Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  Clapping and cheers at this, and I must admit I felt a thrill of pride that brought the water stinging to my eyes as I thought of my father and Iestyn, my brother. My women were standing rigid, their heads low, and my mother was weeping, her face wet, with no attempt to wipe the tears. I looked hard at Mari. White faced, she stood by Tomos, and I pitied her. For I had heard in her first shriek of joy at the sight of him that she was hoping for news of my brother. Nothing for her save confirmation of Botany Bay, with visions of the chained labourers and the blood-soaked ground of the triangles. But Tomos was speaking on:

  “And as I laboured along the road from Carmarthen town I rested by the wayside to catch my breath. There, in the frost, I listened to Sanctus – to the sound of your voices, and beautiful it was to the weary traveller who has walked nigh eighty miles. The sound of your hymn ennobled me, and I knelt in the snow and gave prayers for you, receiving in turn renewed strength for the journey.” His voice rose higher. “And so now, before I take leave of you to find rest – last verse of Sanctus again. Lift the roof with it – ring it out to Monmouthshire. Full chorus now, full harmony, to the beautiful words of your Richard Mant. Ready, ready …?” And his arm swept up and down, and we sang. God, how we sang! Deafening to the ears, this time, rising to such beauty and power that it caught at my soul and snatched it upwards in the last, glorious line.

  “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord!”

  And in the ringing silence Tomos caught my eye again.

  “Jethro!”

  “Tomos!”

  I ran into his arms.

  CHAPTER 6

  BITTER OLD winter, this first one at Cae White, with the coots slipping on their backsides well into March and the hedges iced like gentry wedding cakes. The trees rattled as moody skeletons in the salt-tang of the estuary and the peat bogs rammed themselves into glass. No longer the otters barked along the banks of the Tywi, with the curlews too nipped to shout at dawn. Gaunt and forbidding was the country still, biting at fingers, twisting at noses, and the whole rolling country of mountains and pastures from Llandeilo to Haverfordwest was hammered into frost by the thumps of winter.

  Out at first light, me, back with the curtains. I dressed quickly with mist billowing against the window, trying to get down before Morfydd for once. Snatching my towel I went on the landing and Mari stood there, her eyes dazed through the loss of another night.

  “You all right, girl?”

  She nodded, smiling faintly.

  “Heard you last night, tossing and turning,” I said.

  “Too tired for sleep,” she said. “It will pass.”

  “Do not come down,” I said. “Morfydd and me will get ourselves off.”

  Morfydd at the bottom of the stairs then, peering up. “Mari,” she whispered. “Go back to bed – do you think we need nursing?”

  “But you must have some breakfast,” she replied.

  “God alive, woman, can’t we get that ourselves? Back and try to sleep, there’s a good girl. Mam says she will have Jonathon and Richard.”

  Haggard in the eyes, Mari turned without a word.

  Slower now, thoughtful, I went down to the kitchen. Morfydd was already boiling the oatmeal broth. Nearly retched. Sick of the name of it, the smell of it, stomach-heaving at the taste of it, for things were coming shrimpy with us now our savings were gone. And though Grandfer gave us house room he couldn’t be expected to feed us, though most of what Cae White brought in was put against the walls of the taverns. Rye bread, oatmeal broth, potato soup, a bit of fried bread, no meat, a cabbage or two and buttermilk when we could get it. Reckon I could have eaten a mattress of fat bacon. In the Monmouthshire iron they laboured us to death, but at least we fed except in strike times. I joined Morfydd at the hob in the kitchen.

  “That girl’s going under,” said she.

  Haggard in the eyes and sleepless, was Mari, since Tomos Traherne had visited three months back. Pleased enough to see him, true, but God knows what he had brought with him that Christmas, for Mari was a different girl since. No tears, no sadness one could see; just sleepless and wandering as if dazed.

  “Happy enough until Tomos came,” I said. “You noticed?”

  She shook her head. “I wondered that, but I doubt it. Only just occurred to her, I think, that she’ll wait years for Iestyn. You be gentle to her, Jethro, you could not have a better relation, and she needs a boy like you – you being his brother.”

  “Now what have I done wrong now, for God’s sake?”

