The Merchant's Tale

by Ann Swinfen

  The

  Merchant’s

  Tale

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  The

  Merchant’s

  Tale

  Ann Swinfen

  Shakenoak Press

  Copyright © Ann Swinfen 2017

  Shakenoak Press

  Ann Swinfen has asserted her moral right under the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified

  as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than

  that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by JD Smith www.jdsmith-design.co.uk

  This one is for

  All my lovely readers

  who have taken

  Nicholas & the others

  to their hearts

  Chapter One

  Oxford, Autumn 1353

  It was the fifth day of October, in this seven and twentieth year of our King Edward, third of that name, and not yet dawn when I felt my sister Margaret shaking me by the shoulder. I groaned and rolled away from her, but nothing short of a team of oxen will stop my sister when she is determined.

  ‘Up, slug-abed!’ she commanded. ‘Have you forgot our early start?’

  Cautiously, I opened one eye. She was holding up a rush-light, which cast its sallow beam over my tumbled bedclothes. She made as if to drag them off me, but I clutched at a handful of feather bed and looked at her piteously.

  ‘Not as early as this? Surely?’

  ‘I have already taken the bread from the oven,’ she said austerely, ‘and the children are dressing.’

  The puppy Rowan planted her forepaws on the edge of the bed and licked my hand with enthusiasm. She had grown a good deal in the last month, and could easily extend her ablutions to my face if I did not take evasive measures.

  ‘Very well, very well,’ I grumbled. ‘If the pair of you will but leave me in peace, I will dress.’

  ‘Five minutes, Nicholas,’ she said, turning toward the door of my bedchamber. ‘It is sharpish this morning, and I have made porridge.’

  A rare treat. Usually we broke our fast with little more than bread and small ale, with perhaps a slice of cheese. Porridge was reserved for bitter winter mornings.

  As soon as they were gone, I ventured a foot to the floor, and winced. It was indeed sharpish. If it was this cold in October, did that presage a bad winter? It was almost impossible now to remember the long hot days of summer. The water in the bowl standing on my clothes chest was very cold, but not frozen, as it was sometimes in winter. After splashing a little on my face, I managed to shake off the rags of sleep, with its shadows of the dreams which still haunted me, ever since the days of the Pestilence. I chose warm woollen hose, one of my thicker shirts, and a long cotte, though I was sure that by the time we had climbed Headington Hill I should probably be wanting to shed it.

  I had left one shutter half open during the night. Now I opened both wide enough to lean out and breathe deeply. My window faced north, over the garden, and the sky was still night black and strewn with the Creator’s scattered armfuls of stars, but over to my right I could just make out a grey wash brushed across the horizon, promising dawn. It was the feast of St Placidus, I recalled, a disciple of St Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order of monks. An obscure saint, one I only remembered because of the name he shared with the Placidus who had experienced the vision of the white stag. After the deer hunt in Wychwood a few weeks before, I suppose my thoughts naturally turned to stags.

  When I lived as a boy on my father’s farm at Leighton-under-Wychwood, autumn had always seemed a melancholy time. Even if the harvest had been ample, providing for winter survival, all around there was evidence of the dying year – in the flushed tints amongst the slumbering trees, the tired grass in the meadows, the silent closing down of birdsong. With Michaelmas would come the slaughtering of all those beasts which could not be over wintered, and even though I was a farmer’s son, who had lived through it every autumn of my life, I hated it. Beasts who had been cared for like children, some even fed by hand, would know the ultimate betrayal of the knife.

  I had lived more than half my life on the farm, but since I had come to Oxford, I felt the autumn differently. Here, this was Janus time, the cyclic beginning of a fresh academic year. That first autumn, when I was just short of my fourteenth birthday, October had meant, in addition, the start of a fresh life for me.

  Our parish priest, Sire Raymond, had declared me ready. He had even written a letter on my behalf, recommending me as a student to an old friend of his, who had remained here as a Regent Master when Sire Raymond had been ordained and taken up his parish duties. From time to time that day, as I made the journey to Oxford with the carter from our village, I would finger the letter in my scrip, as if it were some magic talisman, a passport to a different world.

  And indeed a different world it looked, when the carter deposited me in the street in front of the Mitre inn. I had never seen so many people, almost twice as many on that day as now walk the streets, ever since the time of the Pestilence. Nor had I ever seen such fine stone buildings, though in the years since my arrival the colleges have built still more. Even the Pestilence could not halt it for more than a year or two.

  Today, tomorrow, and all this week, other young boys would be arriving, filled with the same dreams and apprehensions, breathing the spring of new life into the autumn of the year, so that the season is turned upon its head, promising fresh beginnings.

  That first day I had found my way to Tackley’s Inn, on the other side of the High Street from the Mitre.

