Free Apples and Prayers by Andy Brown

tenants’ rights. And though I didn’t want my man to sense it, I too felt that so much now seemed uncertain. 
    Buckland is as busy a small village as any round here. Set high on its hill and ringed by woods, wanderers are met by the welcoming view of the spire on our church from many miles away. Our deep and wide village green fronts that church, like an apron spread before the brick and stonework, neat along its edges, but nowadays much overworked. The number of yeomen who’d begun to bring their flocks through that common ground, to graze their animals, was more than one could countenance. How there were any blades of grass remaining, I don’t know. And yet it wasn’t as if they didn’t have their own fields set aside for grazing at the westernmost bounds of our parish. I can’t see why we had to endure their beasts bleating, dropping their dung on the very steps of our church. Sacrilege.
    â€˜It isn’t the shepherd himself,’ John Toucher went on, ‘but the laws which are there to protect him, Morgan. Enclosures. Infernal, permanent hedges! Look abroad into neighbouring villages. See how many green field strips have been taken and made into one large field, hedged in and turned over to pasture. It’s the Lords who take acre upon acre, for grazing their sheep. And with favours like these afforded to the shepherd, men like Billy Down will gain at our expense. They pitch man against his fellow, muscles or not.’
    I’d heard talk like this from other tenants in the village and was used to hearing the name of Billy Down taken in vain. His was the largest flock in the district. It was impossible to miss his presence. Or rather, his flock’s. Countless nights working out under the stars and sleeping in the hedgerows, delivering lambs from straying ewes on the cold hillsides, had thinned Billy Down into a small, lean shape. He was wealthier than most in Buckland, thanks to his rich earnings in the wool trade, but gave no sign of this in his attire. He dressed as any other villein would, in boots, breeches and his stinking tanned doublet, save for that thick and warm sheepskin, which nearly doubled him in size. He was nothing more than a boy to look at with it off but, with it on, he looked like one of his own stocky rams; thin legged, but vast and cloud-like on top. 
    His flock too had grown to twice its size in the same number of years and, with his rich earnings, he’d brought some sizeable copses beyond the Barton’s woodlands, in the district of Limberland. Here he grazed his sheep, before herding them through the woolbrook and on up through the village to the site of his barns. It was at this herding time that his sheep were prone to wander and many times he’d stirred the bailiff’s wrath, as well as the ire of the village, by letting his sheep stray across the green. For such neglect and for his unreasonable profits in these matters, he’d become unpopular in Buckland. I had, by now, heard of the intended tax upon such flocks as large as these and offered this to John, to ease his fears.
    â€˜Profits or not, John, Billy Down’ll soon be paying taxes, more and more upon his massing sheep. That’ll surely keep him within his means.’
    â€˜Not before some honest arable man’s been turned off his land for Billy Down’s profit! Where do those men go, Morgan, those who’ve been drummed off?’ He was becoming terse and I was upset at his manner.
    â€˜I don’t know, John. Though you yourself most obviously seem to. Why bother asking?’ 
    I knew his convictions on such matters, but seldom had seen him so troubled, or heard him turn his talk upon one man in particular. Now he seemed to be turning it on me as well.
    â€˜I’ll tell you where,’ he said.
    â€˜I’m sure you will,’ I replied.
    â€˜Given over to beggary!’ he said, swinging his arms wide round about him, as if he was