Flood (The Fenland Series Book 1) Read online

  ‘Ah. Mevrouw Mercy, not so?’ He stood square in front of me, younger than I had thought from a distance, perhaps of an age with Gideon Clarke, thirty or thereabouts. A good-looking man enough, in that heavy Dutch fashion. He doffed his hat to me, but still wore that supercilious expression.

  I inclined my head very slightly. ‘I am Mercy Bennington.’

  ‘And your brother is Thomas Bennington. Somewhat of a leader amongst your young men, I hear. And both of you grandchildren of the famous Nathaniel Bennington.’

  I held my tongue and worked the churn. The milk slapped the wooden sides, nowhere near coming to butter. I was sure that he was guessing when he said Tom was a leader. No one in the village would have named him. He was deducing from our grandfather’s fame and our father’s position as the most prosperous yeomen farmer in the parish. Reasonable enough. I did not take him for a fool.

  ‘And where is he, this brother of yours? Meneer Thomas Bennington? He is not in the house. He is not in the fields, weeding the crops with the other young men. Is he catching eels? Shooting waterfowl?’

  A knot had formed in my stomach. Could he have recognised Tom when he shot him in the dark? Surely not. I rested my hands from the paddle, and felt the lump of the lead bullet in the pocket of my apron. I cupped my hand over it, as if he could see through the cloth, and raised innocent eyes.

  ‘My brother is gone to Lincoln market, two days since, sir. We think of purchasing a new bull for the breeding. Our bull was old and was slaughtered last Martinmas.’

  We had contrived this story between us, Father, Gideon and I, to account for Tom’s absence. There was a grain of truth in it. My father did plan to buy a new bull, though not yet.

  Van Slyke studied me as I took up the paddle and heard the change in the milk. The butter was forming.

  ‘Your pardon, sir.’ I rolled the churn past their boots and into the dairy, then called across to Kitty, who was folding the dried washing.

  ‘Come and finish the butter for me, Kitty. I must take the cows back to pasture.’

  The men made a show of searching the dairy, but everything was open to view: the churns, the racks of drying cheeses, the big press of new curds. There was no corner where anything larger than a mouse could hide.

  When Kitty had lifted the lid of the churn and scooped out the fresh butter to drain on the earthenware sieve, I went into the cowbarn and called Jasper after me. He circled the Hollanders, belly to the ground and growling low in his throat. One of the men aimed a kick at him, and I swirled around, ready to fight, but van Slyke shook his head at the man and said something in Dutch.

  I turned the cows out of their stalls and made a noisy business of it, so that Tom would hear what was afoot and lie low. Jasper circled the cows, and I took up my stick. More slowly than usual, I herded the cows out into the yard, where they milled about. They were hearty beasts and some of the Hollanders retreated from them, looking nervous. Not countrymen, then, I thought. Van Slyke gave an order, again in Dutch and the men moved reluctantly into the barn, edging around the cows nervously. They picked their way amongst the straw and manure, peering into the stalls, and poking half-heartedly into corners.

  ‘I must drive the beasts back to our pasture,’ I said, turning a smile on van Slyke. ‘Where you are camped. Usually the men drive them. It is difficult for me on my own. Perhaps you and your men could help?’

  If he suspected my lie, he did not show it. He shrugged and jerked his head at the men. As courteous as good neighbours, we headed the cows out of the yard and up the lane. Even Jasper played his part, running along beside van Slyke as if he had known him all his life.

  The next morning, Father and Nehemiah left for Lincoln. They were to take Nehemiah’s skerry up Baker’s Lode to the bridge that carried the old Roman road over the waterway. There they would meet the carter who regularly took Nehemiah and his baskets of eels on to Lincoln. That evening the eeler returned alone.

  ‘Isaac has taken a room as the White Hart,’ he said, ‘and will hunt out a magistrate’s clerk tomorrow, to ask what he must do to bring our case to court.’ He shook his head doubtfully. ‘I’ve never seen any man prosper at law but the lawmen themselves.’

  He laid a worn purse on the table, which chinked faintly.

