Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  The soldier rode up, dismounted, tied his horse and approached the wood. Cool customer, this one, though few Rebeccas were armed save with useless powder-guns. He took his time; a big man, over six feet, with the pistol lying in his palm. Castlemartin Yeomanry by the look of him, a long way from home and dying for the skin of the hatred Rebecca. His every action was casual as he stood there reloading, unconcerned, it seemed, that he was outlined against the stars. I heard the metallic click of his powder flask, the snap of the hammer as he thumbed it back and secretly cursed myself that I had given him time to reload. It seemed he knew he had me, for he jumped the ditch and parted the branches, took a look at Randy and came in stooping, pistol held out. Held my breath, watching, then lowered my face as he turned my way, and my heart nearly stopped. Trailing from Randy’s stirrup was Morfydd’s old petticoat that I had torn off riding five miles back and thought I had flung away. This the reason for the shot without so much as a question. The wind was blustering still, drowning my retreat as I eased my body backwards, feeling for stones. A brook was behind me, gurgling and splashing, and I slid down the little bank and into it in a little shower of stones and plops. Saw the soldier wheel, and he came at a trot, swerving to branches, leaping lithely, the pistol rigid. Only one chance for me – to empty the pistol; best to empty it while he was running and I rose with a yell and flung stones, going flat. God knows how he missed me; heard the ball strike inches from me and go whining away and clattering through branches. His rush took him on me, swinging with the pistol, catching me on the shoulder and spinning me round, and next moment we were locked. Other side of the ditch now, arms and legs entangled, gasping, grunting; a farmer by the sound of him and as strong as Abel Flannigan. We were clasped as lovers as we went down the bank again, and into the brook, me uppermost. Splashing, threshing, we fought like cats, no rules, no honour. I had him by the throat now, holding him down while the water flooded over him and he gasped to breathe, but he brought up a knee and took me over his head, and we floundered and slipped, scrambling for the bank. Drenched, mud-covered, I clawed out first and stood awaiting him, eyes measuring him, switching to his hands for a knife.

  “Right, you bloody swine Rebecca,” he gasped, and dived at my legs, but I leaped away and he went past sprawling, and waited for next time. Big as a horse he looked in that moonlight, confident, trained to a hair with his yeomanry service; not much older than me by the look of him; farmer probably, I remember thinking – farmer fighting farmer, gentry against the people. Armlocks, headlocks, everything in his armoury, no doubt, and he came head on now, hands clenched for the swing. More my line. I ducked it and hooked him solid and I saw the shine of his eyes and his teeth bared white as his head went back and I caught him with another as he skidded against a tree. No use to him this. Every time he came in diving I hit to drop him, but he still kept coming, and I saw him more clearly as he circled for an opening. More like thirty he looked then, curly-haired and handsome; a bad age to quarrel with; full strength, full stamina, and I would have to finish him quick in case there were others. Diving, he got me, pinning me against a tree, and we slipped down the bole, punching short, rolling around the roots, but I was up first, swinging blindly and the fool ran into them. I felt the pain leap to my elbow and my hand went numb as the blow took him square. Feet up soldier now, landing on his shoulders, legs waving, rolling in leaves, and I leaned against the tree gasping, praying he would lie still and put an end to it, but not this one. Face elbowed against boots, he got to a knee, staggered upright and swayed towards me swinging blind. I ducked the first easily, the second grazed my chin and crashed against the tree with every pound of his weight behind it. In a flash of the moon I saw his face, one eye shut tight, blood from his mouth, black stains on his tunic and he opened his mouth and screamed like a girl to the agony of his broken hand. No honour in this. Fighting for life. I measured him, sighted the chin and hit it crisply, and he clutched at the tree and went down it slowly, rolled over once and lay still at my feet. With my hands to my face I swayed above him. I do not remember him catching me square, but there was blood on my fingers when I drew them clear. Gasping, I leaned against the tree above him with the world of moonlight spinning above me, with no sound but the bluster of wind and the gasping breaths of the soldier below me. I got to the brook and knelt in the water, letting the coldness flood over me, bringing back life. The soldier was stirring as I left him for Randy, his buttocks arching to the fighting spirit within him, his hands clutching as he rolled in the leaves.

  Had to get going. With this one not knowing what a beating is he would start the same business within seconds of consciousness. Blinded with weariness, my shoulder like fire from the thump of his pistol, I spreadeagled myself on Randy, snatched up the petticoat and stuffed it in my pocket. By the time I reached the Tywi my strength was coming back. No more dragoons between Kidwelly and Cae White, thank God, and when I reached home we were into a gallop again. Opening the barn I shoved Randy in. Damned near dawn. Cocks were crowing from Bayleaves Farm as I rubbed myself dry and got into the bed, awaking an instant later, it seemed, in bright sunlight.

