Medieval jobs • Page 2
This post – part of a medieval positive discrimination campaign – carries with it a high risk of the occupier being branded a witch with subsequent Catch-22 punishments such as water ducking, leading to torture and death. But the big pay-off is that, while you are practising, you get to make other people take some truly awful cures.
You are required to be both feared and respected by the community. Diverse roles are combined within this post, including midwife, agony aunt and general practitioner. You must personally provide a plethora of paraphernalia to conduct your work. A fair understanding of old wives' tales and herbal remedies would be advantageous, as would a well-grounded appreciation of horrible concoctions and hideous dishes. Experience in making snot-flavoured worm stew would be a plus.
In this age of building castles and cathedrals, there are plenty of vacancies in the stone business. For the less artistic, there is plenty of work at the quarry. This involves dangerous wedge and lever work to remove blocks directly from the rock and the more precise, measured cutting by delving with splitting wedges. If you chose to become a stone carver, you might be able to create gargoyles in the images of your bosses.
General hard labour is always available in the transport section, while those with innate skills can gain training and promotion to become a mason. But that's more likely if you are a member of the middle class and have a talent for funny handshakes.
Even masons are occasionally required to work in dangerous conditions on unsafe scaffolding at a great height – in 1178, master mason William of Sens fell off the scaffolding of Canterbury Cathedral and was paralysed. However, the rewards are top rates of pay and the benefits of enjoying the community that gathers in support around your building project, not to mention shouting abuse from the scaffolding.
Do you like to live on the edge? How about creating and handling an extremely nasty chemical agent to make a vital component of mortar?
Running a lime kiln requires you to supervise the heating of chalk – or, near the coast, oyster shells – until they start producing incredibly toxic carbon monoxide. This can easily make you drowsy or even paralyse you before you suffocate. Don't worry, though – you only have to sit with the kiln for 48 hours at a time.
If you really like a risky challenge, the next process could be for you. The hard cake of quicklime (calcium oxide) is taken from the kiln and added to water. It immediately reacts, producing intense heat and a shower of caustic, agony-inducing specks of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide). These crumbly grains are then crushed into lime powder, which will be added to sand to make mortar. You obviously don't need safety goggles because they haven't been invented yet.
With so much work in the building trade, you know that this is the career for you. A vacancy has arrived following the tragic collapse of the crane at your local cathedral. Now a new one has been made, taking all the design faults of the original into account.
To operate this latest technological marvel, you'll be expected to walk the treadmill to provide the power for lifting blocks of stone weighing up to two tons. Preference will be given to the blind – they have proved great treadmill walkers in the past due to their lack of fear of heights.
