None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  The mere thought of the estate and my place on it was enough to induce a feeling of wretched helplessness. Did my blindness really leave me no choice but to take up an unwanted duty as squire-in- waiting?

  My father had made it very clear that my investigating the circumstances of Margaret’s death would jeopardise any such future, my standing in local society being brought into disrepute by what others would see as an eccentric attachment to the lower orders.

  As my neck muscles began to cramp, I resigned myself to earache and turned to face forwards again, acutely aware of John at my side.

  We were several minutes away from the Tregorlais potato field, from Matthew Evans and his veiled accusation, and I had still said nothing. What could I say? I rode out with Rebecca once but I don’t remember Matthew Evans being there? Explaining how I came to ride out with the Lady would, inevitably, involve explaining my association with Margaret and I was not yet confident enough of John to do so.

  We rode on in silence, my mind busy with the memory of that night, seven years before, with Nathaniel Howell and his Rebeccas.

  April 1843

  As it has come to our attention that you are sympathetic to our cause, you are bid to help us in a pressing matter.

  Be in the lane outside Treforgan chapel tomorrow night at half past ten o’clock. Come in a carriage, arrayed in every particular as a lady. In this you will show your sympathy to the unjustly treated amongst us. You shall see how you may be of service when you come.

  It had not occurred to me to defy the summons. Not only was I excited, in a very young man’s way, at being invited to ride out with Rebecca, I also wished to find out how my sympathy for her cause had been discovered. But I could not possibly assemble a carriage and pair on my own, nor drive them with any degree of competence, especially if I was to go dressed as a lady. So, I went to Davy Thomas.

  ‘Good job I’m only a groom, isn’t it?’ His tone was somewhere between bitter and sardonic. ‘If I was working with Ormiston I wouldn’t know how to take you out in a carriage and pair.’

  ‘You know I’ve tried,’ I defended myself. ‘My father won’t make you under-steward until you prove an interest in the right things.’

  Davy shook his head. ‘Your father’ll never see me steward here. He’s never liked me, you know that.’

  I sighed. ‘He won’t be squire forever, Davy. When he’s gone and I’m in London, barristering, I’ll need somebody I trust running the estate.’

  ‘Somebody who looks the part, you mean?’ He grinned and I knew he was referring to the often-recalled occasions when his mother had looked at the two of us, as little boys, dressed identically in clothes she had made herself, and pronounced that, on looks alone, there was not a soul alive who would not think Davy the master and me the servant. And she had been right. Always a head taller, Davy’s dark features were striking in comparison to my own paleness and he had always been proud of the fact that girls would turn to him first, despite my being heir to the estate. We had gone about together from infancy never once acknowledging, between ourselves, what the world saw – the squire’s son and his nursemaid’s bastard.

  But my insistence on treating him like a brother had been Davy’s undoing. My father, still grieving for my long-dead brother George, had held us both to an exacting standard, and Davy had been found wanting, even more than I.

  ‘If I had seen in him a determination to better himself, to avail himself of the advantages that have been bestowed on him and study diligently, develop an aptitude for the position,’ my father had told me when I had complained of his failure to apprentice Davy to the estate’s steward as I had suggested, ‘then I would gladly ask Ormiston to take him on. Nothing would please me better than to have a local man as steward. But he will not exert himself. He wants everything with no effort.’

  ‘Like me, you mean? I will have Glanteifi for no effort, won’t I? I won’t need to strive and learn and better myself, I will simply inherit.’

  ‘It’s different. You were born to it. You have been at school to be educated for it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you send him to school with me? Why has he always been expected to do everything for himself?’

  ‘Mr Davies’s school was more than adequate for his purposes. And you know perfectly well that he would not have been tolerated at your school.’

  But I believed, with all my callow heart, that if I were welcomed unquestioningly in barn and byre with him, then Davy should be as welcome in drawing and dining room with me. A year later, Oxford had done nothing to quench the flame of egalitarianism; I was a thoroughgoing rebel against the accepted order, ripe for Rebecca’s picking.

  ‘So… you’re asking me to defy the magistrates,’ Davy said when I asked him to obey Rebecca’s summons with me, ‘to break the law and risk transportation?’

  ‘Are you telling me you haven’t already ridden with the Rebeccas?’

  He did not answer and, I confess, I was hurt. Did he think I would inform on him? ‘It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve broken the law together,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Poaching’s one thing…’

  I couldn’t go without him and I was determined to go. ‘Listen, if we’re caught—’

  ‘Caught?’ He laughed with genuine merriment. ‘Those soldiers couldn’t catch a blind lamb in a small pen.’

  ‘But if we are, I’ll say I forced you to come. On pain of losing your position.’

  He looked at me, his face guarded. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

  The question dashed down spirits that had lifted with his laughter. ‘Of course not. When have I ever forced you to do anything?’

  He nodded, abashed at my vehemence, and rubbed his nose with the back of an index finger. ‘You know what this summons is, do you? You know what the Rebeccas who meet at Treforgan chapel are about?’

