by Ann Swinfen
He shook his head. ‘I’m a countryman, Mistress Mercy. I can find my way.’
I kept trying to make him understand, but he was stubborn and would not listen.
The next day the soldiers were away early to join the parties searching for the missing stock and Nehemiah went off to Peterborough market. At the farm we went quietly about our daily business. I checked the four cows and saw that George had made an excellent job of washing them clean. The fog continued to lie heavily over the land, a thick sea fog rolling in from the German Ocean with a taste of salt and seaweed in it. It lay like a sodden blanket over our wetlands. With a winter sky above and a watery landscape below, the fog had nowhere to go. Everything outside was dripping. Indoors the fog seemed to penetrate the very rooms and fill our lungs.
The one excitement all day was a raid by a fox on my hens. Slipping in under cover of the fog, it managed to carry off one of my best layers. Although the panicked cries from the birds sent me running outside, I was too late. I caught a glimpse of a white-tipped tail vanishing under the gate before the predator was lost to sight. In case he decided to come back, I shut the hens away for the rest of the day.
The soldiers returned earlier than usual, soaked to the skin and out of temper. Five of them.
‘Finally saw sense,’ Col said, ‘those bastard officers. Realised we’d find nothing in this blasted fog.’
Four of the soldiers stamped upstairs to change into dry clothes.
‘Bring your wet things down,’ I called after them. ‘You can dry them by the kitchen fire.’
Ben had lingered. He watched me as I began to set up the loom. I had promised to teach Kitty to weave and these long winter evenings were as good a time as any.
‘Mistress Mercy,’ he said, squeezing his wet cap nervously between his hands so that water dripped on the floor.
‘Aye?’
‘George has not come back with us.’
‘I noticed.’
‘I’m feared he may have done what he threatened. Deserted and headed for home.’
I dropped the heddle rod I was holding and turned to him.
‘What? Are you sure? I warned him the Fens are dangerous.’
‘You knew as well, then.’
‘He told me last night that he wanted to go home. It’s Middlesex he comes from, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Aye. Is that south of here?’
‘South, but with miles of Fens to cross first.’
‘I think he’s gone.’ The boy looked pathetic, his great ears red with the cold and his nose dripping. He was not so stupid after all, and he had a kind heart.
‘You get out of those wet clothes. I’ll see what I can find out.’
As soon as he had gone upstairs I turned to Tom, who had been listening to all this.
‘What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘Why should we care what becomes of him? One less mouth for us to feed.’
‘George is a decent man. And we are in debt to him.’
I told Tom about my conversation with George the night before, and how he had washed down the cows, so that they should not give us away. He gave a whistle and grinned.
‘That was clever of him. And a kindness. I suppose many of these soldiers do not care for this present posting.’
I untied my apron and took down my cloak.
‘I’m going to ride into the village and see whether anyone there has seen him. And try to get help to search for him.’
‘You are not planning to go out into the Fen – in this fog!’
‘Someone has to. If he has set off heading south he’ll be in the Fen as soon as he crosses the pasture. I warned him, but I don’t think he believed me. I’ll see if Jack or Toby will come with me.’
‘Mercy!’ Tom said as I opened the door. ‘I forbid you to go!’
I closed it softly behind me, pretending I had not heard.
I did not bother to saddle Blaze, but rode him bareback down to the village. If George was out on the Fen, every minute counted. The news I gathered there was as I feared. The soldiers billeted at the Coxes’ house said that the six men billeted with us had all set out along the lane to the farm, but they had noticed one lingering behind the others. Six had set out and only five had arrived. George had given the others the slip somewhere between the village and the farm. That meant almost certainly that he had taken the branch of the lane that led to the pasture and the drainers’ rebuilt pumping mill, where Hannah’s cottage had once stood.
I went next to Jack’s house, where he lived with his widowed mother. They were just sitting down to an early supper and invited me to join them. I shook my head, explaining why I had come. Jack stared at me incredulously.
‘You want me to come and search the Fen in this fog, for a missing soldier? After all they have done to us? Mercy, what have we been fighting for?’
‘This soldier is different,’ I said. ‘Forced to join the army, forced to stay on past his term. He just wants to get home to his family. Besides, he has helped us.’
Once again I explained how George had concealed the evidence of our muddy cows.
‘Jesu!’ said Jack. ‘I never thought of that! I must wash down our Bessie and White-Leg.’
‘So will you come with me? You know the Fen as well as anyone, except Nehemiah, and he is not back from Peterborough market yet.’
Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Mercy, but I will not come. If it were one of us, I would, but not for some soldier.’
‘One of us would not go out on the Fen.’
‘More fool him. I’m afraid he will already be drowned by this, you must know that. It is an hour at least since the soldiers came through.’
‘Then I shall have to go alone.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Mercy!’ He scrambled to his feet, knocking over his stool, while his mother sat gaping at the pair of us.
I ignored him and ran from the house. He was right. George could already have drowned. There was no time to waste trying to persuade someone else to go with me, only to find this same hostility to the soldiers. I used the milestone outside Jack’s cottage as a mounting block and set Blaze cantering back up the lane to the farm.
