The Merchant's Tale

by Ann Swinfen

  I suppose the man Ford – I had not heard his name before – had accepted the wine and taken a seat.

  ‘Now,’ said Winchingham (and I could imagine him rubbing his hands together in satisfaction), ‘let us to business. I am minded to buy both books. And in that case, I am looking for a slight lowering of the price. If I am prepared to take both.’

  I felt Walden stir impatiently beside me. I knew he was eager to catch the fellow with the coins in his hands, and could not understand the delay. I shook my head at him. Ford would be less suspicious of any trap if Winchingham indulged in the usual bargaining between seller and customer. I could not hear the man’s response to this, for he spoke in a low, mumbling voice. For several minutes they must have had their heads together, negotiating the price, then there was the scrape of a stool.

  ‘And you say that the gentleman has no more books from his library for sale?’ the merchant asked. ‘I am disappointed to hear that. I might have been interested to purchase further volumes.’

  There was a mumbled reply.

  ‘Ah, well, that is my misfortune.’

  There was the clink of metal as coins were counted out on the table, then gathered up. The fellow would be storing them for safety in his purse.

  ‘Let us shake hands on it, then,’ Winchingham said, ‘before you leave.’

  It was the signal.

  Walden leapt out from behind the screen and seized the man around the neck and body. At the same time, three of his men burst through the door, coming to his assistance, although he hardly needed it. Ford was a miserable little man, pale and weedy, as Winchingham had described him. He barely struggled, but merely sagged resignedly in the sheriff’s grasp.

  His punishment, I suspected, would not be serious. He could claim that he was merely the messenger, acting for another – certainly de Hungerford – and since the books came from the priory library, he would be believed. If he had decided, after all that had happened, to indulge in a little private business of his own, that would be difficult to prove. I could tell from Walden’s expression that he recognised the man, perhaps under some different name. One of the petty villains of the town, hardly of account after Mateaux.

  ‘Give us your purse, fellow,’ Walden said, handing the man over to one of his officers. ‘Master Winchingham, you had best retrieve your coin.’

  Winchingham did so, and looked with some compassion at the man, drooping in the officer’s hold, his face a study in hopeless misery.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, ‘he had but a groat and two pennies of his own.’ He handed the purse back to the sheriff.

  ‘Never fear,’ Walden said cheerfully, ‘he shall have free food and board for a while with us.’ He turned to his men. ‘Take him back to the castle. I will deal with him later.’

  When they were gone, he beamed at us both. ‘Neatly and quietly done, my friends. You will return the books to the priory yourself, Master Winchingham?’

  ‘Nay, I shall leave that to Master Elyot,’ he said. ‘He knows their librarius.’

  ‘In that case,’ Walden said, ‘I hope you will both now be my guests for the best dinner the Mitre can serve us.’

  I returned to the shop rather later than I had intended, with the two books belonging to the priory in my scrip and fortified by the excellent dinner provided by the Mitre. The abundance of the food and the quality of the wine accompanying it had rendered me somewhat sleepy, but I managed to keep my wits about me for long enough to be of some use in the shop for the rest of the afternoon. Roger was able to return to his work on the second copy of his collection of tales, since I had sold the first to Peter Winchingham.

  As soon as the shop became a little less busy, I went through to the kitchen to speak to Margaret.

  ‘I have asked Peter Winchingham to take supper with us tonight. Nay, do not give me that look. After the dinner at the Mitre which Cedric Walden treated us to, neither of us will expect more than a simple family supper. You know him now, Meg. He does not stand on ceremony. He will be leaving in a day or two and I should like to have more speech with him before he goes.’

  ‘Very well,’ she conceded, ‘but I wish you had given me fair warning.’

  ‘There has been no time. Besides, he is not one of your pretentious new-made London merchants, like Gilbert Mordon. He is shrewd, and no doubt wealthy, but makes no parade of it.’

  She grumbled a little, but it was mostly for show.

  Perhaps it was no more than fatigue, but I seemed to go about the ordinary tasks of the shop that afternoon in a sort of dream. After the anxiety and fear of recent days, this tranquil – nay, boring – routine seemed unreal. I was truly glad that life was returning to its normal course, but, I regret to say, it felt somewhat flat.

