Heron Fleet

by Paul Beatty

  ‘What can we do for you friend?’ said Tobias. The Herder swayed slightly backwards and forwards but didn’t reply. From out of the corner of her eye Francesca saw Enoch the Head Blacksmith ease his way through the small crowd at the door that was watching what was going to happen. To Francesca’s relief, he sat down quietly about three tables back and watched.

  ‘What can we do for you friend?’ Tobias asked again.

  ‘Well it like this master Outlander,’ the Herder’s voice trembled. ‘I wondered…’ His voice faded away.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tobias in an encouraging tone. ‘You’re among friends here; if you need help then we’ll do what we can.’

  ‘Well master, I wondered if you could teach me to count and do my sums.’ There was an audible release of breath which confused the man. ‘You see I have a really bad memory and I’m always getting the number of the sheep wrong. Jem told me that you might be able to teach me how to make notes like and count them up so I’d be able to do me job better. If I’ve got the word wrong I’m sorry, it was Jem who called them sums.’

  It took a bit of organising but in the end Simon, solved the problem of providing a basic arithmetic class. Francesca wondered if Sylvia had nudged him into it but Simon never gave any indication that he was anything less than delighted to do the job. The Herder started a few days after his request and was rapidly joined by several others, all of whom had realised they could do their jobs better if they could count and do their sums on paper or even on a piece of bark stuck to the side of a sheep-pen.

  Gradually the classes became part of the pattern of winter life. People joined and stayed, some took what they wanted and moved on, to be replaced by new students. Some, notably Jeremy, Caleb and Francesca, developed enough competency and love of reading that Tobias lent them books to read outside the class, using any suitable time in the class or out of it to help with passages they found difficult.

  One evening Tobias’s three star pupils were sitting near the fire, well after evening meal, going through a passage from Jeremy’s book. He was getting impatient with what he was reading; impatience which had become frustration.

  ‘Oh tear it!’ he said. ‘What are these people doing? I just don’t get what is going on in their heads! How can anyone behave like they are? If they love each other why don’t they declare their partnership? Where are the rules that tell them how to behave?’

  ‘I think I understand it,’ said Caleb. Their Rule about how they have to behave is not written down. It’s not like our Rule, it’s contained in how they behave towards each other. If they are impolite then they suffer the disapproval of the other members of their community. That’s their Rule.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Jeremy, tossing the argument back at his partner. ‘But it’s so wasteful of time and words and…’ his impatience blew up. ‘Oh just everything. Haven’t they got anything better to do, like gathering and planting?’

  ‘No as far as I’ve ever been able to work out they haven’t,’ said Tobias.

  ‘So this story isn’t just made up?’ said Francesca. ‘Elizabeth Elliott really existed? People in the cities really lived as the book says?’

  ‘I think someone made up the story. But the world it describes that was once real.’

  ‘So they had music and sang songs just as we do?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Tobias.

  ‘So what were their songs like?’

  ‘Can’t we get back to the book?’ pleaded Jeremy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Francesca. ‘But only if Tobias promises to show me what their songs were like.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Tobias. ‘Now, can we get on?’

  Several nights later Tobias placed a green book in front of Francesca at the evening meal. The book had golden letters embossed into its leather covers. Slowly she read the title on the spine; Bloomfield’s Poetical Works. She looked up at him.

  ‘They’re the nearest thing I have to songs, they’re poems and they called them ballads which is another word for songs.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, tears in her eyes. She stood up, embraced him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’

  Through the next few weeks she was never without the green book. Every minute she could spare she read it. She struggled with the some of words, often having to check their meanings with Tobias but even before she could understand the words, very often she could understand what a poem was about through its pace and swing. Pretty soon she had learned several of them by heart and had started to compose tunes to make them into songs of her own.

  One evening an informal choir was formed. As usual Francesca was asked to sing, which she did. Towards the end of the songs she offered to sing one she had made from the poems in the book. It was about a ghost in a wood that terrifies a woman walking home but turns out to be nothing but a stray donkey. She had devised an accompaniment on the lute that included the sounds of the donkey’s bray and the whole song was very funny, unlike so many of the rather wistful and formal songs of the community.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Tobias after she had finished an encore for everyone. ‘I never thought you would put that collection to work so quickly. Keep the book. I think she would have approved of having it passed on to you.’

  ‘Whose book was it?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘It was The Lady’s book. She was the woman who died when I marooned the Scavenger Gang and escaped here, the night you saved my life. She reminded me of Lucia. That’s why I fell in love with her.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll always treasure it. What was she like, this Lady?’

  ‘Sad and lonely. It was her favourite book. I found it hidden away on the boat when I was working on it. She must have left it there so I would find it. Perhaps she knew she was going to die. Who knows? Make happy songs out of it like the one you just sang, rather than remember the sad story of how it got here.’

  ‘Do you have a favourite poem from it I could make into a song to say thank you?’ said Francesca.

  ‘Not from that book, no.’

  ‘From another?’

