A Country Life

CHAPTER 4 - REDGAR

 It was time to leave. He had brought the Guillemot as far up the estuary as he dared on the flood tide, and now she was rocking gently on a calm sea. Although the sun shone weakly overhead, the cold waters of the estuary had formed a low lying mist that threatened to turn into fog later, and it was becoming difficult to see either shore. In another ten minutes the tide would turn and he would sail away, hopefully never to return. He was an open water sailor, an ocean crosser. This creeping up estuaries, with their shifting shallows and ever-narrowing shores were anathema to him. He felt trapped.

Ahead he could just make out the ruins of a bridge through the mist. One of two that crossed the muddy waters of the Severn Estuary. The closer bridge was the largest; a viaduct over three miles in length and incorporating a large cable-stayed span over the deepwater channel. Much of the structure still remained; both towers still stood and were connected to the deck by their main cables, and Redgar had heard from the traders at Falmouth that it was still possible to cross, although much of the deck had fallen away in places. The other, older bridge, was a little way beyond to the north, where the estuary narrowed still further, and had almost collapsed entirely. At some point its deck had broken mid span, either through rust or deliberate action, and the entire deck between the towers had fallen into the waters below. One of the towers had toppled backwards under the unequal forces acting on it after the catenary cables broke, shedding debris and wires into the water between the tower and the mainland. The way past was only open to very small boats, and that with extreme caution and local knowledge.

Why anyone would want to take a boat up there was beyond him. The tides were fierce, and there was no safe harbour in which to trade. There was a perfectly good road that a traveller could take if they wished, and if you had the means, you could hire protection to shield you from robbers and highwaymen, and other unsavoury things that roamed the land outside the Protectorates and Free Towns.

Yet the silent man had chosen to do exactly that, taking a small skiff by himself up through the bridges. That meant his destination had been either Chepstow Free Town or the Berkeley Protectorate. If Chepstow was his destination, then it was a damn strange way of going there. Free Towns tended to be pretty open about people entering and leaving, and one man on his own wouldn't rouse any real suspicion. That was one of the reasons they were Free – free passage, free trade. If you had money or anything of value on you, the more welcome you were. Of course, a place like that attracted dangerous people, and they were renowned for being unhealthy places where murder and feuding was common. All the more reason why Chepstow couldn't be the Silent Man's destination, Redgar thought. If it was the Free Town of Chepstow the silent man was heading for, he didn't need to enter it by stealth.

A Protectorate, on the other hand... Those were orderly, tidy places, where it was known to the exact number how many people lived there and by what names they went by. They owed their existence to the Crown, and it was the Crown that paid to ensure their security, in exchange for preferential rates on goods – farmstuffs, textiles, anything grown or manufactured within the Protectorate was taxed or forfeit to the Crown, if it wanted. In exchange, the Crown would move to defend a Protectorate should it be threatened, by mobilising the yeomanry of neighbouring Protectorates to reinforce defence. The crown could also call upon the Protectorates to provide men and arms for its own campaigns, if it so wished. The arrangement had worked well for the last two hundred and fifty years. But a Protectorate was not a place you wandered into without good reason. If those in charge of the Protectorate didn't like the look of you, your stay would be short. Perhaps terminally so. There were patrols around their borders, and watch towers that used semaphore, bells and fire-beacons to signal unwelcome visitors, and if you were that unwelcome visitor, then very quickly a large party of men would come bearing down on you holding sharp weapons and asking pointed questions.