Page 74 of The Cornish Inheritance

Chapter Thirty

Caroline stared at the small cave in the cliff face, not even high enough for her to enter without having to almost crouch. This did not look as though it could lead anywhere. Had Yves really gone into this uninviting hole? Why would anyone even want to? Sweat began to prickle out across her skin.

She glanced at Nat, but he was already scrambling over the remnants of what must once have been a path along the cliff edge, but had now been almost all washed into the sea through lack of maintenance and many years of rough weather. Over her shoulder, the waves seemed a lot closer than they had been, but that might have been an optical illusion… or her nerves. Had the tide turned, and was it even now creeping closer by the minute and threatening to shut off the little cove and them with it? She swallowed. She had to think of Yves and not her own safety, hard as that might be.

Nat ducked his head and disappeared into the dark mouth of the cave. In a moment he was outside again, holding up a garment Caroline recognized. Yves’s short blue jacket, the brass buttons on it glinting in the sunlight. “He left it lying just inside the entrance,” Nat said. “He can’t be too far ahead of us. Give me your hand and I’ll pull you up.”

Using his left hand, he hauled her up to stand in front of the cave entrance on a little platform of flat rock. He seemed to be holding his right arm against his chest as though in pain. A pang of guilt assaulted Caroline that she’d asked him to help her so soon after his injury. “I’m sorry. Your arm must be hurting you. I should have asked Young Pascoe to come with me instead.”

He shot her a reproving scowl. “He’d be no good to you at all. Never been down a mine in his life, and I doubt he even knows where this adit is. I’ve spent enough time in this one in particular to know my way about. We’ll find him, don’t worry.”

His positive air comforted her as much as his physical presence did. A man used to command and to facing danger. However bad they were at noticing things going on under their noses, men could be useful in a crisis.

Nat looked past her at the sea. “Time presses on, and we only have until the tide reaches the furthest rocks. We’d best get in there.”

He went first, and, having taken a huge, steadying breath, Caroline ducked her head and followed. Immediately darkness rushed in around her, compressing her body and making it hard to breathe. Her heart began to race and a fresh lot of cold sweat stood out on her skin. Her terror of enclosed spaces filled her head. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.

A flame flickered as Nat struck a match and lit one of the candles, sending the darkness fleeing. The interior of the cave leapt into immediate shadowy reality—a little larger on the inside than the entrance implied, but with walls and ceiling of jagged rock. How narrow it felt, with the walls close enough to touch without stretching out her arms. Underfoot lay soggy sand and lumps of rock, indicating just how far in the sea would come before too long.

Yes. She could do this. For Yves. She took another quivering breath. “Yves!” She shouted, but the rocks seemed to soak up her voice and dwindle it to nothing. Perhaps she was hoping for too much that he might still be near enough to hear her.

“Yves!” Nat joined in, his voice deep and strong, but still swallowed by the walls.

Nothing.

“Take hold of my coat and follow close behind me,” Nat said, seemingly oblivious to her terror. “Step carefully. I don’t want you stumbling and breaking your ankle.” She didn’t want that either. The last thing on earth she wanted was to be stuck in here with a broken limb. She swallowed; she was just going to have to be brave… for Yves.

Nat held the candle out in front of him, and Caroline did as she was told and took a tight hold on his coat tails. They progressed at snail’s pace into the tunnel. The adit. She had to remember it was called an adit. Somehow, remembering the proper name felt like a lifeline that might keep her mind off the reality of her situation.

A glance over her shoulder showed her the tiny dot of daylight that was the entrance disappear around a bend in the tunnel. Adit.

She mustn’t think of the tons of rock above her head, of the headland, the mine buildings on the top of it, of the sea chasing them up the beach. Adit. This was an adit. Think of Yves, lost in here somewhere. In this adit.

After about fifteen minutes of this slow progress, the flickering candlelight illuminated, badly, a fork in the narrow tunnel. To the right, the adit veered off slightly downhill, into murky brown water that must never drain away when the tide was out. To the left, the adit rose a little and headed very gently uphill, the path altogether drier, but considerably narrower. If that were possible. No wonder they sent skinny young boys down here. She swallowed down her fear yet again, an action made hard by how dry her mouth had become.

“He won’t have gone down that tunnel,” Nat said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The boy has some sense, I believe.”

Not that much or surely he wouldn’t have gone down here on his own in the first place.

Nat turned uphill, at over six feet, a tight fit, with his head scraping the tunnel roof and his shoulders the sides. As for Caroline, her skirts caught at the walls of the tunnel, snagging on the rough surface and her feet scuffed over the wet, rocky floor. Thank goodness she’d worn boots and not light shoes.

The flickering candlelight illuminated the walls, revealing streaks of blue running down them. “Copper leaching out of the rock,” Nat said. “See up there?” He pointed where a narrow shaft in the tunnel roof rose above them at an angle. “That’s where the old miners followed the vein of copper upwards.”

“I thought this was a tin mine.”

“It is, but there’s copper here as well. Or there was. Not much left now and too expensive to dig out. So we stick to tin.”

Water dripped and trickled down the rocks on both sides, pooling on the rough floor, and Caroline was glad again of her boots. How far were they going to have to go? She was a mole, blindly tunneling ever deeper into an earth that terrified her. Progress was by necessity slow, and Yves could be anywhere in here, even now lying injured somewhere they might not find him. She tightened her hold on Nat’s coat as they continued.

They hadn’t gone a lot further, or so it seemed, when Nat ground to a halt.

Caroline peered around him only to find the tunnel up ahead blocked by a pile of rocks and rubble. “It’s blocked,” she said, stating the obvious. “Where can he have gone?”

Nat shook his head. “Not fully blocked. Look.”

Sure enough, up near the top of the fall of rocks was a hole. Not a very large hole, but one a small boy could have wriggled through if he had a fancy to. However, it didn’t look large enough to allow either Nat or Caroline through.

Nat scrambled up and put his candle and face to the hole. “Yves! Are you there? Yves!”