Longing (37 page)

“I suppose they feel that you will not desert now,
fach,
” one of Siân's jailers said as she rubbed at her wrists. “It will be safer to stay with the column. You stay next to me and I will shield you from harm.”

“Thank you.” Siân smiled at him. He had done his best through the night to keep her cheerful. He had even released her once and persuaded his companion to do likewise so that she could go into the trees to put herself comfortable, and had stood guard to make sure that no one interrupted her and embarrassed her.

*   *   *

Something
went drastically wrong. No one afterward could ever explain exactly what it was. Perhaps the best explanation was that it
was an explosive situation and that it was almost inevitable that a spark be ignited. Who ignited it was not the important question. Someone did as someone inevitably was fated to do.

The large column that descended on the Westgate Inn was armed, the front and side lines with guns. Inside the inn the mayor waited with special constables and soldiers, all armed, all ready to face trouble. Some of the demonstrators entered the inn and shots were fired. No one ever knew who shot first.

But the demonstrators got the worst of it. Several of them were fired on at point-blank range inside the inn and yet could not retreat quickly because of the press of more men behind them. As some demonstrators, hearing the sound of shots from outside, broke windows in their attempt to get inside to help their comrades, the soldiers began to direct their fire outside the inn as well as inside.

Shortly after the demonstrators had begun to arrive at the inn, and long before all of them had done so, word began to spread that the crowd was being fired upon and the order was given to retreat. It did not take long for panic to spread.

The demonstration broke up as hundreds of men fled along every available street or hid in any available building. It did not help matters that one of the missing columns, arrived at last, was trying to enter the town from the north, the route along which most of the fleers were escaping.

*   *   *

Siân
was not outside the hotel when the shooting began, but she was close enough to hear the sound of shots. It felt rather as if the bottom was falling out of her stomach, she thought even before others reacted and confirmed her suspicion that it was indeed guns she heard.

She looked around, panicked, for Iestyn, but there was no sign of him. She had not seen her grandfather or Emrys or Huw all night, but she knew they must be up ahead. And up ahead were the guns.

And then the crowd ahead of her was pressing back and breaking into a run and panic became a blind and a clawing thing that threatened madness and death. Siân's staunch companion from
Penybont took a firm hold on her arm and drew her close against him, but she shook him off and found herself pushing against the tide of humanity. She was reacting with as little thought as they. Pure instinct, pure panic, drove her forward into danger.

Iestyn. Emrys, Grandad, Huw. She had to find them. She had to know they were safe.

By the time she had fought her way into the square before the inn, it was no longer dense with humanity but was filled instead with fleeing men and dotted with some who lay still on the ground. Siân looked about her with panic and terror. Where were they? Were they on the ground? Were they dead? She ran out into the open.

But before she had taken more than two steps, an iron-hard arm came around her waist and lifted her right off her feet.

“All the devils in hell!” a voice bellowed in her ear. “Are you mad?”

“Iestyn.” She was sobbing. “I have to find Iestyn.”

“Get out of here,” Owen said. “They are shooting. Aah!”

She crashed painfully down onto cobbles, her forehead thudding against them, almost robbing her of consciousness for a few moments. Owen's weight came down heavily on top of her. But she was still sobbing.

“I have to find Iestyn,” she said. “Please, Owen, I have to find him.”

It was only gradually that she became aware that something was wrong. Foolish to think of something being wrong under the circumstances, but she had the unmistakable feeling that something was. He should be shaking her, yelling at her, threatening her.

“Owen?”

He grunted.

Somehow, despite his great weight, she turned herself over under him. His head flopped against her shoulder.

“Owen?” she whispered again.

There was a curious silence all about them. Everyone must have fled.

“Cariad.”
His voice was very faint.

She got her arms about him. But the wetness she felt with one hand was not the expected wetness of rain. It was warm and thick to the touch.

“You have been hurt?” she asked foolishly. She listened to her voice as if it belonged to someone else. She felt almost as if she was above her own body, looking down. A spectator.

There was no answer. She knew with absolute certainty that there would be no answer. Ever.

Cariad,
he had said.

His last word.

Cariad.

She held Owen's lifeless body in her arms and closed her eyes.

Time was a meaningless commodity. She did not know how much of it passed before she opened her eyes. Someone was leaning over her and then coming down on his knees beside her.

