“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 to 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, either, 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. Waldo 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.
Marged was to be there, he thought as he approached the house. The thought had been there, hovering in the back of his mind, ever since he had decided to come. She would have nothing to do with him. It would be far better for his peace of mind to stay away from places where she was likely to be. But he knew that it was the sure knowledge she would be there that had influenced his decision to come.
He would see her again—in a place where perhaps she could not openly snub him. Though one never quite knew with Marged.
