South of the Bridge of Three Arches, the King’s Highway came together with the eastern bank of the Lower Ouse. The road and the river ran together like two parallel ribbons through the rich bottom-land. The road surfaced with crushed river gravel, the river a deep, calm highway of amber water eighty yards wide, gliding between embankments of silver willow and flowering water-mint.
Tomas and Nessa walked along the towpath. On their right, the river was alive with autumn traffic. Great broad-beamed freight punts, laden with winter fuel from the northern forests, moved downstream under the steady sweep of twelve-foot steering oars. Lighter skiffs with woven reed sails skimmed before the north wind. He carried baskets of salted pike and smoked carp from the coastal estuaries. And empty grain barges were being hauled northward against the current by teams of sturdy mules walking the well-graded towpath.
The mules stepped past Tomas with loose, unrushed strides, their bronze harness bells chiming with a sweet, irregular music that drifted across the reeds. The mule-driver, a young man from Reed Bank with a red wool kerchief knotted around his throat, nodded with easy familiarity, touching the brim of his straw hat with his whip-handle without breaking his stride.
