by Smith, Skye
Second off, the kingdom is hungry. Both sides in this war need to get the land producing again. It's bloody genius, that's what it is. Them communists are way ahead of any of us. They've figured it out. They are using the in-common enclosure laws to reclaim common land that was thieved centuries ago... and if the king loses, they will win big."
"And if the king wins?” Venka asked. She also was bubbling with excitement. Their own village lands bordered the Bishop of Ely's lands. As the mayor, she had many dealings with the bishop's tithe collector about leasing those lands as pastures. The Cromwell family were the bishop's tithe collectors, and Oliver owed Daniel his life.
Daniel shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Then eventually the bishops will push the squatters off, or invite the squatters to become their tenant farmers."
"We need a legal opinion on this,” Venka told him. "Not that I think you are wrong, but you may have missed something that could cause all this to go very badly for us."
"What about Oliver Cromwell?” one of the Fishtoft elders suggested. "Twenty years back he spoke for us in court against the drainage schemes."
"No, not Oliver, nor anyone who is an officer in parliament's army,” Daniel replied quickly. They all looked at him in silence, so he had to tell them what he really didn't want to tell them. "While in the south I learned to distrust the faithfulness of the officers. They all seemed too willing to listen to offers of knighthood or other honors should they decide to change to the king's side. Not that I am questioning Oliver's loyalty, but it is a risk. Gentlemen of quality all have dreams of being elevated to knighthood, and knights all have dreams of being elevated into the nobility."
"What about that man what spoke to us in Fishtoft,” another elder suggested. "You mentioned him before. Lilburne. John Lilburne. Oh right. He was an army captain. Never mind."
"Him I would trust,” Daniel replied. "Unfortunately I failed to rescue him at Brentford, so by now he will be in Oxford awaiting the gallows."
"You were at Brentford?” two men spoke at the same time. One continued. "All we've heard about the sacking of Brentford was from the scandal sheets. Tell us what really happened."
"That is a story for another day,” Daniel told them. "As for today, I am finished. I have to put my head down.” With that he stood up and began to walk towards the door of the longhouse. It was time for bed, or at least time to forget all his worries and watch the young folks dance. He was surprised, almost disappointed, that Venka didn't follow him out. She was immersed in the talk of land claims with the other elders. Outside the chill of the winter mists reminded him that all he was wearing was a bath robe and some rabbit fur slippers. Oh well, he could stand the cold for the few minutes while he watched the dancers. When the cold got to him he would make his way to Venka's house and her bed.
There was no mistaking where the dancing was happening. Because of the bitter wind in off The Wash, the young folk had set up a wind break of used duek stretched between posts in a great circle around their bonfire. The white of the sail cloth reflected the color and the heat of the fire back towards the fire, so once Daniel stepped within the wind break he felt the warmth. The warmth had allowed the dancers to hang up their winter cloaks and dance in skirts and robes, which meant that they were much more colorful and graceful to watch.
Above the dancers the sparks from the bonfire climbed up with the smoke into the hazy sky and towards the full moon. By midnight the winter moon would be directly overhead and would light the marsh mists with an eerie blue white light. It was a magic night, and one of the longest of the winter. Some of these youngsters, the ones who had nibbled on the blue mushrooms, would be singing, playing music, and dancing dance all night long. The music was simple and a mix of hand drum, pipe, fiddle, voice, clapping, stomping, and the beating of anything that sounded hollow. It was not being played for the glory of the musicians, but for the floor. A song for the floor was a song with one purpose; to get every one dancing.
Teesa twirled by him dressed in a silk gown from a time when she had stayed at Warwick House in London. She had brought four gowns back with her, and all of them were swirling around the fire clinging to the lithe bodies of young lasses, for only the youngest were as thin as Teesa. Daniels own silk nightshirt swirled by worn by a woman who filled it abundantly in all the right places. She must have taken it from the pile of filthy clothes he had shucked at the bath house. It was the one he wore as an undershirt to keep the rough wool of winter clothes from scratching and itching his skin. It looked much better on her than it did no him. There was something wondrous about the way that silk hugged and draped over a woman's body.
