Dunstan

by Conn Iggulden

  I noticed he used my Christian name. The little man was growing into his crown, which I was beginning to expect. On the first day, all men sit the throne as if they are a child in their father’s chair. Yet as the months and years pass, they swell to fit the seat – and it becomes truly theirs.

  In a line of carts more commonly used to transport coal, wood and stone, I accompanied twenty-two of our young workers over the marsh road at Glastonbury, clattering along the wooden planks. Wulfric joined me, for once without his wife on his arm, as well as Master Justin, who took a fatherly interest in the whole enterprise once he understood it. I do not know how the mason reconciled the trip with his usual concerns, either building the abbey or his joining of the Benedictines.

  In the last cart, we had six soldiers of a sort, on loan to us from the king’s estate guards. Those men had earned their posts as reward for long service. Very long service in some cases. Such white-haired veterans could not have been included in the king’s forces marching away once more. Yet they made it very clear they were not delighted to have been given over to my care, either. I had asked for John Wyatt to be one of their number, but Eadred had refused and taken him into the north instead.

  It was not difficult to find places for our lads in the mines, as we reached each one. We waited half a day for the first ones to come back, but no one did. As Wulfric had suggested, the foremen were all so desperate for strong backs that our lads hardly had to ask for work before they were in and wheeling a barrow, or hacking away at a seam.

  It began to feel as if we were planting seeds. They had their instructions from Justin, from Wulfric – and a last prayer from me. As we came into range of one of the mines, they’d slip over the side, alone or in a pair, then vanish into the roadside. Such a strange caravan as ours would be noticed in the local area and we told them to wait a day until they were good and hungry before seeking out the foreman for work. We bore the king’s crest on our papers, if some thane or shire reeve had brought us to a halt.

  As it happens, we were not stopped, not once, as we made our way through the green lanes. Though we were at war, that was all happening too far away to disturb the peace there. We left two lads at the great mine the Romans had begun near Bath, one more at works just across the Bristol Channel, two in Shropshire, and so on. Wherever there was a royal grant to take silver or gold from Crown lands, we made our way. We left our seeds behind – to seek and to grow.

  There were a dozen lesser mints than the four I wanted to test. I could have dropped a lad in every market town just about, and found some backstreet workshop that stamped its own coins. It was an almighty mess in those days, but then that was why Eadred had called me to the work. Wulfric took two lads to the London mint, with fine letters of recommendation from a goldsmith in Winchester who owed him a favour. My brother caught up on my own mount, Scoundrel, though that old horse was in his last days. Scoundrel turned away from the apple I offered him and I knew. When the appetite begins to go, it all goes.

  The beauty of it was how desperate the mints were for men, like the mines before them. That was our doing, with all young men of sound appearance needed in the shield lines. It had been simple enough to send a dozen king’s men up the road a week or so ahead of us. With a writ from the royal treasurer as their authority, they’d sneered at those who guarded the doors, then entered despite their objection, as real soldiers always will. I heard they’d made a show of peering at teeth and palms, then signed up half a dozen fine fellows in every mine and mint from Winchester to York.

  When our keen lads arrived to replace them in their Sunday clothes, ready to work with a letter of recommendation from their last master – well, we are lucky they didn’t lose the hands they stretched out in greeting.

  Seeing the last of our seeds on their way left me with Wulfric and Master Justin and our veterans, though by then they slept through the afternoons. We’d ended our journey at York, and though the fighting was still a hundred miles or more to the north, there was a feel of it on the air. It was a world apart from those sleepy hamlets and villages back in Shropshire. The whole country seemed up in arms then, with fear of invasion in every mouth and boys and women going armed. Yet our job was done for a time, so we spent a most amiable couple of weeks wending our way south once more with the carts and Scoundrel on a long lead. I caught a fine trout on a line Master Justin had made. He showed us all the trick of it and half the old fellows joined us whenever we came to a river, so that we had fish most days.

