“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 ourselvesandsave 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 silveranda 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.
