Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

“Do they know who?” I asked.

  “Rebecca. She didn’t leave notes. The world’s well rid of him.” He sighed. “You signed on yet?”

  “The Cestria? Not yet.”

  “Nor me. These boys say the dragoons will search her any minute. I’ve been waiting days for them to clear her. But the captain isn’t choosey, thank God. Saints or convicts, he says, five pounds steerage. I got away from the house with ten minutes to spare – saw my mam giving hell to those dragoons – so I’m not rushing things now.” He drank and gasped, wiping with his sleeve. “Been mooching round here for the last ten days.”

  “We sail together then?”

  “Wacko!” said he. “We’ll give them America. Do you reckon they starve out there?”

  “Not if you work, they say.”

  “I drink to that,” said he. “You heard about Tom Rhayader?”

  I saw a vision of the beloved Rhayader; square-faced, tanned, his eyes of steel, and shook my head.

  “Hit out two of them and tried to escape, but they got him in ten yards. He didn’t come out of it.”

  I closed my eyes. “And his wife and kids?”

  “Carmarthen workhouse last time I heard. God knows now. You leaving that woman, Jethro?”

  I looked at him.

  “The night gown woman,” said he. “The one who filled that was worth while bringing,” and he winked at Tara. “Poor exchange with that old bitch. She bedded?”

  “Not that woman,” I said.

  “Has she gone fripperty with another Welsh chap, then?”

  “Leave it, Matthew.”

  “Only asking, mind. No offence.”

  “Leave it,” I said.

  Commotion on the cobbles outside now; hoofbeats, clanks, the angry cries of vendors, shouted commands. We rose. The sailors were pressing to the windows, jugs dangling, fists clenched as the horsemen drew sabres to clear a path to the Cestria. With a captain leading they forced their way along the quay to the gangplank where the skipper stood, hands on his hips. Three soldiers pushed past him and went aboard. We watched, tense, but they came back in five minutes.

  “Routine check,” I said. “Their hearts are not in it.”

  “Give them an hour,” said Matthew. “Wait for the evening tide. They might come back.”

  The nightshift colliers had started when we left the tavern primed with enough ale to make us cheeky, and I thought of the Gower pit as I passed the black-faced labourers; the dull-eyed Welsh and Irish women hauling and singing to the clank of the wheels. But one was young, vital, alive. Irish by her looks, this girl, with the same bright beauty as my Morfydd, black-haired, one eye closing at me as I passed. Morfydd this, this the shade of another, I thought; one who was lying a hundred feet down in the press and smashed props of Number Six, one in the seam, one inch thick. Was Willie O’Hara weeping? I wondered, or seeking the breast of another Morfydd now she had left him for Richard, her lover? Strange the wish to snatch at this Irish, strange the wish to grip her, and I went back slowly to the gangplank where the captain was waiting. Matthew was doing the talking, fist thumping, bargaining. Money chinked and I was elbowed for mine, but I was not really there. I was down in Cae White with the dinner coming out, with the treadling of Mam’s wheel in my ears, listening to the swish of the shuttle, Jonathon’s high shrieks to Mari, her soft voice. And I heard again the sigh of the scythe and saw the wheat falling obliquely in sunfire; heard the herons crying doleful from Kidwelly, the curlews shouting at dawn, the barking of otters from the Reach, the whispers of Tessa. Other things I heard: Mari’s shout to go to Chapel, the crackling hiss of the blazing gates, Mam’s contralto in Sanctus. Dashing into the pitprops now, screaming for Morfydd; making love to Mari down on the shore. I put my hand into my pocket and gripped my earth, the handful I had brought from the fields of Cae White.

  “Not that, you fool,” said Matthew, eyeing me. “The man wants his money.”

  “O, aye,” I said, and fished it out.

  Snow-white deck now, pigtailed seamen, the smell of tar.

  I stood by the rail with my hand in my pocket and gripped the earth.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, man?” said Matthew.

  But I did not answer him. Just staring at Wales. Sails were billowing above me, oceans of white as they dropped and unfurled. Feet stamped the deck. Dimly I heard the creaks, the commands, the shrieking of capstans.

