S. Baring-Gould

“ They illumined the way, they flashed upon obstructions, they sent a gleam over the water of the canal. In the dark—and the night was at times pitch-dark, when clouds cut off the light of the stars—then it was not safe to ride on the embankment without a light. The horse might fail to see the barriers, and precipitate itself against them. It might slip down the bank and fall with its rider, on one side into the river, on the other into the drove. On the one side the horseman might be drowned, on the other break his neck. ”

“ The father of Zita, on hearing the uproar, the threats, the tramp of boots on the stage, staggered to his feet, and, drawing back the curtains, stood holding them apart, and looking forth with bewildered eyes. Zita turned and saw him.
'Sit down, father,' said she. 'It's only the general public on a frolic.'
She put her hand within and drew forth a stout ashen flail, whirled it about her head, and at once, like grasshoppers, the youths leaped from the stage, each fearing lest the flapper should fall on and cut open his own pate. The last to spring was the apple-faced youth ”

“ The clods and the ruts of the drove were rigid as iron. It would have been difficult to move the van when the way was a slough, it was impossible now that it was congealed. The lumps and the depressions were such as no springs could stand, and no goods endure. Pots would be shivered to atoms, and pans be battered out of shape. Whatever Zita may have desired, perhaps hoped, she recognised the impossibility of leaving her present quarters under existing circumstances. A thaw must relax the soil, harrows and rollers must be brought over the road, before a wheeled conveyance could pass over it. ”

“ Drownlands turned to those present.
'I call upon you all to witness, you, Leehanna Tunkiss, you, Sarah, you, Tom Easy, and you, Zita, that I pay over my twenty pounds against my will. Open your hand, Mark Runham. Let them see that you have there my twenty pounds and Zita's ten pounds. There are the sovereigns all in gold. They are well spent—well spent—they rid me of you.'
A few moments later a shout rang from the crowd without—'Tiger Ki has shelled out. For the Union, for the Cause! for the fen-labourers! Twenty pounds! Twenty pounds for liberty and right! The cheap loaf and the big wage! ”

“ NO country in the world is so subject to variations in the climate as England, and in no part of England are the variations so felt as in the Fens. No hills, no belts of trees there break the force of the wind. The gales rush over the plains unresisted from every quarter. Elsewhere there are hedgerows, on the sunny side of which appear the celandine and primrose in early spring, then the red-robin, the bluebell, our lady's smock, and the gorgeous spires of foxglove later still. There are no hedgeflowers in the Fens, for there are no hedges. ”

“ I must justify myself,' said Zita, with vehemence. 'You wrong me in your thoughts; you wrong me in your words. I am not what you suppose. I am not a bold, bad girl. I do not sell myself for profits. I am in Drownlands' house because I cannot help myself. I have nowhere else whither to go. Why should you and Kainie believe evil of me? Why should'—
'I cannot argue with you,' said Mark. ”

“ Down went the front of the van, and out tumbled a dozen lusty men, one over another, stumbling, falling, sprawling, in the trampled snow and straw.
Zita went through the van from aft to fore, and satisfied herself that it was cleared of its human occupants. Then, standing on the platform, which had been thrown forward by those who burst away from her foils, she looked up at the roof. A score of men and youths was on it, their legs pendent.
'Down with you at once,' she said. 'Do you see these rapiers? Do you think I can't run a man through as easy as stick a needle in a pin-cushion? ”

“ With her face radiant with happiness, Zita placed herself in the little sleigh.
Then with a merry 'Whoop!' off he started down the river. The wind rushed in Zita's face, sharp and fresh, and drove the blood to her cheeks.
They passed many 'patiners,' men and boys. There were few women out. Later, when the sun set, they would skate along the frozen surface to the tavern. The tavern is an institution in the Fens more frequented than elsewhere, and frequented without scruple, not by men only, but by women as well. ”

