Longing

by Mary Balogh

  He pulled the curtains together and went back to the warmth of his bed. He heard the sounds three times more before falling back to sleep.

  * * *

  Siân came surging awake and up to a sitting position in her cupboard bed. Oh, no. Oh, Lord. Dear Lord. Pray no. Pray she had only been dreaming. She stared wide-eyed into the darkness, listening intently. But there was nothing. She had been just dreaming after all.

  After a minute or two she lay down again, but she still stared upward, alert for the sounds she dreaded to hear. It was just that she had been worrying about Iestyn. Dear, sweet-tempered Iestyn, always her favorite brother-in-law. He had been only twelve when she had married Gwyn. She had tried to fill his thirst for knowledge by sharing her own remembered store of knowledge from schooldays, though he had learned to read and write at Sunday School. She had listened to his dreams and her heart had ached for the boy who was destined for the mines regardless of dreams. She had been worrying about him all day and when she had fallen asleep. That was what had made her dream the sounds.

  And then she was sitting bolt upright again, in a cold sweat. Howls, wails, bellows. Scotch Cattle. Oh, Lord. Oh, dear Lord. She prayed frantically and incoherently.

  Scotch Cattle!

  She had not heard them many times in her life, but the sound of them had always had the power to turn her legs to jelly and her stomach to a churning mass. She had always burrowed far beneath the bedclothes and pressed her fingers into her ears. But this time she could not so dissociate herself from what was going on outside. This time Iestyn might be involved. It might be Iestyn they were after.

  But he was just a boy. And he had signed the Charter. Surely they would not hold it against him that he had refused to pay his penny to join the Chartist Association? They must have bigger prey than Iestyn.

  But even that thought was not consoling.

  The Scotch Cattle were a secret organization of men who appointed themselves enforcers of group action in the valleys. They always worked at night and always wore disguise. No one knew who they were. It was said that Cattle worked in valleys other than their own so that they would not be recognized and so that sentiment would not soften their hearts. But who could know for sure?

  If ever there was an attempt to form a union or to get unanimous action on a strike, the Scotch Cattle became active. For always there would be some dissenting voices, some men who for one reason or other refused to act with the majority. There was usually a warning first, a frightening nocturnal visit from the Cattle or perhaps merely the leaving of a note if the recipient was known to be able to read. Then punishment—the destruction of possessions, sometimes total. And very often a whipping up on the mountain.

  Siân had always considered it a scandal and a disgrace. Life was so very hard. Surely the only way it could be made bearable was for the people to cling together in love and mutual support. And they did much of the time. Life was lived richly in Cwmbran despite the long hours of work and the hard and dirty conditions and the danger and low wages. But always times like this came along to spoil everything. And to terrify them all in their beds.

  But there were men—and women too—who would say that the Cattle were necessary. She remembered Owen saying the night before that unanimity was essential. Perhaps it was. But did it have to be enforced by terror and violence? She would never believe so.

  And then the howling came again, and Siân pressed a clenched fist against her mouth to stop herself from screaming and giving in to panic. Who were the recipients of their visits? Was it just the warnings tonight? Or were there men even at this moment being dragged up the mountain? She heard a creaking on the stairs and moaned.

  “Siân?” It was Emrys’s voice.

  She pushed back the blankets and stepped out barefoot onto the kitchen floor. “Uncle Emrys?” Her voice shook. “Scotch Cattle?”

  “Yes, fach,” he said. “Scared, are you?”

  She crossed the room toward his darkened form and pushed her hand into his reassuringly warm one. “I hate it,” she said. “It is not necessary, surely?”

  “There were those who would not sign the Charter,” he said, crossing to the window and holding the curtain back with his free hand so that he could peer out. “It is important that everyone sign. The government in London must be made to see that it is not just a few cranks who are demanding the changes.”

  “But if anyone’s conscience is against it—” she said.

  Emrys clucked his tongue. “This is not the time for conscience, fach,” he said. He looked carefully up and down the street. “There is nothing to be seen. It looks as if no one on our street is for it.”

  Siân heard herself sobbing before she could stop herself. “Will it just be those who did not sign, then?” she said. “Not those who did not join the Association?”

  “I don’t know, fach,” he said. “But back to bed and back to sleep now, is it? And keep our noses out of places where they do not belong? We have to be up early.” He squeezed her hand tightly before letting it go.

  “Yes,” she said, climbing back into bed and pulling up the blankets. She wished he would sit down beside the fireplace for a while so that she could feel a friendly human presence close by. But she heard his footsteps going back up the stairs and a low, murmured exchange with her grandfather.

  Their noses did belong where the Scotch Cattle were. It was their own people who were being terrorized. People who were acting from conscience rather than cowardice, surely. It was not cowardly to hold out against the majority. Not when there were Scotch Cattle ready to enforce the majority stand.

  And then the howling and bellowing started again, and Siân dived beneath the blankets, shivering and pressing her hands to her ears.

  Iestyn, she thought. Oh, Iestyn. Dear Lord, protect him. Let them be after only those who did not sign. Lord, keep Iestyn safe.

