Coventry, AD 1307
It was a great city of ancient lineage and three cathedrals – and a stinking, noisy, jostling and exuberant new world that set Jared’s pulse racing. Nothing could be better calculated to set him to rights. Here he could make something of his life – if he took the chance with both hands.
His horse shied from the grisly heads arrayed above the gatehouse with birds at work on the eyes. And his nose twitched at the reek of the black ditch he crossed over; half-naked children at play along it, old women searching among its rubbish.
To the left was a street leading to a packed market square. A flock of lambs was being driven towards it through the bustle. To the right a narrow passage opened to a street with a maze of stalls.
His destination was straight ahead into a complex of inns and taverns and he kneed the horse forward. The Cock and Hen took his fancy and he clopped into the courtyard, leaving his horse and pack animal with the stable boys.
After so many hours in the saddle he straightened painfully and made for the hall to find the landlord.
‘A bed and bread – and a sup of ale will see me content.’
The beefy leather-aproned innkeeper gave him a brief glance, then grunted, ‘B’ horse?’
Assured that this was Jared’s transport and therefore he could not be a penniless itinerant, the man named the price. ‘A silver penny the bed, three ha’pence the meal and it’ll be tuppence the horse. Servant?’
‘Not yet come,’ Jared said loftily.
It was no trivial amount but there was no choice – he had no desire to start his town life in one of the hostelries he remembered from his pilgrim days.
The hall was smoky and smelt of concentrated humanity and stale food, the trestle tables alive with travellers taking their pottage and quaffing ale.
Jared saw, however, that the strewn rushes were not unduly caked with mould and dung and even had traces of fleabane and hyssop to alleviate the stinks. It would do.
That night he lay awake, unused to town noises: the barking of dogs, snores of dozens of others, the grind of cartwheels and the carousing of late arrivals. How unlike the stillness of Hurnwych, where the soft hooting of an owl in Wolfscote Forest could easily be heard floating on the night air.
Above all was the daunting thought that he was now entirely alone in what lay ahead – had he done the right thing by cutting all ties with his past and heading out into the unknown?
He’d left his son stricken and tearful with Osbert but also with half the proceedings from the buy-out, and a vague promise to return one day to see how he was going. It had torn him to leave but he knew he wasn’t the kind of father Daw needed.
Perkyn was grateful to continue as a forge-hand and the little house was now his.
For himself, he now had a well-filled purse of silver, but this was all he had to see him set up in his trade. And it was already beginning to drain.
He’d come to Coventry for one very good reason: a cousin of his, Geoffrey Barnwell, had been born in Hurnwych and left to seek his fortune in the city. He’d gone when Jared was a small child but his father had later spoken of his success as a maker of candlesticks. All he had to do was find him to get his advice and protection.
Given his varied experience in all kinds of blacksmithing there shouldn’t be much difficulty finding a comfortable niche, but it was the outlay needed before he’d made a name that was the chanciest thing.
He set off early in the morning to find his relative, wearing his favourite russet tunic with a hood that hung down ending in a short liripipe, green hose and calf-length boots. His dark-brown felt hat with a saucy point had a twinkling sun motif brooch and he felt ready to face whatever the day would bring.
The innkeeper hadn’t been much help, gruffly pointing out that there wouldn’t be more than half a hundred candlestick makers in Coventry. He did add that if he cared to visit Bishopsgate he would find most of them there together and pointed out how to get there.
Jared stepped out down the road, past raucous market stalls and the fronts of craft shops, pushing through crowds, careful to guard against robbers and cutpurses, as he’d learnt the hard way in cities across the Levant.
Pie stalls, mercers, cobblers – it went on and on in a tumultuous din as he made his way along muddy streets, passages and alleys. It was over an hour before he’d found the candlestick makers and their characteristic billowing reek of tallow.
But there he was told that there was most definitely no Geoffrey Barnwell in their number.
This was a sad blow. Without anyone to speak for him his entry into the closed world of the skilled tradesman would be hard indeed.