A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (11 page)

In spite of everything Megan is happy to have a home. It is not much: a house made from root-filled mud covered with thatch made from grass. There are small holes in the wall where the mud has already fallen away and the wind blows through; but at least it is shelter, and a place to stay, and Silas watches her as she arranges the things they have brought from home – her china and her small cupboard, their clock, her pans, some of the better rugs, the quilts and blankets. He stands at the doorway and watches her move. Her dress, the colour of chocolate, is loose on her now and is held in at her waist by a belt. He looks for the familiar curve of her rump or the swell of her breast, but there seems to be little under the cloth any more but more cloth. She makes a table of their trunk. They have to sit on the earth floor, which is not very flat even though it has been trampled over several times by the stallion, but once this is covered by rugs and the walls covered with blankets to keep out the draft, and the lamps are lit, it seems homely enough. Silas looks at her face in the lamplight, it is thinner and more drawn than it was, but when she sees him looking at her she smiles, and he smiles too.

‘Here,' she says, passing him a tiny shoe. ‘It's Myfanwy's, I was saving it for Gwyneth but it'll be better if you take it now instead.'

He looks at it dumbly.

‘You bury it, Silas,' she says exasperatedly, ‘don't you remember? You put it under the hearthstone for luck.'

Something inside his chest seems to clench and stop him breathing, like a fist of happiness. They are together again and it is all that matters. He lifts up the hearthstone and digs out a small hole and places the shoe inside.

‘Good,' she says. ‘
Y tylwyth teg
will be pleased with that. We'll be lucky now.'

‘
Y tylwyth teg
!' he says, grabbing hold of her suddenly around the waist, and laughing. ‘Surely the little people can't follow us here!'

‘They go everywhere,' she says, pouting. Fairies, demons, bad spirits – he can never tell how much she believes – but she has always looked out for them assiduously.

Together they make supper – a bowl of mutton stew – then they put the children to sleep in a nest of blankets in the corner. For a few minutes they allow the precious tallow to burn while they change out of their clothes. Myfanwy gives a quiet snore as she turns over.

‘Here,' he says. She watches from her seat on a box as he opens a bag she has never seen before and reveals two soft sheepskins. Her eyes widen.

‘A leaving present,' he says, ‘From Muriel. She told me to keep them for you as a surprise when we got here.'

He spreads the skins out in front of the embers of the fire then reaches over to her and pulls her towards him. Her flesh used to spill from his hands but now his fingers fit easily around her. He breathes in the odour of her hair. Everything about her has become more intense: a musk instead of a fragrance; flesh that resists him rather than moulds to his hand – hot, savoury, tasting not just of salt but of something sweet. There are parts of her he no longer knows. He catches his breath. He longs for her so much it hurts. He pulls her down, presses himself to her, her convex back hard against his concave chest. Then he edges back slightly and raises his head so he can just see her face: it is motionless, watching the fire. He watches it too, the small glowing houses tumbling and crackling onto the earth.

She murmurs some words he can't hear and he glides his hands around her again. Ah, he had forgotten how this feels: Megan's skin, Megan's hair, the contours of her valleys. She twists her head and kisses him and he remembers another time, another Megan, a Megan that did all the enticing and all the kissing. A Megan that came to her window at the sound of his voice and pulled him closer; the Megan before this one. He shuts his eyes and again finds her mouth with his.

In front of them the houses of the fire village gradually darken. Roof timbers collapse and walls fall, sending small cascades of sparks into the room. He glances towards Myfanwy and Gwyneth – two dark unmoving mounds – then reaches up beside him for one of the blankets from home. The yellows and blacks are shades of brown in the dying light of the fire. He snuffs out the tallow and its greasy smell drifts around them as they cover themselves with the thick cloth. There is little light left now but he can see the reflection of the fire's glow in her eyes – and in the tears that are collecting on her cheeks. Beside them the tiny charred houses fall softly like snow from a steep roof.

