Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  She had taken pains with her appearance. She wore the hat he'd given her and a fancy pair of green leather gauntlet gloves. Her riding habit was old and outdated, but the only one she owned. It had black frog buttons and bugle trimming and was fashioned of a dusty rose kerseymere that Gram assured her was flattering to her complexion.

  She approached Caerhays Hall from the coast road. Its gray chimneys and gables could barely be seen through a thick curtain of elm and sycamore and wild nut trees, yet the castellated manor house was massive, built of gray stonework discolored by salt and wind. No panes were left in any of the salt-encrusted windows, and many of the shutters were missing or dangling by one hinge. The wind stirred the dead leaves and grass piled in drifts on the front steps. It was as if no one living had set foot here in years.

  A door slammed shut behind her, and she twisted around in the saddle. A tall, lean figure emerged from the gatehouse, and the bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach at the sight of him.

  "Good afternoon, Lieutenant," she called, smiling.

  His head snapped up. He paused a moment, then strode toward her. "What the devil are you doing here?" he said, practically snarling the words.

  Her smile faltered. "I was wondering... if you wanted to go for a ride."

  "My horse is lame, and I'm busy."

  He was dressed rough, in a miner's blue wool coat and old drill trousers. He carried a haversack slung over his shoulder and a small pick stuck through his belt. He swung away from her and walked down the lane, using long, limping strides.

  She brought Prudence into a trot to catch up, then eased her down into a walk beside him. He hadn't shaved this morning. The lines were drawn white around his mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot. He held his head as if it hurt even to breathe. She knew what was wrong with him. He looked like the Sarn't Major after he'd spent all night in a kiddley getting good and pickled on blue ruin.

  She decided to behave with him just as she did with the Sarn't Major—which was to ignore his surly temper. "Where are you going?" she asked brightly.

  She thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he said, "Wheal Patience."

  Wheal Patience was an exhausted copper mine on the south coast, at the very edge of the Caerhays estate. "That's a bit of a ways to walk—"

  His head swiveled around, and he impaled her with his dark gaze. "For a crookshank."

  "For anyone. Really, Lieutenant. I can't imagine why you are throwing your unfortunate injury up in my face, unless it is an attempt to give me cause to pity you. In which case you are far off the mark, sir, for I'm much more likely to think ill of your sulky ways."

  "My what?" He had stopped and was staring at her as if he couldn't believe her temerity.

  "You are sulking. Like a little boy who has been whipped and then sent to bed without his supper. Who's the wicked ogre who has been mean to you and made you so unhappy?"

  "It just so happens that I'm as happy as a weevil in a biscuit. As happy as a flea on a mule. As happy, dammit, as a randy tom in a cathouse. Now, if you will grant me leave, I have business to attend to." He started down the lane again, walking stiffly in a poor effort to disguise his limp.

  Jessalyn sent Prudence ahead of him, then wheeled the mare around, blocking his path. Smiling broadly to take the sourness out of his temper, she slipped her foot from the stirrup so that he could use it. She leaned over and held out her hand. "Come, Lieutenant. Prudence doesn't mind carrying double."

  "I told you to stay away from me."

  The blunt cruelty of his words so stunned her she simply sat there saying nothing, doing nothing. Tears pressed behind her eyes. She blinked hard to hold them back.

  She fumbled with the reins to turn Prudence's head, but he grabbed the shank of the bit, stilling the mare. "You think that simply because you are gently bred and so bloody young that I will have a care for you, that I will suddenly develop a conscience where I've never had one before. You couldn't be more wrong. I am fire, and if you play with me, little girl, you are going to get burned."

  She looked down into his upturned face, a face as impenetrable as the cliffs at their backs. She couldn't make herself believe that he would ever really hurt her. She didn't want to believe it.

  She held out her hand again. "I trust you."

  His mouth twisted into a mean smile. "Don't. Oh, don't, Miss Letty. Don't ever trust me." Yet he reached up and put his hand into hers.

