Chapter 13
Marged joined in the general cheer. She did not believe she had ever felt so exhilarated in her life. It was a blow for justice, for freedom, for the dignity of their lives. Dylan Owen was slapping her on the back, as excited as she.
"Now we have shown them, Marged," he said. "And we will continue to show them."
She smiled back at him, but she became aware suddenly that one of the horses had moved up close to her other side. She looked up, startled.
Rebecca leaned down from his horse's back and set a hand beneath her chin to keep her face turned up. It was some sort of a woolen mask, she saw, hugging his face tightly, with only small slits for his eyes, nose, and mouth. Long blond ringlets cascaded down about the mask and over his shoulders. It was impossible to know what the man behind the mask looked like and would be impossible even in daylight, Marged believed. She felt unaccountably frightened. There was such a contrast between the effeminacy of the woman's attire and the power the man had shown tonight.
"Is it possible," he said, his voice low and soft and quite audible despite the noise by which they were surrounded, "that one of my children is a real daughter?"
"Yes." She looked directly back into his eyes, which gleamed darkly through the slits of the mask. "And there are a few others here too. We represent all the women who feel as strongly as the men that it is time to protest against oppression but who have been kept at home by the orders of fathers or husbands or by the needs of children."
"Ah. Brave words, my daughter," he said.
She felt almost as if she were just that for a moment. She felt absurdly pleased by the implied praise.
He released her chin and raised his arms again and called for silence. Amazingly he got it after only a few moments. "My children," he said, "enough for tonight. Next time we will destroy more than one of these abominations. My daughters will tell you where and when. I have been proud of you tonight. You have behaved with courage and determination—and discipline. Go now. Most of you have a long walk home."
It seemed almost anticlimactic. And it really was a long walk home. Marged smiled at Dylan, determined not to show her weariness. But a hand came to rest lightly on her shoulder and she turned to look up again at Rebecca, who had not moved off. He took his hand away and offered it to her, palm up.
"Come, my daughter," he said. "Take my hand and set your foot on my boot and ride up with me."
The prospect was unaccountably frightening. He was not her enemy. He was the leader she had hoped and prayed for. Even better than Eurwyn would have been, she thought treacherously. He had won her respect and admiration and loyalty tonight. But he looked ghostly and yet massively real all at the same time. And it was the dead of night. And she did not know who he was.
"I am not afraid of the walk home," she said, "even though I am a woman."
She could have sworn that his eyes smiled at her. "Then ride up here for my sake," he said. "I am a woman in need of company so late at night."
She smiled then. And certainly it would be pleasant to ride for a part of the way, until their paths took them in different directions. Of course, by then she would be separated from her friends and would have to walk the rest of the way home alone. But she was certainly not going to give in to a fear of the dark.
She set her hand in his and lifted her foot to rest it on his boot in the stirrup. The next moment she was seated sideways on the horse's back in front of the saddle, his arms like a safe barricade on either side of her while he gathered the reins in his hands.
He held his horse still until everyone had disappeared into the darkness. Only then did he give it the signal to start. Marged sat very still, fighting breathlessness so that he would not notice. One thing had been very clear from her brief contacts with Rebecca and the ease with which she had been lifted onto the horse.
Rebecca was a very powerful man.
All three of his identities had merged in the course of the night. His education and training had reinforced the natural ability to command that he had possessed even as a child. Yet tonight he had used that training and that ability to assert his Welshness, his identification with his people. He felt passionately throughout the night the lightness of what he was doing. He felt a deep love for the people whom he commanded and a deep commitment to their cause. And he found that the role of Rebecca suited him. The role of woman and mother served to remind him that it was a cause for which he fought and that it could be done with dignity and a measure of compassion.
It was a night he frankly enjoyed. It took him back to childhood years and made him realize just how much of his identity he had been forced to give up at the age of twelve, and how much he had finally given up voluntarily in order to retain his sanity. He felt almost as if he had been living a suspended life for sixteen years and was now vibrantly and gloriously alive again.
