Shadow of the Savernake: Book One of the Taxane Chronicles

by Jayne Hackett

  4

  The Nosey Hog

  ‘Bloody ‘ell!’ Brian Dawson exclaimed, backing out of the rotted tree trunk. He staggered backwards and gagged, much to the amusement of his workmates.

  ‘What’s up, Bri? Tramps been shitting in there again?’ One of them guffawed.

  Brian scowled at him and spat. ‘‘Ave a look, mate. See if you can take it!’

  The other man considered. If Bri was choked by whatever was in there, it’d have to be bad but he couldn’t back down now. It hit him as soon as he got within a foot of the opening: the strong, cloying stench of rotting death. He just hoped that it wasn’t a human body. As he stepped into the darkness and his eyes adjusted, he heard the buzzing of fat flies and the acrid stink of necrotic flesh stung his nostrils. He could make out plump pale maggots making the hog’s head alive with movement but the stench was truly unbearable and he exited as quickly as his friend had.

  ‘Jeez! Who’d put that in there! Some sort of bloody ritual?’ He tried to spit out the taste of the smell.

  ‘Dunno.’ Brian paused while they both tried to suck in fresh air. ‘D’you see the tusks?’ A shake of the head. ‘It’d got huge tusks mate. Looked like no pig I’ve ever seen. Could‘ve escaped from a zoo or something.’

  ‘Nah. No zoo round here for miles. Some sort of… pet?’

  ‘It’s not a pet. Would you let something like that around you! You got the bin bags? S’pose we should bag it and show it to the environment people.’

  It was a distasteful task but they managed it swiftly — double bagging it to be sure — always a sign of a particularly nasty find. They gagged throughout. They handled a variety of crap on this shift — literally. Seemed that every tramp and hippy liked to shit in the forest but they’d never dealt with anything like this before. The hog’s head, once photographed on their phones, provided much comment and entertainment in the pub for a while, but the scientists who finally cremated it were totally baffled by the wild boar’s head which could not be identified by the zoologists or the wild boar keepers they contacted. It was suggested that this was an ancient breed which seemed to be a forerunner of the breeds they kept today. Finally, the decomposing flesh was too rancid to deal with and went into the furnace but DNA was sent away and within days, the Taxanes had intercepted it and identified the boar as living nearly four hundred years earlier.

  Days before, the striped, inquisitive animal had been rooting around the great tree, sniffing the enticing scent of fungi inside the hollow trunk. The aperture was narrow but the temptation was too great and he forced his strong and greedy snout into the mushroom dampness. Within seconds he was dead, decapitated. His rigid body was held upright by the tree’s trunk and his head was an unexplained presence in the future.

  Florence sighed with the realisation that she had become adept at pig-handling — and that was an admission that she thought she’d never make. Actually, she was quite proud of her manoeuvring-pig skills and in another age, she thought that they might have called her the pig whisperer. Here, of course, it was actually dangerous to seem to have too close a rapport with animals, especially if you were a woman, when at any time, a disgruntled neighbour with an axe to grind, might call you out as a witch and name the animal as a familiar. Bloody outrageous! It was very hard to prove a negative — even for a pig. So Florence shrugged off all praise about her natural talent and just grunted that she’d grown up looking after pigs. Well . . . in a sense. She had walked the farms with her father occasionally and as a child, she’d rather enjoyed the Royal Shows and The Great Yorkshire. Her parents’ tenants would often let her ‘help’ to shift the show pigs and she’d learned how to use a stick and a board to encourage the cunning beasts into stalls or around show rings. There were hours of family video of her doing it — always shown at family gatherings and Christmas, causing great hilarity.

  Now her honest benefactors were glad of her help with the fattened pig that they were taking to the winter market. Jenny and Richard Bagnall were hoping for a good price for the animal and although Florence would have preferred to have a thick pork chop or rashers of fatty bacon, she knew that they needed to sell — and they’d meat enough stored. The price of the pig would pay for basics like flour and iron nails. Pigs were important in the forest where one of the few rights the locals had was for their pigs to forage for acorns and so, whilst the feeding of the pigs was cheap, their meat was renowned for its flavour, fetching a good price at market. Or at least they hoped so, because the Bagnall’s winter supplies were dependent on the price the animal would fetch.

