and where I was going.
The route we took to London must be roundabout. I decided upon Thorney. It was a
lovely fenland village, a place I’d loved since boyhood when my father had told
me stories of Hereward the Wake, the last man to hold out against William the
Conqueror. Thorney had been one of the last places he defended. From here I
would ride on to Cambridge, and then London.
So easily made are the plans of men! We poled our clumsy craft down the watery
lane, reeds and willows tall about us. The dawn light lay gray-gold with the sun
and mist upon the fens, and around us there was no sound or movement but the
ripples of water around our hull and the small, ultimate sounds of morning birds
among the leaves. My horse had no liking for the scow, and the uncertain footing
worried him, yet the craft was strong if not swift.
Seated in the stern, I turned my eyes ever and anon toward our wake, but there
was no sign of pursuit. Nonetheless, I was uneasy. It disturbed me that I knew
not my enemies, for these were no common thief-takers. There was motive here.
Well … soon I would be abroad upon the seas, and if they wished they might
follow me to Virginia and to those blue mountains that haunted my days and
nights with their unfathomable promise and mystery.
Unfathomable? No. For I would go there. I would walk the dark aisles of their
forests, drink from their streams, challenge their dangers.
The last shadows wilted away to conceal themselves shyly among the reeds and
under the overhanging branches to wait the courage that night would bring them.
The sun arose, the fog lifted, sunlight lay gently upon the fens. Some distance
off we saw men cutting reeds and grass for thatch, then they were blotted from
view by a thick stand of saw-sedge, seven to ten feet tall, but giving the
appearance of a simple meadow if looked upon from distance. Passing through it
was quite another thing, and I recalled returning from those meadows as a boy
with cuts upon arms and legs from their wicked edges.
What memories would my children have? Would they ever know England? They would
be far away and in another land, without schools, without books. No. There must
be books.
It was born then, this idea that I must have books, not only for our children
but for Abigail and myself. We must not lose touch with what we were, with what
we had been, nor must we allow the well of our history to dry up, for a child
without tradition is a child crippled before the world. Tradition can also be an
anchor of stability and a shield to guard one from irresponsibility and hasty
decision.
What books then? They must be few, for the luggage of books is no easy thing
when they must be carried in canoes, packs, and upon one’s back.
Each book must be one worth rereading many times, each a book that has much to
say, that can lend meaning to a life, help in decisions, comfort one during
moments of loneliness. One needed a chance to listen to the words of other men
who had lived their lives, to share with them trials and troubles by day and by
night in home or in the markets of cities.
The Bible, of course, for aside from religion there is much to be learned of men
and their ways in the Bible. It is also a source of comments made of references
and figures of speech. No man could consider himself educated without some
knowledge of it.
Plutarch also. My father, a self-educated man, placed much weight upon him. He
was, I quote my father, urbane, sophisticated, and intelligent, giving a sense
of calmness and consideration to all he wrote. “I think,” my father said, “that
more great men have read him than perhaps any other book.”
“Barnabas?” Black Tom was watching the riverbanks. “Is your boat anchored in
London?”
“Aye. And there is a man in London with whom I speak. I shall be gone for a long
time, and there are things he must do for me here, business he must handle when
I am far from England.”
“Do you trust this man?”
“Aye,” I said, after a moment of thought, “although he has the name of one
gifted at conniving. Yet we have things in common, I think.”
“What manner of things?”
“Ideas, Tom. We have shared large ideas together, Peter and I. There is no
greater time than for young men to sit together and shape large ideas into
rounded, beautiful things. I do not know if our thoughts were great thoughts,
but we believed them so. We talked of Plato, of Cathay and Marco Polo, of Roman
gods and Greek heroes, of Ulysses and Jason.”
“I know nothing of these.”
“Nor I, of some of them, but Peter did. And I learned and became curious and
someday I shall know more of them. Peter spoke also of a strange man who came
once to his booth in St. Paul’s Walk to sell some ancient manuscripts, a man who
spoke of the wise Adapa and the Hidden Treasure of the Secret Writing. He spoke
as if he expected somehow that Peter would respond, but although it disturbed
him, Peter knew nothing of Adapa.
“We talked of many things, Peter and I, and it is he who will handle all sales
of furs and timber for me when I am gone away. When my ships return to England,
he will dispose of their goods and order things for me.
“Also, he has books I must have, and charts of land where we go.”
“They are new lands. How can there be charts?”
“A good question, yet those lands may only be new to us because our knowledge is
limited. They may have been old lands to those before our time. Although much
history remains, much more has been lost. Men have always gone out upon the sea,
Tom, and some few of them have made records. And if we do not leave records, who
will know where we went or what we did? I shall try to write of these things,
Tom.”
“I cannot write.”
“Nor could others who went abroad upon the world. So much was done, so little
recorded. And much was recorded and then lost. Peter has talked to me of men and
nations, of deaths and battles of which I never heard.
“Avicenna? Who is he? Somewhere I heard the name, but Peter knew. A great man, a
great writer, a man of knowledge in many areas, a very great man, indeed. If
such can live and we not know of him, how many others might there be?
“The strange man who came to Peter and then never came again … who was he?
Where had he found the manuscripts and charts he sold? Who was the one he called
the Wise Adapa? Even Peter had never heard of him, nor scholars at Cambridge
whom he knew.
“I have myself seen the chart of Andrea Bianco that shows well the coasts of
Brazil, and the chart was drawn in 1448, and it is said that Magellan found the
straits named for him because he, too, had a chart … drawn by whom?”
“This all may be as you suggest,” said Tom dryly, “but I worry less about charts
of a distant land than a road to London that will keep us free of the Queen’s
men.”
“Worst of all,” I said, “I do not know my enemies. Someone stands behind them
with a well-filled wallet, or they would not have come so far upon a chance.”
We slept in turns, and when I last awakened our scow had brought us in the late
afternoon to a point of trees where there was an opening in the reeds lining the
shore.
“We will leave the boat here.” I stood and stretched, liking the feel of my
muscles underneath my shirt. I could feel the ripple of them and sense their
power, and before we were once more aboard ship I would have need of them …
this much I guessed. We glimpsed the steeple of a church, and a ruined tower.
Thorney should be near.
“The point,” I said to Tom. “We will land there.” Leading my horse ashore, we
went along the lane toward the road that led to the village. No one was in
sight. Already shadows were long and dusk was upon us.
The street was almost empty, and only a few heads turned to look as we passed
along the cobblestoned street. Outside of the village I mounted, and with Black
Tom trotting beside, we made good time for a mile, then changed places.
Willows lined the track we followed to Whittlesey. The market square was empty,