  ‘You will do well to go up to Oxford betimes,’ Sire Raymond said, ‘so that you may secure a place at Tackley’s Inn. It is comfortable, and will not cheat you. I lived there two years myself. The university halls change with every change of warden, and you had best look about you until you decide which you wish to join. Some wardens are lazy, some will take your money yet barely feed you, some, I fear, can be cruel. Stay at Tackley’s, attend the lectures, and keep your ears open. You will soon discover the best of the halls, and apply to live in one of them next year.’

  It was Sire Raymond, my teacher since I was four years old, who had filled me with the longing to go to Oxford. My elder brother, John, more than ten years my senior, would take over the farm when my father grew too old and stiff, so my father made no objection. As a yeoman of some wealth, he could afford to indulge my desires.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘there you will gain the learning you will need to become a man of law, away to London at the Inns of Court. And once trained, you may even find a place in the r
oyal service. I shall be proud of you, lad!’

  ‘Aye, Father,’ I said, as he clapped me on the shoulder. By then the king had grown into his full powers and was busy reforming the court, the law, and the governing of the country. Many paths to a bright future were opening up for any young man prepared to work hard.

  My mother, I knew, had different hopes for me. The night before I left home, she took me aside and pressed into my hand a silver cross studded with simple uncut gems. On its stepped base it stood about the height of my hand’s length. It had been a gift to her on her marriage from her maternal grandmother, who had been born into the gentry. I glanced over my shoulder at it now, where it stood on the shelf where I kept a few of my own books.

  She brushed a fallen lock of hair back from my forehead and smiled at me.

  ‘I know your father hopes you will take to the law, and I would never oppose him, but should you prefer the priesthood . . . I shall pray for you, Nicholas, that you may find the right path.’

  I nodded, but kept my thoughts to myself. I inclined more to my mother’s view than my father’s. I knew nothing of the law, except that my father and his friends often grumbled about it. However, there was no one in the world that I admired more than Sire Raymond. To be a priest, with no trammelling of worldly affairs or dependent family, to spend one’s time amongst books and the writings of great men . . . that seemed to me the ideal life. So I arrived in Oxford prepared to study what I must of the law, in order to please my father, but secretly hoping to follow in the beloved footsteps of Sire Raymond.

  I smiled now, at my boyish blindness. In truth, Sire Raymond spent most of his own days in the comfort and care of his parishioners, with little enough time left to indulge the love of books which he had instilled in me. The years of plague had taken a heavy toll on him, for he would leave no man nor woman nor child to die alone and unshriven. God’s hand must have been over him, for surely no other had taken less care for himself, yet he emerged unscathed.

  Outside Tackley’s Inn, I had hesitated. Now that the moment had come when I must play the man, and the experienced traveller, I knew that I was no more than a clumsy boy. The innkeeper would recognise me at once for what I was, and either turn me away or demand an outrageous rent for lodgings.

  Another boy stood hesitating, like me, at the foot of the shallow steps. Shabbily dressed, and hungry looking – could he possibly be another new student? He looked too poor. Sensing my eyes on him, he turned and gave me a smile of great sweetness. I felt myself flushing, hoping that my disparaging judgement had not been mirrored in my face.

  ‘Are you hoping for lodgings here, too?’ he said. There was a touch of the country in his voice (as indeed there was at that time in mine, to my shame), but he spoke with more confidence than I was feeling.

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘My tutor, our parish priest, he lodged here when he was a student and suggested it.’

  ‘Mine also!’ the boy’s smile widened. ‘I think that is a sign that we shall be friends.’

  I could not forebear smiling at such an eager approach. I dropped the bundle I was carrying and held out my hand. ‘My name is Nicholas Elyot.’

  He bowed over my hand with the courtesy of a gentleman. ‘Mine, I am afraid, is Jordain Brinkylsworth.’

  My astonishment at a name of such grandeur attached to this scrawny and threadbare person must certainly have shown in my face, for he laughed, looking down ruefully at his dusty shoes, which were parting at the toes, his hose (much mended), and a cotte too large, yet faded from some other person’s long use.

  ‘We run to large families,’ he said, ‘and that has impoverished us. It is an article of faith with my mother that we were once landed gentry, but that I cannot quite believe. Yeomen, perhaps. Now we are but poor tenant farmers, and if I am to make my way here, I shall need to earn the chinks in order to live.’

  He spoke with a frankness I found somewhat embarrassing, conscious of the heavy purse my father had given me, which I wore concealed under my shirt (my mother’s wise precaution).

  We were still standing doubtfully before the inn, when another boy ran up the flight of steps, then paused and looked down at us.

  ‘Have you come for rooms at Tackley’s? Best not hang about there like silly sheep, the beds are being taken fast. Come, I’ll show you to the innkeeper. I’m John. John Wycliffe. I came up early, in the Trinity Term.’

