The Bookseller's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 1) Page 2

  ‘It’s a girl, Alysoun. Did you want a boy?’

  ‘Nay, I want this one! ’Tis no matter whether it be girl or boy.’

  ‘Rafe,’ I said, ‘what do you think? Shall we have this one?’

  As the youngest in the family, his opinion was rarely regarded. He reached out a hand and patted the puppy hesitantly. ‘Aye,’ he said.

  ‘That is settled then.’ I turned to John, who nodded.

  ‘Take it, and my thanks. One less to drown.’

  Alysoun turned a shocked face to him. ‘You will wait until Jonathan speaks to the millers, will you not, Master Baker?’

  ‘Aye, my maid.’

  ‘And Papa will ask at Yardley’s farm this afternoon.’ She bent down and whispered to Jewel, who did not seem distressed that we were taking away one of her young.

  ‘Off to Yardley’s, are you?’ John led us back to the shop, where customers were gathering again. ‘Goose feathers?’

  ‘Aye. I’ll ask. They may need a dog. God go with ’ee, John. Time I opened the shop.’

  I carried the puppy as we crossed the High Street, the children running ahead to open the door, shouting to Margaret.

  My two scriveners were already in the shop, but showed no sign of starting work. I bit down my annoyance. They knew their tasks for the day and did not need me to repeat my instructions of the night before. Walter Blunt, the older man, had the grace to look somewhat guilty and began making much of laying out his writing materials and taking out the exemplar of the Logica: Ut Dixit, from which he must copy out two peciae today. Each section, each pecia, consisted of sixteen pages, and he should be able to complete the work within the day. He was writing on paper, producing a plain copy for students to rent. No fine penmanship or parchment was required.

  Roger Pigot was another matter. Two years younger than I, he was as insolent as a bejant student of fourteen or fifteen. I would not have employed him, save for the fact that he had a very fine hand. He was working his way through a copy of a French tale of Robin Hood, writing on parchment and decorating the margins with flowing vines and flowers. He was no great artist, but he could design a pretty illuminated capital for the start of each section, good enough for the merchant’s wife who had commissioned the work.

  ‘Roger,’ I said sharply, ‘why are you idling about? Get you to work.’

  Before he could return an impudent answer, I hurried through to the house with the children and the puppy, who was fully awake now and squirming in my hands. I set her down in the middle of the kitchen floor, where she looked about her with interest, then squatted down in a posture which was immediately recognisable. Before I could bundle her outside, a yellow puddle had spread out across the floor. The puppy stood up and sniffed it with interest.

  ‘Alysoun,’ I said, ‘put her out in the garden at once. She has to learn that she must relieve herself there, not in your aunt’s kitchen.’

  I looked around helplessly for a rag to wipe the floor, but before I could find one, Margaret came in, passing Alysoun and giving the puppy a sour look.

  ‘What did I tell you, Nicholas? Nay, not that cloth. I use that one to polish the knives and spoons.’ She snatched away the cloth I had reached for. ‘Away with you and mind your shop. I will deal with this.’

  I turned and fled, feeling somewhat like a scolded puppy myself and relieved to be away from the drama of a sullied kitchen. In the shop I was master, but not always, I fear, in the house.

  Walter had opened the shutters and was already at work, his quill moving rapidly over the rough paper, though he muttered under his breath from time to time as the tip caught. It could not be helped. I could not afford parchment for the peciae the students rented. And if the paper came back creased or torn, I had to fine them a farthing for minor damage, a ha’penny for worse.

  Roger was still laying out a selection of quills and brushes, and went now to fetch the coloured inks he would use for decorations. The simpler ones I made myself, invading Margaret’s stillroom to do so, but the more expensive, like the lapis blue, I bought in small quantities from the painter’s merchant who supplied the local monasteries and friaries, as well as those colleges which employed their own illuminators. I had caught Roger the previous month trying to steal some of the precious blue, no doubt to sell, and he was under warning. Since then I had fixed a padlock to the storeroom door, which I now unlocked for him. He glowered at me through the heavy fringe of greasy hair which fell over his face, but I ignored him. I needed him to finish the French book so I could sell it and recover the cost of the particularly fine parchment on which it was being written.

