*All right, you've made your point,' Gabriel replied. *Let's get it over with.'

Reaching an entrance hewn into rock, Wakelin withdrew his jack-knife. His tone became serious. *Go careful. Go quiet.'

Genevieve glanced back at the stunning vista. The patchwork valley of silver-greys and mauves stretched countless miles to the swoop of the skyline. Here they stood higher than the loftiest treetops. Leafy boughs licked their feet.

Wakelin lingered to light the lantern he had taken from the bodysnatchers' carriage. *Having second thoughts is we?' he teased.

The chilled air of centuries past filled their lungs as they made their way, painfully slowly, along the dank, salty-smelling tunnels. Water oozed down stone, slippery to the touch like the hide of a horse caught in a rainstorm.

*What is this place?' Genevieve whispered nervously.

*An old copper mine. The caverns are so cold they made the ideal stopping off place for packing bodies before they were taken to London.'

To the strangeness of the rocky maze were added thoughts about the ghosts of miners long gone. *How do you know the way?' she asked, groping through the dripping darkness.

He held up the lantern. *See *em secret markers at each turn? Them tells me.'

An icy draught blew across their faces as they passed a tunnel leading off to the left.

Wakelin checked their position on the carved notches. *We're about half way there.' He set off again, but stopped short. So closely were they following Wakelin that Gabriel thumped into him and Genevieve thumped into Gabriel.

*What is it?' they asked apprehensively.

*Be quiet for once, ya blundering numbskulls.' Wakelin strained to listen. *Can't you hear it?'

Seeping water sopped the tunnels so it was easy to hear feet slapping into puddles. It was one of Thurstan's gang, approaching from the direction they had entered, a man so familiar with tunnels and darkness that he tramped swiftly towards them. Too quickly! They would be caught!

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO.

BEDEVILLED.

*Back to that last side tunnel!' Wakelin urged. *Our ownee chance is to hide n' hope he goes past.' He blew out the lantern light.

Panic rose, black and hard, inside Genevieve.

This part of the tunnel was so constricted that she was forced to take the lead, Wakelin cursing her for her slowness. *Get going, Eppie!'

*I am going!' she exclaimed, the words bursting from her.

*Be quiet you two,' Gabriel warned.

Coming closer, louder, the beat of steady footsteps.

Blood pumped fiercely in Genevieve's temples. Her heart lurched painfully against her ribs. *Where's that tunnel?' she screamed in her head. She wanted to break into a run. Could only creep.

*Eppie, get a move on!' Wakelin hissed.

*I can't find it!' she cried in terror.

The man was almost upon them, his breathing amplified in the darkness. He must have been nearer than she imagined, or marching faster than she would have believed possible for, without warning, she thumped into the chest of the hurrying man.

*No!' she gasped in horror.

*Ep!' The man drew her close, circling his arms around her waist.

Stunned to hear Dawkin's voice, her world shivered into silence. All the heartache and loneliness she had felt at not being with him these last few months melted in that moment.

*You scared the wits outta us there,' Wakelin said.

It seemed uncanny to Genevieve that she should be clasped in the arms of her lover, yet not able to see his face. A tone of incredulity was in her voice as she put the same questions to Dawkin that she had asked Wakelin when he had stolen into the Swan Chamber. *What are you doing here? Where've you been?'

*Keep your honking down,' Wakelin growled. In a hushed tone, he explained, *Daw dragged me outta the river after Thurstan shot me. We've been hiding out on a wrecked barge.'

*How many men have you fetched?' Dawkin asked.

Despair was evident in Wakelin's voice. *We's alone. Guns might as well be at the bottom o' the canal.'

Gabriel realised the folly of his rush. *It's entirely my fault.'

*Yur,' Wakelin answered insensitively, *you're right there.'

*At least we've got Ep with us,' Dawkin said, making light of their predicament. *She's bound to knock a few of *em down just giving *em one of her mean looks.'

Genevieve made to wallop him.

Wise to her ways, he leapt back.

From further along, a roar of anger boomed through the tunnels, followed by an ear-splitting blast from a pistol, a blood-curdling cry and, finally, silence.

Wakelin sounded jolly. *Sounds like that's one less to trouble us. We need to move on.' Even without his urging, they had already set off.

The further they crept, the quieter it became, the sound of wind wailing down the innumerable tunnels left well behind.

A cork of light, a cresset, flared in its holster on the wall.

Towards the end of the tunnel was a scattering of empty kegs and mouldering sacks. Some crates were filled with salted food and other provender. Others were stuffed with sawdust. After scouring the burial pit, Genevieve was all too aware of the odious smell of human flesh. Clearly these were the crates that had been used to pack the bodies.

