A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (24 page)

He stops. Not brown but green. Bright green, as if the blue river and the yellow ground beyond have been mixed together on a palette. As he comes closer he notices something stranger still: this green is changing with the wind – darker then lighter. Yellow-green and then moss-green. A haze: sap-green, leaf-green, new-growth-green.

Silas had divided his plots into rectangles and has brushed in the seed in turn – one direction for one patch and then another for the next. It is like a patchwork of fragments of the same cloth with different naps – the weft of one against the warp of another.

He starts to run then stops. Stands, and then looks again. The ground is covered in small green shoots, rough row after rough row.

He looks again. He calls, once: his voice high with excitement: ‘Megan, come and see this!'

Then Megan is turning with her basket of clothes; trying to run and then giving up; trotting – in his old boots because her own are too tight; then slowing to a quick walk with her arm around her bump. Her mouth is wide, anxious. No, not anxious, amazed and happy. ‘Silas! Oh, Silas.'

They grip hands and half turn; dance.

‘Oh. Oh. Look.'

They squeeze themselves together. In between them is the small bump and a feeble kick. Silas grins: a warble in the stomach.

He kneels in the mud to inspect the shoots. They are healthier than last year, stronger-looking, greener and not so straggly. Last year they seemed to grow too quickly, as if they were searching for something they couldn't find.

He reaches out and puts his arm around her again. She is trembling. ‘I thought something dreadful had happened,' she says, ‘I thought that maybe the seedlings had all been washed away.'

He draws her close. ‘No, my love, they're strong, very strong – quite different from last time. Maybe that was all that was wrong – it wasn't too much sun, but not enough water.'

She clutches him to her. ‘Everything is going to be all right, Silas, I know it. The new Wales! This is the start. Edwyn Lloyd was right all along.'

Just now he is too happy to argue.

Word travels fast. Within two weeks the whole of Rawson has come out to Silas' farm to look at his fields. The crop is continuing to grow strongly, whereas elsewhere the wheat is wilting like last year.

‘It needs more water,' Silas says. It is obvious now – why didn't they see it before? In a couple of weeks he has become Rawson's expert, and is revelling in his new authority. He visits the other farms passing judgement and giving advice on where to dig channels – as if he has spent years in the field refining his expertise.

Megan is inside the house resting. Her feet and hands are swollen and Mary Jones has instructed her to sit with her legs up whenever she can. She has also released Miriam from her duties in the Jones household so that she can be, according to Miriam, ‘an unpaid skivvy' to Megan instead. She does not come graciously. Sometimes Silas eavesdrops on the conversation.

‘Miriam, are you busy?' calls Megan.

‘Yes, I am.'

‘Well, if you aren't would you mind gathering more gorse for the stove?'

‘In a minute, Myfanwy and I are drawing a dog.'

‘Well, I suppose that's much more important then.'

Silas grins and then walks noisily in through the door. Miriam's chair immediately scrapes back.

‘I'll just go and get some, then,' she says, making a face at Myfanwy, and rushes through the door.

‘I'm going too,' says Myfanwy and hurries after her. Silas has heard Miriam explaining to Myfanwy that her own sister is just a baby and not much good as a conversationalist, so she has adopted Myfanwy as her favourite sister instead. So far she has taught the child to skip, knit a long tube of wool though a cotton reel with four nails hammered into it, write several names from the bible and draw the various animals they see in their excursions to the village. She also tells her long stories about the angels she has seen in the clouds and on the sides of mountains, and sometimes in the light above peoples' heads.

‘It's their soul escaping, see. The angels take care of it – they either put it back or they take it up to heaven.'

Like Megan she also believes in the
Tylwyth Teg
, but whereas Megan's fairies are malign, and held responsible for every pail of milk that turns sour and every plate or cup that is cracked or chipped, Miriam's fairies are helpful, leading her to find buttons she has lost and warning her of potential disasters that lie ahead.

Although self-confident, she is young for her seventeen years and handsome rather than pretty or beautiful. She seems like a drawn-out version of her snub-nosed mother; but whereas Mary is dextrous, Miriam has an awkwardness that is not improving with her years. She is intelligent, however, and a proficient reader and writer and Jacob has already proposed that she should join him at the school he has started. Silas suspects that the man is sweet on her, as until recently he made a point of stopping at the Jones house to speak to her whenever he came out to visit Megan. Silas was amused to see that she was either not interested or unaware of his attentions. Often she would choose the moment of his arrival to ride away on the horse she had persuaded her father to buy for her, or would hide herself away reading one of the books Jacob had left for her the week before.

