Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  An ant was crawling on the snathe of the scythe, just an inch from my nose. Brushing away tears, I watched; the posturing daintiness, the nibbling, acrobatic dancing, seeking everything, finding nothing in a world of exploration. Up the handle with you, down again in whiskered concentration; wipe your face, clean your teeth, then round you go in a circle, bright you flash in sunlight. I watched and dreamed. Sleep lazed my eyes again in the metallic burnishing of the sun. Reed-music whispered to the scent of bruised corn, and I awoke again with visions dancing and the stalks above me rippled in an oven of heat, for steepled ears had risen beside me; a harelip snitched not a foot from mine. Face to face, we were, the beaten and the hunted, and the wheat went flat to the brown streak’s passing. Next came the stoat, black, relentless, lithe body swerving in the jungle of corn, but I clenched my hand and hit him flat. Smooth was his coat to the touch of my fingers and the corn stalks waved to the terror of the rabbit. The corn hummed into silence. Nothing remained but the molten pour of the sun. In nothingness, with the stoat in my hand, I slept.

  Give me a pick and a colliery face if I have to labour. Leave the scything to grandfers.

  CHAPTER 10

  IN BED for two days, with Morfydd and Mari dashing round with flannels, giving me hell.

  Eight days it took me, but I scythed Cae White, with Morfydd on her knees spare time swiping with a reaping hook and Mam, Mari and Richard coming for the gleanings, and we stacked the barn high. If Grandfer saw it happen he did not make mention. Didn’t see much of him these days at all, with him lying in bed all the morning and teetering bowlegged down to Black Boar tavern on his ploughing corns and not a glance for anyone. Going to the devil fast, was Grandfer, not even an eye for Randy, his horse.

  A black-faced towser of a horse, this one, and he’d seen better times, having once served apprenticeship as a travelling stallion, and he couldn’t forget his past. Grandfer loved him as life itself, but he didn’t work him often, and now I had him in the shafts for the harvest. Very pugnacious, this one, with the kick of an elephant, and every ploughing regular he sent Grandfer ears over backside along the shippon, but I was used to four legs, having worked them in iron. I let him belt the plough to bits and then I belted him, but he never forgave me for it, I knew. Along the ruts with a load we would go with the old traces slapping in a jingle of harness and horse and man friendship, but I knew he was watching by the roll of his eye. Cruel, I suppose, being a horse when you have once been a stallion – a hell of a time with the women one moment and cut off without an option the next, but he came pretty useful later, did Randy.

  Tired to death that night, I sat in a chair with Richard on my knee. Four years old was Morfydd’s boy now, light-faced and fair, with gold curls to his neck and as pretty as a girl, save for the square of his jaw and his deepset eyes – a throw-back from the dark Mortymers.

  “The white line is in us,” Mam used to say. “As a white-breasted blackbird, he is, as my little girl Edwina.”

  For Edwina, my sister who died up in Monmouthshire, was albino, and the strain had come out in Morfydd’s son, though her lover, like Morfydd, was as dark as a gipsy. A dear little boy, this Richard; quiet about the house in his comings and goings, busy with his labour of tying stooks now harvest had come, and lessons in English from Mari when she had spare time. There was no school near save the keeper of the new tollgate near Flannigan’s farm, and he is not being taught by traitors, said Morfydd.

  “You joining Rebecca, Uncle Jethro?” said he now.

  “Not while he lives in this house,” said Mam, pottering. “Just farming for us now, no need to look for trouble.”

  “That right, Uncle Jethro?”

