Chapter Twelve

“I can come too?” Yves danced from one foot to the other in excitement. “I never get to go anywhere. Not since Grandpapa had to stay in bed. Before he got ill, he once took me into Penzance with him on his horse, but I was such a little boy then, I can’t remember it at all. Can we go to the harbor to see if any ships are in? I know there’s a harbor because Dickon told me so.”

Caroline had descended to the kitchens, where she’d found Young Pascoe just finishing his meal and, having enquired of him the correct road to take to get to Penzance, sent him out to get the pony and trap ready. Yves was eating a fat slab of bread, thickly spread with butter, in addition to the slice of pie Mrs. Teague had already fed him, the crumbs of which he picked up with a licked, and rather inky, fingertip.

“You do get to come,” Caroline said, choosing to ignore his now ink-stained tongue. “Because every whip needs a groom, and you are to be my groom today.”

“I’d rather be the whip,” Yves retorted, with a cheeky grin. “But I suppose being a groom will be quite tolerable. Will it be my job to open gates and things like that?”

Caroline nodded. “You will be in charge of that, if we encounter any.”

“And Hetty’s not coming?”

Caroline had toyed with the idea of asking Hetty, mainly because she might know the way, but the fact that the pony cart only had two places, and even though Yves was small and skinny it would be a squeeze with three of them, put her off. Added to the fact that if Hetty discovered what she was about, she might relay it to her mother, even if not on purpose. And somehow, Caroline did not think she wanted Mrs. Treloar to know anything about the true nature of her journey. Just in case there was something to worry about concerning the bottle of medicine. Although, even if there was nothing nefarious about it, no doubt Mrs. Treloar would be offended that Caroline had thought there could be.

“No, we’re taking the pony cart, so there’s no room for Hetty. I’ve suggested she use the time for useful piano practice.”

“Good,” Yves said with satisfaction. “Just you and me, then. And I don’t have to listen to her playing the piano all afternoon.” He pulled a disgusted face. “That’s such torture .”

They went out into the stableyard where they found Young Pascoe holding the bridle of a pretty dapple-gray mare no more than thirteen hands high, harnessed to a neatly painted two-wheeled pony cart. Caroline thanked him and climbed into the driving seat, and Yves scrambled up beside her.

“She might be a bit lively, Miss,” Young Pascoe said as he stepped back. “Not been out for a while.”

Caroline gathered the reins and took hold of the whip, keeping its long, dangling end under control with her fingers. “That’s quite all right, Tom. I’m well used to handling lively ponies.” Having grown up as friends with the Carlyon girls, whose mother was an accomplished horsewoman, Caroline had benefitted from plenty of experience both on the driver’s seat and in the saddle.

She clicked her tongue to the pony and it trotted smartly out onto the drive, small hooves and trap wheels crunching the gravel.

“Do you know what her name is?” Caroline asked, as she headed the pony down the way she should have entered by when she’d arrived.

Yves, leaning back in his seat with his spindly legs stuck forward, nodded. Today he had on breeches, miniature top boots, and a short navy jacket with brass buttons. Quite the little dandy. “Blossom. She’s the pony that pulls the garden equipment. You know. She does the lawns. She has to wear special shoes for that so she doesn’t make hoofprints on the grass. Aunt Ruth would have a fit if she saw a hoofprint. And she has to wear a sort of napkin to catch her poo.” He said this last with an air of bravado, his eyes resting on Caroline in speculation, perhaps waiting for a rebuke.

But Caroline had never been shy of referring to waste material—the Carlyon girls’ mother, Lady Ormonde, had taught her well. “What a very good idea,” she said. “I wish my mother had thought of that. Our poor gardener’s boy had to go round with a shovel and put whatever our garden pony did on the rose beds.”

Yves chuckled in delight. “I ride her sometimes. She’s very lazy. But Aunt Ruth won’t let me have a pony of my own. She says I’m not a good enough rider, but how I’m supposed to improve when all I have to ride is Blossom, I don’t know.” He sighed. “See down there where the road forks? I think we have to take the left-hand lane.”

Just as well. The right-hand alternative appeared to be no better than the rutted back way into Treloar and was blocked by a rickety gate. Blossom seemed to know her way and naturally headed left, although with a distinct lack of speed, despite Young Pascoe’s avowal that she was fresh. Caroline clicked her tongue again and tickled her rump with the end of the whip, and she sped up her trot. Within five minutes they reached the top road and turned left again, in the direction of Penzance.

Yves seemed much more wide awake now, chattering away about everything they came across, and pointing out the distinctive shapes of the mine workings in the distance. “That one’s Wheal Jenny, and over there’s Wheal True. Both of them are ours.” So the effects of the carminative must have worn off, at last. However, it still disturbed Caroline that something he’d been dosed with the night before had taken this long to lose its efficacy. No child should be as sleepy as Yves had been that morning. She could only presume the syrup had contained something to put him to sleep, and she didn’t like the idea of that at all. What might it be? Only an apothecary would be able to tell her that.

