The Bookseller's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  We made our way out of the churchyard, past the churchwarden, who nodded to us, and the growing crowd of idlers, who stared at us curiously. Turning right up Hammer Hall Lane, then sharp left, we passed the crowded hovels from which an unpleasant stench arose. They were dark and silent. None of their occupants would be abroad this early in the morning, for their trades belonged to the night. The lane ran along the back wall of Queen’s College before turning sharp right.

  There was a tavern and a shoemaker’s shop here, past the college wall, and Hammer Hall and Shield Hall, as well as two lodging houses owned by townsmen, which sometimes took students who could not find accommodation in one of the halls. The university was beginning to frown on these town lodgings, considering that the students were safer – and better regulated – when they lived in approved halls, but the recent increase in numbers meant that there were not rooms enough.

  A final left turn along under the northern portion of the town wall and we reached Hart Hall on the left, with Blackhall on the corner. Just beyond the end of the lane, where it met Catte Street, the narrow Smith Gate led through the wall, to where Oxford had spread out to the north past the old boundary of the town. A row of houses lay to both right and left along the Canditch. Although these houses had long plots behind, enough to grow food for a family, they cannot have been pleasant in hot weather when the ditch began to stink. The road north from Smith Gate led to Durham College and the Augustinian Priory, carefully sited far enough away from the ditch not to be troubled by the smell.

  The whole area of Oxford around Catte Street and the west end of Hammer Hall Lane was occupied by student halls, for as well as those in the lane, there were Arthur Hall and Cat Hall round the corner in Catte Street, and in the Turl Stapledon Hall, beginning to call itself Exeter College, full of Devonshire men. But none of the halls were large, mostly being former houses, and the students lived three or four to a room. William Farringdon would not have had much privacy, though from what Jordain had been able to discover so far, his fellow students could throw no light on any reason why someone should wish to kill him.

  Jordain threw open the door to Hart Hall and ushered me in. At some point earlier in the century, the hall had incorporated the adjacent building to the east, Micheldhall, so the whole place was something of a coney warren, with narrow passages and steps up and down where the two old houses had been knocked together. Arthur Hall, separated from Hart Hall by a small passage at the back, also served as an annexe, with more student rooms. There were two large chambers on the ground floor of the main building, which provided space for lectures and study, and contained a small library of books, while the bed chambers were upstairs and also in the other buildings. Without Jordain to guide me, I always felt I should need to unroll a string to find my way out again, like Theseus in the labyrinth.

  Jordain sniffed appreciatively. ‘Adam is cooking something tasty for our dinner.’

  I smiled. The cook was a large, slow-moving man who did his best with the limited ingredients Jordain was able to afford from the hall’s small income. Meals here consisted of a great deal of day-old bread (bought cheaply), porridge, boiled cabbage, large helpings of stodgy pease pudding, and barley frumenty, flavoured and moistened with a very small amount of mutton broth.

  I knew. I had eaten here. It was little wonder that Jordain appreciated Margaret’s cooking.

  ‘This way.’ Jordain led me down the passage between the two teaching rooms to a narrow staircase which led steeply up to the bed chambers above.

  ‘This was William’s room,’ he said, opening a door which groaned on its hinges, having sagged out of alignment.

  Beyond the door was a room about the size of my own bed chamber, but seeming much smaller because of all the furniture crowded into it. Each of the three students had a narrow bed and a coffer, and these took up most of the floor. There was a table where they could write, with a bench and a couple of stools. Two shelves, leaning somewhat drunkenly to the side, held a few precious books and the piles of paper on which the students had copied out the study texts they borrowed from my shop.

  ‘Which is William’s coffer?’ I asked.

  ‘This one, nearest the window.’ Jordain lifted the lid and propped it against the wall.

