1784, West Cornwall
Spring brought primroses and sea pinks and the warmth of the summer a promise away. Jemima's father had built up a good medical practice and had been lucky, he had confided in his daughter that there was little competition around St. Erth. Chance would have it, he had added, that a man was looking for a surveyor of a mine with a mind for it to be reopened and so John Withering had taken a horse and ridden west to Wheal Leisure.
Ross Poldark had welcomed the man, and showed him about, and they had discussed the difference between copper and coal. He planned to work his inheritance, or so Jemima had discerned and she was pleased that her father would be pleased at his visit there today.
Some men liked fishing, some fighting, some even gambling, but her father liked minerals, and any such technology associated with a mine. Now, Poldark and her father were standing on a piece of high ground and was telling him about the prospects thereabouts.
"Thats my uncle's mine, Gramber," Jemima heard him say, as she inspected the stoneware around. "I have this and Grace, neither of which can make a profit standing idle." The man turned and Jemima watched him run his hands through his unkempt long hair. "I cannot yet discern to raise the capital, and the banks will not touch an idle mine."
"I do remember it working, and Reith, and Busy," John Withering replied.
"When were you here last?"
"Oh, about a decade ago."
"You are not from around here."
"No, sir, I am not," her father conceded, "But I spent many a year here in Penzance after my training in Bristol. I thought I could do a lot of good in my home country."
"Abroad?"
"No, in Shropshire, in the Midland shires, black by day, red by night, my specialism is coal mining, but any mining really." Jemima looked up, her heart filling with familiar sadness at what was to come. Her father put a hand to his head. "My son is - was - working with Lavoisier in France, as a chemist…there was an uprising and he was killed."
"I am very sorry to hear it Dr. Withering," Poldark replied, and at this, his eyes met those of Jemima for a moment, who had looked up at the despondent tale.
"And so, after my wife died, and I lost my money, I was determined to return to a place where I had prospered. Jemima watched her father glance over at the engine housing.
"I had a tour of a bigger mine, Ting Tong, over towards Camborne," John Withering went on. It's operational, and would pay well."
"Well, there you have it," Poldark replied, folding his arms. But her father shook his head.
"Their problem is easy, I can help with their problem, or I can at least advise: get a steam pump, and you'll get twenty levels more working face. But…it would take time away from my practise." Jemima watched Ross Poldark's face brighten.
"You'll work for me? Even if I can't pay you until we are open?"
"I would prefer it, Mr. Poldark, for your mines are nearer my practise. But, yes, I will." Dr. Withering put out a hand. Ross Poldark shook it, looking down at the spoil heap, which Jemima was scrutinising with intent. William Henshawe, Ross's prospective grass captain was talking to he, discussing the structure and colour and potential metal content; neither would remember their first meeting, but Jemima would never forget their last.
"And your daughter?"
"She would work too, given half a chance!" Withering smiled broadly on his daughter's activities. "Already she is grading your spoil heap. As bright as Robert ever was. As it is your mine, you may dismiss her, if you so - "
"No, she may stay. She seems interested in the ore." Poldark made his way down the higher ground and stood beside Jemima for a moment, watching what she was doing. Then he crouched to her level. Jemima froze, and turned to look at him, shaken from her intense focus.
"Pray what do you have here?"
"These are minerals from Worcestershire, from Warwickshire, these. And look, a tiny shell, impressed into the rock."
"You did not carve it?" Ross went to take it from her hand. Jemima did not resist, and watched the man hold it closer to his eye.
"I found it, in a drained quarry." Poldark smiled, and offered it back.
"So someone else carved it and threw it away?"
"No sir, I do not believe that is so. The whole quarry had the same patterns throughout - and I cannot believe that someone would spend their whole time carving the same pattern over a thirty by fifty foot square of limestone." Ross cast an eye over his shoulder to Dr Withering, who smiled. It was Jemima all over, logical, unperturbed by questions from adults. Knowledgeable.
"May I stay, Mr. Poldark?" she enquired. Your spoil heap looks to have interesting treasure."
"Ah, you are playing treasure?"
