by Ann Swinfen
‘Petticoat government,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll not take my orders from a woman.’
‘You need not concern yourselves,’ Will said calmly. ‘I’ll see to it while you drive your own beasts home.’
They did not try to argue further, for at that moment a great shout went up from the football game and the rest of the section of fence fell down. Hoping the noise did not mean the game was over, I helped Nehemiah pull the remaining planks to one side, so the animals would come to no harm, while Will and the other two men made their way cautiously into the yard.
The noise of the crowd had started up again – luckily, for the animals were milling about in distress, making plenty of noise themselves. We could only hope the guards would think they were disturbed by the game. Nehemiah let Jasper off his lead and I whistled to him, sending him to round up the sheep. The foolish creatures were running from one side of the yard to the other, but Jasper soon had them gathered together and heading for the gap in the fence. Once they were through and Nehemiah was helping the dog sort our sheep from those belonging to Crowthorne, I darted into the yard and found Blackthorn. She lowed plaintively, butting her head against my chest. I put an arm round her neck.
‘Come, girl,’ I said. ‘Good girl. We’re going home.’
As I led her out of the yard, all the other cows followed, as they will do when they are driven in for milking, the local cows as well as those from our village. As we reached the fence there was another loud burst of shouting and some of the cows shied away. Will, coming up behind with one of the other men, spread out his arms. Between them they turned the cows back and they followed me into the field. Nehemiah was already halfway across it with Jasper, herding our sheep into the mist. The Crowthorne man who had complained of me was driving the rest of the sheep off in the opposite direction.
There were about twenty cows altogether, twelve belonging to our village. The local man and I soon sorted them, while Will began knocking the fence roughly together again. Before he turned away, the local man gave me what amounted to a smile in Crowthorne.
‘I’m sorry for what Ephraim said. You’re a brave lass.’
I grinned back. ‘Perhaps our villages have more in common than we thought. We must all stand up to these enclosers.’
‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘Good luck to you. I hope you come home safe.’
Almost at once he was lost in the mist. I stowed my billhook away in my satchel and took out a length of rope. The cows were already beginning to wander off, enjoying the taste of fresh grass after being held in the cobbled yard. I passed a loop around Blackthorn’s neck, making sure it would not tighten and throttle her. I remembered suddenly Abel Forrester and his talk of sailors’ knots. The other end of the rope I tied to my left stirrup.
‘Are you done?’ I asked Will.
‘Nearly. You get on your way. I’ll follow you and see none of them stray.’
He gave me a leg up and went back to his fence. As I turned Blaze to follow the edge of the field where Nehemiah had gone before, Blackthorn began to plod after me. Our other three cows fell in behind her, then five or six more. I hoped the others would follow or that Will would be able to find them, for the mist was thickening into a true fog now. I had explained the route to him, which Jack and I had worked out.
I was forced to keep Blaze down to a cow’s pace, although every instinct shrieked to me to get away from there as rapidly as possible. In some ways the mist would help, hiding us if anyone came looking soon, but it would be easy to lose some of the animals. I was glad I had thought to bring Jasper, for he would be able to round up any stray sheep which Nehemiah could not see. For myself, I was forced to depend on the cows’ natural instinct to follow one another. They would also have some homing instinct, wanting to return to their own farms, but I was not sure whether they would sense the way, being so far from their own village.
The noise of the football game was fading away, either because it was muffled by the fog or because it had become impossible for the teams to see, forcing them to abandon it. As soon as it was over and the crowds dispersed peacefully, the soldiers were bound to resume their duties. Would they notice at once that the animals were gone, or would the thick fog lead them to believe that they were simply huddled in some corner? It had been a large farmyard. The soldiers might just patrol the outside and – seeing no break in the fence – would not realise what had happened until the mist cleared or someone came to feed the animals.
As we were crossing the second field, Blackthorn stumbled, and I realised that my anxiety had made me increase Blaze’s pace. I stopped, so that she could recover, then moved on again, slowly, slowly. It was impossible to see more than one cow behind her now. I could only put my faith in the dull persistence of kine.
