Stone

Chapter 43 – The Ship

Rayla insisted on leaving the ship, and taking Jason with her. There were still several hours of daylight left, and Stone would like to have spent more time on the vessel he had spent so much money on, but he knew Rayla was in a mood, and not leaving with her would only make things worse. Jason slid down the ladder to the boat below, and then Stone followed, as Rayla wanted him beneath her as she slowly worked her way down the shaky rope ladder.

“Should be a better way to get on a ship,” she muttered as she descended. “Emily and Sissy probably can’t climb a ladder like this.”

“By the time we have the ship in operation, it will load at the docks,” Stone said softly, not wanting to increase her temper. “A loading ramp that you can walk across. It will be slanted up, but not much.”

As they walked home Rayla and Stone walked beside each other, not holding hands as they often did. Jason ran on ahead, not wanting to be around if his mother verbally went after Stone.

She didn’t: at least not until they were in the house. It after the classes had left, and before the evening students would come in. The sailors were getting their lessons on the ship now, and the other adult class didn’t meet on this day.

“Jason is not sailing on that ship,” Rayla said, still seething.

“We all are,” Stone replied. “The only question is whether or not it is when we make the voyage, or before. You realize he is nearly 11. In four years he will come of age, and be able to do whatever he wants. I think we will spend two more years here, and then sail to the other side of the ocean,”

“Why?” Rayla said. “Do we really need to go over there? I mean, we have a nice life here. I have the school, and you have your transport business. Why not forget about going over there? Does it really matter anymore?”

“Aren’t you interested in finding out how we got here?” Stone replied, thankful that the discussion was proceeding on a normal level, without yelling. “I’d like to find out about those towers. And if we don’t keep to the plans of going, Kalosun will leave. He is enraged that one of the wizards is enslaving his people. He will leave if we give up on the voyage.”

“And Jason might go with him,” Rayla noted.

“Perhaps. I think that if Kalo went without us he might wind up enslaved himself. And if Jason is with him …”

“Okay, I agree. We will go in two years. But Jason needs to be in school until then,” the woman said emphatically.

“Is he learning anything in school?” Stone asked, and Rayla had to agree that he was not. “I won’t let him sail on the first trade run. But the next one will leave after he turns 11. That will be harder to keep him off.”

“No,” Rayla said. “He can go on the third run, or maybe the fourth. They are safe, aren’t they?”

“Of course,” Stone said. “Let us make it the fourth. He will be working towards age 12 by then. As a trader the ship will usually sail within sight of land, and if something were to cause it to sink, they could all get to shore on the boats. But that is unlikely to happen, especially after the first trip. He can go on the fourth trip out, and will be safely back in your arms in two weeks. You can have him stay when the fifth trip goes out. He may not want to go to sea again. But if he does, it will only be for alternate trips.”

“What about Kalo?” Rayla asked. “We can’t stop him from sailing, can we.”

“Well, he is a free man,” Stone noted. “But he is also my friend and I think that carries some weight. We can ask him only to go on the trips Jason goes on.”

“I trust Kalo,” Rayla said. “I would feet better if he is with Jason … out there.”

Jason was okay with the plan, even though his mother was not entirely sold on the idea. The ship would load up and sail for the first time in a week, and would take over two weeks to return, including the time spent unloading and reloading at LakePort. Stone told the captain, and the first mate (who Stone was beginning to realize could wind up as captain when the ship sailed across the ocean) that he was fine if the first trip wound up taking three weeks. He wanted the ship to get a good breaking in, and for the sailors to become comfortable with it: particularly in learning how to use the jib sails effectively. Stone had a layman’s knowledge that they were important, but didn’t know how to make them useful. All he knew was in the last 100 or 200 years of sailing ships on earth, all had jibs.

The day the ship sailed had Jason and Stone at the docks. Rayla was no longer so excited about it, so school was not cancelled, although about 20 boys skipped school to see it leave. There were almost as many boys from the white school who skipped, and they laughed at the odd triangular sails, and the sheer idiocy of a ship sailing with an all Kithren crew (save the captain, who was well-known as a drunk and a coward). This resulted in several fights, but Stone did not interfere, other than keeping Jason from joining in. The pair stood on the dock and watched as the last wagons of coal were loaded, and then saw the dockworkers loosen the hawsers holding the ship to the dock: it drifted away on the tide as sails were raised to catch the wind.

They watched the ship slowly sail to the east until it was barely out of sight. “Come on boy,” Stone finally said. “You better head back to school and take your medicine.”

“You think she will be mad?”

“That you skipped school to watch the ship? I think that it a good guess she will be upset.”

