Page 13 of The Wordsworth Key (Regency Secrets #3)

There was no one working in the mine today.

Dora could see why many might think it natural as the entrance was partially flooded with stepping stones leading to the rear wall where slate was next to be excavated.

The pool hid any traces of man’s activities.

She looked up at the jagged ceiling some twenty foot above.

‘Is it safe?’ she asked her guide.

‘I’ve never heard of an accident.’

Taking that as good enough, she hopped from stone to stone to reach the interior shore. Turning to face the entrance, she could see why this was famed locally.

‘What a view!’ It was like being inside a giant’s gaping mouth looking out on the mountain opposite, trees in the middle distance like scenery flats in a theatre framing the backdrop.

It would make a magical set for the Christmas pantomime– Ali Baba– Robinson Crusoe– Aladdin’s cave. ‘I feel like we’ve been swallowed!’

‘Marvellous, isn’t it?’ Barton poked at a ring of stones with blackened sticks in the centre. ‘But no sign of two boys, unless you count the remnants of a campfire. That could have been left by other visitors.’

‘Then do we go to the shore of Rydal Water? If I were camping, I’d pitch my tent near fresh water.’

Before they could agree their next move, there came a whoop from a ledge behind them.

A youth dressed in ragged trousers, bare chest striped with ash, dropped down on Barton and tumbled him into the shallow water with a yell.

A second smaller boy, who looked about twelve, ran at Dora but shied at the last moment.

He jabbed a homemade spear at her but without making contact.

‘Yah!’ he said, but without the complete conviction of his brother.

‘Leave our lands, foreign invaders!’ growled the older boy. His voice was in that uncertain stage of the newly broken.

‘Hartley!’ said Barton in exasperation, heaving him off and emerging soaked from his unplanned dip.

‘I’m not Hartley. I am Chief Kubla Khan, and this is my warrior, Xanadu.’

Xanadu bared his teeth at Dora, who refrained– with difficulty– from smiling.

‘Let me guess: this is your cavern measureless to man?’ asked Barton. He turned to Dora. ‘It’s taken from a wonderful fragment written by their father, sadly not yet published.’

‘Kubla Khan?’ she wondered. ‘What an odd subject for a poem.’

‘Not at all! In Xanadu did Kubla Khan …’ As Barton began declaiming, Hartley and Derwent joined in. The three boys– for Barton was evidently reverting to his boyish self– formed a little circle and did an impromptu ‘Indian scout’ dance in time to the verse.

A stately pleasure dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Dora laughed and applauded. ‘Excellent!’

Barton grinned. ‘We are somewhat mixing up our exotic imagery, blending the native inhabitants of America with the Mongolian setting of Mr Coleridge’s poem.’

Hartley lifted his chin defiantly. ‘Father says our imagination fuses what we read and what we see into a unity. This place can be anywhere we wish.’

Barton bowed. ‘I stand corrected. You have found a perfect home for Kubla Khan. In the spirit of which, I offer you a visiting Abyssinian maid, who has a few questions for you.’

Dora raised a brow.

‘It was either that or a woman wailing for her demon lover,’ Barton murmured in an undertone.

‘From the same poem?’

He nodded.

This was the boys’ stage and their make-believe. Dora bowed low in oriental style.

‘O most magnificent Kubla Khan, and most fearsome Xanadu, slayer of his majesty’s enemies, I beg leave to share the hospitality of your campfire.’

‘Oh, she’s good!’ whispered Derwent to his brother, who nudged him to remember his role.

‘Speak, fair damsel, speak and be welcome,’ declared Hartley.

Dora could see Barton was shivering. ‘Might we take our parley to the greensward?’ she suggested, using her hands to gesture as she might on the boards. ‘Brother Sun is riding high in the sky and sharing his bounty of warmth and light with the earth beneath.’

‘We shall share,’ agreed Hartley, then displayed that he wasn’t fully Kubla-ed by offering a hand to steady her as they took the stepping stones back to the outside of the mine.

The two boys led them along the slope in the direction of Grasmere before dropping down into a copse where they had established their camp.

Last year’s beech nuts crunched underfoot on a bed of copper leaves.