At the end of the second field I opened the gate, which Nehemiah must have closed. I left it open for the cows still following. Now we were in the third and last field, one belonging to our village. Nearly home. One of the cows loomed up out of the fog and passed me at the shambling trot a cow can manage when she chooses. This was one, perhaps, who sensed home was near. Blaze and I groped our way forward after her, already swallowed up in the fog. Even Blackthorn was picking up the pace now, crowding behind Blaze so that he jigged sideways and flicked his tail in annoyance.
The gate into the village street wavered into sight. It was closed, with the cow leaning over it, mooing anxiously. Two figures loomed up and opened the gate. I saw that one was Nehemiah. The other, to my surprise, was Rafe’s father, leaning on his stick.
‘This is one of ours,’ Master Cox said. He looked up at me, his expression a comical mixture of disapproval and relief. ‘Have you all the cows?’
‘I hope so. It’s difficult to tell in this fog. Most of them were following me and Will was chasing up the stragglers.’ I turned to Nehemiah. ‘Are the sheep safe?’
‘Aye, all herded back into the glebe land. Thanks to Jasper here.’ He reached down and patted the dog. ‘I’d have lost a few but for him.’
‘Best let me through,’ I said, for they were blocking the gate. ‘The cows are crowding my horse.’
We counted them as they came through the gate. Including the Coxes’ cow, which had ambled off toward their house, there were ten.
‘Aye, I thought two had wandered off,’ I said. ‘I hope Will has been able to find them in all this.’ I waved my hand at the blanket of fog.
Our own four cows stayed placidly near me, tearing at the grass verge. Master Cox drove off two to their owner at the end of the street, while Nehemiah led one to the yel-hus and another two to Jack’s house. Still there was no sign of Will. Nehemiah returned and leaned on the gate, while Blaze fidgeted under me. I was beginning to worry.
‘I hope the soldiers have not caught Will. Apart from three sheep, none of the stock are his, but we needed him to fix the fence.’
I told Nehemiah what we had done after he left.
‘Some fool,’ he said, ‘that fellow from Crowthorne. “I’ll not take my orders from a woman.” ’ He imitated the man’s surly tone.
I laughed. ‘The other fellow apologised for him. He won’t be the first to object to petticoat government. Or the last. There have been pamphlets written and published, giving dire warnings against upstart women who forget their place, now that the world is turned upside down.’
He was silent for a while. ‘Have you thought what you will do, Mistress Mercy? Now that Tom cannot work the farm?’
‘I don’t know. For now, we must just survive the winter if we can. In the future? I do not know. With Father dead, the farm is Tom’s now. He must decide.’
‘Would you run the place yourself?’
‘Do you think I could?’
‘What have you been doing, lass, ever since you recovered from what they did to you in Lincoln? Aye, I believe you could run the farm.’
‘Would you stay? Or would you rather go back to a holding of your own? You are like family now.’
He looked down and sh
uffled his boots. ‘I’d be glad to stay,’ he said gruffly, ‘if you want me.’
‘Hey!’ A voice came out of the fog. ‘I heard voices. Is the gate there?’
‘Will!’ I called. ‘Jesu be thanked! We feared you were taken.’
He materialised out of the fog like a ghost, driving two cows before him with a hazel switch. He was mired up to the waist in mud, his boots squelching with every step.
‘What has happened? You look half drowned.’
‘That b’yer lady cow of Rafe’s!’ He pointed his stick menacingly at the cow which was pushing past Blaze through the gate. I saw that she was muddied halfway up her sides.
‘She led me a merry dance, right down to the far side of that second field. And it’s all gone to bog.’
‘Bog?’ I said. ‘There was never bog there before.’
‘Well, there is now. It has started to flood, weeks before time, and by the look of it, I’d say it hasn’t just happened. The works over that way have turned the water.’ He looked around. ‘Jesu, where’s that cow now?’
