All in a flash it came to Quentin who this was. Some time before he had heard that the Princess Margaret, daughter of the French King, was in the city, with her husband, Prince Henry of England. It was for the Prince that Master Gerard had made that other chest. Things linked themselves together in this world, it seemed, like the apricots and blossoms of his design.
“Finish the chest,” said the Princess after a pause. “I will have it for a traveling casket. Can you carve a head on the top—or two heads, facing one another, man and woman?”
“Like this?” asked Quentin, and he traced an outline on the bench. It was the lady’s beautiful profile.
Master Gerard came in just then, and Pol came slinking in at the back door. The next day Quentin was promoted to Pol’s place, and finished his chest in great content and happiness. It was the beginning in a long upward climb to success.
Bang—slam—bang-bang—slam! slam! slam!
If anybody on the Chepe in the twelfth century had ever heard of rifle-practice, early risers thereabouts might have been reminded of the crackle of guns. The noise was made by the taking down of shutters all along the shop fronts, and stacking them together out of the way. The business day in London still begins in the same way, but now there are plate-glass windows inside the shutters, and the shops open between eight and nine instead of soon after day-break.
It was the work of the apprentices and the young sons of shop-keepers to take down the shutters, sweep the floors, and put things in order for the business of the day. This was the task which Guy, nephew of Gamelyn the goldsmith, at the sign of the Gold Finch, particularly liked. The air blew sweet and fresh from the convent gardens to the eastward of the city, or up the river below London Bridge, or down from the forest-clad hills of the north, and those who had the first draft of it were in luck. London streets were narrow and twisty-wise, but not overhung with coal smoke, for the city still burned wood from the forests without the walls.
On this May morning, Guy was among the first of the boys who tumbled out from beds behind the counter and began to open the shops. The shop-fronts were all uninclosed on the first floor, and when the shutters were down the shop was separated from the street only by the counter. Above were the rooms in which the shop-keeper and his family lived, and the second story often jutted over the one below and made a kind of covered porch. In some of the larger shops, like this one of Goldsmiths’ Row, the jewelers’ street, there was a third story which could be used as a storeroom. There were no glass cases or glass windows. Lattices and shutters were used in window-openings, and the goods of finer quality were kept in wooden chests. The shop was also a work-room, for the shopkeeper was a manufacturer as well, and a part if not all that he sold was made in his own house.
Guy, having stacked away the shutters and taken a drink of water from the well in the little garden at the rear, got a broom and began to sweep the stone floor. It was like the brooms in pictures of witches, a bundle of fresh twigs bound on the end of a stick, withes of supple young willow being used instead of cord. Some of the twigs in the broom had sprouted green leaves. Guy sang as he swept the trash out into the middle of the street, but as a step came down the narrow stair he hushed his song. When old Gamelyn had rheumatism the less noise there was, the better. The five o’clock breakfast, a piece of brown bread, a bit of herring and a horn cup of ale, was soon finished, and then the goldsmith, rummaging among his wares, hauled a leather sack out of a chest and bade Guy run with it to Ely House.
This was an unexpected pleasure, especially for a spring morning as fair as a blossoming almond tree. The Bishop of Ely lived outside London Wall, near the road to Oxford, and his house was like a palace in a fairy-tale. It had a chapel as stately as an ordinary church, a great banquet-hall, and acres of gardens and orchards. No pleasanter place could be found for an errand in May. Guy trotted along in great satisfaction, making all the speed he could, for the time he saved on the road he might have to look about in Ely House.
For a city boy, he was extremely fond of country ways. He liked to walk out on a holiday to Mile End between the convent gardens; he liked to watch the squirrels flyte and frisk among the huge trees of Epping Forest; he liked to follow at the heels of the gardener at Ely House and see what new plant, shrub or seed some traveler from far lands had brought for the Bishop. He did not care much for the city houses, even for the finest ones, unless they had a garden. Privately he thought that if ever he had his uncle’s shop and became rich,—and his uncle had no son of his own,—he would have a house outside the wall, with a garden in which he would grow fruits and vegetables for his table. Another matter on which his mind was quite made up was the kind of things that would be made in the shop when he had it. The gold finch that served for a sign had been made by his grandfather, who came from Limoges, and it was handsomer than anything that Guy had seen there in Gamelyn’s day. Silver and gold work was often sent there to be repaired, like the cup he had in the bag, a silver wine-cup which the Bishop’s steward now wanted at once; but Guy wanted to learn to make such cups, and candlesticks, and finely wrought banquet-dishes himself.
