The Town House (7 page)

It was so early in the morning that I was still there, and I asked,

‘Her
what
?’

‘Her Trimble,’ said Agnes. ‘God bless my soul. Where were you reared never to have heard of that saint among women, Dame Trimble?’

‘Let me hear now,’ I said.

So, what time she bound the belly-band firmly about my son’s raw navel, she told me about Dame Trimble as the story had been handed down a hundred years or more. A young girl, one of a large family reared in dire poverty, had gone to work for an old wool chandler, who married her and soon afterwards had died, leaving her well-to-do. She had no children of her own, but was all too well aware of the hardship which childbirth means to poor women. She was shrewd, too, and dealt wisely with the fortune she had been left, so that she died rich. She had founded a charity, now known familiarly as ‘The Trimble’ by which any poor woman in Baildon – poor meaning any woman whose husband was not a full journeyman or its equivalent – could claim upon the birth of any child, meat, bread and ale for forty days following, a woollen gown, a hood and a pair of shoes.

‘Dummy’s wife is still wearing the one she got with her first,’ old Agnes said,‘she sold the others. There’s a good market for such. And the food and drink are good too, very generous, enough for the woman, and her man, and a bit over for the midwife if the family ain’t too large, as in this case.’

‘Who hands it out?’

‘The monks. At the Alms Gate. One of the parents has to take the child and show it. It’s the father’s job, though I’ve known mothers to crawl out on the second day, them with no men to rely on. Dame Trimble made no difference, she didn’t even say
respectable
women.’

So, on the next day, I had to forgo my dinner and run home and take the child to the Alms Gate. I felt silly and sheepish, expecting to be the butt for jeers, standing there with a baby in my arms; instead I found myself an object of envy. And well I might be. Brother Justinius was doling out the usual pease-porridge and bread, but at the sight of me he called out to someone behind him and bade me wait a little. Kate’s Trimble, when it came was food for a family, more food and better than I had seen at one time since I left Rede.

‘The gown,’ Brother Justinius said, ‘according to the rules, must be of the woman’s own choosing, and the shoes made to her measure. So they must wait. By what name is the child to be baptized?’

‘Stephen,’ I said clearly. Kate had chosen the name, long ago, because Brother Stephen had been kind to her.

‘These Norman names, how fashionable they grow,’ said Brother Justinius, with something sour in his voice.

I put on my most stupid, dull-witted look and said,

‘Norman is it? We thought it came from the Bible.’

He gave me a sharp look. ‘It is to be hoped that you are not tainted with Lollardry, to be for ever referring to Master Wycliffe’s Bible.’

‘Master Wycliffe? I do not know him. Is he a Baildon man?’

‘Oh, get along with you,’ Brother Justinius said crossly, and slammed down the hatch.

I hurried home to Kate with all the good food, and a little tale to make her laugh.

Dame Trimble’s sweet charity carried us bravely through the next weeks; there was enough for Kate and me, and most often Old Agnes as well. Kate got back her strength and I gained some flesh. The baby throve surprisingly, and although he had been born a full year before my plans made me ready to welcome him, now that he was here I loved him very dearly.

April brought in the softer weather, with its one disadvantage to us who dwelt in Squatters Row; when the gutters of the upper town ran freely the Town Ditch often brimmed over until its stinking waters lapped our doors. Still, summer was coming in, and by the first week in September I should have served my overlong apprenticeship and be earning. Hope stirred once more.

The town itself was growing; every market day brought more people. A ship-owner from Bywater came inland and began to build a fine new house which employed a number of masons and carpenters. Master Webster, the chief wool merchant in the town, bought a new string of pack ponies. At the forge we were very busy. But when, at the end of six weeks, Kate began looking for work, she found it hard to come by. One reason was that she refused to leave Stephen in the charge of Dummy’s wife who had offered to look after him with her own, for twopence a week.

‘I know her looking after,’ Kate said. ‘One of hers has been run down by a bullock, and one drowned in the Ditch. Stephen goes with me.’

By that time I was beginning to be anxious again.

