None So Blind

by Alis Hawkins

  Howell could have destroyed William Williams’s reputation with a single word. Bastard. And he’d’ve been in a position to speak it into the only ears Williams cared about. The ones attached to the local gentry.

  There was a sudden squeal from the sties. Sounded like an in-heat sow wanting the boar. Or perhaps she’d just heard us talking and thought we’d come with something for her. Jac Rees turned his head at the sound and, as he looked back at us, I caught his eye. He jerked his head at Harry and blinked, slowly and clearly, just once. Then he raised his eyebrows – am I right? I gave a tiny nod. Harry could see that sort of thing if his head was cocked, looking for it.

  ‘Then he went off to England,’ Jac went on. ‘Quite quick after Samuel went to Waungilfach, like you say. Hannah was in a terrible state. At the finish, I had to say I’d go up there and make sure the boy was being looked after properly.’

  ‘You went to Waungilfach to see your nephew?’

  Rees looked at me. He’d’ve liked to slap the disbelief off my face, I could tell. ‘Two can play at the game they were playing. When William Williams tried to order me off his yard, I told him Samuel might be a cousin to Esme on one side but he was nephew to me on the other and I was going to see him, else I’d make the situation known in the whole district.’

  ‘And they let you?’ Harry asked. He didn’t make the mistake of sounding surprised.

  ‘Didn’t have a choice, Mr Probert-Lloyd. I go up there every few months. Just to keep an eye.’

  Another squeal. I couldn’t see the pigs because the sties faced the other way but the sties themselves were well-kept, with sound roofs and walls that weren’t growing weeds. Jac Rees was a man who knew how to look after things. And he might’ve looked after Hannah, but that didn’t mean he’d have been sympathetic to Margaret Jones. Even if your family turn out to be a pack of wantons and wastrels you can’t just abandon them. But you can stick to your principles with everybody else.

  ‘And how is Samuel treated?’ Harry asked.

  Jac Rees grunted. ‘Only son, isn’t he? If anything, he’s spoiled. Going to be no use as a farmer, the way those girls pamper him. Your workers don’t respect you if they don’t think you could do what they do. Sorry, Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ he added, ‘I didn’t mean to give offence. I’m not talking about a gentleman like your father, obviously.’

  Harry smiled. ‘I didn’t take any offence, Mr Rees, don’t worry. But there’s something else I wanted to ask you about. You were one of Nathaniel Howell’s Rebeccas, weren’t you?’

  Jac Rees looked at Harry as if he’d accused him of fucking his pig but Harry couldn’t see that so he stared somewhere into the air, waiting.

  ‘You must’ve wondered why he left so suddenly to go to Ipswich?’ Harry said, when Jac Rees carried on saying nothing. ‘One minute he was riding out at night with half his congregation, promising the likes of Hannah that he’d be there to look after them, and the next minute he was leaving.’

  Rees started his mallet-tapping again. ‘He had his reasons.’

  ‘Do you know what those reasons were?’ Harry asked.

  A shake of the head. All of a sudden, Jac Rees wanted us gone as much as Stephen Parry had.

  ‘What about somebody in Beca who was close to him?’ Harry asked. ‘Who was his Charlotte?’

  Lady Charlotte was what they called the second-in-command of a Rebecca band. God knows why.

  Rees shook his head again. Finding his mallet really interesting, he was. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about all that. It was a long time ago.’ He looked up, but only to glance over his shoulder. ‘I have to get back to work, now.’

  Harry nodded. ‘Thank you for your help.’

  We mounted up – I was beginning to get the hang of it – and turned our horses down the track. ‘So,’ I said when we were out of earshot, ‘Howell didn’t run away because of Hannah Rees.’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  We were almost at the end of the farm track when Harry pulled up suddenly. ‘You stay here. I’m going back to speak to Rees, again. He might tell me something if you’re not there.’ And off he went.

  I watched him trot back down the lane, baffled. Why should he think Rees would speak to him and not to me?

