by Smith, Skye
Work was not the reason he decided to stay in Wallingford. He was carrying a fat purse, so he had enough coin with him that he needn't work again for years. He was not here to work, he was here to wait for two men. Hereward had told him that this ford was the closest place to London where the Duke's army could safely cross the Thames. He would wait here either until either Hereward or the Duke came to the ford.
Earl Edwin of Mercia had camped his army here because he thought Duke William would be less than a week behind him in moving towards this crossing. The Duke did not arrive, and Edgar became King, and Edwin was called to London, so he had left the defense of the crossing to a man named Wigod.
Wigod was the lord of the fortified town of Wallingford, and he was also the Shirereeve of Oxfordshire. As Shirereeve, Wigod could call up the local fyrd if he so needed, which even Edwin could not do, because Wallingford was not in Mercia.
Raynar looked like the rest of the workers, and dressed like them, despite the wealth in his purse. Although he had left half of his wealth hidden at the Porter's Glade, what he had with him was more coin than any of the men on the barges could even imagine. If he, a peasant, were ever caught by the Shirereeve's men with such a purse he would be arrested as a thief, and that could end badly.
After hiding his heavy purse about a mile downstream along the Thames, he went to the market and the barges looking for work carrying just the few poor coins expected of a porter. He found work immediately loading barges. It included a roof for the night, and one thin meal a day. After a few days of this, he realized that working on the barges was not helping him to watch the ford or listen for news.
It was rainy season, and in this season the ford was the major north south crossroad for much of England. From here he should be able to listen for news, and watch for others of the brotherhood, especially Hereward. The barge docks, however, were not in sight of the ford.
The next morning he refused porter work, and went in search of other work closer to the ford. The season of the water sickness was winding down. Raynar always wondered why it was not called the shitting sickness. The healers at the glade had told Raynar that it was caused by the first heavy rains of fall, which washed the dry summer earth clean by pushing the filth into the rivers and ponds.
As he was leaving the glade on his way here, Gwyn's mother, the healer, had warned him not to trust flatland water, other than rain water, until the rivers ran clear again. Today there was no problem finding clean drinking water. All you need do was to open your mouth and look up.
He sat on a bench under a thatch roof of a riverside alehouse watching the traffic cross the ford. There were a half dozen small boats that made the crossing just downstream of the ford. For a small price folk could boat across the Thames rather than wade. The river was in flood, so the ford was deep, so the boats were doing a good business.
He had been to this alehouse before and had talked to the boatmen. Of all the people in the town, the boatmen knew the most gossip and the most news. Passing on gossip and news seemed to be a joyful part of their working day, as it was for the carters on the highways. That was the type of work that Raynar should have while he waited beside this ford.
He asked each boatman if they needed help, but they each in turn shrugged or laughed. A small boat was the work of one man. Eventually he was pointed towards a hut downstream on the far side of the river.
"Old Garth has the water sickness, so his boat is not earning," said the man who was pointing.
"He int sick, he's drinking himself to death," sniffed the man sitting at the next bench.
"He's too busy bonking his daughter," said a third while he jerked his hips in pantomime. "Selfish bugger won't share her with me."
"He is sick, and he is not getting better without meat in his broth" said the first man who had spoken "My girls have been taking them food this last week. They say he is lying in filth on the floor and the roof leaks so badly that everything inside is damp. "
Raynar asked for passage across the river from the concerned boatman, and the man even offered him free passage if his intent was to go and help Garth. The hut was within sight of the ford. Raynar walked the muddy path to the door, and could smell the sickness before he reached it. He knocked but there was no answer. He was about to leave when a young woman came around the corner of the hut balancing a smoking hot chunk of log on two sticks.
"Open the door for me, please," she said , and he did so, and stepped aside to let her pass. She was bare of foot, and dressed in a filthy smock, made from sacking, that came only to her knee. Living by the riverbank as she did, the length made sense, as did the filth, and the lack of shoes. It was impossible to stay clean when you lived in mud. The other name for rainy season was mud season.
"Oye, you, help me to roll him over so I can put this log under him" she called from inside the hut.
The inside was drab and damp and smelled putrid. There was a pallet bed to the right and a man lying on straw on the floor to the left. He was damp and shivering. Together they rolled the man towards the wall. The woman dug out and removed the prior warming log from a hole under the straw and replaced it with the smoking log. Together they replaced some earth and straw to cover the hot log, and then they rolled the man back on top. Raynar went back outside for a gulp of non-putrid air while she tucked a damp cloak around the old man.
"What you want?" she asked after walking outside and sucking deeply on the air while she wiped her hands on her smock.
"The boatmen told me that your boat was not earning. I came to work it for you." replied Raynar softly while slumping from his height so he could look into her eyes.
"Hah, we have no coin for food, and you want to be paid. Be gone with you, fool."
"I ask no pay, just a share of the earnings from the boat," replied Raynar softly, so as not to scare the young woman. She had lovely eyes.
For the first time she looked back into his stare, into his eyes, and she lost her thoughts for a moment. "Where would you sleep, what would you eat?"
