by Mary Balogh
"I will do what I can," Geraint said. "When rent day approaches I shall do my best to see that there are no raises at the Tegfan farms.'" He sighed. "But that will help only a few farmers out of hundreds in this part of Wales. It is a problem not only here but all over, is it?"
"Yes," Aled said shortly.
"And what happens." Geraint asked, "to the farmers who are driven off their land when they cannot afford the rents? They have to become laborers? They are employed on my own lands? Foolishly it is a question I have not yet asked Harley."
"Perhaps it is he you should ask, then, Ger," Aled said.
Geraint nodded. But he had a sudden thought. "You know a family by the name of Parry?" he asked. "They live up on the moors, I believe."
'Yes," Aled said, his jawbone tightening. "I know them."
"It is a last resort, moving up there," Geraint said, "as I know from experience. What happened to them?"
He was afraid that he knew the answer. He almost wished he had not asked.
"Not all of them find work as your laborers," Aled said dryly.
Geraint closed his eyes and balled his hands into fists at his sides. "I will do something," he said after a few moments of silence. "Before rent day comes along there will be some changes. I am very much the enemy, aren't 1?"
"The numbers of those who were prepared to give you a chance has dwindled since the incident with Glyn Bevan," Aled said. "'It was not well done, Ger. He has little ones."
"Glyn Bevan?" Geraint asked with some dread.
"A farmer cannot last very long when his horses and his cattle are taken from him," Aled said, "and all in the name of a church he does not even attend."
Tithes? But Geraint would not even ask what had happened. Obviously it was something that must have occurred since his own return to Tegfan, and therefore it was something he ought to know about. It seemed that his estate was running very well without him. He was almost superfluous—as he had set out to be two years ago, of course, when he had realized he was the owner of land he had poached on as a child. Land that brought back memories he did not want to harbor.
Yes, there were going to have to be some changes.
"Aled," he asked, "what do you know about the, er, accidents that have been happening during the past week?"
"Accidents?" Aled looked instantly wary.
"Sheep grazing on the lawn before Tegfan," Geraint said. "Coal tipped all over the driveway. Milk spilled all over the terrace. Mice in the dining room during dinner and the cat just happening to have escaped from the kitchen."
"I imagine they are just that," Aled said. "Accidents, man. They happen—even to peers of the realm."
"I have the feeling," Geraint said, "that the list is going to get longer as the days go on."
His friend shrugged and Geraint nodded.
"At least," he said, "whoever is organizing them appears to have a sense of humor. At least no hayricks have been burned yet. Rebecca does not roam these parts, Aled?"
His friend looked startled. "Rebecca?" he said. "Who is she?"
"If I did not know you," Geraint said, "I would be under the impression that you are remarkably stupid, Aled. But I do know you. I would say conditions are ripe in these parts for her visits. Would you not agree?"
But Aled was tight-lipped again.
"Perhaps she has some justification too," Geraint said. "But I would not take kindly to her visits. Perhaps you know someone to whom to pass along that message, Aled."
"No," his friend said. "I don't."
"If I were not who I am," Geraint said, his voice brooding, "I might even follow her myself. Make myself into one of her daughters, perhaps. It is just the sort of thing I would have done as a boy, isn't it? No, not quite. When I was a boy it would have been more like me to be Rebecca herself. With you as one of my daughters." He grinned, but Aled was not amused. His face had paled.
"It is no joking matter," he said. "Anyone who dares to be Rebecca has an instant price on his head. He is in danger of capture by the law and of betrayal by his followers. But yes, it is just the sort of thing you would have done. Thank goodness it is impossible."
Geraint laughed. "You sound as if you care, Aled," he said. "I was beginning to wonder. And is it impossible? Maybe that is just what this whole impossible situation needs, someone from my side to come over to your side—it is your side, isn't it?—and force the issue a bit."
"You are mad." Aled bent down, scooped up a clump of soft earth, and threw it at his friend. It hit his shoulder and scattered down the front of his coat.
"Man," Geraint said, brushing at himself and making the mess worse, "I should have you arrested for assaulting a peer of the realm. Or perhaps I should merely let my valet loose on you. I had better let you go home for your dinner. You are not quite comfortable with me, are you? But you are too loyal to an old friend to give me the cold shoulder." He grinned. "So you give me a slightly muddy one instead."
"It will give your valet something to do to earn his living," Aled said, grinning too.
"Shall I tell him it was another, ah, accident?" Geraint asked, and they both chuckled.
He watched Aled make his way back to the village and still brushed absently at his coat. They had ended their encounter on a light note, both sensing perhaps that their friendship was treading thin ice. And it was very obvious that Aled knew all about the accidents that were not accidents at all. Geraint hoped somehow that his friend was not involved in them. They were a nuisance more than anything, but they disturbed him because they suggested that there were people who did not like him. An understatement, doubtless.
More disturbing, perhaps, was the knowledge that at the moment he did not much like himself.
