The Novice's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 2)

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘After that, we shall see,’ the abbess said. ‘I have not yet agreed to a regular supply of books. Let us see how this first one fares. What work have you been set this week?’

  ‘I have been working in the laundry, Reverend Mother.’

  ‘To the neglect of your lessons?’ The abbess’s voice was sharp.

  ‘Sister Mercy said that, because the weather held fine, it was important that all the linen should be washed. I have been helping the lay sisters and servants.’

  ‘Show me your hands.’

  Emma stepped closer to the desk and held out her hands for inspection. They were red and sore from the coarse soap and from scrubbing at stains with pumice. The abbess frowned.

  ‘You cannot work in the scriptorium with hands like that. I excuse you from all duties in the laundry from now on. See the infirmaress about some kind of soothing lotion or salve to restore your hands. As soon as they are fit, you are to make a start on a new book of hours. Sister Mildred will provide you with parchment and inks.’

  ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother. Am I to attend lessons?’

  The abbess considered. ‘For the next two days. After that we will hope that you will be sufficiently recovered to start work on the scribing. Now you may go.’

  ‘Thank you, Reverend Mother,’ Emma said again. She made her reverence and retreated from the room. Outside in the hallway she permitted herself a moment of pure joy, wrapping her arms around herself, before straightening and assuming a sober face.

  In the court, as expected, Sister Ursula had found some excuse to linger. ‘Well?’ she said, putting on an expression of false sympathy. ‘In trouble again, I suppose.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Emma said, sweeping past her toward the gatehouse, to fetch Jocosa from John Barnes. ‘Indeed, it was altogether the opposite.’

  To this Sister Ursula had no answer, but was forced to resume, in silent frustration, whatever duties she had been assigned. As the most favoured of the novices in the eyes of Sister Mercy, she was generally set such onerous tasks as sorting the music in the choir stalls, or supervising the younger schoolgirls at their private studies, an experience not welcomed by the girls, who found Ursula’s sharp tongue hardly more bearable than Sister Mercy’s.

  Emma made her way across the court, only with difficulty restraining herself from breaking into a dancing step.

  ‘You look like the cat who was shut in the dairy all night,’ John Barnes said.

  He would never have used such language to any of the other novices or the nuns, but he and Emma had established an easy friendship from the time she arrived at Godstow. John found that she reminded him of his favourite younger sister, married these five years and moved far away to Henley.

  Emma laughed. Here, in the gatehouse, with no one but John to hear, she could laugh. ‘I am excused the laundry from this on, and I am to sit like a scribe in the scriptorium and make a new book of hours, like the one I made at Sister Mildred’s request. It seems it has been taken up by that bookseller from Oxford.’

  She would not speak his name.

  ‘Ah, so that was what he was about, Master Elyot, meeting with the Reverend Mother. I did wonder.’

  ‘You spoke to him?’

  ‘Aye. He was quite taken with Jocosa, and she with him. Seems she could smell his own dog about his ankles.’

  ‘What manner of dog?’

  ‘I did not ask.’

  ‘There must be good in any man that Jocosa takes a liking to.’

  ‘Aye, indeed. And he had news for you as well.’

  ‘For me?’ Emma picked up the little dog and held her close. ‘What news?’

  ‘It seems your aunt – that would be Mistress Farringdon, would it not? – she is coming soon to live in Oxford. Mother of that fine young cousin of yours who used to visit.’ He looked at her sympathetically. He knew the whole history of William Farringdon.

  ‘My aunt is to live in Oxford?’ Emma said. ‘That is good news indeed. Not so very far away.’

  ‘Not far at all. She will perhaps come to see you make your vows.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Emma said, and went away, looking thoughtful.

  Chapter Four

  However well one may plan, circumstances can always conspire to defeat those plans. The house in St Mildred Street was as ready as we could make it, clean and fresh, but necessarily bare. Alysoun had gone with Margaret to the town meadows behind St John’s Hospital, where they had gathered flowers and woven them into garlands to decorate the house, ready for the Farringdon family, but on the day they were expected, they did not come.