  Just outside the lovely little village of Bicester, with peaceful farms once more all around, my horse lay down and would not get up. I exchanged sharp words with Wulfric over his care of the animal, but it was loss making me harsh. The carts halted on the road and the veterans had their fires started quick as winking. They were old hands at that. They were old hands at everything, in fact, but they liked to be fed on time.

  I sat with Scoundrel for a while, with his legs oddly splayed in the road and a wild look in his eye, as if he could see something bad coming. In the end, Master Justin cut his throat and butchered him, which took the rest of the day. Both he and Wulfric said how fortunate we were to have the carts there for the meat, that it would feed a village and that it could all have been wasted.

  I let them chatter on in my grief. I had disliked that horse from the very start, but he had carried me when I was afraid at Brunanburh and he was mine own. I did eat part of him the following night, but it was tough and I wished I had not.

  28

  As the sun set on the evening of the next full moon, one by one, our lads put down their tools and walked out to the roads where they had been dropped a month before. It took a few days to collect them all – and one of them, name of Cerwen, we never saw again, though we waited a full day on the way up and another on the road back down. I found later he had asked too many questions, though I’d told them all not to.

  We brought all our seeds home except that one. For the most part, we found them spry enough, though thin and battered. Some had been beaten, though that is the life of an apprentice and they seemed to bear no ill will for the marks, even to find the whole task amusing. I had expected to greet the lads with solemnity and thanks, but instead, they came back to the carts with laughter and stories. It was a revelation, as I had never been a carefree child myself.

  As I looked around at them, I realised I had become a father after all. A father can be stern and harsh, indeed he must be, if he is not to turn out a milksop boy. Yet he can also take pride and show it. As I knew very well, that quiet moment of praise, that single wink or smile, meant a great deal to young fellows. They look for it in those they respect, to give them worth. And there is nothing wrong with that.

  Though I had forbidden strong drink the first time, it seemed our veterans had brought supplies of their own on the return trip. There was some drunkenness like Noah, as well as some fishing where one lad was half-drowned before we pulled him out. Yet they were as good as their word, and our returning workers kept my scribes busy writing down everything they had learned.

  By the time we reached Winchester once more, I had a fair understanding of the mints and mines of England. Most of it was unremarkable. If those fools who ran them under licence had shared the secrets of their trade, I might not have gone to such lengths. Yet as I sat there at a fine oak desk in candlelight, looking at two dozen sheets of vellum filled with tiny letters, I could only breathe and shake my head in wonder.

  The following morning, I visited the king’s prison, where two forgers waited to be hanged, alongside murderers, poachers, thieves and rather pitiful madmen or deserters from the army. There was only one scaffold in Winchester then and the king’s executioners went about their task with the steady hand of those who know they will always be in work. No one minded if they were slow, certainly not those who peered out at the yard from behind good iron bars.

  I watched in fascination as the guards pulled two dishevelled and reeking fellows from among the rest.

>   ‘Skinner and the boy Jones, father. These are the ones you want. It’s lucky you didn’t come tomorrow or they’d have been gone, and we don’t have no other forgers in for hanging at the moment.’

  ‘You will soon,’ I murmured, though my attention was on the rough pair as chains were fastened around their ankles.

  ‘Stand up straight, both of you,’ I snapped. Both the forgers and the guards responded, which pleased me. ‘Now, you must understand, there is no true liberty on offer. I wish only to speak to you about your crimes. After that you will be returned to the cell and, when the moment comes, hanged.’

  ‘What will you offer us?’ the older one said, squinting at me.

  ‘I am prepared to offer forgiveness of your sins, so that you can go right to heaven and spend not one day in purgatory, or of course the other place.’

  That caused a stir among the men in the cell, though the one I wanted seemed less impressed. He leaned over to the one they called ‘the boy Jones’ and they conferred. The guard lost patience before I did, reaching out and slapping them both around the back of the head.

  ‘Answer the abbot!’ the man snapped.

