He was coming to a point now. I did not trust him. “I am going,” I said, but he barred the way.
“Wait, you,” he said. “Nothing personal, mind, lest you run a conscience.”
“Wicked old devil,” I said.
“Ah, so! But so was this Bronwen, remember – showed me the way, she did – near twice as wicked as me. You know Dai Education, the new tollkeeper up at the kilns near the Reach?”
“What’s he to do with it?”
“Just wondered. Reckon little Dai might give us the answer, him being a scholar – as to why a beauty like Bron was interested in a chap like me. You fancy a quart, Jethro? Your Grandfer’s gone dry.”
“Just had a quart.”
“But you want the rest of it, eh?”
I had to know the rest of it.
“Well, well! A wicked old tale it is for a chit of a boy like you,” and he gave a long shroud of a sigh. “Listen, then. Welsh gentry was my Bronwen – Welsh to her fingertips, as her name do tell, and Welsh-speaking, like me – which is proper Welshness, none of the foreign old English stuff you bring down here. County’s changed, boy. Fifty years back you’d be straining your ears for an English damn, but the place is going to the bloodies just now. Mind, Dai Education do say it’s the industry, these furnace men and collier chaps coming in, staining the land with their foreign ideas …”
“For God’s sake,” I said. “What about this woman?”
“And me with a throat like the bottom of a bird cage – parrots at that.”
“Just one, then we’re back out.”
“Sharper than billhooks, boy – promise.”
So we went back into Black Boar tavern.
I passed over the twopence and Grandfer went up for the quarts, slapping down the money, bawling for attention, helloing to strangers – one in particular, a tiny wizened shrew of a man who was cranked and blue. Jackknifed, hobbling on his ploughing corns, he was carrying and slopping his ale to a table. Back came Grandfer wobbling the quarts and we sat down opposite.
Grandfer jerked his head. “You notice Ezekiel?”
I nodded. Bald as an egg was this Ezekiel, whiskers drooping, and his face and hands were as blue as a blackberry, and I pitied him.
“Reckoned Ezekiel would be in just now. That’s why I came back.”
“Why?” I asked.
Grandfer drank deep and wiped with his cuff. “Powerful is the Man in the Big Pew, and fearful when He is denied. Terrible is He to His misbehaving children.” He waved his mug at the room. “And there’s one or two in by here due for His wrath pretty soon, boy. You mind you don’t join them. Have a look at Ezekiel.”
“What about your Bronwen?”
“Bronwen can wait. You see Ezekiel there? You know how he got so cranked? Well, thirty years back it would be when Ezekiel was courting Biddy Flannigan, Abel’s mam. Down in the Big Wheatfield, it was, all of a summer’s day. Tall and straight was Ezekiel then, forking a harvest as high as the next. You listening?”
I sighed.
“Well, coming pretty hot with him was Ezekiel, and poor little Biddy was all legs and petticoats and hollering for her mam, for the boy was that determined. Not a cloud in the sky, remember – harvest time, remember. But the Big Man was watching and His sky came dark – nobody near to give Biddy a hand. So down came the lightning and caught Ezekiel square – smack in the middle of the back, and Biddy Flannigan not even singed.”
“O, aye?” I cocked an eye at him.
“The truth. Just for fulfilling a normal function. And that is the first example. Now for the second, the lesson of wrath.” He lowered his mug and stared at nothing. “In child, was Bronwen. In child by me, you understand?”
The bellowing of the room died between us.
“And the child was born, Jethro. The child was Mari’s mother, which makes our Mari gentry blood.” He turned to me, eyes fixed to mine. “Down from Laugharne came her dad with his whip, and I had it. God, I had it naked – damned near killed me. But he left me Bronwen – cast her out as the gentry do a wayward hound. He left me Bronwen and Cae White to go with her for a pound a week rent for the rest of my life. Now listen,” and he gripped my wrist. “Payable on his death to his son, Squire Lloyd Parry. You following me?”
I was gaping now, knowing the secrets of Cae White, knowing of Mari.
“Aye, Cae White is mine, and Parry can’t turn me out of it, and it is Mari’s after I am gone. …”
“And your Bronwen?” I whispered in a lull.
“If I go on the hops it is because of my Bronwen, boy. For she bore my child and then she vanished, went down to the river for the shame of it, in the place where we loved. And they found her three weeks later on the reaches of Laugharne – on the night of Whitland Fair, it was, with mud in her mouth and her eyes taken by gulls. Reckon she walks Cae White by night. You heard her?”
Terrible was his face in that grief.
“God help you, Grandfer,” I said, and he raised his face, his eyes swimming.
“God help me, is it?” he said. “God help you for mating with gentry, Mortymer, d’you hear me?”
I rose, staring down at him. “You cranked little devil,” I whispered. “Me and Tessa Lloyd Parry’s been nothing but decent!”
“Sit down!” and he got me sharp with his stick. “Do I fear the wrath of the likes of you when I have faced the wrath of God? Who’s talking about Tessa Lloyd Parry? The girl is a cripple and couldn’t mate with a butterfly, her body dead from the
