The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [88]
The charcoal burner’s craft is very ancient and requires much skill. During the winter Puckle would cut the huge quantity of sticks and logs – the billets as they are called. All the main forest woods – oak and ash, beech, birch and holly – were good for charcoal. Then, late in the spring, he would construct his first fire.
The charcoal burner’s fire is unlike any other. It is huge. Slowly and carefully, Puckle would begin by laying out logs in a great circle, about fifteen feet in diameter. By the time he finally completed it, the mountain of wood stood over eight feet high. Then, climbing up a curved ladder on to his mighty construction, Puckle would coat the entire pile with a skin of soil and turf, so that when it was done it resembled a mysterious grassy kiln. He lit it from the top. ‘Charcoal fire burns downwards,’ he explained. ‘Now we just wait.’
‘How long?’ Luke had asked.
‘Three, four days.’
The charcoal cone is a wonderful machine. Its object is to convert the moist and resinous wood within to a material which is, as near as possible, pure carbon. To do this it is necessary to char the wood without allowing it to burn away and oxidize to useless ash, and this is achieved by restricting the oxygen within the cone to a minimum, hence the turf sides. The process is also slowed and controlled by burning the material downwards, which is more gradual. The resulting charcoal is light, easy to transport and, once heated in a brazier to a point when it ignites, will burn slowly, without a flame and giving off a heat far more intense than does the wood from which it is derived.
By the end of a day, the first time they had done this, Luke noticed that the smoke from the holes was steamy and that the upper sides of the cone were moist.
‘That’s called sweating,’ Puckle said. ‘Water’s coming out of the wood.’
On the third day, towards the completion of the process, Luke noticed that tarry waste was coming out through the run-offs at the base. At the end of that day Puckle announced: ‘It’s done. All we have to do now is wait for it to cool.’
‘How long’s that?’
‘Couple of days.’
They would fill their little cart many times with the charcoal from that cone.
Luke was happy as a charcoal burner. These men lived out in the Forest mostly; seldom seen, hardly noticed. It was a perfect role for him, especially as the area around Burley where Puckle operated was far from the abbey, and the forest officials in that bailiwick did not know him. The work was undemanding. While the fire was burning he could wander off to roam the woods or watch Mary whenever he liked.
Puckle was quite content to shelter him. The woodman had always been a law unto himself. His family was extended, what with his own children, his dead brother’s and various other family progeny whose origins no one ever bothered to enquire about. So when a forester had once asked him who his assistant was, and he had casually replied ‘one of my nephews’, the man had just nodded and thought no more about it.
He could remain out in the Forest with Puckle, Luke reckoned, at least for some months. Only Puckle’s family knew about him. They didn’t talk.
‘Fewer people that know the better,’ Puckle had said. ‘You’ll be safe that way.’
Even so, Luke could not suppress a small shudder of alarm that May afternoon when Puckle, suddenly glancing up, remarked: ‘Hello. Look who’s coming.’ And then added quietly: ‘Do as I told you, now.’
Brother Adam rode his pony slowly. He was feeling rather listless. He thought he knew why. He even muttered the word to himself: ‘Acedia.’ Every monk knew the state. Acedia – the Latin word had no real equivalent in the English tongue. A falling away, into boredom, depression, listlessness; one’s feelings seemed to have died; a sense of nothingness; a numbness, as when a tolling bell is heard but never answered. It came to him some afternoons, like a drowsiness,