Rape of the Fair Country

Book 1: The Mortymer Trilogy

by Alexander Cordell

Genres: Historical Fiction; Victorian Romance

Synopsis

The first volume in Alexander Cordell's classic trilogy of mid-nineteenth century Wales. Set in the grim valleys of the Welsh iron country during the turbulent times of the Industrial Revolution, this unforgettable novel begins the saga of the Mortymer family - a family of hard men and beautiful women, all forced into a bitter struggle with their harsh environment, as they slave and starve for the cruel English ironmasters. But adversity could never still the free spirit of Wales, or quiet its soaring voice, and the Mortymers struggle on even as the iron foundries ravish their homeland and cripple their people. Rape of the Fair Country launched the bestselling career of Alexander Cordell in 1959 and went on to sell millions of copies in seventeen languages throughout the world.

Release date: July 24, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 316

Sample

THAT JUNE stands clear in my mind.

For apart from it being the month Mrs Pantrych went into the heather with Iolo Milk and had her second in January, it was the time my sister Morfydd stopped going steady with Dafydd Phillips and put him on the gin.

Very strange, all this, for never a drop passed Dafydd’s lips before he set eyes on Morfydd, and with poor Mr Pantrych dead eight months everybody knew Iolo was the father, for not a child in his family had run its full time.

A terrible girl for the men was Morfydd, especially in summer when there was a bit of life in them, and if ever a man was dangled on a string it was Dafydd. Fresh from Bangor, he was, following the iron up to the Eastern Valley, and mad for my sister the moment she bowed back at him. Terrible to see somebody get it so bad; wandering around town hoping for a glimpse of her, not knowing if he was in Brecon or Bangor. Off his food, too, so his mam said; making up poetry and going to Chapel to pray for her soul, while Morfydd, like as not, was up on the mountain with her new boy from Nanty, deep in the corn or down in the heather, fretful because it was Mothering Sunday.

It was a good summer that year. The days passed in rich splendour, with the corn so thick and tall around Bwlch-y-drain farm that the tenants could not open their gate for carts. The nightingales sang loud and clear in the moonlight, something that had not happened since the industry came to town, and every morning I climbed to the crest of Turnpike and looked over the golden valley of the Usk to watch the mountain change from brown to green as the sun got going.

From the day I was four years old my father took me up to The Top on his morning shifts at the Garndyrus furnaces; on his back at first, but later we walked hand in hand. But he would leave me on the crest of Turnpike because of the swearing men. And I can see him now, waving as he walked round the Tumble. Home to Mam, then, and in later years to school; sitting by windows hoping for a furnace flash, every inch of me up in the heat and glare of the iron. First out at the school bell, race to Mam for tea, and away up to The Top with me. There I would wait for him until darkness; lying on my back listening to the drop-hammers of the Garndyrus forge or watching the kingfishers sweeping their colours over the brooks.

There is no green on the mountain after dark. Sulphur is in the wind then, and the sky is red with furnace glare all over the ridges from Nantyglo to Risca, and when the night shift comes on the world catches alight. From the valley comes the singing of the Irish and the screaming of the babies they have nineteen to the dozen. The lights of the Garndyrus Inn go on, the workers crowd in for beer, and an hour later hell is let loose with their fighting. But not my father, who could hold his beer with any man on the mountains. He preferred to come home to a decent supper and listen to my mother’s gossip; of how Mrs Pantrych ought to be ashamed of herself for going big in the stomach unwedded, or grumbling about the prices in the Tommy Shop, and if ever a man wanted transporting it was Iolo Milk, for if he was not the father of Gwennie Lewis’s first as well as Mrs Pantrych’s second she was very much mistaken.

“Hisht, Elianor,” said my father. “Not in front of the children, please. There is enough wickedness for them to pick up in Town without hearing it at home.”

Sit chewing, with your elbows on the table and listen to grown-ups. Very pleasant is the scandal when you are seven years old. Watch Morfydd’s dark, lazy smile, Dada’s frown, Mam’s little red hands cutting bread or sweeping the big black kettle from the hob. Hear the spit of water from the spout, the dying sigh of scalded tea in the pot. Bustle, bustle goes Mam, her mouth a little red button, well up on her dignity.

“No good blinding yourself to facts, Hywel,” she says. “That Iolo Milk is a bad one, and never again will he enter this house while I have growing daughters. Three times today he has looked through the window and knocked once on the door.”

