The Unfinished Land Read online

  “Who are you?” Reynard had asked in a trembling voice.

  The dark man with purple eyes then faded, leaving Reynard on the road beside the hedgerow—alone and frightened. Later, the most memorable part of that odd vision had been that the man’s shadow was itself white. He had cast a white shadow.

  The nearer Reynard had come to Southwold, the less he had felt comfortable with the dark man’s memory: dream or sorcery, trouble either way! And so he had tried to forget about him and told nobody, not even his mother, to whom he sometimes confided his dreams. He still had no explanation. But it was apparent he might not need to drink seawater to lose his mind.

  * * *

  Waves sloshed over his legs. Reynard stared at the worn fingers of his right hand, lifting them one after another, testing their flexibility. First he rearranged and retied the filthy, bloody tag of cloth on his little finger, serving as a bandage. The tag fell off and he saw that the old clot had closed over the exposed knuckle, making the bandage little more than a cushion. But he pushed it back over the wound and held his hand in closer, under his arm, moaning softly. After a time, he took out his hand and laid the fingers as straight as he could along his left arm and arranged, by folding and extending, a series of ogham symbols, engaging in rankalva—spelling out letter by letter old Irish words, as his grandmother had taught him, and as his mother had on occasion signed to him when she wanted chores done. “Do not show this to thine uncle,” his mother had advised. “He is unhappy with my side of the family. Oh, he is an honorable man, comes to that, but not ripe for such heresies . . .”

  The letters and words, dancing from the fingers both injured and raw, brought him comfort. He could still shape the necessary letters, even though his hand throbbed. Somehow, that seemed important, though it was a skill he had never found useful after his grand­mother’s death.

  His uncle had been no-nonsense, straight as a staff and just as blunt in his opinions—unlike Reynard’s father, his brother, who married, gambled, drank, had a son, and then died, leaving the uncle to take up the family and feed and find work for Reynard, who had always borne a distinct resemblance, black hair and all, to his grandfather, also a tinker, ne’er-do-well, and gambler—so his uncle had claimed, with quiet dismay at how life plagued and challenged sensible men.

  He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and saw nothing changed. But his fingers had a life of their own.

  Old Goidelic words now danced on them, spinning a silent tale of the Anakim, powerful giants who had once lived in the Holy Land, vexing Moses and Joshua, and upon being pushed out of those countries, had moved to Ireland and Scotland. There, many centuries before, they had married into the dark Picts and other tribes and had acted as scouts and beacons for the even darker Roma, their distant cousins—according to his grandmother. “Stone people, and big,” she had confided. “I met one once, long ago. Handsome and very large. Thought I to marry him, but mine own mither would hae none o’ it.”

  Reynard had once asked the dotty old priest of Aldeburgh about the Anakim, and the priest had scoffed and suggested he read his Wycliffe. “Or seek’st thou a dark grammary, to learn magic? Thou hast that evil, Gypsy look, I wot.”

  Neither his uncle nor his mother possessed so expensive and rare a thing as a family Bible. And besides, through lack of books, Reynard’s reading skills were haphazard, though he was swift enough with ogham and the finger-forms that spelled out words to those who wished to hide them.

  Still, his grandmother’s secret signs had not satisfied. He had wished to read about and learn of all the places and histories and fables and other glorious things that book-words described. Four months back, one cloudy spring afternoon, he had used his one free day to venture out of the small fishing town and, unannounced, knock on the door of a man known to be a tutor in Aldeburgh. The external beams of the instructor’s two-story, half-timbered house were painted pink, and the door was set with purple stamped-glass windows in leaden frames. Reynard had knocked several times, at first light raps, then heavy bangs, on the thick oaken door, and asked the small stooped man who answered if he had books. Dubious, baldheaded, wearing a sagging, great-shouldered coat over a long gray gown, the instructor had looked him over briefly for weapons, then shrugged and led this strange boy inside. In a dark-shelved inner apartment, away from windows and sun, by the smoky light of a brass candle, Reynard had stared in green envy at the instructor’s shelves of vellum-bound books, dozens of them, spines pale gray or tan, with titles calligraphed on their spines in sepia or black ink. The instructor had held out a clutching hand, rubbed his fingers, and with sucked-in cheeks and pinched lips studied Reynard.