He watched as a few hundred men broke down the tollgate and the keeper's house—by tradition Rebecca and her daughters did not participate in the actual destruction.
And then he saw Marged. He would not have been quite sure, perhaps, if he had not seen her dressed in the same garb the night his horses were let loose from the stables and he found wet ashes in his bed. She was wearing a cap tonight and he could see from the brief glimpse he had of her face that it had been blackened as almost everyone else's had. But she was undoubtedly a woman. Undoubtedly Marged.
His first instinct was to keep his distance. How impenetrable was his disguise? But he had ever been bold as a boy. If the disguise could not fool Marged, then perhaps it would not fool someone else—someone who might betray him. Conversely, if it could fool Marged, then it could fool anyone.
And so he put it to the test, leaning down from his horse's back, cupping her chin with his hand so that she would be forced to take a good look at him, speaking to her with his voice only a few inches from her ears, bending his head so that she could see him despite the darkness.
She did not know him.
His exhilaration and boldness grew as he dismissed the men and sent them on their way home. It had been a brief encounter. What if it were a longer encounter and at even closer quarters? He had been careful about detail. He had even made sure that he did not wear his usual cologne and that none of it lingered on any of the clothes he wore beneath Rebecca's robes. But was there a detail he had neglected, one that would betray him?
It was something he did not need to put to the test. It was something it might be dangerous to put to the test. And even if he could deceive her, it would perhaps be unfair to do so. She hated him with very good reason.
But temptation was something he had never been able to resist as a boy, and the years of discretion that had intruded since that time had fallen away in the course of the night. The more daring an enterprise, the more likely he had been to try it as a child. It was a miracle he had never come to any grief more painful than that blistering spanking he had had at the hands of one of the gardeners at Tegfan.
He leaned down again and touched Marged on the shoulder.
And talked her into riding with him.
And watched the men disappear into the darkness on their way home, trying to calm his breathing as he did so. He had no excuse to be breathless. He had not participated in the exertions of the last half hour.
But he was beginning to realize that perhaps he had made a mistake. His arms, bracketing her body though not quite touching her, burned with her body heat. His thigh felt singed where it rested against her knee. He could smell ashes and sweat and woman—an unbearably erotic perfume.
Marged. Ah, Marged.
"Where do you live, my daughter?" he asked her.
It was incredibly difficult to turn her head sideways and look into his eyes when she was this close to him. They were light eyes, gray or blue—it was impossible to tell which. He looked even more solid from close to, even larger than life. And strangely masculine despite the grotesque woman's garb and the mask.
"On a farm beyond Glynderi and Tegfan park," she said. "Do you know the area?"
"I know it," he said. "When we have passed the village you must direct me to the correct farm."
"Oh," she said, realizing his intent, "you must not take me all the way home. It is late and I would not take you out of your way."
"Ah, but it would be my pleasure," he said. "What is your name?"
"Marged Evans," she said. Sitting sideways on a moving horse was not easy. She had never done a great deal of riding. He must have sensed the fact. His right arm came firmly about her waist, and she felt instantly safe.
"Well, Marged Evans," he said, "perhaps as you said earlier, there were other women out tonight, but I did not see them. Why did you come? It was strenuous and dangerous business."
"I do a man's job at home," she said. "I run a farm. My mother-in-law looks after the house and milks the cows and does some of the work in the dairy, but I do everything else. I do not shrink from hard work."
"Where is your husband?" he asked.
"Dead." The horse was moving upward into the hills and was throwing her balance sideways. She tried to stay upright, but her shoulder touched his chest and then pressed heavily against it. And his arm held her against him. She had not been mistaken. He was very solidly male.
"I am sorry to hear it," he said softly, and she felt that he meant it. She felt warmed by his sympathy. "You came out, then, to prove that you are any man's equal?"