  ‘It takes time to pack up a household and transport it several miles,’ Margaret said to reassure Jordain, who was sitting in our kitchen, fretting. ‘Something has been forgotten, or required mending, or the farmer found that suddenly he needed his cart for some other purpose. They will come, never fear.’

  ‘I hope you may have the right of it, Margaret,’ Jordain said dubiously, ‘and that it does not mean there has been some accident, or one of the children has been taken ill.’

  I could see that the Farringdons were to become more of his flock, over whom he presided like a watchful shepherd. Celibate by reason of his profession, Jordain nevertheless had the instincts of a pater familias.

  Two more days passed. Margaret and Alysoun took down their withered garlands and wove fresh ones.

  ‘Why has Mistress Farringdon not come to Oxford, Papa?’ Alysoun asked, her mouth drooping with disappointment as she gathered up her discarded garlands to throw away at the end of the garden.

  ‘I do not know, my pet. I’m sure all will be well in the end. Something has delayed them, that is all.’

  Halfway through the next morning, I was in the shop, sorting through a pile of tattered books I had bought from students who had finished their studies at the end of the Trinity Term. I had paid what I could for them, knowing how little coin these lads had in their pockets to get them home to their families, even if they walked all the way or were able to beg a lift with some carter. Nevertheless, it was a shabby collection. Several were coming loose from their bindings. They were not worth taking to Henry Stalbroke for repair, but I could stitch them together myself, well enough to serve another generation of students, though they would look far from elegant. One copy of Euclid had lost its last gathering of pages, but we could replace that and bind it in. There were five books with torn pages. It was possible to stitch together torn pages of parchment, if all the pieces were there. I would not buy the paper volumes students had put together for themselves by copying peciae. Those were too ragged and fragile, and the pages, once torn, could not be mended.

  Jordain arrived as I handed the Euclid over to Roger, together with a complete volume, from which he could make a copy of the missing section.

  ‘I am not sure whether you look relieved or annoyed,’ I said to Jordain, who had a letter in his hand.

  He waved it at me.

  ‘From Mistress Farringdon. Brought to Hart Hall this morning by a pedlar coming into town to purchase goods. It seems that the cart in which her neighbour was to have brought her belongings to Oxford has lost a wheel – the spokes sprung from the rim, which was somehow twisted driving over a rough patch in the farm track. The local wheelwright is laid low with a summer fever, so her neighbour had to ride to the nearest wright, in Abingdon, six or seven miles away, who is so overwhelmed with work he cannot mend it for a week.’

  ‘A tiresome delay,’ I said, ‘but not the disaster you were imagining.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but the cart which would have been free to bring them here will now be needed for the hay harvest as soon as the wheel is replaced, so they needs must wait as much as another two or three weeks. She does not say, in so many words, but I sense that she feels they have outstayed their welcome.’

  ‘That is indeed tiresome,’ I said sympathetically, thinking of Alysoun and her garlands, prepared with such excitement and love.

  ‘I have another plan,’ he said. ‘I thoug
ht I would hire a cart and fetch them to Oxford myself. Will you come with me, to lend a hand?’

  ‘Where is this neighbour’s house?’ I asked.

  ‘He holds a tenant farm near Long Wittenham,’ he said. ‘We would go south from Grandpont, then turn west to Clifton. I discussed it with Mistress Farringdon when they were here. You have to cross the Thames to reach Long Wittenham, but there is a ferry.’

  ‘When do you plan to go?’

  ‘Tomorrow, if I can hire a cart. No need to waste any more time.’

  ‘There is no reason I should not come,’ I said slowly. ‘Walter and Roger can spend the day repairing these student books, all but the stitching, which I shall do myself. No need for them to hurry, the books will not be needed until the Michaelmas Term.’

  I found that the idea of a drive through the countryside behind a slowly ambling cart horse was pleasant indeed. In the heat, the Oxford streets had begun to stink. The country roads would be full of the scent of new-mown hay, the air fresh amid the rich farmlands of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Within the town it seemed as though the very air was sullen and motionless, as thick as soup.

  ‘Good. I shall go at once and bespeak a cart. The vintner Edric Crowmer has a cart he will sometimes hire out if he is not using it.’

