Thimblewinter

Thimblewinter

By Dominic Miles

Text copyright © 2016 Dominic Miles

All rights reserved.

My grandmother said that, in the time when there were fish in the sea and birds in the sky, winter wasn’t as bad. It hardly ever snowed then and, when it did, grandmother and her friends would go out to play in the fields and drifts, building snow people and angels and making snow balls to fight with. Sometimes, if it was a heavy fall, they would close the school and all the children of the village would get their sleds, or anything they could use as sleds, and slide down the side of the mountain. They would spend the whole day outside, in the midst of the snow, but they could always get warm, she said, when they went home and winter wasn’t a time of hunger, like it is now.

Now winter is cruel and we’ve had three years of the Big Cold. That means ice and snow right through from October to February or even to March some years. The year before last, we had a week long blizzard in April. No-one plays out in it now, not since the two Peters girls got lost in the drifts and nearly perished. When the village men finally found them, they were just in time; the dogs, wild creatures, had got them cornered. There are all types of beasts hungry at that time of the year. All sorts of dogs in the packs that roam the valley sides and once Cal, the mechanic, saw a big, black cat of some kind up on the mountain. So he says.

We don’t get much school in the winter, as it’s hard to keep the school room heated and there’s little coal to spare from keeping the houses warm. My grandmother says that she never thought she’d see coal dug in this valley again, but what there is comes from old slag heaps or placer seams and it spits and smokes like water in a frying pan. She says it’s nothing like the old anthracite, black diamond she calls that.

Sometimes it feels like the whole rest of the year is just spent getting ready for the winter; storing the vegetables, bottling the fruit, salting what little meat there is, storing up the trade goods. That September it seemed that every day was spent in some such endeavour. As if we’d all been drowsing through the hot days of August and had suddenly woken up and realised how late in the season it was.

So we were all busy when they came. It was Joshua who saw them first, though that was the watchman’s job. They had come by the old road, which was a mess of pot-holes and mud pools, so we knew they were strangers.

Joshua was up in the top meadows, almost by the boundary wall, so he feared to leave the sheep. As luck would have it, little Amy was with him, so he sent her to run and bring the news. She tumbled down to the village gate, arriving all tear-stained and muddy, but by then the watchman had seen them and set off the old mine whistle. And when that sounded, so seldom was it used, the whole village left their tasks and rushed to the gate.

They were a strange procession; frightening, but colourful and a spectacle at the same time. Perhaps like a circus arriving in town, though I’ve never seen one and can only imagine it from books I’ve read. Perhaps more like an army, as they had flags and banners of sorts.

We could see them spread out along the road. They stopped there and then they turned off down the track and over the old stone bridge, heading for our village. When they saw that - saw there was no doubting it, that this army was heading for us - all the people gasped as if the crowd had but one voice.

And on they came. The scouts arrived at the gate first, keeping some distance away sitting on their motor-bikes. We knew they were wealthy then, and wondered where they got the fuel for their engines, but most of them were on ponies, half-starved looking creatures though they were, and these horse-men spread out along the front of the village, lapping around the flanks as if they were testing our strength.

Behind these came the main procession, foot-soldiers, some with ragged red banners painted with winged skulls and hung with chains, followed by a four-wheeled bike - a quad bike one of the old men called it - on which their chieftain rode. Behind him I could see more soldiers and carts, and behind these what looked like a huddle of women and children.

The soldiers had a sort of uniform of black leather and motor bike helmets and they were all hung with chains, as if these were some badge of office or rank. Many, though, wore old army gear and some had police equipment. All were armed, a fair number with shotguns, but most with bows, make-shift spears and clubs. There were some guns, pistols mainly, but some old army or police issue machine guns and assault rifles. And these we feared most.

The riders just sat there. The procession halted and we could see their chieftain - a stocky man with long hair and a beard, with horns of some sort attached to his helmet - dismount and stand talking with an older man in a long greatcoat with shaven grey hair and a sparse beard and what looked like a shepherd’s crook.

A ripple of panic had gone through the villagers as they saw this army arrive. In reality, there were precious few of them - perhaps two hundred or so warriors, truth be told - but though there were more of us, we had fewer weapons and were not used to war or fighting. The people all looked to the Constable with fear on their faces and in their eyes. But he was calm, or at least seemed so, and he quietened them, spreading out his hands in front of him, talking slowly and clearly.

“Before we jump to conclusions,” he said, “let’s find out what they want, shall we?”

“But, Constable,” someone said, one of the younger mothers, Nerys I think it was, “they’ve got machine guns, soldier weapons. How can we defend ourselves against them?”

She was almost crying as she said this. Lots of people talked after this, too much was said for me to remember it and all the time the strangers just sat there out of range.

“Why do you think they dress like that?” The Constable went on, having to shout now, but not too loudly, so the others, the outsiders, wouldn’t hear.

“They want to frighten you and they’ve succeeded. The weapons are for show. Nobody can get ammunition for soldier weapons now, or if they can they’ll have precious few rounds. You must trust to our defences.”

For our village had defences. The Constable had seen to that, I remember, when I was small, before the big cold and the hot, dry summers, not long after he’d been chosen by the people. In those days Councillor Price was still alive, though an old man. I barely recall him, but my grandmother told me that he and the Constable had come up with the plan, because of the unsettled times and trouble coming down the road from the towns and cities. There was still fuel then, diesel and petrol and they’d dug out a ditch around the village with a JCB, the same JCB that was now rusting and useless, sitting like a forlorn, long-dead monster beside the track to the coal dumps. The soil from the ditch had been piled up to form an earthwork, which was topped with a palisade, mainly composed of bits of the old colliery fence.