These visits had become much less frequent recently of course; since their latest altercation over Edwyn, Silas has only seen Jacob from a distance, and he has taken to visiting Rawson on a Thursday when Selwyn was in charge of the store and Jacob was nowhere in sight.

But Jacob's tentative courtship, if indeed that is what it is, has recently been curtailed altogether. One Thursday in December Silas had arrived in Rawson to learn that another ship had arrived with supplies and almost immediately had departed again for Buenos Aires carrying Jacob as an additional passenger.

‘There was a berth spare, I've heard. Next we knew he'd gone,' Selwyn says. He looks awkward, as though he's given something away by accident. ‘Suppose Caradoc or Edwyn should have told you, not me.'

Silas waits for him to continue. No one had even thought to tell Megan. She will be hurt and upset. Everything seems to upset her at the moment.

‘According to the
Meistr
, Dr Rawson liked Jacob.' He sniffs. ‘Didn't notice that myself.'

Neither had Silas – as far as he could remember the two hadn't exchanged a single word.

‘Said the settlement needed a representative there, his right-hand man.' Selwyn smirks at his words and then looks around to check that no one is in earshot: ‘I reckon he just wanted him out of the way. Since you and him had that tiff the
Meistr's
found things a little awkward, I reckon. Been saying things about social harmony, and maybe he thinks this is the best way to get it.'

Megan is lying on the day bed Silas has made for her so she can see Myfanwy and Miriam work and play together. Her feet are so swollen now that it hurts every time she walks. Her fingers are swollen too – so much that she cannot knit or even shell eggs. ‘I am like one of those whales,' she moans. ‘A useless whale landed on the beach.'

She still has a couple of months to go and Silas can't see how she could get much larger. Across her stomach is a network of red and blue weals where her flesh has torn beneath.

She fans herself with a paper Myfanwy has folded for her and decorated with flowers and birds, and for a few minutes after he has told her about Jacob she is silent.

‘He slipped away,' he tells her, ‘like a thief in the night.'

‘Silas!' she says, ‘he's my brother! A man of the cloth too. You shouldn't say that.'

‘I only said “like a thief”,' he says.

‘Well, he'll be back soon I expect. He'll want to see his new niece or nephew.'

But he isn't.

The January sun shines. ‘It is relentless,' Megan says miserably, ‘I can't get cool.' But outside the wheat is growing strongly. When it shows signs of wilting he reopens the channel and allows the fields to flood again, and the plants swiftly recover.

‘It's an inspiration!' Edwyn says. ‘Silas' field shows us what we all can do!'

Silas looks down. He will not change his mind. It is still the
Meistr
underneath, he reminds himself, still the same snake.

‘How wide do you think the channels should be? Better ask Silas!' The
Meistr
slaps him on the back. ‘Here's your expert!'

The
Meistr
grins as if he wants a grin back. When he doesn't get one, he laughs. ‘Too modest! That's what he is,
brawd
! Too modest to say.'

Yeluc

In the summer the
rou
go inland close to the mountains and we follow. It is a beautiful place with trees, lush grass and many streams and ponds. There are bright birds flashing through trees and fish glinting in pools. The
rou
have their young there and it is a busy time for us. The soft pelt of an unborn
rou
is a prized thing but rarely taken.

But as the mountains are fertile they are also cold and soon the
rou
sniff the air and smell the winter coming. Then they begin to drift back towards the sea.

These days Seannu and her sisters grumble. ‘Why can we not just stay here?' they ask. So I tell them about the cold. About the spirits that live there, how they are malicious things that drink the blood of women and crack the bones of men and soon they are rolling up the skins of the
toldo
and stamping on the fires more determinedly than I am.

Are we going to see Si-las? they ask, but I shake my head. Patagones, I tell them, and wait for their howls of disappointment.

Silas goes out to the field early each morning looking for signs that the crop might be ripening. That, at least, is looking promising. Each stalk is straight and each ear full.

New families have arrived from the United States and Selwyn is busy introducing them to the ways of the colony. They are wealthy, young and vigorous and have inspired everyone with their scientific modern methods. They are used to farming on a large scale, and have a certain amount of swagger to them, but they are friendly and happy to share what they know and own.

