shadows everywhere. A few lights showed.
“I’ve a friend here,” Tom said. “We’ll knock him up and have a place to sleep
the night and a quick start come morning.”
Glancing up at the tower of St. Mary’s, I knew I’d miss the bells, for we could
hear them far across the fens when out for eels or cutting thatch. Many a time I
rested from labor to hear them.
We shared work, we of the fens, and I’d worked in many parts of Cambridgeshire
or Lincolnshire, travelling along the narrow waterways to meet friends with whom
I fished. We of the fens were much less likely to remain close to home than
others of our time, who knew little of any place more than a few miles from
their homes.
Even now change was upon us. Ours was a restless as well as a violent age. Men
from the villages had gone out upon the water with Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher,
with Gosnold or Newport, and some of them returned with gold and all with tales.
Tom stopped before an ill-looking cottage on the edge of the village, a cottage
set well back in the trees and close to the river.
A rap brought no response, nor did another. Tom was growing irritable when a
shadow loomed at the corner of the cottage. A voice growled, “Who comes?”
“Richard, you’re a poor host if you do not open your door and trot out the ale.
You’ve two quiet men here who would remain quiet, wanting food and a quick start
before the day breaks, and no bothering with keepers of taverns who remember too
well. Will you have us in?”
“Aye, Tom. I’ll have you in, and collect the two shillings you owe from a
fortnight past.”
He disappeared. After a moment there was the rattling of a chain and the door
was opened. Once inside, Richard stirred the fire to a blaze, lighting up our
faces.
He was a long thin man with a dour expression. Yet upon a closer glance, when
the light caught the side of his face, I saw that the wrinkles of ancient
laughter had woven a net of humor around his eyes and mouth.
“There’s a horse outside, Richard, that will need rubbing down, and care. You’ll
see to it?”
“I will … when I’ve put something on.” He puttered about, filling two flagons
of ale and pushing out a plate of bread and cheese. “There’s apples, too,” he
added, “if you’ll be asking no questions how they was come by.”
While we ate he went to the stable, and when he returned Tom said, “There might
be some asking about, Richard, and we’ll be wanting no word of our passing.”
“Not likely I’d be talkin’, Tom, but I do wish you’d stay on a day. There be a
fine piece of bog oak close by that will bring a pretty penny, but I’ll need a
strong hand or two.”
Such a find was not uncommon, and was like the finding of a treasure trove to a
poor man. Sunken ages ago by a falling of the land or rising of the sea, many
great trees had been buried in the peat, and perfectly preserved by it, and if
sawed immediately into planks and timbers were worth a good bit to the finder.
But if let to lie about, the wood decayed, so the work must be done at once and
the planks allowed to dry and season in the air.
“Is it true, Tom, what they be sayin’ about drainin’ the fens?”
“It is. And when drained it will be the richest farmland in the kingdom.”
“Aye,” Richard grumbled, “but it ruins the eeling, and there’ll be not so many
birds. We live well enough now, with no drainage done, a goose to the table
whenever we wish, eels and pike for the eating or the market, and our patches of
crop land no tax gatherer can find. If the fens be drained, strangers will come
in. Wild and lawless they say we be, and that we stink of our fens, but we are
free men and better it is to remain so.
“Once the gentry ken how rich is the land they’ll have it from us by hook or
crook, or they’ll come on with their laws to interfere with the hunting, the
digging of peat, or the cutting of thatch. They’d have us bound out to labor on
their farms instead of us living free.”
True enough, and well I knew it, for most of the fens were held in common. Once
the fens were drained the fine, free life would be gone and the birds and eels
with it. We lived well, often better than a lord in his castle, for it was all
about us, for the taking.
Yet I was leaving this for a new world, new ways of living. Was I the fool? Was
I leaving a certainty for a chance? No matter. My way was chosen. Not for a
minute did I consider not going.
Was it some impulse buried deep within me? Was there in my blood and bones some
selective device that chose me and a few others like me to venture? To go on? To
penetrate the strange and the new? Were we something chosen by nature for this
purpose? Had we control over our actions, or were we mere tools of the way of
things that must ceaselessly go forward?
William would stay, Richard would stay, even Peter Tallis would stay, yet I
would go. My friend Jeremy Ring would go, and Black Tom Watkins. You might say
he was fleeing the noose, aye, and how many others here in Britain were likewise
fleeing, yet did not go?
“We will sleep now, Richard,” I said, “for tomorrow Tom and I must travel far
… and fast.”
3
Dark were the London streets, and wet with rain. We walked my horse along the
narrow lanes, keeping free of streets where we might be seen and spoken of.
“We will do well to stay clear of taverns,” Tom suggested.
“We’ve a place, Tom, a sure place. It is the house of a sailor’s wife, a clean
place and the food is good.”
“Women gossip.”
“Not this one. She’s a good lass. The house was left her as an inheritance. She
lets rooms and feeds folk who want something better and cleaner than the
taverns, and waits for her sailor to come back from the seas.”
“A lonely life.”
“Aye, but Mag is the girl for it.”
Hounding the corner we saw the tall house before us. Dismounting, I tapped on
the door.
“Who’s there?” It was Mag’s voice.
“A friend of Jeremy’s, whom you know. I’ve a horse and a man with me.”
“I’ll open the gate.”
The window slid softly shut and we led my horse around the corner to the gate in
the dark lane. The gate swung open. Mag whispered, “I’ll get something on. There
be hay and grain in the stable.”
“She does well, this sailor’s wife,” Tom suggested.
“She’s a good woman.” I wanted to put him straight on that. “And there be many
such. You know a sailor’s life.”
“Aye,” he said without bitterness. “I’ve been left ashore once, near drowned
several times, taken by pirates twice and, when I come ashore, robbed by
landlubbers. It is better to smuggle than work the deep seas.”
Mag held the door for us. “I’ve drawn some ale. It is on the table, and there’ll
be some’at to eat in a bit.” Her eyes searched my face. “You’re all right?”
“There’s a Queen’s warrant up for me, Mag, but it will be recalled, I am
thinking. In the meantime I must sleep, and in the morning would get word to
Peter Tallis in St. Paul’s Walk.”
“I know the man. How is Jeremy?”
“Well enough. I left him aboard ship. We sail for Virginia.”
“Ah? It is far, I think. Jack was wishful of sailing there, and he spoke of it
often. He knew Captain Newport, and was wishful to sail with him. My Jack is a
gunner, and a good one.”
We ate, and then we slept, yet scarcely had my eyes opened in the morning than
Mag was at the door. “Get dressed,” she whispered through the crack. “Peter will
be here. There’s some’at of which we must speak.”
Tom was awake. “Morning is it?”
“Peter will be here later. Mag got word to him, somehow,” I said.
Mag sat with us over her own glass. “I sent the lad next door to Peter. He’s a
bright one and for a tuppence he’ll run any word for you, and keep both eyes and
ears open. He also brings me the news. Lord Essex is at York House awaiting the
Queen’s pleasure, but the word is that she’ll not see him, she’s that angry and
put out. And there’s been fighting down the country and a man named Genester is