  They rode in silence, his chest pressed against her back, his hands resting lightly on her waist. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, feel it fluttering and brushing all over her skin like the wings of a thousand butterflies.

  She felt caught and helpless—as if the currents of Crook-neck Cove had gotten her.

  The land around Wheal Patience was wild and bare, falling sharply to the sea. No coves and beaches marked the coastline. Only stark cliffs, seamed by the wind and weather like a fisherman's face, and an occasional narrow neck of pebbly sand strung with garlands of seaweed.

  The enginehouse stood on a promontory of rock with the sea frothing at its base. The tall brick tower rose like a mined cathedral against the cloud-shredded sky. No smoke curled from the chimney stack. The wind blew through empty windows, carrying ghostly echoes from when the mine was alive: the clang of the core bell; the throbbing beat of the pump engine; the shouts and laughter of men coming up to the bright sunlight after ten hours in the dark belly of the earth.

  Wheal Patience was unusual in that much of its subterraneous workings extended below the seabed several fathoms deep. The enginehouse was accessible only by foot at the end of a narrow, dangerous path. Even Jessalyn, who was used to the Cornish cliffs, found the way rough going. She imagined how it must have been for the men coming up from the night core in pitch-darkness and with a winter gale blowing.

  The pump engine had long ago been dismantled and sold for scrap; the house was empty now except for a rust-pitted shovel and an old barrow leaning drunkenly on one wheel. Lieutenant Trelawny went immediately to work, prying loose the rotting boards that covered the main shaft. They came free with a squeal of rage and a flying of splinters. Cold, stale air wafted up from the open bal at her feet, and Jessalyn repressed a shudder. The thought of going down deep into the earth had always frightened her.

  "What do you hope to find here?" she asked, the first words spoken since they had left Caerhays Hall.

  He took his time answering. The veins and sinews on the backs of his hands stood out as he pressed down on the iron crowbar. She stared at his hands, mesmerized by the power of them, hands that could both caress... and hurt.

  "Wheal Patience was mined only for copper in her day," he finally said. "I've been talking to some of the old tributers who worked her. They all claim to have seen evidence of tin-bearing lodes."

  There was a tightness in her chest. She realized that for some strange reason she'd been holding her breath. "And if you find tin, will you and your brother the earl reopen her?"

  "Not bloody likely. Starting up a venture takes a hell of a lot of capital."

  She wanted to ask him why they were here then. Perhaps mining was simply in his Cornish blood, for this was a land whose fortunes ebbed and flowed by what was brought out of the earth and the sea. A bal could bring untold riches for years and then suddenly run dry. Or the price of ore could drop beyond the cost of bringing it up from the ground. That was why the shareholders of a mine were called adventurers.

  "My grandmother held some shares in this mine," she said. She remembered when the mine had closed down, the winter she was ten. It had been a bad winter that year, days full of bitter frost and snow unusual for Cornwall. "So many men lost their livelihood when she shut down, and there was famine that year," she said, reminiscing aloud. "Many families wound up on the parish. A few even had to go into the workhouse...."

  He had gone still beside her. He stared down into the gaping black maw of the pit, and a strange light, the same passionate heat that she had seen on the day they
had ridden the locomotive, shone in his eyes. She knew suddenly that he had been lying. He was a gaming man; if he found tin, he wouldn't rest until he'd also found the means to start up the new venture.

  She touched his cheek, rough with beard stubble. She had wanted to do it a hundred times before; this time she did it without thinking. "You care, don't you? You would open the mine if you could, for Cornwall, so that the men here would have work...."

  His hand closed over hers. He raised his gaze to hersT and something flashed in his eyes. She had seen it before, when she had told him his locomotive could change the world: that look of bewildered hurt mixed with hope.

  She felt his jaw clench before he jerked her hand away. "I don't care about a bloody damn thing," he said.

  He bent over and removed an Instantaneous Light Box from his pack. He dipped the chlorate match into the bottle of vitriol, and it burst into flame. He lit a hempen candle, then fixed it to the front of a hard-brimmed hat with a lump of china clay.

  "You shouldn't go down alone," she said. "It isn't safe."