“ He feels bound to spend all his days in the fen. Only when the vital spark expires does his body leave the turf to repose in the clay of the islet graveyards. That the farmer and landowner should love the fen is not marvellous, because of the richness of the soil and the profits they make out of it; but why the labourer should cling to the spongy turf is not so explicable. He may be discontented, and be a grumbler, but he is discontented with his lot, and envies the taverner or the smuggler on the Fens, grumbles at the hardness of his work or the lowness of his pay ”

“ Zita drew a stool to the fireside. The turf glowed red. The stool was low; when she seated herself, her knees were as high as her bosom. She folded her arms round them and [196] closed her hands, lacing her fingers together and looking smilingly over her knees at Kainie, with a gleam in her face of expectant triumph. Kainie knelt at the hearth and put on the kettle. She turned her head and watched Zita, whose features were illumined by the fire glow, as they had been shortly before by that of the setting sun. ”

“ The cathedral is constructed of stone quarried in Northamptonshire, and brought in barges to the isle.
Ely possesses no manufactures, has almost no neighbourhood, stands solitary and self-contained. On some sides it rises rapidly from the fen, on others it slopes easily down. A singular effect is produced when the white mists hang over the fen-land for miles and miles, and the sun glitters on the island city. Then it is as an enchanted isle of eternal spring, lost in a wilderness of level snow. ”

“ Drownlands contemplated her steadily. He saw her, in her anguish of mind, twine and untwine her long fingers, then pluck at and strip off chips of the table where he had broken it, put them between her teeth and bite them, but still with lowered brow and eyes that she could not raise for shame. He could see flushes pass over her, succeeded by deadly pallor. It was as though flames were flickering about her head, shooting up and enveloping throat and cheek and brow, then dying down and leaving a deathly cold behind. A soul in this present life was prematurely suffering its purgatory. ”

“ In former days, when they were under water—a haunt of wildfowl, a wilderness of lagoons, a paradise of wild-flowers—when they teemed with fish and swarmed with insect life of every kind—when the eys or islets, Stuntney, Shipey, Southconey, Welney, were the sole objects that broke the horizon, rising out of the marshes, rich with forest-trees—then the Fens were full of charm, because given over to Nature. But the industry of man has changed the character and aspect of the Fens. The meres have been pumped dry, the bogland has been drained. ”

“ Men and women skate to market, children to school, and smugglers run their goods from King's Lynn.
Zita had gone to the river side to see a sight that was novel to her. As she stood watching the skaters, Mark Runham came to the bank side, his cheeks glowing, his fair hair blowing about his ears, his eyes sparkling as though frost crystals were in them.
'I say, Cheap Jack, get on your patines and come.' Skates are termed patines in the Fens.
'If you mean skates, I have none. Besides, I do not know how to use them.'
'Not got patines? Not know how to use them? Then take a ride in my sleigh. ”

“ It is what every one has been saying; and, as you see, Mark Runham won't have anything to do with you. You thought to catch him, did you? You've been angling for him and the master, and taken the one as bids highest. 'Tis like a Cheap Jack that. You're young, but bold as brass and cankered as iron.'
'Silence, you false-mouthed woman!'
'Can you silence all the tongues in the Fen? There's not a man over his pipe and ale in the tavern ain't jeering at you. There's not a woman over her soapsuds and scrubbing-brush ain't crying shame on you. But what can you expect of a vagabond but vice? ”

“ She turned her thoughts again in the direction of Mark. What were the ties binding him to Kainie, of which he spoke?
On consideration, she thought she could understand. Mark had fallen in love with the girl at the mill when in hobbledehoydom, and had stupidly plunged into an engagement. Boys are fools; and he was but just emerged from boyhood. His father's death had knocked the nonsense out of his head, and brought him to the consciousness that he had made a blunder. He was now a rich farmer; Kainie had nothing of her own but the clothes she stood up in. ”