  Skinner glared at him, then looked over at me like a crow, his head tilted and one beady eye fastening on me.

  ‘All right, father. We’ll take that. I’ll tell you everything I know about the old trade – if you throw in a plate of ham and eggs, a bit of bread and a pint of ale for me and the boy.’

  The air grew still as the guards goggled at his effrontery and everyone else waited to see what I might say.

  ‘Very well, Skinner,’ I said after a time, hiding my amusement at his boldness. It was not such a poor bargain, given what I hoped to learn.

  He beamed at that, appearing to know the word of an abbot had to be good. I saw he was both toothless and surprisingly wrinkled, though paler than half the men watching us through the bars. The poachers were darkest, of course, from all those years in the heather and the open sun, watching for prey or a sight of king’s men. Yet this fellow Skinner and his lad could have passed almost for scribes, having spent all their working lives tucked away indoors.

  The guards brought out a small table from their own dormitory, setting it in the open yard not a dozen feet from the cell and placing three stools alongside. They made a great show of wiping it down as if for a valued customer, amusing themselves until I asked them when the food would be brought.

  I saw dull resentment in the eyes of the guard I addressed, so I sent another with him, warning them both that I would know if they spat in the food. I saw their shoulders slump as they heard that part.

  I seated myself across from the two men and watched as Skinner in particular looked all around the yard from the new angle he had been given. The boy Jones sat with his head drooping and said not a word, so that I began to wonder if he was simple.

  ‘Would you like me to hear your sins now?’ I asked after a time.

  To my surprise, Skinner shrugged.

  ‘We’ll wait for the food, father, if you don’t mind. I don’t like to confess on an empty stomach and they don’t feed us here, not when we’re going for the hanging. Fair enough not to waste it, when there are so many starving fellows, as I see it.’

  He settled back, apparently content to doze in the sun. I felt my own eyes growing heavy as it took an age for the two guards to return. Ham and eggs and bread should not have tested them too greatly, but they were panting as if they’d run a long way. I did not ask and I engaged in a little mummery with the plate and the mugs of ale, running my hand over them and saying the Pater Noster while I watched the guards. Simple men will usually give themselves away. Yet neither guard looked afraid and I pronounced the food was clean.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen. I will call you when it is time.’

  They bowed as they backed away, in awe by then of one strange occurrence after another.

  When I turned my gaze once more to Skinner, it was to find his eyes gleaming at me in surmise.

  ‘Well? I have fulfilled our bargain,’ I told him. ‘Eat and drink your fill. But as you do, tell me everything you know about the forging of coins like this.’

  I laid a good fake on the table in front of them, a coin in dull grey that might have passed for silver in anything but the best daylight. The boy Jones looked up as I did so, glancing at it. Neither man had made any sudden move to touch the food or drink. They watched me as mice might watch a cat as they brought their hands slowly to it, still suspicious that I might dash it from their lips. I waited patiently, seeing hunger hard on them both.

  Skinner took such a draught of the beer, I thought he would finish it in one, though he put it down with a little still slopping at the bottom. He wiped his mouth and gasped in appreciation. The boy Jones fell to as well, shoving pieces of ham and egg into his mouth. I watched as Skinner eased the second pint of ale over to stand before him. He breathed beer across the space between us.

  ‘Ale for me. The boy don’t have the taste for it yet.’ He looked aside for an instant, showing regret. ‘Won’t live long enough to know it, I suppose, not now. Still, you’ve served us well, father, and I am grateful.’

  He picked up the coin and bent it hard between his fingers before he put it back on the wood.

  ‘Pewter, I’d say, which polishes up nice but will grow dull. Poor work, though. Work I’d be ashamed to put out, meself.’

  I’d seen Roman cups of the metal. Lesser forges often used tin and lead and I knew it was some combination of those. Any great forge that could make iron did so, scorning the poor metals of a crofter’s oven.

