by Smith, Skye
"Wellenhay, on the sea side of Ely,” she replied in perfect English, while pushing Edward's roving hand away from her nipples.
At the reply Cornelius groaned and looked away while he muttered some choice curses of his own in Dutch. "Of course. It had to be Wellenhay. Of all villages, Wellenhay. Get off her, Edward. Let her up."
"No, rip her shift off!" Tom called out while rubbing at the bulge in his pants, "Hurry up and do her so I can have my turn."
"You are both insane,” Cornelius called out. "You don't rape a Frisian clanswoman, not and live to brag about it. Especially not a woman of the Wellenhay clan. They are old-time Frisians. Sea-faring Frisians. My trenching crews have been warned over and over to stay well clear of them. You've both been around the Fens long enough to know that with Frisian clanswomen you must gain their permission, else leave them alone."
"This isn't rape,” Edward hissed back. "This is simply exchanging a favour for a favour. Girl, if I do you the favour of forgiving your theft, what will you favour me with?"
"So that's your game, is it?" she replied. "Well, it wasn't theft was it? If this isn't abbey land, then it's a common. I was going to make proper use of common apples, so it was not theft, so no favour is owed." She was thinking hard. There had to be a way out of this without her getting hurt or ravaged. "Besides, I'm underage, so you must first get my parents' permission."
"Well, my lovely,” he smiled at the second answer for it meant that she was seriously considering it. Now she just needed a little push. "If we cannot come to some arrangement here and now, then I will take you to Cambridge and lock you in the pillory and then ask the men of the alehouses to teach you some manners. Some alehouse wench manners."
Now she was fearful. In a pillory she couldn't defend herself. Men, any passing men, could do terrible things to her. "One kiss. Your forgiveness is worth one kiss. But then I must be free to go."
"You heard her. I asked her permission and she gave it freely." He pulled down the neck of her homespun, and it stretched until a nipple popped out and he kissed it, and sucked it, and licked it. She fought him, and pulled at his hair and pulled his head away. He hissed, "You weren't clear about what I was allowed to kiss." So saying, he grabbed both of her wrists and pinned her to the ground. "I took it to mean one kiss everywhere on your body, and so it shall be."
His face was close to hers now, and she could see every wrinkle and every pore. He was old, well over thirty and probably married with children her age. She would be fourteen on her next saint's day. His teeth were rotten and his breath foul, and this foulness was getting closer to her own face, her nose and her mouth. He cocked his leg over her and now his full weight pressed her to the grass. As he kissed her chin she felt one of his hands reach under her shift and begin spreading her thighs apart. "No, no, no!" she kept yelling into his ear, but he was ignoring her.
To shut her up he covered her mouth with his and pushed his tongue deep into her mouth, and then there was a pain so intense that it froze his brain. He pulled his face back from hers and her face was being covered by red dye. No, not dye. It was bright red blood, his blood. He flicked his tongue. The end of it was painful and tasted of blood and salt. The bitch had bitten his tongue, and bitten it hard. Oh, the pain! He rolled off her and put both hands to his mouth. He could barely see her through the tears of pain in his eyes.
As soon as she was free of his weight, she rolled away, gained her knees, then her feet, and then ran for her punt.
"Gwab hew! I ull kiw hew!" he yelled, mumbled, spat through the blood in his mouth. The other men did not move. They just stared at him. He repeated the command, and just in time Tom took four fast steps and tackled the girl just as she was pulling her punting pole free of the mud.
For the second time in a few minutes, she was fighting off a man. Yet another man who didn't want to hold her so much as to take liberties with her. Just like the other man, this one grabbed at her breasts. Why do men always go for the breasts? She kicked him as hard as she could in the shins, but of course, she was barefoot because her boots were still in the punt. Still, the kick was satisfying and did cause the man to cry out in pain and double over to rub his leg.