Alighting upon a yawning cavern, her heart leapt in wonder. A cathedral of nature, this truly was a world beneath a world. Mighty pillars of stone, like petrified tree trunks, upheld its lofty roof. High above their heads, part of the roof had collapsed. Sunlight filtered down. Rock walls shimmered like diamond dust as though raindrops had sprinkled upon them and frozen.

Copper-miners had hewn holes in the curtain of rock to provide handy shelves upon which to place candles. These now served another purpose, as openings through which they could peer into the cave, without giving away their presence.

To Genevieve's relief, after expecting to confront an ugly band of men, she saw only two. Smoke rose from an open fire in the centre of the cavern. Jaggery was huddled before the blaze. A miserable look on his face, he spread his hands to its warmth as though it were winter. Meat sizzled on the spit, ready to be set down on stones and disjointed.

Bodies were strewn about the cavern.

Not far from where they crouched, she made out Thurstan's slumped, dejected figure, his hands dangling between his knees as though they were weighted with chains.

Through Jaggery's complaining bluster the listeners pieced together what had happened immediately following the torching of the cotton mill. Squabbling had broken out amongst some of those who returned to the caverns. Obsessed with the thought that the men would give him away, Thurstan had killed them. One by one, over the subsequent months, the remaining men tried to make fast their escape, and also met a swift demise.

Thurstan's meal lay on a platter, balanced on the chest of a dead man. Drawing a knife from his belt, he stabbed the meat. *Who's on guard? Molins?'

Jaggery grinned wryly. *If my memory serves me right, you hung him last night after you lost at poker.'

*Did I? Mortui non mordent.'

*Don't ya never leave off spouting gibberish?'

*I was reflecting that dead men do not bite.'

Jaggery tore a leg off the roast meat, bones cracking. Grease dribbling down the sides of his mouth he limped towards what, in the shadows and half-lights, looked like a bundle of rags. *Here, tek it. Granted it ain't as good as beef pie an' a slug o' rum sauce, but it'll have ta do.'

Rowan raised herself to a sitting position.

Startled at setting eyes upon her, Gabriel made to cry out her name. It was all Wakelin could do to hold him back. He writhed beneath his hold, until he finally calmed. With nods to show they understood one another, Wakelin took his hand from Gabriel's mouth.

First they had to think of a plan of attack. Without guns this seemed impossible.

Rowan's hair, usually tidily pinned at the back of her head, was concealed beneath a kerchief, once white, now little more than a filthy cloth. Over the months she had grown pale, languid and remote, her despairing, dead-looking eyes staring from a face smeared and grimed where she had wiped away tears.

There was such quietude about her gentle, withdrawn manner. She seemed to be listening for sounds very distantly heard. Listening, Genevieve realised, for them. All those past months spent waiting and hoping against hope that she would be rescued. Her heart seemed to burst within her when she thought about what atrocities Rowan had witnessed. Like Gabriel, it was all she could do not to rush to embrace her friend.

Hunch-shouldered, his expression one of revulsion, Jaggery spat gristle over Rowan's lowered head. *To hell with yer snivellin' solemnity.'

*Leave her!' Thurstan cried harshly.

Grasping a pair of pliers, Jaggery gripped a rabbit that had been nailed through the head to timbers set into the stone wall, and wrenched off its skin. *Lord knows what you see in the demented woman. She's as sullen as you. What's more, ya can't squeeze a word outta her.'

*She is a mute,' Thurstan answered solemnly.

Anguish was in Gabriel's voice. *What can he mean?'

Thurstan and Jaggery were so busy hating one another that they were not aware of the intruders, but Wakelin did not want to push their luck. *Shut it!'

*More like you're the dumb one,' Jaggery retorted, bitterly mocking. *You're bedevilled by her.' Savagely, he flung down the flayed rabbit. *I'm sick o' scavenging on coney and crow meat. I need a proper meal.' Reaching down, he tugged Rowan to her feet.

Thurstan's knuckles were taut around the hilt of his knife. *What do you think you are doing?'

*You might've stopped yer ears against the outside world, but I ain't. Gabriel du Quesne will pay handsome for her return. I'll leave her body in the woods, grab the ransom, and run.'

Thurstan leapt to his feet in a fiendish fury. *She stays with me!'

In a desperate bid for liberty, Rowan fought against Jaggery's hold. Wrenching her wrist free, she made a half-hearted effort to escape from him, knowing that he would soon catch up with her. Staggering around the rocks, her eyes opened wide in astonishment. *Gabriel?'

In a trice Jaggery was upon her. Spotting them, he was about to holler a warning when Thurstan's knife skimmed through the air and drove straight into his back. The expression of flaring hatred in his eyes instantly paled into a glazed look of horror and disbelief.

