Spring 1791 Follows S2E3-4
Henry Bettys arrived shortly after Poldark's and Henshawe's departure and she told him what had happened. Instead of anger, the man nodded and said that it was expected, and that Mr Warleggan expected it to happen.
"But how can we open now, with only half of what we beed?"
Bettys shrugged. "Mr. Warleggan will get them," he told her. "From Grambler or from Wheal Plenty."
"And what will the miners do when they arrive?" Jemima asked him.
"Go and get 'em," Bettys told her. So instead of beginning at dawn, work did not start at Leisure until the around midday, by which time Jemima had gone down to the upper levels with Bettys and surveyed what was there.
Little had gone from the north east section, where Poldark had found ironstone and the first copper had been found. To the north were a smattering of copper and then tin, which was turning the mine over, and a little copper had been found at the west.
"There is copper there, as you said, at the fortieth fathom. But a lot of it is under water and a pump would be needed." Bettys sat at the mine captain's desk and began a parcel of meat and vegetables wrapped in pastry. He bade Jemima a chair and she took ate her piece.
"Not necessarily. There is an air pocket, a place where there is no water and we can get to the seam," Jemima explained.
"And you've been down, I suppose?"
"I have. All around a cavern of green and good quantities of red copper, waiting for the pick and the truck and the smelter."
"But we can't ask men to do that and, as you said, how can we get it out?"
"By pumping between the thirtieth and fortieth," Jemima told him, and idea dazzling in her mind. "No fixed engine could do it, but what about a steam engine that can be brought here, on wheels, and has fifty times the power of a Watt engine?"
As she expected him to, Henry Bettys' eyes looked on Jemima in disbelief.
"You need to come to see the invention," Jemima told him. "Trevithick has had many orders for the Cornish engine - "
"Which could never fit down in that section."
"Which could never fit down in that section," Jemima repeated. "But we can put in the pipework and the sump in the air pocket.
"You think it would work? Because Warleggan will not go to the expense of a Cornish engine, nor a moveable engine if it's not worth the cost."
"Come and see, Mr. Bettys, come over to Dolcoath and see the steam locomotive engine, see what it can do.". The man smiled. He had of someone who had drawn the short straw in life but was determined use it to the best effect.
"And Mr. Warleggan said you would like to see inside Grambler?"
"I would like to test out a hypothesis proposed by a man who has had good results from it." And she told him about John Smith, and stratification and the application by mine owners, who had come to profit.
"This is why I want to survey Grambler, being in line with the iron-copper-tin discovery. I think it falls in the same pattern, the same strata."
The miners arrived just after midday with tools to begin their work, being told they had lost a half day pay because of it, and Jemima was assigned two boys to work with her on the south section.
She was going to continue with her survey of all the rock surrounding where the potential incursion of a pumping engine would be, and Jemima would show them, in time, how to get to the copper cavern through the water.
"Jimmy, Bobby," she called to them when they got to the level of the water. "Can you swim as well as you can hew?"
Jimmy, who was the only wage earner for his his mother and two sisters, nodded, but without much conviction. Bobby, on the other hand, pulled off his over shirt and trousers and was down to his under things. He jumped into the water and paddled over to the hole in the rock ahead of them.
"There's tools in here!" the boy exclaimed, walking around in the entrance. Jimmy held up the lantern and Jemima could see all that had been left behind after someone had decided to mine in there.
"Are there any rocks in there? Anything already mined?" Because it was unlikely that anything could have been taken from there, unless an adit had been opened…or could be opened.
"Some! It's hard to see, Missus!"
"Come back then," she told Bobby, and clapped the boy on the shoulder before wrapping a blanket around him.
"That's proper stuff, real copper!" he told Jimmy and "Missus", as both boys came to call Jemima.
"And how happy would you be if we got it all out?"
"Can't get it all out, Missus, with the water."
"And what if we get rid of the water?"