  In my ignorance, I had assumed that one band of Rebeccas was much like another. I shook my head.

  ‘Hasn’t your father complained to you about Nathaniel Howell’s crusade against the new Poor Law? Denounced him for a subversive?’

  ‘No.’ My father had not so much as mentioned Howell’s name.

  ‘Hates the new law, Howell does. Especially girls in trouble going off to the workhouse. Calls the new law a seducer’s charter.’

  The minister was hardly the only one who held that opinion. I’d read as much in London periodicals.

  ‘What does his crusade consist of?’

  Davy looked at me, steadily, as he had used to when daring me. ‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’

  ‘You’ll come then?’

  ‘I’ll come, but don’t expect me to play the liveried flunky to your fine lady.’

  Davy had promised to ensure that none of the stableboys came rushing out to confront us and, as we led out the carriage-pair, all was reassuringly still; no lantern bobbed its way towards us, no voice demanded to know what we thought we were doing.

  Once the horses were between the shafts, traces fumblingly fastened in the inadequate light of our lanterns, I opened the carriage door, hung my light on its hook and threw in my valise.

  ‘Who’d you borrow your lady’s things from?’ Davy asked.

  ‘None of your business.’ I was not going to tell him that I had gone up into the attic in search of my dead mother’s clothes. Let him think my life replete with admirers.

  ‘Not Margaret’s, are they?’

  I did not reply, my throat having closed up momentarily at the thought of her.

  ‘Been to see her yet?’ When I did not reply his tone became more serious. ‘You should, Harry. She needs to see you.’

  ‘Needs?’

  ‘Go and see her.’

  ‘You think my father’s not angry enough with me for coming home – that I should step further over the line and go to Waungilfach?’

  ‘So you won’t go and see the woman you say you love, but you will ride out with a pack of felons?’

  I stared, wordlessly, at his soot-bl
acked face. Finally, he jutted his chin at the carriage. ‘You changing in there, then?’

  ‘Warmer than out here.’ Though he and I had been down to our linen together on countless occasions as boys, I had no desire to dress myself as a woman in front of him.

  He climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Get on with it, then, and we can be off.’

  But I did not want to run the risk of being discovered in the stableyard. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of the drive. Then, if you can give me a couple of minutes, I’ll sort myself out.’

  Though the summons had instructed that I come to the rendezvous ‘arrayed in every particular as a lady’ I was determined that I would not arrive besprigged and beflowered in one of my mother’s day gowns. I took out of the valise a dark green riding habit and short coat. It was then, stripped to the waist, that I encountered my first difficulty. How did women put their dresses on?

  If Howell had summoned my brother, George Probert, to ride with Rebecca, he would have known. I had no doubt that George would have arrived dressed in a gown borrowed from his latest paramour, driving the carriage without assistance and flinging down the reins to take charge of the night’s proceedings himself.

  I stared at the buttons that ran down the front to the stiffened waist of my mother’s habit. If I undid those, I should be able to step into the dress. Under no circumstances was I prepared to remove my trousers.

  Buttons undone and the carriage at a standstill, I got both legs in through the waist only to find that I had to undo yet more buttons in order to pull the dress past my hips. Then another problem presented itself. In the attic, I had decided that the garment was only an inch or two short, a deficiency which I had remedied by taking my penknife to the stitching on the generous lower hem. But it seemed that my mother had been both diminutive and slight, for, once I had forced my narrow shoulders in, the edges of the habit’s bodice would not meet across my chest.

  Berating myself for not having made the necessary adjustments earlier, I wriggled out of the arms once more and fumbled for my knife. In the dark of the carriage neither seam nor stitches were easy to see and I was obliged to work by feel.

  After a minute or so of cursing under my breath and nicks in the material, a thump landed on the roof of the carriage. ‘What are you doing in there, making the damn clothes?’

  Easy enough for him to be impatient, he had declined to wear the slightest element of female disguise. ‘One minute,’ I shouted, holding each edge of the half-opened seam and tearing the rest. With the back of the bodice gaping, I was able to put the habit on without difficulty. I fastened the buttons as quickly as I could and shrugged into the short coat which would cover my makeshift alterations. ‘Done!’

  The carriage creaked into motion again and I tossed aside the bonnet which matched the dress; I would not wear it for one moment longer than necessary.

  Even from inside the carriage, the horses’ hooves sounded loud in the silent darkness and I wished that I could be on the box with Davy, able to see and take steps against any threat that presented itself. But, dressed as I was, that was impossible so I attempted to compose myself for whatever lay ahead.

  I did not have to endure long.

  ‘Whoa, girls.’ The carriage swayed to a stop as Davy pulled on the brake. Trying to convince myself that the quickening of my pulse was excitement rather than apprehension, I crammed the bonnet onto my head and opened the door onto the lane outside Treforgan chapel.

  In the light of lamps and torches, I could see a group of two dozen or so men in the lane. Every one wore at least one item of female clothing and one or two wore a woman’s Sunday hat.

  Every face was blacked and every face was turned towards me. One man came forward.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ he said, in Welsh, sweeping a ludicrous straw wig from his head, ‘I am Nathaniel Howell.’

