by Tim Severin
It had rained for most of our journey south-east as our glum little procession travelled the same road that had taken us to Northampton in the spring. And I had another worry. ‘Far from court, far from care,’ had been one of Edgar’s many proverbs and, as the capital drew nearer, I began for the first time to appreciate the danger of my affair with Aelfgifu. I was still very much in love with her and I longed to see her and hold her. Yet I knew that the risks of discovery in London would be far greater than in our secluded rural world. There was a rumour that Knut was shortly to return from Denmark to England now that the summer campaigning season was over. Naturally Aelfgifu as his queen, or rather as one of his queens, should be on hand to greet him. She had chosen to come to London because Emma, the other wife, was installed in Winchester, which Knut regarded as his English capital. Naturally there was gossipy speculation as to which city, and which wife, he would return to if he did come. As events turned out, he did not return to England that winter, but continued to leave the affairs of the kingdom under the joint control of Earl Thorkel the Tall and Archbishop Wulfstan.
While the staff were unloading the carts at the palace, I approached Aelfgifu’s chamberlain and asked if he had any orders for me, only to be told that he had no instructions. I was not on the official list of the queen’s retinue. He suggested I should return to my original lodgings at the skalds’ house, where he would send for me if I was wanted.
Feeling rejected, I walked through the sodden streets, skirting around the murky puddles in the unpaved roadway and ducking to avoid the dripping run-off from the thatched roofs. When I reached the lodging house, the place was shuttered and locked. I hammered on the door until a neighbour called out to say that the housekeeper was away visiting her family, and expected back that evening. I was soaked by the time she finally returned and let me in. She told me that all the skalds who had regular employment with Knut were still in Denmark. Those, like my absent-minded mentor Herfid who had no official appointment at court, had packed up and drifted away. I asked if I could stay in the lodgings for a few days until my future was clear.
It was a week before Aelfgifu sent a messenger to fetch me and I went with high hopes, remembering my last visit to her rooms in the palace. This time I was shown to an audience room, not to her private chamber. Aelfgifu was seated at a table, sorting through a box of jewellery.
‘Thorgils,’ she began, and the tone of her voice warned me at once that she was going to be businesslike. This was not a lover’s tryst. I noticed, however, that she waited until the messenger who fetched me had left the room before she spoke. ‘I have to talk to you about life in London.’ She paused, and I could see that she was trying to find a way between her private feelings and her caution. ‘London is not like Northampton. This palace has many ears and eyes, and there are those who, from jealousy or ambition, would do anything to damage me.’
‘My lady, I would never do anything to put you at risk,’ I blurted out.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but you cannot hide your feelings. Your love is written in your face. That is one thing that I found so appealing when we were in the country. Don’t you remember how Edgar would joke about it – he used to say, “Love and a cough cannot be hid”. He had so many of those proverbs.’ Here she paused wistfully for a moment. ‘So, however much you may try to conceal your love, I don’t think you would be successful. And if that love was constantly on display before me, I cannot guarantee that I might not respond and reveal all.’
Anguished, I wondered for a moment if she would forbid me to see her ever again, but I had misjudged her.
She went on. ‘I have been thinking about how it might be possible for us to meet from time to time – not often, but at least when it is safe to do so.’
My spirits soared. I would do anything to see her. I would trust to her guidance, however much it might hurt me.
Aelfgifu was playing with the contents of the jewellery box, lifting up a necklace or a pendant, letting it slide back through her fingers, then picking up a ring or a brooch and turning it so that the workmanship or the stones caught the light. For a moment she seemed distracted.
‘There is a way, but you will have to be most discreet,’ she said.
‘Please tell me. I’ll do whatever you wish,’ I replied.
‘I’ve arranged for you to stay with Brithmaer. You don’t know him yet, but he is the man who supplies me with most of my jewels. He came to visit me this morning to show me his latest stock, and I told him that in future I preferred to have my own agent staying at his premises, someone who knows my tastes’ – she said this without a trace of irony – ‘so that when anything interesting comes in from abroad, I will see it without delay.’
