A Bugle For The New Day

                                          Chapter two, part five.

In an effort to clear his mind and to concentrate on the important issues facing him, he closed his eyes as though shutting a book, and when he opened them again, the incident with Flora had been relegated to another page the one now before him devoted entirely to the affairs of the morning and the meeting with his landlords.

He called them the Three Crows, an understatement uncommon for Ragway: the Three Vultures would have been more apt. Individually unreasonable, collectively implacable, they had been at war with him since the day he bought the quarry two years ago. Josiah Morgan owned the land containing the broad vein, producing most of the dressed slab: Eli Humphreys held the floor of the valley where the quarry buildings spread in such disarray: and Ithel Pugh, self designated leader of the trio, he possessed the largest slice of the land, through which ran the narrow vein workings and three quarters of the quarry’s output.

The three Welshmen were as formidable, as stubborn as the land itself, their roots deep and entrenched as their opinions. Their eyes having the far away look of those who spend their lives scanning horizons in a constant vigil to repel intruders, an impression outsiders  would soon verify when confronted by their inherent prejudices.

Yet the land over which they lorded with such imperious disdain was, as they must have been aware, incapable of producing revenue until the Tudors scratched the surface and found the blue rock hiding beneath the worthless scrub. Previously, man had struggled with this land, and the ruins of their hopes testified in overgrown walls and skeletal cottages reduced to piles of stones by the merciless winds. As Ragway saw it, marauding nature would return if he failed to convince the three grasping landlords that his quarry was, in all truth, losing money and in danger of closing unless they agreed to the terms he was about to put to them.

When he bought Brynllech it was making a modest profit and he had seen the venture as a way to integrate himself with the community, and, more important, provide him with the opportunity to become a local overlord in control of lives and destinies. Slate was then in demand: there was talk of a boom. But it was not to last…

Competition was coming from overseas, building styles were changing, the industry was going into decline. Yet the quarrymen’s Union, gaining strength despite the setbacks at Bethesda, was demanding higher wages, although production was falling. It was time for cutting costs, impossible at Brynllech without an injection of capital, for more bores were needed urgently, as many of the narrow vein facings were worked out.

None of these difficulties had been given consideration by the Three Crows; they had pushed all his arguments aside and looked around covetously at the magnificence of his home, at the princely style of his living. Not only did they defend the onerous overheads with which they burdened him, they were continually seeking more. In addition to basic rents, he had to meet a royalty of one fifteenth cash value of all slate removed. He also had to limit himself to set areas of working, and deviation from agreed shaft locations and depths being pounced upon immediately.

He was caught in a dilemma of an asset he would be unable to sell requiring extra capital with no guarantee of any return, a position exacerbated by the intransigence of Welsh landlords determined, he was convinced, to meet and defeat the possibility of further exploitation by the English.

He heard the crunch of wheels on the drive. The carriages were arriving….

© Mark Pearson 2007

  start               previous                next

image by aerialfroggof flickr.