Rape of the Fair Country: The Mortymer Trilogy Book One by Alexander Cordell

Author:Alexander Cordell [Cordell, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

GOING ON shift next day was more like a military parade, and the three of us were on early morning at that, which meant half the town was risen at first light.

“Dear me,” said Mam, cutting sandwiches. “If ever a man was begging for a hammering it is mine. Hywel, have sense! With the three of you on the books at Nantyglo the Cattle will be here by dark if you spend an hour on shift.”

“And plenty of workers here to throw them back where they came from,” said my father, easing into his boots.

“Is there going to be trouble?” begged Edwina, her eyes going big.

“If there is you will not be in it,” said Jethro. “We will give him Dai Probert Scotch Cattle, mind, and you can tell them that in Nanty.”

My father grinned as he sat at table. Jethro was his image, fearless, years before his time for manhood.

Courage was all right, but often, when women are about, there is not enough to go round. The case to me was clear. We were men employed by Crawshay Bailey. We were on the books of Nantyglo, paid by the Nantyglo paymasters but lent to Garndyrus. If Nantyglo was on strike then we should be on strike, according to the Union. The Scotch Cattle, born and bred in Nanty, were getting bolder. Even Crawshay Bailey had doubled the strength of his ‘Workmen Volunteers’ and strengthened the walls of his defence roundhouses. For the crime of scab or blackleg men were being dragged out for floggings, furniture was being burned. Legs were being broken in Blackwood for the sin of working when the Union said stop. And Dai Probert, the giant Bull of the Nantyglo Scotch Cattle, was a pig when it came to forcing the Union. Nantyglo had been out two weeks—she had been out for shorter times before and my father and I had worked on at Garndyrus. But now the warning had been given.

And the town rose early to see if we had the courage.

“Dai Probert will take some stopping, Dada,” I said at table.

“It is time he was stopped,” said he, chewing.

“By who—the three of us?”

“Not in front of your mother, if you please, Iestyn.”

“Eh? And why not, may I ask?” said she.

“Ears like bats, but sharper. Get on with the bread, woman, and leave men’s business to men.” He sighed.

“Aye aye?” she replied, the knife a point at him. “But I am in this, too, mind, if there is trouble, and Edwina. Dai Probert do not come all the way from Nanty to paint doors unless they are special ones.” She flung down the knife. “The Mortymers—it is always the Mortymers to set the examples and do the spouting, and when it comes to the end of it less notice is taken than if we were Twm-y-Beddau or the Ffyrnigs.”

The walk to Garndyrus was worth seeing that morning.

Every light in The Square was on; people very busy hanging out washing when it was too dark to see pegs.

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