Hosts of Rebecca

heavy meal of summer, was strickening in brilliance. Left foot forward, swing and back. I smelled the mowing smells of bruised corn, a dryness crept to my throat, but the song of the scythe was an exultation within me, and I disdained the pain of my already blistered hands. On, on, the blade flatter now, a bow of steel encircling my legs. The ache of my loins crept to my back, spreading fingers of fire to my shoulders, but still I worked on. Sweat ran in streams over my face. On, on, left foot forward, swing, and back. Sickening now, but I was still at it strongly, scything in a fashion, getting the damned stuff down. Great I felt then, tied at the knees and belted. Above me in the incinerating blue a lark nicked and dived, his body a diamond of light, and his joy drove me on, eyes narrowed to midday glare now, teeth gritted to the cramping agony in a world of gold that shimmered and swayed. An hour later the sun was hottest, the poplars of Cae White alight and glittering. Heat reflected on my naked shoulders, but I plunged on blindly. Gasping now, longing for the cold draughts of the colliery shafts, the pain was a ring of steel about me, and the last swing came with an indrawn breath. The point hit a stone. The sky somersaulted as the scythe heeled again. I fell, seeking oblivion in the earth and the waving ears above me. Panting, I opened my hands. Claws for fingers, cramped and red, and the sudden gush of tears splashed and stung them, running in salt veins, mingling with blood. Knew I was beaten. Shutting my eyes to the sunglare I let the fire and sweat run over me.
An ant was crawling on the snathe of the scythe, just an inch from my nose. Brushing away tears, I watched; the posturing daintiness, the nibbling, acrobatic dancing, seeking everything, finding nothing in a world of exploration. Up the handle with you, down again in whiskered concentration; wipe your face, clean your teeth, then round you go in a circle, bright you flash in sunlight. I watched and dreamed. Sleep lazed my eyes again in the metallic burnishing of the sun. Reed-music whispered to the scent of bruised corn, and I awoke again with visions dancing and the stalks above me rippled in an oven of heat, for steepled ears had risen beside me; a harelip snitched not a foot from mine. Face to face, we were, the beaten and the hunted, and the wheat went flat to the brown streak’s passing. Next came the stoat, black, relentless, lithe body swerving in the jungle of corn, but I clenched my hand and hit him flat. Smooth was his coat to the touch of my fingers and the corn stalks waved to the terror of the rabbit. The corn hummed into silence. Nothing remained but the molten pour of the sun. In nothingness, with the stoat in my hand, I slept.
Give me a pick and a colliery face if I have to labour. Leave the scything to grandfers.

CHAPTER 10
IN BED for two days, with Morfydd and Mari dashing round with flannels, giving me hell.
Eight days it took me, but I scythed Cae White, with Morfydd on her knees spare time swiping with a reaping hook and Mam, Mari and Richard coming for the gleanings, and we stacked the barn high. If Grandfer saw it happen he did not make mention. Didn’t see much of him these days at all, with him lying in bed all the morning and teetering bowlegged down to Black Boar tavern on his ploughing corns and not a glance for anyone. Going to the devil fast, was Grandfer, not even an eye for Randy, his horse.
A black-faced towser of a horse, this one, and he’d seen better times, having once served apprenticeship as a travelling stallion, and he couldn’t forget his past. Grandfer loved him as life itself, but he didn’t work him often, and now I had him in the shafts for the harvest. Very pugnacious, this one, with the kick of an elephant, and every ploughing regular he sent Grandfer ears over backside along the shippon, but I was used to four legs, having worked them in iron. I let him belt the plough to bits and then I belted him, but he never forgave me for it, I knew. Along the ruts with a load we would go with the old traces slapping in a jingle of harness and horse and man friendship, but I knew he was watching by the roll of his eye. Cruel, I suppose, being a horse when you have once been a stallion – a hell of a time with the women one moment and cut off without an option the next, but he came pretty useful later, did Randy.
Tired to death that night, I sat in a chair with Richard on my knee. Four years old was Morfydd’s boy now, light-faced and fair, with gold curls to his neck and as pretty as a girl, save for the square of his jaw and his deepset eyes – a throw-back from the dark Mortymers.
“The white line is in us,” Mam used to say. “As a white-breasted blackbird, he is, as my little girl Edwina.”
For Edwina, my sister who died up in Monmouthshire, was albino, and the strain had come out in Morfydd’s son, though her lover, like Morfydd, was as dark as a gipsy. A dear little boy, this Richard; quiet about the house in his comings and goings, busy with his labour of tying stooks now harvest had come, and lessons in English from Mari when she had spare time. There was no school near save the keeper of the new tollgate near Flannigan’s farm, and he is not being taught by traitors, said Morfydd.
“You joining Rebecca, Uncle Jethro?” said he now.
“Not while he lives in this house,” said Mam,