Richard was going to market. He was rather a small boy to be going on that errand, especially as he carried on his shoulder a bundle nearly as big as he was. But his mother, with whom he lived in a little, whitewashed timber-and-plaster hut at the edge of the common, was too ill to go, and the Cloth Fair was not likely to wait until she was well again.
The boy could hardly remember his father. Sebastian Garland was a sailor, and had gone away so long ago that there was little hope that he would ever come back. Ever since Richard could remember they had lived as they did now, mainly by his mother’s weaving. They had a few sheep which were pastured on the common, and one of the neighbors helped them with the washing and shearing. The wool had to be combed and sorted and washed in long and tedious ways before it was ready to spin, and before it was woven it was dyed in colors that Dame Garland made from plants she found in the woods and fields. She had been a Highland Scotch girl, and could weave tyrtaine, as the people in the towns called the plaids. None of the English people knew anything about the different tartans that belonged to the Scottish clans, but a woman who could weave those could make woolen cloth of a very pretty variety of patterns. She worked as a dyer, too, when she could find any one who would pay for the work, and sometimes she did weaving for a farm-wife who had more than her maids could do.
Richard knew every step of the work, from sheep-fleece to loom, and wherever a boy could help, he had been useful. He had gone to get elder bark, which, with iron filings, would dye black; he had seen oak bark used to dye yellow, and he knew that madder root was used for red, and woad for blue. His mother could not afford to buy the turmeric, indigo, kermes, and other dyestuffs brought from far countries or grown in gardens. She had to depend on whatever could be got for nothing. The bright rich colors which dyers used in dyeing wool for the London market were not for her. Yellow, brown, some kinds of green, black, gray and dull red she could make of common plants, mosses and the bark of trees. The more costly dyestuffs were made from plants which did not grow wild in England, or from minerals.
Richard was thinking about all this as he trudged along the lane, and thinking also that it would be much easier for them to get a living if it were not for the rules of the Weavers’ Guild. This association was one of the most important of the English guilds of the twelfth century, and had a charter, or protecting permit, from the King, which gave them special rights and privileges. He had also established the Cloth Fair at Smithfield in London, the greatest of all the cloth-markets that were so called. If any man did the guild “any unright or dis-ease” there was a fine of ten pounds, which would mean then more than fifty dollars would to-day. Later he protected the weavers still further by ordaining that the Portgrave should burn any cloth which had Spanish wool mixed with the English, and the weavers themselves allowed no work by candle-light. This helped to keep up the standard of the weaving, and to prevent dishonest dealers from lowering the price by selling inferior cloth. As early as 1100 Thomas Cole, the rich cloth worker of Reading, whose wains crowded the highway to London, had secured a charter from Henry I., this King’s grandfather, and the measure of the King’s own arm had been taken for the standard ell-measure throughout the kingdom.
Richard knew all this, because, having no one else to talk to, his mother had talked much with him; and the laws of Scotland and England differed in so many ways that she had had to find out exactly what she might and might not do. In some of the towns the weavers’ guilds had made a rule that no one within ten miles who did not belong to the guild or did not own sheep should make dyed cloth. This was profitable to the weavers in the association, but it was rather hard on those who were outside, and not every one was allowed to belong. The English weavers were especially jealous of foreigners, and some of their rules had been made to discourage Flemish and Florentine workmen and traders from getting a foothold in the market.
Richard had been born in England, and when he was old enough to earn a living, he intended to repay his mother for all her hard and lonely work for him. As an apprentice to the craft he could grow up in it and belong to the Weavers’ Guild himself some day, but he thought that if there were any way to manage it he would rather be a trader. He felt rather excited now as he hurried to reach the village before the bell should ring for the opening of the market.
King’s Barton was not a very big town, but on market days it seemed very busy. There was an irregular square in the middle of the town, with a cross of stone in the center, and the ringing of this bell gave notice for the opening and closing of the market. It was not always the same sort of market. Once a week the farmers brought in their cattle and sheep. On another day poultry was sold. In the season, there were corn markets and grass markets, for the crops of wheat and hay; and in every English town, markets were held at certain times for whatever was produced in the neighborhood. Everybody knew when these days came, and merchants from the larger cities came then to buy or sell—on other days they would have found the place half asleep. In so small a town there was not trade enough to support a shop for the sale of clothing, jewelry and foreign wares; but a traveling merchant could do very well on market days.
