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.'
Chapter 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 dead ... murdered, they say.'
'Killed in a fair fight,' I replied.
She glanced at me, and Tom, too.
'We went to get a sick man he'd taken away to let die, and they were waiting for us. We were all in it, Jeremy as well, but it was I who killed him, man to man in a duel.
'The old man he'd taken there to die had been a friend to my father, so we went to bring him back for proper care. Genester expected to inherit if the old man died, and Genester intended to let him die. But Genester has friends at court, and I have none.'
'They'll throw you into Newgate until there's a trial,'' Tom warned. 'And it's a pure hell, filthy and crawling with lice. There's good people in there for debt, and every kind of human vermin you can find mixed in among them.'
'I did only what had to be done,' I said. 'Now I must see Peter and board my ship.'
'Won't they be watching it?'
'They will.' I looked over at Mag.
She leaned her forearms on the table. 'Virginia,' she said, 'Raleigh's land. Is it so grand a place, then?'
