The Merchant's Tale

by Ann Swinfen

  The crowd of students had thinned – and I had sold two secondhand books – when a familiar figure came hesitantly through the door. I had known Canon Francis Aubery ever since I had first come to work here for my future father-in-law, Humphrey Hadley. The canon was a passionate lover of books. So passionate, I believe he would have starved himself rather than part with any of his own small library. Both Philip and I share his passion, but we are not fanatics. At least, I hope we are not.

  Under the previous prior, dead now of the plague, Canon Aubery had been allowed to build up quite a fine collection of books for St Frideswide’s library, indulging his passion for expensive books which he could not have afforded himself, although when he could, he still bought books from me. Those of a censorious turn of mind may say: But surely members of the religious orders are not permitted to own personal property? This may be the Rule, but amongst the religious communities in Oxford, devoted as they are to scholarship and the advancement of knowledge, the Rule may be kept, but the rules may be slackened. Certainly amongst the Augustinian canons of St Frideswide, the rules had been, over many years, notoriously slackened, and in more serious ways than the mere ownership of books.

  However, the priory had acquired a new head four years before, one Nicholas de Hungerford, and by all accounts he was an irreligious boor. How he ever achieved such a distinguished post is a mystery to which I do not know the answer. Perhaps the position was in the gift of some great man who favoured him, although how that could come about was also a mystery. Prior de Hungerford was, also by all accounts, greedy, jealous, and violent. Needless to say, Canon Aubery was no longer allowed funds to purchase books. Instead, he came regularly into my shop to finger the forbidden fruits and to grieve.

  As soon as the students had left the shop, I smiled at the canon and took down from its high shelf Emma’s first book of hours, which I had kept for my own.

  ‘Was it this you wished to look at again, canon?’ I asked.

  ‘Indeed, indeed.’

  He blinked at me with his short sighted eyes and took the book reverently. I pulled out a stool for him. He was elderly, and he would take some time turning over the pages, holding the tiny pictures close to his face so that he might enjoy every detail. There were not many people I would trust with Emma’s book, but he was one of them. I sat down behind the table I used as both counter and desk.

  ‘It is a pity you were not here earlier,’ I said, ‘for I have a new book written and illuminated by the same hand, but I have just delivered it to Henry Stalbroke for binding.’

  ‘You will sell that one?’ His voice was a mixture of hope and regret.

  ‘It is already spoken for, I am afraid. But the scrivener is now working for me, so there will be more in the future.’

  He sighed, running a delicate finger over the spine of the book.

  ‘Alas, under Prior de Hungerford, there will be no more books for us. Instead–’ He hesitated. ‘I am worried, Nicholas. Things . . . have been . . . disappearing from the priory. A silver gilt chalice. A pair of very ancient silver candlesticks from the altar of St Mary, the gift of one of our earliest benefactors.’

  ‘Stolen?’ I was alarmed. If there were thieves in Oxford daring enough to steal from a church within the priory precinct, no one was safe.

  ‘It would not be so grievous, if it were thieves.’ He paused. ‘To begin with, he had little idea of the value of our books, but now I worry–’

  ‘You do not mean the prior himself?’ I guessed which ‘he’ was meant, and was shocked almost into silence. ‘He would not sell the priory’s books!’

  ‘Would he not?’

  ‘You think that he is responsible for the disappearance of the church silver?’

  ‘I would not wish to accuse any man unjustly, but I am afraid . . . The man’s eyes are fixed on wealth and worldly position. He courts the king’s son. He has acquired a following amongst seculars in the town. Men not of good repute. He makes use of them, instead of our lay steward and his servants, to collect rents from our tenants. There are whispers of threats being made. Bullying. Extortion.’

  ‘Whispers only?’

  ‘People are afraid to speak out.’ He sighed again and laid Emma’s book gently on my table. ‘I had occasion to visit the priory grange a few days ago. There were two very fine stallions stabled there which I had never seen before. This morning I watched Prior de Hungerford riding into town on one of them. And clad in secular clothes.’

