by Ellis Peters
*
The house of Girard of Lythwood, like so many of the merchant burgages of Shrewsbury, was in the shape of an L, the short base directly on the street, and pierced by an arched entry leading through to the yard and garden behind. The base of the L was of only one storey, and provided the shop where Jevan, the younger brother, stored and sold his finished leaves and gatherings of vellum and the cured skins from which they were folded and cut to order. The upright of the L showed its gable end to the street, and consisted of a low undercroft and the living floor above, with a loft in the steep roof that provided extra sleeping quarters. The entire burgage was not large, space being valuable within so enclosed a town, in its tight noose of river. Outside the loop, in the suburbs of Frankwell on one side and the Foregate on the other, there was room to expand, but within the wall every inch of ground had to be used to the best advantage.
Elave halted before the house, and stood a moment to take in the strangeness of what he felt, a sudden warmth of homecoming, an almost panic reluctance to go in and declare himself, a mute wonder at the smallness of the house that had been his home for a number of years. In the overwhelming basilicas of Constantinople, as in the profound isolation of deserts, a man grows used to immensity.
He went in slowly through the narrow entry and into the yard. On his right the stables, the byre for the cow, the store shed and low coop for the chickens were just as he remembered them, and on his left the house door stood wide open, as it always had on such summer days. A woman was just coming up from the garden that stretched away beyond the house, with a basket of clothes in her arms, crisp washing just gathered from the hedge. She observed the stranger entering, and quickened her step to meet him.
‘Goodday, sir! If you’re wanting my husband…’ She halted there, astonished, recognising but not believing at first what she saw. Between eighteen and twenty-five a young man does not change so much as to be unrecognisable to his own family, however he may have filled out and matured during that time. It was simply that she had had no warning, no word to indicate that he was within five hundred miles of her.
‘Mistress Margaret,’ said Elave, ‘you’ve not forgotten me?’
The voice completed what his face had begun. She flushed bright with acceptance and evident pleasure. ‘Dear, now, and it is you! Just for a moment there you had me struck out of my wits, thinking I was seeing visions, and you still half the world away, in some outlandish place. Well, now, and here you are safe and sound, after all that journeying. Glad I am to see you again, boy, and so will Girard and Jevan be. Who’d have thought you’d spring out of nowhere like this, all in a moment, and just in time for Saint Winifred’s festival. Come within, come, let me put this laundry down and get you a draught to drink, and tell me how you’ve fared all this long time.’
She freed a hand to take him warmly by the arm and usher him within, to a bench by the unshuttered window of the hall, with such voluble goodwill that his silence passed unnoticed. She was a neat, brown-haired, bustling woman in her middle forties, healthy and hardworking and a good and discreet neighbour, and her shining housekeeping reflected her own strong-willed brightness.
‘Girard’s away making up the wool clip, he’ll be a day or so yet. His face will be a sight to see when he comes in and sees Uncle William sitting here at the table like in the old days. Where is he? Is he following you up now, or had he business below at the abbey?’
Elave drew breath and said what had to be said. ‘He’ll not be coming, Mistress.’
‘Not coming?’ she said, astonished, turning sharply in the doorway of her larder.
‘Sorry I am to have no better word to bring you. Master William died in France, before we could embark for home. But I’ve brought him home, as I promised him I would. He lies at the abbey now, and tomorrow he’s to be buried there, in the cemetery among the patrons of the house.’
She stood motionless, staring at him with pitcher and cup forgotten in her hands, and for a long moment she was silent.
‘It was what he wanted,’ said Elave. ‘He did what he set out to do, and he has what he wanted.’
‘Not everyone can say as much,’ said Margaret slowly. ‘So Uncle William’s gone! Business below at the abbey, did I say? And so he has, but not as I supposed. And you left to bring him over the sea alone! And Girard away, and who’s to tell where at this moment? It will grieve him if he’s not here to pay the last dues to a good man.’ She shook herself, and stirred out of her brief stillness, practical always. ‘Well, now, no fault of yours, you did well by him, and have no need to look back. Sit you down and be easy. You’re home, at least, done your wanderings for the time being, you can do with a rest.’
