Sackett's Land (1974)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 01

  There was an opening in the gathering crowd. I took it. There was a space between the houses, I went through it. There was an open lane under the trees. I went down it.

  Many were my faults, but lack of decision was not one of them. Why Genester, if such was his name, had struck me I did not know, unless he feared contamination of his lady by one of such modest birth as myself.

  He had struck me, and worst of all, I struck him back, knocked him down, and to compound my errors, I laughed at him, as his lady had laughed. In his place I might have been furious, too.

  Decision had been imperative. My actions had been purely reflex, instinctive responses. To strike was to parry, to parry was to thrust … these impulses lay in my muscles and that part of my brain that directed them. When he came up from the ground he had intended to kill me.

  As I ran, someone came abreast of me. “This way!” he gasped. “Through the trees!”

  Great old trees bordered the lane. He dodged between them and led the way across an open field. We walked a while to catch our wind.

  “I have a horse,” he said.

  Beside a tumbled ruin, within a shady place, his horse grazed. I did not ask why he had left his horse hidden in such a place. But for the first time I did get a good look at the man who was helping me escape.

  He was a slender, wiry man, not yet so tall as me, of sallow complexion, eyes black and deep-sunk. He looked to be a shrewd and careful man. He carried a sword, which at the moment I envied, and a Florentine dagger. Its mate was in my cottage near Isleham, on the fens.

  “One horse?” I asked.

  “We will take turns, running and riding. We can travel quite fast.”

  He insisted that I mount, and I did. We emerged from the hidden place and into another lane, he trotting alongside and clinging to the stirrup-leather. When we had gone a half-mile we changed places, me running alongside.

  During one such change he said to me, “I regret I can offer no place where we would be safe. This land is strange to me.”

  “Worry not over that,” I told him. “I have such a place, where none will follow.”

  My thoughts had been busy. Who in Stamford might know me? None but Hasling and his housekeeper, and not even they knew where lay my home. Not many people traveled so there was a goodly chance none of those who had witnessed my deed had seen me before, or my village. Yet if such there was, once I reached the fens I was lost to them.

  For the fens were a vast area of lowlying ground, of shallow lakes and winding waterways, impassable swamps with here and there limestone outcroppings that created small islands, often with clumps of birch or ancient oaks.

  From a distance the fens were deceptively flat and uninteresting, but once down in the winding waterways, they proved anything but that. For there were clumps of willow and alder, or tall reeds that permitted boats to move about almost unseen. The scattered islands in the vastness of the fens were mostly secret, a knowledge reserved for fen-men alone, places of refuge in time of trouble. Most of the waterways were hidden by reeds up to ten feet tall.

  Bog myrtle, bladderwort, marsh fern, saw sedge and dozens of varieties of plants and shrubs grew there, and we of the fens knew them all. It was there the Iceni had gone to escape the attacks of northern sea-rovers who invaded the land by sailing up the Ouse or the Cam.

  Our fens were sparsely inhabited by a clannish lot who cared not for outsiders coming to our watery world.

  We left Lincolnshire behind, my companion and I, traveling devious ways. I led the way to Thorney, a lovely village with a great old abbey and many sheltered places where a man might keep from sight. We had no desire to leave behind us those who might speak of our passing.

  In a wooded copse, a hollow among the hills, we built a small fire and tethered our horse.

  “I am Barnabas Sackett,” I said. “I have a place on the edge of the fens. We will go there.”

  “I am Jublain. My family, it is said, came from Mayenne, but that was long ago. I am from nowhere in particular.”

  “A man is what he is.”

  “A profound saying. You have the manner and the shoulders of a fighting man. You are a soldier?”

  “I am a farmer. I have a small holding.”

  “You moved swiftly. It was beautiful, Barnabas … beautiful!”

  “He would have killed me.”

  “He would that. It was in his eye when he came up from the mud. He did not like being made ridiculous, and not knowing you, I thought you were a dead man.”