On the very edge of the trees where Rydal Water lapped at the shore, Hartley stopped and gestured for them to take their seats on the logs the boys had dragged either side of their campfire.

Now for her masterstroke. Dora produced the bag of buns. It was as well she had been carrying them because she didn’t think they would’ve survived a dip in the cave pool.

‘I bring an offering as a token of friendship from my people.’ She placed them on a flat stone in the middle.

Derwent pounced on the bag. ‘Oh, good-o! Iced buns!’

‘Derwent,’ Barton said in warning.

The younger boy grimaced and tentatively held the bag out to Dora. ‘Ladies first.’

Dora laughed in delight. These two were very entertaining. ‘Thank you, sir, but I bought them for you.’

With enthusiastic gratitude, the boys fell on the buns like wolves. Dora waited for the first pangs of hunger to be satisfied before she began on her questions.

‘Mr Barton said you often visit him in his cottage.’

Hartley nodded and swallowed. ‘We do. He’s a good sport. Not stuffy like the others.’

‘Have you, by any chance, borrowed something from him recently– without his knowledge?’

Both boys instantly looked stricken and shot guilty looks at Barton.

‘We’re sorry, Mr Barton. We won’t do it again,’ said Derwent, mortified.

‘We thought you wouldn’t mind,’ added Hartley, not sharing his brother’s repentance.

Barton gave an avuncular nod. ‘It is always best to ask first. If you return it unharmed, then we can put it aside and forget about it. However, you must never again go through a gentleman’s things without a very good reason.’

Derwent blinked innocently. ‘But we did return her. We only took her out for an hour or two.’

‘Actually, it was more like four,’ admitted Hartley. ‘But it was full moon, so we could see what we were doing. I caught two perches.’

They were talking about the boat. ‘Then you didn’t take anything belonging to Mr Barton from the house? No papers or books, nothing of that kind?’ asked Dora.

The boys now looked shocked. ‘Us? It’s the holidays: what would we want with books?’ asked Hartley with unassailable logic.

Dora mentally struck them from her list of suspects.

Barton looked crestfallen. ‘Oh dear. I was hoping it was you.’

‘What’ve you lost?’ asked Derwent.

‘Can you keep a secret?’ asked Barton.

They both nodded fervently, looking delighted that an adult would trust them.

‘One of Mr Wordsworth’s manuscripts.’

‘Oh, gadzooks, you’re in for it,’ murmured Derwent.

‘Uncle William will be mad at you,’ agreed Hartley. ‘He’s always telling us not to touch his things and take more care.’

‘I didn’t, in fact, lose it. Someone stole it from me,’ Barton explained.

‘They never!’

‘They did.’

Dora considered the two ‘Indian scouts’ before her, able to come and go about the area without anyone taking much notice of what they were about, or if they did notice, dismissing it as a game. ‘Boys, would you like to help Mr Barton and me find out who took the manuscript?’

‘Is this wise?’ asked Barton.

Probably not, but her gut was telling her the Coleridge boys would be valuable sources of intelligence, and she’d learned to trust her gut.

‘I’m not asking them to do anything dangerous.

’ Their faces fell. ‘Only brave and honourable,’ she amended, at which they perked up.

‘We would be grateful if you would keep an ear to the ground for anyone offering for sale, or boasting about, a manuscript they’ve found.

We don’t think it is signed but you’ll know Uncle William’s handwriting, won’t you? ’

‘It will probably be in Aunty Dorothy’s hand,’ said Derwent. ‘She does most of the copying for him.’

‘Or Aunty Mary,’ added Hartley, not to be outdone.

‘Then I have clearly found the most qualified investigators in the area as I do not know how to distinguish who has written what. Will you do that for us? It might be worth at least another bag of buns.’

‘If you find it, I think I will owe you a lifetime supply!’ added Barton.

The boys, however, did not jump at the offer. ‘If someone has been stealing Uncle William’s poetry, then we must stop them,’ said Hartley fiercely. ‘We won’t do it for buns but because it is the right thing to do.’

‘But we do like buns,’ added Derwent plaintively. ‘All the same.’