Epic Historial Collection (64 page)

He laughed. “Shall I live so long?”

Aliena decided not to stay and be humiliated any longer. “Let's go,” she said to Richard. “We'll look after ourselves.” Uncle Simon had already turned away and was looking at the horse with the high wither. The men with him were a little embarrassed. Aliena and Richard walked away.

When they were out of earshot, Richard said plaintively: “What are we going to do, Allie?”

“We're going to show these heartless people that we're better than they are,” she said grimly, but she did not feel brave, she was just full of hatred, for Uncle Simon, for Father Ralph, for Odo Jailer, for the outlaws, for the verderer, and most of all for William Hamleigh.

“It's a good thing we've got some money,” Richard said.

It was. But the money would not last forever. “We can't just spend it,” she said as they walked along the path that led back to the main road. “If we use it all up on food and things like that, we'll just be destitute again when it's all gone. We've got to
do
something with it.”

“I don't see why,” Richard said. “I think we should buy a pony.”

She stared at him. Was he joking? There was no smile on his face. He simply did not understand. “We've got no position, no title, and no land,” she said patiently. “The king won't help us. We can't get ourselves hired as laborers—we tried, in Winchester, and no one would take us on. But somehow we have to make a living and turn you into a knight.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

She could tell that he did not really see. “We need to establish ourselves in some occupation that will feed us and give us at least a chance of making enough money to buy you a good horse.”

“You mean I should become an apprentice to a craftsman?”

Aliena shook her head. “You have to become a knight, not a carpenter. Have we ever met anyone who had an independent livelihood but no skills?”

“Yes,” Richard said unexpectedly. “Meg in Winchester.”

He was right. Meg was a wool merchant although she had never been an apprentice. “But Meg has a market stall.” They passed the red-haired peasant who had given them directions. His four shorn sheep were grazing in the field, and he was tying their fleeces into bundles with cord made of reeds. He looked up from his work and waved. It was people such as he who took their wool into the towns and sold it to wool merchants. But the merchant had to have a place of business….

Or did he?

An idea was forming in Aliena's mind.

She turned back abruptly.

Richard said: “Where are you going?”

She was too excited to answer him. She leaned on the peasant's fence. “How much did you say you could get for your wool?”

“Penny a fleece,” he said.

“But you have to spend all day going to Gloucester and back.”

“That's the trouble.”

“Suppose I buy your wool? That would save you the journey.”

Richard said: “Allie! We don't need wool!”

“Shut up, Richard.” She did not want to explain her idea to him now—she was impatient to try it out on the peasant.

The peasant said: “That would be a kindness.” But he looked dubious, as if he suspected trickery.

“I couldn't offer you a penny a fleece, though.”

“Aha! I thought there'd be a snag.”

“I could give you twopence for four fleeces.”

“But they're worth a penny each!” he protested.

“In Gloucester. This is Huntleigh.”

He shook his head. “I'd rather have fourpence and lose a day in the field than have twopence and gain a day.”

“Suppose I offer you threepence for four fleeces.”

“I lose a penny.”

“And save a day's journey.”

He looked bewildered. “I never heard of nothing like this before.”

“It's as if I were a carter, and you paid me a penny to take your wool to market.” She found his slowness exasperating. “The question is, is an extra day in the fields worth a penny to you, or not?”

“It depends what I do with the day,” he said thoughtfully.

Richard said: “Allie, what are we going to do with four fleeces?”

“Sell them to Meg,” she said impatiently. “For a penny each. That way we're a penny better off.”

“But we have to go all the way to Winchester for a penny!”

“No, stupid. We buy wool from fifty peasants and take the whole lot to Winchester. Don't you see? We could make fifty pennies! We could feed ourselves
and
save up for a good horse for you!”

She turned back to the peasant. His cheerful grin had gone, and he was scratching his ginger-colored head. Aliena was sorry she had perplexed him, but she wanted him to accept her offer. If he did, she would know it was possible for her to fulfill her vow to her father. But peasants were stubborn. She felt like taking him by the collar and shaking him. Instead, she reached inside her cloak and fumbled in her purse. They had changed the gold bezants for silver pennies at the goldsmith's house in Winchester, and now she took out three pennies and showed them to the peasant. “Here,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

The sight of the silver helped the peasant make up his mind. “Done,” he said, and took the money.

Aliena smiled. It looked as if she might have found the answer.

That night she used a bundled fleece for a pillow. The smell of sheep reminded her of Meg's house.

When she woke up in the morning she discovered that she was not pregnant.

Things were looking up.

 

Four weeks after Easter, Aliena and Richard entered Winchester with an old horse pulling a homemade cart bearing a huge sack which contained two hundred and forty fleeces—the precise number which made up a standard woolsack.

At that point they discovered taxes.

Previously they had always entered the city without attracting any attention, but now they learned why city gates were narrow and constantly manned by customs officers. There was a toll of one penny for every cartload of goods taken into Winchester. Fortunately, they still had a few pennies left, and they were able to pay; otherwise they would have been turned away.

Most of the fleeces had cost them between one half and three quarters of a penny each. They had paid seventy-two pence for the old horse, and the rickety cart had been thrown in. Most of the rest of the money had been spent on food. But tonight they would have a pound of silver
and
a horse and cart.