"Can't get no pumping engine down here, Missus."
"But what if I told you I know someone who can build one that could get rid of the water?" And, as they climbed back up she told the boys of Trevithick's engine, and how it could drain the level.
"We could put boards across, drag out the ore," enthused Jimmy. And Jemima extracted a promise from him that he would learn to swim.
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Jemina's father was in the sitting room when Jemima returned, exhausted, but exhilarated from Wheal Leisure. A lot had been achieved, not least the copper lode that she had long foretold. George Warleggan would be pleased, Jemima thought. He was to visit the next day, Bettys told her. Jemima was determined he came down to see the metal for himself.
"Did you enjoy your day?" John Withering asked her, setting down a book he was reading. Zoonomia, Jemima noticed.
"Yes," she agreed, happiness at being below ground and making a difference to someone's wealth. It was just a pity it had not come six months earlier for all of the shareholders, for Poldark and his family, for Dunkin and his ability to avoid debtor's prison.
For Henshawe and to be able to care for his wife without having to live in such a constrained state.
Simplistic, she knew, but when had less money been better than more?
Jemima sat by her father and told him about the two boys, Jimmy and Bobby, both being sent to the mine by their father, both aged thirteen and really too small for pit work, yet. Their strength needed to build and it was ideal work doing what she asked, devising ways of retrieving the copper ore.
"Mr. Warleggan is to come tomorrow," Jemima told him. John Withering nodded, and leaned towards her.
"I saw him today," he told Jemima, and is keen to assure me of your safety."
"There are many dangers, but not ones that cannot be overcome. It's not as if I wield the pick myself, father."
"I know," he agreed. "You have been beside me for so long, I almost trust you underground more than on grass. You have an instinct for it. I believe he was reassuring me, for he knows what a good asset he has in you. And to find the copper already?"
"Father, it was always there, since I found it and proposed it to the shareholders, and all the days since. Poldark had begun to work it, to move it.". And I am more certain than ever it runs directly to Grace. If only I could prove it.
And Dr. Withering listened as Jemima enthused about Dick Trevithick's locomotive steam engine, and her desire to see levels water drop, and to go down into Grambler, to see whether strata repeated.
"You seem very happy," her father told her, rising for supper. Jemima still needed to change, and Mrs Vaughn had said she would wait until eight to launder her clothes. The door clicked open at the back: Humphry, no doubt.
"I am glad to be at something that is my own," Jemima told her father. "I felt - consoled by the Ting Tong mines and, though serendipity put me in the path of Dick Trevithick and the Cornish engine, I felt that my work at Wheal Leisure was…incomplete.". And she reminded herself that she must ask Warleggan about time that she had promised to be with Dick to continue with the steam engines.
At the door, John Withering turned and moved to the mantelpiece. From it, he took a rectangular piece of paper, a letter.
"I almost forgot: this came for you."
Jemima took it and held it near the candle.
"It's from Edward Bull," she told her father. "Probably about the steam engine, and his plan to encourage Dick to go to Shropshire, to Ironbridge."
"Ah, the Severn," John Withering replied, smiling. "Many a time we walked there, your mother and…Robert.". His face fell for , like cloud across the sun. Then he smiled.
"Supper, Jemima, and look: Master Davy to join us!"
Jemima nodded to Humphry and passed him to go upstairs. She was tired, and would read it later. She wanted to write to Davies first, and tell him the choice parts of Sir Francis party and asking when he would be back from Bristol.
For it felt like a long time ago, and later, as she dozed off over her table, her mind fell to sunny days of the last, of Sundays and St. Michael's Mount, and time on the beach and their adventure to the Scillies.
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Heavy of head, Jemima pulled on her work clothes the next morning, dressing by the light of the candle and walking the six miles to Sawle.
It was cold that morning, but a brisk walk flushed her cheeks and made her skin glow. Jemima could almost feel the promise of spring, even though it was still December.
