by Clare Dudman
‘I started writing a magazine making fun of everything I could find – the chapel, the church, all the people I thought could have helped her but didn’t – and, of course, the English. But it didn’t make things better. What ever I did I just hurt more.’
Silas is sitting up now, staring at the man and listening. No one in the colony knows very much about Edwyn Lloyd, he realises now. As far as everyone is concerned he is just the Meistr, the one who brought them here, the one who went to Patagonia before them and came back again babbling lies. The man obsessed and possessed by the idea of this promised land. He says little else about himself. Yet once he must have been a child, once he must have fallen in love.
‘It is as the Good Lord says, but I was too young and hot-headed to listen. I had a good brain, you see, and I’d been lucky, I’d been to school and I thought I knew everything. I trained as a printer then became a publisher. Oh, I had fun, ffrind. If the English could do that to my mother then I would hurt them back with my pen. I was cruel, I realise that, now. Eventually I didn’t care if what I was writing was true or false, all that mattered is it should hurt those that hurt me. It obsessed me. It was all I could think about.’
Silas says nothing. He needs to hear more. He shifts slightly on his haunches.
‘But it didn’t work. I never felt satisfied. After all, the people I wanted to hurt didn’t even read my paper. And then, after that report, that travesty of a report, ffrind, by those inspectors of the schools, the Blue Book…’
Silas nods.
‘I realised I could not continue. Welsh was becoming a language of ridicule, “unsuitable for modern life” they said, incapable of explaining complex ideas of law or science…’ he laughs derisively.
‘It was going to die out, I realised. People were beginning not to teach it in schools. There is something called the Welsh Not, have you heard of it? They pass it round in the classroom, one child betraying the next if they hear another using the language, until the last one at the end of the day is whipped. Jiw, jiw…’ he shakes his head.
‘As if it’s dirty! As if it is something to be ashamed of, as if we really are uncivilised, just peasants, backwards – both morally and intellectually.’
He pauses. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve always felt rather strongly.’ He looks into the fire again. ‘I despaired. I gave up my business. It was then that I met Cecilia. Ah, she is such a gentle, considerate woman…’ he pauses for a few seconds and rubs his eyes. ‘I don’t think I should have lived without her… and it was through her and her father that I met Gabriel Thomas.’ He looks at Silas. ‘Have you met him?’
He waits for Silas to shake his head. ‘What a man, so intent on how things should be done and what needs to be done. He made me see what I could do. If things went on as they were, he told me, if we let the English come in, if we let them close the chapels and open churches instead, make fun of our language, call us dirty and obscene, then we would lose everything, just like my mother had. Our culture and our tongue would be gone within a generation. The only answer was to escape.
‘He’d already been to North America – but that was no good, he had seen that. He had gone there as a young minister. Within a generation everyone had forgotten who they were. Ask Selwyn. So we had to find somewhere else. Somewhere clean, uncorrupted, empty of people who could contaminate us. When he heard of Patagonia he knew it was the place. He called me to him and we prayed together. It was then that I saw.’
He shudders, shuts his eyes. ‘Patagonia. The promised land. Kept for the Welsh. All I had to do was go there and see for myself. He warned me it would not be easy to make others see. He said there would be those with blinkers but with time these blinkers would drop away.’
Silas looks up. Edwyn’s face is close, glowing in the fire. ‘Is that why you lied?’
‘I saw what I knew would be,’ he says quietly.
‘But they were not there.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I knew what would be; how it is now; what you have changed it into, brawd!’
‘And what about the Indians? It seems to me you saw exactly what you wanted to see.’
‘I believe I saw what the Lord wanted me to see.’
Silas watches him. He really seems to believe in what he says. It doesn’t matter any more what is true, what is real, all that matters is this place, what it is, and what it will become.
‘What about Cecilia?’ Silas says coldly. ‘Did she see it too?’
At last his face changes. It sags, and then drops from sight. ‘No. I was hoping so much that she would. All she ever saw when she came is what the rest of you seemed to see. At first she tried to support me, but then we argued. She said I was mad, ill, obsessed. Even in Buenos Aires she refused to listen. In the end she said she couldn’t stand it any more.’
