Matthias was standing in front of the hearth, at a distance that offered no harm to Faith Bray’s cheap plaster ornaments and her ‘pride’, a set of matching ‘real’ brass poker and tongs. His head of nondescript brown hair was bent between his clasped hands and he was making sounds as though he was mumbling to himself.
‘He’s praying, Clem,’ Rosie whispered. ‘He could go on for ages and I’m beginning to feel quite daft stuck out here like a sore thumb.’
‘Oh, find a place and sit down then,’ Clem said irritably.
The other occupants in the cramped room were beginning to follow Matthias Renfree’s lead, bowing their heads in prayer, and silence quickly replaced the hum of many voices.
Rosie felt a tug on her skirt and found Rosina Blake pointing to the space she had made beside her by lifting Simon Peter on to her lap. Thankfully Rosie squeezed herself down on the rough rug, one of many spread out on the pressed earth floor. Only the extremely elderly had the privilege of sitting on one of the few hard-backed chairs.
All the men present stood lining the four walls. Clem moved away from Matthias Renfree and joined them, putting his tall lean frame next to Jeb Bray. He glanced at his sister, then his closest friend, shook his blond head and closed his eyes. There was nothing more he could do right now. Clem concentrated on his breathing; a true outdoors man, he hated the weekly crush in the Brays’ cottage. Today he found the atmosphere even more stuffy and oppressive. He was uncomfortable and had to keep his head to the side to avoid knocking a picture off the wall.
The classes were meant to be much smaller, about a dozen people, each with its own teacher. But Matthias Renfree was the only local man in this Methodist Society who felt qualified to preside over the meetings and encourage the others to keep the Society’s rules of sober and honest living as laid down by churchman John Wesley.
Matthias had tried to persuade Morley Trenchard, Clem’s father, to hold a class at his farmhouse, but Morley, shy and simple in outlook, had refused. So had Clem, firmly saying he lacked the religious fervour and application to dedicate himself to a more solid faith. Matthias was unsuccessful, too, with the fishermen from Perranbarvah and the miners of the nearby Wheal Ember mine. So it meant anything upwards of sixty men, women and children jammed into Jeb Bray’s little cottage, Jeb being only too willing to make his home available. Matthias, however, was hopeful that the situation would change by the end of the year if the plans he had for a meeting house to be built on the edge of Lancavel Downs came to fruition. It would see the end of all the squeezing in the good people here had endured for several years and the site would be more central for them.
After a formal prayer, Matthias began to read from the Bible. ‘The Gospel according to St Luke, Chapter 10, Verse 2. Therefore said he unto them, the harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.’
Matthias paused, gazing down at his hands where the fingertips were pressed together before looking up and round the room, his face serious. ‘This passage teaches us that every time someone laughs at us, shows us their hatred of our faith, or simply chooses to ignore the Good News we want to share with them, we are reminded that we are indeed called as lambs to be sent out among the wolves of this world…’
Clem was not listening to Matthias. He never listened to anyone for long, whether it was his wife, his father, Kenver his crippled brother or even Rosie, his much loved sister. While he worked, he worked hard, his mind fully employed on the task in hand. Other times, with only Charity his dog for company, he wandered off to be alone, to immerse himself in his thoughts of the woman he believed should rightfully be his.
He was thinking of the times they had secretly held hands under her shawl in this very room. Looking about, his eyes fell on Rosina Blake. Clem hated Peter Blake for the same reason Oliver Pengarron did, but he held a grudging regard for Blake for allowing his wife to attend these classes – as she had done in the days when she’d worked as a bal-maiden, sorting ore at the Wheal Ember. Why couldn’t his damned high and mighty lordship allow Kerensa the same privilege?
Rosina noticed him looking at her and smiled back. Clem’s face stayed rigid. He rarely smiled. Rosina returned her attention to Matthias’s words, her natural beauty shining through as it always did on her peaceful face. ‘A woman whose beauty comes from being at peace with God and hence with herself and the world,’ Matthias often remarked to him. Clem sometimes wondered if Matthias regretted not asking Rosina to become his wife when he had the opportunity, before she fell in love with Peter Blake.
