THE CARPENTER’S TALE
It was not entirely dark inside the Chester monastery’s storehouse. Elijah Smyth had laid his plans carefully. He knew that no one came in through the heavily secured door. The locks and chains had rusted solid somewhere in the middle of the reign of Henry the Eighth, when the monastery had been dissolved, the monks banished, and the cathedral church usurped by the Church of England. Because the last Abbot of Saint Waerburgh’s had become the first dean of the new Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin, the transition had gone smoothly enough. The books of the heretical worship had not been burned, but banished. And a weeping librarian had laid them here and sealed the door, before trailing off with his brethren to starve on the roads. Elijah had climbed in through the small window at the side. It, too, had been sealed, though not for many years. Someone had drawn out the old nails. The shutter was only secured by a couple of bolts. Some peasant, perhaps, hoping for treasure, disappointed to find nothing but old books.
Old books were Elijah Smyth’s treasure and he would much rather have them than gold. He had prepared carefully. It was getting on for dusk of a summer’s night. His cart and horse waited in a grove. He had sacks and he had a small oil lamp. The monastery’s neglected library was about to be plundered. Lost artistry was about to be passed on to the sure hands of Sir Robert Cotton, who would treat such things as they deserved. He had royal protection. Sir Robert Cotton was King James First’s librarian. The King called him ‘Sweet Robin”.
Elijah slid through the window and stood for a moment quite still. He heard a rustle. Rats? The enemy of all libraries. At this very moment they might be chewing away the last remnants of the Anglo-Saxon poems which Sir Robert loved. Elijah turned a corner around a stack and saw a beautiful sight.
By the dim light of a penny candle, a man was sitting, reading intently. He had a concentrated, beaky face, pale hair, almost vellum-white, no wig, and the garments that Elijah could see were homespun. A peasant, then, but an educated peasant, because as Elijah crept closer, he saw that the man was reading Treatise on the Astrolabe, by Geoffrey Chaucer, in a language now quite foreign to the native English speaker.
So as not to startle the man, and run the risk of spilling that candle, Elijah said gently, ‘Whan that Aprille with its shoures soote, the droght of Marche hath pérced to the roote, and...’
'Bathéd every vyne in swich liquor of whiche vertu engendred is the flo...’
‘Who are you, or has much study sent me mad?’ asked the reader.
‘My name is Elijah Smyth, and as far as I can tell, Sir, you are not any madder than most. Allow me to add my oil lamp to your candle.’
‘Sir, I thank you. My name is Matthias Benedict. I dared not bring a bigger lamp in here, lest it be missed, and could not take home books unaccounted-for.’
‘So you came here to read them,’ observed Elijah, leaning over Matthias Benedict. He smelt delicious, of woven cloth and straw.
‘Yes, and many an eye strain I have obtained, and much learning and beauty likewise. What want you, Sir, with the library of the old Monastery of St Waerburgh?’
‘I am here to steal it,’ said Elijah, and grabbed for Matthias’s arm as he jumped to his feet in outrage. ‘Take care of that candle! Hear me out?’ he asked, and Matthias stilled, looking into Elijah’s face.
He was in deadly earnest, running out of time, and had to convince this educated peasant of his bona fides.
Matthias pried Elijah’s hand off his arm, but retained it in both of his own. It was cold in the library, and Elijah had the most attractive face he had ever seen. His cornflower eyes were compelling. Matthias leaned into his warmth.
‘I mean to take the books to someone who will love and care for them. And I’m doing this now, because the Chester Cathedral needs money, and is minded to demolish this building. They will not value the books. My patron will. If you do, let me go, or help me, and come with me. Are you happy here?’
‘No,’ said Matthias slowly. ‘I was sent to school, you see, and my father said it ruined me for honest labour. As hard as I work, I cannot please him. He thinks I hold myself above him because I can read, though I do not. My elder and younger brothers thrive, just not poor Matthias. Not likely to marry. Too clever for his own good. The only time I am happy is when I can evade notice and crawl in here. ‘
‘Then come with me,’ urged Elijah. ‘I travel, buying–’
‘Or stealing?’ asked Matthias with a smile. Elijah bent his head and kissed the corner of the smile.
There was a shocked silence. The candle flickered. Elijah, heart sinking, wondered if he had just made the miscalculation of a lifetime, the balance of which was likely to be short.
Then Matthias kissed him, firmly, in a matter-fact manner as though this was their ten thousandth kiss, not the first, and went on, ‘Or would you call it freeing the prisoners?’
Elijah exhaled and dragged in a new breath.
‘Exactly. The books languish in their dungeons, and I am sure that I heard rats.’
‘Oh, yes, they have made merry with the saints lives, possibly more than the saints did. But they have not laid a tooth on these. Look here, Master Book Thief.’
By both lights, Elijah could see that he had a folio of Geoffrey Chaucer His Worke, and opened it to read:
“He sayed, Hearken alle, I would telle yow a tale,
Carpenters alle knowe: withoughten faile
A tree grewe in Eden that garden greene
The fyneste woods that ever was seene...”
