“Sane as me,” I said, weeping.
“And I happened by here and Osian Hughes took me in. Saw you last Sunday near Chapel – you and three women, and I asked who you were. It is the Mortymers, Osian told me, him being sweet on your Morfydd.”
“Do you know how it happened?” I asked, broken.
“You know Griff and Owen Howells, the brothers?”
“Aye, I know them.”
“Well, Griff died, too, though Owen got clear – over in transportation, mind, like I hoped for my Sam,” and she sighed. “I knew the Howells boys – they were more than just twins – they shared the same plate, sparked the same women, drew the same breath, hand in hand in the womb. …”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well, the redcoats crammed them in the carts for Monmouth, with Sam, your Iestyn and Idris in one and the Howells boys in the cart following – standing and singing along the road to Monmouth, but Griff Howells was silent, standing stone dead. It took half a mile of whispers and kisses, said Shanco, before Owen Howells screamed and went into bedlam for the death of his twin. Over the cart side he went, bringing down redcoats, and all twelve carts stopped because of the palaver, with muskets going and redcoats swiping at Owen who was mad losing Griff. And Idris Foreman slipped out in the commotion and dragged my Sam and your brother after him, and they dived like demons for the open country. But the soldiers came up and gave them a volley, and the only one who got clear was Shanco Mathews from a cart farther down.”
“They killed him?”
“The three of them. Idris, my Sam, your brother Iestyn.”
“And not so much as a word,” I said, thumping the chair.
“O, God,” said Effie. “Were they important?” She sighed. “If you happen on the Mortymers you tell the boy Jethro, said Shanco Mathews – leave it to young Jethro, for there’s a woman in that three who will march on Victoria.”
“Go now,” I said.
“Eh, so early – with the evening to myself? Now, listen, little man – have you heard about Sam, my man, Sam Miller?”
I raised my eyes and she swam, distorting.
“Dear God,” said she. “You’ve never seen a man like my Sam for looks. Topped six feet naked, he did, and as broad as a barrel, with a smell of caulking-tar about him, being of ships … Jethro Mortymer, you are not listening!”
Through the door I went, swinging it shut. I walked, walked, praying for Mari. And the world was dark in a blustering wind, not a glimmer of light.
CHAPTER 21
BACK FROM Ponty, coal-grimed, sweaty, I broke it to Mari that night, and the face of Fate changed. For days I had gripped it to myself with love and duty tearing different ways. And I bided my time. Mam was over at Flannigan’s place for a tongue-pie with Biddy, Morfydd was out courting with Willie O’Hara. Out every night now, Morfydd – snatching at life, grasping every second in false laughter, and I longed to get her from Ponty. And Willie O’Hara was another worry with Morfydd in this mood. She had fallen before and she might fall again, and we had enough to contend with. And this Willie not so simple as he looked, according to Abel Flannigan – stretching more aprons in the northern shires than gentry ham teas and come down west to start it again.
Hot from labour I came to the back and leaned against the shed, wiping with a sweat rag, cooling off in the shade when I heard Mari singing. She was flapping around the kitchen with her pots and pans and Richard and her son Jonathon were hammering something out at the front, shouting and playing. I listened. I am not one for singing, but being Welsh I am in love with the throat and its wondrous noises, and I stood there in sadness listening to Mari. Beautifully she sang in the minor key, tuning in to the great Welsh hymns. Is there a voice in the world more lovely than that of a woman working, unsuspecting? Thin is the note, plaintive, trembling wobbly to the lifting of pans and stoopings, snatching at breath. Closing my eyes I leaned and listened, and Mari’s voice drifted out to me on the heat-laden air with its message of the moors and mountains of Mother Wales and her muted sadness. In the knowledge of God we sing, with words that spring from the Books of the Testaments; rising from the great believers, from the organ lofts of those who have clutched at glory, in praise of Him. The voices of sopranos are of the alders where streams are leaping, each silver leaf rimmed with the autumn stain. Welsh tenors, to me, are the tree’s upper branches, but the bole beneath gnarled as a fist, clenched for the singer’s hook of manhood. Bass comes as roots to me; of grovelling limbs sapbound in darkness, splitting forth in thunder from the belted bellies of men defiant.
The soul of Wales is the throat of its people.
Mari now. Had to tell her somehow. And her song stopped dead at the sight of my shadow, flung into crippledom over the flags. Heard her step then, saw her eyes.
“Mari,” I said.
Beautiful, those eyes.
“You frightened me.”
“I am sorry,” I said.
Just stood there watching her, and she smiled and shrugged and turned to go.
“No, Mari, wait,” I said, and reached out, taking her hand and drawing her closer. My throat was dust-dry, the lump rising, and I took a deep breath.
Out with it, no other way. Better do it quick as a smack in the face.
“Iestyn is dead.”
She smiled faintly. “I know,” she said.
The hammering of the boys drifted between us in Jonathon’s treble shrieks of joy as Richard got a hammer to something, thudding away, thudding … and sunlight flashed from the green of the fields, and the
