“O, God,” he said.
“You sold a Christian man, Joey Scarlet, God help you. You know what will happen if Justin lays hands on you?”
Kneeling now, he wept, crying as a child cries. “Mortymer! Drunk, I was, I swear it!” he shouted. “I’d never have done it sober. O, help me, Mortymer – pretty tidy you was to me in the old days, remember?” He was wringing his hands now, giving peeps for listeners, standing above the slaking-pit as something in the steam of hell, his face wet with tears and rain.
“Joey!” I shouted. “Are you listening? Up and away with you – hoof it out of the county. Put as much room as you can between you and Rebecca – and never mention the name of Rhayader again, for if Justin Slaughterer don’t land you another slaughterer will. Where’s your mam?”
“Shropshire county, sin-eating,” he whimpered.
“Right then, move. Away with you quick, for if I get a sight of you round here again I’ll do what Justin’s aching to do – rid the world of another Judas. Away!”
Gibbering now, biting at his hands, God-blessing me, scampering around the wall of the pit, gathering up his possessions and bundling them into the canvas.
And I saw quite clearly the hand that rose from behind and pushed him.
Joey teetered on the edge of the slaking-pit, and screamed. Slowly he turned, snatching at air, his bundles flying, and he wheeled towards me as he fell face down, arms and legs spreadeagled, screaming once more as he hit the boiling lime, and the end of his scream was scalded into silence. In horror I leaped from my hiding place, racing up the mound to the rim of the pit, turning away from the stew that was Joey. The undergrowth was crashing to the passage of the murderer. Sickened, I turned.
“Joey,” I said.
The slaking lime bubbled his answer, speaking for his soul for the next million years.
CHAPTER 20
MAY WAS flooding into us now and the lanes were glorious with primroses and celandine. Golden my country now, the fields shimmering with buttercups and dandelions and the old burn was stoking up for a furnace of a summer. O, sweet is wet-a-bed days, with the taste of the gold in the milk and the chops of the cows all plastered with yellow petals as they peep through the hedges at strangers, grinning their joy of fat udders and milkmaids, dripping their beads of silver spit. And the whole rolling county was alive and shimmering breathless with the promise of a belly-full harvest by day and weeping in dew for the rusted ploughs at night. Few fields were ploughed near us for the levy on corn and the tolls were killing us. But up and down the country the gates were going up in flames, with scores of Rebeccas and hundreds of men riding every night, winning the race of building and burning. Magistrates were shivering in their beds, horses of the dragoons dropping dead in the fruitless gallops after Rebecca; lost in the maze of a country we knew backwards, redirected, misdirected, laughed to scorn, publicly insulted. The military heads were being recalled and replaced, the military stations were strengthened, all to no avail. Rebecca grew as an army in numbers. The Trusts were being defeated, and knew it.
I had been out burning most nights since Joey’s death at the kilns. Down had come the special constables, of course; notebooks, pencils, all very official, but it was not worth risking to tell what had happened and a week or two after the inquiries ceased. We had hooked Joey out, what was left of him, and buried him decent in a pauper’s grave, with Dai Alltwen embalming him with the biblical and talk of the All-Seeing Eye that watches the fall of the sparrow, and a day later Joey Scarlet had never existed. Reckon I know who got Joey but I never had the proof of it, for nobody was steadier than Justin Slaughterer on the day Joey went down in his wooden suit. Tom Rhayader was still at St Clears awaiting justice and his woman and kids long gone to the workhouse, Carmarthen. Talk of a Rebecca attack on this workhouse was in the wind at the night meetings now, for our people were starving in it, said Flannigan. Something’s got to be done, the Rebeccas said. How can we sleep while our kinfolk starve. Floggings were being talked about, too, though we had no proof of this. A pig of a Master at Carmarthen house especially, it was said. Starve to death or be beaten to death, were the rumours. Gather the evidence and we will raze the place, said Rebecca – we will burn it as we burned Narberth house, and bring out our people. Then for some floggings, we will show who is master.
The strain of the night meetings were taking toll of me – in just before dawn sometimes, going on shift with Morfydd at the pit after an hour of sleep. Coming pretty gaunt were most of the daughters of Rebecca, very severe this night courting on little growing maids, the men joked. I looked in the mirror one day and saw my face, lined, shadowed, and the haggard swellings beneath my eyes. Nigh eighteen, is it? said Morfydd, you look like forty, then some, there’s a damned sight. Mam and Mari must have noticed this but they made no mention; just quick glances over the table with the buttoned-up air of women disapproving, Mam believing it was a misspent life. I often wonder if my mother knew the truth, for most women did. Even the parish was complaining about the drop in the birth rate, so the joke went, with the men out burning every night when they should have been back home loving. But things were coming a mite better, people said. Now the gates were coming less we were having whey and rye bread twice a
