by Alis Hawkins
‘She wouldn’t have wanted anybody going to look for her, stopping her,’ I told him, not looking round. ‘She needed to make them think she’d taken her things and wasn’t coming back.’
To my left, I saw Seren throw her head up restively in the wind, causing Sara to sidestep suddenly.
‘No!’ I thought John must be admonishing his mare, but it soon became clear that his emphatic tone had been meant for me. ‘Nobody would have gone looking for her after dark! If they were going to look, they’d’ve left it till daylight.’
Was that true? John certainly thought so; he was not making suggestions now, he was speaking as if from knowledge. I had not asked about his life before he had been taken in by Mr Davies at the grammar school; had he spent his early childhood sleeping in lofts, like Margaret?
‘Then, think about where she was buried,’ he went on. ‘David Thomas said he buried her in a hole under a tree. But what if he already knew about that hole. What if he took her into the woods and killed her there because he knew he wouldn’t have to dig a grave?’
I drew in a steadying breath. Though I had begun to fear that Davy might be guilty of Margaret’s murder, I had not allowed myself to imagine the details of what might have taken place; John’s bluntness had conjured up scenes in my mind that, try as I might, I could not un-see. ‘So you think he killed her, then went to Morgan with that story about the boy because he knew that, if he said he’d been seen, Morgan would help him?’
John leaned towards me. ‘What if there was a boy?’ he said. ‘Price’s boy from Pant Yr Hebog. The gwas bach that Williams didn’t believe in.’
‘If there was a boy, if he saw what happened, he’d have told somebody, surely?’
‘Not if his life was threatened! He’d’ve been too scared. And rightly so if he’d just seen somebody murdered!’
I took a breath, tried to separate the tangle of hope and misgiving in my mind. ‘Yes. You’re right. We should go over to Pant Yr Hebog, talk to Price.’
‘If you don’t mind me making a suggestion?’ John was suddenly tentative again. Was he afraid he had gone too far? ‘I think it would be a good idea to see Rachel Ellis before talking to Mr Price. I know Morgan said there wasn’t a plan but I think he was lying. He lied to us about other things – said he never rode with Howell when we know for a fact that he did.’
‘All right.’ I urged Sara into a trot, then a canter. ‘Let’s go and see Rachel.’
John
It’d stopped raining before we got back to Newcastle Emlyn, thank God. It was cold enough without being wet as well. Mind you, the wind was almost as bad as the rain. The crows that always follow sheep about in the winter were getting blown ragged and the buzzards were having to flap their wings for once – no warm air for them to stretch out in and go up and up in their lazy circles.
I shrugged myself down into the coat Harry’d brought and concentrated on keeping my wits about me. I’d pushed him into going to see Rachel Ellis and I needed to make sure I didn’t say anything that’d give me away.
Mind, I didn’t need to worry overmuch. Harry was too taken up with his own fears to give any thought to me.
‘Even if there was a plan,’ he said, ‘Margaret might still have killed herself. If the plan went wrong she’d have been afraid of what Rebecca would do to her. Add that to the shame of having a child with no father and it’s not difficult to see why she might have fallen into despair.’
We trotted past the workhouse and I couldn’t help shivering a bit. ‘Let’s just wait and see what Rachel’s got to tell us, eh?’
I’d half expected Aaron to be there, waiting for us, but Rachel Ellis was on her own with her children.
‘Aaron said you were coming. He had to go. He got the offer of some work.’
And a man like him couldn’t turn down work when it was offered. Not even to protect his wife.
Rachel looked nervous but not terrified like she had at the inquest. She’d sent her children into the house, out of the way, and we were standing in the washed-out sun that was peeping out from behind the clouds.
Harry took his time. ‘Before I ask you anything,’ he said, ‘first I must tell you something, so you don’t wonder why I’m not looking you in the eye while you speak to me. I can’t see you properly. I’m going blind. I can see you’re there, but I can’t see the expression on your face, or where exactly your eyes are.’
Rachel looked from Harry to me. She seemed less nervous now she knew he couldn’t see. Which was what he’d wanted, of course.
‘I don’t want to waste your time,’ he said. ‘We know that Rebecca came to Waungilfach to see Margaret. To threaten her. What we don’t know is who stayed behind that night. Who talked Margaret into getting involved with whatever Beca was planning.’
Rachel Ellis didn’t reply but her eyes moved back to me again. ‘We know some of the men who were there that night,’ I said, ‘Matt Tregorlais, Davy Thomas. Did one of them get her involved in Beca’s plan? Men who rode with Beca back then have tried to stop us finding out what happened to Margaret,’ I told her. ‘Whatever this plan was, they don’t want it coming out. They’re protecting somebody.’
Rachel’s eyes moved away from me to Harry and his face turned towards her, like a flower turning to the sun. ‘You know something, don’t you?’ he asked.
Rachel shook her head. ‘There was no Beca plan.’