She stepped into the punt ready to push off from the bank, but Tom recovered enough to jump up and shove her from the rear. She fell forward and sprawled on the flat-bottomed boat. The eel-fishing spear was next to her hand where she landed, so she grabbed it as she turned and swung the barbed point back and forth to keep the man away from her. That was when she heard a crack of thunder from behind her on the river.
"Everybody calm down and stand away from each other!" came a gruff order from a man in a punt. It was still mid-river, but skimming quickly towards the bank.
The three men on the bank looked at the man on this new punt and recognized him as Ely Abbey's tithe collector. They also took note that he had but one pistol which had now been spent with the warning shot. Tom backed away from the girl and joined his two gov'n'rs. This was an official of the abbey, and trusted by the bishop. This was not a man to be ignored.
"Owiver,” Edward called out after moving the hankie away from his mouth. It hurt to use his tongue, and the hankie was stained red with his blood. Still he must explain, no matter the pain. "Dis isth my lhand and you haf no buthneth here." The effect of his injured tongue on his speech was maddening. It made him sound like the town simpleton.
"What I saw was three grown men attempting to rape a minor. That is the business of every moral man,” Oliver called back as the punt grounded on the muddy bank and he stepped ashore. "What is wrong with your voice, Edward? Are you drunk?" He pointed to the other two men. "You men step well away from the girl." Then he pointed to the girl. "You lass, push your punt a yard from the shore so you are safe from them, but stay close enough to talk and to listen."
Edward tested his tongue and found that if he kept it stiff it did not pain him so. This meant that letters that required the curling of the tongue were impossible to say, such as the letter L. "This is my lyand, Owiver. You have no thay here. I could have you arrested for firing your pistow at a man on his own land."
"It was a warning shot to save your man from being skewered by a fishing lance. Nothing more. If I had been aiming at you, you wouldn't be standing." He turned to the girl, "Lass, I know you as a local but your name has slipped my mind."
"Teesa,” the girl replied. She was balancing in the floating punt while trying to straighten her stretched and muddy homespun, and her disheveled long blonde tresses.
"Teesa, what happened here? Did they hurt you? Did they, umm... you know?"
"They tried,” Teesa replied. "I am bruised, and my shift is torn, and they took liberties with my breasts." She didn't like Oliver, the new titheman. He was always grumpy and in a foul mood, a typical Puritan Bible thumper, full of don'ts and mustn'ts. How could he not remember her name when she so often kept the company of his own daughter, Bridget? "It is the lord who is injured. He stuck his tongue in my mouth, so I bit it."
"Ah, so then he is not drunk?" Oliver turned towards Edward. "Did he give you any money first?"
"No, nothing, he gave me nothing,” Tess replied, the fear was leaving her voice and so her tones were softer. "He threatened to cut off my hand if I did not ... uh ... favour him."
"Edward, you fool!" Oliver turned back to the men and for the first time noticed the blood stains on Edward's clothes. "You could be charged under the law for this." He stepped back a pace and held his hands away from his sides, because Edward had just drawn a modern-looking pistol from his belt and was aiming it at him.
"Oh you would wuv that, wouldn't you, Owiver? You would finawy get back at me for having the Privy Council ruin you. Well, I could shoot you right now in self-defense. I have witnesses that you shot at me, while I stood defending my own property from a thief. The girl is a thief. I caught her steawing appwes. You are her acompwiss. The courts know that you hate me. They will judge it my right to defend myself."
Oliv
er slowly backed away to increase the range. Edward's pistol was a gentleman's weapon, short of barrel and therefore short of accuracy. It was the only pistol the man carried, so once it was fired this danger would end. He wondered if he could trick Edward into wasting his shot. Perhaps if he threw his own spent pistol at the man, and at the same time dived sideways.
"This is not your land yet, Edward. Not until it is enclosed by your drainage ditches. Even then only the third that the king does not want will be yours,” Oliver told him, stalling while he backed away from the leveled pistol . "You should have chosen a cottager girl to molest, not a clanswoman. The men of her clan aren't just ignorant cottagers, you know. They are seamen and traders, very capable, very dangerous. When they come for you it won't be to play football."