“He is dead,” she told the Marquess of Craille in a voice that matched the announcement. “He died saving my life.”

*   *   *

He
had managed things badly, Alex admitted to himself as the night wore on. Unbelievably badly. It came to feel almost as if he were in one of those dreams in which a person is trying to run and cannot seem to propel himself forward or trying to accomplish something but unable even to start.

His first instinct when he left Angharad was to rush to Siân's home to find out if indeed she had gone up the mountain in pursuit of her brother-in-law. It was an instinct he followed. He took the time only to grab a cloak and hat and went into town at a run. It would take as long to have a horse saddled and ride there, he thought, as to go there on foot.

But of course she was gone. Her grandmother looked at him with wide and frightened eyes and tried to pretend that nothing was amiss at all. He grasped her upper arms and looked intently into her face.

“I know they have gone,” he said. “You must tell me if Siân has gone too, ma'am. I shall go and bring her home for you.”

She nodded. “Mari sent one of the children to tell me she went after Iestyn,” she said.

There was a man sitting silently beside the fire. He was neither Siân's grandfather nor her uncle, Alex saw when he looked fully at him. He frowned at a sudden suspicion.

“You are the man who brought the news about Iestyn Jones?” he asked.

The man shrank back against the chair. His eyes shifted from Alex to Mrs. Rhys.

“I shall want a word with you when I return,” Alex said curtly, and left the house.

He half ran up the mountain in the hope that the men would still be gathered there—and that Siân would be doing nothing more dangerous than spying on them as she had done on two previous occasions. Even apart from Siân, he was lividly angry. He would do nothing to interfere with their freedom to march, he had told the men, provided they did nothing to coerce anyone into joining them. They had defied him.

He had accomplished nothing at all in his months at Cwmbran.

The meeting place was empty. And though he shaded his eyes and squinted off into the distance, so was the valley below. The men must be well on their way. Perhaps Angharad had been wrong about the time. She had spent the afternoon in bed with Barnes. Probably more time had passed than she had realized. Though over two hours was long enough.

Despite the coldness and wetness that had already seeped beneath his clothing, Alex was aware of an extra coldness about his heart. Siân had not returned home. He had seen no sign of her on the mountain. That could mean only one thing.

She had been caught and taken along on the march.

And he had wasted precious time running after her on foot. There was at least a mile and a half of rough hillside between him and his stables. Instinct would have sent him off and running again—running in pursuit of his marching men—and Siân. But belatedly he decided to use thought and common sense. It would take
time to go back for a horse. But in the long run he would be faster. It would take the men many hours to march to Newport. He would overtake them long before they arrived there.

Quite what he would do, one man against hundreds, when he came up to them, he did not know. He would think of that when the time came.

And so he went back for a horse—because it was the sensible thing to do and he should have done it to start with. And while it was being saddled, he went into the house to change into dry clothes and to kiss Verity and tell her he would be away on business until tomorrow.

And then he galloped away along the valley, in pursuit of a column of men who could march at only a fraction of his pace.

Except that his horse threw a shoe after less than an hour because he was pushing it too hard over rough terrain, taking risks that he had no business taking. And because he would not abandon the horse in the middle of nowhere, he had to lead it slowly to the nearest smithy—a walk at snail's pace of well over an hour.

Good sense in the end had served him no better than impetuosity. He had to walk the rest of the way and was severely hampered during the night by the oppressive darkness and his unfamiliarity with the landscape. For long stretches, when trees blocked out even the suggestion of light from the sky, he had to walk with his arms stretched out ahead of him, like a blind man.

He ground his teeth impotently, worried sick about Siân. And about his men. But mainly and constantly about Siân.

*   *   *

And
so he arrived at Newport too late. Just too late as was the nature of nightmares. Men by the hundreds were fleeing in undisciplined panic, wildness and fear in their eyes. He caught one of them by the arm and forced him to a halt, though the man took a swing at him. He was no one Alex recognized.

“What has happened?” he demanded to know.

“Thousands of soldiers,” the man gasped out. “All shooting at us. Hunting us down.”

“Where?” Alex snapped out the question. “Where were they shooting from?”

“There,” the man said, waving back vaguely into the town with his free arm.

Alex let him go. He drew a few steadying breaths. It would be the easiest thing in the world to panic himself. Where was she? Where to God was she? How was he to find her in the midst of this madness?