  I knew not how to respond to this. The priory had a chequered history, at least within the last half century or so. In Oxford relations between the town, the university, and the many religious houses are always somewhat uneasy. On more than one occasion violence has erupted between the students and the young men of the town, sometimes leading to deaths. Yet I also knew that, of the quarrels between the town and the religious houses, that with St Frideswide’s was by far the worst, and the root of much of the trouble lay with the priory’s right to hold the fair, a right it had possessed for more than two hundred years.

  The main grievance was the one Mary had expressed – the loss of trade to the town during the fair, when so many people were drawn to Oxford, not just from the surrounding countryside, but from as far away as Wales and Flanders and France. Since the decline in the great fairs of Champagne, merchants had looked elsewhere, and convenient centres like Oxford had benefitted. Yet these benefits went all to the priory and not to the town. After the losses of the plague years and the decline in the town’s own cloth production, the monies flowing solely into the priory left a bitter taste in the townsmen’s mouths.

  Had the Augustinian Canons of St Frideswide’s had a reputation for great piety, it might have been less bitter, but over this last half century they had come to be known for their worldliness, neglect of their duties, and scorning of the Rule. Successive bishops had taken them to task, but to no effect. There still remained good, devout men, like Canon Aubery, amongst them, but, so common report held, they were in the minority. So outraged had the town become some seventeen years earlier, that a group of local ruffians – possibly with the foreknowledge and even the instigation of the Guild Merchant – had taken the prior and all his canons prisoner, using them with violence and threatening them with death unless they agreed to renounce all the privileges and monies of St Frideswide’s Fair. Terrified for their lives, they had sworn the oath. Ever since it had been the subject of regular and at times violent dispute, the town maintaining that the priory had resigned its rights, the priory arguing that the oath had been forced from them under duress.

  ‘But surely,’ I said now, ‘with the income from the fair, there is no need to sell your church silver or your library of books. By all the signs, it seems likely to be a successful fair this year. Already both buyers and merchants have begun to arrive in Oxford.’

  For the last few years, as the world slowly tried to recover from the Death, all fairs had been poorly attended, but the world, like a man recovering from some near fatal disease, was gradually returning to health.

  ‘Our affairs have been mismanaged for years,’ Canon Aubrey said gloomily. ‘We have carried debts forward from year to year, and even the income from our tenants, our manors and lands, and from St Frideswide’s Fair, have failed to solve the problem. Our spending has ever been above our income. In the past, some of our priors have lavished money on the building and embellishment of our church, beyond all that was reasonable.’

  I nodded. The church of St Frideswide was one of the most magnificent in Oxfordshire. I had some sympathy with those who had built so gloriously to honour our Heavenly Father, in the name of Oxford’s own saint, even though it had been costly.

  ‘But now–’ He twisted his hands together. ‘Now the church is starting to fall into disrepair, and the priory’s income finds its way into one man’s pockets instead.’

  ‘I see.’ I rested my chin on my fist. ‘Prior de Hungerford would not make use of you to sell the library?’

  �
��He knows I would not do it.’

  ‘Well, if the books come in my way, or if I hear aught, then I shall tell you at once.’

  ‘I thank you, Nicholas. Though whether we can prevent . . . Sub-prior Resham and I, and a few of the other canons, will oppose any sale, but with all these foreign merchants arriving, a sale may be made in secret, without our knowledge.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Well, you may be sure that I will do what I may.’

  And that would be little enough, I thought, as I saw him out of the shop. He walked away along the High, his shoulders stooped, discouragement written in every line of his body.

  It was true that foreign merchants had begun to arrive in considerable numbers.

  I had not thought then that I should find myself entangled so soon in their affairs.

