One of the organisers, who evidently had not seen him, followed Dick to the centre of the field. Dick ignored him and bellowed, "I am undefeated: who will challenge me?"
When no-one came forward, Trevithick began to stalk about, looking for a competitor
Jemima thought she had found one in Tom Harry. His face was bruised and to Jemima it looked like the damage had been caused by a left handed man hitting him in the face. She looked across to Dick, who was stalking around with his left hand higher than his right, his leading hand.
Did he know? He had been insistent in being protective of her the day after, and that day, and several other times, now she thought of it.
Beside them, Richard Dunkin had arrived, and was greeting Humphry heartily. He nodded to Jemima before striding away, a woman beside him.
He would have benefited from the copper, Jemima knew, for he had been imprisoned for debt.
"Who was the lady?"
"Back from London for a few days, his sister, Mary, Mistress Opie now.". Jemima's face looked blank.
"Opie? John Opie?" Davies asked Jemima. "The artist? He was just there, drawing the scene."
And while Dick pushed a lubberly man into the ground, Davies acquainted Jemima of other names from Cornwall.
"...Samuel Footes, the playwright, who knows David Garrick, who knows Dr. Darwin…Henry Bone is also his friend…he is in London, miniatures, we have several of his if the family…"
"Miss Withering!"
Through a crowd that was building up around the field where Dick Trevithick was laying flat challenger after challenger, Drake Carne pushed his way through. Davies nodded when he got closer, the memory of earlier still in his mind.
So he told them of the plan that he had heard, that the Illogan miners were planning to break the steam engine, put it beyond repair, destroy it.
"Our thanks for telling us this," Edward Bull told him. "It must have been difficult."
"Only I work for Lord Bassett, and it is his engine."
They watched a little more, and waiting until Drake had drifted away, Edward whispered to Davies, "When Dick has finished we will tell him we will guard the engine throughout the night. That will make the wakes live up to their name!"
"All of us?" Davies asked, as a cheer went up from the spectators - another competitor must have arrived.
"We can take it in turns to sleep," he told them.
They moved forward to see who it was who had challenged Dick and at once saw it was the squat, blonde haired man who had grabbed Jemima. Beside them, Drake Carne had found them again.
"Oh no," Drake told them. "His name is Ludd; he is a terroriser in Illogan."
But it was this man was who Dick had been waiting for. His eyes narrowed and he became more hunched backed, more determined to fight as Ludd raised his fists.
They clashed hands, as it was clear that Ludd wanted to fight too, and after a call of "No boxing"! they began trying to grab one another.
After a few slip grips, where the competitors lost their hand holds, Dick managed to get Ludd gripepd around the waist.
But Ludd was cunning and was going into the wrestle, hands pulling at Dick's clothes, and managed to topple him a little. When he turned, it was clear he was hanging onto Dick by the calves. A whistle blew and the organiser made them come apart.
They flew at one another again, Dick was close to his head, and he bit something. Ludd screamed, but held on longer. Dick launched his forehead at Ludd, who toppled back, unconscious to calls of outrage from other Illogan miners at the contravention of rules.
To give him his due, Dick Trevithick had won, but the organiser got Ludd to sit up before calling Dick the undisputed champion, who not only did not have to pay to compete, being champion last year, but won a few coins and, more importantly, the title.
The Illogan miners were still not happy, but there were plenty of people buffering Dick's way back to the group.
"I am leaving daughter," came an unexpected but familiar voice by Jemima's ear. She turned, and there was her father, smiling at her.
"Father!" she exclaimed, guilt lying in her stomach having not thought to look for him the whole day, "I am sorry I did not see you!"
"I saw you, enjoying yourself," John Withering replied. "And now it's time to go home - say goodbye to your friends."
And they were all looking back Dick, the champion, her oldest friend Davies, and Humphry, who was staying with them. Gregory Watt nodded, as did Edward, and little Thomas Wedgwood parted her arm.
"Dr. Withering," Davies began, when he saw Jemima's face. "We are staying for the night - "
" - we can bring Jemima back in the morning when I come back" interrupted Humphry.
"She will be safe with us, sir, there are six of us," Davies told his father's friend. "We promise to bring Jemima home and keep her from harm."
"Besides, I want to be awake with our engine," she told her father. "It's what the wakes are for."
And with the love of heart, though not necessarily the sense of mind, John Withering conceded.
" - with such fine young men, on a day such as this," he concluded. Then he looked to Jemima. "You will come home before the morning sunrise, daughter," he told her. And Jemima agreed, and hugged her father, watching him move off to Rev. Giddy's coach.
