By My Sword Alone David Black (best story books to read txt) 📖

one. Hugger-mugger, hovel-upon-hovel, crushed, stinking, narrow like Edinburgh or even Glasgow, that great spill of a place, sprawling its grandeur and commerce. But neither was like this tiny town. Toy houses, each one immaculate, bright with paint, clean, nudged together like genteel ladies at a dance, their finery on display, not in lace, but as wooden lattice and filigree. And the folk – all much taller, slimmer, in cleaner, finer clothes. The men’s hats, like pill boxes with little skips at the front, or in the style of England in the previous age, as worn by Godly men, and the women’s pointed bonnets with their strange, fly-away coifs. And the wooden shoes … but most especially, the cleanliness. Everything was so clean.

He must have walked like a retarded fellow for some distance, slack-jawed, stunned by the crowds’ incomprehensible tongue. People were beginning to give him looks.

And then he was in what must be the centre. He was dimly aware also of the quality and profusion of what was on sale; earthenware and farm implements and fine cloth and other manufactured goods. For a moment, he wondered about the Hilde’s cargo, which he had not even glimpsed. What could Scotland have produced that would be wanted here? But mostly his thoughts were consumed by a smothering unease that left him feeling like a latter-day biblical pilgrim, stumbled upon some new Babel.

This new land, with nothing the same to what he knew, no familiar thing to cling to. He forced himself to be calm and think, but the shock of all the unfamiliarity unsteadied him. Randomly, his need for a horse suddenly seemed of paramount importance. He needed a mount if he was to get to Leiden. And tack for it, too. He knew the quality he needed, but what was the just price of it in a place like this?

The babble told him he had no hope of haggling here. And then, an idea struck him. He checked down every side alley until he saw the sign; ‘Apotheker’. Apothecary, as good as dammit. Here was a chemist, and surely an educated man? If he didn’t have English, or even French, then surely Latin?

He had Latin.

A friendly old man, neat in his fine-woven cloth, with an apron of rougher material. He welcomed the young Scots scholar to Texel and guessed he was on his way to one of the big universities in the south. Such young men as he came this way from time to time, he said. All thought it good such exchanges of learning could occur.

The chemist’s willingness to help, the general wealth of his attire and the finesse of his manners made James acutely aware of his own threadbare state. He felt suddenly ill-bred in the chemist’s company, even though he was conversing fluently with him in the language of the ancients. It took an effort of will to recover himself, and pay attention to the advice offered. And when he did, he had the impression the old chemist sensed his feeling of dislocation, and was being patient with him. That was reassuring, and slightly humiliating at the same time.

‘Non emere equus hic,’ he said to James. Don’t buy a horse here. Adding, it wasn’t that Texel did not have good horse flesh, but that he would have to transport the beast across the water to Den Helder. Then he said, that as it was – and he lost the Latin at that point – ‘Achttien? Achttien mijls.’ It was the distance from Den Helder to Leiden.

‘Mijls?’ said James.

‘Mijls. In English … leagues. A league, ja?’

A ride of eighteen leagues, they finally agreed, was a long way.

So, don’t buy a horse at Den Helder either, he was told. A ride of eighteen leagues would knacker it! Laughter. There was a system run by stables, the chemist continued, he should use that instead. You hired your horse and tack, and rode it to the next stables along your route. Then you left the horse there, and hired a new one, until you got to where you wanted, and the stablers were left to swap and move their horses back and forward. Short rides, lots of rests in between. Everybody, and every horse, happy. James agreed it was the wisest course. And then he marvelled at the order and basic honesty of a society where such a commercial arrangement might actually be viable.

Then the chemist asked him, did he have a passport? Because folk, foreign folk that is, using the system, were often checked by the stables’ owners and customs officials. Foreign folk often meant smugglers, who’d secrete huge bundles in bushes along the roads, and then load the poor unsuspecting nag where the stabler couldn’t see. Officials took a dim view of unexcised goods passing illegally in and out of their towns, and the stablers, of unscrupulous riders who handed back spavined nags.

James laughed and said he had no heavy contraband, just what he carried, and then he produced his letter of introduction to Professor Pfuffenkipper, and the chemist was duly impressed. That would do nicely, he assured James.

It was only as James was walking south from the town, heading for the ferry, taking time to drink in the gentle countryside, that he understood the oppressive feelings that had been dogging him. It was the poverty and squalor of the land he had come from; that he had grown up in. He had never thought on it overmuch, because he had known nothing else. But this place of plenty and contentment had laid it bare for him. That such a land as this could exist. The counterpoint shone a light on the narrowness of his own life until now; the general frayed grubbiness of his native society hung on him like a shame. However, each step he was taking was pulling him further away from it. He’d found something wanting, and he was acting to