Teesa had come around the fire again, and this time she grabbed him by the arm and twirled around him in such a way that he had no choice but to twirl with her and pick up his step in time with the music. He tried to catch her eyes. She was Blake's lifeline, and he wanted to make sure that she had not been nibbling mushrooms with the others. No, she hadn't. Her eyes lacked the brilliance of the blue juice from the mushrooms. Good, now he could enjoy the dance. After twice around the fire, and a half dozen interruptions so that women he had known since birth (his or theirs) could give him a Yule hug, he noticed that Blake's crew from Lyme had arrived in the fire circle. He un-entwined himself from Teesa to go and speak with them.
"What a treat,” old Leslie Scudds told him. "It's been a long time since I've seen women dressed for gaiety rather than for mourning."
Daniel knew exactly what he meant. In other parts of England women were dressing as and looking like widows, whether because they had lost someone in the war, or because they did not want to stir any lust in the troopers who were ranging across the countryside. Since Tudor times this had been a kingdom of gaily dressed, colorful women, who took joy in experimenting with the new dye's that were being imported from the East and West Indies. Over the past year, or even just six months, this had all changed. Now the dyes used the most were black or dun.
"Yeh, I know what you mean,” Daniel replied. "It reminds me of the first time I ever visited Holland, and thought I had arrived on a strange holiday where Dutch and German woman were forced to dress in mourning. I soon learned that black was the color chosen by women effected by war. It was the wars there, and now it is the wars here. Umm, by the way, tell your crew to remember that this village is run by the women, and so there are heavy penalties for taking a woman against her will."
Old Scudds laughed aloud and said, "That's only the sixth time we've been warned of it. In truth we will be turning in soon, but first we thought we would dance with the women who have offered us the use of their beds. Ah, there they are.” He and the other crew stepped lightly and entered the ring of folk, mostly women, who were joining hands to form a prayer-circle dance around the fire.
Of course. Of course that was how Venka would have found beds for these men in such an overcrowded village. The women who planned on dancing all night to worship the moon goddess Freyja, would not be using their beds. It was all good and he smiled, but he smiled too soon, for suddenly there was a disturbance in the hand holding circle. His heart skipped a beat, hoping beyond hope that these strangers from Lyme were not devout Christians. Hoping they were not taking amiss at the open worship of the moon. Hoping that they had not insulted a clanswoman in some way.
He needn't have worried. Having swung twice around the fire with their bed women, the crew and had let go of the hands in order to stop beside the music quartet. They were offering to take up the instruments so that the quartet could join in the dancing. One at a time so that there was barely a skip of a beat, the instruments were handed over to the Dorset men. The only sour notes were the screech of the fiddle until Scudds found the sweet spot on the bow.
Scudds was calling out to the dancers, "We'd like to play you a song from our town called the Lyme Bay Reel. We play it for the floor, so everybody dance.” With that they picked up the pace from the trance like beat to something half again as fast. The dancers all yelled out in
glee to be dancing to music they had never heard before, and there was a rush into the circle by folk who had been resting or watching.
This was all a bit wild for Daniel's state of exhaustion, so he slipped out between the windbreaks before any of the women could swing him into the dance. The air outside the bonfire circle was decidedly chilled. His clans village had been protecting houses and bonfires from the north wind since time began by using old, well used, reed mats as the windbreaks. The use of all this waxed sail cloth for windbreaks was recent. In the last year they had re-rigged the sails of two handfuls of ships, which had left the village with a surplus of old, well used duek. Since waste was a sin in their village, the duek had been cleaned, repaired, oil-waxed, and re-purposed.