He looked at Rosie who was listening attentively to the lesson to pass on to the others back at the farm while holding Simon Peter’s hand and making funny faces to amuse him. Rosie would make a good mother and Clem believed wholeheartedly that Matthias would make the ideal husband and father for her babies. Renfree was unmarried at the age of thirty and would have the stewardship of Ker-an-Mor, the Pengarron home farm, after his father. Rosie was born to be a farmer’s wife and with Matthias she would be the wife of someone with position. She was committed to the Methodist ideals and would be a comfort and support to Matthias. But it was an uphill struggle to manoeuvre the two together. Neither of them showed the least interest in the other. Rosie was a pretty girl with a clear complexion and large blue eyes in a round face, but she stayed solidly with the family at all times. Matthias always dressed as if he was at a funeral, not the sort of figure to turn a girl’s eye. No one else would approve but Clem decided to buy a love potion when next at Marazion’s market. Perhaps that would get things moving.
Clem noticed his weren’t the only eyes that had wandered around the room and stopped at Rosie. A young gangly miner was staring at her with a lovesick look on his pimply face. Clem glared at him; he would have a word with that individual later, nip his interest in the bud. No coarse-mouthed miner was going to snare his sister, and no amount of Bible class attendances was going to make him suitable for her.
When the miner noticed Clem’s disapproving stare, he looked away nervously and red-faced. He had witnessed Clem seeing off other young men, including Paul King, who had wanted to court Rosie. Obviously Clem thought no one but a farmer was good enough for her.
Content in her maidenly life and oblivious of the hopes that the two men in the cottage had of altering the situation, Rosie went on happily amusing Simon Peter Blake.
Clem fell back into his private world of self-tortured thoughts of his stolen love, unaware of the shouts and growing commotion outside until the people in the cottage were drawn to their feet. Someone flung the door open and let in the evening sunlight. The sound of a bell’s foreboding peel reached his ears. The shouts outside and the stricken faces within spelled out what was happening. People poured out of the meeting and joined the rush to a disaster half a mile away at the mine.
* * *
Clem felt an urgent tug on his arm. Jack, the groom from the stables of Pengarron Manor, whispered to him, ‘What’s happened, Clem?’
‘Rock fall,’ Clem answered grimly.
‘How bad?’ Jack looked from one ashen, shocked face to another of the folk huddled close to one of the mine’s shafts.
‘’Tis a long way down, out under the sea. ’Tis reckoned some rotten timber supports gave way, crushing some, suffocating others. Another man lost his life when he fell away from a ladder. Overcome by dizziness, they said, as he fled for his life. Tis reckoned at least twenty are dead. They’ve brought up half a dozen bodies so far, more are missing. We sent the farming and fisher women back home but some of us men have stayed to help out in any way we can. Rosina Blake wanted to stay when her husband came to ride with her and their son back home, but he was against it and the miner’s wives told her it was no place for her now. She was upset, but has promised to send bandages and things up here. I’ve carried a few of the dead to their cottages to be laid out. I asked if I
could help down the pit but they only want experienced miners going down there.’ Clem had not made the offer lightly but was relieved to have been refused. He was fearful of going underground and found the mine buildings, the clanking from the engine house and the heaps of waste ugly and foreboding.
Jack shuddered as he stared at the black hole a few feet away. ‘I wouldn’t like to have to go down there. Listen to the sea – sounds wild and powerful from here, like it doesn’t give a damn about what’s going on under it. Wonder if they can hear it down there, wonder what it sounds like. Don’t s’pose they can hear nothing but some awful silence.’
Clem stared at Jack for a moment then pulled his collar up to ward off the biting crosswinds. ‘Alice will be upset by this, she worked up here once. ’Tis a good job her family moved on back along or it could be her father or one of her brothers pulled out dead. Can’t do nothing for they over there,’ he inclined his head in the direction of a group of silent women. ‘They’re waiting for news of their menfolk.’
