by Rosie Harris
If only she’d gone direct to Llwynowen when she’d arrived in Wales, she thought with a surge of regret. Her spirits had been high then and she could have faced David’s father resolutely. Now, with all that had happened, she felt drained, her will weakened, her powers of reasoning, and her ability to fight her corner, undermined.
Until she had come to Ebbw Vale she’d no idea how wretched life for the poor could be. Or their unending fight against poverty.
She shuddered as she recalled the squalor and hardship she had witnessed in the past two months. Women who looked like old crones before they were thirty, struggling to cook and clean and bring up a family in one room. Men maimed and blinded, children mutilated by iron splashes or pit accidents. Women and children chained like horses, crawling on all fours through rubble and filth, hauling trucks through underground tunnels.
And if she didn’t find David she might well find herself condemned to such a living nightmare.
‘No! Never!’
Shouting the words out loud she scrabbled to her feet and stood clutching her arms around herself to stop the nervous shaking that assailed her body.
She began to pace the room, tears streaming unchecked down her cheeks as she looked at the unshaven faces of the injured, wondering what torment their wives and children were going through because these men had not returned.
It was the horror of it all that was affecting her, nothing more, she told herself. She need never sink to working down a pit, or scrabbling on a coal face. Dai Roberts had already offered her a home.
The thought of what else he’d told her made her stomach churn. Her nostrils flared, she could almost smell the searing flesh as the hot iron splashed, covering him from waist to thigh in white-hot liquid metal that reddened, then hardened to a deep purple like a grotesque bruise.
She could sense his stunned shock, feel the agony as the hardened metal squeezed down on to his guts, crushing the life force from him. And the fresh agony as they cut through his clothing and prised away the solid metal mass that claimed as its own the flesh from his thighs and his very manhood.
Yes, she thought wryly, Dai Roberts had been quick to offer her a home, even though he had no use of her as a wife, because he thought she could provide him with a son; a child that would be regarded as his. Would he still feel the same when she told him he was mistaken and that all he would be getting was someone to cook, clean and serve ale to his customers? she wondered.
Rather than put it to the test she’d make one last effort to find David and, if that failed, then she would return to Wiltshire.
Maybe she could persuade Helen to recommend her for a post of companion, or better still as a nanny. In time she’d forget her dreams about David. And one day, she’d fulfil her other ambition. She’d seek out William Barnes and see if he would still help her to become a teacher.
By the time the rumbling and rattling of the printing presses faded to silence, signalling the end of the working day, she’d planned a new life.
Her spirits rose.
Soon Iestyn or his friends would return bringing food, drink and clean bandages.
She walked backwards and forwards between the inert bodies, straightening their makeshift beds, wiping perspiration from their brows, doing what she could to alleviate the men’s suffering.
As soon as she’d dressed their wounds and eased their agony with whisky or laudanum, so that they were all as comfortable as possible, she would leave, she promised herself.
No matter what Iestyn or Dr Pugh said, her mind was made up. The long hours of semi-isolation had helped her to think, and shown her that she must be forceful and resolute. She must not allow others to dissuade her from her purpose as she’d done in the past.
Chapter 31
The sky had become a dark blanket spangled with stars before Iestyn, Dr Elwyn Pugh and John Partridge returned.
Kate looked in dismay at the meagre quantity of food they brought with them. Two small loaves of bread, a hunk of cheese, some beer and bottles of cold tea. She could have eaten the whole lot herself she was so ravenously hungry. How on earth could they expect her to divide up so little between twelve men?
Dr Pugh handed over a flask of whisky. ‘Use it sparingly,’ he cautioned, ‘the same as you would if it were medicine.’
‘You said you’d bring laudanum as well,’ Kate reminded him, her voice sharp with disappointment as she remembered the promises she’d made to several of the men who were almost delirious with pain. ‘And I need more bandages and clean water for drinking and to bathe their wounds…’
‘I will bring some laudanum as soon as possible. In the meantime you must manage as best you can,’ he told her brusquely.
‘Morag’s sent along this linen sheet for you to tear up into strips to use as bandages,’ said Iestyn placatingly.
It took her only a few minutes to share out the food and drink between the men and even less time for them to consume it. She had kept up their spirits with promises of hot cawl and dumplings and now she felt she’d betrayed them.
‘Here, Kate, this is for you. Morag sent it special, like!’ whispered Iestyn, drawing her to one side and pulling a cooked chicken leg from his jacket pocket. ‘Eat it! Morag says you must keep your strength up if you are to help these poor devils.’
‘I’m planning on leaving here tonight,’ warned Kate as she tore ravenously at the bone.
‘That’s impossible!’
‘I must go,’ she insisted stubbornly, remembering her resolve to be firm, not to let people dissuade her from her plans.
‘It would be suicide,’ he exclaimed, his eyes darkening with concern. ‘There are Redcoats everywhere!’
‘Like tigers after their supper, they are,’ added John Partridge. ‘It’s taken us until now to dodge them ourselves.’
‘My mind is made up!’
‘All in good time, girl! Samuel Etheridge is just as anxious to have you out of his attic as you are to leave, but he doesn’t want to put his neck in a noose any more than you do,’ John Partridge told her sternly.
