Page 52 of The Cornish Inheritance

Saved by the bell, or rather by the door of the count house opening with a bang.

A large man, in the sort of shabby, workaday suit that told her he couldn’t be a common miner but also wasn’t a gentleman, strode out into the bright sunshine, one hand up to shade his eyes. He paused for a moment then started forward, a grin on his broad face. “Why if ’tain’t Master Nathaniel. Well, I’m blowed.” His gaze flicked over Nat’s face but the smile barely lessened. “I’d know ’ee anywhere, even after all these years.” He held out a huge, square hand and seized Nat’s. “I’m that glad to see you back safe from the wars. That glad.”

“Gryff Casworan. I didn’t dare to hope you’d still be here.” Nat’s ravaged face twisted itself into a one-sided smile, the most genuine Caroline had seen so far. He must really like this burly stranger.

Mr. Casworan appeared to notice Yves and Caroline for the first time. “And this’ll be the little master, no doubting.” He held out his hand to Yves, who after a moment’s hesitation put his own small one in it and was rewarded by having it pumped up and down in a hearty handshake. “You don’t look too sickly to me, young master.”

“I’m not,” Yves said. “Why does everyone keep saying I am?” He lifted his right arm, bending it at the elbow and clenching his fist. “Feel my muscles. I’m as strong as a…as strong as a piece of Cornish granite.”

Mr. Casworan burst out laughing, but he did feel Yves’s muscles. “Aye, lad, you are, that,” he said, surreptitiously winking at Nat. “You’re stronger than Nat here were at your age, I’ll give you that.”

A wide grin split Yves’s face from ear to ear, tinged with a speck of smug superiority as he glanced at Nat, who seemed to be keeping a straight face with difficulty, his lips twitching. Caroline couldn’t help but smile at this exchange. She took a better look at the tactful Mr. Casworan.

Taller than Nat by several inches, and more solidly built, Gryff Casworan had a powerful look about him only a little softened by a budding pot belly, as though lately life had been treating him rather too well.

“May I present Miss Fairfield, Yves’s governess,” Nat said, and Caroline found herself the recipient of a deep bow from this friendly giant. “And this is my old friend, Gryff Casworan. He and I go back a long way.”

“To when you was nothing but a slip of a boy scarce any bigger than this one here,” Gryff said, ruffling Yves’s already wind-ruffled hair. “And if he isn’t as like you as a pair of peas in their pod, I’ll eat my hat. And it’s a new one, so it’d be hard chewing. I can see you two are close related.”

“We’re cousins,” Yves said. “Our fathers were brothers.”

“I know that, young master,” Gryff said. “I knowed both your fathers well. Not that your own father wanted to make hisself known down here at the mine. He preferred the family ship builders over to Falmouth. Not like your cousin Nathaniel and his pa.” He looked at Nat. “Mr. Treloar I should say now, I suppose. Lessen you want me to call you major?”

“Nat did me well enough when I was a boy working with you, and will do me fine now. I’ve had enough of army hierarchy to last me a lifetime.” Nat gestured at the count house. “But how is it that I find you installed in the count house and not working in an adit?”

Gryff’s chest inflated with obvious pride. “Mine Captain now, I am. And that’s a funny story.” He waved a hand to encompass his body. “Grew too big, is what I did. Look at me. I don’t fit down those tunnels no more, not like I did when you and I were lads. And thanks to you teaching me to read and reckon, Mr. Robert put me in the count house. I been here ever since, although that new man of your mother’s, Mr. Trefusis, he keeps on coming to look over my shoulder. Seems to think I might be swindling him and your ma.” He heaved a sigh. “He don’t know nothing about how to manage men and win their hearts, that one. There’s no one here at Wheal Jenny as cares for him.”

Nat’s brow lowered. “I suspected as much. That’s one of the reasons I’m here today. I’ve been out over to some of the farms to visit my grandfather’s tenants, and I wasn’t impressed with Trefusis’s methods of management.”

Casworan grimaced. “I doubt there’s much you can do about it. He’s dug his feet in under that table, all right.” He shook his head. “I spend most of my time up here in the count house, but I still gets to go down the mine from time to time. Gotta be seen by the men and gotta see the conditions they’re working in, like your granfer used to say. And they’ve gotta see me and know I’m on their side. Trefusis ain’t like your pa was, God rest his soul. He’s never set foot in any of the mines.” He shook his head again. “He’s a hard master, I have to say. Since old Sir Hugh were forced to give up the governance of the estate and the mines, and your mother brung Trefusis in, he’s been squeezing it any which way to get more production out of it for less expenditure. Many’s the family that’s feeling the pinch now, both miners and tenant farmers.”

“That was one of the things I came over here to find out,” Nat said. “But I didn’t think to find someone I knew straight away who could tell me about it. I’m very glad I came.”

Yves, bored by the conversation, was wandering off, so Caroline followed him, leaving Nat to discover more of what Trefusis had been up to. As they approached the mine buildings, a whistle blew, making her jump. Yves glanced over his shoulder. “What was that for?”

She didn’t need to answer though. A column of people was coming over the brow of the hill, following a rough track from inland. Their voices, carried by the wind, drifted across the heathery hillside. Good heavens. They were singing a hymn she knew—Love Divine All Loves Excelling. Out here in the late afternoon sunshine, with a sea breeze stirring her hair, and a throng of tatty miners with their voices raised in worship on their way to work in the bowels of the earth, the hymn she knew so well took on an almost mystical air.

“Shift changeover,” Nat said, coming to stand beside her. “The miners down below will be coming up the shafts and these new ones will be taking over.”

“But some of them are children,” Yves said, staring at the approaching relief miners. “Like me.”

Sure enough, a proportion of the new miners were indeed children, who might well have been scarcely older than Yves. They certainly weren’t much bigger. Like their elders, they sang with lusty enthusiasm, swinging small pails that might have contained their sustenance for the night shift.

Of course, Caroline knew about child workers, but living in Wiltshire had done nothing to prepare her for seeing them. Everything in her heart cried out that it must be wrong to send children down into a place she would never go herself. She couldn’t argue with children having to work in daylight, although she wasn’t sure what they might be working at, if she were honest, but to send children down into the dark seemed a terrible thing to do.

She glanced at Nat and Gryff, standing side by side watching the changeover. “Does the mine need to employ such young children?”

Nat shrugged. “Their families need the money they can bring in. The girls work as bal maidens, but the boys go down the mines, where they’re used to squeeze into small gaps a grown man can’t fit into.”

Gryff met her gaze. “I first went down there when I was eight years old.”

That was younger than Yves. “Couldn’t their fathers’ wages be increased so the children don’t need to work?”

Nat compressed his lips. “You’ll have to ask Trefusis that one, as he’s in charge now. Or my mother, as it seems she still holds the purse strings. And if you do that, then you’re a braver soul than I am. She’s never taken kindly to being told what to do.”

“How do they get up and down the mine?” Yves asked, stepping nearer. Some of the children, now they were up close, were looking in curiosity at him, in his clean clothes and with his striking blonde hair and wind-flushed cheeks that gave him a healthy, rosy-faced look. A stark contrast to the children’s dirty clothes, pale faces, and what seemed like uniformly mud-colored hair.

“Ladders,” Gryff said. “From level to level. Down the ladder shaft. They’ll have to wait until all the men and boys from the last shift are up, then they’ll climb down and start work.”