When Richard came into the square the bell had just begun to ring, and the booths were already set up and occupied. His mother had told him to look for Master Elsing, a man to whom she had sometimes sold her cloth, but he was not there. In his stall was a new man. There was some trade between London and the Hanse, or German cities, and sometimes they sent men into the country to buy at the fairs and markets and keep an eye on trade. Master Elsing had been one of these, and he had always given a fair price. The new man smiled at the boy with his big roll of cloth, and said, “What have you there, my fine lad?”
Richard told him. The man looked rather doubtful. “Let me see it,” he said.
The cloth was a soft, thick rough web with a long furry nap. If it was made into a cloak the person who wore it could have the nap sheared off when it was shabby, and wear it again and shear it again until it was threadbare. A man who did this work was called a shearman or sherman. The strange merchant pursed his lips and fingered the cloth. “Common stuff,” he said, “I doubt me the dyes will not be fast color, and it will have to be finished at my cost. There is no profit for me in it, but I should like to help you—I like manly boys. What do you want for it?”
Richard named the price his mother had told him to ask. There was an empty feeling inside him, for he knew that unless they sold that cloth they had only threepence to buy anything whatever to eat, and it would be a long time to next market day. The merchant laughed. “You will never make a trader if you do not learn the worth of things, my boy,” he said good-naturedly. “The cloth is worth more than that. I will give you sixpence over, just by way of a lesson.”
Richard hesitated. He had never heard of such a thing as anybody offering more for a thing than was asked, and he looked incredulously at the handful of silver and copper that the merchant held out. “You had better take it and go home,” the man added. “Think how surprised your mother will be! You can tell her that she has a fine young son—Conrad Waibling said so.”
Richard still hesitated, and Waibling withdrew the money. “You may ask any one in the market,” he said impatiently, “and if you get a better price than mine I say no more.”
“Thank you,” said Richard soberly, “I will come back if I get no other offer.”
He took his cloth to the oldest of the merchants and asked him if he would better Waibling’s price, but the man shook his head. “More than it is worth,” he said. “Nobody will give you that, my boy.” And from two others he got the same reply. He went back to Waibling finally, left the cloth and took his price.
He had never seen a silver penny before. It had a cross on one side and the King’s head on the other, as the common pennies did; it was rather tarnished, but he rubbed it on his jacket to brighten it. He thought he would like to have it bright and shining when he showed it to his mother. All the time that he was sitting on a bank by the roadside, a little way out of the town, eating his bread and cheese, he was polishing the silver penny. A young man who rode by just then, with a black-eyed young woman behind him, reined in his horse and looked down with some amusement. “What art doing, lad?” he asked.
“It’s my silver penny,” said Richard. “I wanted it to be fine and bonny to show mother.”
“Ha!” said the young man. “Let’s see.” Richard held up the penny. “Who gave you that, my boy?”
“Master Waibling the cloth-merchant,” said Richard, and he told the story of the bargain.
The young man looked grave. “Barbara,” he said to the girl, “art anxious to get home? Because I have business with this same Waibling, and I want to find him before he leaves the town.”
The girl smiled demurely. “That’s like thee, Robert,” she said. “Ever since I married thee,—and long before, it’s been the same. I won’t hinder thee. Leave me at Mary Lavender’s and I’ll have a look about her garden.”
The two rode off at a brisk pace, and Richard saw them halt at a gate not far away, and while the girl went in the man mounted his horse again and came back. “Jump thee up behind me, young chap,” he ordered, “and we’ll see to this. The silver penny is not good. He probably got it in some trade and passed it off on the first person who would take it. Look at this one.”
Edrupt held up a silver penny from his own purse.
“I didn’t know,” said Richard slowly. “I thought all pennies were alike.”
“They’re not—but until the new law was passed they were well-nigh anything you please. You see, this penny he gave you is an old one. Before the new law some time, when the King needed money very badly,—in Stephen’s time maybe—they mixed the silver with lead to make it go further. That’s why it would not shine. And look at this.” He took out another coin. “This is true metal, but it has been clipped. Some thief took a bag full of them probably, clipped each one as much as he dared, passed off the coins for good money, and melted down the parings of silver to sell. Next time you take a silver penny see that it is pure bright silver and quite round.”
By this time they were in the market-place. Edrupt dismounted, and gave Richard the bridle to hold; then he went up to Waibling’s stall, but the merchant was not there.
“He told me to mind it for him,” said the man in the next booth. “He went out but now and said he would be back in a moment.”
But the cloth-merchant did not come back. The web of cloth he had bought from Richard was on the counter, and that was the only important piece of goods he had bought. Quite a little crowd gathered about by the time they had waited awhile. Richard wondered what it all meant. Presently Edrupt came back, laughing.
