Sackett's Land (1974) (2 page)

He looked at me from under heavy brows. "Would you have some more tea, lad?"

When I nodded he called for the woman, and she came bearing the pot. It was a guilty feeling I had, drinking tea like it was water. For what a pound of tea cost a man might rent five acres for a year, and the bit of land I had from my father, the land outside the fens, was scarcely five acres with a cottage and a stable.

Of course, there were some hidden acres in the fen, but of them I told nobody, and few indeed knew of them. The fen was a vast marsh land, heavily saturated with water. Here and there were outcroppings of limestone, and also some islands used by smugglers occasionally, and known only to we of the fens.

"Do you know aught of the Romans?" he asked me.

"Aye. My father was a soldier and he gathered tales of the Romans, how they marched and built their camps and drank vinegar when athirst."

"They conquered the world." Hasling said.

"Only a piece of it," I objected, remembering what my father had taught me. "They knew of Cathay, but never marched against it."

Hasling chuckled, obviously pleased. "You are right, lad, and not many know of that, even at Cambridge. You are a uncommon fen-man."

"There are uncommon men everywhere, so many that the common man has become uncommon."

He glanced at me, then turned back to the coins.

"Your father was a soldier? And your name is ... ?"

"Barnabas Sackett. There is another family of the name in Ely, but we are not related. My father was Ivo Sackett."

"Ivo Sackett! Of course! Your father made a name for himself. He is remembered."

"I know he went to the wars."

"Aye, and how he went to them! He was a rare man, your father." He glanced at me again. "The other coins? You can bring them to me?"

"I can. When I have the silver for these."

He left the room and returning, paid me a goodly sum. "Take this," he said, "and rest assured I am your friend. Bring me the other coins and I will have a purchaser for them. Antiquities may have only a small market in England, lad, but there's a few of us fancy the old things."

He held up the coins. "These are a part of our history in the world, and from such as these we can piece together a forgotten story. Men have lived and died in England these thousands of years and each of them may have left something more than his dust. Fitted together, these things may compose forgotten chapters of our history."

History is best made by men with hands. Brains are well enough, but count for nothing without the hands to build, to bring to fulfillment. Willing as I was to listen to ancient history, at this moment my interest centered upon my own, a history lived until this moment in more modest circumstances than I would wish.

With the money I now had, I could purchase from William those adjoining acres, and hold enough land to live as a yeoman should. Yet even as I thought of this, another thought forced itself into my head, bringing discontent: Was this all? Was there no more for me?

My father had been a soldier, wandering wide upon the world; yet what had he said to me? "Own a few acres, lad, and keep it unencumbered and you'll not want for some at to eat. You can always grow a few cabbages."

Aye, if cabbages would suffice. To hold the acres, yes, but to move out from them ... that was what I felt I must do.

William was a steady man, and if I chose to go wide upon the world for a small bit he would work my acres and hold them for me and perhaps a sum as well.

These were my thoughts as I said goodbye to the Haslings.

Scarcely had I left the Hasling cottage when trouble fell upon me. Walking across the town toward the highroad, and passing by the tavern, I looked up and into the eyes of a girl.

She sat in a carriage before the tavern and when I looked, she seemed to smile.

Now there was an exuberance upon me. Gaiety and good will were in my blood. My pockets jingled with more coin than I'd had in many a year past, and more to come.

She was no child, this one. A girl, but a woman also, and of rare beauty. So when she smiled, I smiled in return, and doffed my hat as bravely as though it were plumed.

She was of the gentry, it went without saying. A carriage was a rare thing, and few possessed them or had the use of one. She was gentry, and the less one noticed or was noticed by them the better. I was passing when her low voice said, "I am thirsty."

What was I to do? The well was there, its water cold and fresh. Filling a brimming dipper, I took it to her.

I was holding the dipper out to her when it was struck from my hand, a vicious, stinging blow.

Turning sharply, I faced a young noble wearing a plumed hat such as I did not have, his face flushed with anger.

"Carrion! Why, you vulgar ...!" He struck at my face with a gloved hand, but instinctively, knowing something of fisticuffs, I dodged. Missing the blow he fell into the mud.

I laughed ... and she laughed as well.

For an instant he glared at me from the mud, and then with a burst of fury he came off the ground. In the next instant he had drawn his sword.

She screamed. "Rupert!No !" And he lunged at me.

That he was beyond reason was obvious. Also that he intended to kill me.

It was my father's training that saved me. Although I wore no sword I carried a blackthorn stick, and automatically I parried and thrust, the end of my stick taking him fairly in the wind.

He staggered and went down.

A rough hand grasped my arm. "You daft fool! That's Rupert Genester, nephew to the Earl!"

Chapter
2

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 low-lying 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.