For years, all through his school days, he had wished fervently that the old earl, his grandfather, had never discovered that his birth had been legitimate. He had often yearned to have his old life back, poverty and moorland hovel and near starvation and all. And to have his mother back. He had loved his mother with a fierce protectiveness. Those years had passed. He had grown accustomed to his new life and eventually he had come to like it, to identify fully with it.
Today, now, this moment was the first time in years he had wished he could go back. He had come to see privilege as responsibility too. One did not feel guilty about a privileged life when one also accepted the responsibilities-that came with it. He had thought that he had done so. But he could see now that he had not at Tegfan. It had not been enough to appoint an efficient steward. He had abdicated his responsibilities and people had suffered as a consequence. And yet he saw now more than ever before that people of his class could not act as individuals for all their privileges. If they did not act as a class, as a unit, they might all crumble.
He did not feel proud of his class at that moment. And he did not particularly want to belong to it. He felt a strong nostalgia for those childhood days when only his own survival and his mother's had been of importance to him.
Yes, he thought, he could not blame these people—his people—for disliking him. If he were still one of them, he would dislike him too. And he might well decide to do something about it. Help accidents to happen, perhaps. Or worse. If he were one of them, perhaps he really would lead them as Rebecca to larger, more organized, more forceful protests.
If he were one of them.
But he was not.
He turned his steps toward the house, feeling a growlingly familiar weight of depression. And he thought about
Aled and their strained friendship. And about Marged and her open hostility.
And about an eightieth birthday party to which he had inadvertently been invited. Tomorrow evening, he thought. Everyone in the community had been invited. Marged was to be there with her harp.
Marged.
In what hidden corner of his heart had he been carrying her for ten years?
Life was hard on the farms of Carmarthenshire. Each part of the year and, indeed, each part of the day brought its chores, enough to o
ccupy both men and women, and often children too. And there was always the weather to contend with, and always the threat of poverty and possible ruin to bring constant anxiety. The spirits of the farmers and their wives and of other workmen had been bowed over the years. But not broken.
They believed strongly in community and in chapel and in music. They knew how to enjoy themselves when the opportunity presented itself.
Old Mrs. Howell, Morfydd Richards's mother, had raised eight children, not counting the two who had died in infancy, and had worked side by side with her husband on their farm. For years she had been the leading contralto in chapel and for years she had brought home the solo prize for contraltos at every eisteddfod within a radius of twenty miles from Glynderi. For years there had been no Welsh cakes and no bara brith to match hers. Her talents as a cook were largely responsible for the fact that her husband had been almost as round as he was tall, people had used to say with affectionate humor. And no other woman had been able to spin wool quite as good as Mrs. Howell's.
Her eightieth birthday was something to celebrate. There was scarcely an able-bodied adult or child who did not trudge to the Richards's farmhouse in the hills above the river three miles from the village on the Thursday evening. And a merry gathering it was too, even though there were scarcely enough chairs to accommodate the elderly and scarcely enough space to hold everyone else standing.
"But never mind, though," Dylan Owen said, setting an arm about Ceris Williams's shoulders. "It do give one an excuse to get fresh."
There was a great deal of chuckling as Ceris smiled and ducked out of the way.
"We could all get inside tidy, mind, lanto," Ifor Davies said, laughing, "if we moved the table outside."
But there was a chorus of protests. The table was laden with food to such a degree that plates had to overlap one another. Mrs. Howell and Morfydd had been baking for two days, and not a woman guest had arrived without at least one plate of baking in each hand.
The farmers and their families ate sparingly and plainly throughout the year, but they knew what was due a party. They knew how to feast when there was good reason for a feast.
"Or if we put Marged's harp in with the cows," Eli Harris suggested.
"Don't listen to him, Marged," Olwen Harris said, digging an ample elbow into her husband's ribs. "Eli do love a little bit of harp music. All the way up here he has been saying that if no one else brought it down for you, he would."
"It was brought here at my request," Mrs. Howell said from her place of honor beside the fire. "We will have music tonight and song to raise the thatch off the roof. Sing for our supper it will be, is it?"
Mari Bevan slapped the back of her young son's hand as it tried to slide a jam tart off the table.
"Ow, Mam," he protested.
"It is a good thing this room is crowded," Glyn Bevan said sternly from some distance away. "It would be your backside getting tanned if I were over by there, boy."
Idris Parry, invisible beneath the white cloth that covered the table and fell over its sides almost to the floor, licked the jam out of his own tart and caught crumbs of pastry with his free hand.
"I hear you are going into the business of catching and caging mice, Dewi," Ifor Davies said to Dewi Owen, Dylan and Glenys's brother. "It will make your fortune, will it?"
There was a general burst of laughter.
"A pity you lost them under the table at Tegfan, mind," Ifor said. "I hear that the old cat there had a decent supper."
The laughter grew louder and merrier.
But the Reverend Llwyd cut it short. "It has come to my attention," he said, raising both arms, not an easy feat in the crowded farm kitchen, "that certain members of my congregation have taken it upon themselves to show the Earl of Wyvern that he is not welcome here. You must know that I am as unhappy as anyone to see that he has been acting with some greed in the past few years, but what he has done is his lawful right. It is not our lawful right to punish him."
