“Something’s got to be done, hear me? I’m burning ricks now but I’m heading for tollgates.”
I jerked my head and lifted my mug as Osian Hughes got to his feet. Towering above us, he was biting at his fingers, his looks girlish, his face as white as a fish belly.
“O, God,” said Abel. “Don’t tell me,” and turned.
“I’ve got a gate,” said Osian, soprano.
“And what are you doing about it?”
Osian wrung his fingers.
“Look what we’re up against,” said Abel. “No guts, no fight, no nothing. Go to hell, girl, find yourself a drover.”
“My mam says pay,” whispered Osian. “We can’t fight the Trusts.”
“We can’t fight with the likes of you to fight with,” said Flannigan. “Thank God I was born with an Irish surname if yours is Welsh. But my mam Biddy is proper Welsh, and Biddy says fight. Look, Mortymer,” he turned to me. “I have reckoned it up. If I take a cart to the kilns for a three-and-six-penny load it’ll cost me one-and-a-penny to get it through. Three gates stand between me and the lime now, and full price tolls, mind, not halves.”
“That’s the gatekeepers,” I said. “More fool you.”
“But the notice is up there – full price tolls!”
“And you can’t read and they know it.”
“By heaven, I will have those keepers,” he whispered, fist in his hand.
“And they are planning for another – Kidwelly to St Clears,” said Osian.
I nodded. I had heard, but did not say, not with Flannigan in this mood.
“Bastards,” said Flannigan. “You thought how many of us will use that one?”
“Nigh twenty,” replied Osian, “counting me.”
“Nobody’s counting you,” said Flannigan. His eyes narrowed and he prodded me. “More like fifty, I say – counting the upland people – folks like Tom Rhayader, and the upland boys like a fight for the fun of it. What you say?”
The cockfight grew to a shriek about us and feathers flew in a flash of spurs. Blood spattered the boards where a cock lay dying and money chinked from hand to hand. Men were shouting, shoving to the counter but giving the three of us a wide berth, eyeing Flannigan.
“Rebecca, eh?” I grinned at him.
“O, dear God!” whispered Osian, sweating.
“You get to hell out of it,” said Flannigan. “Get yourself weaned,” and brought up his elbow. He frowned around the room then, his eyes on Gower.
“Mind your tongue,” he said soft. “There is more than one Judas.”
“Just counted another,” I replied, for Grandfer’s eyes were unwinking from his corner, his little nose shining over the top of his quart. “And leave Gower be,” I added.
“Just thinking,” said he. “Best treat him respectable. Six months of this and we will all be at Ponty. How’s that Morfydd of yours sticking it?”
“Don’t mention her in here,” I said.
“Outside, then. We will stick to Rebecca.” He looked at me. “Bloody fool to talk in front of Osian. If they closed a fist at him he’d blab to the devil.”
The June night was warm and alive with candle-flame stars, with a fat, kind moon. We leaned against Betsi’s fence.
“You in with us or out, boy?”
“In,” I replied. “Those gates come down.”
“Which gates?”
“Kidwelly to St Clears.”
“Give me strength, but a kid you are for all your size. The bloody things aren’t up yet. Gates in general, I mean – round these parts.”
“I’m with you.”
“Right, you.” He fisted my chin, knocking me sideways. “It’s fixed. We are meeting next Wednesday, midnight. Up on the mountain in Tom Rhayader’s barn.”
“First meeting, Rebecca? Damned near Squire’s Reach, mind.”
“Poetic justice, boy. It was Squire Lloyd Parry who started the Trust and he is taking his profits from Lewis, the toll-contractor. Have his mansion next, like we had his salmon.”
“You?” I had suspected it was Flannigan.
“Me and six others – Tom Rhayader leading. You heard about this Rhayader?”
“Seen him, that’s all.”
“We couldn’t have a better Rebecca. He was there at Efailwen with Twm Carnabwth when they burned the gate. Chapel pugilist. I wouldn’t tangle with him.”
“Some man,” I said.
“And a brain. Dangerous, mind – he will not stand nonsense.”
“I will be there,” I said.
“God help us,” said he. “Goodnight.”