Her thoughts wandered to her previous neighbor, young Lady Ormonde, Ysella’s sister-in-law, with whom she had become good friends. Morvoren had been the lady of Ormonde Abbey now for a good three years, and was mother to two children. Little George, the heir, now a robust two-year-old, and his new baby sister, Elestren, named after her grandmother, the dowager.

Morvoren was very much what she liked to call “a hands-on mother,” a phrase Caroline had never come across before. She played a large part in her children’s upbringing and had insisted that neither of them be dosed with something called Godfrey’s Cordial that the children’s nurse had produced when George first began to teethe. Her aversion to this bordered on the manic, and all bottles of the cordial had been thrown away, much to the nurse’s annoyance.

Curious, Caroline had asked Morvoren why she was so set against her children being helped with their teething and colic.

“Because I don’t know what’s in it,” Morvoren replied, jaw set in that determined fashion she had. “And I don’t believe in giving anyone, still less my children, something I know nothing about, just to make them sleep to suit the adult who is in charge of their care. I strongly suspect it contains opium, and that’s not at all good for anyone. And besides which, it tastes awful. Have you tried it?”

As far as Caroline could remember, the cordial had tasted similar to the carminative, which was what had roused her suspicions in the first place. That and Yves being so sleepy after his first dose of it. It seemed highly likely it contained the opium Morvoren was so set against. And one thing she’d learned from her friend was to listen to her wisdom, which so far had been right every time.

“Look,” Yves cried in excitement. “I can see the sea!”

“You can see the sea every day from your bedroom window,” Caroline said with a smile. “What makes this sea any different?”

“That.” Yves pointed a finger. “A castle on an island.”

Caroline stared. He was quite correct. What looked like a small castle occupied a rocky island at the nearest end of a long beach. Surely it was too small to be of much use?

“I know what it is,” Yves announced, with pride. “Miss Hawkins told me all about it, even though she was never allowed to take me into Penzance to see it. It’s St Michael’s Mount and this must be Mount’s Bay. Miss Hawkins was Cornish, like me. She knew lots of stories about Cornwall.” He paused. “And I think I remember seeing it with Grandpapa that time he brought me with him when I was just a little boy.”

Their road, still nothing more than a track with potholes filled by large beach pebbles, began to go downhill as it followed the coastline toward the distant town of Penzance at the far end of the bay.

“Now Blossom’s not so lively, can I drive for a bit?” Yves asked.

Caroline narrowed her eyes. “Have you driven before?”

“Oh, lots of times.”

Was that too airy an answer? “Are you telling me a fib?”

Yves had the grace to blush. “Well, I’ve sat on the driver’s seat of the barouche a few times beside Old Pascoe. And watched him.” He grinned. “And I’ve been watching you.”

This made Caroline chuckle. “Nice try. Normally, I wouldn’t let you. But as there’s no one else about for you to crash Blossom into or run over, and it’s not hard…” She held out the reins to him. “Here. You hold these and I’ll keep hold of the whip. Just keep her going and try not to drive into any of the worst potholes. That’ll be the hardest thing to do.”

Yves seized the reins with gusto, clicking his tongue at Blossom non-stop. However, she seemed to sense the change of driver, and ignored his efforts to get her to speed up.

When they reached a little river tumbling across the road and making the going even more bumpy, Caroline took back the reins. The road was beginning to get more crowded and Yves was prone to being distracted by all the new sights. There was a lot to see for a little boy: a few market carts, people on foot or leading packhorses, a wagonload of hay being brought in from the fields to store for winter, some small boys kicking a makeshift football about. She smiled at him. “That was well done. You’ll make an excellent whip.”

Yves’s thin cheeks colored at her praise, and he settled back to enjoy the entry to Penzance itself, the picture of nonchalant relaxation.

Caroline, on the other hand, was decidedly on edge. This was a strange town, and however small, it represented a challenge to a woman with a child and a pony cart to take care of. The road they were on now led uphill, merging into what had to be the main street, many of the buildings being small, mostly seedy, shops of some kind. Now she just had to find somewhere to deposit Blossom and the cart before she and Yves began her detective work.

Her luck was in. On a corner, where a small side street turned off right-handed, stood a substantial inn—the Star. She drew Blossom to a halt in the road. Most inns possessed stables where you could leave your horse, so surely this one could be no exception. She was right. After a few moments, a scruffy boy not much older than Yves came slouching out, pushing back an old-fashioned tricorn hat that was too big for him and eyeing them up and down.

