by Clare Dudman
Seventeen
The men come quickly in the dark, gathering anything they can find that will burn to show the ship the way. They yell and shout even though it is impossible for anyone aboard to hear. Then, when they are too tired to do any more, they sit and wait. If they keep watching it will keep on coming. If they look away it will maybe go.
There are only a couple of men on deck of the Maria Theresa, and they work as if they are dreaming, not making a sound. Everything happens slowly. A rowing boat is lowered and the women and children line up to climb inside. Even from the shore Silas can see that they can barely walk. When they are near he can see their eyes are dull and blinking slowly.
Edwyn Lloyd is first to disembark. He sits erectly in the boat, a stick supporting him, apparently inspecting the way the crewmen row him ashore. He helps Cecilia from the boat and then walks stiffly up the beach alongside her, his arm supporting hers. The two do not look at each other; their faces are as still and as vacant as everyone else’s. Silas barely registers them; instead he searches through the other faces on the Maria Theresa until, at last, he finds them, lit by a sailor’s lamp. Megan helps Myfanwy climb on board the boat then pulls her under her shawl to protect her from the cold. Silas peers through the darkness. He can’t see Gwyneth. Is her mother holding her, or is her shawl empty? He stands stiffly, waiting for them to approach. Then, as they climb ashore, Megan steadies what she is carrying beneath her shawl, and the shawl gives a whimper. She rocks the shawl a little, staring ahead of her. Then she stops. She sees him. For a few moments she stares with an open mouth and then tries to run towards him. She manages only a few steps before Silas reaches her. They cling to each other tightly without speaking.
‘You’re alive!’ she says, ‘thank God. I thought when John Jones came back…’ She buries her head in his chest.
Then, when Myfanwy whimpers, he turns and lifts her far too easily into his arms. For a few minutes they stand where they are on the beach clinging to each other, waiting until one of them can find the power to speak.
‘We thought we’d lost you, lost all of you.’
‘There was a storm,’ Megan says slowly, as if she is testing her voice, ‘everything crashed around and the water barrels went overboard. Oh Silas, it was horrible, horrible. We were so thirsty and it was so cold. I thought... we’d come all this way, and… I thought…’ She sees Jacob and reaches out for him.
‘Oh Megan, Megan,’ Jacob says, coming a little closer. He raises his hands, and then, unsure what to do with them, lowers them again. ‘You should have more faith, I told you Edwyn Lloyd would make sure we were all right.’
She draws back as if stung, stares at her brother for a second and then buries her head again in Silas’ shoulder. Silas hugs her closer and begins to walk a couple of steps along the path, but Megan stops. She struggles to free herself from Silas a little and then looks back at Jacob: ‘How can you say that to me? You don’t know what it was like, what we had to endure.’ Her voice is trembling, but she fights to continue. ‘We almost died and Edwyn Lloyd could do nothing, nothing. He’s just a man, Jacob, human like all the rest of us!’ She slumps back towards Silas, still looking wild-eyed at Jacob, panting and holding Gwyneth tightly to her.
‘It is because of that man we are here, in the Lord’s land.’
‘Exactly,’ Megan snarls, her voice stronger. ‘Because of that man and his stupid schemes I have lost my son, almost lost my daughters, my husband, my brother, almost lost all of you.’
‘Nonsense,’ Jacob says, ‘all of this – is the Lord – testing us. Edwyn Lloyd is our protector – doing all that he can to make the Lord’s plan for Yr Wladfa come to pass.’
Megan narrows her eyes, leans forward and her voice hisses in the dark. ‘He is mad, obsessed; he carries on despite everything.’
‘Calm yourself, chwaer, this is doing no good.’
‘He has no heart, no feeling, no sense.’
‘Ust, watch your tongue,’ Jacob says, frowning. ‘The man has suffered as much as anyone, look at him.’
But she shakes her head. ‘I will not look at him. I never want to see him again.’
‘Megan! You mustn’t talk like that.’
