by Ann Swinfen
‘Mercy! Come in, child.’
Marriageable in age I might be, but I would always be a child to Hannah, who had nursed me through childhood illnesses and comforted me with spoonfuls of her honey when I grazed my knees or fell from a tree. I was forever trying to emulate my brother.
As I unpacked my basket on her table, I looked about me. The one-roomed cottage was a place I had always loved. Unlike our rambling farmhouse, with its jutting wings added on willy-nilly over the generations, Hannah’s home was a simple, plain square, like a child’s toy house, everything clean and in its place. A low settle, serving as her bed at night, was cleared of bedding by day, which she stored in the cupboard beneath. Her wooden cups and platters stood regimented along a shelf with her one pewter tankard, polished till it caught the beam of light from the door, standing proud in the centre. Bunches of herbs, a plait of onions, and a necklace of apple rings dangled from the low rafters, so that I had to duck and dodge as I laid out the bread and beer and eggs I had brought. As quickly as I unpacked them, Hannah swooped down and tidied them away.
‘You had no need to bring me eggs, Mercy. My Polly lays enough for me.’
‘Our hens have gone mad with their spring laying,’ I said. ‘We have more than enough. And these are fertile. You could brood them.’
Hannah had no rooster and I thought she might be glad of some young pullets, for her Polly was growing old.
‘Aye, that’s well thought on.’
She picked up the eggs, which I had wrapped in raw wool to keep them warm, and took them out to her hen-hus.
‘Polly’s looked fair broody of late, trying to make a nest of her own eggs,’ she said when she returned. ‘She should do well with them.’ She tucked the swags of wool back in my basket. ‘You’ll take a cup of my cider.’
It was an order, but I was happy to comply, for it was a good walk from home and the weather had turned warm. I pulled up a stool to the table, scrubbed almost white with Hannah’s fierce housekeeping, and accepted the turned wooden cup. She did not brew ale or beer, but her small plot held a venerable cider apple tree, whose juice she pressed and preserved every year. We are not cider country here in the Fens, and the tree had been planted so far back it was beyond all memory, but there it stood, just beginning to burst forth in pink blossom like a young maid dressed for a wedding. It was a novelty for us, and we never refused a drink of Hannah’s cider. Some of the village dames urged her to make mead with her honey, but she preferred it in its natural state. Whenever Nehemiah went to Lincoln market, he would sell a pot or two for her. The coin they earned paid for the few things she could not grow or make for herself.
‘They haven’t troubled you, have they?’ I jerked my head in the general direction of the drainers, whose voices we could hear in the distance.
‘Not yet. What are they about, do you know?’
‘It is another of these schemes like those before the War on the Great Level and Deeping Level. But Father thinks Sir John’s lawyer will be able to stop them. Or even Cromwell himself.’
‘They’d best make haste, then. I saw them unloading a cart full of picks and shovels this morning.’
My heart jerked, and I felt a prickle of sweat along my spine.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I haven’t lost the use of my eyes, even if my back is bent, young Mercy.’ Her voice was tart. Hannah would never yield an inch to age, and did not care for anyone else to mention it. She was as sensitive to any such remark as a horse to a buzzing fly.
‘I’m sorry. I was alarmed. We did not know things had come to such a pass so soon.’
I stirred uneasily. I mustn’t linger. This was something Tom and the others needed to know at once. Setting down my empty cup, I picked up my basket and rose to leave.
‘Here’s a pot of honey for you.’ Hannah reached one down from the shelf above the settle. She would never accept a gift without making a return, her pride demanded it.
‘Thank you. You know we’ll savour it.’ I tucked the jar into my basket.
As I ducked out through the low doorway, I saw that the drainers, having laid out a double line of ropes were now driving pegs into the turf alongside.
‘Hannah,’ I said, ‘if anything happens, if those men trouble you, promise me that you will come to us.’
She gave me a shrewd look.
‘You think they mean trouble.’
‘I know it.’
‘I’ll not let them disturb me. Now, get you away home. I’ve the pig to feed and the goat to tether on a fresh patch. If those eggs hatch, I’ll send word.’
