Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
I held the lamp up in front of my eyes and looked into the tunnel. A lump formed in my throat.
It was low, hollowed out from the earth, and roots hung from the ceiling. The sides of the tunnel were shored up with rotting wooden posts. Some of them had fallen in.
There was something primal about wanting to be in the light. All my instincts resisted walking into a dark underground tunnel; everything in my body shouted NO when I tried to move forward. But, I had to. In a very literal sense, the only way out was through.
William saw my hesitation and took my hand.
‘Would you like me to lead the way?’ he asked, gently. I shook my head.
‘No. It’s okay. I can do it.’
We walked on in silence for a moment, and then he chuckled.
‘You were going to knock that footman out with that crystal vase,’ he commented. ‘I had no idea that you were such a little tigress.’
‘Didn’t you?’ I shot him a regal look over my shoulder.
‘Hm. A fair point. You are a tigress in the bedroom.’ He chuckled again. ‘Perhaps, then, I underestimated your… significant powers… in other areas.’
‘We needed to get away. I thought they were going to get the better of you.’
‘Pah. I have fought three men at once and won.’
‘I know, I know. You’re invincible. Believe me, your fighting skills were very welcome, just then,’ I admitted.
‘If I cannot protect your honour, and the honour of any lady, then what use am I?’ I knew that was William’s honest opinion, and I loved him for it.
‘Violence is a last resort in the presence of a woman, and certainly a child, but sometimes there is no other choice. And the fact that… scoundrel… dared to issue orders to the Lady of Trevarron…’ William trailed off.
‘It fills me with fury. As if I was not furious enough about the actions of Albert Trevarron. I refuse to call him Lord, even. He does not deserve the title.’
‘I agree,’ I said as we picked our way along the tunnel. There was a lot of fallen rock underfoot, and plant roots tugged unpleasantly at my hair and at my clothes as we walked.
My main concern was the air, however. I was aware that the further we went into the tunnel, the more likely any available ventilation would fail.
‘Was ventilation ever considered when these things were built?’ I asked William. ‘Did your father tell you anything about them?’
‘If he did, I do not recall.’ William sighed. ‘We take a risk being here. It was always a risk.’
The tunnel turned a corner, and we saw Aunt Bill, Hermione and Violet ahead of us. They had stopped walking; I thought for a moment that they had waited for us.
Then, I saw the reason they’d stopped.
The tunnel had fallen in.
William swore. I would have too, but he had turned the air blue enough for both of us.
We got to Aunt Bill, who looked from us to the wall of earth ahead of her with a chagrined expression.
‘’Ello, my loves. Seems we ’ave hit a snag,’ she said.
Lady Hermione was wan and whey-faced in the semi darkness. Violet’s expression as completely blank.
‘Violet? Are you all right?’ I knelt down in front of her and looked into her eyes. She remained expressionless. ‘Violet?’ I touched her hand, gently, but she shrank away. She was cold and looked very pale.
I stood up and turned to William, pulling him to one side, away from Lady Hermione and speaking in a low voice so that she couldn’t hear.
‘I think Violet has gone into shock. We need to get her out of the tunnel as soon as possible.’
He looked at where Lady Hermione stood with her arm awkwardly around her daughter. They both looked awful.
‘All right. Let me see if I can clear this blockage. Stand back, ladies, please.’ He ushered us a little behind him, and started pulling out stones and large clods of earth from where the tunnel had fallen in. Aunt Bill rolled up her arms and joined him.
I wondered how long it would take Harold the butler to get word to Lord Albert in London that Hermione and Violet had escaped.
A day, perhaps? Or would it be quicker now, in the Victorian age?
I racked my brains to try and remember what I could about telegrams and other communications that would have been used in 1867.
I knew that the telephone hadn’t quite been invented yet. That had been the 1870s, I thought.
In any event, we had longer than we might have had in the modern day, but possibly not as long as I expected.
Even though Lord Albert was hours away by carriage, Harold would easily have been able to ride to the local police station in Tintagel and get them to come and investigate.
He could very believably say was William and I kidnapping Lady Hermione and Miss Violet, and we wouldn’t exactly be able to prove otherwise.
We had performed at Violet’s birthday party.
Hundreds of people could identify the fact William and I had been at Trevarron House, and it looked exactly as though we had plotted to kidnap them by posing as musicians.
That actually hadn’t been the plan until Aunt Bill had turned up, but the backstory underpinning why Aunt Bill, William and I were in 1867 at all was more than slightly unbelievable.
‘Let me help,’ I said, but Aunt Bill shook her head.
‘’Tisn’t room for three, my duck. Look after the ladies. ’Ere,’ Aunt Bill reached a dirt hand into the pocket of her dress and handed me a package wrapped up in a cotton handkerchief. ‘I brought some biscuits. See if you can get Violet to eat somethin’. Might perk ’er up.’