"No," she replied. "You have your own treasure here, I - " Jemima broke off, having run out of words to explain to this mine owner. "It would seem to me, if you employed someone to pick through the spoil for these - " she held up a rock with greenish hue, "And this - ", one with more grey than yellow, with cubic crystal within the mixture and jutting out through the form " - then you might have enough to add up to more copper and tin."
"And which is copper? Which is tin?" Jemima held up the greenish one. "I know, because father, mother and I went with Robert to Wales. There is a lot of copper in Wales. This must be tin, though I have never seen its ore before." Ross smiled.
"You would make a fine bal maiden," he told her. But Jemima shook her head.
"I would be a mine owner."
"Like me?" he asked, amused.
"Back at home. I would earn money that I would buy the mines of the Marquis, and work them better than he does." Ross Poldark looked over his shoulder. John Withering shrugged.
"Zacky," called Ross, standing up. as he looked at the two of his workers who he had brought with him to do an exploratory descent, fixing their candles onto hard, calf-skin hats stiffened with tannin. "Send Jago over to me. There is a job he can do."
A boy about the same age as Jemima scrambled over the pit head and hurried over to Poldark. "Between you, sort through the spoil. If your father does not object?"
"Not in the slightest," John Withering replied, a smile on his lips. And he watched intermittently as his daughter instructed the boy to the task, and to both of them sitting with a pile of ore spoil, carefully picking through it, knowing Jemima was having the time of her life.
Once Ross, Dr. Withering and Zacky Martin had reappeared, over an hour later, there were two not unreasonably sized piles of rock, expertly sorted. His face betrayed his admiration, but Poldark told her, "A good job well done. I should pay you."
Jemima cast a worried look across to her father, who raised his eyebrows. It usually meant that he wanted her to decide.
"If you please, may I take some of the ore with me? These pieces?" She unfolded her hand, revealing three medium sized ones. "That I may compare to other rocks?" Malachite, stannerite, and a mixture, probably with dark patches of arsenic ore, or a minerals no smelting would touch.
"You may take any of the pieces you like," Ross told her, ruffling her hair. This was met with a disapproving frown from the girl, and he withdrew his hand. "And you may come back at any time you like, with your father's permission."
"These are lovely samples, " Davies told her that evening, when Jemima told him about her day. She had met him as he walked back from school, his dark brown tricorn hat picked out by the bright afternoon sun.
"But I wish I had been with you," she told him. "What was school like?" Davies narrowed his eyes, and hauled his satchel further up his shoulder.
"The learning is good, but the master is strict." He opened his palm and showed her the lash he had had across it. "I was writing too slowly, and my back was crooked."
"Then we must go exploring," Jemima told her, "On Sunday. Fresh air, exercise and a good lean diet. It's what Dr. Darwin prescribes."
"But, didn't you say he was old and portly?"
"He might have been slim and young once," Jemima told him confidently, as they rounded the head that would take them down to St. Erth's high street. "I saw a portrait once, and he looked just like Thomas. I wish he were here with us, and Gregory. They both talked about interesting things..."
"I have interesting things to talk about," Davies told her, proprietorially. He did not like to think of his friend having other friends; he had heard far too much about Gregory Watt and Thomas Wedgwood "I think there is still a lot about Cornwall that you do not yet know."
"Teach me your geometry and then tell me," Jemima Withering told her friend, linking arms for a moment, for there was no-one to tell them not to. "And I will tell you something of Shropshire."
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Three Sundays later, and the fast friends Davies Giddy and Jemima Withering were waiting at Plymouth for the incoming ships. Normally, they crossed down country to Helston, to watch the incoming vessels, but this time, after Davies had returned from his father's church and after Jemima had watched her father walk across to meet the coach to take him to Camborne for a Bretheren meeting, they had gone to the city that would take them out to the harbour island.
"Across to St. Michael's again?" Mrs Giddy asked of Jemima. The woman sighed, as Jemima stood before her, already defeated. "If your father says it is well."