‘Headed home,’ Nehemiah said. ‘Whose is this other one?’
‘The widow Peterson’s,’ I said. Can you take her back, Will? I want to get our cows home before our soldiers come back.’
We parted, Will herded the last cow down the village street while I headed Blaze up the lane towards the farm, leading Blackthorn, Nehemiah and Jasper following behind and urging the cows along when they showed signs of stopping to graze.
At last a faint glow from the kitchen window showed where the farm lay through the fog. Nehemiah drove the cows into the barn, while I removed Blaze’s tack and fed him.
Tom and Kitty looked up expectantly as we came in, kicking off muddy boots. For the first time I realised that my clothes were sodden from the dense fog. I stood with my back to the fire and began to steam like a kettle.
‘Done?’ said Tom.
‘Done,’ I said. ‘Now we see what will happen when they find their stolen animals gone.’
Chapter Fifteen
Jack arrived soon after Nehemiah and I had finished the milking, though the four cows which had been impounded gave little milk, still distressed after their ordeal and the long walk home. After we had bedded them down and I had checked again on Blaze, we crossed the yard by the light of a rush lamp just as Jack rode through the gate. He followed us into the house.
In the brighter light, he was a sorry sight. His right eye was blackened, his upper lip burst and bloody, his clothes torn and dusty. But his eyes were alight with triumph.
He clapped me on the back as if I were one of the village lads, though I was now decently dressed again in clean skirt and bodice, my apron as white as the milk in my bucket. ‘We have beaten those bastards,’ he said, ‘begging your pardon, Mercy, Kitty.’ He looked around and saw that my mother was not there, for she had taken to her bed early, confusing the dark of a December evening with the middle of the night.
‘We certainly got the stock safely away, but how went the football game?’ I said. ‘I think you have suffered.’
‘Nothing to speak of. We kept it going until you couldn’t see from one end of the street to the other. In the end we let them win, when we thought you must be safe away. We must challenge them to another game, and this time we will beat them fair and square.’
‘I doubt Reverend Edgemont will permit another game,’ Tom said, with a wry smile. ‘I am surprised he allowed this one to go forward.’
‘They told him nothing about it. It was only when all the crowds gathered that he realised what was happening, and by then it was too late to stop it.’
He turned to me. ‘You had no trouble, then, Mercy?’
‘One of the Crowthorne men took exception to a woman being of the party, but that was all. Will mended the gap in the fence before we left, so it should be some time before they discover how the stock escaped.’
‘In this fog, that will take some days.’
‘Two of the cows strayed on the way back, but Will rounded them up. He says that middle field is turned to bog at the far side.’
‘You didn’t mention that.’ Tom turned a worried look to me.
‘I haven’t had time. He thinks the drainage works over at Crowthorne have already caused flooding. Jesu knows what will happen when the winter floods come.’
They digested that in silence.
‘We could attack the works again,’ Jack said slowly.
Tom shook his head. ‘I cannot think that would achieve much. No one can know now how the water will behave. We must wait and see, once winter brings our normal floods. Then we will know where the drainers have caused the most damage, concentrate on those parts of the works.’
‘Perhaps you are right.’
Nehemiah nodded. ‘Before all this happened, we always knew where the water would flow, and where was safe. Now everything is a mystery, in God’s hands.’
‘What I do not understand,’ I said, ‘is where Sir John stands in all of this. It was back in the spring, after Father and the others went to see him, that he said he had written to his lawyer. Surely there was that ancient charter which guaranteed our rights to the commons in perpetuity? The commons cannot mean so much to him as they do to us, for they form only a small part of his estate. But he does have some common rights. Does he not want to protect those?’
‘I’ve long thought Sir John never wrote to his lawyer,’ said Tom.
‘And I.’ Jack nodded.
‘But why?’
Tom gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Perhaps, like Cromwell, he has turned his coat. Perhaps he has shares in this drainage project.’
