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 m
ugs 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.’
‘You will not be,’ I said firmly.
‘Fair enough. So . . . however you get your metal, you have to cut and stamp it. The shears are harder to make than anything, as you need a blacksmith and he has to be one who won’t ask no questions. You need good iron, though, or they won’t cut. Now, the proper mints have one side of the coin set below and the other held in the hand. They put the sheet in and down comes the hammer – and there’s both sides struck at the same moment. Most of my trade makes one side at a time, which is easier but slower. You can spot those if one side is cut deeper than the other, but it takes a good eye like mine. If I were set free to work as your faithful servant, I’d ferret out those rabbits like a good ’un. If I took an oath as a king’s man, with the boy here, we’d find and stop every forger in the realm, I swear to God.’
‘That will not happen,’ I said. ‘What else?’
He chewed his lip for a moment.
‘Sweating? That’s when a merchant takes a bag of silver coins, of wool, see? He shakes them or he gives it to a boy like mine to do it. They all rub alongside each other and the dust that comes off is good silver. No one can tell it’s been done – the coins look cleaner, if anything. Do that with every coin that comes through and you’ll have enough metal dust to make a few spare pennies.’
He sat back and folded his arms across his stomach. The animation faded from his face and when I raised an eyebrow at him, he just sh
ook his head.
‘I’m sorry, father. I think I’ve done enough now. Maybe I hoped to convince you that me and the lad would be useful. You being a believer in forgiveness and all. All I wanted was a second chance for my boy – and maybe to put right some of what I done wrong, by closing all the forgers in Winchester and London and round the country. It’s a small world and we all know each other, see? They’d be gone if king’s soldiers came knocking, but I could tell you . . . Ah, it doesn’t matter. I’m done, as you say. The boy and me will be hanged. I’ll ask you to hear my sins now and not take any more time tormenting those who are to die.’
I sat and thought for a long time, using my second and third fingers to pick at the broken nail of my thumb. The guards hovered when they saw the talking had ended, though none of them dared approach.
‘I can’t take you out,’ I said firmly, cutting the air with my hand.
‘We ain’t murderers, son,’ Skinner murmured. ‘You can bring a great triumph to the king if you give me a second chance.’
‘I know far more than you realise, Master Skinner!’ I retorted, stung. ‘I have heard testimony and seen more mints and mines than you can possibly know.’
‘I don’t doubt it, father. You seem a thorough man and a clever one. Though my world ain’t in the mines or the king’s mints. I’ll bet they have a hundred ways of robbing the Crown, ones that me and my boy ain’t even dreamed of. That’s your world, maybe.’
He leaned forward then, fixing me with his gaze.
‘This is mine. I’ve offered you my fair service and you won’t know it, but my word is good. I want to walk out of this yard with my son, to give him the chance he should have had. If you pardon us, I swear I am your man for ever. That is my oath to you, father, by Christ and my eternal hereafter.’
The Abbot's Tale Page 29