I watched the stars for a bit, thinking of Mari, not knowing why, and turned to go back into Betsi’s tavern and found myself facing Grandfer.
“Nice night, Jethro.”
I nodded, sick of him.
“You mind your company, boy.”
“You mind your business.”
He chuckled then, tapping with his stick, his bald head scarcely up to my shoulder.
“How old are you, Jethro?”
“Hitting sixteen.”
“Big boy – you look like gone twenty. And you mate with Abel Flannigan near twice your age?”
“I mate with whom I like,” I said.
“Take you to the Devil, mind.”
“Then I’ll be in good company.”
He looked up then and I saw the pouches of his red-rimmed eyes, his pickled walnut of a face, his jagged smile.
“Pretty stinky you think me, is it?”
I did not reply. Half a man is better than nothing and with this one living on ale and sawdust for no good reason I had worked myself stupid to harvest Cae White. Time was I owed him something. Not now.
“You make no allowance for age?”
“Uncle Silas is damned near eighty and still farming.” I turned away.
“You know how old I be?”
“No more’n seventy.”
And he grunted and cackled and stamped with his stick on my boot. “Don’t know my age myself,” said he. “Old enough to be born twice, I reckon,” and he sighed deep and gripped my arm. “I’ve fought and drunk with most round here, young lusties – last fifty year – and they’ve all been called by St Peter ’cept me. You know my Christian name. Zephaniah. Zephaniah, there’s a mouthful. You know something more? Could be that a man with a name like that comes at the end of the cloud alphabet – could be St Peter’s got his thumb on my name when he turns the pages of Paradise. Keeps passing me over, see? Me, poor old Grandfer, longing to die. You like the women, Jethro?”
“Old devil, you are, worrying Mari to death,” I said.
“I asked you a question – you fancy the women?”
“Sick of women,” I said. “Got too many back home.”
“And poor little Sixpenny Jane back in there coming fidgety for turfing – there’s a waste.” He tapped with his stick and rocked with laughter. “Bless me, she’d get what she wanted from Grandfer forty years back – most did, forgive me soul.” He belched and pardoned, staggering against me and I held him off, for there is nothing so vulgar as age and its conquests. “Aye,” he added, “a century back, it do seem. All honey and fire; I was chasing the skirts. But I’ve worn pretty well, mind, everything considered.”
“For God’s sake come home,” I said, but he set back his shoulders and pulled up his shirt and his chest was white in its parchment of age. “Look now,” he cried. “There’s beautiful for eighty and some – very gratifying, life in the old dog yet, and I’ve laid my mark on the women of this county, don’t you worry; many being privileged to say nothing of thankful. Now, that Morfydd sister of yours, there is a woman for favours to keep a man awake – with the face of an Irish and hair from Spain, and a temper on her like a boar coming frisky. You like my Mari?”
This turned me. Wicked was his eye, mouth grinning, beard trembling, knowing of the shaft. I sighed, bored.
“Oi, oi! Strikes a chord, do it? But no offence intended, mind – it was the same for me when
I was your age.”
“I am going home,” I said, but he hooked me with his stick and looked up at the moon.
“Hush, you,” he said. “Give me a minute, Jethro. All for your good.”
I waited, disquieted, and listened as his voice came low and sad.
“A long time ago I knew a woman like our Mari. Bronwen was her name. In a shroud of night is our Mari, dark, dark, but this Bronwen girl came opposite – a white, blossomy piece as a hawthorn bush in spring blow and the face of a madonna – never seen the like of her since for beautifying.” He looked at me and his eyes were different. “And gentry, too – remember that – gentry. All crinoline and ribbons, she was, and with perfume, and riding habit regular, she being keen on the hunt. She lived up by Laugharne with her dad, Sir Robert, her mam being dead. And I was her stable boy – ostler, you gather me?”
I nodded.
“And every evening on Sundays she would gallop her mare along the banks of the Taf River to Milton – to the long grasses where I lay waiting.” He sucked his teeth, eyes narrowed to the memory. “And up she would come with her mare fairly lathered, wild as a gipsy, dying for me – me, Zephaniah, the ostler.”