Around them, the atmosphere had taken a turn. Entertainment and food stalls were pacing away, but the alcohol was flowing, so too were the stories and even the songs that were littering the night air. Jemima beamed at her friends.
"Come on," Dick told them, "I want to spend my one, two, three, four, five…guineas on some supper for us all. Looks like I'll have plenty of change after that!"
"You fought magnificently!" Davies told him. Dick nodded, but didn't reply. They strode over to the refectory where pasties as big as one of Dick's fists were being sold and they sat and ate them with boiled milk and weak ale.
Edward told Dick and the others about what Drake had told them, and the Boskednan champion nodded, slowly.
"They plan to do that, then?" He asked. "Well, they'll be in for a surprise when they find us!" And it was decided that they would sleep in shifts, and guard the Cornish engine until the morning.
Around them, stories and laughter filled the air singing. The singers were not holding back.
"A sol-, a sol-, a soldier I will be
Two pis-, two pis-, two pistols on my knee - "
"Too pissed!" Shouted someone. Jemima was hiding her face in her hands, trying not to laugh.
"For cu-, for cu-, for curiosity
I'll fight for my count-, fight for the count-,
Fight for my count-er-ee!"
They crossed from the refectory to Dolcoath, the light just fading now. It was getting colder, so Edward brought out some of their precious coal and lit the back boiler. They sat round it and talked of the next day, and of the engine and of the potential Illogan attack.
Jemima was feeling sleepy, and she rested her head on Davies' shoulder as the rest told stories that became more and more ghostly, the evening light on the metal glowing as if to make the engine's cross beams to appear to be wings and the firebox a mouth of breathing fire.
Until -
A snap! A crack! Above them, something was moving. In a second, Dick was on his feet, Edward beside him.
Davies looked up and prised Jemima from his shoulder. She blinked and stood beside him.
"The miners?" she asked. Dick had got up the steps and was looking, head over the edge of the engine pit.
"Edward, go around," she heard Dick whisper. More crackling as Gregory Watt, the oldest of the group, followed Edward and Dick.
"What do we do if it is the miners?" Thomas, who had been awed at Jemima's willingness to defend herself earlier that day, now felt frightened.
"Don't be scared, Thomas," Humphry told him. "We have the undefeated Cornish wrestling champion with us, what could we fear?"
"Here." Davies handed Thomas a piece of cake that he had saved from earlier. "Eat this."
Around them there were voices, this time chattering and laughing. Some singing.
Edward dropped down into the pit beside the engine, making them jump.
"Heaven! Edward!" Davies exclaimed, and asked what was above.
"If there were someone causing trouble, it wasn't them."
More singing diffused down to them under the engine: "Harass, harass, harass him in the dark
Each hit, EACH HIT, each hit will find its mark!"
"Wasn't the Illogan miners?" Thomas asked, glancing to Humphry and then to Jemima.
"It was," Edward told them. "That dirty sneak of a one who Dick fought was there…
"…A hor-, a hor-, a horse will carry me
I'll fight for my count-, fight for the count-,
Fight for my count-er-ee!"
The singing drifted away. Feet came towards them, Dick and Gregory.
"They're going to the Kiddley, the alehouse," Gregory told them. "But I heard them agree they would come back.
"Then I'm going after them!" Dick told them, but Gregory grabbed his shoulder.
"Too hasty!" he told him, then looked around at the group. "Not devious enough!". They gathered closer, as the most unlikely supporter of Dick's and Edward's Cornish engine, the son of the man who was protesting about its existence.
"Some of need to guard the engine, that leaves some of us free to follow them to the alehouse. Davies, Edward," he turned to look at them, "Stay here with me, so we can guard the machine.". He looked to Humphry and Dick.
"Go to the alehouse, surprise them, trap them somehow."
"If they're going I'm going!" Jemima insisted.
"Not out there at night, I promised your father to keep you safe, and you won't be on the most promiscuous night of the year.". Jemima felt herself blush.
There was silence for a moment, then Edward whispered something to Dick.
"Yes, yes we can!" Dick Trevithick replied. "I'll take Humphry, I have a little trick he can play."
"I'm coming with you, Dick" Jemima insisted, and he nodded, telling them the plan.
The steam engine's pump had an outlet channel that let the water pumped from the mines go straight out to sea. That channel for the engine as it was in Dolcoath took in the office hut and led to the alehouse, all under the rock.
"It'll be just like being in the mine, but we won't be seen outside," Humphry summarised.
"If Jemima's going, so am I," Thomas told them.
"Right," said Gregory, "Where's the channel, Trevithick?"
Dick crossed to a point about ten feet behind the steam engine. At chest height a passage began in the granite. Jemima felt her heart sink.
