by Ann Swinfen
Margaret herded us, like a shepherd’s dog with an unruly flock, and drove us down toward the East Gate out of the town. In front of the third cottage beyond the gate, Beatrice Metford was standing with Philip and Stephen, ready to join us. Philip stooped to take his son upon his shoulders and Beatrice picked up his crutch. During our time in the country, Stephen’s legs had grown a little stronger, so that now he was able to manage with a single crutch, an achievement of which he was justifiably proud.
Our large party at last complete, we headed out over the East Bridge, and turned half left on the road to Headington village. It was a steep climb, partly through woodland, though there were small farms carved out of what had once been a southern arm of Wychwood. This part was now severed from the royal forest. Trees were giving way to pasture and – where the ground was level and not too difficult to plough – to arable.
The two dogs, Rowan and Emma’s small white Jocosa, ran ahead eagerly, drunk on the rich brew of country smells. Despite her small size, Jocosa was a sturdy creature and made no demand to be carried, as I have noticed in the small pet dogs of my wealthier lady customers. Perhaps life at Godstow Abbey had taught her humility and self-reliance.
We did not need to venture as far as the village of Headington at the top of the hill, which was just as well, for the children soon began to tire, and Mary Coomber was puffing like a blacksmith’s bellows by the time I said, ‘Here. This is the spot.’
Most of the party subsided gratefully anywhere they could find a seat, on a fallen tree trunk or a tuft of grass. Philip lowered Stephen to the ground, handed him his crutch, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
‘I am the least tired,’ Stephen said cheerfully, ‘having ridden my sturdy mule all the way.’
‘Mind your tongue, lad,’ Philip said with mock severity, ‘or your mule might prove too stubborn on the return journey.’
Alysoun sprang up again from the ground. ‘There’s lots of blackberries!’
To prove it, she began picking and eating fruits almost as large as my thumb.
‘Leave some to take home,’ Margaret said, ‘or you will have a sore stomach and there will be no preserves for winter.’
‘I think I can see bullaces,’ Emma said, pointing. ‘Through there.’
‘But no nuts.’ Maud Farringdon sounded disappointed.
‘The hazels are a little further on,’ I reassured her, ‘off to the left. You cannot see them from here. And a large crab apple tree. It is old, and does not bear much fruit some years, but I came this way in the spring and it was full of blossom, so I think we shall be lucky.’
‘Does not the Priory of St Frideswide own this land?’ Philip said, sinking down to sit cross-legged on the ground at Beatrice’s feet. She laid her hand on his shoulder and he leaned back against her knees.
‘Not here,’ I said. ‘They hold the church of St Andrew in Headington, and all its glebe lands, and I think some of the messuages in the village. Here, we are in the remains of the old royal forest, where we have the right to pick the wild fruits, or so I’ve always believed. You are the lawyer, Philip, but no one has ever prevented.’
‘Aye, so long as we do no damage, we should be in our rights.’
After the climb, no one but the children seemed in any hurry to start picking. Mary Coomber, having regained her breath, leaned forward, planting her strong, capable hands on her plump knees.
‘I know you wondered why I wanted to come with you this year, Margaret.’ She grinned. ‘And halfway up this hill I began to wonder myself! But I’ve had an idea, and wanted to share it with you. And with Maud and Beatrice too.’
The women looked at her expectantly. Philip raised his eyebrows at me, but I shrugged. I knew nothing of this. Besides, my eyes were drawn to Emma, who had followed the children to the tangle of blackberry vines, which climbed well above her head. Unlike Alysoun, Rafe, and Stephen, and even little Maysant, she was putting blackberries into her basket, but there was a telltale purple stain on her lips. I turned my head toward Mary, to hide my smile.
‘You mentioned the priory, Master Olney,’ she said. ‘Now, ’tis nobbut a fortnight until the priory’s St Frideswide’s Fair, when all of us will be obliged to shut up our shops for six days, and lose much custom by it, just when Oxford is flooded with merchants and buyers. All the rents and the tolls and such, they go to the priory. I may sell a small measure of my milk and cream to the townsfolk who are my regular customers, lest it go sour, but I may not sell my cheeses, neither the soft nor the hard.’