He looked at me. “You want more because you won’t bloody like it.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, we met first when harvest was on us and the barn hay flying all golden and windy – in secret, remember, because of her dad. Eh, beautiful in summer are the crags and whirlpools of the Taf, with the herons crying doleful over the marshes, but terrible it is in winter when the snows are melting and the river is rushing in anger, spraying arms. But even in winter she came to me – for lovering.”
“How old were you this time?”
“Stripling – same age as you, thereabouts, dying for garters. And after the lovering we would part pretty formal – Bron going back to her gentry feathers and me to my stable straw. ‘Yes, ma’am, and no, ma’am,’ it was, of course, with her folks growing ears, but every Sunday regular we would make love red-headed, my Bron and me, with naked bathing in the Taf pools and frolics on the river bank after with nobody watching but herons. You get much practice at that, boy?”
He was coming to a point now. I did not trust him. “I am going,” I said, but he barred the way.
“Wait, you,” he said. “Nothing personal, mind, lest you run a conscience.”
“Wicked old devil,” I said.
“Ah, so! But so was this Bronwen, remember – showed me the way, she did – near twice as wicked as me. You know Dai Education, the new tollkeeper up at the kilns near the Reach?”
“What’s he to do with it?”
“Just wondered. Reckon little Dai might give us the answer, him being a scholar – as to why a beauty like Bron was interested in a chap like me. You fancy a quart, Jethro? Your Grandfer’s gone dry.”
“Just had a quart.”
“But you want the rest of it, eh?”
I had to know the rest of it.
“Well, well! A wicked old tale it is for a chit of a boy like you,” and he gave a long shroud of a sigh. “Listen, then. Welsh gentry was my Bronwen – Welsh to her fingertips, as her name do tell, and Welsh-speaking, like me – which is proper Welshness, none of the foreign old English stuff you bring down here. County’s changed, boy. Fifty years back you’d be straining your ears for an English damn, but the place is going to the bloodies just now. Mind, Dai Education do say it’s the industry, these furnace men and collier chaps coming in, staining the land with their foreign ideas …”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “What about this woman?”
“And me with a throat like the bottom of a bird cage – parrots at that.”
“Just one, then we’re back out.”
“Sharper than billhooks, boy – promise.”
So we went back into Black Boar tavern.
I passed over the twopence and Grandfer went up for the quarts, slapping down the money, bawling for attention, helloing to strangers – one in particular, a tiny wizened shrew of a man who was cranked and blue. Jackknifed, hobbling on his ploughing corns, he was carrying and slopping his ale to a table. Back came Grandfer wobbling the quarts and we sat down opposite.
Grandfer jerked his head. “You notice Ezekiel?”
I nodded. Bald as an egg was this Ezekiel, whiskers drooping, and his face and hands were as blue as a blackberry, and I pitied him.
“Reckoned Ezekiel would be in just now. That’s why I came back.”
“Why?” I asked.
Grandfer drank deep and wiped with his cuff. “Powerful is the Man in the Big Pew, and fearful when He is denied. Terrible is He to His misbehaving children.” He waved his mug at the room. “And there’s one or two in by here due for His wrath pretty soon, boy. You mind you don’t join them. Have a look at Ezekiel.”
“What about your Bronwen?”
“Bronwen can wait. You see Ezekiel there? You know how he got so cranked? Well, thirty years back it would be when Ezekiel was courting Biddy Flannigan, Abel’s mam. Down in the Big Wheatfield, it was, all of a summer’s day. Tall and straight was Ezekiel then, forking a harvest as high as the next. You listening?”
I sighed.
“Well, coming pretty hot with him was Ezekiel, and poor little Biddy was all legs and petticoats and hollering for her mam, for the boy was that determined. Not a cloud in the sky, remember – harvest time, remember. But the Big Man was watching and His sky came dark – nobody near to give Biddy a hand. So down came the lightning and caught Ezekiel square – smack in the middle of the back, and Biddy Flannigan not even singed.”
“O, aye?” I cocked an eye at him.
“The truth. Just for fulfilling a normal function. And that is the first example. Now for the second, the lesson of wrath.” He lowered his mug and stared at nothing. “In child, was Bronwen. In child by me, you understand?”
The bellowing of the room died between us.