‘If she had twopence a week for minding him it would be to her own interest to keep him out of the Ditch. In any case it might be as well to
leave him while you hunt for work, even if later, having proved your value, you took him with you.’

Nothing however would persuade Kate from her course; she was sure the right job would turn up. And in mid-May she found work as a picker in Master Webster’s woolsheds.

The fleeces were cut off the sheep in the spring and bundled up, just as they were and brought into Baildon. Master Webster paid a price which took into account a certain amount of rubbish, burrs, caked dung, leaves, bits of stick and mud. The bigger merchants – many of them oversea in Flanders – paid so much a pound for clean wool, so the fleeces had to be picked over carefully. The picker knelt or squatted as she worked her way through the wool, and the unchanging position became tiring. The oil and odour of the fleeces saturated her clothes, her hair, her flesh even. Kate bore it cheerfully, saying that she was used to the smell of sheep, and that Master Webster had been kind about letting her take Stephen. When he could crawl, she pointed out, the woolshed would be a far safer place for him than the bakehouse would have been.

Alas, before Stephen could crawl, Kate was with child again. This time she was dismayed.

‘There’ll be only eleven months between them. If Stephen isn’t walking I shall have to carry them both to work.’

‘But I shall be earning,’ I told her.

She smiled as though it hurt her.

‘I know. But there will be four to feed then.’

She had carried Stephen cheerfully and willingly and never ailed much. This was different. She was sick, and miserable. I was little comfort. To me there was something wrong, almost obscene about this begetting without being able to support. I was ashamed, and that made me peevish. It was at this time that something went out of our hut, something which had made it, despite its squalor, a happy home. Kate and I now seemed to take an unholy pleasure in making sharp remarks to one another. One day, when she was complaining, I said,

‘I warned you, didn’t I. You would have been better off at Abhurst.’

She swung round on me like a swordsman.

‘You mean you’d have been better off as an unmarried apprentice, with your feet under somebody else’s table.’

The weapon to wound was there, at my hand, and I seized it.

‘If it comes to that, I
am
an unmarried apprentice,’ I said.

Kate shot me a glance of hatred and then began to cry.

‘That’s right. Throw that in my face!’

We had never been married. We had arrived in Baildon as man and wife and never dared risk drawing attention to ourselves by offering ourselves to be wed. There was that question, ordinarily so harmless, to us so dangerous, ‘Of what parish?’ It would have been easy to lie, but Holy Church has a long arm. It might have occurred to the priest to make inquiries whether these unknown people were free to marry, and that would have been disastrous. Sailing under false colours we had come into Baildon, voiced for by Old Betsy, and under those same false colours we must go on.

Now, sobbing bitterly, Kate poured out all her hidden shame and doubts. No wonder, she said, everything went wrong with us, living in mortal sin, as we were. And if she died in childbirth, as well she might, she would go straight to Hell as a wanton. She went so far as to ask whether being born free could make up to Stephen and the child that was coming for their bastardy.

Her distress distressed me. I said I was sorry for having spoken as I had, and we kissed and made up. But every quarrel – of which this was but a sample – took something from us which no reconciliation could fully restore. I understood, during the next few months, what makes men go and drink themselves silly in the ale-house. I should have done so, many a night, had I had any money.

The day dawned that brought the end of my apprenticeship. Nothing had been said over-night, but I had not expected any sign, for during my two years at Armstrong’s I had seen an apprentice become a journeyman. (Journeyman does not mean a man who journeys to his work; it means a man who works by the day,
jour
being the Norman for day.)

It was one of those enchanted days of late summer touched by the first breath of autumn, golden and blue and heavily dewed as I set out for work, carrying Stephen, as I had done for some weeks, and walking round by Master Webster’s woolsheds. Even Kate was more cheerful this morning.

I went, as soon as I reached the smithy, to the nail where my apron usually hung. It was not there. I pretended great surprise and anxiety. Then the others gathered round me, chanting,

The reply to this sally varied with the nature and wit of the new journeyman. I said, ‘How can I get another? I’ve earned nothing yet!’ and that was well received, with more laughter.