  Jordain was soon back, with word that Edric was willing to hire us the cart on the morrow. I insisted on paying half the charge, and we agreed to start soon after dawn the next morning.

  Alysoun and Rafe, on hearing of the expedition into the country, begged to come with us, but regretfully I was obliged to be firm in my denials.

  ‘Impossible, I am afraid,’ I said. ‘Coming back, there will be three more people and all their household goods, even furniture. It is a fair sized cart, but not big enough for the two of you as well.’

  Rafe ran off at once. He had only asked to come because Alysoun had done so, but Alysoun looked rebellious.

  ‘We usually go to Grandmama’s in the summer,’ she complained. ‘And you promised I could practice riding there. And instead we have to stay here in this horrible heat.’

  She did indeed look flushed, but I was sure it was due to no more than running about in the sun.

  ‘If you do not like the heat, my pet, stay in the shade, or indoors. Even Rowan has the sense to do that, young as she is.’

  We both looked at the puppy, who had chosen to lie on the cool flagstones, as far away from the kitchen hearth as possible.

  ‘We will visit Grandmama at the farm later this summer,’ I promised, ‘but she has not been well. Best let her recover before the four of us go to visit.’

  My widowed mother lived in a cottage on the land my family had held for generations, now farmed by my cousin Edmond Elyot, and it was the usual practice for my sister and me to take the children there for a week or two in the summer, to escape the worse of the summer illnesses due to the bad air rising from the Canditch here in town, and also to give my mother the chance to see something of her grandchildren. I suspected she was often lonely. After my wife died, she had wanted to take the children in and look after them herself, but I would not part with them. I suppose that it was partly guilt that prompted these regular visits in the summer and also – if the weather permitted – in the winter around Christmastide. However, Edmond had sent word two weeks before that she was not well, having suffered a bout of the bloody flux, which had weakened her.

  ‘You may not come with us to Long Wittenham, Alysoun, but we will bring back Juliana Farringdon. You remember that you liked her. And she will be living not far away.’

  Alysoun went off, somewhat mollified, for she had admired the older girl and been flattered by her attention.

  At dawn I was standing in front of the shop when Jordain drove the cart along the High from Edric Crowmer’s wine shop. The horse was strong, but elderly, and I could see that we should need to treat him with care.

  I clambered up beside Jordain on to the driver’s bench, and stowed a basket of food and a flagon of ale beside our feet.

  Jordain grinned. ‘I hoped Margaret might provide us with a dinner to take with us.’

  ‘I know that is the only reason you wanted me to come,’ I said. ‘That and my strong arms for loading furniture.’

  ‘Naturally.’ He began to turn the cart, a manoeuvre somewhat hampered by the horse’s determination to continue stubbornly in the same direction, which would have taken us to the East Bridge, quite the wrong way. With a sigh I climbed down again and took the horse’s head to bring him round to set our course for Carfax.

  Once he had realised that I had a stronger will than his, he proceeded placidly up the High to the crossroads and I resumed my seat. As Jordain and I were both country born, we were well used to driving a cart, and would take it turnabout. At Carfax we headed down Fish Street and left the town at the South Gate. The rivers of Oxford meander over much of the land south of the town, so that first we crossed Trill Mill Stream by the single arch of Trill Mill Bow, before driving through the crowded houses of Grandpont.

  These houses formed almost a village of their own, outside the town wall, spilling out from Oxford and yet not quite part of it. Until the pestilence came, this had been a busy community, mostly made up of craftsmen, some of them plying trades driven out of the town by the encroachment of the colleges – skinners and tanners, several blacksmiths and a small brickworks, as well as the usual weavers, fullers, tenters, and dyers, still remaining from the days when Oxford had been important for its production of fine woollen cloth. Grandpont was a kind of island, surrounded on all sides by water – a sharp bend of Trill Mill Stream to north and east, the mill stream that served Blackfriars to the west, and Shire Lake Stream, which joined parts of the Thames and the Cherwell, to the south. Since the deaths visited upon us by the Pestilence, half the houses now stood empty, slowly decaying from neglect. They were too far from the centre of Oxford to interest the colleges, nor were they the kind of profitable manors which would bring in rents. It was a sad place.

