One Dragon's Dream

by Catrin Collier

  ‘This isn’t the Middle Ages. The girls could have said no if they didn’t want to marry.’

  ‘According to Sarah none dared. Deputy Perkins threatened to throw them naked into the street if they didn’t do as he ordered. Sarah believes him capable of it.’

  ‘Then God help Alice Perkins.’

  ‘I hope God’s listening. Sarah said he didn’t do much to aid her sisters.’ Peter left the bench and monitored Richard’s pulse and breathing.

  ‘Any improvement?’

  ‘He doesn’t appear to be quite as deeply and unnaturally unconscious as earlier.’

  They were interrupted by a soft tap at the door.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Jeffries.’ Edward assumed it was Maggie who’d been in and out of the house all evening to see if there was any change in Richard’s condition.

  ‘It’s not Mrs Jeffries, Mr Edwards.’

  ‘Alf?’ Edward rose when the collier who worked under him in the mine entered, cap in hand. Alf Mahoney was Irish, and what he lacked in brain power he made up for in brawn. He was large, even by mining standards, although not as tall as Glyn, but at six feet two inches he was considerably wider, with muscles honed and hardened by ten years of hewing coal.

  ‘I heard you were here, sir, sir.’ He nodded to both brothers. ‘I came because I thought you ought to know what the Paskeys were saying about Richard in The Chandlers Arms.’ He hovered in the doorway. ‘How is the lad, sir?’

  ‘The boy’s holding his own at the moment.’ Peter wished he could offer more reassurance.

  ‘No thanks to Ianto and Mervyn Paskey. Richard’s a good lad. The best of the young ones I’ve trained up.’

  ‘The Paskeys were in The Chandlers?’ Edward reminded.

  ‘Mervyn was boasting they’d as good as killed Richard and it was going to stand them in good stead with Deputy Perkins. Ianto was trying to hush him but Mervyn was having none of it. He was telling anyone who’d listen that Deputy Perkins would promote them and pay them a guinea bonus apiece when Richard drew his last breath.’

  ‘Did anyone say anything about the girl?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Alice Perkins?’ Alf stared, mesmerized by the damage to Richard’s face. ‘The barmaid said she’d heard from one of the Perkins’s housemaids that Deputy Perkins has locked her in her bedroom. Mousy Tinker said he saw Josiah Wilkins going into the Perkins’s house. Everyone knows Josiah is looking for a wife.’

  ‘Josiah Wilkins is over sixty. He’s a deacon. The deputy could have sent for him to talk to the girl.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t, Peter,’ Edward interrupted. ‘Josiah’s chapel, Perkins works for the Crawshays and will do anything to ingratiate himself with them, which is why he left the chapel to join the church when he was promoted head of the Rolling Mill. The deputy would send for a vicar to talk to Alice, not a deacon if he wanted someone to discuss religious matters or filial obedience with the girl.’

  ‘Josiah Wilkins has buried three wives, the last six months ago. He has eight children living. But the man’s so mean no woman will keep house for him. It’s common knowledge he starved all his wives to death.’ Alf repeated gossip that ignored the fact that two of Josiah’s three wives had died of consumption and the last in childbirth.

  ‘He owns a boot and shoe shop which would impress Deputy Perkins. And a gossip-soiled sixteen-year-old would appeal to a man of his age,’ Edward said thoughtfully.

  ‘Gossip-soiled!’ Peter was shocked by the expression.

  ‘That’s how Deputy Perkins and Josiah Wilkins would see it,’ Edward explained. ‘It wouldn’t matter to them whether the girl had done anything to warrant the talk. As far as those two are concerned, she’d be no better than a common streetwalker. Knowing Richard, I doubt he’s laid a hand on Alice – not in the way her father thinks.’

  ‘I thought you ought to know what the Paskeys were saying, Mr Edwards, and they’re still after Richard.’ Alf went to the door.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Least I could do. Like I said, sir, Richard’s a good lad.’

  Edward looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Are you afraid of the Paskeys?’

  ‘Not the brothers on their own, sir, but whenever they set about hammering someone, they do it after they’ve had a few jars of ale with their hangers-on. From what I heard in the Chandlers, someone – and I’m betting, though I wouldn’t say so outside of this room, that someone was Deputy Perkins – gave the Paskeys money to buy a few rounds of ale before Richard was beaten to a pulp. There’s plenty in Merthyr willing to throw punches in exchange for free beer and there’s only so much one man can do against a mob turned ugly by drink.’

