Clem Trenchard urgently wiped his boots on the rush mat outside miner Jeb Bray’s cottage and pushed his sister through the open doorway. Rosie Trenchard tried to shrug him off and nearly lost her balance. She would have fallen into one of the tightly packed groups of people sitting on the floor if Clem had not reached out and caught her. Red-faced with embarrassment, Rosie turned on him.
‘Clem, what on earth do—’
‘Just get inside,’ he hissed.
Rosie obeyed, shaking her head in surrender. At times Clem was hard to understand. Usually Alice, his wife, had a difficult task each week to get him to attend the Bible classes. Today he had been over-eager to get there. He and Rosie had come on their own today and he had rushed her over Lancavel Downs while she had wanted to saunter along and capture the feeling of vastness and majesty that only the moors could give on a sun-drenched day, to breathe in the fresh clean air, grasp the loneliness that touched the soul into half-remembered dreams. The walks provided her with a welcome respite from the noise and eternal busyness of the family farm but Clem’s agitation had robbed her of that pleasure today. When she’d tripped in the enforced haste and insisted on sitting on a granite boulder to rub her sore ankle he had trampled a path over a patch of heather and nagged at her until she threatened to turn round and go home. All the rest of the way he had scolded her for making them late.
Another push inside the cottage and Rosie trod on an old man’s hand. He grinned understandingly and she smiled back in apology then complained to Clem in forceful tones under her breath, ‘Will you stop pushing me, Clem. Whatever will people think?’
Clem spoke straight into her ear, making her shiver and clap a hand there. ‘Tell Matthias that Alice can’t come today because the twins have gone down with the measles.’
‘Why tell him now? Surely it can wait till after? And why can’t you tell him yourself? You’re acting very strangely these days towards Preacher Renfree. Anyone would think you’ve had words with him the way you always get me to speak to him for you.’ Rosie impatiently pushed her one long plait of fine golden hair from the front of her shoulder to fall in a straight line down her back.
Clem let out an exasperated sigh and swung round to apologise to the woman he had just kicked with the toe of his boot.
‘’Tes all right, Clem, didn’t ’urt none,’ Lou Hunken said good-naturedly, ‘but pushing’ ’er through like that towards un went ’elp ’em along, boy. They went see what’s in front of their own eyes ’less ’ee comes right out with it an’ tell ’em what’s what yerself.’
Shrugging his shoulders at Lou Hunken, Clem persisted in badgering his younger sister. ‘Tell Matthias that Alice wants him to say a prayer for Philip and David before the class begins. You know how poorly they are.’
‘All right, Clem, don’t go on so,’ Rosie said crossly.
She was standing directly in front of Matthias Renfree, the stockily built, gentle-eyed young man responsible for holding the Bible classes. He led the people who crowded into the cottage with warmth, sincerity and understanding and was known locally as Preacher Renfree or Young Preacher, although he had never taken holy orders. He had come under some opposition from Sir Martin Beswetherick, the main owner of the Wheal Ember mine where many of the gathering worked. But Matthias had pointed out to the fat baronet that the mine, still producing good-quality ore when most at its age would have been worked out, would be wise to indulge a trouble-free work force rather than risk many of the miners going off to work at a mine sympathetic to Methodism and have them replaced with a bunch of irreligious rabble.
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.
Oliver spoke to Charles Crebo. ‘How are things, Doctor?’
‘Not so bad as I feared, Sir Oliver, but tragic all the same,’ the surgeon-physician said in a heavy voice, without looking up from a patient on whom he was expertly stitching a badly gashed head wound. He waited for the miner’s groans and oaths to die away before going on in precise short sentences. ‘Sixteen dead. Twenty-three injured, some severely, some not. Many are missing. Four amputations, two legs on the same patient, he’ll probably die; two arms, each on a different patient. Two men comatose, one will certainly die. This patient will recover.’