  “How much money doth your family possess?” he had asked.

  “I come from fisherfolk.”

  “So . . . very little?” This made the man’s face turn red as a slice of beef. Unable to pay, Reynard had been shown the door, with a kick on his bum for farewell.

  As he had made his return to Southwold through the gloaming, the same press gang, minus sad boys, almost caught him a second time, but he escaped through a half-overgrown wicker gate and fled through a copse alive with bird screeches. At least there had been no dark man with a white shadow.

  * * *

  With his fingers, he shaped more of his grandmother’s words, concluding stanzas to ancient songs he did not understand, filled with nonsense lists and riddles and begging equally nonsensical answers that nobody had ever explained—then sighed and folded both hands into fists. The bandage fell off again. This time, he did not replace it.

  All of it was nonsense for a fisherboy, nonsense as useless as salt cod in a barrel. Would that the Anakim could rise again and vanquish England’s enemies! But they did not, and would not, ever. This was no longer such a world.

  * * *

  For months now, all England—and certainly the northeast coastal towns—had experienced a numbing terror inspired by actual threats, but promoted by the Queen’s own henchman: agents of Walsyngham and whoever could be encouraged or commanded to cry in the village squares or carry alarming handbills from town to town. Weeks before the battle, dire warnings had been posted at inns and around wells and on the docks. Each village was asked to help the effort against the Spanish by contributing ships and boats. Some villages demurred, made excuses; bet against the Queen, some said, a dangerous treason if the Spanish were defeated. Reynard read well enough to feel concern, but understood better the fear his uncle had expressed that not to give over the use of their hoy would bring down the Queen’s anger. Beloved as the Queen was by most not Catholic, no one wished her servant Walsyngham’s disapproval, and so Southwold had eventually compelled twelve boats, nine pinnaces and three hoys, to join the fleet.

  Farmers as well were reluctant to donate crops and animals to supply the navy or the coastal defenses. Rarely traveling more than ten miles from their land, these yeomen and landowners had difficulty imagining, in their inland fastnesses, a broad, wet ocean. Such, his uncle said, was what it meant to be English these days—surrounded by devils, and the farmers and highborn on shore caught in tides of ignorance and stingy greed.

  “For which God willing I’ll soon die,” Reynard murmured, then cringed as his lower lip split, and not for the first time.

  The fog! The cursed fog filled the sky with weird shapes. Devil’s fog, devil’s war, devil’s time—and his life had scarce begun.

  He could no longer keep his eyes open, even knowing what he now saw might be the last he would ever see.

  The salt crusting his eyelids crackled.

  He dropped into dark misery.

  * * *

  Somehow, the visions would not leave him.

  “Wilt thou tak’st these signs to some who wait?”

  Reynard did not bother to open his eyes. He was raw inside from the knotted string of memories and visions, with no way of knowing which was what. There was nobody and nothing beyond his eyelids to see, he knew that already. And besides, he did not need to open his
eyes, as the lids themselves had become clear as stamped-glass panes, useless to block such specters.

  And yet . . .

  A well-dressed gentleman stood before him, shoes set solid on the sun-touched water. At least his coloring and figure were not reversed. A fancy ostrich plume adorned his well-shaped and expensive hat. Reynard, who seemed to watch from all around, saw the gentleman’s pleasant smile and knew that something more was wanted of him. This was a man of privilege. Even for a vision, being so well-dressed showed money and power, and so he must needs be polite.

  “Noble sir,” he murmured.

  “Fine lad!” The beplumed gentleman leaned in and stretched out his arm. “I have summat to teach thee about the heavens and their ways. I have studied long, and think thou needest guidance on such matters, even now, before thy moment of being born.”

  “I am already born,” Reynard said, wondering if the man was an idiot, or truly a ghost.

  “Nay, thou hast not even a name, yet.”

  “And what is your name, sir?”

