CHAPTER 3

THE EEL-MAN

 

 

 

Fabas indulcet fames

 

Hunger sweetens the beans

 

 

 

“Have you always been a leper?”

Piers is never subtle, but Simon deals with him as straight as he can. He grumps out one word answers as they descend from the relative high ground of Saint James’ Hospital until, perhaps overcome by the child’s persistence or by something else, he explains his own circumstances in the only way he can think to express them.

“No man chooses his lot in this life, young sir; that’s a fact. Mostly it comes to us.”

His voice is refined, Beth thinks. He might perhaps have been a gentleman – once.

He continues, “Take me, for example. I would not choose this disease. Who would? But it is here, and some say because I have sinned, and who among us can say they have not? Some think up other explanations. But howsoever – the fact is that I came here to the abbey, for there is no life for me now anywhere else. They made me lie in an empty grave and confess my sins, take certain vows, then they clothed me and provided for me as you now see. I am part monk, part dead man walking, you understand?”

Piers does not, and is thinking of another question. “Is it far, the eel-man’s cottage?”

Simon sighs. “No, but the way is slow, always slow.” He sees Beth is stumbling with weariness, and would offer to carry the bairn for her but shrinks from her inevitable rebuff, dare not even stare her in the face. He knows there is no reason she should recognise him or even know of him. These things he keeps telling himself over and over, and yet there it is – that gnawing undergirding of all his thoughts; that she is here, like some great unseen hand is moving the wheels of fortune in ways he cannot determine.

They follow for some time behind the uneven gait of their guide, through fields, then marshes, sometimes on banks, sometimes on boards and tree trunks laid in the wettest parts. The children’s feet are sodden and so cold they hurt. Simon feels nothing – the disease had his feet long since. He would give a king’s ransom to feel again, even the biting chill of this water.

On they trudge, deeper into the marsh and a thick blanket of fog. At intervals they startle an owl, heron or coot, which in turn temporarily silences the whimpering sobs of the two little ones. After what seems an age, Simon tells them to wait silently, and the older children endeavour to hush the babes.

They smell burning sod, then caustic hints of a byre nearby, then something else – something foul and rotten: the discarded guts of fish. Beth covers her face. But as yet they see nothing, for the reeds grow high. Simon leaves them for several minutes and in the imposed isolation of silence Beth, Richard and Piers each begin to brood on the creeping fear and vulnerability of their position. The older children fight hard to suppress the thoughts that crowd in on their minds – all except Piers. The other two round on Piers, telling him to shut up, but his whispered questions issue like a flood. Will they see Mother again? What about Father? Will he be allowed his toys, his bed? Will the eel-man make them eat eels all the time? They cannot think, they are too hungry, too cold, too frightened. They snarl at Piers to do as he’s been told and shut up, a third and fourth time.

Eventually they hear Simon’s voice beckon them. They feel gingerly along the path in the foggy darkness, until they see the shape of Simon, then another man: tall, thin and stooped like a willow, silhouetted by light from the doorway of a cottage hidden away there in the wilderness of this marsh.

“Come, kinderen,” the eel-catcher says, his accent alien, but his voice rich and kindly. “I am Pieter, friends of parents. Yes, come!”

They approach him cautiously. Richard observes the long nose, the legs bare up to the knee. He seems to welcome them without reservation and certainly the smell from the thatched cottage, peat smoke and supper cooking, draws him, but he feels afraid for the others – suppose this is a trap? What is safe any more? What can be trusted? His father has warned him about some of these marsh folk; too poor for the land, but not respectable enough for the parish. Some live by reed cutting and dyke digging, others by thievery and crime. No one knows the abodes of half these people; the marshes stretch across vast distances, treacherous and little frequented. No one has bothered to catalogue the paths these grey feet, these bog-dwellers, traipsed to find a home here. Many move from place to place as their needs demand. But this eel-man, he is established, his cottage is sturdy-built, a proper home; yet still Richard is uneasy, gripping Piers by the sleeve to keep him close. Are they all so tall, these Dutch?

Beth turns to Simon. “I thank you for your help, sir. When things are better with us we will re – ”

He cuts in, “No payment needed, maid. Only glad to see you – see you, that is, safe here.” He wants to offer further assistance if needed but he cannot think how to put it in that moment, so he lets it pass. The children shuffle through into the cottage. When baby James cries out, a woman’s voice welcomes them from inside. “Ja, ja! Come in, come in.”