“He has left town,” he said to Richard. “He must have seen me before I met you. I have had dealings with him before, and he knew what I would do if I caught him here. Well, he has left you your cloth and the price of the stuff, less one bad penny. Will you sell the cloth to me? I am a wool-merchant, not a cloth-merchant, but I can use a cloak made of good homespun.”
Richard looked up at his new friend with a face so bright with gratitude and relief that the young merchant laughed again. “What are you going to do with the penny?” he asked the boy, curiously.
“I’d like to throw it in the river,” said Richard in sudden wrath. “Then it would cheat no more poor folk.”
“They say that if you drop a coin in a stream it is a sign you will return,” said Edrupt, still laughing, “and we want neither Waibling nor his money here again. Suppose we nail it up by the market-cross for a warning to others? How would that be?”
This was the beginning of a curious collection of coins that might be seen, some years later, nailed to a post in the market of King’s Barton. There were also the names of those who had passed them, and in time, some dishonest goods also were fastened up there for all to see. When Richard saw the coin in its new place he gave a sigh of relief.
“I’ll be going home now,” he said. “Mother’s alone, and she will be wanting me.”
“Ride with me so far as Dame Lavender’s,” said the wool-merchant good-naturedly. “What’s thy name, by the way?”
“Richard Garland. Father was a sailor, and his name was Sebastian,” said the boy soberly. “Mother won’t let me say he is drowned, but I’m afraid he is.”
“Sebastian Garland,” repeated Edrupt thoughtfully. “And so thy mother makes her living weaving wool, does she?”
“Aye,” answered Richard. “She’s frae Dunfermline last, but she was born in the Highlands.”
“My wife’s grandmother was Scotch,” said Edrupt absently. He was trying to remember where he had heard the name Sebastian Garland. He set Richard down after asking him where he lived, and took his own way home with Barbara, his wife of a year. He told Barbara that the town was well rid of a rascal, but she knew by his silence thereafter that he was thinking out a plan.
“Some day,” he spoke out that evening, “there’ll be a law in the land to punish these dusty-footed knaves. They go from market to market cheating poor folk, and we have no hold on them because we cannot leave our work. But about this lad Richard Garland, Barbara, I’ve been a-thinking. What if we let him and his mother live in the little cottage beyond the sheepfold? The boy could help in tending the sheep. If they’ve had sheep o’ their own they’ll know how to make ’emselves useful, I dare say. And then, when these foreign fleeces come into the market, the dame could have dyes and so on, and we should see what kind o’ cloth they make.”
This was the first change in the fortunes of Richard Garland and his mother. A little more than a year later Sebastian Garland, now captain of Master Gay’s ship, the Rose-in-June, of London, came into port and met Robert Edrupt. On inquiry Edrupt learned that the captain had lost his wife and son many years before in a town which had been swept by the plague. When he heard of the Highland-born woman living in the Longley cottage, he journeyed post-haste to find her, and discovered that she was indeed his wife, and Richard his son. By the time that Richard was old enough to become a trader, a court known as the Court of Pied-poudre or Dusty Feet had been established by the King at every fair. Its purpose was to prevent peddlers and wandering merchants from cheating the folk. The common people got the name “Pie-powder Court,” but that made it none the less powerful. King Henry also appointed itinerant justices—traveling judges—to go about from place to place and judge according to the King’s law, with the aid of the sheriffs of the neighborhood who knew the customs of the people. The general instructions of these courts were that when the case was between a rich man and a poor man, the judges were to favor the poor man until and unless there was reason to do otherwise. The Norman barons, coming from a country in which they had been used to be petty kings each in his own estate, did not like this much, but little the King cared for that. Merchants like young Richard Garland found it most convenient to have one law throughout the land for all honest men. Remembering his own hard boyhood, Richard never failed to be both just and generous to a boy.
Mary Lavender lived in a garden. That seems really the best way to say it. The house of Dame Annis Lavender was hardly more than four walls and a roof, a green door and two small hooded windows. Instead of the house having a garden the garden seemed rather to hold the cottage in a blossomy lap.
A long time ago there had been a castle on the low hill above the cottage. It was a Saxon castle, roughly built of great half-hewn stones, its double walls partly of tramped earth. Nearly a century had passed since a Norman baron had received the “hundred” in which the castle stood, as a reward for having helped Duke William become William the Conqueror. His domain was large enough for a hundred families to live on, getting their living from the land. The original Saxon owner had fled to join Hereward at Ely, and he never came back.