"My first work would be to mend the roof and to trench the walls so that the hut dries. Then I can sleep inside. I still have a few coins from portering. I will give them to you to buy us all food."
She looked at the roof, and the muddy floor of the hut, and her eyes turned crafty. "So get thee mending, and hand me your coin." She held out her hand, but instead of putting coins in it, Raynar grabbed it and shook it.
"We have a deal then. My name is Raynar Porter. And you are?"
"I am Aelfled, and that is Garth my Da. He just has the water sickness, but he has been sick for too long that now he is too weak to work the boat, or even to walk."
Raynar read her thoughts from her crafty eyes. She had nothing to lose by taking money from this fool, and she may even get a dry hut for free. He handed her four local coins. Enough for market food for a week. She took them, went back into the hut, and shut the door in his face.
Raynar walked around the hut looking for tools and materials, but of course, any tools would be inside and safely away from thieving hands. He knocked on the door and walked in saying "I need the tools" but broke off in mid word. Her soiled smock was on the floor and she was pulling her go-to-town shift down over her head. She was thin from too little food, but here body was strong and fit, and her skin shone white and clear through light smears of mud. She hastily tried to pull the shift down to hide her nakedness, but in her hurry she had lost her one of the arm holes.
"Stop staring" she ordered as finally the shift straightened and hid the blonde bushiness beneath her tummy. She tried to regain her modesty through bluster. "The tools are there, behind the door. Take them and get out."
Behind the hut there was a pile of thatching material that Garth had prepared for the roof, but had not the health to use. There was also a thin straight pine log with its small branches cut to create notches, that must serve as a climbing pole. He was just testing the climbing pole when she came around the house to say she was off to market.
She was almost a different woman from the muddy girl he had first seen. Her clothes spoke of better days in the near past. Her skirt was of pale green and her tunic was an earthy red. Her long blonde hair was now combed and braided, and topped with a bonnet that matched her tunic. Of course she was still barefoot, but she was carrying a pair of shoes in her left hand, and a market basket in her right.
"Please listen for my Da. If he pukes you must make sure he does not choke on it. He has his own drinking skin of rainwater above his head. You must not drink from it." She turned and swirled her skirt on purpose to please him, and then skipped down the path already waving to a boatman to hold his boat for her.
* * * * *
It took Raynar two long, wet days of work to repair the roof, and to dig out the trench around the hut, and to dig out the ditch that led the trench water away from the hut and towards the banks of the river. Already the floor was drying, but the hut would remain damp until the endless rain gave way to a dry day. He had tried to sleep in the hut the first night, but the stench of the old man drove him back outside, and he slept under the kitchen roof behind the hut.
At noon the next day, the rain stopped and the sun almost came through the clouds. It was warmer than at any time of the past week. He interrupted his trenching to carry the old man down to the river and bathe him clothes and all. After pulling off the old man's now wet smock, he left both man and smock drying in a place on the bank that was warmed by what little sun there was.
While Garth was drying, Raynar raked the putrid straw bed down to the river and floated it away. He replaced it with fresh, though damp, straw and put a heated log in the bed hole to help dry the straw. The neighboring boatman’s two girls, both young teens with big noses, had come to watch him work. They chatted to Aelfled and giggled whenever Raynar straightened up to stretch his back.
When he took his break to drink from his aleskin, he turned to the three of them and told them, "Garth needs to be eating a thin salty broth and some milk curds so that his stomach can start working again. He needs many small meals of it, at all times of the day. A cooked egg a day would be good too." The two girls skipped off to their hut, with an occasional twirl to keep their eye on him, and his on them. They soon returned with broth and curd.
Raynar’s next chore was the boat. Or boats. The neighbor boatman, Gwain, showed him Garth's boats. "See there are his two boats. His old small one, and this big one." They were both pulled well up the bank and were upside down. Both had flat bottoms in the way of boats on shallow streams. It meant that they could float over the ford in dry weather.
Gwain pointed to the large boat. "When Garth ran the big one he was the biggest earner on the ford, but when he got sick, he got weak, and then he could no longer handle it. Both boats will need chinking before you flip them over. I can show you how to do that. The poles are still in good nick but one of the oars needs its blade fixing."
For the next two days, Raynar learned boat skills. He used hot tree pitch and sacking for the chinking, wooden slats and pegs for repairs, and carved a new blade for the oar. Some of the other boatmen would at times sit around him with their ale, so they could shout directions, but none ever lifted a finger to help him.
Meanwhile at each rest, Raynar would look out into the river and watch the boatmen as they worked their boats. They mostly stayed in the rear of the boat with a long pole. They would stay downstream but close to the shallow ford so that they could use the long pole to push against the river bottom. If they went too far downstream the bottom was deeper, and they would sweep their pole like an oar to get back to shallower water again.
If they were taken too far from the ford by the current, they would tip their one oar into the water and row standing up and facing forward. The boats had no bow or stern for front and back were shaped the same, and the boats did not turn around at the other side. Instead the boatman simply changed ends.
They had a platform both front and back which overhung the ends of the boat. The platforms were where the boatmen would stand to pole, but at the bank they would also reach over the muddiest ground closest to the river, and onto more solid ground up the bank. Thus the passengers rarely got mud on their shoes, if they were wearing any.