  "One of the tributers drew me a map."

  "But..." It was a cardinal rule, given to Cornishmen along with their mothers' milk: Never go down into a mine alone. Jessalyn chewed her lower lip. She knew she should offer to go with him, but just the thought of all those tons of rock and water bearing down on her head made her hands shake and cold sweat start out on her scalp. "I should come along with you," she said.

  He was bent over, taking more candles from the pack and stuffing them into his coat pocket. "No," he said, not even bothering to glance up at her.

  "But it isn't safe."

  He straightened and swung around to glare at her. "You are playing nursemaid again, Miss Letty, and frankly I am beginning to find it tedious."

  She glared back. "Fine then. But if you get lost, or a pit prop collapses and cracks open your stubborn head, don't expect me to come along and rescue you."

  His mouth curled into that expression that was meant to be a smile and wasn't at all. "I never expect anything from anyone. That way I am never disappointed."

  He bent over again to stuff more excavating tools into his belt: a heavy iron jumper and a rock drill. She stared down at his broad back, hating him. He had none of the qualities she had been taught to admire in a gentleman, no gallantry, no compassion, no kindness. There was no softness in him, none at all.

  The last thing he picked up was a coil of rope, and in spite of her anger Jessalyn had a sudden thought that she wanted to take that rope and bind him to her. Not just to stop him from going down into the mine but to keep him with her always.

  He swung onto the pit ladder. "I should be back up in an hour or so," he said, and the next thing she knew he was gone, swallowed up by the black hole in the ground.

  For a moment longer the light from his candle winked at her like a yellow eye before it, too, disappeared.

  Jessalyn sat on the cliff path, her feet dangling over the side. Below her the sea lay drab and sullen. High, flat clouds made the air seem hard and metallic, and the wind sighed mournfully among the rocks and bracken.

  It had to have been at least an hour since he had gone down into the mine. But he had said an hour or so. She cursed him for not being more specific and for being a stubborn, know-it-all cabbagehead to go alone in the first place. Then cursed herself for being such a pudding heart that she hadn't made him take her with him.

  She thought of all the evils that could have befallen him. It was an old mine. The pit props were doubtless rotted. Perhaps one had given way, letting loose tons of rock and sea and burying him alive. One of the tributers had drawn him a map of the workings, but what if it was inaccurate? Mines were a spider web of shafts and tunnels. It was easy to become lost and disoriented in the smooth, thick blackness of the earth.

  Waves thumped heavily against the cliff; the tide was coming in. Without a pump, the mine's lower levels would fill with water at flood tide, and when they filled, they filled fast. More miners had been drowned than had ever died from cave-ins. She saw him helpless, pinned beneath a collapsed pit prop, the cold black water rising up around him filling his mouth, smothering his cries, drowning him....

  She went back inside the enginehouse. She removed her primrose bonnet, set it out of the way on a windowsill where it would not get soiled, then peered down into the gaping shaft. Black and empty, like the dead part of the night. She couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it.

  She had to.

  He had taken the Instantaneous Light Box with him, but she found a tinderbox in the pack and plenty of extra candles. She didn't allow herself time to think. She slung the haversack over her shoulder and, clutching a burning candle tightly in one hand, descended the rickety wooden ladder that was nailed to the side of the vertical shaft. Her legs felt as soggy and mushy as day-old pudding.

  The ladder seemed to go down forever. Finally she reached the first level. She took a deep breath of air that was old and stale, like the crypt beneath a stone church. Her smoky, flickering candle cast shadows on water-slimed walls, but the supporting timbers above her head seemed sound enough. She called his name several times but got no answer.

  Now that she was down here, she realized there was actually little she could accomplish. She dared not go more than a few steps beyond the main shaft without risk of getting lost herself. This was not an adventure out of the pages of a blue book, and rather than save the day, she was more apt to make it worse. Although it wouldn't be very heroic of her, she knew the sensible thing to do would be to ride to Mousehole and fetch a couple of the old tinners to do the rescuing.