Bound into the same volume he found:
“Hwaet! Ic swefna cyst secgan wylle,
hwaet me gemnatte to midre nihte,
Sythan reorberend reste wunedon!”
‘My God,’ said Elijah Raven, with absolute devotion. ‘Chaucer’s Carpenter’s Tale! So he did write more tales! What could be more fitting for the Carpenter than the Dream of the Rood? And a good copy of the original Dream of the Rood itself, I’ve only ever seen fragments... Oh, treasure! What more, my Matthias, could you offer me?’
‘I can’t read these,’ confessed Mattias. But they’re the same sort of script as that one.’
‘Sithen the seege and the assault watzs esed at Troye..’
That’s the Gawain poet,’ murmured Elijah, awed. ‘Four... no, five, six, seven more poems! Oh, Matthias, and he’s written a dedication to one, Charity, and he really is Robert Massey!’
He kissed Matthias in joy, and Matthias kissed him back. They embraced as well as they could for the heavy folios between their bodies. Neither of them was ready to let the precious books out of their grasp.
‘No time,’ said Elijah, releasing Matthias and leaping to his feet. ‘Gather up all these, any others you love, and here’s a sack. I have a horse and cart waiting. Any illuminated books? My patron adores them. Come, my love, let us plunder.’
Matthias, for the first time in a very long count of days, laughed aloud.
They stopped just outside Cottington, near a small cottage in a grove of trees.
‘I must change and take the cart on,’ said Elijah, throwing Matthias the reins. ‘Let poor Bessy drink a little and give her some corn. There’s a pump over the trough,’ he added.
Matthias, who felt as much in a sweven as the author of the poem, tied the reins, got down, and pumped some water for the mare, allowing her to drink, then snuffle the golden grains from his hands. The mare, at least, was real. He felt encouraged at that. If this was all a dream, then waking would break his heart.
Bessy had just lipped up the last of the oats when Elijah Smyth came back. He was wearing grey whiskers, a box wig, a shovel hat, had one leg strapped up somehow and wore, on his shoulder, a grey parrot, who regarded Matthias with a cynical eye.
‘Greetings,’ said this fever-vision, sweeping Matthias such a low bow that he almost dislodged his parrot. ‘Captain Elijah Raven at your service, m’lord! And his parrot, Livy.’
‘At your service,’ gasped Matthias, correctly. ‘Why this play-acting, Sir?’
‘The King tends to get tired of his favourites, and Sir Robert tends to criticise the King,’ replied Elijah, soberly. ‘I do not want to be excised from the record because I am an inconvenient witness to royal infatuation. Therefore, should anyone come looking for me, they shall not me find. Will you stay here? I never go into the house.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ insisted Matthias. ‘I’m not entirely certain, Sir, that either of you are real.’
Captain Elijah Raven limped confidently to the back door of the large country house. He was admitted by the cook. After a moment, she waved Matthias in, as well.
‘Wayfarers must be cared for, that’s what the Master says.’ She pulled out a chair. ‘Now eat up, my dears, and I shall send for the master.’
The table was laid with scones, cream, jam, apples, a round of roast venison, pickles and bread and butter. Matthias was hungry, also dirty, and hardly fit company for this bright, scented kitchen. But he ate and drank, anyway. The food was toothsome and the beer very drinkable. Several housemen passed, carrying the sacks of books.
The kitchen could tell when Sir Robert Cotton received the monastery’s books. They heard a squeal of joy from within. Then a tall, spare, worn gentleman entered. Captain Elijah bowed, sweeping the air with his hat, and the parrot croaked ‘Rob, Rob, sweet Robyn!”
Matthias bowed as well as he could and was happy to be over looked. Sir Robert was elated, overcome with delight. Matthias knew that his books would be in safe hands. But he still felt a pang at losing them. He had not had time or means to copy them. Though he had memorised many of the poems.
On the other hand, he now had Elijah. More than he had ever hoped for or deserved. Ingenious, shameless, learned Elijah, who for some reason, desired his company. Matthias, no longer Too-Clever-For-His-Own-Good.
Sir Robert Cotton paid coins into Elijah’s ready hand, and the Captain accepted a basket of food for their journey. They took their leave and Bessy trotted happily away, aware that she was going home to her own stable.
‘Will you stay with me? Travel with me?’ asked Elijah Smyth, when they were home and he had shed his disguise. Livy eyed them from his perch. He wasn’t sure about the newcomer yet. Elijah had never brought a visitor home before.
‘Your surname is Fair Ruthlessness,’ quoted Matthias. ‘The wyse, y-knit unto Good Adventure, That, for I love him, slee me guiltlesse.’
‘His love I beste, and shall, while that I dure,’ replied Elijah. They met in the middle of the little cottage, breast to breast, mouth to mouth, clapped together, like the covers of a book.
Astrologie Geoffrey Chaucer
Whan that manne another ane shal fynde
Of equal lerning and equal mynde
They love in felawshippe and speke al night:
And when thatte they are of equal myghte
They ar called Castor and Pollux, Gemini, the twain.
Ane hearte, ane mynde, ane body, alle faine.