9:30 AM, The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist Chester, England

“William! Is William up there?” yelled Rose.

Rose stood at the foot of the scaffolding looking up. Several men glanced down at her.

“Up here. I’ll be down in a moment,” William hollered back.

Rose watched as he made his way down the various levels of the scaffolding. He had taken over the Cathedral repairs for the Mason family. It kept them on the biggest job in the county and helped out the Mason girls.

“What can I do for you, Sister?”

“I heard you found out the source of what caused the scaffolding to collapse,” said Rose.

William just looked at her.

“Well, what was it?” Rose demanded.

“No offense Rose, but just what does this have to do with the convent?”

Nothing, its personal, your family are friends and I don’t believe this was an accident, there’s more to it than that.

“It’s a sorry world is not? Where the deaths of my uncle and cousin are left to be investigated by a nun. It’s a shame the Sheriff is not the Bishop, we might see him get off his behind and look for the man who killed them.” Williams said bitterly.

“The thing of it is, what you heard was nothing to do with the scaffolding coming down.”

“I’m not with you William,” Rose said in confusion. “I heard that….”

William interrupted her. “What you probably heard is the news that we have found out why this old wall is tilting in the first place and needs the work Uncle Edward was starting.

When we dug down to put in shoring, we found a space that shouldn’t be there. Nothing on any surveys or drawings see! We all thought we knew everything there was to know about this site and the churches built here. Seems we was wrong but that didn’t kill Uncle Edward. No, this tunnel or whatever it is, has been there since the first Church was built back in Saxon times or before most likely. It’s collapsing and that’s why the wall is leaning.

“Could you show me, William?”

William hesitated.

“Please William it’s important!”

William grunted then nodded and moved off.

Rose followed him to the front of the church where he unlocked the door before pushing it open.

“Got to keep it locked until we make it safe” he explained.

He led the way down the nave then turned to the right and the steps leading to the crypt. He lifted two oil lamps from a shelf at the top of the stairs and lit them, then handed one to Rose.

He appraised her for a moment, her face a mix of curiosity, fear and excitement. He shook his head then led the way down the steps. The crypt was not that large considering the size of the church above. Their lamps easily lit the space, though supporting columns left shadowed areas.

William pointed to the far wall where oak timbers as thick as a man’s thigh had been braced against the ceiling and wall to hold it. To one side was a small opening in the brickwork, large enough for a man to pass through. This too had thick timbers supporting the weight of the stone above.

“We are going to have to fill in behind that with stone and mortar to support the wall above. We are going to start later this morning.”

Rose moved closer trying to see into the space beyond.

“Rose! Be careful, it’s only those timbers keeping the whole structure in place at the moment.”

Rose lifted her lamp in front of her as stepped into the cramped space beyond the wall, crouching slightly to avoid touching the support timbers. It was clearly an old stone tunnel, the walls cracked and crumbling.

“Please Rose! I would never forgive myself if this all caved in on you!”

The tunnel only ran for a short distance before ending in a pile of stone and dirt sloping up to the ceiling.

“What do you make of this?” asked Rose, ignoring the stone mason. He had followed her into the tunnel space.

“I’d say this tunnel dates back to the original chapel or even before. The Roman tunnels we find used brick and cement, while this is all stone and daub.”

Rose approached a niche in the tunnel, and saw that the earthen floor had been disturbed, although the sides of a hole were hard packed.

“What was here William?”

“That was there already,” William replied. “None of my men have done anything other than brace the walls.”

Rose reached into her pocket and drew out a small copper mirror about six inches across with a wooden handle. She had fashioned the object, after reading about scrying in Dee’s book. Piecing together concepts on its design over the past few days. She had fashioned the object from materials she has scavenged about town.

She held it up at an angle to the lamp she held and murmured the words of the incantation she had read in Kelly’s book. Rose felt a little silly, doubly so with William standing there, but she forced herself to concentrate on looking beyond what was reflected there. She slowly turned the mirror this way and that as she turned in a circle trying to see all of the area.

There it was, as she came back to the alcove a faint flickering reflection of what might be a child, grey in color, digging up the ground; the image startled her and made her nearly drop the mirror. The image vanished, but it had worked!

“You all right there?” William asked, concerned. “Just what are you doing Rose? What’s that for? He nodded at the mirror.

“William have any children been in here?” she ignored the question; her voice was serious.

“No! Well not that I know of. Of course, a child could slip in but not when we were working and not now the door is locked! Why?”

“I…. I just had a feeling that a child was digging here,” said Rose hesitantly, her thoughts going to the image in the mirror, a small child, a boy she thought, only naked and grey.

“Well, I don’t see how that could be Sister, I was here when we broke through the wall into the tunnel and that hole in the floor was already there.”

“The hole had been dug before you opened the tunnel?”

“I hadn’t given it a thought, but yes it had to be, you can see from the way the soil is packed down that it has been there a long time. It was made after this was built,” he gestured around him.

William examined the hole and then looked at the scree slope from the collapsed roof.

"Now that you mention it, it’s clear that this was dug after the roof fell in, you can see the debris was moved out of the way,”

With the observation from William, Rose could see that there was a clear spot where the hole had been dug a few steps away from it and the ground was littered with broken stone and clumps of dried soil. She tried to work out in which direction the tunnel went.

“It’s going to the East isn’t it William?” she asked her friend as she went to examine the collapsed end of the tunnel.

“Please be careful, none of this has been supported,” urged William looking at the roof nervously. “It should be headed East if I haven’t been turned around coming down here.”

Rose lifted her lamp so that its light shone on the debris slope. Near the top of the slope there was less stone and more soil and it looked as if something had burrowed through from either the other side or above.

“William, what do you think happened here?” Rose’s curiosity was piqued.

The man made his way carefully next to her and held up his lamp. “An animal, maybe a badger or the like burrowed through.”

“Wouldn’t there be signs of it if that was the case?”

“Not if it turned around and went straight back out again, same as we should be doing!”

“Alright,” agreed Rose, “I want to see if this burrow comes out above ground anyway.”

They made their way carefully back into the crypt and then into the church proper. They extinguished their lamps and placed them on the shelf before leaving.

William gave a heartfelt sigh of relief as he locked the door. “Rose, God may be holding your hand at all times, but for us other mortals that was known as pushing your luck!”

“Let’s go look in the ruins,” said Rose with a smile.

They made their way to the east side of the church where once the old cathedral had stood. Its remains now littered the ground, along with an occasional headstone, fallen or askew, the names obliterated by time and the elements.

Now that they knew roughly where to look, the line of the collapsed tunnel could be made out. It had left a shallow depression in the soil which the grass cropped by sheep could not hide. Rose walked towards the back wall of the church and found the torn divots and soil of the burrow leading downwards. It was too small for a child, yet the image from the mirror…

“Over here, Rose!”

Rose joined William at the far end of the depression.

“Whatever was digging into the tunnel, started here!” Said William. “There’s no other digging between here and the one that goes into the tunnel. Dug here first and then over there.” He nodded towards the hole Rose had found.

“Would an animal do that William?”

He looked at her and fear was evident in his face. “No Rose, I don’t think so, I really don’t.”