Epic Historial Collection (172 page)

“But now your king has interfered.”

It was true. Edward III had seen the money being made in wool and had decided that more of it must go to the crown. He had introduced a new tax of one pound per woolsack. A sack was standardized at 364 pounds weight and sold for about four pounds in money; so the extra tax was a quarter of the value of the wool, a huge slice.

Buonaventura went on: “What is worse, he has made it difficult to export wool from England. I have had to pay large bribes.”

“The ban on exports will be lifted shortly,” Edmund said. “The merchants of the Wool Company in London are negotiating with royal officials—”

“I hope you are right,” Buonaventura said. “But, with things as they are, my family feels I no longer need to visit two separate wool fairs in this part of the country.”

“Quite right!” said Edmund. “Come here, and forget about the Shiring fair.”

The town of Shiring was two days' travel from Kingsbridge. It was about the same size, and while it did not have a cathedral or a priory, it boasted the sheriff's castle and the county court. It held a rival wool fair once a year.

“I'm afraid I can't find the range of wool here. You see, the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair seems to be declining. More and more sellers go to Shiring. Their fair offers a greater variety of types and qualities.”

Caris was dismayed. This could be disastrous for her father. She put in: “Why would sellers prefer Shiring?”

Buonaventura shrugged. “The guild merchant there has made the fair attractive. There's no long queue to enter the city gate; the dealers can hire tents and booths; there's a wool exchange building where everyone can do business when it rains like this…”

“We could do all that,” she said.

Her father snorted. “If only.”

“Why not, Papa?”

“Shiring is an independent borough, with a royal charter. The merchant guild there has the power to organize things for the benefit of the wool merchants. Kingsbridge belongs to the priory—”

Petranilla put in: “For the glory of God.”

“No doubt,” Edmund said. “But our parish guild can't do anything without the priory's approval—and priors are cautious and conservative people, my brother being no exception. The upshot is that most improvement plans get rejected.”

Buonaventura went on: “Because of my family's long association with you, Edmund, and your father before you, we have continued to come to Kingsbridge; but in hard times we can't afford to be sentimental.”

“Then let me ask you a small favor, for the sake of that long association,” Edmund said. “Don't make a final decision yet. Keep an open mind.”

That was clever, Caris thought. She was struck—as she often was—by how shrewd her father could be in a negotiation. He did not argue that Buonaventura should reverse his decision, for that would just make him dig his heels in. The Italian was much more likely to agree not to make the decision final. That committed him to nothing, but left the door open.

Buonaventura found it hard to refuse. “All right, but to what end?”

“I want the chance to improve the fair, and especially that bridge,” Edmund replied. “If we could offer better facilities here at Kingsbridge than they have at Shiring, and attract more sellers, you would continue to visit us, wouldn't you?”

“Of course.”

“Then that's what we'll have to do.” He stood up. “I'll go and see my brother now. Caris, come with me. We'll show him the queue at the bridge. No, wait, Caris, go and fetch your clever young builder, Merthin. We might need his expertise.”

“He'll be working.”

Petranilla said: “Just tell his master that the alderman of the parish guild wants the boy.” Petranilla was proud that her brother was alderman, and mentioned it at every opportunity.

But she was right. Elfric would have to release Merthin. “I'll go and find him,” Caris said.

She put on a cape with a hood and went out. It was still raining, though not as heavily as yesterday. Elfric, like most of the leading citizens, lived on the main street that ran from the bridge up to the priory gates. The broad street was crowded with carts and people heading for the fair, splashing through puddles and streamlets of rain.

She was eager to see Merthin, as always. She had liked him ever since All Hallows Day ten years ago, when he had appeared at archery practice with his homemade bow. He was clever and funny. Like her, he knew that the world was a bigger and more fascinating place than most Kingsbridge citizens could conceive. But six months ago they had discovered something that was even more fun than being friends.

Caris had kissed boys before Merthin, though not often: she had never really seen the point. With him it was different, exciting and sexy. He had an impish streak that made everything he did seem mildly wicked. She liked it when he touched her body, too. She wanted to do more—but she tried not to think about that. “More” meant marriage, and a wife had to be subordinate to her husband, who was her master—and Caris hated that idea. Fortunately she was not forced to think about it yet, for Merthin could not marry until his apprenticeship was over, and that was half a year away.

She reached Elfric's house and stepped inside. Her sister, Alice, was in the front room, at the table, with her stepdaughter, Griselda. They were eating bread with honey. Alice had changed in the three years since she had married Elfric. Her nature had always been harsh, like Petranilla's, and under the influence of her husband she had become more suspicious, resentful, and ungenerous.

But she was pleasant enough today. “Sit down, sister,” she said. “The bread is fresh this morning.”

“I can't, I'm looking for Merthin.”

Alice looked disapproving. “So early?”

“Father wants him.” Caris went through the kitchen to the back door and looked into the yard. Rain fell on a dismal landscape of builder's junk. One of Elfric's laborers was putting wet stones into a barrow. There was no sign of Merthin. She went back inside.

Alice said: “He's probably at the cathedral. He's been making a door.”

Caris recalled that Merthin had mentioned this. The door in the north porch had rotted, and Merthin was working on a replacement.

Griselda added: “He's been carving virgins.” She grinned, then put more bread-and-honey into her mouth.

Caris knew this, too. The old door was decorated with carvings illustrating the story Jesus told on the Mount of Olives, about the wise and foolish virgins, and Merthin had to copy it. But there was something unpleasant about Griselda's grin, Caris thought; almost as if she were laughing at Caris for being a virgin herself.