They have told him it is most important to harvest just before the wheat bursts into flower.

The weather turns, the air becomes colder and Silas lies in bed beside the sleeping Megan and thinks about the baby ripening alongside the wheat. Sometimes he imagines the grains are like miniature babies growing plumper inside their casing. Then he imagines the baby ripening too, growing fingers and toes, hair and fingernails, and its belly becoming round and its legs kicking. He thinks of it like the frogspawn he once saw and the way the tadpoles became frogs, one set of limbs and then another and then the tail shortening. A gust blows at the window making the rhea gut rattle and beside him Megan squirms and moans. ‘What is it?' he asks, grabbing her arm. ‘Is it time?'

She doesn't reply.

‘Answer me,
gwraig
!'

He struggles out of bed then fumbles with a tinderbox. When he can eventually see her face it is grimacing with pain.

‘Do you want someone?'

She nods, and then gasps again. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and tries to stand then cries out as her feet touch the floor.

‘I'm getting Mary.'

Her nightclothes have risen up above her knees and trickling down her legs is something that is not quite red enough to be blood.

‘Quickly, Silas, quickly.'

Myfanwy is at the door looking in. He takes her by the hand and leads her into the kitchen. ‘Stay here, understand?'

The child nods.

‘Just for five minutes while I fetch Mary.'

The birth is almost silent: there is just a single cry and then a subdued mewl.

Mary opens the bedroom door just for a few seconds to tell Silas that the baby is very weak, and Megan is weeping that the child is going to die. An hour later she sends out Miriam to him to tell him to fetch the minister so they can at least baptise the child. The girl looks pale and frightened, her hands trembling by her sides.

‘Well, at least tell me what it is before I go.'

‘Another girl,' says Miriam, and Myfanwy looks up and smiles.

‘A sister!' she says and claps her hands. ‘Can I see?'

Miriam tells her to hush. ‘Not yet,' she says, and glances at Silas, ‘Mam said I had to tell you both she's resting and doesn't want to see anyone.'

The dawn is coming. There is a pinkness to the sky in the east, and despite the wind it is a pleasant morning. It must be the wind that is making tears in his eyes – no man can mourn a child he has never met. And anyway Mary might be wrong. How can anyone tell for sure if a baby is to die? Miracles happen, and even the sickliest-looking children sometimes survive.

Caradoc pulls on a jacket over his nightshirt and steps quickly into his trousers.

‘Not always right, these women,' he tells Silas kindly and Silas nods.

But when they see the child they know that Mary is right. The baby is a strange pink-blue, her skin translucent with her blood vessels and ribs showing clearly beneath. She makes little sound except a faint wheeze and her chest seems to be fluttering rather than breathing. They have little time to see, because as soon as they enter the room Megan snatches the baby from the bed where she is lying beside her, and wraps her so vigorously in a blanket that Silas is afraid that life has been quenched from the child already. Mary glances at them and frowns, then motions them from the room.

‘I think her mind has been affected,' she says when they are in the kitchen. ‘She wouldn't speak to me, even when... even when the baby was coming. Even then. She hardly made a sound, not even at the end. It was as if she was determined not to speak. And she's not looked at her, you know. Just keeps moaning that the baby will die and that she will die too. I don't know what to do, how to make her comfortable. She has let me bathe the child, but cries and snatches her back if I try to put her in her cradle.'

‘Perhaps if she rests...' Silas says.

Mary turns to the minister. ‘I'm sorry, Caradoc, but I think you've had a wasted journey. I don't want to force her to give up the child.'

They return to the room. Megan's face is flushed but it is too early for childbed fever, and her eyes are brighter than they have been for months. Myfanwy rushes in and throws her arms around her asking excitedly to see the baby, but Megan pushes her away as if she doesn't know her.

‘Mam?' Myfanwy steps back then turns to her father, her eyes like two small, overfilled ponds in the dim light. ‘Dadda?'

Silas picks his daughter up and looks at the woman on the bed. ‘Mam is not well,
cariad
fach
. Don't worry, she'll be better soon.'

Mary tells Miriam to take Myfanwy home with her. ‘I will stay here a while, if you like.'

‘
Diolch
yn fawr
,' he says, thanking her for her quiet competence.