15 The Sempster's Tale

by Frazer, Margaret

  Master Grene seemed someone who knew well the things that wealth-to-hand made possible. But of course to have Alice’s patronage, he must be a successful mercer, and successful mercers were wealthy, with Alice’s patronage and trust likely to make him all the wealthier. Thus his interest in serving her well in this matter.

  Frevisse, still set on understanding more, said, “So there are those who know Suffolk’s wealth is gone somewhere and are on the watch for it. Therefore, it’s been brought into England by someone who conveys goods against the law.”

  ‘By merchants, my lady,“ Master Grene said quickly. ”Plain merchants, who sometimes trade in deeper matters than the makers of simple laws allow for.“

  Meaning they were not “plain merchants,” Frevisse thought sharply but held back from saying as Master Grene went on, “That they’re bringing this gold out of France is to the good, of course. No one in England, even the law, objects to gold coming into the country.”

  That, Frevisse had to grant, was true enough; but still it had been perilous, and these merchants who had done it must be bold as well as well-witted. But, “Why can’t these merchants, having brought it this far, take the gold on to Lady Alice themselves?”

  Master Grene hesitated, giving another look toward the napping nun, then turned the first paper over again and leaned closer to it as if pointing out something there and said, “They can’t go that far from London.”

  Which told Frevisse they were not English merchants but foreign ones, allowed into England for only a set while, with limits as to where they were allowed to go.

  ‘I’d gladly undertake the business myself,“ Master Grene went on, ”but my own leaving London would be out of my usual ways and maybe noted. That’s why her grace of Suffolk asked your help and hopes you’ll be good enough to give it.“

  He did not quite make that a question, but he looked at her, waiting for her answer. She went on looking at the paper, not really seeing it. She did not like what she was being asked to do, nor was it fair of Alice to have asked it; but given how Alice and she had last parted, the asking must have been hard, telling Frevisse something of how desperate her cousin’s need must be. And since she had no hope of sorting out the layered rights and wrongs behind it all, she settled for simply accepting Alice’s need and said, “For my cousin’s sake, yes, I’ll help.”

  And God forgive her for whatever wrong she did by doing so.

  Chapter 3

  Across the room the St. Helen’s nun awakened with an upward jerk of her head, and Frevisse, willing to be done with Master Grene, said in a usual voice, as if having made a usual agreement, “I’ll go to Mistress Blakhall tomorrow, then.”

  ‘Tomorrow won’t serve, I fear,“ said Master Grene, matching her. He began gathering his papers, using the busy rustle to cover him softly adding, ”Better there be a pause while we make certain no one is heeding us out of the ordinary,“ before he went on, his voice raised again, ”Tuesday is when she hopes you’ll come. Her place is in Kerie Lane off Gutheron’s, just north of St. Paul’s from Cheapside. Someone here will be able to show you the way, surely.“

  He stood up. Frevisse, standing up with him, said mildly, “I look forward to seeing her work.”

  ‘You’ll find it more than satisfactory, I’m certain. She’ll be able to well-advise you, too, about the cloth, though I think you’ll find what I offer the best of anyone’s.“ With the pointless papers folded and in his belt-pouch again, he bowed to her. Frevisse bent her head to him in return, while the St. Helen’s nun bustled to her feet and opened the door ahead of him as he left. Because she would see him out the nearby cloister door and lock it behind him, Frevisse was left free to escape to the church with the hope that time alone and in prayer between now and Vespers would quiet her mind and give her assurance she had chosen rightly.