Back at home I shut Blaze hastily in the barn, not even stopping to take off his bridle. I knew Nehemiah would notice it when he came home. In the kitchen I paused only to change into my high winter boots and to collect the rope I had used to tie Bluebell to my stirrup.
‘Well?’ said Tom. ‘What has happened? Has he deserted? In anyone from the village coming?’ He began to struggle to his feet.
‘Later,’ I said. ‘Stay there.’ I caught up a lantern with one of our precious wax candles and flint and tinder. ‘Come on, Jasper.’ I whistled, and the dog followed me out of the house.
Out in the yard I struggled to light the lantern, but my hands were shaking so much it took me four tries. I knew that what I was doing was foolish, dangerous, but I was driven on by a sense that somehow I owed this to God, who had sent Abel Forrester to save me when all hope was lost. It was my time to repay the debt.
I tied one end of the rope to Jasper’s collar and knotted the other around my waist. A dog has a better sense of safety in the Fen than any human being and I did not want to lose contact with him. Then we were through the gate and running by the short way I had so often taken in the past to Hannah’s cottage. If George had followed the lane from the village, I had some hope of shortening the distance between us, though he would still be ahead of me. Even knowing the way as well as I did, I stumbled several times and fell once, extinguishing the lantern. It took me even longer this time to relight it.
Wait! I said to myself. This will get you nowhere.
I stopped a moment to slow my breathing and think calmly. No roads ran south of the village, only the lane that petered out at the pasture. Normally anyone wanting to travel south would go north first to Crowthorne, then across to the Roman road which led to Lincoln, but would turn south there, instead of north. The Romans had built
it on a high causeway, a ramper skirting the fenland. George, however, would not go that way, past the army camp, where he would be seen and stopped. He was a countryman and believed he could travel cross-country, avoiding the roads. Despite my warnings, he clearly thought the Fen was no more difficult country than his own Middlesex. I knew nothing about Middlesex, except that it was near London. I imagined it to be a rolling countryside of neat little farms and tidy woodlands. What could a man like George know of our vast acres of peat bog interspersed with chains of ponds and larger meres? What looked like solid ground could tremble as soon as you stepped on it and suck you down in minutes. As children we were brought up on tales of men sinking into the Fen, never to be seen again. And there were boggarts and jack-a-lanthorns and ghosts out there. Safe indoors by the fireside it was easy to enjoy the tales Hannah used to tell, not quite believing in them. But out on the Fen, it was a different matter.
I slowed my pace to a fast walk and managed to avoid any more falls before I reached the pasture. I crossed it carefully, avoiding the new ditch. The pasture seemed much wider than usual when I could not see across it, then suddenly the pumping mill loomed up in front of me, like one of Hannah’s boggarts. I gave a yelp before I realised what it was. The sails hung motionless in the still air, reaching out like great arms overhead. In the heavy fog, with no breath of wind stirring, the pump would not be working. Had the drainers thought of that? It would mean that, at the moment, water was not being pumped out of the Fen. It might even mean that water which had been pumped into the new ditch would drain back. Even as a fenlander, I could not be sure. The ways of water are mysterious, no one really understands them. If the mill had dried out this end of the Fen, the level of the peat moor might have sunk, because it was said that the new drainage schemes caused the peat to shrink. In that case, water from the meres might flow over the shrunken peat and change the whole landscape of the Fen. On the other hand, if the fact that the mill had stopped pumping meant that water had flowed back over the lowered level of the peat, that too would have altered everything.
I had been into the Fen in daylight, in summer, with Hannah to fetch herbs that grew there and I tried now to picture in my mind the pattern of safe ground one could follow. The pasture lay on slightly raised ground, not more than a foot above the level of the Fen beyond, but just behind where Hannah’s cottage had stood there was the beginning of a path, reinforced with ancient woven hurdles, preserved by the dark peaty water. Hannah used to say that the path had been made by fairies, but Gideon said it was the work of our ancient ancestors who had first settled this land long ago.
No, I must not think of either Hannah or Gideon.
Calling back Jasper, who had been investigating some interesting scent, I skirted the mill and raised my lantern. The light barely reached a few yards, reflected back weirdly off the fog. Everything was changed since the cottage had been demolished and the cider apple tree cut down. Then I saw the two large, flat boulders which formed steps down from the edge of the pasture to the path.
Sending a prayer for help up into the grey mass overhead, I stepped down into the Fen.
Would George have investigated the way south? Despite his refusal to take seriously my warnings about the dangers of the Fen, I though he was, on the whole, a careful man. Only a careful man, with foresight, would have thought to wash the mud off our cows. A careful man, with foresight, would have found an opportunity to investigate the first part of his route south.
Jasper was sniffing eagerly along the line of the path reinforced by the hurdles. He tugged at the rope and I followed him. Although I could see only about six feet in front of me, I knew I could follow the path for about half a mile into the Fen. I had never been further than that with Hannah and did not know how far it extended. At first the path seemed the same as I had remembered it, but then we reached a great patch of liquid mud which spread in all directions, hiding the path.
