Maybe Mattock was right. Maybe Ivy should hold her peace until tomorrow, when she could talk to the Joan in private. After all, the spriggan was gone, and what were the chances of anyone finding him now?
‘Now then,’ said the droll-teller, sitting back with his bony hands on his knees. ‘What would you like to hear about next?’
‘Giants!’ piped up one eager listener, and ‘Gnomes!’ shouted another. Ivy, who was interested in neither, was about to get up and leave when Cicely called out, ‘Faeries!’
‘Ah, I can’t refuse a pretty lass,’ the droll-teller said. ‘Faeries it is.’ Some of the boys groaned, and he gave a chuckle. ‘No worry, lads, there’s something for you in this story as well. Let me tell you of the last great battle between the piskeys and the faery folk, many years ago…’
He went on to tell a story that even Ivy hadn’t heard before, about a time when the piskey clans of Cornwall — or Kernow, in the old speech — had banded together to defend their territory against an invading army of faeries. The fight had been long and bitter, with terrible magics wielded on both sides, but in the end the piskeys had won and the faeries had retreated to their own lands.
‘And after that day,’ he finished, ‘they never dared march upon our borders again. Once or twice a troop of them came sneaking across the Tamar, claiming some patch of woodland as their wyld and pretending they’d always lived there. But they soon thought better of it once a few of our boys paid them a visit, and now there’s hardly a faery to be found from Launceston to Land’s End.’
Which was probably for the best, Ivy thought. Faeries might not be as vicious as spriggans, but they were far too cunning and ruthless to be trusted. Still, she couldn’t blame Cicely for being curious about them, because they were said to be eternally young and beautiful, with graceful bodies and wings clear as crystal, and as a child Ivy had often longed to see a faery herself.
‘Where’s Mica?’ asked Cicely, as the droll-teller wandered off in search of a drink. ‘He said he’d play jump-stones with me — oh, there he is.’ She moved to get up, but Ivy caught her arm.
‘He’s in a foul mood right now,’ she said. ‘I’d leave him alone, if I were you. Why don’t we play a game instead?’
As usual, the Lighting ended with the first rosy glimmer of dawn. The last of the piskey-wine was poured out on the ashes of the wakefire, and the tables and benches whisked into storage. The Joan pronounced her blessing on the company, and with that all the revellers — yawning musicians and sore-footed dancers, pranksters and victims, knockers and hunters, aunties and maidens — headed back into the Delve for some well-earned sleep.
‘I’m telling you, it was a spriggan,’ Ivy said, as Mica laid the slumbering Cicely in her alcove. ‘If Matt hadn’t shown up when he did…’
‘And I’m telling you it was Keeve, hiding in the gorse-bushes with a tablecloth over his head,’ said Mica. He sat down on the edge of his bed and started pulling off his boots. ‘He did the same thing last year, remember? Jumped up behind the droll-teller and made everyone scream.’ He flopped onto the mattress. ‘I should have throttled him then.’
‘It wasn’t Keeve,’ said Ivy. Keeve’s eyes were black and bright with boyish mischief, nothing like the slate-grey stare that had so chilled her. ‘And I know what a tablecloth looks like. Why can’t you believe-’
But Mica’s eyes were closed, and a snore was bubbling up between his lips. He wasn’t pretending, either. Mica could drop off into a deep slumber in an instant, and Ivy, who often struggled to sleep, found it one of the most infuriating things about him.
Meanwhile, the adder’s body still lay in the middle of the cavern, its blood pooling on the granite. And though Ivy realised now that Mica wasn’t to blame, she resented him for not even offering to clean up the mess.
Flint wouldn’t be any help either, even if she’d had the courage to ask him. He’d left the Lighting early and his thunder-axe was gone from its place by the door, which meant he’d already slept as much as he needed to before heading off to the diggings again.
Resigned, Ivy crouched by the snake’s limp body, pulled the sack over its mangled head and started shoving the rest of it back in. She’d stick it in the cold-hole for now, and give it to Keeve once they all woke up — along with a good piece of her mind. Maybe then he’d think better of switching sacks on his fellow hunters, especially without making sure the snake was properly dead first.
The cavern was still quiet when Ivy woke several hours later, the only light her own glow reflected in its copper-tiled walls. It had taken her father years to refine all that metal and hammer it into shape, but he’d worked every spare moment until it was done. He’d also polished the floor to bring out every fleck and ripple in the granite, and as if that weren’t enough, he’d begun inlaying the stone with silver all around the edges.
He’d only finished half the cavern when Marigold disappeared. A few chiselled swirls continued where the silver left off, but they’d never been filled, and in the end Ivy had dragged an old trunk over those forlorn two paces of stone so she wouldn’t have to look at them.
She padded to the water-channel and washed her face and hands, then opened the clothespress she shared with Cicely and took out a sleeveless blouse and skirt. Closer to the surface the Delve could be cool, but not here, and where Ivy was going it would be warmer still. Once dressed, she studied herself critically in the mirror. Should she leave her shoulder-length curls down, as she usually did? Or would she look older and more serious with her hair up?
‘You look nice,’ said Cicely sleepily from her alcove. ‘Where are you going?’
Ivy put the mirror aside. ‘To talk to the Joan,’ she said.
‘What about?’
She didn’t like to frighten Cicely, especially since Mica hadn’t even had a chance to talk to her yet. But she couldn’t lie to her, either. ‘I saw a spriggan last night, outside the Engine House,’ she said in an offhand tone, hoping Cicely would assume she’d only glimpsed it from a distance. ‘It ran away before I could point it out to anyone, and Mica thinks it was only Keeve playing a prank. But I thought the Joan and Jack ought to know.’
‘Oh,’ Cicely said in a small voice, and Ivy could tell the news had troubled her. Well, maybe that was for the best — it would make it all the easier for Mica to talk to her when the time came. Ivy slid a copper arm-ring up above each elbow and pinched it tight, then stooped to kiss her sister’s forehead.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘Wish me luck.’
‘You’ll need that and a hammer to get Aunt Betony to listen to you,’ said Mica from his alcove. He swept the curtains aside and clambered out of bed, scratching his bare chest. ‘What’s for dinner?’
‘There’s plenty of adder in the cold-hole,’ said Ivy sweetly, and walked out.
As Ivy headed down the stairs to the next level, she was struck by how quiet the Delve was. Usually at this time of day there’d be children chasing each other through the corridors, matrons carrying baskets of laundry up from the wash-cistern, knockers returning from the diggings with their thunder-axes over their shoulders. But right now most of her fellow piskeys were still sleeping, and Ivy walked the passages alone.
Soon another set of stairs took her down to Silverlode Passage, where threads of the precious metal still shone bright against the granite. The tunnel was wider here, as it was one of the main thoroughfares of the Delve, and the most direct route to the cavern where the piskeys held their market. Yet even this passage was empty, which made Ivy feel lonely and strangely liberated at the same time. She appreciated the close-knit community of the Delve, where everyone looked out not only for their own interests but also for everyone else’s. But there were times when her fellow piskeys’ company became stifling, and it was a relief to be by herself for a while.