another tollgate ahead. He sighed and considered riding out into the dark field to one side of the road and skirting the gate so as to avoid the delay of waking the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers seemed invariably to be sound sleepers.
And yet this one was not. The door of the small cottage beside the gate opened slowly even as he approached and a head appeared around it. Then the door opened wider and a thin, stooped figure stepped outside, clutching what appeared to be a giant club.
“What do you want?” the gatekeeper demanded gruffly in the voice of an elderly woman.
“I want to take my horse from this side of the gate to the other side,” he said with weary hauteur. The woman was carrying no light. But she was still clutching her club with both hands. He also realized that she had spoken in Welsh.
He had heard it spoken all about him for the past few days of his journey. What surprised him now was the fact that without thinking he had answered the woman in her own language.
“Who are you?” she asked. But she did not wait for his answer. She was peering beyond him into the darkness. “Who else is with you?”
He was impatient to be moving on. But he realized that the woman was frightened. He did not blame her. It was a lonely stretch of road. He spoke more gently than he might have done.
“I am Wyvern,” he said. “And I travel alone, Mother. I would have you open the gate if you will.”
“Wyvern?” She took a step forward and looked intently and suspiciously up at him. “The Earl of Wyvern?” She bobbed a sudden and awkward curtsy, still clutching her club. “Oh, Duw, what are you doing out on the road alone at this time of the night, then? I thought you were Rebecca.”
Well. To be mistaken for a woman, even in the darkness. “Rebecca?” he said, his tone more frosty.
“Come to break down the gate with her daughters and all the rest of them,” she said. “I couldn’t have stopped them, mind, but they wouldn’t have got away without some bruised knuckles and knees.” She moved her club back and forth in front of her as if to prove her point.
Was this not Tegfan land or very close to it? He leaned down from his horse’s back and frowned. “Some woman and her daughters are terrorizing you?” he asked. “And threatening to damage property that belongs to a trust? I hope you have reported this matter.”
“Oh, Duw love you, your lordship,” she said. “Rebecca is not a woman and neither are her daughters. And there would be no point in reporting them. No one could catch them.”
Ah. He had heard it said that the keepers of tollgates were strange people. They lived lonely lives and were not on the whole very popular in their neighborhoods. This woman was clearly mad. It was time he rode on.
“Not that they have been around here since over three years ago, mind, in 1839,” the woman said. “But they will. Did you see that?” She held the club in one hand, resting it on the ground like a staff, while she jabbed out her free arm in the direction of the hills behind which the fire had been burning earlier. “It is not a gate or a gatehouse yet. The fire was too big. Hayricks, if my guess is right. But it is a start, mark my words. Soon it will be gates and Rebecca will be back.”
“No one has seen her—him for longer than three years? But burning hayricks and tollgates was the sort of thing she did?” he asked. The woman might be mad, but the fire had been very real. “Doubtless after tonight’s work, if you are correct, she will be caught and punished.”
“Oh, Duw, Duw,” she said, “you will be trying to catch her yourself if she comes up this way, your lordship, but you never will. All the other gentlemen tried last time and the constables too. There were even soldiers looking to catch Rebecca and her daughters. But no one else was trying, do you see? Everyone else cheered them along and even went with them to smash the gates. And will again. Word has it that it is all starting again.”
Ah. A local rebellion against the turnpike trusts. Led by a man disguised as a woman. It was a wild idea, not without a certain romantic appeal, he supposed. A man