‘So she went.’
‘Yes. Home. I’m still hoping...’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Of course.’ His voice snaps like one of the twigs in the fire. ‘I had such dreams, but without her...’
‘They won’t all come true.’
A twig snaps again.
‘No.’
Silas wakes with the wind still blowing past his ears. He is cold and stiff, the blankets around him sodden. He doesn’t know how he has slept but he has. Then it comes: the despair that overwhelms him each time he wakes. Another day without Megan, another day Richard won’t see. Her face. His voice. He allows himself to think of them for a few minutes before resolving, as usual, to set them aside. Then he looks at Edwyn. He watches his eyelids twitch as the eyes beneath follow a dream. Then, without warning, they open. For a few seconds they meet Silas’ eyes. Neither of them speaks. Then, abruptly, Edwyn smiles and rises swiftly to his feet.
‘Time to go,’ he says. ‘If we move now we will be back in time for lunch.’
Fifty-seven
Everything is as grey as the ashes in front of him, but at least now it is possible to see the direction. If they just go to where the sun is dimly rising it should be quite easy to make their way back to the coast. Their horses trudge with heads bowed against the wind. At the edge of each small incline Silas and Edwyn strain to see ahead but they have to rise and fall three times before they can make out the river glinting in the distance. At last they come to the edge of the valley. The drop in front of them is steep and almost cliff-like, but Edwyn walks to the edge, where the ground is crumbling, and stares across – while Silas keeps a little way back.
The rain is falling again – across the sky like slanted spears. The sun appears briefly from behind a thick bank of cloud and sends out a shaft of light. It picks out the river that is now spread across much of the valley in a rippling lake. It is littered with objects – precious pieces of wood, bodies of animals, branches of trees and items of clothing, some of them are being dragged away into the body of the river.
For a few minutes Edwyn stands silently, his toes at the edge of the precipice, then he closes his eyes and raises his arms to the sky.
‘Edwyn?’ Silas says. He wonders if the man has finally lost all his sense. Beneath his feet pebbles fall away – a few seconds’ silence and then a soft chink as they hit the ground far below them. But Edwyn’s feet don’t move. They stay exactly where they are. Then, with his eyes still closed, he begins to mouth words.
Silas shifts beside him. Just one step forward, that’s all it would take. Or the merest push. No one would ever know. Silas holds his breath. It is as if someone is testing him.
There is a renewed burst of rain, so intense that Silas staggers back, he pulls the blanket from his saddlebag and covers his head. But Edwyn stays where he is. It is as if he doesn’t feel the rain touching him at all. He looks relaxed and he smiles as if he is listening to a pleasant secret. Water is flowing off him now in rivulets. He slowly brings the palms of his hands together and his lips start moving again. Silas moves closer. Praying. Of course. The only thing left.
Silas shuts his eyes and tries a little prayer of h
is own. ‘Make it stop,’ he prays. ‘Make the wind still, dry up the riverbank and let me go home.’ But when he opens his eyes everything is just the same except that Edwyn is now looking at him, smiling. And even through the rain he can see that smile beneath the Meistr’s beard, and hear it too in his voice: ‘Did He speak to you too?’
Edwyn is still standing at the edge, still slightly swaying. Silas slowly moves one foot and then the next. ‘Of course not. Did he speak to you?’
Edwyn smiles and nods. ‘I think that He did. He told me that we should stay where we are and He will make sure that the storm will subside.’
Silas looks around him – if anything the wind is picking up and the sky is darkening.
Another small step: close enough now to feel the man’s breath, close enough to hear it rasping from his lungs.
‘Did He happen to say when?’
‘No, but it doesn’t matter. We will be safe. I know that now.’
Silas feels his muscles tense. One small push, that’s all it would take, just one touch of his fingers...
‘All this...’ Edwyn sweeps the air in front of him, ‘...is part of the plan.’
Silas shuffles forward a little more. Almost close enough to touch him now without meaning to. ‘What plan is that? Which stupid plan is that?’
