Hosts of Rebecca

by Alexander Cordell

  “This minute,” said Morfydd.

  “Is somebody coming up?” Great were his eyes in his little man’s face; six years old now, handsome, strong, and I loved him.

  “O, God,” said Morfydd. “No peace for the wicked, is there?”

  “Them old ghosties be roaming, Mam,” he said. “They are always out and doing about Christmas. Another five minutes?”

  We wavered.

  “Not much control, is there,” said Mam, treadling. “Feet first they went in my day, mind – no argument.”

  “I will take you,” said Mari, kissing him.

  “Give him here,” I said. “I am going up, anyway. Come on, Dick boy, we will give them old ghosties,” and I hooked my arm under him and turned him in a circle for kissing.

  “Richard, if you please,” said Morfydd. “There are no Dicks here.”

  In the bed beside Jonathon I put him down and covered him.

  “Uncle Jethro?”

  “Aye, Dick?”

  “Where do the old moons go when they sink over Carmarthen?”

  “Chopped up into stars and put over Tenby,” I said at the window.

  “O, aye?” He fell to silence.

  I stood looking through the window. The country was white and misted and the snow caps of the hills were spearing at the moon like hunters. Away to the east the clouds flashed in strickening brilliance and I heard the faint plopping of the powder-guns of Rebecca.

  “Uncle Jethro?”

  I grunted.

  “You out again tonight, Uncle Jethro?”

  “Never go out,” I answered. “Too cold to be roaming.”

  “There’s strange,” said he. “I see you out there most time, for the slightest sound do wake me. A secret, is it?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “Will you tell on me?”

  “Swear honest,” said he. “Wait now before you tell me while I fetch out the china or I will wake my mam later and then there will be a palaver.”

  “Right,” I said, “but hurry.”

  Down with him, under with him, heaving it out, kneeling now, nightshirt held up, eyeing me excited.

  “Please turn away,” I said. “It is not a public exhibition, Dick.”

  “To the wall, turn round, is it?”

  I nodded.

  At the wall he said, “You courting then, Uncle Jethro?”

  “Aye, a lady, but keep it secret, remember.”

  “Cross my heart, man,” and I toed the thing under as he climbed into bed.

  “What lady, Uncle Jethro?” His eyes were as jewels in that light.

  “You never tell the lady’s name,” I replied.

  “Sixpenny Jane?”

  “Who said that?” This turned me.

  “Is she indecent, then?” He played with his fingers. “Old Grandfer said it – that telling? All you are worth, he said.”

  “Aye?”

  “And my mam do tell him to shut his mouth, eh, the wicked old bastard.”

  “Do not say bastard,” I answered. “Least of all about Grandfer.”

  Nodding now, the blankets up to his chin. “Do all men wear petticoats when they do the courting, man?”

  Just looked at him.

  “I see’d you, remember – night after night – sitting on old Randy, wearing the petticoat, and I told my mam and she said hairpins in the bed next, poor old Jethro.”

  “Mistaken,” I said. “Pretty snowy lately, Dick. When I go courting with the lady I come back covered. It wasn’t a petticoat.”

  “O, aye?”

  I examined his eyes for disbelief, finding none. O, for the eyes of children – innocent, trustful, read as a book. I had settled him, but not myself.

  Coming sick of it, fearful of the danger. God knows what would happen to them here if the dragoons tailed me one night. More than once I had galloped Randy to shake off the military, for the new Colonel just come in had a nose for Rebecca. Only last week I had laid in a hedge a hundred yards from Cae White waiting for a patrol to move off. Very interested in the house, it appeared, and I had sweated. Rhayader said somebody was informing – somebody among us but he did not know who. So we watched each other at the meetings now; took breaths while eyes switched, the sentences stopped half way. And now a child was tracking me – little hope if the dragoons got onto him, aged six. God help him if I find that tongue, said Justin Slaughterer. I will have the thing out bloody and dripping.

  Terrible to be harbouring the ears of a Judas.

  “Sleep now, Dick,” I said. “Don’t forget your prayers.”

  “Our Father, is it?”

  “He will listen. Just pray. Good night, boy.”

  I was going down the stairs when Morfydd met me halfway.

  “Is Grandfer in?” she asked.