“And the child was born, Jethro. The child was Mari’s mother, which makes our Mari gentry blood.” He turned to me, eyes fixed to mine. “Down from Laugharne came her dad with his whip, and I had it. God, I had it naked – damned near killed me. But he left me Bronwen – cast her out as the gentry do a wayward hound. He left me Bronwen and Cae White to go with her for a pound a week rent for the rest of my life. Now listen,” and he gripped my wrist. “Payable on his death to his son, Squire Lloyd Parry. You following me?”
I was gaping now, knowing the secrets of Cae White, knowing of Mari.
“Aye, Cae White is mine, and Parry can’t turn me out of it, and it is Mari’s after I am gone. …”
“And your Bronwen?” I whispered in a lull.
“If I go on the hops it is because of my Bronwen, boy. For she bore my child and then she vanished, went down to the river for the shame of it, in the place where we loved. And they found her three weeks later on the reaches of Laugharne – on the night of Whitland Fair, it was, with mud in her mouth and her eyes taken by gulls. Reckon she walks Cae White by night. You heard her?”
Terrible was his face in that grief.
“God help you, Grandfer,” I said, and he raised his face, his eyes swimming.
“God help me, is it?” he said. “God help you for mating with gentry, Mortymer, d’you hear me?”
I rose, staring down at him. “You cranked little devil,” I whispered. “Me and Tessa Lloyd Parry’s been nothing but decent!”
“Sit down!” and he got me sharp with his stick. “Do I fear the wrath of the likes of you when I have faced the wrath of God? Who’s talking about Tessa Lloyd Parry? The girl is a cripple and couldn’t mate with a butterfly, her body dead from the waist down. Is she the only gentry girl who is taking the rove of your eye?”
I clenched my hands.
“Be warned, Mortymer,” said he. “Grandfer has been watching. With Cae White as your Eden and your brother’s wife for a lover, the fingers of Cain shall reach up from the dust, and seek you. Be gone!”
Ligh
t chopped the hedge as I opened the door. The gables of Kidwelly were gaunt in the distance, a steeple a pine-needle of silver in moonlight. With Tara against me I walked back home. Sick, sick I felt, of life.
CHAPTER 11
September!
I AWOKE ON the Feast Day Sunday to a dazzling, jewel-blue morning, and the air through my window was sparkling and heady with its scents of coming autumn and the fields below me swam in vivid light, every bough tipped with hoar frost and dripping diamonds as the sun kicked Jack Frost out of it. Rebecca meetings, threats of action, notes to magistrates, but not a suggestion from Tom Rhayader that we should get down to the business of tollgates, and I was getting sick of it. To hell with Rebecca, I said, and to hell with Grandfer, too, including his gentry Bronwen.
To hell with farming, too, for this was the Feast Day.
Plenty of activity downstairs, with women up and rushing with pots and pans clattering, everyone singing and laughing in anticipation of the joys to come.
Up and doing, me – dashing down the stairs with the towel waving, gave Morfydd one with it as I skidded through the kitchen, and out to the water butt to plunge my head down. Splashing, ducking, I didn’t hear them come up behind me, and Mari got one leg and Morfydd the other and I was in head first and drowning till Mam ran out swiping with a dishcloth and hauling me out while the boys were leaping around as things possessed. O, great was the joy of that September morning, all cares forgotten, the house tinkling with laughter, and even Grandfer allowed himself a chuckle, his warnings washed away in the Black Boar jugs. Best clothes, me; smarming my hair down with Mari’s goose fat which she used for chests; getting the hair flat to the head; clean shirt, belted up to strangle; nip into Grandfer’s room for his funeral stock, and I stood before Morfydd’s mirror all shines and creases, a sight fit to turn the head of a countess. Downstairs to make an impression, for a man who is handsome and six feet is a fool not to make the best of it, but everyone seemed too busy to take notice, for Mam and Morfydd were dressed for prize bantams and Mari came down all ribbons and lace, slim and willowy in the new black dress she had made. Richard, too, very smart in the suit Mam had stitched for him, and Jonathon with an old one of Richard’s cut down. Eh, there’s handsome are little boys dressed for Feast Days, all curls and podges, their little faces alight with teary excitement.
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