  No mam to contend with, just dull looks from Morfydd and Mari. Not so bad in the mirror, really; nose, that was all, half way over my face, and skinned.

  “Justin Slaughterer again by the look of it,” said Mari, banging down the plate. Only the three of us now not counting Richard and Jonathon.

  “More like the yeomanry – good beak-busters, them – the colonel himself, was it?” Morfydd now, acid curious, frightened. I saw her trembling hands,

  “Second-in-command,” I said.

  “Good grief,” she replied, “we are coming down the scale,” and turned to Mari. “Make the most of your brother-in-law,” she said. “We will not have him long.”

  Inclined to agree with her at this rate.

  CHAPTER 25

  WALDO BAILIFF caught it that June, got it proper from Flannigan’s daughters, though I had no hand in it, more the pity.

  “Terrible, disgusting,” whispered Mari at breakfast next day.

  “Waldo Bailiff you speaking of, or Rebecca?” asked Morfydd.

  For the first time since Cae White their eyes met in challenge over the table.

  “Took him through on the pole, saw it myself,” said Richard, his eyes like saucers. Growing fast, this one, regular man.

  “Hush,” said Mari. “It is too indecent to think about.”

  “Ask Gipsy May,” said Morfydd, chewing. “Indecent all right. Things are coming improper indeed when a man pays a shilling for a child, though I hold no grief for Gipsy. Cross her palm with silver, turn her out. Do you call that justice?”

  “A public exhibition. Better horsewhip him in private – never have I seen the like of it,” said Mari. “It has a bad effect on the children.”

  A bad effect on Waldo, too.

  The rumours varied but I knew the truth of it. Flannigan and ten of the daughters went up to the Reach and caught Waldo sprucing himself for his Saturday outing with Betsi Ramrod. Heading for marriage these two, arm in arm, large as life, peas in a pod in their treatment of Gipsy. Lucky for Betsi she wasn’t carried, too. Trial, sentence and punishment, all within the hour, and they brought him through the village on the pole near midnight; staghung, naked but for his trews, screaming for a pigsticking, begging for mercy, while windows went up and doors came open and Betsi Ramrod weeping and tearing out her hair when they dumped him in the taproom of Black Boar tavern. Six pounds savings they found under the bed, six pounds for Gipsy May, said Flannigan to me later, though the trouble was getting it to her. Wonderful to see Flannigan in Chapel next day with Dai Alltwen Preacher roasting Rebecca up in the pulpit for dastardly attacks on God-fearing people; not a hair out of place had Abel Flannigan, and Toby Maudlin sitting next to him beating his breast for the sins of the village and Justin Slaughterer giving his bass Amen. That was a week back and not a daughter recognized: recognized, no doubt, but nobody dared breathe a name, an
d not a soul had seen Waldo since. Still going, said Flannigan. Thank God, said Morfydd.

  “You ready?” she asked me now.

  “Aye,” I said, rising from table.

  It was three days or so since I had tangled with the soldier and my bruises were going down and my nose coming normal. I had been lying low of late though every Rebecca and daughter in the county were out doing overtime on burning ricks and gates, and the victory was practically gained. The Trusts had lost all heart for rebuilding and the splintered remains of gates littered the highways, the charred timbers of the tollhouse rafters grinning at the summer sky. Due on shift at Gower’s pit that morning, Morfydd and I took the endless road to coal. Strangely, she was looking better since Mam had left; as if the constant suppressing hand of my mother had lifted, leaving her free of criticism, but I knew the truth of it when we were half way to Ponty on that bright June day.

  “I am bringing Willie O’Hara home tonight, Jethro. D’you mind?”

  She glanced at me sideways and I winked.

  “None of that,” she said. “Respectable is Willie, never mind the tales – a woman could do worse.”

  “Handsome devil, I’ll say that for him.”

  “Knows how to treat a woman,” and she smiled. “Opening doors, closing gates, and he wants me.”

  “Are you in love with him?” I asked.

  “Take me out of coal, mind.”

  “I am doing that,” I said. “The end of this month. I asked if you loved him.”

  “I will only ever love one,” she said. “I am thinking of my son. His father for the next world, if there is one. Willie O’Hara will do for this.”

  “He wants to marry you, this Willie?”

  She did not reply. Still beautiful she looked with her shawl over her shoulders and the wind catching her hair, still young enough to be loved.

  “Bring him home, girl,” I said. “We will make him welcome.”

  We walked on, leaping the brooks, taking the short cuts over the fields on the paths we knew so well. Years it seemed since we first came to Cae White. Willie O’Hara had come into her life at a time I feared for her sanity, and I was grateful to him, and relieved. For Morfydd was the one reason why I stayed on at Cae White. Much as I longed to get to America there seemed no chance with Morfydd around, and I knew that Mari would never leave her alone to fend for Richard.