‘All right. Thanks.’ I went back to Lady Hermione and Violet and unwrapped the handkerchief, showing Violet what I had in my hand.
‘Look, Violet!’ I said, in as jolly a tone as I could muster. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’
Violet looked straight past my right ear.
‘Violet, dear. The lady is asking you a question,’ Lady Hermione said. Violet didn’t respond.
‘I’m sorry. I think she is distressed. She gets like this sometimes,’ Lady Hermione said, apologetically.
‘There’s no need to apologise. This is a really stressful situation.
’ I took off my shawl and wrapped it around Violet’s shoulders.
‘Poor lamb. She’s really cold.’ I hugged the girl, trying to get some of my body warmth into her.
I wondered how often Violet ‘got like this’.
If it was the twenty-first century, we’d have said she was dissociating.
I felt Violet tremble a little as I held her, but I stayed steady. Finally, I felt her let out a long breath, as if she had been holding it in all this time. She relaxed against me, just a little.
‘Shhh.’ I continued to hold her. ‘Shh, Violet. It’s all right.’ She wasn’t making a noise at all, in fact, but shh was a comforting sound to make. I stood back a little and offered her the biscuits again. ‘Here, sweetie. You’ll feel better if you eat something.’
This time, she took one, shyly. I felt as though I’d conquered Everest.
There was a shout of triumph behind us, and I looked around to see William scrabbling with both of his already torn hands at a hole in the dirt wall.
‘Air!’ he cried out. ‘We can get through.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Lady Hermione said with a nervous half laugh. ‘Why, I have been standing here, dreading Harold and his men racing down the corridor to find us stuck here.’
I was quickly learning that Lady Hermione had a gift for saying the first thing that was on her mind, which was usually the worst possible scenario. For Violet’s sake, I wished she had more of a filter, or just more of a hopeful outlook.
But, I had to put myself in Hermione’s shoes, and if I’d had to be married to a man like Albert Trevarron, all the hope and optimism would probably have been smashed out of me, too.
‘Here, my ducks. Go through. Tegan, you go first, then Hermione, then Miss Violet,’ Aunt Bill chivvied us as William made short work of the remaining blockage. ‘Quickly, now.’
I bent my head to get through the space that William had cleared, then helped Hermione through. Aunt Bill took Violet’s hand and guided her through, and William brought up the rear.
‘Thank you.’ I hugged him. ‘We need to clean your hands, though. You’ll get a horrible infection.’
‘I’ll be fine. Stop fussing,’ he muttered, but when I gave him a look, he softened. ‘All right, my sweet one. I will let you clean me up when we get to the pellar’s cottage.’
‘Let’s hope that was the last blockage,’ Hermione said, with her pinpoint accuracy of being able to say what everyone else was thinking, but had chosen not to say in the hopes of staying positive. I suppressed a sigh.
‘We should fill it back in,’ William said. ‘If someone does come behind us.’
‘But, what if there’s a blockage ahead, and we can’t get through it?’ I asked. ‘That would mean we were trapped.’
‘It might. But if I fill this one in again, I know I can clear it again if I need to. It does mean that it creates an obstacle for anyone coming behind us, however. It can provide us with time.’
‘That’s a good point,’ Aunt Bill said. ‘I think William should fill it in.’
‘Go ahead. I will catch up.’ He nodded. ‘Go with your aunt, Tegan. I will be all right.’
Reluctantly, I left him rebuilding the blockage, and followed my aunt.
She led us on, lamp aloft. I was reminded of images of Florence Nightingale. Aunt Bill was a hero cut from the same cloth; I felt a rush of pride in her, pride in being her niece, of being able to help her help Hermione and Violet.
‘Who else have you helped?’ I asked my aunt, as we trudged along. I handed the handkerchief of biscuits to Violet and was happy to see her smile in reply.
Poor Violet. I could only imagine the horrors she had experienced, and now, I was making her follow a tunnel through what must have seemed like hell to the poor girl. She was brave. She might not have thought she was, but Violet was braver than a lot of adults I knew.
‘What?’ Aunt Bill frowned.
‘You said, the other day, that was what you’ve ended up doing, when you travelled through time,’ I prompted her. ‘Helping people.’
‘Oh. You know. A few, ’ere and there,’ Aunt Bill replied, opaquely.
‘Come on. This is clearly not your first rescue,’ I whispered.
‘Well, I didn’t know I’d ’ave so many people what needed ’elpin.’ She shushed me, so Hermione and Violet wouldn’t hear. ‘Turns out there’s a lot of peril in the past. And, I might say, a lot of wrong ’uns. Particularly in the Trevarron family.’