Silas steps back, straightens Myfanwy in his arms, and glances at Jacob. ‘She can talk any way she pleases. If you don’t like it, leave us alone.’
‘Maybe it will be better if I do.’ He turns to the group surrounding Edwyn, picks up a small box that has just been thrown ashore and walks stiffly up the beach alone.
Megan and Silas rest in the shelter of a low cliff before continuing.
‘Was it worse than on the Mimosa?’ he asks.
She nods. ‘Colder... but the storm was the same, wind and rain and big waves, just like then….’ She grows silent. He remembers too.
Above them the hatches had rattled, lifted from their housing by the wind even though they had been fastened down, and then the rope holding the luggage in the centre of the hold broke and some of the trunks had begun to slither from one side of the deck to the other. Then the hatch doors had opened a little more and banged shut again, and with each tilt water had flooded in, soaking anyone near with a short cold torrent.
Then, from somewhere close, came the sound of cracking and splintering, and the ship had tilted even more wildly. Silas wedged his family onto the bunk, holding them to him in the corner, bracing himself against the sides, while even more water had fallen through. And then the wind had grown stronger still, until it was shaking the hatches like something strong and angry, roaring and moaning, then hissing and whistling. Waves crashed above them, louder and louder until each one was so like a small explosion that Myfanwy had screamed and covered her ears. Then, all at once, it had stopped and there had been a quietness quenching everything else.
Silas shivers at the memory. It had been the start of fear, the start of suffering. The boy had been in his arms, already ill and smelling of vomit.
‘A big wave,’ Richard had whispered, his hot body shivering, ‘it’s gone right over us.’ And he’d clung to Silas – so tightly that afterwards, even after the child had died, there had been a bruise on his arm. ‘I’m scared, Dadda,’ he’d said, ‘are you?’ But Silas had shaken his head against him, and lied. ‘No, cariad.’
On the beach Silas holds Myfanwy more tightly to him and shuts his eyes. It’s as if he’s there. He doesn’t want to go back, but he can’t stop himself: the hatches are shut tight and nothing comes through; the air is sealed in, motionless, the timbers creaking, one against the next, every movement a little creep inwards.
He opens his eyes again but the feeling is still there: the water pressing, squeezing, and holding them tight – a mile below and then another mile, and in all directions, more and more – an endless terrifying volume.
He’d thought of God, of reaching out, looking for a hand, praying that it would appear and he’d feel it holding his, but it wasn’t there. Instead of a hand just the thread of a thought. He’d grabbed hold. Attached to the thread, some string, attached to the string, a piece of rope and then a larger rope, and maybe, at the end of that, God’s hand, holding on. Don’t break, don’t break, he’d prayed. And it hadn’t.
How long had it been? A minute? Maybe two. It seemed like time had stretched, as if it would go on and on. But eventually the crashing on the deck had returned, and everyone around him had laughed and there had been Richard again on his lap; his breath on his face – hot, real, and soaking in sweat.
‘It’s going to be all right now,’ he’d said and the child had believed him.
But it wasn’t, of course. Instead everything had become worse. Finally Silas manages to shake away the memory. That was then; this is now. They can start again. Thankful to feel Myfanwy in his arms again, he shifts her to lean against his shoulder, and helps Megan along the beach to the path.
Eighteen
Yeluc
There was a new moon shining over the desert. As I saluted her I thought about the sea and th
e moon’s daughter who lives there, how she makes the waves shift and creep closer to the land in her anxiety to rise up and greet her mother’s arrival. Then I thought of Seannu, how she emerges from the toldo smiling to greet me too, and how much I miss her, so I rode Roberto quickly away from the sea to the high place where the river forces its way through rocks to enter the valley, and the air is colder and drier.
Seannu and her sisters, they are there – in the elbow of the river, their toldo emerging from the ground like a large boulder, the entrance gaping open like a mouth in the direction of the far away sea. For a time I watch them. They are almost as blind and as deaf as the strangers: Tezza crouching by the fire; Mareea pegging out skins.
