The tunnel turned a corner, and we saw Aunt Bill, Hermione and Violet ahead of us. They had stopped walking; I thought for a moment that they had waited for us.
Then, I saw the reason they’d stopped.
The tunnel had fallen in.
William swore. I would have too, but he had turned the air blue enough for both of us.
We got to Aunt Bill, who looked from us to the wall of earth ahead of her with a chagrined expression.
‘’Ello, my loves. Seems we ’ave hit a snag,’ she said.
Lady Hermione was wan and whey-faced in the semi darkness. Violet’s expression as completely blank.
‘Violet? Are you all right?’ I knelt down in front of her and looked into her eyes. She remained expressionless. ‘Violet?’ I touched her hand, gently, but she shrank away. She was cold and looked very pale.
I stood up and turned to William, pulling him to one side, away from Lady Hermione and speaking in a low voice so that she couldn’t hear.
‘I think Violet has gone into shock. We need to get her out of the tunnel as soon as possible.’
He looked at where Lady Hermione stood with her arm awkwardly around her daughter. They both looked awful.
‘All right. Let me see if I can clear this blockage. Stand back, ladies, please.’ He ushered us a little behind him, and started pulling out stones and large clods of earth from where the tunnel had fallen in. Aunt Bill rolled up her arms and joined him.
I wondered how long it would take Harold the butler to get word to Lord Albert in London that Hermione and Violet had escaped. A day, perhaps? Or would it be quicker now, in the Victorian age? I racked my brains to try and remember what I could about telegrams and other communications that would have been used in 1867. I knew that the telephone hadn’t quite been invented yet. That had been the 1870s, I thought.
In any event, we had longer than we might have had in the modern day, but possibly not as long as I expected. Even though Lord Albert was hours away by carriage, Harold would easily have been able to ride to the local police station in Tintagel and get them to come and investigate. He could very believably say was William and I kidnapping Lady Hermione and Miss Violet, and we wouldn’t exactly be able to prove otherwise.
We had performed at Violet’s birthday party. Hundreds of people could identify the fact William and I had been at Trevarron House, and it looked exactly as though we had plotted to kidnap them by posing as musicians. That actually hadn’t been the planuntil Aunt Bill had turned up, but the backstory underpinning why Aunt Bill, William and I were in 1867 at all was more than slightly unbelievable.
‘Let me help,’ I said, but Aunt Bill shook her head.
‘’Tisn’t room for three, my duck. Look after the ladies. ’Ere,’ Aunt Bill reached a dirt hand into the pocket of her dress and handed me a package wrapped up in a cotton handkerchief. ‘I brought some biscuits. See if you can get Violet to eat somethin’. Might perk ’er up.’
‘All right. Thanks.’ I went back to Lady Hermione and Violet and unwrapped the handkerchief, showing Violet what I had in my hand.
‘Look, Violet!’ I said, in as jolly a tone as I could muster. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’
Violet looked straight past my right ear.
‘Violet, dear. The lady is asking you a question,’ Lady Hermione said. Violet didn’t respond.
‘I’m sorry. I think she is distressed. She gets like this sometimes,’ Lady Hermione said, apologetically.
‘There’s no need to apologise. This is a really stressful situation.’ I took off my shawl and wrapped it around Violet’s shoulders. ‘Poor lamb. She’s really cold.’ I hugged the girl, trying to get some of my body warmth into her. I wondered how often Violet ‘got like this’. If it was the twenty-first century, we’d have said she was dissociating.
I felt Violet tremble a little as I held her, but I stayed steady. Finally, I felt her let out a long breath, as if she had been holding it in all this time. She relaxed against me, just a little.
‘Shhh.’ I continued to hold her. ‘Shh, Violet. It’s all right.’ She wasn’t making a noise at all, in fact, butshhwas a comforting sound to make. I stood back a little and offered her the biscuits again. ‘Here, sweetie. You’ll feel better if you eat something.’
This time, she took one, shyly. I felt as though I’d conquered Everest.
There was a shout of triumph behind us, and I looked aroundto see William scrabbling with both of his already torn hands at a hole in the dirt wall.
‘Air!’ he cried out. ‘We can get through.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Lady Hermione said with a nervous half laugh. ‘Why, I have been standing here, dreading Harold and his men racing down the corridor to find us stuck here.’
I was quickly learning that Lady Hermione had a gift for saying the first thing that was on her mind, which was usually the worst possible scenario. For Violet’s sake, I wished she had more of a filter, or just more of a hopeful outlook.