This rude Saxon castle was not what the Norman needed, at all. He must have, if he meant to be safe in this hostile land, a fortress much harder to take. He chose a taller hill just beyond the village, made it higher with most of the stone from the old castle, and built there a great square frowning keep and some smaller towers, with a double wall of stone, topped by battlements, round the brow of the hill, and a ditch around all. No stream being convenient to fill the moat he left it dry. Here, where the Saxon castle had been, was nothing but a dimpled green mound, starred over in spring with pink and white baby daisies, and besprinkled with dwarf buttercups and the little flower that English children call Blue Eyes. Mary liked to take her distaff there and spin. The old castle had been built to guard a ford. The Normans had made a stone bridge at a narrower and deeper point in the river, and Dame Annis and Mary washed linen in the pool above the ford.
The countryside had settled down to the rule of the Normans with hardly more trouble than the dismantled mound. Travelers often came over the new bridge and stayed at the inn on their way to or from London, and there were more than twice as many houses as there had been when Mary’s mother was a girl. Older people complained that the country could never endure so much progress. This was a rather remote region, given over mainly to sheep-grazing. On the great extent of “common” still unfenced, the sheep wandered as they liked, and they often came nibbling about Mary’s feet as she sat on the mound.
There had been a garden about the ancient castle—several, in fact: the herb-garden, the vegetable garden, and a sort of out-door nursery for fruits and berries. The last had been against a southward-facing wall and was nearly destroyed; but herbs are tenacious things, and the old roots had spread into the vegetable patch, and flowers had seeded themselves, until Dame Annis moved into the little cottage and began to make her living.
Most of the old-fashioned cottage-garden flowers could be found there. Thrift raised its rose-red spikes in crevices of a ruined wall. Bluebells, the wild hyacinths, made heavenly patches of color among the copses. Great beds of mustard and lavender, in early summer, were like a purple-and-gold mantle flung down upon a field. Presently violets bloomed in orderly rows in Dame Annis’s new herb-garden, and roses were pruned and trimmed and trained over old walls and trees.
It may seem odd that violets and roses should be among herbs. The truth is that very few flowers were cultivated in the early Middle Ages simply for ornament. Violets were used to make perfume. Roses were made into rose-water and also into rose conserve, a kind of sweetmeat of rose-petals, sugar and spice packed in little jars. Marigolds were brought from the East by returning Crusaders for use in broth. Pennyroyal, feverfew, camomile, parsley, larkspur, and other flowers used to be grown for making medicine. One of the few herbs which grow in modern gardens, which the Conqueror found in England when he came, is tansy. The name comes from a Greek word meaning immortality. Tansy was used to preserve meat, and to flavor various dishes. There were also sage, marjoram, thyme, and many other herbs of which Dame Annis did not know the names. One of the most precious finds that she made in her digging and transplanting was a root of woad. This plant was used for blue dye, and was so much in demand that England did not produce enough and had to import it. It was too valuable for her to use it herself; she cherished it and fed the soil, planting every seed, promising Mary that some day she should have a gown dyed watchet blue, of linen from their own flax. Mary was thinking about that gown as she sat spinning and listening to the hum of the bees. She knew exactly how it would be made from beginning to end.
The flax would be soaked in the brook until the strong stem-fibers were all that were left; it would be hackled and washed and spun and finally woven by their neighbor, Dame Garland, for Mary’s mother had no loom. This neighbor was as poor as themselves, but they would pay her in herbs and dyestuffs. The leaves—not the flowers, which were yellow—from the woad, would be crushed into a paste and allowed to ferment, and finally made into little balls that would keep until needed.
Neither perfume nor dye could be bought in shops thereabouts, and there were no factories anywhere for making either. Dame Lavender had been, before she was married, maid to a great lady who had taught her women how to make such things out of the plants in the castle garden. Now, when her husband failed to come back from the wars in France, she turned to the perfumer’s trade as the one which she knew best.
There are a great many ways of making perfume at home. If she had had a still, Dame Lavender could have made almost any sort of ordinary perfume, flavor or medicine. In this process, a mixture of blossoms, spices and drugs, or the blossoms alone, or the leaves, is cooked in a glass bottle called a retort, with a long glass tube fitted to it so that the steam must pass through the tube and cool in little drops. These drops run out into a glass flask and are the perfume. Another way was to gather flowers when perfectly fresh and put them into a kettle of alcohol, which would take up the scent and keep it after the flowers are taken out. Strong-scented flowers or leaves were put with salve in a jar and covered, to perfume the salve. Dried plants of pleasant fragrance, mixed with salve, could be left until the scent had been taken up, then the whole could be melted and strained to remove the herbs. Each herb and flower had to be gathered at the proper time, and dried in the little attic. With this business, and the honey which the bees made, and the spinning done by both mother and daughter, they managed to make a living.