She chuckled. "Yes, I suppose so. I had to come. I have the same grievances as everyone else. I also have a personal grievance."
"Ah," he said, and his arm tightened as his horse scrambled over uneven ground. She lost the battle with her neck muscles and her head came to rest on his shoulder among the blond ringlets of his wig. "Is it also a private grievance?"
"No," she said, "not really." Who better to tell than Rebecca? "My husband died in the hulks while being transported to Van Diemen's Land. He had been sentenced to seven years for trying to destroy the salmon weir at Tegfan. The Earl of Wyvern never even lives there."
"I have heard he is in residence now," he said.
"Yes." She could hear the bitterness in her voice. "But I wish he had stayed away. His coming has brought it all back fresh again. I used to know him when we were children. We used to—play together. I thought to appeal to that old friendship after my husband was sentenced. I wrote to him—twice. But he did not help. He did not even answer my letters."
For a moment she felt his cheek against the top of her head, but he did not keep it there. "I am sorry," he said softly. "It must have been a dreadfully painful time for you."
She swallowed but did not answer. This was not good for her, this being cradled by a man's arm, her head on his shoulder, feeling his sympathy. It was not good at all.
"Who are you?" she asked him.
He chuckled. "I am Rebecca, Marged," he said.
"But who is the man behind the mask?" He was someone she had never met. She knew that. But he was someone she would like to meet. She would like to see him in his everyday clothes. Was his physique as magnificent as it felt through the robes? Was his face handsome? What color was his hair? "Where are you from?"
"There is nothing behind the mask," he said. "There is only what you see. And I come from the hills and the valleys and the rivers and the clouds of Carmarthenshire."
She smiled rather ruefully. "You wish to keep your identity a secret," she said. "That is understandable. I should not have asked. But I would not betray you, you know. I admire what you did tonight and the way you did it more than I can say. I will follow you in the coming nights as often as you call us out."
"That is high praise indeed," he said.
They were moving downhill. It would have been easy for her to sit upright again. But his arm held her to him, and she did not struggle against it.
They lapsed into silence. But she was not embarrassed by it. Her initial fear at his closeness and at her precarious position on the horse's back had passed. They were alone in the dark hills, but she was not afraid of him. Leaning against him, no longer looking at his disguise, she could feel that he was only a man. And he was a man she trusted. He was Rebecca.
And yet other feelings came gradually to replace the fear.
An awareness of him as a man. An awareness of the fact that she was cradled against the chest of a stranger, her head on his shoulder, his arm about her waist, his inner thigh pressed against her knees. And that they were alone together in the hills on a dark night.
But still there was no fear and no embarrassment. Only a guilty enjoyment. It had been so long. Until recently she had felt guilty about thinking of other men, wanting other men. She had felt disloyal to Eurwyn. She had felt still married to him. But lately she had admitted to herself that he was dead, that her loyalty to him while he lived had been total, but that she still had a life to live. She had started to feel her emptiness, her need of a man. And yet she had been unable to feel interest in any of the men who had signaled that they might be interested in her.
She had a mental image suddenly of a man standing in darkness before her, his back to the doorway of Ty-Gwyn. Of that man taking both her hands in his and raising them one at a time to kiss the palms. And of the shameful way she had wanted him. Shameful because she hated him. She shivered and pressed her head harder into Rebecca's shoulder.
"You are cold?'" his voice asked against her ear.
"No." She shook her head slightly. "Am I taking you very far out of your way?" But she knew she was. They had walked for miles earlier before they came up with him.
"No," he said, but she knew he lied.
They were silent again. And she closed her eyes and frankly enjoyed her closeness to him. And the feel of him. strong and broad-shouldered. And the smell of him. He smelled—clean. And the knowledge that he was someone worthy of her respect and loyalty. She enjoyed the pleasant desire he aroused in her. He made her feel that she was back in the land of the living. He made her aware again of her femininity. He made her know that one day she would really desire and really love again.