  Chapter Two

  After Canon Aubery left, I managed to work in the shop until midday, when I was summoned to a meagre dinner eaten awkwardly off the end of the table in a kitchen thronging with women. The aromas were enticing, an intoxicating mixture of fruits and honey, but I soon found myself banished to the garden, with the dubious help of the children, including the youngest, Rafe and Maysant, who would be of little use in the picking of apples. Alysoun I sent to fetch Jonathan Baker, with the inducement of a basket of apples for him and his father. Juliana soon joined us.

  ‘It is as hot as a blacksmith’s forge in there,’ she said. ‘And there are so many of us that we are falling over each other. My mother agrees that I shall be of more use here with you, picking apples.’

  I was glad of her help, and with Alysoun and Jonathan we picked steadily for about an hour. Stephen was determined to help, although he could not climb into the lower branches of the trees as they could. Jonathan, I suspected, enjoyed showing off his skill, but Stephen in his short life had learned a patient acceptance of his own limitations and did not seem to grudge the other boy his minor triumphs.

  In our small orchard, as well as some fruit bushes, we have three good apple trees and two pears, but the pears had been gathered long since, some to be dried by Margaret, and some to be pickled. It was pleasant now in the garden, the autumn sun drawing spicy scents from the bed of herbs near the house, and the languorous murmur of bees declining toward their winter sleep. Because the shop occupied the width of two messuages, the garden was also double in size. Along our eastern boundary a narrow alleyway led in from the High Street, which I closed off with a stout oak gate, to keep out intruders. As I climbed into one of the apple trees and reached down to lay apples into the basket Juliana was holding up to me, I began to turn over in my mind whether it would be possible to build a small stable at the far inner end of this alley, large enough to accommodate a single horse. In the normal way of things, I should have no need of a horse, but my hire of Rufus over recent months had cost me near as much as keeping him.

  ‘Master Elyot!’ Roger’s shout from the kitchen door came close to causing me to fall from my perch.

  ‘Aye?’ I said, regaining my balance and looking toward him somewhat sourly.

  ‘There is a gentleman wishes to see you. A stranger. Foreign mebbe. Here for the fair.’

  ‘I am coming.’

  I lowered myself with some caution to the ground, and brushed the fragments of twigs and bark from my clothes.

  ‘Can you carry on, Juliana?’

  ‘Aye.’ She grinned. ‘You may want to run a comb through your hair.’

  I ran my fingers through it instead and a small cascade of dead leaves and twigs fell to the ground.

  ‘You have the right of it,’ I said. ‘Roger, tell the gentleman that I will be with him shortly.’

  Dodging the culinary workhouse in the kitchen, I ran upstairs to my bedchamber, where I combed my hair and washed my hands in the bowl on my coffer, for the smoke from Oxford’s chimneys lays a fine ash on the fruit in our garden, and my hands were far from clean.

  In the shop I found the stranger talking to Walter, who was showing him the book Roger had recently completed, consisting of a collection of traditional tales, each with a full page illumination at the start. I had commissioned Henry Stalbroke to bind it in natural leather of a soft tan hue, with elegant tooling of vine leaves about the title. I had decided the book needed a cover that was not too flamboyant, lest it detract from Roger’s paintings within. As I came into the shop, Walter was explaining that the book was Roger’s work, and my younger scrivener was blushing with pleasure. It was good for him not to be constantly measured against Emma’s skill and found wanting.

  ‘You wished to see me, sir?’ I bowed. The stranger was clearly a man of both wealth and taste, for his gown was of rich cut velvet, in a sober dark red, while the lace which could be seen at the neck and sleeves of his shirt was fine, but restrained.

  ‘You are a son of Humphrey Hadley?’ he asked, bowing in his turn.

  ‘He was my father-in-law. No longer in this world,’ I said, crossing myself.

  He, too, crossed himself, with more feeling, I thought, than a mere gesture of politeness.

  ‘Alas, I feared it might be so. He was a fine man. So many good men and women robbed of life untimely.’

  I nodded. It was difficult for me to speak of it.

