by Ann Swinfen
‘That’s a bullet wound,’ she said, ‘and a nasty one. It’s not come out ’tother side. It’ll be lodged in his flesh.’
She rolled up her sleeves and turned to me. ‘Fetch me a bowl of hot water, Mercy, and rags. This’ll bleed a fair bit. And I’ll need . . .’ Her eyes lit on the knife at my side. I had forgotten it was there and glanced nervously over my shoulder, where my mother was sitting in her chair, her hands over her face, weeping.
‘I’ll have that.’ Hannah pointed to the knife and I handed it to her. What was she going to do?
I fetched water and rags, then climbed up to the attic for a pot of Hannah’s salve.
‘Unfasten his belt,’ Hannah said, when I handed her the salve, ‘And lay aside that fool sword.’ She clucked her tongue in irritation as I laid the sword on the floor and rolled up Tom’s belt. Carefully I eased his breeches down until his whole thigh was exposed, a mass of broken flesh and fragments of cloth.
‘He’ll be wanting that,’ she said, nodding at the belt.
Suddenly I realised what she was going to do and felt sick, but my mother was in no state to help her. Tom moaned and opened his eyes.
‘My leg,’ he said.
‘Never fear,’ I said, patting his shoulder. ‘Hannah is here and she’s going to take the bullet out.’
His mouth screwed up as he took in my meaning. Silently I handed him the belt and he gripped it between his teeth. Hannah pulled away the torn pieces of cloth from his leg, then picked up the knife and made two swift slashes across the mangled flesh of his thigh. Tom gave a muffled yelp through the leather of the belt and gripped my hand so hard I thought the bones would break. Hannah probed into the wound with the point of the knife, then something flew across the room and landed with a clink in the hearth. Blood was pouring out of Tom’s leg and with my free hand I tried to staunch it with the rags, but they were soon sodden.
‘I have to fetch more rags,’ I whispered in Tom’s ear, drawing my hand from his. His face was grey with pain and he nodded as the belt slipped from between his teeth and fell to the floor. Then he became very still.
I found I was weeping.
‘Oh, Hannah, he isn’t dead, is he?’
She shook her head. ‘Just lost his wits with the pain. Wash out the wound and salve it, Mercy. Then bind it up.’
I realised that Hannah herself was pale and shaking. She sank down on a bench beside the table and laid her head on her crossed arms. As I washed Tom’s wound, which looked even worse now, I heard Father pouring ale for Hannah and Mother. My own hands were trembling, but I managed to smear Hannah’s salve over the torn flesh, though my own flesh cringed as I did so. I wrapped a length of cloth torn from an old sheet around and around Tom’s leg, but the blood continued to seep through it.
Hannah must have raised her head and seen my face, for she said, ‘It will stop bleeding soon. There’s herbs to dry the blood in the salve.’
I nodded. I felt too sick to speak. When I had done my best with the bandage, I cleared away the bloodied water and rags. There was a dull glint of something on the hearth and I picked it up. It was a lead bullet, smeared with blood, once round but now flattened and distorted.
‘It must have hit the bone.’ It was the first time Father had spoken since we had carried Tom into the kitchen. He picked up the bullet from my palm and turned it around between his fingers. ‘That’s what has pushed it out of shape. He’s lucky it didn’t break his thighbone.’
He sighed deeply. I had expected him to be angry, but he merely looked defeated.
‘Tomorrow you will tell me what happened. Tonight we must go to our beds.’
‘I’ll stay with Tom,’ I said. ‘He may need something when he wakes.’
He nodded and dropped the bullet back into my hand.
When they had all gone, I made up the fire and brought the coverlet from my bed to lay over Tom, who lay lost in some silent world, his face drawn. I could see in the lines of his face how he would look when he was old. Drawing up a chair close beside the settle, I sank down, finding my legs suddenly weak beneath me. How had it ended like this? These intruders brought us nothing but pain and suffering. And I feared there would be retribution.
In the light from the fire, I turned the flattened bullet over and over in my hand.
Chapter Four
Father and I faced each other across the table. Tom still lay on the settle, grey-faced but awake, after a night of pain and bad dreams. Now was the reckoning. I drew breath to speak, but Tom forestalled me.
