Chapter 1
He had miscalculated the distance. He had not expected still to be riding this long after nightfall. And it was rather a dark night too, so that he was unable to cover the last few miles at any speed. But he had hated the thought of putting up at another inn and had pressed onward to his destination. Tegfan. Home.
Was Tegfan home?
It belonged to him certainly, had done since the death of his grandfather two years before. But was it home? He had not been there for ten years, and even that had been a short visit. He had deliberately avoided going there since. He was not sure he wanted to be there now. He was not even quite sure why he had come.
It had been a whim, a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had overheard a snippet of conversation on the street between two passersby he had never seen before and would never see again. Men who did not belong in London. Drovers, probably, he had guessed, men who had driven a herd of cattle to market and who had not yet returned home.
"—so much to do here all the time."
"But I miss the hills and—"
It was all he had heard. Words that had no real significance. Except that they had been spoken in Welsh and he had not even realized it or the more surprising fact that he had understood the words until he had felt a stabbing of unidentified longing so powerful that he had stopped walking for the moment and stood on the pavement, frowning, his eyes closed.
But I miss the hills—
And the words themselves had taken meaning in his mind. No, not his mind—his heart. They had become a nameless yearning, something he had been unable to shake off.
The hills had beckoned to him. And he had been unable to resist their call.
And so here he was, without any warning, without any reason, in Wales, in Carmarthenshire, one of its western counties, very close to Tegfan. And wondering even now if he should turn back. That chapter in his life—really a very brief chapter—was best left closed.
Except that deep down he had always known that one day he would come back.
He was riding through open, hilly country, as bare and as bleak as he remembered it. And chilly, of course, as one could expect of early spring in any part of the country. But more than chilly. Almost damp, though there had been no rain. And gusty, though there was no steady wind. Although he had not lived in Wales for sixteen years, and then he had been a mere boy of twelve, he felt the familiarity.
The road was bad. He huddled inside his cloak and slowed his horse's pace even further. Although he had passed through tollgates every few miles of his journey today, and although he knew that there were turnpike trusts set up everywhere, there was little evidence that the money extracted from travelers was being spent to make their journeys safer or more comfortable.
He was glad he had left his carriage to travel after him with his baggage and his valet. Traveling this road in a carriage would be a severe trial.
But suddenly the night was not so dark—and yet darker too, in a way. The line of distant hills to his right was lit from behind, almost as if he had ridden the night through and the sun was about to rise. Except that the direction was more northerly than easterly and the light flickered and danced against the sky instead of remaining steady. And the time could surely be no later than midnight, if that.
There was a fire burning. He could not see the flames or smell the smoke or hear any sounds of human alarm. It was too far away to investigate and in too different a direction from Tegfan to cause him any personal alarm. But he shivered with a little more than just the chill of the air. Fires at night had no logical explanation. He had passed the industrial valleys of South Wales, in which iron furnaces might be kept alive night and day. Besides, this fire had sprung suddenly to life.
It was not his concern. He rode onward until a bend in the road and the changing contours of the hills brought darkness again. There was only a faint glow of light about the tar hills when he looked deliberately back at them. He surely could not be far from Tegfan now. And yet there was another tollgate ahead. He sighed and considered riding out into the dark field to one side of the road and skirting the gate so as to avoid the delay of waking the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers seemed invariably to be sound sleepers.
And yet this one was not. The door of the small cottage beside the gate opened slowly even as he approached and a head appeared around it. Then the door opened wider and a thin, stooped figure stepped outside, clutching what appeared to be a giant club.
"What do you want?" the gatekeeper demanded gruffly in the voice of an elderly woman.
"I want to take my horse from this side of the gate to the other side," he said with weary hauteur. The woman was carrying no light. But she was still clutching her club with both hands. He also realized that she had spoken in Welsh.
He had heard it spoken all about him for the past few days of his journey. What surprised him now was the fact that without thinking he had answered the woman in her own language.
"Who are you?" she asked. But she did not wait for his answer. She was peering beyond him into the darkness. "Who else is with you?"
