Pillars of Avalon by Katherine Pym

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 Now in Audio

Since it’s June, and the traditional wedding month, if we ever get through this pandemic, I thought I’d share an excerpt from Pillars of Avalon, the wedding vows between David & Sara. Humourous to say the least.  This is a story of love, struggle and passion. A good read for YA & Adults.

David and Sara Kirke were married in London 1630. It was not long after they settled in Newfoundland, now Newfoundland/Labrador. Their story is filled with adventure, very well researched. We found as much data on them from the limited resources as possible. 

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Spangler took a deep breath and said, “Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered together here in the sight of God...”  

David’s chest deflated and his gut heaved. The very raising of her chin emasculated him, casting him into the hoary pit of impotence. She did that often and he wondered if women were born this way or if they learned it from their mothers. 

Lord above, but he pitied Sara’s father. Being married to a bloody harpy like Mother Andrews would be his undoing. 

“...an honourable estate instituted by God in paradise, in the time of man’s innocence...” Spangler said in a singsong manner. 

David wanted to scoff. Man’s innocence, my arse. Women’s cunning and their wicked ways unmanned men. In his weakness David would soon lustily bed Eve as Adam had taken the apple and eaten thereof. 

“…of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men, and therefore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts…” 

Of course, he was a brute and a beast. He hungered for Twig, her softness, how her eyes brightened when he walked into a room. Their bundling showed she had the capacity to love him. She was open to do all things imaginable behind the bed curtains. He intended to try the sports expressed in chapbooks. All of them. 

“…but reverently, discretely, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.”

David did not like those words. A woman must have whispered in the ear of whoever wrote that part of the Book of Common Prayer. Why should a man fear God when he created the physical body to enjoy the act of procreation? 

He scoffed in derision and Sara gave him a look. The minister paused in his reading. They turned to him with question, their regard on the verge of horror. Embarrassed, David’s neck heated. His ears buzzed and his knees wobbled. 

All he could do was shrug.  

Spangler cleared his throat. “Duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained. One cause was the procreation of children, to be brought up in fear and nurture of the Lord, and praise of God…”

Why should he raise his sons to fear God? When a man struck out on his road, to do what his heart most desired, if it was honourable, then there should be no fear. He sliced a glance at Sara. So far, she hadn’t been overly reverent or spouted homilies. She did not judge with the Good Book in her hand. He nodded. They would do well together. 

“Secondly,” the minister continued, his voice falling into the monotone of words often said.

David frowned. Would this never end?

“It is ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication that such persons as be married, might live chastely in matrimony and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.” 

Those words should be stricken from the ceremony, David reflected sagely. The only reason a man would fornicate outside the marriage bed was a cold and stiff wife, which he would not have. He’d sell Sara in a public auction if she was thusly, and he snorted. 

Spangler tripped over his words and Sara faced him, her lips curled in a frown. David reared back, as if he would soon be pummelled by the two of them. Nervous coughs came from the congregation. He tried to look innocent of any wrongdoing. 

After several tense moments where he burst into a mighty sweat, Spangler flipped through the pages of his book, then said, “I require and charge you, as you will anywhere at the dread full day of judgement, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed,” he put his hand to his mouth and coughed, “that if either of you do know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, that ye confess it.” He gazed at David. 

Sara turned to him. 

He wanted to shout, “What have I done?” 

Still looking at David, Spangler said, “For be ye well assured that so many as be coupled together; otherwise then God would doeth allow you are not joined of God. Neither is your matrimony lawful.”  

Annoyance turned to anger. The man was a damned rogue who pointed an improper finger at him. 

“David Kirke, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her…”

Surely he would if she weren’t a crone and enjoyed tussling upon the counterpane. 

Spangler cleared his throat and Sara gave him a murderous regard. 

David could not fathom their discontent. “I will.” 

“Sara Andrews, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Will thou obey him and serve him…”

She would certainly obey him. If not, David knew he had the full right to beat her into proper submission. He gazed at her. She was so pretty with bright eyes and kissable lips. He could never lay a hand upon her, no matter how much she vexed him. 

“I will,” Sara said. 

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The vows were taken from the Book of Common Prayer, 1549 edition

The Great London Fire by Katherine Pym

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London Fire reached Ludgate, September 4, 1666

I understand this is a subject that may have been slightly overdone, especially since 2016 marked the 350 year anniversary of the vast destruction that occurred within a short 4 day timespan. To celebrate, London had a lovely old city effigy burned on a barge in the Thames. BBC had a television show on how it happened, where it started. It looks like Pudding Lane wasn’t quite where we thought it was all these years. The bakery was a block or so farther away. A marker that shows where it was is in a nice, clean street where cars now parallel park.

