Joey in Cornwall

by Jean Rolt

charged them great prices for the raw rock and even more for the already smelted bars of tin....

  Uncle Joe was rich but always ready to find new ways of making money!

  Also he liked people. And so did Joey. He enjoyed meeting all the different sorts of men from many different tribes. Somehow their language was never a problem to him. When the crew tried to talk to the fishermen always to be found in any port, it was Joey who could understand them, no matter what their tongue. Their meaning was plain to him and one of the reasons his uncle wanted him with them.

  ,Joey enjoyed the travelling too. He was a quick learner and knew by heart most of the scriptures which he would recite when prompted as part of their Sabbath day ceremonies.

  The men occasionally teased him about his learning but were quickly persuaded out of it by Uncle Joe who would shake his head at them and scowled ferociously if the conversation became too adult for the boy.

  Three

  The next morning after a good sleep in their lean-to hut they woke to a dreadful noise. The wind howled like a beast and the sky grew dark. Joey jumped out of his bed and ran to the waters edge. The tide was out but the sand bar in the dim light had great tongues of white appearing along its edge which Joey realised was water....the waves were almost covering the bar!

  A massive storm blew for three days. The wind coming from the east was like a sword, cutting the vegetation down, the tops of the trees were scoured by the wind into a dark, dead mass. Nothing could move on the water. They would have been battered and sunk if they had tried to sail.

  The men raced outside to try to batten everything down.....too late they saw sticks and foliage sweeping the shore, the fish they had laid in the sun to dry had gone, back into the sea they'd come from....this was a blow...in bad times the dried fish kept them alive. They would have to start again.

  They were at the time of the year when the sun rose late and went down earlier. The wind was a cold one and they were not used to being cold. Some sort of covering would be needed if they were forced into staying for a while. They could light fires along the almost circular shore.....there was an abundance of dead wood and it was time to make some charcoal.

  Joey and the rest of the crew were happy to sit out the storm but impatient to get to grips with the real purpose of the expedition. They had brought the bright green rock containing the copper with them...they had called in to harbours where metal traders congregated as they sailed steadily west.

  They were anxious now to start smelting. The copper was soft until it was melted together with tin which was even softer. Mixing the two made it into bronze which was strong and beautiful as well. Joey was keen to fashion something for his mother. He knew she missed him during his absences.

  The process couldn't start yet though. First they had to find some tin.

  Across the water in what the Romans called Gaul there were tin mines and they had been told of the even greater deposits across the channel in further Gaul.

  The Romans were the great conquerors of the age. They had landed their legions along all the borders of the great sea and had travelled as far west as was possible. Further Gaul was not an easy conquest but they had managed to build cities in many areas and had taken the precaution of having them protected by walls. The toe of the country waiting to be explored by tin merchants had never been taken over by the Roman soldiers...the natives were unfriendly and it was a very long way from Londinium. The number of soldiers required to keep order in the further reaches of the country made it impossible....so apart from occasional soldiers, Cornwall was still quiet, still isolated and still unconquerable.

  The sailors were not interested in conquest. They were looking for one thing, the ore that would change copper into bronze.

  Four

  The storm lasted for three days, during which they stayed in the leanto, fashioned rough clothes from old sail and tried to work out where the best chances of finding tin were.

  On their way up the wide estuary they had seen several small tributaries and one larger harbour on the other side of the water.

  They had noticed a stone jetty and seen small boats bobbing up and down in the water and had passed it because the tide had been coming in fast and it was easier to allow it to carry them past the little town.

  The place they had arrived in was cut off by the sand bank and there was no sign of habitation there. They were not worried about anyone local seeing them and feeling threatened or frightened by them. They felt secure in the little creek. It was a good place.

  The well provided them with sweet, clear water.

  The wind dropped after three days and Joey set off to look beyond the bar whilst the crew climbed on board the ship to look for any damage and repair it.