The women’s faces were set grimly with vacant eyes. Their hands, battered from years of hard work, hammering and sorting the ore at ground level, gripped their shawls about themselves. Young children clung fretfully to their skirts and one young mother sat a little apart, rocking a baby at her breast while softly singing the words of a hymn.
Clem pointed briefly at her. ‘She hasn’t accepted what’s happened yet, can’t bring herself to believe it. ’Tis awful, Jack. Her husband’s body has been seen, can never be got out, they said. Only been married a twelvemonth. I don’t know, some of these people were at the Bible class not so long ago. Were happy enough then, had no idea what was about to happen. How quickly things can change.’
‘First Perranbavah, now this,’ Jack said softly, with a low whistle between his teeth.
Clem turned his head to Jack. ‘Eh? What’s that?’
‘First the fishing boat tragedy, now this. ’Tis reckoned things, good or bad, but specially bad, do come in threes.’
‘Aye, my gran always used to say that.’
‘So does old Beatrice at the manor. After the Lowenek was torn asunder she said we haven’t seen the last of it yet. Looks like she was right. I just hope nothing else happens to tear our lives apart.’
The two men stood with their hands pushed down into pockets. They could think of nothing they could do to help but felt compelled to stay and wait.
A girl ran up to them and clutched Jack by the arm, whirling him around. ‘’Ere, you! Preacher wants ’ee, ’e’s over there by the engine ’ouse.’
Irritated by the girl’s action, Jack made to reproach her but instead he just stared. Her long hair was wild and brackenish brown, her eyes the same. They gleamed from a pert pink face that wore a rebellious expression. Her clothes were muddy and she filled them well. She had neither hat nor shawl.
‘Are ’ee blamed stupid or somethin’?’ she yelled at him.
‘Come on! Men are dyin’ below ground and the preacher wants yer ’elp!’
‘What can I do?’ Jack muttered, his thin face a blank statement.
‘Is ’e bloody daft or somethin’?’ she shouted at Clem.
Clem’s deep blue eyes widened but he said nothing. The girl blatantly studied him for a moment, she liked the sulky line of his mouth and wanted to kiss and tease it. It would be a hard challenge to take his mind off Lady Pengarron but no man had yet refused her charms. She couldn’t do anything about it now because she had been sent on an urgent errand to fetch the youth beside him and he was angering her with his idiotic stare. The next instant she became angered at Clem ignoring her.
‘You farmers is all bloody simple-minded,’ she screamed, adding another sentence pitted with foul words. They brought anger to Clem’s features and a bright redness creeping up Jack’s neck. She grabbed Jack’s arm again and began to pull him along with her. ‘You’ll find out what the preacher wants if you ask ’im,’ she snarled. ‘Come on! Or I’ll kick yer arse all the way there!’ Without protest Jack allowed himself to be dragged away.
Clem turned to Faith Bray, Jeb’s wife, who was tut-tutting at his side. ‘Who on earth’s she, Mrs Bray, the little wild-cat?’
‘That’s Heather Bawden, Clem. Like you said, she’s a proper little wild-cat. Some d’say she’s got an evil spirit in her, right out of Hell. But I believe she’s a bit mazed in the head, if you know what I do mean. Poor soul.’
‘You mean she’s Carn’s daughter? I haven’t seen her in years. I never would have thought she’d turn out like that. I’m glad my sister Rosie is nothing like her. Carn wasn’t at the class earlier. Is he safe, or below ground?’
‘Aye, he’s below ground, I’m afraid. There’s no news of him yet.’ Faith Bray sadly shook her head. ‘Jeb brought up another body a little while back.’
Clem sighed deeply. ‘I’ll go see if they want help taking him home.’
Heather Bawden gave Jack an ungainly push towards Matthias Renfree. ‘’Ere ’e is, Preacher, though I can’t see what use ’e’s going to be. Dafter than a dog’s turd, if you ask me.’
‘Thank you, Heather,’ Matthias said, frowning as she immediately flounced off with a toss of her head that sent her hair stinging across Jack’s face.
‘Jack… Jack.’ Matthias had to prod Jack’s attention away from staring at the girl.