  As soon as it was time to close the shop, I told Margaret that I would return the two books at once to the priory before supper.

  ‘I have no wish to keep them in my care,’ I said. ‘I will be glad to hand them over to Canon Aubery, who can place them in safety with the rest of the books from the library. Sheriff Walden tells me that his men have found the missing church silver in the prior’s house, hidden under the floorboards in his bedchamber.’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘Do you tell me so! How came it about that such a man was ever admitted to the Church, and then rose to be a prior?’

  I shook my head. ‘How do any great men rise? Some through merit, no doubt, but others through bribery or trickery or the influence of powerful friends.’

  ‘You are become a cynic, Nicholas.’

  ‘Nay, I hope not. But these late happenings have left the taste of bile in my mouth. I never liked Hamo Belancer, but I did not strongly dislike him. Yet he has been proved a traitor, who connived at the murder of Prince Edward.’

  ‘Mayhap,’ she said, ‘he did not know what the man Mateaux intended.’

  I shrugged. ‘You may have the right of it, but somehow . . . why should he have allied himself with Mateaux at all? That was his French blood speaking, I believe.’

  ‘Well, he has paid for it.’

  ‘Aye, he has. And he did not deserve to die like that. Though I suppose, had he not, he would have been discovered in his treason and would have hanged for it.’

  I sighed. ‘That reminds me. I meant to discover what has become of Belancer’s old dog, poor fellow. He was distressed at his master’s death.’

  ‘We are not taking in another dog,’ she warned.

  ‘Nay, never fear! I will call in at the cobbler’s shop on my way to the priory.’

  As I let myself out of the shop, I saw Jordain approaching from the direction of St Mary’s.

  ‘I was coming to see how you fared,’ he said, linking his arm with mine. ‘It is all over Oxford, how you tackled a French assassin, armed to the teeth, with nothing but your bare hands, then went chasing after him in company with the Prince of Wales.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ Praise from a few friends was heart warming, but I had no wish to be pointed at by every gawping townsman in Oxford.

  ‘One of my students. He had it from one of the sheriff’s men he met in the Swindlestock tavern.’

  I shook my head sorrowfully. ‘You are failing in your duty, as one in loco parentis,’ I said. ‘You know the students are not allowed to drink in the town taverns, and most especially not in the Swindlestock.’

  He laughed. ‘And you and I never did, when we were students? I am blind to the occasional visit, but if it becomes a habit, and their studies suffer, I am ruthless.’

  Jordain had never in his life been ruthless.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have some errands. Are you on your way back to Hart Hall, or will you come with me?’

  ‘I need not go back yet. What are your errands?’

  I told him, as we crossed the street to the cobbler’s shop. I noticed that someone had cleared the alleyway lying between it and Belancer’s shop of the worst of the rubbish. The vintner’s shop remained sealed and silent.

  It was Goodwif
e Brinley who answered my knock.

  ‘The old dog, Master Elyot? We have decided to keep him. He’s no trouble, and he’s gentle with the children. In these fierce times, ’tis as well to have a guard dog.’

  I smiled. The old fellow might have been a great hunter, and even a guard dog, in his day, but not now. Still, I was glad he had found a safe haven.

  As Jordain and I walked down to St Frideswide’s Priory, I gave him an exact account of what had happened the night before.

  ‘You could have been killed,’ he said, ‘throwing yourself recklessly down an ale chute into the dark. And what if he had caught you there, armed as he was?’

  ‘The thought came to me,’ I admitted, ‘about halfway down the ramp, but by then it was too late to turn back.’

  ‘I suppose it was,’ he said. ‘But you need not have tackled him in the courtyard of the priory.’

  ‘Oh, I think by then I had no choice. There was no way out of the cellar but up the steps, and once I was in the courtyard, which was lit by torches, he saw me and came for me. What could I do? I am no heroic Arthurian knight, like those in the king’s entertainments, but I could hardly stand there and wait to be killed.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He thumped me on the back, and I winced. ‘Well, I am glad you were not killed, and I am sure the prince is glad you prevented the Frenchman’s plan. The rumour has it that you and he caught the assassin together.’

