Chapter Twenty-One

“W e have a steam engine here to pump water out of the lower adits,” Nat said, indicating the smoke emerging from the tall chimney. “The best veins head out under the sea—veins of copper and tin, although we’re only working tin here, and have been since before I was born. Not much of a market for copper any longer. Not like there was in my great-grandfather’s time. That was how he made his fortune. To start with. Unfortunately, it all comes from North Wales now, where it’s less expensive to produce.”

Caroline stared out across the foam-flecked sea. “If the veins go out under the sea, does the mine as well? Do the miners have to dig tunnels under the sea to get at the tin?” How awful that sounded. Even in her imagination, the thought of tunnelling under the sea seemed terrifying.

He nodded. “They have to be very careful where they dig and not get too near the sea floor or the sea would come flooding in. There’d be no time to evacuate.”

A shiver ran down Caroline’s back at the thought. “How far out does the mine go?”

“The adits in Wheal True, our other mine, go out a mile at least. These not so far. But some of the old adits in this one are hundreds of years old.”

“Have you been down the mine?” Yves asked, kicking the reluctant Blossom forward. “I’d like to see what it’s like.”

Nat nodded. “Many times, as a boy. I worked here some of my summers when I was old enough. But not for more than eleven years now.”

“Did you go out under the sea?” Caroline asked, another shiver running down her back at the thought of Nat out there with all that water above his head.

Nat nodded again. “Sometimes, when you’re down there, you hear the boulders being rolled about on the seabed above your head by the water, and the roaring of the waves when the sea’s rough. A bit unnerving to start with, but you get used to it.”

“Weren’t you afraid the sea would break through?” Caroline had always suffered from slight claustrophobia and the very thought of being in a tunnel beneath not just miles of rock but the sea as well set her heart pounding.

“You don’t think about it,” Nat said with a dismissive shrug. “Don’t forget. I was a boy then and boys never think of danger.”

An image of Ysella’s older brother Kit, with whom their respective mothers had once tried to engineer a match for her, hanging upside down from a high branch in a tree on the Ormonde estate flashed into Caroline’s head, and she laughed. “Very true. I have yet to meet a boy for whom caution is a natural attribute.”

“So can I go down the mine?” Yves asked, as if to prove her words. “As it’s going to belong to me one day, surely I should be able to see what it’s like down there. I really, really want to go down the mine.”

Nat shook his head. “Not now. You’re too young. Maybe when you’re older.”

Yves’s lower lip jutted in rebellion, but he had the sense not to argue. Nat had about him the air of a man with whom it wouldn’t be a good idea to do that.

Nat turned Duchess toward a long, low building off to one side from the mine workings. “We’ll tether our horses here, by the count house, and see if anyone’s about.” He gave a shrug, taking out his pocket watch to consult the time. “Most of the men should be down the mine, but as it’s nearly time for the changeover of shifts, they should be coming up soon.”

“Do they work at nights as well?” Caroline asked, eyes widening.

Nat nodded. “It makes no difference if you’re down in the dark whether outside is day or night. And it increases production.”

“Is that something Trefusis introduced?” Somehow, if it were Trefusis who’d brought in this regime, it would feel better.

But Nat shook his head. “No. It’s always been done. Shift work employs more men, and puts food on the table of more families. They’re glad to have the work.” He pointed a finger. “The bal maidens don’t work at night though. Just in daylight hours as they work above ground.”

“What’s a bal maiden?” Caroline asked as she halted Folly beside a handy hitching ring someone had embedded in the stone wall of the count house. Yves was already slithering off Blossom, his eyes fixed in longing on the mine buildings. “Yves. Do not run on ahead. This is a mine and it could be dangerous.”

Nat dismounted. “A girl whose job it is to break up the ore the men bring to the surface. It earns them a bit of extra money, which helps their families. They don’t earn what a miner earns though.” He grabbed Yves by the collar. “What did Miss Fairfield just say to you? Stay here. She’s quite right about the danger and you know nothing of how to behave at a mine.”