He gave the cup to the steward and was told to come back for his money after tierce, that is, after the service at the third hour of the day, about half way between sunrise and noon. There were no clocks, and Guy would know when it was time to go back by the sound of the church bells. The hall was full of people coming and going on various errands. One was a tired-looking man in a coarse robe, and broad hat, rope girdle, and sandals, who, when he was told that the Bishop was at Westminster on business with the King, looked so disappointed that Guy felt sorry for him. The boy slipped into the garden for a talk with his old friend the gardener, who gave him a head of new lettuce and some young mustard, both of which were uncommon luxuries in a London household of that day, and some roots for the tiny walled garden which he and Aunt Joan were doing their best to keep up. As he came out of the gate, having got his money, he saw the man he had noticed before sitting by the roadside trying to fasten his sandal. The string was worn out.
A boy’s pocket usually has string in it. Guy found a piece of leather thong in his pouch and rather shyly held it out. The man looked up with an odd smile.
“I thank you,” he said in curious formal English with a lisp in it. “There is courtesy, then, among Londoners? I began to think none here cared for anything but money, and yet the finest things in the world are not for sale.”
Guy did not know what to answer, but the idea interested him.
“The sky above our heads,” the wayfarer went on, looking with narrowed eyes at the pink may spilling over the gray wall of the Bishop’s garden,—“flowers, birds, music, these are for all. When you go on pilgrimage you find out how pleasant is the world when you need not think of gain.”
The stranger was a pilgrim, then. That accounted for the clothes, but old Gamelyn had been on pilgrimage to the new shrine at Canterbury, and it had not helped his rheumatism much, and certainly had given him no such ideas as these. Guy looked up at the weary face with the brilliant eyes and smile,—they were walking together now,—and wondered.
“And what do you in London?” the pilgrim asked.
“My uncle is a goldsmith in Chepe,” said the boy.
“And are you going to be a goldsmith in Chepe too?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then you like not the plan?”
Guy hesitated. He never had talked of his feeling about the business, but he felt that this man would see what he meant. “I should like it better than anything,” he said, “if we made things like those the Bishop has. Uncle Gamelyn says that there is no profit in them, because they take the finest metal and the time of the best workmen, and the pay is no more, and folk do not want them.”
“My boy,” said the pilgrim earnestly, “there are always folk who want the best. There are always men who will make only the best, and when the two come together——” He clapped his hollowed palms like a pair of cymbals. “Would you like to make a dish as blue as the sea, with figures of the saints in gold work and jewel-work—a gold cup garlanded in flowers all done in their own color,—a shrine threefold, framing pictures of the saints and studded with orfrey-work of gold and gems, yet so beautiful in the mere work that no one would think of the jewels? Would you?”
“Would I!” said Guy with a deep quick breath.
“Our jewelers of Limoges make all these, and when kings and their armies come from the Crusades they buy of us thank-offerings,—candlesticks, altar-screens, caskets, chalices, gold and silver and enamel-work of every kind. We sit at the cross-roads of Christendom. The jewels come to us from the mines of East and West. Men come to us with full purses and glad hearts, desiring to give to the Church costly gifts of their treasure, and our best work is none too good for their desire. But here we are at Saint Paul’s. I shall see you again, for I have business on the Chepe.”
Guy headed for home as eagerly as a marmot in harvest time, threading his way through the crowds of the narrow streets without seeing them. He could not imagine who the stranger might be. It was dinner time, and he had to go to the cook-shop and bring home the roast, for families who could afford it patronized the cook-shops on the Thames instead of roasting and baking at home in the narrow quarters of the shops. In the great houses, with their army of servants and roomy kitchens, it was different; and the very poor did what they could, as they do everywhere; but when the wife and daughters of the shopkeeper served in the shop, or worked at embroidery, needle-craft, weaving, or any light work of the trade that they could do, it was an economy to have the cooking done out of the house.
When the shadows were growing long and the narrow pavement of Goldsmith’s Row was quite dark, someone wearing a gray robe and a broad hat came along the street, slowly, glancing into each shop as he passed. To Guy’s amazement, old Gamelyn got to his feet and came forward.
“Is it—is it thou indeed, master?” he said, bowing again and again. The pilgrim smiled.
“A fine shop you have here,” he said, “and a fine young bird in training for the sign of the Gold Finch. He and I scraped acquaintance this morning. Is he the youth of whom you told me when we met at Canterbury?”
It was hard on Guy that just at that moment his aunt Joan called him to get some water from the well, but he went, all bursting with eagerness as he was. The pilgrim stayed to supper, and in course of time Guy found out what he had come for.
He was Eloy, one of the chief jewelers of Limoges, which in the Middle Ages meant that his work was known in every country of Europe, for that city had been as famous for its gold work ever since the days of Clovis as it is now for porcelain. Enamel-work was done there as well, and the cunning workmen knew how to decorate gold, silver, or copper in colors like vivid flame, living green, the blue of summer skies. Eloy offered to take Guy as an apprentice and teach him all that he could for the sake of the maker of the Gold Finch, who had been his own good friend and master. It was as if the head of one of the great Paris studios should offer free training for the next ten years to some penniless art student of a country town.
