Mid 1789, follows end of S1E8
Or had it been decided? The decision was in Jemima's mind to work with the earnest Dick Trevithick when she left Burslem. When she got as far as Worcester, and again Bristol, where she left a letter each for delivery to Humphry and for Davies, the desire to return to Wheal Leisure and copper strata filled her mind.
Before she had left the Wedgwood family home, Smith had allowed her to make a copy of the map he had drawn, and Jemima had copied two more and enclosed one each into her letters to her friends and she wrote to them both that it answered both Davies' theory of earth formation, Neptunian - that all rock had crystallised out of the sea, and Beddoes' favoured one Plutonian - that all rocks had formed from volcanoes.
Jemima did not know which one she thought was right, but either could produce the results that Smith had discovered, that there are layers in the earth, not just within a dozen feet, but over miles and miles, like pastry and fruit layers in a pie. And they would be, unless interrupted by hills and mountains, in straight, horizontal lines.
She has a working hypothesis now; she knew what it was her mind and her logic were telling her. The lode she had first found, that had stopped Leisure from closing, that was in line with Grambler; the rocks she had discovered behind the new blackstone and had brought up - and had indeed been copper ore, went off in line with Grace.
Trevorgie, well: there could be another seam parallel to the one she was hypothesising, but the Grambler-Leisure-Grace stratum would be most profitable. At last, with a survey to back up the hypothesis she could show Ross Poldark now, and -
No, Jemima told herself. Go home, speak to your father, and rest. The decision will come easier in his company.
Not only a change of heart but a change of weather came the next day as Jemima boarded the coach from Bristol to Falmouth. She would be getting off at Camborne and walking the last distance home, her bag was not a lot.
But the sky darkened and rain set in, a little at first as they approached Exeter, and then more, until they were beyond the Tamar and whole lumps of sky seemed to be hammering against the coach window.
"You be going to Penzance, Mistress?" A woman in a dark blue silken coat looked across to her. There was only Jemima and this woman, and an older woman beside her, who was giving her a long look
"Yes," Jemima agreed. "Almost. My father's house is Meadowsweet House, near Camborne. But - " she looked out of the window, then back to the woman, who she sensed she had silenced with her reply.
"I feel I know you, ma'm. Are you ever in Penzance?"
"My father has friends, in Penzance, a Reverend Giddy…?" The woman's eyes widened and her mouth broke into a wide smile.
"It's….are you…Miss Withering? Jemima?"
"Yes," Jemima said uncertainly. "Are you - "
"I'm Sarah Giddy! Davies's sister?"
"Sarah…?" Jemima felt her mouth fall open. Last time she remembered Sarah at Tredree she remembered the girl's hands working over embroidery, silently, with a straight back. Clearly all that training had paid off and the fair haired young woman sitting before her was the model of gentlewoman, sitting tall and straight, hair styled, hat matching her dress. In the company of a chaperone. Travelling in all other ways alone.
"It's Mrs. Predee now," she told Jemima. "I live near Luxulyan now, my husband owns the china clay works there."
And Jemima told her friend's sister all about her time in the Midlands, and being sent there because of the diphtheria outbreak. In turn, Sarah told her about her recent marriage, and how Anne was now a governess for a family at Helston.
"Was there a lot of sickness?" Jemima asked, as the rain thumped harder. The horses' hooves clattered along the metalled road between Launceston and Bodmin. Soon, they would be heading out onto the moor and then, soon, Truro, Falmouth, Redruth, Camborne, where she would alight, Hayle and Penzance.
"A fair bit, Miss Withering," Sarah Giddy told her. "Anne came home when one of the girls who she was teaching died. Many people succumbed, it was good you had a place to go. But it is the summer now." Summer meant fewer diseases, people could recover, fevers and infections would pass. The coach drew up at the Falmouth dockyard, and the woman beside Sarah Tredee got out, a man at the stop taking her bag. So not a chaperone, Jemima thought.
"You will go home in this?" Sarah asked Jemima. "Listen, my mother would happily put you up for the night, and you can go back tomorrow." Relieved to be saved a walk in the rain, Jemima agreed and soon the miles passed, and they turned the bed that was illuminated by the lights from St. Michael's Mount, Penzance before them. As the coach took the bend, a group of soldiers raced past them.
The coachman lifted down Jemima's case and she took it as Sarah nee Giddy climbed out of the carriage. They were close to Tredrea House and the door was soon opened and they were soon sitting by chairs by the fire, being fussed over by Mrs. Giddy, who was delighted to have her and told her she could certainly stay.