Yves’s shoulders sagged, but he didn’t run off.

Caroline glanced at the ground. Could she manage to slide down from Folly without hooking her habit up too much? Ysella had the right idea. Men’s clothing was much better suited to riding horses than a woman’s riding habit. But Caroline had until now felt no inclination to dress as a boy, unlike her friend Ysella.

Nat held out his arms.

A curious unwillingness to allow him to help her down washed over Caroline. Not that she didn’t want him to touch her, but more that she didn’t want to be beholden to someone whose motives she didn’t entirely trust. How difficult her feelings were making this for her.

“Let me help you,” he said.

Nothing for it but to allow him to play the gentleman. She unhooked her leg from the saddle’s high pommel and slid down into his arms. How strong he was and how firm his hold on her waist. Unnervingly so, and really quite exciting. She reprimanded herself for having these feelings. She did not want to provoke thoughts like this about him, or indeed about any young man. The only male she could think of right now was Yves. He was the important one in her life.

For just a moment, Nat stared down into her eyes, his hands still firmly on her waist. Was he not going to let her go? She removed her own hand from his arm, where necessity and balance had forced her to put it, and took a step back, out of his grasp. Why on earth was her heart pounding so hard? Had he been able to feel it under her ribs? Under his hands? This was ridiculous. She’d met many men more handsome and eligible than Nat, including the one she’d fancied herself in love with several years ago, before he’d gone off to fight Boney and never returned, but never had she felt quite as flustered as Nat was making her. Warmth crept up her cheeks and there was nothing she could do about it.

Saved by the bell, or rather by the door of the count house opening with a bang.

A large man, in the sort of shabby, workaday suit that told her he couldn’t be a common miner but also wasn’t a gentleman, strode out into the bright sunshine, one hand up to shade his eyes. He paused for a moment then started forward, a grin on his broad face. “Why if ’tain’t Master Nathaniel. Well, I’m blowed.” His gaze flicked over Nat’s face but the smile barely lessened. “I’d know ’ee anywhere, even after all these years.” He held out a huge, square hand and seized Nat’s. “I’m that glad to see you back safe from the wars. That glad.”

“Gryff Casworan. I didn’t dare to hope you’d still be here.” Nat’s ravaged face twisted itself into a one-sided smile, the most genuine Caroline had seen so far. He must really like this burly stranger.

Mr. Casworan appeared to notice Yves and Caroline for the first time. “And this’ll be the little master, no doubting.” He held out his hand to Yves, who after a moment’s hesitation put his own small one in it and was rewarded by having it pumped up and down in a hearty handshake. “You don’t look too sickly to me, young master.”

“I’m not,” Yves said. “Why does everyone keep saying I am?” He lifted his right arm, bending it at the elbow and clenching his fist. “Feel my muscles. I’m as strong as a…as strong as a piece of Cornish granite.”

Mr. Casworan burst out laughing, but he did feel Yves’s muscles. “Aye, lad, you are, that,” he said, surreptitiously winking at Nat. “You’re stronger than Nat here were at your age, I’ll give you that.”

A wide grin split Yves’s face from ear to ear, tinged with a speck of smug superiority as he glanced at Nat, who seemed to be keeping a straight face with difficulty, his lips twitching. Caroline couldn’t help but smile at this exchange. She took a better look at the tactful Mr. Casworan.

Taller than Nat by several inches, and more solidly built, Gryff Casworan had a powerful look about him only a little softened by a budding pot belly, as though lately life had been treating him rather too well.

“May I present Miss Fairfield, Yves’s governess,” Nat said, and Caroline found herself the recipient of a deep bow from this friendly giant. “And this is my old friend, Gryff Casworan. He and I go back a long way.”

