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

  ‘Good day to ’ee, Dafydd,’ I said.

  The Welshman nodded to me as he picked up one of the smaller frames and headed to another shed, where the fine work on the skins was carried out. I followed him, but knew better than to offer to help him carry the frame. He was short and bow-legged, with a thatch of dark hair and a truculent expression, but he was a master parchment maker.

  ‘What do ’ee want, then?’ he asked, as he began untying the skin from the frame. I thought it was sheep skin, but it might have been goat. It was difficult to tell at this stage, but I could judge the difference in the finished parchments by the feel between my fingers.

  Dafydd’s English was perfect, since he had lived in Oxford for all his adult life, but he had never lost the sing-song inflection of his native land, his sentences soared and dipped like music, like the hills and valleys of Wales.

  ‘I need to place a large order with you,’ I said. ‘A good supply of your finest quality, and some of the everyday.’

  He nodded. ‘You must wait a while then.’

  I was accustomed to this. Although I was one of his best customers, he would always put the welfare of his skins ahead of the convenience of his clients. Having unstrung the skin from the frame and laid it flat on his wide table, he shouted for his journeyman to pin out another skin on to the empty frame. When the journeyman, as taciturn as his master, had carried it off, Dafydd picked up a pumice stone with a curved top which fitted neatly into his hand, and began smoothing the stretched skin with the flat lower surface of the stone. This was where the real skill came in. Rubbing too hard would tear the skin, and all the precious labour would be lost. Too faint-hearted an effort and the parchment would be left rough and uneven, useless for the preparation of books.

  I hitched up a stool and sat down to watch. I never cease to wonder at the skill which can turn animal hide into creamy soft parchment, so thin that the light shines through it. I looked around me. The walls of the shed were lined with shelves. On some lay piles of prepared but uncut skins, and on others the final trimmed sheets, some for the great bifolia, like the ones I had seen in the bookbinder’s workshop, down to the small fine sixteen-folds for the best quality small books. A separate shelf held the poorer sheets which were adequate for schoolboy texts.

  When I judged that Dafydd was sufficiently content in his work, I ventured to ask the question which was my other reason for coming here today.

  ‘Any strangers about lately?’ I asked, making my voice as casual as possible. ‘Strangers buying high quality parchment?’

  He eyed me from under bushy black eyebrows, in which a few grey hairs flickered. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he said bluntly.

  ‘I have come across some unfinished pages in odd circumstances,’ I said, ‘and they were not written on parchment I had supplied. I wondered where it might have come from. Too fine to be sold by the other stationers in Oxford, so perhaps someone bought it directly from you.’

  I reached into my satchel for the single blank sheet from William’s room and held it out to him. Dafydd laid down his pumice stone, dusted his hands on his apron, and took it from me. He carried it over to the open door and examined it, then handed it back before resuming the smoothing of the skin.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘Aye, that is one of mine.’

  My heart gave a small leap. Perhaps this would throw light on the tangled mystery of William’s death.

  ‘Who bought it, and when?’

  He glowered at me. ‘Why do you want to know?’ He asked again.

  I sighed. Dafydd Hewlyn could be both difficult and stubborn. I had thought it best to keep the discoveries Jordain and I had made to ourselves for the present, but it was clear Dafydd was not prepared to tell me more until I revealed at least some of those discoveries to him.

  ‘I do not know whether word has reached you out here, but a student died in the Cherwell yesterday, and I was the one to find him. No one yet knows what happened. He lived at Hart Hall, and when the Warden and I looked in his room, we found some pages under his mattress. That is one of them.’

  ‘That seems little enough reason for you to be coming all the way out here to ask about it.’

  He had his eyes on his work, but I realised that he was paying sharp attention.

  ‘We think – Master Brinkylsworth and I think – that the boy’s death may not have been an accident. It seemed strange to us that he should have hidden the pages under his mattress. And as they were of this very fine quality, I suspected that they came from you. If the pages have anything to do with his death, we thought we should find out. I was coming here anyway, to order parchment from you and to take a book to be bound by Master Stalbroke.’

  He shrugged. ‘I suppose there is no harm in telling you. It must have been about three weeks gone. Aye, it would be three weeks. Two men came, said I’d been recommended by one of the college Fellows. They wanted a quarter ream of the best quality parchment, duodecimo, like that.’ He pointed to the blank sheet, which I had laid on the edge of his table. ‘It was an odd order, because I do not sell much of that size in that quality, except to the large abbeys. What were these pages you found?’

  ‘They seemed to be for a Psalter,’ I said.

  One matter I was not going to reveal was that I knew which Psalter.

  ‘Hmm, well that makes some sense, though not altogether. They said they were buying for Greyfriars in London, but why come all the way to Oxford, when they could buy in London? I’m not such an arrogant fool as to think I am the only man to make fine parchment. There will be plenty in London.’

  ‘Were they friars?’

  He gave a snort. ‘Nothing like. Men of the world. I would have thought traders of some sort – not great merchants, small men – save that there was a certain shifty look about them. The sort you see at the great fairs, who are long gone before you find how faulty were the goods they sold you.’

