Sackett's Land

            Suddenly my mind seemed to stop still.

            There had been a man at Reach when I worked there ... I had glimpsed his face in the crowd at Stamford.

            Now I was uneasy. The man might not remember me, might not tell, might not even know where I came from. Still ...

            When Jublain was out of the cottage I took the other coins from their hiding place and hid them in a secret pocket in the seams of my clothing. Mayhap we might abandon this place, and I wished to be ready.

            Then, on the fourth day, a drum of hoofs awakened me before the light. Stepping from my bed I took down the Earl's sword, then placed it upon the table and stepped outside.

            The air was cool and damp. Fog lay upon the fens, beading my grass with dew and making the grass itself greener where it could be seen at all.

            The drum of hoofs slowed and a rider came down to the fence and stopped at the gate. When he opened the gate and led his horse through, he turned. It was Coveney Hasling.

            He wasted no time. 'You are in trouble, lad, serious trouble. You were known to someone and by tomorrow he and other men will have made inquiries at Reach. Then they will come here.'

            'It was good of you to come.'

            'You will need money.' He took a handful of coins from his pocket. 'Take this and pay me when you sell what you have, but be gone from here. Into the fens with you.'

            'I shall do that, but you have ridden far. Come ... we will eat first. I have found it is better to eat when one can, for one never knows when he will eat again.'

            He tied his horse and entered the cottage with me. Jublain was up, holding a naked sword.

            'Jublain is a soldier,' I explained. 'Jublain, my friend from Stamford. He carries a warning.'

            Hasling's eyes swept the cottage, rested upon the sword. 'That will be it, then? The blade given your father by the Earl?'

            'It is,' I said.

            'I know the story,' Hasling said, to my surprise. 'I was reminded of it when your name was mentioned. I know a friend of yours.'

            'Of mine?'

            'The man who buys antiquities. He knew your father.'

            'Barnabas has an enemy, too,' Jublain said, irritably. 'What of him?'

            'Rupert Genester? An evil man, but one with power in many places. You could have no worse an enemy. He is an ambitious man, an heir, a man filled with pride and hatred. He was laughed at and that he cannot abide.'

            We drank our ale, then Hasling mounted and was gone, returning by a different route that I suggested.

            Standing at the gate, I listened to the beat of hoofs as his horse carried him away. Walking back to the cottage I belted on a sword and dagger. I charged the pistols afresh while Jublain watched me, his eyes bright with irony.

            'You learn quickly.' He emptied his cup.

            We among the fens were an independent lot. We were a people who did, with contempt for all who did nothing.

            For centuries smugglers had used the fens, bringing their craft up the secret waterways. We paid them no mind, but knew them and their ways. Few of us entered the army, fewer were impressed into the fleet. We went our ways, content with them.

            From a chest I took a casque that had belonged to my father, and the weapons from the walls. I took bacon, hams, dried fruit, cheese, and meal. We loaded them into my punt.

            Returning to close the door of the cottage, I was turning from it when they rushed upon me, a half- dozen armed men. They came at me, and my sword was out.

            'Kill him! I want him dead! Do you hear?'

            I heard the shout as they closed, but when battle was joined I was not one to dally about, so I had at them, sidestepping to place one between myself and the others, parrying his thrust and thrusting my own sword home with one movement.

            Quickly withdrawing my blade as the man fell, I had a moment when they hesitated. Shocked to see one of their own die, for they had come to murder a farmer, not to die themselves, they paused, appalled. It was the moment I needed, and with a shout, I went at them.

            I feinted, thrust ... the sword went deep. Then they were all about me and my sword was everywhere, parrying, thrusting, knowing I could not continue long, when suddenly there was a shout from behind.

            'Have at them, men!' It was Jublain. 'Let not one escape!'

            They broke and fled. Murder is one thing, a fight another. They had the stomach for one, only their heels for the other. They did not wait to see if there were more than two, but fled, unheeding their master's angry shouts.

            As they fled we ran toward our punt. Three men were down and a fourth had staggered as they fled. I heard a voice call out: 'I know you now! I know you forever, and you shall not escape!'

            It was Rupert Genester.

        Chapter 3

            The country of the fens was not so large as most of us believed it to be, but to us it seemed endless, a vast, low-lying, and marshy land where remnants grew of the once great forest that had covered England.

            The Romans, who understood the reclaiming of marshy land, had begun the drainage of the fens, but once they departed the Saxons let the canals fill and the fens return to fens.

            It was said that even now Queen Bess was talking to a Dutch engineer, a man with much experience at draining land below sea level. This we did not oppose, for reclaiming land might make some of us rich.

            Myself, for instance. I owned but a few acres of tillable land, but owned by grant more than two square miles of fen. Once drained, such rich land would make me wealthy.

            Yet I was now a fugitive. Had my case come to trial it might possibly have turned out well for me. Occasionally a commoner won such a case, but the occasions were too rare to make me confident. I had the thought that it would never come to court, for the hand of Rupert Genester could reach even into prison to kill me, easily.

            For some time I rowed until Jublain asked impatiently, 'Are you lost, man? You are rowing in circles.'

            'Almost a circle,' I agreed cheerfully, 'but not lost.'

            Fog lay thick down the tips of the blades of grass. No movement was in the water, no sound but the chunk of my oars in the locks, and that to be heard no more than a few feet away.

            Where we now went was a place I had played in as a child, visiting but rarely since. It was an islet of perhaps three acres, cut by several narrow, winding waterways. It was an outcropping of limestone with a few birch trees and some ancient, massive oaks, thickly-branched. Reaching the place I sought—where an old snag of a dead tree projected upward from the bog—I turned past it, parted the reeds and took the boat into a hidden waterway which I followed for almost a hundred feet. There, against a limestone shelf, I moored the punt to an iron ring.

            Taking weapons and food we walked the narrow path between limestone boulders and trees to a small shelf backed up against a fifteen-foot cliff of the same material. There stood a small hut, also of limestone, thatched and secure.

            'This is mine,' I told him.

            'You do yourself well,' he admitted grudgingly.

            'We may have to drive out bats or water rats,' I said, but we did not. It was tight and snug as always; a deep fireplace, thick walls, a table, two chairs, two chests on which to sleep and a bench along the wall. There was also a cupboard.

            Gathering fuel together I kindled a small fire to take off the chill. 'It is an ancient place,' I said, 'the men of the fens hid here from the Romans.'