‘The Lord’s plan. He has everything in hand.’
Just the slightest movement, anyone would believe it was an accident, but it’s not, just the flat of his hand, slowly, slowly, slowly…
Edwyn closes his eyes and smiles tightly again. ‘All will be well. The Lord has shown us that the wheat will grow through you. You, brawd! Don’t you see?’
Silas’ arm drops slightly.
‘Why you? It seems so undeserved. It was you that doubted, you that questioned everything that I did.’
Edwyn sways with his eyes still closed, over the precipice and back again.
‘You protested, turned the others against me and I almost came to hate you as much as I hated the English. You were a demon sent to try me, I thought. My test, my temptation in the wilderness.’
His face twists with such an expression of anguish that Silas feels some of it too.
Edwyn throws up his arms again, gasps in a lungful of air and cries out: ‘Why? Hadn’t I done enough? Hadn’t I done all I was told? Hadn’t I sacrificed everything? Why did I need to be punished again and again?’ He opens his eyes, turns to Silas and grips him by the jacket, his eyes wild. ‘Do you know? Did the Lord tell you?’
Silas shakes his head carefully. Beside him a foot-sized piece of the ground breaks away and falls. He tries to shift himself backwards.
‘But surely…’
Suddenly Edwyn stops, looks down at his hands and lets go. ‘I’m sorry, brawd… sometimes I…’
Another clod breaks away, closer to Edwyn this time. Silas watches the ground. Watches while a crack forms close to where the last sod broke away.
‘But then, when your crops succeeded, I realised. Not a demon but chosen – by God – to show me the way.’
The crack grows, creeps forward.
‘Why, Silas? It doesn’t seem right. You don’t pray, you don’t study His word, you don’t even try to listen – and yet He talks to you even though you don’t know you are hearing Him.’
Edwyn waits for an answer, but Silas doesn’t speak. He is watching the crack, watching it grow. Edwyn sighs and turns again to look at the lake below them. His eyes widen. ‘Silas, look! Down there!’
Now that the sun has risen a little more Silas can see that the water has spread farther than he thought and as he watches a fresh surge of water washes down as if something upstream has given way. As it sweeps out towards the sea it picks up hundreds of sheaves of wheat.
‘Our crop!’ Silas stands transfixed. Not just his crop, but everyone else’s crop as well, all of it disappearing in front of them in the current and the wind.
‘All those fields of wheat! All gone!’ Edwyn turns back to look at the sky, his arms outspread. ‘Why, Lord?’ he wails, ‘why this test?’ Suddenly he stops and looks at Silas again. ‘Do you know?’
Silas shakes his head, says nothing, waits.
The Meistr lowers his voice and arms. He takes a few paces along the cliff and back again. Then he holds his arms out to Silas as if to draw him close. ‘But what comes next, ffrind? You must know. Tell me.’
The place where Edwyn had been standing falls away. Silas watches it tumble, break and then settle. He breathes out. The Meistr is still there in front of him: walking back and forth shaking his head, making strange little flapping movements with his arms, muttering, then making little cries as another surge of water carries yet more of their crop towards the sea.
When Edwyn speaks again his voice is as plaintive as a sheep’s. ‘What must we do next?’
Silas smiles. Yeluc was right. There is no need for a knife. No need to push. No need to run. All a man has to do is wait.
Below them the sheaves are now floating past the spit, being thrashed by the waves and there is a distant shout as someone below wakes and sees what is happening. A couple of men start to wade through the water. The Meistr’s eyes swivel wildly. He staggers to the cliff edge and then back again. Then he stands in front of Silas with his mouth half open and his eyes oddly empty. ‘Silas!’ Both a wail and a question.
Silas takes a breath, reaches up to wrap his arm around his shoulder and steers him gently away from the edge. ‘You need to do what you did before, brawd. The wheat grew. You need to go back to Wales. You need to tell Gabriel Thomas of our good news and persuade more to join us. Then you must bring them all... and you must fetch Cecilia.’
Edwyn subsides a little. ‘Ah yes, my own dear wife...’