  ‘We did. I liked him. Were he not royal, he would be a good friend.’

  At this mild remark, he burst out laughing and no protest of mine could stop him. I foresaw, gloomily, that I should have to endure a deal more teasing.

  Once we reached the priory, we found Canon Aubery in the prior’s office, putting away the account books with relief.

  ‘I am going to visit our patients in the infirmary before Vespers,’ he said. ‘Shall our infirmarian look to your back again, Nicholas?’

  I shuddered. ‘I thank you, but no. I have been sent by Master Winchingham to return these to you. I do not believe they have come to any harm.’

  I laid the book of hours and the Bible on his desk. He smiled his delight and ran caressing fingers over them.

  ‘Aye, no harm done, I think. The thief is taken, then?’

  ‘The thief’s messenger,’ I said. ‘He has confessed nothing yet, but the sheriff has him in hold. I am sure he will be in haste to name the true thief, to save his own neck.’

  ‘Aye, you probably have the right of it. Have you heard that the missing church silver has been found?’

  ‘I have.’

  We walked with him as far as the door to the infirmary, but I refused again, politely, to benefit from any more of the priory’s salves, and we headed back into town.

  ‘I have not heard how that matter of the books ended,’ Jordain said.

  ‘You were too busy mocking my remarks about the prince, or I should have told you.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  So as we made our way back to the High and along to my shop, I told him of how Sheriff Walden and I had waited, concealed, while Peter Winchingham concluded the purchase with the man Ford, and how he was then arrested.

  ‘In the end,’ I said, ‘I think we were all sorry for him. Walden knows him of old. He told us over dinner. Orphaned in the first month of the Pestilence, while still a boy. Keeping alive by petty crime ever since. He is barely twenty now. I think the sheriff will not impose too great a penalty. All that he needs is some honest work. For all that we know, he may have thought this was honest, employed as he was by a senior churchman.’

  ‘Poor fellow.’ Jordain shook his head. ‘Surely there must be some way for him to earn his bread here in Oxford. He does not sound a very terrible villain.’

  ‘Nay, he is not.’

  ‘I’ll turn up here,’ Jordain said, as we reached Catte Street.

  ‘Nay,’ I said, ‘we have hardly seen you these last weeks. Come you in to supper. Peter Winchingham is to join us, and Margaret is scolding me for giving her so little warning. You can help me to soothe her.’

  My worries proved unnecessary. Emma was with Margaret in the kitchen, helping her to prepare the food, and they were both laughing as we came in.

  ‘I have invited myself to supper,’ Emma said. ‘I wanted to assure myself that you had neither fainted away from loss of blood nor decided to run away and become a courtier.’

  ‘Neither, I am glad to say.’ I smiled at them both, flushed and bright eyed in the warmth of the kitchen after the autumnal feel in the streets. ‘I am once again a humble Oxford bookseller, and glad to be done with the high drama of foreign spies and assassins, not forgetting rogue priors and stolen treasure. And see, I have brought Jordain to eat with us. Without your good meals from time to time, Meg, he has been starving on Hart Hall’s pig swill.’

  ‘What you need,’ Emma said, laying out pewter dishes and spoons, while Alysoun followed behind with the ale cups, ‘what you need, Jordain, is a wealthy patron with a great love of scholarship, and a loathing of boiled cabbage.’

  ‘Cabbage is very nutritious,’ Jordain said bravely. Then he spoiled the effect by adding wistfully, ‘but a wealthy patron would be very welcome.’

  There was a knock on the street door of the shop, and Rafe ran to open it, with Rowan jumping excitedly up at our guest.

  ‘You must teach that dog not to jump on everyone, my pet,’ I said to Alysoun. ‘Someday she may knock some poor old lady over in the street, and think how sorry you will be.’

  ‘She is only a puppy,’ Alysoun objected, ‘and she doesn’t understand. She is always so glad to see everyone.’