  This turned her, spoon up. “Nothing, or you’d never hear the end of it. Just be gentle, that’s all. Poor little Mari.”

  Nothing angered me more than this sister-in-law stuff that Morfydd was always turning out. Indecent to have a relative nigh a head shorter but only four years older than you. Facing Morfydd I got the bread down somehow and spooned up the dirty old oatmeal.

  “We will try Ponty,” said she.

  I just sighed.

  “Well, don’t look so ghostly – something’s got to be done. We will work the only way we know – in coal.”

  “It is spring, damned near. I could try my hand at farming, for the place is going to the dogs under Grandfer.”

  “Grandfer’s privilege – his farm. Best stick to what you know.” She sighed herself then. “Queer, isn’t it – just as Mam says – we run from iron for a bit of peace and land in dirty old coal. Diawch!”

  I had worked coal in Nanty, like Morfydd, the rest of my family being in iron, except Mari, who had taken her share of hauling trams one time. I hated coal – sixteen hour shifts six days a week, a shilling a day if the seam held out, nothing if it ceased. Black trash were colliers, these days. I had seen the battered heads of the Top Town colliers, the smashed hands of the hewing poor. Furnace work I do like if you can keep clear of the scald, but coal is a trap with no back door out. I cannot stand the galleries and the creak of the splintering prop. Drop the pick, go sideways, watch the slow lengthening of the wane of the pole. Upward it spreads to the pitch, widening: ten million tons of mountain moving, perched on the tip of a four inch prop, and you hold your breath in the seconds of eternity while the county yawns and stretches in sunlight. For you, the microbe, work in the belly, raking at entrails, tunnelling in bowels, and the mountain groans as a child with an ache and its guts rumble thunder. It howls then as the wind breaks and seeks relief by changing position, then bucks to a bright explosion of pain, seeking the balm of its underground rivers. A hit in the stomach as its floor comes up; you squirm for protection as the roof comes down; grip, wait, ready for the crush. Dai Skewen caught it in Number Five, two others walled up.

  “What is wrong with you, now?” asked Morfydd.

  “Nothing, but I would like iron.”

  “Who wouldn’t. Is this Ponty pit a winder?”

  “Ladder. And the foreman Job Gower is blessed double with bastards, I heard say, but he is dying for labour.”

  “Hush your bad language,” said she. “But I will give him, bastards if he proves a thumper. We go on Top Town rates mind.” Rising, she swung off the kettle and screamed the teapot. “Skilled rates or nothing, or I will tell him what he does with his Ponty – ladders and all.”

  I sipped the tea, blowing steam. “We look like staying, then, for he don’t like barristers.”

  “Skilled labour,” said she. “Different.” She chewed at the window.

  “Skilled or unskilled, all the same rate. Sixpence a pound for a dead pig – shilling a week for a live serving-maid.”

  “There is a dainty expression – where did you learn it?”

  “Tramping Boy Joey – he had it off his mam. Two-pounds ten a year she drew as a scrubbing-girl, all in, keep included.”

  “O, aye,” said she. “Everything counts.”

  “But happy enough was Cassie Scarlet, mind, while she was scrubbing.”

  “Pity,” said Morfydd. “If the two-pounds-ten includes being bedded you might as well enjoy it.”

  Bitter, she was, and I
chanced a look at her. Grey streaks at the temples now, the high bones of her face flinging shadow into her cheeks. Black-eyed, gipsy-slanted; and beautiful was her mouth so full and red when not twisted as now. Dress her in lace and she’d rock the county.

  “Morfydd.”

  She didn’t hear three feet away.

  “Morfydd, listen,” I said.

  She sighed, eyes closed, her lashes spread wide on her cheeks.

  “No lectures, Jethro.”

  “Just this, then,” and I took her hand. “Treat Ponty respectful and bring home money, is it? Just for a little while. In a month or two I’ll be into farming, then no more coal.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She gripped my hand then and my fingers cracked, and in the ringing silence between us came the grumble of the bed as Mam turned over and the dribbling tune of Richard at the china and his call to Mari to waken and help. Morfydd rose and kicked back her chair. “I will work,” she said. “But no lash will drive me now, for I am past those damned capers. Labour, nothing more, for I have heard of this Job Gower, too – women’s language that you do not understand. Sixpence a pound for dead pigs, is it? Twopence a stone for a dead Ponty foreman if he tries his tricks on me. There’s advantage in being born with the looks of a sow.” She pointed. “And you keep clear. I take care of myself.”

