Based on S1 E4, Mid to late 1787

A letter had come, and it was from Thomas Wedgwood. From the back house, where Jemima kept her things, she came at the call from her father, who was still having breakfast in the dining room. Usually she was at the mine, but not today because she had an examination to take at school. Humphry would be there, and sometimes she missed her life at Tredrea, when she could see him more often but her father was smiling.

"Come, sit! And tell me all about life in the Midlands," he encouraged, warmly. Jemima, who always rose early and when she was not at the mine she was experimenting and recording. Because she missed her friends and letters from Thomas and Gregory kept her sustained.

"Father has used different consistencies in little pieces of clay, and fired them, to see which is the better recipe," he told her, in his small, round hand. He went on to tell her of the fishing in Stafford, "As good as Isaak Walton would have it," he added, in reference to the man, a hundred years ago, who had written the first book on fishing, "The Compleat Angler."

"He will find fishing rather different when he comes," John Withering told his daughter. He waited the moment for the understanding to form and the smile break out onto her face.

"Mr. Wedgwood, dear Josiah," he added, glancing at his own letter, "requests, "lodgings for himself wife and son, and Mr. Gregory Watt."

"Truly father?"

"Indeed. Mrs. Davy is to take them, she has room now the rest of the family are gone to their own lives, and - "

"Oh father!" Jemima exclaimed, her mind running to the fun, the joy they would all have exploring the county, and Humphry's experiments. She had handed over several mechanisms that Humphry had already taken apart and refashioned in her workroom anyway, for she has less time than she used to with such things. Better, she procured her father's spirits from his medical stores in order to distil and extract as much as she could from any rocks that she had. But still that strange, soft, reactive metal was the best she had had, from the machine that caused sparks, like miniature lightning. Humphry had already repeated her experiment and made a sample of his own.

"It is good, is it not?" And John Withering received his daughter's arms around him, tightly.

It was better than that, it was magnificent. For years she had been writing to her friends, but to see them, after all this time? But she had hoped they would be going home to do that.

Going home, back to the Midlands, back to the Black Country. But, her promise to herself? She needed a reference if she were to be a mine manager, and money if she were to own a mine. Coal mining was not copper mining; land was owned differently.

Were things different…

Leisure was only yielding ironstone; orange-red rocks pressed into the mining housing, growing by the day and the north west was still blackstone. Behind it, however, in a dangerous move, she had got between a fault to bring back her precious malachite that had been shown at Reverend Giddy's dinner. She walked to school that morning full of thought, forcing herself to the examination with reluctance - Latin and grammar first, but mathematics in the afternoon.

Yet, Jemima had learned, as she came after school that day to Wheal Leisure that, Poldark had a cousin whose father owned a neighbouring mine, Grambler.

"Do you know what the problem is with Grambler?" She had ventured the question to Henshawe as the summer grew. The man gave her an easy smile, and they walked down the path that took them to the cliffs. The will to take his hand was a strong one, but Jemima resisted. She could not, of she wished to mine.

"Too few workers. The price of copper is low; Captain Poldark's cousin has…" he broke off. "Would you come to see the winding gear, Miss Withering?" Jemima followed the man back up to the engine housing around to the north side of the brick building where they were quite alone and lowered his head to her ear. "Francis Poldark mismanages his money; that means too short a wage for the men, when there's only too much work that can be found here."

"Mr. Henshawe, do you mean the fair haired man who comes here sometimes? Is that Francis Poldark?"

"It is, and - " his voice grew louder, "If I were you, and your father permits it, send your blackstone to the smelters at Portreath." But then, Jemima did something he did not expect. In her hand was -

"It's copper!" Henshawe exclaimed, almost as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Wh - where did you get this?"

"Behind the blackstone," Jemima told him. "I managed to get between the - " But William Henshawe took her by the shoulder and stood in front of her, bending his head.

"The only way you could have got this is, is to have gone between the levels - "

" - it's - " Jemima protested.

"No!" Henshawe chided her, "Again?" He remembered her doing it the first time, her exhilaration, her terror. Her delight at his face when she held up the stone, some grey, but mostly blue and green.

And what she had done after…

"No!" Henshawe backed away, but not as immediately as he might have. "It is too dangerous! You need to - " Henshawe was about to touch Jemima but stepped back as voices to one side of them grew a little louder and he took a few steps back, restoring respectability.

"Mr. Poldark," Jemima acknowledged, and took the ore in her hand. "I…wish to show you something.

Ross flicked a quick look to his mine captain and then back to Jemima, and was about to ask her what, when she took the step herself and stood in front of him, hand open.

