Longing (32 page)

He remained silent, watching one tear trickle diagonally down her cheek to be absorbed in the pillow. The tear from the other eye pooled against her nose.

“Siân?” he said after a while. “Who were they?”

She sobbed then, a wrenching sob that seemed to have been dragged out from deep inside her. She lifted one shaking hand to cover her face and sobbed as if her heart would break. Alex stayed where he was, watching her. He could not draw her into his arms. He did set one hand lightly against the side of her head.

“Who were they?” he repeated.

He knew the answer. He sensed it. But he had to hear it from her own lips.

“I wouldn't have known,” she managed to jerk out between helpless sobs. “He was whispering like the others. He pleaded for ten lashes instead of twenty and they changed it to fifteen. He stopped them after a few strokes to put a cloth between my teeth so that I would not bite my lips raw. I didn't think I noticed or heard him. But he forgot to whisper when he was pushing the cloth into my mouth.” She could say no more for a while.

He watched her, feeling the cold knot of fury ball inside his stomach.

“Who was he, Siân?” he asked.

“O-w-e-n,” she wailed, misery and despair stark in her voice. “He was Owen.”

He stroked the side of her head as she wept. His hand was warm and gentle. His heart was as cold as steel.

“It's over now,” he murmured to her while the crying eased and he could tell from the lesser tension in her body that the pain was receding. “You defied them and you faced them with more courage and dignity than I have ever known in a woman—or in most men for that matter. When you stand on your own feet, Siân Jones, you stand quite firmly and quite alone on them, don't you? Some would
call you a fool. I would wager that many have in the last few days. I honor you. I deeply honor you.”

She smiled fleetingly. “That was strong medicine?” she asked. “I feel fuzzy all over.”

“It was strong medicine,” he said. “Are you comfortable?”

“I can never sleep on my stomach,” she said.

“You would prefer your back?” he asked. “Let me help you, then.”

It would be safer to help her, now—her eyes looked heavily drugged, but no longer with pain. He helped ease her over onto her back and covered her nakedness with the sheet and with two blankets. She was very nearly asleep.

“I should go home,” she said, her words slow and slurred.

He looked down at her, watching her eyelids droop over her eyes. He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek and then leaned over her and set his mouth lightly to hers.

“You are home, Siân,” he whispered.

He did not believe she heard him. Her eyes were closed and remained closed. Her breathing was quiet and even.

*   *   *

She
opened her eyes once to see Miss Haines standing beside her bed.

“I have brought you a drink,” the housekeeper said. “Would you like it? May I help you sit up?”

But Siân shook her head and closed her eyes again. She was floating on cotton wool. She was cotton wool. She could not remember why, but she had a feeling that this was a state to be clung to for as long as possible. She vaguely wondered what Miss Haines was doing leaning inside her cupboard bed.

“I have sent a message to Mr. Hywel Rhys,” Miss Haines said, “to inform him and Mrs. Rhys that you will be staying here at least for tonight.”

Yes, that was good. Gran would not worry now. Siân sank gratefully back into fuzz.
I honor you. I deeply honor you.
She wrapped herself about with his voice and the soft gentleness of his words. They had been more soothing than the ointments. They had made the
whipping worthwhile. No, not that, perhaps. But they had made its aftermath bearable.

Alexander. She opened her eyes and looked about the room for him. But he had gone away. There was no one else in the room.

You are home, Siân.
She could hear his voice saying the words, though she could not remember where or when he had spoken them.
You are home.

She sank back into sleep.

She woke up later to find someone else beside her bed. He was standing there gazing silently down at her. She had seen that look on his face only once before.

“Siân,” he said softly as she closed her eyes again, “Siân, my little one.”

She wanted him to go away. She did not want him in her dreams. Not with that look on his face. Not with those words on his lips. It could only be a cruel, mocking dream, the sort she could remember from childhood. Never reality. Only a dream.

“My little one,” he said, “what have they done to you? Why didn't you come to me? Why have you never come to me?”

Because it was a dream, she said what she had always longed to say to him and never been invited to say. “Dada,” she said, her eyes closed.

She had heard him cry once before. It was also when she had seen him look like that before. When her mother had died and he had come to the house. He had never cried over her, Siân. Or laughed with her. Or shown any emotion over her. She had never existed for him. But this was a dream. Anything could happen in a dream. In the dream he was crying over her.

“Things are going to change,” she heard Sir John Fowler say before she sank back into sleep. “By God things are going to change. They are not going to hurt you again, my little one.”

Where was Alexander? She opened her eyes to look about for him, but he was not there. There was no one there. She was in a strange room, she saw. She did not recognize it. She did not know
quite why she was there. Alexander had brought her there. There was a twinge of discomfort when she tried to move. But she did not need to move. She was comfortable and warm and deliciously sleepy.