  Today she joined Jenny and her husband on their journey to Edwinstowe where they hoped the wealthier buyers would like the look of this fine beast. Not that she’d had any choice in the matter. She was on the lowest rung here — well, perhaps above beggar and whore. She was an unmarried, skivvy who was fed and clothed according to the work she did. She was not treated unkindly; she just wasn’t a consideration.

  She assessed the sow with her quasi professional eye and thought that she was reminded of some of the old breeds that she’d seen at shows — a sandy colour but much smaller and more irritable than modern pigs, with some sort of colouring on her back. Early Saddleback she mused idly as she chivvied it along? She encouraged the sow with turnip tops that they’d brought with them and handfuls of ripe nettles which the animal seemed quite partial to, but it was tiring work keeping the cumbersome beast on course for the four miles to market, constantly berating it when it plonked itself in a puddle and refused to get up. It seemed to have the penchant for mud which all pigs had. Florence didn’t voice any complaint. She’d learned to work hard and to keep silent if she wanted feeding — and food had become an imperative; the focus of her day. What was it her great-grandfather had once said? You’ll eat anything when you’re properly hungry! He was right. She’d begun to understand this fat sow, her moods, her habits, and realised that the pig was actually training her quite well. Sometimes, they stopped at an oak where the acorns were still heavy on the ground; Piggy loved them and the treat made her more pliable for the next few miles — a thank you to her assistant. Florence was sharply reminded of the mast year production of acorns and fought the tears. At night, she discovered that the pig’s warmth was very welcome. Her farting however… She decided that she’d be sorry to see her sold for slaughter — whilst not refusing a nice pork chop!

  When they reached Edwinstowe, they came upon it quite abruptly as the forest ended. Most of the towns and villages were like this. You were deep in the woods and then you were in the narrow band of fields ringing the town. Edwinstowe was an island, entirely surrounded by Sherwood Forest which gave it its life. She knew enough to remember that Sherwood had been ravaged by the greed for timber in the late 1600s to build war ships but before that the great oaks had supplied the timber for cathedrals and minsters and fuel for the fires of the Dukery castles and fine houses that the area became famous for. The locals, of course, had minor rights to collect fallen wood and that which their masters deemed useless, although they paid for this right. No such thing as a free lunch.

  Each day, Florence tried to remember details of history, science and literature, as an exercise in sanity. If she stopped, she thought that she’d just disappear into this century, dying unknown and recorded — just a pig girl buried in an unmarked grave. So, as she cajoled the wretched pig along, she wondered why the Major Oak had been spared from the plundering of oak and realised that it was because it was already rotting in its centre and was no use at all for the long, strong timbers required by shipwrights or builders. The heart rot was caused by the fungus which hollowed out the centre of these trees with no effect at all on the health of the plant. She knew so much about trees, none of it of any use at all here and a cloud passed her face when she thought that she lacked the one vital piece of knowledge: how to use one to go home. Her learning had been taken from her as well. It was impossible to suggest that she’d been educated, that she’d been to university, even that
she could read and write. That right had gone hadn’t been won yet.

  The journey had provided Florence with the time to reflect on this life. It was a novelty. She’d never had this sort of focused thinking time, without other distractions. She remembered how on that first day, she’d asked the question about the visitor centre and received blank looks and then asked if there was an army base nearby and had almost been thrown out. Richard was very afraid of one of the armies seeking out their hamlet and conscripting the men. Who would feed their children then? She wasn’t sure exactly what year it was, because she hadn’t found a way to ask without sounding suspicious but she was pretty sure that she was in the middle of the English Civil War.

