‘That’s not the point, Alf.’
‘No? What is the point?
‘Annie needs a piece of paper outlining her gratuity.’
Tom was right. They’d left seasickness behind along with the coasts of England and France, yet Annie still bathed heads and checked sores while Mrs Scarcebrook spent her afternoons promenading the quarter deck with Doctor Roberts. Frank Burns wasn’t the only one complaining. Rhys had seen raised eyebrows among the families amidships, heard more than one snide comment about Doctor Roberts and his ‘paramour’.
Alf wouldn’t hear a word against the surgeon. Rhys couldn’t help admiring the older man’s loyalty. Though he doubted Doctor Roberts deserved it. He still couldn’t place the thin, humourless face. But he’d seen the wad of credit notes alongside that criss-cross of calculations, felt a sharp wave of revulsion and, quite apart from Mrs Scarcebrook, he sensed Doctor Roberts couldn’t be trusted.
Alf shifted, mopping his brow. ‘Doctor Roberts hasn’t offered to pay Annie.’
‘Well, of course not. You’ve got to ask him.’
‘Me!’
‘You’re her guardian.’
‘I’ll raise the matter, Tom. Though it’s none of your business, I agree Annie deserves a small gratuity.’
‘Not small, Alf. Fair. Tell him you want it in writing.’
Rhys thought Alf might burst. His mild blue eyes looked almost wild. His pulse throbbed above the open neck of his shirt.
‘Oh, and another thing, Alf. About our wine rations.’
‘Rations are at the surgeon’s discretion. I’ve told you that already.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt to remind him. In case he’s forgotten.’
Alf dropped his head in his hands, his calloused fingers threading his thinning blond hair. He’d aged these past weeks, his argument with Bridie bowing his shoulders and deepening the worry lines on his face and, although Rhys had apologised for his part in their quarrel, he couldn’t resist trying to make amends.
‘Is it the steerage union you’re forming now, Tom? Next, you’ll be drawing up a charter and asking us to pay our dues.’
‘Not a bad idea, Welshman. Sure your name ain’t Rebecca?’
‘No dressing up for me. I’ve told you already.’
‘That’s right, your tad was a great one for politics.’
‘Indeed, you are greatly like him. Though, Tad mixed politics with religion. I doubt anyone could say that of you, Tom?’
‘Is that why you’re running, Welshman?’
Iesu! Where had that come from? And how to answer? Tom hadn’t goaded him about Tad since the night of the Taliesin story. ‘Welsh politics for you, is it, Tom?’
‘All politics, son. I’ve told you a number of times. But I’d rather you stuck to the topic.’
‘The Rebecca Riots, I thought we were discussing.’
‘Your tad, if I remember correctly.’
‘Tom the radical.’ Rhys kept his voice deliberately light. The trick was to answer questions with more questions, he’d learned over the years; steer the conversation away from his past. ‘If you’ve an interest in Welsh politics, you’ll know the name Dic Penderyn. From Aberafan, he was originally. Close to my home village.’
‘I know who Penderyn was. I signed the petition for his release. For all the good it did him.’
‘His cousin was luckier, though, Tom. Sentence commuted to transportation.’
‘I bet that pleased your Bible-thumping tad?’
‘Tad was a hard man to please.’
‘Come on, Welshman, what’s the story? Religion? Or something else?’
‘My name’s Rhys, Tom. And who says I have a story to tell?’
‘No one, Rhys. It’s written all over you—you and the pretty girl.’
Rhys shivered, aware of Siân’s stillness on the bench beside him, the way the deck around him had fallen silent.
‘We’ve heard all about her aunt. No mention of parents. Funny what goes on in those valleys. Better than one of your stories, I’m guessing.’
No. It wasn’t funny, none of it was funny, and damned if he’d let Tom Griggs dictate the evening’s entertainment. Rhys rose, grabbed his violin and called out across the deck.
‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we will have a story for our good friend, Mr Griggs, a unionist and political agitator who is traveling to New South Wales as a free settler. Not, as you would imagine, a prisoner of Her Majesty.’
Rhys heard the ripple of amusement as people scrambled into place. He reached down, unsmiling, and helped Siân onto the bench.
Her eyes were like black ink, underlining her disquiet.