  Unlike almost all the other shops on the High Street, mine did not let down a shutter across the bottom of the window to form a counter into the street, on which to display items for sale. The goods I sold were much too delicate to expose to a dust-laden wind or to the risk of a sudden shower. However, once the shutters over the wide window in the shop front were opened, passersby could easily see the rack of secondhand books laid out on view, a safe distance inside. It was one of my obligations, having sworn the oath to become an official stationarius and librarius for the university, to display all secondhand books prominently. I was also restricted as to how much profit I might make on them. Moreover, the university fixed the rental price paid by students for the peciae of their essential study texts.

  It was irksome, but the position of official bookseller to the university had the advantage of bringing in a regular income. As for any private commissions I undertook, like the French book, I could charge whatever I pleased. In the first years after the plague, when half the students and masters had perished, I often wondered whether we would have enough to live on, Margaret and the children and I. Even, I thought of returning to the family farm, but with my cousin Edmond now in possession, since the death of my father and elder brother, I put it off from day to day. Somehow, the university had survived. More students had arrived. A few masters, who had gone to teach in Paris or Bologna or Prague, returned to Oxford, as though those fearful years of plague had driven them to seek the comfort of their own country.

  When Roger had finally settled to his work, I began to unpack a barrel of books which I had stored the previous day under the counter where I wrote my bills of sale and did my accounts. A widow from Banbury, who could not read, had brought her late husband’s small library to me for valuation.

  ‘They’re no mortal use to me, Master Elyot,’ she had said, wiping her eyes on the trailing hem of her sleeve, ‘but my Edward set a great store by them. Learned to read with the monks of Abingdon, he did, like a proper cleric. Now I hope they will keep me and my daughter, for she had the pestilence and it has left her deaf. I’ll not find a husband for her.’

  The girl, standing shyly behind her mother, had been pretty once, but the scars left by illness marred her appearance now. Her face spoiled and her hearing gone, she might well fail to find a husband. When her mother died, how would she fare? Such afflicted souls have a poor time of it. Yet if she had a dowry – which these books could provide – some man might be glad of her, perhaps a widower like me, but left with a large brood of children and no sister to come to his aid. A second wife to care for his young ones might be forgiven her disfigurement. I would give the widow the best price I could for the books, but I must not lose money. I had my own family to support, and no income but this shop.

  ‘When you finish that page, Walter,’ I said, ‘come and help me assess these books.’

  He nodded, but did not raise his eyes from his writing.

  Walter had worked for my father-in-law, Humphrey Hadley, for ten years before I married Elizabeth and joined the business, and he was as shrewd a judge of the value of a book as you could wish. When Elizabeth’s father died in the very first month of the plague, he bequeathed the property and the business to us, and we had been glad of Walter’s assistance as we struggled to carry on through those black months. The plague was dwindling away as Elizabeth came near her time with Rafe and
I dared to hope that we would all survive, but the birth had weakened her. Rafe was but two weeks old when she was struck down and died three days later. By then the horrors of the mass graves were over, and I was able to bury her decently in St Peter’s churchyard. Without Walter in the dark days after her death, neither I nor the business could have continued.

  I laid out the books in a row on the table, six of them, varying in quality. Walter came to stand beside me and immediately picked up one.

  ‘This is a very fine bestiary, Master Elyot,’ he said.

  ‘Aye, I noticed it last night. It has been well read and the spine is just a very little worn, but otherwise it is in excellent condition.’

  He turned over the pages. ‘The colours are still very fresh.’ He held the book open for me to see. The picture showed a strange animal with a horn growing from its forehead, a scaly hide, and cloven hooves. It was like no animal I had ever seen, either in the flesh or in a book, but it was exquisitely done, every blade of grass and daisy under the creature’s feet picked out with care, a knowing gleam shining from its eye.