What amazed Guy more than anything else, however, was the discovery that his grumbling old uncle, who never had had a good word to say for him in the shop, had told this great artist about him when they met five years before, and begged Eloy if ever he came to London to visit the Gold Finch and see the little fellow who was growing up there to learn the ancient craft in a town where men hardly knew what good work was. Even now old Gamelyn would only say that his nephew was a good boy and willing, but so painstaking that he would never make a tradesman; he spent so much unnecessary time on his work.
“He may be an artist,” said Eloy with a smile; and some specimens of the work which Guy did when he was a man, which are now carefully kept in museums, prove that he was. No one knows how the enamel-work of Limoges was done; it is only clear that the men who did it were artists. The secret has long been lost—ever since the city, centuries ago, was trampled under the feet of war.
Nicholas Gay stood on the wharf by his father’s warehouse, and the fresh morning breeze that blew up from the Pool of the Thames was ruffling his bright hair. He could hear the seamen chanting at the windlass, and the shouts of the boatmen threading their skiffs and scows in and out among the crowded shipping. There were high-pooped Flemish freighters, built to hold all the cargo possible for a brief voyage; English coasting ships, lighter and quicker in the chop of the Channel waves; larger and more dignified London merchantmen, that had the best oak of the Weald in their bones and the pick of the Southdown wool to fill them full; Mediterranean galleys that shipped five times the crew and five times the cargo of a London ship; weather-beaten traders that had come over the North Sea with cargoes of salt fish; and many others.
The scene was never twice the same, and the boy never tired of it. Coming into port with a cargo of spices and wine was a long Mediterranean galley with oars as well as sails, each oar pulled by a slave who kept time with his neighbor like a machine. The English made their bid for fortune with the sailing-ship, and even in the twelfth century, when their keels were rarely seen in any Eastern port, there was little of the rule of wind and sea short of Gibraltar that their captains did not know.
Up Mart Lane, the steep little street from the wharves, Nicholas heard some one singing a familiar chantey, but not as the sailors sang it. He was a slender youth with a laugh in his eye, and he was singing to a guitar-like lute. He was piecing out the chantey and fitting words to it, and succeeding rather well. Nicholas stood by his father’s warehouse, hands behind him and eyes on the ship just edging out to catch the tide, and listened to the song, his heart full of dreams.
“Hey, there, youngster!” said the singer kindly as he reached the end of the strophe. “Have you a share in that ship that you watch her so sharply?”
“No,” said Nicholas gravely, “she’s not one of father’s ships. She’s the Heath Hen of Weymouth, and she’s loaded with wool, surely, but she’s for Bordeaux.”
“Bless the urchin, he might have been born on board!” The young man looked at Nicholas rather more attentively. “Your father has ships, then?”
Nicholas nodded proudly. “The Rose-in-June, and the Sainte Spirite, and the Thomasyn,—she’s named for mother,—and the Sainte Genevieve, because father was born in Paris, you know, and the Saint Nicholas,—that’s named for me. But I’m not old enough to have a venture yet. Father says I shall some day.”
The Pool of the Thames was crowded, and as the wind freshened the ships looked even more like huge white-winged birds. Around them sailed and wheeled and fluttered the real sea-birds, picking up their living from the scraps thrown overboard,—swans, gulls, wild geese and ducks, here and there a strange bird lured to the harbor by hope of spoil. The oddly mated companions, the man and the boy, walked along busy Thames Street and came to Tower Hill and the great gray fortress-towers, with a double line of wall coiled around the base, just outside the City of London. The deep wide moat fed from the river made an island for the group of buildings with the square White Tower in the middle.
“None of your friends live there, I suppose?” the young man inquired, and Nicholas smiled rather dubiously, for he was not certain whether it was a joke or not. The Tower had been prison, palace and fort by turns, but common criminals were not imprisoned there—only those who had been accused of crimes against the State. “Lucky you,” the youth added. “London is much pleasanter as a residence, I assure you. I lodged not far from here when I first came, but now I lodge——”
That sentence was never finished. Clattering down Tower Hill came a troop of horse, and one, swerving suddenly, caught Nicholas between his heels and the wall, and by the time the rider had his animal under control the little fellow was lying senseless in the arms of the stranger, who had dived in among the flying hoofs and dragged him clear. The rider, lagging behind the rest, looked hard at the two, and then spurred on without even stopping to ask whether he had hurt the boy.