  Opening his bedroom door I looked in; shook my head.

  “Little devil,” said she. “We thought he was abed. He is worrying that girl into her grave.”

  “Leave the back door,” I said. “I am off to bed.”

  “Early tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I am tired to death.”

  She smiled. “You won’t serve Job Gower and Rebecca, too, man. Bed with you. At least I will sleep tonight.” She came up the stairs and kissed me.

  “Goodnight.”

  The problems multiply in darkness, pressing in heat and sweat. Yet when morning comes, fortified, you wake and face the molehills that were mountains last night. But even this remembering does not bring you peace, and you toss and hump about, knees up one minute, six feet down in the bed the next. Distantly that night I heard the thumps and clanks of the dragoons and waited with pent breathing till their galloping drifted into silence, and sleep came, fitfully, with visions of Tramping Boy Joey parting the hedges for a journey to St Clears and the special constables. It was close to dawn when the door of my room rasped and I rose up in the bed.

  Mari stood there in her nightdress, hair down over her shoulders, holding a candle like a wandering saint.

  “Jethro!”

  She came towards me, drifting. “Grandfer,” she said. “I have been waiting and it is nearly dawn. He has rarely been as late as this.”

  I sank back, sweating, cruelly relieved. “He will come in soon.”

  “Jethro …” now she was standing above me, her face pale, her eyes moving in anguish. “I am worried.”

  “For God’s sake go back to bed,” I said. “Does he give a thought for you?”

  She sat on the bed then, shifting my knees. Beautiful she looked. Her clenched hand was lying an inch from mine, and my fingers itched to be upon it. I looked at her, closed my eyes as the magnet drew me, gripping myself in the bed as I flew against her, cursing myself.

  “Jethro, please,” she said.

  “Away, then, let me get up.”

  She gripped my hand at this, her eyes narrowing with some kind of love and her touch brought fire to me, with a longing greater than I had ever known before, to hold her, to be one with her.

  “Poor old Jethro,” she said, smiling down. “Loaded with women and kids and drunkards, worrying day and night, trying to make ends meet, pestered with women like me.”

  God, the stupidity of women. She was leaning above me. The white smoothness of her breast, I saw, neck and throat. And her womanhood flashed between us in the instant I moved towards her, and she drew away sharp, eyes startled. Unblinking, we looked, in the year of that second as the understanding flew into her, and she caught her breath, her fingers pulling together the neck of her nightdress.

  “Damned woman,” I whispered. “Do you think I am stone?”

  “I … I did not know, Jethro,” she said, and lowered her face.

  “Now … now get out before it’s two in the bed.”

  Faltering, she stood, eyes closed.

  “Go on, get out,” I said, and turned away from her.

  I did not hear the door shut but knew she was still there, and turned. She was standing with the candle, a look of infinite kindness on he
r face, and pity.

  I dressed in a daze to go out looking for Grandfer, and crossing the snow-covered shippon I looked back at the house. Mari was standing by the window of the landing where Morfydd had stood when I first went out with Rebecca; holding the candle, misty in white, beautiful, looking as a soul in search of God. She waved.

  I did not wave back but ran, taking the track to Tarn.

  Raw cold are the peat bogs when they dress themselves in shrouds. I kept to the track through the peat, knowing the way Grandfer took on his stumbling journeys home. An unholy place this, billowy and wraithy in the hour before dawn; a world of tinkling icicles shivering in sweeps of the wind, with the branches bare-black against the moon. Bending, I examined the new sprinkling of snow and found footsteps, Grandfer’s most likely, but leading one way – to the tavern. There was no sound but faint wind-sigh and the creaking of trees. All yesterday a thaw had been upon us with the rivers running wild again and the little brooks shouting down to the Tywi. But at night had come frost, fisting them into silence, and they stood as glass now, ready for the footstep and the wallowing plunge. Nothing moved in the stink of the peat. Wiping sweat from my eyes, I turned. The mere at the end of the track was black, its rushes as spears, and beyond lay the pine end of Black Boar tavern with its mud and wattle chimney stark against the sky. Took a step towards it, and sank. Twisting sideways, I threw myself flat and the peat bog bubbled in splinters of ice as I rolled back to the track. Panic hit me then, for the bog was fishing for sober men now, never mind drunkards.