She sank back into sleep.

*   *   *

The
atmosphere at the ironworks and in the coal mines and in the houses of the town was always somewhat subdued the morning after Scotch Cattle had dealt out punishment. Everyone knew about it and everyone knew who the victim or victims had been, yet no one wanted to discuss it. There was always a dual feeling of almost shamed sympathy for the victim on the one hand and approval of what the enforcers had done to safeguard the will of the majority on the other.

The atmosphere was more marked than usual this morning. No one could remember a time when a woman had run afoul of Scotch Cattle. But Siân Jones had. It was almost beyond belief that she had defied their warnings when she could so easily have complied with their one demand. But she had defied them.

Everyone knew by the morning that she had been dragged up the mountain last night and given the whips. Everyone even knew how many—fifteen lashes. Those who had been willing to discuss the matter in the days previous to it had bet on ten. Perhaps even five. She was a woman.

But she had been given fifteen lashes—with damp whips. She had been spread on the wet ground and her back bared for the whips, just as if she had been a man. Emrys Rhys had carried her home across his own back. Hywel Rhys had used enough curse words to be expelled from chapel for at least two eternities if anyone had cared to take the matter up with the Reverend Llewellyn and the deacons.

Owen Parry had not been able to control her obstinacy, the shocked whisper went around. There were those who had predicted that he would give her backside a good tanning before the Scotch Cattle could get at her, and thus save her from herself. But he had not been able to stop her. And he had not gone to her after the Cattle had howled the end of the whipping and their departure. Only
her kin and Gwyn Jones's kin had gone up the mountain to bring her home.

Owen Parry was at work today among the puddlers, his face hard and set so that no one spoke to him unless he had to or stepped into his path.

Another amazing fact was that Siân Jones had gone to work this morning—a few hours after being dealt fifteen lashes with wet Scotch Cattle whips. One could not help but be rather awed at her spirit.

And one could not but be rather uneasily aware that such defiance and such courage did not seem quite to denote an informer. There were very few who had ever wholeheartedly believed that it was she who had informed against them. Why would she have done so when her own man would be the one most in danger from discovery? She must have known that Parry was to chair the meeting. And if she had been the informer, why had she apparently done nothing after the warning to enlist the help of the Marquess of Craille? Why had she done nothing to avoid the whips?

Men and women went about their work that morning subdued and a little fearful and a little puzzled.

The ironworkers were the first to hear it—the distinct, authoritative voice of the Marquess of Craille. It was not particularly loud, but it was a voice of his they had not heard before—a voice trained from birth to be heard and obeyed without question.

Work was finished for the day, he announced. He would see them in one hour's time on the mountain, in their usual meeting place. Every last man of them. The women were to return to their homes.

The men looked at one another, stunned. And yet, as they laid down their tools and left their work areas, there was not one of them who even thought of disobeying.

The miners received the same message less than half an hour later as the marquess's voice rang along first one coal seam and then another until every man, boy, and woman had heard the summons at least twice.

There was not a man who dared absent himself from the summons to the mountain. And not a man who would have done so even if he dared. The Scotch Cattle had gone too far this time. They had whipped a woman—the teacher Craille had employed to teach his daughter. Every man wondered in some fascination and not a little dread what the Marquess of Craille planned to do about it.

H
E
stood on the rise at one end of the hollow, where the speakers at the two meetings he had observed had stood. He waited, still and silent, for the last stragglers to come up from Cwmbran, though most of the men had been there ahead of him. They were uneasily quiet and were eyeing him warily.

He was driven by a cold fury. He had not thought of what he would say. He did not think of it now. The words would come when he began. He knew at least what he was going to do. But first he would speak. He tapped his riding whip slowly against his boot.

The men seemed to sense the moment when he was ready to begin though he did not raise his arms or make any other signal. All fidgeting and whispering stopped. All faces gazed up at him. It was a self-conscious silence, a faintly hostile one, perhaps. He did not care.

“I am tired of being at war with you,” he said, looking around at the upturned faces. “I am tired of being considered the enemy merely because I am an English aristocrat and the owner of the land on which you live and the industry at which you work. I am sorry that anyone who gives me information about your lives must be considered a base informer and punished with whips.”

There was a barely audible murmuring. Some men shifted their weight from one foot to the other. A few gazes slipped from his own.

“No woman has ever given me such information,” he said slowly and distinctly.

He waited while discomfort among the men grew visibly.

“The woman who was whipped last night was innocent of the charge against her,” he said. “She is my daughter's teacher, not my spy.”

There was more shuffling, louder murmuring.

