December 12

Thank you to Natasha Gennady Robinson for sharing her work with us today.

The Wherriman and the Wherriman’s Wife

Upon the shores of the Thames, East of Southwark, there lived a Wherriman named John Young, and his wife. The Wherriman was a man of good, but excitable nature, but that trait which here marks him as exceptional is that of his ingenuity. For although he and his wife lived off of his meagre Wherriman’s wage, their house standing as nothing but a shack upon the muddy river shoreline, their house within was a divine sanctum of invention. In short, John Young was an inventor of marvellous things, and though a lesser counterpart would label him thus as merely a ‘tinkerer’, to those with more eloquent eyes, the Wherriman was a genius. Young’s first great success, and there were many, many, was a system of well placed water spouts, which churned in their turn a water wheel, by which through its turning mechanism, moved automatically the spit which Young’s wife used to cook fine meats upon the fire. For the lady had complained long about cooking meat, upon a Sunday more predominantly, for, she said, it were God’s day for rest, and how might she then call it thus, for she were turning the spit from day to night. Thus the necessity negated the father of invention, and the man upon hearing a need, necessitated a brilliant solution. Such inventions amounted largely from the Wherriman’s habit as a Mudlark; and while others would pick up that which they found in the mud upon the river shore, being a Wherriman by day, Young held no such constraint, and often picked up that which floated freely down the Thames, and as he neither discriminated against, nor differentiated upon that which he found, the Wherriman held a fine collection of such remnant ‘things’.

From this obsession, there developed an eye for the finer things, being the smaller things, and as he took home all that he saw, the components of some future venture into invention grew many and wide. From pieces of rope, the Wherriman spun a fine net, which he used every evening to catch a fish for his supper before his homeward journey. This Young did invariably at the eastern side of the London Bridge, with its great Stone Arches, and its closely spaced Starlings, from whence betwixt would rush a torrent of water, thus yielding fish a plenty. The Wherriman would often gaze into the water below, wondering if that bridge was indeed placed upon packs of wool, and doubting in thus at the sense of his fellow Londoner’s, for he knew himself that packs of wool might never stand well beneath such a mighty structure.

Upon such an evening, as the summer turned swiftly to autumn, the Wherriman sat thus in his little wooden boat beneath the London Bridge, his net in his hand, and later than usual; thence came a strange and fortuitous things, as he would ever recount, for as John Young perched with his net in his hand, there came a great thud and a splash in the water nearby, yielding a great massed from which popped up again to the surface as a cork. The Wherriman was curious, with all the excitability his secondary trade imbued upon his expectations, he came then close to the thing, and before he could scoop it up with his fishing net, yet another thud hit the water, and splashed and bobbed the same way as the first. The Wherriman rowed excitedly, scooped up the first and then the second, then gazed in the half light at his catch.

And just as soon, gasped at what it yielded. It was a severed head; its eyes still and glassy, its form grizzly and almost stunted in its continued application unto the world of the living. The Wherriman Young looked aghast, then hearing the same thud again, peered carefully to the bridge above, which stood itself in relief in the blue inky night, a clear outline of black against the first stars, and a distinct form of a man then moved about in the general direction of the coming of the heads. John Young sat then very quietly, his boats rhythmic rocking hidden well by the rushing of the Thames between the bridge’s great stone starlings. He resolved to pick up the all of the fallen heads, and any others that might come within his reach, thus collecting five in all, and all the while wondering at their strange materialisation. He gazed again and with scrutiny up to the bridge above, a torchlight now lit the place in question, and the man’s form which had yielded the heads from their home appeared more clearly outlined; he was a man both tall, wily like a tree, and yet the man struggled long with his occupation.

The heads, thought Young, were none other than those traitor’s heads which were placed often upon spikes atop the London Bridge, and so, he surmised, when those heads had gone beyond their mortal duty, where thus cast into the River Thames, and so it them seemed, replenished in their place by the heads of further traitors. Then after seeing all of the traitor’s heads into the stern of his boat, the Wherriman covered the gory haul with the piece of canvas he used to shield himself from the rain, and rowed his wherry boat for home.

And if the Wherriman John Young felt in any way confounded by his gruesome loot, his wife protested her opinion as being even more so!

“And fer what may they be?? Fer aye ‘ave no cause fer heads, nor do aye ‘ave want o’ them!”

And seeing that in his taking of the heads, Mr. Young had neglected to bring home his fish for supper, the lady sighed, and ordered that if he thought them of any human value, he might take them to the marketplace and sell them now, and while he was about it, he might buy himself a fish for supper, for yes she was a talented wife, but no, she might not conjure a fish from such thin air.