My current work in progress (WIP) takes place in London 1666. Since the fire was a big event in that year, I cannot not mention it, now can I? The reader would wonder why I’ve listed every other important moment but not that one, which to this day marks many souls as a living catastrophe.

In 1666, England was at war with the Dutch (fought entirely at sea). It was really a merchant’s war, caused by skirmishes over ports of call in the East and West Indies. The English felt the Dutch should share in the profits of spices, new fabrics (cotton), exotic fruits, differently manufactured furniture and fine pottery. After all, the Indies included vast areas of land and people. It wasn’t fair that one country take everything. 

 

Fighting fire with a 'squirt'. It held 4 pints of fluid, and took 2 men to operate.

Almost 18 months into the war, as the English fleet prepared to meet the enemy in a pitched battle, on September 1, 1666, a gale entered the Channel. A wind so strong, it felled the fleet. Sails ripped from masts. Bowsprits shattered. Ships collided and listed. Gun ports were closed to keep the seas from flowing onto the gun decks, swamping everything in its wake. The winds tore the fleet to shreds, then moved onto England. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, September 2, London winds whipped a spark and London began to burn.

The fire was so fierce, it created its own weather. Lightning slashed, thunder boomed. Warehouses along the Thames contained oils, pitch and tar, which burned fiercely.

People weren't this calm as they ran

Most homes were squeezed along narrow, dark lanes, cantilevered so that top stories were only inches apart. Made of half-timbers, wattle and daub, a material that if maintained did not burn easily, many houses were not maintained. Leased houses and shops were the responsibility of the renters. They had to fix anything that broke, burnt or toppled over. They were responsible for the walkway and road outside their doors. Not many followed these regulations. And with the winds so fierce, it was fodder for fire.

People took their goods to neighbors’, thinking the fire wouldn’t reach them. They took furniture and clothing to churches, thinking the walls were too thick for fire to burn them. As the fire moved west along the river and northwest through town, people removed what they had stored and moved them farther away, into a neighborhood they were sure would not burn.

Black smoke could be seen over 56 miles away. The city looked like daylight when it was nighttime. A contemporary wrote the firestorm sounded like “a thousand iron chariots beating on stones”. It was deafening. Stone facades exploded like bombs. Church steeples engulfed in flame toppled over onto streets and houses.

Booksellers lived in the vicinity of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They sold their wares in Paul’s Yard. Their parish church was St. Faith’s located under St. Paul’s church in the undercroft. They called it St. Faith’s under St. Paul’s. They took their presses, paper and books to St. Faith’s knowing with the massive pillars of Paul’s it would never burn. By the time the flames licked Paul’s outer walls, St. Faith’s was stuffed. St. Paul’s was filled with goods up to the choir loft.

St. Paul’s was in disrepair. Over time, the heavy, lead roof had spread its walls outward. Pillars were crumbling. Scaffolding supported some of the pillars and the outside of the church. Just a few days prior, a meeting had been held to discuss renovation of the building. 

The Burning of St. Paul's Cathedral

By 8 o’clock Tuesday evening (September 4), fiery debris had fallen on Paul’s roof. Shoddy repairs of timber caught and burned so hot, a gentleman who stood over a mile away saw the inferno.

“Large parts of the roof, both stone and burning timber fell in, and the Cathedral became a roaring cauldron of fire…”

“Molten lead dripped in silvery beads from the roof, raining down upon the broken stones and tombs that strewed the Cathedral floor, and there collecting, ran out into the streets in a stream.”

Paul’s choir and lower floor crashed into St. Faith’s. When St. Paul’s collapsed, the whole building exploded with an earsplitting roar. Burning papers and books sailed in the air, some of the pages landing miles away in the English countryside.

St. Paul’s was a mass of smoking ruins within an hour.

London after the fire. It poured beyond the old Roman walls into west London.

 

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Many thanks to Wikicommons, public domain,

By Permission of Heaven, the True Story of the Great Fire of London, by Adrian Tinniswood, Riverhead Books, NY 2004

The Story of London’s Great Fire by Walter G. Bell, Butler & Tanner, Ltd., Frome and London, 1923

The Destruction of Port Royal by Katherine Pym

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Port Royal, Jamaica 1690

First, a little history of the town…

Port Royal (changed in 1660 from Point Cagway) was a village in Jamaica, taken by the English in 1655.  The town had a natural deep harbor perfect for ships, but there was little to defend it. Houses dotted the landscape up the hills and down to the water, some with stilts in the sand, their houses standing in the tidal swells.