  “Damned pixilated, you,” said Matthew. “I’m going below.”

  I gripped it in my hand, this Wales, and bowed my head. Gripped this plot for which men died; for which my kin had stood square to invaders, mocking the whip, spitting in the faces of kings. For such small muck and pebbles men have laboured and suffered – for this proud land of the Celts, Iberians, Moors and Spaniards, Angles, Jutes, Bretons, Welsh! For this blessed race whose mongrel blood is stirred with the blood of nobles and princes, this land of song and greenness that has flung an empire of invaders into the sea. The ship shuddered and rocked to the swell and I raised my head. Relations and friends were thronging the quay now; weepy matrons, stalwart fathers, ancient grandfers pinned on sticks, and the dying red sun was shining on the bare heads of children. Screamed goodbyes now, sobs and laughter as the exiles jostled beside me.

  “For God’s sake what is wrong with you, man?” Matthew again, turning me.

  Wind in the rigging now, sails slapping; ropes were curling against the evening sun. The Cestria heaved and bucked beneath me. Hawsers tightened and sprayed water, drooped slack and tightened again as she fought to be free. Hands clenched, I stood there holding Tara.

  What is it that enters the blood and chains a man’s soul to the soul of his country? What is it that pierces as a barb and cannot be drawn? O, this beloved country that has raised its sword to the fire of its persecutors and reddened its soil with beloved sons! Wales! What lies in your possession that you bite at the throats of those who leave you? You of the mountainous crags of Dinas, of Snowden, Pembrey and Capel Pass – you of the valleys, heaths and pastures, the roaring rivers, the village brooks – what is your golden key that turns in the hearts of your patriots; what flame sears their souls in the last goodbye?

  The gap was widening. The Cestria strained to the bridling hawsers. Heard the captain then; saw his arms outstretched to the quay where the crowd was gathering into an informal choir, and the labouring Welsh and Irish rushed to join them – any excuse for a song; barefooted, ragged, come to sing.

  “A song for the exiles, then?” roared the captain.

  “Sanctus, Sanctus!” a woman shrieked.

  “Right, you, Sanctus!” And he stood conducting.

  The ship vibrated to the voices, the crew stopped work and sang; faces turned up, they sang, and it was glorious, but I could not sing.

  The crowd was thicker now, pouring down to the harbour, emptying from the hovels and taverns. Vendors screamed their wares at us, bullying a path for their carts, elbowing at tipsy sailors. Bull-chested colliers shouldered in from the mine, bantering, quarrelling, forming a circle of stamping hobnails, clapping to the time as a skinny Irish woman did a jig on the quay, skirts up, scarf waving, her black sticks of legs raising the dust, and the child-labour, drooping in their rags, watched her with dejected eyes. A drunken foreigner now, bottle waving, screaming insults, bristling for a fight; a black-gowned priest, hand up in blessing, telling his beads. All the bedlam of it grew about us in a thundering of sails, and above all was Sanctus in power and majesty, pulling in the crowd until it jammed them solid before the gangplank. Only one stood alone. Bending at the stern rail, I watched her. This, the image of Morfydd I had seen earlier, cheeky with her harlot come-hitherings, lounging impish on a bollard, smoothing back her long dark hair. Hands on her hips, brazen, she smiled at me. Rags fluttering, she waved, and I smiled back. Dimly I heard the captain’s voice:

  “We leave in joy, good people, so do not weep. For the exile takes but his body to the sister land, leaving his heart in Wales. Last verse of Sanctus agai
n, and sing it to the sky! Sing!”