This was the first time he had seen it used as a wall around the bonfire, and he heartily approved. The duek was off-white so it reflected the moonlight. It was translucent so it took on the yellow, orange, and red hues of the bonfire. The shadows of the folk dancing around the fire were being cast against it like a giant shadow-puppet show. It was all good, he thought as he quick stepped towards Venka's house to find a warm cloak so he could wander about the village a little longer on this magic night.
Venka's house was typical of a Fens cottage, but larger than most. It was built on a mound of earth called a terp to keep the floor above the flood levels. It was built post and beam, with the walls filled in with sticky wattle pressed into reed mats and then whitewashed. The roof was reed thatch with a venting hatch that allowed the smoke to rise through it without letting the rain in. To the north of the house was a winter windbreak now made from waxed duek rather than reed mats. In the shelter of the duek was firewood, kindling, and neatly piled bricks of cooking fire peat.
He ducked through the low door into the one large room. Draperies hung along the sides to lend privacy and warmth to the beds, which were layers of thick rush mats on the floor. By the way the drapes were organized, he assumed that there would be three families sleeping here tonight. A woman's voice called out from one side and a drape was lifted open so a young woman rocking a babe against her breast could see who had come in. "Put another peat brick in the brazier, love,” she whispered.
He did as she asked, even though the cottage was warm for this time of night. The waxed duek windbreaks seemed to be far more effective than the reed mat ones had been at keeping out the freezing draughts. There was a winter cloak hung on a peg which was coated with the same oil-wax as the duek, and he grabbed it and swung it around his shoulders. As he did up the clasps, he thought about how warm this traditional cottage was, and how easy and cheap it was to keep it warm, and then he thought about the modern English and their modern houses. How they would right now be shivering in their cold, damp, brick or stone houses, while feeding their brick chimneys with a fortune in firewood and coal just to take the chill off. Oft times the traditional ways were better.
Before leaving the cottage he took a longing look at Venka's bed and its puffy down comforter. He couldn't wait to climb under it, but first he had to walk about village. Although he was so often away, he was still considered an elder and a warlord in this village, so one of his duties was to make the rounds. Outside it seemed even colder than before, so he decided not to walk about the village but to climb the watch tower instead. The watch tower, the only tower in the villages, was behind the communal longhouse, and it sort of made the longhouse look like a Christian church. This was not a coincidence, as his clan had long ago learned that it was better to give the appearance of being good Christians, even though they weren't. The tower even had a cross on top of it, and a bell.
As he approached the tower, to his approval he noticed that the old reed mats that were not longer in use as windbreaks had been used to wrap the post and beam frame of the tower, which had wind proofed the steeply winding staircase within the posts. He could hear voices above him as he climbed the stairs. There was always at least one watcher in the tower, a man, woman or a child depending on the current need. Tonight it sounded like there were a lot of watchers above him. When he poked his head up through the hatch, his thoughts were confirmed. There were six watchers. He joined them and made seven.
He looked out over Wellenhay, and then shushed the chatter of the others. They smiled at him and went still. They were smiling because each of them had done the same when they first arrived and looked out. The combination of the clear sky, the full moon, the marsh mists, and the bonfire circle had created a view that was timelessly magical and therefore required calmness to savour. A woman passed him the watcher's looker, and he focused the spectacle lenses on the grim castle tower not seven miles to the north. It marked the old town of Wisbech, now mostly deserted save for some enterprising cottagers who braved all the ghost stories.
There were a lot of ghosts. It was in that ancient castle that King Henry the Cock had locked up or murdered all the Catholics of Ely, including the monks of Ely and Peterborough. Wisbech town had boomed during Henry, while Ely town fell onto very hard times, but then under Queen Mary the castle had been abandoned and folk had moved back to Ely. During the reign of Bess, the courses of the Nene and he Ouse rivers had changed, leaving Wisbech without a port, and so the town had been abandoned. It was now a grim, haunted place, and completely different from Wellenhay.