The Wherriman conceded her directions, hauled the heads into a sack, and made for the marketplace. In an hour he returned, with a fat cod, but much to his relent, said he to his wife, no man would buy his heads, not even one of them! The wife scoffed, well of course not, and how did he think he would make then any use of them? The Wherriman said that he had not yet devised a way to use them, but he assured her he knew them to be of some great worth, and needed only to devise what their proper use may be. So, said the wife, Mr. Young had until the morning to find a good and reasonable use for the heads, or else she would throw them back into the river from whence they came.

All night John Young stayed awake and scratched at his chaffed elbows, wondering and wondering for what he may use his strange and sudden bounty. And all the while he gazed at them, and indeed they were a most gruesome thing to behold. Two of them had their eyes pulled from their sockets, which dangled from their faces. All of them had mouths drawn back in some ugly mask, their teeth bared, their gums white and so receded, that the heads looked more alike to stone carved horrors atop a castle gate; there to scare away bad lucks and humours.

Perhaps this was the manifestation of what man becomes when he endures the ultimate horror, and perhaps such a grizzly end there showed the result of a man’s ultimate treachery on earth. For no man was there now, and yet his remnants were clear for the living world to yet consider, and in that hideousness there appeared a higher truth beyond that which the common man would encounter upon his daily round. John Young had never attended a public execution, for his work called him on to all the hours of the lighted day. His wife had attended several, but upon returning home, she spoke very little of what she and her fellow wives had witnessed, only would she shake her head, muttering blessings and looking very grim; ‘twere a sore shame’ was all she said ‘a sore and sorry shame in deed’. Indeed it appeared so to the Wherriman, as he observed the heads carefully, one by one. And there, he found finally his big idea.

The next morning, having not slept a wink, the Wherriman pronounced to his wife, that he had devised a sure plan for the heads, only he wished she would bring out her biggest jars, and boil up her pickling brine. Being used to such strange requests, as the proud wife of a great inventor, the lady shrugged her shoulders, and promised she would. And just as she brought out her biggest pot, the Wherriman made his way up the river, and before he had taken his first fare for the day, he landed his boat just east of the Bridge, jumped to the shore, and climbed the bank to seek out the man whom had last night thrown down John Young’s salvation, from great stone street above. After general enquiry, the Wherriman was directed to a man, whom, in his appearance tall and gnarly, seemed to be quite visibly the man in question.

Without preamble, said the Wherriman; “And be ye ther man whom doth deal ther ‘eads o’ ther King’s traitors ‘ere ‘pon the London Bridge?”

“Aye,” said the tall gnarly man, “And what be it to yer?”

“Nowt,” shrugged the Wherriman in good humour, “Only aye do think ther job an ‘ard one, and thus do wish ter ease yer o’ yer duty, fer aye do make such things as do aid men, and thus do think ter make such an thing fer ye.”

Now the headtaker was a good natured man, and thus admitted he could use such a thing to help him in his occupation, for, he said, he managed the heads with his bare hands, and after some time upon the spikes, especially in the summer months, the heads were very difficult indeed to take off of the spikes, “As,” quothe he “En ther Sommer, they do swell a plenty!”

The Wherriman nodded.

“Then aye do think aye do have ther very thing fer ye. Only gev me a day or two.” And with a more genial tip of his cap, the Wherriman went to work.

In two days John Young came back to the Headtaker upon the bridge, an invention, indeed one of his better inventions, in his hands.

“And mayt I show yer ‘ow it works?”

Yes, said the Headtaker, and he took the Wherriman to the bridge side, where the row of spikes stood tall, and finding a particularly festered head, took down the spike and dared the Wherriman to commit his task.

The invention consisted of the inner wooden round from a cartwheel, with a hole dug from its middle, several long iron nails protruding from its top, and a long steel shaft, about an arm’s length long, with a long handle attached upon a right angle to its bottom. The Wherriman then took the free end of the spike, threaded it carefully through the hole in the cart wheel middle, forced the iron nails into the severed end of the head, and holding the spike in his left hand, placed his right hand upon the handle, and rotated the pole up and down until the head was forced easily from the spike and with a sharp pop, the head fell freely from the instrument onto the stone pavement.

The Headtaker watched on with great amazement, and seeing that the thing was done so easily, and with no clear trickery, exclaimed at his wonder.

“Bert what do yer want for it?” said he.

“O, no thing at all, only aye would know if yer would tell me what day yer do cast them off inter ther river.”

“Aye, and pleased ter! Tuesdays, aye do cast ‘em off upon a Tuesday night, unless we do ‘ave a more famed ‘ead upon another day. ‘Tis usually ther King’s business to ‘ave ‘em beheaded upon a Monday, fer ‘e cannot do it ‘pon a Sunday, and Tuesday is too long fer ‘em ter wait!”

The Wherriman chortled; “And do yer ‘ave any particular order ter which yer do place ‘em?”

