Unbound Horizons

[Keeper]

Chapter Eleven

After Closing

By the time the Miners' Rest had been restored to something resembling a public house, there was little left to suggest the violence of the previous hour. The broken glass had been swept away, the tables returned to their proper places and the worst of the spilled ale had disappeared beneath several buckets of water. One or two chairs had suffered injuries from which they would never entirely recover, but the landlord had already decided they could be repaired rather than replaced. Nobody had thought it worth arguing with him.

The miners had gone home in gradually diminishing groups, some with the sheepish expressions of men who had sobered considerably while helping to clear up their own handiwork. Others had remained only long enough to receive a final warning from Ellie, who had somehow acquired the authority of the entire mine during the proceedings. Roak had needed to say very little. His presence near the door had been sufficient to persuade the last reluctant helpers that repairing the damage was preferable to discovering precisely how disappointed the overseer could become.

Eventually the doors were locked, the lamps turned lower and the Miners' Rest settled into the strange quiet that belonged to a public house after closing time. Without the noise of the miners, the room seemed considerably larger. The fire had burned down to a comfortable glow, throwing occasional flickers of light across the polished brass and the scattered evidence of the evening's disorder.

The remaining occupants gathered around one of the larger tables. Zach, Hettie, Audrey, Moore and Markham sat together with Ellie and her father, while Mrs Ashcroft occupied the chair opposite Zach. The landlord brought them another round without being asked, though his expression suggested that he intended to charge Zach for every drop.

Markham had acquired a clean handkerchief and was treating his nose with the solemnity of a man who had discovered a new and fascinating injury. Moore had already examined him twice and was beginning to suspect that the professor's continued discussion of the subject owed rather more to wounded pride than physical discomfort. When Moore assured him for the third time that his nose was not broken, Markham pointed out that it had been struck by a bottle with considerable force and therefore remained, in his opinion, a matter worthy of continued observation. Moore eventually conceded that anything was possible, at which point Markham seemed considerably more satisfied.

Hettie laughed quietly into her drink while Audrey sat beside Zach with the relaxed expression of someone who had long since accepted that Markham could turn even a minor injury into a subject worthy of scholarly investigation. Ellie was still amused by the entire affair, particularly by the memory of finding Zach behind the bar. Roak, by contrast, seemed to have decided that the evening had contained quite enough excitement and was now concentrating upon his ale.

Mrs Ashcroft had been watching them all.

She was a sturdy woman, perhaps somewhere in her fifties, with brown hair beginning to show silver and the sort of face that had learned over the years that honesty was usually less trouble than politeness. She had spent much of the evening listening rather than speaking, occasionally adding a dry observation when one of the others offered an account of the fight that she considered particularly unreliable. Zach had noticed that she possessed the same quality he remembered from Gabriel's description: she was not easily impressed, and she appeared to have very little patience for nonsense.

For several minutes he allowed the conversation to wander around the subjects of the mine and the fight. It was not that he had forgotten why he had come to Charwell. Quite the opposite. He had been thinking about the conversation since Gabriel had first suggested the name Percival Ashcroft in Westminster. But there was no point in forcing the matter before everyone had settled. Mrs Ashcroft had been working, dealing with the aftermath of a brawl and entertaining a room full of unexpected visitors. She deserved a little peace before being asked about a husband she had apparently spent years attempting to forget.

Eventually the conversation reached one of those natural pauses in which nobody immediately felt the need to fill the silence. Zach rested his forearms upon the table and looked across at her, telling her that there had been another reason they had come to Charwell.

Mrs Ashcroft studied him over the rim of her glass, and the faint smile that touched her mouth suggested that she had been expecting the question from the moment he walked through her door. She admitted as much before Zach finally told her that they were looking for her husband.

The change in her expression was immediate. Whatever amusement had remained in her face disappeared, replaced by a look of deep and entirely unapologetic irritation. She repeated Percival's name with such venom that Hettie lowered her eyes to hide a smile, then told Zach that if they were determined to go all that way after the bloody man, they could damn well take him straight back with them when they found him.

There was no affection in the description that followed. Percival, she explained, had always possessed a remarkable talent for finding trouble wherever he went, usually accompanied by alcohol, gambling debts and some ill-advised scheme that sounded considerably better to him after midnight than it had before supper. She had endured years of his disappearances, his drinking and his apparently limitless ability to make respectable situations thoroughly disreputable.