He moved around the tower looking out in all directions. The tower stood not only higher than the marsh sedge, but higher than the stunted trees so he could see a long way over the flat low land, and over the blue mist that was hovering just above sedge level. The bright clear night allowed him to see all of the spires and towers for perhaps a dozen miles. Yes a dozen, for he could see the towers of Lynn and that was a dozen miles to the Northeast. He even thought he could see the hulking abbey at Peterborough which was over a dozen miles to the west. He could easily see the church towers of the closest villages of March and Downham Market, which were five miles to the west and five the east. To the south about five miles was the village of Littleport, and after it the hulking abbey of Ely. The mists rose higher over Ely, so he could not see Cambridge, but since that city was over twenty miles away, you could rarely see its towers from here even in daylight.
Voices came from down below. Calls for folk to come down so others could come up. For a few precious moments he was left alone with the watcher, who tonight was Sarah's son, Teller, who was now fourteen and a hearty lad. He gave him a hug. "So your grandfather allowed you to spend Yule with your mother, then?” Sarah was the widow of a Cambridge merchant, and the lad lived with his ultra Presbyterian grandparents so that he could attend school there.
"They didn't like the idea. They believe in Christmas not Yule, so they spend it fasting and praying rather than feasting and celebrating. Mum demanded some time with me and came to fetch me."
"Ah, she can be formidable when she wants something,” Daniel said with a smile.
"Well, she wasn't as formidable as the two men who escorted her to Cambridge and back. I thought granddad was going to choke when they stopped him from slamming the door in her face. One of them is teaching me how to shoot, er, pistols I mean. He gave me an old dragon and he says that if I convert it to use flints, that I can keep it."
Daniel gave him another hug. At that age, fourteen, he had been working on the clan's trade ships on the Amsterdam run. This lad would have a different life, for he was going on to college. Even now his hands were stained with gall wasp ink and they showed no calluses from hard work. He released the lad because he could hear footsteps on the steps and didn't want to embarrass him.
Teller straightened up and stepped away from his step-dad and became the watcher again just in time for the next group of folk to hiss at them to be silent. Teller couldn't be silent, for Daniel was leaving him and making for the stairs. He had to ask him something before he left. "Why are the birds flying at night?"
"Shhh,” hissed an old woman who had her arms stretched out towards the moon while she prayed.
Daniel stepped back to the lad an
d looked where he was pointing. Out towards the north where The Wash was hidden by the mist, a long V of geese was forming and then turning towards the south, away from the sea. At a lower level there were small families of ducks lifting out of the marshes and also turning south. He whispered into the lads ear, "Good lad. It's a sign. I'll go and ask the elders what it means."
Once down the steps he walking out from behind the longhouse, and there he spotted another lad, Davie, who served on the ships. He grabbed him by the arm and told him, "Find Cleff and Oudje and tell them that the birds are flying in the moonlight, flying south in great numbers. If they need me, I will be asleep in Venka's bed. Hurry now, it's important."
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The Pistoleer - Invasion by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-15
Chapter 15 - The Fens freezes over in January 1643
Every time he got back to sleep Daniel was woken again. It was like a torture, falling asleep just as another person came into Venka's house to go to bed, and another, and another. Last of all was Venka, and she was ice cold and insisted on warming her bum on his thighs. Worse, she was feeling frisky, not having been in bed with a man for over a month, yell all he wanted to do was sleep. Eventually she had her way with him using the old trick of nuzzling his face between her ample breasts, and when he rose to that occasion, she moistened him quite naughtily with her mouth and then backed onto him so she could be cuddle fucked. All of this while ten others snored away in various corners of the one room cottage.
He woke alone in the bed, with the one room cottage in an uproar of activity. It was first light and the visitors from the sister villages were packing up to leave. "No,” he moaned at them. "Didn't you hear. Your elders want to stay an extra day so they can listen to my war stories. Go back to bed, or better yet, go to the longhouse and break your fast, but for heaven's sake let me sleep."
