by Dan Davis
‘I must wait until the battle begins so that Cedd and Bede are busy. Otherwise, they will simply catch me and bring me back to the King’s Army. And I feel as though I have barely learned anything this entire time. When I run from them, I will likely never see another alchemist ever again. So I need to make the most of it. Learning even one more spell could help me to protect the Vale into the coming years, whatever happens in this war.’
‘Has anyone told you that your friends are with Cromwell’s forces?’ Bacon asked her.
Writer almost wept. But she did not. ‘So close? I knew they would not leave me. How do you know?’
The old alchemist waved a hand. ‘Spies,’ he said. ‘We have many agents and they have many with us. Now we are so close to one another, secret messages between the armies go back and forth all day long.’
Archer and the others were so close. ‘I will go to them as soon as I am able,’ she said. ‘Even though I have yet to learn anything truly valuable.
Bacon drank more wine and she thought he was going to fall asleep.
‘How many days since I first met you?’ Bacon asked her.
She knew exactly. ‘Three weeks ago. Twenty-one days.’
‘And how many spells have you learned in that time?’ Bacon said.
‘Only three,’ she said, feeling like a failure. ‘Three types of protection spell.’
Bacon wheezed. She realised he was laughing. ‘You are a fast learner indeed.’
She wasn’t sure if he was mocking her. ‘I have tried my best. Despite Bede’s efforts to restrict me, I have spoken to the other mages and learned the words and motions to more spells. Spells on conjuration and destruction. But the magic does not come. And the battlemages mock my efforts.’
‘Do you know that it took me thirty years of practising to perform my first spell?’
‘So long?’ She was shocked.
‘For many it is far longer. Most alchemists who ever lived never cast a single spell. Even the ones who were rewarded with a draught of the Elixir of Life and lived for hundreds of years. You must be gifted indeed, beyond even your elemental power.’
Writer had not known it was quite that rare an ability. ‘So Bede says.’
Bacon sighed. ‘Yours a gift I would have loved to have had. I say this with no modesty because it is true but I have achieved much in my life. Four hundred years I have had to do it. I have mastered one school of magecraft and have an understanding of many more. I have built devices never before seen by mankind. But to be at one with the pure element of water itself? Ah, what a joy that would have been. I envy you.’
‘It has saved my life more than once,’ Writer said. ‘But water isn’t always around when you need it.’
Bacon blinked at her. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well, just that when I fell in a river as a little girl I controlled the water and saved my life. And when I sailed upon the sea and was caught in a storm, I controlled the waves. I used the rain once to hide myself like a cloak. But when I am inland on a dry day then my power is useless. Which is why I need to get good at magic.’
‘Before you run away.’
He pondered for a long while, his eyes drooping. He seemed so long in thought she wondered if he had fallen asleep sitting up again. She got up, crouched by his knees again, and reached to take the wine cup from his hand lest he spill it on himself.
But then his head jerked up and he spoke, making her jump. ‘You know that water is everywhere, do you not?’
She hesitated. ‘Of course. There are rivers and streams all over England. We crossed many on the walk here. But they’re not within the extent of my powers. I have a limited distance that I can sense. Perhaps two or three hundred yards.’
‘And can you sense no water within two hundred yards?’ Bacon asked, as if he was amused.
‘No,’ she said without thinking. Then she saw the pitcher of water. ‘Oh, yes. Of course there is water in jugs and cups in most places.’
‘How pure must the water be in order for you to control it?’ Bacon said.
‘Purity?’
‘How much can it be mixed with other liquids and solids and elements and ingredients? You used the river. Was it not full of mud and sand and earth? The sea is full of salts and tiny creatures. Did that stop you from controlling them?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But they were mostly water.’
‘Do you know what else is mostly water? Everything that lives.’ Bacon was smiling his gummy, gap-toothed smile. ‘Every single plant and creature and man and woman in this world is mostly water.’