“More of that later,” he said, and the hush was suddenly loud. “I disapprove of the planned march on Newport. I disapprove because it will accomplish nothing but will put you all in considerable danger of injury and arrest. Government authorities are expecting such a move and are preparing for it. I disapprove of your going but will do nothing to stop you provided no one is coerced by Scotch Cattle whips to join those of you who decide to go and provided that there is no other violence concerning it here in Cwmbran. The decision is yours. You are all free men.”

He waited through the swell of sound that followed his words. It was unclear to him if it was merely surprise or if it was suspicion that set them all to talking at once.

“But in the meantime,” he said, “there is much to do here at home. I have owned Cwmbran and been your employer for two years. I have been deeply shamed in the past few months to discover how irresponsible I have been during those years, assuming all was well here when I should have come to find out for myself. There is enough to do here to occupy us all for a decade or more—new housing, waterworks and sewers, schools for the children, to name but a few of the more obvious. It has angered me and—yes—hurt me that you have not met me halfway on this, that you have ignored my requests to meet with your representatives so that we might get started.”

There was a roar of protest, most of it directed at him. So many men were speaking to him that he heard none of them. For the first time he held up a hand for silence.

“Do I understand,” he asked, “that you knew nothing of my requests?”

The men's reaction convinced him that he had guessed correctly.

“Perhaps,” he said, “your leader saw fit to make a decision without consulting you. Perhaps Owen Parry decided not to accord you the democratic rights you have been demanding in the Charter.
Perhaps he assumed that you would be unwilling to trust and to work with the enemy.”

“We should have been given the choice,” someone cried out with a growl, and there was a loud murmuring of assent.

“What Parry decided is good enough for me,” someone else shouted, and won for himself his own chorus of approval.

Alex held up one hand. “If I must make improvements alone,” he said, “I will do so. Both the right and the responsibility are mine. I would prefer to make decisions with you rather than for you, but I consider it your democratic right not to participate in democracy. I will ask the Reverend Llewellyn if a meeting may be held in the chapel schoolroom one day next week—on your ground rather than on mine. I will ask him to chair that meeting. I will attend it. I invite all of you to attend too—and to bring your women with you.”

“Oh,
Duw,
” someone said, “that is all we would need.”

There was a gust of laughter in which Alex briefly joined.

“Your women live in your houses all day and care for your children while you are at work,” he said when there was silence again. “You can be certain that they will have very strong ideas, and sensible ones too, about what is needed to make life healthier and more comfortable in Cwmbran. Perhaps we should learn to listen to them and give their ideas the respect they deserve.”

It was an idea with which the men were uncomfortable, he could see. But he had no wish to labor the point or any others he had made. They were there. He had spoken them in the hearing of almost every man from the valley. It was up to them now. Their lives would improve whether they wished it or not. But he could not change their attitudes or their perception of himself. It was up to them.

He waited until there was full silence, and then he waited a little longer until the silence became tense and expectant.

“Where is Owen Parry?” he asked.

“Here I am.” A voice rang out firm and clear from near the back of the crowd of men packed into the hollow.

Alex took his time locating the man in the crowd and then looked directly at him.

“Owen Parry,” he said, dropping his whip to the ground and removing his coat with deliberate slowness, “I once told you that if the Scotch Cattle returned to Cwmbran to terrorize and hurt any of my people, I would hunt them down and give them as good as they gave.”

“You did,” Owen said, challenge and defiance in his voice.

Alex unbuttoned his waistcoat and pulled it off, dropping it to the ground to join his whip and his coat. “They came back,” he said, “and put terror into a woman too courageous either to give in to their demands or to seek help from someone who might have given it. She suffered that terror for three days.”

The silence was louder than Scotch Cattle howls.

“Last night she was dragged up the mountain by men too cowardly to show their faces or speak above a whisper and confined to the ground and whipped,” Alex said. “Fifteen times. This morning she came to work and said nothing by way of complaint.” His cravat was on the ground with his other clothes. He pulled his shirt free of his breeches and began to unbutton it. All the while he spoke he had not taken his eyes off Owen Parry.

“Even if she were guilty of the offense for which she was punished,” Alex said. “Even if, I would be her champion. She is a woman. You were one of those Scotch Cattle, Owen Parry.”

“Yes,” Owen said as the great swell of sound succeeding the accusation died down.

“The bloody bastard!” one voice roared. Alex recognized it as Hywel Rhys's, though he did not take his eyes off Owen Parry. “Let me get at him. I will tear him limb from limb and go to hell for it too. It will be a pleasure to spend eternity in hellfire with the devil, knowing that Parry is there with me.”

But the men about him subdued him and silence fell again. Parry was looking directly back at him, Alex saw, his head lifted proudly.