Before Nicholas had fairly come to himself he shut his teeth hard to keep from crying out with the pain in his side and left leg. The young man had laid him carefully down close by the wall, and just as he was looking about for help three of the troopers came spurring back, dismounted, and pressed close around the youth as one of them said something in French. He straightened up and looked at them, and in spite of his pain Nicholas could not help noticing that he looked proudly and straightforwardly, as if he were a gentleman born. He answered them in the same language; they shook their heads and made gruff, short answers. The young man laid his hand on his dagger, hesitated, and turned back to Nicholas.
“Little lad,” he said, “this is indeed bad fortune. They will not let me take you home, but——” So deftly that the action was hidden from the men who stood by, he closed Nicholas’ hand over a small packet, while apparently he was only searching for a coin in his pouch and beckoning to a respectable-looking market-woman who halted near by just then. He added in a quick low tone without looking at the boy, “Keep it for me and say nothing.”
Nicholas nodded and slipped the packet into the breast of his doublet, with a groan which was very real, for it hurt him to move that arm. The young man rose and as his captors laid heavy hands upon him he put some silver in the woman’s hand, saying persuasively, “This boy has been badly hurt. I know not who he is, but see that he gets home safely.”
“Aye, master,” said the woman compassionately, and then everything grew black once more before Nicholas’ eyes as he tried to see where the men were going. When he came to himself they were gone, and he told the woman that he was Nicholas Gay and that his father was Gilbert Gay, in Fenchurch Street. The woman knew the house, which was tile-roofed and three-storied, and had a garden; she called a porter and sent him for a hurdle, and they got Nicholas home.
The merchant and his wife were seriously disturbed over the accident,—not only because the boy was hurt, and hurt in so cruel a way, but because some political plot or other seemed to be mixed up in it. From what the market-woman said it looked as if the men might have been officers of the law, and it was her guess that the young man was an Italian spy. Whatever he was, he had been taken in at the gates of the Tower. In a city of less than fifty thousand people, all sorts of gossip is rife about one faction and another, and if Gilbert Gay came to be suspected by any of the King’s advisers there were plenty of jealous folk ready to make trouble for him and his. Time went by, however, and they heard nothing more of it.
Nicholas said nothing, even to his mother, of the packet which he had hidden under the straw of his bed. It was sealed with a splash of red wax over the silken knot that tied it, and much as he desired to know what was inside, Nicholas had been told by his father that a seal must never be broken except by the person who had a right to break it. Gilbert Gay had also told his children repeatedly that if anything was given to them, or told them, in confidence, it was most wrong to say a word about it. It never occurred to Nicholas that perhaps his father would expect him to tell of this. The youth had told him not to tell, and he must not tell, and that was all about it.
The broken rib and the bruises healed in time, and by the season when the Rose-in-June was due to sail, Nicholas was able to limp into the rose-garden and play with his little sister Genevieve at sailing rose-petal boats in the fountain. The time of loading the ships for a foreign voyage was always rather exciting, and this was the best and fastest of them all. When she came back, if the voyage had been fortunate, she would be laden with spices and perfumes, fine silks and linen, from countries beyond the sunrise where no one that Nicholas knew had ever been. From India and Persia, Arabia and Turkey, caravans of laden camels were even then bringing her cargo across the desert. They would be unloaded in such great market-places as Moussoul, Damascus, Bagdad and Cairo, the Babylon of those days. Alexandria and Constantinople, Tyre and Joppa, were seaport market-cities, and here the Venetian and Genoese galleys, or French ships of Marseilles and Bordeaux, or the half-Saracen, half-Norman traders of Messina came for their goods.
The Rose-in-June would touch at Antwerp and unload wool for Flemish weavers to make into fine cloth; she would cruise around the coast, put in at Bordeaux, and sell the rest of her wool, and the grain of which England also had a plenty. She might go on to Cadiz, or even through the Straits of Gibraltar to Marseilles and Messina. The more costly the stuff which she could pack into the hold for the homeward voyage, the greater the profit for all concerned.
Since wool takes up far more room in proportion to its value than silk, wine or spices, money as well as merchandise must be put into the venture, and the more money, the more profit. Others joined in the venture with Master Gay. Edrupt the wool-merchant furnished a part of the cargo on his own account; wool-merchants traveled through the country as agents for Master Gay. The men who served in the warehouse put in their share; even the porters and apprentices sent something, if no more than a shilling. There was some profit also in the passenger trade, especially in time of pilgrimage when it was hard to get ships enough for all who wished to go. The night before the sailing, Nicholas escaped from the happy hubbub and went slowly down to the wharves. It was not a very long walk, but it tired him, and he felt rather sad as he looked at the grim gray Tower looming above the river, and wondered if the owner of the packet sealed with the red seal would ever come back.