  ‘This is for you, Abigail. For my board and lodging.’

  ‘Nay.’ My mother was flustered. ‘You owe us nothing. If we cannot take in a friend who has suffered grief, what sort would we be? Keep your eel money.’

  I left them arguing and went out to Tom. All day I had felt as though someone was watching the farm, though in truth I had seen no one. Yet I made sure that whenever I crossed the yard I was busy about some chore. Now I carried a broom and after using it to chase the hens into their house for the night, I swept the dairy floor vigorously before I went into the barn.

  ‘So he has truly followed this plan of going to law.’ Tom shook his head, just as Nehemiah had done. ‘I think it foolish. Who will pay the costs? Does Father pay everything?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is it very costly?’

  He gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘Why do you think lawyers are always so prosperous, even when their clients have no shirt to cover their backs? Oh aye, it is costly. And the seasons of the year move more swiftly than proceedings at court. He must stay in Lincoln while the days and weeks drag by, and what shall we do in place of his labour? I cannot work yet. You cannot take on the labours of two men.’

  ‘Kitty is hard-working and willing.’

  ‘Kitty is a child, with arms no thicker than that broomstick. Mother has her own work. Hannah is too old to do more than a little about the house.’

  ‘Nehemiah.’

  ‘I grant you Nehemiah, but he will be most of the time at his eeling. He must needs fish, for it’s how he gets his living.’

  ‘At least we are at a quiet time. The fields are planted.’

  ‘They will need to be hoed. We cannot expect our neighbours to take on our share.’

  ‘I can hoe.’

  ‘And it will be sheep-shearing soon, before I am able, I’m afraid. And then hay harvest.’

  I turned away, trying to hide my tears. I knew that everything Tom said was true, and I agreed with him. How could I manage the men’s work on the farm?

  He reached out and patted my hand. ‘I will do my best to recover quickly. Ask Toby and Jack to come and see me. After dark would be best.’

  ‘Aye.’ I hesitated. ‘I feel as though someone is watching us, watching the farm, but perhaps it is just in my mind.’

  ‘Or your guilty conscience?’ He gave me a weak smile. ‘You dealt very well with van Slyke yesterday, but it’s wise to be cautious.’

  Jack and Toby came to visit Tom two evenings later. I do not know what passed between them, but I found that nearly half our strips in the common fields had been hoed when next I went out to them, and when sheep-shearing came, they each gave me a day of their labour. Between us we sheared the whole flock. In earlier years I had helped with herding the sheep into the pens and driving them back out to pasture when they were clipped, but now for the first time I learned to wield the shears myself. Alice’s husband Rafe was our champion shearer, and he came on the first day and took me in hand. I could not manage the older and heavier sheep, but he taught me how to heave the yearlings on to their backs between my knees, where they would suddenly become still, as if startled out of their wits. I nicked a few sides, and left some clumps of unsheared wool, but I grew better with each sheep and found that I loved the way the whole fleece would peel off at last, like a fat alderman shedding his fur robe. The naked sheep, full of skittish airs, would go leaping away, and I could throw the fleece over the hurdle to be bundled up by Kitty. Next year, I would be able to handle the full-grown sheep.

  No word came from Father, but Nehemiah sought him out when next he went to Lincoln. He no longer went every week, for his catch of eels had fallen away. It seemed they did not like the disturbance caused by the drainers and many had t
aken themselves off to quieter waters. This time, however, Nehemiah had snared two dozen wild ducks and so returned to Lincoln soon after Father’s arrival there.

  ‘I have brought a letter from Isaac,’ said Nehemiah, sitting down with us to evening supper. I was tired and grubby from the last day of shearing, and Tom was back amongst us again. The wound in his leg seemed to be healing cleanly, but he was not yet fit to work. However, he wanted to be seen about the farm, in case we were being watched. There was, of course, no new bull to show for his supposed trip to Lincoln, but we put it about that he had not found one to his liking.

  My mother could read a little, though not well, and of late had needed to hold the paper out at arm’s length. She needed spectacles, but they were a luxury she said we could not afford. She passed the letter to Tom. He read through it quickly, then shrugged.