  Roger abandoned his work and came to peer over Walter’s shoulder. I did not send him back to his desk. Let him study the work of a real artist. Perhaps he would then be less arrogant about his own modest skills.

  ‘I should be able to give her a good price for that,’ I said, dipping a quill in my ink pot and scribbling figures on a scrap of paper. ‘There is a Regent Master at Gloucester College who is interested in such books. I think he would pay well for it. The rest are not so valuable.’

  I looked them over. Most were in fairly good condition, all except Boethius’s Arithmetic, probably left from the owner’s time as a schoolboy with the monks of Abingdon. Still, I would have no trouble selling that, for a modest price, to one of the young students newly arrived in Oxford. There was a collection of tales – Robin Hood again (shorter, and in English), Sir Bevis of Hampton, Arthur and Guinevere, Floris and Blauncheflur, Sir Galahad. Originally they had been separate small books, but at some time in the past (not recently, I thought) they had been bound together. This had necessitated trimming some of the pages to fit, which gave the book a somewhat ragged appearance, but such tales are also easy to sell. I would try the merchant’s wife who had commissioned the French book.

  There was a book of husbandry, another slim volume recounting the stories of classical heroes, and a useful volume of rhetoric topics, such as students use – I had one myself. I thought that the owner of these books had once had aspirations to become a scholar.

  Between us, Walter and I arrived at what we reckoned was a fair price for the six books, and I wrote a message to the widow, which I would send with the next carter travelling to Banbury. Once she agreed to my offer I would contact the master at Gloucester College and the merchant’s wife. The remaining four books would join the others on my secondhand shelf.

  When the students emerged from their morning lectures, the shop became busy as they crowded in to buy writing materials. Two of the older students came to return peciae of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Boethius’s Music. Both students had completed the fundamental course of the Trivium – Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric – and were now studying the more advanced Quadrivium – Geometry, Music, Arithmetic and Astronomy, which also included additional reading in Philosophy. One of the students I knew quite well, William Farringdon, for he had once worked for me briefly and lodged at Hart Hall, where my friend Jordain Brinkylsworth was Warden. Jordain had told me only last week that he was worried about the lad, who seemed unusually distracted and inattentive in lectures, and lost his way in propounding his argument in the obligatory debates.

  ‘A model student until now, Nicholas,’ he said, ‘but something is troubling him. He will not confide in me, but merely shakes his head and swears that nothing is amiss.’

  I sometimes teased Jordain that he was as anxious as a mother hen over his charges, but I had seen that this time he was genuinely worried.

  Looking closely at William Farringdon now, I saw that he was very pale and nervous, plucking at the neck of his shirt and glancing from time to time over his shoulder. However, if he would not admit his troubles to Jordain, he was not likely to tell me, a comparative stranger. There was a fresh ink blot on one of the pages of the pecia of the Boethius that he was returning, but I decided to ignore it. I saw him watching me from the corner of his eye as I inspected the document, and also saw his look of relief as I turned over the damaged page without comment.

  Perhaps the lad had money troubles. It would not be surprising. Many Oxford students came from the families of small country gentry, who had suffered a great deal as a result of the pestilence, not only from deaths in their own families but from widespread deaths amongst the villeins and small tenant farmers who worked their land. Lacking the labour of the former and the rents of the latter, many of these families found themselves almost beggared. My own family was of yeoman stock, but we too had suffered financial loss.

  I always closed the shop over the dinner hour, when the students would go back to their halls. It gave me the chance to eat my own dinner with my family, while my scriveners took themselves off to a tavern, usually Tackley’s since it was nearest. It seemed the new puppy had won praise for performing liberally in the garden and had not yet sullied Margaret’s clean floor a second time.

  ‘And have you found a name for her yet?’ I asked, after saying grace over our meal of mutton pottage.

