The Iron Chain at the Ford

The Arlanza came down from the cirques of Oakhaven with twice the water it had carried a week before, mud-colored, dragging larch trunks and slabs of dirty snow that burst against the rocks of the gorge. It was the first true thaw in three centuries, and the river didn't yet know what to do with so much freedom.

From the stern of her barge, moored in a backwater half a league above the ford of the Mills, Captain Sira studied through a brass spyglass what blocked her way. Two iron chains, with links as thick as a woodcutter's arm, crossed the channel from bank to bank, drawn taut by capstans on two armed pontoons. On the masts flew the sparrowhawk banner of the border barons.

Three silver coins for every sack that went down. Half the cargo confiscated if the master protested. And if the master protested a lot, a holm oak on the bank. The week before they had hanged Fermo, the boatman from Peñalba, who had refused to pay on a load of wool. He was still there. Sira could see him through the spyglass, turning slowly in the wind.

She lowered the spyglass. She had piloted barges through the northern gorges for ten winters and knew every eddy of the Arlanza. In her hold she carried eighty hundredweight of iron ore from the mines of Oakhaven, the first cargo in three centuries that could go down to the fairs of Valdelobos. With what it fetched, Oakhaven would buy wheat for the spring. If she paid the barons' toll, it would buy half.

The border barons weren't barons of anything. They were three riverside families who, during the long winter, when the river was frozen and no one came down it, had been buying old titles in Burgos and old cannon in Flanders. Now that the ice was going, they had discovered that a river is a street everyone has to pass along.

A splash of short oars to starboard made her turn.

A flat-bottomed boat, daubed with pitch, came alongside the barge. At the oars was a man of about thirty, broad-shouldered, in a rawhide jerkin, his black hair plastered to his forehead by the drizzle. His hands were wrecked from rowing against the current.

"Captain Sira? My name is Nuño Arceo. I'm syndic of the vintners of Valdelobos." He threw a line onto a cleat without waiting for permission. "I've rowed all night up the bank to talk to you before you reach that chain."

"You've rowed up the Arlanza in spring in that nutshell."

"That's why I have these hands." He jumped aboard. "If you mean to take that iron down through the ford, I'm warning you: the barons have mounted two bronze falconets on the right bank. And they charge the buyers too. My guild has had your ore bespoken since winter, at a good price, and the barons are going to take half from you up here and half from us down there."

"And what do you want? For me not to go down?"

"I want you to go down without paying."

Sira burst out laughing.

"The pontoons have twenty marksmen and the chain is anchored to oak posts set in mortar. No barge will break it."

"Not one." Nuño went to the rail and pointed upriver, toward the three other Oakhaven barges moored in the backwater. "Four, lashed together in a wedge with crossbeams, loaded with ore to the waterline and launched on the crest of the flood at midnight. They weigh as much as a hill. Eighty hundredweight a barge. That isn't a boat: it's a battering ram."

Sira looked him up and down. He didn't have the face of a madman. He had the face of a man who had spent a long time paying for something he didn't owe.

"And why is this proposed by the syndic of a guild that pays without a murmur?"

Nuño took a while to answer.

"Because on Sunday the guild voted to keep paying," he said at last. "Sixteen to three. I was one of the three. The other two are afraid of their wives. I don't have a wife."

"In other words, you're coming against your own people."

"I'm coming for the river."

Sira looked at the hanged man turning on the holm oak. Then she looked at Nuño. Then she held out her hand.

"If we miss the blow, the current smashes us against the rocks of the ford and the barons hang us beside Fermo."

"Then let's not miss."

They shook hands. They set the meeting for nightfall at the cove of the Willows, a backwater hidden among cliffs a league above the ford. Nuño went back to his boat and let the current carry him toward the Valdelobos bank. Sira followed him with the spyglass until he rounded the bend. As she lowered the tube, she saw something else on the right bank, among the poplars: a rider standing still, in no hurry, who had been watching her barge for some time.