  From his saddlebags he took a chunk of bread and broke it in two, handing the half to me. It was old bread and hard, but it tasted well, very well.

  “I have no wine.” He glanced at me. “I have eaten little these past few weeks. These are bitter times for a masterless man.”

  “Wait. We will have enough to eat.”

  “They will search for you. You know that?”

  “Do you know aught of the fens? They’ll not find me, not in a hundred years. Mile upon mile of deep marsh, willows, alders, and channels. Places where you can walk for several hundred yards, then drop through the grass into a hole large enough to take a cathedral. We will go there.”

  I paused, considering. “Yet I do not believe any in Stamford knew me. I was there on business.”

  “And he whom you saw on business? He will not speak?”

  “I think not. He seemed a good man, but one who would keep silent. And there is reason for his silence, a good reason.”

  He looked at me but I did not explain. One does not tell a stranger with a dagger and a sword that one has gold.

  “Still, a man of your size, with your skill at arms …”

  “Nobody knows my skill. Not even my friends. My father taught me at home when none were about. There are few who know me. Some know I own land; most only that I have worked in the quarries.”

  “Your father was a soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  “A neat parry,” Jublain muttered. “I’d have taken you for a swordsman.”

  “I am a farmer,” I insisted, “planning to buy a cow and a few acres more.”

  “Acow ?” Jublain was scornful. “In your position I’d choose a blade. You’ll have more need of it, for all your swamps.”

  “I have a sword, and no good it does me, hanging upon the wall. In truth, three of them I have, a halberd as well, a brace of pistols and a fowling piece.”

  “What kind of a farmer are you who goes armed like a pirate?”

  “My father took the weapons in battle. One sword was given him by a great Earl.”

  “A likely tale!”

  “An Earl,” I replied with dignity, “who would have died had not my father stood over him on the field and slain nine enemies who would have killed him as he lay helpless. The Earl gave him a sword, a purse of gold with which he bought our land, and promises which I have forgotten.”

  “It is as well. Such men are free with promises and freer at forgetting them.”

  “I have the sword.”

  “You’d best wear it, then.”

  “A farmer with a sword? Folk would think me daft.”

  “Better daft than dead. You’ve made an enemy, my friend, who will neither forgive nor forget. My advice is carry the sword, charge the pistols, and sleep not too well.”

  We talked long, then slept. But before the light of dawn, we were upon our way. Then I led him into the fens, and a long way it was, by such routes as only then fen-men knew.

  I had no fear of pursuit. A step or two to right or left might put a man over his head in an ugly tangle of roots, floating plants and decaying, matted reeds. But there were safe and certain ways to be followed by the knowing, and the grass had a way of springing back up when one passed, leaving no trail to be followed by a stranger.

  Three days we traveled before reaching my cottage, and a neat place it was, my father being a man of judgment in such matters. The cottage was of four rooms, large for its time, with a stable for animals separate from the
house. The cottage was of limestone quarried on the spot, with a roof of deep thatch, tight and well made.

  “A tidy place,” Jublain said, “a right tidy place.”

  When I had lighted a candle he looked at the swords on the wall. First was the gift from the Earl, a straight, double-edged weapon with a good point. The second a Turkish scimitar, engraved and beautiful, and the third a falchion, broad-bladed, incredibly sharp.

  “You did not lie,” Jublain admitted reluctantly. “These are blades!”

  “My father took the scimitar from a Turk at Lepanto. He was also at the victory over the French at Saint-Quentin, and at the Battle of Zutphen. There were others … many others.”

  “That’s a spread of years,” Jublain acknowledged.

  “He went to the wars at seventeen, and was a soldier until three years before he died. I have heard he was a noted fighting man.”

  There was food enough in the house, meal, cheese, dried fish and the like. I put them together and went to the cool place near the well where I kept my ale.

  Then we sat down to eat.