  The coffer was only about half full. There were a few neatly folded garments, including a thick, hooded winter cloak, put away now the weather was warmer. Three pairs of hose, rolled up. A satchel similar to the one Jordain used, probably for carrying books and papers. In the candle box attached to one side there were, indeed, three candles – wax candles, not cheap rush lights. It also contained a dozen or so good quills, carefully trimmed, and some sealing wax. No books or papers, except for some careful notes on ethics in the satchel, probably taken from the lectures Peter de Wallingford had said they attended, given by John Wycliffe, a young Regent Master, a contemporary of Jordain and me.

  Jordain lowered the coffer lid. ‘Nothing unusual here.’

  I peered under William’s bed. Nothing there but a pair of winter boots.

  ‘What about these books and papers?’ I pointed to the two shelves.

  We checked the books, one by one. They were all well-worn copies of the most popular student texts, which are bought and sold until they fall to pieces. Three contained William’s name, the others belonged to the students with whom he shared the room.

  ‘I suppose we should look at the papers,’ Jordain said reluctantly. ‘I must confess, Nicholas, I do not care for this. A man deserves his privacy, even men as young as these.’

  ‘In the general way, I agree,’ I said, ‘but we are faced with the murder of an apparently blameless young man. I think it must be done.’

  Sheet by sheet, we went through the stacks of papers. There were three piles, clearly one belonging to each student. The contents were much the same in all three – copies made from the peciae they rented from me, from which they could put together a copy of any study text they did not own in book form. Books being so expensive, few students could afford to buy them, except such worn old copies as these three possessed. Besides, I always found when I was a student that the copying of a book, section by section, for myself, helped to fix it in my mind better than simply reading it. So Necessity became a scholar’s best teacher.

  ‘These are William’s papers,’ Jordain said, indicating a stack written in a beautiful even hand. They might be merely for personal study, but they were in best scrivener’s writing.

  ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘I recognise his hand. Do you not remember? In the summer, two years ago, when Roger broke his wrist in some foolish game of football, I employed William for several weeks as a scrivener. He was a talented illuminator as well, with a clever sense of humour. I told him then that if he ever decided to leave the academic life I would give him a permanent job in my shop.’

  ‘So you did. I had forgotten that. He makes the other lads’ writing look like a tangle of spider’s webs.’

  We replaced the piles of paper where we had found them and looked around the room. There was little else to see. One academic gown hung from a peg in the door.

  ‘That is William’s,’ Jordain said. ‘He must have gone out yesterday without it.’

  ‘So not on any university business,’ I said. ‘I wonder why he was there, somewhere between the East Bridge and Holywell Mill? I told the constable he was probably rabbitting, but of course I do not believe that.’

  ‘The lads do sometimes go rabbitting for the pot,’ Jordain said, ‘but I do not think William would go off alone.’

  ‘I keep coming back to what Peter said about the two men he saw with William. And that William seemed afraid.’

  ‘Are you thinking he went to meet them?’

  ‘Why should he?’ I shook my head. ‘If he was afraid of them? It makes no sense.’

  I cast my eyes round the room again. Everything was just as one would expect in a student room, except that it was neater than most. I knew that Jordain kept a strict watch on the stude
nts under his care. He was almost as much of a domestic tyrant as my sister.

  ‘There is one place we have not looked,’ I said, walking over to William’s bed. I lifted the somewhat lumpy pillow. Underneath, carefully folded, was a night shift. It looked somehow particularly poignant, waiting for a wearer who would never return. Then I heaved up the straw mattress and rolled it back.

  ‘Ah!’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something here.’

  It was a small sheaf of parchment sheets. I lifted them up and let the mattress fall back. Sitting down on the bed, I examined them.

  ‘Now this,’ I said, ‘is very strange.’

  Jordain sat down next to me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This is William’s hand,’ I said, ‘his most careful and elegant hand. And look at the quality of his drawings! Not coloured in yet, only outlined. But then, we found no coloured inks, did we? He must have planned to finish when he had access to coloured inks, but where would he get them? From me?’

  ‘But what is it, Nicholas?’