  “Grandfer!” I called, and the woods flung it back.

  On again, cursing myself for bringing no lantern.

  And the hiss came from behind me, swinging me round.

  In the place where I had fallen the Corpse Candle was rising, with the peat bog hissing and sighing. And the flame of it struck then, glowing into a brilliance. Gripping a tree I watched. Now the blaze died, leaving one straight candle, three feet high from the goblin of the peat. Red-topped, evil, it danced and swayed; yellow now, leaping high into incandescent fire, and I felt the warmth of it. Then it moved, rushing past me along the track, thrusting me back, hands to my face.

  For I had seen him.

  Grandfer, not two yards from the track, ten feet from me, frozen, and in the light of the Corpse Candle I saw his face, eyes bulging, jaw dropped for the scream.

  Flat on my belly now, wriggling towards him, grasping the tuft-grasses, the hair of the peat bog, and I reached him in pistol shots of cracking ice.

  “Grandfer!” I cried, but he gave no answer. Not a sound he made standing there to his waist in bog, with one hand gripping a bottle and the other hand pointing to Tarn.

  The fingers I clutched were frozen solid.

  Preserved all right was Grandfer but not in hops as he’d planned it.

  Preserved by peat for Cae White’s generations.

  As I snatched at his belt he slipped from my sight and his soul flew up to Bronwen, his lover.

  And the peat bog sighed and sucked in hunger.

  CHAPTER 18

  AMAZING HOW many friends one has when it comes to weddings and funerals. Reckon half the county was in Mam’s kitchen, come to pay respects to Grandfer, although we had lost the body, with people sitting around bowed under the weight of the loss. Respectful, kind, generous, but I prefer the habits of the Irish, for a man is grown up when he understands that death is a joke. For instance, a whale of a time Biddy Flannigan gave Dick Churchyard, her man, when he went down, according to reports. Called in his Irish friends from ten miles round, did Biddy, and they boxed old Dick and set him up in a corner with a quart mug of ale in his hand and the feasting went on till dawn. Everyone to their beliefs, said Biddy Flannigan – the Welsh have their black funerals, the Shropshire’s their sin-eating, the Indians their burnings and the Irish their Wakes. Gave my Dick what he requested, face down burial, too – no conscience.

  “Buried face down?” whispered Morfydd. “Why?”

  “Well, being a gravedigger my Dick wanted something out of the ordinary,” said Biddy. “For he’d put down hundreds proper way up, see?”

  “Well!” said my mother.

  “But I might just as well have saved myself trouble,” said Biddy, “for a variable man was my Dick and bound to change his mind. Just back home I was, tired to death, for wearing old things be funerals, and then he started. First he hit up the chimney in Dai Alltwen Preacher’s place, then he rattled the pots and pans in by here, which was clever, for a haunted man was Grandfer at the best of times. …”

  “Good grief,” whispered Mam.

  “And when gravel sprayed my window near midnight I knew it was Dick playing up, see. ‘Abel Flannigan,’ I shouted down. ‘Turn out of bed this minute, your stepfather’s changed his mind again,’ and up got Abel cursing. Pouring cats, it was – I stayed in, mind. It was a four mile walk and a two hour dig to turn my Dick face up. But worth it, eh, son?”

  “Aye,” grunted Abel. “Good man was Dick.”

  “Lucky in some ways, Mrs Mortymer, if I might say,” added Biddy, “having no body.”

  “And Grandfer that variable, too,” said Morfydd. “Anything could happen.”

  “Hush,” I said. “Mari is coming.”

  Prayers now, but wasting their time in respect of Grandfer. I sat, listening, my heart aching for the living, not the dead. Poor Mari.

  “We are gathered here to pay our last respects to our friend,” said Tom the Faith. “Grandfer Zephaniah, rest his soul.”

  “Amen,” said Justin Slaughterer beside me. Close as twin nuts was Justin and Grandfer in ale, but I was surprised to see Justin there next to me.

  “For a good man knoweth the light of Heaven, and his face shall shine,” said Tom the Faith, and we clasped our hands and bowed our heads, doing our best for Grandfer who was about ten to one on my betting.