‘I don’t know anything about jewellery, but, of course, I’ll do whatever is necessary,’ I promised her.
‘I’ve asked Brithmaer to give you some training. You’ll have plenty of time to learn. Of course he won’t instruct you himself, but one of his craftsmen will. Now go. I will send for you when I judge it to be safe.’
One of Aelfgifu’s servants showed me the way to Brithmaer’s premises, which was just as well because it was a long walk from the palace to the heart of the city, near the new stone church of St Paul, where the land slopes towards the Thames waterfront. Riverside London reminded me of Dublin, only it was very much bigger. Here was the same stench of fetid foreshore, the same jostle and tangle of muddy lanes leading inland from the wharves, the same dank spread of drab houses. However, London’s houses were more substantial, stout timbers replacing Dublin’s daub and wattle. The servant took me down a lane leading to the river, and if he had not stopped at the door of the building, I would have mistaken Brithmaer’s home for a warehouse, and a very solid one at that.
A small spy hatch opened in answer to our knock. When the servant identified himself, the massive door was opened and, as soon as I was inside, closed firmly behind me. The palace servant was not allowed to enter.
I found myself blinking to adjust to the dimness. I was in an antechamber. The place was dark because the barred windows were small and high up in the walls. The man who had let me in looked more like a rough blacksmith than a fine jeweller and I quickly concluded that he was more of a guard than a doorkeeper. He grunted when I gave him my name and gestured for me to follow him. As I crossed the darkened room, I became aware of a muffled sound. It was an uninterrupted chinking and clinking, a metallic sound, irregular but insistent which seemed to come through rear wall of the room. I could not imagine what was causing it.
There was a small door to one side, which led on to a narrow stairway, and that in turn brought us up to the upper floor of the building. From the outside the house had seemed workmanlike, even grim, but on the upper floor I found accommodation more comfortable than in the palace I had just left. I was shown into what was the first of a series of large, airy rooms. It was clearly a reception room and expensively furnished. The wall hangings were artfully woven in muted golds and greens and I imagined they must have been imported from the Frankish lands. The chairs were plain but valuable and the table was spread with a patterned carpet, a fashion I had never seen before. Sculpted bronze candle holders, even some glass panes in the windows instead of the usual window panes of horn, spoke of wealth and discreet good taste. The sole occupant of the room was seated at the table, an old man quietly eating an apple.
‘So you are to be the queen’s viewer,’ he said. By his dress and manner he was clearly the owner of the establishment. He was wearing a dark grey tunic of old-fashioned cut with comfortable loose pantaloons. On his feet were well-worn but beautiful stitched slippers. Had he been standing, I doubted that he would have come only halfway up my chest, and I observed that he had developed the forward stoop of the very old. He held his head hunched down carefully into his shoulders and the hand that held the apple, was mottled with age. Yet his small, narrow face with its slightly hooked nose and close-set eyes, was a youthful pink, as if he had never been exposed to
the wind and rain. His hair, which he had kept despite his age, was pure white. He looked very carefully preserved. It was impossible to read any expression in the watery, bright blue eyes which regarded me shrewdly.
‘Do you know anything about jewellery and fine metals?’ he asked.
I was about to tell this delicate gnome of a man that I had lived for two years in an Irish monastery where master craftsmen produced exquisite objects for the glory of God – reliquaries, platens, bishops’ crosses and so forth – made in gold and silver and inlaid with enamel and precious stones. But when I saw those neutral, watchful eyes, I decided only to answer, ‘I would be pleased to learn.’
‘Very well. Naturally I am happy to accede to the queen’s request. She is one of my best customers. We’ll provide you with board and lodging – rent free of course, though nothing was said about paying any wages.’ Then, speaking to the doorkeeper who had stood behind me, he said, ‘Call Thurulf. Tell him that I want a word.’
