could see the bruises and scars. Aedelbert wasn't the only man putting more effort into his labors lest he march down to the lowlands and teach the girl's sire what an undeserved beating felt like. Ehric certainly appreciated Bonna's willingness to move stone for him as well as for the smelters, judging by his smile and springing step.

  And such thinking did not put coins in a man's purse. Aedelbert returned to his task, sorting through the stones Ehric had brought and finding the best ones for the foundation courses. Caedda would finish the trench before nightfall, and once he got the stones arranged, Aedelbert needed to start work on the pit. Winfrith wanted this one shallower but dipping toward the trench so the men would have an easier time pulling out slag. "Nothing but slag from this one, nothing left that we can use unless it is for paving. Slag, some ore, and some prills in the crucible for black copper."

  Red copper, black copper, Aedelbert didn't know all the different flavors metals could come in. Copper and iron and bronze with tin or that other thing, the one that also poisoned people, gold and silver he knew well, lead too. Some of the others that the miners muttered about, well, that was their business. Learning the different kinds of rock and how a man might use them kept him busy enough. He hefted his mattock and attacked the area for the pit. It still seemed to him that fire should be under the ore, like a smith's fires, rather than on and around it. Especially after one of the lead smelter men had said that fire copper-hot would burn lead. Aedelbert had shaken his head in disbelief. How could anything burn away a metal?

  "Lead's different," Aedelbert overheard Winfrith explaining later to Mildthryd when she asked during a rest pause. "Lead's a sort of icy metal, more water in its nature than earth, so it melts easily like ice, then boils away with the smoke. Some say you could distill lead the way a healer distills oils from plants, but no man has done it yet that I know." He snorted and folded his arms as he studied the second smelter. "If you have more copper than lead in the ore, you can burn off the lead if you don't need it. Or you heat the ore and catch the lead with a low fire, then re-heat the ore and matte and shiny-slag and capture the copper as well. And some places you find copper pure, but those are as rare as a skinny baker and about as trustworthy."

  The next morning a priest blessed both completed smelters. The workmen had already run two batches of lead-copper ore through the first smelter and loaded a third "charge," as they called it, layering ore, charcoal, ore, red earth, and charcoal, then some wood and lighting it. They also had a small fire at the end of the snout. "That's to keep the draw moving and the body warm. If it stays warm, takes less fuel and time to finish a charge," Winfrith told Ehric. "Like cooking things in the baker's oven between loaf and roll batches."

  "Ah, that makes sense, sir." The boy brought more sorted rocks down to the third smelter as Aedelbert and Caedda measured and re-arranged some of the foundation stones. "I'd avoid Master Turold's cabin, sirs," he whispered. "Miss Mildthryd's cleaning." The doom-laden word made Aedelbert shudder. He remembered when his mother and older sisters would clean. He'd rather shift manure from the inn-yard to the fields by hand, would rather work in a wet mine than be around a woman when she was minded to clean.

  As before, the girl collapsed into sleep as soon as she settled her great-hauler. The men shook their heads, and Aedelbert wished half the men he knew worked as hard as she did. "Her sire's a fool," Turold grumbled at last. "She'd make any farm prosper."

  "Makes a body wonder what else is wrong with the man." The smelter supervisor stared past the fire into the darkness. "If he" he mimicked drinking, "a little too often."

  "Or smokes rope. Some men in the far south will burn rope and breathe the smoke, saying it makes them feel less pain and worry." Turold scowled. At least, that's how his face moved. "Never permitted near the mines, and if a man was caught doin' it, he was read out."

  Mildthryd had not flinched from Turold. That's what Aedelbert had been wondering about. She'd blinked, but she'd not reacted like most people. Huh. Perhaps her father was even uglier. Or perhaps she was one of those who could see past faces. Some teamsters were like that, trusting their beasts to judge people. If he'd been beaten as badly without cause as she had, he'd lean on a great-hauler's judgment before other people's opinions. Aedelbert added the idea to his store and retreated to his bed. Digging made him more tired than almost anything else.

  The stone cutters had dug out the foundation and set one and a half courses of stone when they heard raised voices from near the second smelte
r. "I don't care who did it," Winfrith declared. "I care that someone didn't pay attention and let it happen. This is why you have the door blocker. Now start pulling the slag and looking for prills, because that's where half the copper and more is."

  "Oops," Caedda mouthed before looking back down at the foundation stones and reaching for a new one.

