by Andy Brown
Yet, however sweet the air had been made to smell, the congregation left the church that day in muttered gossip.
Although the weather, it seemed, had turned on that auspicious day, such signs don’t augur well for the coming times. I had the old rhyme ringing round my head as I made my way back home. If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will have another flight: If Candlemas Day be shower and rain, Winter is gone and won’t come again. The beat of the rhyme, if not its message, raised my wilted spirits for, if the song was true, then more bad weather was set to come our way on the heels of this upturn. I reasoned that I’d have to cover over our beehives with straw, for warmth and protection, if yet more frosts and chill winds were afoot. I couldn’t bear to think of another winter stretching on throughout the length of March, or goodness knows til when. The commoners were crying out for a little good cheer and brighter days, what with current hardships and privations. I knew of these from my own experience and talking with John Toucher.
John farmed his few strips of fields to bring forth wheat and root crops. The land is exceedingly heavy there, where it slopes down towards the river and John had to plough in plentiful straw and dung each year to break up the sodden clay. His arable land needed annual rest and he gave it over to grazing in the early part of the year. That way the animals dropped their dung and fertilized his marshy fields.
His few ewes had been lambing in recent weeks and the cattle had been housed in the barns against the rougher weather. As soon as the cold lifted, he’d wheel out cartloads of their dung and spread it widely on the fields, to lie there on the earth for a month or so before digging in. That way he’d have an even crop and a good yield later in the year, or so he hoped. The dung, he scattered thickly in the furrows and thin on the ridges, his land being so wet until summer, needing good manure to bring it to proper condition. His few livestock were provided with only enough pasture to satisfy them, so they could graze and grow to good condition themselves without damaging the fields with their heavy hooves, as cattle left to freely roam surely will. It irked him when his neighbour’s animals jumped over his fences and found their way onto his strip, but he was never so angry for long. ‘Their shit for my grazing,’ he used to say.
‘Good morning John,’ I greeted him that early February morning, as I walked back from our bittersweet Candlemas service.
John was already working in his field and I stopped to throw some playful words across the high hedgerow, where he stood shin-deep in mud.
‘Your land seems awfully muddy,’ I observed.
I hadn’t seen him for several days and it would be a pleasure, I hoped, to pass the time of day with him in sweet nothings.
‘Aye, Morgan. But even this muddy land may soon no longer be mine,’ he replied, without so much as even looking up at me to bid me back good morning. He seemed in no mood for playing games, or wasting time in talk of love.
‘The land you farm is yours by right and payment, John. It’ll be yours until they dig you into it.’ I’d been addressing my talk to the hedge until now, when he finally showed his broad brow above the bushes.
‘The voice, it has a face,’ I said.
‘Indeed it does,’ he replied, ‘until they bury it, as you say. I’ll be lucky if the land’s still mine by then.’
I reached across the hedge and squeezed his arm. ‘Who could take it from a man like this?’ I said. ‘No one could wrestle it from you, even if they came to take it by force!’
‘Listen Morgan,’ he snapped and shrugged me off. ‘Put your ears and eyes to work instead of your tongue. Can’t you see? On land where many men have made their livelihoods, tilling the arable soil, now we only see more flocks of sheep. So many, the earth’s nearly blotted from sight. Look around you, Morgan. One man, the shepherd, will own all of this, where twenty men have yet endured by their own labours.’ His cheeks reddened in the chilly morning air.
‘A shepherd can’t take your land from you, John! No man can. It’s nothing but rumour and gossip.’
In some uncertain way, however, I feared he might be right. If Candlemas could go, then so might tenants’ rights. And though I didn’t want my man to sense it, I too felt that so much now seemed uncertain.