“A scandal, pestering a decent household,” says Dada.

And there sits Morfydd with a face of innocence, eyes to tempt a saint, but she winks at me over the brim of her cup.

Terrible to have a loose sister.

“Speak to him, Hywel,” whispers Mam. “Something will have to be done or I cannot face the pastor at Chapel next Sunday.”

“Aye,” sighs Dada. “Where is Edwina?”

“Down at the Company Shop, but back this minute.”

“There is a girl to give an example,” he says, and glances sideways at Morfydd. “Strong for her Chapel is Edwina, a daughter to be trusted, with no men trailing her like rams. So let me say something that is on my mind, eh, Morfydd? Iolo Milk do not pester this house for nothing, so any girl of mine seen with him on the mountain leaves home quick, and Iolo Milk goes six feet down without a service. Do you understand, girl?”

“Yes, Dada,” says Morfydd.

“Then do you mind me.”

This takes the smile from her face, which is a pity, for Morfydd is beautiful, especially when smiling. But a clean-thinking man was my father and determined in his manner. The way he caught my mother was determined, too. It was at the Cyfarthfa Horse Show that he bowed to her and her sister, and when the fair was over he invited them home in his trap. Not a word passed between the three of them on the ride, Mam said, and when they reached her father’s manse Dada handed them both down, bowed and was off. She thought it was the end of him and went to her room and wept for hours. But a week later he was back outside her gate. Straight up to the front door he went and asked for her father. Ten months later Mam had been signed for, sealed, and had delivered her first in our two-bedroomed house in town.

“Good God,” says Mam. “Here is Iolo Milk now. Speak to him, Hywel.”

“Aye,” says Dada.

“But no violence, mind.”

“Just man to man, girl. Do not bother yourself.”

Very smart is Iolo, with his black hair plastered down and in his new coat and trews, with the carnation he wears in his buttonhole especially for ladykilling. Bang, bang on the door. There he stands, six feet two of him, cap in hand, white teeth shining.

“Good evening, Mr Mortymer,” said he.

“Good evening, Iolo,” said Dada. “Very fancy you look in that new suit. Up with the chest to show it off, man—in with the stomach by here,” and he tapped it. “Aye, very smart you look. Courting, is it?”

“No violence, remember,” breathed Mam.

“God forbid,” said Dada. “Is it Morfydd you are come for, Iolo?”

“Please God,” whispered Iolo, “and with your permission, of course.”

“For a little stroll up the mountain, is it?”

“Just a stroll, Mr Mortymer. No harm in a bit of a stroll, you understand, with a maiden as respectable as your Morfydd, not like some I could mention.”

“Back before dark, is it, Iolo?” asked Dada.

“Aye, indeed, and the lighter the better, see, when a decent girl is involved. Back in half an hour, if you like, Mr Mortymer, if that suits you better.”

“It do not,” said Dada. “Head on one side, if you please, for I have been puddling all week and I cannot see in this light. Bend a bit, too, for you have grown inches since I saw you last. And smile, man, do not look unhappy.”

And Iolo, the fool, held his chin up, beaming.

One hit and he was out, flat out in the yard, with his hands crossed on his chest and ready for burial.

Good God.

“And me a deacon,” said Dada while the women screamed. “This house is open to Christians, Chapel or Church of England, but pagans and fornicators stay without.”

It is good to be sleeping with your sister, with your feet where her knees begin. We always kissed Mam goodnight in the kitchen, but my father came in later with the lamp. And I can see Morfydd now, hear her sighing after her fourteen-hour shift down the Garn pulling trams—reaching up for Dada’s kiss. Then, when he shut the door we would settle together in the belly of the bed. With the house gone quiet she would whisper:

“Iestyn, you asleep?”

Lie quiet and see her rise in the blankets, careful of the squeaks, for ours was a bed you would not sell to the devil for courtship. One eye open, watch her slip out. Up goes her flannel nightdress and she is there in buttoned boots; on with her dress, a comb through her hair, and away through the window she goes like a witch on a broomstick.

God in heaven, you think, one day that girl will be as full as Mrs Pantrych. For you have heard Mam say this in the kitchen. Scramble out of bed and run to the window. She is climbing the mountain stained silver, her hands searching for a hold, her long black hair streaming out behind her. Shiver, and listen. An owl hoots from a thousand feet up. Morfydd hoots back. Iolo Milk is up by there, lying on the tumps, smiling at the stars; responsible for the next generation of furnace workers if he has his way, says Mam.

