Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “Now, now!” said Mam, finger up. “Not our house, remember.”

  “I would burn the damned gentry, never mind their ricks,” said Morfydd, and she swept back her hair. Excellent at rebellion and speeches, this one, especially when it came to hanging the Queen. Beautiful, but a woman of fire; an agitator in the Top Towns, married to an agitator once but no ring to prove it, and God knows where she would land us if she started tricks here, for we got out of Monmouthshire by the skin of our teeth.

  “Let her speak,” said Grandfer. “Let her be. Does she also write poetry?”

  “Aye,” said Morfydd, and fixed him with her eyes. “The centuries of Time echo to the tread of the clog going up the stairs and the buckle coming down. Burning hayricks – chopping down tollgates? A barrel of gunpowder would bring this county alive.”

  I looked at my mother. Her face was agonized. For this was the old Morfydd sparring for a fight, and we were here by the grace of Grandfer. But he smiled, to his credit, and stirred his tea.

  “Speak, child, speak,” said he. “You know your Bible? Genesis twenty-four, verse sixty. Let us draw your teeth.” And Morfydd raised her dark eyes to his, saying, “‘And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, thou art our sister. Be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.’”

  “Amen,” said Grandfer, eyes closed, and turned to my mother. “God help me, woman. Retired, I am, and I have opened the house to a nest of Welsh agitators.” He swung to Morfydd. “The first tollgate burned, young woman?”

  “Efail-wen, just this year,” said she.

  “When?”

  “May the thirteenth – by Thomas Rees of Carnabwth. Burned twice since, thank God – June the sixth and July the seventeenth. Tollgates!” Morfydd sniffed. “Back home in my county we fought it out with redcoats.”

  “Remarkable,” said Grandfer, quizzy.

  “Aye, remarkable,” said Morfydd. “If your people had half the spunk of the Welsh I come from you’d have taken to arms and marched on Carmarthen. Look at the place! The people are either starving or pinched to the bone, your workhouses are filling up daily – they transport you here for poaching rabbits,” and here she looked at me, “and all you can do is burn a tollgate when you ought to be hauling up cannon. Good God!” Sweating now, the beads bright on her face, and she sighed and wiped it into her hair.

  “You see what I have to put up with?” asked Mam, hands empty to Grandfer. “She lost her own man to the riots in Monmouthshire, and I lost mine to the iron. You see what I have for a daughter?”

  “I see that you are harbouring a vixen,” said Grandfer. “But the goals are the same north or west.” Down came his fist and he thumped the table. “Keep a grip on that tongue, young woman – I have no use for it here.”

  And Morfydd rose, shaking off crumbs. “And I have no use for yours. Thank God for starving, thank God for kicks. If the damned house burned down you’d be too frit to fetch water,” and she slammed back her chair, looking knives. As she reached the door her son came through it – Richard, her beloved, aged three, and she stooped and snatched him up and held him against her. “Come, boy,” said she. “There is no place for us here.”

  That is what it was like in those early days at Cae White Farm; my mam the sandwich between Grandfer’s dislike and my sister’s fire, but it settled down after a bit, thank God. To hell with Morfydd, I used to think; to heaven with my mother, she being all gentleness in the face of rebellion. Eh, did I love my mam! If I had to die on the breast of a woman I would die on my mother’s – Morfydd’s next, though hers was mainly occupied. But where my mother went, I went; touching the things she touched, smoothing her place at table. Sometimes I wondered who was the more beautiful, Morfydd or Mam, who could give her twenty years, for Morfydd was lifting up the latch for thirty. Smooth in the face was my mother, carrying herself with dignity; pretty with her bonnet streamers tied under her chin, five feet of black mourning that turned every set in whiskers in the county. The basses went a semitone flat in the Horeb when she was present, but there beside me, singing like an angel, she didn’t spare the men a look. A smile for everyone, her contralto greeting, she was alive and dancing outside. Inside she was dead, in the same grave as my father. My father had joined the Man in the Big Pew over twelve months now but he still lived with us, I reckoned. For sometimes, when the house was sleeping, I would hear my mam talking to him in a voice of tears. And next morning at breakfast the redness was in her eyes and her mouth was trembling to her smile, as if it had just been kissed.

  “Somebody slept in the henhouse last night,” said Grandfer now.

