Jack Higgins – The Violent Enemy

‘I’ll take that,’ Rogan said and he slipped his arms through the straps.

Over the mountains, the sky was grey and threatening and the sun had almost disappeared, but the prospect of more rain didn’t seem to matter. They turned out

through the gate and started up the valley.

The surface of the old road had almost disappeared under a creeping carpet of moss and rank grass that grew profusely from every crack and it followed the side of the hill, rising steeply. Beyond a shoulder they paused and saw in a hollow beneath them the ruins of the old mining village.

As they moved down, rain descended in a great rush, splashing into the interiors of the roofless cottages, giving the place a setting that was somehow strangely appropriate.

‘It must have been quite a place,’ Rogan said.

Hannah nodded. ‘I looked it up in the library in Ambleside once. There were two or three hundred people living here at one time. They mined for lead during the Napoleonic Wars.’

‘What happened?’

‘The vein ran out during the eighteen twenties.’ She sighed. ‘It’s rather sad when you come to think of it. This place was once alive and throbbing with love and laughter and children and chapel on Sundays and then the vein ran out.’

‘That’s life/ Rogan said gently. ‘The vein always seems to run out when you least expect it.’

She turned, a shadow in her eyes. ‘It isn’t really fair, is it? It doesn’t seem to give people much. You work and hope and then get kicked in the teeth.’

‘God lets no man suffer too long.’ Rogan smiled. ‘A saying my grandmother was fond of.’

‘Do you believe that?’

He shrugged. ‘I believe in hope, Hannah. Hope above all things. Without it, life would be pretty pointless.’

They paused outside the little church and Rogan examined the slab above the door with the faded letters, moss-grown:Scardale Primitive Methodist Chapel 1805.

‘The year of Trafalgar,’ he said. ‘A long time ago.’

‘Another British victory?’

He grinned. ‘There were more than fifty American

citizens in the crew of Nelson’sVictory and twice as many Irishmen. A way the British had with them.’

‘We learn something new every day.’

They moved on, following the slope of the main street and came to a sizeable dam constructed of large blocks of granite stone, slippery and green with the years where moisture leaked through, the stream issuing from a stone sluice at the bottom.

On the far side of the dam higher up the valley were the actual mine workings. A dozen or fifteen sheep were penned together in an old stone enclosine. A few yaids away, Brendan Costello sat on a large boulder throwing pebbles into the water. Hannah called to him and he turned quickly, eyes very dark in the white face.

He came towards them and nodded to Rogan, smiling shyly. Hannah ruffled his hair with obvious affection. ‘What have you been doing?’

He spoke in short, rather clipped sentences, an obvious attempt to defeat his stammer by missing out those words which gave him most difficulty.

‘He w-wants m-more sheep bringing down.’

Hannah nodded. ‘We’re having our dinner up here today. Would you like to come with us?’

He looked swiftly at Rogan and his face crimsoned with pleasure. ‘C-can I?’

‘If you like.’

‘I c-could show you the Long C-cut, Mr. Rogan. Y-you’d like that.’

Rogan turned to Hannah. ‘The Long Cut?’

She pointed to the western end of the dam where it ran into a tangled mass of bushes at the face of a steep cliff. ‘We’ll take a look if you like. You can’t see the entrance from here, but they ran a tunnel under the shoulder of the mountain into the next valley. It carries a canal. They used to take the ore out that way.’

They moved round the edge of the dam into a clump of trees, and beyond them a crumbling landing stage jutted into the water and the mouth of the tunnel gaped

darkly. There was very little headroom and when Rogan squatted down and looked inside, he could see a tiny circle of light at the other end.

‘How long is it?’

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