  Someone just lost their pay, or so Aedelbert guessed. Not his problem, so he continued setting stones. They didn't need an arched block over the pit this time, so they could set a flat, even slab. Ehric had begin softening some of the clay already. It had ripened in the summer heat and needed more water.

  Winfrith stomped over to them later that afternoon. "Good news is we have almost enough dung. Bad news is they got careless and broke the smelter. Need you to repair it."

  Aedelbert straightened up and blinked. "Broke the smelter, sir?"

  "Close enough." The older man exhaled loudly and glowered at the horizon, shaggy eyebrows jutting out, eyes narrowed. "Overheated it and didn't think to slow the wind flow, so the clay's damaged. We're cooling it now, and you'll need to re-do the lining."

  And the stones might be overheated behind the clay if it cracked badly enough. Aedelbert did not groan, but he came close. He had narrower shoulders than Caedda, so he'd be the one in the snout. He didn't trust Ehric to know enough to do a proper job.

  "Pity we can't put clay on Bonna's head and have her smear it around," Caedda joked later, after Winfrith left. "The bird's neck's long enough to reach."

  Aedelbert's eyes narrowed and he stared at the smelter's snout. He's got a point. Not the great-hauler, but if I could make the right tool, like the one we use in chimneys... "Not Bonna's head, but something like it, a knob on a stick, but flat enough to hold the clay."

  That evening, before the light faded too far, he sorted through the various wood piles and found something that looked workable. He took it back to the fire and shaved the end of the knobby lump with his knife, flattening it a little. Then he held out his arm and pretended to be applying clay to something. It just might work. If the new tool did, it would save him stuffing himself that far into the snout of the smelter. He did not want to break more of the clay off the interior by accident.

  The smelter cooled enough overnight to allow Aedelbert to squeeze inside safely. The stones still radiated a little heat, but not enough to dry the clay prematurely. He pushed a flat piece of scrap wood heaped with clay in ahead of him. Ehric and one of the smelter men had reassembled the scaffolding the day before, and Mildthryd stood on it, lowering a lamp on a rope down into the chimney for a little more light. Aedelbert used his tool to get a little clay, then smeared it in the rough area. It stuck. Emboldened, he added a little more and a little more, then smoothed them with the round side of the knob. Nothing fell off, so he continued patching, then rubbed the edges of the new clay into the older work. What stone he could see in the lamplight didn't look overheated, and nothing crumbled as he rubbed the fresh clay onto it.

  The patch appeared to blend in well, so he wiggled himself out of the smelter snout, dragging the tool and the clay. Caedda and Ehric had started working on the third smelter already. "Well?" Winfrith inquired.

  "It's done, sir. I'd let it set for a day before heating it again, so the fresh clay has time to even up with the clay around it." He wasn't sure if heating it too fast would affect how well it held to the stone, but he didn't want to take a chance.

  "Very well. That will give us time to make crucibles, now that we have dung."

  The Scavenger's priest walked up to them and the men bowed. "So, are you going to add frit to the crucible or no?"

  Frit? Aedelbert scratched under his nose. It had begun itching the instant he wiggled into the snout. And he had ash ground into his leather apron. Ugh.

  Winfrith rocked back and forth, left foot to right, and then coughed. "Ah, honored Father, I've ground up those clay shards and will try them."

  "Good. If it works for pottery crucibles, it will work for this." The voice from the shadows of the hood sounded far more confident than Winfrith acted. And wasn't that odd advice from a priest? Aedelbert shrugged, bowed again, and went to resume work on the third smelter.

  "The frit tempers the charcoal and dung, gives it more time to heat before burning," the priest told the men the next morning as Winfrith shaped the mixture into cups without handles. "Test crucibles always have frit worked back in, be it glass or pottery." Aedelbert heard laughter in the man's voice. "Why do you think taverners keep the broken mugs, besides using them for measuring scoops? Potters and smiths will buy them to grind for frit."

  Winfrith held up the first example. "No lid because that's for charcoal and some matte. The good charcoal, not the light stuff you use for starting the fire."

  Turold inspected the crucible and then got out of the men's way as the other smelter men started copying Winfrith's sample. "Don' let the charcoalers hear ye'. They gave me two ears full and a firkin for later about krameich as compared to weide for charcoal. Won' ask that again."

