Flood (The Fenland Series Book 1)

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘Have you packed your belongings?’

  ‘I shall take very little. A few clothes and my Bible. I am leaving the rest of my books here for you, Mercy.’

  ‘I do not want you to go!’ The words burst out of me, despite myself. I threw myself down on the bench opposite him, but I could not look him in the face.

  ‘Mercy.’ He reached across the table and took my hands. ‘Look at me.’

  Reluctantly I raised my eyes.

  ‘I am much older than you. I shall be thirty next year. But . . . if we ever come out of this . . . if it is possible for me to come back . . . if there is no one else in your life . . . will you allow me to speak for you?’

  I felt the colour rising in my cheeks, but I did not turn away.

  ‘Aye,’ I said.

  He rose from his bench and without realising what I was doing, I found I was standing before him.

  ‘Oh, dear heart,’ he said, ‘I have watched you grow from a lovely child to a woman who fills all my thoughts, the one person I want to spend the rest of my life with, and you send me away.’

  Tears were streaming down my face, but I could not brush them away, for he had both my hands firmly gripped in his.

  ‘I don’t send you away, but you must go,’ I whispered.

  Then his arms were around me, holding me so tightly that our bodies merged and our lips were together. Dear God, stop Time’s flow. Let me hold him forever.

  Jack arrived and suddenly everything was happening too fast. The cart was loaded with the goods for market, the horses were changed over, the goodbyes said. Tom took the reins and I passed the basket of food up to Jack. Gideon climbed into the back of the cart and wormed his way down amongst the fleeces and bolts of cloth. He gave me one last look, but did not speak. Then they were gone.

  I turned and climbed up to the attic and threw open the window that overlooked the lane. I watched until the cart was out of sight and the dust of its passing drifted down to the ground. He was gone.

  Chapter Ten

  They returned from Lynn nearly three days later. In the early evening Tom rode Blaze into the yard after leaving Jack and the cart in the village. Both man and horse looked exhausted.

  ‘Poor Blaze,’ Tom said, stroking the horse’s neck. ‘It has been a hard few days for him. The road from here to Lynn was in a bad way, uncared for since before the War, I’d say. Rutted and pitted with holes, mile after mile. And the cart was heavy with all our goods.’

  He led Blaze into the barn and lifted off his harness. I fetched a bucket of bran mash and another of water. The horse drank thirstily, then buried his nose in the mash. I began to rub him down with a handful of straw where his coat was stiff with dried sweat.

  ‘Then when we reached Lynn we could find no decent livery for him.’ Tom hung the harness on its peg and sat down on an old cask, stretching out weary legs. ‘The town was overflowing. It was market day, but there were also crowds of people like Gideon, intent on finding ships to leave England. And the same ships were bringing in foreigners – whole families with their bundles and even livestock. Lynn is where they are coming into the country.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Found one of Jack’s old shipmates. He’s a fisherman by trade and let us tether Blaze in the yard at the back where he has a smokehouse. The poor horse has had to stand on cobbles the whole while. I’m surprised he’s not lame. We slept on the floor of the fisherman’s house. Not much more than a hut, in truth. They’re poor men, those fishermen.’

  ‘And Gideon has gone on board the ship?’

  ‘The next morning we found the ship, the Brave Endeavour – a brave name for a small packet, not much bigger than an inshore herring buss! She was not to sail until the day after tomorrow, so Gideon stays with the fisherman until then.’

  I did not like to think of Gideon lingering in Lynn. If he must go, why then, let him go. I would rather think of him safe in the Low Countries than lurking like a thief in Lynn. At least, that was what I told myself.

  ‘Did you sell our goods?’

  ‘Aye, and did well.’ Tom patted the front of his jerkin, which gave a satisfying clink of coin. ‘We should make the trip more often, did it not take so long. We sold everything and at good prices too.’

  ‘So now what do we do? Will Gideon send word when he is safely in the Low Countries?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I told him, better not. Remember, he is a dead man by all reports.’