  He disappeared round the corner into the yard. I didn’t like letting him out of my sight. Mr Schofield would hang, draw and quarter me if anything happened to Harry. I slipped off my horse’s back and led him back down the lane, keeping him on the grass at the edge so his shoes wouldn’t make any sound.

  At the turn in the lane, I stopped. If I craned my head round, I could see the yard but I was pretty sure Harry wouldn’t be able to make me out, even if he looked back.

  He’d pulled his little mare up. But not so he could speak to Rees. The yard was empty but for Harry.

  I waited. He just sat in the saddle, doing nothing. Nothing that I could see, at any rate. Sat there for two, maybe three minutes. Then, slowly, he pulled the mare’s head round. I turned and ran my horse back up the grass and was waiting for him where he’d left me when he came around the corner again.

  He was grinning. ‘I got the name of Howell’s Charlotte out of him,’ he called.

  What? The lie felt like a punch in the guts. ‘Who was it?’ My voice sounded normal but I was glad Harry couldn’t see my face. He’d’ve been able to see I didn’t believe him.

  ‘Ezra Lloyd,’ Harry said. ‘I know him.’

  So if he knew, why didn’t he just tell me? Because of how he knew – must be – he’d been involved.

  But did he ride out with Howell, or had the minister and his crusade come to Glanteifi?

  If I was going to steer Harry the way I wanted to, I was going to have to find out.

  Harry

  Though I disliked hiding behind subterfuge, I still felt the need to conceal my first-hand knowledge of Nathaniel Howell’s Rebecca band from John. I knew I had little hope of keeping my participation in Samuel Williams’s repatriation from his ears permanently but I wished to do so for the time being, lest he feel that my investigation was compromised by my own involvement with Rebecca.

  More and more, I was coming to believe that the actions of Nathaniel Howell and his Rebeccas were significant. Howell’s name had been mentioned by both Dic Jones and Stephen Parry and I was convinced that his sudden disappearance was bound up with Margaret’s death, in some way.

  Had she gone to him for help? And, if so, was her murder connected with his sudden move to Ipswich?

  Unless, of course, he was not in Ipswich at all, but in his own version of Margaret’s makeshift grave.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ Ezra Lloyd returned my greeting when we finally tracked him down, hedge-laying in a field distant from his house. I had declined his daughter’s offer to go and fetch him, suspecting that he would be better disposed to answer questions if he had not been dragged away from his work. ‘It’s good to see you home from London,’ he added. ‘If you don’t mind me saying?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, seeing him stoop and hearing the almost fleshy sound his billhook made as he sliced it into the turf at his feet. The earth would clean the blade while we talked.

  ‘I expect you’ve heard that we’re looking into Margaret Jones’s death?’

  ‘I did hear something,’ Lloyd acknowledged.

  ‘I’d like to ask you about the Reverend Howell,’ I said, deliberately leaving the sentence hanging to see what he might do with it.

  Did he lick his lips uneasily? Did he look from me to John, trying to find a clue as to the question I was really asking? I had no way of knowing but I heard the tension in his voice when he answered. ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd, I know you mean well, but the Reverend Howell had nothing to do with the girl. And anyway, it was an accident, wasn’t it? That’s what they said at the inquest.’

  The smell of freshly cut wood was coming from the saplings he’d laid into the hedge. Though I couldn’t see his work, I knew that the sycamore, ash and hazel which he would be la
ying grew long, straight poles that wove well into the bulk of a hawthorn hedge. I had cut one of those poles often enough, in years gone by, to furnish one of the thousand and one uses a boy has for a stout stick.

  ‘Mr Lloyd, I’m not suggesting that the Reverend Howell was involved in Margaret Jones’s death. I’m concerned about why he felt the need to leave so quickly. Has anybody had any word from him since he went to Ipswich?’

  I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the spot where I estimated Ezra Lloyd’s face was likely to be, so as to encourage him to answer; but I was acutely aware that the oddness of my gaze might well have the opposite effect. His answer was stiff, guarded.