A couple forts were built, but that was not enough to keep the Spanish at bay, so the inhabitants contacted the Brethren of the Coast, a pirate union of sorts, and invited them to settle there. Port Royal boomed. Soon 6,500 souls resided there. Ships in the harbor and a lively town with men known for their swashbuckling, rough ways were a deterrent for anyone thinking to come ashore and cause havoc.

Port Royal After quake

Before long Port Royal became a haven for pirates with brothels and lawlessness. Merchants bought and sold what the pirates dragged ashore, but this wild life had its comeuppance, with a final, deadly end.  

June 7, 1692 life in Port Royal changed forever. Just before noon a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Jamaica, its epicenter in the hills above the town. The ground suffered liquidation, sinking buildings, animals, trees and streets. Geysers erupted. When the town collapsed, a large tsunami crashed onto the island, taking a ship with it. 40 feet high on the wall of water the ship throttled inland to rest on a ruined building. Unearthed corpses floated amongst the debris. Landslides prevailed. Except for the ship perched on an old building, what remained of Port Royal sank into the sea. 

Over 5000 died. Looting and violence took over. Of those who survived the initial destruction, many later succumbed to their injuries or illness.

Port Royal Before the quake

Port Royal After the quake

As a species, people are enduring. They usually rebuild after a catastrophe, and many tried to rebuild Port Royal, but one disaster after another struck, hurricanes, fire, more earthquakes. What remains today is insignificant compared to the late 17^th century.

Today, you can swim over the sunken city, and see rooftops not far below. In the past years, archaeological digs have explored the remains. Interesting finds have surfaced. “In 1969, Edwin Link discovered the most famous artifact: a pocket watch dated 1686, stopped at exactly 11:43 (a.m.).”

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Many thanks to:

Wikicommons public domain.

‘Port Royal, Jamaica, Sunken Pirate City at Port Royal, Nature took her revenge on the "Wickedest City in the World."’ https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sunken-pirate-stronghold-at-port-royal

History Channel:

“Earthquake destroys Jamaican pirate haven”

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/earthquake-destroys-jamaican-pirate-haven

‘The History of Port Royal, Jamaica”

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-history-of-port-royal-2136379Bottom of Form

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Henry Hudson by Katherine Pym

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Henry Hudson

In the first decade of 17th century, Henry Hudson worked for several merchantmen companies, both in England and in Holland. His goal was to find the northern route to the Spicerie Islands in the South Pacific. 

He worked for the Muscovy Company, East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). These companies pooled their resources, made their captains sign extensive contracts, gave them long lists of rules and regulations, then sent them on their way to find the easiest, fastest passage to spice ports of call.

Henry's search for the NW Passage

The route south through the Cape of Good Hope was fraught with danger, i.e., weeks of calm, scurvy, the bloody flux, pirates. Once into the Cape, there were added dangers of rogue waves that came from out of nowhere, swamping and sinking a ship to the depths.

If it weren't for the ice that filled the northern regions, that route would be far easier to navigate. When men sailed north toward Greenland or west to Newfoundland, these intrepid explorers found a vast ocean so crowded with fish, they leaped into their boats rather than be netted. They brought home stories of ling cod, and whale meat/lard. Fishermen sent their ships to these waters, and the English dinner table began to find new foods that delighted the palate.

When Hudson worked for the Muscovy Company, he failed to find the Northwest Passage, but alerted his employers of a place where one could catch many whales. The Dutch East India Company had so many failures, when they heard of Hudson, they enlisted his services.

Hudson was certain the passage could be found and promised better things. All their previous captains could not find the passage, and the directors wanted to know how he would go about it.

Henry replied that he followed Petrus Plancius' theory. Plancius was one of the founders and cartographer of the VOC, so the directors nodded their approval. When Hudson offered this concurrent theory, Plancius was still alive. He could be consulted for authenticity.

The theory was of a temperate, open sea in the North Pole not covered with ice. What Hudson professed was a mild climate above '74 degrees latitude - the point at which the Dutch ships had always found their path blocked by ice'. Hudson not only affirmed to have seen this, he raised the stakes higher by adding the depth of the sea was so great at this point, the swells could never freeze. In this ice-free area, Hudson declared to have seen a new land with many animals, sweet grasses wherein the animals grazed. It was a veritable paradise.

Hudson further added if he could go above '83 degrees latitude', he would sail west to the Pacific then south into the warmer seas of the East Indies. VOC demanded more proof, so Hudson sent for Petrus Plancius. The gentleman, an astronomer and clergyman, nodded his concurrence on Hudson's every point. He added the sun's long days and white nights during the summer kept the waters warm enough so that ice would not form. As a result, Henry was given the opportunity to seek a northern route to the South Seas.

