Heron Fleet

by Paul Beatty

  As the Lady had predicted I was summoned to see Robert soon after breakfast. He was alone in the meeting room except for Angus who had been posted at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Ostlander say me again wot yen trade.’

  ‘Me say yen me gwain, food, cloth, books. Now me found book-store yen got plenty for trade.’

  ‘For tinder yen save us go leery?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Yen mefool-take. Nune trade chockvul food yen ave for nufin. Wot more?’

  ‘Nufin my Lord, me swear.’ He didn’t looked convinced. It was going badly.

  ‘Me try nuther path. Wot special yis paper?’ Robert picked up a newspaper from one of the niches.

  ‘Wot make yen think it special?’

  ‘She tell me. Yen think it special,’ he said slowly. ‘Yis ave learnin yen friends need. Friends yo make the cloth and grow the food you trade. Must ave chockvul, chockvul and peacevul.’

  He was too close to me for comfort. ‘But not defenceless,’ I replied.

  ‘Me hazard yen have-no these,’ he drew his pistol. ‘Me find these great me point-o-view persuaders. She told yen wot these do her parents.’

  ‘She told yen more me meet eye.’

  ‘Yen mean torch no burn. Yeh she told me but it make me more interested. The path me think it yat proves there be somethin’ chockvul on yis paper. Haps it can tell you how to make things like torch we no make now. Haps things match power me guns but how we find out?’ He tapped the barrel of the gun on his jaw.

  ‘Yat case wouldn’t it be better trade-me? In time me might trade knowledge yen.’

  ‘No me style.’ Robert cocked the pistol and pointed it at me. ‘Me more shoot first, think after guy. Me put yen knowledge to test against me guns direct. Yen gwain me guards, eye yen friends, yen we know surely.’

  I had kept calm up to this point, feeling that I could still buy Robert off with a trading agreement I had no intention of keeping. Once I was gone from here, I was not coming back, this man was just too dangerous. But the remark the guard had made at breakfast now made sense. It wasn’t just the captains who were wanting to move on, so did Robert and because I had said too much to the Lady, Robert now had a target, one of the farming communities across the channel, and they were in no position to resist firearms.

  ‘Me boat no take all yen guards.’

  ‘No all yem. Only me originals. Ten most. Rest stay. Go leery with rest scum.’

  The crisis had been reached. I swallowed hard. ‘Sorry, me won’t take you. Yen better kill me now and ransack boat. Yat all yen get.’ There was thirty seconds of silence as Robert seemed to weigh up my resolve and I tried to hold my nerve sufficiently to die well.

  Then Robert uncocked the gun and shouted, ‘Bring she in Leonard.’ The private door opened and Leonard forced the Lady in to the room. ‘Yen may be prepared yen die but she and yen attached.’ The image of Robert’s joy when he had shot the starving woman came to me. I knew I would be entirely unable to stand here while Robert shot the Lady. It would deny something so deep and so precious to me that I would not be able to do it. Robert and I both knew I was beaten.

  From the Archive of Master Tobias

  RSPB Birds, March 2016

  Grey Days Ahead

  A new RSBP study based in East Anglia has shown that migration patterns of Grey Herons, normally considered a resident bird in the UK, have changed and there is now a net outflow of the birds to southern Europe in the autumn.

  It has been suspected for some time grey herons (Ardia cenera) might be changing their migration habits in northern Europe but this has been hard to prove. Grey herons have rather erratic migratory patterns with birds from Scandinavia migrating to over-winter in the UK in bad years, with some UK birds moving to southern and central Europe.

  Results from ringing studies are further complicated by low rates of retrieval of rings from both migrant and non-migrant casualties.

  Last year a large group of birds were specially ringed in specific nesting areas in Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as in East Anglia. This was combined with intensive satellite tagging of groups of herons from the same areas.

  Paul Engliss from the Snape reserve said: ‘The results were unambiguous. Herons are leaving both Britain and Scandinavia in the winter in much bigger numbers than we had thought. Some of the Scandinavian herons do winter here but more only stop off and are joined by British birds when they continue to move south in late autumn.