"We are so pleased Davies is coming back in the summer," Mrs. Giddy told the table in general, "And we think - "she paused and glanced to her daughter, "That he will have an announcement. He is twenty one now, you know."
"Yes, I know," Jemima replied, enjoying the thin chicken soup that was supper. And felt so happy in her heart at the implication: Davies, her friend, had met someone he wanted to marry.
Jemima put down her spoon. She could see both women were looking at her for a reaction. But the truth was that she was more surprised that she didn't feel anything other than overwhelming joy for him. True, he was a man and she a girl. But there was never any idea in her head and none in his, of a development of this situation. Jemima was certain that no marital union would ever be in their future. Besides, marriage meant babies, and babies meant care and absence of mining and engineering.
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The weather the next morning could not have been more different if it had been designed to be so. Sun filtered through Jemima's window behind the shutters well before breakfast, but Jemima, a naturally early riser, did not stir until a maid knocked on the door and awoke her.
"Good morning, Miss Withering!" declared Edward Giddy, as she appeared at the breakfast table. "You are most welcome, and I took the liberty of writing to your father that you were here, he is over at Tregidden, Lord Bassett's home. He sends word he will be home today to meet you.
"My thanks, sir," Jemima told him, and enjoyed the breakfast heartily. She was even happier when Revered Giddy told her he would accompany her by coach, for he was going to Bodmin, "For the election," the election being the son of Trevaunance, who owned the Carnmore Copper Company's smelting works to be made Member of Parliament.
On the way, however, Giddy told Jemima the terrible news of the "Charlotte" that hard run around on the north coast the night before, and when Jemima had returned her expression of dismay at such a terrible disaster, went on to tell her, "The militia arrested your employer, Captain Ross Poldark, for wrecking and plundering."
Surely not, Jemima told him, her mind racing, surely not, she repeated in her head.
"A man died, of drowning," her father went on, when she arrived back at Meadowsweet House and hour later, "The cousin of the banker, Warleggan. Much was plundered by the common folk, of course, which is the way in Cornwall. But…did Poldark incite it, is what is being asked."
"But - ". John Withering stopped, and opened his arms to embrace his daughter. "I am sorry I was not at home, I am pleased the Giddys gave you a place to stay in the terrible weather. Francis Bassett is still unwell, and I must return to him. "Diphtheria?" Jemima asked. It was the end of the illness seasons, but it could still strike.
"No, a complaint of the heart. Choake, of course, has prescribed bleeding, but I believe he does need a preparation of foxglove. His heartbeat is irregular."
And images of her father's twin brother, in his cottage in Wellington, Shropshire, filled her mind, from many years before, a cottage whose garden was filled with a hundred different species of plant, or so it seemed to Jemima. She could see William Withering sitting on the outside bench surrounded by his flowers, and Jemima made up her mind to visit him when she was next in the Midlands.
"I can't believe it of him, Poldark," Jemima repeated as her father strode the hall and picked up his black medical bag. He apologised again to Jemima for leaving and that he would not be home until the morning, asking if she would be alright in the company of Mrs. Vaughn, before handing her three letters that had arrived.
"His daughter died, from diphtheria; he has had some problems with his mine - if I were you daughter, I would take Wild's offer, now Poldark has been jailed pending trial."
"Arrested? Jailed?" She shook her head. But her mind was also on being at home and her eye drifted to her travelling bag, and she asked her father to wait a moment before he left.
Striding over to it, Jemima took out "Zoonomia", the gift from Dr. Darwin. Dr. Withering took it from her hands and looked over cover, and his voice dropped lower, like a man recently converted and seeing the Bible for the first time.
He opened the first page, and read the inscription, reading it aloud as Jemima looked over the page. ""My dear John Withering,"" her father read, "Everything from shells, fondest affection, Erasmus Darwin.""
Jemima caught a small illustration on the title page as her father closed the book, and he pulled Jemima to him, and she noticed the small illustration in the centre of the page, which was a small bivalve shell.
Everything from shells, Jemima thought, and she thought of the small fossil shells that she had in the rocks, images as they were, of similar shells.
"There can be no more than…five, six of these in existence," Dr. Withering told her, and kissed the top of her head, as he used to do when she was a young child. "I am deeply honoured that this man has given a copy to me - what friends we have - " And he broke away from his daughter and trod to the door. "And I will hear everything - everything tomorrow, when I have treated the man." But Withering still did not leave straight away, he was waiting for Jemima to say it was alright for him to go.