And there is Dada in the room next door, snoring his way up the path to heaven, while Morfydd, his beloved and eldest, goes hand in hand with Iolo Milk to the gates of hell.

ON MY eighth birthday my father put my name on the books of the ironmaster and took me to work at the Garndyrus furnaces. It was either the furnaces or the Abergavenny Hiring Fair, and I chose the furnaces, for some of the farmers were devils with the stick. Starting work at eight years old was late to begin a career, for some of the children in town began work at seven, or earlier. Take Sara Roberts—she was about my age but she had been chipping the rock from the iron vein since she was five, and Ieun Mathers lost one foot under a tram at five and the other when he was six. Still, there was no comparison between my family and the likes of these. The Roberts sat a long way behind us in Chapel for their father was a plain limestone digger, work that could be done by the foreigners, and he took home a bare three pounds a six weeks. My father, on the other hand, was a forge expert lent to Garndyrus by Mr Crawshay Bailey of Nantyglo, and was paid twice as much. So the fourpence a week Sara took home made a deal of difference.

Grand to be pulling on your trews of a winter’s morning with the frost making you hop. Dada and I were due on shift at first light, so I hopped quietly, for fear of waking Morfydd. She scrubbed at the manager’s house in Nantyglo until ten and then went down the Coity Pits getting coal and seeing to the children in charge of the doors. They thought a lot of Morfydd in Nanty, I heard, for she had quick fingers with bleeding when the children were caught in the trams, and she could deliver a baby underground as well as any doctor. She lay in the bed now, her face white and her hair flung black over the pillow. Downstairs Dada was hitting the tub, making the noises of a man being drowned, next door Mam was snoring. The moon was putting his fingers round the room as I pulled my shirt tail between my legs. With my boots in my hand I got to the door.

“Iestyn.”

I turned. Morfydd was sitting up.

“Up The Top, boy?”

“Aye,” I said, dying to be gone, for I could hear my mother stirring in the bed next door and if she came down there would be talk of my first day at work and what has he got in his eating bag and has he washed and combed his hair properly.

“Wait, you,” said Morfydd.

“To hell. I am late already.”

“Come over by here,” she said.

Sighing, I went round the bed and her hand went under my shirt.

“Where is the vest?”

“Dada does not wear one. It holds the sweat.”

“On with the vest I knitted you last week or you do not leave the house alive,” she said. “Too young you are to be going up The Top. What time is it?”

“Six o’clock,” I replied.

“Six o’clock and a child goes to work. A plague on the whole bloody system. …”

“Swear and I tell Dada,” I said.

“Tell and be damned,” said she, climbing out to the boards. “You at work first light while the brats of ironmasters eat at eight before riding.”

Her face was dark with anger as she reached for the long drawers and pulled them up her legs. Up with her nightdress, a lift to her breasts to give them a start for the day, on with the ragged dress now, pulling in her waist with her leather tram-towing belt, and she whispered to herself, her eyes large and bright with growing anger. “See now, if there is trouble on these mountains then I am having a hand in it, for there is not a man in town with the belly to shout.” She hit me across the ear. “Go then. Be like a sheep. Go to work years too early and draw starvation pay, but come back here weak in the chest and you sleep under the bed with the china, is it?”

“To hell with the bed, I will sleep with Edwina,” I said, and I went through the door and down to the kitchen like a rabbit.

My father was kneeling by the grate blowing flames into the fire. Edwina was asleep under the table, her naked arm lying across the boards like an accident. The kettle was in tears on the hob and bacon sizzling in the pan. Dada did not turn as I entered.

“Trouble with Morfydd, boy?”

“Aye. Because I am going up The Top.”

He sighed. “Take no heed, I expected it. The Scotch Cattle will be enrolling Morfydd before she is much older.” Smiling, he gripped my arm. “Not much there in the way of muscle, but the furnaces will put it there, and quick. Away and wash now.”

Lovely it is to plunge your body into frosty water when rime is lipping the tub, to know the shock of lost breath and fight to get it back. Trickles of freeze run down your blue chest and soak the waist-towel; splash and thresh about and take great breaths of the white mountain mist. Down into the lungs it goes, making the blood run in hot agony; rub, rub with the towel and sing for courage. No hair on the chest or belly like Dada but it will come after a month of Garndyrus where grown men die in the heat and frost, says Morfydd. Cross the legs for the towel is soaked and letting it down to the privates.

