In the Days of the Guild Part 9

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. "n.o.body 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 polis.h.i.+ng 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ne. 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, pa.s.sed 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 grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+p, 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.

PERFUMER'S SONG

The rule of the world is heavy and hard, Taketh of every life a share, Strive as it may to cherish and guard The dawning hope that was all so fair, And yet, so sure as the night-wind blows, Memory dwells in her place apart, And the savor of rue or the breath of a rose Brings peace out of trouble, dear heart, dear heart!

There was never a joy that the world can kill So long as there lives a dream of the past, For the alchemist in his fragrant still Keeps fresh the dream to the very last.

So sure as the wind of the morning blows To heal the trouble, to cool the smart, The breath of lavender, thyme and rose Will bring to thee comfort, dear heart, dear heart!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

X

MARY LAVENDER'S GARDEN

HOW MARY LAVENDER CAME TO BE OF SERVICE TO AN EXILED QUEEN

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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.tercups 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.