As he passed the little church at the foot of Tower Hill a light step came up behind him, and two hands were placed on his shoulders.
“My faith!” said the young man. “Have you been here all this time?”
He was thinner and paler, but the laughter still sparkled in his dark eyes, and he was dressed in daintily embroidered doublet, fine hose, and cloak of the newest fashion, a gold chain about his neck and a harp slung from his shoulder. A group of well-dressed servants stood near the church.
“I’m well now,” said Nicholas rather shyly but happily. “I’m glad you have come back.”
“I was at my wit’s end when I thought of you, lad,” went on the other, “for I remembered too late that neither of us knew the other’s name, and if I had told mine or asked yours in the hearing of a certain rascal it might have been a sorry time for us both. They made a little mistake, you see,—they took me for a traitor.”
“How could they?” said Nicholas, surprised and indignant.
“Oh, black is white to a scared man’s eyes,” said his companion light-heartedly. “How have your father’s ships prospered?”
“There’s one of them,”—Nicholas pointed, proudly, across the little space of water, to the Rose-in-June tugging at her anchor.
“She’s a fine ship,” the young man said consideringly, and then, as he saw the parcel Nicholas was taking from his bosom, “Do you mean to say that that has never been opened? What sort of folk are you?”
“I never told,” said Nicholas, somewhat bewildered. “You said I was not to speak of it.”
“And there was no name on it, for a certain reason.” The young man balanced the parcel in his hand and whistled softly. “You see, I was expecting to meet hereabouts a certain pilgrim who was to take the parcel to Bordeaux,—and beyond. I was—interfered with, as you know, and now it must go by a safe hand to one who will deliver it to this same pilgrim. I should say that your father must know how to choose his captains.”
“My father is Master Gilbert Gay,”—Nicholas held his head very straight—“and that is Master Garland, the captain of the Rose-in-June, coming ashore now.”
“Oh, I know him. I have had dealings with him before now. How would it be—since without your good help this packet would almost certainly have been lost—to let the worth of it be your venture in the cargo?”
“My venture?” Nicholas stammered, the color rising in his cheeks. “My venture?”
“It is not worth much in money,” the troubadour said with a queer little laugh, “but it is something. Master Garland, I see you have not forgotten me,—Ranulph, called le Provençal. Here is a packet to be delivered to Tomaso the physician of Padua, whom you know. The money within is this young man’s share in your cargo, and Tomaso will pay you for your trouble.”
Master Garland grinned broadly in his big beard. “Surely, sure-ly,” he chuckled, and pocketed the parcel as if it had been an apple, but Nicholas noted that he kept his hand on his pouch as he went on to the wharf.
“And now,” Ranulph said, as there was a stir in the crowd by the church door,—evidently some one was coming out. “I must leave you, my lad. Some day we shall meet again.” Then he went hastily away to join a brilliant company of courtiers in traveling attire. Things were evidently going well with Ranulph.
Nicholas thought a great deal about that packet in the days that followed. He took to experimenting with various things to see what could account for the weight. Lead was heavy, but no one would send a lump of lead of that size over seas. The same could be said of iron. He bethought him finally of a goldsmith’s nephew with whom he had acquaintance. Guy Bouverel was older, but the two boys knew each other well.
“Guy,” he said one day, “what’s the heaviest metal you ever handled?”
“Gold,” said Guy promptly.
“A bag that was too heavy to have silver in it would have gold?”
“I should think so. Have you found treasure?”
“No,” said Nicholas, “I was wondering.”
The Rose-in-June came back before she was due. Master Garland came up to the house with Gilbert Gay, one rainy evening when Nicholas and Genevieve were playing nine-men’s-morris in a corner and their mother was embroidering a girdle by the light of a bracket lamp. Nicholas had been taught not to interrupt, and he did not, but he was glad when his mother said gently, but with shining eyes, “Nicholas, come here.”
It was a queer story that Captain Garland had to tell, and nobody could make out exactly what it meant. Two or three years before he had met Ranulph, who was then a troubadour in the service of Prince Henry of Anjou, and he had taken a casket of gold pieces to Tomaso the physician, who was then in Genoa.
“They do say,” said Captain Garland, pulling at his russet beard, “that the old doctor can do anything short o’ raising the dead. They fair worshiped him there, I know. But it’s my notion that that box o’ gold pieces wasn’t payment for physic.”
“Probably not,” said the merchant smiling. “Secret messengers are more likely to deliver their messages if no one knows they have any. But what happened this time?”