  I did not answer him at first, but turned over the sheets carefully until I was sure. They were beautifully executed, all but the last, which was still unused. I had grieved for the boy before; now I grieved also for a lost artist.

  I laid the parchment aside and clasped my hands about my knee.

  ‘You remember that I was offered a place at Merton, to study for a doctorate in law?’

  ‘Aye. Then gave it all up to marry Elizabeth.’

  I did not need to be reminded.

  ‘The Warden of Merton – Robert Trenge, it was then – showed me their collection of books, when they thought I would be joining them. It is remarkable, such a collection for a single college, and they hope to build a library to house them one day soon. Some of the books are very fine, including a remarkable Psalter, written and illuminated for an Irish king, some five hundred years ago. How they came by it, I cannot guess. You know that I have always loved books, even before I became a bookseller.’

  He grinned. ‘I know that you near enough starved yourself, that first year, so that you could buy your own book of hours from Master Hadley.’

  ‘Aye.’ I smiled sadly. ‘That was when I first met Elizabeth. I was fourteen and she was twelve, already helping her father in the shop. Master Hadley promised to keep the book aside for me, and each week I gave him a little – sixpence or a penny – toward the cost. He would let me peep at it, and placed a ribbon to show how much of the book was mine.’

  I shook myself. Now I still had the book, but had lost Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, knowing my interest in illuminated texts, the Warden allowed me to look through their great treasure, the Irish book. I had never seen anything to match it, neither then nor since. Until now.’

  I picked up the sheets I had found under William’s mattress and held them out to Jordain.

  ‘Until I saw these.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘These are copies. Very fine copies, but copies nonetheless, of the opening of that Irish Psalter. The text might have come from any Psalter, but the drawings are distinctive. Characteristically Irish. The boy was very talented indeed. Not only has he captured the antique writing. His drawings – even though they are but outlines – capture the flowing freedom of the originals. Once they had been coloured and gilded, they would have been magnificent.’ I studied the drawings again. ‘I wonder where he hoped to obtain gold leaf for the gilding? I keep it for the monastic scribes, but it is very costly.’

  ‘I still do not understand.’ Jordain reached out and touched one of the entwined capitals with the tip of his finger. ‘If the original book is kept in the Merton collection, how could William have copied it? And why?’

  ‘The “why” is not so difficult,’ I said. ‘Since he had the skill – and I know too that he loved books – why not make a copy for himself? But the “how”? That raises many questions. How was he able to see and copy the book? For although this is only the first part, it would have taken many hours. Did he persuade someone at Merton to admit him to their collection? Possibly. They can sometimes be persuaded to allow other scholars to read their books, and I know William was set to continue to a higher degree. Though their keeper of books would be unlikely to allow a student near such a treasure.’

  ‘He was to be admitted to Merton as a junior Fellow this coming Michaelmas term,’ Jordain said slowly. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘very few are granted the chance to handle that particular book. It is kept in a locked box and only brought out rarely. It was an exceptional favour that I was shown it. I cannot imagine that William would have been given the opportunity.’

  ‘But, as you say, you were shown it, at much the same age.’

  ‘Aye, and the Fellow who cares for the books gave the Warden a scolding for it! Said I was too young to be allowed to touch anything so precious. He took it away from me and locked it in its box. The Warden himself was quite abashed. Robert Trenge died two years ago and the new Warden, William Durant, is far less welcoming to university men who do not belong to Merton. So how could William have had the book in front of him for many hours? Their custodian of books survived the Death. The same man, Philip Olney, still rules his literary domain. I have had a number of dealings with him since, in matters of business.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ Jordain agreed. ‘So what shall we do with these?’ He pointed to the sheets, lying between us on William’s bed.

  ‘We should not leave them here, under the mattress. No doubt you will need to take in another student to occupy this room. I think we should remove these until we can discover just what William was doing.’

  I looked around, wondering how I might carry the sheets but keep them safe.