"I can't go in there," Jemima stopped. They stared at her. They really didn't see her dress, which was what Jemima meant was stopping her - she was not a woman to them, but a miner, an engineer, a colleague. A friend.
"Nor I." said Thomas. He was a little younger than Humphry, and the age difference was showing.
"Come on," Edward winked at Trevithick. "Ever been in a mine at night?"
He helped up Jemima, who gathered up her dress and clambered down, into a tunnel that was no different to the ones all over the mines, before handing her a candle and holder from the stack behind the engine. She took the other three so that the young men could have one each when they got up.
Above her, the lip of a tube that would lead back to the pumping chamber, each stroke of the pump would push gallon after gallon over the edge and down this way, and she wasn't surprised to find that the channel sloped gently downwards, the surface smooth for it had been used for many years by the Newcomen that had been there and the water had scoured the rockface.
A scuffling behind her made her stop, and Dick was behind her followed then by Humphry and followed by Gregory.
"Where's Thomas?" Jemima asked. Gregory nodded his head back towards the engine.
"He's cold I think," Gregory told them. "Davies has him, he's by the fire."
They climbed on, and could hear more singing as they went.
"It's the Kiddley, come on!" Gregory insisted. Bawdy songs were filtering down.
"Someone's father once dug a way up to the drinking establishment," Dick told them in an uncharacteristic moment as they inched along the smooth passageway,
"Don't look for trouble, Dick," Jemima warned. "Just, stop them getting back to the engine somehow."
"Trouble?" asked Gregory
"The Illogan miners who took a liking to Miss Withering." Trevithick grumbled. Gregory, of course, didn't know now that. "They'll be sorry they saw you."
"No, Dick, don't," Jemima told him, turning to Gregory for an ally, "Don't do anything!"
"Oh we won't," said Gregory, winking at Dick, "We won't think about the Uttoxeter manoeuvre."
"The Uttoxeter manoeuvre?"
"Let's just say," Gregory laughed, "They didn't see the horses coming!"
A hatch above them told Jemima that the mine's office hut was above them. She turned to Dick and Gregory, shaking the skirt of her dress.
"The mine office is up there," she told them, by way of explanation. Both men knew what she meant - she couldn't go into the alehouse dressed as she was.
Gregory pushed open the hatch. Light spilled through as the moon illuminated the room. Jemima jumped, trying to get her elbows over the sill, but it was a bit too high. She handed her candle to Humphry.
"Jemima," Edward said to her, mock-admonishingly, "Get in there and come out as miner for all that is precious in this world!"
"Poetry and fishing?" asked Humphry. They laughed.
One big jump, and a boost up by Gregory and she was there. She had not been into this one before but, as with all mine offices, a row of hats were across one wall with candles set in the brim.
Breeches and shirts set underneath them, all as musty as each other, but a bit of digging about and Jemima found a freshly laundered set. She had got the front lacing off, but had forgotten about the buttons at the back.
"I need some help! She called. Gregory had his hand up on the door but Trevithick pushed past him. He closed the ceiling door behind him, which was, to them, the floor.
"Dick?" Jemima turned and then turned back. She'd managed the over trousers and found a pair of boots. But the lacings were beyond her.
"Can you…?" She gestured to her back and turned away from her friend.
It was the work of a moment, hands smoothing down her body to find the start of the lacing, Dick's fingers light at her waist so Jemima could wriggle out of it. Dick handed her the overshirt and was folding the dress when she turned around.
On her flight down to Bristol, some time in the future, Jemima would have vivid memories of that night, that moment - it must have started then, her piece of heart, given. And never recalled.
The little party of troublemakers continued to climb through the water outlet pipe, which would eventually drain overland into the sea. A slow cycle of water displacement.
And within moments they had got to a door on the other side of the alehouse, a shack built of driftwood with a bar across the back. Jugs of ale stood across it, a large man with long, grey-black hair guarding them.
The Kiddley was rather full, but there seemed to be no partitioning of miners as usually happened in drinking establishments. Here, all were mingled together.
"How will we know which are from Illogan?" Humphry asked. Jemima looked, and after a moment located both the brown haired man, drinking and laughing with another man, the fair haired man the other side of him, his face swollen and bruised from his encounter with Dick.
"There," Jemima told Gregory. Dick had spotted them too, his face one of menace.
"Now for the horse trick," Gregory Watt told them, and pulled Humphry aside.
"What's the - " Jemima began, as Humphry dropped into her corner of the alehouse. He curled his hand around something, and then walked, if a little unsteadily, towards the men.
"Is someone waiting for a horse? Free? To get back to Sawle?". His words were light, and those further away couldn't possibly have heard him.