"I know the tides, and I will not lose track of the time. I will speak to no-one that I know and will be back for supper." And with that, Sarah Giddy could not help but smile at the young lady. It was hardly conceivable that she had been born there, in their own house, and had had a second chance at life, thanks to Dr. and Mrs. Withering.
"You are the most sensible child that I know," Mrs Giddy told her, smiling. "I know you will not put yourself to harm, but mind that you are safe by the water, for you do not know how to swim."
She met Davies at the front gate, having given the woman her deep reassurances, and within an hour, they were watching a schooner punt across the harbour, resting before their ascent to the road that would then descend to the pathway that was usually covered in sea, the crossing point to St. Michael's Mount.
"Have you really not been to sea?" he asked her, when they had got to the shore of the harbour island that was St. Michael's. Davies knew the owner of the house and the groundskeeper nodded them through. Jemima shook her head. Not that she had avoided it, the opportunity just never had come about.
"Lovn day f'rit," the man commented, winking at Jemima.
"Indeed, sir," replied Jemima, the warmth of the late spring day on her skin. Already, from being outdoors, her hands were browning, and her face must have been too, as the girls, Davies's sisters, Sarah and Mary had both commented to her mother that Jemima needed something for her face. Mrs. Giddy had explained to her daughters that it was from being outdoors.
Jemima had not sensed any blame, however, although Mrs. Giddy's words sounded like disapproval. She had asked her father, who had waved her concerns away.
"Of course your skin will change being out of doors. If you don't care, neither do I. Sea air and exercise are what are important, and your mother would have agreed with me."
Her father had not crinkled his eyes as he had once done at the mention of his mother and now, as they circumnavigated to the south side of the Mount, Jemima recalled the conversation her father had had with her on their journey down: she had been a foundling and her father and mother, though dead, were of Cornwall.
"If you look at the angle of the sun to the water, and a fixed point on the shore, and drop a bob down, you can calculate by trigonometry your position, Davies told her as another commercial sailing ship put out its sails to catch as much of the paltry wind as it could, to get it into Falmouth. He handed her the string, and Jemima did the calculation, telling him the answer.
"I got the same," he told her, and they both smiled. "Of course, a ship has a more sophisticated instrument, the sextant. A sixth of the circumference of the earth. Middies are trained in it to plot the position of latitude."
"I'd like to see," Jemima confided in her friend.
And before she could think, Davies had asked Mr. Porter, the keeper of the grounds at St. Michael's, if he could row them to Falmouth. "If it is no trouble on your way for your victuals."
That was what she liked about Davies Giddy, brilliantly insightful, and happily persuasive, no-one ever had a bad thing to say about him. As the wind whipped about her face, Jemima's thoughts turned to Robert and she wondered what it would be like to have him with her, as her brother, as Davies was her brother.
"You will get the carriage home, then?" Porter asked of Davies, who agreed that they would. He knew the "Swan," a packet ship that went out to Lisbon - one of the sons of their servants was crew aboard her and he hailed William Marsh when they got to the quay.
"Captain not back yet," William told Davies. "I can't let you aboard without his say so. He - " and William lowered his voice, confidingly "Has a problem with the liquor, Master Giddy. I would be beaten if he came back in a drunken way and knowed I had let visitors aboard."
"Then we can wait," Davies told William, and nodded to Jemima. "We can look at the ships from here; Admiral Nelson has lodgings here does he not?"
"He do indeed, sir, " William assred Davies. "Up in - "
But he did not finish. A man was steaming along the wharfside, hands bunched into fists, face red as the setting sun He kicked at an empty herring basket as he marched to his ship, pushing past Davies and Jemima. She took Davies's hand as they stepped back, which was a food thing, because she nearly missed her footing. The day had taken a turn for the worse, but worse was still to come when the captain took out a pistol and was waving it about. William Marsh's face had gone pale; the drunkenness of the captain was causing havoc amid-decks.
Cries of, "Captain Blamey!" could be heard aboard the Swan, but Davies and Jemima did not hang around long enough to find out the outcome of the man's unsober conduct.