“Aye, aye do place ‘em more important ones ter the South, fer ther guards can better see ‘em ther, fer ‘tis the great ‘eads people be stealin’. Only ther other day, some jolly basterd did come and take o’ Thomas More’s ‘ead, and ther guards were at break fast, and thus ther scamp ‘e got clean away afore they could catch ‘em!”

The Wherriman grinned sly now, for he saw then some consternation of understanding in the Headtaker’s face, for it appeared he knew very well the Wherriman’s intentions.

As if the Headtaker even now knew the Wherriman’s thoughts, he added; “O aye, and yet ef ‘e ‘ad only waited ‘til More’s ‘ead were thrown into ther river, t’woulda been no crime at all, fer once they be cast down o’ ther Bridge, they do belong to ther river and to no man else.”

The genial Headtaker then bowed low to the Wherriman, thanked him for his brilliant tool, and bid him good day. The Wherriman in his sudden anticipation of good fortune, whistled while he worked for the rest of his day upon the river, and the other Wherriman said they had never seen him happier.

And so it came to be, that an unspoken understanding had developed between the inventive Wherriman and the somewhat mercenary Headtaker; for upon every Tuesday evening, the Wherriman would come to the East of the London Bridge, would catch himself a fish for his supper, and would catch also those traitor’s heads which the Headtaker cast systematically into the dark waters of the Thames, a system indeed which caused the Wherriman to accrue a fine collection of ‘The Crowned Heads of Britain’ which he so generously named this collection, which stood pickled in brine in earthen jars in his wife’s larder, and which each day his wife wondered aloud what her husband the Wherriman would in fact do with the collection of pickled heads.

“Ter display ‘em ter the genial public, fer men would pay a pretty penny ter see ther head o’ a lord, and moreover, a lord beheaded by ther King!”

The Wherriman’s wife she nodded, doubtfully, and spent much effort devising an ulterior home for her jars of pickling which did not contain the severed heads of Lords beheaded by the King. And so she muttered under her breath, and doubt of her husband’s sanity finally crept into her mind to brood.

Upon each jar, for consider the Wherriman could neither read nor write, there stood a label embellished with a unique collection of crude symbols, which in their phonetic speaking of, gave the name of that head which was pickled therein. And so much did the Wherriman place upon this skill, that he was sorely disappointed by when the Queen Anne Boleyn’s head was buried with her body, for he had devised for her a hen, a bull and then a hen, all with a crown atop; and more so when Queen Kathryn Howard’s head went the same way, of which he had devised a cat, a hen, an owl then a head, all alike surmounted by a crown. On the latter occasion, the Wherriman’s wife said she was well pleased, for she had no mind for pickling head’s upon that day, she felt most ill and said could pickle heads no more.

And indeed some months after the beheading of Kathryn Howard, the Wherriman’s wife delivered to her husband a singularly perfect son, whom was given the name of Lancelot Young, named for the dead lovers of that same unfortunate Queen Kathryn, for those men were named in the Taverns and upon the streets ‘The Queen’s Unfortunate Lancelots’. Such an eloquent and chivalrous name may have been wasted upon the more common boys whom grew up upon the filthy and wretched shorelines of Southwark upon Thames; Lancelot Young, however, had been born to a greater destiny, for his father professed at his birth that the boy would be a Master Glazier, and in secret to his wife, that the boy would be their good fortune, for he would devise a way to keep the Young’s collection of severed heads both preserved and viewable to the paying public. Said the wife, the boy might be a glazier or a crosier, it worried her neither way, for the Lord had given her a son, and their good fortune he would be not matter his vocation.

And the Young boy knew no more of his father’s collection of the heads of traitorous Lords than his father’s recounted dreams and an occasional peek into a briny jar; and yet the boy’s childhood was steeped in the depths of those dreams, and thus he felt it his duty to do as his proud father dictated, and indeed Lancelot Young did become a Master Glazier, whom would one day be Master Glazier to the Queen of England herself. However long before that Queen took the throne, the Wherriman John Young breathed his last breath, and in spite of his dying wish to have his own head pickled amongst the heads of his pickled collective, he was buried as the Church would have it, and his wife, not wishing to impose upon her son and his own wife, continued to live in the little shack on the river banks at Southwark, kept company by her husband’s bequeathal of pickled heads.

The Wherriman’s widow spoke often of disposing of the collection of earthen jars filled with the earthly remains of unfortunate traitors, but when the River Thames during a late spring deluge, crept from its bed into flood, and washed away the Wherriman’s house and all within it; the poor lady truly mourned their loss. Those heads, she sobbed, were the embodiment of her husband’s life long devotion to bettering his families lot in the world, and their loss were as keen as his loss had been, and so much the worse that they should never be replaced.