“To when you was nothing but a slip of a boy scarce any bigger than this one here,” Gryff said, ruffling Yves’s already wind-ruffled hair. “And if he isn’t as like you as a pair of peas in their pod, I’ll eat my hat. And it’s a new one, so it’d be hard chewing. I can see you two are close related.”

“We’re cousins,” Yves said. “Our fathers were brothers.”

“I know that, young master,” Gryff said. “I knowed both your fathers well. Not that your own father wanted to make hisself known down here at the mine. He preferred the family ship builders over to Falmouth. Not like your cousin Nathaniel and his pa.” He looked at Nat. “Mr. Treloar I should say now, I suppose. Lessen you want me to call you major?”

“Nat did me well enough when I was a boy working with you, and will do me fine now. I’ve had enough of army hierarchy to last me a lifetime.” Nat gestured at the count house. “But how is it that I find you installed in the count house and not working in an adit?”

Gryff’s chest inflated with obvious pride. “Mine Captain now, I am. And that’s a funny story.” He waved a hand to encompass his body. “Grew too big, is what I did. Look at me. I don’t fit down those tunnels no more, not like I did when you and I were lads. And thanks to you teaching me to read and reckon, Mr. Robert put me in the count house. I been here ever since, although that new man of your mother’s, Mr. Trefusis, he keeps on coming to look over my shoulder. Seems to think I might be swindling him and your ma.” He heaved a sigh. “He don’t know nothing about how to manage men and win their hearts, that one. There’s no one here at Wheal Jenny as cares for him.”

Nat’s brow lowered. “I suspected as much. That’s one of the reasons I’m here today. I’ve been out over to some of the farms to visit my grandfather’s tenants, and I wasn’t impressed with Trefusis’s methods of management.”

Casworan grimaced. “I doubt there’s much you can do about it. He’s dug his feet in under that table, all right.” He shook his head. “I spend most of my time up here in the count house, but I still gets to go down the mine from time to time. Gotta be seen by the men and gotta see the conditions they’re working in, like your granfer used to say. And they’ve gotta see me and know I’m on their side. Trefusis ain’t like your pa was, God rest his soul. He’s never set foot in any of the mines.” He shook his head again. “He’s a hard master, I have to say. Since old Sir Hugh were forced to give up the governance of the estate and the mines, and your mother brung Trefusis in, he’s been squeezing it any which way to get more production out of it for less expenditure. Many’s the family that’s feeling the pinch now, both miners and tenant farmers.”

“That was one of the things I came over here to find out,” Nat said. “But I didn’t think to find someone I knew straight away who could tell me about it. I’m very glad I came.”

Yves, bored by the conversation, was wandering off, so Caroline followed him, leaving Nat to discover more of what Trefusis had been up to. As they approached the mine buildings, a whistle blew, making her jump. Yves glanced over his shoulder. “What was that for?”

She didn’t need to answer though. A column of people was coming over the brow of the hill, following a rough track from inland. Their voices, carried by the wind, drifted across the heathery hillside. Good heavens. They were singing a hymn she knew— Love Divine All Loves Excelling . Out here in the late afternoon sunshine, with a sea breeze stirring her hair, and a throng of tatty miners with their voices raised in worship on their way to work in the bowels of the earth, the hymn she knew so well took on an almost mystical air.

“Shift changeover,” Nat said, coming to stand beside her. “The miners down below will be coming up the shafts and these new ones will be taking over.”

“But some of them are children,” Yves said, staring at the approaching relief miners. “Like me.”

Sure enough, a proportion of the new miners were indeed children, who might well have been scarcely older than Yves. They certainly weren’t much bigger. Like their elders, they sang with lusty enthusiasm, swinging small pails that might have contained their sustenance for the night shift.

Of course, Caroline knew about child workers, but living in Wiltshire had done nothing to prepare her for seeing them. Everything in her heart cried out that it must be wrong to send children down into a place she would never go herself. She couldn’t argue with children having to work in daylight, although she wasn’t sure what they might be working at, if she were honest, but to send children down into the dark seemed a terrible thing to do.

