The Bookseller's Tale (Oxford Medieval Mysteries Book 1) Page 7

  Walter laughed. ‘That will please her. She always enjoys the chance to say that she has beaten any rival in gaining possession of a precious object.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true,’ I said thoughtfully. His words made me think of William’s copy of the Irish book. It would be someone of much more elevated tastes than Mistress Lapley who would want a beautiful copy of something so precious as that book. The cost of the copy, by the time it was written, illuminated, gilded, and bound in a jewelled, clasped cover, would be more than a year’s income for one of our richest merchants. Or it would have been. Now that William was dead, the copy might never be completed.

  Could this secret work of copying have any bearing on William’s murder? It seemed incongruous. But that the work had been secret was evident, else he would never have kept the sheets hidden under his mattress. Certainly the other students at Hart Hall, even the two who shared his bed chamber, had known nothing about it, or they would have told Jordain.

  And where had the work been carried out? He cannot have done the work in his chamber. In the room at Merton where the books were kept, then? Knowing, as I did, the ill-tempered and protective nature of Merton’s librarius, I could not imagine William working there, yet he must have done, for the precious Irish Psalter would never have been allowed out of the room. There would be no time today to go to Merton, with the business I had out at the west of town, but I would go there tomorrow and see what I could discover. I would say nothing about our discovery under William’s mattress, but try to find out whether the librarius knew the boy.

  ‘I will just let Mistress Makepeace know that I have returned,’ I told the scriveners, ‘then I will have a look at your work, Roger. And I will bring in the new supply of cheap quills before the students arrive.’

  I went through to the house, taking William’s satchel with me and carrying it up to my bed chamber. I took out the pages he had written and looked at them again. The work was exquisite. The drawings – as far as I could remember – quite as fine as the originals, although of course the details of the painting might not have matched their quality when they were finished. Some of the originals had been so fine they seemed to have been painted not with a brush but with a single hair.

  The lecture notes in the satchel were written on cheap paper and were probably of little interest, but I lifted them out and laid them beside the parchment on my bed, intending to look at them later . Then I noticed there was something else in the satchel. I drew it out.

  It was a key. A heavy iron key. The key to a house door.

  Chapter Four

  After dinner I sat down with the original French book of Robin Hood which Roger had been copying and the pile of his manuscript pages, which I turned over carefully, one after the other. When he had first begun the task, I had required him to make a fresh copy of a few of the pages, but as he had continued his work had improved. He had a good hand, although perhaps not quite as elegant as William’s had been in the pages we had found hidden under the mattress. It was in the illustrations that Roger lacked a certain freedom and originality, although he was a competent copyist. However, Mistress Lapley had said that she did not want the illuminations of the original to be copied; instead, Roger was to design something in the same style but unique to her own copy of the book. His work was adequate, if not exceptional, and I thought she would be satisfied.

  ‘Very good,’ I said, when I had finished, and I gave Roger a reassuring smile, for he was hovering over me like an expectant father awaiting the arrival of his firstborn.

  ‘You have done very well. You shall have an extra quarter noble for the work.’

  Walter raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He was paid considerably more than Roger, in recognition of his years of experience and his duties in managing the shop whenever I was absent. He may have thought me over generous to Roger on this occasion, but he understood very well that the younger man had a difficult temperament and needed encouragement.

  I took out my purse and handed Roger the small gold coin, which he took with mumbled thanks. I hoped that, with financial incentives and praise, he might not be tempted to steal my precious ink again.

  ‘I shall be away for the rest of the day,’ I told Walter as I wrapped Roger’s copied pages carefully in a clean cloth and tied the package with tape. ‘I shall take this first to the bookbinder, then call at Dafydd Hewlyn’s for a fresh supply of best quality parchment for the Carmelites. On my way home I may need to call at Hart Hall, so I will leave it to you to close the shop.’

  He nodded. ‘What would you have Roger do for the rest of the day?’

  I considered. ‘He could prepare more student peciae. Nay, wait.’ I had had an idea while I was eating dinner.