Aliena's plan was then to go out again and buy another sackful of fleeces, and to do the same again and again until all the sheep were shorn. By the end of the summer she wanted to have the money to buy a strong horse and a new cart.

She felt very excited as she led their old nag through the streets toward Meg's house. By the end of the day she would have proved that she could take care of herself and her brother without any help from anyone. It made her feel very mature and independent. She was in charge of her own destiny. She had had nothing from the king, she did not need relatives, and she had no use for a husband.

She was looking forward to seeing Meg, who had been her inspiration. Meg was one of the few people who had helped Aliena without trying to rob, rape or exploit her. Aliena had a lot of questions to ask her about business in general and the wool trade in particular.

It was market day, so it took them some time to drive their cart through the crowded city to Meg's street. At last they arrived at her house. Aliena stepped into the hall. A woman she had never seen before was standing there. “Oh!” said Aliena, and she stopped short.

“What is it?” said the woman.

“I'm a friend of Meg's.”

“She doesn't live here anymore,” the woman said curtly.

“Oh, dear.” Aliena saw no need for her to be so brusque. “Where has she moved to?”

“She's gone with her husband, who left this city in disgrace,” the woman said.

Aliena was disappointed and afraid. She had been counting on Meg to make the sale of the wool easy. “That's terrible news!”

“He was a dishonest tradesman, and if I were you I wouldn't boast about being a friend of hers. Now clear off.”

Aliena was outraged that someone should speak ill of Meg. “I don't care what her husband may have done, Meg was a fine woman and greatly superior to the thieves and whores that inhabit this stinking city,” she said, and she went out before the woman could think of a rejoinder.

Her verbal victory gave her only momentary consolation. “Bad news,” she said to Richard. “Meg has left Winchester.”

“Is the person who lives there now a wool merchant?” he said.

“I didn't ask. I was too busy telling her off.” Now she felt foolish.

“What shall we do, Allie?”

“We've got to sell these fleeces,” she said anxiously. “We'd better go to the marketplace.”

They turned the horse around and retraced their steps to the High Street, then threaded their way through the crowds to the market, which was between the High Street and the cathedral. Aliena led the horse and Richard walked behind the cart, pushing it when the horse needed help, which was most of the time. The marketplace was a seething mass of people squeezing along the narrow aisles between the stalls, their progress constantly delayed by carts such as Aliena's. She stopped and stood on top of her sack of wool and looked for wool merchants. She could see only one. She got down and headed the horse in that direction.

The man was doing good business. He had a large space roped off with a shed behind it. The shed was made of hurdles, light timber frames filled in with woven twigs and reeds, and it was obviously a temporary structure erected each market day. The merchant was a swarthy man whose left arm ended at the elbow. Attached to his stump he had a wooden comb, and whenever a fleece was offered to him he would put his arm into the wool, tease out a portion with the comb, and feel it with his right hand before giving a price. Then he would use the comb and his right hand together to count out the number of pennies he had agreed to pay. For large purchases he weighed the pennies in a balance.

Aliena pushed her way through the crowd to the bench. A peasant offered the merchant three rather thin fleeces tied together with a leather belt. “A bit sparse,” said the merchant. “Three farthings each.” A farthing was a quarter of a penny. He counted out two pennies, then took a small hatchet and with a quick, practiced stroke cut a third penny into quarters. He gave the peasant the two pennies and one of the quarters. “Three times three farthings is twopence and a farthing.” The peasant took the belt off the fleeces and handed them over.

Next, two young men dragged a whole sack of wool up to the counter. The merchant examined it carefully. “It's a full sack, but the quality's poor,” he said. “I'll give you a pound.”

Aliena wondered how he could be so sure the sack was full. Perhaps you could tell with practice. She watched him weigh out a pound of silver pennies.

Some monks were approaching with a huge cart piled high with sacks of wool. Aliena decided to get her business done before the monks. She beckoned to Richard, and he dragged their sack of wool off the cart and brought it up to the counter.

The merchant examined the wool. “Mixed quality,” he said. “Half a pound.”

“What?” Aliena said incredulously.

“A hundred and twenty pennies,” he said.

Aliena was horrified. “But you just paid a pound for a sack!”

“It's because of the quality.”

“You paid a pound for poor quality!”

“Half a pound,” he repeated stubbornly.

The monks arrived and crowded the stall, but Aliena was not going to move: her livelihood was at stake, and she was more frightened of destitution than she was of the merchant. “Tell me why,” she insisted. “There's nothing wrong with the wool, is there?”

“No.”

“Then give me what you paid those two men.”

“No.”

“Why not?” she almost screamed.

“Because nobody pays a girl what they would pay a man.”

She wanted to strangle him. He was offering her less than she had paid. It was outrageous. If she accepted his price, all her work would have been for nothing. Worse than that, her scheme for providing a livelihood for herself and her brother would have failed, and her brief period of independence and self-sufficiency would be over. And why? Because he would not pay a girl the same as he paid a man!

The leader of the monks was looking at her. She hated people to stare at her. “Stop staring!” she said rudely. “Just do your business with this godless peasant.”

“All right,” the monk said mildly. He beckoned to his colleagues and they dragged up a sack.