“Oh, who?” She found that she was agog with eagerness.
He shook his head. “I cannot say that either,” he said. “It is safer for everyone if almost no one knows his identity.”
She was disappointed. “But he is not from here?” she asked. “No, he cannot be. But is he anyone we know? Anyone from close to here?”
“Aled is right, Marged, fach,” Ifor Davies said. “It is better we do not know. No one can squeeze out of us what we do not know, girl.”
“But is he suitable?” She could not let it alone. “He is not someone who has been pressed into it against his will, Aled? Or someone who is merely a daredevil with no sense of responsibility? Or someone who is ruthless and will do more destruction than is necessary?”
“He will do, Marged,” Aled said. “He will be the best Rebecca there has been, I believe.”
She raised her eyebrows. Aled was not given to wild enthusiasms. This was praise indeed.
“I will show my support of him and my trust in him by being one of his daughters,” Aled said. He smiled faintly. “Charlotte.”
Charlotte was, by tradition, Rebecca’s favorite daughter. The leader’s right-hand man. Rebecca must indeed be someone Aled believed in. Marged was more curious than ever.
“Bring with you crowbars or anything else that will help destroy gates and tollhouses,” Aled said. “But no guns or anything else designed specifically to harm people. There is to be no violence shown to any people. Rebecca has made it a firm condition of her service to us, and I support her wholeheartedly.”
“Duw,” Eli Harris said, “but there are a few gatekeepers I would not mind putting the fear of God into—with my fists or something a little more convincing.”
“Rebecca will not tolerate a rabble,” Aled said. “He will expect a disciplined army and he will demand obedience. Anyone who cannot accept that would do better to stay at home.”
Eli grumbled to himself, but he appeared to have no supporters.
Rebecca, Marged thought, was winning her respect with every passing minute. She hoped Aled was not exaggerating. But where had this man been hiding all this time?
“I am all for you, Aled, and for Rebecca,” she said. “At least something will be done to speak loudly and clearly to the government. At last the likes of Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern, will have something rather more serious to bother him than a few stray mice and escaped horses and ashes in his bed. I can hardly wait to see how he reacts.”
Aled looked steadily back at her. “I imagine he will be very angry, Marged,” he said.
She smiled brightly at him. “I hope so,” she said. “Duw, but I hope so.”
He had forgotten the feeling. He had lived with it for years, this combination of excitement and fear, the one inextricably a part of the other. He had been a child then, poaching for a living, thrilled by the sheer delight of snaring food for himself and his mother, titillated by the knowledge that sure punishment awaited him if he were caught.
He was a man now and realized that for many years life had been tame. Not that he had not enjoyed it, but it had been without challenge. His boyhood exuberance returned to him as if the intervening years had fallen away. There was a new challenge on which to focus all his energies. He was to lead the Rebecca Riots in this part of Wales. There would be perhaps a few hundred men to lead and control and keep safe. There was his identity to be kept secret from both sides—from both the authorities and the men he led. There was his own safety to be guarded against possible informers. There were always large rewards offered for the capture of a Rebecca, he had been told.
And there was the fear. Definitely the fear. Fear that he would be unable to control his men and that he would be merely creating a mob that would wantonly destroy property and perhaps harm people. And fear of being caught. Transportation for life—that was what lay in wait for any Rebecca who was caught. None had been yet. Perhaps in this case, since he was a landowner and an aristocrat and would be seen as someone who had betrayed his own class and perhaps his country—in his case, perhaps the ultimate penalty.
Geraint had made his appearance before the committee, conducted to their meeting blindfolded, as he had suggested, by a grim Aled. He had been kept behind a screen in a darkened room. For longer than an hour he had made his case and answered questions and withstood a thorough grilling. He had lost hope. They were not going to accept him. But they had. Perhaps they thought they had little to lose. If he failed, if he was somehow trying to set a trap, they would be safe. He had seen none of them except Aled. It was clear to him that they had even disguised their voices.
He had set his conditions. Only tollgates and tollhouses were to be destroyed. There was to be no damage to private property. There was to be no harm done to any person. No one was to be coerced into joining the rioters, as was happening in other areas. No one was to carry a gun. And one gate was to be exempt. There was a gate on Tegfan land, the Cilcoed gate, kept by an elderly woman, Mrs. Dilys Phillips. He had given her the word of the Earl of Wyvern that he would protect her from all harm.
And so he had a third identity. He was Geraint Penderyn and the Earl of Wyvern—and now Rebecca. He was to become Rebecca for the first time on Saturday night. His disguise had been found for him and was safely stowed away in a derelict gamekeeper’s hut at the northern tip of the park. He had studied the rituals that were always observed at a gate breaking. They were foolish rituals, perhaps, as was the whole idea of Rebecca and her daughters, but he knew that sometimes ritual had its function in giving form and orderliness to a situation that was fraught with dangers. He thought Saturday night would never come.
He found himself unable to settle to anything for the intervening days but wandered restlessly about the house and park. He found it difficult to eat. He found it almost impossible to sleep.
He was excited and afraid.
She was terribly afraid. Perhaps more afraid than she had ever been in her life. But, no, that was not true. She had been more afraid when Eurwyn had been out trying to destroy that weir. And her feelings at his trial and afterward had gone beyond fear. Fear was a dreadful emotion when it was accompanied by utter helplessness.
There was an element of excitement and exhilaration mingled with this fear. And this time she was not helpless. She was doing something. She was in control of her own destiny.
Her mother-in-law and grandmother always went to bed early. Sometimes Marged regretted the fact. Evenings could be long when they were spent alone. But tonight she was glad. She dressed quickly and quietly in the old breeches and jacket she had cut down from Eurwyn’s size to her own. She pulled a woolen cap over her head and then stooped down by the fire to blacken her face with some of the cooled ashes she had mixed with a little water.
Wet ashes. Her hand paused for a moment over the dish. But she would not think about him or about what she had done to his bed. She had not seen him for two weeks and she could not be happier. It seemed that the less than warm welcome he had received from them all and the “accidents” that had befallen him had had the desired effect. He had retreated into the house and park of Tegfan. Perhaps soon he would retreat all the way to London. Perhaps the riots that were to start tonight would drive him away.
She could not somehow imagine Geraint running from danger, though. But then she was remembering him as a daring urchin. She did not know anything now about the state of his courage. Except, she thought unwillingly, that it must have taken courage both to go to chapel and to go to Mrs. Howell’s birthday party. She had not thought of it that way before. And did not want to think it now. Or to think of him.