He was impatient to be moving on. But he realized that the woman was frightened. He did not blame her. It was a lonely stretch of road. He spoke more gently than he might have done.
"I am Wyvern," he said. "And I travel alone, Mother. I would have you open the gate if you will."
"Wyvern?" She took a step forward and looked intently and suspiciously up at him. "The Earl of Wyvern?" She bobbed a sudden and awkward curtsy, still clutching her club. "Oh, Duw, what are you doing out on the road alone at this time of the night, then? I thought you were Rebecca."
Well. To be mistaken for a woman, even in the darkness. "Rebecca?" he said, his tone more frosty.
"Come to break down the gate with her daughters and all the rest of them," she said. "I couldn't have stopped them, mind, but they wouldn't have got away without some bruised knuckles and knees." She moved her club back and forth in front of her as if to prove her point.
Was this not Tegfan land or very close to it? He leaned down from his horse's back and frowned. "Some woman and her daughters are terrorizing you?" he asked. "And threatening to damage property that belongs to a trust? I hope you have reported this matter."
"Oh, Duw love you, your lordship," she said. "Rebecca is not a woman and neither are her daughters. And there would be no point in reporting them. No one could catch them."
Ah. He had heard it said that the keepers of tailgates were strange people. They lived lonely lives and were not on the whole very popular in their neighborhoods. This woman was clearly mad. It was time he rode on.
"Not that they have been around here since over three years ago, mind, in 1839," the woman said. "But they will. Did you see that?" She held the club in one hand, resting it on the ground like a staff, while she jabbed out her free arm in the direction of the hills behind which the fire had been burning earlier. "It is not a gate or a gatehouse yet. The fire was too big. Hayricks, if my guess is right. But it is a start, mark my words. Soon it will be gates and Rebecca will be back."
"No one has seen her—him for longer than three years? But burning hayricks and tollgates was the sort of thing she did?" he asked. The woman might be mad, but the fire had been very real. "Doubtless after tonight's work, if you are correct, she will be caught and punished."
"Oh, Duw, Duw," she said, "you will be trying to catch her yourself if she comes up this way, your lordship, but you never will. All the other gentlemen tried last time and the constables too. There were even soldiers looking to catch Rebecca and her daughters. But no one else was trying, do you see? Everyone else cheered them along and even went with them to smash the gates. And will again. Word has it that it is all starting again."
Ah. A local rebellion against the turnpike trusts. Led by a man disguised as a woman. It was a wild idea, not without a certain romantic appeal, he supposed. A man fighting apparent oppression. Yes, he could understand why such a man would not be easy to catch. He would have far more protectors than hunters. And yet he fought a doomed cause—if indeed he was coming back to life after more than three years. One could not fight the whole force of law and society and hope to win.
"If they have not started yet," he said, "perhaps they will not. Mrs. — ?"
"Phillips," she said, bobbing another awkward curtsy. "Dilys Phillips, your lordship. But there have been a few other fires like tonight's, mind. It will be gates next."
"I will be living at Tegfan for a while, Mrs. Phillips," he told her. "I will see to it that you are not harassed. You will be safe here. My word on it."
"Oh, Duw, there is kind you are," she said, "and you the earl from Tegfan. But I will keep my big stick by me anyway." She laughed merrily and moved out into the road to unlock and open the gate. She appeared elderly and rather frail for such a job, the Earl of Wyvern thought. But she was able enough to perform her duties, he supposed, though it was a lonely life for an old woman. And what was the alternative? he wondered. The workhouse?
He rode forward and held out a coin. But she shook her head and took a step back. "It is free passage for the gentry," she said. "Good night to you, your lordship, and watch where your horse do set his feet. The road is rough and the night is dark."
He did not withdraw his hand though he knew that the gentry, who could afford the tolls, often rode free while the poor, who could not, were forced to pay or stay at home.
"Take it anyway," he said. "I dragged you from your bed and alarmed you by coming through so late."
She took the coin and curtsied once more.