Buckland is as busy a small village as any round here. Set high on its hill and ringed by woods, wanderers are met by the welcoming view of the spire on our church from many miles away. Our deep and wide village green fronts that church, like an apron spread before the brick and stonework, neat along its edges, but nowadays much overworked. The number of yeomen who’d begun to bring their flocks through that common ground, to graze their animals, was more than one could countenance. How there were any blades of grass remaining, I don’t know. And yet it wasn’t as if they didn’t have their own fields set aside for grazing at the westernmost bounds of our parish. I can’t see why we had to endure their beasts bleating, dropping their dung on the very steps of our church. Sacrilege.
‘It isn’t the shepherd himself,’ John Toucher went on, ‘but the laws which are there to protect him, Morgan. Enclosures. Infernal, permanent hedges! Look abroad into neighbouring villages. See how many green field strips have been taken and made into one large field, hedged in and turned over to pasture. It’s the Lords who take acre upon acre, for grazing their sheep. And with favours like these afforded to the shepherd, men like Billy Down will gain at our expense. They pitch man against his fellow, muscles or not.’
I’d heard talk like this from other tenants in the village and was used to hearing the name of Billy Down taken in vain. His was the largest flock in the district. It was impossible to miss his presence. Or rather, his flock’s. Countless nights working out under the stars and sleeping in the hedgerows, delivering lambs from straying ewes on the cold hillsides, had thinned Billy Down into a small, lean shape. He was wealthier than most in Buckland, thanks to his rich earnings in the wool trade, but gave no sign of this in his attire. He dressed as any other villein would, in boots, breeches and his stinking tanned doublet, save for that thick and warm sheepskin, which nearly doubled him in size. He was nothing more than a boy to look at with it off but, with it on, he looked like one of his own stocky rams; thin legged, but vast and cloud-like on top.
His flock too had grown to twice its size in the same number of years and, with his rich earnings, he’d brought some sizeable copses beyond the Barton’s woodlands, in the district of Limberland. Here he grazed his sheep, before herding them through the woolbrook and on up through the village to the site of his barns. It was at this herding time that his sheep were prone to wander and many times he’d stirred the bailiff’s wrath, as well as the ire of the village, by letting his sheep stray across the green. For such neglect and for his unreasonable profits in these matters, he’d become unpopular in Buckland. I had, by now, heard of the intended tax upon such flocks as large as these and offered this to John, to ease his fears.
‘Profits or not, John, Billy Down’ll soon be paying taxes, more and more upon his massing sheep. That’ll surely keep him within his means.’
‘Not before some honest arable man’s been turned off his land for Billy Down’s profit! Where do those men go, Morgan, those who’ve been drummed off?’ He was becoming terse and I was upset at his manner.
‘I don’t know, John. Though you yourself most obviously seem to. Why bother asking?’
I knew his convictions on such matters, but seldom had seen him so troubled, or heard him turn his talk upon one man in particular. Now he seemed to be turning it on me as well.
‘I’ll tell you where,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you will,’ I replied.
‘Given over to beggary!’ he said, swinging his arms wide round about him, as if he was casting seed. ‘Those beggars knocking at the Barton’s gate each month don’t arise from nowhere, you know. They’re men like me. Ploughmen put out of work by enclosure. Rampant shepherding. And it’s the King’s law that protects them, Morgan, making outlaws of them. See how many men have moved awa
y from these parts in recent months? Seeking to make their living elsewhere, where they might. Why, Morgan, even your own departed brothers…’
‘You leave my brothers out of your quarrels, John Toucher,’ I warned him. ‘They went abroad from their own choice, as well you know. And that was many years ago. I don’t know why you make such a thing of it all. These changes can’t happen here. My Lord won’t let it happen.’
‘Your Lord is letting it happen, Morgan! He should mind his obligations to us, his loyal tenants.’
By now I had to stop him.
‘Be ashamed of yourself for suggesting it, John Toucher. It’s you who should be mindful of your tongue and obligations,’ I shouted. ‘My Lord’s never shown anything but kindness to me, to you. And to those beggars attendant on his gates.’
‘And why is that, Morgan?’
I turned my eyes away, as his words began to make tears form in their gentle wells.