“ A young farmer said to his fellow, 'Them chaps, Runham and Drownlands, be like two tigers; when they meet they must fight. We shall have fun.'
'You are a fool!' shouted the fair man,—'a fool—that is what I think you are, to give twelve and six for what isn't worth two shillings. I'll let you have it at that price, that you may become the laughing-stock of the Fens.'
The flail was handed out of the van to the man called Drownlands, Zita received a piece of gold and half a crown in her palm. She retired into the waggon, and immediately reappeared with a second flail. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII MARK RUNHAM
NO sight in the Fens is so solemn, so touching, as a funeral. There are no graveyards in the Fens. There is no earth to which the dead can be committed—only peat, and this in dry weather is converted into dust, and in rain resolved into a quagmire. A body laid in it would be exposed by the March winds, soddened by the November rains.
Consequently the dead are conveyed, sometimes as many as nine miles, to the islets—to Ely, to Stuntney, or to Littleport, wherever there is a graveyard; and a graveyard can only be where there is an outcrop of blue clay. ”

“ A van. Surely the familiar Cheap Jack conveyance, crawling along the drove on a summer's day, drawn by an old horse that takes a few steps, then pauses, breathes hard, looks behind him with a peculiarly resolute expression in his eye, and ignores absolutely every appeal, entreaty, objurgation addressed to him, till he has recovered his wind, when he goes on once more. ”

“ If you hurt one hair of the head of Kainie, I'll shoot you through the heart. I've time on my hands now. I'm turned out of my mill by the Commissioners, and can choose my occasion. I shall watch you. One or other—leave my Kainie alone and stick to her.' He indicated Zita with one hand.
'Pip,' said Mark, flushing very red, 'do not talk nonsense!'
'Nonsense?' repeated Beamish; 'that is how you rich men treat these matters—sport and nonsense; but to us it is heartbreak and despair. What have I but my one ewe lamb? ”

“ The November frost had continued, and canals and rivers were iced over as well as dykes and drains. God's plough was in the soil—that is what country folk say when the frost cuts deep into the earth. Where God's plough has been, there golden harvests are turned up to gladden all sorts and conditions of men, and golden harvests turn to metallic gold in the pockets of the farmers.
Every fen man, woman, and child can skate. As soon as a child has found its legs, it essays to slide, and when it can slide, it attempts to skate. Fen skating is inelegant. ”

“ A woman's clothes gets to know her ways. Mine, I daresay, 'd be terrible puzzled in that van of yours.'
'Don't you talk to me about petticoats,' said Zita. 'Petticoats to a woman is what whiskers is to a cat. They have feeling in them. A cat never knocked over nothing with his whiskers, nor does a woman with her skirts if she ain't a weaker fool than a cat.'
Then up the interior of the mill ran Kainie, with wondrous agility, playing in the framework, whilst the huge axletree turned, and the oak fangs threatened to catch or drag her into the machinery. ”

“ Whatever we may think of the morality of a wife deserting her post at the side of her husband, of a queen abandoning her position in a kingdom, we cannot, perhaps, be surprised at it. A tender, gentle-spirited woman after a while sickened of the brutality of the ways of a Saxon court, its drunkenness and savagery, and fled that she might find in solitude that rest for her weary soul and overstrained nerves she could not find in the Northumbrian palace. ”

“ In the first place, it is awkward for a young girl to be cheap-jacking over the country—it's awkward, and it's not respectable. She cannot manage by herself. As the gentleman said, a Jill must have a Jack. That was true, though I did not like to hear him say it. I could not manage the van and Jewel and the selling alone. I must have some man with me. And if I were to take a servant, he might set his head to make himself Jack and make me Jill. And to take a proper Jack,' pursued Zita,—'I mean, to have a husband,—why, I don't fancy it. ”

“ I shall take account of every act of lawlessness. They have not had my twenty pounds for nothing. I shall get some satisfaction in return. In Ely folks will be too much alarmed, the faces will be too strange for there to be recognition of offenders. That is my work. I shall witness against them, man by man, beginning with my own labourers who have revolted against me. I have purchased the right with my twenty pounds—a life for every pound—ha! ha!'
Then, looking steadily into Zita's eyes, he said in a low, bitter tone, 'I shall begin with Mark Runham.'
'Mark?' echoed the girl. ”