She brought him ale, and sat down beside him, considering without distress all that was now needful. A competent woman, she would have everything ordered and seemly whether her husband returned in time or not.
‘He was nearing eighty years old,’ she said, ‘by my reckoning. He had a good life, and was a good kinsman and a good neighbour, and he ended doing a blessed thing, and one that he wanted with all his heart, once that old preacher from St. Osyth’s put the thought in his mind. There,’ said Margaret, shaking her head with a sigh, ‘here I am harking back like a fool, and I never meant to. Time’s short! I should have thought the abbot could have sent us word of the need as soon as you came in at the gatehouse.’
‘He knew nothing of it until this morning at chapter. He’s been here only four years, and we’ve been gone seven. But everything is in hand now.’
‘Maybe it is, down there, but I must see to it that all’s ready up here, for there’ll be all the neighbours in to join us, and I hope you’ll come back with us, after the funeral. Conan’s here, that’s lucky, I’ll send him west to see if he can find Girard in time, though there’s no knowing just where he’ll be. There are six flocks he has to deal with out there. Sit you here quietly, while I go and bring Jevan from the shop, and Aldwin from his books, and you can tell us all how it was with the old man. Fortunata’s off in the town marketing, but she’ll surely be back soon.’
She was off on the instant, bustling out to fetch Jevan out of his shop, and Elave was left breathless and mute with her ready volubility, having had no chance as yet to mention the charge he had still to deliver. In a few minutes she was back with the vellum-maker, the clerk, and the shepherd Conan hard on her heels, the entire core of the household but for the absent fosterchild. All these Elave knew well from his former service, and only one was much changed. Conan had been a youngster of twenty when last seen, slender and willowy, now he had broadened out and put on flesh and muscle, swelling into gross good looks, ruddy and strong with outdoor living. Aldwin had entered the household in Girard’s service, and stepped into Elave’s shoes when William took his own boy with him on pilgrimage. A man of past forty at that time, barely literate but quick with numbers as a gift of nature, Aldwin looked much the same now at nearing fifty, but that his hair had rather more grey in it, and was thinning on the crown. He had had to work hard to earn his place and hold it, and his long face had set into defensive lines of effort and anxiety. Elave had got his letters early, from a priest who had seen his small parishioner’s promise and taken pains to bring it to fruit, and the boy had shamelessly enjoyed his superiority when he had worked in Aldwin’s company. He remembered now how he had happily passed on his own skills to the much older man, not out of any genuine wish to help him, but rather to impress and dazzle both Aldwin and the observers with his own cleverness. He was older and wiser now, he had discovered how great was the world and how small his own person. He was glad that Aldwin should have this secure place, this sound roof over his head, and no one now to threaten his tenure.
Jevan of Lythwood was just past forty, seven years younger than his brother, tall, erect and lightly built, with a clean-shaven, scholarly face. He had not been formally educated in boyhood, but by reason of taking early to the craft of vellum-making he had come to the notice of lettered men who
bought from him, monastics, clerks, even a few among the lords of local manors who had some learning, and being of very quick and eager intelligence he had set himself to learn from them, aroused their interest to help him forward, and turned himself into a scholar, the only person in this house who could read Latin, or more than a few words of English. It was good for business that the seller of parchments should measure up to the quality of his work, and understand the uses the cultured world made of it.
All these came hurrying in on Margaret’s heels to gather familiarly around the table, and welcome back the traveller and his news. The loss of William, old, fulfilled, and delivered from this world in a state of grace and to the resting-place he had desired, was not a tragedy, but the completion of an altogether satisfactory life, the more easily and readily accepted because he had been gone from this household for seven years, and the gap he had left had closed gently, and had not now been torn open again by his recovered presence. Elave told what he could of the journey home, of the recurring bouts of illness, and the death, a gentle death in a clean bed and with a soul confessed and shriven, at Valognes, not far from the port where he should have embarked for home.