‘I do not understand. How can that be so?’ She looked down at herself. ‘I am flesh and blood.’
Bacon chuckled. ‘Blood is almost entirely water. Flesh is mostly water. Trees and birds are mostly water.’
The thought was strangely disturbing. ‘Surely not. Trees? They are hard and dry.’
‘Do not trust your eyes and your fingers and your mind. Feel it. With this.’ He tapped her on the forehead again.
She put her hand over her forehead. ‘My third eye?’
‘It is the window to the Energetic Plane through which our power flows, is it not?’
‘I remember a white light pouring from up here when I revived Bede.’
‘You may also prise open the third eye to look into yourself. Into me. Into everything around us.’
‘Now?’ she asked. ‘What do I do?’
‘You already know how,’ Bacon said.
She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. Using her power could be rather taxing so she had only ever accessed it before during times of great need. It was the first time she had looked out through her power in a quiet, safe place.
Her awareness flowed outward and the wateriness of everything around. She felt first the Alchemist Bacon sitting across the table from her. It astounded her.
And herself. She felt the water inside herself. The shape of her body in the space of the room. Like a Writer-shaped bag of water. But it was not still. The water in the blood in her veins flowed through her arms and legs in pulsing beats, pushed round and round her body into the tiniest part of herself. Not just in the blood but there was water in her stomach, her kidneys, her bladder. It gurgled through her guts. There was water flowing into and out of her brain, filling the inside of her skull with the powerful blood. The water, the blood, reached into every single tiny part of her body. She felt as though she had opened a map of Writer and was peering closely at it.
And if she could feel it, she could control it, she was sure. She could lift the water, all the water, inside herself, together as one. And if she could do that then perhaps... perhaps, she would be able to lift her entire body off the floor and into the air. Even more herself through the air from place to place.
The thought was like a door being flung open and light pouring into her eyes.
‘Writer. We need you,’ Cedd said.
She prised her eyes apart and squinted.
Cedd was in the doorway to Bacon’s chambers. Bede was there with him and light flooded in past them.
‘Cromwell’s army is moving to attack,’ Cedd said, angry and scowling. ‘Forget this useless old fool. We need you. Now.’
Weaver’s Fall
‘I ain’t got time today, Winstanley,’ Weaver told him and Susan who were on the back of their stupid travelling garden in the middle of the camp. ‘It’s to be the battle today, you know that and I can’t be hanging back here. I just came to say bye. I got to go ready Artemis and everything.’
Winstanley smiled at her. ‘All the more reason to get your hands dirty now, isn’t it? Help us to dig out some of this good earth we found, please?’
Susan started on her, too. ‘It won’t take you a minute but it will take us ages.’
She sighed and knelt in the dirt, dragging it from the ground and throwing it up and into the troughs in no time. Making soil move through the air with her power was trickier than making a wall of it rise from the ground. She h
ad to make sure that every bit of soil was touching another bit or else it fell down to the grass. It was hard to do. It was like trying to pour out a jug of water, upside down, without spilling a drop. She got dirt everywhere. It was scattered over the wagon, the grass, her clothes and in her hair.
But Weaver didn’t care about making a mess.
It was the battle today.
‘There, I done it,’ Weaver said, as the last of the troughs filled with the good black earth. ‘See you later, Winstanley. See you, Susan.’
‘Help me plant out these seedlings,’ Winstanley said. ‘Those fellows of mine are good at digging but they’re from London, aren’t you, my friends.’
The dirty soldiers ignored him, lounging against the wagon.
‘Yeah, alright,’ Weaver said, eyeing the plants. ‘Long as we’re quick.’ She jumped up on the wagon and crouched in the mess of dirt between Winstanley and Susan. ‘What plants you got here, then?’
‘All kinds,’ he said. ‘Crosswort and fennel there. Agrimony in that trough with mugwort. I’ve got those big rosemary bushes in along the edge there.’
‘Why do you always wear rosemary twigs in your hats?’ she asked them as she poked rows of holes and planted the seedlings for each type of plant.
