Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  She passed a mule train, heavy with panniers of tin bound for the coinage hall in Penzance. Perhaps some of the red ink on the earl's cost sheets would soon be turning to black, she thought. As she got within sight of the mine, she heard a party of bal-maidens singing in the washing hut and the thump and clatter of the tin stamp.

  The engine had just been coaled; thick smoke belched from the chimney, drifting across the scarred moors. Behind it rolled the sea, a bottle green, the color of Clarence Tiltwell's eyes. Odd that she would think of him now. Or perhaps not so odd, after all this talk of marriage. If she married anyone now, it would be Clarence. Yet still she straddled the fence, unable to tell him yes or no.

  She found Duncan within the enginehouse, hunkered down before the boiler. A piece of the brass plating had been removed, and he had his hand thrust inside a mess of tubes so tangled they looked like a plate of Italian noodles. He was wrenching at something with a spanner, and she wondered how he kept from scorching his fingers. Steam hissed and plopped in scalding drops onto the floor, and she could hear a steady throb thump and the suck and splash of water, which meant the pump was working.

  The enginehouse had lost much of the gaiety of opening day. It was the hub of a working mine now, filled with strips of canvas, miners' picks and shovels, storm lanterns, and kegs of blasting powder. Already the whitewashed walls were turning ocherous from the coal smoke, and the miners' dirty boots had left tracks of congealed grease and dried mud on the stone floor. Duncan, however, looked magnificent—stripped down to shirtsleeves and a yellow swansdown waistcoat that matched his hair, the muscles of his arms and back bunching with each twist of his wrist.

  The mine was between shifts, and so the house was empty of people. Besides Duncan, there was only a single tinner, who was even now climbing onto a round iron bucket the Cornish called a kibble, lurching into the shaft, bumping out of sight, and leaving Jessalyn alone with McCady's manservant.

  He turned and looked up at the sound of her footsteps. "Miss Letty? If ye're looking for his nibs, he's gone down—"

  She stopped before him, her hands fisted on her hips. "You have broken Becka's heart, and I demand to know what you are going to do about it."

  He tossed the spanner onto the stone floor with an angry clatter. He stood up, wiping his palms on a stained rag. "Her heart is no more broken than mine be. She willna have me."

  Jessalyn's eyes widened in surprise. "You've asked her to marry you?"

  "Aye, I've tossed her the handkerchief a'right," he said, the words coming out in a bitter rush. "And she tossed it right back at me. She told me she was a drunken tinner's ugly daughter, and I shamed her with my offer because I didna mean it, and if I meant it, I'd likely regret it. She said I'd soon get so pucky-sick of her scarred face, I'd be out for a lark with any moll or whore-bird who caught my eye, thereby shaming her even worse."

  "Oh, Becka..."

  He jerked his head. "Oh, aye. She thinks 'tis nae but lust as put the words into my mouth. She thinks some sort of witch she calls a knacker has put a lust spell on me. She even gave me something to counteract the magic." He tugged open his shirt and drew out a shriveled brown-green lump that was strung through the middle with a bit of twine. He held it up, shrugging. "Aweel, I had to put it on. I'd ae hurt her feelings otherwise. Do ye know what 'tis?"

  "It's a mummified frog."

  He dropped the charm as if it had suddenly been jolted into life with one of those electric currents and had tried to leap out of his hand. Jessalyn laughed, and after a moment his laughter joined with hers, though he sobered first. "Oh, Becka..." Jessalyn sighed. She stared at the man's averted face, at the finely sculpted nose and cheekbones, the sensual lips. "You must know you are a very handsome man, Duncan. I should imagine you are... well, that women might..."

  His beautiful mouth twisted into something that was not quite a smile. "Aye, ye've the right of it. I shave this phiz of mine every day. I know I've got what ye might call pleasing features. And I won't deny there's been a time or two when I've used them to get beneath a woman's skirts. But a straight nose and a well-shaped mouth... they're all chance. A good heart doesna lie behind a handsome face, no more than evil goes about dressed as ugliness." He looked at her out of tawny eyes that were pure and deep as springwaters. "There is in Miss Poole a sweetness, a goodness of heart the like of which I've never met before. I would count myself the luckiest man in the world if she would consent to share my life. And I would spend that life making sartain she never regretted her choice."