  ‘May I borrow William’s satchel? You may have it back when you return his belongings to his family.’

  Jordain lifted the satchel out of William’s coffer and handed it to me. ‘Do you want to leave these other notes here?’

  ‘Nay. They are from Wycliffe’s lectures, and it was after one of them that Peter saw William with the two men. I do not suppose there is anything . . . but I will read through them.’

  We went soberly down the stairs again. I was turning over the puzzle in my mind, and I suppose Jordain was as well, for he said suddenly, ‘Perhaps Merton wanted a copy made of the book, so that they might sell it. Or present it to some noble. Or even the king.’

  I looked at him dubiously. ‘If that were the case, would they not have brought it to me, or taken it to one of the monasteries? The Franciscans have an excellent copyist, Brother Severus. Why use a student, a boy of eighteen, whatever his skill?’

  Jordain shrugged. ‘Impossible to know.’

  We had reached the front door. ‘I have bejant students from Cat Hall coming for a disputation shortly,’ Jordain said.

  I nodded, my attention still occupied by this curious mystery we had uncovered. I turned in the open doorway. ‘What I also find strange is this: William was not particularly well-to-do, was he?’

  Jordain shook his head.

  ‘Then where did he get the chinks to buy that parchment? It is of the highest possible quality. Very costly. And I do not think it came from my shop.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Every batch of parchment has its own appearance – there are subtle differences in the feel and shade. You come to recognise them, working as I do. In particular with that very fine parchment. It did not come from my shop, I would swear to it. There are two other stationers in Oxford, but neither is licensed by the university, and neither deals in parchment of this quality. Where, I wonder, did William come by it?’

  After I left Hart Hall, I hurried home as fast as I could go. I had been away from the shop far longer than I had intended, and I could only hope Walter and Roger had been able to deal with any customers who might have arrived in my absence. At least I would have returned before the usual crowd of students a
rrived after morning lectures.

  As I passed the broken cottages I noticed a thin plume of smoke rising from the smoke hole in one of the roofs. None of these hovels had the luxury of a hearth with a chimney, such as we had. The crowd outside St Peter’s gate had thinned a little, but there were still twenty or so standing about. I could not imagine what they were hoping to see. The churchwarden continued patiently standing guard, or rather sitting, for he had brought a stool from the church and planted it firmly inside the gate. I gave him a nod as I passed and hurried on to the High Street.

  The shop was empty apart from the two scriveners, to my relief.

  ‘I am sorry to have left you for so long,’ I said. ‘Have there been many customers?’

  I saw them eying the unfamiliar satchel, but they did not comment on it.

  ‘Some came just to poke their noses into other folks’ business,’ Walter said, with a wry grin. ‘When they found you were not here and I pressed them as to what they might wish to buy, they made off again. The librarius from the Carmelite Friary came in to ask when their order would be sent. He said they were running very short of parchment and red ink.’

  I nodded. I would need to make a trip out beyond the castle that afternoon, where the skinner who prepared my parchments had his workshop and soaking cages in one of the many side streams of the Thames. While I was there, I could ask him whether he had supplied the best quality to anyone other than myself.

  ‘Mistress Lapley had been in,’ Roger said. ‘Demanding to know when her Robin Hood book will be ready. She thinks a man may snap his fingers and suddenly a book appears.’ He gave an angry grimace. ‘She does not understand the labour it needs to make a book.’

  ‘Indeed, she does not,’ I said soothingly. If Roger lost his temper, his work suffered. ‘She has not been promised it for another ten days.’

  ‘As for that,’ Roger admitted, ‘I should have it finished by dinner time, or soon after.’

  ‘That is excellent news,’ I said. ‘If that is the case, I can take it to the book binders when I go for the parchment this afternoon. If they have not much work in hand, we may even present the lady with her book a few days early. And if the widow from Banbury is satisfied with my prices for her books, I shall offer Mistress Lapley the chance to buy the collection of tales before I display it in the shop.’