‘I’m glad you noticed. Do you like them?’ Winstanley said.
‘I love the smell of rosemary,’ she admitted. ‘But you look stupid.’
Susan laughed.
‘Oh,’ Winstanley said. ‘Well, I wear them because the smell is nice. But they are one of the signs of my group. They call us the Diggers. We have many members who feel the same as I do about how England should work and how we should live.’
‘What, like never having a war or anything?’
Winstanley nodded. ‘We think the people who rule us, people with power, shouldn’t have that power. We think no one should. Or, rather, that we should have power together. That we should not own important things ourselves but together. And work the land, as you did in the Vale. Together. Not in conflict like in this mad war or when the lord of the manor turfs out his tenants and steals their common lands. So the lords and those in charge don’t like us saying that sort of thing too much so we don’t go about telling everyone we meet that we’re Diggers too. So we wear a sprig of rosemary in our hats. It’s like a secret code. Although, it’s not so secret these days but we still do it anyway.’
‘You’re the leader.’ Weaver realised it all of a sudden.
‘We do not have leaders,’ Winstanley said. ‘But if we did then I would be the leader, yes.’
‘How many people in your Diggers?’ Weaver asked.
‘Many are not revealed to us because they don’t want to be singled out and harassed by the mayors and bailiffs and squires. But we believe it to be many thousands. Tens of thousands, almost certainly.’
‘Tens of thousands?’ Weaver said. ‘What, like, as big as the King’s army? Or as big as Cromwell’s army?’
‘Bigger than both combined. But they are spread out within the armies of both sides and mostly amongst the people in the villages and towns all over England.’
Weaver couldn’t believe it. ‘So it’s like you’re a leader of your own army?’
‘An army of pacifists, I suppose,’ Winstanley laughed.
‘Pacifists? Are they all like you? They would rather get killed themselves than kill anyone else?’
‘That’s one way of saying it,’ Susan said, nodding.
‘That’s mad,’ Weaver said, pausing halfway through to poke a seedling into its row. ‘You must be totally mad.’
Winstanley smiled. ‘We are an army that wants peace, because peace is a wonderful goal in and of itself. But also peace brings plentiful harvests and much trade between fellows and a good life, for anyone that wants it.’
‘But if you’re such a powerful man, how comes you’re just digging around in dirt all day?’ Weaver asked, poking more seedlings into the trough. ‘Why aren’t you out leading? Speaking to folk and whatnot? Making them do what you want.’
‘I have spent years spreading my ideas. I have travelled England speaking to ordinary people and landowners. I have written books and pamphlets and had them printed in the thousands and handed out in the towns and cities and villages. There are many of my friends out there, growing food together on land that was gifted to us by a sympathetic lord. They work together, share the produce, and trade it with others. Our movement grows by itself when people see that it works. All I need to do is wait for it to become overwhelming. Once this war ends, with the defeat of the King and the Alchemists who keep us down, we will change the new England with our self-belief and our numbers.’
‘So you want to overthrow Cromwell?’
‘Oh no,’ Winstanley said. ‘Nothing so violent as that. We simply wish to make him irrelevant.’
‘And he knows that? So why doesn’t he get rid of you? Do you in, like?’
‘Cromwell has not killed me because he knows it would make no difference to the ideas themselves. Those are out there, whether I live or not. And I may not be a leader in the classic sense, my death or imprisonment could stir up the Diggers. Many of his soldiers are Diggers. He wants to win his war first, and then deal with me. And that is why he is happy for me to be with the army. He thinks he can control me, eventually. Like he controls everyone else.’
‘Why call yourselves the Diggers, anyway?’ She laughed. ‘That’s a stupid name.’
‘I agree,’ Winstanley said. ‘It was meant as an insult but it caught on and now we use it with pride. We dig the earth. Like this. Is this not the most wonderful thing in all the world? This good, dark earth crumbling in your fingers. The cold, wet soil under your fingernails. Pushing a seed into the earth. Watching it grow, become green and full of life.’