  ‘There is nothing to report. He has made the rounds of the magistrates’ clerks, and they but pass him from hand to hand. He has some hopes of one Master Gillivray, but he is away at the Court of Common Pleas in London, and does not return for another week. He sends his remembrance to us all and will write again when there is anything to tell.’

  The weather turned wet and windy after that, day after day beating down the grass in the hay medland. It was nearly time for hay harvest, but if the weather did not turn soon, we would lose it all. It seemed as though every year since King and Parliament fell out the very weather wept, spoiling the grain in the ear, beating the hay to the ground, festering mould in the crops, disease in the cattle and ague amongst the people. Tom was now able to help with the milking, but could not walk far enough to drive the cows to and from pasture, so that it fell to me twice every day. The rain had revived the poor grass in the area where the stock huddled, but it had turned the lane to a ginger-hued slurry and pocked the fields with plashes which shone dull pewter whenever the sun showed briefly through the clouds.

  As I walked with the cows near the drainers’ work, I saw that some of their ditches were filling with sluggish water, but also that the ground had grown so soft that when they tried to dig further ditches the earth collapsed and slithered back down into their holes as fast as they could dig them. Our own land was fighting back against them. In the end they took to their shelters, where I sometimes glimpsed them through their doorways dicing and drinking. Van Slyke strode about his muddy works, glowering, his boots sucking at every step.

  At last the clouds cleared, the wind dropped, and we had fair weather. Tom managed to walk as far as the hay medland.

  ‘The hay is fine and dry,’ he said, dropping wearily into Father’s chair. ‘I’ve been into the village. We’ll begin mowing tomorrow.’

  ‘And the crop?’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Not of the best. Some of it is so laid that it cannot be saved.’

  ‘All things seem to conspire against us,’ I said.

  Every able-bodied man, woman and child from the village turned out for the hay-making. The survival of our beasts over the winter depended on the hay. If the supply was too little, it would mean more of the stock must be slaughtered at Martinmas, which meant reduced flocks and herds next year. This had happened four years running now. Little by little we were being stripped back to near poverty.

  All day we laboured under a sun which – having hidden itself away so long – now blazed down on us. Under the shade of my woven straw hat, I swung a scythe along with the men as we worked our way in a rhythmic wave across the medland. The older women and young girls worked along the edges with their smaller sickles, while the old men followed behind us, raking the hay into rows. Babies were laid in the shade of the line of sallows that ran along Baker’s Lode, the smallest children ran about getting underfoot and trying (unsuccessfully) to catch the rabbits which bolted ahead of our line of reapers. A few of the women tended the great flagons of beer and baskets of food, amongst them Alice, who sailed along like a Lynn wherry in full sail.

  ‘There are still weeks to go,’ she said with a laugh, when I scolded her for coming out into the heat and dust of the reaping.

  ‘You look to me as though you might bring forth at any moment, here in the medland, with all the village gaping!’

  At midday we downed tools and eased our aching backs amongst the babies under the sallows. I had snatched a drink from time to time during the morning, but now I threw back my head and drank and drank from an ale jack kept cool in the Lode, until I felt dizzy and had to sit a while to clear my wits. My head stopped spinning when I had eaten a slab of pigeon pie and an early apple. The apple was one of the drop-apples that fall from the trees in summer and tasted as sour as a lemon, but I liked its sourness on my tongue.

  Gideon sat down beside me on the grass, a hearty helping of pie in one hand and a piece of cheese in the other. He had removed his clerical bands and untied the strings of his shirt at the throat, although he had not stripped to the waist like many of the men. He shone, bronzed in the sun, and to my dismay my heart leapt at the sight of him. When he had eagerly eaten both cheese and pie, he took off his straw hat and fanned himself with it.

  ‘Hot work,’ I said, reaching into the water for the ale jack and passing it to him.

  ‘Aye.’ He drank deeply and handed it back, but I felt I had drunk enough.

