“Yes, Dada.” Ceris Williams, small and slim and dark and mild-mannered, rarely spoke in public. But she possessed a certain courage that occasionally impelled her to speak out. “I was only fifteen when he came for his mam’s funeral. That was ten years ago. I felt sorry for him then because he seemed to feel so out of place and everyone was watching him so closely, more prepared to find fault than to welcome him home. Perhaps we should not judge him now that he is the Earl of Wyvern. Perhaps we should wait and see.” She blushed furiously, bit her lip, and lowered her eyes.
“Perhaps we should at that,” Aled said, his eyes fixed on her, their expression softened. “But we will not expect too much, is it? He has been the earl for two years, after all, and things have got worse here since then rather than better.”
Ceris looked up and held his gaze for a few moments, her own eyes filling with a longing that was quickly hidden when she lowered them again to the ground at her feet.
“Wait and see? Give him a chance?” Marged Evans’s voice was incredulous and taut with fury. “I do not need to give him a chance. For two years he has had his chance. That is long enough. Too long. Can Eurwyn be given a second chance? Eurwyn is dead, thanks to Geraint Penderyn, Earl of Wyvern.” She almost spat out the name, her back straight, her bosom out, her chin up. As always Marged, tall, lithe, and beautiful drew both eyes and attention.
“Eurwyn committed a crime, Marged,” the Reverend Llwyd said firmly, ever courageous despite her obvious anger.
She turned it on him, her cheeks flushing, her eyes flashing. “A crime,” she said. “A crime to try to stop his people from starving. Oh, yes, a crime, Dada. A capital crime, as it turned out. A crime for which he died. My husband died, leaving behind him a farm to be run by three women, by his wife and his mother and his grandmother. Eurwyn died because Geraint Penderyn cares for no one but Geraint Penderyn. And we are to give him a chance? A chance for what, pray? To raise our rents again? To force the tithes from us even if we starve as a result? To force us to pay ever more and higher tolls at the gates so that we cannot go to and from market or bring the lime we need to fertilize our fields? To force us from our land into the workhouse?”
The Reverend Llwyd, Marged’s father, raised one hand again. “It is not for us to break the law, even to right a wrong,” he said. “Two wrongs do not make a right. We must leave the righting of wrongs to the Lord. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’”
There was a chorus of murmurings from the gathered congregation, which had not this morning broken up into several smaller groups, as it usually did. But it was not clear who was murmuring assent and who was indicating disagreement. The two combatants stood facing each other at opposite sides of the crowd, the father on the chapel steps, the daughter on the street.
“Well, sometimes, Dada,” Marged said, uncowed, “the Lord needs a helping hand. And here are two.” She raised two slim hands, callused palms out. “I say that if and when the Earl of Wyvern shows his face in Glynderi or on any of our farms, we give him the welcome he deserves.”
“Which can be interpreted more than one way, mind, Marged,” Miss Jenkins said.
“I know how I will welcome him if he dares to come to Ty-Gwyn,” Marged said.
“He has a right to go there, Marged,” Ninian Williams reminded her. “Your farm belongs to him just as mine does. Just as all the farms around by here do. It would be best to be polite and to wait and see.”
“Perhaps,” Aled said, “we would not be feeling quite so angry if he were anyone but Geraint. We think of Geraint as a person. It is easier to focus our displeasure and our protests just on owners generally. It is too bad he has decided to come back here just now. I don’t like it.”
“But he has come and he is Geraint Penderyn,” Marged said, drawing her cloak more closely about her. “I am going home. Are you coming, Ceris?”
Ceris glanced at Aled to see if he would say more. But he had turned away. “I will go on ahead with Marged, then, Mam,” she said, turning toward her mother and smiling too at her father before stepping out into the street to begin the long walk home along the river and up into the lower hills—one and a half miles for her, two for Marged.
The crowd outside the chapel split, according to age and gender, into its more usual smaller groups.
Chapter 2
MARGED and Ceris had been close friends for most of their lives despite the fact that they were almost as different from each other as it was possible to be. But they had one thing in common that perhaps accounted for their relationship. They both believed passionately in goodness and right.
Marged shortened her stride to match that of her smaller friend. “Aled has an incurable sense of fairness, you know,” she said. “He will not immediately turn to violence. He was one of Geraint’s few friends when we were children. He was one of the few who bothered with him when he came back here ten years ago. He will give him a chance now. You must not worry that he will die as Eurwyn died.”
Ceris bowed her head, so that for a few moments the brim of her bonnet hid her face. “I do not worry about Aled Rhoslyn,” she said. “He is nothing to me, Marged.”
Marged sighed. “The old story,” she said. “I am your friend who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, Ceris. Perhaps better in some ways. Why are you still unmarried and living with your mam and dada at your age if Aled means nothing to you?”
“I have not found the right man,” Ceris said.
“You have,” Marged told her. “That is the trouble. He will not go to burn Geraint in his bed tonight, you know. More is the pity.” She laughed briefly.
“You do not mean that, Marged.” Her friend looked at her reproachfully.
“No,” Marged admitted. “Not quite, I suppose.”
“But it does not matter, don’t you see?” Ceris’s voice and face were unhappy. “Aled is committed to disobedience, to worse than disobedience. As soon as he agreed to represent Glynderi—”
“On the committee?” Marged completed the sentence for her. “The less said out loud about that the better. So far it has been kept so secret that no one who ought not to know about it does. Let us pray it stays that way. None of us know who the other members are. Perhaps it would be better to pretend we do not even know Aled is a member. Perhaps it would be better not to talk about it openly among friends.”
“Aled was more than a friend,” Ceris said with unusual candor. “I know it in my heart, Marged. Even if I must never talk about it, even if I must pretend even to myself that I do not know it, I do know it. Aled represents this area on the committee that is to decide what we can do to show our displeasure to the landowners and perhaps to draw the attention and sympathy of the government in London. There, it is said. I cannot love such a man. I cannot.”
Marged sighed again. “Then it is better to suffer oppression and injustice in silence?” she said. “It is better to be driven from our land and our means of livelihood? It is better to watch children starve? It is better to see families forced into the workhouse, where they are separated from one another and where they are slowly starved? Where their spirits are broken even before their bodies die?”