  Got up and kissed her, couldn’t think why, and the look she gave me froze me standing.

  The windows winked with light from the blackness as we took the road to coal.

  It was a two mile walk along the river to Ponty and the mountain behind us frowned blue with the promise of dawn. Over Fox Brow we went, leaping the puddled places, tiptoeing over the iced peat with our hair riming in the frost and the wind from the estuary tearing into us. Near Treforris the track narrowed and the woods of the hollow rose up sharp and clear as the sun ripped at the veil of night with a hatchet of fire. As scarecrows stood the trees, their boles gleaming white with frost, branches flaring and all over dripping as long suddy fingers from the weekly wash. An eye out for corpse candles, me, though Morfydd seemed at peace, whistling quietly under her shawl. I have never been afraid of things on four legs or two, but Will o’ the Wisps and Buggy Bo Goblins do give me the creeps when trees are standing as tombstones and the thick pile of a thousand autumns sigh beneath the feet. Grandfer reckoned he saw a corpse candle once; red and evil, it was, topped with yellow and dancing over the peat – sure sign of death for someone, and God knows what is happening fifty feet down where Buggy Bo lives with his blistered victims. Sweating, me; nearly died when Morfydd gripped me and drew me behind a tree.

  “Down!” she hissed.

  She pulled me closer and I saw the sudden white of her face smudged with shadows.

  “Look,” she breathed.

  “Buggy Bo,” I whispered.

  “Buggy Bo to hell,” said she. “Look, Rebecca!”

  A Rebeccaite was standing in a clearing before us, dressed in white from head to feet and the wind caught at his gown, billowing the hem as he raised his hands as if in a signal. Leaves rustled, branches snapped. A company of men came from the woods and made a ring in the clearing, all dressed in women’s petticoats, their faces blackened. A horseman came next. Tall and broad in the saddle was this Rebecca, his petticoat streaming over the horse’s flanks, and he entered the ring of his daughters and the horse reared, forelegs pawing as he checked on the rein. On his head was a turban as of silk, bejewelled and flashing in the shafts of dawn and the golden locks of his wig reached to his waist.

  “Bring Luke Talog!” he cried.

  “A judgement,” Morfydd whispered. “Look, a prisoner.”

  “Heisht!” I whispered back, “or they will have us, too.”

  Two men came from the tree-fringe, dragging between them a naked man, and I saw his face upturned in terror as he drooped before the horseman.

  “Luke Talog, is this your name?”

  And the naked man sank to his knees, biting at his hands.

  “Luke Talog,” cried Rebecca, “by us will you be judged. For you have crossed a serving-maid in the house of your wife, and filled her, and cast her out into hunger, which is against the law of God. Dost know the Word, Luke Talog – Deuteronomy twenty-two, which saith, ‘If a man finds a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they shall be found … then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife: because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.’ Right now, Luke, will you marry the damsel?”

  And the prisoner trembled and shook his head.

  “Aye, Luke boy, that is the trouble, eh? Already married, isn’t it?”

  The palaver that followed raised me a foot. A weeping of mock tears at this news, and a beating of breasts, with the tormentors in white gowns sobbing on each other’s shoulders in grief. Rebecca rose up in his stirrups, shouting:

  “See the grief you are causing my daughters, Luke Talog – what about the poor bloody damsel’s. Ashamed you should be. Now bring forth the father of the poor girl who was wronged!”

  A stooping, white-haired old labourer was pushed into the clearing.

  “Thou art the father of the maid,” said Rebecca. “Take thou these fifty shekels of silver that have been wrung from the pockets of Luke Talog, being the payment exacted under the law of God,” and the shillings were counted into the old man’s hands.

  “The law of God has been fulfilled, O, Mother!” called a follower. “But what of the law of Rebecca. What is the price of virginity?”

  “Can you prove it?” shouted another, and laughter echoed.

  “Was she worth it, Luke?”

  “Should he not be cast into a pit?”

  “A pit of spikes?”