  If he could fight like he ate, this Jublain was a noted warrior himself; but well as he ate, he drank even better. With a cup of ale in him he talked well of wars and weals and bloody times gone by. The stories were like my father’s tales, but with my father each tale had a point for my instruction; he seemed to know his time was short and he wished to pass on what he could. He wished me not to go unarmed into the world, and warned me to prepare for wily men and wilier women, and to face danger with some knowledge and some art.

  “All this I have learned,” he told me one night, beside our fire, “and much more, but of what further use if I cannot pass it onto you. Learn from me and avoid the scars your soul and mind will take, let alone your body. Profit by what I say, Barnabas, and go on to learn new things, and when you have a son, teach him.”

  “I may not have a son.”

  “Have a son, by all means, but choose the lady well. Breeding counts for much in dogs, horses, and men. Breed for strength, health, and stamina, but for wisdom, too. Your mother was a better person than I, a clear-eyed one who saw to the truth of things, and I see much of you in her.

  “You will see many women, and often you will think yourself in love, but temper passion with wisdom, my son, for sometimes the glands speak louder than the brain. Each man owes a debt to his family, his country and his species to leave sons and daughters who will lead, inspire and create.”

  He was a talker, my father, when we were alone, but sparing of words with others around. When he spoke of wars it was of what had been done, what might have been done, and what he believed should have been done.

  “The art of war can be learned,” he told me. “But after the principles are learned the rest is ingenuity, the gift that goes beyond learning, or the instinct born of understanding.

  “There are good ways and bad ways of attacking fortified positions, of crossing streams under attack, or withdrawing when the situation is no longer favorable.

  “Learn the accepted modes of attack and defense, then use the variations that are your own. Masters of battle know what has already been done, then go beyond it with skill and discretion. Alexander, Hannibal, Belisarius … study them. They were masters.”

  Of these things I spoke to Jublain, and he stared at me. “Your father was only a soldier? He should have been a captain himself.”

  “Captains’ commands go to men of birth. My father was a strong man with a sword … perhaps in another time, another place …”

  “Aye,” Jublain muttered. He took a swallow of ale. “I think sometimes of the lands oversea. If rough soldiers such as Pizarro could do it, why not I? He had no particular birth, no position. He had only courage, will, and a sword.”

  “In a new land,” I agreed, “all things are possible. I have given much thought to this. Perhaps in a new land only achievement would give rank, and not birth. To be born of an eminent family is nothing if you are nothing yourself.”

  “In a new land a man might become a king. He might take hold of land as did the Normans when they came to England, and the Saxons before them.”

  “I do not want to be a king,” I said, “I want only freedom to grow and do and be as much as time will allow.”

  For two days we ate well and lived quietly. Jublain was content to rest, for there were cold, hungry days behind him, and as for me, there was much to do about the place. For months past I had worked in the quarries, with but few nights at home.

  Suddenly my mind seemed to stop still.

  There had been a man at Reach when I worked there … I had glimpsed his face in the crowd at Stamford.

  Now I was uneasy. The man might not remember me, might not tell, might not even know where I came from. Still …

  When Jublain was out of the cottage I took the other coins from their hiding place and hid them in a secret pocket in the seams of my clothing. Mayhap we might abandon this place, and I wished to be ready.

  Then, on the fourth day, a drum of hoofs awakened me before the light. Stepping from my bed I took down the Earl’s sword, then placed it upon the table and stepped outside.

  The air was cool and damp. Fog lay upon the fens, beading my grass with dew and making the grass itself greener where it could be seen at all.

  The drum of hoofs slowed and a rider came down to the fence and stopped at the gate. When he opened the gate and led his horse through, he turned. It was Coveney Hasling.

  He wasted no time. “You are in trouble, lad, serious trouble. You were known to someone and by tomorrow he and other men will have made inquiries at Reach. Then they will come here.”

  “It was good of you to come.”