  "Oh, Becka... Perhaps if I talked to her, I might convince—"

  He shook his head, and his mouth softened into a gentle smile. "Nay. Don't ye worry, Miss Letty. I'll talk her round to my way of thinking, given time." The smile deepened, crinkling the tiny fan lines around his eyes. "And my word as a gentleman's gentleman: I willna take her to my bed till it can be as my wife."

  But Jessalyn was beginning to wonder if perhaps more ardent lovemaking on Duncan's part might be just what was needed to convince Becka of the sincerity of his feelings. She had opened her mouth to offer a delicately worded suggestion when the stone floor shivered beneath her feet as if the earth had caught an ague.

  Her startled gaze flew to Duncan's face. He had his head cocked toward the main shaft. A heartbeat later a great blast shook the enginehouse, and the ground heaved violently, knocking Jessalyn to her knees. Clouds of brown dust billowed out of the pit. A faint odor of sulfur singed the air.

  Shouts rebounded up the walls of the shaft; boots rang on stone. Through a haze of dust and smoke, Jessalyn saw a head top the ladder, eyes blinking molelike in a blackened face. In the stunned silence that had followed the explosion, Jessalyn could hear water dripping. The candle in the miner's hat flickered in the gloom.

  "There's been a fall on the seventh level!" he shouted as Duncan sprang forward to help him. "A bad un. There's four, mebbe five trapped." He hacked a cough. "Air's gone thick with dust. And tes flooding."

  Another man climbed out the pit in a temper, jerking the hard hat off his head and flinging it at the wall. "The shorings all come down on the back half of the winze. Some bleedin' fool set off powder down there."

  More miners spilled out of the black hole in the ground, looking like bog creatures with their muddy faces and wet, filthy clothes. One especially, with his squat-legged, thick-bellied body and greasy, shaggy hair. He held a hand up to his hat, shading his mud-splashed face with his arm. Hunching his back, he ducked under the great swinging beam rod, disappearing behind the pump engine. But for a flash of a second their gazes had met—and Jessalyn could almost have sworn she'd been looking into the snake gray eyes of Jacky Stout.

  Just then someone cried out from below that a man was coming up on the kibble with a broken arm. Jessalyn had hurried over to the shaft head to see if she could help when an echo came to her as if carried along on the gauzy ribbons of smoke and dust: If ye're looking for his nibs, he's gone down—

  She seized Duncan's arm so hard she nearly pitched the both of them into the pit. "Where is Lord Caerhays?"

  The face he turned to her was ash gray. "One of the tutworkers discovered a new tin-bearing lode. His nibs and the mine captain went down to see it for themselves." The color seemed to blanch from his eyes as he spoke. "The seventh level. He's on the seventh level."

  Jessalyn shook her head hard, as if by doing so she could shake off his words. "No. Oh, God..."

  Something pressed against her chest, cutting off her breath. He was down there, in the ground, buried beneath tons of rock and dirt, the black water rising, filling his mouth, smothering his screams.... Get him out, she had to get him out.

  A pile of mining gear and tackle lay heaped in one corner. She ran over to it; her hands clawed through metal and wood. She picked up a shovel, then saw something better: a rock drill. She started back to the shaft head.

  Duncan tried to pry the heavy iron drill from her shaking grip. She tugged back. She couldn't bear the thought of McCady's d
ying down there while she did nothing. "Let go of me, damn you."

  "Ye canna go down there, Miss Letty," Duncan said, laying a big hand on her shoulder, stilling her. "Ye'd only be in the way. And there's Lady Caerhays, she'll be needing ye."

  Her chest heaved; she couldn't seem to get enough air. At last she sucked in a great breath, and with it came a raw and impotent fury. Damn him. Damn McCady Trelawny for trying to leave her again. Always, always he left her. "I shall never forgive him for this," she raged aloud. "What was he thinking of? He's the earl now, he's not supposed to be going down into mines."

  Duncan expelled a deep sigh. He plucked a lantern off a peg on the wall and slammed a hard hat onto his head. "They said the load looked rich. And he's that desperate for the blunt, Miss Letty."