  ‘There are enough men in this court who’d help you if it came to a fight with the Paskeys and their mob, but hopefully it won’t come to more blows. If I send for a carpenter to strengthen the door could you hold off the Paskeys and their riff-raff for as long as it would take one of the court boys to fetch the police?’

  ‘You want me to look after Richard and his family, sir?’

  ‘It’s an idea. What do you think?’ Edward turned to Peter and Glyn who’d arrived in time to hear Edward’s suggestion.

  ‘We can’t leave the boy and his family without protection,’ Peter agreed. ‘As you said, the police won’t make a move against the deputy without cast-iron proof, which we’re not likely to get.’

  ‘Betty wants to move the younger children into the Boot,’ Glyn stepped down into the room. ‘But your idea is better, Edward. It would be impossible to keep track of every customer drifting around the bars or intent on creeping upstairs when Betty and her father’s backs are turned.’

  ‘How would you like to move in here for a week or two, Alf, and look after Mrs Parry and the children?’ Edward asked. ‘We’ll make up a bed on the floor.’

  ‘But the pit …’

  ‘Can manage without you for a short while. I’ll keep your job open and pay you a pound a week bonus while you’re here. How much did you take home last week?’

  ‘One pound six shillings and three pence, sir.’

  ‘I’ll guarantee you two pounds six shillings and three pence a week while you’re here. What do you say?’

  ‘Yes please, sir. Provided you keep my job open.’

  ‘You have my word on it, Alf.’ Edward extended his hand to shake on the deal.

  ‘I’ll fetch my things, sir.’

  ‘The Paskeys still in The Chandlers?’

  ‘They were when I left, sir,’ Alf confirmed.

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Too drunk to think straight or do anything in a hurry, sir,’ Alf concurred.

  Edward turned to Peter. ‘Given the threats the Paskeys have made in public against Richard, Mrs Parry and the children will be safer if we get the boy out of here. Can we move him into your house, Peter? You’ve enough spare rooms.’

  ‘Sarah and I will look after the boy to the best of our ability but you can’t move Richard yet, Edward.’

  ‘You’d rather see the boy dead?’

  ‘No but …’

  ‘There are no “buts”. If we get Richard out of this house now, right away, chances are the Paskeys won’t find out where we’ve taken him. Alf, go up to Tom at the farm and tell him to bring his cart down. Pick up your things from your lodgings on the way. If we shift Richard at this time of night while the Paskeys are drunk and most of the town asleep or on shift no one will be any the wiser. Tom won’t open his mouth.’

  ‘Richard’s at a critical stage.’ Peter opened his bag.

  ‘You’d rather the Paskeys finished what they started and killed the boy?’

  Peter looked down at Anna lying on the rug before glancing up at the boys on the shelf. ‘You really think Alf will be able to protect Richard’s family by himself?’

  ‘Not alone, but with the neighbours, long enough to get word to me or the constables, yes. Any sign of trouble or the Paskeys, don’t be a hero, Alf, send for me and the police. But I doubt the Paskeys will bother the family
once they realize Richard isn’t here. It’s Richard Deputy Perkins is paying them to kill.’

  ‘When Richard recovers? What then?’ Peter crouched over the boy.

  ‘You still looking for colliers to take to Russia, Glyn?’ Edward asked.

  ‘We haven’t recruited enough to sink and work the pits to supply coal to all the furnaces John Hughes intends to build.’ Glyn followed his brother’s train of thought. ‘Is Richard a good collier?’

  ‘He has the makings of the best. Not only good at digging out coal, but shoring too. I was thinking of promoting him to trainee repairman. I’ve lost two this year to lung disease.’

  ‘If he’s going to Russia, he’ll have to be fit to travel next week. He won’t be up to it,’ Peter declared.

  ‘Train from here to Cardiff, then on to the docks, ship out of Southampton through the Mediterranean. Summer voyage with sea air and wholesome food is just what the boy needs, and he’ll have you and Sarah to nurse him back to health. His own private physician and nurse.’