I stopped. Jasper tugged at me again, sniffed again at something on the ground. Squatting down beside him, I held the lantern over the mud. There was a trail of fresh footprints. They must have been made by George. No one else would have come this way, in this weather. And they were indeed fresh, because the mud was so wet that water was already filling up and obscuring the prints. Cautiously I stood up again and began to follow them. The path must lie beneath this part of the mud, because it had borne his weight, therefore it would take mine. I followed slowly, keeping a sharp eye on the prints, which were fading fast.
Then, to my horror, I saw that the prints led to a great scrabbling in the mud, where they had sunk in deeply. I groped around until I found a stone and tossed it into the middle of the disturbed ground. There was a sucking noise and the stone disappeared from sight. I realised that I had been holding my breath and let it out in a gasp. Jasper had run ahead, vanishing into the fog. The rope stretched between us, and I gave thanks to God that I had thought to bring it. Sliding my feet carefully ahead of me, one by one, along the line of the rope, I followed the dog, skirting the churned area of mud. The ground, for the moment, was firm under my feet. Had George been sucked into the bog, like the stone?
Ahead, Jasper had sat down and was waiting for me, looking as pleased as if he were out for a normal walk. Then I saw, half-hidden by his tail, more of the footprints. George must have managed to regain his footing and found the path again. Slowly we resumed our careful walk. We came to the end of the mud slurry. In the dark and fog I could not be sure, but I thought the path continued for some way yet, though here the ground was the usual deceptive rough grass and moss, interspersed with the clumps of the taller fen grass that we call hassocks and which we dry for lighting fires. This is the terrain which is so dangerous, because what looks like firm ground can collapse beneath your feet. As there was no more of the wet mud, there were no more footprints, so I was not even sure whether I was following George, though I could still sense the hurdles beneath my feet, from the way they bounced slightly when stepped on.
I also sensed that it was getting darker. In the fog it had been dull all day, but now whatever winter light had been in the sky above the fog was seeping away. Soon I would have true darkness to contend with as well as the Fen and the fog. Slowly I felt my way further along the path. Now it curved to the right, on the very edge of a large mere. A moorhen, startled by us, gave a loud cry and flew up from the water. This was as far as I had been with Hannah. We would come here to gather the mare-blobs that grew along the fringes of this mere. She used them in several of her cures, saying they were a sovereign remedy for many ills.
Did the path go any further? When I had discussed the path with Gideon all those months ago, I had said that I thought it might have been made by those ancient people so that they might fish in the mere, but he disagreed.
‘Why go to all that trouble, when there is easier fishing nearer to hand? No, there must have been some other reason. Perhaps they thought it was a place sacred to one of their pagan gods. Did you not say there is an island in the mere? Very remote and inaccessible?’
I remembered that now. I could not see as far as the island, but the thought of some ancient, terrible god frightened me. I crossed myself in the old way, which would have had Reverend Edgemont damning me as a recusant.
‘Jesu, protect me,’ I whispered. And I crossed my fingers against any evil lurking here. Yet somehow the remembered sound of Gideon’s voice steadied me. I could hear it now, as clearly as if he stood beside me in the cold and fog. His voice was warm and reassuring, wrapping me round. I had the strength to do this, I told myself. There are no evil spirits here, only the memories of ancient times. And the only dangers are the physical ones, the sink holes of the bog.
I knew the path went a little further and felt my way along it, round the bank of the mere. I still had a horrible feeling that I was being watched, either from that unseen island or from behind the clump of sedges that grew on the bank, with their feet in the water, but I scolded myself and went on, one cautious step aft
er the other.
Then Jasper, running enthusiastically down to the edge of the mere, startled another moorhen, which rose with a clap of its wings, disturbing other roosting birds.
Suddenly, I thought I heard a faint call in the distance ahead of me.
‘George!’ I shouted, holding up the lantern. ‘George, are you there? It’s Mercy Bennington.’
My voice seemed to bounce off the fog, echoing around me. The call came again, but seemed to come from a different place. Not only was the fog blinding me, it was distorting sounds.
‘Jasper, seek, boy.’
I patted him on the rump encouragingly. He stood up and trotted off into the fog. I lost sight of him at once, for it was much darker now, but the tug on the rope guided me to him.
‘George, where are you?’
‘Here.’
This time I heard him more clearly. Jasper seemed to be heading in the right direction, but we were moving away from the part of the path I knew.
‘Easy, Jasper.’ I prodded the ground with the toe of my boot. It squelched and sucked. No hurdles here. We had come to the end of the path. The dog pulled again, but I held him back, feeling my way cautiously forward. Ground that would support a dog might not support me.
‘Mercy?’ The voice was much nearer now.
‘I’m coming. I have to feel my way.’
‘Be careful. I’m in the bog.’
Jesu. Was he sinking?
Suddenly Jasper stopped. I held up my lantern. The spit of ground on which we stood was surrounded on three sides with sodden peat and water. One step on to that and we would both be drawn down into the Fen. Where was George?
‘Here.’
I turned. The light from my lantern just reached to an isolated hassock rising up from the peat. George was sitting there, clinging on to the long grass. Between us stretched impassable bog.