  Jessalyn let the drill clatter to the floor. She pressed back tears with the heels of her hands; she knew there wasn't anything she could do. Except wait.

  "Is he dead?"

  Emily tottered down the cliff path, the wind whipping at her blue hussar cloak, flattening it against the bulge of her stomach. Her face was the thin, translucent white of an eggshell. "Please tell me he's not dead."

  Jessalyn took her arm, steadying her. She felt so frail, as easy to blow away as a dry leaf. "He's been trapped by a fall, but they're digging him out." Saying it aloud, she could believe that it was true, that he would come out of it alive and whole.

  She tightened her grip on Emily's arm as Dr. Humphrey lumbered past them on the narrow path, the long tails of his frock coat slapping his legs. He carried his black bag in one hand, while the other kept his wig anchored to his head. Emily swayed, buffeted by his wake.

  "You mustn't try to make this climb," Jessalyn said, gently pushing her back up the path. "It's too dangerous, and you've the babe to think of. Come, I'll wait up on the bluff with you."

  They sat, side by side, with their backs braced against the rocks where the land fell sheer to the sea. The tall brick tower that was Wheal Patience thrust up from the promontory below them, like a rocket poised to fire. The sun set behind it, limning the bricks with a silver light.

  The sea wind cooled Jessalyn's face. She rubbed a chin that was tacky with dirt and the sweat of fear against her drawn-up knees. She could still taste the brown dust in her mouth, like chalk. Beneath her bottom, the ground vibrated with the steady pulselike throb of the engine, pumping water from the depths of the earth where he lay buried, but not dead.... Please, God, not dead...

  The core bell hadn't clanged that evening, but the men on the night shift were already there. Word of the fall had spread, and they had come, carrying their picks and shovels and drills. Their women had arrived, as always, in the late afternoon to get hot water for their washing and had stayed to keep the vigil.

  Only a faint bit of daylight showed now on the horizon, dying behind clouds that were torn and ragged like a beggar's cloak. Frothy waves flashed white and sharp like knife blades.

  The darkness made the waiting worse. Down there, where he was, the dark would be utter and absolute, smelling of death. Her fear for him was a scream in the back of her throat that kept threatening to burst out. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs, hugging herself.

  Beside her Emily stirred. Her voice came, gentle on the wind. "You love him, too, don't you?"

  A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest, and tears stung her eyes. She was too soul-weary to lie. "It seems that I have loved him my entire life."

  The tide washed against the rocks, again and then again. Emily ripped up a handful of marram grass, sending a tiny avalanche of pebbles splashing into the sea. "I am his wife, but you are his... I was going to say heart, but that's not it. His obsession, I suppose."

  Jessalyn held herself still, afraid to move, afraid to speak.

  Emily twisted around, and her face in the deepening twilight looked brittle as old parchment. "But he is my husband. Caerhays is mine."

  Jessalyn's breath stopped in her throat. "I know... I know."

  Emily's shoulders hunched, and she smothered her mouth with her knuckles. "Oh, God, I love him so. He is my night and my day." She pulled down her fists, tilting her face to the night sky. "And he—he is kind to me, but that is all."

  Emily's fingers pleated and unpleated the soft wool of her cloak. "That night of the fire, I started to come into the library, and for some reason I got distracted—it was Duncan, I think, coming to tell me that the rain had doused the flames, and there was no longer any danger of its spreading. And I heard Caerhays shouting through the closed door. 'Dammit, Jessalyn,' he said, bellowed really, and I could tell that he was quite angry with you. He is never anything but unfailingly polite with me, no matter what I do or say. The few times I tried to provoke him into feeling something for me, even if it was rage, he simply left the room." She vent her frustration on the grass, tearing it up by the roots. "Kindness! I think that it is possible to kill with kindness—"

  "Miss Letty!"

  The tinners' women had gathered within the shelter of a copse of wind-twisted hawthorn. Little Jessie had broken away from the group and was toddling across the sward, lugging a basket almost as big as she was. "Miss Letty, lookit!" A big grin split her face as she raised the wicker lid, revealing an earthenware plate piled with lardy cakes, a battered teapot, and two tin cups.

  "Me mam said ee would be needin' vittles to keep up yer strength." From the pocket of her pinafore, she produced a mashed lump wrapped in newspaper that turned out to be a smoked pilchard sandwiched between chunks of black bread. "This un's mine, but ee can have it, too."