‘That is very true,’ Margaret said. ‘Nicholas may not sell his books and other goods, when the students are just come to Oxford for the Michaelmas term. The busiest time for the shop. And the new lads will not know this and go away disappointed. It causes problems every year.’
‘Well, I have decided that this year,’ Mary said, ‘I will take a stall at the fair. I think that the rent paid to the priory will soon be covered by what I may earn by selling my cheeses, but I have an even better plan.’ She paused for effect. ‘Why do you not join me?’
‘Me?’ Margaret looked startled. ‘I am no shopkeeper. I have nothing to sell.’
Mary waved her arm at the blackberry bushes. ‘You make the best preserves in Oxford. And you always make more than you need for the family. Why not sell what you do not need at the fair? And you, Beatrice. And Maud.’
The women looked at one another, in some astonishment. Then Maud Farringdon said cautiously, ‘Apple butter and apple cheese should fetch buyers. It needs only windfalls, and Margaret says she has plenty. Even we have some, in the wilderness behind our cottage.’
‘Did you say there are bullaces, Nicholas?’ Beatrice turned to me. ‘Emma thought she saw a tree. They make an excellent fruit cheese as well, though the stones are troublesome.’
‘A coarse sieve,’ Margaret said. ‘Push the pulp through. Much easier than picking out the stones.’
‘But do you not lose much of the pulp?’
I jerked my head at Philip and he got to his feet. I handed him a sack.
‘Let us leave them to it,’ I said. ‘I will show you where the hazel nuts are to be found.’
‘I will come with you,’ Juliana said, taking a sack from the pile I had laid on the grass.
I thought she would rather have joined in the women’s plans, but wanted to prove she could be useful.
‘And I.’ Emma set down her basket of blackberries, which was already nearly full, and picked up another sack. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and I saw that her arms were badly scratched. ‘The bullaces are over there, are they not? I will make a start on those. If we are to make fruit cheeses, we shall need a great many.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘They will come to no harm in a sack unless they are overripe.’
‘If they are, then I shall pick crab apples. But they will not be overripe yet. Not till the end of October.’
I smiled at her. ‘You have blackberry juice on your nose,’ I said.
By the time Margaret gave us permission to stop for our midday meal, we had filled several sacks with hazel nuts, two with crab apples, and two more with bullaces. The children had been discreetly persuaded to pick nuts, else there would have been far fewer of the blackberries, which Mary and Beatrice had piled high in their baskets. Without this precaution there would have been more than one child with a sore stomach before night.
‘It is quite settled then,’ Margaret said later, as she packed away the scant remnants of our picnic. ‘We have decided that a simple stall will not be enough for all we have in mind. We shall rent one of the large booths the priory sets up on the fairground. Mary will arrange that tomorrow with the lay steward at the priory. She has already a good stock of cheeses in hand. The rest of us will set to and make our preserves. The fair begins on the nineteenth. We shall be busy until then, Beatrice and I, with Mary and Maud when they can be spared from the dairy.’
‘I can help,’ Juliana said. ‘And Emma too.’
Emma and I exchanged a glance. Since our return from the country, she had been working hard to complete the book of hours ordered by Lady Amilia. She now shared a bedchamber in the Farringdon house with Juliana, and her aunt had moved little Maysant in with her, to allow the older girls more room. Emma worked on a small, unsteady table by the window, not the best for fine lettering and illumination, but despite her difficulties the book was nearly done.
She smiled at me and gave a small nod, whose meaning I was not able to guess.
‘Certainly I can help. In the nunnery we spent part of our time working in the kitchens. I cannot claim to be a cook, but if I am told what to do, I can do it.’
‘Then you may undertake the simple but tiresome task of separating the bullaces from their stones,’ Margaret said serenely.