  “Or be hanged by the neck?”

  “For Luke Talog has worshipped the phallus, and the price of that is death!”

  The naked man screamed as they laid hands on him and dragged him upright for the judgement, and the man Rebecca raised his hand as if in blessing, bringing all to silence.

  “Listen!” whispered Morfydd.

  “Hearken ye, my daughters!” Rebecca cried. “The judgement is given. A man who worships his body and defiles that of a child must endure the shame of his own obscenity. Luke Talog shall have his obscenity exposed by the shame of the ceffyl pren.”

  “The wooden horse,” Morfydd whispered. “O, God!”

  Hustle, bustle now, with white gowns dashing demented, tripping in leaves, scrambling, and where the hell is the pole of shame and who had it last, for God’s sake. This, the miming, part of the punishment. Couldn’t find it. Up came a wraith and bowed low to the leader.

  “A little pole or a big pole, Mother?”

  “Was it a big pole or a little pole he used on the maid?”

  “A little stick or a big stick to quieten her?”

  “He is not being judged for thrashings,” cried Rebecca. “Hasten! The dawn is up and the dragoons are out from St Clears – do you think we have all day?”

  Comedy now, the sentence given. They jostled each other, measuring poles for length, testing them for strength while Luke Talog on his knees stared at them in terror.

  “What will his poor wife say when we carry him through the parish?”

  “What will the neighbours say when Luke goes through on the pole?”

  “With his backside turned to the sky and the wind taking a whistle at his poor little troubles.”

  “Chair him,” said Rebecca. “He can put on his coat. Up on the wooden horse. Up, up!”

  And I could not drag away my eyes.

  To business now, the fun over. Up with him, down with him flat in leaves; squirming, screaming, mudstained – bloodstained when they hit him quiet. Pitiless these men of Rebecca, as their own oppressors. And they roped Luke Talog across two poles and hoisted him up, with the ends of the poles resting on two horses. Head lolling, he drooped, pot-bellied
, obscene, cradled.

  “Pretty brisky for spring, mind. The poor soul will catch his death. O, Mother, have pity – it is a four mile march to his parish.”

  Rebecca wheeled his horse, bridle chinking, white shroud streaming.

  “Down to his parish with him,” he cried. “Spare your pity. From magistrates to adulterers we will carry them on poles – clergy, even, if the crime deserves it, and show them the fury of the people. For the bars of Hell are crammed with Luke Talogs and the gates of Heaven are thronged with the helpless. Time it was changed and by God we will change it, and cleanse the fair name of our beloved county. Away!”

  In single file they went, Rebecca leading, the wooden horse next, and then the Daughters, as ghosts of silence till the clearing was empty.

  CHAPTER 7

  WE SPOKE little the rest of the way, shocked into silence by the punishment of Luke Talog. The wooden horse was everywhere these days, although only one tollgate had so far been burned. Rebecca, more powerful every minute, was now fighting to put right the social wrongs, setting herself up as judge of social morals. Horsewhipping for the minor crimes, burning in effigy most nights now, threatening letters to magistrates for unfair sentences, rumours of attacks on the workhouses which were springing up like mushrooms under the new Poor Law. Rebecca was everywhere, especially in Pembrokeshire, but our county was getting its share. Daren’t kiss your girl without a glance over your shoulder, and thinking of girls brought me back to Mari. Sweet, sad Mari.

  Strange it was Mari who was sending me back to coal. …

  The lights of Gower’s mine winked through the mist as we climbed the last hillock to Ponty. This, a green land ten years back, was now outraged. For the new industry of coal was treading on the skirts of iron and the black diamond wealth of my country was making fortunes for men who had never set foot in Wales. When a shaft struck a black seam the merchants were killed in the rush for profit. Ironmasters, greedy for better investment, came running, and their capital was doubled by our cheap Welsh labour, for taxes and tithes and tolls were lowering our power of bargaining. Slave-owners, fresh from their auctions of the Black Trash of Africa, came surging in shoulder to shoulder with the new Welsh gentry who hated their brothers for the sin of their poverty. These, our great benefactors, came flying – from the slave buying of Bristol to the counting houses of Mother London – to negotiate and quarrel on the body of my country, and the scars of their greed will stand for everlasting.