  Before we could pursue this further, Peter Winchingham was in the kitchen, bowing to Margaret and Emma, and throwing Rafe into the air so that he squealed with delight. I caught Margaret’s eye and smiled.

  We sat down, as I had hoped, to a family meal in the kitchen, and the merchant, beseeched by Alysoun, was soon describing the town of Bruges to us, with its network of rivers and canals, where it seemed he moved most of his goods about by boat.

  ‘We have lots of rivers too,’ Alysoun pointed out, ‘here in Oxford.’

  ‘You do, but you do not make the most of them.’

  ‘They do not run through the middle of the town,’ Jordain said mildly, ‘for which we are grateful. We have enough trouble with flooding as it is. And they are used for moving goods, as your rivers and canals in Bruges are. We have excellent river transport to London, and upriver too.’

  That reminded me. I turned to Winchingham. ‘Has your barge returned from Westminster yet?’

  ‘Aye, this evening. It is tied up near Trill Mill again. And Mistress Walsea has returned with a party from the king’s court, not long before I came out. She stopped at the Mitre to speak to me before they went to the sheriff at the castle. I told her they came too late, that you had throttled the French assassin with your bare hands. Or so the story goes about the town, as I was told by one of the inn’s pot boys.’

  I found myself flushing. ‘As you know, I did no such thing. The Lady Emma was there, and can bear witness.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, her eyes sparkling, ‘I was there and so saw a most wondrous battle. David again Goliath. The unarmed hero against the sword wielding villain.’

  ‘It was a dagger,’ I said dryly, ‘and he would have slit my throat, had the prince not come to my rescue.’

  To put a stop to this teasing, I thought of something I had meant to ask Peter Winchingham over our dinner at the Mitre, though the opportunity never came.

  ‘When you first called on me,’ I said, turning to him, ‘you said you planned to come back to England, now that the king and Parliament have decided to move the wool Staple here.’

  He nodded. ‘I do.’

  ‘You also said that you intended to buy a manor with enough land to rear a small flock of sheep of your own.’

  ‘Aye, I did. And I want to set up my own spinners and weavers. I shall need to buy in far more fleeces than I
can produce myself, but when I was a boy I used to spend time on my grandfather’s farm, my mother’s father. It was over in the Welsh Marches, Herefordshire, but that can be a troublesome area, when the Welsh are restless. The Cotswolds are more peaceful. Not so likely to be raided by a party of wild Welshmen.’

  I smiled, thinking of Dafydd Hewlyn, the parchment maker. I wondered whether his forebears were wild, raiding Welshmen, harrying Winchingham’s grandfather’s farm.

  ‘You have never said whether the manor you went to see near Burford suited you.’

  Margaret lifted the ale jug and smiled at him.

  ‘Aye, I thank you, mistress.’

  When she had filled his cup he drank deep. ‘Excellent ale, Mistress Makepeace. Your own?’

  ‘It is.’

  I could see that by now she was quite won over.

  ‘I saw the manor, Master Elyot,’ he said. ‘It was well enough, but somewhat smaller than I had in mind. I was disappointed, for I want to be near Oxford – for your excellent route to London.’ He bowed at Jordain. ‘And also near Witney, where the weaving of woollen cloth is beginning to increase, ever since it declined here in Oxford.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Your university has been driving the weavers out of town.’

  Jordain opened his mouth to protest, but I shook my head.

  ‘So, the manor I went to see was too small, and too far on the other side of Burford. Had it been larger, I might have considered it, even with the greater distance, but, nay, it would not do.’

  ‘So you have not yet found a manor?’ Emma said. ‘Nicholas told me that you were storing your goods at the Mitre. I thought that you had decided to stay.’

  ‘Indeed I have.’ He smiled at her. ‘I was about to leave my inn – I was staying in Burford – when the innkeeper told me of a manor about which there had been some trouble. It had been in the king’s hands, then it was not, then the king had it again and wanted to sell. As ever, he needs finance for the French wars, and he cannot always persuade Parliament to raise all that he needs from taxes. This manor is large enough, and nearer to Witney and Oxford. I rode over there just before I returned to Oxford.’