At the direction of Magistrate Vane, two court guards lifted Dennis Cole’s twenty-second slate tablet. Then they carried it to the raised witness stand. Beside the stone stood Mara Flint and Marta Cole, their hands resting upon the dark Welsh slate.
“Swear the witness,” Magistrate Vane commanded.
Mara Flint raised her right hand. “I swear by the living rock of Mount Sunder that these twenty-two slate leaves were recovered from the granite stone base of the Deep Gallery, where Dennis Cole and seventy-nine master cutters lie in their final rest behind the padlocked drop-gate on Level Four.”
Magistrate Vane adjusted his iron glasses, leaning over the bench to inspect the carving. “Read the final entry into the public record of the Crown.”
Mara cleared her throat. In the vast, crowded courtroom, the silence was so deep that the scratching of the clerk’s quill on parchment sounded like a rasp across dry wood.
“‘Day Twenty-Two,’” Mara read, her voice ringing with the tragic, unbending dignity of eighty dying craftsmen. “‘The water has risen to our knees in the haulage drift. We have shared the last crust of barley bread. No man broke rank. No man touched another’s ration. We have sharpened our last chisels and left our names in the living rock. So our children know we were true men who paid our debts with honest stone. May the law find this slate. Signed: Dennis Cole, Master Mason. Jonathan Vance. Peter Flint. And seventy-seven cutters of Mount Sunder.’”