The eggs never hatched. Nor did the pig eat many more meals at Hannah’s hand. I went home that day deeply troubled by what Hannah had said about the shovels and picks and by what I had seen of the purposeful activity of van Slyke and his men. The most direct way to our farm would have taken me right past their encampment, but I took care to skirt the far edge of the meadow, stopping once to scratch the head of one of our own ewes who came ambling up to me, followed by her twin lambs skittering about, leggy and shy. I passed the cottage belonging to Nehemiah, who was Hannah’s nearest neighbour. He was not at home, but the smell of eels hung about the place. His holding nets, bobbing about in the small mere where we had stopped during the beating of the bounds, squirmed in a tangle of eels, their silver-black sides coruscating in the sunlight. I wondered whether the invaders had discovered this source of food yet. The townsmen and the Scots might not take to them, but I guessed that the Hollanders, being a watery people, would probably relish the meat of a fat eel to vary their diet.
When I told Tom of the drainers’ activities, and the arrival of their picks and shovels, he went off at once to his friends in the village. As soon as he returned, he and Father began to argue.
‘We must act now!’ Tom strode about the room, thumping his fist into his palm. ‘We have waited long enough for Sir John’s lawman. And Cromwell.’ He spat out the name as though it was bitter on his tongue.
‘You will do nothing, do you hear?’ Father was slower to anger than Tom, but when he was roused he could be formidable. ‘You and your wild young friends. If we do any act of violence against the drainers, we will have no case in law.’
‘Law! How has law ever protected the fenlanders? In your father’s day, the men of the Great Level took the ancient charter to London, which laid down their rights to the common land of the Fens. Inalienable, they were meant to be.’
‘That was another part of the Fens, and there was some doubt about the wording of the charter. Ours is clear, Sir John says, on good authority. But these matters of law take time. And since the War, all things are unsettled, even the courts in London.’
‘And Cromwell will protect us.’ There was contempt in Tom’s voice.
‘Do not speak of that great man with disrespect, you puppy!’ Father was on his feet now, confronting Tom.
Like a punctured wineskin, Tom sank down on the bench beside the table and put his head in his hands.
‘If we do not fight, they will slaughter us like sheep,’ he muttered through his fingers.
Mother and I crept away to bed, but I lay awake far into the night, hearing their raised voices through the floor.
Two days later, at dusk and just as we were lighting candles, there came a frantic scratching at the kitchen door. When I opened it, Hannah Green fell into my arms. Her cheek was bruised and bloody, her cap torn half off so that her white hair fell about her shoulders. Her skirt was ripped, wet and muddy. She dragged a small sack over the threshold and under her arm her hen Polly thrust out a frightened head. A swift dark shape darted in behind her, her cat Tobit.
‘Hannah!’ I half carried her to a chair by the fire. ‘What has happened? Here, give me the hen.’
But she would not loose her grip on the hen or the sack, and stared about as we crowded round, as if she did not know us.
‘The men,’ she said. ‘The men.’
She seemed unable to say more. Tom fetched her a cup
of beer and I laid a quilt over her knees. I prised her fingers from the strap of the sack and folded them around the cup. They were frozen, for a cold wind had been blowing all day from the east.
‘Drink,’ said Mother. ‘You can tell us more when you are ready.’
It must have been half an hour before Hannah stopped shaking. By then Polly had settled herself on her lap in the warmth of the fire and tucked her head into her feathers in sleep. I brought a stool up to the chair and took Hannah’s hand between mine.
‘Can you tell us what happened?
She turned her face toward me. Slow tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her lined cheeks. I had never seen Hannah weep. She was the strongest person in my world.
‘The Dutchman, he came and said I must move out of their way, because they were going to dig a drain right through my land. When I said him nay, said he had no right, he said he had every right. I tried to close the door in his face and then he hit me.’
She raised her hand and tenderly touched her bruised cheek. Her fingers caught in her hair and she looked surprised, then pulled her other hand from mine and tried to stuff her hair back under her cap, but her hands were shaking too much. Quietly I stood up and settled her hair, then tied her cap in place.