Tom snickered at the mention of football. The Isle of Axholme where he had worked for Cornelius last year had become too dangerous for the drainage crews, what with the mobs and riots against the enclosures. That was why the crews had been moved South. Here there were still mobs to fear, but they were mobs of footballers.
The truth be told, the footballers here were actually more of a hindrance than the angry mobs of Axholme. Once a lattice of ditches was almost complete, the two closest villages would challenge each other to a football match. Everyone from both villages would show up with shovels and rakes to level the playing field before the match. The football pitch was on the common, and the villages still had the right to use it until the ditches were complete. To level the playing field they would shovel and rake the dikes back into the ditches. By the time the match was won, there was nothing left of weeks of hard digging by the drainage crews. Tom snickered again. Effing footballers.
"Owiver, you have more to worwy about than what vilwage she comes from and who her cwansmen are,” Edward said slowly and painfully. "You shouwd worwy about who will take care of your own family when you are dead." He straightened his arm and sighted the pistol at Oliver's heart.
Oliver stared at the pistol in disbelief, and watched for the movement of the trigger finger that would signal him to drop to the ground. Behind him from down river there was a noise. A wooden noise, a hollow noise, but he could not risk turning to see. Whatever was causing the noise had the two drainers dropping to the ground and more importantly, had grabbed Edward's full attention.
There was the unmistakable crack of a firearm and Oliver dropped to the ground as he had planned to do. As soon as he hit the ground, he rolled while trying to keep an eye on Edward. It was very strange but it was as if Edward was throwing his pistol away. As the pistol hit the ground, Edward grabbed at his empty right hand with his left and howled in pain. The shot had come from downriver. Someone new was shooting at them.
Oliver kept rolling until he reached a small bush which offered the merest of cover. While he was rolling, a quick glance showed him a small ship gliding silently towards him through the river mist - or was it musket smoke? It slowed as it neared the two punts. There was an ever-increasing noise from the ship as oars were shipped and orders given.
Two men were standing on the bow of the ship, one tall and fair, the other short and dark, but both wielded pistols in each hand, and by the steadiness of those hands there was no mistaking that they well knew how to use them. The tall man called out, "You with the fine clothes! Lie on the ground like the others. Do it now, else we will shoot your legs to stop you from running away."
"You can't speak to me wike that,” Edward complained but decided not to argue the point and so he dropped first to his knees and then lay on the ground. "I am Edward Heath, lword of these lyands."
As soon as the bow of the small ship ground into the muddy bank, the two men with pistols leaped ashore and walked towards the four men laying on the ground. The tall one looked over at the girl, who was still standing in the punt just off shore. He called to her, "Teesa my dear, you are much too young to have gentlemen dueling over you. Are you all right?"
"Oh Daniel, I was so afraid,” Teesa said as she poled her punt back to shore and took a graceful leap across the mud to the grassy part of the bank.
Daniel looked back along his ship and the line of crew still shipping their oars and called out, "Peter, come and care for your cousin." A blonde head popped up amidships and turned until the lad spotted Teesa, and then in a flash he was ashore and running to her side. Seeing them together it was difficult to decide who was the most comely, the lad or the lass.
Cornelius pulled at Tom's sleeve and motioned him towards the bushes behind them, and slowly, ever so slowly, they inched along the ground toward them. The engineer had heard enough to realize that this shallow draft coastal trader was the worst of possible coincidences for Edward. Not only were the crew Fensmen, and therefore no friends to drainers, they were also of the girl's clan. Frisian clansmen who lived by the old law, the customary laws, the traditional laws.
While the tall pistoleer, Daniel, was busy talking to the girl, Cornelius had decided that he would be much safer anywhere but right here, right now. He and Tom didn't get far before the shorter of the pistoleers strode over towards them and motioned with his guns that he wanted all of the men to go and sit together in front of the taller pistoleer. Tom refused, so the short man cocked his pistol and aimed it at his upper leg. Tom scurried to obey.