  I felt a flash of anger. It seemed that Gideon had said he would send word and Tom had undertaken to forbid him. How dare he! Now I could hope for no news, good or bad. Who could tell when or if it would be safe for him to return? I might never see him again. I pressed my lips together and scrubbed harder at Blaze’s back. Startled, he threw up his head and gave me a reproachful look.

  ‘Good lad,’ I said, rubbing him between the ears and throwing down my lump of dirty straw, determined to hold back my tears. I turned to Tom. ‘Come. We have kept your supper for you. I thought you would be home tonight.’

  While Tom ate, I cleared away the rest of the supper dishes, then sat down opposite him.

  ‘I went over to look at the settlement again today. They have started to build another row of houses, forming the other side of the street, with their holdings stretching out behind them. And at the nearer end of the street they have begun what looks as though it might be a church. At this rate the settlement will soon be larger than the village.’

  ‘It cannot go on.’ Tom pointed his spoon at me. ‘We will have those foreigners out of here. What right have they to settle on our commons? Tomorrow I’ll go to the village and talk to the other lads. I think it’s time we moved to greater efforts. These last weeks we have done only minor damage, childish things. They care nothing for it but go on relentless as a flood. And all the while destroying our food. That wheat we harvested will make poor flour.’

  I nodded. ‘I took my turn at winnowing today. The grains of wheat are hard and dry as stones.’

  ‘And how much of the barley have we lost to this settlement? A third? A half? Now they are digging up the bean field.’

  ‘It is not just that they destroy the growing crops. The soil is drying out. It will turn to dust.’

  ‘I know.’ He began to beat a rapid tattoo with his spoon on the table top. ‘That our wetlands should turn to desert! There’s an irony for you!’

  ‘What will happen when the winter floods come? I do not believe this van Slyke and his men understand what happens here then.’

  We both fell silent. I knew that Tom, like me, was thinking of our Fen country in winter. When the rains came, all the watercourses in the land to the west of us – higher ground which sloped down to the Fens – would fill up and rush down towards us, bringing flood waters and the precious silt that fed our fields. As the high winter tides rose in the German Sea, the rivers which drained into it would also back up. Between the sea and the wolds, all our low-lying land would flood and remain flooded until it drained naturally, slowly, in spring. We fenlanders were used to this. We harvested our crops and laid them up, brought in our animals to the barns or a few high-standing pastures, and prepared to be cut off from much of the rest of the world until the floods receded. This was our way of life. This was how our ancestors had lived since the beginning of time. Where there were man-made ditches and lodes, these had been constructed slowly, over centuries, by men who had watched the movement of the waters during a lifetime. Bit by bit they had learned to manage the water, to live with it and respect it. Where the floods needed the relief of a drain they studied where to place it, always working with the water. For a flood is a mighty beast, perhaps the most powerful element God has placed on this earth. These fly-by-night drainers, with their heedless ditches and arrogant ways, understood nothing of this. If you do not respect and fear the power of the flood, you will drown.

  The next morning Tom went off early to the village, leaving the work of the farm to the rest of us. After milking an
d cleaning the house, I set to and tidied the room where Gideon had slept. I lifted the blankets and pressed them against my face, trying to draw in the essence of him. Although he had taken his clothes, he had indeed left his books for me, all except the Bible. I turned them over now, running a caressing hand across their covers. Holding what he had held, I felt closer to him than I had done since he had left. I had never before owned books of my own. In the house we had our family Bible, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and a few chapbooks Tom had bought in London, mostly folk tales but also some ballads. As well, Tom had several of John Lilburne’s tracts. Now I was the richer by a library of my own. How wisely Gideon had judged his gift.

  As I opened them and read a few paragraphs here and there, something slipped out of the book on architecture that I had noticed in Gideon’s house. I stooped to pick it up. It was a folded paper packet with my name written on the front. I could tell from the feel of it that it contained coin. Opening the paper I saw that Gideon had written a short note on it.

