Page 60 of The Cornish Inheritance

Chapter Twenty-Five

Consciousness returned slowly, accompanied by the raucous sound of gulls calling, their intrusive cries gouging uninvited into Nat’s pounding head. The vibrant heat of sunshine on his face followed, with an awareness of brightness lurking beyond the inadequate shelter of his eyelids. Then a disconcerting sense that he was lying with his head lower than his legs on what had to be rocky ground seeped over him. And pain. Not just the throbbing in his head, but a sharp, nagging pain like the worst toothache imaginable, encompassing the entire right side of his body.

Nat groaned.

After he’d groaned a bit more and cursed himself for falling off his horse, he ventured to open his eyes. He was right about the sun. It appeared to be directly overhead and trying to blind him out of a cloudless blue sky that otherwise he would have enjoyed. He tried turning his head to the right but found his cheek up against a sizeable rock, so he closed his eyes, heaved in a breath and held it, and turned his head to the left instead.

When the rocking dizziness had subsided, he forced his eyes open again. Purple heather met his gaze, both close up and far off, stretching uphill to a not-too-distant, blurry horizon.

He lay for a minute or two trying to organize his jumbled thoughts. That he must have fallen off was obvious, but apart from that, he had no idea how that could have happened to a cavalry officer who’d almost lived in the saddle for a good number of years. Nor could he recall why he’d been out on a horse, nor where he was.

Gradually, though, shards of memory fought their way to the surface, and he waited while they slotted back together. He’d been riding over to Wheal True to see what conditions were like there for the miners. On Duchess, who’d been particularly lively that morning and probably in season. Yes, she’d shied at a good few things along the way, but hadn’t a large bird of prey startled her? He saw again the dappled browns of the hen harrier’s large flapping wings and felt Duchess leap to the left, but what had happened after that remained hidden. Surely, he hadn’t fallen off when a horse did a simple sideways shy? What kind of a greenhorn rider did that make him?

His brain couldn’t seem to work its way around any of that, so he closed his eyes for a minute or two, hoping things would improve. They didn’t, much.

Common sense prevailed, though. He needed to make an assessment of what damage had befallen him. His head hurt with a vengeance with every move he made, but what else had he done? The pain down his right side had localized to his upper body, which felt tender from the shoulder down, and he didn’t fancy trying to move. However, he couldn’t stay here in what appeared to be the bowl of a rocky gully. He had to get up into the open, where perhaps he might spot a cottage somewhere, or even someone on an errand who could help him. Instinct told him he very much needed help.

He tried moving his legs first, one at a time. They seemed inclined to mobility which was a relief. Arms next. His left arm and hand were fine, but not so his right. Any movement of that arm resulted in a wave of pain that threatened nausea. He grit his teeth; he would not lie here and puke on himself. He had to get up.

Perhaps he could pull himself up into a sitting position against the rock to his right.

It took some time and frequent pauses to grit his teeth and wait for the pain to subside, but he managed it. Panting for breath, he leant against the boulder and surveyed his situation. His right arm hung useless, pain pulsating out from the shoulder, and his ribs hurt as though he might have cracked at least one. But apart from that, and whatever head injury he’d sustained, he seemed to be in one piece.

Overhead, the wheeling gulls kept up their cries, but they were no indicator of how close he was to the cliffs. Did he just have to hope someone would eventually come looking for him? How far did the moorland stretch? Too far. With lots of little gullies like the one he’d so unfortunately fallen into. He peered up at it again. It wasn’t steep sided, just dotted with lumps of granite amongst the heather, and if he could get to his feet, he could perhaps use those rocks to lean on as he fought his way back to the higher ground.

In a few minutes. He just needed to close his eyes and rest.

When he opened them again, the sun had shifted in the sky and the rock behind him was throwing a giant shadow across his body. He tried to muster some spit to lubricate his mouth, without success. He’d lain here too long. The day was moving on, and even though it was only just past midsummer, he didn’t want to spend the night in the open. For all he knew, he hadn’t yet been missed, and no one was out searching for him. He had to do something for himself.

It took far more effort to stand than it had to pull himself into a sitting position, but through sheer determination, he did it. Leaning heavily against the boulder, he surveyed the easiest way out of the gully. Every part of him ached as though he’d been trampled by a herd of wild horses, and his whole being focused on the pain in his right shoulder, which managed to overshadow his aching head with no trouble.

Touching wary fingers to his scalp, he found sticky blood matting his hair and explored no further. If a head wound like that had been going to kill him, then he’d be dead or dying by now, and his shoulder pain told him he was anything but.

Moving slowly, from boulder to boulder, rock to granite rock, he began what had looked at first to be the gentlest of ascents but rapidly turned into major mountaineering. But eventually, he made it to the brow of the gully and stood, swaying slightly, surveying the view. His saddle lay in the heather a few feet away, testament to how he’d managed to fall off. Damn it. He’d saddled Duchess himself. Had he done something stupid? Surely not. He’d been riding since he was younger than Yves. Only a fool would have failed to do a girth up properly, and anyway, a loose girth wouldn’t have made the saddle come right off.

He couldn’t bend over to pick the saddle up now, not one-handed, so he left it lying in the heather.

To his right, at a distance of perhaps only five hundred yards, rose the buildings of Wheal Jenny, the pump house engine busy working to empty the lower parts of the mine of water. He hadn’t even made it past there.

Deciding they were the best place to head for, as it was much further to try to walk back to Roskilly, Nat took a first, shuffling step, anxious not to jar his shoulder too much. He failed on that. Pain lanced through his body leaving him gasping for breath.

It was no use letting it get the better of him. He had to keep moving.

A thousand more steps, almost exactly, as he was counting them to take his mind off the pain, brought him to the walls of the count house. The afternoon’s shift change must have already happened, because the sun was now even lower in the sky, and the count house looked quiet and deserted. With his good arm, he banged on the door, then leaned against it, forehead resting on the flaking paintwork.

Nothing. No one was there.

He let his body sag and nearly collapsed to the ground, only willpower holding him up. All the pain he’d been holding at bay on the walk from the gully threatened to overwhelm him and the world spun out of control. Nausea welled.

“Nat!”

A voice he knew broke through the wall of pain.

In a moment strong arms were supporting him and he was being helped inside the count house. “Mind my arm,” he managed to mutter. “I think it’s broken.”

Gryff Casworan, for it was he, helped Nat into the high-backed chair in front of his desk, and Nat leaned back with a deep sigh that transmuted into a groan, partly of relief but mostly from pain. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, but his whole body felt tense, as though he were holding it taut in an effort to lessen the pain.

“What happened to you?” Casworan’s deep voice asked. “We heard you was missing, and I spared some men from the mine to join in the search, but Mr. Trefusis wouldn’t let them all go. Said as how the mine had to keep working, come what may.”