  We followed him obediently into the inn, where we were able to secure beds in a room with John and one other boy, Tom Winter. John’s confident introduction ensured that we were charged no more than the normal student rent. By the time all was arranged satisfactorily, the bells were ringing for Vespers from a church across the way.

  ‘St Mary’s,’ John said. ‘Best attend on your first day, though it will not be expected every day. Supper is served here after Vespers.’

  As we walked over to the church, Jordain said cheerfully, ‘I have some bread and cheese left from my journey. I shall have that, rather than spend my pence on the inn’s supper.’

  By now I knew that he had walked to Oxford all the way from his home, and it had taken him four days. Shy but determined, I said, ‘Let me buy you supper. I had rather sit down with a friend than alone.’

  For a moment I thought I had offended him, then he said gravely, ‘That is kind of you, Nicholas, but as soon as I have earned my first shilling, I shall treat you in return.’

  And so he did.

  There was an urgent tapping on my door, and then Alysoun stepped inside, looking important.

  ‘Aunt Margaret says that if you do not come this minute, she will give your breakfast to Rowan.’ She gave a mischievous grin. ‘Rowan would dearly like it.’

  ‘I am coming,’ I said. ‘She shall not waste my porridge on that greedy dog.’

  Alysoun slipped her hand in mine.

  ‘There’s honey.’

  ‘Then let us make haste. I shall not miss the chance of honey.’

  Although both Alysoun and Rafe were excited to be on our way, they still took time to eat with enthusiasm the ample breakfast Margaret provided. The porridge was excellent, for my sister had brought back a sack of the oats we had harvested at the farm, and had them ground at Trill Mill.

  ‘We shall want baskets and sacks,’ I said, wiping my mouth and washing down the last of the porridge with a sip of ale.

  ‘Teach your grand-dam,’ Margaret said crisply. ‘I had everything ready last evening before I went to my bed.’

  ‘Why do we want sacks?’ Alysoun asked. ‘The blackberries would be squashed.’

  ‘Baskets for the blackberries,’ Margaret said. ‘Sacks for the hazelnuts.’

  ‘And the bullaces,’ I said, ‘as long as they are not overripe.’

  ‘There may be sloes as well,’ Margaret said. ‘And crab apples.’

  ‘Some of our own apples are ready to pick.’

  ‘Not today,’ she said. ‘I have already gathered the windfalls. Tomorrow,’ she added graciously, ‘you may pick the apples.’

  I rolled my eyes, but knew enough not to point out that I had a business to run. Just as important as the field harvest on my cousin’s farm was the free and abundant harvest to be found growing wild. Years ago, before Elizabeth and I were married, we had discovered a fine spot on Headington Hill, and every year since then it had provided for us, except in the plague years, when no one had felt any desire to gather the wild harvest, since no one expected to live long enough to eat it.

  Elizabeth was gone, but I still took our children there every autumn, and this year we were to be a large party. Mistress Farringdon and her family would join us shortly, and on our way past Mistress Metford’s cottage we would gather her up, as well as Philip Olney and their son. Philip had grown less cautious of late in his visits to his mistress – or his common law wife – and sometimes I worried for him, lest the university authorities should discover what he had been at pains so long to conceal.

  As we were collecting up our supply of basket
s and sacks, and a large hamper packed with food for our midday meal, there was a knock on the outer door of the shop. Rafe ran to answer it. Mistress Farringdon was there, with the girls Juliana and little Maysant, both flushed and eager. I kept my eyes averted, but behind them I had glimpsed Emma Thorgold. This morning she wore – as she often did in Oxford – one of her aunt Farringdon’s homespun brown dresses, too large and cinched in at the waist with a simple cord girdle. Her hair had now grown enough to hang in two short plaits to her shoulders, like any young girl of the town. It was as if she wished to make a show of the fact that she was no more than Mistress Farringdon’s niece, and not heir to her grandfather’s substantial estate.

  ‘We are ready,’ Margaret said, shooing the children out in front of her. ‘Shall you lock the shop, Nicholas?’

  ‘Aye, Walter has a key.’

  My journeyman scrivener would take charge of the bookshop today while I was gone, although I would have been glad to be here when the first rush of new students came seeking paper, ink, and quills. If there were one or two boys of means, they might even buy a secondhand book before they had spent all their coin on drink and gambling. Usually we went a-foraging earlier than this, during the last week in September, but Rafe had been laid up with a summer rheum, so Margaret had decreed we must delay.

  ‘And here is Mary,’ Margaret said as I locked the shop door.

  I had forgot that Mary Coomber, Margaret’s friend from the dairy, had said she would also join us. She had no family to provide for during the winter, and I was surprised she could spare a day away from her work, but now she came surging across the street, an ample woman, well fed on her own excellent cream and cheeses. She too must have risen early, to milk the small herd of cows she kept in the croft behind the dairy.