It seems Charles isn't the only one given to romantic terminology, Loring thought, stroking his mustache to hide a smile; he was a baronet himself, after all. Still, I've seen stranger things since the Change. And Arminger here was one of those Society chappies. The medieval reenactment group had offshoots and equivalents in Britain, and a fair number of those had ended up on the Isle of Wight; his own son had been involved with them since his teens. Very useful they were, as instructors. I do wish they hadn't given Charles so many ideas.
Sandra Arminger rode along in an open carriage, reading through some files. Servants jogged along behind on nags, but the mounts of the armed men and the guests were superb, spirited but beautifully trained-the tall yellow hunter he'd been given was a joy to ride, and he hadn't been able to resist naming it Pommers after his favorite horse back home:
No. Back in England, he told himself sternly. England will never be your home again. You'll have to carve yourself a new home somewhere-land for the Lorings to hold, and I suspect by the sword.
Nigel took a deep breath. The air was fresh, a little warmer than Hampshire would be in April, with an intense green scent. Now that they were out of the overgrown ruins the landscape was gently rolling; steeper ridges in forest of oaks and firs, the hillsides and valleys between a patchwork of greens-pasture with clover and trefoil blooming red among the grass, young grain, a pink froth of cherry blossom scenting the air, hillside vineyards putting out shoots and leaves. There were blue-flowered flax, and hemp and beets as well; cattle and sheep grazed in substantial herds, overseen by herdsmen on foot with slings and simple spears.
But no scattered farmsteads except ruins. Odd, that.
From what he remembered, villages weren't common in the United States, not in the European sense of farmers and farmworkers living clustered together, but that was what he saw here. Homes were tightly grouped at crossroads or near a stream, several dozen in every clump, ranging from modest comfort to mere shacks. The villages were slung along laneways with an open square at the middle, each house surrounded by kitchen gardens and sheds. Every cluster was bounded by a fence of palings with a gate and watchman's house, and each had a church, a larger-than-usual home functioning as a tavern, a smithy and sometimes a water mill. There was usually a larger building some distance from the hamlet, surrounding by a ditch, earthwork bank, concrete or fieldstone-and-concrete wall, and tower; from the look of it each of those was the center of a separate farm, and a large one at that.
It did look rather like some rural parts of England, save that it was more systematic, more consistent, and the village homes were less varied-whether substantial or squalid, most of them looked as if they'd been knocked together since the Change out of salvaged materials. Children and a few women were busy around the hamlets, caring for small stock and weeding in the gardens, or looking after toddlers and infants; he recognized the moan of spinning wheels and the rhythmic clattering thump of looms as well, and several times the distinctive sound of wooden hammers in water-powered mills fulling woolen cloth. Most adults were in the fields, largely weeding at this season when the spring planting was complete. There were a few horse-drawn machines helping, particularly around the fortified manors, but mostly it was hoes, and workers kneeling or stooping to use trowels or their bare hands.
Hmmm, he thought, judging the density and the spacing. One or two square miles per village, on average; call it a hundred people per square mile. Most of the territory this Lord Protector claims to control must be empty, or he'd have a million subjects, not the hundred and fifty thousand he boasts about. Islands of cultivation in a sea of wilderness, probably.
The field workers looked up at the sound of hooves; some in rags with iron collars about their necks, some drably but warmly dressed. Loring could see expressions ranging from naked fear to cultivated blankness when they saw the long black banner flapping from its cross-staff. Frenzied cheers burst out, and smiles more artificial than anything he'd seen in Madame Tussaud's as a boy down from Winchester College. As it came closer they dropped to their knees, still cheering, then bent their necks in silence until the standard had gone past; the whole procedure was repeated in reverse as Arminger's party drew away.
I wonder if anyone dares spit or curse when he's out of sight? Loring thought.
Nobody who'd experienced the frightened court at Os-borne House in the days of the madness of King Charles could miss the smell of tyranny when it sweated out of the very earth beneath his feet.
No, probably they don't dare. Charles was never as bad as this.
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And the field layouts are interesting, too. Big fields, but I'd say they're worked in strips, from the markings in the crops. Like the old open-field system, except with clover-lays instead of fallow. Demesne home farm around those fortified manor houses. It's not like England; it's like a dream of medieval Europe in generaclass="underline" like something out of a book, in fact.
And twice that morning they passed genuine forts, like some demented modernist version of a medieval castle, done in frowning gray ferroconcrete with gangs of plasterers working to cover them in stucco, and complete to the pointed circular roofs over the towers and the wet moats grown up in waterlilies.
Just then one of the servants, a lean, dark-bearded man in a leather jerkin, rode up and pointed.
"Heron, my lord!"
Arminger looked up, and he grinned as he reined in and unhooded the falcon; the column halted as he did. The bird saw the prey and mantled, feathers splayed and wings spread as it crouched, then launched itself into the air with a sweet chime of bells and a fierce skreeek! Loring strained his eyes. The heron was high already, traveling from north to south; it broke even further skyward when it saw the peregrine's upward rush. He'd never practiced falconry himself; foxhunting was his sport, and since the Change he'd taken up pursuing boar. This did have a certain excitement.
"She rings, my lord Protector!" the servant-who must be the falconer-cried. The falcon was circling, rising in an upward gyre. "She's going to get above him! I told you that was the finest peregrine in the mews."
"No, she's way below. Ten rose crowns she's not going to get altitude on him, Herb," Arminger said with a grin.
The falconer paled, beneath a short-trimmed black beard. "My lord, I'm a poor man. I couldn't pay that."
"Well, then, let's bet a kick in the ass against the kitchen girl you've been sniffing around," the lord of Portland said. "She's yours if-"
"She stoops!" someone cried. "The falcon stoops!"
The tiny dots merged. "She binds!" the falconer said. "She's bound, all right!"
The dot grew, until it showed as two birds tumbling around their common center of gravity, the peregrine's talons locked in the heron's body. Then the falcon released its giant white prey and ringed again, climbing for a second strike. It climbed almost to the edge of visibility as the heron flapped heavily for a forested ridge, then stooped again-falling like a guided missile; they could all see a burst of white feathers as it struck, and then killer and victim tumbled together to the ground. The falconer ran out into the pasture to the north of the road, twirling his lure, and returned with the falcon on his wrist, tearing at gobbets of meat he fed it and then submitting meekly to the hood. The big white bird dangled from his free hand by the feet, its wing tips brushing the ground despite his attempts to hold it high.
"Annie's yours," Arminger said. "That's her name, isn't it?"
"Yes, Lord Protector," the falconer said.
"You want to marry her? She's a bondservant, isn't she? Peon?"
"Yes both times, Lord Protector." A flush this time. "And I do want to marry her. She's willing, too."
"Well, I'll pay her debt," Arminger said. "Can't have the household staff marrying beneath themselves. And you get the ten rose crowns, too-call it a wedding gift. Take the heron over to that village; give it to the priest with my compliments."