  ‘No, nothing. But we didn’t expect it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lloyd hesitated. He was clearly reluctant to speak about the Reverend Howell which I found strange, given the esteem in which the man had been held.

  ‘Before he left, he asked us not to write to him.’ His words were flat, devoid of emotion; he would tell me what I wanted to know but he would not allow me to see his own feelings on the matter. ‘He said that it wasn’t his choice to leave but he was going where he felt he was being called.’ He hesitated, then forged on, as if he had decided that I might as well hear everything. ‘Said that hearing about folk here would only make him feel the loss of us even more. He’d thought he’d end his life here, where he’d been so happy. But it wasn’t to be.’

  ‘End his life? Nathaniel Howell was a young man.’ My confusion was made worse by my inability to see Ezra Lloyd’s expression, see how he delivered the words. Was he telling the truth? I thought so but, until sight is denied you, it is easy to underestimate the constant scrutiny one makes of a face as its owner is speaking.

  ‘You’re right, Mr Probert-Lloyd. Reverend Howell was barely twenty-three when he came to us. But he always had the feeling that he would be called home young. Even had a plan to go and live with his sister when the time came.’

  ‘The time?’

  ‘I took him to mean when his last illness came.’

  I waited and, as I had anticipated, Lloyd felt the need to explain. ‘I believe he must have been given knowledge of his own death.’

  At that moment, I would have sacrificed a week of my life to be able to share a look of scepticism with John. I felt trapped behind my own blind eyes, denied common communion with my fellow men. ‘Do you know where this sister lives?’ I asked, my mouth bitter with something a little less than grief but more than frustration.

  ‘No. And she never came to visit him – it was always just, “I’ll go to my sister’s when the time comes”.’

  The high clouds shifted, uncovering the sun and flooding the oddly shaped little field with a warm, low-angled light. Despite myself, my spirits rose a notch. ‘I know Nathaniel Howell had a faithful congregation who were prepared to defend the weak with him,’ I said, not wanting to invoke Rebecca’s name unless I had to. ‘Did something happen, on one of those nighttime outings, something to make him feel afraid? Was that why he decided to leave Treforgan?’

  I caught a glimpse of Ezra Lloyd running a hand over his face. ‘No.’

  I waited, but he said nothing more.

  ‘Did the Reverend Howell’s band ever take part in other Beca activities?’ John asked.

  ‘What other activities?’ Lloyd’s voice was taut with suspicion.

  ‘Well, gatebreaking, I suppose…’

  I heard the farmer take in a long breath. ‘I couldn’t say,’ he said, finally. ‘I know I didn’t.’

  Was he protecting himself or was that the truth? ‘Did he make enemies,’ I asked, ‘defending young women? I’m sure not everybody agreed with him?’

  ‘Mr Probert-Lloyd.’ It was almost a plea. ‘What has any of this got to do with the girl who was killed by that tree falling?’

  ‘Wasn’t she just the kind of young woman the Reverend Howell’s crusade was for?’ John asked.

  I pictured Ezra Lloyd looking this way and that between me and John, like a boy left out of the game watching his friends play catch. I felt John’s eyes on me. He was throwing the ball back.

  ‘The reason I asked about enemies,’ I said, ‘is that if somebody was threatening the Reverend Howell – if, perhaps, that encouraged him to take up the offer from Ipswich—’

  ‘I’ve told you! It was God’s call – he wouldn’t have run away!’

  ‘Not run away, no. But, perhaps, if there was opposition to his views…?’

  ‘There’s always opposition to those who dare to challenge sin.’

  ‘If somebody was threatening him,’ I suggested, ‘whoever it was might have been a threat to the girls he was trying to help, too. Girls like Margaret Jones.’

  ‘We didn’t have anything to do with Margaret Jones! Nothing!’ He was desperate to be believed. Because he was telling the truth, or because he was lying? Ezra Lloyd took off his cap and wiped his forehead. He was sweating and I doubted very much that it was a result of the exertions we had disturbed.

  ‘If I were you, Mr Probert-Lloyd,’ Ezra Lloyd’s voice shook slightly, ‘I’d let the dead rest in peace.’