‘You must not blame Mercy, Father.’ His voice was weak, but firm. ‘Without her I would have died.’
Father flicked him a cold glance. I rarely feared my father, but I knew that this time his anger, held back and damped down, would be scorching when it broke out.
‘I blame you both,’ he said. The calmness of his voice was more frightening than any shouting. ‘These drainers will not be defeated by riots and fires. They must be defeated at law. What you did last night makes our case worse.’
‘Father.’ Tom struggled to sit up, but sank back again. ‘We have a royal charter declaring our commons inalienable. Yet this projection of drainage and enclosure – whether or not Cromwell is responsible – marches on with no one to say it nay. Sir John made us promises two months ago, yet nothing has come to our aid.’ His voice faded and he closed his eyes.
‘They have attacked our people.’ I knew my father would think I spoke out of turn. This was not women’s business. But sitting awake beside Tom all night, I had had time to think. Last night I had acted spontaneously, following in Tom’s wake as so often in our lives, but now I needed to make clear to our father why I believed Tom was right to act.
‘Hannah and Nehemiah – their homes have been burned to the ground, their goods and stock stolen or destroyed, their livelihoods taken from them. How can we stand by and do nothing? We know, all of us, what has happened in the Fens where these foreign drainers have been at work. Land ruined, homes washed away yet peat dried to dust, whole villages which used to prosper turned to beggary.’
I held out my hands to him, pleading. ‘It will be the same for us, surely? Their misguided works will flood the village at the next great storm. We could lose the farm.’
Father stared at me.
‘Do you believe that, Mercy?’
‘Aye. Truly I do believe that. We must act.’
‘Mercy is right.’ Tom’s voice came weak from where he lay.
Father passed his hand over his face and I saw that his anger was ebbing away, leaving him tired and perhaps a little frightened.
‘You are right that we have waited too long for word from Sir John’s London lawman.’
It was a concession. Unusual from him.
He got up and walked to the door. Throwing it open, he stood framed in the doorway, looking out across our land, with its rich level fields and the wide arched skies of these eastern counties. For a long time no one said anything. At last he came back and sat down again at the table.
‘It seems we must act for ourselves, but not by breaking down banks and setting fire to sluice gates and pumping mills. I will take our case to the authorities in Lincoln. It may be that our local magistrates will take more interest in local affairs and local charters than the courts away in London.’
Tom and I exchanged a look. I knew that he had little faith in the workings of the law, but a faint hope stirred in me at Father’s words. Perhaps our land could be saved after all without further violence.
A shadow passed over the floor as Gideon stepped into the doorway.
‘So,’ he said, soberly, taking in the sight of Tom’s sickly pallor and heavily bandaged leg, ‘what they are saying in the village is true.’
I looked at him in alarm. ‘It is being spoken about?’
‘Only amongst ourselves. But van Slyke is bent on hunting out the miscreants who burned down his mill and his sluice and filled in more than half his ditches. He is on the hunt, moreover, for one whom
he winged last night, although he escaped.’
Tom gave him a shaky smile. ‘Mercy carried me home on Blaze, else I had been left to his thugs to finish me off.’
‘Mercy was there!’ Gideon was startled. He looked at me in concern, but I avoided his eyes. I was not sure whether I was pleased or annoyed. ‘Well, I came to warn you. It would be best to keep Tom out of sight just at present, in case van Slyke and his men come ferreting about.’
‘They cannot enter our homes. They have no right!’ Father stood up indignantly.
‘No right, indeed. But they are armed. They are many. And they are, I imagine, unscrupulous. You had best hide Tom until that very unpleasant wound is healed.’
We looked at each other. Where could he be hidden? The house was easy to search.
‘The hay loft?’ I suggested hesitantly.
‘I could never climb up there.’ Tom shook his head.
‘The hay loft seems a wise suggestion,’ said Gideon. ‘I can carry you.’