  There is clear evidence that many that winter in southern Europe do not return but nest in the south the following summer, increasing the resident populations. If this trend continues the grey heron will become a rarity on our rivers and wetlands in future.’

  New Scientist, 20th January 2029

  IS A NEW ICE AGE FOR BRITAIN

  JUST AROUND THE CORNER?

  Could Britain’s central-heating system be about to break down? Last week an Anglo-French group of oceanographers took the unprecedented step of calling an urgent international pressconference.

  The researchers Augustus Benion of Aberdeen’s National Oceanographic Centre and Françoise Ramaux of the Institut Europeén de Recherche de la Mer in Brest were drawing attention to the results from their latest research using a new computer model of sea currents in the North Atlantic. Their findings suggest that global warming will lead to a sudden, catastrophic drop in temperature on the European seaboard sometime in the next twenty years. This would fling Britain into a new ice age.

  A network of currents links the oceans of the world together. These currents are driven by winds and by a more complicated process called thermohaline circulation – THC for short – which depends on heat and salt.

  In the North Atlantic, water flows towards the Arctic from the Caribbean in the warm current known as the North Atlantic Drift. As it heads north, evaporation makes this water saltier. It is cooled by cold winds from the Arctic ice-sheet. Both these effects make it denser and as a result it sinks somewhere off north Norway. It then spills back to the south over undersea ledges and through undersea trenches displacing deep ocean water that emerges off the coast of Africa as a cold current that flows back towards the Caribbean. This flow completes the circle in what is called the South Atlantic Gyre

  This process has been broadly stable for millions of years but as global warming gets worse, the rate that the Arctic sea-ice melts increases, and more and more fresh water is released into the Atlantic between Greenland and the North of Scotland. This fresh water dilutes water in the North Atlantic Drift, reducing its density and making it more buoyant, which reduces the sinkage and the overall flow rate in the South Atlantic Gyre.

  For many years it has been proposed that at some point the fresh water input could reach a critical rate and the sinking will stop entirely. Then the North Atlantic Drift will no longer bring the warm tropical waters to the western shores of Britain to keep us warm in winter and summer.

  Until now it has always been assumed that the deep ocean water displaced by the sinkage water moving south diffuses back into the system over very large areas of the ocean. The twist that the work of Benion and Ramaux has given to this theory is that much of this water may come back to the surface in two local areas, off Spain near the Bay of Biscay and off the coast of Labrador. For the first time, by measuring the rate of this upwelling, oceanographers would have a direct measure of the health of the North Atlantic Drift.

  Previous computer modelling of what would happen if the THC collapsed and the North Atlantic Drift stopped predicted that Britain’s average temperatures could fall by -1 to -2°C. whereas the rest of the world would see average rises in temperature of 2 to 3°C.

  Is all this theory? Well geophysicists believe the Northern Atlantic Drift stopped temporarily once before about 20,000 years ago. Before restarting, the effect of the cold reduced the far north of Scandinavia and Russia to the tundra and icy moorlands we see today.

  Chapter 5

  Everywhere Francesca looked was a smoke fil
led-hysteria. At large stone anvils male and female Gatherers slammed hammers into glowing metal, producing small fountains of white-hot sparks. Sweating Apprentices pumped wildly at bellows, feeding air to dull-red beds of charcoal that shimmered in their own heat. Pieces being worked on, plunged into baths of quenching river water, produced flamboyant clouds of steam, which exploded as the water hissed and boiled. Occasionally, a completed hoe blade, rake head or spade was placed on a rack to wait for its handle to be fitted by one of the wood turners who worked on foot-lathes nearby. Then the smith would saunter out to the pile of rusty metal at the rear of the building, carefully select the best piece available for his purpose and return to start again making one of these vital tools. Although where Francesca stood in the yard the day was bright, clean and fresh, under the canopy of the Smithy it was misty, smeared and sulphurous.