  They’d spotted small troupes of soldiers on the roads and she was surprised to realise that their appearance didn’t make it obvious which side they were on. She’d thought that the Roundheads would be wearing the eponymous head-gear while the Cavaliers would be all frill, feathers and huge hats. But actually, they all looked worn and grizzled, none of them looking like they wanted to be there. They trudged by carrying their worldly goods and weapons, offering the occasional crude comment at the women but mostly looking downhearted and weary, in worn and dirty clothes. Well, she guessed that was true of any war.

  Florence tried to speak as little as possible. Her strange accent and vocabulary drew sideways looks from the villagers and laughter from most. None of these people liked ‘different’ and different was anything which was from beyond twenty miles radius. She was glad to agree with Jenny who thought that she might be Welsh. Satisfied that English was not her native language, they stopped the suspicious looks and just mocked her. She provided endless amusement for them. It took concentration to remember the different word order, the forms of address, not to use her own familiar colloquialisms — they’d all fallen about laughing when she’d inadvertently used ‘OK’; it was tiring. All Florence wanted to do was to go home and tell everyone who loved her about her unimaginable adventure. She wanted to wallow in a hot bath, with a glass of wine, put on her pyjamas and slippers and amaze everyone with what had happened. She fantasised about how it might change everything when she told her story: science, history…religion — physics! That’s if they didn’t commit her.

  She decided to remember every detail about this age so that when she returned, she would become a living history book. She saw the simplicity of the Bagnalls’ day. Jenny was mistress of the small house taking tremendous pride in what little there was of it. Pots and pans were scrubbed to polished perfection and meals were generous and hearty. Florence noted how differently ingredients were used. Salt was precious and used sparingly and it seemed that the vegetables, grown in their own small plot, were seen as fillers in lieu of meat — which was a definite luxury. Honey was a special treat and often gathered at great cost from wild hives. Florence recognised many of the herbs which gave flavour to the plain fare: rosemary, sage, parsley and thyme. The gritty bread was the staple of the diet, with the yeast kept alive in a small bowl beside the fire. The flour, bought at great expense, was full of mill grit and harsh on the teeth. It was always fresh, though and wonderful with a good slathering of pale butter. Florence took to secretly cleaning her teeth with semi-chewed sticks, careful not to advertise this odd hygiene habit of hers.

  Richard was master of the small family and had little to do with her. It seemed that Jenny had persuaded him that whatever the strange circumstances of Florence’s arrival, they could do with an extra pair of hands while the child was so small. It seemed to be Jenny’s sphere to decide. He departed early to tend to the animals and to take work felling trees in the forest and when he returned he was exhausted. Jenny fed him, serving him before she sat to her own meal while Florence held the baby. During the day, Jenny carried the child wrapped in a shawl, fastened to her, when it was not sleeping. Sometimes, when the baby was happy and Jenny sat to sew, she would talk and play with it and sometimes Richard would hold the baby on his knee until it fell asleep.

  When they smothered the fire, and went to their own sleeping places for the night, she heard Jenny and Richard’s love-making and knew that theirs, despite the hardships, was a happy marriage. Florence resolved to be as helpful as she could be — before she left them because it was quite certain that her destiny did not lie here.

  5

  Pack Light

  Each day, she devoted her thinking to working out how to use the knowledge that she had to make life better for herself. She knew a hell of a lot about arboreal ecology — inexplicable and not useful to these people - but she could read and write. Ha! A very useful skill. She hadn’t seen anyone in the small hamlet that knew their letters and she had only seen one book — a chained Bible in the parish church. Church, it seemed, was obligatory — twice a day on Sundays. But who might need her talents and why? Clerks were men, and while the clergy seemed able to read and write, both of these groups guarded their edge fiercely. She doubted that they’d simply welcome her in to their educated male clique. She didn’t know of anyone who would employ a single woman to read and write for them. She didn’t know any—one of significance at all.

  Next: she had some understanding of basic science — including medicine. These people had no idea about what caused infection, despite some effective herbal remedies. Florence knew that wounds should be stitched and that cleanliness would prevent the spread of disease but what help was that when no one would take heed of her? Actually, the women of the village had a huge range of ‘cures’ for ailments, some of which were both disgusting and bizarre, involving poultices of boiled onion with various pinches of animal dung mixed in, but others seemed to actually work.

