The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1) (13 page)

“As much as I’d like to help with that, Father, I think Miss McFlynt is doing a better job of that than any of us could.”

Chapter 24:

Magnus was terribly nervous about the rest of the train trip. He didn’t know what to say or do around a young woman. Of course, he had been invited over to Grimsby’s house for dinner, but every time had been disastrous; while Grimsby’s wife had drunk herself into a near-stupor, his daughter had done everything short of throwing him onto the settee to seduce him, and all the while Grimsby had been rattling on about his triumphs in the courtroom. Other than that, Magnus had had little interaction with the fairer sex.

Minerva, being a woman of remarkable perspicacity, vim and vigour, had seen him sweat and realized that he was really just a young man with far too much intelligence and a dearth of common sense and stunted social ability. So she decided to go easy on him.

“Tell me about your first case, Magnus. What was it? Were you nervous in the courtroom?”

“My first case…” he thought for a moment, but didn’t have to think too hard. He could almost hear the creaking of the fleshy judge’s chair who had presided over the case.

“What made you smile just then?”

“Nothing really. Just that the judge had been so fat, and his chair so old, that the opposing council and I agreed that we would have to duck if the chair broke; we knew the splinters would have been deadly!”

They grinned at each other, and through her coaxing, he began to speak about working in at Grimsby and Associates, the difficulty of being the youngest and yet the most advanced barrister there, the parties he had to go to and hated.

“And you?” he finally got up the nerve to say, “when you aren’t chaining yourself to the Prime Minister’s house or badgering young barristers or fighting to become a lawyer, what do you do?” Minerva shrugged.

“Those duties are very time consuming, you know. And I am a lawyer, just not legally. Do you think that if you were disbarred you would cease to be a lawyer?” He thought about that, and Minerva loved that he always thought about each question.

“I suppose not. I’ve never thought what I would do if I couldn’t work in a firm. And being a solicitor has no appeal, working on wills and marriage contracts all day might as well be done by clerk! But though I don’t know what I would do, I would still be a barrister at heart,” he said with a kind of wonder.

“Then you don’t only do it for the money and the power.”

“I do it because of the order, and because I’m good at it, too.”

“And the people?” He paused, feeling his answer would be very important. But just as he was trying to formulate it, the conductor came into the carriage and announced,

“Port Chastity, Port Charity and Port Prudence, next stop!”

As they gathered up their things and donned their outerwear, Magnus managed to say,

“Whoever went around establishing these villages was too bloody virtuous!”

              Though they had been distantly aware of the city giving way quickly to the countryside, it had been a slightly blurred scene as the STEAMer had sped westwards at over 100 miles per hour. Slightly less than two hours after they had left Paddington Station, they disembarked in the heart of Cornwall. The sky was clear and blue and filled with corpulent white clouds, completely unlike the bloody sky of the city. All around them, spring was just getting ready to blossom, and the air was filled with the saltiness of the sea.

              The station they got off at was little more than well-maintained shack, and there were no carriages in sight. They were the only ones to get off and they looked around, completely out of place.

              “Well, I suppose there’s only one way to go,” Minerva said, pointing to the one gravel street that sloped downwards and around a large grassy hillock.

              “But-” even as he protested she carried on, beginning to walk down the hill, leaving him to trail after her with his briefcase and hamper in tow. He caught up to her just as they rounded the hillock.

              As they saw on the other side, though, it wasn’t a hill.

              It was the detritus of the mine, dirt and sewage and packing, all built up and overgrown after over a decade of plundering the soil for a small, red mineral. They continued to walk, but in silent dismay as they saw the earth cut open and the mine, all too silent.

              “Where is everyone?”

              Magnus shrugged and kept walking. Finally, he said, “they might know here,” he nodded to the first building on the main, and only paved street of the town; it was the pub.

              It was a neat, low building that spoke of a regular stream of patrons, and the little wear and tear showed that those patrons were, by and large, respectable. Beneath the front windows, brimming over with petunias from well-tended flower boxes, were two benches carved from driftwood.

              “Here we go,” said Magnus, stopping at one of the benches and setting down the hamper. “Now, just wait here for a moment, and I’ll try to find out where the foreman, or whoever is in charge of the mine, is.”

              “But-” Minerva began to object, but he was already gone, pushing inside past the heavy doors and into the dark, gloomy interior.

              However, while it was dark and gloomy, it was also the best-kept bar that Magnus had ever seen. The floor was devoid of unknown stickiness, and the brass fixtures on the bar and lanterns gleamed. The gloom just seemed to be an affectation to make the drinkers feel sure that this was, indeed, a pub, and not a parlour.

              As one, those drinkers looked up at the newcomer, and the low rumble of conversation stopped. The thirty or so patrons were all miners, all encrusted with dirt, hands and faces dyed an angry, spesium scarlet that would forever be the patina of their hands. They glared at the well-kempt Magnus and held their pints of ale protectively.

              Magnus gulped, but strode forward anyway.

              A large, burly man tended the bar, methodically wiping its immaculate surface down with a clean cloth. He was obviously the proprietor.

              “Can I get you somethin’, sir?” he asked with a thick Cornish accent. Magnus tried not to stare at his brushy eyebrows that seemed to have minds of their own, creeping towards each other with nefarious intentions.

              “Um, no, thank you. I was just hoping to find the foreman of the spesium mine.” The room temperature dropped a few degrees.

              “And why would you want to find him, now? Do you owe him money?”

