“Yes,” she said.
She gripped my hand then and my fingers cracked, and in the ringing silence between us came the grumble of the bed as Mam turned over and the dribbling tune of Richard at the china and his call to Mari to waken and help. Morfydd rose and kicked back her chair. “I will work,” she said. “But no lash will drive me now, for I am past those damned capers. Labour, nothing more, for I have heard of this Job Gower, too – women’s language that you do not understand. Sixpence a pound for dead pigs, is it? Twopence a stone for a dead Ponty foreman if he tries his tricks on me. There’s advantage in being born with the looks of a sow.” She pointed. “And you keep clear. I take care of myself.”
Got up and kissed her, couldn’t think why, and the look she gave me froze me standing.
The windows winked with light from the blackness as we took the road to coal.
It was a two mile walk along the river to Ponty and the mountain behind us frowned blue with the promise of dawn. Over Fox Brow we went, leaping the puddled places, tiptoeing over the iced peat with our hair riming in the frost and the wind from the estuary tearing into us. Near Treforris the track narrowed and the woods of the hollow rose up sharp and clear as the sun ripped at the veil of night with a hatchet of fire. As scarecrows stood the trees, their boles gleaming white with frost, branches flaring and all over dripping as long suddy fingers from the weekly wash. An eye out for corpse candles, me, though Morfydd seemed at peace, whistling quietly under her shawl. I have never been afraid of things on four legs or two, but Will o’ the Wisps and Buggy Bo Goblins do give me the creeps when trees are standing as tombstones and the thick pile of a thousand autumns sigh beneath the feet. Grandfer reckoned he saw a corpse candle once; red and evil, it was, topped with yellow and dancing over the peat – sure sign of death for someone, and God knows what is happening fifty feet down where Buggy Bo lives with his blistered victims. Sweating, me; nearly died when Morfydd gripped me and drew me behind a tree.
“Down!” she hissed.
She pulled me closer and I saw the sudden white of her face smudged with shadows.
“Look,” she breathed.
“Buggy Bo,” I whispered.
“Buggy Bo to hell,” said she. “Look, Rebecca!”
A Rebeccaite was standing in a clearing before us, dressed in white from head to feet and the wind caught at his gown, billowing the hem as he raised his hands as if in a signal. Leaves rustled, branches snapped. A company of men came from the woods and made a ring in the clearing, all dressed in women’s petticoats, their faces blackened. A horseman came next. Tall and broad in the saddle was this Rebecca, his petticoat streaming over the horse’s flanks, and he entered the ring of his daughters and the horse reared, forelegs pawing as he checked on the rein. On his head was a turban as of silk, bejewelled and flashing in the shafts of dawn and the golden locks of his wig reached to his waist.
“Bring Luke Talog!” he cried.
“A judgement,” Morfydd whispered. “Look, a prisoner.”
“Heisht!” I whispered back, “or they will have us, too.”
Two men came from the tree-fringe, dragging between them a naked man, and I saw his face upturned in terror as he drooped before the horseman.
“Luke Talog, is this your name?”
And the naked man sank to his knees, biting at his hands.
“Luke Talog,” cried Rebecca, “by us will you be judged. For you have crossed a serving-maid in the house of your wife, and filled her, and cast her out into hunger, which is against the law of God. Dost know the Word, Luke Talog – Deuteronomy twenty-two, which saith, ‘If a man finds a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they shall be found … then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife: because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.’ Right now, Luke, will you marry the damsel?”
And the prisoner trembled and shook his head.
“Aye, Luke boy, that is the trouble, eh? Already married, isn’t it?”
The palaver that followed raised me a foot. A weeping of mock tears at this news, and a beating of breasts, with the tormentors in white gowns sobbing on each other’s shoulders in grief. Rebecca rose up in his stirrups, shouting:
“See the grief you are causing my daughters, Luke Talog – what about the poor bloody damsel’s. Ashamed you should be. Now bring forth the father of the poor girl who was wronged!”
A stooping, white-haired old labourer was pushed into the clearing.
“Thou art the father of the maid,” said Rebecca. “Take thou these fifty shekels of silver that have been wrung from the pockets of Luke Talog, being the payment exacted under the law of God,” and the shillings were counted into the old man’s hands.
“The law of God has been fulfilled, O, Mother!” called a follower. “But what of the law of Rebecca. What is the price of virginity?”
“Can you prove it?” shouted another, and laughter echoed.
“Was she worth it, Luke?”
“Should he not be cast into a pit?”
“A pit of spikes?”
“Or be hanged by the neck?”
“For Luke Talog has worshipped the phallus, and the price of that is death!”
The naked man screamed as they laid hands on him and dragged him upright for the judgement, and the man Rebecca raised his hand as if in blessing, bringing all to silence.
“Listen!” whispered Morfydd.
“Hearken ye, my daughters!” Rebecca cried. “The judgement is given. A man who