“Bore da’ chwi!” shouts Twm-y-Beddau, the coal-trimmer from next door. Naked as a baby he is and his children throwing buckets at him.

“Good morning!” I shout back, shivering.

“Up The Top today, Iestyn?”

“Aye, aye!”

“Good lad. Dead you will be before you get there, whatever!”

Up with the dry towel and pull it like a saw across the back. Shout, dance, sing, and heat comes from the agony of the morning. On with the shirt, pull the flap between the legs and go like Risca for the door before the fingers of frost have you back. Change your mind and race down the garden. Fling open the door and Morfydd is sitting on the seat.

“Good God,” said she, “is nothing here private?”

“Quick, you, or I will do it in my trews.”

“Do it and to hell,” said she, “I was here first. Hie, back here this minute!”

Her hand went for the vest. “Right,” she said.

Off with her, on with me. I watched her go to Dada by the kitchen door.

“Dada,” she said, “Iestyn will not wear the vest I knitted special and it is cold enough for furs.”

There is a bitch for you.

“Vest on,” called Dada, “and buttoned at the top, please, and be so good as to shut that door.”

Two sheets of The Record, read one, use the other, and away.

Morfydd felt me for the vest when I got in, but I had no time to be angry for my lips were wet with the smell of bacon in the pan.

There is good to be a pig and give such joy. No smell like you in every corner of the house; up in bed with Mam, opening Edwina’s eyes, tickling the end of Twm-y-Beddau’s nose—out of the window and straight up the mountain to the heaven all pigs go with nothing on their conscience. Edwina put her face from under the table, blinking.

“Good to see you,” said Dada. “And remember that you are supposed to be cooking the breakfast. Outside with you and wash your hands and sharp to table, please.”

There was never any strictness in my father when he spoke to Edwina. She crawled out on all fours and smoothed back her long white hair from her face, smiling.

My second sister, Edwina, was nearly thirteen then.

To make a picture of her would need the hand and eye of a London artist. She was beautiful, but the serenity in her face, pale and proud, was something more than beauty. Her eyes were the palest I have ever seen, slanted so high at the outer corners that they turned the gaze of strangers. Mystery, deep and pure lay in Edwina, and when she was in school no other child would sit with her for fear of the tylwyth teg, the supremely fair and terrible ones who lived at Elgam Farm.

She touched my hand as she passed the table and I drew it back as if scalded. The hurt lay in her eyes, but I could not help it. All the people in town treated her the same, and little wonder. Rub shoulders with a tylwyth teg on a Sunday and the coal face might have you on Monday. Look one in the eyes, and watch for your toes in a tram, and more than one God–fearing man has had molten iron over his hands for calling goodnight to footsteps he believed to be human.

A white girl, Tomos Traherne, our preacher, called her once, which is only another name for wickedness.

Edwina’s eyes were big at me as she went out to wash, and she smiled so gently that I knew she had something under her apron that would come out at breakfast. But I did not worry for I was into the bacon now and packing bread in after it, thinking of the trams running the finished iron down the mountain to the canal at Llanfoist and through the arched bridges to Newport.

But she had her say at table. Morfydd was cutting bread, Dada sipping his tea. I knew something was coming by the rise and fall of her pointed breasts and the quickness of her fingers.

“Yes, girl?” asked my father, not looking at her.

Edwina swallowed hard, shivering. God knows why she was scared to death for he never laid a finger on any of us.

“True, is it, that Iestyn starts work today?” she said.

“Aye. And what of it?” he asked his tea.

She screwed her hands. “The English preacher do say he is going up years before time.”

My father blew steam from his tea. “Does he now?”

“Aye. And I heard him tell the owner straight that it is terrible to see the little ones on The Top in winter and that heaven has no place for the father who sends them there.”

It was out. Sweat sprang to her forehead and she closed her eyes and wiped it into her hair.

“Excuse me,” I said, getting down. “I will start going.”

“Wait, Iestyn.” Rising, my father went to the fire and lit his pipe. “Let us be clear, Edwina. Is it the English preacher saying this or my daughter?”

“Little matter,” said Morfydd with a sniff. “Everybody in town is thinking it.” She washed that down with tea. “Including me.”

“Good,” replied Dada. “Now let it be said without English preachers and owners.”