Yes, he was angry. Yes, he was overreacting. And, yes, he would pay for this in the morning. But he didn’t care. Tom wanted a tale from the Valleys; he’d give him one. Never mind ‘The Fairy Ointment’. He’d give them the story of Dic Penderyn, the man hung for his involvement in the Merthyr riots.
Eyes closed, Rhys raised an arm as anticipation ran like a fuse along the deck. He heard a scuffle of feet, creaking timbers. When all was quiet, he began to speak.
‘Tonight I must tell you a tale of great sorrow.’
Rhys scanned the deck, daring his fellows to enter into the tale.
‘Of tinder and sparks and embers that glow.
Think hardship and hunger,
Think profit and loss,
A rising of men, revenge, a life lost.
Sad tale whispered in valleys, softly blown on the wind,
Spoken with awe and with pride and fear tinged.
Missed son of a mother, beloved of a wife,
A miner, a unionist,
Man for a fight!’
Rhys felt the response. It was palpable. No one in steerage was a stranger to hardship. All were acquainted with loss. Hot, sweaty, and berthed like beasts in an airless compartment, Doctor Roberts’ high-handed refusal to let them sleep on deck had set a match to their fury. Pacing back and forth on the bench, Rhys used short, sharp, staccato violin strokes to fan that fury into a blaze.
‘Merthyr—dirt-mean and poor at the century’s turn,
Barely eight thousand souls still a rural concern.
Scratch the surface, find iron ore, limestone and coal,
Add water, add timber—industrial gold!
Come Crawshay investor, stir the pot, give us cawl,
In pit, foundry, quarry employment for all.’
A roar greeted the word employment. Rhys stepped back as if from the blast of a furnace. Give us this day our daily bread, the most basic of human needs. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, their reason for being on this ship. As Rhys’s eyes raked the crowd, he saw that struggle in every face: anger, disappointment, uncertainty—they were all there. He turned to Siân, wanting her mood to match his own. To know that in this, he wasn’t alone.
No. Brow creased, she shook her head.
Rhys shrugged, returning her frown. Why? What was the harm? They could control a crowd. He held out a hand. She stepped back, jerking her head towards the hatchway. Rhys followed her gaze, saw the alarmed face of a ship’s officer. Siân’s eyes flicked from the back hatch to the front hatch. She raised a fist, slamming it into her palm. Then he knew. Crist Iesu, he knew.
If things got rowdy, they would batten down.
Rhys swayed, his knees threatening to buckle. He imagined the sky all purple with dusk, a tight-lipped Doctor Roberts pacing the deck, Captain Thompson’s curt, no-nonsense orders, the hatch planks slamming into place. Hard, wooden, like the inside of a cupboard. His chest growing tight, the air rationed.
He turned back to Siân. Her eyes held a question. What? What did she want him to do? Pull back, wind things down? No, he might be a coward, but he’d never pulled out of a telling. Besides, things had gone too far. People were on their feet, stamping, shouting, pressing up against him, eyes hard as bullets. He’d have to take this story to the end, no matter what it cost him.
‘Population explosion, there’s work for the poor,
Blistering Merthyr, vision of hell,
Foundries and furnaces, smoke and foul smell.
Cheap housing, flimsy, sanitation poor,
Cholera come quickly, don’t knock at the door,
Feel it to see it, don’t turn a blind eye.
Filth, rancid squalor, misery, vice.’
Rhys’s gaze found the back hatch. Open, thank God. The hatchways were still open. It was only a matter of time. Children bawled, forgotten in their bunks. Women stamped their feet. After Rhys spoke each line, he paused, raising his bow, letting them beat out its rhythm on the deck boards, benches and tables, their voices rising in an ocean of deep-throated guttural sound. Dear God, what must it sound like from above? As if he were starting a riot.
No one in steerage had known Dic. But all knew his story. For hadn’t it been on every tongue those short weeks in 1831, spoken in pits, foundries, and quarries the length and breadth of the land? All knew a group of miners had met on Twyn-y-Waun common to discuss parliamentary reform. With the iron industry in the grip of a recession, was it any wonder those talks had grown restive? Or that workers had poured in from nearby towns of Dowlais, Aberdare and Penderyn? For hadn’t a red flag been raised over Merthyr that early week in June and hadn’t a troop of Highlanders been called in to quell the swirling mass of protest?