"But, if you approve, I insist you take me on. As a consultant, or mine subcaptain, or something!"

"Is this - "

"I was just showing Captain Henshawe - " Jemima watched Poldark's face light up into animated joy. He took the grey-green rock and held it up to the sky."

"If you want me to tell you, I will, for a price." Ross looked up from the rock to Miss Jemima Withering. She had come nearly every day since the mine reopened, nearly four years. She was impudent, but persuasive. If he hadn't let her play in the western side - and play was what it was, with her scientific instruments and father's surgical implements, and hot water and mechanics - she would never have found it.

"I would be a mine manager, or supervisor, or consultant when I am grown," Jemima told him. "And to do that, I need to work and learn. Be apprenticed."

"None will admit a woman," Poldark cautioned.

"Except the balmaidens, who go aground every day and drag out rock, or pulverise rock to the end of their days? The question is, Mr. Poldark, will you employ a surveyor? Look, I have already found copper for you. There are other mines that I could apply to; Mr. Ishmael Tredinneck is in need of consultation, or advice at least. Over at Ting Tong mines. There is, of course, Reith, if it gets reopened," and Jemima went on to list half a dozen more, their condition, their lode, their owners. The only one she excluded was Grambler, for the obvious reason that she did not want Poldark to know that she knew of the mine.

He stared at her for a moment, and a smile formed on his face.

"Agreed," he told Jemima, "Agreed. Subject to your father's approval. Henshawe here can supervise you." Her smile grew bigger - today had been a good day.

"You must leave at once, you will go to him, now, and get a letter of agreement. It will form your contract with me. I will not have you here otherwise.

"Yes, sir. My thanks, Captain Poldark." Jemima beamed a smile to Henshawe, who smiled in return, an amused smile, knowing that she would be back the next day with a lengthy testimonial from her father.

"Doesn't look as if she has lost interest in mining," Henshawe told Ross, as she strode away.

"I do not really approve," Ross confided to Henshawe, "But at least if I give her employment, I can supervise her more closely - " he tossed the copper ore into the air. "What would I say to her father if she were to come to harm? I take it she went through the 20 to 30 gap?" William Henshawe shook his head.

"30 to 40," he told Ross, as the memory stirred, her defiance at the safety, his shock as to what came after.

"Well, that is deep. We will blast, and see what will come of it." Poldark took a step to William Henshawe, "And I know I can trust a gentleman's daughter with you, married man that you are." Ross looked in Jemima's wake. "Even if she is obsessed with mining."

88888888

It wasn't until the height of summer that Wedgwood and his family and Gregory Watt arrived, a coach to themselves laden with baggage. But, after just a few days it felt as if the Midlands had come to Jemima, and they were soon catching up, Jemima showing Thomas and Gregory her experiments and recommending they see those of Humphry's.

To her delight, Davies also returned, and at once struck up a strong friendship with Gregory, who was about his age, and who also set about teaching Humphry chemistry.

Jemima knew, just knew, it would be like that, the Lunar Society in miniature, the sharing of information, of knowledge, the tiny developments in understanding and furthering of development to practical application. Healths improved, walks were more diverse, as more people, Jemima's friends, would take to the landscape, with fresh perspectives. Fishing was done and, surprisingly of all, poetry was composed, Thomas and Humphry being most enthusiastic to record their experiences in verse.

And, of course, Jemima had taken them to Wheal Leisure, and Poldark had given them a tour. It was then that she heard the devastating news that a mine explosion in one of Lord Dudley's mines had killed over a hundred miners.

And the summer passed, and the days seemed light and filled with pleasure, every one of the people whether visiting or hosting drew together as if they had known one another all their lives.

Wedgwood demonstrated a green glaze that baked into the bone china - and for this he had visited Luxulyan and Mr. Hall, who owned the mine that supplied the Wedgwood factory and procured a sample - and Beddoes had experimented with it with the cottageware clay that was made in Devon and Cornwall, producing a green so like malachite that Jemima had to hold it in her hands to believe it hadn't been shaped from the rock.

In the Dunkin house, explosions, foul odours and gas production increased as Gregory Watt demonstrated more new chemistry techniques that Joseph Priestley had sent him in a letter when his guardian had propose Humphry design an answer to the barnacles up of the Penzance dock gates, copper becoming the answer and he and Gregory invited to supervise the fitting of the plates. It had all come from Jemima's discussion with Wedgwood about the metals she had exuded from the blackstone using her lightning machine, the soft, malleable metal which fizzed to nothing when in contact with water. Humphry had taken to using it as a mould and then cover with zinc or tin, for a more watertight finish, and Jemima had asked for the machine back for a time to demonstrate its formation.