  ‘Given his present state I won’t predict a recovery. Aren’t you forgetting his mother, sister, and brothers,’ Peter reminded. ‘He won’t want to leave them.’

  ‘He will when he finds out the alternative is another pasting from the Paskeys. Hasn’t John Hughes offered to pay half his workers’ wages to their families back here?’ Edward asked.

  ‘He has,’ Glyn confirmed.

  ‘Richard’s mother will miss him but she won’t be worse off financially, not when you take the cost of his clothes and food into account,’ Edward said.

  ‘I’ll draw up a contract for him tomorrow.’

  ‘I hope he lives long enough to sign it, Glyn.’ Peter checked Richard’s pulse, yet again.

  Alf opened the door. ‘I’ll get Tom Farmer and his cart.’

  ‘For all the good I’m doing here, I’ll go with you. Mountain air has to be fresher than the fug in that court. I’ll tell Betty to wait until I come back. I don’t want her making her way to the Boot alone in the dark at this time in the morning.’

  ‘I’ll walk you to the arch.’ Edward followed Alf.

  They could hear cats yowling but the yard was quiet and in darkness apart from the shadowy blue light of the gas lamp that shone through from John Street.

  ‘Be as quick as you can.’ Edward didn’t know why he’d asked. Alf wasn’t likely to dawdle, not after he’d taken the trouble to inform them of the Paskeys’ threats.

  ‘Be back before you know it, sir.’

  ‘You and Peter will be all right?’ Glyn checked with Edward.

  ‘As all right as we’ve been for the last four hours with you sleeping. How’s Mary?’

  ‘No change.’

  ‘I’ll tell Peter.’ Edward watched his brother and Alf walk away before descending into the damp basement. Peter was still crouched beside Richard.

  ‘He’s …’

  ‘The same.’ Peter stretched. ‘I need to feel the wind on my face if I’m going to keep my eyes open.’

  Edward returned to the court with Peter. He pulled the door behind them but didn’t latch it. The atmosphere was thick with smoke.

  Peter leaned against the wall. ‘It will be as good to get away from here as it was to leave London. I can’t wait to look up at a night sky and see stars.’

  ‘You won’t see them for long after John Hughes has built his works. The furnaces will smoke the same in Russia as they do here.’

  ‘Only after they’ve been commissioned. We’ve at least a year, maybe two, of clear skies to look forward to.’ He patted his pockets. ‘I wish I’d brought my cigarettes.’

  ‘I have a couple of cigars.’ Edward took two from his top pocket. He handed Peter one and struck a Lucifer. ‘No second thoughts about dragging Sarah off to follow Glyn and John Hughes in this crazy Russian enterprise?’

  ‘John Hughes knows what he’s doing. He’s going to build more than an ironworks in Russia. Mark my words, he’ll …’

  ‘Start a revolution?’

  ‘A non-violent one.’

  ‘With liberty, fraternity, and equality for all. The cry of the French Revolution and look what happened there. Despite the high ideals and fine speeches it culminated in a bloodbath, and not just for the aristocrats. It’s a dream, Peter, and dreams have a habit of ending in tragedy. You’ve not long qualified. You and Sarah have the world at your feet. You could make a fine life for yourselves here.’

  ‘In Merthyr?’ Peter looked around the grim dank court. ‘It’s even more crowded and unsanitary than the East End slums.’

  ‘Not in Merthyr. I’m tied here by my position, but you could go anywhere. Back to London – Cardiff – anywhere. This country is full of beautiful towns and villages.’

  ‘Not brand new ones, with a history waiting to be written. This is a strange time to start arguing with me about Russia again when Glyn’s returned to fetch Betty so we can all travel together.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ Edward was finding it difficult to resign himself to losing both his brothers and sister-in-laws to John Hughes’s Russian enterprise. ‘If it doesn’t work out, if you find yourselves unhappy …’

  ‘Ships sail both way, and trains make return journeys. John Hughes would offer you a contract tomorrow if you asked him, and for better pay than you’re getting here. Have you thought of joining us?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Judith wouldn’t countenance the idea of leaving her mother, brothers, sisters, and their families. She idolises her nieces.’

  ‘If Judith changed her mind?’

  ‘She won’t. You and Glyn have adventurous wives. I don’t.’

