Challenge #02112-E289: Spiritual Progress Goes Huff-Huff-Huff
Baths were once optional, water had to be carried in jugs to fill a bath, and people (a) stank and (b) got diseases. Then came the 'chip heater', hot water for all. guess what it sounds like. -- Anon Guest
Ne'er cast a clout[1] 'till May be out -- pre-industrial era saying.
It was the paradox of the northern realms: bathe regularly, and you would catch your death from the icy winds that crept in through the chinks in the mortar, or bled away your life through the stone that made the buildings. Do not bathe regularly, and the pox or the plague would find you anyway.
Solutions to this quandry were many and varied, including boiling water in a cauldron and tipping it over the plentiful snow, then using an array of sheets or blankets to cover the bathing bodies[2] in the tub. That said, getting the water from well to cauldron to tin tub was a herculean and monotonous effort, so Sundays were the day to cleanse the soul, and Mondays were the day to cleanse everything else.
Some who lived near hot springs took great advantage of them, to the point where those further away thought that the water itself was possessed of a blessing. Others merely took themselves by the fire and passed a washing cloth around their body and under their clothes, which were also changed by the fire.
Then there were the bathing houses. People with enough money for good mortar or enough tapestries to block the breeze made a fortune from those who wished to rid themselves of their filth, or relieve themselves from a desperate kind of loneliness. The more enterprising entrepreneur saw to it that hard liquor, soft beds, and rigged games were also as available as the women. Travelling traders had many needs and preferred it when they were all in easy reach.
The preacher outside, begging or cajoling anyone who frequented them, came free of charge. Visitors could cleanse their bodies, sin to their heart's content, rest, gamble, drink, and then pay penance within easy reach of the same building.
Father Kedvale contemplated the problem. He had been a blacksmith before he had taken the cloth, and the monastery still relied upon him to shoe the horses or replace the rusted hinges. There had to be a way... There had to be a way to boil out the demons without also providing them a means to invade a soul by other doors.
There had to be a way to heat water and get it to a potential bather, in the privacy of their own home and safely away from hostels of temptation, without making it far too difficult to do regularly. A way to close down the bathing/body houses without allowing the demons of disease free reign. Some kind of cauldron that could heat the water and then move it to a certain destination.
He discussed the issue with some of his fellows. He could certainly forge the cauldron, but the means to turn incoming cold water into outgoing hot water with reliability was the problem. From a former builder, a pipewright, and a barrelmaker, came the answers. From determined fiddling around came new solutions. It was a complicated thing, but it would conquer the world for purity.
One barrel, filled with cold water, fed into a double-walled chimney. The central flue warmed the water within the double walls, as did the firebox underneath, and the tiles around the outside kept the heat in. From there, a spigot close to the top could pour hot water out and into any given vessel.
Hot water on demand, plentiful and distant from the bath houses of ill repute.
It was not a thing of beauty, but that was not the point. Artificers and crafters could make devices like this and remove at least one avenue of sin from the world. Even his fellow brothers in the monastery gave praise for its existence, since they no longer had to stink until spring was nearly over.
Such a pity that they couldn't do a thing about the sound it made.
[1] clout - olde english for any article of clothing.
[2] bath sharing is pretty much traditional world-wide.
[AN: All my research leads to the chip heater being invented in the late 1800's in Australia, but this is a fictional story, so...]
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / ba11istic]
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