I let Roberto graze and creep closer on my belly. For a while, I watch the smoke drift up and billow into shapes in front of me. My mind wanders, time falls away, layer upon layer, until there is Seannu at the entrance to her father’s toldo, as she was the first time I saw her: black-haired, pink-faced, tall, holding her mantle tightly around her, flashes of silver and bone at her neck, frowning at something at my feet. It is the body of a zorrino I found.
‘Why do you have that, you stupid boy?’ she asks, kicking the carcass with her foot. ‘Take it away from here. It is a nasty smelly thing that no one wants.’
I look at her foot and then at her leg outstretched. It seems to reach up and up, lean, long and straight as a stem. Then she sees me looking and grins. It is like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. ‘Are you Yeluc?’
I nod. It is all I can do.
She comes closer. I feel each muscle in my back stiffen; one then the next like a branch caught in a flame. Her two long cords of hair lift with her face. ‘I’ve heard you’re strange. I’ve heard you see things. A shaman in the making, that’s what they say... is that why you have the zorrino?’ She squats down to examine it. ‘But it’s dead. Why did you kill it? If it was a spirit...’ Her questions stop and she pauses to look at me. Her frown makes two deep lines on her brow and I see how she will look when we are older. ‘Do you not talk?’
And for now it seems that I do not. The smell of her breath is like every summer I have known, and every summer I want to know. Her mantle has fallen open and I can see the short garment she wears beneath – something that has been bought from the Cristianos – a piece of woven cloth, thick and red. Beneath it her legs are pressed together, and I examine the crevice between them, and the way it becomes wider and then narrower again to her knees. She is lean; but as she stands again there is something in the way that she holds herself – legs apart, chin jutting forward – that is powerful and reassuring. She looks at me, waiting.
‘It was fighting with another...’ I do not want to tell her about the battle, about the kicking and biting. ‘I wanted to see what makes it smell. What gives it power.’
‘Oh, it will give you power, Yeluc, you can be sure of that. If you smell like the zorrino people will not come close but run away from you.’ She smiles again. Her teeth are even, small, still ridged at the edges like those of a child. ‘My brother was right – you are strange. But I do not think you are going to be a shaman.’ She catches hold of her mantle and draws it close. Then takes a few steps towards her father’s toldo.
‘Why?’
Her face is in shadow now, but her smile still shines whitely. ‘Because a shaman cannot take a wife.’
So because of Seannu I tried for a time to deny what I saw and heard, tried to ignore the signs of Elal and the voices of the spirits calling me to journey. But a man cannot choose not to be a shaman just as he cannot pretend to be one. It is something that he is, something bestowed upon him by Elal, like five fingers on each hand and a head upon his neck. O Elal, how I betrayed you and the way you had blessed me. But Seannu haunted me with her own sweet spirit and I could not resist her. For just a few weeks our tribes would be camped around the same spot on the river and every day I made some excuse to go and see her until she would emerge at the sound of my horse’s hooves, and then, at last waiting for me as she skinned meat or pinned out skins.
I was possessed by her, bewitched, my head felt hot and light as if I were short of water. One day my mother caught my face between her hands and looked at me, pursing her lips and frowning: what is it Yeluc, she asked, it is as if there is something inside you – can you not chase it out? But all I wanted to hear, all I wanted to see was Seannu. So I told my cousin Aonik to present her father with all that I owned: two fine mares, some brooches and bracelets for his wife, some pots and a pup my mother’s dog had whelped. But Aonik reported that the chief had regarded them uneasily. He knew of me, knew what I was. The shaman should not marry. But Seannu had weakened him, as she weakens everyone. She tugged at his mantle, looked at him with her mouth turned down and then up, pleading and then placating him with promises of grandchildren until he relented.