  His blackened face made him as anonymous as he had been when he had led the ceffyl pren procession to Waungilfach to mend William Williams’s ways. But I recognised his voice – a slightly husky light tenor, as if he’d been singing or preaching too hard.

  I bowed, my mouth dry. ‘My friends know me as Harry Gwyn.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Howell said, ‘friends who include Margaret Jones of Waungilfach farm.’

  I stared at him, my stomach tightening. ‘I… We’re…’

  ‘I know what you are, Henry Probert-Lloyd.’ He looked around at his men. ‘We all know what you are. Please, do not attempt to justify your behaviour.’

  It was as if he had slapped me across the face.

  Howell gave a snort of laughter. ‘Equality doesn’t feel so noble when it’s assumed by those on whom you wish to bestow it, does it? It doesn’t feel as virtuous as telling your sweetheart that she’s as good as a lady and you’re no better than the working man, does it?’

  There was a malicious gleam in his lantern-lit eyes and, despite myself, my knees began to tremble. How could I have been so stupid as to come? To assume that a gentleman would be welcome in Rebecca’s ranks?

  ‘But this is what equality before God really means, Harry Gwyn. That I – or any man here –’ he flung out an arm to encompass the watching Rebeccas ‘am as free to stand in judgement over you as you are over me.’ He sucked in a sudden breath, as if bracing himself. ‘Of course, the Bible tells us that we shouldn’t judge each other – Judge not that ye be not judged – but when we see sin, constant and flagrant sin, we must act, mustn’t we?’

  ‘I haven’t sinned—’ my voice was a croak.

  ‘Haven’t you? Then you’re a better man than any of us, here.’ He waited for me to draw breath to defend myself and, when I did, interrupted me neatly. ‘But don’t worry, Harry Gwyn. Tonight isn’t about punishing you, though your dalliance with Margaret has been noted. As has her condition.’

  Her condition?

  ‘Ah. I see you didn’t know.’ His voice had dropped; now it was for me alone. ‘You must go and see her. Make amends.’

  I shook my head, remembered to breathe. ‘It’s not mine. The child can’t be mine.’

  Head on one side, like a blackbird eyeing a worm half-pulled from the ground, he looked at me. ‘And that’s the only reason you’d have to make amends, is it?’

  He waited while I took in what he’d said. ‘Go and see her, Harry Gwyn. But not tonight.’ He gave me his lantern to hold while he settled his grotesque wig back on his head. ‘Tonight we have other fish to fry at Waungilfach.’

  As we headed towards Williams’s farm, I was reeling from the shock of Howell’s words.

  Margaret was carrying a child. Someone else’s child. She had shrugged me off and taken up with another man.

  She would be at Waungilfach. Would she come out when she heard us in the yard, as she and I had done when the ceffyl pren came for William Williams? I did not want her seeing me. Did not want her laughing at me in my mother’s clothes; did not want her witnessing whatever humiliation might be meted out to me.

  Margaret and another man. I writhed inwardly as I remembered her attempts to seduce me. How prim she must have thought me, how unmanly to turn away her offer of herself.

  I heard a sudden shout and the carriage came to a halt. Deciding that it was better to be forewarned, I opened the door to see what we had stopped for, and a man, standing with his back to me, spun around at the click of the door. Bulging eyes and protrusive teeth are not easily hidden by soot-black, and I recognised Ezra Lloyd, one of my father’s tenants. He said nothing but glanced back over his shoulder at Nathaniel Howell who stood a few yards away, in close-headed conference with a young woman.

  The minister took his time saying whatever he had to say before bringing the young woman over to the carriage.

  ‘This is Hannah Rees. She will be riding with you the rest of the way.’

  Hannah Rees. Hannah the housemaid, much troubled the previous summer by the unwanted attentions of her master, William Williams.

  Seeing my eyes on her, Hannah moved her hand
s protectively around the shawl-slung infant held fast to her breast.

  I nodded and held out my hand for her, forgetting that I was supposed to be a lady. ‘Come and take a seat. It’s not the most comfortable carriage in the world, but it’s better than walking.’

  Once inside, Hannah backed into the shadowed corner furthest away from me and sat, cradling her swaddled child.

  I let her be. We were not far from Waungilfach now and I was mute with apprehension.

  Barely two minutes later, the carriage stopped. Before I could put a hand to the door, it was opened from the outside and I saw that we were in William Williams’s farmyard, the whitewashed house and outbuildings pale and huge in the moonlight.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Howell asked.

  He was looking past me at Hannah, his face sinister in the light of his lantern.

  ‘No! I can’t,’ Hannah Rees sobbed. ‘I can’t give him up.’

  ‘Hannah, I promise you he’ll be well cared for. That he’ll be brought up in every way as one of the family. As indeed he is, being Williams’s son.’

  ‘She’ll be cruel to him! I know she will.’

  ‘She will not.’ Howell spoke with such authority that Hannah’s sobs ceased.

  ‘How do you know?’