  “The trouble is you and Mari,” said Morfydd. “Hardly fair, is it, to walk out of the place with Willie and Richard and leave the pair of you alone – not fair on Iestyn, come to that.”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Queer old life, isn’t it?”

  I nodded, taking her hand over a stream. Brilliant that early morning sunshine with the mist billowing down the river and the rooks screaming in the tops of the trees. Every detail of that last walk together to the pit is impressed on my mind, cut in deep grooves as with the knife of the woodcutter; every second of that morning I hear: the gurgling rush of water over stones, the coloured darts of the kingfishers I see, as if it was yesterday instead of through the mist of years.

  “Mari and me will be all right,” I said.

  “O, aye?”

  “You go and make a home with Willie, do not study us.”

  “No, Jethro,” she said. “Not till Iestyn comes back.”

  “Three years,” I said, watching her, wondering. … But I knew she thought him still alive when I saw her smile.

  “God, I know how Mari feels,” she said. “Three years more, that is all, and then I will see him.”

  Less than three hours.

  I knew of a ship at Saundersfoot; a three-masted barque that was lying at the quay; waiting for the flood of immigrants from the north – people coming down on foot, it was said. Two weeks or longer she had laid at Saundersfoot with her sails trimmed down and smoke drifting from her galleys, and her captain was taking the fares at the gangplank, five pounds a head steerage, fifteen pounds a head cabins. Bound for the port of Philadelphia: a leap from there to the town of Pittsburgh and the flaming ovens of the iron. White in the deck, black-tarred her hull, a leviathan of a ship of two hundred tons, stalwart, braced in the bows for ploughing Atlantics, with pigtailed Plymouth men manning her and her captain with the face of Neptune himself, bearded and sideboarded and a gold-buttoned tunic. God, how I longed for that fifteen pounds, for Mari, Jonathon and me. Saving every penny now in the black box under the bed. No more quarts in Black Boar tavern, skimping on this and that, coming the Welsh Jew, longing for the feel of the deck beneath me, with Mari one side of me and Jonathon on the other, turning my back on the labour I hated. Last fall I had ploughed and sown Cae White, doing it spare time after a full Ponty shift, and the corn was standing high now, begging for the reapers – full price and profit for corn now the gates were nearly down. Like a longing for Mari it grew within me, this yearning for the land of promise, to make a decent life. This very morning Rebecca was marching on Carmarthen city, but I was sick of fighting. Led by Rebecca John Harries of Talog Mill thousands of the daughters were marching on the city to burn the workhouse down, they said; burn it to the ground and succour the starving, and God help the man who stands in our path. Flannigan would be there, Toby and Justin, Matthew Luke John and even Tom the Faith – scores of others I knew, fighting for justice. For this was Rebecca triumphant, showing her strength now the gates were down; pitting her numbers against the sabres of the yeomanry, spitting on dragoons, constables and magistrates. Fighting, fighting – four years of it, me – and for what? Not for gates. Fighting for Mari and the ship that was lying at Saundersfoot Quay. I would hang in her rigging, unfurl her sails, tar her from bow to stern while she rode at sea, scrub her white, labour in the galleys, bow and scrape to the dining gentry – just to hear the song of her, feel the roll of her, the buck and toss of the swell beneath her and listen to the whine of the Atlantic gales that drove her west to Philadelphia. Fifteen pounds between me and freedom – saving it now at two shillings a week – take me three years at this rate. And in three years time Iestyn would come back – tiptoeing over the waves from Botany Bay, his fingers clutching for Mari, invading her life.

  I had to get away.

  Lying in the seam in Number Three now, coal-grimed, sweating in inches of water, with the pick reaching in to the two foot roof. Liam Muldooney beside me mouthing the Bible, intoning deep about Kabzeel; his grandpa; grumbling and grunting about lions in snow. Worse than ever was Liam these days, what brain the coal left him was deserting him fast now: stupefying his body with unending labour, and God knows for what for he didn’t need the money. The tram-towers and basketers were labouring behind us, coming in a queue from the ladders to the seams where fifty men or more lay side by side with us. I stopped for a breather and turned on my back, arms behind my head. Saw Morfydd next one up with a tram and an Irish girl shovelling it full like a man, singing above the bedlam of wheels and chinks some plaintive song of home. Pretty it sounded to its backcloth of thumps, the grunting of men, grumbling shovels, the wounding picks that echoed in the gallery to the shaft of the pit where Gower was bellowing. Pretty little Irish woman, too, come to that, coming upright now, leaning on her shovel and giving me a wink.

  “Right, girl,” she said to Morfydd. “Switch road, this one – through Number Six,” and Morfydd nodded and crawled down to hitch up.