by Ann Swinfen
‘I should be glad to provide Sister Mildred with parchment myself, in exchange for this,’ I said. We were both speaking formally. ‘But as for another completing your work, that seems like a kind of sacrilege.’
A spark of hope sprang in her face, but died again. She shook her head, but said nothing.
Margaret had gone to the fire and replaced the cookpot Jordain had removed from the heat. ‘’Tis a good hour past dinner time,’ she said. ‘There is plenty here for all. Jordain, will you call the men from the shop? Maud, the dishes are there on the shelf. Nicholas, you had best put those pages safe in the shop. The children may take theirs into the garden, for this one time, else there will not be seats enough.’
The whole party sat down to a hearty meal of stewed bacon, onions, and cabbage, and the bread I had seen baked that morning before I set out from home, followed by Meg’s preserved plums from last year. It was a lively meal, with the children running in and out, and the two dogs, who had become allies, begging for – and getting – scraps.
Yet both Emma and I were quiet. I did not know what she could be thinking. Would she stay here in Oxford with her aunt? Or would she return to her grandfather’s estate, as he hoped? Our ride, clinging together, from Osney to Oxford, was slipping away from me. Already it had taken on the appearance of a dream. Once, she caught my eye and smiled, then looked hurriedly away.
I needed time to think. After we had eaten, Jordain and Philip both left, Jordain to return to Hart Hall, Philip to attend the sheriff at the castle and show him Sir Anthony’s signature and seal. By then it was halfway through the afternoon and I decided to given Walter and Roger leave to go home early.
At last there was no one left but my family and the Farringdons. And Emma.
‘Will you come home with us now, Emma dear?’ Maud Farringdon said. ‘It is a humble house, but very comfortable. You may stay with us until you decide what you wish to do.’
‘Aye,’ Emma said quietly. ‘I will come.’
Alysoun fetched her sandals and I watched her put them on. I had not noticed before the damage to her feet, but they bore traces of the salve Meg had spread there in addition to what she must have used on the injury from the dog.
We walked with them to the street door.
‘I thank you for all your kindness, Margaret,’ Emma said, and kissed her swiftly on the cheek. ‘I will return the gown.’
‘Nay, you will keep it,’ Meg said firmly, ‘and with my good will. It never looked as well on me and it does on you.’
The Farringdons were in the street now. In a moment Emma would be gone. Yet she hesitated.
Then she took both my hands in hers.
‘And you, Nicholas. I owe more than my life to you.’
She leaned forward and I felt her lips on my cheek. The kiss lingered, and for a moment our hands clung together.
Her hands slid from mine, and I thought I saw tears in her eyes as she turned away. Slipping her arm though Juliana’s, she walked up the High Street, not looking back.
‘I shall never see her again.’
I was hardly aware that I had spoken aloud, but my sister slipped her arm about my waist.
‘And why do you say that?’
‘Emma Thorgold is now the lady of a manor,’ I said. ‘In rank far above a mere Oxford shopkeeper.’
Margaret smiled.
‘Do not be too sure of that, Nicholas,’ she said.
Historical Note
If you visit the site of Godstow Abbey today, you will find that it no longer stands on an island. As Edwin tells Emma, the course of the Thames, with its many branches and tributaries, has been constantly changing over time. The building of canals in the area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also had an effect on the river. Some branches have moved, some have dried up altogether. Some have even been culverted and now run underground, like much of the Trill Mill Stream. In fact friends have told me that they have seen a change in the course of the river beside Godstow in quite recent years. Driving around Oxford now you will hardly notice that you are crossing the successors to the bridges which were already in place in Nicholas’s day.
It is indisputable that many women who chose the monastic life had a genuine religious vocation. For others, it must have offered the prospect of a tranquil life, away from a possible forced marriage and the endless dangers of childbirth, at a time when so many women died from simple complications or puerperal fever. Virtually all the girls who entered nunneries came from the upper classes, since a fairly substantial ‘dowry’ was required on entering. Had they remained in the secular world the likelihood was that they would be given in marriage as part of some property or political deal. In a nunnery, on the other hand, a woman could have a safe and comfortable life, and if she had talent, could rise to be one of the obedientiaries or office-holders of the institution. I have written about the management of medieval nunneries here: http://bit.ly/2bBEGOk
However, the system could be abused. What is beyond doubt is that some girls were forced into the monastic life against their will. Sometimes these were redundant daughters. If a family ran to a large number of girls, the cost of marrying them all off advantageously could ruin an estate. (Presumably even larger dowries were demanded for a secular marriage than a marriage to God.) Sometimes they might be the daughters of their father’s earlier marriage, thrust out of the manorial nest by the cuckoo of a second or third wife, bent on securing the greatest advantages for her own children – the seed of so many fairy tales about wicked stepmothers. And in a number of documented cases which have come down to us, the girl was shut away in a nunnery so that someone else could seize her inheritance.
