“Here, Tara!” I said, and she leaped into my arms, licking and grinning.
He wept then, did Joey, with the tears leaving tracks on his grimed face.
“I am sorry,” I said.
No sound he made in that sobbing, and he reached for the ferret and put it against his face; just sitting there with the wind stirring the branches above him, wisping up his bright hair.
Minutes I stood there kicking at leaves, for words are useless things in the presence of injured friendship, then I gathered up the rabbits and put them tidy at his feet, but he made no sign that he noticed.
“Rebecca is about,” I said. “You heard they carried Sam Williams on the pole for blowing up that serving-maid down in Plasy? And the hayricks of the gentry are blazing something beautiful. Look, Joey boy, you can see them from here.”
But he just went on weeping and kissing the ferret.
“Look, now,” I said, short. “There is more than one ferret. That old thing was a rabbit-feeder, anyway. I will buy you another and train him rigid. Heisht you, is it?”
“Go to hell,” he said, and his eyes were as fire.
“It is only a ferret, Joey – let us be friends.”
Up with him then and blazing. “Out you get, Mortymer – you and that black-faced towser!” he shrieked. “You be bastards the pair of you, you and the bitch!”
With Tara held against me I watched as he turned and climbed the fence, bending to the hill on his way to his limekiln sleep.
“I will slip up the catch in the henhouse, Joey!” I called.
Not even a look. Just me left, and moonlight.
Nothing to do but go back home, taking the. short cut this time along the road to Carmarthen, but I dived into a ditch pretty sharp as the cavalry came galloping. Helmeted, spurred, they rounded the bend, thundering hooves, jingling and clanking, flashing to the moon, their big mares sweating and snorting smoke. Trouble in St Clears by the look of it; twelve dragoons this time of night.
I stopped near the shippon of home and unlatched the henhouse to give Joey a welcome, and the feathered old things grumbled, fearing the fox. In the back now, put Tara under the table; tiptoe past Grandfer who was snoring in shouts, up the stairs as a wraith and I got to my room. Up to the bed, throwing off my clothes. Shivering in the nightshirt I reached for the china; touched Morfydd’s face and nearly hit the ceiling.
“Right, you,” said she, rising up like the Day of Reckoning. “Poaching again with Tramping Boy Joey. Account for yourself, and quick.”
Black hair over her shoulders, eyes narrowed with sleep, face as a madonna and looks like daggers. Beautiful, she was, to anyone but a brother.
“Quick,” she said, thumping the blanket. “And no lies!”
A saint of a mother I had, but a tidy old bitch of a sister.
CHAPTER 2
JUST A couple of months me and my women had been at Cae White, Grandfer’s house – Morfydd, my sister; my mother, and Mari my sister-in-law – running to Carmarthenshire from Monmouthshire iron; from the flash and glare of the Top Town furnaces where my father had died to the pasturelands of the west. Quiet and sweet it was here, a change from starving and sweating; far from the bellowing industry, as the opening of a Bible after a bedlam of labour.
Hitting it up for fourteen I was at this time, and coming a little hot with me about women. There are women and women, said Morfydd my sister, who was no better than she ought to be, but my mam, as I say, was a saint. Even the neighbours admitted she was a cut above the rest of them, with Good morning to you, Mr Waldo Bailiff, and Good afternoon to you, Mr Tom Griffiths, and God help even a seller of coloured Bibles who put his foot in the door without her permission.
“Rebecca was burning the hayricks last night,” I said at breakfast, aware of slanting eyes.
“And how do you know when you were in bed and asleep?” asked Grandfer.
Five feet exactly, this one – every inch of him pickled in hops. The villagers said he was Quaker blood that had slipped off the black shine of the Book, though some said he was gipsy. But whatever his blood he soused himself regular five nights a week on the profits of the farm – ten jugs on a Tuesday when the drovers came down; with a crag for a settle and the moon for a blanket, snoring in icicles out in the mist, singing his bawdies in the company of goblins. Reckon Mari, my sister-in-law, was ashamed of her Grandfer Zephaniah.
“Big fires, though,” said my mam. “Looked like tollgates – saw them myself.”
“Read your history,” said Grandfer. “Hayricks. Rebecca rioters – eight barns went up last night – and the dragoons came out from Carmarthen. I would give them rioters if I got my hands on them.”
I chewed the black bread, watching Morfydd. Flushed and angry she looked, spooning up the oatmeal broth.
“Eh,” sighed Mam. “We run from Monmouthshire iron for a bit of peace and we bump into riots all over again. Isn’t just, is it?”
“You will always have riots while we bear such injustices,” said Morfydd, eyes snapping up.
“Now, now!” said Mam, finger up. “Not our house, remember.”
“I would burn the damned gentry, never mind their ricks,” said Morfydd, and she swept back her hair. Excellent at rebellion and speeches, this one, especially when it came to hanging the Queen. Beautiful, but a woman of fire; an agitator in the Top Towns, married to an agitator once but no ring to prove it, and God knows where she would land us if she started tricks here, for we got out of Monmouthshire by the skin of our teeth.
“Let her speak,” said Grandfer. “Let her be. Does