Jason sagged. “Don’t worry boy,” Stone reassured him. “I’ll probably get just as much blame for letting you.” Jason looked at the big man, and his admiration grew another notch. Not only was his man the biggest in the valley, and the strongest, but here he was willing to take some of the blame from the one person alive that he feared: his wife.

It was lunch when they got to the schools, and Rayla was waiting for him. It took nearly five minutes before Stone got a word in. Jason just hid behind his father’s legs.

“Of course I knew he was there,” Stone said, watching Rayla just get madder and madder. “I wanted to know that he wasn’t on the ship.” Rayla sagged as the anger fled from her mind at the realization that Jason might have tried to go on board and sail the maiden voyage.

“Oh. I didn’t think about that,” she confessed. “Perhaps it was a good idea you took him with you. You wouldn’t have left me, would you Jase?”

“No momma. I promised. Not until after the third trip.”

“Fourth! Well you have to go to class with the little ones this afternoon for skipping the morning. You can help Ms Kern in the numbers class.”

“Yes momma,” the relieved boy said. “Are we going to the new school tomorrow?”

“Yes, son. I want to see how it is progressing. I expect you to help keep the kids in order. I don’t want everyone running all over the place and getting in the way of the workers. Your dad is paying them to be builders, not babysitters.”

With the ship at sea, the school became the main focus of Stone’s attentions. The woodsmen were no longer working in the oak groves, but had moved to the pine groves where they were gathering branches from the timbers being cut for the school. Pines do not grow large side branches out from the main trunk like oaks do, but there was still a considerable amount of firewood being piled up at the lot, and much of it was being taken away daily. Some boys pulled a small wagon or two home each night. The free wood would mean their family would eat in the winter rather than paying for wood. Boys without wagons carried bundles of wood in their arms. Stone didn’t take any of the pine to the piles at the two houses: he knew that the dried oak would be much better at generating heat over the winter and he now had an ample supply to keep the two houses through a cold winter. Split oak was also stored at the school.

The next morning the students marched the several block to the new school. The main roundhouse was up and thatchers were working on the roof. The current construction was on the circle of classrooms that was being built around the roundhouse. These were being built as lean-tos against the main circle, with wattle and daub walls. It was possible to make the lathing for the walls from sticks woven together: most of the residential round houses in town were built like that. But Stone had wanted the sticks put into the firewood pile, so pine logs were being split into lathes about two inches wide and a quarter inch thick. These were woven between the uprights, and the builder suggested that less daub would be needed, and the walls would be warmer.

Each classroom had two or three large windows. The smaller residential round houses usually had shutters that could be closed off in winter. But Rayla had begged for windows, so Stone had ordered glass in from Three Rivers/Sarn. There were still shutters, so that the winter storms wouldn’t smash the windows, but the school caretaker would open these each morning before classes. Stone also was wise enough to have netting placed a foot or so away from the windows facing a playground, to minimize the number of windows broken by misthrown balls and other game equipment.

“When will it be ready?” Rayla asked he husband after he returned from chatting with the head builder.

“Best case, early in December,” Stone replied. “Worst case, late January. I would aim for Solstice holiday.”

“That would be ideal,” Rayla said. “We could use the week off to move things.”

“And I’ll finally be able to take a piss in my own bathroom,” Stone said, hugging his wife to let her know he was not truly upset with the temporary arrangements.

“We will need to work on furnishings,” Rayla said. “A blackboard for every room and a teacher’s desk. We have a lot of benches for students now, but I’d like to start moving towards individual student desks and we need more slates. I’d like each student to have their own, instead of sharing between the morning and afternoon classes.”

“We need to think about lighting,” Stone mentioned. “If it is stormy out, the shutters will have to be up and that will require light in the rooms. Not to mention during the short days of winter when it will be quite dark in early morning and late afternoon.”

“Oil lamps,” Rayla decided. “Three or four for every classroom, and I don’t know how many for the main hall.”

“I’ll get one of the metal workers building them: no two or three. We will need them all by the opening. And you might need two caretakers instead of one if someone has to go around each morning and fill each lamp with whale oil and light them.”

Stone noticed a white man standing on the corner of the lot, looking at the construction. “I wish I knew who that fellow is. He always comes by and stares. He doesn’t come onto the lot, so I really can’t chase him away.”

“I know who he is, Rayla said after glancing at the man. “He is the principal of the other school. He is the one who said Jason and Emily couldn’t attend his school because they were Kithren. I suspect he is just snooping around to see the competition: although we really don’t compete with him as all our students are Kithren and he made it clear he didn’t want them at his school.”