  She had her foot on the ladder, prepared to climb back out of the shaft, when she heard it—a faint, mewling cry. She froze, her breath trapped in her throat, ears straining, and just when she had herself convinced that she had imagined the whole thing, she heard it again. Louder this time, almost a scream, like someone in pain.

  Three tunnels led off from the main shaft. She thought the cry had come from the widest one, and she took it, climbing and slipping over piles of attle and other mining refuse. She paused a couple of times, trying to listen for the cry above the loud thumping of her own heart, but she didn't hear it again. Before long the way began to narrow, and soon she was walking bow-backed like an old crone. The tunnel sloped downward and was intersected by numerous crosscuts and winzes. But these were much smaller —just big enough to allow the passage of a man bent double, wheeling a barrow.

  She had expected it to be cold underground, but it was hot, and before long she was sweating. Under the ground... Tons of earth and rock and seawater pressing down, putting a strain on the prop timbers, old wood, weak and probably rotting—

  Stop it, she told herself sharply. "Lieutenant!" she shouted, and her voice echoed back at her, tenant... ant...

  She was beginning to think that she ought to return to the surface after all and ride for help, when the way ahead of her widened, spilling into a big cavern.

  Holding the candle above her head, she turned in a slow circle. The candle drew smoky patterns in the air, its feeble flame revealing the marks of old excavations and dark mottled veins in the rock. The place smelled rotten, of stagnant air and dead things. A crack in the stone seeped water in a small pool that was dark and smooth as bottle glass.

  She heard the cry again. So faint this time that she was not quite sure she had heard it. She waited, holding her breath.... There it was again.

  "Lieutenant!" she shouted, starting toward the direction of the cry.

  And stepped into a black hole.

  CHAPTER 8

  She twisted sharply, her flailing hands grasping at air. Her hips and knees banged into rough rock, and then her feet hit something wooden, a ladder, skidded along the rungs of a ladder. One of her scrabbling, clutching hands found the side rail, and she grabbed it, halting her fall with a hard jerk that wrenched her arm and tore a harsh cry from her throat. Pebbles and dirt rained down around her, falling into emptiness.

>   She hung, swinging by one arm, gasping and sobbing with terror. The candle had gone out, dropped when she fell, and the darkness was absolute. She had fallen into a shaft that led down to a new level, and the ladder, nailed into the rock, had saved her life.

  Slowly she searched with one foot, found a rung. She put her weight on it, and the wood gave way with a splintering crack. She slid down the ladder several more feet, ripping her glove and tearing the skin off her palm. Her scream echoed back at her.

  She hung, sucking at the foul, hot air and trying not to cry. Her arm shrieked with pain.

  She shouted for help, her voice bouncing up into the cavern and down, down, down.... Shouted until her throat was raw and she couldn't breathe. It felt as if there were a vise around her rib cage, pressing against her lungs, slowly strangling her. The pain in her arm and across her shoulders became so intense it was a scream in her mind. But the fingers of the hand that grasped the ladder were growing numb. She could not hang like this much longer. She was suffocating, and it was so hot... so hot... like hell.

  She would have to help herself, or she would die down here. Throwing her weight sideways, she swung like a pendulum, grabbing for the other side rail. Missed. Swung around again. Missed. Swung. Had it.

  The relief of taking some of the weight off her right arm was so exquisite she sobbed. But she allowed herself the luxury of only a few moments' rest. She pulled her leg up and put the toe of her boot on the first rung she could find. She applied the barest pressure, heard it crack. All the rungs were completely rotten.

  But the side rails seemed sturdy enough. She made sure she had a good grip with her left hand. Sucking in a deep breath of the hot, stagnant air, she let go with her right hand and slid it up the rail as far as she could reach, gripped, and pulled. Let go with her left hand, reached up, and pulled. Inch by painful inch she crabbed her way up the side of the shaft. It took an eternity. Sometimes she had to stop and rest. And test the rungs again, which were always rotten. She cried the whole time because it hurt so much. She told herself it didn't matter that she cried, because there was no one to see it.