He rode onward, hearing the sounds of the gate closing behind him. He wondered if Mrs. Dilys Phillips had noticed that the whole conversation had been conducted in Welsh. His grandfather had not spoken a word of the language. And he himself had not spoken it for the last sixteen years except sometimes during the early years in the whispered privacy of his own room—when he had had a room to himself.
And sometimes in the silent depths of his own heart.
There were two churches in the village of Glynderi, the one picturesque with its slim Gothic lines and tall spire, the other squat and solid and less attractive in appearance. The one was Anglican, the other nonconformist.
Only a handful of people from the village and surrounding farms and a few of the forty servants from the house of Tegfan ever attended the church, though everyone paid tithes to it—in cash rather than produce since the new law passed a few years earlier. It was a bitter grievance with the people. And what made it worse was that the tithe money did not go to the church but to the man who had the living in his possession.
Their tithes, like their rents, enriched the owner of Tegfan and Glynderi and the farms and all the land most of them had ever traveled in the course of their lives. The Earl of Wyvern.
Almost everyone from the village and from the farms for miles around attended the chapel. It was the spiritual center of the community and the social center too. And the center of music and song, of course, so essential to the Welsh soul. The Reverend Meirion Llwyd's sermons were always at least twice as long as the Anglican vicar's. But in addition to length they always had enough hwyl, or fiery, almost hypnotic emotion, that his congregation could have listened and responded for as long again. The fact that the Anglican service was over well within an hour of its start whereas their own frequently lasted far closer to two was no inducement to any chapel member to switch allegiance.
And then, of course, there was always the best part to look forward to when the service was finally over, though no one ever put it quite that way. There was the gathering in the street outside if the weather was fine or crowded into the porch and the back pews or even spilling into the Sunday schoolroom if it was raining. It was a gathering for fellowship, for the exchange of news and opinions, for the sharing of gossip. For people who worked long, hard hours through the week, many of them on farms too far distant from each other or from the village to allow for much company, Sunday morning was the time to look forward to, the time to cherish. The best morning of the week.
Glenys Owen, kitchen maid at Tegfan, had never felt quite so important in her life as she did on this particular Sunday morning. This morning she had come to chapel, bringing with her the news that the Earl of Wyvern had arrived unexpectedly from London in the middle of the night and thrown the whole household into consternation. Glenys had not yet seen him herself but he was there right enough.
"Praise the Lord," the Reverend Llwyd said. He was standing at the top of the stone steps leading down from the porch to the street, shaking hands with his departing congregation. He raised both arms as if in benediction. "Praise the Lord for bringing him safely home."
Not everyone agreed.
"After all this time?" Glyn Bevan, a farmer, said. "I wonder what for, then?"
"He has never shown much interest in the place before," Gwen Dirion, a farmer's wife, remarked to Blodwyn Jenkins, who kept the general store next to the chapel. "Glad to get away from here, he was."
"And never came to see his poor old mam," Miss Jenkins said, nodding about to include others in her remark, "until she was in a wooden box. Too late it was then."
"Geraint Penderyn." Eli Harris, the harness maker, turned his head to spit into the dirt roadway, perhaps forgetting for the moment that he was wearing his Sunday best and should therefore be on his Sunday-best behavior. "Come here to show off his fine clothes and his fine English ways and his fine English voice, I suppose. Come to lord it over us, is it? it do make me sick to my stomach."
"Eli," Mrs. Harris said reproachfully, glancing furtively at the minister.
"Well, it do, woman," Eli said, half-sheepishly, half-defiantly.
"Penderyn," Ifor Davies, the cooper, said. "Who broke his mam's heart, as Blodwyn has said, and does not care the snap of his fingers for us. A cheek, I do call it, mind, coming down here to sneer at us all."
"Not that any of us treated his mam very well for many years, mind, to be fair," Mrs. Olwen Harris said with ruthless honesty, nodding about at the other women for approval. "Not until we knew, that was."
"Geraint Penderyn," Aled Rhoslyn, the village blacksmith, said almost pensively, not talking to anyone in particular. "It is not the best time for him to come down here, is it? He may be sorry that he did. And so may we."