Tom protested, but Gideon was adamant. Despite his clerkly calling, he was strong and in the peak of life. Tom had always been slight, but even so I was surprised at how easily Gideon lifted him. I went ahead of them to the barn, carrying the coverlet and cushions, and climbed the ladder to the loft. In the far corner I made up a crude bed and watched as Gideon climbed awkwardly after me, with Tom over his shoulder and Father steadying him from behind. We laid Tom down in a nest of straw and I tucked the coverlet around him. He was sweating with pain, but kept his lips compressed against the escape of any sound.
When he was as comfortable as we could make him, we piled up hay to form a low wall, to conceal him as best we could.
‘You must stay very quiet,’ I warned.
‘Teach your grandmother.’ Tom’s voice was faint but defiant.
‘I’ll bring you dinner later.’
‘Good. I’ll sleep till then.’
We climbed back down into the barn and looked at each other as we brushed the wisps of hay from our clothes.
‘Sleep is the best thing for him,’ Gideon said.
I nodded.
‘Come,’ said my father. ‘I would discuss with you a plan I have, to go to the magistrates in Lincoln.’
As I baked bread and set to making the midday dinner with Kitty, they sat beside the fire, talking in low voices. Gideon, as a man of the cloth, would favour Father’s plan, I was sure. Peaceful action rather than fire and violence. Which of us was right?
There had been no sign of Hannah or my mother this morning, after the disturbances of the night. Hannah was old and frail, but my mother was usually up and about her chores one of the first of us. For her to lie abed was a sign how badly she had taken Tom’s injury. She appeared at the bottom of the stairs just as Kitty was laying out bowls and spoons for my pottage of bacon, carrots and turnips. I was shocked to see that my mother seemed suddenly to have grown old, yet she was twenty years younger than Hannah. There were dark pouches beneath her eyes and a careless strand of grey hair strayed from beneath her cap. She sank down on her chair at the foot of the table and I saw that her hands, loosely clasped in her lap, were trembling.
Kitty began to ladle out the pottage and I took a bowl of it together with a cup of small ale for Tom, slipping a spoon and a thick slice of bread into my pocket. It was difficult climbing the ladder in the barn with my burden and I had to make two trips. Tom was asleep, but stirred groggily as I squatted down beside him and set the cup of beer on the ledge made by one of the roof beams. I eased my arm under his shoulders and helped him to sit up.
‘Did you sleep?’
‘Aye.’ His voice was muzzy, as if he had only half woken. He looked worse than he had done that morning.
‘I’ve brought you a bowl of pottage.’ I balanced the bread on his chest and handed him the spoon. He let it dangle limply, as if its weight was too much for him.
‘Come, you must eat.’
He looked with complete indifference at the bowl I held out.
‘Put it over there.’ He nodded toward the cup of ale. ‘I’ll eat it later.’
‘You’ll eat it now, not leave it to go cold and greasy.’
I took the spoon back from him, and began to spoon the pottage into his mouth. He did not resist me and I thought of making some remark about feeding babes, but – seeing the exhaustion in his eyes – I thought better of it.
In the end, he took it all, and the ale, and most of the bread, and a little colour had come back into his face by the time I left him to return to my own dinner. The others were finishing as I warmed the pottage again and took my seat at the table.
‘How is he?’ Gideon asked.
‘He has eaten his meal,’ I said, keeping to myself that I had had to feed him. ‘He seems very tired.’
Gideon nodded. ‘That’s often the way after a wounding. The body directs all its energy towards healing. I’ve seen it many times.’
With a jolt I remembered that for a while Gideon had served as minister with the local militia in the early days of the War. He would have seen many wounded men during those days of terrible, chaotic slaughter. After the militias were disbanded and the New Model Army formed, Gideon had come back to the Fens. He was not wanted in an army commanded by Puritans. Of course he had comforted the wounded and dying. I was ashamed that I had forgotten his own terrible experiences on the battlefield.
‘You have seen musket wounds, like this of Tom’s?’ Father asked.
Gideon nodded. ‘This is cleaner than most, and Hannah removed the bullet quickly. The bone is undamaged and the wound scoured out. The only thing to fear is if the bullet was dirty, or filth got into the wound in some other way, lest it turn putrid.’
‘Hannah puts honey in her salves,’ I said hesitantly. ‘She says it is a sovereign cure for broken flesh.’