"We need to walk to the Penzance road," Davies told her. "We can go on the top of the stage to get back quicker." Jemima nodded. Davies did not have a lot of money; perhaps she should have taken the offer of Ross Poldark's of coin for a job done in sirting the spoil.
"Here," she told him, as the carriage was under way.
"What's this?"
"What the mine owner said I could take, I have plenty of it." She pressed a piece of copper ore into his hand, and fumbled in her pocket for a piece of the tin. Davies held them up.
"Thank you," he told her, and Jemima smiled. He had already given her a few pieces of granite from Luxulyan, pink mineral held together by black and white.
"Poldark, did you say, Wheal Leisure?" Jemima nodded.
"It's a fortune it is opening for him; his seems a rich sample. Were they all like this?"
"What I saw that had been brought up," Jemima agreed. "My father brought up similar pieces."
"How did you like your first journey by sea?"
"
"A great deal," she told him, remembering the exhilaration of the wind around her, Davies's steadying hand at her waist, not that she needed it. But Jemima's mind was fixed on another visit, to see the ore again as the carriage bumped towards St. Erth. But Poldark had said she was welcome.
88888888
"Dr. Beddoes!"
It was another night, another night to discuss faith and society, medicine and chemistry. Thomas Beddoes, true to his word, had written, and John had welcomed their old friend, dearer to the reverend Giddy than he himself.
The conversation was seeing in midnight and had got as far as Withering's own fortunes having been turned around and his survey of Poldark's mine.
"What would you do: have you seen the son?" Thomas Beddoes picked up his sherry glass.
"Oh yes, he took me on a tour. Sorry state, and half under water. He has no money to reopen her, and more would be needed for a pump to drain the levels further down."
"So, in short, my dear fellow, few prospects." He looked at John Withering with a silence that only the three of them knew the meaning of.
"What can a brother offer her but a lifetime of servitude and drudgery - look at what they keep the cousin to over at Trenwith! They refuse her the chance to marry so she may live to serve them." Giddy's argument filled the space where John Withering was about to protest, about to field suggestions about how to broach the subject of Jemima.
Instead, John Withering put something onto the table. Candlelight flickered off its faceted surface.
"I followed him," Dr. Withering told his friend.
"Followed, To what end?" Edward Giddy called for his servant to bring more sherry.
"To find why he was selling his father's possessions. To make good his farm, it would seem. I bought it back for the price he sold it for." Beddoes and Giddy gave one another a long look.
"Do you intend to leave her in her brother's care, then?" Dr. Beddoes reached for the pocket watch and held it in the palm of his hand and watched the light catch it at a close up distance.
"God in heaven, no!" Exclaimed Reverend Giddy. "Please say no, John, as the friend that you are to me. You have brought her up so well: manners, gentility, refinement, intelligence. And modesty enough that does not make her brag or show off. She is not precocious. She is - "
"A free spirit," John Withering turned to Giddy, then leaned back in his chair. "I have seen him - the brother - there is good in him. But, I hear your words, old friend. I had thought, if her father, her true father was alive, I might - "
"You are her true father, my dear John!" Thomas Beddoes set down his sherry abruptly. "You cared for a child that was thought dead; her father took to his bed, gave up on his living. As for her uncle, her cousins…by all accounts - " he broke off and shook his head. " - after the Illuggan miners stormed his house; after the duel between his cousin and the courting sea captain - "
"But is it right, though?" Dr. Withering pressed. "Long have I vexed over that question. When we were in Salop, yes, we were away, we had our life. Then I bet on bluejohn; Darwin, well, his living is far healthier than mine, and his investment much smaller." He put a piece of rock on the table.
"Here it is, and when it polishes up, my it does glow. Boulton had a mind to manufacture it. But - " He stopped, and clapped Edward Giddy on the shoulder. "You're right, my old friend."
"Of course I am. She will be old enough to one day make up her own mind. But for now, let your daughter do that wonderful task of not letting Davies get into trouble. Believe me," he leaned in towards Dr. Withering. "That poor orphaned child has had the best life you could have given to her. Now," he turned to the servant, "Bring the brandy, will you?"