"Mr Wild called, on many occasions, I think you must have left an impression on him," Withering ventured, in case this was the cause of her hesitation.
"But what about Poldark?" Jemima asked.
"He is to be tried - many are against him. But many will be for. Have you decided?". Jemima nodded.
"I wish to remain at Leisure." It was a surprise even to herself. "I prefer mining to engineering," and she told her father of William Smith's Strata.
"I would agree, but think of the owner. If he goes to gaol then you won't have Leisure."
"So I haven't a moment to lose then!" she exclaimed."
"Dear daughter, I suppose you have not. But write your letter to Mr. Wild promptly."/
"I'll do it tonight.". Because I want to get across to Leisure.
"Rest, eat," her father told him. And at last Jemima smiled
"Mr. Bassett needs you, and I can rest, and we can talk later or tomorrow," Jemima told him, and John Withering nodded, then strode to the door, opening it, and closing it firmly behind him.
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But she could not rest, despite a change of clothes and food. Mrs Vaughn fussed over her a little then made her take a bath, which was sunheard of in the daytime.
And she closed her eyes for a time in the living room, awoken by a scraping of gravel.
"Miss Withering, a letter has come for you," Mrs Vaughn told her, when she went to find out the cause. "Shall I put it by the others?
"The others?". And the housekeeper indicated them on the mantle.
The one that arrived was addressed to her and was from Davies. No mention of the surprise his mother and sister had implied, but he said his practice was well and he had a lot of business.
"Ignore what I say about Dick Trevithick in my letter of April. You will be in Staffordshire by then and it will be of naught. It was uncharitable."
What was? Jemima thought, and she looked at the two others, opening the other in Davies' hand.
"...how pleased I am that you are away from the county, your father is eminently sensible.". Jemima looked over the words to find mention of Trevithick, and read, "...should advise against Dick Trevithick, he is a wastrel of the highest order. I was at school with him in Truro. When he did attend, which was not often, he was lazy, stubborn and laggardly, conditions which, I am lead to understanding, have not changed in adulthood. I should like to spare you this, Jemima."
No, of course she hadn't got it. But, as it was, she wanted to work with Poldark, to find the copper stratum. But that man was now…in prison…? Jemima could scarce believe it. And now her oldest friend in all the world did not want her to waste her time with Trevithick.
Sitting now, she picked open the wax on what turned out to be Humphry's letter to her, which recounted his joy in Bristol with Thomas Beddoes, and the experiments he had been doing, which reminded Jemima of the rocks she had brought back with her for him, those of Warwickshire, Shropshire Staffordshire.
But near the end he talked of his sorrow that, because he took up medicine and not mining, his guardian, Richard Dunkin, had cut him from his will.
"I do long to be home," Humphry had written, to speak with him. Not for any financial gain, but to ask if I mayake his favour again."
Jemima looked away, and to the window. She would have her friends home too. Was nothing to be the same since she got back home? Leisure's status under question, for if Poldark hanged, she may not be welcome by the main shsreholders. Trevithick, though Davies said so, she still held hope there, for it would be the canny Wild who would be her boss.
And now her friends, living their lives away from her.
Jemima got to her feet, and did what she always did when she was restless, she walked.
And this time, after hours of tramping, she came across a mine she recognised. Long shadows drew its outline in the grass beside it, and the stopped.
How Bettys had come to ask her, so many times, to leave Leisure for Grambler. How sorry she was now that she couldn't go in.
But at least the walk had helped her decide something. Jemima would send a letter to Wild, asking if she can work some time there while still working at Leisure, explain she was still under a contract , of sorts.
She could tell him she could experiment with some of the engine at Leisure and report back to Dick Trevithick at Dolcoath. It was his engine, his and Bull's, and she didn't know what she could contribute. But she liked them both, and their company would remind her of home.
Twilight now, and Jemima got to her feet, a starfield above her as she went to the door of the mine office. Locked of course, and not in operation, owned now by George Warleggan, who now owned more Leisure shares.
Maybe it would stay open if he continued to buy more of them, though, looking at Grambler, perhaps the opposite.
And turned in the direction of Leisure. Jemima took some strides away from the mine office and then turned, striding back, applying a little trigonometry and estimating the distance to Wheal Leisure's steam pump house.
Suppose the lode went all this way. Poldark might have been onto something with Trevorgie, but Grambler made much more sense and from beside the pumping house and looking south west, Grace was in line too - and not Trevorgie. Three mines, in line, all bringing up copper, none closed due to petering.
