Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

Elaine hid behind her hair again. “Don’t talk like that,” she whispered.

  Timothy smiled. “You can’t deny me that. Now, please play me a cheerful song and forget the girl at the piano in the Wild Rover. I already have.”

  Elaine brushed her hair back and smiled shyly. She played a few trivial tunes, but people could tell her mind was not on the music. And when Timothy Lambert finally took his leave, a small miracle occurred.

  Timothy said his usual “Good night, Lainie,” but Elaine took a deep breath and looked at him shyly. Almost afraid of her own courage, she decided to smile.

  “Good night, Tim.”

  Healing

  GREYMOUTH

  Late 1896–Early 1898

  1

  Timothy Lambert was in the best of spirits when he rode to his father’s mine on Monday. And that despite the fact that they had not yet reached an agreement over the necessary renovations. Timothy had fought fiercely with his father about them on Sunday, but Marvin Lambert considered further investment in the safety of his mine superfluous and declared the elder Biller crazy.

  “He’s probably blown a gasket with that boy of his playing piano in the pub every night. No wonder the old man is coming up with ideas to keep Junior busy—in something at least vaguely related to coal mining.

  Timothy had then suggested that he could start taking piano lessons himself. Maybe they could use him in the pub since his suggestions on matters of workplace safety were unwanted. Why in heaven’s name had his father had him study mining engineering if he was just going to ignore every recommendation? The whole conversation had then escalated into their usual discussion about how the mine did not need an engineer as much as it needed a savvy businessman and that Timothy could easily acquire those skills if he would duck into the office more often.

  Timothy had been furious, but at that moment, in the bright sunshine that made the landscape around Greymouth appear freshly washed, he forgot his frustrations. Instead, he entertained himself with the thought of what Elaine would say to having him for a piano student, and as he pictured Elaine in his mind’s eye, his spirits rose even more. He would see her again that night. He would walk up to her, smile at her, and say “Good evening, Lainie.” And maybe she would smile again and call him “Tim.” It was a small step forward, but an important one. Perhaps the ice had now broken. Elaine had looked so relaxed and cheerful after he had put to rest her silly ideas about the other pianist.

  That was a strange matter, though. Why did the girl react with such panic about a rival she didn’t even know? Or was there history between her and this Kura person? It was possible. The Maori girl had traveled around a great deal. Had the opera ensemble brought all of its musicians along from Europe? Maybe Elaine had played piano for the singer and there had been a fight. Perhaps Kura knew who had caused the girl so much pain that she had been afraid of men ever since. Timothy briefly considered speaking to the singer himself, but that struck him as a breach of faith. He could speak to Caleb Biller, however. It was true that the boy was a bit effeminate, but Timothy had nothing against him personally. On the contrary, he was much easier to get along with than his domineering father, and he was not stupid. If Timothy told Caleb about Elaine, perhaps Caleb would cautiously sound out Kura on the subject and then tell Timothy what she had said.

  Timothy whistled to himself as Fellow trotted through the miners’ camp. He had achieved a few small successes here at least. The streets had been drained for Saint Barbara’s Day, and one could travel them easily. The cleanup had also been a step forward for mine safety. There had hardly been any traversable emergency roads to Greymouth before. However, it was not even worth thinking about what would happen if the workers’ camp caught fire. Or the mine itself.

  Timothy studied the headframe tower and the other mine buildings coming into view with a mixture of pride and repugnance. They could make a model operation out of it, a modern mine with high safety standards, with connections to the rail network. Timothy also had a plethora of ideas about increasing the delivery rate, about new, more efficient delivery techniques, and the expansion of the shafts. He suspected that would have to wait for Marvin’s retirement. Nevertheless, his father had agreed to go on another tour that day. At the very least, Timothy wanted to show him from above where ventilation was lacking and what possibilities there were for expanding the shafts—if he was willing to invest the money and labor, that is. Brimming over with vim and high spirits, he almost believed he would convince his father.

  Marvin Lambert looked crankily at his son.