‘By Castle Inn gathered in grey light of dawn,
Mob seething and restless, festering sore,
Come violence and murder, terrible strife,
Sixteen men killed, soldier stabbed with a knife,
“Black” the man’s name was,
Though, no one quite saw it,
Lewis Lewis was arrested and Dic from Penderyn.’
Rhys had been too young to understand the court cases that followed. But all knew those eighty trained soldiers had fired on the unarmed crowd. He remembered the pall of horror spreading from valley to valley, Tad’s fist pounding the table top.
‘One soldier! Only one soldier stabbed, him not even dead! Whereas sixteen Welshmen—sixteen innocent Welshmen are, even now, being laid to rest!’
Petitions had been circulated. Men of reason and power protested Dic’s arrest. But in London, Lord Melbourne was adamant. ‘A unionist! And a Welshman! By God, I’ll make him pay for this!’
‘They killed Dic Penderyn to set out an example,
Though guilt never touched him, they forced him to wear it.
One last cry of injustice, one last dying breath,
Brought home, Aberafan, laid there to rest.
But his cry it still echoes in valley and town,
Still we do whisper it bitter and proud,
It’s the cry of the poor, it’s the cry of the weak,
It’s the cry of our people, it’s our turn to speak.’
A drub of anger, hands and feet, echoing Tad’s fists. Rhys felt a jolt, an all round shudder of timbers as the first hatch plank was rammed into place. He raised his fist, letting Dic’s final cry ring out over the deck.
‘O Arglwydd, dyma gamwedd! Lord here is injustice!’
‘Lord here is injustice!’ the crowd roared back at him.
Another jolt, the lanterns flickered. Rhys’s gaze flew to the nearby scuttle. Open. Thank God. The scuttles were still open. He bunched his fist, felt a sob rise in his chest.
‘One step.’ Tad’s hectoring voice. ‘Then another. That’s it, son. Control your breath.’
Rhys moaned, swaying. No airless cupboard, no Tad standing over him, belt in hand. Only the hatch covers. The flimsy rotten hatch covers—yet still his chest heaved like the flanks of a pit pony.
‘What’s he done? Taken fright? Christ, see his legs tremble.’
‘Nah! It’s all part of the act. Wait, you’ll see.’
Legs? An act? Were they talking about him? Speak, Rhys, speak. Raise the violin. Do something. Anything. Before they guess.
No. He couldn’t move. His arms had frozen—and his lips. His legs, on the other hand, seemed to be turning to slush. Dear God, he was going to fall. Now. In front of them all. He staggered, reached out, pleading to Siân. She grasped his hand. In that moment, she gathered him like a hen does its chicks. Her song, not of anger, or injustice, but of grief and a terrible yearning.
‘A dream has ended,
The fire has burned,
A young wife lonely,
A child must mourn.’
As Siân stood, her dark curls tumbling down her back, it wasn’t hard to imagine Dic’s young wife, pregnant and alone. Nor to experience a deep, welling sorrow as her husband’s lifeless body was dragged from the gallows. Rhys found himself part of the funeral procession that walked him home to Aberafan; saw the silent avenue of faces that lined the way for his passing.
‘Come lift your voices,
Sing deep regret,
A star has fallen,
The sun has set.’
Rhys still couldn’t utter a sound, let alone raise his fiddle. Fixing his gaze on the nearby scuttle, he let Siân’s words fill the icy void within. Not with courage, for he was surely craven. But with a borrowed strength, the kind that only Siân could give. Like Moses holding his staff aloft in the wilderness, or the severed head of Bran the Blessed, she kept him from foundering and, as long as she stood beside him, he could face anything—this journey, the aftermath of tonight’s story. The terror that, even now, stole the breath from him.
As he stood, gathering strength, he watched her song work its wonder. Saw women turn and embrace men, reaching out to grasp work-roughened hands, handkerchiefs; many of them with red-rimmed eyes and tremulous smiles. As his face thawed and his legs began to strengthen, he at last found himself able to function.
He acknowledged Tom’s nod of approval, watched Pam reach up to settle the children, saw Mary sink on to the bench, Alf stooping to pick up a battered quart pot. Glancing upwards, he saw Bridie crying alone in her bunk.
Bechod! Such sorrow, cutting her like a scythe.