  And Justin beside me wept for Grandfer’s soul. One sob only, and the silence rang.

  “Good God,” said a calf in the terror of that silence. “Just look what Justin Slaughterer is doing to Joe.”

  And Justin wept louder while Mari sat dry-eyed. If I’d had my way I’d have straightened him with a right, for I could smell his hops from here.

  “Amen,” we intoned.

  “Good grief,” whispered the calf in my ear, high-pitched. “Just look at Justin Slaughterer weeping.”

  For getting it proper was little Joe Calf the last time I called on Justin Slaughterer – getting it good to Justin’s song; a bawling blackguard of a song that spouted from the end of his bloodstained pipe and battered on the slaughterhouse walls. O’s and Ah’s from his friends as Joe Calf went down. Shivering is in them at the blood on Justin’s hands, gasps as the belly hide rips to the upward casual stroke, calf one moment, dinner the next. “And I am next,” whispers another as Justin reaches to drag. Powerful on his knees is Justin Slaughterer, bass in the chanting, right on the note, loving his God, grieving for his neighbour. Come to pay respects to Grandfer, newly slaughtered.

  “And may the Lord have mercy on his soul,” ends Tom the Faith in deep reverence.

  “Amen,” we said.

  “Amen,” boomed Justin Slaughterer, dabbing, snuffling.

  “Amen,” said Joe Calf, treble from the fields.

  I clenched my hands and rose; went out into air.

  Couldn’t bloody stick it. The brother of hypocrisy is the blubbering of drunkards.

  Biddy Flannigan, every time. Death is a joke.

  Much better are the memories of my last spring at Cae White.

  The wind blew cool from the south, the country flowered, joyful with birdsong, with the blackbirds singing around our door and the young woodpeckers laughing and twittering in the alders of the Tywi. Sometimes I went down to watch them in their mating, thinking of Tessa, listening to the harsh shrilling of their lovers’ quarrelling, following the tossing and tumbling of the peewits and their bright diamond flutterings in sunlight against a cloudless blue. Pale gre
en were the buds of the willows, shy and waving in the winds of spring, breathless as children before adventure, the bursting ecstasy of their flowering. Foxes stole from lairs among the ripening heather, eyes slanting to the scent of hounds, nose high for the stamping panic of the rabbit. Old Grandfer Badger rolled from his earth down in Bully Hole Bottom and lumbered around the mantraps of Waldo’s preserves, nose twitching for the stink of Jethro Mortymer the man. And at night the young, fresh moon made the circle of her eternal fullness, waning before the invisible Lord. Bill Stork was down on the estuary, one-legged in white purity, monumental against the patterned branches of yew where Hesperus watched. The corncrakes were crying masterful, the herons were singing doleful from Kidwelly. Feather and fur, leaf and branch, man and maiden were reaching up fingers, vital, reborn, for the tumbling, shouting torrent of spring.

  Eighteen now, me; feeling the surge of manhood. Six-feet-one in socks, every inch alive, every pound bothering, feeling the rise of the sap in me, with the flicker of an eye for an incautious maiden, longing for Woman.

  Tessa was but a dream now, as eggshell china standing behind glass. Even Mari faded in these spring-heat days; something apart and unattainable that washed and mended in her nunlike purity, dedicated to another. So enough of Tessa, I thought, enough of Mari.

  Dilly Morgan, me.

  Dilly Morgan aged seventeen, lately come from carrots for hair and one tooth missing. God help her since she crossed my path.

  Come beautiful all of a sudden, had Dilly; tall and willowy, black-haired and with a beckoning eye and lashes slanted low with a spring come-hither; narrow in the waist and hips, most pleasant in other places to say the least of it. From childhood to womanhood I had watched this Dilly bud, flower and bloom. It is strange to me how the little scrags of females grow to such beauty – the muddy sticks of legs that lengthen to stately grace, the dribble-stained pinafores that peak to curved beauty, the tight-scragged tufted hair that flowers to grace the Helen; discoloured, aching teeth change to pearls and the cracked lips of winter come cupid bows for kissing. From little dumps of shapelessness grows Woman; desirable, desiring, the perfect animal for the mating of Man. And as such grew Dilly Morgan or very damned near it.