From time to time, some of these girls fought back, managed to leave the nunnery, claimed their inheritance, married, and had children.
And what of those candle-makers? Nowadays, when at the mere flick of a switch we can have all the light we desire, it is difficult to comprehend the huge importance of candles in the Middle Ages. The poorest people rose with the sun and went to bed when it set, but in northern Europe even they needed some illumination during the long dark hours of winter, if they were to manage all their daily tasks. For those not so poor, some form of lighting was essential merely for a comfortable life, and for churches candles were a part of the ritual and a means for showing true devotion.
The cheapest form of lighting was the rush dip, which could be made at home by dipping the head of a rush (gathered in a nearby boggy area) into melted tallow (animal fat). This would then be clipped into a wooden or metal stand and gave off a poor, smoky light and an unpleasant smell. Next in quality was the tallow candle. Like a modern candle this had a wick and was made by dipping until a coating of tallow was formed. It would have given a better light than a rush dip, but still had the unpleasant smell.
The best form of lighting, used by anyone who could afford them, was provided by wax candles, consisting of a rush stem wick, dipped in successive layers of pure beeswax. The finished candle would be held in a candlestick made of anything from wood to gold. So valuable were the stub ends that they were generally the perk of one of the servants. Most expensive of all were the great moulded candles, often of enormous size, used by the Church on various altars and sometimes carried in processions. Made by skilled craftsmen, these were the highest form of the candle-maker’s or chandler’s craft.
So important was the business of candle-making that there were two guilds in London: the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers and the Worshipful Company of Tallow Chandlers. These still exist to this day, though I suspect few of their members do much candle dipping themselves.
Since wax was expensive and the making of candles quite a skilled craft, groups of candle-makers travelled about the country. They would call at the larger houses and the monastic institutions perhaps once a year, stay for some days, and make a year’s supply of candles. In addition to these itinerant candle-makers, there were, of course, chandlers in all the towns, who supplied the local townspe
ople and those who came in from the surrounding countryside on market day. As late as 1840 there was still a tallow chandler in the large village of Weobley in Herefordshire.
As standards of living rose (for some) under the Tudors, better lighting began to be demanded, and the royal family required staggering amounts of candles for their palaces, the nobility not lagging far behind. The supply of wax in England began to be insufficient to meet the need, and was one of the major imports from Russia, by the Muscovy Company, as I mention in Voyage to Muscovy. The merchants might have begun by thinking exotic goods like furs would be most profitable, but in reality humble ship’s cordage and wax for candles were to prove their most valuable imports!
The Author
Ann Swinfen spent her childhood partly in England and partly on the east coast of America. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Classics and Mathematics and married a fellow undergraduate, the historian David Swinfen. While bringing up their five children and studying for a postgraduate MSc in Mathematics and a BA and PhD in English Literature, she had a variety of jobs, including university lecturer, translator, freelance journalist and software designer. She served for nine years on the governing council of the Open University and for five years worked as a manager and editor in the technical author division of an international computer company, but gave up her full-time job to concentrate on her writing, while continuing part-time university teaching in English Literature. In 1995 she founded Dundee Book Events, a voluntary organisation promoting books and authors to the general public.
She is the author of the highly acclaimed series, The Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez. Set in the late sixteenth century, it features a young Marrano physician recruited as a code-breaker and spy in Walsingham’s secret service. In order, the books are: The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez, The Enterprise of England, The Portuguese Affair, Bartholomew Fair, Suffer the Little Children, Voyage to Muscovy and The Play’s the Thing.
Her Fenland Series takes place in East Anglia during the seventeenth century. In the first book, Flood, both men and women fight desperately to save their land from greedy and unscrupulous speculators. The second, Betrayal, continues the story of the dangerous search for legal redress and security for the embattled villagers, at a time when few could be trusted.
Her latest series, Oxford Medieval Mysteries, is set in the fourteenth century and features bookseller Nicholas Elyot, a young widower with two small children, and his university friend Jordain Brinkylsworth, who are faced with crime in the troubled world following the Black Death. The first book in the series is The Bookseller’s Tale, the second is The Novice’s Tale.
She has also written two standalone novels. The Testament of Mariam, set in the first century, recounts, from an unusual perspective, one of the most famous and yet ambiguous stories in human history, while exploring life under a foreign occupying force, in lands still torn by conflict to this day. This Rough Ocean is based on the real-life experiences of the Swinfen family during the 1640s, at the time of the English Civil War, when John Swynfen was imprisoned for opposing the killing of the king, and his wife Anne had to fight for the survival of her children and dependents.
Ann Swinfen now lives on the northeast coast of Scotland, with her husband, formerly vice-principal of the University of Dundee, and a rescue cat called Maxi.
www.annswinfen.com