  And then she remembered the Marquess of Craille and the fact that there was danger not only from Scotch Cattle. She burrowed deeper.

  * * *

  The next day was a busy one for Alex. He made the planned visit to the coal mine in the morning and received a visit from the closest neighbors of his own class during the afternoon.

  But first, at breakfast, he tried to find out what animals he had heard the night before. Neither his housekeeper nor his butler had heard anything. And neither knew anything about either wolves or cattle in the valley or on the hills. He had the feeling that they were being deliberately evasive, though he could not imagine why. Did they believe that he would go scurrying back to England and dismiss them all from their jobs if they admitted to the existence of wild animals in the vicinity?

  He had some surprising and disturbing answers from Josiah Barnes later, when he asked the same questions.

  “Scotch Cattle, my lord,” he said shortly. And he went on to explain just as Alex was forming a mental image of Scottish animals in the Welsh hills. “Workers out on the prowl and in disguise to punish some of their own for an offense against the masses.”

  Alex frowned and looked inquiringly at his agent.

  Barnes was tight-lipped. “They are up to something,” he said. “This happens when they are trying yet again to form a union or when they are trying to persuade everyone to go out on strike. I have not heard rumblings of either lately.”

  “Chartists, perhaps?” Alex suggested.

  “Could be,” Barnes said. “One never knows, my lord. I have some sources, but even they can button up their lips at times. These are a damnably closely bonded people. They can have a meeting of a thousand people up on the mountain and not a word of it leak out to any of the owners or their agents. I shall look into it, my lord.”

  Alex remembered both Robert Mitchell and the Welsh puddler calling for united action to bring the Charter successfully to the notice of Parliament. Scotch Cattle! He had never heard of them before. But he would never forget
the sound of their night cries. The very memory of them made his spine crawl.

  The coal mine was more unpleasant than the ironworks, he discovered during the course of the morning. Josiah Barnes seemed rather taken aback when he insisted on going actually underground. Alex suspected that Barnes did not go down often himself.

  The air underground was heavy and very warm and laden with dust. Many of the men worked without shirts, their upper bodies glistening with sweat and coal dust. Children, some of them seeming very young, operated ventilation doors, opening them as people or carts went through, shutting them immediately again behind them. Women, harnessed at the waist to coal carts, hauled them along the tunnels, sometimes having to bend double and move on all fours in the lower sections. One of them almost butted him in the stomach with her head before seeing him and looking up, startled, to reveal a grubby face and large clear eyes. Her hair was bound with a dirty cloth.

  “How old are those children?” he asked Josiah Barnes when they were aboveground again. Alex felt grubby with soot and was glad he had thought to wear his very oldest clothes.

  “How old, sir?” his agent repeated.

  “At what minimum age are they employed?” Alex asked.

  “They are not supposed to be down there before the age of twelve,” Barnes said evasively.

  “But they sometimes are?”

  “Sometimes one turns a blind eye out of kindness to their families,” Barnes said. “Some of them need the extra income, my lord.”

  Were wages that low? Alex wondered. And yet Barnes had assured him earlier that his workers were well paid. At the moment they were still sharing in a time of prosperity, though sales had fallen off along with profits and the workers were due for a wage reduction. It was all quite routine, his agent had assured him when he had expressed concern. Wages fluctuated with the market. Everyone knew it and accepted it. And yet as far as Alex was aware, his agent’s salary was constant. He felt very ignorant—yet again. Wages had not yet been reduced, though they would be next week. The workers were to be informed of the change when they collected their pay this evening.

  He had lived a very protected life, he supposed. About the hardest workers he had seen before coming here were the chimney sweeps who were called in to his houses occasionally. He had always refused to employ any who used climbing boys. And yet here everyone seemed to work long hours in hard, dirty jobs for a wage that sounded to him pitifully small—even before the reduction. And some of them even felt obliged to send their young children to work.

  Yet there was not much he could say. What did he know about the working of industry in comparison with the confident, efficient Barnes? At the moment Alex’s sole task was to learn. It was a frustrating task, when much of what he had seen disturbed him, but it was a necessary one.

  He was grateful during the afternoon to receive a visit from Sir John Fowler, owner of the Penybont works farther up the valley. Sir John brought his wife and daughter with him. Although Alex and they would not perhaps have moved in quite the same social circles if they had been in London or some other fashionable center, they were at least from the same world. He greeted them graciously, listened to Fowler’s rather pompous speech of welcome, and sent for Verity to come down for tea. Lady Fowler and Miss Tess Fowler cooed over her and made much of her while Alex talked with Sir John.

  The Penybont workers were to have their wages cut too. It was an economic reality, Sir John explained. The men and their families understood that and accepted it. They had learned from long habit to enjoy the good times and endure the not so good. And of course there was no real suffering. Even the reduced wages were sufficient to satisfy their needs. And the truck shops, the company shops, were always ready to give advances on wages to those families who were less skilled at managing their money than others. Child labor? It was a reality. Parents were not forced into it. If they chose to send their children to work, who were the masters to stop them?

