Page 40 of The Ladies Least Likely
“Mother Morris? What about you?” Pen watched as the older woman bit off a length of string.
“Twll din pob Saes,” Mother Morris cried. She leaned forward and muttered a musical cadence of Welsh, her mouth turned down at the corners.
“An Englishman came after her husband died and took her farm for the coal,” Widow Jones told them. “TheSaessaid the land belonged to him. Her sons were put to work like animals and the mines killed all three of them—cave in, poisoned air, lung fever.” The widow shook her head while Mother Morris hugged herself and rocked in her chair.
“TheSaesnever paid a penny to their families when they died. She lost one daughter to childbed, and the rest found new husbands. Mother was sent to the workhouse here, and that’s where Miss Gwen found her.”
Widow Jones turned to the older woman. “Not allSaesare like that, Mother,” she said, indicating Pen.
“Dim, he’s Cymry,” Mother nodded. “One of us.”
Gwen, startled, glanced at Pen to see what he made of this acknowledgement. But he simply turned to survey the boys at their game, his face thoughtful.
“Ifor was brought to St. Woolos when he was three,” Gwen said. “He’d gone blind by then. His mother served the sailors at the wharves and caught the English pox.”
Pen scowled at her. “The pox is the French disease.”
“And the French call it the Spanish disease.” Evans managed a smile. “At any rate, it’s rare that the children survive. Ifor’s a fighter.”
“Mr. Stanley couldn’t raise him, of course. A bachelor priest? But we could,” Gwen said.
“Me,” Tomos said, looking up from the board.
“Ah,bachgen.Tomos’s mother brought him here because—” She hesitated. “They had so many mouths to feed, and he’s a strapping boy, isn’t he? She asked if he could work here for his keep.”
“Bwyd,” Tomos said happily, separating his game pieces from Ifor’s, which were carved with a mark.
“Yes, you earn your food and more,” Gwen told him.
“And Dovey.” Pen’s eyes settled on her. Cerys stilled, listening.
Dovey focused on her needles, her long lashes hiding her eyes. “My mother was born on a sugar plantation in the West Indies. She was given to the planter’s daughter as her companion and went with her at her marriage. Turns out the husband liked my mother as well as he liked his wife. He, my father, brought them both to England when he retired from his government post, and I was raised in Bristol.”
She paused, turning the needles in her hand to begin a new row of stitches. “He left papers freeing my mother and I when he died, but he didn’t leave any money, and his widow didn’t see it her place to look out for us, though my mother had served her so long. Maman took in sewing and I worked for a hatmaker, as a hairdresser, as a lady’s maid.”
Her needles clicked steadily. Gwen continued sorting clothes, knowing this story already, but the others listened, rapt. Only Evans seemed detached, staring out the window above Mathry’s head. Pen was as riveted as Cerys.
“My husband was a Dutchman who came to Bristol to learn English shipbuilding and help the Dutch Navy rebuild its fleet. It didn’t take him long to win me. We married in Bristol and took a small set of rooms.” Dovey’s gaze settled on her daughter, and she smiled. “He was wild about you, my darling. He boasted that you have his eyes.”
Cerys’s green eyes shone, but Dovey looked back at her work as if she couldn’t, for the moment, bear the sight of her daughter’s glowing face. “Because he knew the Baltic Sea, Jan was hired to help take a ship filled with riches to Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, in St. Peterburg. So many riches—artwork, fabrics, fancy metalwork. I’d never seen such fine things. They promised a commission that would have bought us a house.”
“But it didn’t,” Pen said somberly.
Tears gathered on Dovey’s lashes. “They sailed too late in autumn and the storms blew them into the Archipelago Sea. It’s known as a graveyard for ships. Hundreds have gone down there. Including Jan. His friends in the navy searched, they told me. But they’ve never found a trace of his ship. Not a bolt, not a plate. Not a man.” She fell silent.
“Full fathom five thy love lies,” Pen said in a low voice, “and of his bones are coral made.”
Evans’s head swung round, his expression darkening in rebuke, but Gwen recognized the poetry. “Nothing of him doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange,” she murmured. At Dovey’s small frown, she explained. “When we readThe Tempest,remember? Ariel sings a lament to Ferdinand to tell him his father has been lost at sea.”
“And where did you learn Shakespeare, Miss Gwen?” Pen asked, his voice soft but somehow dangerous. “You haven’t told us your tale.”
“Ah.” She lifted a shift from the box, a woman’s gown, nearly new. She ran a hand over the fine linen, soft as silk. “Does anyone care?”
“Everyone else shared their histories,” Pen said. “Those of us who could.”
Gwen nodded and put the gown aside. A shift that fine would have been prized by its owner, worn as often as possible. It could only be sorrow that brought it to St. Sefin’s barely worn.
She cleared her throat and kept her eyes on her task, aware of how the late golden light in the room fell in thick shafts, catching the dust motes in their dance. Outside the songbirds began their evening chorus.