  ‘Rafe wanted Isolde, from that story you told us,’ Alysoun said, ‘but I told him it was too sad.’

  Margaret raised her eyebrows at me.

  ‘It was a very . . . simple version of the tale,’ I reassured her.

  Alysoun had heard of Tristram and Isolde from her older cousin, Edmond’s daughter, the last time we had visited the farm, and had pestered me until I recounted a version suitable for children. Edmond’s daughter was fifteen and a romantic.

  ‘Aye.’ I nodded. ‘’Tis a sad name. Have you thought on one yourself, Alysoun?’

  ‘I can only think on boys’ names for dogs – Valiant, Holdfast, Gripper.’

  We all looked at the puppy, who was curled up near the hearth, despite the warmth of the spring day. I could have sworn her stomach was rounder than it had been. Perhaps Margaret had softened enough to give the mite some food. As if she felt our eyes on her, the puppy sat up suddenly, cocking her head to one side.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘She does not look like a Valiant or a Holdfast or a Gripper. Or even a Boarsdeath or a Stagkiller.’

  They laughed as the puppy got to her feet and waddled over to us, with a look of enquiry on her face.

  ‘Perhaps she is a Rowan,’ I said, ‘for although her coat is golden it has a reddish touch when the light catches it, like ripe rowan berries.’

  The puppy sidled up to me and nuzzled against the back of my knee.

  ‘Aye!’ Alysoun was delighted. ‘She knows her name already. Rowan it shall be.’

  ‘Then the first thing you must teach her is to come to her name. Take her into the garden and reward her every time she comes when called. I expect your aunt has some ends of stale bread you may give her.’

  ‘After you have eaten!’ Margaret said severely.

  The shop was quiet that afternoon, so I decided to walk out to Yardley’s farm earlier than I had intended, leaving Walter in charge. He had almost finished the two peciae when I left, and Roger had written and nearly decorated three pages, which was a good day’s work for him.

  My route took me out of the East Gate by the end of the Canditch, then past a huddled row of cottages built just beyond the town wall, before I passed the hospital of St John. I crossed the Cherwell by the East Bridge, a trembling wooden structure that needed constant shoring up after the winter floods had come roaring down the river. It lay outside the town’s jurisdiction and the maintenance of the bridge was a matter of constant dispute between the hospital and the other neighbouring landowners. Today it quaked under my feet and
I wondered, not for the first time, how it withstood the traffic of beasts and carts coming in from the farms lying east of Oxford. The road led on, up over Shotover Hill and eventually to London, which I had visited just once on business for my father-in-law.

  Today, however, I turned off along the narrow dirt track between hedges which led to Yardley’s farm. On either side the last of the blossom lingered on the blackthorn, while the small wild crab apples and the bullaces were in full bloom. It felt like walking under a bridal arch. Elizabeth and I had stepped out from the door of St Peter’s under branches of May blossom at this very season, seven years ago. My mother had come, but my father had refused to attend our wedding, holding it as a grievance against me that I had cast aside my years of schooling and the chance to rise, perhaps, as a cleric in the royal service, all to marry (as he put it) some shopkeeper’s wench.

  I could hear Yardley’s farm before I reached it. Although Thomas Yardley had the usual milch cows, a pig or two, and a small flock of Cotswold sheep, his real love was poultry. I had never been there at dawn, but the roosters’ greeting of the day must have been enough to wake folk halfway up the hill. No thief would ever dare attempt the farm, for his geese were as noisy as a pack of hounds and twice as vicious. I stood safely on the far side of the gate and shouted for Thomas.

  He came ambling across the yard, impervious to the geese, who made no attempt to attack him, probably the only creature on two legs or four who was safe from them.

  ‘Come for your goose feathers, Master Elyot? I’ve a sack put ready for you. Come you in-by.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, ‘the geese?’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ He made a vague waving gesture which the geese seemed to understand, for they drew back a foot or so as I stepped cautiously through the gate. Thomas led me to the barn, where he had the feathers ready for me in a small sack.