The Reverend Llwyd kept Geraint talking at the top of the chapel steps after service was over, and Ninian Williams joined them there. Everyone else stood about in groups in the street, Geraint noticed, as they always had done, though it seemed to him that their gossip was quieter, more self-conscious than it had used to be. It seemed to him that everyone studiously avoided looking at him, as if they were afraid to be caught staring.
It had not been a good idea to come. But he had hoped that by attending chapel he would be able to demonstrate his good will, his desire to be a part of the lives of his people, though he knew that both his strange past and his present position would always keep him apart from them. There could be friendly relations, though, he hoped, as there were on his English estates.
But it was not going to be easy. And perhaps it had been a mistake to come today, so soon. Aled had been right in what he had said. Geraint had spent two days discovering that rents had been raised quite steeply for the past five years in a row. There did not seem to be any good reason for quite such a rise. Matthew Harley, his steward, had explained that there were too many potential farmers in Wales and too few farms. If one could not pay the rent, therefore, there was always another able and willing to do so.
It did not sound like a good enough reason for raising rents. To Geraint it sounded more like greed.
And he had discovered something he was ashamed of not having known sooner. The living of Glynderi parish was in his possession and therefore all its tithes were paid to him. He had a bailiff with a sound reputation for gathering outstanding tithes. Apparently Bryn Jones was the envy of all the neighboring gentry. It seemed to Geraint rather as if he were the beneficiary of double rents. Tithes had originally been devised as a way of financing the church, had they not? Yet almost all the people of Glynderi and its surrounding farmland attended the chapel while almost no one attended the Anglican church and the Earl of Wyvern received the tithes.
Something was wrong. It would have been farcical if it were not also deadly serious.
The road trust that had the responsibility of repairing the roads on his property and the right to set up tollgates was partly owned by the Earl of Wyvern. But for the past two years—since Geraint had inherited the title—the trust had been leased out to a company that could more efficiently look after the roads and collect the tolls. Until the leasehold expired, the earl and the other landowners who held the trust had no control over its operation.
And poaching on Tegfan land was still punishable by transportation. It was still discouraged by the presence of several gamekeepers and the strategic placement of man-traps. The salmon weir on the river as it flowed through the park still hoarded all the salmon for the use of an earl who rarely set foot on the estate and even then was only one man in possession of only one stomach.
His discoveries had shamed Geraint.
He conversed politely with the minister and with Ninian Williams on the chapel steps while he watched Marged talking in a group that included Mrs. Williams, Ceris, and several other women. He wished she was not quite so hostile to him. It would have been good to have two friends here still—Marged and Aled. Though he was not sure of Aled, either. Aled had not come near him this morning.
Someone was calling for silence and waving his arms above his head to draw everyone’s attention. Ianto Richards, Geraint saw, one of the farmers he had visited during the week. He was laughing and red-faced.
“Hush this noise for a minute, then, is it?” he said when he had finally succeeded. “And let a man get a word in edgewise. Morfydd’s mam is having her eightieth birthday this week on Thursday. And she has not been over the doorstep since last summer on account of her legs. Morfydd and I would be very pleased if you would all come by our house in the evening to help us celebrate. It is choir night, but the choir can practice for Mam to hear. Ninian has offered to carry Marged’s harp over. He has not offered to carry Marged, mind.”
There was a burst of laughter.
“Duw, man, how will you get us all in?” Ifor Davies asked.
“We will squeeze you in with a shoe lift,” Ianto said with a laugh. “If everybody will come, we will find room for you all. Won’t we, Morfydd, fach?”
“We will that,” his wife assured everyone, her voice raised loud enough to be heard. “We want every one of you to come. For Mam’s sake, is it, then?” Her eyes swept over the crowd and up the steps to include the minister and the other two men standing there. But she looked hastily away when her eyes encountered the earl’s.
“And we will all bring food as well, Morfydd,” Mrs. Williams said. “It is too much for you to feed all us lot, girl. We will help out, is it? And fancy your mam being eighty already. How time do fly, indeed. She has lived to a good age, mind.”
The crowd was beginning to disperse, Geraint noticed. Marged was saying something to the group of women and then she turned away to stride along the street. She was holding her shawl about her shoulders with both hands. The blue dress swayed pleasingly about her hips and legs.
He acted hastily and without any real wisdom, especially considering the fact that there was still a large audience. He touched his hat to the Reverend Llwyd and Ninian Williams, bade them a good morning, though morning had passed into afternoon during the long sermon, skirted around the crowd still standing on the street, and hurried along it, not toward home but away from it in pursuit of Marged.
Chapter 7
HE caught up to her at the end of the street just where it became a path proceeding along beside the river. The wind was in their faces. She had not heard him come. She turned a startled face toward him as he fell into step beside her.
“A woman should not be left to walk home from chapel alone,” he said.
Her face flushed. But her lips thinned and her eyes grew arctic as he watched. “Thank you,” she said to him in English, “but I would prefer to walk alone.”
“Than with me,” he said. “That is how your sentence ended even if the words were not spoken. What have I done to you, Marged?”
He knew what he had done to her, what he had done to all his dependents. He had made life hard for them, unnecessarily hard. He never behaved hastily. His education and training had taught him that every coin has two sides and that both must be examined with care before one commented on the whole coin. But he would make changes, he was sure of it. He could not imagine finding any reason why he should not. Tegfan was a very prosperous estate. And even if it were not, he was a very wealthy man.
“You have denied me my freedom to walk alone,” she said.
“We were friends,” he said. “You and Aled were my only friends.”
And yet how could he expect either of them to be his friends now? The improbability of it struck him fully even as he spoke. Another thing his training had taught him was that one could expect friendship only from people of one’s own station, and sometimes not even from them. There were still men—mostly men he had known at school—who despised his background even though his birth and lineage were impeccable. Though not quite, he supposed. His mother had been a commoner, a mere governess, even if she had been his father’s legitimate wife.
“That was a lifetime ago,” she said. “Longer even than that.”