  “You will need money.” He took a handful of coins from his pocket. “Take this and pay me when you sell what you have, but be gone from here. Into the fens with you.”

  “I shall do that, but you have ridden far. Come … we will eat first. I have found it is better to eat when one can, for one never knows when he will eat again.”

  He tied his horse and entered the cottage with me. Jublain was up, holding a naked sword.

  “Jublain is a soldier,” I explained. “Jublain, my friend from Stamford. He carries a warning.”

  Hasling’s eyes swept the cottage, rested upon the sword. “That will be it, then? The blade given your father by the Earl?”

  “It is,” I said.

  “I know the story,” Hasling said, to my surprise. “I was reminded of it when your name was mentioned. I know a friend of yours.”

  “Of mine?”

  “The man who buys antiquities. He knew your father.”

  “Barnabas has an enemy, too,” Jublain said, irritably. “What of him?”

  “Rupert Genester? An evil man, but one with power in many places. You could have no worse an enemy. He is an ambitious man, an heir, a man filled with pride and hatred. He was laughed at and that he cannot abide.”

  We drank our ale, then Hasling mounted and was gone, returning by a different route that I suggested.

  Standing at the gate, I listened to the beat of hoofs as his horse carried him away. Walking back to the cottage I belted on a sword and dagger. I charged the pistols afresh while Jublain watched me, his eyes bright with irony.

  “You learn quickly.” He emptied his cup.

  We among the fens were an independent lot. We were a people whodid , with contempt for all who did nothing.

  For centuries smugglers had used the fens, bringing their craft up the secret waterways. We paid them no mind, but knew them and their ways. Few of us entered the army, fewer were impressed into the fleet. We went our ways, content with them.

  From a chest I took a casque that had belonged to my father, and the weapons from the walls. I took bacon, hams, dried fruit, cheese, and meal. We loaded them into my punt.

  Returning to close the door of the cottage, I was turning from it when they rushed upon me, a half-dozen armed men. They came at me, and my sword was
out.

  “Kill him! I want himdead ! Do you hear?”

  I heard the shout as they closed, but when battle was joined I was not one to dally about, so I had at them, sidestepping to place one between myself and the others, parrying his thrust and thrusting my own sword home with one movement.

  Quickly withdrawing my blade as the man fell, I had a moment when they hesitated. Shocked to see one of their own die, for they had come to murder a farmer, not to die themselves, they paused, appalled. It was the moment I needed, and with a shout, I went at them.

  I feinted, thrust … the sword went deep. Then they were all about me and my sword was everywhere, parrying, thrusting, knowing I could not continue long, when suddenly there was a shout from behind.

  “Have at them, men!” It was Jublain. “Let not one escape!”

  They broke and fled. Murder is one thing, a fight another. They had the stomach for one, only their heels for the other. They did not wait to see if there were more than two, but fled, unheeding their master’s angry shouts.

  As they fled we ran toward our punt. Three men were down and a fourth had staggered as they fled. I heard a voice call out: “I know you now! I know you forever, and you shall not escape!”

  It was Rupert Genester.

  Chapter 3

  The country of the fens was not so large as most of us believed it to be, but to us it seemed endless, a vast, lowlying, and marshy land where remnants grew of the once great forest that had covered England.

  The Romans, who understood the reclaiming of marshy land, had begun the drainage of the fens, but once they departed the Saxons let the canals fill and the fens return to fens.

  It was said that even now Queen Bess was talking to a Dutch engineer, a man with much experience at draining land below sea level. This we did not oppose, for reclaiming land might make some of us rich.

  Myself, for instance. I owned but a few acres of tillable land, but owned by grant more than two square miles of fen. Once drained, such rich land would make me wealthy.

  Yet I was now a fugitive. Had my case come to trial it might possibly have turned out well for me. Occasionally a commoner won such a case, but the occasions were too rare to make me confident. I had the thought that it would never come to court, for the hand of Rupert Genester could reach even into prison to kill me, easily.