  I got some more barley bread and packed it well in.

  “Not rioters?” whispered Mam.

  “Boys,” said he, eyeing me. “Same thing. And anyone this applies to can listen. If Tramping Boy Joey shows his backside round Cae White I will kick the thing over to St Clears, understand? Poachers and thieves, stinking of the gutter – I will not have him near!”

  Chewing, me, eyes on the ceiling.

  “Did you see anything of that Joey last night, Jethro?” asked Mam.

  “How could he have seen him?” asked Morfydd from the door with Richard in her arms. “He was in well before dark and he slept with me. Come, Jethro, bach, it is cleaner outside.”

  A bitch one moment, sister the next.

  Two months of hell, it was, living with Grandfer.

  Yet I remember with joy the early spring days in the new county, especially the Sundays in the pews of the Horeb. Mam one side of me, Morfydd on the other, she with an eye for every pair of trews in sight, until she caught my mother’s glance which set her back miles. Proud I felt, the only man in the family now; well soaped up and my hair combed to a quiff, singing quiet according to instructions, because my voice was breaking, but dying to let things rip. Little Meg Benyon was hitting it up on the harmonium, eyes on sticks, feet going, tongue peeping out between her white teeth, one missing; with Dai Alltwen Preacher beating time and the tenors soaring and basses grovelling. Deep and beautiful was Mam’s voice in the descant, and Morfydd with her elbow in my ribs.

  “‘All hail the power of Jesu’s name …!’” Tenor, me, threatening to crack, hanging on to Mam’s contralto. Double bass now, with the crack turning heads and bringing me out into a sweat. And the hymn of Shrubsole flooded over us in glory and Dai Preacher lifted his eyes to the vaults of Heaven.

  “‘Crown Him, Crown Him, Crown Him …!’” Top E, and me hitting soprano.

  “For God’s sake!” whispered Morfydd as I hung on the note.

  “Leave him be,” said Mam with her soft, sad smile.

  “I will be doing some crowning when I get you back home,” and I get the elbow.

  “Mam,” I said, “look at this Morfydd!”

  “Hush!”

  Aye, good it was, those spring Sundays, with the smell of Sunday clothes and lavender about us, and peacock feathers waving and watch chains drooping over stomachs begging for Sunday dinner, and the farmers had twenty quart ones in this county. There is Hettie Winetree in front of me done up in white silk and black stockings, all peeps and wriggles around her little black hymn book – second prize for missing a Sunday School attendance, presented by Tom the Faith – fancies herself, does Hettie Winetree. Behind me sits Dilly Morgan, tall, cool, and fair for Welsh, her tonic-solfa beating hot on my neck. Down comes Meg Benyon’s little fat behind as she thumps the keyboard for the Amen and Dai Alltwen Preacher is up in the pulpit before you can say Carmarthen, leaping around the mahogany, working up his hwyl, handing hell to sinners from Genesis to Jonah. Motionless, we Mortymers, though other eyes may roam and other throats may clear. For a speck of dust do show like a whitewash stain on strangers wearing the black, says Mam.

  Sunlit were those mornings after Chapel and the fields were alight with greenness and river-flash from the estuary where the Tywi ran. This was the time for talking, and the women lost no chance, giving birth to
some, burying others while the men, in funeral black, talked bass about ploughing and harvest. Waldo Bailiff was always to the front, the devil, handsome and bearded, little hands folded on his silver-topped cane and his nose a dewdrop. Very sanctimonious was Waldo, loving his neighbour, and a hit over the backside for anyone breathing near Squire’s salmon steps, never mind poaching. A big fish in a little puddle, said Morfydd, and when his dewdrop falls Waldo will fall like the leaning tree of Carmarthen. I never got the hang of how that dewdrop stayed with him; stitched on, I reckon, for when a gale took every other dewdrop in the county Waldo’s was still present. But Welsh to his fingertips, give him credit, as Welsh as Owain Glyndwr but no credit to Wales, and more Sunday quarts died in Waldo than Glyndwr could boast dead English. But he drew me as a magnet because of Tessa, the daughter of Squire Lloyd Parry.