And all of them, Humphry, Davies, Thomas, Gregory and Jemima strode the county on Sundays and, in particular, St. Michael's Mount, only Davies took fewer walks as he was preparing for the bar.

But they were to go, and Jemima was truly sorry, wanted to go with them, wishing that her four years in Cornwall had been just a few weeks, and they would all be together again back in the Midlands, with her mother and Robert.

"We can accommodate Jemima at Barlaston," Josiah Wedgwood told John Withering as the bags were loaded onto the carriage. Gregory was giving Humphry some last minute instruction using a length of wite and some string.

"It would make a change from her living down copper mines," he told his friend, wryly.

"Will you come? I have so much I want to show you!" enthused Thomas Wedgwood to Jemima, "Next Whitsun, or Easter? Or the summer?" Jemima agreed in advance, and waited for her father to nod approval, which he did, nodding indulgently to his daughter.

Before he had to leave to return to Bristol, Davies took a walk with her, as autumn fell in, quickly as it always seemed to do in Cornwall.

"You want to go back?" he asked her, as they approached St. Erth. Tredrea was to the east, an it was a three mile direct road back to Camborne.

"Eventually," Jemima agreed. "I will visit, but I sense it is no longer my home. Father's home was lost, and things could not go back to the way they were. When I go, I still would help miners. Thomas told me a lot of people were killed at Silverdale mine, from a gas that poisoned them all.

"You have our experiments, your machine," Davies reminded her.

"I gave it to Humphry, with my blackstone samples. I don;t have time for it as I used. Despite all your help, I still am very bad at Latin." Davies laughed.

"I think you named your soft metal well."

"Lithaeium? "Of the rock"? You see, even that…I would need to be taught chemistry, as Gregory taught Humphry."

"

"And I I say, all you do is sound." Davies stopped at the stile that would take him home. Jemima glanced at the Camborne road, "Listen, Jemma, now I have passed the bar, I have to be apprenticed to a lawyer. A friend of Beddoes knows of a man who will take me on."

"So you are going to Bristol too?"

"Too?" Davies echoed. Jemima shook her head.

"Dunkin is so angry, he has removed Humphry from his will. But Humphry is adamant he is going to be a doctor. Beddoes is going to take him on when he is old enough - "

"I was going to say he is nowhere near old enough," Davies told her, patting her shoulder.

"Will you write?" Jemima asked urgently. " I will have Humphry, my little brother, but you, my big brother, will have left." And there it was, a void bigger than the cave at Leisure. Davies took her hands, and smiled at his, for want of a better word, sister.

"Of course, Jemima. I do not go until next January And - " But whatever he was going to say the church bells of St. Erth rang out, indicating the only thing that was important to workers in north Cornwall: the pilchards had been sighted.

"Copme on!" Davies exclaimed with joy, and took up her hand in his, "Let's see it this year!"

88888888

Nearly six months since Jemima had handed Ross Poldark the copper ore and no more copper had been found. Her job, now at the mine, had taken a turn and, instead of exploratory digging, she was to sit and triage the rocks coming up, a tricky job, especially for a fourteen year old, but, Jemima supposed, she was trusted, for every last scrap of ore, whatever its metal content, was valuable and would be sent to be smelted. When they had any.

But it still felt like a consolation prize. One who did encourage her, as well as Humphry, was Dr. Withering, and would tell an exhausted Jemima that embroidery was also an option that he supported.

"You truly do not mind, father?" Jemima had asked, one evening, having had her what seemed to be daily baths, and sat down to dinner.

"My darling girl, I see the pleasure and satisfaction working out this puzzle gives to you - why would I want to take it from you?" John Withering lay down his fork and leaned over his sherry glass. "I signed that letter to Poldark, did I not? But if it hadn't been for the mine I was commissioned to work for then you could go to any mine - Ting Tong, Mr. Wild's mines, would do for you, I suspect, for they have the ores you like to experiment with."

So it was with the greatest of satisfaction Jemima went back each morning, knowing her papa was allowing her to do precisely what she wanted, without prohibitive barriers to her work, who she spoke to, what she did. It was as if he were treating her as he might treat a son.

He had even said nothing about her breeches, so Jemima would walk the three miles to Leisure ready to work, shirt tucked in at the waist. What would it have been like if Robert, Dr. Withering's son, had still been alive? Might he be working and they had never lost their house?