It was somehow easy to find his way to the focal point of the whole trouble—a cobbled square with a large building to one side of it, seemingly an inn. It was strangely empty of panicked men, like the eye of a storm. But it was swarming with armed constables and uniformed soldiers. They were turning over dead bodies with their boots and pointing bayonets at those few who were groaning or even screaming from their wounds.

Alex felt cold at heart again. They were all men, one quick glance around at the dead and wounded revealed to him. But the welling of relief the realization brought lasted for only a moment. God in heaven. His worst fears had been realized. There had been a bloody battle here, or more likely a bloody massacre. There were perhaps twenty dead lying on the ground. Were any of them his men?

His mind was almost paralyzed with anxiety over Siân's whereabouts, but he forced himself to walk about the square, looking down at the dead and the wounded. He breathed a fresh sigh of relief each time he looked into a stranger's face.

And then he saw two bodies tangled together, the one sprawled over the other. And his heart lurched again as he noticed that the lower body wore skirts. She was a woman.

He was not sure how his legs carried him across the short distance. But they did. And he stood looking down, his heart turned to stone.

She was wet and disheveled and as pale as parchment. Her forehead was smeared with blood. Sprawled across her, his head cradled on her shoulder, her arms about him, was Owen Parry, a huge bloodstain on the back of his coat.

Alex gazed down at them, unable to move or to think or to feel.

And then she opened her eyes.

He dropped to his knees beside her, hardly daring to hope that this was more than her last gasp of life.

“He is dead,” she said to him, her voice flat but quite firm. “He died saving my life.”

She was, he realized—and he was glad that he was on his knees so that they could not buckle under him—very much alive.

“Siân,” he said to her. “Siân, my love.”

S
IÂN
lay lethargically on the ground, holding Owen. His weight was squashing the breath from her. Her head was sore. She was cold and wet. But now suddenly there was only one thought in her mind, one focus of her being. He had come. All would be well now. He had come.

“Alexander.” She tried to smile at him.

And then there were others there, scarlet-coated soldiers, one of them pointing a gun down at her, while two of them grabbed Alex by the arms and dragged him to his feet.

“The game is over,” one soldier said roughly. “You can dry off and cool your heels in jail for a while, the pair of you. That one is dead by the look of him.”

But while the soldier whose gun was pointed at Siân gave Owen's body a great shove with his boot so that he rolled off her, Alex was transformed before her eyes. He shrugged off the hold of his captors with apparent ease and looked at them with cold hauteur. Despite the fact that he was soaked through and liberally splattered with mud, there was obviously no mistaking the fact that his clothes were costly and fashionable. And even if one discounted the clothes, there was something about him, Siân thought, some indefinable air, that would have convinced the soldiers that he was not of the common rabble. They stared at him without trying to take hold of him again.

“I am the Marquess of Craille,” he said, looking down at Siân with steely eyes and thin lips, “owner of the land and works at
Cwmbran. And come in pursuit of my truant workers.” There was something coldly malicious about his tone.

“Begging your pardon, my lord,” one of the soldiers said, clearly embarrassed. “We did not look closely enough.”

Siân sat up slowly. The one gun was still pointed at her. Her mouth felt dry despite all the wetness about her.

“We will take the woman and see to the body,” the soldier said. “The mayor would doubtless be pleased to receive you inside the inn, my lord. You probably need a good stiff drink.”

Alex laughed unpleasantly. “She comes with me,” he said. “I came all this way at considerable discomfort to myself, Lieutenant, as you can see, to round up as many of them as I can and take them home. I cannot allow you to have all the joy of dealing with them. I really cannot. The pleasure of seeing them suitably punished will more than make up for a sleepless night and one ruined suit of clothes. On your feet, Siân Jones.”

Siân stared at him in disbelief. He was every inch the cold, sneering, cruel aristocrat. Alexander had totally disappeared; the Marquess of Craille had taken his place.

“I can see your point, my lord,” the lieutenant said. “But it is a long way back to Cwmbran, I believe. Would you not prefer to have me jail her here and you can come back for the trial?”

Alex sneered. “I shall enjoy every mile of the journey,” he said, so deliberately undressing her with his eyes that the other soldiers snickered. His voice became low and menacing. “Perhaps you did not hear me, woman. Perhaps you need some help.” And he bent over her and jerked her to her feet with one hand clasped about her upper arm. With the other hand he whacked her painfully on the bottom.