Pieter tries to persuade the leper to stay for a bit to eat, but he declines and shuffles back into the night. The smell of livestock hangs thicker now on the frosty air, wafted from byres to the rear of the wattle and daub cottage. They pass through the low doorway into the yellow warmth of the rush lights, the smell of burning animal fat rousing their hunger further, and reminding them yet again of home. For their mother used tallow for making candles – and sweet scented beeswax too, saved for high days and holidays.

He brings the children to the fireside, where an old woman, wrapped in woollen shawls, waits with a wooden bowl in one hand and reaches forth the other. “Ja, come now, let the kinderen come; come to the fire, hot food, pobs, pobs.” She offers shreds of bread soaked in warm milk but Samuel and James are past the point of reason. “He is wet, he needs a new tail-clout, some moss?” Beth sees straightaway that there will be no waffle-weave cloth here. Moss will do from now, it will have to.

“Ja, I have old clout that will do, but no wine for the washing, only the water. Bring him to the hearth, and Pieter, Pieter shut that door!” The woman is called Sarah. The sister of Pieter, she has never had children of her own and the unrelenting crying unsettles her. “The door, Pieter, the door.” Beth lays James by the fire, removing his bib, swaddling shawl and gown, then lifting his shirt. His pilcher – an absorbent triangular felted-wool nappy – is wringing wet, and the waffle-weave cloth underneath is soiled, his skin chafed and raw on the inside of his legs. Beth washes him carefully while Piers brings Samuel to the fire, removing the woollen kerchief across his breast, wet with dribble and tears, and then his apron and pudding cap. Piers’s chilled fingers work slowly at the leading-strings sewn to the back of Samuel’s frock – a gathered skirt on a fitted bodice. Standing there in his shift, with blue fingers and lips, the mite bawls piteously until eventually the pobs are inserted into his mouth by Piers.

While Beth deftly dries and clothes the babe with what Pieter brings her, she is all the while catching glances of the old woman, whose fingers walk through the air towards the cauldron to take the ladle, yet whose eyes stare straight ahead. Beth sees that the old woman is partly blind, and straight after also thinks that that is why her linen coif is so dirty: she cannot see it, and surely a man would never think to point it out. Beth then unconsciously feels for the strings of hers and tucks some loose hair under it. She has so many pretty ones at home.

Pieter encourages the children to the stools, which he pulls to the hearth. He too is old, in his seventies, and at this moment wonders how his sister will cope having so many others in the cottage. They grew up in a busy household – who doesn’t? – but you get used to your own space, your own routine. But she exclaims, “Ah, the poor kinderen!” reaching out her arms. “Po po po, come little one, come.” But James hides his face in Beth’s skirts and will not be prised away, while Samuel only screams for his mother. So Sarah turns back to ladle the broth, holding out one of the applewood bowls full with steaming potage in their direction, with visibly shaky hands. She squints at the bowls, for though she is not completely blind, in this light it is very difficult. Her eyes have got worse in the last three years but even her blindness is less daunting a challenge than this – how can she, being so old, so set in her ways, be mother to five terrified children? The parents will not be back, that much she knows. Maybe next time the bailiff will come for her, and that will be an end of the matter – but five children, and little ones too! “Here now, perhaps the older ones first while it is so hot. You will have to share the spoons until Pieter can make more.” She chuckles nervously. “Dear me, and bowls and stools too, ja.” Her hand fumbles with the ladle as she lays it again in the pot. “Oh dear, here we are.”

Pieter rests his own hand tenderly on her arm and she acknowledges it. “Ja, we shall be busy, but the roach and bream are spawning, so there is eel enough in the river. What a blessing, and summer will come soon.”

It is a good thing that she cannot see the older children’s faces clearly as they smell the broth, though to their credit, they start to eat without the usual complaints. Their mother doted slightly too much on the children in regard to food, often remarking with a saintly resignation that if it were a sin, it were but a venial one, and perhaps an occupational hazard for any who love too much. The little ones stop their crying and kicking and, seeing the others with food, nestle in and share the spoonfuls. Even when they finish the food, none of the children ask what they really want to, namely about their parents. It is not shyness so much as the risk of hearing unpalatable truth. After some awkward silences, Pieter clears a space in the loft for Piers to snuggle down with the little ones. There is plenty of straw but they must share a blanket until more can be borrowed. When they’ve settled down, Beth and Richard join Pieter and his sister by the fire, where they turn to practical things.

“You will want learning,” Pieter says in an accent oddly mingling the cadence of his own country and the rustic dialect of Norfolk.