The servant left by a different door from the one we had entered through and, as he opened it, that same puzzling sound came bursting in, at much greater volume. It seemed to be coming from below. Now I remembered a similar sound. As a boy, I had been befriended by Tyrkir the metalworker and had helped him at his forge. When Tyrkir was beating out a heavy lump of iron, he would relax between the blows by letting his hammer bounce lightly on the anvil. This is what I was hearing. It sounded as if a dozen Tyrkirs were letting their hammers tap idly in a continuous, irregular ringing chorus.
Another burst of the sound accompanied the young man who now stepped into the reception room. Thurulf was about my age, about eighteen or nineteen, though taller. A well-set-up young man, his cheerful countenance was fringed by a straggly reddish-orange beard which made up for the fact that he was going prematurely bald. His face was ruddy and he was sweating.
‘Thurulf, be so kind as to show our young friend Thorgils to a guest room – the end room, I think. He will be staying with us for some time. Then you might bring him down to the exchange later in the afternoon.’ With studied courtesy the old man waited until I was walking out of the door before he turned back to take the next bite of his apple.
I followed Thurulf’s broad back as he stepped out onto an internal balcony, which ran the entire length of the building, and found myself looking down on a curious sight.
Laid out below me was a long workshop. It must have been at least forty paces in length and perhaps ten paces broad. It had the same small high windows protected with heavy bars which I had seen in the ground-floor antechamber. Now I noticed that the outer wall was at least three feet thick. A heavy, narrow workbench, set high and securely fixed, ran for the full length of the wall. At the bench a dozen men sat on stools. They were facing the wall, away from me, so I could only see the backs of their heads and they were bowed over their work, so I could not make out what they were doing. All I could see was that each man held a small hammer in one hand and what looked like a heavy, blunt peg in the other. Each worker was making the same action, again and again and again. From a box beside him he lifted an item so small that he was obliged to pick it up carefully between forefinger and thumb, then he placed it in front of him. Next he set the peg in position and struck the butt end with his hammer. It was the metallic sound of this blow repeated regularly by a dozen men, which I had been hearing from the moment I had entered Brithmaer’s premises.
Looking down on the line of stooped, hammer-wielding workmen as they beat out their rhythm, I wished Herfid the skald had been standing beside me. I knew exactly what he would have said: he would have taken one glance and burst out, ‘Ivaldi’s Sons!’ for they would have reminded him of the dwarves who created the equipment of the Gods: Odinn’s spear, Thor’s hammer and the golden wig for Sif, Thor’s wife, after she had been shorn by the wicked Loki.
Thurulf led me along the balcony to the last door on the right and showed me into a small sleeping room. It had a pair of wooden beds, set into the walls like mangers, and I put my leather satchel on one of them to claim it. The battered satchel was my only baggage.
‘What are all those men with the hammers doing?’ I asked Thurulf.
He looked puzzled by my ignorance. ‘You meant with striking irons?’
‘The men in the workshop down there.’
‘They’re making money.’ I must have looked mystified, for Thurulf went on, ‘Didn’t you know that my uncle Brithmaer is the king’s chief moneyer?’
‘I thought he was the royal jeweller.’
Thurulf laughed. ‘He’s that also in a small way. He makes far more money by making money, so to speak, than by supplying the palace with gems. Here, I’ll show you.’ And he led me back to the balcony and down a wooden ladder, which led directly to the floor of the workshop.
We walked over to the heavy bench and stood beside one of the workmen. He did not lift his head to acknowledge our presence or break the steady rhythm of his hammer. In his left hand was the metal peg which Thurulf called the ‘striking iron’. I could see that it was a blunt metal chisel about five inches long and square in section, with a flat tip. With the hand that held the striking iron, the man stretched out to a wooden box on the bench beside him, and used finger and thumb to pick up a small, thin, metal disc. He then placed the disc carefully on the flat top of a similar metal peg fixed into the heavy wooden bench in front of him. Then, as the little disc balanced there, the workman brought the striking iron into position on top of it, and gave the butt of the iron a smart blow with his hammer. Lifting the iron, he used his right hand to pick up the metal disc and drop it into a wooden tray on his right-hand side.
