The extract below is from the opening of my current work-in-progress, which is tentatively entitled “The Winchester Carver.”
It tells the story of Crispin, a frankly hopeless young fisherman, who has an extraordinary talent for carving. The book recounts the tale of his journey, arrival, and subsequent work at the construction site of Winchester Cathedral.
I find the histories of the forgotten artisans have endless possibilities, don’t you? This is the start of my attempt, anyway. Onwards and upwards to draft three!
The boats lounged idly across the mudflats and, propped on their wooden elbows, cast creeping shadows over the pools that the absent tide had forgotten to reclaim.
Along the shoreline, in gawking pockets, huddled gaggles of geese, satisfied with their daily work. Wide-eyed with disdain, they glared at the undignified gulls that squawked and whooped with every dive. In the splishing of a white flash, the excitable feathered screechers plunged to pick off a careless crab or skating beastie of the meniscus.
But it was a blend of the drying mud, seaweed and salt that drifted on the shiftless air. It was that unmistakable aroma of a scape where land meets sea, but to the fisherman perched above on the grass banks, it was wholly unremarkable. They thought that the whole world smelled this way.
Alert yet flattening down the reeds, the men sat amid the toil of their ancient craft – most in a bed of nets, with a few engaged in other practical tasks.
“What are you taking home for tea, Bill?”
“Fish. You?”
“Ah, fish.”
The gentlemen nodded to one another and returned to their toil.
“I’ve just about had enough of fixing this net,” exclaimed Griff, drawing the thick net needle through his beard.
“Get the boy to do it.”
“Him?”
Crispin, whose gaze was now lifted from his work, brought it to rest on the back of his forebear, ears of the son now bent to the words of the father.
“He’s no fisherman, Bill. He goes green about the gills no sooner than he sits in the bows. Even in the calmest of seas. I just can’t fathom it.”
“Tis unfathomable, Griff.”
“I mean, I am a fisherman, my father was a fisherman, my father’s father was a fisherman. My father’s father even fished with Valbert.”
“Ah, Valbert! Now, there was a fisherman true.”
Crispin, words catching on the breeze of the upper bank, muttered under his breath, “The fish jumped in his boat.” Downbank, his father, continued with his harangue.
“They say the fish leapt into his boat of their own volition! He near enchanted them into his bag.”
“Ah, tis so.”
“May his legend be cherished,” said Griff. “And unsullied by unsuitable beginners.”
Crispin returned his attention to toil, the small blade removing a tiny morsel of wood that fluttered moth-like to the wind. It was done. Speaking no word and with silent steps, he crept forward and placed the trinket on the grass, upon which festooned his father’s nets. He did not wait but continued to walk away.
“What is this boy?”
“A charm. For good fortune. For the craft. May the fish leap into our boat.