  “Frauncis,” the man said. “Thou’lt know me better in time.” His fingers tickled Reynard’s palm in patterns he recognized, letters leading into words, words forming a kind of poetic sense, of which he translated a crucial few: The First Mother . . . the First Word . . .

  The First Star in the Sky.

  Was that the stand of it?

  A far metal peal interrupted.

  Reynard lifted his chin.

  The man collapsed like folded paper.

  Reynard looked for the source of the clang that had roused him. Had it been a swinging bell? Bump of blocks against an anchor? After a short, dark time, he thought he heard other voices—not English voices, but not dreams, either—and craned his neck to find their direction, muffled as they were by fog, like every other sound—but real. He looked down at his fingers, but could recover nothing from the strange dream of the feathered man except his smile and the arch of his plume.

  Again Reynard tried to stand, and nearly fell into the water. Words from across the lapping waves came flat and clear to his ears—Spanish words, and not from spirits. Dare he cry out in answer? What choice? To keep to this drifting pile of sticks meant a sure and drowned death. Could the Spanish do worse?

  Walsyngham had insisted they could.

  Reynard made his choice.

  “Ahoy!” he tried to yell, but the call came out a dry, weak croak. He tried again, and once more, with no better result, then leaned on his elbow and stared into the gloom, cheeks puffy, eyes stinging with salt.

  There it was! A great shadow pushed through the lower grayness, huge spritsail dragging under a boom big as a tree. The sail passed over his wreck, and the hoy hard-bumped a keel and swung slow about, grinding and spinning along a massive, bulged black hull. Above, from as high as the sky, more cries drifted down. He knew little Spanish, but these were words he could almost understand—nautical words. They had seen the wreck and were discussing it, he was sure.

  Reynard rose to his knees to hold out his arms and reach for a ladder or rope, something to climb or cling to. Whatever the origin of the huge, potbellied ship and its crew, they were alive, it was afloat, and together offered at least a thin hope.

  But nothing was lowered to his grasp, and the wreck kept grinding and spinning.

  And then, suddenly, shouts and cheers from above, and a huge, dark mass plunged from over the rail into the water, just feet from the wreck of the hoy. Bubbles greened the sea, and a sad hump surfaced and rolled to show a long head, folded and broken legs—

  A horse! A dead horse. With such a feast, the ocean would soon be thick with sharks. The words from above grew louder. The wreck had beat along about a third of the galleon, wrenching against solid oak and splitting the frame. Reynard was awash to his waist when a thick line uncoiled like a snake from the quarterdeck. He grabbed it and held tight. A grizzled old sailor leaned over the rail, scanned the dead horse and the wreck’s submerged tangle, then waved his arm and pulled back. A few seconds later, the old sailor was swung out again and down, sitting on a slung board, such as might be used to paint the hull or transfer sailors.

  The old one laughed as if this was a joke and he was paying off a bet. He had very few teeth left. “Muchacho!” he said. “¡Oye, tú! ¿Eres inglés o castellano?”

  Asking if he were English or Spanish. Reynard understood this much. But again, he could only croak.

  The old man looked him over with a yellowed, doubtful eye. “I think inglés. Do not move. Thou art fast sinking.”

  A great voice boomed from the forecastle, arguments broke out along the rail, and the old man was pulled up. Water slopped into Reynard’s mouth and he tried to swim, but his muscles knotted. The great ship moved on. He was sure that would be the last he would see or hear of any of them, but moments later, the old man descended again and flung him a second rope. “Tie it on!” he urged, and pointed to his own skinny waist. Reynard had enough strength to do that, and soon he was lifted like a sack, the old man keeping him steady as they both were hauled aboard the ship, passing gun ports, thick sheets of tar and hair to help repel shipworm, black steel spikes to discourage boarders—which could skewer them like fish on a hook. But the men pulling from the deck swung them about, and the old man, with surprising strength, pushed the boy up over the thick rail.