  Francesca couldn’t see the Head Smith but eventually she caught the eye of one of the Apprentices on the bellows. He nodded to her to show she’d seen her and then had a word with another Apprentice who was refilling the baths of water. He disappeared into the fog at the back, emerging in a few moments later with the Head Smith.

  ‘You must be Francesca.’ He was cleaning his hands on an old piece of cloth, which he pushed back into the pouch on the front of his leather apron. He held out an enormous hand that swallowed hers as he shook it. ‘Enoch. Simon said to expect you. He also said I wasn’t to give you anything but the best. He seems to think you’re going to need your tools for many years.’

  ‘Yes, he told me much the same.’ Francesca felt nervous and in awe of this giant.

  ‘Well come this way and we’ll see what we can find.’ He led her to a small thatched storeroom across the yard and opened the door. ‘Take your pick. These are all Gardener’s tools, none of these is lent out to workers in the fields.’ Seeing she was reluctant, he looked her up and down and pulled out a long-shafted hoe with a large flat blade. ‘Try this one. It’s bigger in the head and longer in the stave than you’ve been used to, but you’re tall and lithe, and a well-balanced hoe will probably suite you.’

  He handed it to her. The point of balance fell under Francesca’s hand immediately. A few practice prods, as if she was weeding, and she realised that it would give her extra reach across rows without reducing accuracy or control. She smiled, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Well that’s the hoe then. Spade’s another thing though. Try this for length.’ He passed her a spade, the open handle of which came up to her waist. ‘Put your foot on the blade as if you were going to push it home.’ He eyed her position carefully. ‘Umm… too long…try this one.’ It took a few more goes until both of them were satisfied the height was comfortable. Then they turned their attention to the blade size, settling on a small one. ‘You’re too thin of frame for a big blade. What you win in speed with that hoe you’ll lose in having to dig more often with the spade.’

  They added a rake to her equipment and then there was only one tool left. For this they went to another store room. When the door opened Francesca saw on the bench, catching the sunlight, five new trowels. Whereas the blades of the other tools were clean and in their new state shiny enough, the trowels were totally different. She picked up one. Its surface was so polished she could see her own reflection in it.

  ‘Beautiful,’ was all she could say.

  ‘Made from the best metal we have. The silver-steel we call it. It’s hard to work but it shines when it’s polished and as you use it the edge sharpens itself. It’s the mark of the Gardener. Which will you have?’

  She looked at them. Each seemed as graceful and beautiful as its neighbour. She did not know how to choose. Then she saw one whose handle had a strong, dark grain, like the grain in Sylvia‘s staff. ‘That one, please,’ she said.

  ‘Good choice. Fine blade, though I says it who made it. And the ash handle sets it off beautifully.’

  It didn’t take long for Francesca to realise that the life of a Gardener was perhaps a bit more physical than she’d originally thought. True, she was saved the effort of carrying her tools to the Glasshouses each day; they were safely stored in a place of her own in one of the upper domes. But there had been an awful lot of digging and racking to be done as they prepared the beds for replanting. She thought her back was prepared for it by the work in the fields but after the first week she was as stiff as she’d ever been. One other snag was that since she had to be in the Glasshouses to close them up at the end of the day, she was always late back to the roundhouse and missed walking home with Anya. When she got home this evening Anya wasn’t even in. This vexed her until she remembered that Anya must be down at the river giving Jonathan his first swimming lesson. But the more she thought of swimming the more she thought it might be a good way of getting the creases out of her back. So she picked up a drying cloth and walked down to the river.

  There were not that many places for a novice to swim and the best was where the Crèche Mothers taught the children, a bit upriver from the bridge, so she made for that. Sure enough as she approached she could hear Anya’s impatient voice.

  ‘Oh come on Jonathan. It’s not that bad.’ Her partner was standing up to her waist in the river. Her wet hair, flattened down into black tresses, glistened in the evening light. She looked totally in command of the element. Jonathan, on the other hand, had only made it in up to his knees. He was flapping his arms up and down and hopping from one leg to the other; the perfect picture of someone very afraid of water, who found the shale of the riverbed sharp on his feet.