  Florence knew, of course, about the analgesic properties of Salix – the willow — and was impressed to see an infusion of it used to sooth a range of aches and pains. In terms of diet, they were idiots. They only ate vegetables when they had to. No wonder their skin was so addled with spots and pimples. She maintained her intake of greens — even resorting to nettles when nothing else appeared in the food. The villagers thought her very strange to eat such things and told her so. She was careful not to let any of them see her brushing her teeth with twigs.

  Next: she knew the basic outcome of the Civil War but no details at all. Cavaliers and Roundheads. Cromwell and an executed King. No help there then. In any case, what could she say: ‘I know the outcome of this battle? I know the future. Vote Roundhead?’ Hardly. OK. Could she invent something that would be useful to them and that she’d be credited for? What? A steam engine? How? You had to have a level of technology for an invention to be meaningful. All she could offer would be dreams of ideas to the right man who might act upon it, if he felt inclined to believe her mad notions. Where would she find an Arkwright? A Brunel? Jenner? Lovelace?

  The more she thought, the more frustrated she became. And so, finally, she came to a reluctant and shocking conclusion: she needed a man — urgently. Much worse than that, she needed a husband. Married women had some protection, some authority, some status. Look at the way Jenny spoke to her. A single woman was vulnerable here if her modesty was in any way impeached. She had to be virtuous or she was a whore. She had no rights of ownership, no voting rights; no voice in governance and was always legally and spiritually subservient to a man. However, if she married well, she might enjoy a modicum of her husband’s authority and wealth if he had any, and so that was what she aimed for as a beginning. Decided. It was the start of a very painful path for Florence Brock.

  She knew famous tales from history, knew that this suspicious age found witches in every nook and cranny and so, for now, she kept her literacy well hidden. These superstitious villagers would have asked questions about how or indeed why she’d been taught to read and that would have led around to her dishevelled state when she’d first come to them and then they’d have wondered about where she’d come from and what her circumstances were. No. Women were burned. So, she spoke very little and kept her eyes lowered — modestly. She was remin
ded of some of the far away countries where this was still the lot of women in her own day and was horrified. Florence learned to stay by Jenny’s side when around the men — especially the young single men who thought nothing of a quick grope and thought it their right, to try to grab a kiss and a fondle if they could catch her alone. Keeping virtuous was not at all easy and she had no doubt that she’d take the blame for any encounter. She had to keep her fury at their misogyny under control, swallowing her indignation as, each Sunday, their pastor drooled with unctuous pleasure as he reminded the whole congregation of the temptations that women presented. How they were punished in childbirth because of Eve’s treachery, and of their culpability in the First Sin. Nothing changes, she thought bitterly.

  Once, she slapped a lad who’d pinned her to the stable wall and pressed himself on her, slobbering all over, and she’d been horrified when he slapped her back, very hard indeed. Jenny had spotted the bruise, of course.

  ‘William Spofforth, I think, eh?’ Jenny sighed as she bathed Florence’s cheek with witch-hazel. Florence nodded, tears of anger stinging. ‘You’d as well keep out of his way for a few days. Will Spofforth has a fine temper and a great opinion of himself where women are concerned. You’ll not be the first that has struggled against him and he’ll not be used to being struck by a wench.’ She smiled even as she shook her head, ‘Did you not think to flatter his manhood and escape him girl!’ It seemed obvious to her. ‘Many a lass has had to wriggle out of Will Spofforth’s clutches, I’ll warrant.’ She saw the anger in Florence’s eyes and the swelling on her cheek. ‘Aye, well, you’re not from these parts. Mayhap it’s different in Wales.’ She paused for a moment, softening, ‘I shall speak to Will’s mother when next I see her and she’ll have a word with the lad to leave you be. It may help,’ but there was no confidence in it. She finished with the bathing and eyed Florence up, ‘You’ll do. Just stay out of the way of the lads!’