‘I remember that there was a damson tree at my grandfather’s house when I was a child, and the cook used to curse the stones, though William and Juliana and I always loved the damson cheese he made. Do you remember, Juliana?’
‘Aye. But that tree blew down in a storm last year. I think bullaces are much the same. Just as sour.’
I had noticed lately that Emma spoke more and more of her childhood, when she had lived happily with her parents on her grandfather’s manor. Perhaps the wound that marked her time as a virtual prisoner at the abbey was beginning to heal over. When she had mentioned the kitchen of the abbey her face no longer wore that bleak look which used to come over her whenever she spoke of Godstow. In time, perhaps only the good memories would remain – the music, her work in the scriptorium, the beauty of the place, and the friends she had made there, like Sister Mildred and John Barnes, the porter.
‘Well, that is how we shall proceed,’ Margaret said briskly, ‘but for now we must gather our materials. Some of the best blackberries are too high for most of us to reach, so Philip . . .? And Stephen, I think you might use your crutch to knock down the nuts on the upper branches of the hazel trees. How useful that you have it! Then the girls may gather them up. Nicholas–’
‘Never fear,’ I said hastily, ‘we have barely touched the crab apples. I shall find plenty to occupy me there.’
By the time our master of the hunt, my capable sister, finally called a halt to our foraging, we were all scratched, bloodied, tousled, and exhausted, but our harvest was almost more than we could carry, and involved tying sacks together in pairs, to be slung over our shoulders, like a pedlar’s pack ponies. Maysant, who had fallen asleep, curled up on the grass, awoke groggily. Stephen, realising that his father was puzzling over how he might carry both his share of the sacks and his son, was quick to speak out.
‘Do not worry, Father. I can walk back down the hill. And carry a sack as well.’
‘Aye, lad,’ Mary Coomber said comfortably. ‘’Tis far easier going down than coming up. You and I shall hold each other upright at the tail end of the company and take it slow. If I should fall, you may heave me to my feet again.’
At that we all laughed, for Stephen would be no more able to heave Mary Coomber to her feet than a mouse might topple St Mary’s Church.
We made our way down toward Oxford, slumbering in its river valleys below us – slowly, for we were all tired. Emma and I brought up the rear, behind Mary and Stephen, since I was concerned lest either of them should stumble and fall, while Emma had lingered behind, clearly wishing to speak to me.
‘I shall finish the book this evening,’ she said quietly. ‘The last of the colours will dry overnight, so I can bring it to you tomorrow when I come to help your sister in the kitchen.’
‘You have done very well. I know it has not been easy for you, working on that little table in your bedchamber.’
My initial intention, that only Emma and I should know that she was acting as a scrivener for me, had of necessity proved quite impractical. She must do her scribing somewhere. It was not suitable for her to sit with my scriveners in the shop, so Maud and Juliana Farringdon had needed to be told, though the child Maysant took an interest only in the fact that she now shared a bedchamber with her grandmother, which was a larger room. Margaret had soon guessed what we were about, and I felt it only just to admit Walter and Roger to the secret – which was barely a secret any longer.
Walter was unperturbed. ‘She will not be the first woman scribe, Nicholas,’ he said, to my surprise. ‘You know my father worked in London for a time, and his master’s wife was a scrivener, though she could not draw, not beyond a foliage border. They sent out their pages to a studio of illuminators, and the wife of one of the artists there undertook the drawing and painting along with the men. He said she did excellent work on the miniature scenes within the capital letters. Sometimes she painted with a brush that had no more than a few hairs.’
Roger was less philosophical about my employment of Emma, accustomed to regarding himself as the artist in my establishment. Yet he was not lacking in integrity. He knew that Emma was the better artist, even if he could not quite conceal his jealousy. My solution was to provide him with a great deal of work, so that he should not think he was being replaced. The less time he had free to grumble, the sooner he would forget his grievances.