“Why,” said the sea captain, “I found the old doctor in his garden, with a great cat o’ Malta stalking along beside him, and I gave him the packet. He opened it and read the letter, and then he untied a little leather purse and spilled out half a dozen gold pieces and some jewels that fair made me blink—not many, but beauties—rubies and emeralds and pearls. He beckoned toward the house and a man in pilgrim’s garb came out and valued the jewels. Then he sent me back to the Rose-in-June with the worth o’ the jewels in coined gold and this ring here. ‘Tell the boy,’ says he, ‘that he saved the King’s jewels, and that he has a better jewel than all of them, the jewel of honor.’”
“But, father,” said Nicholas, rather puzzled, “what else could I do?”
None of them could make anything of the mystery, but as Tomaso of Padua talked with Eloy the goldsmith that same evening they agreed that the price they paid was cheap. In the game the Pope’s party was playing against that of the Emperor for the mastery of Europe, it had been deemed advisable to find out whether Henry Plantagenet would rule the Holy Roman Empire if he could. He had refused the offer of the throne of the Cæsars, and it was of the utmost importance that no one should know that the offer had been made. Hence the delivery of the letter to the jeweler.
Any one who had happened to be traveling along the Islington Road between two and three o’clock in the morning, when London was a walled city, would have seen how London was to be fed that day. But very few were on the road at that hour except the people whose business it was to feed London, and to them it was an old story. There were men with cattle and men with sheep and men with pigs; there were men with little, sober, gray donkeys, not much bigger than a large dog, trotting all so briskly along with the deep baskets known as paniers hung on each side their backs; men with paniers or huge sacks on their own backs, partly resting on the shoulders and partly held by a leather strap around the forehead; men with flat, shallow baskets on their heads, piled three and four deep and filled with vegetables. That was the way in which all the butter, fruit, poultry, eggs, meat, and milk for Londoners to eat came into medieval London. Before London Wall was fairly finished there were laws against any one within the city keeping cattle or pigs on the premises. Early every morning the market folk started from the villages round about,—there were women as well as men in the business—and by the time the city gates opened they were there.
It was not as exciting to Barbara Thwaite as it would have been if she had not known every inch of the road, but it was exciting enough on this particular summer morning, for in all her thirteen years she had never been to market alone. Goody Thwaite had been trudging over the road several times a week for years—seven miles to London and seven miles home—and sometimes she had taken Barbara with her, but never had she sent the child by herself. Now she was bedridden and unless they were to lose all their work for the last month or more, Barbara would have to go to market and tend their stall. Several of the neighbors had stalls near by, and they would look after the child, but this was the busy season, and they could not undertake to carry any produce but their own. A neighbor, too old to do out-of-door work, would tend the mother, and with much misgiving and many cautions, consent was given, and Barbara set bravely forth alone.
She had her hands full in more senses than one. Besides the basket she carried on her head, full of cress from the brook, sallet herbs and under these some early cherries, she had a basket of eggs on her arm, and she was driving three geese. Barbara’s geese were trained to walk in the most orderly single file at home, but she had her doubts as to their behavior in a strange place.
The Islington Road, however, was not the broad and dusty highway that it is to-day, and at first it was not very crowded. Now and again, from one of the little wooded lanes that led up to farmsteads, a marketman would turn into the highway with his load, and more and more of them appeared as they neared the city, so that by the time they reached the city gate it was really a dense throng. From roads in every direction just such crowds were pressing toward all the other gates, and boats laden with green stuff, fruits, butter and cheese were heading for the wharves on Thames-side, all bound for the market.
Naturally it had been discovered long before that some sort of order would have to be observed, or there would be a frightful state of things among the eatables. Like most cities, London was inhabited largely by people who had come from smaller towns, and certain customs were common more or less to every market-town in England. In the smaller towns the cattle-market was held weekly or fortnightly, so that people not anxious to deal in cattle could avoid the trampling herds. London’s cattle-market was not in the Chepe at all. It was in the fields outside the walls, in the deep inbent angle which the wall made between Aldersgate and Newgate, where Smithfield market is now. Even in the Chepe each kind of goods had its own place, and once through the gates the crowd separated.
Barbara knew exactly where to go. From Aldersgate she turned to the left and followed the narrow streets toward the spire of St. Michael’s Church in Cornhill, where the poultry-dealers had their stands. Close by was Scalding Alley, sometimes known as the Poultry, where poultry were sold by the score, and the fowls were scalded after being killed, to make them ready for cooking. Goody Thwaite’s little corner, wedged in between two bigger stalls, was not much more than a board with a coarse awning over it, but she had been there a long time and her neighbors were friends. Barbara set down her loads, dropped on the bench and scattered a little grain for her geese. They had really behaved very well.
She was not very much to look at, this little lass Barbara. Her grandfather had come from the North Country, and she had black hair and eyes like a gypsy. She was rather silent as a rule, though she could sing like a blackbird when no one was about. People were likely to forget about Barbara until they wanted something done; then they remembered her.