It seemed a strange end to a night that had been devoted to violence and hatred.
Guilt and pleasure warred within him. She really did not know who he was. She did not even suspect. He could tell from the way she snuggled against him, all her weight resting sideways against his chest, her head nestled on his shoulder, that she trusted him utterly. It was foolhardy. She was alone in the middle of the night with an apparent stranger and trusted him to do her no harm.
And yet it was no man she trusted, he knew. It was Rebecca. She admired and respected and trusted him because he was Rebecca. He had told her there was nothing behind the mask. He had lied more than she realized.
He remembered suddenly the way she had leaned away from him, revulsion in her face, when he had reached for her that night the horses had been let out and she had been telling him about the letters she had sent him pleading for her husband. Don't touch me! she had told him.
He should have left her to walk home with the Glynderi contingent.
But he had not done so and now he was committed to taking her all the way home. He would not do it again. Indeed, he would persuade her before letting her down not to join any of the Rebecca Riots in future. He would command her as Rebecca not to come. It was just this one time, then. And they must be more than halfway home already.
And because it was just this one time and because they were more than halfway home, he allowed himself to enjoy her closeness. It had been so long. And no one would ever convince him that young love was ridiculous and of no account. He had bedded his share of women and considered others as a wife, but he had never loved any of them as he had loved Marged. He had never suffered the pain of loss with any of them as he had suffered it with her.
He had loved her. And though he had not thought of her constantly or even often during the past ten years, he had thought of her occasionally and always with a pang of nostalgia and regret for the gaucheness that had killed his chances with her. It was partly Marged who had made him resolve never to return to Tegfan and never to know what was happening there.
And now he held her in his arms again, and like a dream, she rested against him, relaxed and trusting. Although he was no longer a young boy with a young boy's foolishness, he knew that in the future he would continue to remember her occasionally and that when he did, it would be tonight he would remember.
And then landmarks began to look familiar as they loomed out of the darkness. They were almost home. He felt both relief and regret. Relief because enjoyment was beginning to turn to active desire. Regret because he knew there would never again be a night like this one.
He skirted past both the village and the park. He almost made the mistake of turning up into the hills toward Ty-Gwyn. He caught himself in time.
"We have just passed Glynderi," he said. "You must direct me from here, Marged."
She turned her head to look about her, and he realized that she must have had her eyes closed.
"Oh," she said, "it seemed such a short distance coming back." Perhaps he only imagined that he heard regret in her voice.
He chuckled. "Distances have a tendency to feel shorter when one is on horseback," he said.
"You must ride often," she said. "You ride easily. Turn right here up into the hills."
He turned right and did not comment on what she had said.
"Your mother-in-law will be worried about you?" he asked.
"She does not know I am gone," she said. "At least, I hope she does not. She had enough worries with my husband. She deserves to live out the rest of her life in peace."
"You should not even take the chance of worrying her, then, Marged," he said. "What if you were caught? Who would run the farm for her?"
"Somehow the Lord provides,"' she said simply. She laughed softly. "I am a minister's daughter, you know. When my husband was taken, I wondered the same thing. But somehow we manage without him. We have to do what we believe in in this life, I am firmly convinced. We cannot always be wondering what will happen if things go wrong. That is the surest road to cowardice."
It was not going to be easy.
"I married Eurwyn because he was the sort of man who followed his convictions," she said. '"I loved him for it. I never whined and insisted he think of me first before going into danger. And I never blamed him for leaving me alone."
He felt a stabbing of jealousy for the long-dead Eurwyn Evans, the man she had loved. And the wistful desire to be so loved himself. But such love had to be earned. He had done nothing to earn it.
"A little farther on," she said, pointing. "At the top of the next rise."
They rode the rest of the distance in silence. When they reached the gate and the shape of the longhouse could be made out through the darkness, she stayed where she was.
"Here?" he asked her.
"Yes." Her voice was low, almost a whisper against his ear.