Everyone is crammed into the small warehouse they have built on the side of one of the earth walls of the Old Fort. Jacob stands on a small box so that everyone can see him while sacks of rice and flour have been arranged like pews and the women and children sit on these, the sacking itchy on the legs even through trousers and skirts. They are wearing their best clothes, but even these are starting to look bedraggled.

‘There are other wildernesses,
ffrindiau
,' Jacob says, his voice strained with sincerity, ‘hot places where nothing grows at all, and the Lord has called his people even there, and helped them to build His kingdom...'

Silas' mind starts to wander. From where he stands at the back he can just see the cliffs that skirt each side of the valley floor through the open door. On the southern side something rises: a bird, or maybe a wisp of smoke. It lasts just a minute. When he looks again it is gone. He glances around to see if anyone else has noticed but everyone else seems to be trying to pay attention to Jacob's sermon.

‘Fountains burst forth from cliff, yea
brodyr
, water where there was just rock before. Corn grew where there was nothing but sand. Manna from heaven... then glittering cities where there was nothing but caves and shelters. A new land where His people can dwell in His glory! And that is what the Good Lord has promised us. Are we going to betray Him,
brodyr
?' Jacob pauses, his arms stretched out, but nothing happens.

‘I said, are we going to betray Our Lord?'

‘No,
brawd
,' says a single voice.

‘No,
brodyr
, we will serve Him and labour for Him. We will toil without rest, labour without looking for reward...'

A few people around Silas fidget on their sacks and exchange glances with each other. ‘Don't think that lazy dog Tomas Price will think much of that,' whispers one not quietly enough. His neighbour laughs and Jacob raises his voice ‘...knowing that the true paradise is in Heaven above. And what a place that is,
ffrindiau
– angels playing harps, glorious singing by the almighty chorus...'

There is more rustling and creaking as people shift on the sacks of grain, their eyes wandering. Hands play with hymn sheets and buttons on clothes. One young man shyly reaches out to hold hands with a young woman who sits next to him while another woman straightens her dress, smoothes it down and then straightens it again. When a child cries several people immediately rise to take her out.

The
Meistr
is sitting with Cecilia at the front. They sit upright, still as two statues, their faces calm and without expression. From time to time Edwyn bows his head to draw a finger across his eye, and sometimes Cecilia nudges the hat on her head. There is a smugness in the way they hold their heads, and in the way they politely join in with the amens and halleluyahs. But even Silas has to acknowledge the contrast in reception: whenever Edwyn Lloyd speaks the people sit with rapt attention. No one fidgets. When children cry they are told to hush. There is something in the way he makes his voice rise and fall, swell and fade, and then there is the vibrato that Silas hates but which catches his ear just as much as it seems to catch everyone else's.

‘Let us pray,' says Jacob, and Silas watches as the
Meistr
and his wife shuffle to their knees. His lips move without a sound. Her eyelashes flicker.

The service ends. Jacob appeals for another chorus of agreement but none is forthcoming. So Jacob orders Silas to give them a note for their hymn. Silas finds a ‘Soh' from the middle of his range and leads them through the first verse. He has a large collection of hymns and songs in his head. It is something he has always found easy to learn. If the entire bible were to be put to music he is sure he could learn it in a month if not a week. Sometimes, when he is alone, he makes up new tunes for the words of old songs, and sometimes he makes up new words as well. One day he would like to find someone to write them down for anyone that is interested. It will be his legacy, something for Myfanwy and her children and her children's children. These are your grandfather's hymns, she could say, even though he couldn't read a note and did not know many letters, he knew his songs and he knew more words than the entire congregation of Rhoslyn. It is something he first thought of a few years ago for Richard. His voice fades slightly. Richard. His singing dies away altogether. A few people next to him notice and give him sideways glances. The child had a promising voice and could sing several complicated old tunes nearly note-perfect. ‘I can hear them in my head, Dadda. It is as if there is someone in there singing them already – is there someone in your head singing too?'

Silas had enjoyed imagining the two of them sometime in the future, singing side by side in the choir, perhaps being picked out for duets – father and son together. Silas looks down, blinks. He can't read the words but he waits for the letters to become clear again on the paper.