  ‘I have a favourite poem I used to share with another, yes.’ He reached into a pocket in his jacket and pulled out a small book, nowhere near as grand as The Lady’s.

  ‘Would you read it to me?’ said Francesca. She sat down on the bench and he sat next to next to her. The Hall was almost completely empty. The fire was dying down and the Gatekeepers were extinguishing the torches. Their last job would be to bank up the fire for the night so that it did not go out.

  The poem was written on a piece of stained, folded paper, kept in the small book. As he opened it to take out the paper, a lock of fair hair dropped out on to the table. Francesca picked it up and without thinking rolled it between her finger and her thumb feeling its fine texture and then held it to her nose; its smell was comforting. He unfolded the paper and started to read.

  Let not my love be called idolatry,

  Nor my beloved as an idol show,

  Since all alike my songs and praises be

  To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

  Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,

  Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

  Therefore my verse to constancy confined,

  One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

  Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,

  Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;

  And in this change is my invention spent,

  Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

  Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,

  Which three till now, never kept seat in one.

  As he read she began to recite, covering up the parts which she mis-remembered. At the edges of her memory there was a woman’s voice saying this poem to her. The voice was associated in memory with hair as fair as the lock she held in her hand.

  When he had finished and was wrapped in the sad thoughts of his Lucia she placed her hand on his. ‘Father,’ she said.
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br />   Chapter 17

  The following morning Francesca was determined to find Sylvia. She missed her at breakfast and after calling at Sylvia’s longhouse, where she had just missed her again, she was directed towards the Kitchens. Fortunately, half-way there she ran into Simon coming back from the Smithy. He told her that Sylvia was headed in the direction of the Glasshouses.

  ‘She wants to check on the stocks of potatoes and how the brassicas are doing. You’ll have to be quick. She won’t be there long, she’s got a Council meeting at noon.’

  Not wanting to be on another fool’s errand Francesca hurried. She could see Sylvia from the moment she entered the upper house. As Simon had said she was examining the kale and sprouts growing there. Francesca ran down the path, making enough noise so that Sylvia turned towards her before Francesca had got to her. All decorum forgotten she stopped abruptly on the path facing the Head Gardener.

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘My dear girl, you know more than you think you do, so it’s not much of a surprise that you know. Know what?’

  ‘I know who I am.’

  ‘Again an easy question to answer. You are Francesca, Gatherer of Heron Fleet, Gardener.’

  ‘I found out last night. Tobias showed me his favourite poem. I already knew it. My mother used to read it to me when I was little and somehow the words went in. I was composing a song based on as much of the words as I had remembered for Anya weeks before he got here. When he read it I knew or I thought I knew I was his and Lucia’s daughter. Now in the morning I’m not as sure as I was. Tell me the truth. Am I right?’

  Sylvia sighed. ‘This is what I’ve feared from the moment he came back and I saw him in the Infirmary. I knew I could stop him asking the Council directly and the Crèche Nurses would never tell him in any case but I always feared an accident like this, a coincidence. Yes it is true you are Tobias’s daughter but it may not prove to be as important as you think.’

  ‘How can you say that? We all need to know who we are.’

  ‘I’ve already told you the most important things: you’re Francesca, Gatherer of Heron Fleet, Gardener. The most promising Gardener of any generation I’ve seen. Help me down to the main dome and we’ll talk about it.’

  A few minutes later Francesca and Sylvia were sitting on a bench drinking herbal tea at the hub of their common world. Francesca had made the tea using the Head Gardener’s private charcoal heater and she felt calmer.

  ‘You know most of the story already,’ said Sylvia.

  ‘So couldn’t I just be imagining it? Have I imagined I knew the poem and he’s just gone along with me?’

  ‘Would you want it not to be true?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I need to know who I am. I’m not sure it matters whether it’s Francesca or …or…’

  ‘Philipa. Your name was Philipa.’

  ‘That’s what he told me. Then it’s true?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  ‘If it is true, why can’t I remember something else? Something about when I lived with my… parents… in the roundhouse?’

  ‘You were very young.’

  ‘But not too young to remember the poem. Why that and nothing else?’

  ‘Well you’ve always had special a gift for songs and words so I suppose that it was just that coming out early. But I know that in your head there’s more than just a half-remembered poem.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Remember I sat by your bed after you nearly died in the storm. You talked in your delirium. You went back again and again to talking about the storm and saving Tobias but gradually I realised that you were also talking of another stormy night when you’d run for your life.’

  Francesca though about the dream she had had in the Infirmary and the parts she had been unable to fit into Tobias’s story.

  ‘I dreamt about the wind breaking into a roundhouse. A man leading me down the bridge as the water broke over it. He talked to me and held on to me tightly. There was lightning so strong you could see it through the thatch. A man and a woman helping me up to safety out of the water. They gave me to a woman with yellow hair who kissed me.’

  ‘I was the woman who helped you up out of the water. Peter was the man. You already know, I think, who the woman with the blond hair was, that was your mother, my friend. The man whose hand you held was Tobias. You have a memory that is all your own of something only four other people in the world could know anything about and only you see it from your angle.’

