of the holes, but they were deeper than her hands.
Above and behind her, Mary saw the last of the day. In front and beneath was the stope, where it was always night.
Father took the whole bundle of candles and set them on the rocks and lit them. They showed how dark it was in the stope.
‘Wait while you get used to it,’ said Father. ‘You soon see better. Now what about that roof?’
Mary looked up into the shadows. ‘It’s not dimension stone,’ she said. ‘There’s a grain to it, and it’s all ridge and furrow.’
‘But if you’d been with me that day,’ said Father, ‘when I was prenticed and walked to the sea, you’d have stood on sand just the same as that. The waves do it, going back and to. And it makes the ridges proper hard, and if you left it I reckon it could set into stone. But the tide goes back and to, back and to, and wets it. And your boots sink in and leave a mark.’
‘If that’s the sea, why’s it under the ground?’ said Mary.
‘And whose are those boots?’ said Father.
There were footprints in the roof, flattening the ripples, as though a big bird had walked there.
‘Was that Noah’s flood, too?’ said Mary.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Father. ‘If it was, that bantam never got into the ark.’
‘It must’ve been as big as Saint Philip’s cockerel,’ said Mary.
‘Bigger,’ said Father. ‘And upside down.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Mary.
‘It would if we could plunder it deep enough,’ said Father. ‘I reckon that if you’re going to put the sea in a hill and turn the world over and let it dry, then you’ve got to be doing before nine o’clock in the morning. But preachers aren’t partial to coming down here, so it doesn’t matter. Does it?’
He blew out all the candles except two. He gave one to Mary and stepped onto the ladder. Mary went with him, and climbed between his arms down into the stope.
‘It’d take some plucking,’ she said.
‘If it had feathers.’
The stope was the shape of a straw beehive and tunnels led everywhere. Mary couldn’t see the top of the ladder.
‘If you’d fallen, you’d have been killed dead as at Saint Philip’s,’ said Father.
‘It’s different,’ said Mary. ‘There’s no height.’
‘There’s depth, and that’s no different than height,’ said Father.
‘It doesn’t call you,’ said Mary.
Father held Mary’s hand sailor’s grip and went into a tunnel under a ledge at the bottom of the stope. They didn’t go far. There was a shaft in the rock, not a straight one, but when Father bridged it with his feet, the pebbles rattled down for a long time. It was easy climbing, even with a candle to be held, because the rock kept changing, and each change made a shelf. There was puddingstone, marl and foxbench, and only the marl was slippery.
‘That’s it,’ said Father. They were at a kink in the shaft.
‘What about further down?’ said Mary.
‘It’s only rubbish gangue from here to the bottom; neither use nor ornament. Although there was a man, him as sank this shaft, and he could read books and put a letter together. But he lost his money, for all his reading. Now if he’d read rocks instead of books, it might have been a different story, you see.’
Father held his candle out to the side. There was a crack, not a tunnel. The rock itself had made it.
‘Hold fast to your light,’ said Father. ‘And keep the matches out of the wet.’
Father had to crawl. Mary could stand, but even she had to squeeze, because of the narrowness.
The crack went up and down, wavering through the hill. Then Father stopped. He couldn’t turn his head to speak, but he could crouch on his heel. ‘Climb over,’ he said.
Mary pulled herself across his back. A side of wall had split off and jammed in the passage, almost closing it.
‘Can you get through there?’ said Father.
‘Easy,’ said Mary.
‘Get through and then listen,’ said Father.
Mary wriggled past the flake and stood up. The passage went on beyond her light. Father’s candle made a dark hole of where she had come, and she could see his boots and one hand. He pushed the bobbin of bad ends through to her, and six candles. He kept hold of the loose end of silk.
‘What’s up?’ said Mary. ‘What are we doing?’
‘You still want a book for Sundays?’ said Father. ‘Even if you can’t read?’
‘Yes,’ said Mary.
‘Then this is what we’re doing,’ said Father. ‘So you listen. You’re to keep the lucifers dry, and use only one candle. It should be plenty. Let the silk out, but don’t pull on it, else it’ll snap. It’s to fetch you back if you’ve no light, and that’s all it’s for. Now then. You’ll find you go down a bit of steep, and then the rock divides. Follow the malachite. Always follow the malachite. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘After the malachite there’s some old foxbench, then a band of white dimension, and a lot of wet when you come to the Tough Tom. Can you remember it all?’
‘Malachite, foxbench, dimension, Tough Tom,’ said Mary.
‘Always follow the malachite,’ said Father. ‘And if there’s been another rockfall, don’t trust loose stuff. And think on: there isn’t anybody can reach you. You’re alone.’
‘What must I do when I get to the Tough Tom?’ said Mary.
‘You come back and tell me if you want that book,’ said Father. ‘And if you do, you shall have it.’
‘Right,’ said Mary.
The crack in the hill ran straight for a while and was easier than the first part. She held her candle in one hand and the bobbin in the other. She had tucked the other candles and the lucifer matches into her petticoat. She went slowly down the rock, and the silk unwound behind her.
The steep was not enough to make her climb, and water trickled from above, over the rock, and left a green stain of malachite. She stopped when the passage divided, but there was nothing to worry her. She went to the left, with the malachite. The other passage had none.
She took the silk through the hill. The green malachite faded, and she passed by a thin level of foxbench sand, hard and speckled.
Then the walls were white.
