West Wales, March 1843

You know the one thing I wish about that night?

I wish I’d seen my father.

I just wish I’d known – without so much as a scholar’s doubt – that he was there. Because all through the weeks and months afterwards – all through watching that girl die in the rain and being terrified that I’d be next if I said a word – the thought that Dada was one of them made it all right.

If Dada was part of it, it had to be.

Mind, that’s not what I thought when I first saw them. Didn’t think much, to be honest, just felt a half-terrified excitement go through me – you know, that scalding thrill that makes you scared you’re going to piss yourself.

Shots’d slapped me awake. Ear-clapping powder shots. And the smell of smoke. And noise.

I was halfway towards the loft ladder before I was properly awake.

Heart hammering, breath catching in my throat.

Fire!

Scrabbling, hands and knees over the hay – get out, get out!

But then sense caught up. Fire didn’t make that noise.

I stopped. Listened. Moved back, towards the window. Footsteps.

That’s what the noise was. Footsteps outside.

I didn’t have to lift the shutter, it was warped enough to see around. And there was my fire, going by on the road down below. Rag-and-pitch torches. The reek of them was black and tarry in the freezing air.

I watched the lights bob down the road and my heart followed the clump and clack of boots and clogs on the wet road. Men marching. Not just walking by, like they’d have done if it’d just been one or two of them. Marching.

Clump, clump, clack, clack. They weren’t in perfect time. They were a bit ragged, as if they could see themselves doing it and thought – look at us, marching like soldiers! But still, marching they were.

I pulled the shutter further open and stared down. Their faces were black and gold in the flames and the smoke from their torches hung in the air after they’d walked by, as if it was trying to hide them.

Dozens of men, there were. Maybe a hundred. Not easy to count a mob in the dark, even with a bright moon.

I pulled the shutter right up so I could see down the road to the tollgate. And that’s when the piss-pressing excitement grabbed hold of me. It was happening. Here. In front of my eyes. Because there he was, on a tall horse, huge in the moonlight. Sitting there, his face so black he almost disappeared clear into the night. Only the white nightgown on him showed he was there.

Rebecca!

My father’d been wishing The Lady here for months. Rebecca from Efailwen, he’d said. That’s who we need.

But wishful thinking was all it’d been. He hadn’t really, honestly thought she’d come. Not in the flesh. Not for us.

I shivered. Needed my blanket, now I wasn’t going to be burned to death.

All that last summer the newspaper at chapel’d been full of a new word. Unrest. The paper’d gone from hand to hand between service and Sunday school until the print was just dark grey smudges. Men who could read recited the words to those who couldn’t. And we’d listened, us boys. Quiet for once, pretending we weren’t there. Listened with our ears out on stalks. Working men were taking up weapons in England and walking away from manufacturing machines. The militia was putting down Chartism – whatever kind of violence that was – in Merthyr Tydfil. In our own country! Workers were trying to force a bit of fairness for themselves and their families.

Unrest.

Then, after the newspapers, it was the Bible. And we listened again. More than we’d ever listened to scripture before. Suddenly, it was speaking to us, the way the minister’d always said it would, one day. Only we’d never believed him.

They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger. That was the one we kept saying to each other. Hunger wasn’t killing us yet, but we knew it was crouching nearby, teeth bared. We’d heard our fathers dreading it. And we wanted to fight. They that be slain by the sword… of course, we turned that round. In our minds, it’d be us with a sword in our hand. We’d be the ones doing the slaying, thank you very much.

And it wasn’t just us boys, either. We watched the men looking at each other from under their eyebrows. Nodding and muttering. Finding words to give voice to a defiance that didn’t sit easily with them. We’re men, not cattle. If it’s one or the other, better to die with a sword in your hand, isn’t it, than with the cramps of hunger in your belly? Got to do something, haven’t we?

We’d thought it was just words. When had we ever seen our fathers lift a finger against their betters? Never. We’d do something when we were men, of course we would. But not our fathers. Not the men who touched their caps and scraped up their bits of English for the squires and their stewards. Not our fathers who paid over every ancient farthing in the house for rents and rates and tolls and got nothing but tired, bony land in return.

But then Rebecca’d come down from the hills and it wasn’t just words any more.

And now the Lady was here. Not up in the Preselis. Not in gossip and tales. Here, right in front of me.

Was my father in the crowd? The other men from our chapel? I strained the marchers with my eyes but black faces were all I could see. Was he there? I looked and looked but I couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see anybody I recognised, not for definite. Every man-jack I knew in the world might’ve been there and I couldn’t’ve put a name to one of them. I stared as hard as I could but even moonlight and firelight added together couldn’t show me what I wanted to see. My father with a sword in his hand.

Truth to tell, I couldn’t see many real weapons. Everyday tools, the men had. Axes, hammers, saws, billhooks. Heavy, sharp tools for hacking and smashing.

I shivered. My teeth were chattering from excitement and cold.

Heads and shoulders were still going by beneath me. They were as noisy as you like, didn’t care who heard them. Shouting, laughing. Even singing a bit of a hymn. And all of it had a shrill edge to it. It wasn’t everyday laughing and singing and shouting – it was like that moment in an argument when words suddenly turn weak on you and fists finish things.

