Hosts of Rebecca

whispered.
“Come,” said Joey. “While Waldo Bailiff is out chasing rioters he is not trapping poachers. You got the towser?”
“Under my arm,” I said.
“You scared of mantraps, Jethro Mortymer?”
Just looked at him, and spat.
“Right, us. Away!” whispered Joey. “We will give him Waldo.”
As ragged heathens we ran down to Tarn, to the white-bouldered world of skulls and skinny sheep – to the burrows of the rabbits that riddled Squire’s Reach, leaping frozen streams, plunging through undergrowth and wallowing in the marsh track till we came to the fence of Waldo Bailiff. Gasping, we rested here, steaming, flat on our backs. Tara and the ferret were running in circles about us, playing as children in bounds and squeaks, working up a joy for the coming hunt.
“Easy now,” said Joey, sitting up. “Under the fence and follow me, and watch for mantraps.”
This was Joey’s world and he knew it backwards. Wild as a gipsy, this one, his bed under the moon in summer, seeking warmth on the rim of the limekiln fires in winter. He had lived alone since Cassie, his mam, hoofed it out of the county two years back – wanted by the military for caravan stealing. Joey baked his hedgehogs in balls of clay; was a better cook than Morfydd when it came to a rabbit, roasting them on spits or stirring them in stews.
“Mantraps are against the law,” I said.
“O, aye?” said he, old-fashioned. “And who do say so?”
“My grandfer.”
Joey jerked up the wire for me to crawl through. “Mantraps with spikes is against the law,” said he. “Waldo’s are legal, for they only break the leg. You watch for spikes, though – the spikes I fear for they rip and tear – like little Dai Shenkins down at New Inn – you heard about Dai?”
“No,” I replied.
“Night before last, it was. Addled was Dai, poaching without a moon, for the moon shows mantraps, never mind bailiffs. Over at Simmons place he caught it, did Dai.”
“Bad?”
“Rest another minute,” said he. “Jethro Mortymer, d’you think much of me?”
“Pretty tidy.” Strange was his face turned up to the moon. “What about Dai Shenkins, then?”
“Never mind him, you think about me.” He sighed. “Look, these old nights are shivery, and you got a henhouse back home at your grandfer’s. Hens are warm old things in nights of frost. Could you get me in?”
“A booting, mind, if Grandfer do find you.”
“Aye, a stinkifying grandfer that one,” said he, vicious.
“Could try, if you sleep quiet. You slept with hens before?”
“O, eh! Often,” and deep he sighed, his face pale and shadowed in the blue light and his eyes all mystery and brightness. “You ever stopped to think, Jethro Mortymer, hens are better’n humans. Humans be thumpers and hens gentle old women. Sorry I am for hens, too, being done down for eggs all their lives and finishing up between knees. But I do not love cockerels, mind – there’s lust in them cockerels, says Cassie, my mam – always leapfrogging and crowing to tell the neighbourhood. You eat a cockerel every Christmas for the rest of your life and you will eat more sin than me eventually.”
“You eaten sin?”
“Aye, and why not? Folks got to eat something, says Cassie, my mam, so we did the funerals – swallowing the sins of the dear departed, taking the blackness off the poor soul going down, or up – case may be.”
“Good God.”
“You know Clun?”
I shook my head.
“Eight years old, me, when we did Clungunford – first time at sin-eating, for me. We knew we were into something pretty shocking when we got a spring chicken and wine to wash it down. And us that hungry we’d have stained our souls with child-killing for a piece of poorhouse bread, said Cassie. And the dear departed a clergy, at that.”
“Chapel?”
“Church of England, but we sent him up clean as a washday. Eh, dear me, I reckon I be loaded black. Who started all this?”
“Hens,” I said.
“Right, then – you fix me in your henhouse?”
“Out at first light, is it?”
“And not an egg missing. God bless you, Jethro Mortymer.” He rose and stretched. “Right you, Waldo,” he said. “Just look out.”
“Come easy or she’ll spring.”
On tiptoe I came, peering.
“Throw me that stick. Watch the towser,” said Joey.
I saw the steel jaws of the mantrap, gaping, smothered in leaves, and the spring steel curved tight and ready for the footstep.
“Eh, Waldo, you swine of a bailiff,” said Joey, and swung the stick and the jaws leaped and slammed shut. “But not as bad as some – all legal. You seen Dai’s leg?”
“Dai Shenkins?”
“Neither has Dai. Spikes, see? Took it off neat at the knee. And the Simmons bailiff found it next morning and followed the blood right up to New Inn. They’d have had little Dai, but he died. Died to spite them, his old mam said – hopping his way to his Maker for a rabbit, you can keep your old Botany Bay – she’s a regular cheek is Dai’s old mam. You got the towser?”
“Aye.”
“Right,” said Joey, and fished in his rags for his ferret, parted bushes and stuffed it down a hole. “Put the towser by the hole near that tree. Ready?”
I nodded, and set Tara down. And out came the rabbits in a stream.
I have seen dogs at rabbits but never one like Tara, my little bitch, for she threw them up as soon as they showed their eyes – two in the air at a time, hitting the frost as dead as doornails.
“Some terrier!” cried Joey, delighted.
Five rabbits came from the burrow and then came Joey’s ferret, nose up, sniffing for more, and Tara got him square, for the light was bad that minute. Six feet up went that ferret, dying in flight, and Tara ran round him, sniffing delighted.
Good God.
“You black-faced bitch!” yelled Joey, and aimed his boot, but I caught his ankle and brought him down flat. With the mantrap between us we faced each other, sitting, and the silence grew in the