The lieutenant chuckled. “Well, we have a manhunt to conduct, my lord,” he said. “The inn is already full of prisoners. I doubt the jails hereabouts will all hold the number we will catch today. This will be the last we hear of the Charter at any rate.” He touched his shako and beckoned his soldiers away.

“Let me go.” Siân's voice was shaking. She felt dizzy. She would not look up into his face. “Let me go.”

But his grip on her arm tightened more painfully. “Siân,” he said with quiet urgency, “you must be my abject prisoner. Or if you choose to fight me, you must expect that I will strike you. You are in terrible danger.”

She looked up at him, understanding suddenly.

“It was the idea that I will rape you every mile of the journey home and then punish you at the end of it that appealed to them and made them agree to let me have custody of you,” he said. “Come, we must get out of this town as quickly as we can. This is going to develop into a witch hunt.” He pulled firmly on her arm.

“No!” she said sharply. “No. Please.” When he stopped, she looked down. Owen was on his back. His face looked peaceful though his eyes were open.

“He is dead, Siân,” Alex said gently. But when she pulled again on her arm, he let her go.

She went down on her knees beside Owen's body and smoothed the wet hair back from his forehead. With shaking, shrinking hands she closed his eyes. “Owen,” she whispered. “Owen.” She bent over him and kissed his lips. They were cold, though whether from the wintry chill or from death she did not know. She got back to her feet.

“Come,” Alex said, one arm about her shoulders.

“We cannot just leave him.” She looked at him in an agony.

“Yes, we must,” he said, and he was again the Marquess of Craille, though neither cold nor cruel. “I will have him brought home for burial, Siân. But now we must leave him.”

“I can't leave,” she said. “I don't know what has happened to Iestyn. Or Emrys or Grandad. Or Huw. I can't leave without them. I have to find them.”

He swore softly. “I suppose you have heard of needles and haystacks,” he said. “After this morning's rout it will be every man for himself, Siân. We will have to hope that everyone returns safely home within the next few days.”

“Alexander.” He was quite right, of course. But she could not yet think either rationally or sensibly. She wanted miracles worked. She wanted him to work them. “Please?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them to watch as five dispirited men were marched briskly under armed escort toward the inn. He recognized none of the men.

“Come, then,” he said. “I should pay my respects to the mayor while I am here, I suppose.” But he did not immediately move. He fumbled beneath his cloak and came out with his cravat, wet and limp and bedraggled. He took Siân's right wrist and bound the cravat tightly about it while she watched in incomprehension, before securing the ends to the belt at his waist.

“I was brought here with both wrists confined,” she said dully.

“For goodness' sake,” he said, “act the part of sullen prisoner, will you, Siân? If you appear defiant or abusive, I will have to give you the back of my hand across the face.”

“I'll be sullen,” she said. “Do you think they have taken Iestyn?” Please God they had not taken him. Not Iestyn. What was going to happen to the prisoners? A firing squad? Hanging? Transportation? A long incarceration? Please God they had not taken Iestyn.

“We will hope not,” Alex said, moving toward the Westgate Inn with arrogant, purposeful strides, so that Siân had to run to keep up with him.

*   *   *

It
was late afternoon by the time they left Newport to begin the long walk home. Despite the fact that at first his relief at finding Siân alive and relatively uninjured had given him only the one purpose of getting her away from all danger as fast as he possibly could, Alex found after a while that his need to ensure the safety of his people kept him in the town. Siân looked about her fearfully and eagerly for her relatives. He looked for any of his people.

There was no particular danger, he realized early. There was no more shooting. It had all ended before he even arrived at the Westgate. And fortunately his appearance was so different from that of the workers, and his voice and accent, that no one questioned his claim to be who and what he was—and no one questioned his right to take his own prisoners. Of course, there had not been many women among the demonstrators.

The mayor and everyone else in authority he spoke to in the course of the day appeared amused more than anything else to see Siân with her wrist confined to his belt and to see her abject demeanor—slumped shoulders, downcast eyes. And to imagine the rapes that he hinted she would have to endure between Newport and Cwmbran. Men seemed generally to consider a rape a suitable and amusing punishment for female wrongdoing, Alex thought with inner anger.

