London - Edward Rutherfurd [289]
“So what will you do?” the little man asked again. Receiving no reply, he delivered his considered opinion. “You know your problem, Daniel? You’ve got too many obligations.” To which Dogget only sighed, but said nothing. Not that he had ever complained. He was devoted to his tubby wife Margaret and their brood of happy children; he was kind to his sister’s family; and now, when poor Carpenter’s wife had died giving birth to her fourth, he had brought his own wife and children upriver from Southwark to the lodgings at Hampton Court where Carpenter was working. “They can live with you until things get sorted out,” he had offered, and Carpenter’s gratitude had been obvious. But if only this were all. There was still the matter of his father.
It was a year since he had let the old man live with them in Southwark – and a year that he had regretted it. Old Will Dogget might be a standing joke to his friends, but after his last drunken escapade, Dan confessed: “I can’t handle him any more.” What was to be done with him, though? He couldn’t just throw the old man out. He had tried his sister, but she wouldn’t take him. He sighed again. Whatever the answer was, he thought, you could be sure of one thing. “It’ll cost money.” And short of stealing, there was only one way he could get that: which was why, now, his eyes were scanning the barges moored by the jetty. Could one of them provide his answer?
Though they came in many sizes, all the Thames passenger barges conformed to the same basic pattern. In construction, they were essentially Viking longboats with a shallow keel, and planks laid, in the overlapping clinker fashion, in long, sweeping lines. Inside, they were divided into two parts: the fore section, with benches for oarsmen; and the aft section where the passengers reclined. The variations upon this theme, however, were many. There were the simplest row-boats, the broad and shallow wherries, which one or two oarsmen could send skimming across the river between Southwark and the city. There were longer barges, with several pairs of oars and, usually, a canopy over the passengers. These frequently had rudders and a man to steer as well. And there were the huge barges of the great city companies, with entire superstructures for the passengers, magnificently carved prows, and a dozen or more pairs of oars to pull them, like the gilded barge of the Lord Mayor, as he was now called, which led the yearly water procession.
Daniel loved the waterman’s life. The work might be physically hard, but he was built for it. The feel of the blades dipping neatly into the water, the surge of the boat, the smell of the riverweed – these brought him a contentment that could not be bettered. Above all, as he fell into the slow, powerful rhythm, he would experience a huge warmth swelling up in his broad chest as though, like the river’s flow, his strength were endless. How well he knew the river – every bank, every bend, from Greenwich to Hampton Court. Once, rowing a young courtier, the fellow had sung a pretty ballad with a chorus:
Sweet Thames, run softly
’Til I end my song.
This had so pleased him that often, on a still summer morning, he would find himself murmuring the words as he slipped down the stream.
There was plenty of work. Since London Bridge was still the only road across the Thames, and it was frequently congested, there were always wherries hurrying across