It was time to stand firm, not time to display even the slightest sign of weakness or wavering.
Besides, Geraint came to realize, the trust of which he was part owner was only one of several in the county. Even if he could gain concessions for his people in the immediate area of Tegfan, they would find the same oppressive tolls to pay as soon as they ventured farther afield—as they must in order to reach markets and in order to haul lime.
In fact, he came to realize that the whole problem was too large for him. If he lowered rents on his land, countless farmers on other people’s land would still be suffering. If he gave back the tithe money in services to his people, no other landowner would do so for theirs. The poor would still grow poorer and the workhouses would become increasingly places filled with human despair. He toured the one in Carmarthen with Sir Hector Webb and an alderman of the town. They displayed it with pride. It haunted his dreams for the coming nights. The upland hovel he had shared with his mother had been paradise in comparison. At least they had been together and at least they had been free.
Eurwyn Evans had not been fishing for salmon. He had been trying to destroy the salmon weir that trapped all the fish on Tegfan land and denied the people of Glynderi and the farms beyond one source of food. He had been caught and tried—Sir Hector had been one of the magistrates involved—and sentenced to transportation.
Geraint instructed Matthew Harley to have the weir destroyed. His steward protested but found himself impaled by the cold blue gaze of his employer. There was no love lost between the two of them, Geraint thought ruefully as he left the man’s study. Harley had had the sole running of the estate for two years and had done an admirable job when judged only by impersonal criteria.
Huw Tegid made similar objections to removing all the mantraps set up on Tegfan land. They were the best deterrent there was to poachers. There were not enough gamekeepers to patrol every corner of the land, and none of them liked to work nights, when poaching was most likely to occur. Like the steward before him, Tegid found himself facing an employer who chose not to argue with him but merely to look at him.
But Geraint felt frustrated. He would make changes on his own estate and gradually conditions would improve. Gradually his people would come to trust him. But it would all happen on a pitifully small scale. For the first time in ten years he felt again a confusion of identities. He was the Earl of Wyvern. In two years in England he had grown comfortable with the title. Now, after a mere couple of weeks in Wales, he was Geraint Penderyn again as well as the earl. He felt with his people. He felt angry with them. It seemed to him as if his real enemies were people like his aunt and uncle, the lessee of the turnpike trust, his steward, his gamekeeper, and—himself.
His two identities were in conflict with each other.
Chapter 11
THERE was a small forge attached to the stable block of the house though it did not have a full-time blacksmith. When there was work to be done, the Glynderi smith was summoned.
Geraint sat in the forge one afternoon watching Aled shoeing one of the workhorses. They did not converse a great deal—the noise of the forge made conversation difficult—but the silence was companionable enough. Geraint relaxed into it. It must be good, he thought, to have a trade, a skill, something one did well and enjoyed doing, something that occupied most of one’s time. He imagined that Aled was a happy man. He wondered, though, why his friend was not married. He was twenty-nine years old. But then Geraint was not married either and was only a year younger. His thoughts touched for a moment on Marged but veered firmly away again. He had spent a week avoiding thoughts of Marged—without a great deal of success.
Aled stretched, his work done. A groom led away the horse, the last of the day.
“I should have charged admission to the show,” he said, grinning.
“I could sit and watch work all day,” Geraint said, “and never grow tired. I can recommend it as a wonderfully useless occupation.”
“You will have to go watch your cook making your dinner, then,” Aled said. “I am done here.”
“Sit down and relax for a while,” Geraint said. “I want to talk to you.” He got up himself and strode to the adjoining door into the stables to call to a groom to fetch him two mugs of ale.
“And me a good chapel man,” Aled said.
“It is a good restorative, man,” Geraint told him. “Think of it as medicine.”
Aled seated himself on a rough workbench. “At least you choose to talk to me today instead of fighting me,” he said. “I see that Wales is civilizing you again, Ger.”
“Again?” Geraint laughed. “I was a marvelously civilized little urchin, wasn’t I? Do you remember the ghosts?”
They both laughed at the memories that came flooding back. Poaching at Tegfan had been so bad at one time that the gamekeepers had been put on night patrol. Geraint and Aled had played ghosts one night, dressed in two old nightgowns, one Aled’s sister’s and the other Marged’s. They had wafted through trees, wailing horribly whenever they had spotted a gamekeeper. It had all been Geraint’s idea, of course.
“I feel the hair stand on end at the back of my neck when I picture what would have happened if we had been caught,” Aled said.
They talked and laughed, reminiscing, until their ale came. It felt almost like old times, Geraint thought. And although he could not be quite sure that they were friends, still he felt closer to Aled than he felt to any of his friends back in London. It was a surprising and rather disturbing thought.
“Aled,” he said at last, and his friend’s instantly wary expression showed that he understood the conversation was moving past the preliminaries. “I have given orders to have the salmon weir destroyed and the mantraps removed from my land. There will be other changes as time passes. But they will not be enough. Most people here have closed their minds against me. And even if we could make a little haven of this part of West Wales, the injustices and the suffering would go on elsewhere.”
Aled drank his ale and avoided Geraint’s eyes. He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“Something drastic has to be done,” Geraint said. He realized as he talked that the thoughts had been germinating in his mind for days. Now they were taking definite shape as he talked. “Something is being done in other areas. Rebecca Riots. Why are there none here?”
Aled looked at him then, amazement and anger mingled in his expression. “Is that what this is all about?” he said, indicating his glass of ale. “You are looking for an informer? How in hell would I know why there are no Rebecca Riots here? And what are Rebecca Riots, pray? I have a tidy walk home. I had better get started.”
“No!” Geraint said. “Sit there, Aled. You have been like a bloody eel since I came home, wriggling and slippery to the grasp. If there are no Rebecca Riots here, there ought to be. I hate the thought of destruction as much as the next man, but there is no surer way of attracting outside attention, I believe. Any riot confined to one man’s land will be seen as his problem. Any riot concerning the public roads will be taken far more seriously. And perhaps it will bring about change for the better.”
“And perhaps it will lead men into a trap to their deaths or to hard labor half a world away,” Aled said, his voice still tight with anger.