She glanced at Nat and Gryff, standing side by side watching the changeover. “Does the mine need to employ such young children?”

Nat shrugged. “Their families need the money they can bring in. The girls work as bal maidens, but the boys go down the mines, where they’re used to squeeze into small gaps a grown man can’t fit into.”

Gryff met her gaze. “I first went down there when I was eight years old.”

That was younger than Yves. “Couldn’t their fathers’ wages be increased so the children don’t need to work?”

Nat compressed his lips. “You’ll have to ask Trefusis that one, as he’s in charge now. Or my mother, as it seems she still holds the purse strings. And if you do that, then you’re a braver soul than I am. She’s never taken kindly to being told what to do.”

“How do they get up and down the mine?” Yves asked, stepping nearer. Some of the children, now they were up close, were looking in curiosity at him, in his clean clothes and with his striking blonde hair and wind-flushed cheeks that gave him a healthy, rosy-faced look. A stark contrast to the children’s dirty clothes, pale faces, and what seemed like uniformly mud-colored hair.

“Ladders,” Gryff said. “From level to level. Down the ladder shaft. They’ll have to wait until all the men and boys from the last shift are up, then they’ll climb down and start work.”

Caroline shivered, the hope that she’d never have to find out what it was like to go down a mine at the forefront of her mind.

A few men appeared from amongst the buildings, dirty and disheveled and walking with their backs bent and their heads down as though exhausted. Amongst them a smattering of children in a similar state. Was this what working all day in a mine did to you? As a boy, had Nat come up from the depths looking like this? But he’d been going home to a hot bath and a fine dinner, unlike some of these workers who might only be going home to a cold hearth and the barest of meals. The hymn singing of the approaching night shift had ceased, and they were standing back, watching the day shift as they blinked in the unaccustomed sunlight.

“They look terrible,” Caroline said.

Nat nodded. “You’re right. They do.” He turned to look at Casworan accusingly. “Why do they look like this? It may be eleven years since I was here, but what’s been happening? I don’t remember the men being like this when I last worked with them.”

Casworan had the grace to look embarrassed. “There’s nothing I can do. Mr. Trefusis has reduced wages to save money and the price of bread has done nothing but rise. These people are sending out their children to earn enough money just to eat. They can’t afford to put clothes on their backs or boots on their feet.”

Nat shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

Casworan raised his shoulders and grimaced. “Who? Mrs. Treloar lets Trefusis do as he wishes. Sir Hugh’s an invalid whose information is filtered through his nurse so he knows nothing of what Trefusis gets up to. No one’s going to let me have an audience with him, and even if I did see him, what can he do from his sickbed? Apart from Trefusis and your mother, who don’t care, who else is there to tell? And if I were to go to the other local mine owners do you think they’d take my side against one of their own?”

Of course they wouldn’t. The landed gentry stuck together through thick and thin. It had been the same in Wiltshire.

“Those children look hungry,” Yves said. “Can’t we get them food? Look how thin and dirty they are.” He looked up at Caroline. “I don’t think I really do want to go down the mine if that’s what it does to you.”

Nat banged his fist into the palm of his other hand. “How long has this been going on?”

Casworan sucked in his lips. “Since your grandfather suffered his nasty turn. ’Twas said he were going to die, but he rallied. Only with him confined to his bedroom, there were no one to make sure all was fair. He were a hard taskmaster in his day, that’s certain, but he were a fair one. He used to say he’d give a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work. And he did. Not like Trefusis.”

“I see you apportion no blame to my mother.”

Casworan stayed silent, but his expression spoke volumes.

Nat punched his hand again. “A workforce treated like this is not a happy workforce. This is more like slave labor. I saw some of that on my travels. But I’m home now and if I do nothing else, I’ll see our workers treated better.” His brows lowered. “And Trefusis kicked out of Treloar.”

“Good,” Yves said. “I don’t like him and nor does Hetty.”

Children were such good judges of character.