For whom did young Bridie weep tonight? Not Dic Penderyn, or his young wife’s plight—something older and deeper, to do with her father. A man of music and stories, who’d drunk too much in his sorrow. A man Bridie had loved deeply yet, strangely, also feared had wanted to leave her. He’d not died well, according to Alf Bustle. Perhaps he should have heard the older man’s side of the story. No. Bridie must find the courage to trust him. Iesu mawr, who was he to speak of courage, or trust? He, who stood with knees weak and his chest wheezing like a set of bellows.
Crist, he needed Siân.
He dug his fingers into the soft skin of her palm. She didn’t wince or turn away. Only held his gaze. Rhys’s pulse thrummed. He closed his eyes, raised the violin, and let it speak his longing—for her lips, her touch, the warm yeasty scent of her hidden places. The need to rise above her and to feel like a man. To come home shuddering in the fortress of her arms.
Rhys couldn’t sleep after their coupling, though Siân gathered and rocked him like a toddling child. If only he could stay in her arms forever with his breath slow and his pidyn softening, enjoying the rise and fall of her breasts and the dead sleeping weight of her in his arms.
He breathed deep, forcing air down into his lungs. Fixed his gaze on the nearby scuttle. Heard the sea’s lap, a rat scuttling, muffled footsteps from the deck boards overhead.
A single bell marked the change of watch. He heard movement around the back hatch, a curse, someone fumbling with the ropes. A plank lifted, then another. Moonlight slivered in.
Open. Thank God, the hatchways were open.
Rhys drew his arm from beneath Siân. Hair mussy with sleep, she pressed herself against him.
‘The baby, Rhys, can you feel it moving?’
Yes. He could feel it, her belly undulating beneath his palm. Was it an arm or leg, perfect and finely formed? He’d be a father soon, an adult calming a child’s fears.
‘You’ll be fine,’ Siân answered his thoug
hts. ‘Grand stories you’ll tell our babanod.’
‘Not stories they’ll be needing.’
‘What then? A firm hand, no nonsense. Locked in a cupboard until they behave.’
‘Not that either.’
‘Well then … stories and songs, is it? A cwtch by the fire. Strong arms, clear mind, gentle faith … you’ll be fine, Rhys. Brave.’
‘No, Siân. I’m a coward. Jumping at ghosts, reacting to the slightest sound. That wasn’t brave, what I did tonight, or clever. It was foolish.’
‘Yes. It was.’ Her words stung.
‘Only wanting to keep you safe. You and our babanod.’
‘What good does it do me, with us arguing, you not sleeping, and me unable to try a simple charm?’
‘It’s never simple, Siân. You know that. People will talk, ask questions. Our children unable to hold their heads up.’
‘Is it for our children you fear, or yourself?’
‘You should know. You’re the one they turned on.’
‘And it’s you who are turning on me now.’
Rhys jerked upright, groped for his trousers and shoved his feet into his boots. He dragged a blanket from the bed and fumbled his way along the deck, keeping his movements slow, deliberately even, though none were awake to see him. On the main deck he bent double, sucking clean, fresh air into his lungs. The watch officer nodded at him from quarterdeck. A sailor winked his complicity.
Rhys swivelled away, shoving his hands in his pockets. He picked his way towards the deckhouse, slipped past Mrs Scarcebrook’s cabin, and squeezed in between the boats. Settling back against the horsebox, the cold wet nose of a puppy made him startle.
What are you afraid of? Rhys laughed mirthlessly in the dark.
When they were children, boys from the village had thrown stones at Siân, calling her the devil’s child. As her friend, he’d taken his share of stoning over the years. His father had beaten him for spending his days on the mountain. Yet he’d never stopped running back to Siân. Even in London, never mind the pretty girls in chapel, their fathers wanting a son-in-law to carry on the business, he’d been bound by a simple childhood promise and the sanctuary he had found in Siân.
He’d sensed her danger long before the news of Rhonwen’s death ever reached him. Racing back to Cwmafan, he’d found a party of youths had burned her whitewashed cottage to the ground. It was all right for the old woman to live among them, they said, but not the devil’s child. Never mind that Siân had nowhere to go. Or that she’d fled, fearing for her life. When Rhys found her hiding out in the woods, he’d had to gentle her like a foal. So, why wasn’t she afraid now? Because he was. Afraid people would glimpse his cowardice. Imagining, even here, on this ship, someone would link Siȃn’s magic with her birth.
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