She passed Redruth, and thought of William Murdoch, his house, converted to run on coal gas now abandoned as the man was, now, in Ironbridge, and further on was the chapel, and the convalescent home, where poor Mrs Henshawe would be, staring out into her room and beyond. To where…?
Illogan was next, the village of surly minefolk who were almost an industry to themselves, who could make it break mines - and they knew it.
Beyond was Sawle, the church spire rising through the mists like a conical horn from an ancient creature roused from slumber.
And then Wheal Grace, before Wheal Leisure, and Jemima picked over land what she believed to be the path of the copper thereunder.
Lost in her own thoughts as she was, Jemima did not expect to come across the white, faintly dappled horse of her employer. George Warleggan dismounted and led his mare by the bridle, crossing to where Jemima was walking.
"Good morning, Miss Withering," he called, a small, neat to his face. Jemima nodded back, smiling all the more heartily.
"Yes, I feel a good deal was achieved," Jemima told him, as they approached the office hut. No fire that morning, and she wondered whether she should lay it, as cold as it was.
Fire produced heat but it also burned up any of the scant gases that might escape through the mine hatch and, as they got in through the door, Jemima did just that, striking a stone on the flint, there for the very purpose. Clearly Ross Poldark had one already, and had not needed to lift this.
Wood burned merrily in the hearth as Jemima climbed past the desk and to the hatch, grabbing the wooden door with its rope and tying it to the hook on the wall. Warleggan watched her owlishly as she did so, before laying out the ledger for Bettys to complete that day.
But instead, she turned it to the day before.
"As near full owner, it is your right to inspect your tonnage," Jemima told Warleggan. "Particularly yesterday's tonnage," she added,pointing to the entry.
Curious, George stepped closer and ran an eye over a few lines, his finger guiding the entry.
"South?" he asked, though he could see the entry. He smiled to Jemima.
"South. Two tonnes, mixed green and red. Locked away in the stores."
"I would see it," Warleggan told Jemima. And that was the reason she felt under the desk for the large, iron key that was lodged there, and she led George to the other Wheal Leisure entrance, the old entrance, the first on the site dug by Captain Poldark's father that now lay dormant and was barred and locked. She gave George the key.
Behind the door was mainly darkness. Small chinks in rock betrayed outside sunlight, channelling them through tiny fissures giving the effect of a shower of light into the storeroom. Jemima lit the candle with the one from the lantern she had brought with her.
"Two…tonnes…" Warleggan murmured, looking at the wealth. "Well, Miss Withering, you are quite remarkable. I made a good choice when I employed you."
"Oh, I recall that it was I who offered my services," Jemima ribbed, and George Warleggan gave an uncharacteristically warm smile as he locked up the storeroom.
Back at the office, key carefully stowed, Jemima broached the subject of the steam engines and the matter of the stationary pumping engines that were still to be fitted.
"You may go to Trevithick when you see fit. Negotiate your time with Bettys, and remind him Grambler.". And then Jemima took Warleggan below, to the fortieth fathom, where the boys Jimmy and Bobby had set up pulley system to move copper ore over the water, which they had done with the helping two other men the day before.
"There is more to come," Jemima told George. "What you saw in your storeroom was just what could be moved yesterday, all of it already been, but no attempt had been made to move it. There's at least twice more, and that's before we've drained down and men have gone across to mine it properly."
"Once ore is moved need to get across to mine more. The water higher than…before. When I was here under Poldark," Jemima clarified, coldly.
"Can the men not just swim across?" Warleggan asked her.
"They may drop tools and valuable equipment and ore," Jemima told him. "I have swum it, but it was summer, the water was warmer. But, repeated exposure risks the men developing pneumonia. Aside from the terrible affliction for them, it makes no financial sense to hire more who do not know the mine. You need to send your best in to get the red copper."