  I was giving a bit of thought to tollgates and Rebecca about this time, for big Trusts were being formed by the gentry who were investing money in them for the erection of tollgates which were supposed to earn money for the road repairs, and the gates were going up like mushrooms. Rebecca who burned gates once was now sending threatening letters to Trusts and tollgate keepers. Humble men and women, these keepers – the Welsh bleeding the Welsh, said Morfydd. The levying of the tolls was unjust, too, for some gentlemen’s carriages passed free, because they were gentlemen; the charge for a horse and cart with broad wheels was fourpence while a cart with narrow wheels cost sixpence, so the richer the farmer the cheaper the toll. Time was when the Kidwelly Turnpike Trust let lime through free, but new gates were springing up round the kilns now. Osian Hughes Bayleaves was a business man, though Morfydd gave him no credit for gumption. Thought nothing of a five mile detour, did Osian, to avoid a tollgate, sometimes ending in gentry fields. When building his new barn he brought in his bricks under a layer of manure, which passed through free. Aye, no fool was Osian till we all started trying it, and then he got caught and fined three pounds, enough to set him back weeks. Every night, lying in bed, I could hear the tollgate carpenters knocking them up, and the noise made me sweat with seven people to keep and a harvest to sell, for to try to get into Carmarthen or St Clears was like trying to enter a besieged city.

  I could see us starving at the height of winter. Sweated blood at the thought of it.

  “We will work it out,” said Mari.

  The house was quiet that night for Morfydd, exhausted by a late Ponty day shift, had gone to bed with Richard and Jonathon. Grandfer was drowning his back teeth down at Black Boar tavern, but Mari and me were not alone, Mam saw to that. Sitting in Grandfer’s rocking-chair she was dozing and waking in snuffles. Keeping things decent, she said, you understand, you two, no offence meant, mind, she said.

  “None taken,” replied Mari, but I saw the hurt in her eyes.

  “Gone dark, see,” said Mam. “A young married woman ought to be escorted after nine o’clock at night, never know who might be looking through a window.”

  “My sister-in-law,” I said.

  “Never mind,” said Mam.

  “Iestyn’s wife, then.”

  Fingers up now. “Look,” said she. “I am not accusing anyone of capers. It is only the custom, and customs die hard. Old fashioned, perhaps, but I think it safer.”

  “You are making too much of it, Mam,” I said.

  “Jethro, I am only thinking of Iestyn. So hush!”

  “I am doing that night and day,” said Mari, and I saw her eyes go bright.

  “Fetch the accounts,” I said. “We will see how we stand. And enter a sixpence for Mam standing guard.”

  Up with her then. “No cheek, Jethro, I will not stand for it. Still your mam, I am, and I will take a stick to you, big as you are. Now then.”

  Gave her a sigh, fluttered an eye at Mari. So we had Mam’s company when we worked the accounts, adding up rent and church tithes, coal rates and toll payment, with Mam going soprano in snoring, keeping it decent. Full length on the mat and she wouldn’t have known it.

  “Rent, rates and tithes,” said Mari. “Eighty pounds outlay, and wear and tear.”

  “And with decent harvests like this last one, a hundred and thirty pounds income – fifty to live on and seven to keep.”

  “Pretty shrimpy,” I said, thinking of the tolls.

  “But that is not counting Morfydd, mind – ten shillings a week, remember. How much is that a year?”

  “Take us all night to work it out,” I said. “And she will not earn it for ever. You noticed Morfydd lately?”

  “Time she came from coal.”

  “Long past,” I said. “Nothing for it. I will have to go back to Ponty and part-time farming.” Sick, I went to the door.

  “Where you going, Jethro?”

  “Black Boar tavern.”

  “Got money?”

  I rattled it, grinning. “Enough for a quart.”

  “At this time of night?”

  I shrugged. “Early for Betsi. She don’t close at all these days.”

  I pulled on my coat and Tara, my terrier, came wriggling to my heels.

  “Jethro.”

  “Aye?”

 
; Pale was her face. “We will manage, mind. A bit shrimpy it will be, but we will manage. You keep from Betsi’s place, boy.”

  “Listen. If Grandfer can souse himself on his savings every night the least I am entitled to is a quart.”

  After me now, her hand on mine. “It is not the old drinking, Jethro, it is where you drink that matters. Drink quarts, if you like, but at the Miner’s Arms, is it – somewhere decent.”

  Over her shoulder I saw Mam’s eyes open, watching. Give her a broomstick just then and she’d have been round chimneys.

  “Jethro,” said Mari, begging, “you keep from Rebecca. For me, boy? Wicked, it is, carrying poor men on the ceffyl pren and slaughtering salmon and burning ricks.”

