“Seen him, that’s all.”
“We couldn’t have a better Rebecca. He was there at Efailwen with Twm Carnabwth when they burned the gate. Chapel pugilist. I wouldn’t tangle with him.”
“Some man,” I said.
“And a brain. Dangerous, mind – he will not stand nonsense.”
“I will be there,” I said.
“God help us,” said he. “Goodnight.”
I watched the stars for a bit, thinking of Mari, not knowing why, and turned to go back into Betsi’s tavern and found myself facing Grandfer.
“Nice night, Jethro.”
I nodded, sick of him.
“You mind your company, boy.”
“You mind your business.”
He chuckled then, tapping with his stick, his bald head scarcely up to my shoulder.
“How old are you, Jethro?”
“Hitting sixteen.”
“Big boy – you look like gone twenty. And you mate with Abel Flannigan near twice your age?”
“I mate with whom I like,” I said.
“Take you to the Devil, mind.”
“Then I’ll be in good company.”
He looked up then and I saw the pouches of his red-rimmed eyes, his pickled walnut of a face, his jagged smile.
“Pretty stinky you think me, is it?”
I did not reply. Half a man is better than nothing and with this one living on ale and sawdust for no good reason I had worked myself stupid to harvest Cae White. Time was I owed him something. Not now.
“You make no allowance for age?”
“Uncle Silas is damned near eighty and still farming.” I turned away.
“You know how old I be?”
“No more’n seventy.”
And he grunted and cackled and stamped with his stick on my boot. “Don’t know my age myself,” said he. “Old enough to be born twice, I reckon,” and he sighed deep and gripped my arm. “I’ve fought and drunk with most round here, young lusties – last fifty year – and they’ve all been called by St Peter ’cept me. You know my Christian name. Zephaniah. Zephaniah, there’s a mouthful. You know something more? Could be that a man with a name like that comes at the end of the cloud alphabet – could be St Peter’s got his thumb on my name when he turns the pages of Paradise. Keeps passing me over, see? Me, poor old Grandfer, longing to die. You like the women, Jethro?”
“Old devil, you are, worrying Mari to death,” I said.
“I asked you a question – you fancy the women?”
“Sick of women,” I said. “Got too many back home.”
“And poor little Sixpenny Jane back in there coming fidgety for turfing – there’s a waste.” He tapped with his stick and rocked with laughter. “Bless me, she’d get what she wanted from Grandfer forty years back – most did, forgive me soul.” He belched and pardoned, staggering against me and I held him off, for there is nothing so vulgar as age and its conquests. “Aye,” he added, “a century back, it do seem. All honey and fire; I was chasing the skirts. But I’ve worn pretty well, mind, everything considered.”
“For God’s sake come home,” I said, but he set back his shoulders and pulled up his shirt and his chest was white in its parchment of age. “Look now,” he cried. “There’s beautiful for eighty and some – very gratifying, life in the old dog yet, and I’ve laid my mark on the women of this county, don’t you worry; many being privileged to say nothing of thankful. Now, that Morfydd sister of yours, there is a woman for favours to keep a man awake – with the face of an Irish and hair from Spain, and a temper on her like a boar coming frisky. You like my Mari?”
This turned me. Wicked was his eye, mouth grinning, beard trembling, knowing of the shaft. I sighed, bored.
“Oi, oi! Strikes a chord, do it? But no offence intended, mind – it was the same for me when I was your age.”
“I am going home,” I said, but he hooked me with his stick and looked up at the moon.
“Hush, you,” he said. “Give me a minute, Jethro. All for your good.”
I waited, disquieted, and listened as his voice came low and sad.
“A long time ago I knew a woman like our Mari. Bronwen was her name. In a shroud of night is our Mari, dark, dark, but this Bronwen girl came opposite – a white, blossomy piece as a hawthorn bush in spring blow and the face of a madonna – never seen the like of her since for beautifying.” He looked at me and his eyes were different. “And gentry, too – remember that – gentry. All crinoline and ribbons, she was, and with perfume, and riding habit regular, she being keen on the hunt. She lived up by Laugharne with her dad, Sir Robert, her mam being dead. And I was her stable boy – ostler, you gather me?”
I nodded.
“And every evening on Sundays she would gallop her mare along the banks of the Taf River to Milton – to the long grasses where I lay waiting.” He sucked his teeth, eyes narrowed to the memory. “And up she would come with her mare fairly lathered, wild as a gipsy, dying for me – me, Zephaniah, the ostler.”
He looked at me. “You want more because you won’t bloody like it.”
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, we met first when harvest was on us and the barn hay flying all golden and windy – in secret, remember, because of her dad. Eh, beautiful in summer are the crags and whirlpools of the Taf, with the herons crying doleful over the marshes, but terrible it is in winter when the snows are melting and the river is rushing in anger, spraying arms. But even in winter she came to me – for lovering.”
“How old were you this time?”
“Stripling – same age as you, thereabouts, dying for garters. And after the lovering we would part pretty formal – Bron going back to her gentry feathers and me to my stable straw. ‘Yes, ma’am, and no, ma’am,’ it was, of course, with her folks growing ears, but every Sunday regular we would make love red-headed, my Bron
