In the Days of the Guild Part 7

"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 n.o.body 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 Caesars, 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.

LONDON BELLS

London town is fair and great, Many a tower and steeple.

Bells ring early and ring late, Mocking all the people.

Some they say, "Good provender,"

Some they sing, "Sweet lavender,"

Some they call, "The taverner,"

Some they cry, "The fripperer Is lord of London Town!"

London town is great and wide, Many a stately dwelling, And her folk that there abide Are beyond all telling.

But by land or water-gate, Aldgate, Newgate, Bishopsgate, Ludgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Bells ring early and ring late, The bells of London Town.

VIII

BARBARA, THE LITTLE GOOSE-GIRL

HOW BARBARA SOLD GEESE IN THE CHEPE AND WHAT FORTUNE SHE FOUND THERE

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 b.u.t.ter, 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, b.u.t.ter 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BARBARA KNEW EXACTLY WHERE TO GO"--_Page 97_]

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 coa.r.s.e 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 la.s.s 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, w.i.l.l.y nilly, for n.o.body 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."