“Strip down, Parry,” Alex said. “Perhaps the men you lead and I
employ will be good enough to clear a space in the middle of this hollow. I will fight you man to man. If I defeat you, I will punish you as you and your thugs punished Siân Jones last night. Fifteen lashes with my whip.”

Owen Parry laughed. Alex could understand why, having seen the man stripped to the waist at the works. But then perhaps Parry had not had a good look at him, and certainly he could not know that Alex had been trained in one of the prestigious boxing saloons of London. And perhaps he did not understand what murderous rage love could find in a man's heart and in his muscles.

An empty square appeared in the middle of the hollow as if by magic, and two paths, one leading down from the rise on which Alex stood and the other from the spot on which Owen Parry stood.

Alex pulled off his boots and his stockings and took the path to the square. “You may choose your seconds, Parry,” he said. “There are doubtless any number of men who will stand in your corner. I will stand alone—as I have done since coming to Cwmbran.”

“No, you won't,” a light, youthful voice said from close by. “I'll be in your corner, sir. For Siân.”

For the first time Alex removed his eyes from Owen. He looked in some surprise at Iestyn Jones, who had stepped into the square and moved now to one corner of it.

“And I.”

“Me too.”

The voices spoke simultaneously, and Huw Jones and Emrys Rhys joined Iestyn in the corner.

“Thank you,” Alex said, and turned his attention back to Owen Parry, who was stripping to the waist in the opposite corner of the square.

“I hope you don't knock the bastard senseless,” Emrys Rhys said. “I want that pleasure for myself.”

It was a lengthy fight. Owen Parry's sheer strength was pitted against Alex's strength and skill and they gave punch for punch for long minutes, neither pausing to circle the other looking for an opening, neither backing up from the other, neither staying down when
he was put down. For both it was more than a mere fistfight. It was a battle of the classes and of ideas. It was a battle of hatred on one side, determination on the other.

Alex was not at all sure he could win. He had not been sure from the start. And yet, win or lose, it was a fight he had to fight. But as they fought on, surrounded by hundreds of curiously quiet men, their landed punches and their grunts audible to all, he knew ultimately that he had the advantage. He fought to avenge what had been done to Siân. He detached his mind from his opponent and the pain that was being inflicted on his own body and focused his thought on the remembered sight of the red thread above Siân's dress that morning and the raw welts across her back when he had bared it. He thought of her face, pale and controlled, her eyes dark-shadowed.

And he thought of her finally losing her control and weeping, not because of the pain but because she had had to admit at last to both him and herself that Owen Parry had been one of the Scotch Cattle who had dragged her from her home.

He focused on Parry again, his mind coldly furious, his own pain and near-exhaustion forgotten, the skills he had learned from a master suddenly remembered. He waited for an opening, for a momentary dropping of guard—not difficult at this stage of the fight, when they were both on the verge of collapse. And then with one powerful right and all his remaining strength, he hit Owen full in the face and felled him.

They had both been down before. Both had got up each time, shrugging off aid from their corners. But this time Parry lay where he was, facedown on the thin heather, breathing heavily. He had not lost consciousness, but the strength and the will to get up and fight on had gone from him.

The men of Cwmbran watched in awe and near-silence. It was many years since any man had dared face Owen Parry's fists and even more years since any man had put him down. Those who had considered the aristocratic owner of Cwmbran an effete weakling—especially after the hasty way he had given in to the threat of a
strike—looked uneasily at the evidence to the contrary stretched out on the ground in the empty square they surrounded.

Alex strode back to the rise from which he had addressed them earlier and slid his whip out from beneath the mound of his clothes. Men fell away from either side of him as he walked back again. He stood over the prostrate form of Owen Parry, feet apart, whip clenched in his right hand, gazing down at him. Owen watched him. He had made no move to get up and had waved away his seconds with weary annoyance. He had made no move to roll over onto his back or otherwise protect himself from the promised punishment.

“The whips were wet last night,” he said, defiance in his voice. “They were wielded full force.”

Alex gazed down at him for a long time. Parry would not move, he knew. He would lie there and take his punishment. But Siân had been given no choice. She had been spread-eagled on the ground, wrists and ankles tied to stakes. Wet whips. Wielded full force.

“Coward!” Owen Parry hissed up at him suddenly. “Are you afraid to draw a little blood, Craille? Or afraid that your arm is not strong enough to do so?”

Alex felt sick suddenly. Hatred upon hatred. Violence upon violence. An eye for an eye. He dropped his whip onto Owen Parry's back and turned away.

“I'll leave you to your conscience, Parry,” he said, “and I will hope sincerely that it will pain you far worse and for far longer than the lash of a whip.” He walked away toward his clothes.

“Right, you, Owen,” Emrys Rhys growled from behind him. “This is for Siân, you bloody cowardly bastard.”