  Which was just what Rebecca wanted. What her threats to Stephen Parry and the rest of the jury had been calculated to achieve. ‘There is no peace,’ I said, ‘not when an innocent life is taken and nobody is brought to justice.’

  ‘Margaret Jones was no innocent. David Thomas must’ve told you that she—’

  I had moved before I was aware of it. ‘How dare you—’

  ‘Harry!’

  It was John’s use of my Christian name that stopped me as much as his restraining grip on my arm.

  ‘Take my advice, Mr Probert-Lloyd.’ Even as Ezra Lloyd’s voice shook there was a kind of latent menace to it. ‘Don’t rile Beca. Let her be. Because, believe me, you don’t want her to come after you.’

  Harry

  Though we had not seen each other for seven years, it still dislocated something in me when I heard Davy’s name.

  David Thomas must’ve told you… I shivered. Davy had told me.

  And I had not wanted to know.

  I recalled the conversation we had had on the night of Samuel’s delivery to his father. On the way back from Waungilfach, I had asked him to stop the carriage so that I could put my own clothes back on; then I had climbed up to sit outside with him as he drove home.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Margaret was pregnant?’

  Davy kept his eyes trained on the darkness ahead of us. ‘I said you should go and see her, didn’t I? It was her business to tell you, not mine.’

  ‘Davy, I’m not the child’s father!’

  That made him look round; his blackened face showed no expression in the dark but his white eyes stared into mine. ‘I know that’s what you told Howell but you don’t have to lie to me, Harry.’

  ‘I’m not lying! The child isn’t mine.’ I hesitated, strangely unwilling to admit it. ‘It can’t be.’

  Davy said nothing. I was relieved; I had braced myself for mockery at the admission that I had failed to deflower Margaret.

  ‘Why didn’t you write to me?’ I blurted. ‘If you thought it was mine, didn’t you think I’d want to know?’

  The carriage swayed under us. ‘I knew you’d come home when I told you about Beca threatening your father. I thought there’d be time enough, then, for you to see you needed to clean up after yourself.’

  I winced at his choice of words. As if fathering a child was equivalent to trailing mud thoughtlessly into the house.

  ‘How did you hear?’ I asked. ‘About the baby?’ He would have no reason to go to Waungilfach and Margaret barely ever left the farm but to go to chapel.

  ‘I’ve started going to Treforgan.’

  ‘But all the se—’ I stopped myself. ‘Everybody at Glanteifi goes to church.’

  ‘Not all the servants do.’ His voice was bitter. ‘And not me, anymore. There’s no law that says I have to go to church just because that’s what your father thinks is pr
oper. Times are changing.’

  We had been silent the rest of the way home, leaving me time to think unwelcome thoughts. Margaret was carrying another man’s child; yet still I wanted her. In fact, now I knew she was not virtuous, I wanted her in a way I had not before.

  I sat there, on top of my father’s carriage, imagining another man doing with Margaret the things I had not allowed myself to do. Who was he, the man she had given herself to once I had been banished to Oxford? Some labourer who had reckoned on her receiving favours from me? Might she even have encouraged such a belief?

  Harry’s in love with me, he won’t see us destitute.

  I felt the humiliation of being played for a fool. And yet… William Williams had been very keen to denounce me to my father. Had he taken advantage of Margaret as soon as I was out of the way? Knowing she was without family or protection, had he forced himself on her as he had on Hannah Rees?

  My mind flitted back to the scene we had just played out on Williams’s yard. Had he recognised me? Had his wife? Her eyes had been everywhere, missing nothing.

  Was I to anticipate another visit to my father from Williams?

  I feel it my duty to tell you, Probert-Lloyd, that your son has been keeping dubious company once more.

  No. Williams would not wish to incriminate himself. But any one of the men under Howell’s command might betray me as they had nothing to fear. No crime had been committed; no ceffyl pren had been carried, no property destroyed. A child had simply been taken to his father and a message delivered. Take your son and sin no more.