“No,” Marged said. “Can you show me the room and the way to it, Glenys? Without getting yourself into any trouble at all? It will be just another joke, I promise.”
Glenys swallowed and then nodded.
Marged laughed as they parted a couple of minutes later. “Watch for the coal delivery tomorrow,” she said. “It should be amusing.”
But it was not amusement she wanted to feel. And indeed it was not amusement she felt. It was excitement. And determination. Soon he would know that it was not just a series of clumsy accidents that was making his life less than comfortable. Soon he would know himself to be the victim of hatred.
It would happen the night they planned to let the horses out of the stables. Friday night. She would do it that same night. Before the night was over he would know.
Finally Marged directed her steps downward. It must be almost teatime.
It was not a good week for Geraint.
He talked to his steward, and Matthew Harley chose to be indignant and to take offense at the suggestion that there was something wrong at Tegfan and on its farms. He pointed out that the estate was the most prosperous in West Wales and was the envy of every other landowner. He explained with some pride that other stewards and even some landowners had visited him to ask his advice on a wide range of topics concerning estate management. He pointed out that tithes and road trusts and the poor rate were beyond his power to control but that rents certainly were not. By raising rents annually, he had ensured the continued prosperity of Tegfan and the continued superiority of the farms.
“How so?” Geraint asked, questioning that last point.
There were many more farmers than there was land for them to rent. It was a competitive business. If a man with land could not afford his rent, he was proving that he was a poor manager. It made perfect business sense to see that he was replaced by a better man. The knowledge that they might be replaced by someone better able to run their farms was incentive enough to keep everyone working hard.
It sounded reasonable. It sounded admirable. But Geraint had always suspected that business was often an impersonal thing, ignoring the human factor. He could not shake from his mind the image of Idris Parry, thin and ragged and poaching on his land. And the memory of what it felt like to live in stark, frightening poverty.
He talked to his neighbors. One of them, who was also in full possession of the tithes of his parish, stared at him in incomprehension when Geraint raised the matter. Tithes were a part of the whole establishment of the church. Church and state would collapse without them. And if one man refused to collect them on the grounds that he did not need them, then the whole fabric of society might crumble.
“One might almost call such a man a traitor,” the neighbor said severely.
It seemed extravagant to Geraint. But it was a disturbing idea that perhaps he was not free to act alone on a matter because it was something that concerned the whole of society. Perhaps at least he could see that the tithes were spent on the church—or, better still, on the chapel.
And all his neighbors were agreed that rising rents were desirable for all concerned. They trotted out arguments so exactly like Harley’s that Geraint realized anew why he was so envied in his steward. He could find no one sympathetic to the idea of lowering rents or at least freezing them for a few years until there had been a few good years for crops and until the demands of the market had improved.
“It is a mad idea and one you had better not institute, Wyvern,” Sir Hector Webb told him sharply. “You would not be popular with your relatives and friends, and your tenants would see you only as a weak man. They would not respect you for it.”
“It is just the sort of thing I would expect you to suggest,” Lady Stella said coldly. “You are still one of them at heart, are you not, Wyvern? But you must remember that according to Papa’s will, I will inherit Tegfan if you fail to marry and produce a legitimate heir.” She put slight emphasis on the adjective.
“Your aunt is right, Wyvern,” Sir Hector told him. “I would not take kindly to your wasting her inheritance.”
Geraint merely nodded. He refrained from arguing or from reminding them that he was only twenty-eight years old and perhaps capable of producing a dozen sons.
Life was not going to be easy.
Chapter 8
HE sought out Aled again, early one evening, entering the forge just when Aled was finishing work for the day and dismissing his apprentice. They walked into the park of Tegfan as they had before.
“You were right,” he said, bringing to an end the meaningless exchange of talk that had occupied them for a few minutes. “Things have not been well done since I inherited Tegfan. And I cannot plead ignorance, though I have been deliberately ignorant. My problem now is seeing a solution.”
Aled maintained a silence.
Geraint told him about his visits to his neighbors. “And it seems that I have no power over the road trusts at all,” he ended by saying. “Although I draw lease money from them, their actions are beyond my control. And even when the lease is due for renewal, mine is only one voice among many. I would be outvoted.”
Aled still said nothing and Geraint sighed.
“But the problem is mine, not yours,” he said. “You do not have a great deal of respect for me, do you, Aled?”
His friend shrugged and looked intensely embarrassed. “I can understand your situation well enough to know that I would not wish to be in your shoes,” he said.
“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.
