Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

He hated this job, as he hated his loneliness. Already this year he had spent months away from his wife during his pilgrimage, and being apart from her again was terrible. He wanted to see Peterkin, to see Edith, and especially to have his wife with him once more to warm his bed. This separation was the worst thing in the world.

It was also leading to this lethargy. His lying abed was not merely the result of too much wine and ale last night, it was also the reluctance to return to that cell-like room, listening to the scritch, scratch of that blasted clerk Andrew’s reed.

The work was weighing down his spirits. He would give anything — even most of his treasure — to be back home again at Lydford with Meg and his children. Here in Dartmouth his mind was turning to mash and his heart was losing all sense of proportion. He found it difficult to break out of his torpor, and he hated himself for his idleness. It was so unlike him.

When he heard the cheerful whistle from the hall beneath him, he tried for a moment or two to cover his head with his arms, but then he had to admit defeat as the smell of smoke started to fill his little chamber. Reluctantly, he rose, pulled on his shirt, tunic, cote-hardie and a thick lined cloak, heavy woollen hosen and boots, and made his way to the ladder.

‘Morning, Master Simon.’

‘Hello, Rob,’ Simon sighed. Rob was a young servant whom he had hired on arriving here. A merry fellow with sharp eyes that spotted everything, Rob was dressed in a faded tunic with a leather jerkin. His head was encased in a hood that surrounded his throat, always a good idea in this chill weather.

‘Did you sleep well, Master?’

‘I slept,’ Simon grunted.

‘I heard your snores would have woken a sleeping dragon!’

‘Then it’s lucky there aren’t any dragons around here,’ Simon snarled. ‘Now get me some bread and stop wittering!’

‘You had a good evening in the tavern?’ Rob asked innocently. He was stirring at a thick broth of oats over the fire, crouched down and keeping his eyes on the pot, but Simon was suddenly sure his whole attention was on him.

‘Who told you I was there?’

‘All the people here know it. They say you’re in need of some company.’

Simon grinned briefly. It was not the first offer he had received since moving here: a couple of sailors had offered their sisters, another, perhaps more enterprising, his wife, if only Simon would turn his back while certain vessels arrived in the port or nearby. Simon had made it clear that he had no need of women. He was content with his wife.

‘Tell them to mind their own sodding business,’ he said harshly, and maintained a diplomatic silence as Rob ladled some of the porridge into a bowl for him.

Wymond was at his tanner’s yard first thing in the morning, same as usual, and he inhaled deeply as with a broad smile he surveyed his little empire.

There were pots and great chambers cut into the ground, filled to the brim with his leathers. He was proud of his rise from impoverished child to this position of importance. Even the members of the Freedom would deal with him as an equal. There was no one else who produced such good quality leather as he, because no one else had such a splendid area for the work.

Exe Island lay at the western edge of the city, and the river flowed all about it, which gave access to a plentiful supply of water. Others had set themselves up as tanners, but some had done so in the daftest places. Old Mart up in the High Street, for example. He had to spend a fortune every year to get water hauled up to his shop in carts. What was the point? He fancied himself important, living up there in the middle of the town, but all it really won him was the passionate hatred of all his richer neighbours, who couldn’t stand the smell of him, or the worse stinks that permeated his hall and seeped out to annoy all and sundry. It was mad to work as a tanner in the middle of a city like Exeter.

Whereas out here, away from people, you didn’t upset anyone and you had as much water as you could wish for. And all tanners needed lots of it.

He walked about his estate and chose which pits he would work on later. There were some hides which had been resting in his warming shed. They’d been sprinkled with urine before being folded up together. They were left here to help the hair roots rot so they could be scraped off more easily. He checked them, and rubbed a couple with the ball of his thumb. Only a few hairs came away: they could do with at least another day.

Shutting the door to the shed, he walked off to the next skins. In the bating tanks, where the leather went after scraping, the skins were immersed in a warm mixture of dogs’ dung. Some tanners swore that birdshit was the best softener, but Wymond was sure that it was the dogs’ dung that gave his leathers their natural pliability. All the leathers he’d seen which had used chicken muck tended to be a little more brittle; not quite so pleasant to handle. For his money, he’d stick to dogshit — it wasn’t as if there was any lack of it!

The last area of his domain was the tanning pits: it was here that the final result was stored. The first pit was the handling pit, where the fresh leathers would be turned and stirred for days in a weak oak solution, until they reached a uniform colour. Then they were taken out and stored in the other pits, the great ones, where the leathers rested in a fresh solution for at least a year and a day, before being removed ready for smoothing with a setting pin — a long, blunt knife — and then dried slowly in a dark shed with a free flow of air. Tanning was not a fast process.

There were several jobs to do today. He had some skins ready for the handling pit, and he’d get his apprentice to start the stirring and mixing process. First, though, Wymond had a fresh cartload of cattle hides to clean. They’d been brought from the butchers after the slaughtering yesterday, and he had to immerse them to wash away the loose blood and dung. If any had been brined, the salt would also have to be removed. He busied himself with that, feeling the thickness of the pelts, pulling away odd lumps of fat from the skins, before thrusting them into the Exe’s fast-flowing waters. Down here he had constructed his own little leat, and at the far end he had installed a metal grate. The skins went into the river and were caught by the grate. There he could pummel them with a club, like a washerwoman with her linen, until the worst of the dirt and muck was cleaned off.

He was finished, and was reaching into the chilly waters to rescue his skins, just as his son appeared.

‘Vin, what are you doing down here?’

Vince glanced at his father with a half-apologetic smile. ‘Maybe you’d offer me a job if I needed one?’

‘No, boy! You’re going to be the big master at the city, you are,’ Wymond said loudly. He reached out to his lad and ruffled his hair affectionately. ‘You’ll be Mayor, or master or somesuch! You learn your joinery, lad, and when you have, we’ll buy you a small shop to start trading, and get you working to make as many saddles as will fill the whole of Devonshire. There won’t be a place for anything other than my son’s saddles! Ha ha! With my leather, your wood and Jack’s work to finish the saddles, we’ll all be rich, eh?’

‘I hope so.’

‘There’s something the matter, isn’t there, boy?’ Wymond said.

He was a medium-height, thickset man with deep brown eyes that were mostly hidden in among the wrinkles about his eyes. Looking at him, Vince suddenly realised how old he was. Although Wymond still worked as hard as ever he had, his black hair was turned grizzled, with wings of white at either temple. His face was as square as Vince’s, but the jowls drooped on either side like a mastiff’s, and his face was as brown and rugged as his finished goods. As he put his arm about Vince’s shoulders, the boy tried not to pull a face as he caught the smell of old flesh, rotten meat, dung and urine. It was the odour he had grown up with, and he had never been so grateful for anything as he was for the chance of leaving that stench behind. He recalled with a shudder all those days when, as a lad, he’d been sent out before the rakers to find any decent-sized lumps of dogshit, bringing them back in his old bucket, carrying it two-handed because it was so heavy and he was so small. The smell of dogs could still make him want to heave even now.