One day when they were at their busiest an old man came to the door and asked for a night’s lodging. He had a gentle way of speaking, although his cloak was threadbare, and he seemed much interested in their work. He knew some of the plants which they had never been able to name, and told what they were good for. He seemed so old, poor and feeble, that although she really needed all the money she could earn, Dame Lavender refused the coin he offered her. She felt that if he fell ill somewhere, he might need it.
The Norman castle on the hill had not been really lived in for some ten years. There was a company of soldiers in it, with two or three knights who came and went, but that was all. It had been built as a fortress, and was one; and the situation was such that it could not easily be made into anything else. The baron who owned it was in attendance upon the King.
Then, one day, a rumor went floating about the village, like the scent of growing hedges in spring. It was said that the castle was to be set in order for some great lady; and that she would bring with her two or three maids perhaps, but most of the work was to be done by the people of the village. This was rather mystifying. Mary wondered why a great lady should not rather choose to stay at the nunnery, where the Lady Abbess had all things seemly and well-planned. It was an old Saxon religious house and not at all rich; but Mary always liked to have an errand up Minchen Lane. The lane had got its name from the nuns, who were called “minchens” a long while ago. Sometimes they sent to get some roots or plants from the garden of Dame Lavender. She had some kinds that they had not.
It was nearly certain, at any rate, that the housekeeper at the castle would want lavender and violets, and Dame Annis told Mary to get the besom and sweep out the still-room. This was a shed with a stone floor, the only room they had which was not used for living or sleeping. The room they had given their strange guest, Tomaso of Padua as he called himself, was the one where Mary and her mother usually slept, and they had made up a pallet in the attic.
Mary worked briskly with her besom. It was just such a broom as English people still use to sweep garden walks, a bundle of twigs tied on a stick handle with a pliant osier. While she was at work she heard the gate shut, and saw old Tomaso coming in.
It cannot be said that she was exactly glad to see him. She felt that they might have all that they could do without a lodger just then. She spoke to him courteously, however, and he smiled as if he read her thoughts.
“I have not come to ask for your hospitality this time,” he said, “but to bring your good mother something in return for her kindness.” Beckoning to a boy who stood outside, he opened the gate, and the boy led in a little donkey laden with the basket-work saddle-bags called paniers. From these Tomaso took all the parts of a still, some fine earthen and glass jars, flasks and bowls, and bundles of spice which were like a whole garden packed into a basket.
“These,” he said, “will be of assistance to your mother in her work. I see her coming now, and I will talk with her awhile.”
Mary felt as if the earth had turned inside out when she heard the outcome of that conversation. The lady who was coming to the castle was Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of England, and her coming was a considerable responsibility to every one concerned. She had been found just ready to join her sons, Richard and Geoffrey, in Aquitaine, where they were fighting against their father, and she was to be shut up in this remote fortress, in charge of one of the King’s most trusted knights, until he had disposed of the rebellion and had time to consider the case. She would not, she declared, spend her days in a nunnery, and the nuns of Minchen Lane were anything but anxious to have her. There was a room in the Norman castle which could be fitted up as a still-room, and it was desirable to have whatever was needed made within the walls if possible. Would Mary undertake to go there and make herself useful, either in ways that might aid the cook, or in any other duties that she saw? The cook was an Italian. The maids of honor were daughters of Norman-French families. Barbara Edrupt, the wife of the wool-merchant who owned Longley Farm, was also, it appeared, going to lend a hand with the spinning and train one or two country girls for the rough work. It was no small task to maintain a royal lady in fitting state, even though she was a prisoner. It was more difficult here because there was little or nothing to do it with, and peddlers, merchants and other purveyors from distant London or Paris might be a source of danger.
Dame Annis Lavender was rather doubtful, but she had confidence in Mary, and it was settled that Mary should go. She was to have the gown of blue sooner than she thought. The flax was already spun, Dame Garland did the weaving, and she and Mary’s mother dipped and dipped again until the web was a deep exquisite blue like a summer sky. Barbara made Mary a gift of a fair white linen cap and kerchief. The two girls, Barbara with her black eyes and hair, Mary with her gold-brown braids and calm blue eyes and wild-rose coloring, made a pretty picture together.