She nodded. ‘I used to do this with my mum and dad,’ she said, remembering. ‘We were farmers. Not the best soil in the Vale but my dad was tough and he used to work the plough well. He brought in these barrows of chalky stuff from down Vale somewhere to make things grow better. And I would help my mum in the garden, close to our house. We had so many herbs in summer, it was the most amazing smell in the world, especially the rosemary. We’d plant and weed together, side by side. She would tell me stories and tell me what each plant liked and didn’t like. And my mum used to say that’s it, Isolda, push the earth in nice and tight, that’s a good girl. She liked growing raspberries, I remember that.’
Winstanley and Susan were looking at her.
‘What?’ Weaver asked, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. ‘Have I got something on my face?’
‘Is that your real name?’ Susan said.
‘What?’ Weaver asked.
Susan placed her hand gently on Weaver’s arm. ‘You just said that your mother called you Isolda.’
Weaver felt like she had been punched in the stomach.
She sat back and stared out, away from the army, toward the distant hills. Light green buds dotted the dark branches of the faraway trees.
‘Yes,’ Weaver said, feeling the memories floating into her mind. ‘Yes, she did. That was what they called me. That was my name.’
Susan put her arm around Weaver’s shoulders and hugged her a bit. Winstanley smiled at her, then looked over her shoulder and his face dropped into a scowl.
Weaver cuffed her eyes and turned at the noise of hooves drumming the earth.
Captain Smith rode up to the wagon, his face angry like she’d never seen and yanked his reins hard.
Behind him on a long rope trotted Artemis.
‘Girl. The battle has begun. What are you doing wasting time with these rabble-rousers? The company awaits you. I have brought your pony, seeing as you were too preoccupied to do your duty.’
‘Artemis.’ Weaver jumped up and sprang from the wagon right onto her back. Weaver laid across the horse’s neck. ‘I love you, Artemis,’ she whispered.
‘Hurry, child,’ Captain Smith growled. ‘Hurry before we miss the greate
st battle of our age. The King’s Army is just waiting for us.’
‘Bye, Winstanley, bye Susan,’ she called. ‘Thanks for...’ She swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Thanks.’
The Winstanleys stood with their arms about each other, and waved. They looked sad. Neither warned her to be careful and she was grateful for that, too.
The company were waiting for their Captain and her to return. The army was busier than she had ever seen it, redcoats running everywhere clutching helmets and muskets. It was like stamping on the top of a red ants nest and seeing them swarm out everywhere.
‘The armies are forming up,’ Captain Smith shouted at his men from astride his horse. ‘It will be a battle. Now, the battlefield is two hills, with a deep hollow between. Our men will be on one hill with the King and the Alchemists on the other. We’re with General Ireton on the left flank. Our job will be to counter Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers.’
The men groaned and muttered and swore.
‘Yes, I know. They are good. But we are better. And we shall have support on our left flank. I am told the sharpshooter company will be in the treeline to the left and they will try to take out Rupert and his officers as they advance. If the Cavaliers charge, they will do it as they always do. Heads down, heels back and going like demons. But they will be ragged. Their lines will drift, you have all seen it. We will charge slower, we shall stay together. Knee to knee. Stay with your brothers on either side and we shall see this day through.’
The men cheered at that. Sergeant Gore snarled at them to form up in column and together they cantered on.
‘You will stay with me behind the second rank, Weaver,’ Captain Smith said.
‘But I want to fight,’ Weaver said.
Smith tutted. ‘Just stay back with me. Your pony is too small to ride with those beasts, you know that. If there’s any trouble, you will use your powers to help us again, understand?’
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Fine what?’ the Captain glared at her.
‘Fine, sir,’ Weaver muttered, feeling like tipping the Captain out of his saddle.
There were companies of redcoats walking, talking and joking. Some were grimly silent. They were marching to war.