  The tide had got us proper, swinging us to the stern ropes. The wind was rising, the pennant standing as stiff as a bar. Impatient, the Cestria bucked to the swell. Screamed goodbyes now, people weeping aloud, ropes splashing silver as they were hooked from bollards. Halyards stiffening, sails billowing, the ship heeled and rolled in the wind, thumping in the waves. I looked again at the Irish Morfydd, and saw through her breast the winding road that led to Amroth where Mari might be coming, and far beyond it to Llangain and Carmarthen, Llandeilo and Senny, and I laboured up the Clydach Valley road to home. Cae White I saw, ruined, deserted, the golden sweeps of its rejected corn; the empty kitchen, the cold, dead hob. And then came a vision of Mari, sitting in Tomos’s trap with Richard and Jonathon either side, dominated by the black mass of Tomos, trotting east towards Nanty, and Mari was weeping. Aye, weeping – but for me, or her Iestyn? Strange and cruel are the laws of God, that a woman cannot marry her dead husband’s brother. And this, I knew, was why she had not come. Stranger, too, are the laws of women. The road to Amroth danced in my eyes, and the road was empty. The crowd was as solid as a heading of coal now, arms raised as a forest as the gap between us widened, and I smiled again at the Irish Morfydd; she who had risen, it seemed, from the smashed props of Number Six and walked the galleries through a thousand tons of rock, sent by my Welsh Morfydd, to say goodbye.

  Matthew Luke John at my elbow now, hooking me to face him.

  “For God’s sake, man,” said he, “you are weeping.”

  “Go to hell,” I said.

  “For the petticoat woman? For that one there? O, aye!” and he narrowed his eyes. “Well, there’s a waste, but never you mind, for we’ll tar and feather a few in the town of Pittsburgh. Eh, dry it up, Jethro. They come better in silk than rags.”

  He spoke again, but I did not hear him, for in turning I had seen the crimson sky. The sun was setting, blazing and red as a Dutch cheese with him, one half steaming the sea and the other half in Hades, flaring at the clouds with his furnace glow, taking my mind back to childhood and the flashes of Blaenafon. It was as if the ovens of Pittsburgh had crashed back on hinges, striking at the world with their incinerating glare, and Mari’s face grew dim in that light as the sea divided us. Creaking, clanking, shuddering, the Cestria was lumbering before the wind, and in the magnificence of her bedlam I heard the call of the iron as men had heard it for a thousand years before me. O, brilliant was this sky! Brilliant is the flaring when the cauldron is turned and the molten streams run wild, hissing and firing in the moulds! I put out my arm and thrust Matthew behind me, hearing again the clang of the loading bays, the thump of hammers, the whine of the mills. Bedlam in the rigging now as the Cestria got going, with the wind singing as a puddler’s hammer and the spray hissing as water in the steaming-pit. This, the cold kiss of the firing-iron, the scald of the ladle, the heat and stink and sweat and call of it in all its hobnail stamping, this the iron that no woman understands. With Tara held against me I shouldered my way through the exiles huddled in their tears, staring at home; lace-trimmed gentry, half naked beggars, half starved Welsh and starving Irish. Reaching the prow I stared at the western sky where the iron was pouring, turning but once to wave.

  Standing erect, she was, and alone, her shawl held high.

  Morfydd no longer now, but Mari standing there.

  “Mari,” I said. “Goodbye.”

  Also by Alexander Cordell

  The Mortymer Saga

  THIS PROUD AND SAVAGE LAND

  THE RAPE OF THE FAIR COUNTRY

  HOSTS OF REBECCA

  SONG OF THE EARTH

  BELOVED EXILE

  LAND OF HEART’S DESIRE

  THE LOVE THAT GOD FORGOT

  A THOUGHT OF HONOUR

  RACE OF THE TIGER

  THE SINEWS OF LOVE

  THE DEADLY EURASIAN

  THE WHITE COCKADE

  WITCHES’ SABBATH

  THE HEALING BLADE

  TRAITOR WITHIN

  THE FIRE PEOPLE

  IF YOU BELIEVE THE SOLDIERS

  THE DREAM AND THE DESTINY

  THIS SWEET AND BITTER EARTH

  SEA URCHIN

  TO SLAY THE DREAMER

  ROGUE’S MARCH

  LAND OF MY FATHERS

  PEERLESS JIM

  TUNNEL TIGERS

  TALES FROM TIGER BAY

  REQUIEM FOR A PATRIOT

  MOLL

  THE DREAMS OF FAIR WOMEN

  SWEET AND BITTER EARTH

  SEND HER VICTORIOUS

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