Raynar fixed the older small boat first, which turned out to be a mistake. It needed the most fixing, and was too unstable in Raynar’s inexperience hands to trust with passengers. No matter, it meant that he did a better, faster job of fixing the larger boat.
Raynar, a mountain man, had been fascinated by boats since he first saw them on the River Ouse up in Yorkshire. On his practice runs with the big boat, he was well pleased with himself for how quickly he came to understand them.
His was the biggest passenger boat on the ford. It was half again as long and as wide as the others. But though only half again as big, it could carry twice the passengers. It was too heavy for him to pull up onto the bank by himself at the end of the day, but once it was moving through the water, it was just as easy to pole as the smaller boats, and it was faster.
A week to the day after he had first met Garth and Aelfled, was his first day of making the boat earn. Afterwards he sat on Aelfled's bed and shared the coins with her. Her father was still weak but was finally holding down his food. The hut was dry and warm and no longer smelled of sickness.
When Raynar stood to go to his straw on the floor, Aelfled pulled him back down onto her bed and asked him to keep her warm that night. He did and they did, and in the morning they were late rising because it was so delicious to be spooning, connected, and warm.
While he was relaxing half dazed, after coming inside her, yet again, she turned in the bed and faced him. She kissed his eyes and his cheeks and his mouth. "Thank you Raynar" she whispered. He grinned against her mouth. "Not for that" she felt him growing against her thighs, so she squeezed it playfully. "That is your due. Thank you for caring to help. You did not know us. You did not need the work. Yet you helped us."
She kissed him again. "In a few more days you could have had me for ha'penny at the alehouse. We were done, my Da and I. Finished. Except for Gwain, all the boatmen were refusing us help, and rubbing their hands in glee and greed at our misfortune. One of them would get Da's boat for less than its worth, and they would all get me for next to nothing." She sucked at his lip. He was big again and ready for more. "All that work, and yet you asked nothing of me, though I could see you were thinking of it every time you looked at me."
"The healing women in my hamlet told me that I should always wait to be invited into a woman. They said that though a man was always ready, he can never know the right timing, for only the woman can know that." He was whispering softly as she was guiding him into her. "It seems an easy rule for men to know, yet they don't know it, do they?"
"Oh Raynar, you are such a child," she said, suddenly very serious. "Most men are ugly in mouth or face or body. They would never be willingly invited by a woman, any woman, so they must pay or take." He began to reply but she silenced him with more kisses.
* * * * *
A boatman’s life is spent patiently waiting for passengers, and when they arrive, there is a sudden short spurt of hard work. To the passengers, he is a valuable source of gossip and messages from other passengers. Messages such as "Tell my wife I will see her in the market," and gossip such as "The baker's daughter is visiting the mill by night," and news such as "Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury is visiting Shirereeve Wigod," or "Duke William has finally reached Canterbury but he stole all the food along the way and left nothing for the folk."
Raynar was able to follow Duke William's progress by listening to the news and gossip of the passengers, and of the other boatmen. The latest news was that William had been very sick in Hastings and in Dover. Raynar hoped that this was his doing by his killing his horse out from under him on the battlefield, but that smugness was dashed by the next news. The entire Norman army had been stricken by the water sickness.
The more he heard such ne
ws, the more infuriated and frustrated he was by Bishop Stigand's choice of the boy Edgar as King of the English, rather than Edwin. With William's army weakened from sickness, Edwin would have driven them into the sea by now.
Whenever Raynar was waiting for passengers on the northern bank, he visited with Aelfled and the girls from next door, or did improvements around the hut. From the hut they could keep an eye turned to watch for passengers. The wealthier passengers tended to look for Raynar because his boat was larger and more stable.
Besides, Raynar was the best spoken of the boatmen and was a better source of news about the Normans. Even Shirereeve Wigod sought passage with him whenever the river rose to the point where mounted men got wet feet, or whenever he had his wife with him.
It was watching the Shirereeve's wife shivering on his boat in the rain, that Raynar got his next idea. He put a roof on his boat. It was a simple design and not quite waterproof but it kept his passengers mostly dry. It was just a light frame made from lashed staves, with some oiled sackcloth stretched over it. Because of the roof, all of the well dressed folk would wait patiently on the bank for his boat, and in soggy weather, even the market women wanted to take his boat.
The other boatmen became angry with him for stealing their passengers, but Raynar had an easy solution that calmed the waters. He raised his fare above that of the other boats, so that the other boatmen would still have the custom of the normal folk, while the wealthier folk would willingly pay more to cross the river in the covered boat.
The only bad thing about the roof was the effect of a wind. When there was wind, the boat became difficult to control from the rear. He needed to use Aelfled on the front platform with another pole just to keep the boat on course. The solution came to him after watching two boatmen raft their two boats together during a storm. Raynar experimented with rafting Garth's other, smaller boat to his big one.
Rafting the two together made more differences than just stability. The small boat became his pushing platform. He would start at the front of the small boat with his pole, sink it in the mud, and then walk down the entire length of the small boat pushing on the pole. Then he would pull the pole out of the mud and carry it back to the front and start again.