Of the Ninety-and-Niners, and Their Home Took From Them

By my troth, I have seen a wonder today, and I do not know what to make of it, save that it has left me sore troubled and my supper cold.

I was set, as ever, to watch the great contest and set it down true, for that is my labor and I do it faithfully though I have not the learning for it. And this day's contest was not fought upon the field at all, but before it — a council of grave men, seated at a long table beneath the great glowing tapestry, who did announce to the whole shining hall that the Forty-and-Niners, a company of men so named for I cannot say what reason, unless it be a tithe of ninety-and-nine sheep with one held back for the lord's larder, would not fight their home battle where they had thought to fight it, but instead be sent across the whole wide sea to a land called Australia, which I am told lies so far below the world that the men there walk upon their heads with their feet toward Heaven, and their winter comes in June, and God alone knows how a man plants turnips in such an upside-down country, or whether the crows even know which way is down.

Their captain, one Kyle Shanahan — and a fine captain's name it is, though I know not what shire it hails from — did stand before the crowd and speak his sorrow plain, that the home game had been took from him and given over the sea. And I confess, good reader, this is the part that struck me hardest, for I understood it entire, as I have understood little else this whole day. A man's home is his home. It is the hearth his father built and the field his father tilled before him, and if the reeve came to me and said, Hodge, you will not fight your battle on your own strip of land this Michaelmas, you will fight it in Australia, where the men walk on their heads, I too would stand before the hall and speak my sorrow plain, and no man could fault me for it. I do not know this Shanahan. I have never broken bread with him. But I know the loss of a home game when I hear it named, and I set down here, for the record, that it is a hard and grievous thing, and the West Coast — which I take to be some rich water-meadow he had hoped to defend — is now lost to him for this year's reckoning, gone to men on the far side of the world who will watch him fight in their own upside-down noontide while his own folk sleep.

The council of grave men did speak much of a thing they called "international presence," by which I understand they mean to plant their banner in far countries the way a lord plants a market cross in a new-cleared village, so that all the world may come and pay to watch, and I confess there is a shrewdness in it, though it costs poor Shanahan his hearth-right, and that seems to me a high tithe to lay upon one man's home for the sake of the lord's ambition, but who am I, a serf a very long way from his own field, to say how a great lord ought to manage his manor.

Now I must set down also what I saw whilst this council spoke, for my eye, as it does, wandered from the great matter to the small, and dwelt long upon a fellow near the front of the hall who sold from a little wheeled cart a kind of meat pressed into a long red tube and laid in a soft white trencher-bread, and folk did queue for it in great number, more I think than attended to the captain's sorrow, and I watched this vendor a full quarter-hour, marveling at how swift he worked, laying down his mustard-sauce with a practiced hand like a miller sifting flour, and I have not the faintest notion what the tube-meat is made of nor what beast gave it up, and I did not ask, for some things a man is better off not knowing, be it witchcraft or supper.

There was also a man in black robes near the grave council's table who did nothing the whole time but blow upon a small silver whistle whenever he liked, and no one questioned him for it, and I took him for some manner of holy man keeping the proceedings honest, the way our priest raps his staff when the ale-wife shorts a measure, and I set down that he did his office well, for the council did not once come to blows in my sight, though I sensed they wished to.

And above it all hung the great tapestry of light, taller than any cathedral window, upon which numbers and letters did chase one another and change of their own accord with no hand touching them, and beside it a painted ox, or some beast made to resemble one, walked upon its hind legs and danced a jig for the crowd's delight, tending no plow and pulling no cart, which struck me as a scandalous waste of a good ox, dressed up so fine and put to no honest work at all, and I thought of my own beast at home, poor and unpainted and put to nothing but labor every day God sends, and felt near to weeping for the unfairness of it, though I could not rightly say for which beast.

I will say plain, since it is my charge to keep the facts true even where my understanding fails me entire: a company of men called the Forty-Niners was to fight at home, in a westward water-meadow they call Los Angeles, and now shall fight instead in Australia, the upside-down country, and their captain Shanahan is grieved by it, and the grave council says it is done for the sake of planting the banner in far lands and managing the great tangle of the season's calendar, which even I can see must be a fearsome business, matching so many companies to so many fields across so wide a world, and no wonder tempers run short among grave men who must reckon it.

What manner of contest they shall fight, and by what rules, I confess I could not follow, for the council spoke overlong and the meat-tube vendor's queue was long also, and my attention, as ever, was but a poor divided thing, more suited to watching a whistle-man and a dancing ox than to the deep counsels of captains and lords. I have set down what I saw as true as I am able, and left out nothing, though I understand near none of it, which is, I am told, the whole of my office and I do not quarrel with it.

The light is going now over the hall, or over wherever this hall truly stands, and I feel the pull of my own field though it lies I know not how far from this place, and the beast wants tending and the light will not wait on grave men's councils, so I must away and leave the Forty-Niners to their long sail, God speed them to the upside-down shore and back home again by harvest.

Yours in bafflement and honest labor, Hodge o' the Field