‘Listen to what we are planning,’ urged Iestyn.
‘Tomorrow night, or the one after, just as soon as it is dark, we’ll come and move those men who are fit enough to travel.’
‘We’ll take them to their families, or to friends who can look after them until they’re fully recovered.’
‘So why can’t I leave as well?’ Kate protested, struggling to keep her voice steady.
‘I’m surprised you should ask,’ Dr Pugh said gruffly. ‘If you go, who will nurse the ones too sick to be moved?’
‘You mean you expect me to stay here until all of them are better?’ Kate flared. She looked quickly from Iestyn to Dr Pugh and back again, unable to believe her ears.
‘Just a matter of a few days, my lovely,’ soothed John Partridge. ‘We’ll bring you more food and some nice warm blankets. You’ll be that comfortable…’
‘We need you here, Kate. We could do with a dozen more like you,’ interrupted the doctor. ‘There were twenty men killed and some fifty injured in the carnage.’
‘One poor fellow from Sirhowy who’d been shot through the back managed to get almost to his own door, but they caught up with him,’ added Iestyn.
‘Another, who’d been shot in the leg, was hustled off to the workhouse to have his leg amputated and he was taken prisoner before the surgeon had cleaned his knives,’ Dr Pugh told her grimly. ‘Without your help, Kate, we’d never be able to look after the men we’ve got hidden here,’ he added.
‘A couple more days, that’s all we ask, girl,’ pleaded John Partridge.
‘They arrested John Frost last night,’ Iestyn told her. ‘Hiding he was, right here in Newport, in the house of one of his friends.’
‘There’s rumour, too, that William Jones has been caught,’ butted in Dr Pugh. ‘They say he was found at the Navigation Inn at Crumlin and that he put up the devil of a struggle.’
‘I refuse to do it!’ Kate said sharp
ly.
‘In that case you had better go now, right away!’ John Partridge snapped, pointing to the door.
‘Stop, Kate! Listen to me.’ As she snatched up her cloak and wrapped it round her, Iestyn grabbed her arm. ‘You must stay here, it’s not safe on the streets! There are Redcoats on every corner and special constables posted all over the place. It would be suicide for you to go out there. They’d pick you up before you’d gone a hundred yards.’
‘He’s right. They’re searching high and low,’ agreed Dr Pugh. ‘They’re determined to find anyone who has helped the Chartists. You won’t stand a chance if you leave here now.’
‘It’s the truth,’ affirmed John Partridge. ‘The soldiers will have seen you in Westgate Square and they’ll take you prisoner as soon as look at you, even though you’re a woman. Be a feather in their cap, see!’
Hungry, weary and frightened, Kate finally agreed to stay. She only hoped they would remember their promises to bring more food and whatever else they could manage so that conditions would be more bearable.
She knew she was no match for these determined men.
It had been so easy to make elaborate plans and convince herself that she would carry them out. Now, faced with reality, she felt lost and unsure of herself. She’d still do it though, she promised herself. She’d go to Llwynowen the moment it was safe to do so.
* * *
Ten days passed before the last of the twelve men was well enough to be moved out of the attic over the printing shop. Ten days during which Kate was virtually a prisoner, sharing the same discomforts as the men, and their fears.
As she looked round the deserted, blood-stained room, she felt a sense of dismay. The longing to get right away that had tormented her during the first few days of her incarceration had gradually given way to resignation.
Completely cut off from the outside world, time had hung heavily. Because of the overcast November skies, it had been dark in the attic by mid-afternoon, the gloom dispelled only by a single candle.
Unless the printing machines were rumbling and rattling they had been afraid to move about in case someone in the shop below heard them. Talking in low voices had been their only diversion. Their disillusionment because the uprising had failed, and their fears that even yet they might be caught, dominated the conversation.
Kate had constantly urged them to talk about other things, hoping to take their minds off the impending sense of doom. She asked about their homes and families, persuaded them to talk about their wives and children, brothers and sisters until she knew everything there was to know about each and every one of them.
Now it was all over and she could leave, free from all commitment, Kate felt as if she’d been abandoned. Nursing the injured men, tending to their every need, she had become attached to them.
She’d had plenty of time also to think about her own dilemma. She kept asking herself if all along she had been blinding herself to the truth, and indulging in romantic fantasies. Had she wrongly interpreted David’s words, reading far more into their exchanges than he had ever intended she should?
She was still reluctant to admit that David might have dallied with her for his own amusement. His intoxicating kisses and sweet words of love when they’d strolled through the lanes, or met in the summer house at Bramwood Hall, had surely meant something.
In the long hours of isolation, Kate held imaginary conversations with her dead grandmother, drawing on the old lady’s store of wisdom as she had done so often in the past when she had gone to her with problems.
When she had been growing up, her grandmother had warned her to guard against becoming a plaything for one of the gentry, and had told her what happened to young girls who succumbed to such temptation.