  “More wicked to build the gates that cripple us.”

  “Then leave it to others – remember my Iestyn.”

  This turned me. “I am doing that. There will be no Cae White for my brother to come back to unless the gates come down.”

  “O, God,” she said, empty.

  “Go to bed, Mari. Here, Tara!” and the terrier scrambled into my arms.

  But Mari did not move. It was as if I had struck her. Motionless, she stood, shocked pale; always the same these days when her husband’s name was mentioned, and I pitied her. Helpless, I touched her hand. “Bed,” I said.

  “What is happening out by there?” Mam now, peering, spectacles on the end of her nose.

  “Me and Mari kissing,” I said, hot. “For God’s sake go back to your snoring.”

  I heard Mam’s voice raised in protest as I slammed the door to show her my anger. Getting sick of things at Cae White lately, with Morfydd coming snappy with overwork, Mari mooning about Iestyn and Grandfer stupefied. Enough to think of without having to put up with guardians of virginities, and it infuriated me that Mam, of all people, should go under skirts with thoughts of Mari who was pure and beautiful, for a thought like that brings canker into a house and we had given her no reason for it. But with every day’s passing now Mari was more substantial, less of a relation. This working together, the sweet intimacy of her presence, had brought me joy, obliterating something of Tessa, the girl. I loved her, of course.

  Cursed myself for it under the stars.

  The moon was hanging doomed in a friendless sky as I went down to Tarn.

  The sheep track from Cae White leads to Black Boar tavern, a track that carries the refuse of the north; the Midland drovers with their stinks, ghosts of the transportation hulks and prison, the fire-scarred puddlers of the Monmouthshire iron – not a pint of good Welsh blood in a thousand; all come flocking to the coal industry of Carmarthenshire and to Betsi’s place, the strongest ale in the county. Light and smoke hit me as I shouldered the door.

  Betsi Ramrod is serving the jugs, dark eyes flashing in her hatchet of a face, swabbing up her counter now, scooping up her pennies. Irish as Killarney is Betsi Ramrod – the Welsh had a name for her – man-hating, man-loving but fearful of conceiving, straighter than a fir tree and twice as prickly. She hoofed it out of Ireland ten years back, it was said, her black shawl scragging her domed head, her stockinged sticks of legs plastered with the mud of her barren country – running from the rumbling bellies of a potato famine, one hand gripping her twopenny fare, the other waving the last crust in Ireland: running for Rosslare Wharf and Freedom’s schooner, a walking ballast journey of no return alive. A hundred thousand Irish crossed the sea about then, most to neat Welsh graves, but Betsi was one who did well out of it. From the ballooning stomachs of her country to the best cellar in Carmarthen county via the bed of a travelling tinker, she gave short change over the counter if you dared to bat an eye.

  A few of my neighbours were drinking when I got in there – Osian Hughes Bayleaves for one, shivering in his corner to draw my attention, mortifying for Morfydd still, scared of her reception, for she’d split his skull with the nearest thing handy if he tried it on, and he knew it. Hairy Abel Flannigan sat opposite him, one hand gripping a jug, the other a bottle, stupefied, trying to forget tollgates, and God help him if Biddy his mam finds out, for she is still serving him beltings. Job Gower, of all people, Morfydd’s Ponty boss; up at the counter, dwarfing every man in sight, his eyes still black-ringed from the day shift and roving for good labour. And the sawdust was jammed with farmers and drovers, with the foreigners of iron quarrelling and bellowing, spilling out their wages; ragged men, beggars, hoydens and hags, two per cent Welsh, thank God. A cock-fight in a corner now, bloodstained, wine-stained, elegant with dandies; a man-fight in another – two north country drovers, their blue chins jutting with lip from Lancashire, fists bristling, eyes glaring, dying for each other and the meaty thuds of the slug it out, with dark Gipsy May thrusting between them to take the first thump, hands spread on their chests, her white teeth shining as she laughs at the lamp.

  “Trouble, Betsi, trouble! Grandfer Zephaniah, up by here and give me a hand with some muscle!”