  A lonely half hour, this, waiting for Sunday dinner, and grown-ups chattering. Lean against the chapel gate and watch them. Crows are shouting in the tops of the elms for you, half boy, half man. Yellow beaks gape in the scarecrowed pattern of branches. And you think of the lichened bark of Tessa’s tree as being velvet to the touch, and the cowslip path to the river that is crumpled gold. There we would stand in my dreams, me and Tessa Lloyd Parry, watching the river, eyes drooping to brightness while the reed music of spring flooded over us.

  “You dreaming, Jethro Mortymer?”

  Do you see her framed by leaves, wide-eyed, restless always – as leaf-movement and the foaming roar of the river under wind; never still was Tessa – all life and quickness with words, snatching at every precious second. Small and dark was she, with the face of a child and the body of a woman, and often I would dream of kissing her. A week next Sunday if I plucked up courage. But Tessa flies in the movement of men. Waldo wipes his whiskers in expectation of a quart in Black Boar tavern. The men drift away, the women chatter on.

  Here comes Polly Scandal now, black beads and crepe, donkey ears wagging in her fluffy tufts of hair. Straighten now, hands from pockets. Buzzing around the women, she is, getting a word from here, a word from there, and saving it up for weekdays. She will have them over the county by Monday with a death before the croak and a pain before conception. My turn now. Flouncing, hips swaying, she comes to the gate; three sets of teeth.

  “Good morning, Jethro Mortymer.”

  Nod.

  “Very happy you are looking, if I may say. Courting, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Tessa Lloyd Parry, eh? And her the daughter of Squire! There is gentry you are now, boy.”

  “O, aye?”

  “Aye, good grief! Marrying you will be before long, I vow. Whee, terrible, you new Mortymers, and such beautiful women! True your big sister Morfydd’s moonlighting with Osian Hughes Bayleaves?”

  “First I’ve heard of it,” I answered, rumbling for dinner.

  “Couldn’t do better, mind. Prospects has Osian Hughes with fifty acres in the family and his dada starting death rattles. Eh, close you are, but Polly do know, mind – can’t deceive Polly. And that mam of yours too pretty for singles, too. Waldo Bailiff off his ale because of her and Tom the Faith laying a shilling to nothing he has her altared before summer. You heard?” Up with her skirts then. “Eh, got to go. Goodbye, Jethro Mortymer, give my love to Tessa.”

  And here comes Hettie Winetree with her little black hymn book, brown hair drooping, a hole in each heel of her mam’s black stockings.

  “Good morning, Jethro Mortymer,” flushing to a strawberry.

  The trees wave in perpendicular light, the wind sighs.

  “Enjoy the service, Mr Mortymer?” Screwing the back from her hymn book now, eyes peeping, dying inside at the shame of her harlotry. Anxious was Hettie for the facts of life, according to her mam, said Morfydd.

  “No,” I said.

  “O, God forgive you,” says she, pale. “Hell and Damnation for you if Dai Alltwen do hear you, mind.”

  “And to hell with Dai Alltwen via Carmarthen,” I said.

  This sets her scampering and I mooched over to Morfydd, digging her. “Damned starved, I am,” I said. “You coming?”

  But she, like the rest, are into it proper now. Nineteen to the dozen they go it after Chapel; hands waving, tongues wagging; dear me’s and good grief’s left and right, shocked and shamed and shrieking in chorus; the crescent jaw of the crone with her champing, the double chin creases of the matron and the quick, shadowed cheek of the maiden, all lifting in bedlam to a chorus of harmony, hitting Top C. And God put Eve under the belly of the serpent.

  “Good God,” whispered Morfydd. “Look what is coming!”

  Osian Hughes Bayleaves, six-foot-six of him, with a waist like Hettie’s and a chest as Hercules, white teeth shining in the leather of his face. Low he bows, jerked into beetroot by his high, starched collar.

  “Good morning, Miss Mortymer,” he murmurs.

  Down they go, all eight of them. Pretty it looks, mind.

  “My mam have sent me to ask you to tea, Miss Mortymer.”

  “Eh, there’s a pity,” says Morfydd to me. “Today of all days, and we have company, eh, Jethro?”

  “First I’ve heard of it.” Gave her a wink. For beauty as Morfydd’s must duck its own trouble.

  “Damned swine,” she whispers, smiling innocently. “Some other time, Mr Hughes, and thank your mam kindly.” And away she goes in a swirl of skirts, giving honey to Osian and daggers to me.

