A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (31 page)

‘Time to go,' he says. ‘If we move now we will be back in time for lunch.'

Everything is as grey as the ashes in front of him, but at least now it is possible to see the direction. If they just go to where the sun is dimly rising it should be quite easy to make their way back to the coast. Their horses trudge with heads bowed against the wind. At the edge of each small incline Silas and Edwyn strain to see ahead but they have to rise and fall three times before they can make out the river glinting in the distance. At last they come to the edge of the valley. The drop in front of them is steep and almost cliff-like, but Edwyn walks to the edge, where the ground is crumbling, and stares across – while Silas keeps a little way back.

The rain is falling again – across the sky like slanted spears. The sun appears briefly from behind a thick bank of cloud and sends out a shaft of light. It picks out the river that is now spread across much of the valley in a rippling lake. It is littered with objects – precious pieces of wood, bodies of animals, branches of trees and items of clothing, some of them are being dragged away into the body of the river.

For a few minutes Edwyn stands silently, his toes at the edge of the precipice, then he closes his eyes and raises his arms to the sky.

‘Edwyn?' Silas says. He wonders if the man has finally lost all his sense. Beneath his feet pebbles fall away – a few seconds' silence and then a soft chink as they hit the ground far below them. But Edwyn's feet don't move. They stay exactly where they are. Then, with his eyes still closed, he begins to mouth words.

Silas shifts beside him. Just one step forward, that's all it would take. Or the merest push. No one would ever know. Silas holds his breath. It is as if someone is testing him.

There is a renewed burst of rain, so intense that Silas staggers back, he pulls the blanket from his saddlebag and covers his head. But Edwyn stays where he is. It is as if he doesn't feel the rain touching him at all. He looks relaxed and he smiles as if he is listening to a pleasant secret. Water is flowing off him now in rivulets. He slowly brings the palms of his hands together and his lips start moving again. Silas moves closer. Praying. Of course. The only thing left.

Silas shuts his eyes and tries a little prayer of his own. ‘Make it stop,' he prays. ‘Make the wind still, dry up the riverbank and let me go home.' But when he opens his eyes everything is just the same except that Edwyn is now looking at him, smiling. And even through the rain he can see that smile beneath the
Meistr
's beard, and hear it too in his voice: ‘Did He speak to you too?'

Edwyn is still standing at the edge, still slightly swaying. Silas slowly moves one foot and then the next. ‘Of course not. Did he speak to you?'

Edwyn smiles and nods. ‘I think that He did. He told me that we should stay where we are and He will make sure that the storm will subside.'

Silas looks around him – if anything the wind is picking up and the sky is darkening.

  Another small step: close enough now to feel the man's breath, close enough to hear it rasping from his lungs.

‘Did He happen to say when?'

‘No, but it doesn't matter. We will be safe. I know that now.'

Silas feels his muscles tense. One small push, that's all it would take, just one touch of his fingers...

‘All this...' Edwyn sweeps the air in front of him, ‘...is part of the plan.'

Silas shuffles forward a little more. Almost close enough to touch him now without meaning to. ‘What plan is that? Which stupid plan is that?'

‘The Lord's plan. He has everything in hand.'

Just the slightest movement, anyone would believe it was an accident, but it's not, just the flat of his hand, slowly, slowly, slowly…

Edwyn closes his eyes and smiles tightly again. ‘All will be well. The Lord has shown us that the wheat will grow through you. You,
brawd
! Don't you see?'

Silas' arm drops slightly.

‘Why you? It seems so undeserved. It was you that doubted, you that questioned everything that I did.'

Edwyn sways with his eyes still closed, over the precipice and back again.

‘You protested, turned the others against me and I almost came to hate you as much as I hated the English. You were a demon sent to try me, I thought. My test, my temptation in the wilderness.'

His face twists with such an expression of anguish that Silas feels some of it too.

Edwyn throws up his arms again, gasps in a lungful of air and cries out: ‘Why? Hadn't I done enough? Hadn't I done all I was told? Hadn't I sacrificed everything? Why did I need to be punished again and again?' He opens his eyes, turns to Silas and grips him by the jacket, his eyes wild. ‘Do you know? Did the Lord tell you?'