  Even with flapping arms and looking more than ridiculous he was a tall, well-made young man, if you liked that sort of thing. Good shoulders and firm chest muscles came down to a flat stomach.

  Anya spotted her. ‘Look, you tell him Francesca.’

  ‘Oh no,’ wailed Jonathan, ‘it’s bad enough with you, let alone her as well.’

  ‘That’s not very polite,’ retorted Anya. ‘If I get you in here I might just drown you to make up for being so rude to my partner!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jonathan. Francesca stripped off her clothes and paddled over to him.

  ‘You have to bear in mind that she’s never been frightened of anything in her life,’ she said to him. ‘Now I can remember how frightened I was when I went for a swim the first time. So you just come with me and we’ll do whatever Anya wants us to do together. Then she can take over and teach you how to swim properly.’ As Francesca had spoken she had drawn him deeper into the water by the arm. It was now above his waist. She let go and put a hand on his shoulder instead. Anya saw that Francesca was doing the trick and came up on Jonathan’s other side, adding her comforting hand to his other shoulder.

  ‘Take a big deep breath, Jonathan,’ Anya said quietly. ‘Then all three of us are just going to bob down below the water and come straight back up. If you’re frightened just remember that there isn’t anything in this river Francesca and I can’t save you from. Ready.’

  ‘Yes. Alright. I’ll try.’

  ‘One, two, three,’ said Anya and down they went. The cool water flowed over Francesca’s head, she opened her eyes and saw the pale green world of the river: weed, sandy bottom, shoals of small fish. A second later they were up again in the air. Jonathan spluttered and breathed hard but after recovering and a bit more reassurance, he was ready to do it again. After three goes they persuaded him to open his eyes underwater and then to count to five before coming up. After a few more goes, he could float with his feet off the bottom and allowed them to tow him gently out into deeper water. After that Francesca left Anya to it and swam up stream, feeling the stiffness in her shoulders melting away.

  ‘Look, it’s not me,’ the male voice was angry and upset. ‘I don’t care what you think but it’s not me. You’ve changed, not me.’

  Whoever it was could not see Francesca and with a bit of luck she could keep it that way. If she was careful she could back off round the side of the roundhouse and not embarrass them by letting them know they had
been overheard. She started to retrace her steps.

  ‘You may not think you’ve changed but you have. You used to like spending time with me but now…’

  ‘Now what? Now I can’t bear to look at you, can’t bear to touch you? You know that’s not true.’

  There was something in the way the voices intersected that made her shudder. It reminded her of conversations she’d had with Ruth just after she’d begun to notice Anya. She had denied vehemently that she had changed but she had known that she had, even as the words had come out of her mouth in her own defence. She had denied it because she denied it to herself. Denied she was falling for someone else, that Ruth’s care of her, which had once been charming, had begun to pull and restrict her. That Ruth’s steadfastness had become dullness. What she wanted was a lover more likely to take risks; one who would let her grow.

  She backed off slowly and then made it to the shelter of the next roundhouse so she could go well to the left of the voices. As she glimpsed the place were they must have been talking between the roundhouses, she saw Jonathan hurry off in the direction of the river. So it was Jonathan who had been arguing with Hamied. She remembered the exasperation in Hamied’s voice on the bridge the day Anya had pitched Jonathan into the river. She hadn’t thought twice about his tone then, thinking he had been cross with Anya for her prank on Jonathan but now maybe he had been exasperated with Jonathan as well. And the real source of that exasperation was now clear. She thought it a great shame since they had looked so happy when declaring their partnership two years ago. She hoped that whatever happened as they broke up it would be quick and easy to heal.

  The hot days of summer were beginning to come to an end. Increasingly, the clarity of the sunsets was marred by the presence of cloud, low on the horizon, that gathered during the day. The Fishers were reporting seeing squalls forming out to sea. The Shepherds had taken the seasonal hint and had started to bring the flocks in toward their winter quarters nearer the Gathering Hall. The Gardeners who had been on field duties had returned to the Glasshouses, where the racking and digging was over. And planting had begun.