  After going back on board Uncle Joe called the men together to say a prayer. It was important to thank God for their safe delivery through the storm.

  The men prayed in strong sincere voices. His uncle turned to the boy and asked him to say a prayer.

  Joey was not surprised . This had happened before....he stood gazing upwards and said his own prayer.

  "My father, we thank you for delivering us to this land and keeping us safe from the darkness and the storm. May we live to praise your name and ask for your blessing all the days of our lives. Amen."

  The men nodded their heads in approval and chorused the amen loudly before moving off to check the ropes and see that everything on board had stayed safe.

  After settling down to their routine jobs they heard a rustling in the undergrowth.

  Several of the men, took cudgels and climbed back into the marsh. It sounded like a big animal...maybe even a wild boar.

  They were ready for a diversion and as they waded onto the shore they laughed, their eagerness apparent, a chase was always good fun.

  They listened as they approached. The sounds came from a small clearing and there they found not one but four pigs. The men licked their lips....the taste and smell of the toasted flesh inciting them to action. With great whoops they rushed on the animals and one man armed with a great stone axe felled the biggest pig. It dropped with no sound and the men cheered as they saw her babies lying in the undergrowth.

  Rushing they picked them up and one man raised a stone.

  "Stop" said Joey. "Stop"

  They looked at him,

  "It's good eating "the man said "A baby pig is very tasty." and he scooped up the small animal and made to wring its neck"

  "No" said Joey' "No"

  The men stopped and looked at him. The mother pig was clearly dead. The babies could not survive now. Better to eat them.

  "No" said Joey "No" The second no the sound of gentleness and pain.

  "We have to kill to live. We have to survive. We can eat pork in order to do that even if it is forbidden by Scripture. But there is enough flesh on this one animal to feed us all for two days or maybe three. "

  "Then we kill the baby's? " said the men, still holding one of the litter.

  "Maybe " said Joey. "We could. But if we kill we must only do it for our own survival. After that it would be gluttony...a sin. We can only kill what is necessary to ensure we don't die."

  Five

  Oddly the men had listened intently.

  There was in the boy a stillness, a goodness that was apparent to everyone who met him. They always listened as he explained his ideas to them .

  One man was not impressed...."It would be because the meat is unclean" he told the others, "It is a forbidden meat, surely you knew that? "

  Of course they had known that but they had eaten pork before in far places where hunger was always a problem.

  Joey spoke again. "The scriptures do say that the meat is unclean but surely out here where no man or any other animals have touched them they must be pure. The rules are to stop us from becoming sick. But here, this animal will stave our hunger, it will not make us ill . When we have caught the sea creatures with the big armour we are bidden not to eat shell fish but we could if we were hun
gry. Staying alive is surely more holy than dying?"

  The men had no answer to this but as none of them were going to refuse their share of the pork they argued no more, they took the dead boar back to the shore line where they built a bonfire whilst Joey built a small enclosure to put the baby pigs in, three of them now screaming for their mother.

  Joey knew that they might well end by dying now they had no mothers milk to drink but he could not bear the thought of the brutality involved in killing them . He wondered if they might be old enough to survive in the wild on their own...it was worth a chance . He picked them up and carried them back into the undergrowth. They scampered off quickly as Joey felt a warm glow of caring and even of love before he turned back to the waters edge.

  They all enjoyed the feast given to them by the boar and sat late that evening around the fire they had made on shore. They sang quietly, songs of home, of mothers and fathers, of boats and fishing on the lake. It was a good time and they went to bed happy.

  The next day they had to decide whether to move on in the calm quiet waters beyond the sand bank or stay for a little while.

  They had not really explored their immediate surroundings but nothing in the small stretch of land suggested the presence of tin....

  Uncle Joe was strangely indecisive. He walked along the sand bar staring across the water...the sea was more estuary than anything else but further up there might be places to explore. He realised as he gazed around him that the water was much