Dispatch from the Antipodes, Being an Account of the Forty-and-Niners' Great Sea-Pilgrimage

I am bid write of a contest, and I will, though I confess before God and this page that I do not rightly know where I am, nor what manner of thing I have seen, nor whether I have seen it yet at all. But I am a serf, and a serf who is given honest labor does the labor, and does not ask the reeve why. So: hear me.

It is told to me that the men of San Francisco — a fine city, though I have not seen it, and am told it sits upon a hill the way our own manor sits upon its hill, save theirs has no sheep upon it, which seems to me a waste of good hill — have crossed the great water entire, the whole width of it, to a far land called Melbourne, there to meet in contest with a company of men called, and I set this down exactly as I am told, the Rams. Now I know a ram. I have driven rams from the hedgerow with a stick more times than I have fingers, and a meaner, more bandy-legged, more headlong creature does not walk God's earth, and if these Rams of Los Angeles are anything like the rams of my own home pasture then I do pity the Forty-and-Niners truly, for a ram does not tire, does not yield, and will put its skull through a gate before it will put its skull through a gate politely. I do not know why a company of men would name themselves for a beast that has, in my experience, gored the priest twice and eaten the churchwarden's hat entire. But it is not my place to question the naming of far companies. Perhaps in this shining age men have learned to yoke the ram to their purpose the way we yoke the ox, and if a man can make a ram play at contests then I say good on him, for I could not make one so much as walk in a straight line.

The crossing itself I am told took the better part of a day and a night, which staggers me, for the longest journey I have ever made was to the shire fair, three days' walk, and I came home with blisters and a bad opinion of the miller's son who would not share his cart. To cross the whole ocean in a single day and night is sorcery plain and simple, and I do not care what any man tells me of ships that fly, for I have seen no wings on any ship and will credit no wing I cannot see. I expect they have found some manner of enormous compliant goose.

And Melbourne! By my troth, what a place is Melbourne. I am told it sits so far round the belly of the world that when it is day here it is night there, or the reverse, I misremember which, and either way it unsettles me greatly, for it means somewhere on this earth right now a man is having his supper while I am having my breakfast, and neither of us has told the other, and I do not like to think how long that has been going on without my knowledge. I picture Melbourne as a hall much like our own great hall at the manor, only turned upside down and shaken, with all its people walking about quite calm as if their feet were not, by rights, pointing at the stars. I am told there are indeed shining towers there, and men who sell strange meats from little carts, and I confess it is the carts that hold my eye rather than the contest to come, for a cart is a thing I understand, and a man selling meat from one is a man doing honest trade the way the miller's boy sells eels on market day, and I could watch such a fellow all afternoon and call my labor well spent.

Of the contest itself, which I am told is still a week off and has not yet been fought, I can report only what I am told will occur: that the Forty-and-Niners, having survived their crossing and their sorcerous goose-ship, mean to stand upon a green field in this upside-down hall and do battle with the Rams for the honor of — here my instruction fails me, and I am not ashamed to say so, for a serf who claims learning he does not have is worse than a serf who admits his ignorance plainly. I do not know what is won. I do not know if there is a purse, or a maiden's favor, or merely the right to walk about afterward with one's chest puffed out, which in my experience is reward enough for most men and has started more fights at the harvest feast than any purse ever did.

I am told, too, that this is not the whole of the contest-season but merely one match of many, a "week," they call it, as though the whole grand affair were parceled out like tithe-days, a portion here and a portion there across the whole turning year, which strikes me as a very sensible way to run a thing, for God knows the harvest cannot be brought in all in one day either, and any lord who tried it would find his people dead of exhaustion by Michaelmas. So perhaps these men of the shining age are not so foolish as their goose-ships and upside-down halls make them seem. Perhaps they have simply built themselves an enormous, elaborate harvest, and the Rams and the Niners are two crews sent out to bring it in, only instead of scythes they carry — I am told — an egg-shaped ball, which does not sound to me like any implement fit for reaping anything, but who am I to say. I have never reaped with an egg. Perhaps it is more efficient than I know.

What troubles me most, if I am honest, and a serf ought always be honest with the page even when he cannot be honest with the reeve, is the distance of it. A whole ocean crossed, for a single day's contest over an egg-shaped ball and an undisclosed purse, in a hall turned upside down where my supper is another man's breakfast. I cannot fathom what a man must feel, standing so very far from his own hearth, his own hill, his own sheep, waiting a week in a foreign upside-down country for the chance to wrestle a company of rams over a matter I cannot name. I think of it and my chest goes tight, the way it does when I think too long on the plague-year, or on my own dear departed ox, Wat, who I do still miss.

But the light is going gold over the west hedge even as I write this, and I hear the reeve's boy calling that the lower field wants turning before the frost, and a serf's labor does not wait on far contests nor upside-down halls nor geese that fly, however sorcerous. I must away. God keep the Forty-and-Niners on their long road home, and God keep me clear of any ram, San Franciscan or otherwise, for the rest of my natural days.

— Hodge o' the Field, who has never crossed water wider than the mill-race, and does not mean to start