"I cannot disagree," George Warleggan told her as they climbed back up the iron-runged ladder. Jemima smiled at him in the darkness, her chest swelling with the knowledge that her hypothesis had begun to be proved right.
South, exactly where she had said the lode would be.
And, as the week wore on, and Friday, the negotiated date for her to work at Dolcoath neared, Jemima reflected on the new situation at Leisure, no longer disbelieved or ignored, the men listened to her, Henry Bettys, the diminutive, middle aged captain involved Jemima in the decision making about her life and the pernicious ironstone-copper lode to the east, the source of Poldark's original copper bounty
And the workers too had a different nature: quieter, more deferential, more reserved. They spoke in Kernowek, which Jemima couldn't understand.
"Are they talking about me?" Jemima asked Bettys one day. She had just come back fortieth, and Jimmy and Bobby were bringing back the storeroom key. A group of men were talking to one another, with the odd glance in Jemima's direction.
"Yes," Henry Bettys agreed.
"Good or bad things?" she asked the boys, who were unwrapping their piece for midday dinner. Jemima sat beside them in the dry earth.
"Some good, some bad," Jimmy admitted. "They call you "Zur"."
""Zur"?" repeated Jemima. "Because…?". Jimmy looked across to Bobby.
"Because you are promoted beyond "Missus"", Bobby told her, in between bites of some things, dry pasty.
""Zur Withering", now that I do like," Jemima told them, smiling. "Am I Zur or Missus to you?"
The boys stopped for a moment, and then exchanged looks."
"Missus," they both said. "For our mam said that beyond a man is always a woman doing the 'ard work!"
At this Jemima laughed. "What can I learn in Kernowek? I was born here," she told them.
"Trek a'ar," said Jimmy, promptly.
"And that means…?"
"Kiss my - " stuttered Jimmy, realising almost too late.
"Arse," finished Bobby. "Missus."
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As she left Leisure that evening, Jemima walked not west, to Camborne, but south, to the Warleggan's home Cardew. She was kept waiting by the servants at the tradesman's entrance, only to be welcomed by George Warleggan himself when he found out she was there.
"Mr. Bettys is continuing with the moving of the ore and so we agreed I would go to Trevithick tomorrow."
"Yes, yes," nodded George. "You have agreed with Bettys. What of my consent? You know you have it."
"I venture, would you come to see locomotive steam engine? I could show you the machine, show you how much water it can moce."
"An intriguing notion," Warleggan told her. "Yes, yes I do see how this will be a benefit. Perhaps not tomorrow, but tell Trevithick I will come."
So, as she walked back that evening, thoughts of Wheal Leisure faded and were replaced by the memory of Dick's hands on her body, his lips on hers. She did love him. And she would be going to see him tomorrow.
But all thoughts to the good began to unravel when Jemima found the letter sent to her by Edward Bull that her father had given to her at the start of the week, and to her shock, Jemima realised that she hadn't opened it.
Sitting upright in her chair in her room, Jemima was roused from her torpor as she looked at the letters, shaped and placed by Edward's distinctive hand.
Why hadn't she seen it before? Why had she failed to open it?
And her anxiety got worse as she scanned the page, refuge sought temporarily in reading his name again. It was not a happy letter, it contained little that was good.
Edward told Jemima of a court action being taken against Dick Trevithick - not the Ting Tongs, not Sir Francis, just Dick. James Watt had petitioned a judge to preside over the matter and he had found in Watt's favour.
"Gregory has advised that, if you are involved with Dick's locomotive steam engines, to cease immediately, to stay out of it." And, inside, was another letter, from Gregory Watt himself, small, and in neat, tidy writing. It was worse.
"Father has deliberately excluded your name to protect you, Jemima, and we hope to get Bull off too. Father has petitioned a lawsuit for Dick - no-one, not even Matthew Boulton could dissuade him. Jemima, do what you can to get Dick to travel to us, to Abraham Darby, and not continue on this stubborn venture or it will be the ruin of him.