Page 26 of The Cornish Inheritance

Chapter Twelve

“Ican come too?” Yves danced from one foot to the other in excitement. “I never get to go anywhere. Not since Grandpapa had to stay in bed. Before he got ill, he once took me into Penzance with him on his horse, but I was such a little boy then, I can’t remember it at all. Can we go to the harbor to see if any ships are in? I know there’s a harbor because Dickon told me so.”

Caroline had descended to the kitchens, where she’d found Young Pascoe just finishing his meal and, having enquired of him the correct road to take to get to Penzance, sent him out to get the pony and trap ready. Yves was eating a fat slab of bread, thickly spread with butter, in addition to the slice of pie Mrs. Teague had already fed him, the crumbs of which he picked up with a licked, and rather inky, fingertip.

“You do get to come,” Caroline said, choosing to ignore his now ink-stained tongue. “Because every whip needs a groom, and you are to be my groom today.”

“I’d rather be the whip,” Yves retorted, with a cheeky grin. “But I suppose being a groom will be quite tolerable. Will it be my job to open gates and things like that?”

Caroline nodded. “You will be in charge of that, if we encounter any.”

“And Hetty’s not coming?”

Caroline had toyed with the idea of asking Hetty, mainly because she might know the way, but the fact that the pony cart only had two places, and even though Yves was small and skinny it would be a squeeze with three of them, put her off. Added to the fact that if Hetty discovered what she was about, she might relay it to her mother, even if not on purpose. And somehow, Caroline did not think she wanted Mrs. Treloar to know anything about the true nature of her journey. Just in case there was something to worry about concerning the bottle of medicine. Although, even if there was nothing nefarious about it, no doubt Mrs. Treloar would be offended that Caroline had thought there could be.

“No, we’re taking the pony cart, so there’s no room for Hetty. I’ve suggested she use the time for useful piano practice.”

“Good,” Yves said with satisfaction. “Just you and me, then. And I don’t have to listen to her playing the piano all afternoon.” He pulled a disgusted face. “That’s such torture.”

They went out into the stableyard where they found Young Pascoe holding the bridle of a pretty dapple-gray mare no more than thirteen hands high, harnessed to a neatly painted two-wheeled pony cart. Caroline thanked him and climbed into the driving seat, and Yves scrambled up beside her.

“She might be a bit lively, Miss,” Young Pascoe said as he stepped back. “Not been out for a while.”

Caroline gathered the reins and took hold of the whip, keeping its long, dangling end under control with her fingers. “That’s quite all right, Tom. I’m well used to handling lively ponies.” Having grown up as friends with the Carlyon girls, whose mother was an accomplished horsewoman, Caroline had benefitted from plenty of experience both on the driver’s seat and in the saddle.

She clicked her tongue to the pony and it trotted smartly out onto the drive, small hooves and trap wheels crunching the gravel.

“Do you know what her name is?” Caroline asked, as she headed the pony down the way she should have entered by when she’d arrived.

Yves, leaning back in his seat with his spindly legs stuck forward, nodded. Today he had on breeches, miniature top boots, and a short navy jacket with brass buttons. Quite the little dandy. “Blossom. She’s the pony that pulls the garden equipment. You know. She does the lawns. She has to wear special shoes for that so she doesn’t make hoofprints on the grass. Aunt Ruth would have a fit if she saw a hoofprint. And she has to wear a sort of napkin to catch her poo.” He said this last with an air of bravado, his eyes resting on Caroline in speculation, perhaps waiting for a rebuke.

But Caroline had never been shy of referring to waste material—the Carlyon girls’ mother, Lady Ormonde, had taught her well. “What a very good idea,” she said. “I wish my mother had thought of that. Our poor gardener’s boy had to go round with a shovel and put whatever our garden pony did on the rose beds.”

Yves chuckled in delight. “I ride her sometimes. She’s very lazy. But Aunt Ruth won’t let me have a pony of my own. She says I’m not a good enough rider, but how I’m supposed to improve when all I have to ride is Blossom, I don’t know.” He sighed. “See down there where the road forks? I think we have to take the left-hand lane.”

Just as well. The right-hand alternative appeared to be no better than the rutted back way into Treloar and was blocked by a rickety gate. Blossom seemed to know her way and naturally headed left, although with a distinct lack of speed, despite Young Pascoe’s avowal that she was fresh. Caroline clicked her tongue again and tickled her rump with the end of the whip, and she sped up her trot. Within five minutes they reached the top road and turned left again, in the direction of Penzance.

Yves seemed much more wide awake now, chattering away about everything they came across, and pointing out the distinctive shapes of the mine workings in the distance. “That one’s Wheal Jenny, and over there’s Wheal True. Both of them are ours.” So the effects of the carminative must have worn off, at last. However, it still disturbed Caroline that something he’d been dosed with the night before had taken this long to lose its efficacy. No child should be as sleepy as Yves had been that morning. She could only presume the syrup had contained something to put him to sleep, and she didn’t like the idea of that at all. What might it be? Only an apothecary would be able to tell her that.

Her thoughts wandered to her previous neighbor, young Lady Ormonde, Ysella’s sister-in-law, with whom she had become good friends. Morvoren had been the lady of Ormonde Abbey now for a good three years, and was mother to two children. Little George, the heir, now a robust two-year-old, and his new baby sister, Elestren, named after her grandmother, the dowager.

Morvoren was very much what she liked to call “a hands-on mother,” a phrase Caroline had never come across before. She played a large part in her children’s upbringing and had insisted that neither of them be dosed with something called Godfrey’s Cordial that the children’s nurse had produced when George first began to teethe. Her aversion to this bordered on the manic, and all bottles of the cordial had been thrown away, much to the nurse’s annoyance.

Curious, Caroline had asked Morvoren why she was so set against her children being helped with their teething and colic.

“Because I don’t know what’s in it,” Morvoren replied, jaw set in that determined fashion she had. “And I don’t believe in giving anyone, still less my children, something I know nothing about, just to make them sleep to suit the adult who is in charge of their care. I strongly suspect it contains opium, and that’s not at all good for anyone. And besides which, it tastes awful. Have you tried it?”

As far as Caroline could remember, the cordial had tasted similar to the carminative, which was what had roused her suspicions in the first place. That and Yves being so sleepy after his first dose of it. It seemed highly likely it contained the opium Morvoren was so set against. And one thing she’d learned from her friend was to listen to her wisdom, which so far had been right every time.

“Look,” Yves cried in excitement. “I can see the sea!”

“You can see the sea every day from your bedroom window,” Caroline said with a smile. “What makes this sea any different?”

“That.” Yves pointed a finger. “A castle on an island.”

Caroline stared. He was quite correct. What looked like a small castle occupied a rocky island at the nearest end of a long beach. Surely it was too small to be of much use?

“I know what it is,” Yves announced, with pride. “Miss Hawkins told me all about it, even though she was never allowed to take me into Penzance to see it. It’s St Michael’s Mount and this must be Mount’s Bay. Miss Hawkins was Cornish, like me. She knew lots of stories about Cornwall.” He paused. “And I think I remember seeing it with Grandpapa that time he brought me with him when I was just a little boy.”