There’d been much complaining and vexing about this at the time, so grandmother said, and if the Councillor hadn’t backed the new Constable, it wouldn’t have been done. But in the first hunger winter, people had seen it for the good sense it was; the ditch and the fence kept out scavengers, both human and animal. There were things from that winter that people did not want to remember and nightmares that I had, which might not have been dreams. But the past is past, as grandmother says.

At that time, it didn’t look as if the people would trust these defences. The strangers looked fierce and hungry, like Vikings must have done to monks and peasants in the old days. Most of the people still milled around like sheep, though others had taken their appointed places around the fence with what weapons they had. The Constable quieted the people again though, by saying:

“I’ll go and see what they want.”

He didn’t open the gates; instead he climbed one of the scaffolding towers that flanked them, the look-out towers. He had a shouted conversation with the old man in the great coat and they agreed to meet in front of the gates in the flattened expanse of ground we called the market place. This was where all the trade was done, as strangers were seldom allowed within the village gate, unless they were well-known peddlers or from neighbouring settlements.

I think that most of the people thought that the Constable was going to his death; I remember that I found my Aunt Rachel in the crowd and held onto her as tight as I could. Aunt Rachel took care of me then, as my parents were long gone, dead of the flu. Cal, who was up on the tower, gave us a commentary on what was taking place. The Constable had slipped out of the gate, passed over the wooden bridge across the ditch, and then walked out to the market place on his own. And though some of our people on the palisade had crossbows or shotguns trained on the spot, the range and their questionable skill put their accuracy in doubt.

The old man, Great Coat as we soon called him, was waiting for the Constable out on the flattened muddy grass; he was alone, though the motor-bike scouts kept close by. The two men talked for a long while, sometimes the conversation seemed heated, but in the end the Constable walked back to the gate and the strangers broke ranks and started putting up tents and erecting shelters around the market place. This did nothing to calm the villagers’ fears and they crowded around the Constable at the gateway.

“This is the way it is,” he said, “they are going to camp her for two nights. We are going to give them food and supplies and they will leave us alone. I’ve agreed the quantities, so we’ll have to look to that. The rest of you should get back to you work.”

People didn’t like it, there was a lot of muttering and shaking of heads, It was because we all knew what this meant, as there was precious little food as it was, barely enough. But everyone knew as well what the Constable had had to do. Cal said later:

“He’s paid them tribute.”

I didn’t understand what he meant at first, but then I remembered reading about the Danes and the Danegeld in one of the old school books, about Alfred the Great. Then I understood, or thought I did.

The last thing the Constable said to the people was:

“Keep on your guard!”

And as we worked, I noticed there were fewer hands for the tasks, as people were still standing sentry duty on the walls.

That evening I sat with Cal and Rachel around the supper table in the little terraced house, but my mind was too busy to savour the food. I had been worried about Joshua, knowing that he was still out there with the sheep, when all the other villagers, even the watchman, had come in.

Then later the Constable came, collecting men for a party to take out the agreed supplies to the strangers. When I asked him about Joshua, he smiled and put his hand on my head:

“He’s fine. I sent Edgar out to keep him company. They’ve taken the sheep up to the Hafod, for a while till we’re shot of these visitors.”

I knew that the Hafod was the summer place, where the sheep were taken to graze on the sweet mountain grass. It was late in the year for them to be taken there, but the weather was still pleasant and there was a fold there and a shepherd’s hut, but the best thing was it was far enough away to be hidden from the strangers’ eyes.

Cal had to go out then, with the Constable, and they gathered with other men at the old barn that was our storehouse. I tagged along and no-one said anything to me, The Constable had a list on an ancient scrap of paper that had once been some sort of official form. And the men were piling up goods in the back of an old trailer.

It was mainly food; bags of oats; salted pork; mutton; apples and cider. And it was then I saw how clever the Constable had been, because we had a lot of other things there. Things that the strangers would marvel at if they knew; tins of things, bags of rice, coffee and tea. There was even whisky and beer. Because, Cal had told me, when we still had petrol and enough motor vehicles, our people had been good at scavenging. Going to the towns and villages around, where sickness had killed the inhabitants or fighting had made them flee, and filling up their cars or trucks with the contents of super-markets, pubs and with anything else that was for the taking. That was one of the reasons that we were still here; why we had survived.

When the Constable had ticked everything off the list, the men started pushing the trailer towards the gate, while the Constable locked up the barn again. At the gate the Constable had mustered another party; these were all armed and told to stand ready as the gate opened, just in case this was some kind of trick. One man stood ready with some homemade bombs made of coal-oil or scarce and precious petrol, to burn the bridge in case it was rushed. But nothing untoward happened as the men pushed the trailer out into the middle of the market square.

Great Coat was waiting there to check the list and, when he had checked off all its contents, he nodded to the Constable and shook his hand. And the men came quickly back. I had climbed the scaffolding tower to watch this, though the guards tried to shoo me off and told me to keep my head down. I knew two things; the first was that they didn’t want the strangers to see any of our women, though I was just fifteen; and secondly that there were things happening that I wasn’t meant to see.

Some people were screaming, that I could tell and they seemed to be women, not stranger women but others, somewhere out there in the dark. I could only see shadows and flickers of light by their fires, but I could also tell that many of the strangers seemed drunk or drugged. As the Constable turned to go, I heard Great Coat say to him:

“The boys will have their fun.”

He laughed, but the Constable made no response and turned away and traced his steps back to the gate. I know that our people stood guard all night.