  Unfortunately, neither quieted mind nor assurance came, either while she prayed alone or through Vespers’ prayers and psalms with the other nuns. Supper followed and after that, in the usual way of things, would have been simply an hour’s recreation until time for the day’s final Office of Compline, with bed afterward. Today, though, was the eve of the feast of Saints Peter and Paul; tonight the Mayor’s Watch would be kept throughout the city, with bonfires in the streets, tables with free food and drink for passersby set up by richer folk outside their houses, and after nightfall a torch-lit procession through the streets with drums and trumpets and the mayor and his attendants on horseback in their richest array, followed by the Sheriffs’ Watch and all the standing watches of every ward and street in the city. They did not come by way of Bishopsgate Street, nor should the nuns be up at that hour to see them—the more especially because nightfall came so late this time of year, making the hours short from bedtime to the Offices of Matins and Lauds at midnight. But St. Helen’s prioress indulged her nuns enough that after Compline, instead of to bed they and Dame Juliana and Frevisse were allowed to the nunnery gatehouse’s parapeted roof to look out at Bishopsgate Street with all the lanterns lighted and torches flaring beside doorways bedecked with greenery and flowers and people wandering up and down in talk and laughter, with here a juggler fountaining balls, there three tumblers stacking themselves one a-top the other, farther along someone walking on stilts, and almost under the nunnery gateway a minstrel singing a song that nuns might have been better not to hear.

  All of London would be the same, festive with light and food and sports and people making merry. The nuns even heard, not so very distantly, the drums and trumpets and cheering of the mayors procession as it crossed Bishops-gate, passing from Cornhill into Leadenhall and on toward Aldgate. And when the nuns finally came down and returned into the cloister, there were spiced ale and ginger cakes waiting for them, for their own small celebration.

  There was much head-nodding over prayer books at Matins and Lauds and a hurried shuffling back to bed at their end, and morning with its Office of Prime came too soon, but sustained by memories of last night’s pleasures Dame Juliana was cheerfully ready for the day of seeing London, where she had never been before now. Frevisse, for whom it was not new and with other things on her mind, was less eager, but their own prioress had seen a journey to London paid for by Lady Alice as a chance for priory business to be done there, and she had given them a list of wants—things to be purchased in London if they could be found more cheaply there than in Oxfordshire. Spices were principal. Salt came from enough places around England to cost much the same everywhere, but such things as pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and sugar were another matter, of high expense because brought from abroad and their expense only the greater the farther from London they were sold.

  And then there was cloth. “A good black linen for our summer undergowns would be welcome,” Domina Elisabeth had said. “Our present ones are over-worn almost past bearing. If you should find a good black wool, too, not too dear, there are some of our winter gowns…” She had trailed off with a sigh that Frevisse understood better after this short while in St. Helen’s. Domina Elisabeth had been a nun here before being made prioress of St. Frideswide’s, and although St. Frideswide’s was prospering under her, it would never have the prosperity of St. Helen’s, where London merchants and craftsmen gifted the house while they lived and left it bequests at their deaths for the sake of their daughters’ comforts as well as the comfort of their own souls.

  Frevisse knew that beside St. Helen’s nuns she and Dame Juliana in their well-worn habits looked like the poor country cousins they were, and though there was no shame in holy poverty, she had seen Dame Juliana quietly turning under the frayed edges of her sleeves. Worse, she admitted to the urge to do as much herself and had to grant that Domina Elisabeth was right: it was time for a large purchase of black cloth for new gowns.

  So quickly did desire for worldly things take hold, she noted with an inward sigh.

  And immediately admitted with wry, silent laughter, how glad she was that her even stronger urge to a worldly thing—more books for
St. Frideswide’s—was to be satisfied by another of Domina Elisabeth’s behests. The priory’s small scrivening business was thriving, making enough difference to the priory’s income, that, “If there are some new-written books to be had,” Domina Elisabeth had directed, “something we have likelihood of selling and not so long they will take us forever to copy or so costly we’ll never make back our money, get them.”

  The promise of visiting stationers’ shops on that search was the one great brightness in Frevisse’s thought as she and Dame Juliana readied to go out at mid-morning. For Dame Juliana, though, all was delight. She was in a burst of excitement as she and Frevisse left the cloister to meet Master Naylor and his son Dickon near St. Helen’s gateway, with young Dickon as near to bursting as she was, though he tried to hide it. Near to twenty-one years old and nearly ready to be a man in his own right, he was lean-bodied and lean-faced, looking much as his father must have looked at that age, Frevisse thought; but Master Naylor’s face had creased with years and duty into lines that looked like permanent displeasure whatever his humour. Though presently displeasure was probably the truth with him. Frevisse had never found him overly given to cheerfulness at the best of times, but he was very unpleased with this London journey, nor did it help he was under Domina Elisabeth’s order to do whatever Frevisse required of him in Lady Alice’s service.