  I felt in the barrel under the counter where I had stored the widow’s books until I heard whether she accepted my offer.

  ‘This collection of tales – Sir Bevis and the rest – I think we might make a book of our own to sell. You may copy the text, Roger, and I think we might create our own illustrations. This is a hodgepodge, made up of different hands and the work of different illuminators. What say you to an illustration at the start of each tale, full page, and an illuminated capital? If you make a start on the text and leave room for the pictures, the three of us can discuss later how best to illustrate each tale.’

  Roger’s normally sulky face lit up. He had never before been given the opportunity to make a book of his own rather than a copy, although he had had some freedom with Mistress Lapley’s French book.

  ‘Aye, Master Elyot! Which parchment shall I use?’

  ‘Not the highest quality.’ I lifted a stack down from one of the high shelves. ‘We’ll use this. It is good, but not too expensive. Duodecimo will be the right size, I think.’

  Aware that Walter was looking somewhat glum, I grinned at him.

  ‘Enough peciae for one day, I think, when you finish that one. Could you shape half the good quills I bought yesterday – was it only yesterday? Then I thought you could prepare some texts for horn books. Say half a dozen. I’ll give you fresh red ink for the capitals. I see Roger has all but finished his. Tomorrow I will find you something more rewarding. You have slaved over the peciae long enough.’

  He returned my smile, with a look of relief. Boredom can set in after days of copying peciae, and a bored scrivener is an inaccurate scrivener.

  I fetched the flight feathers and the ink from the storeroom, then went through to the house to warn Margaret that I would be away for some time.

  ‘Can we come too, Papa?’ Alysoun asked. ‘Master Baker has given me a collar and lead for Rowan and he says she must learn to walk with them.’

  I shook my head. ‘It is much too far for the puppy. She is only a baby yet, remember. I am going all the way out past the castle, the whole length of Oxford. Her short legs would soon tire.’

  ‘I suppose.’ She picked up the puppy, who had been leaning against her feet, half asleep.

  ‘You could practise with the lead in the garden. That will be far enough for now. Did Jonathan persuade any of the millers to take a puppy?’

  ‘Aye, both at Trill’s Mill and the Dominicans’ Blackfriars Mill.’

  ‘You may tell Master Baker that Thomas Yardley will take a puppy. So much has happened since I left the farm, I have forgotten to tell him.’

  She counted up on her fingers. ‘Us and two mills and the farm, that’s four. Jonathan is sure his father will keep the terrier pup. We only need to find one more home, and they will all be saved!’

  ‘There is still Holywell Mill.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Jonathan does not like the miller there. He is afraid to ask.’

  Holywell’s miller had a reputation for beating any children he found stealing the apples from his orchard, so perhaps Jonathan had had an unpleasant encounter there. The boy ran wild much of the time.

  ‘I may need to go out to Holywell myself soon,’ I said. ‘Ask John Baker if he will keep the last pup until I can ask there.�
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  ‘Thank you, Papa!’ She embraced me about the knees and I dropped a kiss on the top of her red gold hair, which was in dire need of combing.

  ‘I must go. I will see you at supper time.’

  Alysoun followed me into the street and ran across to the bakery with the good news about the puppies. With Roger’s parcel of pages in my stiffened satchel – designed to keep books and manuscripts from damage – I set off up the High. In my satchel I also carried the key I had found amongst William Farringdon’s lecture notes. It had occurred to me that it might be nothing more than a key to Hart Hall. I did not think Jordain usually gave the students house keys, but William had been one of the most senior, perhaps entrusted to lock up in the evening.

  As for telling Alysoun I might go out to Holywell, I fully intended to trace the route of the Cherwell from the mill to the East Bridge, as soon as I could, in the hope that it might throw some light on what had happened to William, but I could not go there today, since it lay in quite the opposite direction from the bookbinders’ quarter.