  ‘I am Nicholas Elyot,’ I said. ‘I inherited the business from him. How can I help you?’

  ‘Peter Winchingham.’ He bowed again. ‘I am here for the fair.’ He was looking about him as he spoke, picking up and setting down the books on display. ‘I deal in Flemish cloth, and have come early to secure a good position on the fair ground, for I was not certain how it might be, after . . . why, it must be ten years, more, since last I was in Oxford! But I understand that all will go ahead as in the old days.’

  He laughed. ‘Though I have heard some talk over dinner at my inn that the old quarrels between the town and the priory are as bitter as ever.’

  ‘They rumble on,’ I said cautiously. I find it is wise not to favour one side or the other in these endless disputes.

  Roger had thought the man foreign, and there was something foreign in the cut of his gown, but he seemed English to me.

  ‘You live in Flanders?’ I enquired politely.

  ‘In Bruges, though I may return to England soon. I have been there more than twenty years, married a Flemish wife, God rest her.’ Again we crossed ourselves. ‘Now that the king has agreed in Parliament to establish the Staple in England, many of us who have lived abroad will be returning home. An English Staple, at last, for English wool.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘It has always seemed wasteful of time and coin to carry our fleeces to Flanders, only to carry them back at increased cost, before they can be spun and woven.’

  ‘It made some sense in the past.’ He had picked up Roger’s book again and was turning over the pages. ‘In the days when England produced the best wool, but the best weavers were in Flanders and France. Now, that is no longer true. English weavers have surpassed all others. We should keep everything in our own hands and export only our finished cloth, not our fleeces. I shall be glad to come home, now that concern for the happiness of my wife no longer holds me in Bruges. I shall leave my elder son there, to manage the business. He is to marry soon. Meanwhile I shall find myself a property somewhere in the Cotswolds, where I may run a few sheep of my own and buy my fleeces near at hand. I shall employ my own spinsters and weavers here in England. How much is this book?’

  Startled by the question coming hot on the heels of his business plans, I named a price much higher than I had intended.

  He nodded, unsurprised. ‘I will buy it. My daughter takes after me in her love of books, and I know such a collection of tales will please her. Cloth is my living, but books are my joy. Shall you have a stall at the fair?’

  I shook my head, handing the book to Walter to wrap in a piece of cloth for protection.

  ‘Nay, I would not risk my books in the weather. October can be very changeable here in Oxford. I shall lose business for a week, but there is no he
lp for it.’

  ‘Then I shall visit you again on a day not taken up by the fair. I must go to the priory now, to bespeak my booth. My men are unloading my goods on the jetty.’

  ‘You came by boat?’

  ‘Aye, up the Thames from London.’

  That would be the jetty owned by the priory, close by Trill Mill. Boats coming upriver from London could moor there for the duration of the fair – at the cost of a mooring paid to the priory. It was situated at the edge of the fair ground, providing easy access for unloading goods. The priory kept guards there during the days leading up to the fair and afterwards, in case there should be trouble with some of the wilder elements from the town. There was another jetty, down on the main branch of the Thames, but merchants must provide their own servants to guard their boats and goods there.

  ‘You are come early,’ I said, handing him the book of tales and stowing his coins away in the locked drawer of my table. Later, I would move them to my strongbox.

  ‘I am not the only one.’ His look was thoughtful. ‘Once I have made my arrangements for renting a booth in a suitable position, I am off over toward Burford, where I have heard there is a manor lying vacant.’

  I smiled at him. ‘I come from those parts myself. You say there are other merchants already here?’

  ‘Aye. Englishmen and Flemings. Even,’ he paused meaningfully, ‘a few Frenchmen.’

  ‘There is peace at the moment.’

  ‘A peace of sorts. I have some dealings in France. I would say that this is but a brief truce, while both sides draw breath and repair their losses.’

  ‘I do not see how it can ever end, this scourge of warfare.’

  ‘Nor I.’ He turned to go. ‘Does the Mitre still have horses for hire?’