  Dickon, on the other hand, seemed not cast down at all by his father’s demeanor. He was as ready as Dame Juliana for whatever the day might bring, and as the four of them set out along wide Bishopsgate—Frevisse walking beside Dame Juliana, Master Naylor and Dickon following a few paces behind them—Dame Juliana’s and Dickon’s plain gladness in the day began to take hold on Frevisse, too. That London was at its most welcoming surely helped. With midsummer not long past, an early morning overcast was burning off to the perfect sunshine of a late June day, the high-riding sun filling the street with sunlight gay on the bright-painted housefronts and sparkling on the glass of upper windows. The first flourish of housewives’ morning shopping was over but there were still people enough—and carts and occasionally a full wagon lumbering its way along toward London’s heart—to bewilder someone only just come from Oxfordshire. Dame Juliana for certain stared around, trying to see all at once into the innyards they passed and the street-facing shops with their shopboards out, displaying goods for sale, and at the same time upward at the narrow, tall, out-thrusting housefronts above the street and still not lose anything of all the crowding folk among whom they were making their way.

  Rain in the night had washed what refuse there had been into the runnel down the middle of the street, and housewives or their servants had been out to sweep the paving in front of their houses and make sure the waste piled beside their door was ready for the official scavagers to collect on their rounds. City law required, too, that householders keep the paving in front of their houses in repair, and on such a main way as Bishopsgate that was well-seen to. So except for the fresh annoyances of this morning’s passing horses, there was nothing underfoot of which to be wary; but after Dame Juliana, because she was staring the other way, nearly collided with a woman carrying a wide basket of bread for sale on her head, Frevisse took hold on her arm and guided her along, leaving her to stare freely. She was a little older than Frevisse, a steady, good-humoured woman who had taken to the troubles of travel with the same merry interest she was giving now to London, and it was just as well they had been excused the rest of the day’s offices until Vespers because trying to hurry her looked to be a cause lost from the start. They were past where Bishopsgate became Gracechurch Street, to where at Gracechurch was met by Lombard Street from the west and Fenchurch Street from the east, when Dame Juliana, looking one way, then the other, stopped short, drew and let go a long, quavering breath, and said, “It goes on forever, doesn’t it? London. Everything in the world must be for sale here.” She looked back to the Naylors still close behind and said, honestly a little worried, “You won’t lose us in the crowds, will you?”

  ‘I’ll not,“ said Master Naylor. ”You’re in my charge, and I’ll keep it.“ He fixed a brief, flat stare at Frevisse that told her he held it her fault they were here at all, and added, ”Though it’s maybe best you have your business done, and we go back as soon as may be.“

  Frevisse suspected he did not mean merely to St. Helen’s but right away back to St. Frideswide’s, but she only said evenly and to Dame Juliana, “We’ll look at goods today but probably not buy. If I remember rightly, there are a great many drapers shops on Lombard Street. My thought is to see what they have on offer and then go on to the stationer shops in Paternoster Row where they’ll have whatever’s new in the way of books. Coming back through Cornhill into Bishops-gate, we can look in on more drapers if we’re not too tired by then.”

  Dame Juliana was willing to all that, and they turned right into Lombard Street. Frevisse had last been here years ago but it was still mostly a street of drapers, their shops’ wide fronts open to the street, their half-timbered homes rising over them as much as four storeys tall, with timbers deeply carved into patterns of vines and fantastical animals and galloping knights, and the housefronts painted most colors that could be thought of, ranging from deep cream to cheerful scarlet. It made a brave show, and the busyness of people all along and back and forth across it only added to the pleasure of going from shop to shop, where cloths of every common kind and color were laid out on the forward shopboards, while inside on tables or else draped over wallpoles were the more costly kinds—the silks and velvets and damasks—while those drapers who dealt in the most costly cloths—the camelines, tartaires, marbrinus, and cloths of gold—would have them safe-kept in rear rooms, to be shown only to those able to buy them.