  Mercy, I am leaving this with you to be put towards redeeming your father’s fine. It is little enough, but it may help to make up the amount, so that you may bring him home from his wicked confinement. You will always be in my thoughts, however far away I may be, however long. Pray for me, dear heart. Gideon Clarke.

  I sat down on the bed and wept. Gideon had beggared himself, gone penniless into exile to help us. Dear heart, I thought.

  Tom did not return until after we had eaten dinner, but refused food, saying he had shared a meal at Toby’s house.

  ‘We are resolved to make another attack tonight,’ he said, looking round at us. ‘We can no longer sit still and do nothing but a few minor pranks. This time we will attack the settlement, set up so brazenly in our barley field.’

  ‘Tom, I wish you would not do this,’ Mother said. ‘Your father would not like it.’

  I saw from Tom’s expression that he thought Father was in no position to forbid it. Besides, these months in the Lincoln prison were likely to have changed his mind.

  ‘Mother,’ he said, kind but firm, ‘if we do not act, soon there will be no fields to feed us and no pasture for our beasts.’

  ‘Aye, and no meres for fishing. No waterfowl to trap. The eels driven away,’ Nehemiah growled. ‘I am with you, Tom.’

  ‘I am glad of it,’ he said, ‘but I do not think you should come tonight. We will likely have to make a run for it. Our actions won’t go unnoticed.’

  Nehemiah made a face, but conceded Tom was right. He was still strong and hearty for his age, but he could not run swiftly.

  ‘And I will come,’ I said.

  ‘No, Mercy!’ My mother was clearly deeply upset. ‘Remember what happened the last time you took part in one of these dangerous capers.’

  ‘It is not a caper,’ I said stubbornly. ‘This is war. A war to protect our livelihood. Besides, it was not I who came off worst last time.’

  ‘She speaks truly, Mother,’ said Tom. ‘I was the one who took the bullet and without Mercy I might have fared far worse. She may come, if she takes care.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I did not try to hide a slight touch of sarcasm in my voice. Tom could not stop me if I chose to go.

  We were not yet a month past the summer solstice, so darkness was late coming. Our farm was the meeting place, being the nearest to the settlement, and one by one our friends slipped in – Toby and Jack, Alice’s brother Robin, half a dozen others. Even Rafe, despite his changed status as a married man and a father.

  ‘They are all of a piece,’ he said to me, as we waited for full dark. ‘These drainers and settlers and the soldiers who defiled the church and that evil preacher Edgemont. We used to have a fine way of life here. Prosperous, comfortable, at peace with the Fens and with God. Yet they would destroy it all.’

  ‘I agree. But does Alice approve your coming?’

  ‘Aye. She would have come herself, were it not for Huw.’

  ‘I shall get ready,’ I said.

  Up in my bedchamber I dropped my skirt and petticoat to the floor and pulled on a pair of Tom’s breeches, which I had begged him to lend me. If it came to running, I would impede them all, clumsy in my skirts. Tom was slender, but a good six inches taller than I. The breeches were too long until I had rolled them over at the waist and tied them firmly in place. I tried walking up and down in them. They felt strange, but my movements were freer than they had been since I had worn short skirts as a child.

  I came downstairs to be met by curious looks.

  ‘Best you don’t let Master Edgemont see you like that,’ Jack said. ‘Else you’ll know for sure you’re damned to the eternal fire!’

  ‘Do you have darker head gear, Mercy?’ said Toby. ‘That white cap will give us away. There is a quarter moon tonight.’

  ‘Of course.’ It was stupid of me not to have thought of it. They were all wearing dark clothes. My cap was the only pale garment amongst us. I ran back upstairs, pulled off my white cap and headcloth, and looked around for something dark. There was nothing I could find quickly. But my hair was brown and would not show in the dark. I would leave it uncovered, a sure sign of damnation for Reverend Edgemont. Bare-headed and wearing man’s breeches!

  When I went back to the kitchen, Jack gave a whistle at my tumble of loosened hair, but Toby silenced him with a frown. We were ready now, and would go on foot over the fields, the others leaving their horses in the yard so they could ride quickly back to the village afterwards.