"It is our lawful right as Britons, Reverend," Aled Rhoslyn said as Marged drew breath to make some retort, "to be free to live our lives without fear of ruin and starvation and to earn our living with the honest labor of our own hands. When those in power try to deny us that right, then we have the right to assert ourselves."
"Here, here," someone said.
"Amen," someone else said.
There were murmurings of assent from all around.
"Duw, Aled," Ifor Davies said, "I thought you were Penderyn's friend. I saw you go off walking in the park together just yesterday."
"I was not talking about anyone in particular," Aled said. "I was talking about those in power. That nameless mass of aristocrats and gentry who believe we exist only for the purpose of making them richer. Perhaps some of them, some individuals, might change if they can see what is happening, if they can see that we are people."
"No," Marged said fiercely. "They are all the same, Aled. And it is time that we showed them we can be pushed only so far and no farther."
"I can be pushed as far as a tollgate," someone said. "I pay my rent and my tithes and my taxes, and then I find I cannot even travel the roads about my home without paying for the privilege. I do not know where the money is going to come from to haul the lime when May comes. There is almost no butter to sell and no one to sell it to."
"And you would have to pay the tolls in order to take it to market and to bring yourself and your horse and cart home,"' someone else added.
"It is the gates we want down,'' a third man said over the swell of grumblings around him. "Gates first, I say. And if the idea of getting together all the farmers of this, part of Carmarthenshire to do so is not going to work, then maybe I will have to start doing it myself."
"It will not come to that, Trevor," Aled said. "The committee has a definite plan, with dates and places set and which gates are to go first. Give it another week or two, man, and we will be on the march. All the men here who want lo join us will have the chance, and a few hundred men from other places too."
"And women, Aled," Marged said, "It will not be all men. When the first gate is pulled down, I am going to be there."
"Oh, hush, Marged," Ceris said, obviously close to tears. She turned and pushed her way past neighbors and friends until she could let herself out through the door.
"It was well said," the Reverend Llwyd said, his eyes on fire as he gazed at the closed door. "It is the God-given function of women to give life and nurture it, not to destroy. And it is not the work of men to destroy, cither, even when what they destroy is wicked. The Lord will punish wickedness in his own good time. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." "
"Well, the Lord is a little slow for me, Dada," Marged said.
Everyone packed into the room looked from one to the other with interest. Their minister and his daughter often disagreed in public. They were alike in many ways, but it was a likeness that led to certain conflict. Their opinions on most topics differed.
However, enjoyment of the scene was cut short when a knock on the door heralded a late arrival. Silence, at first incredulous and then decidedly uncomfortable, spread through the Richards's farm kitchen when the woman closest to the door opened it and the Earl of Wyvern stepped inside.
It was all intensely embarrassing, as he had known it would be. All the way up the hill his steps had lagged. He knew that he would not be welcome. If he had not known it a week ago, he knew it now. And it was worse even than he had thought.
Yesterday he had sent food up to the Parrys—he had found himself unable to go in person. And with the messenger he had sent a request for Parry to present himself to his steward for work as a laborer on the home farm. Harley had explained that it was not his policy to hire on farmers who had lost their farms, since that very fact usually indicated that they were indolent men. But Geraint had fixed him with a blue stare and pointed out that this would be one exception.
The food had been sent back and with it a polite refusal of the offer of work. W
aldo Parry, it seemed, was not a man who accepted charity. Or not at least from the man who had destroyed him in the first place, Geraint thought. He had been puzzled and angered—until he remembered that on the few occasions when the old earl had sent clothes and food to his mother, she had always returned them even though she and her son might be shivering in rags and have stomachs painful with emptiness. She would not accept charity from a man who would not acknowledge that she was his lawful daughter-in-law and Geraint his lawful grandson, she had explained on one such occasion, hugging him in her thin arms and shedding tears against his cheek.
His other attempt yesterday at showing goodwill had failed just as miserably. He had pondered long and hard the idea of sending back the horses and cows that had been confiscated from Glyn Bevan—it had happened since his return to Tegfan, he was ashamed to discover—and had rejected it. It might set up all sorts of confusion in the minds of the rest of the farmers and might justifiably infuriate those who had paid their tithes. Instead he had sent a message informing the farmer that he might borrow free of charge the services of one of the Tegfan workhorses at seeding time and harvest and whenever else he had need of it.
It had been a clumsy move, he had to admit now. But it had been a sincere attempt to try to alleviate suffering that he was at least partly responsible for causing. The answer had come. Glyn Bevan would not have occasion to make use of any his lordship's property or possessions, thank you kindly.
They complained of his treatment of them, Geraint thought in a flash of anger and frustration, but they would not allow him to make amends.
But he was not going to go away. And he was not going to hide away either. Help them he would, one way or another. Things were going to change on the Tegfan estate and on the estates around it if he had any say in the matter.
And so he went to Mrs. Howell's birthday party. He had, after all, been included in the invitation, even if his inclusion had been unintentional. And even if he had not, surely it was the correct thing to do for a landlord to pay his respects to a woman on such a landmark occasion.