  The confirmation that she was Lucia’s and Tobias’s daughter did not make things easier in the next few days. In fact Francesca started to admit to herself that Sylvia may have been right when she’d suggested that knowing might create more problems than it would solve.

  Initially with Tobias it had been wonderful. He filled in all the details of the story. Best of all he told her about her mother. But he assumed too much. Most seriously he started to assume that she would go with him to help found the new community rather than stay at Heron Fleet. This was also assumed by the rest of the community.

  A less important but more awkward effect was that he immediately went over to calling her Philipa and tried to persuade other people to do the same. But she did not feel like Philipa. To herself she was Francesca.

  The debate came to a head at one evening meal. Tobias had been referring to Francesca as Philipa all through the meal. Jeremy and Caleb had been valiantly trying to adjust but Elizabeth had simply been ploughing on with Francesca, oblivious to Tobias’s feelings. They were just finishing when he decided to challenge her.

  ‘Elizabeth, why don’t you call Francesca Philipa?’

  ‘She was Francesca when she was in the Crèche and to me she’ll always be Francesca no matter what.’

  ‘But her first name was Philipa. Doesn’t that take precedence?’

  ‘Not in my book it doesn’t’

  ‘I bet Francesca prefers it,’ added Anya. ‘I bet it gives her a feeling of importance.’ Anya was expected to give birth any day. She was uncomfortable and short-tempered. As a result she had been digging at Francesca in minor ways for days, revealing that the doubts she had had about Francesca’s motives at the Testing had not gone entirely away.

  Tobias went on talking to Elizabeth. ‘So you’re saying that even if your Francesca asked you to call her Philipa you’d ignore her request and just go on calling her Francesca come what may?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when she asks me,’ and she laughed as she finished off the last of the hardbread she was eating.

  ‘So there’s a challenge, Francesca. Which will you choose?’

  ‘Bound to be Philipa,’ chipped in Anya. ‘Like I said, makes her more important.’ There was a pause and all of them looked at Francesca.

  ‘Philipa is a nice name. My mother, who I never knew, gave me that name and I honour it for that reason if no other. It doesn’t make me feel more important, it just makes me feel separated from things I love here and now. Francesca is the name I’ve had for all the life I can remember. Francesca is my Gatherer name and that’s the name I feel comfortable with. Please call me by that name, even you, Father.’ Then she got up and left the hall. After that everyone called her Francesca, even Tobias though she could see that it gave him some pain.

  It was about three days after the debate about her name that what everyone in the community had been waiting for happened. She had been doing one of her shifts in the Glasshouses and had come directly to the meal from there. As soon as she came in Thomas waved to her and came over urgently.

  ‘Anya went into labour this afternoon. Jonathan and Elizabeth are with her and one of the Shepherdesses who know most about lambing, but it’s not going well. They want you to go across in case the worst happens. They’re in the Infirmary.’

  Fear made her feet swift. Before she got through the door she could hear Anya’s cries; she was sweating and in pain, gripping tightly to Jonathan’s hand as what seemed like waves crashed over her. Elizabeth was on her knee
s looking into Anya.

  ‘I think I can see the top of the head but it stopped moving when the contractions came. Could it be stuck?’

  ‘It could be. Use two fingers to feel round the head between contractions,’ said Hermione, the Shepherdess who was helping.

  Elizabeth waited until Anya’s next bout of crying died away and then did what Hermione had suggested. ‘I think there’s something caught round the shoulder,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Hermione. She beckoned to Francesca. ‘It’s very serious,’ she said quietly. ‘The sheep give birth much quicker than this. When something like this happens the sheep and the lamb usually die if nothing is done. Usually we sacrifice the lamb to save the sheep by cutting off the head and delivering the bits or any other lambs behind the one that’s stuck, before clearing out the womb. But this is a baby and Anya is a not any old ewe.’

  ‘Stop talking among yourselves and tell me what I can do. Would that I knew what the Crèche Nurses know,’ said a despairing Elizabeth.

  It took only a few strides for Francesca to be out of the door and running across to the Crèche Nurses’ house. No one had seen any of the Crèche Nurses since they had withdrawn from the Testing. It was assumed that they had gone to ground in disgrace in their house. Francesca hammered on the door but there was no answer, not even a sign of any movement in the house. She hammered again. Finally, in frustration, she yelled at the door.

  ‘Does it not matter to you that a child of Heron Fleet is dying in need of your skills?’

  Someone rattled the catch of the door and it opened. It was Rebecca, the young Nurse who had taken notes when Anya had been examined.

  ‘She has gone into labour and it is not going well. One of the experienced Shepherdesses thinks that both Anya and the child will die. Come now if you have the skills to help the baby, even if you won’t help Anya.’

  ‘What do they think is wrong?’ said Rebecca

  ‘They think something is caught across the baby’s shoulder.’

  ‘What is it, Rebecca?’ The Head Crèche Nurse appeared behind her junior. ‘It’s you,’ she said, seeing Francesca. ‘Is that slut in labour? There’s nothing we can or will do about it. Come away, Rebecca.’