The Wherriman’s widow then moved into her son Lancelot Young’s house, but survived only another year after that fateful river deluge. Lancelot Young then spent many brooding nights in various Taverns lamenting the loss of his father’s Lordly collection to any man whom would listen. And it happened to be, upon one such night, that a man did listen, and did suggest in his generosity of spirit some reconciliation. ‘For’ said he, ‘I do know of some alike thing, and thus shall tell you of it.’ Or in as many words, and the man then proceeded to tell Lancelot Young the tale of James IV, King of Scotland, and his misplaced corpse; which, the man attested, his finger upon his nose, he could boast knowing himself the exact whereabouts of.

This the Wherriman’s son listened to with undivided attention, and before the dawn had arisen, Lancelot Young was upon a wherry making his way up river to Sheen, where the location of the corpse in question was illicited, and breaking the door down, the now sobered glazier, broke heartily the seal of the lost King of Scotland’s coffin, to find wrapped in lead his welcome bounty. It soon appeared, however, that the Queen’s Master Glazier was somewhat of a dilettante, for even as he unwrapped the Scottish King’s long dead corpse from its lead casing, so felt he the bile in his stomach rise to his throat, and so by the stink, he swooned away.

But words are nothing if not deeds, and the Wherriman’s son resolved to make his acquisition as intended, and taking out a very sharp dagger from its sheath, performed his grizzly operation. The head, he found, as the body, lay perfectly preserved in the half light of the dawn. Then as he cut through the spongy throat, and came finally to the spindly neck, worked to find a soft relief between the vertebrae. Young then severed the last piece of gristle, and held his conquest to the light.

And there a very strange thing occurred, for the head, perfectly preserved for nearing a century in its air tight lead casing, its hair perfectly supple and red, its eyes still crystalline and moist, and its skin still turgid as if the King of Scots death had never been; turned suddenly in the morning light from sweet sleep to festered mortality. The supple hair turned to copper wire; the moist eyes burst, shrivelled and died; the skin withered and wrinkled as if marked by extreme age; and thus what remained gained in those moments the rotting inevitability that lays its ashen fingers upon all dead men. Lancelot Young fancied he saw before him a miracle at the Devil’s own hand, but nevertheless, he took the newly severed artifice, placed it in a sack, and boarded a wherry for London with his prize intact.

Upon reaching his home, the Wherriman’s son found his wife awaited him, thinking as he had not returned home, that some foul thing had befallen him, and angry as a tigress when her husband related, that he had stayed out by design, and that that design were to obtain the head of the dead king James IV, and here that head be! And pulling the head from his sack, there placed the rotting severed head upon their dining table. The wife turned blanched white then flushed red; shook her head worldlessly then spat upon the table. She should not have such a thing under her roof, and thus she demonstrated her wrath by retiring to her bed chamber, admitting not her husband for a full fortnight.

“The thing be of such stench befouled, ne’er will I abide ther sight o’ it, and verily shal’ ye remove o’ it, ‘r else so shal’ aye remove meself from yer presence, henceforth!”

The husband sighed, very well, and took the head of the Scottish King James from its prime place upon the mantle, put it again into its hessian pillow case, and came from the house with every intention of disposing of the thing. There, said he, he found men toiling in the street, reclaiming the remnants of an old crypt, and issuing the bones into wooden carts to be reburied at some hallowed place.

And there, said the Wherriman’s son, Lancelot Young, he disposed of the King of Scotland’s head, thinking it a very fitting thing, for surely the Priests would again consecrate the unearthed remains, and there the King of Scotland would finally be committed to the Earth as God had intended.

And so was the tale the Queen’s Master Glazier recounted to any man whom made question of his having discovered and for some time kept and displayed the head of King James IV of Scotland in his home. And yet, in an earthen jar, hidden in a cupboard under a back stair, there lay pickled in brine, a head, with wiry orange hair, and withered green eyes, and the fine and handsome profile of the King of Scots. Upon the label, there stood a cross, four lines, and a tiny whistle with a musical note issued from its end, all surmounted by a crown. And to the Wherriman John Young, this strange coding would stand clearly for; ‘Good Fortune; The King’.

Natasha Gennady Robinson began her journey as an historical writer after reading Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, which led to an insatiable curiosity for British History, which in turn led her to stumble nearly a decade ago upon a fledgling Tudor History website known as ‘The Anne Boleyn Files’. She has never looked back!

Natasha has purposefully developed an unusual style of writing which she calls ‘Historical Quasi-Fiction’ the essence of which combines a driven passion for in depth research presented in the form of lyrical prose and early modern poetry. Natasha has since penned over one hundred short stories about the Tudor Era and means to publish a collection of these called ‘The Raven and the Writing Desk: Tales of the Tower of London’ in 2020.