Caroline dismounted from the trap. “Jump down, Yves.” She fixed the disreputable boy with a hard stare. “Good afternoon. Stabling for an hour or so? With some hay for our pony?”

The boy wiped his sleeve across his nose and took hold of Blossom’s reins by the bit. “You pays inside.”

Caroline followed the boy’s advice, Yves trailing after her, but with his chin on his shoulder gawping back at the boy. No doubt he saw very few other children and it must have been a surprise for him to see one so close to himself in age employed at an inn.

The livery charge having been paid, Caroline took him by the hand, as he was much inclined to dawdle and stare at everything wide eyed, and returned to the street.

What she needed was an apothecary. But where to find one. Penzance did not look large, and its selection of shops matched it in size. A milliner’s, a haberdasher’s, a well-stocked fishmonger’s as you’d expect of a fishing village, a small iron monger’s, a butcher’s, a shoemaker’s, a tobacconist, and a plethora of inns and taverns, or so it seemed. But no sign of an apothecary.

A number of people were promenading in the street, each with a purposeful air, but from their clothing, most of them must be of the working class, and Caroline was not sure they’d be the ones to ask. She was saved the effort by Yves, who suddenly yanked his hand out of hers with a high-pitched squeal, and bolted across the road, narrowly missing being run over by a heavy dray.

Where on earth was he going?

Caroline waited for the dray to pass then crossed the road with more decorum only to find her young charge in the embrace of a stern-faced older lady. This lady, dressed in somber dark brown and with a plain shawl drawn about her shoulders, released Yves and straightened up, a wary look in her brown eyes. Her mousy hair was streaked with gray.

Caroline studied her for a moment. Average height and on the scrawny side, with a fiercely straight back and a look of taking no nonsense about her, she nevertheless possessed the sparkle of real tears in her eyes. And as she straightened, she took Yves’s hand in hers. A touch possessive.

Yves was bouncing on his feet with excitement. “Caroline! This is Miss Hawkins. My old governess. Isn’t it wonderful that we chanced to see one another?” He hopped up and down, beaming up at the woman. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Hawkie. Aunt Ruth told me you’d gone to London on the stagecoach to take up a new position.” His mouth down turned. “Why didn’t you come to say goodbye to me?”

Miss Hawkins held out her free hand to Caroline. “I take it you must be the new governess?”

Was there a hint of distrust in her tone? Caroline took the offered hand and nodded. “Caroline Fairfield, from Wiltshire.” She herself felt a strong wariness for this woman, although quite why, she couldn’t be certain. Almost as though trouble hovered around her in an invisible miasma.

However, Miss Hawkins’s hand in Caroline’s was strong and the grip firm. “Imogen Hawkins.”

An awkward silence ensued.

Oh well, she might as well ask Miss Hawkins as anyone else. At least if the woman had been dismissed by Mrs. Treloar, she wasn’t likely to report back anything about Caroline’s enquiries. Caroline cleared her throat. “I’m looking for an apothecary’s. Surely there must be one in a town this size?”

Miss Hawkins’s eyes narrowed and she glanced quickly down at Yves who was still staring up at her in childish awe. It was clear how much he cared for her, and from the softening of Miss Hawkins’s severe face, it seemed she cared for him as well. And she appeared to have been dismissed for wanting to keep him safer than she felt he was being kept. Which in itself was odd.

“Crago’s is just around the corner from the Star. Down New Street.” Her eyebrows rose. “Might I enquire what it is you need? I might have something I can give you.”

This was so clearly a probe, Caroline had to smile. “Nothing for me, nor Yves. I merely wanted to enquire about something I… came across the other day. I wanted to know what was in it.”

Miss Hawkins, still holding Yves by the hand, gestured with her other hand to Caroline in the direction of the Star. “I’ll show you where it is.” She began to walk, her steps unhurried, as though she wanted to elicit more information from Caroline en route.

Caroline might as well try. “I was wondering,” she began, walking side by side with Miss Hawkins and keeping her voice down low lest any passersby should hear, or Yves. However, he was staring in at the shop windows as they passed. “I was wondering if, in your life as a governess, you might have heard of something called Dalby’s Carminative?”

Miss Hawkins stopped dead. “Dalby’s Carminative?”

Yves was craning his neck to look at a pair of dogs fighting over some scraps.

Caroline nodded quickly. “Yes.”

“And where did you ‘come across’ this the other day?”

Why did Caroline get the impression this astute woman already knew the answer to her question. “In the nursery nurse’s bedroom. Bridget’s room. Locked in her corner cabinet above her washstand.”

Miss Hawkins gave an emphatic nod. “It’s as I feared. They’re trying it again.”

Caroline swallowed. “Trying what?”

Miss Hawkins met her gaze. “Not here. Come back to where I’m staying and I’ll tell you there.”