Harry heard the edge to her voice as well as I did. ‘Rachel, we know there was a plan. It’s all right if you know nothing about it but we need to know who stayed on that night—’
‘Nobody stayed on. Margaret had nothing to do with Beca and her plans.’
She was lying! I heard David Thomas’s words again. The words he’d spoken as he killed Margaret Jones. All you had to do was one thing. One simple thing. You said you’d do it. You said you had done it. But you were lying, weren’t you?
Rachel put one arm across her body, as if she wanted to fold her arms. But she needed one hand to help her speak so she just clutched her elbow instead. ‘I don’t know anything about that night,’ she said. ‘Only that they came and said things about Margaret. Things that weren’t true. She didn’t know what was happening to her.’
‘But Matthew Tregorlais said—’
Suddenly she was shouting at me. Waving her hands. Raving almost.
I stepped backwards without thinking, almost knocked Harry over. ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying!’ I shouted, angry that she’d startled me like that.
Rachel got hold of herself, pinched her nose. ‘Matthew Tregorlais can say what he likes. And he can think what he likes but he knows nothing about Margaret Jones,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
‘And Davy Thomas?’
She shook her head at me. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’
‘No,’ Harry’s voice was harsh, ‘you haven’t! What about Margaret and David Thomas?’ Rachel stared at him like a foot-snared rabbit that sees the club coming down. ‘David Thomas was the father of her child, wasn’t he?’
I saw Rachel swallow, saw her hand shake as she lifted it to her face. ‘I can’t talk about this with you here, Mr Davies.’ She turned away from me to Harry. ‘This is for you, Harry Gwyn. Only you.’
‘Then tell me! We can go into the house. John can stay out here.’ I’d never heard Harry so close to begging.
I watched Rachel’s face. She was suddenly calmer, she’d made a decision. ‘Yes. All right. We can speak English so the children won’t understand.’
With the children there, she and Harry’d be chaperoned. She wouldn’t want them telling Aaron that Mami had shut them out of the house while she was inside with a strange man.
Harry
Rachel opened the door to her cottage and stood aside for me to enter. ‘Welcome to our house.’
I was thrown, we had never spoken English to each other before, but I knew why she would not speak Welsh to me: there were things that small ears should not hear.
‘Thank you
.’ I was wretchedly conscious of the barrier that English would put between us but I was also forced to acknowledge that, from Rachel’s point of view, a barrier had always been there, irrespective of language. Imagining otherwise had been part of my own self-delusion.
The children, presumably having watched their mother’s encounter with the gentlemen through the window and seen her turning towards the house, were sitting quietly beneath the window, working away at something. I had the impression that they were stripping rushes but I could not be certain.
‘I can make some tea.’
I did not want tea, but I knew that she would feel more at ease if she was doing something. ‘Thank you.’
She began speaking as soon as she went towards the fire. ‘There was a plan but it was not a plan of Beca.’
It was said quickly, as if she was afraid she would lose courage otherwise.
‘Then what kind of plan was it?’
I saw her swirling the teapot, heard the old leaves being dumped in the swill-pail. ‘A plan of David Thomas.’
Davy. I tried to calm the thrumming of my nerves with a deep breath. ‘Please, Rachel, tell me what it was.’ In Welsh, it would have felt more like a request between equals; English gave it the force of a command.
I heard her draw breath, saw her hand move upwards. ‘You remember the bidding of Hepzi Jones and Tom Roberts?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I was quite certain I would remember it to my dying day.
‘David Thomas saw you with Margaret. He saw you—’ she fumbled for the phrase, ‘that you liked her – you know. He knew—’ she stumbled again, ‘he knew how it goes with men and women, always. So he came with a plan to Margaret.’
A plan. A plan of David Thomas. Somewhere inside me a gash of fear split open.
‘He said to her that you will speak a lot of nonsense. He said you will believe you was in love with her. That you will say it to her. But he said to her not to listen to your nonsense because love cannot be with somebody like you and somebody like her. That she was a servant, always, and you was the squire’s son.’
How many times had I tried to persuade Margaret that I did not have to be the son my father wanted? That she did not have to be a servant?
David had been right, I had spoken a lot of nonsense. He knew me so well. And he had used that knowledge against me.
I heard the sound of boiling water being poured into the teapot and swilled around to warm it. ‘He told her he was—’ I could feel her translating what she wanted to say in her mind, ‘that he was a long time tired of being a groom, that you said he can be the steward of Glanteifi, but it is not true.’ She paused again. ‘He said to Margaret that he cannot be steward. Instead,’ she hesitated and something in her voice told me that she was looking for confirmation that she had used the right word. She had forgotten that I could not see that she needed a nod. ‘Instead,’ she repeated, ‘there was a plan with him.’
I waited, apprehension stealing over me like hoar frost.
‘If you give Harry a child, he said to her, he will look after you – he will give you a cottage and a cow and a pig.’
I swallowed a gulletful of bile at the memory of his using exactly those words to me.