"Perhaps," Ninian Williams, a farmer, suggested, his hands spread over his ample stomach, "we should wait and see why he has come and what he intends to do. He has every right to be in his own house, after all. Perhaps we should give the man a chance."
"Yes, Dada." Ceris Williams, small and slim and dark and mild-mannered, rarely spoke in public. But she possessed a certain courage that occasionally impelled her to speak out. "I was only fifteen when he came for his mam's funeral. That was ten years ago. I felt sorry for him then because he seemed to feel so out of place and everyone was watching him so closely, more prepared to find fault than to welcome him home. Perhaps we should not judge him now that he is the Earl of Wyvern. Perhaps we should wait and see." She blushed furiously, bit her lip, and lowered her eyes.
"Perhaps we should at that," Aled said, his eyes fixed on her, their expression softened. "But we will not expect too much, is it? He has been the earl for two years, after all, and things have got worse here since then rather than better."
Ceris looked up and held his gaze for a few moments, her own eyes filling with a longing that was quickly hidden when she lowered them again to the ground at her feet.
"Wait and see? Give him a chance?" Marged Evans's voice was incredulous and taut with fury. "I do not need to give him a chance. For two years he has had his chance. That is long enough. Too long. Can Eurwyn be given a second chance? Eurwyn is dead, thanks to Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern." She almost spat out the name, her back straight, her bosom out, her chin up. As always Marged, tall, lithe, and beautiful drew both eyes and attention.
"Eurwyn committed a crime, Marged," the Reverend Llwyd said firmly, ever courageous despite her obvious anger.
She turned it on him, her cheeks flushing, her eyes flashing. "A crime," she said. "A crime to try to stop his people from starving. Oh, yes, a crime, Dada. A capital crime, as it turned out. A crime for which he died. My husband died, leaving behind him a farm to be run by three women, by his wife and his mother and his grandmother. Eurwyn died because Geraint Penderyn cares for no one but Geraint Penderyn. And we are to give him a chance? A chance for what, pray? To raise our rents again? To force the tithes from us even if we starve as a result? To force us to pay ever more and higher tolls at the gates so that we cannot go to and from market or bring the lime we need to fertilize our fields? To force us from our land into the workhouse?"
The Reverend Llwyd, Marged's father, raised one hand again. "It is not for us to break the law, even to right a wrong," he said. "Two wrongs do not make a right. We must leave the righting of wrongs to the Lord. 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'"
There was a chorus of murmurings from the gathered congregation, which had not this morning broken up into several smaller groups, as it usually did. But it was not clear who was murmuring assent and who was indicating disagreement. The two combatants stood facing each other at opposite sides of the crowd, the father on the chapel steps, the daughter on the street.
"Well, sometimes, Dada," Marged said, uncowed, "the Lord needs a helping hand. And here are two." She raised two slim hands, callused palms out. "I say that if and when the Earl of Wyvern shows his face in Glynderi or on any of our farms, we give him the welcome he deserves."
"Which can be interpreted more than one way, mind, Marged," Miss Jenkins said.
"I know how I will welcome him if he dares to come to Ty-Gwyn," Marged said.
"He has a right to go there, Marged," Ninian Williams reminded her. "Your farm belongs to him just as mine does. Just as all the farms around by here do. It would be best to be polite and to wait and see."
"Perhaps," Aled said, "we would not be feeling quite so angry if he were anyone but Geraint. We think of Geraint as a person. It is easier to focus our displeasure and our protests just on owners generally. It is too bad he has decided to come back here just now. I don't like it."
"But he has come and he is Geraint Penderyn," Marged said, drawing her cloak more closely about her. "I am going home. Are you coming, Ceris?"
Ceris glanced at Aled to see if he would say more. But he had turned away. "I will go on ahead with Marged, then, Mam," she said, turning toward her mother and smiling too at her father before stepping out into the street to begin the long walk home along the river and up into the lower hills—one and a half miles for her, two for Marged.
The crowd outside the chapel split, according to age and gender, into its more usual smaller groups.