MISSING SPARKS

Yorkshire — 1603

Two hundred miles away on the moors of Yorkshire, a family’s lives would be forever changed by these events.

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Times were difficult in 1603.

Good Queen Bess was dead. King James now sat upon the throne of England and Scotland, and unrest moved through the country like smoke under a closed door.

Rumours of Catholic plots, punishment, poverty, hunger, and betrayal travelled quickly. Food was scarce. The poor felt every change before the powerful gave it a name.

And two hundred miles away, on the moors of Yorkshire, one family’s life was about to be changed by forces far greater than themselves.

The bleak Pennine moors stretched beneath a cold sky — beautiful, harsh, rugged, and close to the heavens. There were no boundaries except the horizon, which in some places seemed to go on forever.

Green pastures and wayward hills rolled through shades of ochre, brown, and spring pink. Dry stone walls divided the land into a patchwork of green upon green. Sheep with thick wool and dark snouts dotted the hills and dales, while one-room cruck cottages stood scattered across the moors, smoke rising from some and not others.

Long grasses whispered in the chilled wind.

As the sun lowered, the silvery beck glistened amongst ghost-like trees lining the bank, and the countryside sang its quiet songs to the rhythm of the hills.

Thomas Rushworth sat beside the fire in his cottage.

He was not a tall man, but there was confidence in him that made him seem taller. His face had been weathered by the punishing winds of the Pennines and hardened by years spent working the land. His hands were rough and calloused, shaped by labour, weather, hunger, and duty.

It had been a severe winter. A ten-week deep freeze had made life almost intolerable. Trees had split. Birds had frozen to death. Travellers spoke of the Thames freezing hard enough for people to walk across it.

Thomas remembered hunger from his own boyhood — the careful dividing of bread and pottage, the silence around the hearth, and his father’s warning:

“Better the pangs of hunger than resorting to eating the unimaginable.”

Inside the cottage, the fire threw light across his face and dried the mud caked to his leather and sheepskin foot coverings. The room smelled of damp straw, pipe tobacco, wet earth, smoke, labour, and livestock.

A cow shifted in the corner.

The shutters rattled softly against the wind.

Thomas watched a spark leap from the fire and briefly ignite a piece of straw before the damp floor swallowed it.

Bo, the rat terrier, lay near the hearth with one eye on his master and one eye on the hay crib.

Then he heard it.

A rustle.

Small.

Hidden.

Alive.

Bo pricked his ears.

“Pssst,” Thomas whispered. “What is it, dog?”

The terrier lowered himself, shifting his weight forward. His tail stiffened. His eyes fixed on the mound of hay where the cow and lamb had settled for the night.

The hay moved again.

Bo lunged.

The lamb darted clear in panic as the terrier plunged snout-first into the straw. A rat burst from cover, almost half the dog’s size, its yellow teeth flashing as it scrambled along the wall.

Bo struck again.

This time his jaws found the spine.

The rat hit the earthen floor with a wet thud.

The mastiff barked.

“REX BEHAVE!” Thomas shouted.

For a moment the cottage erupted — barking, straw scattering, claws scraping, the fire spitting, the rat twitching as Bo seized it by the neck and thrashed it hard against the wall.

Then silence returned.

Only the fire remained.

Only the wind at the shutters.

Only the long breath of the moors beyond the door.

And somewhere outside, in the darkening Yorkshire evening, trouble was already finding its way toward the Rushworth family.

Chronicle II Awaits

On the moors, danger rarely arrived with warning.

Thomas looked toward the cottage door.

Someone was standing outside.

Bo growled.

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                                                             -I-