“I'll try the cathedral,” Caris said, and with a perfunctory wave she left.

She climbed the main street and entered the cathedral close. As she threaded her way through the market stalls, it seemed to her that a dismal air hung over the fair. Was she imagining it, because of what Buonaventura had said? She thought not. When she recalled the fleece fairs of her childhood, it seemed to her that they had been busier and more crowded. In those days, the priory precincts had not been large enough to contain the fair, and the streets all around had been obstructed by unlicensed stalls—often just a small table covered with trinkets—plus hawkers with trays, jugglers, fortune-tellers, musicians, and itinerant friars calling sinners to redemption. Now it seemed to her there might have been room for a few more stalls within the precincts. “Buonaventura must be right,” she said to herself. “The fair is shrinking.” A trader gave her a strange look, and she realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud. It was a bad habit: people thought she was talking to spirits. She had taught herself not to do it, but she sometimes forgot, especially when she was anxious.

She walked around the great church to the north side.

Merthin was working in the porch, a roomy space where people often held meetings. He had the door standing upright in a stout wooden frame that held it still while he carved. Behind the new work, the old door was still in place in the archway, cracked and crumbling. Merthin stood with his back to her, so that the light fell over his shoulders onto the wood in front of him. He did not see her, and the sound of the rain drowned her footsteps, so she was able to study him for a few moments unnoticed.

He was a small man, not much taller than she. He had a large, intelligent head on a wiry body. His small hands moved deftly across the carving, shaving fine curls of wood with a sharp knife as he shaped the images. He had white skin and a lot of bushy red hair. “He's not very handsome,” Alice had said, with a twist of her lip, when Caris admitted she had fallen in love with him. It was true that Merthin did not have the dashing good looks of his brother, Ralph, but Caris thought his face was quite marvelous: irregular and quirky and wise and full of laughter, just as he was.

“Hello,” she said, and he jumped. She laughed. “It's not like you to be so easily spooked.”

“You startled me.” He hesitated, then kissed her. He seemed a little awkward, but that sometimes happened when he was concentrating on his work.

She looked at the carving. They were five virgins on each side of the door, the wise ones feasting at the wedding, and the foolish ones outside, holding their lamps upside down to show that they were empty of oil. Merthin had copied the design of the old door, but with subtle changes. The virgins stood in rows, five on one side and five on the other, like the arches in the cathedral; but, in the new door, they were not exactly alike. Merthin had given each girl a sign of individuality. One was pretty, another had curly hair, one wept, another closed one eye in a mischievous wink. He had made them real, and the scene on the old door now looked stiff and lifeless by comparison. “It's wonderful,” Caris said. “But I wonder what the monks will think.”

“Brother Thomas likes it,” Merthin replied.

“What about Prior Anthony?”

“He hasn't seen it. But he'll accept it. He won't want to pay twice.”

That was true, Caris thought. Her uncle Anthony was unadventurous, but parsimonious, too. The mention of the prior reminded her of her errand. “My father wants you to meet him and the prior at the bridge.”

“Did he say why?”

“I think he's going to ask Anthony to build a new bridge.”

Merthin put his tools into a leather satchel and quickly swept the floor, brushing sawdust and wood shavings out of the porch. Then he and Caris walked in the rain through the fair and down the main street to the wooden bridge. Caris told him what Buonaventura had said at the breakfast table. Merthin felt, as she did, that recent fairs had not been as bustling as those he remembered from childhood.

Despite that, there was a long queue of people and carts waiting to get into Kingsbridge. At the near end of the bridge was a small gatehouse where a monk sat taking a fee of one penny from every trader who entered the city with goods for sale. The bridge was narrow, so it was not possible for anyone to jump the queue, and in consequence people who did not need to pay—residents of the town, mainly—also had to stand in line. In addition, some of the boards that formed the surface were twisted and broken, so carts had to move slowly as they crossed. The result was that the queue stretched away along the road between the suburban hovels and disappeared into the rain.

The bridge was also too short. Once, no doubt, both its ends had given on to dry land. But either the river had widened or, more likely, the passage of carts and people over decades and centuries had flattened the banks, so that now people had to wade across muddy beaches on both sides.

Caris saw that Merthin was studying its structure. She knew that look in his eyes: he was thinking about how it stayed upright. She often caught him staring at something in that way, usually in the cathedral, but sometimes in front of a house or even something natural, a thorn tree in blossom or a sparrow hawk hovering. He became very still, his gaze bright and sharp, as if he were shining a light into a murky place, trying to make out what was there. If she asked him, he told her he was trying to see the insides of things.

She followed his gaze and strained to imagine what he perceived in the old bridge. It was sixty yards from end to end, the longest bridge she had ever seen. The roadbed was supported by massive oak piers in two rows, like the pillars that marched either side of the nave of the cathedral. There were five pairs of piers. The end ones, where the water was shallow, were quite short, but the three central pairs stood fifteen feet above the waterline.

Each pier consisted of four oak beams in a cluster, held together by plank braces. Legend said that the king had given Kingsbridge Priory the twenty-four best oak trees in England to build the three central pairs of piers. The tops were linked by beams in two parallel lines. Shorter beams crossed from one line to the other, forming the roadbed; and longitudinal planks had been laid on top to form the road surface. On each side was a wooden railing that served as a flimsy parapet. Every couple of years a drunk peasant would drive a cart through the rail and kill himself and his horse in the river.

“What are you looking at?” Caris asked Merthin.