              “No, it’s just that-”

              “Just that nothing, sir. As I’m sure you can see, this town’s in mourning. Mourning for those lost in the mine explosion, and for all their lost livelihoods.”

              “Why did they lose their jobs?”

              “Because,” said a gravelly voice beside him, emanating from a man who looked to be about fifty, but was in all probability Magnus’s age. “After the explosion, we protested the working conditions in the mine. Brutal, they ‘twere. But the company, the SWSMC,” he spat, “took it that we were striking and so sacked us all. They’re bringing some other miners out here next week to reopen the mine.” He made to spit on the floor, but a sharp word from the house-proud proprietor checked him.

              “So sir, we’d all be happy if you’d just leave.” It wasn’t a request, and Magnus, though tall, was outnumbered, and beat a hasty retreat back out into the fresh air and sunshine…to find that Minerva had disappeared.

              He looked around, suddenly slightly panicked, looked up and down the street, and yet didn’t see anyone except for a few children playing in small front gardens. He picked up his briefcase and the abandoned hamper and began to retrace their steps, his mind a frantic blank, when he heard the sound of Minerva’s laughter. He ran after it, following it around the side of the pub to a small side door.

              What Magnus didn’t know when he had entered the front door of the pub was that, while the front door was perfectly serviceable, none of the locals ever used it. Instead, they all entered through the back door, going through the basic kitchen, past the stairs to the rooms above the pub, and into the bar for a drink. Decades ago, before Mr. Pips was the proprietor, the publican had a beautiful daughter who was also the cook. And so, as single (and, it must be said, some not so single) men in the village came to flirt and court her, it saved time to just go through the kitchen, woo her and ask for a bacon sandwich, and move through to the drinking and socializing in the front. And though the cook had long since lost her figure after she married Pips, and her father had retired to a table in the pub, she still made quite superior bacon sandwiches.

              Had he known all that and gone ‘round the back to the kitchen entrance, his reception might have been warmer. As it was, he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

When Magnus had left Minerva kicking her plainly-shod heels and boiling in frustrated anger, she had wandered down the back alley and met the good Mrs. Pips. Just now, she was leaning over the split-door, laughing and nibbling on a bacon sandwich.

              “And so I says to my ol’man, Mr. Pips, that is, that if that floor don’t stay as clean as seal’s arse, then he’ll be seeing soggy bacon sandwiches for the rest of his life!” As they both giggled, Magnus slowed down from his frantic running to a more dignified trot.

              “Magnus, there you are!” his companion said, as though he were the one late for a meeting. “Do let me introduce you to Mrs. Pips, the wife of the publican and wonderful chef of bacon sandwiches- the best in the county!”

              “Two counties, Miss,” said Mr. Pip’s better half. Indeed, she could have been his twin, they looked so alike; both red-faced and blustery, though Mrs. Pips had a great deal more hair, everywhere.

              “Mrs. Pips was just telling me how she married her husband, though only after a spesium accident blew off the lower part of his leg and he got a mechanical limb imported all the way from Bristol.”

              “Indeed, he did. I wouldn’t have married a miner, no indeed- far too dangerous for the family. O’course, after the accident he couldn’t work, and so took over me dad’s place. And it’s a shame, a shame says I, that the mine now had to go and explode. If you ask me, ‘twas planned by those higher up, if you know what I mean,” she tapped her nose, leaving a smear of bacon grease on it. Magnus was about to say something, but Minerva stepped hard on his toe and quickly said,

              “Really?” eyes wide, she asked, “but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the foreman here, now would it? Good Mister...”

              “Craggs? Of course not, dearie. Why, he was born and bred here, and the poor man just lost his wife. And he opened the newest mine shaft, the one that exploded. Why, the poor man won’t even leave his house now.”

              “Oh yes, that one…”

              “Yes, just down the way. You can still see he wife’s rose bushes, though they’re overgrown by now. I tried to prune them back for him, but he actually began yelling at me for it the other day, can you imagine?

              “Of course, his daughter does her best- she’s just about your age, dear- but between her father and brother” she leaned in and whispered “he’s the one what’s ill, you know- anyway, I don’t think she’s coping very well.”

              Minerva shook her head. “Oh, dear, Mrs. Pips. Unfortunately, though, we have to be going. But it was so lovely to meet you!”

              “Oh, and you, m’dears. Don’t let me keep you,” she cheered them as they walked down the street, both brimming with excitement and trying to be dignified about it. But just as soon as they turned the corner onto a smaller lane, Magnus exclaimed,

              “How did you-?”

              “What did you find?”

              “When I came out and I didn’t see you…” They paused, but then Minerva launched into her investigation and subsequent short but fruitful acquaintance with Mrs. Pips.

              “You see,” she finished, “I thought that perhaps I might be able to augment your information.” She didn’t add that he was as likely to get information out of the hostile miners as to get copper from coal.

              As they began to walk down the street towards Mr. Craggs’s home, she asked, “What did you find out?” Magnus was tempted to brush her off or lie, but instead paid her a compliment by admitting,

              “That angry miners in a pub at mid-day are unforthcoming and scary as hell.” With great force of will, Minerva held back a smile as they proceeded down the street.

              Though small, Port Prudence could be called a relatively prosperous village, nestled into a vale near a cliff in the western tip of the country. A stiff, salty breeze played with Minerva’s skirt as they walked along the unpaved road.

              “I can feel you relaxing,” Minerva murmured, just loud enough for him to hear. Instead of bristling as she expected, he simply shrugged.