Education! Richard’s thoughts flash immediately to his career of failure at Saint Mary’s chantry school in South Walsham. His poor, tired shoulders slump as he remembers the twelve-hour days, setting out along the dark, winter lane with Latin Vulgaria in one hand, and a linen bag with food, ink and candles in the other. He was, said Master Pinches, at school to receive a fine modern education. It was one that came with regular birchings. As Pinches’ right arm grew in strength, so Richard was to become, it was said, Italianate – a rounded renaissance scholar, a humanist. His father revered this as a high calling, unthinkable only a generation before, and often spoke of it, only increasing the child’s guilt and shame. For Richard, even with all his genteel sensibilities, and all his earnest application, had no calling to the classics, neither literature nor rhetoric. He envied his sister who seemed to have their mother’s aptitude for study, and not just household lore – herbs, medicine, sewing, cookery, household management and the like – no, for Mother had had a tutor of her own when she was young; she knew books, writing, languages, music, dancing. She was forever borrowing books, sharing the great prose romances with Beth. “Filling her head with nonsense,” Father had said. “Just make sure they all know their catechism by the time they’re eight as the law says. I don’t want any fines. Not this year, the way crops are.” How she had ended up wed to a farm steward was not a question that Richard had ever thought to ask, but Beth had, she told him. It was a scorching August day when both she and her mother were comparing the blisters on their hands after haymaking. “I will tell you one day, but never think unkindly to your father; he is the best of men.” That was all she said. Money there was, but not enough for a tutor which would benefit Beth. It was for the oldest son’s education, and if Pinches and his birch rod could not make a renaissance man of Richard then it was not the fault of modern education. The boy was plainly a simpleton, no doubt born under the influence of a bad and mischievous star, or at least not Mercury or Sol. This has weighed heavy on the lad and so too the lesser problems accompanying youth, for he has matured late and his voice was still high until recently. His body, though by no means short, is nevertheless that of a boy. The other scholars, and even Pinches, have noticed this and long since teased him in their turns. Manhood lies beyond him, through some door that might never open. These and other things stir in the lad’s soul as the others talk on, until he is sunk in self-pity.

“Eh, eh,” Pieter says, waving the swollen-jointed fingers before Richard’s mesmerised eyes. “What you thinking, lad? I say learning and you look to the fire like this?” Richard comes to, in for a pleasant surprise as the old couple think out loud in the light of their dying fire. “The boy looks strong. He can learn to cut reeds, set eel traps and eel lines. I will teach him to hunt and trap food, to provide for his family.” Beth observes Richard straighten up and sit forward, the whites of his eyes now clearly visible. Pieter nods to himself with satisfaction, his eyes alighting with pleasure on the lad. Pieter guesses rightly that Richard would learn quickest without his nimble brother to steal his thunder, but to be kind, he adds, “Perhaps we will let your brother come with us too sometimes? Maybe?”

“Oh yes,” Sarah says. “There will be much to do, much to learn, the kinderen will be very good to scare away the birds when we sow the meadow next month. And you, Elizabeth…” She reaches an unsteady hand towards Beth and rests it on the girl’s knee. “You can help me, my dear, for there is so much to do here too, and these old eyes, ja, so dim now.”

Sarah breaks off and gestures around the cottage. “We will bake these hungry men bread, for they are like stubborn oxen when their bellies are not filled. We will cure the bacon, salt the meat and fish, tend the bees, raise the vegetables, milk the cows, feed the animals, make nice pickles, jellies and preserves, ja, ja – and sell them at market!” She chuckles and raises a knowing finger. “And when we have done all this they will need clothes, so we must spin wool and make coats for them – and soap for them to wash with, and candles for them to chatter by, with a mug of warm ale which we will brew too. And then they will want to know what we find to be tired about at the end of the day!”

They all laugh but under it all Beth has the sickest feeling that she has just heard a life sentence passed upon her. She is not a gentleman’s daughter but she might have become a gentleman’s wife; isn’t everyone trading up in England these days? But now, she is robbed of parents, status and prospects in one swoop. Now she will be lower than a serf, attached to no land even, with nothing but these two poor old souls and no future save the drudgery of a peasant’s life on the marshes, where the damp carries most off by forty, all except these Dutch, who have willow in their bones. Beth does not even think to ask how these people have earned the trust of her parents, or what secret agreement has been made, or even what (if any) money has been laid by for the eventuality. Even an hour later, tucked up with the others in the loft, she is still wrestling with these feelings; sometimes with anger, sometimes with guilt for her own ingratitude and snobbery. They eclipse sometimes even her longings for her mother, and still the boys snore lightly with open mouths. She envies them. She weeps for herself, then for them, then she sleeps. For good or ill, tomorrow is a new day.