‘There’s very, little hope of getting any others out alive, sir,’ Matthias added. ‘Several feet of tunnelling has given way out under the sea. There’s tons of rubble to get through and far too little good air for further rescue work. It’s badly ventilated at the best of times.’
‘Nearly as bad as the accident at the Trewhelah Mine at Porthtowan last year,’ Oliver said gravely. ‘That, it is said, will shut the mine down about two years early. Let’s hope that won’t be the case here. Have Sir Martin Beswetherick and the other owners been informed?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Matthias. ‘I saw to it straightaway.’
‘Good.’ Oliver waved his hand at the fug caused by the tallow-dipped rush candles. ‘You need more light in here. Jack and I rode over with two lanterns. I’ll fetch them and more candles from the miners. I’ll replace all that are used so they will have no fear of going without sufficient light down the mine or in their homes in the winter. My elderly servant, Beatrice, would have been of considerable help to you with her herbs and potions. I know you respect her skills, Dr Crebo, but unfortunately she’s more or less housebound. The Reverend Ivey will ride over at first daylight, he’s too old to risk the moors after dusk. He’s pleased you are here, Renfree, to comfort the bereaved.’
‘It was good of the Reverend to say that,’ Matthias said, ‘but we’re all doing our best.’
‘Yes, I’ll agree with that,’ Dr Crebo put in. ‘People have been good enough to rally round quickly. As soon as the Blakes got back to Marazion they organised a bundle of sheets and bandages for me to bring with me. Tomorrow they’re sending over food, extra to their monthly contribution for the miner’s children, and the medicines that I’ll recommend.’
‘Mistress Blake’s idea, no doubt,’ Oliver remarked, rubbing his chin. Clem grunted in agreement, he also not wanting Peter Blake to take the credit. Oliver looked directly at Clem, and said to Dr Crebo, who had risen to his feet and was wiping his bloodied hands on a piece of cloth, ‘Have you enough proper help in here, Doctor?’
‘We can manage, thank you, Sir Oliver,’ Charles Crebo said almost gaily, lifting his wig to scratch at a troublesome spot. ‘This young fellow, Trenchard here, stopped a miner from bleeding to death under my instructions while Renfree and I were vainly trying to resuscitate another. They have both kept their wits about them while others have gone to pieces.’
Clem became aware of the amount of blood on his shirt and breeches and was embarrassed at this unexpected praise. But he looked straight at the baronet to see his reaction and received a small shock. He could have sworn Oliver Pengarron almost smiled at him. But he did not want praise, however faint, from the man he despised more than any other and jerked his head away.
After collecting the bundles of candles the miners wore round their necks to light their way underground then riding the half mile to the cottages to obtain more, there was nothing more Jack could do to help. Knowing few of the Wheal Ember folk, he kept out of the way. The cries of a boy who was having his crushed fingers amputated upset him and he returned to Conomor and Meryn.
He talked to the horses, explaining what had happened up on the cold inhospitable cliff top and why they were there. Conomor’s sleek black coat shone in the light of a small bonfire, giving the stallion the warrior-like appearance that appealed to Jack’s youthful sense of adventure. He occupied himself by telling a story out loud, urged on by the eerie surge of the invisible sea below, describing danger and doom heroes and wickedness overcome. Conomor became Jack’s own horse and Meryn the pony he’d brought with him on his adventure to rescue a beautiful maiden imprisoned in the treacherous clifftop castle of the evil Lord Pendragon. Jack was getting to the heart of the colourful tale when a pair of long clinging arms were thrown about his neck and he was almost toppled to the ground.
‘Thought ’twas you,’ Heather Bawden purred into his neck.
Thrusting her away, Jack said breathlessly, ‘What on earth do ’ee think you’re doing of, maid?’
‘Can’t see no one ’ere but you,’ Heather said, pouting her lips and moving up close again, ‘so who the ’ell were ’ee talking to?’