Once the men were all sat together, Daniel asked the crew of the ship to join him as witnesses to what was said. "I suppose we should start with introductions,” Daniel said to his pistol-packing friend. He waved to an old man being helped off the ship by a giant fellow with a fuzzy beard. "Cleff, you have some last duties as the captain. Come and make a judgement on this affair, but first tell us who these men are."
Cleff refused to hurry himself. He was now the leading village elder since the death of his brother last month, and it would not be seemly for him to hurry. After thirty years a captain of the village ships, he had now resigned that post, and as of later today Daniel would be the new captain of the Freisburn. That was why Daniel was on this ship returning from the Netherlands rather than still working as the clan's factor in Rotterdam.
"The gent with the stinging hand and the lisp is Edward Heath,” Cleff called out as he came up to Edward. Then he asked, "Does your father still live?" At Edward's nod he continued, "The eldest son of the king's right hand man, but not yet a lord himself.
The gent he was trying to shoot is Oliver Cromwell, the titheman at Ely Abbey. These other two will be drainers working for Edward or his father. By the look of the fat gent's Dutch coat, I would guess that he is Cornelius Vermuyden, the king's engineer. Whatever common land Vermuyden can drain becomes the property of the king, no matter which village loses their livelihood by doing so."
Cleff turned and pointed to the tall pistoleer. "Gentlemen, let me introduce the next captain of this ship, Daniel Vanderus, late of Schiedam near Rotterdam. Beside him is Robert Blake of Bridgwater, Somerset, also late of Schiedam. I am Cleff Arnoson, elder of the Wellenhay clan, of which yon lass is a daughter. Now, what the bloody hell is going on here?"
All the men began to speak at once, but at a motion from Cleff, Robert hushed everyone by firing his cocked pistol into the air. Cleff put both hands on his hips and hissed, "Typical effing educated gentlemen. Always choosing their words carefully so they can lie without uttering an untruthful word. Teesa, come over here and tell us everything that happened. Everything, mind you."
Teesa spoke for less than five minutes, but left nothing out. At one point two crew members had to grab her cousin Peter, because he had whipped out his roper's spike from his belt and had leaped toward Edward. It was only after they had Peter back under control that Robert spoke out.
"It seems that I am the only person present who has nothing to lose or gain and no axe to grind, and belongs to no local group or clan,” he said. "Perhaps it is I who should be making sense of all of this."
"Aye Rob, good point,” old Cleff replied. "Do any of you gents have an objection to Robert here asking the questions? He is
a man of letters from Oxford." No one objected. "Good. Then it's all yours Rob, but I warn you that those two are Cambridge men and politicians and sworn enemies." He was pointing towards Edward and Oliver.
"The first thing we must find out is who actually owns these apples,” Robert began while pointing towards the humble old half-wild apple tree.
"They are mine,” Edward interrupted.
"Under customary law,” the elder Cleff spoke out, "the bounty of God's work belongs to those that help in that work. The tree is wild, not nurtured. By her effort in picking the unwanted fruit, Teesa has a legal claim to the apples."
"Not according to the King's Law,” objected Edward. "The customary laws were never written down, never mind enacted. Under the law of this kingdom everything that grows on land belongs to the owner of that land."
"King's Law, bah,” grumbled Cleff before clearing his throat and spitting it out onto the grass. "Just cause somethin' is written down don't make it true, and just cause good thoughts ain't on paper doesn't mean they don't exist. Customary law was written down once, long ago by order of Canute the Great. You English lawyers now call it common law and sneer at it, but it is much the same up and down the North Sea." Some of the crew called out to the truth of this.
Old Cleff straightened his broad shoulders. He would have been formidable twenty years ago. "And Canute was a better king than any that have been crowned since. Under our customary law, our Fen's law, all land is God's land and we are all just God's tenants. Those willing to work it well are welcome to use it. When those folk cease to work it, then others can take their place. There was no theft. The girl did no wrong."