"Aye!" It wasn't an Illogan miner, it was Jago Martin, her former worker. Beside him, Ted Carkeek got to his feet.
"I'll show you, sir!" Humphry told him, leading Jago outside.
"You know which the Ting Tong miners are, and now we know which are the Sawle miners. Those left are Illogan." Jemima looked across to Gregory.
"And Humphry?"
"I've told him to go back to Edward and Davies," he told her.
More singing began as Humphry spoke to them, and put something in Jago's hand.
"...Her slender neck, her handsome waist, Her hair well buckl'd, her stays well lad'd, Her taper white leg with an et, and a, c, For her a,b,e,d, and her - "
" - Right!" interrupted Gregory. "My turn!" He slid down into the alehouse. It was too full for him to be noticed and Jemima relaxed a little.
"Aaasnnnd…My little sister Millie is a pro in Piccadilly
My mother is another in the Strand
My father sells his arsehole
in the Elephant and Castle
We're the biggest load of bastards in the land.
My uncle's a vicar - "
"…Oh let down your drawbridge, I'll enter your keep
Enter your keep nonie nonie, enter your keep nonie nonie
Let down your drawbridge, I'll enter your keep…"
The bawdy singing continued, even in Spanish: "...Tengo un pequeño problema, Tengo la picha muy grande, Y cuando estoy con mi novia, La cosa se pone que arde."
"I know this one," a voice piped up. Jemima turned from her place beside Dick, just inside the passage.
"Thomas!".
"I wanted to come to you!"
"What do you know…?"
But the singing had begun again, and Thomas was joining in: "...can't find the secret to your combination for your chastity oblation…
For the cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale
Fitted a Yale nonie nonie, fitted a Yale nonie none
The cunning old bastard has fitted a Yale!"
"Thomas!" Jemima scolded, noticing the mirth on Dick's face, "You're thirteen!"
"And you're a girl, Jemima! You shouldn't know these things!"
"I know what a Yale is," , keeping an eye on Gregory. "You think I haven't been to see the locks being made in Willenhall?"
And Gregory had got close to the Illogan men, and said, as to the room in general, "Gentlemen, George Warleggan's horse awaits outside, who is in charge of taking it to him? I have your money here!"
To their surprise it was Ludd who got to his feet. Gregory handed him a sixpence.
"Sixpence?" scoffed Ludd, pushing it back to Gregory in disgust.
"You will get the five pounds when you get to Tehidy, but you must give the horse directly to Mr. Warleggan!".
"Gregory, no!". Jemima hissed, as Gregory Watt smiled, and gave a brief nod in their direction. Ludd smirked, drained his tankard and strode through the door.
Gregory left too, and would be heading back to the engine.
"What now?" Jemima wondered, but within minutes, Gregory was back beside them.
"Nothing at the steam engine," he told them. "Now for part three." He bent his head to Thomas, "Want to have some fun, Master Wedgwood?"
Despite Jemima's protest, Thomas Wedgwood was brilliant. He got his way to the door, and nodded a few times at the people coming in.
He went out, standing by the door, shouting outside. " Quick, quick, Mr Warleggan's horse is being stolen! He will offer five pounds to anyone who will stop his horse from being stolen!"
"Gregory - " Jemima turned to her friend.
"Just wait," Gregory replied, looking out into the Kiddley. The bar emptied and outside a crowd grew. Jemima could hear voices being raised, disagreeable voices, which grew to shouting outside: they were fighting one another.
"Now…tell me that wasn't fun?"
All three of them dropped into the alehouse, Jemima waiting as Gregory and Dick poured themselves a jar of ale, Gregory leaving sixpence under the bar, for the barkeeper had also gone outside, presumably to recover his customers.
Two more drinks poured, for Edward and Davies, and the three of them walked past the throng of miners, convinced that both George Warleggan's horse was being delivered to him and, at the same time, being stolen.
"You stopped them then?" Edward asked, as they climbed down to the steam engine, Gregory passing the beer to him and Davies, and told them of what they had done.
"Thanks to Mr. Watt junior," Dick told them. Gregory smiled broadly.
"Too drunk and incapacitated to damage steam engine now," he told them. One of them, the brown haired man who had attracted her attention earlier, had been staggering around with a broken nose. Dick had smirked as they passed, perhaps wishing it had been him who had meted it out.
Jemima, who had picked up a jar of milk and had left the tuppence she had found in the over trousers next to Gregory's sixpence, called for.
Humphry to take it off her.
They sat together drinking milk and ale, cheering the horse trick's success. The moon was setting when someone suggested climbing up to the upper platform of the engine, and they continued, laughing and singing.
Until someone noticed the sunrise.