So focused was she on her puzzle that Jemima Withering did not see the person immediately whose footsteps behind her caused her to turn. But she staggered back from the blow that came to her chin, and she hit her arm against the bell of Grambler - that was still there even if the workers wouldn't.
Jemima flailed and lost balance, and her assailant moved closer.
"Come on then, George's hound!". A bit came in Jemima's direction, but she managed to roll out of the way.
It was Francis Poldark. Jemima scrambled back as he came for her again, clearly mistaking her for someone else, but his foot met her ribs with a sickening crunch and she screamed.
"Do not come here again, I say!" He roared at her, his strategy changing. Jemima managed to scramble to her feet, and Francis was holding his arms up as if challenging her to fight him.
"Mr. Poldark!" Jemima managed, and for a moment, he stopped and looked blearily in her direction. It was her chance, and she took it, running as fast as she could, expecting for him to be after her. There was a thump, as if a drunkard had fallen onto the hard earth.
What was that about? An intruder? Well, of course she thought about going down, but she would have to get permission from George Warleggan.
Home, go home and -
Jemima broke off and felt her jaw. Something damp was coming through it though in the semi-darkness she could not tell its colour. She exhaled, catching her breath.
Focus. Tomorrow, go back to Leisure, see how everything is. Speak to Zacky Martin, and -
-but there was a second call on her heart - why was her mind focused on work when she was in pain anyway? - - Dick Trevithick was so sincere,so earnest. And Jemima hated the sea, so any attempt to rid it from mines was right in her mind. Perhaps she could work a little beside Trevithick; it would not pay as well as Leisure. If Leisure would ever pay at all, given that its owner was now up on charges -
She needed help. And she needed infirmation. Stumbling, she rose slowly and saw the house she knew she must visit now, a cottage built into the side of a cave, a poor, mean dwelling.
There was the one person who would know, the one person who she was afraid to ask. But she must. William Henshawe lived in that cottage.
If she were to meet him for help, for questions, ask him to walk her home, all proprietary could be maintained…
…and yet there was a sickness to her stomach not borne of her attack. His face, when she left…
Jemima's brain must have decided for her, because within what felt like a moment, she was before the door, and in another, she was knocking on it.
"Hello?" called the man from inside, and when he opened the door, he exclaimed, "Miss Withering!" and then, "Your face!"
"It was Mr. Poldark, Francis Poldark," Jemima told him, when she had allowed him to help her sit in a high bavked chair. Only one in the sitting area end of the cottage.
Of course Jemima knew he lived alone, but to see so little furniture belonging to a gentleman, a mine shareholder made her feel sorry for him, and ashamed at herself for feeling so.
"Mr. Francis did this?" he asked, passing her a handkerchief. Jemima dabbed at her face - it was her mouth that was bleeding, her lip was split.
"I suppose I should not have been at Grambler," she told him, when he kicked a stool over and sat by him. "But I tried to talk to him, and he was weaving around, he seemed drunk, or crazed, he didn't listen. I wanted to tell him…". Jemima trailed off. William Henshawe did not press her, but instead, boiled some water in a pan over a fire at the other end of the cottage and brought it to her.
"Sorry, I have no spirit to take the pain away," he told Jemima.
"I would have said no, in any case," she told him, but took the water gratefully. She watched him sit beside her, the fire was warm, and she felt sleepy. The crockery pot in which the water had been slipped through her fingers. Henshawe was fast enough to catch it.
"Here. Rest. I will send word to your father "
"He has tending Sir Francis Bassett; there is no-one home tonight."
"Then I think it would be best you stay right there, Miss Withering," he told her kindly. "Stay, but stay awake. We can talk, then no one will think impropriety". Jemima looked down, then back to the man.
"Don't you hate me? After all thise times…?"
"Hate you," he repeated, chuckling faintly. "Why, I do but like you only too well.". It was Henshawe's turn to glance away, and he looked at the flames in the fireplace as it consumed a log of wood.
His wife, those were the next words, Jemima supposed, so she asked,
"What of the mine? If the worst comes, what will happen?" Henshawe turned back to look at her.
"Find another investor? His wife - widow she would be - would be shareholder, she might want to continue to be done. Unless someone makes her an offer. We must find copper first."
"And I say, it's behind the blackstone, heading towards Grace. What's more, I think I can prove it.
And Jemima leaned tentatively forward, and from her pocket brought out the map that she had made of William Smith's, and the second she had done of the land beneath the grass surrounding Leisure.
She told him about meeting William Smith, friend of the Wedgwood family, and his intriguing hypothesis about rock layers.