When Zach mentioned that Gabriel remembered him as an exceptionally capable Nexus Gate Cartographer whenever he was sober, Mrs Ashcroft gave a derisive snort that made Ellie nearly choke on her drink. Being brilliant when sober, she explained, was Percival's great trick. Unfortunately, he spent remarkably little time in that condition.

Then, almost in the same breath, her expression softened.

The question escaped her before she could disguise it. After all the contempt and irritation she had just poured upon her absent husband, she wanted to know whether he was all right, and whether Zach had any reason to think he might have been hurt.

Zach's smile faded as he admitted that they simply did not know.

Mrs Ashcroft stared at him for a moment before asking whether that meant she had not heard from Percival herself. When Zach explained that they had no direct word from him and that Gabriel had remembered she still received letters, she lowered her gaze and slowly turned her tankard between both hands. She eventually admitted that Percival wrote occasionally, the last letter having arrived six months earlier.

The concern returned to her face almost immediately. She asked whether he was hurt, and there was no anger left in her voice this time. Whatever Percival had done to earn her contempt, the concern of a wife had survived all of it. Zach recognised that immediately, as did Hettie, whose expression softened while she watched the older woman.

He explained the reason for their search without burdening her with more of the extraordinary details than necessary. They needed someone who understood the Nexus Gates, someone who knew the old routes and the places where the gateways had been surveyed. Gabriel remembered Percival's work well enough to believe that, whatever his personal failings, his knowledge was exceptional. If his trail had led into Africa, Zach intended to follow it.

Mrs Ashcroft listened without interrupting. When he finished, she gave a slow sigh and shook her head, remarking that running off to Africa sounded exactly like Percival. He had always preferred to be a very long way from home whenever he was getting himself into trouble.

The admission seemed to trigger another memory. She looked towards the bar and told Zach that she still had Percival's last letter.

She rose and disappeared through a door behind the bar while the others waited in silence. A moment later they heard cupboards being opened and closed somewhere beyond the room. When Mrs Ashcroft returned, she carried a worn envelope between two fingers. The paper had been folded and unfolded enough times to soften its edges, but the African postmark remained clearly visible.

Zach took it carefully and examined the mark without immediately opening the envelope. He needed no further confirmation that they had come to the right place. Six months was a long time, but the letter established that Percival had at least been alive when he had written it.

Mrs Ashcroft watched his expression and reminded him that being alive when the letter was written did not necessarily mean he had been sober when he wrote it. Zach smiled and admitted that he had expected nothing less, which finally drew a brief laugh from her.

They spent the next several minutes discussing the scant information contained within the letter and what Mrs Ashcroft could remember of Percival's movements. None of it provided a destination precise enough to be useful, but the postmark gave them a starting point, and for the moment that was enough.

Eventually Mrs Ashcroft folded the letter carefully and handed it to Zach, telling him to take it. When he hesitated and asked whether she was sure, she waved away the question and said that if he was going after the bloody fool, he might as well have something useful. Zach thanked her and slipped the letter safely inside his coat.

Mrs Ashcroft then glanced towards the bar and mentioned that, if he was determined to be useful while he was there, she had another problem. The chiller in the basement had begun making a dreadful noise three days earlier and had stopped keeping the beer as cold as it should. Zach laughed when she suggested that repairing it might constitute his bill for the damage caused during the fight. He agreed that it seemed fair, though his amusement suggested he considered repairing machinery considerably preferable to paying for broken furniture.

He pushed his chair back and stood, only to find Audrey already getting to her feet. She told him she would help, and the brief exchange was enough to produce several knowing looks around the table. Hettie's mouth twitched as she glanced towards Ellie, while Moore suddenly found Markham's nose fascinating again. Even Markham seemed to understand what was being implied, although he wisely chose not to comment.

Mrs Ashcroft handed Zach a lamp and pointed towards the basement door, explaining that the chiller was not complicated and merely made an awful racket whenever it started. Zach assured her that those were usually the interesting ones, and Audrey followed him towards the stairs with a smile.

The others watched them disappear below.

For several seconds nobody spoke. Hettie eventually exchanged another amused glance with Ellie, while Roak concentrated upon his drink with the solemn determination of a man who had no intention whatsoever of becoming involved in whatever amusement his daughter and Hettie's expression suggested.

From somewhere below came the distant clank of machinery.

Hettie smiled.

"Give them ten minutes."

Ellie laughed.

"Fifteen."

Moore looked genuinely puzzled by the exchange, while Markham, still dabbing carefully at his nose, merely shook his head.

"I suspect," he observed, "that we are better off not knowing."

Nobody disagreed.