‘Thank you, child.’ There was still a vacant look in her eyes, as though she did not quite know me.
‘The Dutchman struck you,’ I reminded her gently, ‘then what happened?’
‘I tried to bolt my door. You know I never bolt my door, and it was too stiff for me. I heard the men outside, and my pig squealed. I heard them dragging him away. I didn’t know what to do. Then I remembered you had said to come to you, so I was putting some things in a sack, my salves and my honey . . .’ she looked down at the sack by her feet, as if she wasn’t sure if it was hers.
She was silent again, and this time Tom prompted her. ‘Did the men come back?’
She nodded. ‘I could hear them striking at my house with their pickaxes. One splintered the wall above my bed and my shelf of honey fell down. I saved some of it. And Polly.’ She stroked the sleeping hen, who stirred but did not wake. ‘Then I thought I’d best run. When I went out of the house, they came after me, swinging their pickaxes. I don’t think they would have struck me, but I was afraid. My goat was gone and my hives overturned, the bees everywhere.’
‘I hope they stung the drainers,’ I said, furious.
She gave me a weak smile. ‘I think they did. I made my way here as fast as I could, but it was beginning to be dusk, and I was frightened, and I fell a few times.’
She had taken my hand again, and I could feel fear running through her fingers.
‘My bees gone, my home, my goat, my pig. I don’t know what has become of my cat.’
‘He followed you here.’ I pointed to where Tobit had curled up just within the warmth of the fire, but away from our dog, Jasper, who eyed him from time to time, but made no move to approach.
‘Now do you see?’ Tom had drawn Father to the far side of the room, away from our group by the fire. ‘These men mean our destruction. How could they treat an old woman so? An old woman out on the Fens by herself, doing no harm, and they have struck her and destroyed her home and stolen her livelihood. You must see that we can wait no longer for word from Sir John’s lawman. We must act ourselves.’
I glanced across at them. My father ran his hand over his face and looked at Hannah. His eyes were troubled and for once he spoke hesitantly.
‘It is unforgivable, what they have done. I will go myself to Sir John in the morning. If he has heard nothing from London, perhaps he will come and speak to Meneer van Slyke himself, put a stop to this and restore Hannah’s home.’
In my mind’s eye I could see that neat little cottage, now a heap of broken timbers and scattered bedding. I could smell the bonfire they made of it, and hear the crackling of the roasted pig, turning above it on a spit. Hannah’s home would never be restored.
Chapter Three
The village was beginning to divide into two factions. The younger men, with Tom at their head, were all for attacking the drainage works at once, before they could do any more damage. Not only was Hannah’s cottage destroyed and her stock stolen, but the other beasts grazing at common on the pasture were disturbed and fearful. They crowded to the far side of the large meadow, as far from the drainers’ camp as they could get, and stayed together for safety. There were perhaps two hundred sheep, about seventy cattle, two pairs of working oxen, and five mares with foals running at heel, as well as two geldings, a stallion and three yearlings. With so much stock confined to one area of the pasture land, the grass soon grew thin and poached, and we saw that they would need to be persuaded to spread out or else moved to the hay meadow, which would mean no hay harvest for the winter.
At the same time, a number of the older men, the elders and leaders of the village, headed by my father, clung to the belief that Sir John would save the day. Sir John had indeed ridden over, not long after Hannah had sought sanctuary with us, and spoken to van Slyke. As a result, the drainers drove their ditch southwards only as far as the peat moor behind Hannah’s cottage. This was designed to drain the Fen and run the drained water off into Baker’s Lode. Once they had reached into the Fen and dug some cross-ditches, they worked back north from the beginning of their original ditch, across the pasture – thus cutting it in half and confining the grazing stock still further – and out through a corner of the wheat field to the Lode, destroying a quarter of the new crop as they went.
Bread would be short this winter.
They built a sluice gate where the new drain met the Lode, and began to construct a wind-driven pumping mill where Hannah’s cottage had stood.