"Hiraeth", Will, that is, Mr. Henshawe had told her it was on Cornwall, musing on a different future if a past event had been different, or a longing for something which could never now come to pass.

So it was that the next day, Poldark called her from the spoil and told her to report to the office. Beside him, in mining hats were Zacky Martin and his son. Jago gave Jemima a half smile.

"I wish you to go down to the place in which you got this, Miss Withering," Poldark told her, and to her ear his words sounded deliberate.

"Yes sir," Zacky told the Captain. "Butvwe have been west, sir."

"And have you tried where Miss Withering has told you she found it?

Mss Withering?" He looked at her, almost as if he were trying to transmit another message simultaneously. "You took Jago and Zacky there - ?"

"I did. And that was when you sent me to my father, Captain, for permission for me to work for you?"

"Indeed," Poldark told her. "They have explored north west and have still found nothing."

"Nothing?". Jemima asked, bewildered. It had yet been a tiny miner's candle, they should have found at least something. "here should be a good deal there from and - "

An explosion, from the eastern levels - they were persevering with haematite but had equally found nothing. Jemima had gleaned that Leisure was down to its last few charges. She stuck out her hand automatically, and caught the door frame.

But, it shouldn't be like that - she had seen copper ore with her own eyes!

"So, you believe there is something there?" Poldark nodded to her. "So, to your word, I am sending you the level captain, and I want you to take him and Jago to where you found it.".

He took one of the thick felt miner's hats and offered it to her. Before she took it, Jemima took the leather cord from her wrist and pulled her hair tightly to her head, and took it from his hands.

"Show Zacky and Jago, Miss Withering, and perhaps we won't have to close Leisure."

Poldark watched the top of Jemima's hat descend as she climbed down the iron rungs, following after mister and master Martin.

When he was sure they had gone, he called Henshawe over to him. The man was overseeing the shovelling of the spoil into the carts- he would send it to Polreath anyway, and it could be roasted with other mines' tonnage, as was the ancient agreement between mine owners if one was lean.

"Ross?"

"Do you see the schooner on the horizon, William?" Poldark strode to the north face of the engine housing and surveyed the seascape. Little was ado that morning.

"I see nothing, Ross," Henshawe replied, frowning.

"Nothing," Poldark confirmed as he stepped round and turned his head in remonstrance to his mine captain and one of Leisure's investors.

"And that's what there should be between you, Will - "Poldark held up a hand. "I saw you, and don't say it was just the once - she is the fourteen year old daughter of the local doctor who helped me get this mine open. You must not put her on her back - "

"Ross! The very idea!"

"But I saw you. She stood on tiptoes and kissed your cheek…". He waited for Henshawe to deny it, and his heart sank when his friend said nothing.

"And, if you had seen a little longer, I told her it was inappropriate, and I would not share mining with her if ever she did it again." And she has not.

"But, you have…?" Poldark, with the uncanny ability to read minds, or mannerisms that betrayed minds. "You both went to the 20 level fissure, and - " Another explosion. One more left, and then they would have to close the lack of gunpowder. Only a miracle could change their fortunes.

"It not for me to say, Henshawe, but this mine's reputation - our investment - will not suffer because of your indiscretions. She is a beauty, I will give her that," Ross looked wistfully out to the aquamarine sea. "It stops here," he told his friend, gravely.

"Yes," Henshawe told him, remembering her lips on his. There had been many times. Too many. "Yes Ross. I will make sure it no more than those times."

"More than once, Will?!" Poldark have him a severe look. "Listen, my dear friend, you must put her out of your mind. You are married…your wife is…" Poldark searched for safer ground. "Her divining of copper behind the black is nothing more than hokum. I wonder if all she sees is her beloved coal. It's why I sent Zacky - I want an end to this, and she can find her place at another mine, if she truly loves the work and hasn't come here to cause trouble." Ross shook his head. II was a fool to listen to her, Now, bring the - " But it was here that Ross broke off, for a bell was ringing, the bell that denoted -

"Copper! We have copper!"

It was Zacky, and from his complexion he had been running through the tunnels underground. He breathed heavily, and sat on the grass, trying to recover. Poldark came over to him. Will Henshawe took a position just behind him, his own heart racing.

"From the east? Zacky?" Ross dropped to his level. "Was it the ironstone fault?" But, Zacky Martin grinned, and gestured towards the pit head building door, where Jemima was standing, her hands filled with as much green rock as she could hold.

"No, Captain Poldark, 't a'nt. It be behind that blasted blackstone! A whole wall of it, got to be twenty tonnes!"