  Reynard sprawled on his back, gasping, and the sailors and soldiers—dozens of Spanish soldiers in full battle gear—formed a solid wall, like a stand of brutal flowers. A great net had been slung above the deck, and hammocks still dangled from its squares. The soldiers carried half-pikes and halberds and wore crested helmets and bulge-breasted cuirasses, and they were bearded, brown or olive with sun and warm-climed Spanish blood.

  They circled around Reynard, curious, disdainful. Some spat. Some moved in with short swords drawn, ready to dispatch this useless English wretch, until the old man cried out, “Santa Maria, madre de Dios!” and pushed them back. The soldiers rewarded him with grating laughter and what sounded like insults.

  The old man leaned over Reynard and whispered to him, “Speak truth! Speak lies! But say thou canst tell us where we are.”

  Reynard croaked and pointed to his mouth.

  The old man lifted his gaze to the soldiers and curious sailors and called for water. The sailors grumbled, the soldiers parted and wandered off, but water was brought in a bucket by a frowning boy much younger than Reynard, and the old man ladled him his first drink in days.

  “Not too much,” he advised. “Thou wilt heave on el maestro’s bloody deck.”

  The water was sweeter than fresh apples and gave Reynard back a whisper. “What ship?”

  “A mighty ship,” the old man said. “El Corona Royale, thirty-one guns! Sad boy, niño inglés, thou shalt surrender to the imperial navy of King Philip and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and tell us where we sail!”

  “¡No hay viento!” cried a voice forward.

  “No wind,” the old man translated. “No wind anywhere.”

  A man of great dignity and fine clothes came down to the middle deck to inspect their catch. He knelt beside Reynard and regarded him sadly. The old man, in oft-patched rags, with a rope for a belt, was a sorry contrast to this splendid fellow, whose gray-specked beard had been neatly trimmed, and whose enameled scabbard depended from a belt on a silver chain. His eyes were like emeralds, and his hands were pale and smooth—a young woman’s hands, untouched by the wear of rope or oar.

  The old man bowed low. “This is el capitán del mar y de la guerra Jorge Cardoza de Vincennes, very powerful. Say something. Name anything—an isle thou know’st, a spit, a reef.”

  “Where the sea doth strangle the wind,” Reynard rasped, sensing he would be tossed back into the water unless he said something, however stupid.

  “Donde duerme el viento,” the old man said to the gentleman.

  “Ah,” the gentleman said. “¡Él sí conoce el nombre!”

  “Know’st thou this place?” the o
ld man asked Reynard, with a sparkle of suspicion. “Or make cruel jest?”

  Reynard tried to remember where he had heard the phrase, where the notion had come from. It might have been from his father before he died . . . but that would have been when Reynard was little, no more than three or four years of age. “My father told it to me,” he said, then put fingers to his mouth for more water and for food.

  Sadly, deliberately, the gentleman in the fine clothes came off his knee and stood his full height over them—about five feet six inches, shorter than Reynard’s uncle and slighter, more delicate.

  “¡Norte-noroeste!” cried the voice forward.

  “How doth he know?” the old man muttered. “For days, the compass guideth not.”

  And so it was. The Spanish were lost, too. The fog obscured the tops of sails and masts like a billowing blanket, dividing and reshaping into worms and wisps—but also hiding some of the damage the galleon had suffered in the great battle off Gravelines. Ragged sails hung, ripped and holed, rigging cut as if by shears, the ends tied and lifted for fidding and rejoining later, spars hanging but also tied away, bumping in dejection against the great masts.

  The old man followed Cardoza, el capitán del mar y de la guerra, forward and up onto the forecastle. Two other boys, also younger than Reynard and curious about the prisoner, brought him more water. The oldest smiled, not in the least afraid. They were not unkind, he saw, not cruel—and he had heard many times that the Spanish tortured their own children when they were bad, that they flensed and ate fishermen and merchants for breakfast after breaking their necks in the noose. More grog tales, no doubt, but effective at keeping an air of menace about those who threatened the Queen.

  “The Queen’s a fair tease when it cometh to Philip,” his uncle had said. “But now the old king’s dander is up and we are all put to it. If only the dander flaked from a worthier head. Philip will be their bloody ruin!”