No nerves in Morfydd. She smiled dangerously, her dark, rebellious eyes lifting slowly. “Diawl! Too young he is, and you know it. We are not like the Hughes or the Griffiths—a penny a week less and they starve.” She cocked her thumb at me. “You send a baby to work in iron in a house that is already taking thirty shillings a week. It is not Christian.”

Dad blew out smoke. “Take my shift at the forge today. Dressed in trews you might run the house better, I doubt.”

“Easy to say, but no answer,” said Morfydd, and pushed her chair back and stamped to the fire.

“O, please, do not quarrel,” begged Edwina, gripping herself.

“Shut the snivelling. It do gain nothing,” whispered Morfydd. “I say a bitch on every man who sends a child under ten to work with fire. God help us, the owners will be snatching them from their cradles soon, and that is not the only injustice. Half the town is in debt to the Company Shop and the other half starving. The place is in rags at the height of winter. Over the Coity in Nanty we work like horses and here we live like pigs, and when Hill says grunt we grunt. …”

“It is written,” said Dada. “As poor we must labour.”

“Aye, labour, and sweat by the bucketful. Right, you! Does Tomos Traherne tell you what else is written? Suffer little children and such is the Kingdom—that is written, too, he says. But Sara Roberts chips the ore when she is not as high as His knee. Little Cristin Williams is buried with cold and Enid Griffiths gets the iron over her legs at nine!”

“As poor we are born to suffering,” said Dada quietly.

“Whisht!” cried Morfydd. “Suffering all right and called early for the Kingdom, by order of the masters and the preachers who take their money, eh? Listen! The God of Traherne is a pagan Christ. Sick to death I am of the bowing and scraping and tired enough to sleep for a month, and if Iestyn goes to Garndyrus he goes without my permission.”

“This has been a long time coming out,” said Dada.

“But not soon enough,” breathed Morfydd, her eyes on fire. “If there is not a man with the belly to lead us we can soon find another out of town. Mr Williams comes from London to speak to us and there is not a soul at his meeting …”

“Wait. What do you know of Williams?”

“That he stands for fair wages and decent hours like the workers are fighting for in London.”

“You have been to his meetings, then?”

“Yes, and not ashamed of it.”

“Nobody says you should be, but you will keep his talk out of the house or find another place to live, for I will not have it used as a political platform. Save your speeches for the mountain, and do not blame me if the Baileys run you out of Nanty, for they are dead against lawyers.”

“The Baileys have more friends than they think,” whispered Morfydd.

“O, Morfydd!” breathed Edwina, her hands clasped.

“Yes,” said my father. “For I am a worker and a good worker knows his place, and perhaps you will tell me what we would do without the Hills and Baileys, who have put their every penny into these mountains and are entitled to something back, even at the cost of sweated labour.”

“And perhaps you will tell me what they would do without us,” shouted Morfydd. “The masters of these towns are bleeding us to death, and if Williams had his way he would kick the backside of every ironmaster from here to England.”

“Easy in front of the children, please,” said Dada.

“Labour indeed! Crawling through the galleries where the masters would not rear their pigs, and them sitting in the middle of their Company Parks paying wages in kind and their prices in the Tommy Shops higher every month!”

“Finish now,” said Dada.

“God help me, I am not started,” said Morfydd. She swung to me. “Away to Mam and say goodbye, Iestyn, and remember that it was your father who sent you to work years before your time for pigs of ironmasters who have money to burn.”

“Enough!” roared Dada, and hit the table with his fist in a sudden fury that sent me from the table and scrambling up the stairs.

My mother was sitting up in bed as if awaiting me.

“Trouble downstairs, is it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “About the ironmasters as usual, but finished now. I am going to Garndyrus this morning unless Dada changes his mind.”

“He will not change it. That Morfydd will get us hung with her speeches and shouting.”

“Chipping the ore first,” I said, “and then on the trams with the Howells boys to learn spragging. Away now, is it?”

My mother nodded as if not seeing me, and the lovely smile went from her face. I will always remember my mother as I saw her then, for beautiful she looked with her long, brown hair over her shoulders. A noble face she had, with the stamp of the manse on it. You could see she was not born at a tub. Pick, pick went her fingers on the blankets, always a sign of trouble with her. I was half way through the door when she called me back.

“Iestyn, bad times are coming, Dada says, and money will be shorter. Another little one is with me. Clothes will be needed, extra milk and food. That is why you are going up early to Garndyrus.”