A small hand squeezes his. Myfanwy. ‘Sing, Dadda.'

He opens his mouth obediently. This is supposed to be a joyous day. Edwyn Lloyd has ordered it so. A holiday, he'd said. They had done enough building, digging and carrying for now, and were celebrating the start of the colony. There is a pig roasting on a spit and bread cooking in the oven.

After the blessing they burst noisily into the courtyard smacking their lips and inspecting the fire.

It is a fine day. One of the best they've had. The air has a clear quality quite different from the air in Wales – perhaps because it is drier. He looks around. He can see for miles. Something attracts the corner of his eye – something moving. It is another wisp of smoke, rising this time from the opposite direction, towards the northwest. It forms a thin neat column several feet into the air then stops. A second later another column of smoke rises. The air seems to be quite still because the smoke doesn't spread, just widens slightly as it rises until there are three fat beads of smoke slowly rising in a column over the desert.

Silas turns back to the fire, but as he does so, another head turns with his. Selwyn Williams has seen them too. Their eyes meet. Selwyn nods, his expression hidden by his hat. Indians.

There is a wreck in the river that is revealed at low tide. After the meal the men go to the riverbank and examine it for timber. Apart from a few willows, and the planks carried down from Port Madryn by the
Maria Theresa
, it is their only source of timber. Jacob says that he believes he could easily remove the cabin intact from the deck and that this would make an excellent schoolroom.

‘You think so, do you?' says the
Meistr
. ‘You don't think this ferocious current and turbulent water would cause you any sort of hindrance whatsoever?'

The people around him laugh at Edwyn's sarcasm, but Jacob seems quite oblivious to the ridicule.

‘Indeed not, Edwyn, I should think that if we could hitch up a few ropes from the bank…'

Silas drifts away. Even though he dislikes Jacob, he can't bear to see him ridiculed. Megan's brother has always been hopelessly impractical. Just because a man can read Latin it doesn't mean he has more sense than anyone else. Silas himself can barely read, but he knows that trying to dismantle that wreck in such fast-flowing water would be suicidal. He looks back. He can no longer hear what is being said, but Jacob is still obviously causing much merriment.

Silas walks back towards the fort and is immediately convinced they are being watched. He turns around quickly but there is nothing there.

The warehouse is their committee meeting place as well as their chapel and there is such a shortage of candidates that Silas finds himself elected as representative alongside Selwyn, Jacob, John and seven other men.

The
Meistr
, of course, is leader. His position was taken as read.

‘We will start with the potatoes and the maize,' he says, ‘the land is cleared; all it needs is to be ploughed.'

‘Too cold, here, for maize,' says Selwyn.

‘We'll try using the oxen,' the
Meistr
continues pointedly, as if no one has spoken.

‘Too late in the year for planting anything now.'

Edwyn sighs and looks at the doubting American. ‘Mr Williams, why are you always so full of such cheerful optimism?'

There is the usual trickle of laughter and Silas' eyes meet Selwyn's. He tuts almost silently and Selwyn nods back, his face grim and still.
Brawd
.

‘If the plough doesn't work with the oxen we'll try the horse. We must have faith, Mr Williams, otherwise we will accomplish nothing – surely you know that by now.'

As Edwyn commands so the work is done. Within a week the ground around them has been ploughed and planted, and soon, thanks to a recent light shower of rain, is covered in a patina of green.

The next Sunday Jacob revisits his sermon on transforming the wilderness, nodding at Edwyn each time he mentions a miracle. Afterwards he catches Silas at the doorway. ‘Have you seen,
brawd
?' he asks, pointing to the strips of green visible in the distance. His grin is triumphant. ‘The Lord triumphs through Edwyn Lloyd!' he says, ‘despite the naysayers,' he adds, looking at Selwyn who is trying to get past. ‘Despite those with little faith.'

Now he looks back at Silas. ‘This is just the start! Imagine the valley filled with fields, acres and acres – wheat, potatoes, and maize! Milk and honey, milk and honey, just as Edwyn always said. Do you still doubt him?'

And with that he sweeps away, his long coat billowing.