So at least thought the troubadour who came riding by and saw them. He was in attendance upon the castellan, Thibaut of Toulouse, and a little group of maids and pages coming to make ready for the Queen, who was expected to arrive the next day. Thibaut’s wife had been a Provençal lady, and his daughter Philippa, by whose side the troubadour was riding, was a trifle homesick for her childhood speech. She was very glad of Ranulph’s company.
As they came past the garden she bent sidewise in her saddle and looked eagerly toward the gate. “Do you see—there?” she cried. “That is a Provence rose.”
“I will bring you some,” the troubadour answered, and a moment later he was striding toward the two girls among the flowers. They had never seen any one like him,—so gay, so courteous and so straightforward.
“I come to beg a rose,” he said. “Are not these the red roses of Provence?”
“Surely,” answered Barbara. “I brought the bush from my own home, and gave Mary a cutting. There never was such a rose for bloom and sweetness, we think. My husband he says so too.”
Barbara blushed and smiled a little when she spoke of Robert, and she and Mary quickly filled a basket with the roses. The next morning Ranulph came again with the Provençal maid of honor to get more flowers, and “strowing herbs,”—sweet-scented plants that gave out their fragrance when trodden upon. The rushes used for floor-covering were often mixed with these on festival days, and when new rushes were to be put down the whole might be swept into the fire and burned. The maids of honor made garlands for the wall, and thus the first breath of air the Queen drew in her grim, small stone rooms high in the castle keep, was laden with the scent of the blossoms of the South.
It was a cheerless abode, Mary and Barbara thought. There were no hangings, no costly dishes nor candlesticks, no weapons or anything that could be made into a weapon, nor any jewels or rich clothing.
Mary wondered a little that certain richly embroidered tapestries which belonged to the nuns had not been borrowed, for she knew that the Lady Abbess had lent them now and then. Philippa could have told her.
“It is well,” said the Queen haughtily when she had seen her apartments, “that they have given me no gold-woven arras for my prison. I think I would burn it for the gold—if any of these jailers of mine could be bought perchance.”
The captivity of the royal prisoner was not, however, very severe. She sometimes rode out under guard, she was allowed to walk upon the terrace and in the walled garden, and she talked sometimes with the troubadour and with old Tomaso. In one of the older towers of the castle the physician had his rooms, and here he read in ancient books, or brewed odd mixtures in his retorts and crucibles. He taught Mary more about the management of a still, the use of herbs and the making of essences than she had ever dreamed there was to learn. Physicians in those days might be quacks or alchemists. Here and there one was what we call an experimental chemist. Nearly a hundred years later some of Tomaso’s papers proved most valuable to the University of Padua.
London was a busy town when the long Venetian galleys and the tall ships of Spain anchored in the Pool of the Thames. Leather and silk and linen and velvet and broadcloth came to the London wharves, and London people were busy buying, selling, making and decorating every sort of apparel, from the girdle to hold a sword to the silken hood and veil of a lady. And nobody was busier than the men who worked in leather.
Nowadays we go into a shop and try on shoes made perhaps a thousand miles away, until we find a pair that will fit. But when Crispin Eyre’s father sold a pair of shoes he had seen those shoes made in his own shop, under his own eye, and chosen the leather. It might be calfskin from the yard of a tanner, who bought his hides from the man who had raised the calf on his farm, or it might be fine soft goatskin out of a bale from the galleons of Spain. In either case he had to know all about leather, or he would not succeed in the shoe business. The man who aspired to be a master shoemaker had to know how to make the whole shoe. More different kinds of shoes were made in Thomas Eyre’s shop than most shops sell to-day, and as he had begun to use the hammer and the awl when he was not yet ten years old, he knew how every kind should be made.
Early in the morning, before a modern family would be awake, hammers were going in the shoe-shops—tap-tap—tick-a-tack—tack! Sometimes by the light of a betty lamp in the early winter evenings the journeymen would be still at work, drawing the waxed thread carefully and quickly through the leather. Hand-sewn and made of well-tanned hide, such a shoe could be mended again and again before it was outworn. Riding-boots, leather shoes, slippers, sandals, clogs, pattens, shoes of cloth, silk, morocco, cloth-of-gold, velvet, with soles made of wood, leather, cork and sometimes even iron, went to and fro in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and sooner or later every kind crossed the threshold of Thomas Eyre’s shop. The well-to-do came to order shoes for themselves, and the wooden-shod and barefoot came to get the shoes others would wear.