‘But I am his best friend, he said, and if I marry you and say I will bring up his child like my own, he will give us a farm. A good farm. And not rent. Give. Our own farm.’ She paused for a second. ‘That was his plan. Margaret only had to make sure that you gave her a baby.’
I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my dry mouth. ‘How do you know?’
‘I heard. Remember, I was in the loft with Margaret.’
And out of sight is out of mind, as I knew only too well. I tried to order my darting thoughts. ‘I know David didn’t want to be steward,’ I said, ‘he told me that himself. But he still had ambition – he still wanted money,’ I amended, lest she did not know what ambition meant. ‘I don’t think he would have married somebody like Margaret.’
‘Not Margaret by herself. But Margaret with a good farm from you is different.’
I tried to conjure up a picture of her face from the take-it-or-leave-it tone of her voice. Was she looking at me with pity, knowing I couldn’t see her?
‘David Thomas wanted a farm from you. So there must be a baby. He said to Margaret that you must think it belonged to you but he will not rear any man’s bastard. He said if anybody is putting a child in her it is him. But you must think it is yours.’
I swallowed. That was why he had not been surprised to find her a virgin. He had quite deliberately taken her virginity before I could. No wonder she had tried so hard to seduce me; I had to believe that her child was mine.
‘She started to grow after you went away,’ Rachel said, ‘and David Thomas put his hand on her stomach and laughed every time he came to Waungilfach. He said to her when you come home, he is coming to you with the plan. To tell you he’s willing to wash your pots for you.’
Wash your pots. Clean up your mess. I knew, then, that Rachel was telling me the truth.
‘Don’t think bad of Margaret,’ she said, a practical sort of kindness in her voice. ‘She thinks she can stop him telling you the child is his. That she can change him. Make him a good man. Stupid, she was. David Thomas wanted to take something from you. To pain you.’
To pain me. To hurt me.
He had certainly hurt me often, physically, when we were children but I had always put that down to his being bigger and stronger; of course I would get beaten in a fight, of course I would fall over as we bumped together in a race.
I had been an innocent in so many ways.
‘But what about Elizabeth Jenkins?’ I asked. ‘Was David really courting her?’
‘Yes. He was waiting for you to come home at Christmas but you didn’t come. Without you there was no plan.’
The course of events was clear, now. In the face of my persistent absence, Davy had written, telling me that I had to come home to defend Glanteifi from my father’s misguided defiance of Rebecca, hoping that his plan to become a landowner could still be rescued, believing, still, that I would accept the child as my own. And, meanwhile, he had hedged his bets with Miss Jenkins. A rented farm might not be as good as one owned outright, but it would have fitted Davy’s self-conceit far better than grooming Glanteifi’s horses did.
‘Did Margaret know about him courting Elizabeth?’ I asked.
‘Yes. She asked him why he was sniffing after Elizabeth when he was promised to her.’ Rachel paused. ‘David Thomas said to her if she could get a farm off you, he would have to see. It depends if it’s a good farm, he said.’
And then, on the carriage ride home from Samuel’s presentation at Waungilfach, I had told him that, whoever the father of Margaret Jones’s child was, it could not be me.
I had sealed her fate.
All Davy had to do in order to have Elizabeth Jenkins and her father’s farm was to traduce Margaret and ruin her reputation. And it had been so easily done. Even I had believed him.
Margaret had seen no choice but to take her own life. She had hanged herself in the Alltddu and Davy had found her.
Had he gone to Waungilfach with the intention of punishing her for lying to him, for allowing him to assume that I would accept the child as mine? Perhaps that fear, in the end, was what had pushed her into self-destruction. If so, there was a bitter kind of justice in him finding her body.
‘Stupid to believe him, she was.’ There was resignation in Rachel’s voice; this is how people are, her tone seemed to say, they believe what they want to believe. ‘But she thought it was a chance for her. A good chance.’
I could feel her looking at me and I submitted to her gaze without knowing whether it was one of judgement or compassion; it was the smallest kind of penance I could do.
‘A gentleman, you are,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what it means for a girl like Margaret to think of having a farm and a husband – not to have a fear of the workhouse.’
Alth
ough she meant it kindly, she was wrong; I had known Margaret more than well enough to know what such a prospect would mean to her. I had simply been too selfish to offer it.
‘She knew you could not marry her. She had to make her own way.’
I nodded, unable to speak. Margaret had used those same words to me. I have to make my own way in the world.
‘After you came to see her the last time, she cried. That night. And she said to me that she loved you. She said she tried to stop herself, because of her plan with David Thomas but she couldn’t stop love. He was such a kind boy she said to me and I made him cruel.’
Cold fingers wrapped themselves around my heart. Yes, I had been cruel.
There was one last thing I needed to know. ‘Rachel, why didn’t you say any of this at the inquest? The coroner asked you whether Margaret was courting and you said no. You could have said all this then.’
I heard a sigh. ‘Mr Williams, it was. Before the inquest, he said to me not to say anything that will…’ she searched for a word, ‘upset you.’
‘Upset?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean embarrass?’
‘Yes. Embarrass.’