  Even so, there were cloths displayed that would make a lady’s single gown worth more than all the gowns a nun might wear in her lifetime, and though Frevisse and Dame Juliana looked from outside, Dame Juliana making soft exclaims of pleasure, neither of them went in for nearer looks but were content with looking at and judging what was offered at the front of the shops. But even looking only at black cloth left them too much to see, too many choices to consider. Coarse-woven, fine-woven, deep-dyed or not. And could enough yards be supplied by one draper? Would there be advantage offered for buying in such quantity? Did the draper pack purchased cloth for travel, or would that be Master Naylor’s problem?

  Dame Juliana soon understood that London merchants were hardly different from those of Banbury she often dealt with on the nunnery’s behalf, and she happily took over the questioning and judging and bargaining. Frevisse as happily let her, knowing herself not so skilled that way, but after half a dozen shops, even Dame Juliana was tiring and said, “Thank St. Frideswide we don’t have to make up our minds today. Shall we go look at books a while?”

  Frevisse was willing to that but said, “The stationers are mostly gathered into Paternoster Row beside St. Paul’s and that’s somewhat of a walk from here.”

  ‘I’d not mind seeing the cathedral,“ Dame Juliana answered, and onward they went, crossing the Stocks Market into wide Cheapside. Here were a great many goldsmiths, and Dame Juliana’s staring at the gleaming displays of jewelry and plate slowed their going. Halfway along the street, standing in the middle of the way, was the narrow stone tower of the Standard, the grandest of London’s public conduits for water piped into the city free for the taking by anyone. Farther along was the high Eleanor Cross, likewise in the middle of the street, rich with carved stonework and painted statues; but by then St. Paul cathedral’s tower and spire—last seen clearly as they came down the Thames— were reared into view, unbelievable against the sky, drawing the eye from any lesser thing, and the four of them went aside, into the lee of a housefront, to stare their fill, Frevisse and Master Naylor, who had seen it this close before now, no less than Dame Juliana and Dickon. ”More than five hundred feet tall, not counting the golden cockerel at its top,“ Master Naylor said.

  ‘But we’ll
save going inside for another day,“ said Frevisse. ”After we’ve tended to our other purposes.“

  ‘So that we can spend a whole day in it if we want,“ Dame Juliana agreed, but went on staring as they curved along the long north side of St. Paul’s churchyard toward Paternoster Row. From that near, the cathedral was like a great stone cliff, fretted with buttresses and pinnacles and stone-traceried windows, towering over even the towers and spires of the very many London churches everywhere thrusting up above lesser rooftops.

  Once into narrow Paternoster Row, though, it was the stationers’ shops that took Frevisse’s and Dame Juliana’s heed. Here was the heart of London’s book-trade. Paper-sellers, scriveners, illuminators, bookbinders, and booksellers all existed together in mutual use to one another and their customers. Books of every sort were to be had, from theology in dark, dense lines of careful script—Frevisse spared a moment’s pity for the scribes who had to copy out those works—to any of Chaucer’s lightsome tales, either together or singly, depending on the buyer’s preference or purse, because books could be bought bound—in full, hardboarded, leather-wrapped covers or simply stitched into parchment or heavier paper—or unbound, if that should be the buyer’s pleasure.

  To St. Frideswide’s need, that latter would be the best. Books were less costly that way and would save Dame Perpetua the work of unstitching from any cover. But that was the simplest choice Frevisse and Dame Perpetua had to make. By various borrowings from their prioress’ brother, an abbot, the priory had a sufficiency of devout works from which to copy. “Something lesser and lighter,” Domina Elisabeth had said. “But not too profane,” she had added, and after a happy time in one shop and another, their choice was come down to a small abece of children’s learning-rhymes for certain and an uncertainty between a Siege of Troy newly translated from the French, a collection of Aesop’s fables, and a lengthy Life of St. Katherine. “By that very learned Augustinian canon John Capgrave,” Master Colop the bookseller at the sign of the Gilded Quill was telling Dame Juliana in one part of the shop while Frevisse lingered at the front over a copy of Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes. There was a directness and clarity of thought to Hoccleve’s verse that drew her, and under her breath she read: