And before any soldiers walked here, engineers came, men such as myself, strangers to the place. They must have measured this ground, as I have done, observed its times of flood and shrink, and calculated where to float their road across. Perhaps they lodged hereabouts, or at a fort hastily constructed, for the people of this place could have had no good intentions towards their conquerors. At this thought I feel something of the spirit of these my ancestors enter into me. By my shoulder I sense a man such as I might have been, though more likely born in Spain or some other southern place. I see him rise up out of the fen and come towards me across the expanse, an arm raised as if in greeting, one engineer to another. He is young and dark-complexioned; full of his knowledge as I am full of mine. His gestures to me are at once eager and supplicating, as if he wishes me to tell his story, to rescue him from that place where the dead of his religion journey in the end.
The road is well done, and would be still serviceable were it lying now upon the surface of the land as it was when built. I feel a joy to see its beauty now brought by chance into the light. Yet had we not cut through it, it would have lain undisturbed in its sleep of centuries, down below the vegetable world, no conjecture to be made of it. My fancy brings forth ghosts; yet they are everywhere, if only we could see them. Perhaps this is the very thickness in the air of this place, filled with the souls of those who lived here, or passed this way.
This jumble of thoughts rushes through me in an instant. I had thought the meres untouched, but this cannot be so. Nature has swallowed what man made, dragged it beneath the water and the mud. So our eyes deceive us. We think we see all, or can discover it, and yet we see so little. Time has covered over what men made here before, and all the habits of their life.
As if in a dream, I see inwardly the whole skin of the earth peeled away. It is a picture only, yet for a second everything is discovered and placed before me, both the works of man and the hidden works of nature that only seldom burst forth as volcanoes and hot springs. For if a Roman road may hide here unsuspected, my own work might at some future time drown also, and lie forgotten.
I walk back past the slumped figure of Aelbert Mortens, to where Adriaan Renswyck still stands with his sardonic look. Only a minute or two has passed, but my ill humour has turned to wonder.
‘Have you seen the road we cut through, Adriaan?’ I ask.
‘You have been dreaming, Mijnheer Brunt,’ Renswyck says. ‘What road? You are seeing things.’
‘Indeed I am, Adriaan; great things.’
There is no profit in talk with Renswyck, so I turn to Ralph Cooper.
‘Come, Mr Cooper,’ I say. ‘Pick up your pike; let’s go.’
Ralph Cooper leads me along the roughly thrown-up embankment of the new cut. Below on the mere, the reed heads are brown and the hawthorns heavy with scarlet berries. After a few minutes the ground is firm beneath my boots again and I am come back into the world of our day. In half an hour we reach the northernmost extent of the works. An angry murmur of voices rises up from beyond the new embankment; spades, entrenching tools and hessian sacks lie across the ground, piles of muddy soil stand at intervals. Another ragged group of prisoners sits on the grass. Two soldiers stand guard.
‘What passes here?’ I ask.
The prisoners reply all at once.
‘The work of the devil.’
‘These are witches buried here.’
‘Or this is the work of witches.’
‘Or sinners with no Christian burial.’
One man makes the sign of the cross on his breast, rocking forward as he does so. Another says the same words over and over. The rest just sit, and raise their eyes to me in accusation.
A tall soldier, who himself appears discomposed, points to a patch of turned-up ground a little way off. Walking over I see new-broken shards of pottery. Dusty ashes veil the grass. Beside them a rough-hewn pot as high as my knee lies quite out of the ground. It is full of grey fragments that make a kind of gravel. All around, the tops of many more jars have been uncovered. Rightly they must be called urns, for there is no doubt that this is a place of burial.
‘Go back to Mr Renswyck,’ I say to Ralph Cooper, ‘and tell him that work is finished here for the day.’
Then I tell the captain in charge, ‘Escort the prisoners back to the camp, but leave me half a dozen of your men. I wish them to excavate these things and remove them from sight. We will work tomorrow in the usual way.’
When the prisoners have been marched off beyond the embankment I kneel down to look at the excavated urn. My heart is full within my chest, for I see easily that within the ashes that have spilled out onto the mud are human bones. Man, woman or child; perhaps a whole family is mingled here, the ashes of one person poured on top of another.
I cannot resist plunging in my hands and drawing out a handful of grit and other stuff. When I open my fingers the heaviest particles fall to the ground, coating it in patches. The lightest rise into the air, a million motes in the shafts of autumn sunlight. The dust moves and turns gracefully. I watch it fall, then come up again, pushed by the resisting ground. Minutes pass as it comes up slowly and then sinks again until finally there is just a slight haze left. The sun shines through it, filling the air. The sight is as beautiful as God’s grace, or the light that will open to the heavens when all souls rise at the Last Judgment.
I part my fingers and see that a few lumps cling to my skin. One of these I pick out and rub on my breeches as I might do to a pebble from a beach. The dust comes off and I see that it is a tooth, ivory white, perfectly formed, brown in the hole where the root once grew. Wonder turns to horror and I dash the other teeth off my hands. When they fall onto the grass the story of the sowing of the teeth comes into my mind, so that I fancy for a moment that a legion of Romans, fully armed, might spring up to fight. My ears fill with sea-sounds and I forget where I am.
When I come to myself I order the soldiers to dig out all the urns. They do not move; they have seen my horror. It comes across me that we are in a sacred place and that the spirits of the dead, now disturbed, may remain here with malevolent intent. This I know to be a superstition, and tell myself so, yet fear fills me.
I grab one soldier’s pike from him and lower it towards the others, advancing on the group without a thought in my head.
‘Take up the urns. Carry them beyond the new embankment and bury them again. Cover them well. They are pagan remains, merely. No Christians lie here. Put them from your minds. Now get to work.’
Slowly the soldiers bend to pick up the spades abandoned by the prisoners.
‘Do this and you may return to the camp afterwards. I give that as an order.’
I leave and walk slowly down the new embankment in search of Van Hooghten, who is riding this way from Ely. I will tell him how the Roman road has come to light and show it to him before it is washed away, as it will be. The discovery of the urns I will keep to myself; I do not want Van Hooghten to share my fear, or see it.
Chapter 5
Near King’s Lynn.
The Great Level.
Winter and spring, 1650–1651.
Days and nights both cold.
Colour drains from the islands and the meres. The last red berries are eaten by birds or wither and turn to black. After the winter solstice the golden heads of the reeds fray and thin, until the reeds stand grey and seedless, bent westwards by the bitter wind.
I now insist that the more docile prisoners are unroped when they arrive at the day’s place of work. They do not thank me and still labour in anger. Round their hands they tie rough strips of hessian taken from the sacks which they fill and tip out to build the highest parts of the embankments. By midday blood seeps through the hessian and drips into the mud. I demand leather gloves, and order them handed out with the spades and returned at the end of the day. This measure helps the men’s hands, but not their feet, which, from standing in the mud, turn black and rot.
For want of doctors and space to nurse
them these sick men are sent away, I know not where. When I look at the prisoners, so miserable and far from their homes, I remember the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, that I read of in my childhood. As these men are, so were the Israelites in captivity, forced to build great works and labour without reward.
I think of the buried road. Was it also built by men such as these, taken in battle and enslaved? What a great desire men have to take the liberty of others with scarce a thought. And more, what pride man has in the conquest of all living things, the smallest creatures as well as the mountains, valleys and seas, which are alive in their own fashion. This idea will not leave me. It fills me with unease. Like the Romans long ago, the Adventurers now subject this place to their will, as if the whole world is part of an empire like that of Rome.
The urns, and the ashes within them, squat in my mind, a mystery and a threat. The remains in them are not of Romans, who built tombs for their dead. Who were these, then? Another people from this place? The silence of the urns unsettles me. I have breathed the dead, taken them in. I want to exhale them, but find that I talk to them instead.
‘Who are you?’ I ask. ‘What customs do you have, what beliefs?’
One night I return in the darkness to the place where the soldiers buried the urns, and dig about until I find a small one that sits as high as my hand. This I empty and carry to my lodging, where I put it out of sight in my box.
When I was a child the world appeared a safe place, made by God and explained by him. But now uncertainty has entered my heart with the dust of the dead. Nothing is as it seems; much is covered up, much washed away. Yet when I turn to God I cannot see him. I tell this to Van Hooghten, feeling safe to confide in him, far away from home as we are and with no priests or churches near, only our bibles to read and to guide us. I am losing sight of God, I say to him, and this dimming of the light appears progressive, as blindness can be. There is no single cause; it must be borne. Perhaps it started with the discovery of the urns. Perhaps it has been going on longer, but it was only then that I noticed it, like the faint tremor before an earthquake that has long been building its force under the earth.
Van Hooghten is alarmed at my confidence. His kindly face is covered over with fear. He says nothing and I guess he hopes that I will say nothing also. That is our habit of life. Though there must be many Dutchmen who have lost God, no one amongst us speaks out when he walks away.
In my childhood I knew God. I knew him as I do my mother and my father and all those whose acquaintance I make and who leave an outline on my soul. God comes through my skin, down my throat and into my heart with each breath.
When I learn to read, I hang on to my mother’s red woollen skirt, feeling its rough weave and the softness of the white muslin apron tied over it. I am a thin, dark boy, tall already for my age. I stand and cross one shin over the other so that I can lean into her as much as I dare and breathe her cool, musty scent that soon gets mixed in with the very idea of God. My head rests on her and I feel her chest rise and fall. My heart beats in time with hers, steady and strong. My mother sounds out each word of the prayer book, and points to it as she reads. Soon it is as if she and God are speaking at the same time and in the same voice. I can hear his voice inside hers, and his presence shimmers with the words. I love him and, though I do not have the thought, I know that he loves me.
Later, when my sister Margriet is old enough, we two sit at the table in the parlour with my father, he in an oak-armed chair, Margriet and I on four-legged stools drawn up close so that the wooden edge of the table presses against us. From then on there is no leaning in to my mother and feeling the warmth of God. When my father reads the prayer book God’s voice becomes stern and distant, as if he speaks from far away. Now God is in the firmament of heaven, high above us, and looking down. Then I often make mistakes with my reading, fearing my father and God together, for this God will chastise me if I fall into error or fail in any tasks at home or at the school.
Each Sunday we go to the church in the village and the pastor preaches forgiveness, or repentance, or obedience. The nave of the church is high and columned, filled with the light of God that comes off the water in the canal outside. There are no paintings on the walls; it is cold and white and golden. The pastor speaks of the great flood and tells us it is needful to be as Noah was, righteous and obedient and the only man to survive. Every Dutchman lives in fear of the flood and must be as pure as he. If I am a sinner I will not be saved as Noah was, but drowned and lost.
Though this God makes me fearful, I bargain with him, promise that I will learn my tables if he makes sure that my father treats me kindly, and if he will save me when the time comes. Sometimes he agrees, but at other times, though I fulfil my side of the promise, he fails in his, and then I am angry, and fear him and know that I have fallen from the path.
All through my childhood, though, the kindlier God comes back when I am alone with myself. He and I talk together – or, to be more exact, I talk to him – and he sometimes speaks to me in reply. I tell him what I am doing, as if he might not be able to see; describe to him my daily walk along the canal to school. If I notice a carp rise to the surface, or see that a calf has been born in the water meadow and is lying damp and surprised on the grass, I make sure to bring these things to God’s attention.
‘Look at that,’ I say, as if directing his gaze.
‘Yes, I see it, Jan,’ he replies.
‘See the way that calf’s legs are tucked under him, so he can push up and walk.’
‘Ah, yes, Jan, it is wonderful how ready he is for life.’
‘My sister Margriet did not walk like that. She was useless for so long, lying on our mother.’
‘Why might that have been, Jan?’
‘I cannot say,’ I tell God in answer to such questions, for these things I puzzle over as I lie in my bed at night with the curtains tight shut across the opening to the room.
It does not come to me then that God, having made the world, must know it and see it all. No, I am sure that, just as I see a new wondrous sight, so must he, or so must he if I point it out. I wish him to cast his eyes on this small corner of the earth; the island of Tholen itself, my village of Sint-Maartensdijk, and the things I see. If a new crop is sown, or slice of land reclaimed, I bring it to God’s attention, not just for the joy of it, but so that he can change the great map of the world that he must have created from the beginning.
We understand one another well enough in those early years. Sometimes I know God walks beside me. At other times I talk to him while he stays in heaven. From my schoolboy years I begin to show him my scholarly efforts, and to strive to be worthy of him. The first works of drainage that I accomplish I share with him; they are my gift to him and his to me.
And this goes on until now, and his gradual disappearance. Now I turn to him sometimes, and find nothing, or it seems that the voice in which I was used to speak to him is no longer serviceable. God is leaving my life. I notice that I do not attempt to make him stay. Some people, when God stops speaking to them, or does not answer an appeal, will call out, Stop! They will entreat, pray harder, beg God to chastise them, to break open their hearts, batter down their defences and walk back in.
I do nothing. I let God disappear slowly. He thins out and dissipates – as if, towards the end of a church service, the organist plays more and more quietly and then simply ceases altogether. There is not so much a departure as a lack of presence.
And so he is gone, and I find myself changed. When I used to speak to God I was always stretching up, enlarging myself so that he might see me; raising my voice and justifying myself to him. Now that I have stopped, the world remains, just itself. A curtain has been lifted, and the gauze that stood between myself and nature melted away. I feel a part of all that is. If now I see a creator, it is nature itself, in every particle in all the earth and skies. I see it in my flesh, and in you.
In December ice creeps along the streams and across the meres. Snow settl
es on the frozen water and when the ground turns too hard for digging the men are confined to the camps, restless and quarrelsome. Nonetheless, at the turn of the year, I am able to travel to London and report to the Gentlemen Adventurers that the works are remarkably progressed. An eagle, high on the eastern winds, might see the new landscape coming out of the old, an orderly world being born from the wilderness. The new rivers are now laid out and partly dug. The run-off channels for the sluice at Denver are also near complete. Two more years will see the whole endeavour finished and the Great Level drained and ready to be farmed without the smallest difficulty, for all land that comes up from underwater is level or only very gently inclines, and is composed of the finest silt and peat with gravel here and there.
You and I never talk of the time when the works will be finished and I will have to leave this place. I know clearly why I am reticent upon the subject. I am anxious that if I speak out you will leave as you first appeared, without any warning, and that I shall not see you again. I fear that you will refuse what I have in mind for the future. Or perhaps it is that I do not have the language to speak of it, our relation being so much of the present tense.
So it is that when we are next together, from habit now entwined together like branches so that I hear your voice soft upon my neck, I do not say what I had intended. My hope hangs there just out of reach. For this is what I wish to say, then and since, that it is a year and more since I came upon you, I in my coracle, you near naked in the pool. Since that time the feeling within me has only deepened. I have been with women before, Dutchwomen who wished for the life my mother has, but with none did desire grow and join us together or spread out into stillness and peace. I want to say this, and that I have come to understand that I do not want the life my parents live.
The Great Level Page 12