‘Sometimes, they’m married off to an ageing cowherd, or shepherd, whose own wife’s died in childbirth and left ’im with a growing family to look after. In return for a name for the child and a roof over her head, the girl’ll be little more than a slave. She’ll be at the beck and call of the man’s older children, and expected to cook and clean for them all as well as being a willing bedmate for ’im.’
‘What about the others… the ones who are not married off?’
‘They turn to their families for help. If they refuse to give ’em shelter the only other option’s the poorhouse. That means drudgery from dawn to dusk, rags to wear, and straw to sleep on. The food’s poor and there’s precious little of it.’
Her incarceration in the attic above Samuel Etheridge’s printing shop had given Kate a taste of such hardships and she knew it was a fate to be avoided at all costs.
Most days she had experienced pangs of hunger, accompanied by harsh burning sensations that sent bile as bitter as gall flooding into her mouth. And there had been a dry constriction in her throat that made her long for a draught of cold water. At times, swallowing became almost impossible. Her tongue seemed twice its normal size, her lips so parched that they became dried up and cracked.
She wondered if her appearance was as calamitous.
When it became dark outside a ghostly, distorted image was reflected back at her from the small window. It was so unflattering that in the end she tried not to look.
To add to her discomfort, because she was not able to wash she felt sullied. Morag had sent her a clean shift and a petticoat to replace the one she’d torn into strips to bind up the men’s injuries the first night she had been there. She had donned them while the men slept, using her cloak to screen her nakedness in case any of them were awake.
Two days later, Twm Jenkins had moved too vigorously and his wound had opened up and haemorrhaged, so she had been forced to use Morag’s petticoat to stem the flow of blood.
Now that she could leave and put it all behind her, a sense of reluctance kept her rooted there. As long as she lived she would remember these nightmarish ten days of confinement and the groans and suffering of the injured men. The smell of blood and excrement, that had constantly assailed her nostrils in the airless room, would remain with her forever.
It was amazing that there had been no infection since there had been no water to bathe their wounds and barely enough clean rags to cover them.
Despite their deprivations, all of the men had survived. They had also retained their grim determination to go on supporting the Chartist Movement. Their spirits were high.
She couldn’t understand why she was the one so afraid to return to the everyday world. As she vacillated between what her heart desired and what her head told her was the right thing to do, she knew her grandmother would have scorned such shilly-shallying!
As footsteps sounded on the rickety staircase, Kate pulled herself together. It would be Samuel Etheridge come to take possession of his attic, and he would not expect to find her still there.
‘Kate!’ The sound of Iestyn’s anxious voice shattered the silence. ‘Thank goodness I’ve caught you, I was afraid you might have left.’
‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, of course not. Morag wants you to spend a little time with us before you set off back up the Valley.’
‘Oh, Iestyn, I would like nothing better,’ she exclaimed, overcome by joy that she could delay any decision for just a little longer. ‘Is it safe? For you, I mean.’
‘It’s your safety we are concerned about, Kate,’ he told her gently. ‘They’ve arrested all the leaders but they are still on the lookout for stragglers. They found Dai Pritchard hiding in a chest at the King Crispin and they took Zephaniah Williams off a merchant ship that was docked in Cardiff. He was just about to set sail for Portugal.’
‘What will happen to them?’
‘They’re being kept in Monmouth Gaol. They’ll go on trial and doubtless they’ll be convicted of high treason.’
‘And condemned to death?’
She thought of the three men he had mentioned. Zephaniah Williams, who had kept the Royal Oak Inn at Coalbrookvale and who had led the contingent from Blaenafon. A dark-haired man with his ha
ir brushed forward, a retrousse nose and a full face with heavy eyebrows. His wife, Joan, and his two children would be waiting anxiously for his return. She wondered what would happen to them if he was condemned to death.
She thought sadly of the families of those men who had lain dead outside the Westgate Hotel and whose bodies had been interred at St Woolos under cover of darkness a few nights later.
Abraham Thomas had been one of them. She remembered how his wife had pleaded with him not to join Zephaniah’s contingent. Wrapping their youngest child in a shawl she’d braved the torrential rain to run after the marching column, begging him to come back home with her.
He had resolutely refused.
Less than fifteen hours later he’d been dead. Trampled on by the fleeing Chartists, his body kicked to one side by the pursuing Redcoats.
Her own problems seemed trivial compared with theirs.
‘You will come?’ Iestyn’s plea brought her back to the present. Tempted by the thought of a warm fire, hot food, an opportunity to wash, and the chance to see Morag again, she accepted eagerly.
Chapter 32
Morag’s green eyes sparkled with pleasure as she greeted Kate. Her enthusiasm as they hugged and kissed overwhelmed Kate and left her speechless. Dafydd, too, seemed pleased to see her, jumping up and down excitedly and telling her of things he had been doing since she went away. Even Gelert wagged his black stubby tail in welcome.
Iestyn had taken such a devious route from the print shop, avoiding the main streets, and entering their house in Westgate Square from the rear of the property, that Kate had grown uneasy.
Remembering his warning immediately after the uprising that the Redcoats were still seeking those sympathetic to the Chartist cause, she had wondered if he was taking a risk in inviting her to their home. Once or twice she had been on the point of asking him, but each time he had diverted the conversation to other topics.