  The choir was rehearsing as I passed the university church of St Mary the Virgin, the high, pure voices of the boys soaring above the men’s deeper tenors and basses. Then they would break off and repeat the same phrase again and again until the choirmaster was satisfied. I had sung as a boy in our parish church in the village, but after my voice broke I had never felt my voice good enough to sing in public. Besides, in Oxford there was an over abundance of men in holy orders to sing the services in the many churches and the chapels attached to some of the colleges. There were so many churches, you fell over them wherever you went, since Oxford was, in theory, a place of worship and religious study. That was to ignore the frequent outbreaks of violence and the ever increasing study of more secular subjects. My own parish of St Peter’s was the largest in the town, the church originally an ancient Saxon foundation. Only St-Peter-le-Bailey approached its parish in size. Some, like that of St-Michael-at-the-North-Gate were very small indeed.

  By the time I reached Carfax, I was quite hot, the weather having decided – for today, at least – that it really was spring. Here the four streets that joined the gates of old Saxon Oxford met at a crossroads: the High leading in from the East Gate, Fish Street from the South Gate, and Northgate Street from the north. Ahead of me Great Bailey should have led to the West Gate, but when the Normans built the Castle at the west end of the town they destroyed it. What was now called the West Gate resembled a postern, like little Smith Gate near Hart Hall.

  I passed Swindlestock Tavern, standing right on Carfax, as I headed down Great Bailey. As usual there was a good deal of noise spilling out from it. One of the rowdiest drinking places in town, it had a reputation for trouble, though there was unlikely to be anything to fear from it during the afternoon. The road here sloped down, to what I suppose must once have been a quiet river valley long before the town was built. Our two rivers, the Thames and the Cherwell, form a maze of streams and tributaries all round the town, and the area beyond the Castle (which I reached by skirting the mound and going out through the small West Gate), has been likened to Venice. I have never been to Italy, but I am told that whole town consists of islands.

  This waterlogged, marshy area west of Oxford is prone to flooding, but it suits a number of the businesses located here, which need water. Above all, for my purposes, the makers of parchment, who must leave their scoured skins for days on end in cages in the river, till they are washed clean and pure, and rendered soft by the action of the flowing water. Where there are parchment makers, there you will find bookbinders, and a number of bookbinders had established themselves on an island here in the Thames, entirely surrounded by water, reached, unsurprisingly, by Bookbinders Bridge. The road crossed to the far side of the island, leaving it in the west by the Small Bridge and continuing on to St Thomas’s and Osney Abbey.

  Once across Bookbinders Bridge on to the island, I turned left to the workshop of Henry Stalbroke. He was a small, frail-looking man, white-haired, with a pointed face and remarkable eyes, who might have been any age from fifty to eighty, for he was one of those who look like old men when they are boys, and like slightly withered boys when they are old men. My father-in-law had always dealt with him, and I had continued the partnership. Bookbinding is hard work, requiring strength as well as skill, but Henry Stalbroke’s frail appearance was deceptive. He was a master of his craft and although he had two journeymen working under him, and four apprentices, he still did all the most exquisite work himself, creating covers of tooled and gilded leather which were unique works of art. As well as book binding, the workshop also made the inlaid and jewelled leather boxes to hold the most precious books. Not only was this the finest bookbinder’s workshop in Oxford. Their work was also commissioned by the great abbeys and even the court. I hoped they would have time to take on the modest task of binding Mistress Lapley’s French book.

  ‘And how soon do you need the work completed, Nicholas?’ Master Stalbroke asked.

  ‘As soon as it can be managed,’ I said. ‘I have already expended a good deal of money on it, and it has occupied all Roger Pigot’s time for several weeks.’

  ‘I could not bind it myself until next month, but if you will entrust it to Thomas, he should be able to finish it by next week.’

  Thomas Needham was his most senior journeyman and a competent workman. His binding would be quite fine enough for Mistress Lapley.

  ‘Aye, let Thomas do the work,’ I said.

  We discussed which leather, out of the samples Master Stalbroke showed me, should be used for the binding, whether there should be clasps – not, I thought – and whether the edges of the pages should be tinted or gilded.