‘From guilt!’ he went on, shouting at me in misdirected fury.
Behind him, two crows krekked in the treetops and lifted into the air, like ashes on the heat of a fire. I wished then for this heated talk to end and for the morning to return itself to rights. He, however, was going to finish his piece.
‘Your Lord feels guilt for those men he’s displaced. Nothing more, Morgan. Open your eyes to the truth. There’s more profit in sheep than there’s ever been in arable, we all know that. It won’t be long before we too are pushed aside for the landlord’s further gain.’
With this he had me at a loss. I wouldn’t hear slanderous talk of my Lord. And yet it was true that many men in local parishes had lost their land and even that some village commons had been enclosed to make way for grazing. Our own church green was being abused, against the laws designed to so prevent it. My Lord must have turned a blind eye to such trespass, or wouldn’t he surely in some way have stopped it?
And so, although I smarted at the way he abused my intentions that morning, it struck me there were grains of truth in what John Toucher said.
Then again, this was the first time ever that I’d argued with him so openly and it hurt me that he thought so little of upsetting me. All I’d wished for was a few quiet moments together, but he’d firmly rebuffed that.
I ran away from him that morning, crying myself back to the Barton. I didn’t turn back to see what he was doing, but then neither did he call after me, nor follow.
When I returned, I tried to take my mind off our argument by sowing the season’s peas. Besides my usual chores around the hearth, at table and in my Lady’s chamber, my own work for February was mostly in the garden, composting the plot with kitchen waste and digging over twice. Preparing the ground like this always reaps great benefits and sets a precedent of vigour for the whole year. I sowed peas and beans for our pottage. These would also serve for feeding animals, added to their grazing.
The moon is always an excellent measure for timing your sowing. I cast my peas and beans when she’s on the wane, for then they’ll surely grow into fuller pods under her influence. Those who sow upon the waxing moon can only look forward to small pea plants, leafy and rope-like in stem and tendril, puny in the pod.
That morning, although I sowed the seeds at the right time, I watered them in with my own regretful tears, for John had so wounded my feelings. Between my duty to my Lord and Lady and my devotion to my own man, I felt myself bruised, my allegiances pulled hither and thither.
February’s the time for weeding the fields. Lines of crouched serfs and labourers scour the land, with weed-hooks in one hand and tongs in the other, plucking the weeds from the soil. It’s one of the times when fieldsmen offer their services to each other and work as a team. John Toucher and his argumentative neighbour, Reynolds; the odd-jobber, Rawlings; Lucombes the ploughman; the cottagers Barum, Brimley and Putt. These last three men were joined to the communal stalk of friendship like the trefoil of a clover.
Tom Putt was their principal dealer, quick minded and clever with his tongue. He was tall, high cheeked, with the guise of natural intelligence, rather than schooled, for he had been put to work in the fields from the cradle. The joker of the three, he’d speak for all of them against the bailiff’s steep demands for rent, or increase in tithes, winning adversaries over with a tale and an amicable smile. It bought them time, though the bailiff would soon enough be back.
Brimley was the mover of their group, who organised and oversaw their common work. A small, squat man with wide-set eyes and a nose like a great pebble, he was straight talking. Practical. Barum was their muscle, when muscle was called for; a simple, quiet man, who called a hoe a hoe and did as he was bidden. The arrangement suited each man according to his means and constitution. And where these three men were, perhaps, less dutiful in their observances at church, they held intensely to their landed rights and would protect a fellow’s independence, whatever his beliefs.
Behind the lines of weeding men come others; children hired to clear the fields of stones. They gather the cobbles together and sell them to the bailiff for repairing lanes and highways, which suffer greatly in the spring rains. Weeding is backbreaking and tedious work and I obliged John Toucher with small attentions at the end of his day. All that kneeling and bending made him stiff and crotchety, as I had lately found.