  “Typical case of Monday disease,” he complained. “There’s no end to the people skipping work today. Ten percent of the lazybones in the camp didn’t show up. The freight-wagon drivers are complaining because their carts are getting stuck in the mud—this damned rain! I should just have built the roads to the train line instead of that street through the camp. And the foreman took off too. Yeah, that’s right, took off, without even asking if I thought it proper for him to see to this plank delivery himself, which still hasn’t arrived. And then the fellow actually refused to carry on with the face until—”

  Timothy’s good spirits drained away. “Father, without support beams, he can’t carry on with the face. I explained that to you yesterday. And the high percentage of sick workers is probably the result of all the rain we’ve had. It gets to the men’s lungs, especially if they’re already weak. But the sun is shining today, so they’ll be doing better by tomorrow. Just watch, the men’ll be here for the next shift. They need the money, you know. But for now, come, Father. You promised you’d look at the plans for the mine expansion.”

  Marvin Lambert would have liked to finish his tea. Timothy could smell that his father had added a splash of whiskey to it. In the end, however, he gave into his son’s importuning and followed him into the bright sunshine.

  “Look, Father, you have to think of it like air circulation with an open window. A single window isn’t sufficient, nor is a second one on the upper floor of the house. If the entire house is to have fresh air, you need to have several openings. If we continue adding to the face of the shafts, expanding the house so to speak, we have to dig new air shafts. And the greater the risk of a gas leak, the more circulation there has to be. Especially with our weather here. The outside temperature and air pressure play a role as well.” Timothy explained all of this patiently, but he doubted his father was listening. The longer his presentation lasted, the more desperate he became to make it clear to his father how complicated and dangerous the network of underground shafts and tunnels really was.

  Then he heard a rumbling, almost as though a storm were brewing somewhere. Marvin, too, looked at the sky, irritated, and ducked his head back inside to avoid getting wet. But there wasn’t a single cloud over Greymouth, the mountains, or the lake. Timothy was alarmed. That sound wasn’t coming from above. It was right under their feet!

  “Father, the mine. Something is going on down there. Did you order anything? A blasting? Or… you didn’t order a shaft expansion, did you? With the old explosives? Is anything out of the ordinary happening today?” Timothy’s expression was one of extreme urgency and concern.

  Marvin waved his hand calmly. “That young foreman, Josh Kennedy, is extending tunnel nine,” he said almost proudly. “He’s no hemming-and-hawing do-nothing like Gawain. He was right there when…”

  Timothy looked alarmed. “When you ordered the extension of tunnel nine? My God, Father, we haven’t done any test drilling in tunnel nine! And Matt suspected there were hollow spaces in the rock down there. We have to sound the alarm, Father. Something is going on down there!”

  Leaving Marvin standing there, Timothy raced to the mine entrance, but the explosions beat him to it. Though the mine complex continued to look still and unchanged under the spring sky, an infernal noise was erupting beneath the earth. It sounded as though one stick of dynamite after another was going off underground. First once, then a second time, before Timothy reached the entra
nce of the mine.

  Standing at the entrance tunnel, pale with fear, the men who operated the hoisting cage had already set the cage in motion to ascend.

  As the cable began to move, there was a third explosion underground.

  “That’s not right below us,” one of the men yelled. “That one’s further away, more to the south.”

  Timothy nodded. “That’s tunnel nine. Or it was. There can hardly be much left of it. I hope the men made it out and there weren’t any gas or water leaks. I need to get down there. Fetch me a lamp.” He looked at the men at the winch. One of them was an old Welsh miner with badly damaged lungs who no longer entered the mine. The other was a young man. Timothy thought he had seen him underground before. “Aren’t you normally in tunnel seven? What are you doing up here? Are you sick?”

  The man shook his head—and prepared to enter the mine without being asked.

  “My wife’s pregnant. She thinks the baby’s coming today, so the foreman said I should help up here. Tunnel seven was halted anyway because of the shipment of boards, so the foreman told me I could stick close to my wife.”