  ‘Then why did they not simply take the parchment back to London to sell? Instead of giving it to this student?’

  ‘Aye, why not? Perhaps they thought they could have a cheap job of scribing done by a student, then sell the book for a high price in London. Or at one of the fairs, as I say. I do not believe they were buying for Greyfriars.’

  ‘What were they like, these men? Can you describe them?’

  He squinted and stopped smoothing for a moment. ‘Both about your height, one a mite taller. Heavy built, both o’them. Especially the bigger man.’

  ‘Age? Colouring?’

  ‘My age, I’d say, somewhere short of fifty. One dark brown, one lighter, reddish. The reddish-haired one was pock-marked.’ He frowned. ‘The other had been in a fight some time and had his nose broken, it hadn’t healed straight. A rough man, he looked. Violent.’

  ‘Well, I thank you, Dafydd. I do not know whether any of this has a bearing on the boy’s death, but it’s as well to find out. By all accounts he was a decent lad.’

  ‘Aye, well, we’ve seen too much death these last few years to want any more, especially of the young. Now, I must finish this today. Tell me what you have come to buy and I’ll have one of the boys pack it up for you.’

  I chose my supplies from the stock on his shelves and was soon heading back to Bookbinders Bridge, my satchel weighed down with the parchment. On the whole I was encouraged by what I had learned from Dafydd Hewlyn. Indeed, I had never known him so forthcoming and I suspected it was because he had not liked the two men from London. If they really were from London. What I must do was to question Peter de Wallingford more closely about the men he had seen with William. It was likely they were the same men, though I was not certain that would make matters any clearer.

  It was evening by the time I had made my way back across Oxford, turning up Northgate Street after I came to Carfax, then following the town wall until I reached Hart Hall. Jordain was sitting at a table in one of the large rooms, struggling to read a student’s poor handwriting by the light of a rush dip, which reminded me
that William had possessed some good wax candles, rarely to be found in Hart Hall. Was that important?

  I sat down opposite Jordain.

  ‘I am afraid we have already supped,’ he said, apologetically, ‘but there may be some left.’

  A smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air. Even had I wanted some, I was sure his hungry students would have eaten the lot. I shook my head.

  ‘Margaret will have kept me something. I shall not stay long. I have been over to the bookbinder’s and parchment maker’s.

  I told him all that I had learned from Dafydd Hewlyn.

  ‘It does sound,’ Jordain said slowly, ‘as though these might be the same two men seen by that student from St Edmund Hall. We need to question him closely. So Dafydd thinks these men bought parchment then persuaded – and I suppose paid – William to copy the Psalter for them. He thinks they might be the sort of untrustworthy traders who haunt the big fairs.’

  ‘Aye. But Dafydd’s idea does not quite make sense,’ I said. ‘For one thing, why would such men buy the very finest quality of parchment for such a fraud? Surely they would use a cheap sort, and pass it off, perhaps in a dim light. They would not waste their money on Dafydd’s best.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘And besides, I did not tell Dafydd what book William was copying, merely that it looked like a Psalter, not that it was that ancient Irish treasure which Merton possesses. If these men were the fraudsters he supposes, they would not go to so much trouble. They would use some common Psalter.’

  ‘Unless–’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Suppose some rich nobleman coveted a copy of that particular book. Might he hire these men to arrange for a copy to be made? In that case, it needs must be written on the best parchment, for such a man would not tolerate anything less.’

  ‘Aye.’ I rubbed my chin and felt the bristles rasp. I had not shaved that day. ‘It does not solve the most perplexing problem. How was William able to see and copy the original Irish book? I cannot imagine how these men could have obtained it. How would they even make their way into Merton?’

  Jordain shook his head in bafflement. ‘You have the right of it. Until we know the answer to that, we cannot understand what it was that William was involved in. Whatever it was, I do not like the sound of it, nor does it accord with all I know of the boy.’

  ‘And even then,’ I said, ‘we cannot know how it relates to his murder. It must, somehow, for these men were about no honest affair. Dafydd was sure of it. And I would say he is a shrewd judge of character.’

  ‘Well, I am glad you stopped to tell me what you discovered, but you must away home, or Margaret will be wanting to roast me before a slow fire.’

  ‘There is something else,’ I said.

  I felt in my satchel underneath the package Dafydd’s boy had made up for me, and drew out the key.

  ‘When I looked through the notes which were in William’s satchel, I found this at the bottom.’ I handed it to him. ‘It looks like a house key. Or I suppose it might be the key to a large strong box. It may mean nothing. Did you give William a door key for Hart Hall?’

  Jordain turned the key over in his hands and shook his head. ‘Nay, this is not our key, it is quite different. See.’

  He drew up a key which hung by a thin chain from his belt. I knew that he carried it, but could not quite remember its shape. He laid the two keys side by side on the table. They were roughly the same size, about six inches long, but the shapes bore no resemblance to each other.

  ‘Do you think it is a house key?’ I said. ‘I am not sure.’

  ‘It certainly looks like one. But you are right, it might be something else. It could belong to a strong box or a locked coffer. Some of those are this large.’