The month is also time for planting hedges and mending the old and damaged ones around the edges of the fields. Hazel and blackthorn stand side-by-side, silver-skinned and dark barked alike, shooting straight lines up against the whiteness, like supplicants with arms raised to Heaven. Ash straplings spring from their pollarded boles, their branches tipped with hard, black buds. On the thin tips of hazel twigs, the catkins hang, waiting to open and shed their seeds in the first awakenings after winter. Their soft yellow pom-poms hang bright against the grey-brown understorey of sapling willows. Last season’s beech leaves still cling to their branches in bright patches, emblazoning the hedgerows. A year’s woody growth stands ready to be hacked and twisted into a thick new hedge. Willow’s dug in for new fence posts and shoots to shade the livestock in the summer. Quick sets of hawthorn and blackthorn are rooted into the ground to portion out copses and fields, to stop stray livestock wandering.
By mid-month, the hedgerows are full of farming men cutting through the growth at the base with a hand-axe or hatchet, bending the straplings down to the ground, to weave them through the border’s living fabric. Woodbine was the fastest in his craft, but other men vied for his title and there was competition for the speed and neatness of their finished hedges. None is neater than those around my Lord’s woodlands.
Both deer and coney are plentiful in those woods and they gave excellent sport. In winter, my Lord left the rabbits to their own devices, so they might increase their number in their natural way, for greater sport come spring. The red deer themselves are pests, always eating crops, or the tender new shoots of the coppice, which grows there for valuable fuel. To stop the deer, Woodbine cut the trees into pollarded clumps and each winter I’d make fences from the poles of wood he’d trimmed. It’s here that my Lord also gave chase to the reynards, those red thieves who pestered my chickens and ducks. Along the edges of these woods, he also made sport with his falcon, his crossbow and bolts. Many times I was charged with cooking up his catch for warming suppers.
One time this last February, a roguish man named Stubbard, from the neighbouring homestead of Halstow, was arrested for snaring rabbits in his woods. After they caught him, he spent a day and night in the stocks for his pains, which was so fearfully cold he’d almost frozen solid by morning. Happily, my Lord showed him mercy and didn’t have the poacher’s hand removed, as was common. Justice has always been hard in these parts. There were villains hereabouts with only five fingers to labour. From time to time we saw other rogues abroad, with noses split, an ear removed, or jabbering through the stump of a tongue. These men were mostly vagabonds, who terrified the children and found themselves hounded away by the bailiff.
On Valentine�
�s Eve, Alford and I amused ourselves. We set the candles on their sconces on the dim kitchen walls and sat ourselves at the scullery trestle, preparing things for a game I had in mind.
‘Take the parchment, Alford,’ I told her, ‘and lay it flat before you.’
We’d borrowed some scraps from my Lady’s chamber, after she’d finished her practice at calligraphy and illumination.
‘What’ll we do with it, Morgan?’ she asked me.
I enjoyed these moments with Alford. They gave me the chance to pass on to her some matters of lore, which she always engaged in with interest.
‘Take the charcoal… scribe your boy’s name,’ I told her.
She looked at me, puzzled, fumbling with the stick of charcoal I’d saved from the fire for writing. Then she looked away and her mouth went into a quiver. I remembered then that she didn’t know how.
‘Let me show you,’ I said quickly and held her hand to help her form the shape of his initial. ‘There, it’s done. The letter D for Dufflin.’
She was so pleased with herself that she set to copying the shape over and over. Her piece of paper was soon covered both sides with the bow of his initial. It was as if she hoped to conjure him there and then by writing it out so many times.
‘Look, Morgan,’ she cried. ‘I can write! I’ll be sending him letters soon to win my husband.’ Her eyes were alive by the candles.
While she delighted herself in her task, I wrote John Toucher’s initials carefully on my own scrap of paper and set it to one side.
‘Next, we’ll make ourselves some holders for these tokens.’ I went to the window ledge and fetched down what I needed: a small clod of clay that I’d dug up from the edge of the pond that afternoon.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
I showed her the clay and she pouted her lips in anticipation.