Thurulf reached out, took one of the metal discs from the first box and handed it to me. It was about the size of my fingernail and I saw that it was plain unmarked silver. Thurulf took back the disc, returned it to the box, then picked up a disc from the tray on the workman’s right. This too he handed to me, and I saw that on one side the disc bore a stylised picture of the king’s head. Around the margin were stamped the letters KNUT, a small cross, and a leaf pattern. Turning the disc over, I saw the leaf pattern repeated and over it was stamped a larger cross. This time the lettering read BRTHMR. I was holding one of Knut’s pennies.
Thurulf took back the penny, carefully replaced it in the box of finished coins and, holding me by the arm, led me away from the workmen so we could speak more easily over the constant ringing of the hammers.
‘My uncle holds the king’s licence to make his money,’ he said. He still had to raise his voice to make himself heard clearly. ‘In fact, he’s just been named a mint master, so he’s the most important moneyer in London.’
‘You mean, there are other workshops like this?’
‘Oh yes, at least another dozen in London. I’m not sure of the exact number. And there are several score more moneyers in towns scattered all around England, all doing the same work, though each moneyer has his own mark on the coins he stamps. That’s in case of error or forgery so the king’s officials can trace a coin back to its maker. My own family are moneyers up in Anglia, from Norwich, and I’ve been sent here to gain experience under my uncle.’
‘It must cost the king a great deal to keep so many moneyers employed,’ I said wonderingly.
Thurulf laughed at my naivety. ‘Not at all. Quite the reverse. He does not pay them. They pay him.’
When he saw that I was baffled again, Thurulf went on, ‘The moneyers pay the king’s officials for the right to stamp money, and they take a commission on all the coins they produce.’
‘Then who’s paying the commission, and who supplies the silver which is turned into coins?’
‘That’s the beauty of it,’ said Thurulf. ‘Every so often, the king announces a change to the design of his coins and withdraws the old style from circulation. His subjects have to bring the moneyers all their old coins. These are then melted down for the new issue, and the new coins are given out, but not to the same value as those that were given in. Th
ere is a deduction of five to fifteen per cent. It’s a simple and effective royal tax, and of course the moneyers get their share.’
‘So why don’t the people just keep their old pennies and use them amongst themselves as currency?’
‘Some do and they value their old coins by their weight of silver when they come to trading. But the king’s advisers are a clever lot and they’ve found a way round that too. When you pay royal taxes, whether as fines or trade licences or whatever, the tax collectors only accept the current issue of coins. So you have to use new coins and, of course, if you fail to pay the tax collectors, they impose more fines and that means you have to obtain more coins of the new issue. It’s a system of pure genius.’
‘Don’t people complain, or at least try to melt down their own old coins and stamp out a copy of the new design?’
Thurulf looked mildly shocked. ‘That’s forgery! Anyone caught making false coins has their right hand cut off. The same penalty, incidentally, applies to any moneyer caught producing coins which are fake or under weight. And the merchants don’t complain about the system because the royal stamp on coins is a guarantee of quality. All over Europe the coins of England are regarded as the most trustworthy.’
I looked at the number of men working at the benches, and the porters and assistants who were moving around, carrying bags of silver blanks and finished coins. There must have been at least thirty of them.
‘Isn’t there a risk that some of the workers will steal? After all, a single penny must represent at least a day’s wage for them, and a coin or two would be very easy to carry away.’
‘That’s why my uncle has designed the premises with that balcony so he can appear from his rooms at any time and look down into the workshop to see what’s going on, but the counting is far more effective. A moneyer’s job might seem to be nothing but organising a lot of men to hammer out coins while he himself endures the din. But the real chore is the endless counting. Everything is counted in and out. The number of blanks issued to each worker, the number of finished coins he returns, the number of damaged coins, the number of coins received in for melting down, their precise weight, and so on. It’s endless, this counting and recounting, checking and rechecking, and everything of value is stored in the strongrooms behind you.’ He pointed to a row of small rooms located directly under his uncle’s rooms. Brithmaer, I thought to myself, ate and slept on top of his money like a Norse troll guarding his most valuable possessions.