‘Do you really think so?’ I was shocked. I knew Edmund Dillingworth for what he was, but I had always believed Sir John was an honest man and as lord of the manor would protect the people of this area.
‘It could be so. We shall know, someday, if we see him take over our stolen land. There would be more profit to him in owning the land outright than in his small share of the commons.’
I studied Tom without responding. These days the fight seemed to have gone out of him. I could not imagine how it must be to have lost a leg, but I suppose he felt unmanned, as well as weak and frustrated. And still in pain. He spent most of his time sitting in our father’s great chair beside the fire. Although he could, with some difficulty, manage to help with the milking, he seldom offered now, leaving it to Nehemiah and me. He told me once that he was still aware of his leg, as if it were there. He would feel a pain in his calf or an itch in his foot, and bending over would discover, as if for the first time, that the leg was gone.
That evening our soldiers returned much later than usual. As I served them their supper, bacon and turnips warmed over, with bread I had made fresh that morning, I heard them discussing their day.
‘They need not have kept us searching in the dark,’ Seth said. ‘As if we could find anything in this thick fog and a night as black as a bag over your head.’
‘Aye,’ said Ben, the jug-eared boy. ‘But that was a fine football game before! Best I’ve ever seen, and we’ve had a few in London.’
‘I wonder whether they knew there was to be a game,’ Aaron said. ‘And got the animals away while we were watching.’
‘But we never left the gate of the pound,’ Ben said. ‘How did they get past us?’
The other man shrugged. ‘Witchcraft?’
George, I noticed, did not join in the discussion.
‘Anyway,’ Ben said with a sigh, ‘they will have us hunting again to tomorrow, so I heard tell.’
George turned to me. ‘Mistress Bennington, these fogs on the Fens, how long do they last?’
I considered. ‘When the ground is already as wet as it is, and at this time of year, it could last four or five days. Perhaps as long as a week.’
‘You see,’ said Ben, ‘they’ll have us out there in this blasted fog, going round in circles, and we’ll find nothing.’
Indeed I hope not, I thought.
Later in the evening, when I was about to bolt the door and go upstairs, I caught sight of a lantern moving back across the yard from the barn. One of the soldiers must still be abroad, though everyone else in the household had gone to bed. I sat down to wait. I could hear Tom thumping about in the small bedroom and occasionally cursing, but by now I knew better than to offer to help him.
George came in. He bolted the door and blew out his lamp, then sat down across the table from me.
‘I have washed down the cows’ legs,’ he said. ‘They were covered in mud and would have given you away. Cows kept in a barn for the winter would not be caked in mud.’
I stared at him. ‘You knew!’
‘I guessed. Then I counted the cows and found the right number restored, with four of them bearing traces of a muddy journey. Do not worry.’ He smiled at me. ‘I’ll tell no one. It was cleverly done. I doff my cap to you.’
‘How did you know about me?’
‘Oh, I have heard of your exploits. You have nothing but my admiration.’
‘You may get into trouble.’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t intend to stay around to get into trouble. I’m going home. I miss my wife and children.’
‘But how can you?’
‘By rights, my term of service is up.’
‘By rights, the common lands belong to us. The rights of poor people are worth little. If you go without leave, it will be desertion. You could hang.’
He spread out his hands in a gesture of despair. ‘I never sought to join the army, and when I was forced to, I thought: Very well, we are fighting the King to better the lot of the ordinary people of England. But now, is our lot any better? Look what is happening here in the Fens. And the men behind it nowadays are not courtiers and aristocrats. They are the very men who told us soldiers that we were fighting for freedom.’ His tone was bitter.
‘I’m going, and going soon, while the fog lasts. I can slip away from the search party and head south for Middlesex.’
‘George.’ I reached across the table and laid my hand on his arm. ‘South of here lie nothing but Fens, and the Fens are dangerous, never more dangerous than in the fog. Even a fenlander would not try to cross the Fens in fog. You must not run the risk.’