‘And his funeral is to be tomorrow,’ said Jevan. ‘At what hour?’
‘After the Mass at ten. The abbot is to take the office himself. He stood by my master’s claim for admittance,’ said Elave by way of explanation, ‘against some visiting canon there from Canterbury. One of the bishop’s deacons is travelling with him, and let out like a fool some old business of falling out with a travelling preacher, years ago, and this Gerbert would have every word dragged out again, and wanted to call William a heretic and refuse him entry, but the abbot set his foot firmly on that and let him in. I came close,’ admitted Elave, roused to recollection, ‘to sticking my own neck in a heretic’s collar, arguing with the man. And he’s one who doesn’t take kindly to being opposed. He could hardly turn on the abbot in his own house, but I doubt he feels much love for me. I’d better keep my head low till he moves on.’
‘You did quite right,’ said Margaret warmly, ‘to stand by your master. I hope it’s done you no harm.’
‘Oh, surely not! It’s all past now. You’ll be at the Mass tomorrow?’
‘Every man of us,’ said Jevan, ‘and the women, too. And Girard, if we can find him in time, but he’s on the move, and may be near the border by now. He meant to come back for Saint Winifred’s feast, but there’s always the chance of delays among the border flocks.’
Elave had left the wooden box lying on the bench under the window. He rose to fetch it to the table. All eyes settled upon it with interest.
‘This I was ordered to deliver into Master Girard’s hands. Master William sent it to him to be held in trust for Fortunata until her marriage. It’s her dowry. When he was so ill he thought of her, and said she must have a dowry. And this is what he sent.’
Jevan was the first to reach out to touch and handle it, fascinated by the beauty of the carving.
‘This is rare work. Somewhere in the east he found this?’ He took it up, surprised at the weight. ‘It makes a handsome treasury. What’s within it?’
‘That I don’t know. It was near his death when he gave it to me and told me what he wanted. Nothing more, and I never questioned him. I had enough to do, then and afterwards.’
‘So you did,’ said Margaret, ‘and you did it very well, and we owe you thanks, for he was our kin, and a good man, and I’m glad he had so good a lad to see him safely all that way and back again home.’ She took up to the box from the table, where Jevan had laid it down, and was fingering the gilded carving with evident admiration. ‘Well, if it was sent to Girard, I’ll keep it aside until Girard comes home. This is the business of the man of the house.’
‘Even the key,’ said Jevan, ‘is a piece of art. So our Fortunata lives up to her name, as Uncle William always said she would. And the lucky girl still out marketing, and doesn’t yet know of her fortune!’
Margaret opened the tall press in a corner of the room, and laid both box and key on an upper shelf within. ‘There it stays until my husband comes home, and he’ll take good care of it until my girl shows a fancy to get wed, and maybe sets eyes on the lad she wants for husband.’
All eyes had followed William’s gift to its hiding-place. Aldwin said sourly: ‘There’ll be aplenty will fancy her for wife, if they get wind she has goods to bring with her. She’ll have need of your good counsel, Mistress.’
Conan had said nothing at all. He had never been a talker. His eyes followed the box until the door of the press closed on it, but all he had to say throughout was said at the last, when Elave rose to take his leave. The shepherd rose with him.
‘I’ll be off, then, and take the pony, and see if I can find where the master is. But whether or not, I’ll be back by nightfall.’
*
They were all dispersing to their various occupations when Margaret drew Elave back by the sleeve, delaying him until the rest had gone.