Genevieve and the others backed off as he lurched towards them, his hands outstretched as though aiming to grasp any unfortunate person who happened to be nearest to him. Crumpling to his knees, he fell hard on the stone, face down.

A stone skimmed through the air and struck Dawkin on the cheek.

Before Wakelin and Dawkin could give chase, Thurstan had escaped through one of the tunnels at the back of the cavern, his maniacal laughter echoing through the labyrinth. *That's for the snowball, climbing-boy!'

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE.

GILLOW'S WELCOME It was late afternoon when the shower ceased. Genevieve fetched a wicker basket and went to gather berries from the hedgerow. A sunbeam broke through the ragged clouds, its warmth spilling upon the valley.

She had not purposefully strolled towards Miller's Bridge, but now she lingered. Gazing wistfully upon her old home it was as though she could see into the future, to a time when the cottage would return to nature. Spinning through the air a stray ash seed would settle in the parlour and gracefully flourish. The branching canopy would burst through the wind-blasted thatch where sparrows happily built their nests. Ivy spreading its stranglehold, the walls, carefully laid by Gillow's great-grandfather, would collapse. In one, maybe two hundred years a passer-by might chance upon a clump of cottage garden flowers dancing in the breeze, the only marker that someone had once dwelt upon this plot of land.

She mourned the home she had lost, the way of life she had known and cherished throughout her childhood. No matter how luxurious her present circumstances, no other place could be the same.

In her restlessness she was struck by a tantalising thought. It was madness to throw away her resplendent life at the manor. But, like the ash seed, once her idea took a hold, she could not give it up. She gave herself fully to the desire that she need never be without her beloved honeysuckle cottage with its homely air of sinking comfortably into the ground. She treasured it so dearly.

She could be free. Free like Hortence's linnet, which she had released from captivity after the Wexcombes had left the bird behind in their dash from the manor. She had been elated to see it flitting between conifers, its twittering song expressing its happiness in regaining its liberty.

The time was ripe for Eppie to come home.

With the delight of a traveller returning, she stepped into the neglected cottage.

Swags of cobwebs trembled upon the dusty loom. Fantasy or no, she caught the thud-thud of the weaving pick and glimpsed Gillow turn to smile at her.

In wistful silence, she wandered about the parlour. Except for the scratching of mice in the larder it was as though the cottage slumbered.

Hessian still curtained the bedchamber from draughts. A flaking moth and a dead spider lay upon the damp straw mattress on the wainscot bedstead. Saints Matthew and Mark still gazed serenely upon the rocking cradle and child's commode.

Beside the ladder leading to Wakelin's loft, a metal cauldron hung from the fire-crane. No other pots, no griddle, kettle or frying pan remained. The dresser, settle, kitchen table and chairs stood as though in a heavy trance, waiting for the cottage to breathe again. To Eppie all these things brought joy, as though she were reuniting with old acquaintances.

She picked up a wooden spoon that had been discarded on the oak plank table. It brought to mind autumns past when the parlour was full of steamy fragrance as she and Martha battled with preserves, the sharp aroma of quince jelly rising from a bubbling pot. Testing the jam to see if it had set, Martha would drip a little of the mixture into a saucer of water, whereupon, having prodded the sweet stickiness into congealed waves, Eppie merrily sucked her finger and declared her verdict. She pictured herself as a child, hopping onto the stool before the dresser, proudly arranging honey crocks with their bladder covers.

That the cottage smelt damp, the windowsill crumbled at her touch, and the shattered pane remained unfixed all these years, none of these things mattered. All she knew was that this cottage wanted her and she wanted this cottage.

She fetched down the tinderbox from the shelf above the fire beam. The wall above still bore the stains where Gillow had slammed the fowl stew. Using kindling to start a fire with the twigs and logs in the hearth, she methodically worked the moss and striker.

It was snug in the cottage with the blaze roaring up the chimney. Lost in her thoughts, she sat upon the fox-hide cushion before the warmth, unaware of the passage of time.

A concern which constantly plagued her was the demise of the Crusader Oak. Over the last few weeks the ancient tree had taken on a nightmare form, its twisted, buckled trunk rapidly attacked by a fungal disease. Several branches had torn away. One or two dangled like shattered arms, so tenuously attached that it looked as though they would blow away in a gentle breeze. Other branches, bark-flayed and holed by worms, jutted upwards, their tips jagged. The tree should be cut down, Gabriel and Eppie both knew it, but they had agreed this would not happen unless the disease showed signs of spreading to other trees.

Evening fell with the strange swiftness of autumn dusk. Wind moaned through the hedge, and blew parched leaves beneath the door.