She penned in the geese with a small hurdle of wicker so that they should not get away; she set out the cherries and cress on one side and the eggs on the other; then she put the eggs in a bed of cress to set off their whiteness; then she waited. An apprentice boy came by and asked the price of the cherries, whistled and went on; a sharp-faced woman stopped and looked over what she had, and went on. They were all in a hurry; they were all going on some errand of their own. The next person who came by was an old woman with a fresh bright face, white cap and neat homespun gown. She too asked the price of the cherries and shook her head when she heard it. “How good that cress looks!” she said smiling.
Barbara held out a bunch of the cress.
“I can’t give away the cherries,” she said, “they are not mine, but you’re welcome to this.”
“Thank you kindly, little maid,” the old woman said, “my grandson’s o’er fond of it. Never was such a chap for sallets and the like.”
A few minutes later a stout, rather fussy man stopped and bought the whole basket of eggs. As he paid for them and signed to the boy who followed to take them, Michael the poultryman in the next stall grinned at Barbara.
“Ye don’t know who that was, do you?” he said. “That was old Gamelyn Bouverel the goldsmith. You’ll be sorry if any of those eggs be addled, my maiden.”
“They’re not,” said Barbara. “I know where all our hens’ nests are, and Gaffer Edmunds’ too. We sell for him since he had the palsy.”
Then a tall man in a sort of uniform stopped, eyed the staff, and without asking leave took one of the geese from the pen and strode off with it hissing and squawking under his arm. But Michael shook his head soberly as Barbara sprang up with a startled face.
“That was one o’ the purveyors of my lord Fitz-Walter,” he said. “He may pay for the bird and he may not, but you can’t refuse him. There’s one good thing—London folk don’t have to feed the King’s soldiers nor his household. Old King Henry,—rest his soul!—settled that in the Charter he gave the City, and this one has kept to it. My grand-dad used to tell how any time you might have a great roaring archer or man-at-arms, or more likely two or three or a dozen, quartered in your house, willy nilly, for nobody knew how long. There goes the bell for Prime—that ends the privilege.”
Then Barbara remembered that the stewards of great houses were allowed to visit the market and choose what they wished until Prime (about six o’clock) after which the market was open to common folk. A merchant’s wife bought another goose and some cherries, and the remaining goose was taken off her hands by the good-natured Michael, to make up a load of his own for a tavern-keeper. The rest of the cherries were sold to a young man who was very particular about the way in which they were arranged in the basket, and Barbara guessed that he was going to take them as a present to some one. The cress had gone a handful at a time with the other things, and she had some of it for her own dinner, with bread from the bakeshop and some cold meat which Goody Collins, her neighbor on the other side, had sent for. She started for home in good time, and brought her little store of money to her mother before any one had even begun to worry over her absence.
The next market-day Barbara set forth with a light heart, but when she reached her stall she found it occupied. A rough lout had set up shop there, with dressed poultry for sale. A-plenty had been said about it before Barbara arrived, both by Michael and the rough-tongued, kind-hearted market-women. But Michael was old and fat, and no match for the invader. Barbara stood in dismay, a great basket of red roses on her head, her egg-basket on the ground, and the cherries from their finest tree in a panier hung from her shoulder. The merchant’s wife had asked her if she could not bring some roses for rose-water and conserve, and if she had to hawk them about in the sun they would be fit for nothing. The Poultry was crowded, and unless she could have her little foothold here she would be obliged to go about the streets peddling, which she knew her mother would not like at all.
“What’s the trouble here?” asked a decided voice behind her. She turned to look up into the cool gray eyes of a masterful young fellow with a little old woman tucked under his arm. He was brown and lithe and had an air of outdoor freshness, and suddenly she recognized the old woman. It was that first customer, and this must be the grandson of whom she had spoken so fondly.
“This man says he has this place and means to keep it,” Barbara explained in a troubled but firm little voice. “He says that only the poultry dealers have any right here,—but it’s Mother’s corner and she has had it a long time.”
“Aye, that she has,” chorused two or three voices. “And if there was a man belonging to them you’d see yon scamp go packing, like a cat out o’ the dairy. ’Tis a downright shame, so ’tis.”
“Maybe a man that don’t belong to them will do as well,” said the youth coolly. “Back here, gammer, out of the way—and you go stand by her, little maid. Now then, you lummox, are you going to pick up your goods and go, or do I have to throw them after you?”
The surly fellow eyed the new-comer’s broad shoulders and hard-muscled arms for a moment, picked up his poultry and began to move, but as he loaded his donkeys he said something under his breath which Barbara did not hear. An instant later she beheld him lying on his back in a none-too-clean gutter with her defender standing over him. He lost no time in making his way out of the street, followed by the laughter of the Poultry. Even the ducks, geese and chickens joined in the cackle of merriment.