Each trade kept to its own street, even in those early days. When the Guilds had multiplied so that each part of each trade had its own workers, who were not supposed to do anything outside their trade, the man who made a shoe never mended one, and the cobbler never made anything. Each trade had its Guild Hall, where the members met for business councils or holidays, and some of them had their favorite churches. It was like a very exclusive club. Men and women belonged to these societies, they made rules about the length of time a man must work before he could be a master workman, and they took care of their own poor folk out of a common fund. Each Guild had its patron saint, connected in some way with the craft it represented. The especial saint of the shoemakers was St. Crispin, and his day was the twenty-fifth of October.
The leather workers were among the most important artisans of London, and in course of time each branch of the trade had its own Guild Hall. The cordwainers or leather workers took their name from Cordova in Spain, famous for its beautiful dyed, stamped, gilded and decorated leather. The saddlers had their hall, and the lorimers or harness-makers theirs, and the skinners and leather sellers and tanners had theirs. London was rather behind some of the cities on the Continent, however, both in the number and the power of her guilds. King Henry II. was not over-inclined to favor guilds, especially in London, for London was too independent, as it was, to please him. He had observed that when cities grew so strong that they governed themselves they were quite likely to make trouble for Kings, and not unnaturally, he felt that he had trouble enough on his hands as things were without inviting more. If he had allowed it London would have had a “Commune,” as the organization of a self-governing city was called, long ago.
Crispin heard this discussed more or less, for all sorts of chattering and story-telling went on in the shop, and he heard also many stories which tended to make him think. The popular tales and songs of the Middle Ages were not by any means always respectful to Kings. The people understood very well that there were good monarchs and bad ones, and they were not blind to the reasons for the difference.
The story that Crispin liked best was the one about his own name, and on this October day, seated on his low bench beside Simon, the oldest of his shoemakers, he asked for it again.
“Aye, I’ll warrant,” grunted Simon, “an Eyre would be a born shoemaker, and name him Crispin—— Eh, lad, what be you after with that leather?”
Crispin’s fingers were strong, if small, and he was busy with hammer and awl and waxed thread, making a little shoe.
“Just a shoe, Simon—go on with the story,” said the boy, with a little, shut-mouthed grin. Simon fitted the sole to the boot he was making and picked up his hammer.
“It was a long time ago—(tap-tap) when the emperor of Rome was a-hunting down the blessed martyrs, that there were two brothers, Crispin and Crispian their names were, who lived in Rome and did nothing but kindness to every one. But there be rascals—(trip-trip-trap!)—who do not understand kindness, and ever repay it with evil. One of such a sort lived in the same street as the two brothers, and secretly ran to tell the Emperor that they were plotting against his life. Then privately the wife of this evil-doer came and warned them, for that they had given her shoes to her feet. So they fled out of the city by night and came to France and dwelt in Soissons, where the cathedral now is.
“This England was a heathen country then, they say, and France not much better. Before long the king of that kingdom heard of the strangers and sent for them to know what their business was. When they said that their business was to teach the people the story of our Lord, he asked who this lord might be, and whether he was mightier than the king, or not.
“Then when the heathen king heard that the Lord of Crispin and Crispian was more powerful than either King or emperor he had a mind to kill them, but he was afraid. He asked if they had ever seen a palace finer than his own, that was made of wood and hung with painted leather, and they said that there were finer ones in Rome. Then said the king, ‘Give me a sign of the greatness of your Lord.’ And they asked him what it should be. And the king said, ‘Cover the streets of my city with leather and you shall go forth unharmed.’ Only the rich had any leather in those parts.
“That night Crispin and Crispian took the leather hide of their girdles and made a pair of shoes for the king. And when they came before him in the morning, they put the shoes upon his feet, the first shoes he had ever seen, and told him to walk abroad and he would find all the streets covered with leather.”
The apprentices had been listening, and a laugh went round the shop, as it always did at that part of the tale.
“Thus it came to pass,” concluded Simon, “that the two brothers lived at court and taught the king’s leather workers how to make shoes, and that is why Saint Crispin is the friend of shoemakers.”
“What was the name of him who told you the tale, Simon?” Crispin asked thoughtfully.
“Oh, he is dead these many years, but his name was Benet, and he came from Soissons, and had been to Rome and seen the street where the brothers lived. He had a nail out of one of the shoes they made for the king. People came to our house while he was with us, only to see that nail and hear the story. I heard it so many times that I learned it by heart.”
Old Simon drove in the last nail with a vicious stroke that sent it well into the leather. “I’ll warrant,” he said, “the blessed Saint Crispin made none o’ them shoes we make here, with pointed toes and rose windows on the leather, fitten for a lady.” He held up the shoe with great disfavor. It was for a courtier, and the toe was two feet long and turned up, with a chain to fasten it to the knee. The front of the shoe was cut into open work in a wheel shape to show the gay silken hose underneath, and the shoe itself was of soft fine leather. With a parting sniff, Simon tossed it to a slim, grinning youth who would finish it by putting on gilding.