‘Eh? What can I do for you, Matthias?’ Jack asked, his face embarrassed and perplexed.
‘I take it you’ve ridden up here?’ Matthias would have liked to have explained about Heather’s coarse behaviour, asking Jack to make allowances for her, but that would have to wait for some other time.
‘Aye,’ Jack replied, half turning and glancing at Heather’s retreating back. ‘I was out exercising Meryn on the pannier tracks when I heard from the fisherfolk going home what had happened. I came here straight away.’
‘Good. Would you leave again immediately and ask Sir Oliver’s permission for you to ride over to Marazion and ask Dr Crebo to come up here as soon as he possibly can. The mine doctor has been sent for but there’s no sign of him yet. He’s never been efficient in his duties and I doubt if he’ll show up until it’s too late for some of these injured men. Ted Trembath was pulled out a while ago with a terrible leg injury that needs urgent attention, and the Lord only knows what we’ll have to deal with next.’
‘Course I’ll go,’ Jack returned eagerly, ‘but they can’t afford a doctor up here, can they?’
‘No, but we’ll worry about that at a later date. Saving lives is what is important now.’
‘I’ll go to Marazion straightaway, Matthias. Sir Oliver won’t mind when I tell him where I’ve been and why. ’Spect he’ll be up here himself when he hears what’s happened.’ Jack sped off to the pony and was soon riding over the dried heather and ferns of the downs, his mind only half on his errand of mercy.
Matthias returned to check on the condition of the injured miner, Ted Trembath. Clem had not been needed to carry home the dead miner and was kneeling beside Ted, pressing a bloodied scrap of cloth against his leg above the knee. Ted was the Wheal Ember’s underground afternoon core captain. He lay unconscious next to five other injured men and a boy, in a corrugated iron shack cleared out as a makeshift field hospital. Lou Hunken, widow of one of the mine’s previous captains killed in a similar accident and living now with her miner son, was wiping dirt, sweat and blood off Ted’s craggy face.
‘He’s lost a lot of blood,’ Clem said.
‘His leg’s stripped clean through to the bone,’ Lou Hunken said glumly, ‘but I think the break’s clean. You’ve bound un up well and good, Preacher, and Clem’s stopped a fresh flow of blood. He’ll stand a good chance if only the doctor’ll come.’
Snatching a glance out of the doorway and up at the sky, Matthias sighed. ‘It’ll be getting dark soon. You may as well go home, Clem. Could be hours before anyone else is brought up.’
‘I’ll keep vigil with you, Matthias,’ Clem replied. ‘Rosie will feed Charity for me
and send word if I’m needed for either of the boys.’
Matthias raised his eyebrows and looked even more anxious. ‘Oh, I hope there’s nothing wrong with them.’
‘Rosie was going to tell you, Philip and David have gone down with the measles.’
‘Oh no. I didn’t get the chance to speak to Rosie with all this happening. Are the twins very ill?’
‘Alice doesn’t seem to be too worried but of course you never know with measles.’
‘They should be all right,’ Lou Hunken added. ‘Your young’uns are strong and healthy with farm life, they’ll fare better than the two I lost last year with it.’
On this grim note they all looked back at Ted and fell into a bleak silence.
Two hours later Oliver rode up with Jack by lantern light. Leaving Jack to tie up the horses, Oliver weaved his way through the waiting groups of hushed, shocked mining folk huddled round a fierce bonfire. He stopped to give words of comfort and asked if the two doctors had arrived and where he could find Matthias Renfree. He was told there had been no sign or word of the mine doctor but Dr Crebo had arrived half an hour ago and was treating the casualties in the shack with Matthias’s aid.
As Oliver lowered his head to enter the shack, his features hardened at seeing Clem there. A quick glance around the poorly lit shack told him there were eight men and three boys lying injured. A corpse covered with the shawl of a weeping woman was about to be removed.
Oliver ignored Clem, who’d given him a curt nod before turning his head away. Neither man liked the other being there; two things they shared, a mutual love for Kerensa and a mutual loathing of each other.
Pengarron Pride Page 8