‘So I have heard.’
‘Has she eaten?’ I was aware that I had not seen her yet, nor Nehemiah.
‘Kitty took her dinner up to her.’ It was the first time my mother had spoken.
‘And Nehemiah?’
My father shrugged. ‘He has gone to move his skerry down the delph to Baker’s Lode, away from the encampment. He’ll moor it nearer to where he lays his traps and walk over each day.’
‘But his head–’
‘He claims his poll is as hard as an iron cooking pot. He will not listen. He will go to Lincoln with me tomorrow, so at least I can keep a watch on him.’
The day carried on like any normal day and I was laying out the washing on the lavender hedge to dry when Alice came round the corner of the house. She was full of news.
‘They have been searching the village,’ she called, even before she reached me. Her Rafe had not been one of the party last night, but her brother had.
‘Take an end of this sheet,’ I said, ‘and keep your voice down. Van Slyke’s men? Have they seized anyone?’
She took hold of the other end of the sheet and we shook it straight before spreading it out over the hedge.
‘Not yet. They beat little Rob Higson, to try to make him talk, but he wouldn’t. He slipped their hold in the end and made for the Fen. They won’t find him.’
‘He wasn’t there last night.’
‘But you were?’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘What were you about?’
‘Defending our lands,’ I said, shaking out a pillow bere till it snapped. ‘Why Rob?’
‘Oh, I think he was the first child they caught, and they thought they could make him talk.’
She looked around the yard, which was quiet and sleepy under the sun, except for a few hens scratching. ‘Where is Tom?’
‘Somewhere they won’t find him. Have they searched the houses in the village?’
‘Indeed. Turned us upside down. Broke open linen coffers, smashed dishes, pulled down wall-hangings, pretending men might be hiding behind them.’ She gave a furious snort. ‘Villains and fools, they are. Everything is open to view. They had no need to wreck our homes. The men are mo
stly out hoeing in the fields, so they thought they could use violence against the women. The horses are all rested by now, of course. No sign of galloping through the night.’
I nodded. Blaze was back out in the pasture, under the drainers’ very noses.
‘I’d best go back.’ She laid her hand on my arm. ‘Be careful, Mercy.’
‘I will. Like you, we are open to view, but my father and Gideon are inside, so perhaps they will be less ready to do damage here.’
When she had gone, I whistled for Jasper and cut across the fields to the pasture to call in the cows. I had no need of the dog, for the cows knew to come home at their milking time, but I felt safer with him beside me. As I herded them back along the lane, I noticed how the muddy surface, churned up by the drainers’ activities, was pock-marked with the hoof-prints of our horses. Van Slyke and his men had only to follow them to find us. The thought chilled me, but at the corner where we had gathered, I saw that someone had been out with pick and shovel, breaking up the surface of the lane, so that the tracks leading back to the village and our farm were obliterated. Someone had had the foresight to come out early, to outfox the drainers. I was smiling as I drove the cows into their stalls.
But I was not smiling an hour later when van Slyke walked into the yard. He had six men with him, six large Hollanders. Perhaps he did not trust his Englishmen to hunt out their fellow countrymen. He went first into the house. I finished milking, carried the milk through to the dairy, but did not lead the cows back to pasture yet. I wanted to remain here to confront van Slyke and keep him away from the loft. We had hidden the ladder in plain view, around the back of the house, where my father was making much of pinning down a piece of the reed thatch which had worked loose. We did not want the ladder to draw van Slyke’s eye up to the loft.
In the dairy I set some of the milk for cheese-making and unhooked two muslin cloths holding curds which had been hanging up to drain all night. I packed the curds into a large cheese-press, covered them with the lid, and laid a stone on top to weigh it down. Then I poured the rest of the new milk into the churn for butter-making, so that I could keep my hands busy when van Slyke came to the outbuildings. The men were not long in the house. My father had welcomed them in courteously, and no doubt had escorted them into every room. Soon they were crossing the yard. I had rolled the churn into the doorway of the dairy and sat on a high stool as I worked the paddle. To block the doorway to the barn would have been to invite suspicion, but from here I could watch where they went.