‘You must tell them to come at once. We cannot wait.’
Silas removes his arm and turns to look again at the valley. The sheaves are in the open sea now. Silas watches them sink and float, float and then sink. ‘And you must show Dr Rawson that his faith in us has been well founded. You can tell him about our yield, how this is just the start. Tell him to imagine what we can do next year and the year after that.’
‘Yes,’ Edwyn murmurs, ‘yes...’
He looks dreamily to the sky behind Silas’ head then stops and points at the sky. ‘Look, look over there!’
Silas turns, nods and smiles at the rainbow. ‘Yes, fy ffrind, it’s what comes next. After every storm – a promise.’
Epilogue
Buenos Aires State 1879 (10 years later)
Seannu wakes, remembers where she is and shuts her eyes again.
‘Señora? Are you here?’
The door bangs shut. Footsteps come over to the bed. From where she is hiding beneath the overhanging covers Seannu can see a black gown and then two sandalled feet peeping out below. The feet pause and then a face frowns at her. Then a hand reaches in and grabs her arm.
‘You have to lie on top of the bed, old woman, not underneath.’
She is the only one left. Tezza and Mareea died of the Cristianos’ flux as soon as they came here – one and then the next. Like Yeluc. Yeluc. She sits on the floor in the corner of the room letting her thoughts drift. Sometimes she thinks her mind is like a forest in the mountains with each tree a person that she knew. When she stops by Yeluc’s tree she always looks up. It is tall and straight. One day she will start to climb, she thinks, and maybe he will see her and pull her close to him. But for now she walks alone.
The rest of them here are young; a mixture of tribes, they talk their own dialects and stick to their own kind. When the Cristianos come close she closes her lips. There is one that smiles and begs her to talk but it does no good to speak. Sometimes she feels she has no words left. Sometimes, in the night, she practises her numbers quietly in her mouth the way Yeluc taught her; one to five in Tehuelche and then one to five in Welsh: chuche, houke, aäs, carge, ktsin… un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump.
She smiles. How Yeluc loved the Galenses. Go to them, Seannu, he told her
once, if you ever find yourself alone, go to the Galenses. They will help you, the Galenses are our friends. And she had tried. When the news came back that her Yeluc was dead, the three of them had tried to get back to the Chubut but the Gallatts had stopped them. ‘You’re safer with us,’ Gallatt had told them, no doubt he’d believed it.
Seannu shuts her eyes. She had been dreaming when the soldiers had come, sitting by the fire and dreaming as she is now. There’d been a skin in her hand but she hadn’t been sewing. She’d thought the sound of galloping horses were the Gallatts returning. It was only when Mareea screamed that Seannu had opened her eyes and seen them. The soldiers had taken her arm too, just like they’d taken Mareea’s and Tezza’s; squeezed it too tight, then kicked her so that she had fallen, and when she had screamed hit her in the face until she’d become quiet.
It is better to be quiet. That’s what she learned. Better not to say a word. Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump. Sometimes she says the Galenses’ words quietly to herself as if they are a spell. Mareea had thought the words would protect them if they said them. They are special words, Seannu. They chase away evil spirits. It is what Elal speaks in that place where the ancestors live. She used to know more: bara, cawl, bach, cacen. She smiles. She likes to roll them around the tongue. She rocks quietly back and forth: Welsh then Tehuelche. Mam, yanna; dadda, yank; Silas, Si-las; Megan, Me-gan; Mi-ri-am. Miriam.
Mother, yanna. That is what Miriam had called out the last time Seannu had seen her – a rare trip to the Chubut with Gallatts. She’d come running up to her and opened her loose outer mantle to show the stretched one beneath. ‘Yanna! That’s what you say, isn’t it?’
Yanna. She wonders how it was for her, and whether the child lived. Then she thinks of the ravine where they buried one and then another child of their own. How Yeluc had wept. How it had pulled at them both each time they’d passed. A place of just rocks, no grass, not even a single calafate. But it is better not to stay there. She shifts her mind away. Better to go somewhere else.