  ‘Perhaps it means nothing.’ I dropped William’s key into my scrip. ‘It may be the key to his own home, though I do not know why he should have carried it off with him when he came to Oxford. Such keys as this – for it fits a complex lock – are not cheap.’

  ‘Perhaps it is the key to his home.’ Jordain sighed. ‘I wrote to the boy’s mother today. His father is lately dead. It is a task I hate. I thought after all the deaths in the pestilence that I should never need to do it again.’

  ‘Was he an only child?’

  ‘An only son. I believe there is a younger sister.’

  ‘With the father dead and now William, they may find life hard. Do you know anything of their circumstances?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not very prosperous, I expect. Perhaps they needed money, which might explain why he would undertake a job of copying. William never spoke much about his past and his family, for he was looking to the future. Small gentry, I believe, or yeomen. Had he gone on to the promising future that lay ahead of him, he would have been able to support a widowed mother and sister, but now–’

  ‘Every way you look at it, this is a bad business,’ I said. ‘Not just the murder, but whatever is behind it, and the hardships that lie in the future.’

  I got up. ‘’Tis time I was away. Tomorrow we had best go to the coroners and tell them what we know.’

  ‘Are they even in Oxford?’

  I looked at him blankly. ‘That I do not know. I will ask the constable.’

  He saw me to the door. ‘Do not go home by Hammer Hall Lane, not this late. It is quite dark.’

  ‘Nay, never fear!’ I laughed. ‘I shall go down Catte Street to St Mary the Virgin. God give you good night, Jordain.’

  ‘And you, Nicholas.’

  Even Catte Street is narrow and dark at this time of night, although it has not the sinister reputation of the cluster of hovels at the far bend of Hammer Hall Lane. A few lights shone out from Cat Hall, and I could hear laughter and drunken singing, so it seemed the students there were having a riotous evening, unlike Jordain’s students, who were so quiet they must have been studying or already abed. I quickened my steps, for I always tried to be at home when the children went to bed and I had not been there the previous evening. I had already failed in my promise to be home in time for their supper. Although Alysoun had not been much above two years old when her mother died, she had felt the loss. Sometimes I think she was afraid she would lose me as well, and would not always settle to sleep unless I was there to kiss her goodnight.

  As Catte Street narrowed alongside St Mary’s, my footsteps echoed between the hard-baked earth of the street and the wall of the church. I thought I could hear other footsteps behind me, but when I stopped and looked over my shoulder, I could see no one, although now I was beyond the light from Cat Hall it was very dark. I told myself I was imagining the sound. It was probably nothing more than a repeated echo between the close stone walls.

  Nevertheless, I turned with relief into the wider High Street. There were a few taverns here, still displaying flaming torches before their doors, though no student should have been drinking there at this hour. The tavern-keepers were probably flouting the rules for townspeople as well, but since the pestilence such regulations had become slack. In a world where life seemed so fragile, even the strictest of town authorities were reluctant to clamp down on the few pleasures left in life.

  I thought of what Jordain had said, about writing to William’s mother. She must have believed that her son was safe, now that the time of pestilence was past. I had been too lost in my own grief at that time to pay much heed to Jordain, but it had also proved hard for him. The warden of Hart Hall had died about halfway through the plague, and Jordain had been appointed in his place, although he was but newly a Regent Master and only twenty years of age at the time. I knew that he had written to the families of all those students under his care who had died, but selfishly I had never given thought to the toll it must have taken on him. Little wonder that he had found the letter to Mistress Farringdon difficult to write. I wondered whether she could read, or whether she would be obliged to find someone to read it for her. Even receiving a letter would probably be a shock to her. Unless, poor woman, she thought i
t was a letter from her son.

  I was glad to see that Margaret had left a rush light burning for me in the window of her room above the shop, with the shutters open, so that I was able to see to unlock the door of the shop. We never left it unlocked at night, for some of my stock was valuable and might prove a temptation to thieves. Once inside, I relocked the door and drew the bolts across. A light shone through from the house, so, as I suspected, Margaret had waited up for me. I laid my satchel on the counter and walked through to the kitchen.

  I found her dozing in the wicker chair beside a dying fire. She had had little sleep the night before, and I felt guilty that I had kept her up for a second night. A plate was laid out on the table, with a slice of cold pease pudding, bread, a few early radishes from the garden, and a pot of custard. A jug of ale was covered with a cloth to keep the flies out.

  I lifted a stool out from under the table as quietly as I could, but when I sat down, the legs scraped a little on the flagstones and Margaret gave a soft snort and a cough, and sat up.

  ‘I did not think you would be so late, Nicholas,’ she said reprovingly.

  ‘It is not so very late,’ I said, pouring myself some ale and cutting off a portion of the pease pudding. ‘You are tired, after yesterday. It is a long walk to Bookbinders Island and back. And I needed to see Jordain before I came home.’

  She rose from the chair and stretched. ‘I am stiff. I must be getting old.’

  She joined me at the table, pouring herself some ale and helping herself to one of my radishes.