‘No one,’ he replied gruffly. To hide his embarrassment he turned to Conomor and stroked the stallion’s strong velvety neck. ‘Was just thinking out loud, that’s all. The horses like it, it soothes them. What do you want anyway?’
‘I wanted to thank ’ee fer goin’ fer the doctor. When they pulled out my tas he was nearly done fer, bleedin’ buckets, got a proper ’ard bash on the ’ead, poor bugger. The doctor told that tall fair man, you know the one I mean, the good-lookin’ one who ’ankers after Lady Pengarron, well, the doctor told un ’ow to stop the bleedin’, saved ’is life, I d’reckon.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear he survived all right. Who’s your tas?’
‘Carn Bawden’s ’is name. It was on ’is pitch the accident ’appened, a thousand feet down. ’E’s a tributer, works on contract, not like the tut workers. ’E’s more skilled, you see,’ she ended proudly.
Unaware that he was supposed to be impressed by this information, Jack said, ‘Never heard of him, but then I don’t know many folk up here. Don’t come up this way too often.’
‘Don’t ’ee now? My name’s Heather. What’s yours then?’
The screaming from the makeshift hospital started again. The boy who had lost his fingers was terrified and in agony. If he was able to go down the mine again, his days of racing the other boys up the ladders were over. Jack would have pressed his hands over his ears if he hadn’t had company.
‘Well, what’s your bloody name? Or are ’ee too stiff-necked to tell me as you work fer ’is Lordship?’
The screaming stopped; the boy had passed out.
Jack sighed with relief for himself and the boy. He was glad Heather was there to give him something else to think about. ‘Jack, that’s my name. I’m the groom at Pengarron Manor. ’ It was his turn to be proud to tell of his occupation.
Heather stood on tiptoe and peered into Jack’s face. ‘You ’aving me fer a fool?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘You’m too bloody young to be a groom at an important place like the manor.’
‘I am then,’ Jack retorted, ‘and that’s the Gospel truth. I was stable boy till I was eighteen, then Barney Taylor, he was the groom, well, his rheumatics finally got the better of him and he took to his bed for good and Sir Oliver didn’t take on nobody else but made me the groom in Barney’s place. That was two years ago and now I’ve got two stable boys working under me.’
‘Fancy,’ Heather said, swaying her broad hips. ‘Thought there’d be more’n three of ’ee workin’ in a big place like the manor stables.’
‘Sometimes someone comes over from Sir Oliver’s stud,’ Jack said grudgingly.
‘This ’is Lordship’s ’orse then? The big black un?’
‘Aye, he’s magnificent, isn’t he? I’ve ridden him occasionally, when His Lordship’s not had the time to exercise him.’
‘Oh, ’ave you now? What’s it called them? Somethin’ bloody silly, I d’reckon.’
‘It’s not silly at all,’ Jack returned defensively. ‘He’s called Conomor.’
‘Conomor, a warrior’s name, eh? I ’eard ’is master’s a warrior in bed.’
Jack was attracted to this wild-looking mine girl and wanted her to stay and talk but he wished she would not use such coarse language. He was not used to it, spending most of the time about the manor where no one spoke like that. He hoped Heather could not make out his blushes. He didn’t speak, wondering instead if she really did know that Conomor was the name of an ancient warrior or if she was poking fun at his fantasy tale to the horses.
‘Still, Jack, you mayn’t be a warrior but you’re my ’ero fer gettin’ the doc to me tas. I reckon I d’owe ’ee somethin’ fer that.’
With swift movements she pressed her curvaceous young body to his and dragging his head down she kissed his mouth fiercely with wet open lips. Before Jack could recover his startled thoughts and feelings she wrenched herself away and disappeared into the darkness as unexpectedly as she’d come out of it.
Jack pressed trembling fingers to his stinging lips. His, insides were heaving with a new intense sensation that was almost painful. The terrible reason for his being up close to the bleak looming mine buildings had completely left his mind.