The shoe that Crispin was making was of a different sort. It was a little round-toed sturdy thing, about the right size for a child of ten. The mate to it was on the bench at his side, and he put them together and looked at them rather ruefully. The shoe he had made was plain, and the other was trimmed daintily with red morocco and cut in a quaint round pattern on the toe—the decoration that was known as “a Paul’s window,” because the geometric cut-work with the colored lining looked like stained glass. Crispin frowned and shook his head.
“What’s ailin’ ye, lad?” Old Simon peered at the shoes in the boy’s hands. “Bless ye, those ben’t mates!”
“I know that, but I haven’t any colored leather for this one even if I knew how to finish it,” Crispin said with a sigh.
“Um-m-m!” Simon looked more closely at the little gay shoe. “That never came from these parts. That’s Turkey leather.” He gave Crispin a sharp glance. The great bell of Bow was ringing and the apprentices were quitting work. “Where did this shoe come from, now?”
Crispin hesitated. “Don’t you tell, now, Simon. I found a little maid crying in Candlewick street—standing on one foot like a duck because she had lost her other shoe. She was so light I could lift her up, and I set her on a wall while I looked for the shoe, but it wasn’t any good, for a horse had stepped on it. She cried so about the shoe that I—I said I would make her another. And then her father came back for her and took her away.”
“Who might she be?” inquired Simon dryly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t tell father. She said she would send for the shoes though.”
Simon had been rummaging in a leather bag behind his bench. “If she don’t there’s plenty of other little wenches that wear shoes. If the leather should be blue in place o’ red, would that matter?”
“I shouldn’t think so; one shoe is no good alone.” Crispin began to be hopeful.
Old Simon pulled out some pieces of soft fine leather the color of a harebell and began to cut them quickly and deftly into fine scalloped borders. “This ben’t Turkey leather, but it is a piece from Spain, and they learnt the trade of the paynim, so I reckon ’twill do. Stitch this on the other shoe in place o’ the red, and I’ll cut the pattern.”
Nobody would have believed that Simon’s old, crooked fingers could handle a knife so cleverly. In no time the pattern on the old shoe had been copied exactly on the new one. When Crispin had stitched the blue cut-work border on both, and Simon had rubbed the new leather on some old scraps and cleaned the old a bit, the two little shoes looked like twins.
“Is there a boy here named Crispin Eyre?” inquired a man’s voice from the doorway. Almost at the same time came the sweet lilting speech of a little girl, “Oh, father, that is the boy who was so kind to me!”
Crispin and old Simon stood up and bowed, for the man who spoke was a dignified person in the furred cloak and cap of a well-to-do merchant. The little girl held fast to her father’s hand and gazed into the shop with bright interest. “Look at the shoes, father, aren’t they pretty?”
The merchant balanced the little shoes in his broad hand. “Which did you lose, Genevieve, child?”
“I—I don’t know, father,” the child said, pursing her soft lips. “Cannot you tell?”
“By my faith,” said the merchant thoughtfully, “if a London shoemaker’s boy does work like this I doubt Edrupt may be right when he says our ten fingers are as good as any. This shoe is one of a pair from Cordova. Who’s your father, lad?”
“My father is Thomas Eyre, so please you, master,” said the boy proudly, “and I am Crispin.”
“A good craft and a good name and a good workman,” said the merchant, and dropped a coin into the litter of leather scraps. It was the full price of a new pair of shoes.
Crispin certainly could not have dreamed that his kindness to little Genevieve Gay would be the occasion of new streets in London, but it happened so. Master Gay, the merchant, came later to talk with Thomas Eyre about the shoe trade. Then, instead of sending a cargo of Irish hides abroad he gave Eyre the choice of them. Other shoemakers took the rest, the shoe trade of London grew, and so did the tanneries. The tanners presently needed more room by running water, and sought new quarters outside London Wall. The business of London kept on growing until the Leatherworkers’ Guild had presently to send abroad for their own raw material. England became more and more a manufacturing country and less a farming country. In one or another trade almost every farming product was of use. Hides were made into leather, beef went to the cook-shops; horn was made into drinking-cups and lantern-lights, bones were ground or burnt for various purposes, tallow made candles. What the farmer had been used to do for himself on his farm, the Guilds began to do in companies, and their farm was England.