Yes, Yeluc, it happened. Long ago now when you were young and so was she. I shut my eyes and remember: her blue-black hair oiled and decorated with threads of red, every piece of finery that she owns taken out and displayed on her throat and arms, and the women chanting, and then Seannu running between them, hugging, clutching, tongues leaping up, la-la-la-la, arms reaching out, tears, calls, sighs. And I sweep her up and she is there, la-la-la-la, pressed against my back, soft, warm, still they sing, la-la-la-la. She clutches tighter. Touches my neck with her lips. The shaman has a wife.
The smoke clears and time shifts again. I peer inside and there she is. Red face polished like stone. Grey hairs woven in with the black, but still the same amulets glinting beneath the gown. Her dog sits on her lap and she plays with its ears through her fingers. She looks up and smiles. ‘Ah, Yeluc. There you are. I’ve been waiting.’
Nineteen
In spite of everything Megan is happy to have a home. It is not much: a house made from root-filled mud covered with thatch made from grass. There are small holes in the wall where the mud has already fallen away and the wind blows through; but at least it is shelter, and a place to stay, and Silas watches her as she arranges the things they have brought from home – her china and her small cupboard, their clock, her pans, some of the better rugs, the quilts and blankets. He stands at the doorway and watches her move. Her dress, the colour of chocolate, is loose on her now and is held in at her waist by a belt. He looks for the familiar curve of her rump or the swell of her breast, but there seems to be little under the cloth any more but more cloth. She makes a table of their trunk. They have to sit on the earth floor, which is not very flat even though it has been trampled over several times by the stallion, but once this is covered by rugs and the walls covered with blankets to keep out the draft, and the lamps are lit, it seems homely enough. Silas looks at her face in the lamplight, it is thinner and more drawn than it was, but when she sees him looking at her she smiles, and he smiles too.
‘Here,’ she says, passing him a tiny shoe. ‘It’s Myfanwy’s, I was saving it for Gwyneth but it’ll be better if you take it now instead.’
He looks at it dumbly.
‘You bury it, Silas,’ she says exasperatedly, ‘don’t you remember? You put it under the hearthstone for luck.’
Something inside his chest seems to clench and stop him breathing, like a fist of happiness. They are together again and it is all that matters. He lifts up the hearthstone and digs out a small hole and places the shoe inside.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘Y tylwyth teg will be pleased with that. We’ll be lucky now.’
‘Y tylwyth teg!’ he says, grabbing hold of her suddenly around the waist, and laughing. ‘Surely the little people can’t follow us here!’
‘They go everywhere,’ she says, pouting. Fairies, demons, bad spirits – he can never tell how much she believes – but she has always looked out for them assiduously.
Together they make supper – a bowl of mutton stew – then they put the children to sleep in a nest of blankets in the corner. For a few minutes they allow the precious tallow to burn while they change out of th
eir clothes. Myfanwy gives a quiet snore as she turns over.
‘Here,’ he says. She watches from her seat on a box as he opens a bag she has never seen before and reveals two soft sheepskins. Her eyes widen.
‘A leaving present,’ he says, ‘From Muriel. She told me to keep them for you as a surprise when we got here.’
He spreads the skins out in front of the embers of the fire then reaches over to her and pulls her towards him. Her flesh used to spill from his hands but now his fingers fit easily around her. He breathes in the odour of her hair. Everything about her has become more intense: a musk instead of a fragrance; flesh that resists him rather than moulds to his hand – hot, savoury, tasting not just of salt but of something sweet. There are parts of her he no longer knows. He catches his breath. He longs for her so much it hurts. He pulls her down, presses himself to her, her convex back hard against his concave chest. Then he edges back slightly and raises his head so he can just see her face: it is motionless, watching the fire. He watches it too, the small glowing houses tumbling and crackling onto the earth.
She murmurs some words he can’t hear and he glides his hands around her again. Ah, he had forgotten how this feels: Megan’s skin, Megan’s hair, the contours of her valleys. She twists her head and kisses him and he remembers another time, another Megan, a Megan that did all the enticing and all the kissing. A Megan that came to her window at the sound of his voice and pulled him closer; the Megan before this one. He shuts his eyes and again finds her mouth with his.