"But has this William Smith been to Cornwall?" Henshawe asked, doubt in his voice. How do ee know the geology hereabout.
But Jemima opened the plan, and went through it again.
"It's not the rock itself, it's how the rock is laid," she told him, pointing to the plan, the map, areas of the country that William Smith has visited because of his work, areas which he had done the same geological survey, and the other plan she had been working on, specific to Leisure.
"May…may I keep this? For a little while, or at least make a copy?"
"Have it, Mr. Henshawe, I made it for you. Now do you see?". Jemima leaned forward, in anticipation, her ribs throbbing behind her chest.
"Yes, I do see," he told her, smiling the smile that made Jemima melt. The old Jemima, she told herself, sharply.
"So, Smith is saying it is giving the same result, at the same height from the sea, not depth from the upper surface."
"I suppose it would," Jemima replied "I haven't thought about it like that before. He calls it "stratification", it's what I have been using to gauge the mines, but I didn't know it had a name. Coal does this."
"But coal is coal. Put it on a fire, and it burns.". Jemima smiled, and tried not to move.
"Not always. There are different sorts of coal, some blacker than others, some yellow, and containing a gas like the pits of hell, some look almost like would might if it had been left in a bog for centuries, coal is not always coal. But miners know that it happens in layers, they have always known it."
Jemima lapsed into silence and, after a time, closed her eyes. William Henshawe took up the woollen blanket from the back of his arm chair and put it around Jemima.
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It was not yet dawn when Jemima thanked Henshawe and said she would explain to her father. He thanked her for the map and bid her walk safely, "And not to Grambler!" Yet, after another offer to walk with her, Jemima had to insist on going alone.
Her route home took her through Sawle and stopped at the church, ss the sun rose, and she paused at the names that she knew, of the Martins, the Cowlans, the Predees and the one or two Trevaunts.
Her eye caught for a moment on a tiny grave, buried under an overgrown holly tree. Jemima couldn't read the name, so poorly the graves were kept in some of the areas, and she was surprised to see the name, "Henshawe".
"Harriet Henshawe, fell asleep January 15th, 1779, aged three months."
Jemima read the grave again. Three months? It was no wonder his wife was in a hospital, that was no age for a child.
Although, here, when plagues came and held…like the one she had run from…
A thought occurred as Jemima, and though her father had never told her the names of her parents, she set about looking for any child's graves she could, as the summer's sun shone on them.
She supposed there may be none, though one would have been there had John and Anne Withering not wished to take her home as a sister for Robert.
Not that he really thanked them for it, he had never treated Jemima too kindly, only when he had to, but there had been good sides to him, and he had rescued her from a tree she was stuck in, once.
Her ribs told her to move on and Jemima took some steps to the west gate, but stopped when she noticed another grave she did know the mane of.
"Grace Mary Poldark," Jemima read aloud, "Died 3rd March 1773, beloved wife of Joshua Poldark and mother of Ross and Claude.". She scanned the writing and bent lower to continue to read.
"Also here buried, daughter Grace, born 3rd March 1773, died 3rd March 1773."
A baby? A little sister? No there was a mistake, they meant Julia Poldark, Captain Poldark's daughter.
Julia had been her name, Julia Poldark. And before Jemima strode off at pace to home and food and rest, she felt compelled to crouch a little and say a prayer.
Then, Jemima reached into her pocket, and for Captain Poldark's daughter, she put little fossil by headstone.
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"Francis Poldark? Was assaulting the girl?"
In the privacy of his office, strips were being torn off Tom Harry and Thomas Tankard.
"Didn't I tell you to follow the girl? Well?" Tankard exchanged a quick look with Harry. It was the former's turn to reply.
"Oh, we be following the girl" he told his employer. "But how were we to know the crazy fool had decided to come and moon about his lost mine? To attack a stranger? He was stopped."
"By my fist," Tom Harry replied, lasciviously.
"And we followed her back."
"Home?" Warleggan prompted, steepling his fingers as he rested his elbows on his desk.
"Not at first. She spent the night at William Henshawe's house.". They both sniggered. George Warleggan scowled at them.
Interesting, he thought, could be used as a lever, or blackmail if necessary.
"And then she went to her home?"
"After going to Sawle churchyard."
George Warleggan relaxed. So, if her injuries by that bone headed numbskull were few, she would be compelled to head back to Leisure, and insisting she carry on surveying.
And Ross Poldark would be exactly where he, George Warleggan, exactly where he wanted him.