  Between us we carried a variety of tools. Our plan was to destroy the buildings, not harm the people, so we carried axes and billhooks and pitchforks and scythes. Anything that could be used to pull down thatch, break timbers or tear away lath and plaster. It was a mild summer’s night. Even if the people found themselves suddenly homeless, they would not suffer exposure to the weather. So I reasoned. As we set off, creeping silently in twos and threes toward the barley field, I felt a small pang of guilt, thinking of that woman I had seen spreading her washing on a fence. There had been a small child playing around her feet with some toy. At that distance I was unsure whether it was a girl or a boy. The woman was not so very different from Alice, the child perhaps two years older than Huw. Still, they had no business here, putting up their houses on our commons without so much as a by-your-leave. None of these people had come anywhere near the village. Were they afraid of us? Or was it because they knew they did wrong, and were ashamed to show their faces?

  As we came within sight of the settlement, we could see light shining in the windows of some of the houses, and at that my anger grew, for I could tell by the quality of the light, a bright clear yellow, that they lit their rooms with beeswax candles. And we, who belonged here, were driven to make our light from rushes gathered from the Fens, dipped in our melted tallow – those rushlights which burned dull and smoky, leaving such a stench that even by day our rooms and clothes reeked of it. The sight of those wax candles was enough to strengthen my resolve.

  As we crossed the bridge over the Lode, the men were whispering together. Those who were deemed the swiftest of foot were sent off to the far end of the settlement, where they would attack the furthest of the completed houses. Tom and I, with Robin and Toby and two others, remained at the nearer end. We would attack the nearest house. It had been the first built and was by far the largest. It must be the home of the leader of the settlers. Next to it stood the framework of the half-finished church, a crucifix of timber uprights, with cross beams joined in with hefty tongue and groove joints. Overhead the curved roof beams soared higher even than the largest house.

  There was, as Toby had said, a quarter moon, which gave us enough light to make out the outline of the settlement quite clearly, now that our eyes had adjusted to the night. There was a sweet scent wafting over from the bean field, which lay up wind from us, and the rich damp smell of newly turned earth from the drainers’ ditches and the foundations of a new house pegged out beyond the church. Was there to be no end to this settlement?
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  Something rustled in the grass just in front of where I was kneeling. A field mouse or a vole, or possibly a snake. I hoped it was not a snake. I hate them, with their slithery ways. However much I argue with myself that a grass snake is harmless, they still make me shudder and recoil. I peered closer at the spot. In the faint light I saw a small dark shape, not much larger than my thumb, and as it turned for a moment towards me, the moonlight caught two bright eyes. Then they whisked away, there was another rustle and it was gone. A field mouse.

  We waited in deep silence so that I thought my heartbeat was loud enough for the others to hear. My hands clutching a long-handled scythe grew slippery with sweat, so I laid it down and wiped my palms on the seat of my breeches. Then came the call of a barn owl from the far end of the settlement. Three times. Then a pause. Then three times more. It was the signal that the others had reached their appointed spot. Tom gave a nod, which we could just make out in the dim light, and we rose to our feet.

  Now we were running towards that large house. My task was to reach up with the scythe and pull down the thatch, while Tom and the others attacked the main timbers of the frame with axes, except Robin who was wielding a pick to prise off the plaster infill. This was not one of the houses which had shown a light, so the people must all be abed. Somewhere up under the thatch, I thought, as I tugged helplessly at it. I seemed to make no impression. The noise the others were making would soon rouse the whole settlement.

  Then I felt my scythe snag on the binding of the thatch and catch firm hold. I dragged at the scythe with all the strength I could muster and suddenly bundles of thatch were cascading down around me. It was the dried reed thatch we use in the Fens and it is apt to be dusty. As I was showered with it, I began to cough. Next to me Robin had prised away one large section of plaster and started on another. To my shame, I began to feel excited with the glory of destruction. We would drive out these people who dared to set up their houses on our fields!