  Winfrith grinned. "I don' tell a miner how to dig, and you don' tell charcoal burners about wood. Unless you need to remind them not to burn the stools after they've coppiced the trees."

  Mildthryd unloaded a basket of fresh dung up-slope of where the men worked. "Sir, are there any coppiced trees up here?"

  Turold and one of the smelter men both shook their heads. "Not for at least three generations. Dunstan's sire's sire said his sire was warned not to harvest wood from this area by priest of Korvaal and priestess of Valdher, and the gods made it clear. After two generations unclaimed, the wood returns to wild, at least by law." Turold scratched under his hat, settled it back down on what little hair remained on his head. "You find fruit trees, you have gather right, usufruct as the notary says. Find a castana grove and you'd be wise to keep quiet around the miners until you speak with the priests of Korvaal."

  Caedda and Aedelbert both nodded their agreement.

  The girl made a face, nose squnching down, eyes half-closed, lips pursed. Then her eyes flew open. "Oh, those are the trees Father called bread-trees, because the nuts can make flour if you take care of them properly and give the trees proper honors. And you can coppice them for small timber, but you can't have nuts from small timber. The neighbor has a stand, and father grumbled because their nuts bore so well and our did so poorly." She ducked.

  "Like as not you won't find any up here," Aedelbert assured her. "All the castana groves I've seen have deep soil and face south for shelter in winter. Castana don't fare well in this" he waved one hand, "sort of wildwood."

  "Thank you, sir." She sounded a little disappointed. Caedda too drooped a little. He'd been known to eat his weight in fresh roasted castana when he could, and Aedelbert thought him more than a touch daft. They had too much fire in their natures, especially hot from the roaster—dried a man out inside and slowed movement.

  "I'd ask one of the charcoal burners if you see what looks coppiced or pollarded. They might have done it as a claim or marker," Turold told the girl. "You need wood for something?"

  "No sir, withies. I spent time with mother's sister and she taught me a little withy weaving, just mats and some simple baskets, nothing fancy." As she spoke, the men's eyes lit up, and Aedelbert decided that she'd just become a very valuable worker indeed. And that he'd best get back to his work before someone sent him into the woods to find little branches and withies for her to work. The way things had been that eight-day, a tree would likely fall on him for the affront of being touched with a stone-cutting ax rather than a proper hatchet.

  The stone-cutters had the third smelter half-finished when the priest departed. He blessed the work as it was. "I or one of my brothers will return to bless the finished work, but things move that need our attention below." Did he mean in the city and flatland, or the mines? Or elsewhere. One did not inquire if one were wise—god business was best left to the gods. Aedelbert and Caedda had enough to deal with as it was.

  One
of the charcoal burners brought a load in just before noon, as Aedelbert studied three stones and wondered what had gone wrong. He felt cracks where none should be. Caedda too hefted one of the flat oblongs, frowning. "It's as if they heated and broke inside, but that couldn't have happened."

  Aedelbert tipped his head toward the much diminished rock pile. The two men left the smelter and climbed up the little slope, then around the stacks of charcoal and wood to where their clay and stones had been stored. Ehric left off gathering the next load of stones and straightened up. "Sirs?"

  "Some of the stones broke inside," Caedda handed him one of the offending objects. Ehric's eyes lost focus for a moment. He made a face and handed the stone back. Caedda continued, "We need to see if more have this problem, and why. I don't want to be quarrying more this late in the contract."

  "No sir! There are some here that felt," Ehric lowered his voice, "sick, if that can be, sirs."

  Aedelbert picked up one of the "sick" blocks and studied it with normal eyes and rock eyes. He turned the flat side this way and that, squinting a little in the noon sun. There. The faintest of little cracks marred the surface, not where it ought to be in the gritty texture but across the grain of the stone. How had he so badly misread the slab?

  Caedda squatted down on his hunkers and leaned a little this way and that, then stood again and walked around the pile to where it backed into the hillside, under the weather-battered remains of the brush cover. He beckoned the others over. "You've been taking stones from this side, aye?"

  "Yes, sir," Ehric gestured. "I'm trying to pull from all sides even."

  Caedda pointed with one boot-shod toe. Aedelbert leaned forward, saw the faint traces of frozen and melted water and covered his eyes with one hand. "Oh, rats and rusty tools," he groaned. They'd have to work through every stone block from that side of the stack and check them for cracks, as well as the ones already at the work site. "Radmar turned the Wheel on us."