When we reached the High Street, we all made our way to the dairy. Mary had a number of cool, stone-built rooms, where our wild harvest could be kept fresh, until it was needed for the busy work in Margaret’s kitchen. The dairy had been in Mary’s family for three generations. When it was built, one of the many small streams which wander through this valley – to join either the Thames or the Cherwell – had been diverted to flow beneath the stone slabs of the dairy floor, so that it was kept cool even on the hottest of summer days.
We unloaded our burdens with relief, while Mary insisted that we should all sit down to dishes of blackberries and her thick cream before we made our separate ways home. Even while we were enjoying some of the best blackberries I ever remember eating, the cows were beginning to give voice in the back croft.
‘We’ll away,’ Margaret said, ‘and leave you to your milking. I will take one sack of crab apples and make a start this evening.’
The other women assured her that they would come to help, though it was clear they were all tired. Philip grinned at me as we left the dairy.
‘I shall be glad to return to my peaceful books at Merton tomorrow.’
‘You are fortunate,’ I said. ‘I am ordered to pick our own apples.’
He laughed. ‘A formidable woman, your sister.’
‘They all are. I’ll wager not a man or woman will pass their booth at the fair without buying something.’
‘It seems a new merchant company has been founded,’ he said.
They were not to be the only merchants I would encounter that week, nor would I avoid more dealings with the Priory of St Frideswide. However, my first task, even before picking apples for Margaret, was a visit to the bookbinder, Henry Stalbroke. As she had promised, Emma delivered the gatherings of the book of hours the following morning. I turned over the pages with care and delight.
‘It seems a pity to put this in the hands of a woman who cannot possibly appreciate its quality,’ I said with regret.
She laughed at me. ‘How can you run your business and feed your family, Nicholas, if you want to keep everything for yourself?’
‘Not everything.’
‘Well, I confess I am somewhat loath to part with it myself, but there will be other books, will there not?’
‘Of course. We must decide what you will attempt next.’
‘There will be no scribing until this famous fair is over and done with.’
‘Aye, Meg is like a horse who has seized the bit and run away from his master.’
‘Oh, I think she is far too steady to compare with a runaway horse. Besides, it was Mistress Coomber who first brought forward the idea.’
‘So it was. I will not keep you from your ’prentice duties in the kitchen, while I shall escape across the river to Bookbinder’s Island before Meg catches me.’
Lady Amilia had ordered a binding in a leather dyed a rich purple, almost the colour of ecclesiastical vestments, and when I described it to Henry Stalbroke, he scratched his head as he looked about his workshop.
‘I have nothing in that shade at present, Nicholas. It will need to be dyed specially for this customer of yours.’
‘All the better,’ I said. ‘The lady will prize it all the more if she knows that no one else can match her. Here are the gatherings. I know I need not ask you to handle it carefully, but I think you will find that it is very finely done.’
He took the manuscript from me and began to turn over the pages. After a few moments, he looked up, puzzled.
‘I know this handwriting, and I know this illuminator. Surely it is the same as the book of hours you bought, made by that novice at Godstow, the one who ran away?’
I saw that I could not contradict a man with such knowledge of books as Henry Stalbroke. How long before the whole of Oxford knew Emma’s secret?
‘It is indeed,’ I said cautiously. ‘She began the work at the abbey, and consented to finish the book for me, as it was already promised to the Lady Amilia.’
He gave me a knowing look. ‘That was fortunate. I had heard that the maid is an heiress.’
‘So she is.’
Henry Stalbroke was perfectly trustworthy, but I saw no need to enlarge on my agreement with Emma. He would learn the full story as I brought more of her books to him for binding.
I walked swiftly back across Oxford to the shop, for I knew that Margaret would be fretting over those apples. I had also remembered my promise to give a basket of them to Jonathan Baker and his father, who had no apple trees of their own, their only one having died. Perhaps I could persuade young Jonathan to help with the picking in return for that basket of apples.
When I reached my shop, I found that Walter and Roger were doing good business, so occupied with students and their demands for quills and ink and paper that they had been unable to accomplish any work of their own. I set Roger to scribing again. Told Walter to explain to the new students how the hire of peciae was managed, and took over the other customers myself. The apples would have to wait.
