Chapter 5
Ely, England
February 1773
JAMES
HOLLOWAY PULLED an armful of faggots from the shed behind his family bakery. He
estimated they had enough for another week before needing to forage for more in
the woods outside Ely.
Too bad it was so time consuming, but broken
branches on the ground from winter storms were free. If they bought wood from Jonathan
Herrick, it would rob them of some of their profits. When the damned rain stopped
for more than a couple of hours, they would go to the woods and restock before
they ran out.
No, not they. Him. His older brother
William gave James the chores he himself didn’t want to do.
His brother hated leaving the bread baking
to James, claiming he never added the right amount of salt or flour. He didn’t
knead it long enough. The loaves weren’t quite regular. The oven cooled too
quickly. According to William, only he and sometimes his wife Alice could turn
out the quality bread that made their bakery successful. It didn’t hurt that
theirs was the only bakery in Ely.
From under the shed roof, James stared at
the second-floor window that peeked out between the half timbers where he lived
over the bakery.
In his imagination he could still hear the
screams of his late wife Bess bringing their daughter into the world. The baby
had not lived long enough to scream even once.
Rain pelted down. Tiny rivers filled the
ruts between the shed and house. The Fens hadn’t flooded this year, but if rain
continued it would happen. Again.
James wished he had the courage to throw
himself in the River Ouse. He had gone so far as gathering rocks for his pocket
to guarantee that he would sink.
With Bess gone, he had little to live for.
People said men die in battle. Women die
in childbirth. Three other neighborhood women had not survived the births of
their fifth, second and eighth child, respectively in the last year.
He’d felt sad when they died. They had
been neighbors since he was a little boy starting his apprenticeship under his
parents’ instructions. The women rested forever in the Cathedral burial ground along
with his Bess. All had died before her.
He never thought it would happen to her.
She had been too strong. Why he thought that his wife would be different from
all the other women who died in childbirth, he didn’t know. Had she lived she
would have been 22 next month, the same age as he was now.
He often dreamed of Bess’s last moments.
He’d been called into the room where she lay on blood-soaked sheets. All she
said was, “I’m sorry.”
At least his brother wouldn’t mock him for
the tears running down his face. Rain would mingle with them.
He found the cloth that they kept in the
shed for days like this and wrapped it around the faggots before dashing across
the yard.
In the bakery his brother William paused
from scooping foam from the beer before pouring it into a wooden trough where
the bread would be mixed. Not only did the beer give their bread a special
taste it helped it rise.
“It took you long enough,” William said.
“Can you help me get this bag of flour
down?” Alice, William’s wife, pointed to the sack on one of the upper shelves
over the mixing trough. She was forever diffusing tension between the brothers.
William was two years older than James.
The other three surviving children of the ten his mother had given birth to had
been girls. They were married into other local families where they now worked.
One was married to the shoemaker. One had become a farmer’s wife and the third
had married the baker in Little Thetford, three miles away.
The rest of the morning the two men worked
without speaking: mixing flour into beer foam, kneading the dough, letting it
rise, punching it down, heating the brick oven with the faggots and then
cleaning out the ash. They shaped the dough into round loaves.
James didn’t need to think. He worked
automatically as his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had done.
Maybe even longer than his great-grandparents. He didn’t know any other life or
even if any other life was possible. As a small boy of seven, he, like William before
him, had begun to work in the bakery before and after school.
They had gone to the village school to
learn to read, write and handle the math necessary to run the bakery. James had
loved school: his parents had allowed him to go three years longer than
William, who had declared being in the classroom was a waste of time.
After school, James would be sent into the
village with the loaves still warm in a twig basket. Most villagers were their
customers. Three times a week he went into the countryside where there were no
bakeries, and the farmers were far too busy to bake their own bread most of the
year.
Today was one of the days he would visit
villagers. Considering the weather, he was not looking forward to being
drenched to the skin. If he suggested to William that he not go or that William
take his place, his brother would have a tantrum and throw things.
James noticed when William did throw things, he was careful not to break anything.
Chapter 6
Ely, England
Feb. 1773
“YOU
SHOULDN’T DO that,” James took money from the raggedy pouch the old woman handed
him.” She had bought his last loaf of bread. “Someone could steal your money.”
“You won’t cheat me, Jamie.” Her unseeing
eyes twinkled. “You were always an honest little boy.”
She smiled. He smiled, feeling her warmth.
That was about the only warmth that day. The drizzle had stopped, leaving
everything damp, including himself.
He looked inside the cottage. It was dark
and dank without a fire. “Could I help you rebuild your fire?”
“Oh Jamie, that would be lovely.” The old
woman stepped aside, allowing him into the room with its table, two chairs and
a bed. The fireplace was large enough for a short person to stand inside. He
noticed she had only one log to the right of the blackened hearth.
From the times he had played there as a
boy with her late son, he knew wood was stored under the overhang outside of
the house. “I’ll get you some more wood.”
As soon as he turned the corner outside
the cottage, he stepped in a mud puddle with his left foot. There was a sucking
sound as he pulled his foot out. Do a good deed and get paid in bad coin, he
thought.