  “Do these children not go to school?” Alex asked.

  It seemed there were not many schools. The few there were in any of the valleys were mostly dame schools, run by women not well qualified to teach, though two owners’ wives in other valleys were attempting to sponsor schools themselves and had brought in schoolmasters. The Sunday Schools often taught the rudiments of reading and writing.

  “I am considering hiring a governess for Verity,” Alex said. His words drew the ladies into the conversation.

  “Oh, yes,” Lady Fowler said. “She is quite old enough, my lord. And a dear child. We had a governess for Tess when she was but five years old. A very superior woman. English, of course, and a gentlewoman.”

  “I suppose I should have thought of it before coming here,” Alex said. “I don’t like the thought of someone else making the choice for me, and yet it seems there would be no likely candidates here, if any.”

  “Now Tess would be your perfect choice,” Sir John said with a laugh, sounding as if he were only half serious. “She had the best of schooling in England and is always looking for something new with which to amuse herself, the puss.”

  Tess smiled dazzlingly at Alex. She was a pretty little blond, perhaps eighteen years of age. The sort of girl he instinctively avoided at any social function he attended. The sort of girl who was fresh from the schoolroom and in search of a husband and a dazzling match. As a marquess, and a wealthy one at that, he was definitely a dazzling match.

  “It would be a quite delightful arrangement,” Lady Fowler said with great enthusiasm, “and most convenient. She could come here two or three times a week, my lord, to teach dear little Lady Verity. I am sure they would become the best of friends in no time at all. Tess would be like a mother figure.”

  Tess tittered at the idea.

  Alex’s smile was polite and hid the real amusement—and the slight twinge of alarm—he was feeling. He had noticed from the start how very smartly the girl was dressed and how carefully her hair was styled. Almost as if she was about to take tea with the queen. It was quite obvious to him why she had been brought on this visit with her parents when it might have been more appropriate for Fowler to come alone the first time.

  “Would you like that, Verity, dear?” Tess asked, all tender big blue eyes, taking his daughter’s hand in hers. “I would like it of all things. It would be no trouble at all.”

  “I can read and do sums already,” Verity said. “My grandmama taught me. I want someone to take me running and climbing in the hills.”

  “Oh, dear,” Lady Fowler said, tittering, “what comical ideas little ones have, my lord. That would not be at all ladylike, Lady Verity.”

  “Then I do not want a governess, Papa,” Verity said.

  “I have the notion,” he said entirely on the spur of the moment, “that she should learn something of the Welsh language and something of the country and the culture in which we have decided to live for a time.” He hoped fervently that Miss Tess Fowler did not speak Welsh.

  “This country is quite wild,” Lady Fowler said, “and the culture much inferior to our own. It is not easy to be forced to live in exile here. Fortunately, of course, there are several other ironworks at the heads of the valleys and a superior circle of acquaintances of our own kind with whom to mingle. I believe you will not find our company inferior to what you have been accustomed to, my lord. And the language of these people is a barbarian’s tongue. No civilized person would be able to get his tongue around it.”

  “I refuse to pay heed to anyone who does not speak English to me,” Tess said. “It is nonsense that they all speak Welsh when they understand English perfectly well.”

  She did not speak Welsh, Alex understood with some relief.

  They stayed for an hour and before they left renewed the offer for Tess to come to Glanrhyd Castle as often as he wished in order to give instruction to Verity. Alex smiled and bowed over the girl’s hand when they took their lea
ve.

  “It is too kind of you,” he murmured, shamelessly using all his charm on her. “I am quite sure you have far more pleasant things to do with your time than running in the heather on the hills with my daughter.”

  “Papa,” Verity said when their carriage had disappeared down the driveway, “I would be lucky to coax that lady to stroll in the garden.” Her voice was filled with disgust.

  He chuckled. “I believe you are right,” he said. “You would be no better off than with Nurse. Would you like to learn Welsh?”

  “I think Cook and the maids were speaking it in the kitchen when I was sitting on the stairs this morning,” she said. “I escaped from Nurse when she nodded off to sleep for a while. They could not see me. But it was no fun because I could not understand what they were saying.”

  “If you learned the language, imp,” he said, chuckling again, “you would be able to eavesdrop to better effect. But I don’t know where I am likely to find a governess who is qualified to teach it to you as well as a competent dose of other knowledge. And one who is willing to romp in the hills with you.”

  He asked Miss Haines about it a little later. The housekeeper was not at all encouraging at first. He would have to go down to Newport, the largest Welsh town that was anywhere close, and ask around or advertise there, she supposed. Or to Cardiff. But Cardiff was smaller. Certainly none of the teachers at the dame schools were in any way qualified to teach the daughter of the Marquess of Craille.

  But she came back a short while later. She had thought of someone. There was Siân Jones, who lived right in Cwmbran. She had been educated at a private girls’ school in England and she spoke Welsh.

  “And would such a lady be prepared to be a companion to my daughter as well as a teacher?” he asked. “Would she have the energy to climb to the top of the hills above the valley, for example?”