Once aboard ship, Hudson disregarded all instructions by the VOC. He used his own maps and went northwest through bad weather. Finding the way too difficult, Hudson tootled south. He expected to find a waterway along the American coast he could travel to the Pacific. He did not find it, but did find a land rich in fisheries and game, trees so big they would make excellent ships.

Hudson had found Manhattan Island. The VOC was not impressed but other merchants were, which started the colonization of that area.

A Doomed Henry Hudson

In 1610, this time financed by the English merchants, Hudson tried again. He found his way into what is now the Hudson Bay. The seas were filled with ice. His crew turned surly, and one night mutinied. They grabbed hold of Henry Hudson and a few faithful crewmen, put them in a small boat without food, water, or warm clothing, and sent them adrift.

Henry Hudson disappeared into the night, never to be seen again.

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Many thanks to the following bibliography:

Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton, and Wikipedia (Hudson, Petrus Plancius)

Map of Hudson Bay is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Some 17th c History & James Bartley by Katherine Pym

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You’d think we’d get along considering the size of our world. We should have our own patch of land, our own lean-to and a garden plot to grow veggies but it seems we are an argumentative species. Nothing is safe. 

Take the 17^th century. Compared to today, there weren’t many folks on the planet. London was a metropolis, with a large portion of the English population within its walls. Holland had her canals and Amsterdam. Paris belonged to France. These nations found plenty of land to explore but as squabbling children, they all wanted the same spots. 

East India Company Battle in Indonesia

During the early part of 17^th century, the English and Dutch each had an East India Company who plied foreign waters, seeking trade. Whenever the Dutch or English sailed into the same harbor, there were sea battles, torture and murder. There were plenty of islands in the South Pacific and the Caribbean but the grass was always greener on the other’s atoll. 

To compete, it wasn’t until the 1660’s that France established their own East India Company, but the French had not been idle the first half of the century. They established colonies all over the world, in the East and West Indies, along the Norwegian and North American coasts. 

In the Banda Islands of today’s Indonesia where nutmeg grew, a fierce rivalry sprang up between the Dutch and English. They fought over these islands until the native peoples were decimated and the crop completely destroyed. It reminds me of a Star Trek episode where the mindset is so stubborn, the enemy would rather see the death of a planet than share it. 

Killing a Whale

Whaling was another product the French, English and Dutch fought over. There were a lot of whales in the seas, but everyone congregated on the same shores. Initially, Norwegian islands offered places where whale and walrus meat could be processed but others sailed on to the cold waters of the Atlantic for whale blubber. 

Stories ensued from these exertions. Hostilities transferred from country against country to whales against men. 

Whales are big animals. They fight for what is theirs. Moby Dick came into being where a large mammalian beast fought in a life and death struggle against a madman, and then there was James Bartley. 

Off the Falkland Islands, the crew on a whaler spotted an 80’ whale basking in the cold waters, sifting krill through its fringed baleen. Men climbed the ships’ shrouds, hung from the yardarms and pointed. Two small boats were launched. It was time to kill a whale!

Processing Whale Blubber etc.

One harpooner sent his weapon into the whale, who lashed out. The small boats in peril, men fell overboard. Water sprayed the remaining men but they bagged their prey. They hauled the 80’ beast onto the vessel and began to dissect it. 

Someone reported a man missing, a James Bartley. Everyone assumed he had drowned in the battle against the big whale. They shrugged and continued to dissect the animal. After 6 hours of backbreaking work, they threw in the towel and went to sleep for the night. 

The next morning, they were at it again. “Suddenly sailors were startled by something in the stomach which gave spasmodic signs of life. Inside they found the missing sailor, James Barley, doubled up and unconscious. He was placed on deck and treated to a bath of seawater, which soon revived him, but his mind was not clear and the crew placed him in the captain’s quarters.” 

Poor Sod about to Beaten by Whale

Once Bartley recovered his senses, he related that he’d been hit by the whale’s tail and had been “encompassed by great darkness, and he felt he was slipping along a smooth passage that seemed to move and carry him forward. His hands came in contact with a yielding, slimy substance, which seemed to shrink from his touch. He could easily breathe, but the heat was terrible. It seemed to open the pores of his skin and draw out his vitality. The next he remembered he was in the captain’s cabin.”

Even as James Bartley survived being sucked into the belly of a beast, he was lucky. The whale was more benign than being tortured by a hostile, East India Company person. 

The Salt Box, YA Fantasy

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Many thanks to: 

The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1975, page 1399

Wikipedia Commons, public domain