My mother owned a few pieces of blue-decorated Delft pottery, including a large platter which had been my grandmother’s. It was used for high days, when we had a large ham or leg of mutton, and entertained friends. I had never taken much heed of the picture before, but now I was drawn out of curiosity to examine it where it was propped up on the kitchen dresser. The scene depicted was clearly Dutch: a canal in the foreground, with disproportionately small wherryboats plying to and fro, while a Dutch family looked on, twice the height of the boats, the man in baggy trousers and a tall hat. Beyond the canal was a cluster of houses, a village I suppose, and a tall windmill which (unlike the boats) was disproportionately large. In the past I had always assumed that the windmill was for grinding grain, like our English windmills, but Tom said no, that it served to pump water out of the Dutch farmland and deposit it in the canal.
The drainers’ new windmill grew quickly on the edge of the Fen. They worked quickly, those men. Not for love of the work, I suspect, but because van Slyke was a ruthless master. It was built of timber (our timber) and before we knew what was afoot, a strange machine had been hauled in which Tom said was the pump. Soon after that they were constructing the sails. Laid flat out on the ground they seemed huge.
Still the older men forbade Tom and his friends from interfering with the work, clinging to the hope that Sir John would act on our behalf.
Then one night we saw fire over on the Fen.
Tom, coming in from driving the cows out to pasture, paused in the doorway, drawn to the flickering light.
‘That’s no cooking fire,’ he said.
We crowded behind his shoulders, trying to decide where it could be. Sometimes odd flames would burst out on the marshes. Boggarts’ fire, the old people called them, or jack-a-lanthorn or sometimes jenny-burnt-arse, set to lure folk astray to their doom in the quag. Gideon, who read books of the new natural sciences, said they were due to gases escaping from the marsh. This, however, was too big to be a marsh fire.
‘That’s near Nehemiah’s place,’ my father said.
‘It couldn’t be his cottage, could it?’ My mother twisted her hands in her apron. Nehemiah liked his beer of an evening, and might have overturned a candle. Without another word, we hurried to gather up buckets, the five of us,
my family and Kitty too, and set off at a run, leaving Hannah to mind the house.
As we drew nearer, stumbling through the dusk, we could see that it was indeed Nehemiah’s cottage afire, and the blaze had taken vicious hold. The reed thatch set a fiery crown on the house, and fingers of flame were creeping down the timbers, making orange frames for the clay daub between. We rushed to fill our buckets in the mere and throw water helplessly over the cottage, but it was too much for us. More of our neighbours arrived and someone found a pitchfork and a rake, with which the men tried to drag the flaming thatch off the roof. Others formed a bucket chain, but we knew it was useless. Tom stripped off his shirt, soaked it in the mere, and tied it round his face.
‘Be careful, Tom!’ My mother clutched at his arm as he made for the cottage.
He put her hand aside. ‘Where is Nehemiah? He may be within.’
Tom fought his way through the flaming doorway, but there was no sign of the eel-fisher. He emerged scorched but empty-handed.
By now it was growing full dark, with an overcast sky, moonless, starless. The only light came from the burning cottage. I groped my way further along the bank of the mere, beyond where our feet had slurried the mud of the shore. I must have been near the spot where Nehemiah moored his holding nets when I stumbled and fell over something in the dark. I reached out my hand and felt rough cloth. And smelled the unmistakable stink of eel. My heart tripped over like my feet as I pushed myself up and felt around me. My hand met something warm and sticky and I knew at once what it was. Bile rushed into my throat and for a moment I could not make a sound, then I croaked out, ‘Nehemiah is here. He’s hurt.’
Or dead, I thought. Poor old man. Heaven help him.
They came running to my side, my neighbours, dirty and tired, some of them with scorched hands or singed hair. Someone had had the sense to bring a candle lantern, which he had lit from a fragment of burning thatch. Nehemiah was lying face down in the muddy turf, his right arm outstretched toward the mere, the back of his head a mass of bloodied and tangled hair. Gideon knelt down opposite me and felt beneath Nehemiah’s ear.