  We left Grandpont by Denchworth Bow, and here the houses ceased, giving way to water meadows and marsh, and a confusion of small islands in the river, joined by causeway and bridges. At last we were in the true countryside and heading along the road south. One branch led to Abingdon, one to Dorchester and Wallingford. We would take the Dorchester road.

  Jordain gave a sigh of pure content. ‘It is good to be out of the town sometimes. We forget that a whole world lies out here, no more than a few miles from our colleges and halls and busy streets.’

  ‘And the air is sweet,’ I said, filling my lungs. As I had suspected, the air was rich with the delicious scent of freshly mown hay. ‘Is there any sweeter smell in the world than hay? No wonder cows have such clean breath, not the foetid smells emitted by so much of humankind.’

  ‘You are very hard on humankind,’ he said. ‘But I suppose what you say is true. Do you think that, if we lived on a diet of grass, we should never have rotten teeth?’

  ‘Mm, like Nebuchadnezzar?’ I was sleepy from the early start and the sun, and had no inclination to pursue the notion any further. ‘Do you know where to turn off for Clifton?’

  ‘Aye, I think so. It is some way yet. Look, beyond that rise and then down in the dip there is a clump of trees. Let us stop there a while to rest the horse, and we can explore what Margaret has put in the basket.’

  It was still early for dinner, but I too was hungry, having taken no more than a small cup of ale and a piece of bread when I woke. And I think country air sharpens the appetite. We meandered up the low hill, and then down the slope beyond, which proved longer than it had looked. When at last we reached the shade of the trees, the horse seemed as glad to stop as we were.

  I climbed down and hung his nosebag from his harness, while Jordain drew off the cloth which covered the basket and explored the contents. He handed it down to me, then joined me on the wayside verge, carrying the ale flagon with care.

  ‘She has provided a feast,’ he said, with
a smile of delighted greed. Hart Hall’s meals were notoriously dull and parsimonious. ‘Fresh bread, a pat of butter wrapped in a dock leaf, two large meat pasties, a huge piece of cheese, a pot of onion relish, half a dried apple pie, and a poke of early cherries.’

  I could see that his mouth was watering at the prospect of such abundance.

  ‘Best keep some of it for later,’ I said. ‘We have the return journey to make, and Mistress Farringdon will not be expecting to feed us.’ I took two pewter mugs from the basket and poured us each a generous helping of ale. Even under the trees it was hot, and we were both thirsty.

  ‘Aye,’ he said regretfully, ‘I suppose you are right. I had no time to let Mistress Farringdon know that we were coming. I hope we may not have made things difficult for her.’

  ‘I suppose if they were packed and ready to leave several days ago, it will be quite easy for them to come with us now.’

  I was used to Jordain’s sudden impulses of generosity, but they sometimes took others by surprise. Even with our unexpected arrival, from all I had heard I guessed that Mistress Farringdon would be glad to make the move, despite any brief inconvenience caused by this last minute change of plan.

  We limited ourselves to half the food in the basket, though I fear we drank more than half the ale, then, refreshed, set off again. It seemed that Jordain had but a vague notion of where to turn off the Dorchester road for Clifton, but by asking first at a cottage and then seeking clearer directions from two men repairing a broken hedge, we found the road and headed south west for the village.

  ‘I believe Clifton lies just within Oxfordshire,’ Jordain said, ‘this side the Thames. Then we cross the river by ferry and find ourselves in Berkshire, where Long Wittenham is the first village on the other side.’

  ‘That fellow said something about the Wittenham Clumps.’

  ‘Aye. A hill or hills, I think, where there was an ancient fort. But we do not go there.’

  Clifton proved to be a small but tidy village. Like all villages it was diminished by the Great Pestilence, but not as desolate as many I had seen when riding north of Oxford on the Banbury road. By now I was driving, and I halted the cart so that Jordain could get down and speak to a man digging his vegetable patch, asking the way to the ferry. It was clear from the man’s gestures, even where I sat, that we had only to follow this road a little further to the river and we should find the ferry there.