Some of the men had nightgowns on, like Rebecca. But most just had an apron or a shawl. There was the odd tall Sunday hat but not many. I didn’t bother looking under the hats for Dada. My mother’d never lend him her best hat to go gatebreaking, I knew that for a certainty. She’d be afraid of never getting it back.

I raked my eyes through the crowd pushing up to the tollgate. Was he here? We were half an hour’s walk from home and that was nothing to Dada. He’d walk that far to give you an egg.

He was desperate enough to risk the militia and come here, I knew that.

He’d told me straight – we didn’t have the money for lime-tolls in the spring. And if we couldn’t spread lime, our land wouldn’t yield. Caught in the old farmers’ trap, weren’t we? Penniless now if we did pay out, penniless later if we didn’t. That was why Dada’d hired me out. If Uncle Price fed and clothed me for a year, Dada could put lime on our ground. If I stayed home, he couldn’t.

I wiped a nose-drip with the side of my finger and pulled the blanket up around me. Was Uncle Price watching from the inn next door? Or was he snoring after the skinful he’d had with the farmer he’d come to buy a bull from? I didn’t care. He’d brought me with him and I was going to see Rebecca.

The air bit at my nose and cheeks. Stragglers hurried not to be last at the tollgate. Bootnail sparks came off the road in the dark with the haste of them.

A sudden bang made me jump so hard my teeth rattled. A powder shot like the one that’d woken me up. Then another bang came and I saw an axe handle beating against the tollhouse door.

The man holding the axe was shouting. ‘Out. Get out here, now!’ Bang, bang, bang.

The gatekeeper came out quick enough. Quicker than I’d’ve come for a mob. Passed himself round the edge of the door and shut it behind him, as if he was just keeping the cold out.

Shouting turned to jeering, then, and a big man in a shawl stepped forward and started pushing him. Perhaps he was crooked, the gatekeeper – took more than the proper toll off people who couldn’t read the notices.

I pulled the blanket up round my face. The cold was making my face bones ache.

The big man was still going at the gatekeeper. Pushing him with the haft of his axe. Holding it at both ends, like a staff.

Push, push.

The keeper stumbled backwards and went down.

There was some ragged cheering and my heart started banging at my ribs again. What was going to happen now? Crooked or not, I didn’t want them to kill him.

No. That wouldn’t happen. Beca didn’t kill people. It was the gate they’d come for. And maybe the tollhouse as well. Easy enough to put a gate back up, isn’t it? Not so easy to get a gatekeeper to stay and take tolls if he’s got no house.

A sound came from somewhere to my right. I whipped round and hit my head on the window frame.

I tried to rub the pain away, staring and staring back up the road until my eyes burned and I could see a thousand pinpricks in the dark. But there was nobody there. Nothing.

Then a latch clicked shut on the street below. It must’ve been a door opening I’d heard. Somebody wanting a look.

I turned back. The gatekeeper had an axe in his hands now and the crowd were shouting and jostling. ‘Break it’ a voice shouted. ‘Break it!’

Then they were all shouting: Break it! Break it!

The gatekeeper didn’t move. My heart was thumping against my ribs. Break it, I wanted to shout. Don’t make them beat you into it.

I stared into the crowd, desperate to see my father. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen. The gatekeeper might get a hiding but my father wouldn’t let them kill him.

Black face after black face I looked at, and any one of fifty of them might’ve been him. Dada, are you there?

Break it, break it!

A man in a tall hat stepped forward and pushed the gatekeeper towards the gate.

Break it, break it!

Whatever was holding the gatekeeper back suddenly gave way. He turned, swung the axe over his head and brought it down, hard, on the top bar of the gate. Must’ve jarred every inch of him from fingernails to backbone.

Something like a cheer went up, then, and filled the night. A terrible, savage sound it was – full of hate and fear and triumph and bloodlust. Made me shake at the thought of what might happen next. The mob rushed forwards like weaners at a trough, pushing and shoving, all wanting to be at the front. I couldn’t see the gate or the keeper any more, only axes and hammers swinging.

The sound of it was tremendous, even from fifty yards away. Like a whole wood being cut down. A hundred axes biting into a hundred trees. Bits of gate splintering and getting thrown onto the road. A hollow, ringing sound. Good, solid timber on frost-hard ground.

Two men were standing, one on each side of the gate, holding all the torches. Two or three in each hand, they had, and the flames were running together, like bonfires that’ve caught at the trash, twisting in the cold air, pitch smoke pouring up into the black sky. But the night bore down on them and all the flames lit up were the soot-blacked faces of those two men.

When the smashing was finished, the Rebeccas gathered the splintered wood into a pile and pushed the torches into the middle of it, one by one. Stabbed the flames in as deep as they’d go.

I thought Rebecca’d stay till the end. Till the gate’d burned to ash. But he didn’t. As soon as the flames were high enough and hot enough to stop anybody trying to kick them out, he turned his horse and walked it back through the middle of them. And every man turned and fell into step behind him.

Within a minute there was nobody watching the gate burn but its keeper. Rebecca was gone. And so was my last chance to see my father.

I never saw him again. In less than two months, he was dead.

And, the next time I had anything to do with the Lady, it would damn’ nearly kill me, too.