A log, more like a branchless tree, was
stored under the overhang. No smaller pieces. He picked up the axe and hacked
enough wood for that nights and tomorrow’s fires. I’m a baker, not a caretaker,
he thought, but tonight before I fall asleep, I don’t want to think of her cold
and unable to cook.
After he had the fire going, he said goodbye.
James knew he should head back to the
bakery. Since his brother was always accusing James of being lazy and of taking
too long to do anything, he might as well justify the attack.
William would want him to prepare for the
next day’s baking. His wife would want to count the coins from the day’s sales.
She would have cooked a simple supper. Most of the root vegetables remaining
from last year’s harvest would be dried and tasteless. Potatoes might be
seasoned with bacon if he were lucky.
Alice did her best. It would be a while
before this year’s crops were on his dinner plate. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. The
garden behind the bakery needed planting, but there was no point until the
rains stopped. It was like this each spring. The inevitability made him wonder
if when he was an old man would it be exactly as it was now: get up, make the
fire, mix bread, let the bread rise, punch bread, shape bread, bake bread, sell
bread, see customers, get supplies, hope that the annual floods would not come
as far as the bakery.
Bess created a change. She’d worked in the
bakery but laughed at silly things annoying his brother. Sometimes they went to
the Noisy Rooster to drink a beer, listen to music and walk home holding hands
before making love. He could tell her anything, his hurts, his pleasures.
Instead of going home, he walked toward
the River Ouse. His footsteps made a slurping sound when he found it impossible
to avoid puddles.
Although the drizzle had stopped, the air
felt wet.
He passed the small houses where the eel
farmers lived. The cylinder traps, made either of thin strips of wood or rope,
were stacked outside the doors.
The river was not wide. In summer, on a
rare hot day, he could swim across, not that he did it often. There was too
much work producing and selling bread. He was lucky, he supposed, that his
brother didn’t like walking through Ely to hawk their wares. It gave him a
chance to talk to people and to find out village news. Even when people came
into the bakery, William tended to be gruff with them. Alice was good at talking
people into buying a bit more. Bess had been even better.
James had not wanted to be a baker. He had
not wanted not to be a baker. It was what was. In his family as far back
as anyone could remember and beyond his family baked bread. James remembered
his gran ruling the process after his grandfather died, although James never
knew his grandfather.
Bess wasn’t from a baking family although
once they were married, she had learned.
He’d known Bess from when his father
bought flour from her family’s mill. She wasn’t like a lot of giggly girls.
Instead, she challenged him constantly.
The first time was when they were about
eight. His father and her father were loading the sacks of flour into his
father’s wagon.
Two apple trees were behind the mill. “I
bet I climb up faster than you can!” she’d taunted him.
“You can’t. You’re a girl.”
She did.
“You have the easier tree,” he said.
“Change trees.”
She beat him the second time.
He didn’t quite beat her swimming across
the river. That usually ended in a tie. He should have been selling the bread,
not leaving it on the ground while he swam. Somehow his father had always found
out.
Their marriage was something everyone expected.
Her death came as a shock. Bess had seemed
indestructible — only she wasn’t. She had screamed for two days before their
daughter came into the world with a cord wrapped around her neck. She didn’t,
couldn’t, take a single breath.
If someone had asked James if he’d loved
his wife, he probably would have said, “Of course.” She had been part of his
life for almost forever. It wasn’t just the sex, which had been one of the best
parts of their marriage. Now, nights, in their bed, the same bed he’d slept in
as a child, he’d reach for her in his sleep only to wake to find himself alone.
He wanted to tell her how much he missed
her, like he had told her everything else. William used to tease him about how
much the couple chatted. Alice had said it wouldn’t hurt William to do a little
more talking to her.
Customers had expressed their sympathies,
saying he’d find someone else. James thought they were probably right even if
it seemed unimaginable now.
Watching the water in the dwindling light,
James thought once again how easy it would be to put some rocks in his pocket
and walk into the river.
There had to be more to life than this. If
not, why go on?
Chapter 7
Geneva, Switzerland
Argelès-sur-Mer, France
November
RANGER JIM AT the Minute Man National Park created a series of videos responding to questions about the period in general and the events around the April 1775 battle in particular. Dressed the way he would had he lived in the time, he responded to my questions as well as others, although I tried not to hog the session.
For
each session I arranged myself on my couch, the computer on my lap, Sherlock,
my dog is by my side. I take notes.
Over
the next few months, I will watch videos and podcasts, not just sponsored by
the national park, but by different historians and authors. From their
information, I was able to buy books that gave me enough information that on
more than one night, I was so saturated with the history of the time and place
that I would dream I was living in Boston in 1774.
My
fear that I will not learn enough about the period to create an accurate
depiction of the era is disappearing, but I must be careful not to get too
cocky.
Note: Tomorrow in Chapter 8, we learn more about Daphne and begin to see the cracks in the marriage. In Chapter 9, we are back in Ely and begin to understand why James loved his late wife and why he misses her so.
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