  “But Osian Hughes has prospects, remember,” says Mam on the way home.

  “You are not bedding me with prospects,” says Morfydd. “Give me a man a foot lower and fire in him, not milky rice pudding. Pathetic is that one,” and she sniffed. “A body made for throwing bullocks pumped into passion by the heart of a rabbit.”

  “Time you was settled, nevertheless,” and Mam sighs.

  “I don’t do so bad, mind,” said Morfydd, and I saw Mam’s dig.

  We had put up with all this before, of course. I wandered beside them kicking at stones in visions of the lips of Tessa Lloyd Parry, dying for manhood that I might honour her. The wind whispered as we laboured up the hill, and it was perfumed.

  “You cannot live in the past,” said Mam to Morfydd.

  No answer from Morfydd, but her eyes were bright.

  “You must think of your Richard. Soon he will ask for a dada.”

  Out came a handkerchief.

  “Now, now!” said my mother, sharp.

  “O, God,” said Morfydd.

  It was the Richard that did it, the name of her son and the lover who sired him three years back.

  “Hush, love her,” whispered Mam, holding her. “Jethro, walk on.” But a bit of sniffing and wiping and we were back to normal and Cae White grew before us ruined and turreted, blazing in the sun, with Mari, my sister-in-law, waiting in the doorway with Jonathon, her baby, asleep in her shawl.

  O, this Mari!

  CHAPTER 3

  STRANGE THAT I knew Cae White was mine the moment I set foot in it; that I would shoulder the burden that Mari’s grandfather had carried for life, and mate with it, and bring it to flower. Beautiful was this old Welsh gentry place gone to ruin, standing in its thirty acres with pride of nobility, shunning lesser neighbours. No time for it, said Morfydd – too damned proud – and how the hell Grandfer got hold of it I will never understand. Cheap, mind, at a pound a week rent, land included. Fishy. For places half the size Squire Lloyd Parry was charging double and he was not a man to lose sight of a pound. Most of the villagers worked for Squire, but not Grandfer, and Cae White was stuck in the middle of Squire’s acres as a ship in full sail. Left and right the little farmers were being pushed out by rising rents and the gentry were forcing out their land enclosures faster than a wizard mouths spells, but nobody shifted Grandfer who had the power of the Devil in him, some said. Others said that Squire was pixilated and had never set eyes on Cae White though he passed it most days of the week. And I had seen him and Grandfer walk within feet and neither offer the other a g
lance while grown men were tugging out forelocks and their wives draping the ground. Indecent, said Morfydd, there are secrets at Cae White.

  Things were happening in Carmarthenshire just now. The gentry were forming Trusts for road repairs and setting up tollgates to pay for the labour, but drawing fat profits for the money invested by charging the earth for tolls. Left and right the gates were going up now, placed to trap the small farmers. Graft, too, as usual, for some gentlemen’s carriages passed the tollgates free and bridges were being built to serve the needs of big houses. Men were flocking away from the land, queueing for the workhouses, and at the beginning of spring whole families were starving. And I was starving for Tessa Lloyd Parry.

  “You keep from that one,” said Morfydd. “Hobnails mating with lace.”

  “Leave him be,” said Mam, sewing up to the light, squinting.

  “To make a fool of the lot of us? Listen, you!” And Morfydd peered at me. “Gentry are running this county same as back home. You heard of Regan Killarney?”

  “South of Ireland,” I said to shift her.

  “Transportation for twenty salmon – dished out by a clergyman magistrate yesterday – getting his protection for the water he owned. While men like Killarney stink in the hulks for Botany Bay you’d best keep away from gentry Welsh lest the working Welsh call you traitor. You listening?”

  “Half the county’s listening,” said Mam, stitching, sighing.

  “Too damned young to be courting, anyway,” said Morfydd, pale.

  “Too damned old, you,” I said, ducking her swipe.

  Wandering about now, hands pressed together. Gunpowder, this one, dangerous to a flame. “The Devil take me,” said she. “When I was his age I was spinning six days a week and hymning in Sunday School the seventh. …”

  “O, aye?” said Mam, pins in her mouth.

  “And here he is cooing and sweeting on gentry lawns with the people who starve us!” Dead and buried, me, with her looks.

  “Not much starved you look from here, mind,” said Mam.