  It was the closest Peter had heard Edward come to criticizing his wife.

  ‘Time I returned to my patients.’ Peter walked down to Maggie’s house. He lifted the latch.

  Tim was sleeping on the shelf, his nine boys in a separate bed alongside his. Maggie was on a wooden stool, slumped against the wall snoring.

  Betty was holding Mary’s hand. She gazed up at Peter. ‘I knocked the wall.’

  ‘I didn’t hear. I was outside.’ He looked down at Mary. Her face was grey, bloodless. Her eyes slightly open. He took Mary’s hand from Betty. Felt for her pulse. Kneeled and moved his fingers from Mary’s wrist to her neck. He turned to the open door. Edward was watching him.

  ‘You did all you could for her.’ Edward’s voice was hoarse with supressed grief.

  ‘It wasn’t enough. If you can still pray, Edward, pray I don’t lose the boy too.’

  Chapter Seven

  Oakleigh, Dr Edwards’ rented house

  High Street, Merthyr, June 1870

  Richard lay, bruised and battered, in the bed in Peter and Sarah Edwards’ spare room. Four days after his beating, he was still too weak to stand unaided. He was also devastated by Dr Edwards’ refusal to allow him to attend his mother’s funeral. Peter had warned that although he was recovering, his injuries were so severe that even a slight infection could result in a major setback and possibly permanent, crippling damage.

  It was the threat of damage that would prevent him from working that silenced him. With his mother dead, he knew if he were to keep his family together he had to remain healthy and earn enough to support his younger brothers and sister.

  The curtains had been drawn against the afternoon light. Dr Edwards didn’t open them when he ushered Glyn and Edward in before they had to leave for St Tydfil’s cemetery. After discussions with Richard and Anna, Edward had arranged for Mary to be buried beside her first husband, Tom, and her children by Richard Parry in the grave she’d bought with the proceeds of Tom’s life insurance. Money had been so short when Richard had been killed, he’d been interred in a pauper’s grave in Pontypridd. A common grave was a dismal prospect, and one Edward wouldn’t countenance for Mary’s final resting place.

  Weak, resenting his dependence on the doctor and his wife for his every need, weary of the monotony of convalescence, Richard welcomed
the three brothers.

  He listened absently to Glyn’s account of the New Russia Company and the venture in the Ukraine, and looked at the photographs Glyn passed around without evincing the slightest interest, because he couldn’t see how the enterprise was relevant to him. When Sarah brought in a bottle of laudanum, he used the interruption to ask if anyone had seen or heard anything of Alice Perkins. Sarah glanced at Peter before answering.

  ‘No one’s seen Alice, her mother, or sister since last Sunday. Her father works, but from I’ve heard he hasn’t said a word about his family.’ Sarah set the bottle on the bedside cabinet. ‘I’ll plump the pillows if you help Richard up, Peter.’

  Peter eased Richard forward while Sarah rearranged the bed.

  Richard grimaced when Peter lowered him back. ‘Could you get a letter to Alice please, Mrs Edwards?’

  ‘No, she couldn’t.’ Edward was unequivocal. ‘If we’d left you at home, boy, you’d be in a coffin alongside your mother, and if the Paskeys discover your whereabouts it won’t be just you who’ll get hurt. Should they find out you’re in this house, none of our lives will be worth living. That goes for Sarah as well as my brothers.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought about it. I’ve caused all of you a great deal of trouble as well as killing my mother.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for your mother’s death, Richard,’ Peter insisted. ‘She fainted and hit her head. It was an accident. It could have happened at any time.’

  ‘But it happened after she saw me unconscious.’

  ‘Before she saw you,’ Peter contradicted. ‘Everyone who was in the court when the Farmers brought you home was clear on that point.’

  For the first time Richard realized what a risk Dr Edwards and his brothers had taken in caring for him. ‘My sister and brothers …’

  ‘Are fine,’ Edward reassured. ‘Alf Mahoney hasn’t left them since we moved you here and the neighbours are looking out for them as well. They’ve promised to send word if the Paskeys go anywhere near the court.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be alive, Richard.’ Sarah counted off half a dozen drops of laudanum and stirred them into a glass of water.

  Richard’s hand shook but he took the glass and drained the contents.