Silas shakes his head carefully. Beside him a foot-sized piece of the ground breaks away and falls. He tries to shift himself backwards.

‘But surely…'

Suddenly Edwyn stops, looks down at his hands and lets go. ‘I'm sorry,
brawd
… sometimes I…'

Another clod breaks away, closer to Edwyn this time. Silas watches the ground. Watches while a crack forms close to where the last sod broke away.

‘But then, when your crops succeeded, I realised. Not a demon but chosen – by God – to show me the way.'

The crack grows, creeps forward.

‘Why, Silas? It doesn't seem right. You don't pray, you don't study His word, you don't even try to listen – and yet He talks to you even though you don't know you are hearing Him.'

Edwyn waits for an answer, but Silas doesn't speak. He is watching the crack, watching it grow. Edwyn sighs and turns again to look at the lake below them. His eyes widen. ‘Silas, look! Down there!'

Now that the sun has risen a little more Silas can see that the water has spread farther than he thought and as he watches a fresh surge of water washes down as if something upstream has given way. As it sweeps out towards the sea it picks up hundreds of sheaves of wheat.

‘Our crop!' Silas stands transfixed. Not just his crop, but everyone else's crop as well, all of it disappearing in front of them in the current and the wind.

‘All those fields of wheat! All gone!' Edwyn turns back to look at the sky, his arms outspread. ‘Why, Lord?' he wails, ‘why this test?' Suddenly he stops and looks at Silas again. ‘Do you know?'

Silas shakes his head, says nothing, waits.

The
Meistr
lowers his voice and arms. He takes a few paces along the cliff and back again. Then he holds his arms out to Silas as if to draw him close. ‘But what comes next,
ffrind
? You must know. Tell me.'

The place where Edwyn had been standing falls away. Silas watches it tumble, break and then settle. He breathes out. The
Meistr
is still there in front of him: walking back and forth shaking his head, making strange little flapping movements with his arms, muttering, then making little cries as another surge of water carries yet more of their crop towards the sea.

When Edwyn speaks again his voice is as plaintive as a sheep's. ‘What must we do next?'

Silas smiles. Yeluc was right. There is no need for a knife. No need to push. No need to run. All a man has to do is wait.

Below them the sheaves are now floating past the spit, being thrashed by the waves and there is a distant shout as someone below wakes and sees what is happening. A couple of men start to wade through the water. The
Meistr
's eyes swivel wildly. He staggers to the cliff edge and then back again. Then he stands in front of Silas with his mouth half open and his eyes oddly empty. ‘Silas!' Both a wail and a question.

Silas takes a breath, reaches up to wrap his arm around his shoulder and steers him gently away from the edge. ‘You need to do what you did before,
brawd
. The wheat grew. You need to go back to Wales. You need to tell Gabriel Thomas of our good news and persuade more to join us. Then you must bring them all... and you must fetch Cecilia.'

Edwyn subsides a little. ‘Ah yes, my own dear wife...'

‘You must tell them to come at once. We cannot wait.'

Silas removes his arm and turns to look again at the valley. The sheaves are in the open sea now. Silas watches them sink and float, float and then sink. ‘And you must show Dr Rawson that his faith in us has been well founded. You can tell him about our yield, how this is just the start. Tell him to imagine what we can do next year and the year after that.'

‘Yes,' Edwyn murmurs, ‘yes...'

He looks dreamily to the sky behind Silas' head then stops and points at the sky. ‘Look, look over there!'

Silas turns, nods and smiles at the rainbow. ‘Yes,
fy
ffrind
, it's what comes next. After every storm – a promise.'

Buenos Aires State 1879 (10 years later)

Seannu wakes, remembers where she is and shuts her eyes again.

‘
Señora
? Are you here?'

The door bangs shut. Footsteps come over to the bed. From where she is hiding beneath the overhanging covers Seannu can see a black gown and then two sandalled feet peeping out below. The feet pause and then a face frowns at her. Then a hand reaches in and grabs her arm.

‘You have to lie on top of the bed, old woman, not underneath.'

She is the only one left. Tezza and Mareea died of the
Cristianos
' flux as soon as they came here – one and then the next. Like Yeluc. Yeluc. She sits on the floor in the corner of the room letting her thoughts drift. Sometimes she thinks her mind is like a forest in the mountains with each tree a person that she knew. When she stops by Yeluc's tree she always looks up. It is tall and straight. One day she will start to climb, she thinks, and maybe he will see her and pull her close to him. But for now she walks alone.