There were more dead bodies inside the inn. None of them looked familiar, and Siân, pale and listless, shook her head when he looked down at her inquiringly. He was not sure that he knew every man of Cwmbran by sight. There were many prisoners. By some miracle none of them were from Cwmbran either.

They wandered the streets endlessly after finally leaving the inn—Siân had been forced to stand by Alex's side while he sat eating a cold dinner with the mayor and drinking a bottle of wine. He had not dared suggest that a chair be brought for her and he risked offering her only a few mouthfuls of food from his plate, sneering at her each time he did so and forcing her to say thank you before giving each to her. The mayor thought it great sport.

Alex wondered what the mayor would say if he knew that Siân was Alex's love—and that Alex was not a magistrate.

The streets were almost totally deserted except for small bands of soldiers and constables and occasionally some prisoners, rooted out from their hiding places within the town. Even the lawful citizens would not risk being seen out on the streets that day and perhaps being mistaken for demonstrators.

“I think all the men of Cwmbran must have made their escape, Siân,” Alex said finally, relieved in one way but anxious in another. It seemed too good to be true. And dammit, he thought, they did not deserve their good fortune. They had been warned. “We are not going to find any of them in the streets and we can hardly knock on every door and ask if by any chance there is a man from Cwmbran hiding in a cupboard.”

Her shoulders were slumped. It was not all act, he thought, looking into her face.

“He will be safe, Siân,” he said, resisting the urge to set an arm about her shoulders. “He is probably halfway home to Cwmbran by now.”

“They forced him to come too,” she said, “though he had been brave enough to say no and to stand for his principles. Owen could never understand such convictions. He believed that all people should think the same way—his way.” She shuddered suddenly. “Owen is dead.”

“He knew the risks, Siân,” he said. “He believed in his cause so strongly that he was willing to die for it. I felt no love for the man, but I have to admit to a grudging respect for him.”

She did not reply. She hung her head.

“Did you love him?” He was almost whispering.

“Yes,” she said, and his heart plummeted to somewhere around the level of his boots. “There are many kinds of love. I did not love him quite as a woman loves a man. And I did not like his approach to life. I did not like his intolerance or the way he condoned violence and was even willing to use it himself. I hated him for what he did to Iestyn yesterday—was it only yesterday? But in some inexplicable way and despite all I loved him. Yes, I did. Even though he was among the Scotch Cattle who took me up the mountain. I loved him. Does it make sense?”

“Yes,” Alex said, relieved. Yes, it made sense. “Siân, we must leave. Perhaps we will find him on the way home. Probably we will find him at home, anxious for your safety.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we must leave. I pray God that Owen is the only Cwmbran casualty of all this madness.”

“Amen,” he said. “Let's go, then. Once we are clear of the town I will be able to release your wrist.”

“So much madness,” she said, following him as he made his way to the outskirts of the town. “And so much violence. And it is not at an end. I will not ask you what will happen to all these prisoners. I don't think I want to know. Not now.” She shivered. “And all in the name of freedom, Alexander. Is there any such thing?”

“In the heart and mind,” he said. “In the individual life if one is
fortunate and perhaps in the individual family and community. Perhaps the secret is to look inward and then to look outward just at what is within the radius of one's personal influence. Even that is not possible for all people, of course. But for us it is, Siân. For Cwmbran it is.”

“Because you are our owner,” she said. “Ah, that word
owner.
It says volumes.”

“Small ways,” he said. “A little at a time. We live according to a certain social and political system, Siân. None of us can change the world in one sweep. We can only do our small part, starting with who we are and what we are. Don't blame me because I am in a position of power. It is what I do with that power that counts, surely.”

She laughed suddenly though there was not much amusement in the sound. “This does not seem quite the time or place to be having this discussion,” she said. “You have used your power to keep me free today. By keeping me tethered to your belt and by treating me with contempt when we have been in company, you have ensured my freedom. A strange paradox. I must thank you.”

“At the same time as you resent the fact that I have that power,” he said. “We are outside the town, Siân. I think I may untie your wrist.” He stopped to do so and smiled at her. “I should be angry with you for doing anything as foolhardy as rushing after your brother-in-law when it must have been obvious to you that you were not going to persuade Parry to let him go. But as usual I honor you instead.” He chafed the wrist he had just freed and briefly lifted it to set his mouth against the inside of it.