  I lowered the jack into the cool water again by the length of twine tied to its handle. When I turned to speak to him again, I saw he was lying back amongst the long grass, his eyes closed. He lay very still, the only movement a pulse in his throat, where the sun had not yet caught the fair skin usually hidden from sight. I smiled and leaned back on my hands, dabbling my bare feet in the Lode.

  By the end of the day the medland was cut and all the fit hay raked into wind rows to dry. The weather-wise amongst us swore that there would be three more days of fine weather to cure the hay. It was perhaps half the crop we would expect to take in a good year, but better than we had hoped for. Sore, exhausted, but fair content, we made our way home. Tom, who had scythed in the morning, but could not manage a full day, had done the milking by the time I reached home and I was so tired that I barely managed to eat a piece of bread and cheese before I fell into bed.

  Three days later my aching limbs were almost recovered, but now we had to load the hay into carts and drive it to the communal tithe barn, where each family’s share would be reckoned.

  ‘I can drive a cart as usual,’ Tom said.

  ‘No, you cannot.’ I was determined. He argued, but his heart was not in it.

  So I drove our cart, taking over his role, first standing and packing down the hay as it was pitched up by the men, then bumping away over the stubbs to the lane and down into the village to the great barn. It was hard work for Blaze. The weeks of rain had left the lane a quagmire and the few days of sunshine had not yet dried it out. Blaze and the other horses struggled from medland to barn, pulling carts whose wheels soon became choked with casings of mud from the sludder in the lane, casings so thick the wheels would not turn but had to be dragged. At each end of the trip I poked and wacked at the mud with a heavy stick, but once in the lane the wheels became clogged again.

  In all this time there had been no further word from my father, but we were not concerned. He had said he would write when there was news, and Tom had assured us that it would be weeks before any action was taken. The day after the hay was in, Nehemiah at last had enough eels to make the journey to Lincoln worth his while. He said he would look Father up and bring us back news.

  ‘Tell Isaac to come home.’ My mother twisted her hands in her apron and looked pleadingly at the eeler. ‘Surely he can be sent for when he is needed in court? His place is here.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Tom. ‘I am still a poor worker and it is too much for Mercy, even with your help.’

  ‘I will try,’ Nehemiah said, ‘but you know your father. He will not believe that matters will move forward unless he is there to see to it.’ He picked up his baskets of eels and two brace of ducks he had shot the day before,
and set off for his boat.

  It was past nightfall when he returned, long after his usual time, so that we had begun to ask each other what had become of him. We were all sitting in the kitchen, Kitty scouring a pot she had allowed to burn earlier in the day, my mother and Hannah knitting woollen caps, which they could do without need of the candle set on the table, where Tom was reading a pamphlet Jack had given him. I was oiling my heavy boots by the light of the fire, for the weather had closed over and I could feel thunder in the air. I would have a wet and muddy walk for the cows tomorrow.

  At last we heard Nehemiah’s footsteps in the yard, slow and dragging.

  I sprang up and Tom looked at me, frowning. We said nothing, but reached the door together. Nehemiah stumbled in. His coat was torn, the crown of his hat broken.

  ‘Nehemiah!’ Tom took him by the arm. ‘What has happened?’

  He shook his head at first, as though he could not speak.

  ‘Why are you come so late?’ I pulled off his wet coat and spread it over the back of a chair. The rain must have begun already, without our noticing.

  ‘The trial was today,’ he said. ‘The hearing of your father’s case. It did not come before a local magistrate. A judge had been sent from London.’

  ‘Well?’ In his impatience Tom shook the eeler’s arm.

  ‘There was another man there from London, a lawyer representing the adventurers, as they call themselves. The drainers. Cromwell’s men.’

  My heart began to pound, as if I knew already what he was going to say.

  ‘This man talked and talked, lawyer’s talk, I couldn’t understand the half of it. Hours, it went on. Then it came your father’s turn, or so I thought. There was no lawyer with him. That fellow Gillivray has never come back from London. But when your father got up to speak, the judge would not hear him. He said he had heard enough and would make his judgement.’