I then went to take up my tools. They too were gone and again I pretended concern. They gathered round me,

The next remark was prescribed. I must turn round and cry in mock dismay,‘What shall I do?’

Then they all bellowed,

‘Become a journeyman!’

After that there was a moment or two of jollity, with good wishes and drinking, turn and turn about, from a jar of ale, which, according to rule, should be provided by the senior workman present. It was an understood thing that on such a morning, the master should allow ten minutes for the little ritual. On this morning my apron and tools were returned to me, and I was, at last, a journeyman of the Smith Guild in Baildon town.

Presently Master Armstrong arrived, stood by my shoulder while I finished a job and then said,

‘Step across the road with me. I’ve something to say to you.’

The ‘Smith’s Arms’ stood directly across the road from the forge; we took a seat on the bench and Master Armstrong called for ale. This, I thought, was another stage in the process of being recognized as a journeyman. When the ale came I expected him to speak some words of salutation, but instead he took a deep draught and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘You ain’t going to like this, Martin,’ he said. ‘But thass no good blaming me, nor nobody. Rules is rules and they hev to be kept. Last Guild meeting I brung up your name and said you’d done your time and was a handy skilled worker; but they ain’t taking you.’

The cobbled lane, the forge opposite with its smoky red fire and the haunches of the waiting horses and donkeys began to rock and swing before my eyes, slowly at first and then faster, until all I could see was a blur. I realized that my eyes had filled with tears; I was about to cry, like a
child. My throat ached and felt wooden. I lifted my mug and took a tiny sip and swallowing it eased me so that I was able to say,

‘In God’s name, why, master?’

‘You worn’t born here. And do you go back where you come from, you’ll fare no better. There they’ll hold agin you that you didn’t do your full time there. See?’

At that moment it seemed like a cruel blow aimed at me personally by malignant fate. Later on I understood better and knew that I was but one of many men of all crafts who were, in the towns, superfluous to requirements. All through my lifetime, ever since the great rising of 1381, on all but the most old-fashioned manors the serfs had been buying themselves free and had thus been at liberty to apprentice their sons how they would. So every year more apprentices qualified to become craftsmen than old craftsmen died or retired, and those safely inside a Guild were casting around for excuses to keep the young men out. Often the excuse was flimsy, invented. In my case there was no need. I was a ‘foreigner’; my exclusion needed no cunning twist and would cause no searching of, conscience on anyone’s part.

‘What’s to become of me then?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ Armstrong said. ‘Thass the question. But I got the answer. I’m sorry for you, Martin, and I’m making you this offer outa goodness of heart. You mind that. I brung this up at the Guild meeting too, and they was all agreed. You can’t be a full journeyman, nor claim the rate laid down for such. But you can go on as a
paid
apprentice, see? They looked up the rules, laid down in past years when there was a shortage of apprentices. They was paid then, anything between quarter and half the standard rate; and you being a bandy sort of chap, I’d give you half.’

I looked at him, and quickly away, lest he should see the loathing in my eyes. I’d had, from eating at his table and a hundred other little things, evidence of his meanness and cunning. Pretending to do me a favour he had prolonged my apprenticeship for a year. Now, pretending to do me another, he was getting a skilled, finished workman at half rate.

But I had no choice. Half pay was better than no wage at all. I said humbly,

‘Thank you very much.’

He jumped up quickly and said,

‘Let’s to work then.’

All that day, added to my own bitter disappointment, was the dread of the moment when I must tell Kate. She did not, however, weep, or
rail against Armstrong and the Guild; only the deepening of the lines in her face, the increased droop of her mouth, betrayed how shrewd the blow had been. I had dreaded her tears, and yet now, perversely enough, I wished she had cried. I might then have been moved to take her in my arms and comfort her. Once in a hard winter I saw a tree entirely encased in a coating of ice. Our poverty and our worries, and our defeated hopes were putting a similar casing around our souls. Soon we should have lost even the memory of love, and be dull, plodding work animals, no more.