“Sit thee down and rest,” said the youth to Barbara kindly. “We must be getting on, grandmother. If he makes any more trouble, send some one, or come yourself, to our lodging—ask for Robert Edrupt at the house of Master Hardel the wool-merchant.”
“Thank you,” said Barbara shyly. “There’s plenty cress in the brook, and I’ll bring some next market-day—and strawberries too, but not for pay.”
“Kindness breeds kindness, little maid,” added the old woman, and Barbara reflected that it sometimes breeds good fortune also.
This was not the end of Barbara’s acquaintance with Dame Lysbeth and her grandson. The old dame had taken a fancy to the self-possessed, quaintly dignified little maid, and the Thwaite garden proved to have in it many fruits and herbs which she needed in her housekeeping. It was a very old-fashioned garden planted a long time ago by a tavern-keeper from the south of France, and he had brought some pears and plums from his old home in the south and grafted and planted and tended them very carefully. There was one tree which had two kinds of pears on it, one for the north side and one for the south.
Barbara’s mother did not get any better. One day Robert Edrupt stopped in the Poultry to buy a goose for dinner, to celebrate his home-coming from a long wool-buying journey, and the stall was empty.
“Aye,” said Goody Collins, wiping her eyes, “she was a good-hearted woman, was Alison Thwaite, and there’s many who will miss her. She died two days ago, rest her soul.”
Edrupt bought his goose of Michael and went on his way looking sober. A plan had occurred to him, and when he talked it over with Dame Lysbeth she heartily agreed. A day or two later Barbara, standing in the door of the little lonely cottage and wondering what she should do now, saw the two of them coming down the lane. Dame Lysbeth opened the gate and came in, but Robert, after a bow and a pleasant word or two to Barbara, went on to the next farm on an errand.
Barbara could hardly believe her ears when she heard what the old dame had to say. The young wool-merchant had brought his grandmother to London to keep house for him because he did not like to leave her alone in her cottage in the west country, nor could he live there so far from the great markets. But neither of them liked the city, and for the next few years he would have to be away more than ever. He and Master Gay had been considering a scheme for importing foreign sheep to see if they would improve the quality of English wool. Before they did this Edrupt would have to go to Spain, to Aquitaine, to Lombardy and perhaps even further. While he was abroad he might well study the ways of the weavers as well as the sheep that grew the fleece. He wanted to buy a farm he had seen, with a tidy house on it, where Dame Lysbeth could have the sort of home she was used to, but with maids to do the heavy farm work. If Barbara would come and live there, and help see to things, she would be very welcome indeed as long as she chose to stay.
Dame Lysbeth had never had a daughter, and she had often thought in the last few months that if she had one, she would like to have just such a girl as Barbara. The young girl, on her side, already loved her old friend better than she had ever loved anybody but her own mother, and so it came about that when the spring turned the apple orchards white about King’s Barton, three very happy people went from London to the farm near that village, known as the Long Lea. It had land about it which was not good enough for corn, but would do very well for geese and for sheep, and there was room for a large garden, as well as the orchard. Even in those early days, people who bought an English farm usually inherited some of the work of the previous owner, and as Robert said, they would try to farm Long Lea in such a way as to leave it richer than they found it, and still lose no profit.
“Don’t forget to take cuttings from this garden, lass,” he said to Barbara in his blunt, kindly way, as they stood there together for the last time. “There are things here which we can make thrive in the years to come.”
“I have,” said Barbara staidly. She motioned to a carefully packed and tied parcel in a sack. “And there’s a whole basket of eggs from all our fowls.”
Edrupt laughed. He liked her business-like little way.
“Did you take any red-rose cuttings?” he inquired. “There’s a still-room where the old castle used to be, and they’d use some, I believe.”
“It’s the Provence rose,” Barbara said. “I took the whole bush up and set it in a wooden bucket. Michael won’t want that.”
Michael the poultryman was adding the little garden and the stall in the Poultry to his own business. He would cart away the little tumbledown cottage and plant kale there.
“The Provence rose, is it?” queried Edrupt thoughtfully. “We’ll have it beside our door, Barbara, and that will make you feel more at home.”
Both Barbara and the roses throve by transplanting. When Edrupt came home from his long foreign journey, more than a year later, it was rose-time, and Barbara, with a basket of roses on her arm, was marshaling a flock of most important mother-ducks with their ducklings into the poultry-yard. The house with its tiled and thatched roofs sat in the middle of its flocks and fruits and seemed to welcome all who came, and Dame Lysbeth, beaming from the window, looked so well content that it did him good to see her.