  ‘Not gilded,’ I said. ‘It is not a work of devotion, but the lady would probably like a touch of crimson on the edges of the pages.’

  We settled on the price, then I spent some time admiring the latest bindings, from two great bifolia Bibles (one for Osney, one for an abbey in Yorkshire) down to the little palm-sized books of hours, like my own most precious volume. I breathed deeply, drawing in the heady scent of newly polished leather, which I have found intoxicating ever since I fell in love with books as a boy, and I stroked the covers of the Bibles with admiring (not to say covetous) hands. Thomas unscrewed the press where a recently bound book had lain overnight, until the glue dried and the pages were flattened.

  ‘Here’s a pretty little book of hours, Master Elyot,’ he said. He was smiling mischievously, and I wondered why, as he handed it to me.

  I turned over the pages carefully. The tiny illuminations were exceptionally skilfully done, and I liked the lively antics of the squirrels and monkeys playing around the margins.

  ‘This is an artist who knows how to depict animals,’ I said, ‘unlike some. He has observed them carefully.’

  Master Stalbroke and Thomas both laughed.

  ‘She has done so,’ Master Stalbroke said. ‘That is the work of a nun at Godstow.’

  ‘Indeed!’ I was surprised. Some nuns could write, a few even might call themselves scribes, but I had not previously encountered one with this level of artistic skill.

  ‘A newcomer, I believe,’ Master Stalbroke said, ‘perhaps still a novice.’

  ‘A rare artist, if she is so young.’

  ‘They have both squirrels and a monkey as pets in the nunnery,’ Thomas said, ‘as well as dogs and cats, so she had models for her art.’

  ‘Even so, it needs a special quality to be able to depict what you see as accurately as this.’ I gave a wry grin. ‘It has always been a regret of mine that I can barely draw an apple. To draw a monkey would be impossible.’

  ‘To each of us the talents God has given us,’ Master Stalbroke said.

  Leaving Roger’s pages with them, I set off for the parchment maker, Dafydd Hewlyn, whose premises were at the lowest tip of the island, where the two branches of the Thames joined together again and provided a good flow of water through his cages. I could smell Hew
lyn’s workshop from some distance away, for the raw materials of his craft were the newly flayed skins of calves, sheep, and goats, which with great patience and seemingly a kind of magic were turned into the creamy sheets from which all books are made. Because of the unpleasant nature of much of their craft, parchment makers are sometimes regarded with a kind of scorn, yet without them there would be no books, without books there would be no scholars. Indeed, there would be little to raise us above the level of talking beasts.

  A wooden walkway lay between the buildings and the river, with posts at regular intervals, from which ropes disappeared into the water. From these, I knew, slatted wooden cages were suspended, in which the newly flayed skins were tied, one above the other with spaces between, so that the water could flow over both surfaces, washing away any remaining fragments of flesh or loose hairs left from the first preliminary scraping.

  I opened the door and ventured into the main workshop, trying not to breath too deeply, but even so the stench of the skins and the sharp smell of the lime caught at the back of my throat and made me cough. One of the apprentices was stirring the skins soaking in the lime and water bath, contained in one of the enormous stone de-hairing tanks. He was standing on a stool and using a long pole like a giant broomstick. The other tank contained the skins which had been scraped and were receiving a second soaking to bleach them before the final dressing.

  ‘Where is Master Hewlyn?’ I asked another apprentice, who was tying down the netting over a cage of fresh skins before it went into the river.

  ‘Out at the stretching frames,’ he said, jerking his head toward the door in the side of the workshop.

  I opened it and went through, glad to be out in the open air again. On a patch of ragged turf three stretching frames were set up, a large one for calf skins, the two smaller for sheep or goat skins. Strings were threaded through at crucial points all round the edges of the skins and drawn tightly outward to be tied to the wooden frames. From time to time, the strings would be pulled tighter, stretching the skins thinner and thinner. Dafydd’s journeyman was carefully scraping the calf skin with a curved two-handled knife, shaped like a half moon, removing the last of the hair which had been loosened in the lime bath.