  Jessalyn's fear had churned her stomach into a permanent state of nausea, but she took the sandwich and even managed a smile. "That is very kind of you, spud."

  "I can pour. Lemme pour." Little Jessie squatted beside them, knees spread wide, her lips pouched in concentration as she filled the cups. Steam wreathed her fey, pointed face. The tea was hot and black, smelling strongly of jasmine.

  Jessalyn took the tea, warming her fingers on the hot tin. "Have you seen your grandfather again since the opening, Little Jessie?"

  The child shook her head so hard her braids whipped her chest. "No'm. Mam said I musta been mistooken. He scampered off, did Grandda, on 'count of the runners bein' after him. Went to America. Should I be leavin' the basket, Miss Letty?"

  "Yes, please. Thank your mam for me."

  Emily watched the little girl run off with a flash of white pantalets. "Little Jessie. Was she named after you?"

  Jessalyn breathed a shaky laugh. "Yes, the poor little thing." She broke off a piece of the lardy cake and flung it into the sea for the shorebirds. "What a namesake to have to live down—the scrapes I got into when I was her age..."

  "She is the baby you and Caerhays found in the mine," Emily stated. Jessalyn kept her gaze on the lardy cake, breaking off another piece. "He spoke to me once of that time," Emily said. "He said they were the happiest days of his life."

  Jessalyn swung around in surprise. "But it was only one summer."

  "A summer that changed his life. I believe he thought that if he ever married anyone, it would be you."

  Jessalyn stared out at a sea that was still and black, as if it, too, existed only to wait. "I asked him to marry me that summer. I as much as begged him. He wanted nothing to do with me, and he told me so in most unflattering terms."

  "I think men must be different from women in how they love," Emily said, "in how they show their love. For us being in love is a haven. For some men it can be a most tormenting kind of hell."

  In the dark all Jessalyn could see was the purity of Emily's profile and her cropped hair faintly tinseled by starlight. Her chest felt sore with a grief unspent. She wondered if this was a punishment from God, for clinging to her love even after he had married. It was sinful to covet what was Emily's. And she could not begrudge the man she loved another's love and care simply because it did not come from her. He was already out of her life. She made a silent vow to God that if He would let McCady live,
she would banish him from her heart as well.

  She started to reach out, to take Emily's hand, but in the end she pulled back. "You are his wife, and I am nothing to him now," she said, her throat full. "He might not know it yet, but Caerhays is blessed to have found you."

  Emily's head lifted, and for a moment Jessalyn thought she would smile, but then she tensed, her face seeming to shatter like ice under a mallet. She grabbed Jessalyn's arm, her nails digging deep. "They're bringing somebody up."

  Jessalyn jerked around, jolting to her feet. Lanterns bobbed and dipped before the enginehouse. Men were climbing the cliff path, carrying a body on a piece of canvas stretched between two poles.

  Emily tried to run and stumbled, falling with a rattling jar onto her hands and knees. Jessalyn stopped to pick her up, and they waited, arms wrapped around each other, for the rescue party to crest the bluff.

  Because he was taller than the others, Duncan's golden head topped the rise first. He walked beside the litter, holding aloft a pitch torch, and in the sudden flare of light Jessalyn could see that the body had hair that was the washed yellow color of an old saddle. And the hand that dangled lifeless was spotted with age. The men laid the litter on the ground, covering it with a blanket. One of the tinners' women started to wail.

  Jessalyn felt Emily's spine stiffen as she drew in a deep breath. She stepped forward, her head high, and in that moment Jessalyn thought she had never looked more the earl's wife. "Have you found my husband?"

  Duncan shook his head, his gaze on his boots. "We'll keep digging, m'lady." He paused, as if undecided whether to say more. "There's still hope, m'lady." But he hadn't been able to keep the lie out of his voice.

  "Yes, of course," Emily said. "Thank you, Duncan. And thank the others for me as well, please. For all that they are doing."

  Duncan and the men returned to the mine. McCady's women stood on the bluff together and watched them go. After a while Emily slipped her arm around Jessalyn's waist, leaning her head on Jessalyn's shoulder... waiting.