  Timothy bit his lip. The unborn child may have just saved his father’s life. And now he was putting it in danger again.

  “I’m sorry, but you have to come along anyway. It might be too late by the time other help arrives.”

  Timothy boarded the hoisting cage before the expectant father. The old miner made a motion of prayer, and Timothy caught himself calling out to Saint Barbara. This was a calamitous situation, and the deeper the elevator sank into the mine, the more dire it seemed. With the exception of the noise of the hoisting cage, a deathly silence prevailed underground. Instead of the usual sounds—the constant hammering, the rattling of the carts on the tracks, the shoveling of the spoils, the voices of the sixty to a hundred men working down there—all was quiet.

  The young man noticed it too. He looked at Timothy, his eyes wide with fright, and whispered, “My God.”

  They came upon the first bodies in the relatively wide space in front of the hoisting cage. Two men. They must have been fleeing, but it had been too late to call the elevator.

  “Gas,” Timothy whispered hoarsely. “It must have been released here, since the ventilation is still functioning here. But they had already breathed in too much of it.”

  “Could also have been some kind of blast,” the young man suggested. “What are we going to do now, sir? Do we continue on?”

  Timothy knew the young man would have liked to leave immediately. And he was probably right. If there were dead here, it was highly unlikely that anyone had survived farther into the mine. But what if there were survivors? What if some of them had found air bubbles?

  Timothy bit his lip. “I’ll take a closer look,” he said quietly. “But you can go back up if you want.”

  The man shook his head. “I’m coming with you. These are my buddies down here.”

  Timothy nodded. “What’s your name?” he asked as they walked through the pitch-black and deathly still shaft.

  “Joe Patterson.”

  The lamps on their helmets bathed the immediate vicinity in a sallow, ghostly twilight.

  “Look, there are two more,” Joe said.

  “Three,” Timothy whispered.

  It looked as if two of the men had been attempting to support a wounded third.

  “Joe, we need to split up to cover ground more quickly. You go to tunnel seven. I’ll take nine.”

  The tunnel forked here. Timothy wondered whether the men had been coming from the right or the left. In the end, he went right. Reluctantly, Joe turned down the left tunnel—continuing alone obviously made him uncomfortable. But there shouldn’t have been many men in tunnel seven. Timothy thanked heaven for the wood shipment’s delay.

  In shaft nine, he found more bodies—and then the first holes. He knew he had found the origin of the explosion, whose blast had dispersed gas and a torrent of rubble all over the place. Silence still reigned. Eventually, Timothy could no longer stand it, and he began to call out.

  “Is anyone there? Is anyone still alive?”

  And then a young voice, childlike and full of fear, suddenly answered. “I’m over here! Help! Please! I’m over here.”

  The appeal ended in sobbing.

  Timothy grew hopeful again. So there were survivors! “Help’s on the way! Just stay calm,” he called into the darkness. Even before the explosion, tunnel nine had not been laid out very clearly. The boy could be anywhere. “Where are you exactly? Are you injured?”

  “It’s so dark!” The boy sounded hysterical. Timothy followed the sound of the voice ever farther down a blind tunnel, hoping the boy had not been trapped under rubble. In their haste, he and Joe had not even brought mining tools down with them. The boy’s voice wasn’t muffled, and Timothy could tell he was getting closer.

  “Stay where you are, boy, but keep talking,” Timothy called. “I’ll come get you.”

  Just then he spotted the wide-eyed boy. Roly O’Brien—Matt had introduced him to the boy a few days before. Only thirteen years old, Roly had just started in the mine as an apprentice. His father had been working there for years. A chill ran down Timothy’s back. Where was Frank O’Brien?

  Roly sobbed with relief and almost leaped around Timothy’s neck.

  “It cracked,” he reported, trembling. “I was inside here. They sent me in because I was supposed to practice digging a bit more. I’d only hold things up in the main tunnels, Dad said, but in here I could help remove the spoils from the face.”