The rest of them here are young; a mixture of tribes, they talk their own dialects and stick to their own kind. When the Cristianos come close she closes her lips. There is one that smiles and begs her to talk but it does no good to speak. Sometimes she feels she has no words left. Sometimes, in the night, she practises her numbers quietly in her mouth the way Yeluc taught her; one to five in Tehuelche and then one to five in Welsh:
chuche, houke, aäs, carge, ktsin… un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump
.

She smiles. How Yeluc loved the Galenses. Go to them, Seannu, he told her once, if you ever find yourself alone, go to the Galenses. They will help you, the Galenses are our friends. And she had tried. When the news came back that her Yeluc was dead, the three of them had tried to get back to the Chubut but the Gallatts had stopped them. ‘You're safer with us,' Gallatt had told them, no doubt he'd believed it.

Seannu shuts her eyes. She had been dreaming when the soldiers had come, sitting by the fire and dreaming as she is now. There'd been a skin in her hand but she hadn't been sewing. She'd thought the sound of galloping horses were the
Gallatts
 returning. It was only when Mareea screamed that Seannu had opened her eyes and seen them. The soldiers had taken her arm too, just like they'd taken Mareea's and Tezza's; squeezed it too tight, then kicked her so that she had fallen, and when she had screamed hit her in the face until she'd become quiet.

It is better to be quiet. That's what she learned. Better not to say a word.
Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump
. Sometimes she says the Galenses' words quietly to herself as if they are a spell. Mareea had thought the words would protect them if they said them. They are special words, Seannu. They chase away evil spirits. It is what Elal speaks in that place where the ancestors live. She used to know more:
bara
,
cawl
,
bach
,
cacen
. She smiles. She likes to roll them around the tongue. She rocks quietly back and forth: Welsh then Tehuelche. Mam, yanna; dadda, yank; Silas, Si-las; Megan, Me-gan; Mi-ri-am. Miriam.

Mother,
yanna
. That is what Miriam had called out the last time Seannu had seen her – a rare trip to the Chubut with Gallatts. She'd come running up to her and opened her loose outer mantle to show the stretched one beneath. ‘
Yanna
! That's what you say, isn't it?'

Yanna
. She wonders how it was for her, and whether the child lived. Then she thinks of the ravine where they buried one and then another child of their own. How Yeluc had wept. How it had pulled at them both each time they'd passed. A place of just rocks, no grass, not even a single
calafate
. But it is better not to stay there. She shifts her mind away. Better to go somewhere else.

Each time Gallatt had gone close to the Chubut valley she had begged for news, but he would tell her nothing – except long tales about the things that men care about but women do not: the roads, the crowds of people, the way the ground was changing colour: from grey mud to great yellow glistening plants that rattled in the wind. Wheat to make bread, she'd said smugly, and Gallatt had opened his mouth a little at her knowledge. They have a mill now, he tells her. They make flour but they put it in bags for the Cristianos in Buenos Aires.

‘The Gallenses give the Cristianos their wheat?' she'd asked Gallatt, checking to make sure she had understood correctly, and when he had nodded had thought again about the things she thought she knew.

Gallatt has gone now too. A single shot and he had flown backwards. A good way to die, she'd thought, but wished that Yeluc had been there to tell her what to do for his soul.

‘They are taking our land, Seannu,' Gallatt had told her once. ‘They're stealing it from us. They want us to stay in one place, not hunt, not speak our own tongue. We have to fight.'

She rocks on the floor and thinks about the forest in the hills and Yeluc's tree.

‘
Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump
,' she counts in Welsh, and waits for his approval.

‘
Chuche, houke, aäs, carge, ktsin
,' he replies in their own tongue.

‘No one speaks our words any more,' she tells him.

The tree sighs, bends down and touches her head with its lowest branches. ‘Just words, Seannu, that's all they are. There's no need to fight over words. It's what they mean that's important – and anyway,
ysher
, in heaven I have found, there is no need to speak at all.'

No need to speak at all. She nods and rocks, nods and then rocks again.