  “Settle your own business,” says Grandfer, steering up his quart.

  Not seen me yet.

  “Oi! Osian Hughes Bayleaves – six-foot-six of you for God’s sake. Part these two pugilists for your poor little gipsy, eh?”

  And Osian trembles and goes deeper into his mug. From the table rises Abel Flannigan and shoulders through the crowd, undoing his coat: a north country drover every week for supper, this one.

  “Now, now!” shrieks Betsi Ramrod, and up on the counter she goes, landing in the sawdust with a flurry of drawers. “Sit you down, Abel boy, Betsi will handle it.” She shoves the drovers out of it. “This is a respectable establishment, me boyo, anyone fighting will pay for the damages, a penny for every mug broken, twopence for a jug. By all the saints suffering, God what a life. Fighting, fighting! Good evening, Jethro Mortymer, most unhappy you are looking for somebody courting the gentry. How is Tessa Lloyd Parry?”

  “She does not come in here,” I answered, and shouldered drovers aside for the counter.

  “No offence, mind, only asking. Heard she was poorly again, that’s all.”

  “Right poorly,” said Gipsy May, joining me. Strange about this gipsy. Coffee-coloured, blowsy, half a yard of breast showing and bangle-earrings, was Gipsy, the daughter of Liza Heron of a Cardigan tribe; a woman in love with things that screeched and as tame as a meat-fed tiger, but mother-gentle when it came to Tessa. I lifted the mug and blew off the froth with Grandfer’s eyes boring holes in my shoulders. First time we had shared Black Boar.

  “You heard what ails her, Jethro Mortymer?”

  I had heard but I would not say in there. Weak in the chest, was Tessa, and coughing with her the last time I saw her, eyes as bright as stones in her fever, and I had called old Ben, her servant, and he had carried her back to the house in tears. Three Sundays running I had walked to the Reach, letting Grandfer Badger off with a caution, feeling dull, and Tessa had not been there. Called at the house once and fished out old Ben, but he had turned up his nose at the garbage.

  Sixpenny Jane in the corner by there, buxom, dark, pretty as a picture, giggling, posturing, her head flung back, kissing the air with her lips at a drover, driving him daft. Down on the Burrows lives Jane with her dad; a terror for the men, the curse of the women, but as clean as a new pin, and quiet. Strange how she resembled Mari with her inborn daintiness; cast in the same mould, the woman and the harlot. I cursed her soul as I saw her coming over for Grandfer’s little eyes were peeping over his quart.

  “You loose tonight, Jethro Mortymer?”

  I looked at her, at the smoothness of her, the whiteness of her throat, and she smiled then and her lips were red and curved above the shine of her teeth.

  “Don’t judge by yourself,” I said.

  “O, hoity toity, eh? Respectable, is it? Gentry, is it?” Eyes closed to the light, she laughed, tinkling above the bedlam. Saw the curve of her waist, the dress taut across the upward sweep of her breasts. Pity I felt, and longing. But up leaped Flannigan, and shouldered her out of it.

  �
��Leave her,” he said. “There’s quicker ways of dying,” and he grinned and back-handed his bristling chin. “You heard, Mortymer? I’ve got a gate.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “Tom Rhayader’s got two.”

  “Bullin’s men. Sassenachs, not even Welsh. God, what a country. Another’s going up in front of the kilns – that will catch the lot of us.”

  I drank, watching him. Dangerous, this one. I reckoned I could take most there that night, including Gower, but not Abel Flannigan. Deep-chested, he topped six feet, and his hobby was bull-taming. When bulls went mad they always called for Abel. “Bull gone mad down at Morgan’s place, Abel me son,” Biddy would shout, “slip down and see to him, there’s a good boy,” and Abel would kill a quart or two to liven him up and cut a yew branch for the taming. Slippery on his feet for a big man, he would vault the gate and get the bull’s tail and hang on relentless to the kicking and bucking, and every time the thing turned its head Abel would cut him on the nose with the yew. Bulls around our parts tossed and turned in their dreams of Abel.