Swollen in the waist she had been these last few weeks and sickness with her in the morning, which I had heard was a bad sign. A terrible business it was when these babies came, with Wicked Gwennie Lewis in a bother with deacons and Mrs Pantrych the scandal of the neighbourhood. And when Dathyl Jenkins caught her first the sidesmen pulled her out of the front row at Chapel and chased her up the mountain with Bibles and sticks. Morfydd lived in dread of having one, for I had often heard her praying about it. And here was Mam smiling and nodding about it as brazen as the foreign women.

“Good God,” I said.

Often I had seen the Irish women in town, big in the hips and stomach, setting out for Abergavenny market with their baskets. Mrs O’Reilly for one. There is a size for you is that Mrs O’Reilly. Down North Street she goes like a ship in full sail, with the wind under her skirts and her bonnet streamers fluttering, rosy face glowing, smiling one way and bowing another, not giving a damn for her trouble, though every soul in town knew it was Barney Kerrigan, Nantyglo. Then Dathyl Jenkins, the daughter of Big Rhys, I saw once in the Company Shop. Happy as sin and as pretty as a picture looked Dathyl that morning—lifting her stomach sideways to get it through the crowd and pushing the people about with it inside and chattering like a magpie. Mervyn Jones Counter had something to say, as usual:

“There is healthy you look, Dathyl Jenkins. Three of a kind you are having, is it?”

“Two for Crawshay Bailey and one for Will Blaenavon, I am thinking,” said Dathyl. “Marrying, we are, next Sunday at Brynmawr, so Will says, thank God.”

“No chance for Chapel, then?” asked skinny Mrs Gwallter with her nose up.

“Dead I will be before I enter Chapel,” said Dathyl, putting her stomach on the counter. “Brynmawr to make it respectable, says Will, and to hell with Tomos Traherne and the deacons.”

“A loaf of bread,” said Mrs Gwallter, “and two penn’orth of accidents, please. A terrible thing it is, Mervyn Jones, when a woman does not know the father.”

“Worse when she does,” replied Dathyl, giggling as Mervyn cut the meat. “All bone and muscle is Will, but I would not give your Mr Gwallter bed room,” which put the other women into fits.

But Dathyl did not marry at Brynmawr or any other place, for Will was absent at the altar. Sorry in my heart I was at the time, for all the town was talking, saying it was this one and that one, and Owen Howells had a finger in the pie unless Morfydd was mistaken, although Big Rhys, Dathyl’s father, laid poor Will out for burial in the Abergavenny Fountain and his three farmer friends beside him.

And now Mama.

“Well,” said she now. “What is it thinking?”

“Sorry I am,” I said. “Will there be trouble for you?”

Her eyes went big, and she began to laugh, making the bed shake. She put out her arms and held me tight, laughing in tears, as women do.

“O, Iestyn,” she said. “So small you are to be working for me while I lie here like a lazy old lump. Listen, boy. The tales they tell you in town are nothing to do with your mam, for I am respectable.”

“Good,” I said. “Now I am from here.”

But she caught my hands. “Take care on the mountain, boy. Keep clear of the trams and away from the horses, and try to stay out of the wind, eh?”

I kissed her and was down into the kitchen before she could wink. Morfydd, her face still flushed with anger, was waiting with a scarf she had knitted for herself.

“Round here, you,” she said, tying me up and tucking in the ends. “Freeze if you must but do it in style.” She gathered my things from the table. “Eating-bag, tea-bottle, vest back on, hair combed, scarf. Right now, away!” She pushed me through the door. “No fighting with the men and keep off the women.”

“I will pray for you,” whispered Edwina.

“Aye,” said Morfydd. “Very warm he will be after prayers. Move your backside, boy. Dada is waiting and scared to death of being late.”

She tried to kiss me but I pushed her away and ran into the dark street. My father had already left the Square, and I could hear his iron-tipped boots ringing on the cobbles. Gasping, I joined him with a quick upward glance, knowing he was frowning.

“Only one way to go to work, Iestyn—early. Please remember it.”

“Yes, Dada.”

“Which shows respect for the man who pays you—Mr Crawshay Bailey of Nantyglo, who has been kind enough to take you on his books and lend you to Garndyrus.”

“Very kind,” I said.

We clanked on past Staffordshire Row. The moon was bright and full and shivering with frost and the stars over the mountain looked cold enough to faint from the sky. My father said:

“You are going to work before your time because of a new baby coming, do you underst. . .