‘You’ll understand, I’m sure, how it is,’ she said confidingly. ‘I wouldn’t say anything but just to you, Elave. You were always a good lad with the accounts, and worked hard, and to tell the honest truth, Aldwin is no match for you, though he does his best, and can manage well enough all that’s required of him. But he’s getting older, and has no home or folks of his own, and what would he do if we parted with him now? You’re young, there’s many a merchant would be glad to hire you, with your knowledge of the world. You won’t take it amiss…’
Elave had caught her drift long before this, and broke in hastily to reassure her. ‘No, no, never think of it! I never expected to have my old place back. I wouldn’t for the world put Aldwin’s nose out of joint. I’m glad he should be secure the rest of his life. Never trouble for me, I shall look about me and find work to do. And as for bearing any grudge that I’m not asked back, I never so much as thought of it. Nothing but good have I had from this house, and I shan’t forget it. No, Aldwin can go on with his labours with all my goodwill.’
‘That’s like the lad I remember!’ she said with hearty relief. ‘I knew you’d take it as it’s meant. I hope you may get good service with some travelling merchant, one that trades oversea, that would suit you, after all you’ve seen and done. But you will come up with us tomorrow after Uncle William’s burial, and take meat with us?’
He promised readily, glad to have their relationship established and understood. To tell the truth, he thought he might have felt confined and restricted here now, dealing with the buying of stock and paying of wages, the weighing and marketing of wool, and the small profits and expenses of a good but limited business. He was not yet sure what he did want, he could afford to spend a little while looking round before committing himself. Going out at the hall door he came shoulder to shoulder with Conan, on his way out to the stable, and dropped back to let Margaret’s messenger go first.
A young woman with a basket on her arm had just emerged from the narrow entry that led to the street, and was crossing the yard towards them. She was not over-tall, but looked tall by reason of her erect bearing and long, free step, light and springy from the ground like the gait of a mettlesome colt. Her plain grey gown swayed with the lissome movement of a trim body, and the well-poised head on her long neck was crowned with a great coiled braid of dark hair lit with shadowy gleams of red. Halfway across the yard towards them she halted abruptly, gazing open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and suddenly she laughed aloud, a joyous, silver sound of pleasurable amazement.
‘You!’ she said, in a soft, delighted cry. ‘Is it truth? I am not dreaming?’
She stopped them both on the instant, brought up short by the warmth of her greeting, Elave gaping like an idiot at this unknown girl who yet appeared not only to recognise him, but to take pleasure in the recognition, Conan fallen warily silent beside him, his face expressionless, his eyes roving from one face to the other, narrowed and intent.
‘Do you not know me?’ cried
the girl’s clear bell of a voice, through the bubbling spring of her laughter.
Fool that he was, who else could she be, coming in thus bare-headed from the shops of the town? But it was true, he would not have known her. The thin little pointed face had filled out into a smooth ivory oval, the teeth that had looked far too many and too large for her mouth shone now even and white between dark-rose lips that smiled at his astonishment and confusion. All the sharp little bones had rounded into grace. The long hair that had hung in elflocks round scrawny childish shoulders looked like a crown, thus braided and coiled upon her head, and the greenish hazel eyes whose stare he had found disconcerting seven years ago now sparkled and glowed with pleasure at seeing him again, a very arresting flattery.
‘I know you now,’ he said, fumbling for words. ‘But you’re changed!’
‘You are not,’ she said. ‘Browner, perhaps, and your hair’s even fairer than it used to be, but I’d have known you anywhere. And you turn up like this without a word of warning, and they were letting you go without waiting for me?’
‘I’m coming again tomorrow,’ he said, and hesitated to attempt the explanation, here in the yard, with Conan still lingering on the borders of their meeting. ‘Mistress Margaret will tell you about it. I had messages to bring…’
‘If you knew’ said Fortunata, ‘how often and how long we’ve talked of you both, and wondered how you were faring in those far places. It’s not every day we have kinsfolk setting out on such an adventure, do you think we never gave you a thought?’
Hardly once in all those years had it entered his mind to wonder about any of those left behind. Closest to him in this house, and alone significant, had been William, and with William he had gone, blithely, without a thought for anyone left to continue life here, least of all a leggy little girl of eleven with a spotty skin and a disconcerting stare.