  This tunnel—which was connected to the others but a bit out of the way—was more or less mined out. The men had never liked it. Since it lay deeper than the other tunnels, the air in it was always stale. However, that might have been precisely what saved Roly’s life that day. It seemed that no gas had streamed into that tunnel and that nothing had collapsed there either. Though half-paralyzed with fright, Roly was completely unharmed. When all the lamps had been extinguished, he had not been able to orient himself, so he had crouched in the corner until he heard Timothy calling.

  “It will all be all right, Roly. Calm down.” Timothy did not know whether he was trying to comfort himself or the shivering boy. “But now tell me a little more. Were you the only one here? Where were the others? What caused the explosion? Did you hear anything after that?”

  “My dad and the foreman were fighting,” Roly reported. “The new foreman, not Matt. Maybe, maybe that’s why they sent me away. Josh… er… Mr. Kennedy sounded angry. My father too. Mr. Kennedy wanted to extend the tunnel. With explosives. But my father thought there might be a cavity. He thought we shouldn’t just blow it up, because we needed to make a… a…”

  “Test drilling.” Timothy sighed. “What happened then?”

  Roly sniffled. “Then my father said Mr. Kennedy should do it himself and sent me over here. I think he went into the other tunnel across the way. And… and then I heard something, sir. Clearly. When I was here alone.”

  Timothy’s mind worked feverishly. Could somebody else be alive under the rubble? The entrance to that tunnel had collapsed during the explosion. He had seen that as he passed by. But before or after the gas had streamed in there?

  “What did you hear, Roly?”

  The boy shrugged. “Knocking. Voices?” His voice sounded unsure. He might have imagined it. Nevertheless, Timothy reached for the pickax and the other tools Roly had brought with him into the tunnel. The boy sobbed when he saw the collapsed tunnel entrance.

  “My dad’s in there, I know it.”

  Timothy cleared some of the rubble to the side experimentally. It was quite loose, so he could dig a bit. Perhaps then he might get a little closer to whatever sounds Roly had heard. However, he didn’t really believe there were any survivors. Though the tunnels were not far apart, solid rock lay in between them. It was unlikely that Roly had been able to hear knocking from the next tunnel over. On the contrary, in this grave-like stillness…

 
Roly, next to him now, grabbed a pick. He was astoundingly strong for his age and his slight build. Soon he was chipping away more quickly than Timothy, and it started to sound hollow when the pick struck against the rubble. So the tunnel was not completely caved in.

  “Easy, Roly,” Timothy warned as the boy worked feverishly. “If someone is buried in there, you might hurt him. Besides…” Timothy still felt a nagging doubt. What if they released a gas bubble here? They needed to proceed carefully: it was better to leave the mine, fetch more help, and carry out a test drilling. Damn it, maybe they could even borrow some gas masks from some less penny-pinching mine in the area.

  Just as he was about to tell Roly to stop digging, the boy let out a cry.

  “A man, there’s someone here, a man!”

  With trembling fingers, the boy cleared the earth and stone away. Timothy saw there was no hope. If the man had not died immediately when the tunnel collapsed, he must have suffocated under all that rock. But Roly was frantically digging the man out. He uncovered the man’s shoulder, took him by the arm, and pulled with all his might. The tugging set the rubble covering the body in motion.

  “Run, boy—it’s collapsing!”

  Timothy tried to pull the boy away, at first worrying only that they might be struck by falling rock. But then he noticed that it was getting more difficult to breathe.

  “Roly…” Timothy had only just managed to turn his back to the newly exposed cavity when he heard the explosion and felt himself being hurled through the air. He fell to the hard ground and worked his way onto his knees. Roly was wheezing beside him. Timothy pulled him to his feet.

  “Quickly—the gas!”

  It was a repetition of the earlier nightmare, but this time Timothy was caught in the middle of it. This time the rumbling of collapsing rocks was not coming from a safe distance aboveground but from all around. Flames began blazing behind him, and he fled just as desperately as the men whose corpses they had discovered earlier must have done.