  ‘I thought it was,’ I said. He looked askance at me, unsure if I knew the first thing about metal. ‘I have worked iron, Master Skinner,’ I said. ‘I am a fair hand with brass and bronze as well.’ I gave him the title out of habit, though it seemed to draw a more serious look from him.

  ‘No one knows how to make good pewter no more,’ he said in answer. ‘Though I do. I know what the Romans added to tin and lead to harden it all up into good metal. You couldn’t bend a coin I’d made. If that was one of mine, you’d never have known it was a fake even.’

  ‘Is that common, then? The use of lead and tin?’

  ‘And a few other secrets, yes. It’s almost all tin, though. Lead would be too heavy in the hand, do you see? It doesn’t matter much anyway. Tin melts as easy as lead just about. Not like silver. That takes one of your fine forges. For most, anyway. I’ve blown it hot enough to melt. I know the tricks of that an’ all.’

  ‘Master Skinner, you do understand that I will not take you out of this place? When our discussion is at an end, I will depart – and you will be hanged.’

  ‘The boy did nothing, though. You might take him as a servant, maybe. You’ve seen the way he is. No wickedness in him, is there? Just look at him!’

  We both did, to see the boy wipe his nose as he sat there, still staring at nothing.

  ‘I am a king’s officer, Master Skinner. I cannot aid or pardon those who have been sentenced to death for their crimes.’

  ‘You are a priest, though, as well,’ he muttered.

  ‘I am, but I certainly cannot put the Church in opposition to the Crown. That is a path that would end in disaster.’

  It was a strange thing to consider. I had the king’s authority, and the truth was I could have taken him away and set him free to take up his old work that very day. No one would have dared say a word about it. Yet in my office, in that role as king’s treasurer, I was the Crown. The king’s authority and honour resided in my person as long as I acted on his business and in his name.

  ‘I made you a bargain, Master Skinner, of confession of your sins – and food and ale. I was told you knew the tricks of coining and forgery. That if you didn’t know them, no one did. So far, you have had the better of it. Now, put aside false hope. You will be hanged today, just as if I had not come to this prison yard. Say what you know and I will shrive you and leave you to your thoughts.’

  ‘I
’ve drunk the ale, though,’ he said, cradling the second mug to his chest. ‘And my boy has eaten his scran and that. I think we’re finished here, father.’

  ‘You place no value in the confession of your sins? You and this child are content to risk your immortal soul, to suffer eternity in hell for your arrogance here? You do not fear what awaits you when the curtain is torn and you stand before the archangel?’

  My voice had risen in wrath and volume and Skinner looked in amazement at me, seeing perhaps a different side to the gentle man who would swallow all his lies. He raised his open hands to quieten me as I began to stand.

  ‘All right then, father. Your point is made.’ He settled himself as if there had been no raised voices between us. ‘Now, there’s clipping of true coins, which is done with shears. Some prefer to rub away the silver on a stone, then heat the stone to make it run, but the bigger firms clip. You’ll have seen the marks of it, of course.’

  I had, as almost every silver penny bore a straight edge somewhere.

  ‘You collect your clippings and you have enough silver to make a fine new coin as good as any of the real ones. Now, you already know about the pewter coins …’

  ‘What was the secret ingredient?’ I asked him.

  He sighed and blew out a great gust of beery air.

  ‘Antimony. The Romans knew it well enough, though no bugger seems to any more. It hardens the tin along with lead. Nine-tenths tin, the rest lead and a few pinches of antimony, what they call kohl. Some women put it on their eyes, so they say. I’d have thought that would sting something fierce, but maybe high-born girls is different to the ones I know.’

  He grinned at me, but I just gestured for him to continue.

  ‘Tin and lead melt easily on a charcoal fire – and the ores is all over. Good shops have their own suppliers, who dig seams out in the wilderness, where no man has ever trod, well away from the king’s mines and king’s men. They know where to look, or they use the spots their father showed them. I must have seen a hundred of those mines. I could remember a few of the good ones if I was taken back there, as well.’