Chapter Thirty

C aroline stared at the small cave in the cliff face, not even high enough for her to enter without having to almost crouch. This did not look as though it could lead anywhere. Had Yves really gone into this uninviting hole? Why would anyone even want to? Sweat began to prickle out across her skin.

She glanced at Nat, but he was already scrambling over the remnants of what must once have been a path along the cliff edge, but had now been almost all washed into the sea through lack of maintenance and many years of rough weather. Over her shoulder, the waves seemed a lot closer than they had been, but that might have been an optical illusion… or her nerves. Had the tide turned, and was it even now creeping closer by the minute and threatening to shut off the little cove and them with it? She swallowed. She had to think of Yves and not her own safety, hard as that might be.

Nat ducked his head and disappeared into the dark mouth of the cave. In a moment he was outside again, holding up a garment Caroline recognized. Yves’s short blue jacket, the brass buttons on it glinting in the sunlight. “He left it lying just inside the entrance,” Nat said. “He can’t be too far ahead of us. Give me your hand and I’ll pull you up.”

Using his left hand, he hauled her up to stand in front of the cave entrance on a little platform of flat rock. He seemed to be holding his right arm against his chest as though in pain. A pang of guilt assaulted Caroline that she’d asked him to help her so soon after his injury. “I’m sorry. Your arm must be hurting you. I should have asked Young Pascoe to come with me instead.”

He shot her a reproving scowl. “He’d be no good to you at all. Never been down a mine in his life, and I doubt he even knows where this adit is. I’ve spent enough time in this one in particular to know my way about. We’ll find him, don’t worry.”

His positive air comforted her as much as his physical presence did. A man used to command and to facing danger. However bad they were at noticing things going on under their noses, men could be useful in a crisis.

Nat looked past her at the sea. “Time presses on, and we only have until the tide reaches the furthest rocks. We’d best get in there.”

He went first, and, having taken a huge, steadying breath, Caroline ducked her head and followed. Immediately darkness rushed in around her, compressing her body and making it hard to breathe. Her heart began to race and a fresh lot of cold sweat stood out on her skin. Her terror of enclosed spaces filled her head. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.

A flame flickered as Nat struck a match and lit one of the candles, sending the darkness fleeing. The interior of the cave leapt into immediate shadowy reality—a little larger on the inside than the entrance implied, but with walls and ceiling of jagged rock. How narrow it felt, with the walls close enough to touch without stretching out her arms. Underfoot lay soggy sand and lumps of rock, indicating just how far in the sea would come before too long.

Yes. She could do this. For Yves. She took another quivering breath. “Yves!” She shouted, but the rocks seemed to soak up her voice and dwindle it to nothing. Perhaps she was hoping for too much that he might still be near enough to hear her.

“Yves!” Nat joined in, his voice deep and strong, but still swallowed by the walls.

Nothing.

“Take hold of my coat and follow close behind me,” Nat said, seemingly oblivious to her terror. “Step carefully. I don’t want you stumbling and breaking your ankle.” She didn’t want that either. The last thing on earth she wanted was to be stuck in here with a broken limb. She swallowed; she was just going to have to be brave… for Yves.

Nat held the candle out in front of him, and Caroline did as she was told and took a tight hold on his coat tails. They progressed at snail’s pace into the tunnel. The adit . She had to remember it was called an adit. Somehow, remembering the proper name felt like a lifeline that might keep her mind off the reality of her situation.

A glance over her shoulder showed her the tiny dot of daylight that was the entrance disappear around a bend in the tunnel. Adit .

She mustn’t think of the tons of rock above her head, of the headland, the mine buildings on the top of it, of the sea chasing them up the beach. Adit . This was an adit . Think of Yves, lost in here somewhere. In this adit .

After about fifteen minutes of this slow progress, the flickering candlelight illuminated, badly, a fork in the narrow tunnel. To the right, the adit veered off slightly downhill, into murky brown water that must never drain away when the tide was out. To the left, the adit rose a little and headed very gently uphill, the path altogether drier, but considerably narrower. If that were possible. No wonder they sent skinny young boys down here. She swallowed down her fear yet again, an action made hard by how dry her mouth had become.

“He won’t have gone down that tunnel,” Nat said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The boy has some sense, I believe.”

Not that much or surely he wouldn’t have gone down here on his own in the first place.

Nat turned uphill, at over six feet, a tight fit, with his head scraping the tunnel roof and his shoulders the sides. As for Caroline, her skirts caught at the walls of the tunnel, snagging on the rough surface and her feet scuffed over the wet, rocky floor. Thank goodness she’d worn boots and not light shoes.

The flickering candlelight illuminated the walls, revealing streaks of blue running down them. “Copper leaching out of the rock,” Nat said. “See up there?” He pointed where a narrow shaft in the tunnel roof rose above them at an angle. “That’s where the old miners followed the vein of copper upwards.”

“I thought this was a tin mine.”

“It is, but there’s copper here as well. Or there was. Not much left now and too expensive to dig out. So we stick to tin.”

Water dripped and trickled down the rocks on both sides, pooling on the rough floor, and Caroline was glad again of her boots. How far were they going to have to go? She was a mole, blindly tunneling ever deeper into an earth that terrified her. Progress was by necessity slow, and Yves could be anywhere in here, even now lying injured somewhere they might not find him. She tightened her hold on Nat’s coat as they continued.

They hadn’t gone a lot further, or so it seemed, when Nat ground to a halt.

Caroline peered around him only to find the tunnel up ahead blocked by a pile of rocks and rubble. “It’s blocked,” she said, stating the obvious. “Where can he have gone?”

Nat shook his head. “Not fully blocked. Look.”

Sure enough, up near the top of the fall of rocks was a hole. Not a very large hole, but one a small boy could have wriggled through if he had a fancy to. However, it didn’t look large enough to allow either Nat or Caroline through.

Nat scrambled up and put his candle and face to the hole. “Yves! Are you there? Yves!”

Nothing.

Caroline, abandoned in the dark, her heart beating so fast and hard it might at any moment leap out of her mouth, bit her lip as she strained her ears for a reply. Oh, please let him be there. If only so they could get out of this dreadful tomb-like warren of ever-narrowing passages. Please.

“Yves!” Nat shouted again.

Nothing.

Caroline glanced over her shoulder into impenetrable blackness where anything could be lurking. No. She mustn’t go down that road or she’d go mad. “Maybe he didn’t come this way?” Her whisper hissed in the quiet of the tunnel.

Nat twisted to look at her, the candlelight throwing his face into stark planes of light and dark, highlighting his scar and bestowing on him a sinister appearance. “He must have. We found his coat, and I doubt he’d have taken that semi-flooded tunnel. He must have squeezed through here. I’m going to try and move a few of these rocks and see if I can make the hole big enough for me to get through. Stand back a bit, because I’ll be throwing them down.” He grimaced. “In fact, stand well back in case I bring the roof down on us.”

Caroline’s poor heart performed a fresh leap of terror. She stared at the pile of rocks. “Is that likely?” She couldn’t keep the tremble out of her voice. Thank goodness for the darkness that must be hiding the tears in her eyes. She had to be brave.

He shrugged. “Possible. Go back ten paces, but be careful not to fall.”

Into the darkness?

She retreated the required ten paces into the darkness with careful slowness. Should she have asked him to give her a candle? If there was another rock fall and he was buried, so would his candle be. Too late now.

She watched the small circle of light as Nat pulled at the rocks. He’d set the candle down and was using both arms for this, which couldn’t be good for his shoulder. A few of the smaller rocks tumbled down the pile onto the floor of the tunnel, location unseen. He strained at a larger one for what seemed forever, then that too tumbled down.

She kept her eyes fixed on the roof above his head, waiting for any sign of movement that might indicate another fall.

Nothing.

“I’ve done it,” he called back. “Make your way back to me very slowly. There are rocks where you won’t expect them.” He held up the candle and she did as he said. When she reached him, he moved the candle to illuminate the not-much-larger hole. “I’ll get through there now, and look for him. I’m going to light another candle for you, and send you back to the beach and safety.”

She shook her head. “No. I want to come with you.”

He sighed. “It’s too dangerous for a woman. It’s best if you go back.”

She shook her head again, surprised at herself. “No. What if he’s hurt?”

“What if the tide comes in and cuts you off?”

“It’ll do that to you as well. These tunnels will flood and you’ll drown.”

“That’s why I don’t want you here.”

She bit her lip. “Whether you like it or not, I’m coming too. You can’t stop me.” Was she mad? Probably.

They were at an impasse. He drew himself up to his full height, glowering at her. “Has anyone ever told you that you are the most frustrating of women?”

She glowered back at him. “Of course. And while we’re about it, has no one ever told you how difficult you are? No wonder I suspected you might be behind the attempt on Yves’s life.”

His eyes caught the candlelight. “You are the most outspoken young woman I’ve ever met. Only you would have been tenacious enough to bring us searching into a mine like this when it’s blatantly obvious you have claustrophobia.”

She opened her mouth to make a retort, but he forestalled her, catching hold of her shoulders and pulling her to him. His mouth came down on hers, hard, insistent, and hot with a mixture of what might have been frustration and… passion. His tongue parted her surprised lips, invaded her mouth, and found her tongue. She was too astonished to respond, but the shock rippled through her body, from the top of her head down to her legs, where her knees nearly buckled with a sensation quite new to her.

He released her mouth and retreated half a step, but without releasing his hold on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. It was the only way to shut you up.”

For once, Caroline could think of nothing to say for several long moments. When words returned, all she could manage was a rather hoarse, “I’m still coming with you.”

He gave a shrug, removed his hands and climbed up to the hole again. “Well, you’d best follow me then.” As though he hadn’t just kissed her like a lover, he shoved his head and shoulders through the hole, his legs scrabbled for an instant, and he was gone.

She was alone in the pitch blackness with her thoughts. And what thoughts they were. Never had anyone kissed her like that. Not even the dashing young officer she’d fancied herself in love with, who’d gone off to fight in the French wars and never come back. Her lips tingled with the feel of his mouth on hers, her knees still had trouble holding her up, and a curious sensation had inhabited her stomach, reminiscent of how she’d felt as a child when waiting for something exciting to happen, like Christmas or her birthday.

She didn’t have long for these thoughts, however. The light appeared in the hole, along with Nat’s face. “Hurry up, then.” He was back to being all practical.

Hitching up her skirts, she scrambled up the rocks and inserted her head and shoulders into the hole. The tunnel on the far side looked much the same as the first. But what if she got stuck? She probably had wider hips than Nat, being a girl, and he’d looked a tight fit.

She kicked out with her legs, to the sound of fabric ripping, wriggled as fast as she could, mainly out of rising panic, and she was through, an easier fit than Nat had been with his wide shoulders. He helped her to her feet on the other side and, for just a moment, they stood gazing into one another’s eyes. If she looked anything like he did, with his dirt smeared face and clothes, then not even her own mother would recognize her in the street.

“Onward,” Nat said, and set off along the tunnel. Adit .

Caroline, holding tight to his coat tails, struggled along behind him, only now she had something more to think about than how frightened she was. No, terrified. Now she had that kiss to think of. And how much she’d liked it. Had he meant it as more than a means of shutting her up? Had it made him feel the way it had her? Did she want him to do it again? Yes, she did. She wanted to feel that glorious shiver run through her body, so strong it had pushed aside her terror. She hugged the feeling to herself like a comforting blanket as she trudged along the tunnel. Adit .

After a bit, a thought broke through her ruminations on that kiss, and she tugged Nat’s coat to get him to halt. “Do you have your pocket watch? We need to know how much time we have left before the tide cuts us off.” Saying it out loud, although she’d been thinking it for a while, somehow made the reality of what might happen to them much more real. If only she hadn’t said it.

He frowned. “I came out in too much of a hurry. I’d say we might have to abandon any idea of going back to the beach and make our way up to the Wheal Jenny workings instead. This adit should connect to them still, if we’re lucky, and it hasn’t been completely blocked by another fall of rocks. I think we’re probably safe here from the sea. We’ve climbed for long enough that we should be well above high tide level, but we can’t go back that way unless we wait for the tide to go back out again, which won’t be until late evening.”

Small comfort. At least the threat of drowning like rats in a drain had retreated.

Caroline heaved in a lungful of the damp air. “Yves!”

She listened hard. Nothing. Or was that the faintest sound? It could have been dripping water, a falling stone… anything.

“Yves!” Nat called, his voice louder and stronger than hers.

Another faint sound.

Nat’s eyes lit up. “Did you hear that?”

“Was it an echo?”

“No. I don’t think it was. Come on.”

They hurried now, their boots scraping the rocks, their light bouncing around the low roof of the tunnel. Water ran down walls, stained here and there with the blue of more copper. If Yves had been this way, he’d have liked that.

Nat halted, his finger to his lips. They both listened.

Nothing.

“Yves!” Caroline shouted.

“Caroline!” His voice carried faint but clear through the echoing tunnels. “Help!”

“Yves! We’re coming. Hang on.”

Nat sped up, with Caroline stumbling along behind him in near darkness, expecting at any moment to fall flat on her face but, for once, her terror ignored.

“Caroline!” Yves’s voice grew louder, but high with fear.

Nat came to such a sudden halt that Caroline crashed into him. She steadied herself and squeezed past him. The inky surface of water twelve feet across reflected in the candlelight, nearly filling the tunnel floor from wall to wall. A good three feet below them, Yves’s small, pale face stared up from water that covered him to his neck, his hands clinging limpet-like to the rocky wall of the water-filled shaft he must have fallen into. He hadn’t been able to get out because the water level was too low.

“Caroline,” he whimpered, and one hand came away from the rock as he reached toward her.

“Hold on,” she cried, throwing herself down onto her front and reaching for his hand. “I’m here.”

But she couldn’t reach him and his remaining hand was slipping.

Nat dropped with a thud to the wet ground beside her and reached his longer arm for Yves’s hand, automatically using the right one. She saw his fingers close around Yves’s wrist and he heaved, his face contorted in a grimace of pain. Yves’s other hand slipped off its precarious grip on the rock, and, for a moment, all the boy’s weight hung from Nat’s right hand. Caroline stretched for him, their fingers touching as Nat gave a grunt of pain.

With a concerted heave, Nat pulled Yves partly out of the water and Caroline managed to snare his other hand, gripping him as tightly as she could. Together, they dragged the little boy further out of what had been going to be his watery grave. Nat’s other hand closed around Yves’s arm and the boy slid up over the side of the shaft to lie beached on the tunnel floor.

Caroline gathered him into her arms, holding his freezing body against her.

He might have been nine years old and a brave adventurer like his hero Robinson Crusoe, but he burst into tears, his whole body shaking violently.

Nat rose to his knees and pulled his coat off. “Get his wet shirt off and wrap him in this. Quick. We have to get him warm.”

Caroline did as she was told, pressing Yves against her own warm body, terrified by the iciness of his limbs. It was possible to die of cold, and Yves was frozen.

Nat stood up. “There’s nothing for it now. We have to go on and get to Wheal Jenny and the ladders. We can’t wait for the tide to go back out or he’ll die of cold down here.” He stepped closer to Caroline and put his long arms around her and Yves, sandwiching the little boy between them. “This is our only way of getting him warm.”

Yves was still crying, but less noisily, his face pressed against Caroline’s chest.

Caroline pressed him closer still. “Why ever did you do this, you cuckoo?”

He sniffled, his teeth chattering. “M-Mr. Trefusis said how exciting it would be and that if I wanted an adventure I should sneak off and do it by myself. He said he’d done it when he was a boy, and he was sure Nat would have.” He paused. “I wanted to be like Nat.”

Nat growled but said nothing. What more proof did they need?

Caroline held Yves closer still, his body trembling against hers, and Nat’s strong arms were around them both.

“We have to move,” he said, after another minute or two. “Give him to me and I’ll carry him.”

“What about your shoulder?”

“I’ll manage. Look at him. He can’t walk.”

“It might get his circulation going.”

“He’s not strong enough.”

He was right. Yves didn’t look capable of sitting up on his own, never mind walking. She nodded and Nat gathered Yves into his arms, his coat wrapped tightly around him. “We’d better get going. If we’re lucky we might come upon the miners after a bit and they can help us.”

One behind the other, they edged their way around the flooded shaft to the tunnel on the far side and, with Nat now following Caroline, who had the candle, set off along the narrow tunnel.