The Baron's Quest (3 page)

Chapter 2

Muriel awoke the next morning to a loud pounding noise. She rolled over on her sleeping pallet and opened one eye, trying to focus. She hadn’t slept well at all after the episode yesterday on the docks. Her stomach was in a knot. She knew times were rough if she couldn’t even manage to sell her wares to a questionable tradesman who looked to be as dishonest as the day was long.

And then she’d been cornered by the handsome baron of the ports, and was only glad he didn’t realize exactly who she was. If she hadn’t managed to get away, the bailiff would have told him about her debt.

She heard pounding again, and jumped up, pulling her gown over her head quickly, making her way to the stairs.

Like all merchant shops in town, they lived in the upstairs of the small two-storey building made of stone and wood. The storefront and their workroom were downstairs for all to see, as well their distaffs of wool, their vertical loom, and anything else that was used for spinning, weaving or sewing. The upstairs was used as their private quarters, mainly to eat and sleep. This basically consisted of a table and benches, and a second room separated by a hanging cloth with pallets on both sides.

Most the buildings as well as a lot of the land was owned by the church. Her father had rented the building from the church, paying Brother Germain the money due each month.

“Muriel, someone is here,” said her brother, darting down the stairs in front of her. “Mayhap we’ll make some money today.”

It was not yet dawn, and she knew no one would be coming to buy cloth at this hour.

“Nay, don’t let anyone in, Isaac,” she called, running after him, but it was too late. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, her brother was already opening the door. Half a dozen guild members pushed their way into her shop, followed by Brother Germain. She saw another dozen angry guild members standing out front with lit torches in their hands.

“We’ve come for your guild dues that are two months late,” said Oliver Card, the head of the guild, who was also the town mayor.

“Muriel, I’m here to collect your rent on the building as well,” added Brother Germain in a soft, melodic voice. The man had been a good friend through the years, but she knew he had a job to do.

“Please, you know I don’t have the money,” said Muriel. “Just give me another day.”

“Another day?” growled a man from the back of the crowd. “For what? So you can break the rules, just like your father and run off and sell your wares for less than ours? That action has cost us all sales.”

“Our father didn’t do that,” Isaac protested. Muriel just laid a hand on her brother’s shoulder to still him.

“I’ll go to another town to sell my wares, then,” she told them. “I promise I won’t compete with the guild for sales. But just give me more time. I’ll get the money, I will.”

“Our guilds are in every town up and down the coast from here to Great Yarmouth, and you know it,” snapped Oliver. “You won’t be able to sell your things anywhere once we put the word out of what you’ve done.”

“I’ve done nothing. You are talking about my father, and I had no idea anything was amiss. If you won’t let me sell my goods on the coast, then I’ll go overseas instead.”

“Muriel, you know that is not an option. What will you use to pay for passage since you don’t have any money?” asked the monk.

“I’ll find a way, now please just leave.”

Oliver shook his head and scowled. “Nay. Not before we get some kind of compensation.” He waved over a man holding a torch so he could see inside her home better. “We’re taking enough wares to pay for the guild dues.” He nodded his head, giving the rest of the members the signal. They piled into the room with baskets in their hands and started collecting up her spun wool, her spindles, her needles and thimbles, and her bolts of cloth as well.

Oliver pulled a piece of parchment from his bag and studied it closely in the torchlight. “Brother Germain tells me what you owe him in rent on the building comes out to sixteen shillings. I think that old draft horse of yours is worth about that, so the horse will go to Brother Germain in compensation. Your wagon on the other hand will be given to the men who brought your father’s dishonesty to our awareness, to sell and split the money between them.

“Nay, stop!” Isaac rushed forward, but Muriel stopped him with another grab to his arm.

“Isaac, we can’t fight them. Let it be.”

“But our father wasn’t dishonest. I’m sure he followed the guild rules, Muriel.”

“I have the proof right here he didn’t pay his dues,” said Oliver, holding up the parchment. “He owes us two months of guild fees at six shillings, eight pence for each month. So we will take whatever woven cloth and spun wool you have left that wasn’t stolen from your father on the road by the bandits who killed him. And to compensate the sales lost to our guild members due to your father’s dishonesty, we’ll take . . . ” he looked around the room which was sparse of any furnishings to begin with. Then his eyes settled on the one thing Muriel did not want to lose. “We’ll take your weaver’s loom as well.”

“Nay!” she shouted, feeling his words stab at her heart like a sharpened blade. She could always make new spindles or get more wool, but without the loom her father had paid for dearly, they would have no real business at all. “That is not fair. That loom is worth ten times what we owe you.”

Oliver just smiled. “Perhaps, but with the fines of breaking the rules of the guild, not to mention the fine that the lord’s dockman will need the guild to pay from your little endeavor yesterday, I figure this will make the situation even.”

Damn, so they knew about her trying to sell her wares on the docks. She had a feeling that might come back to haunt her, and now it had. But still, he was only making up fake fines so the guild could get their hands on a loom they’ve coveted since the day her father sold most everything they had to buy it from an overseas tradesman.

“I thought we weren’t in the guild anymore, so why would there be these additional charges?” she asked.

“Muriel, don’t let them do it,” urged Isaac in a soft whisper.

“It’s either you pay the charges or be brought before the town’s council to be tried and sentenced,” said the man. “This is the better choice, I assure you.”

Muriel felt so helpless right now, and knew she could do nothing to change the decision. The guilds were powerful, and Oliver was on the town board. She didn’t have a hope that they’d change their minds.

All she could do was stand there and stare as the guild members cleaned out her home. Everything they had worked so hard for was gone in a matter of minutes. She still hadn’t recovered from grieving the loss of their father, and now she had even more to grieve.

“How do you even know for sure my father did what you accused him of doing?” she asked.

“We know, because we have witnesses,” said Oliver, nodding toward three men standing behind him. “Thomas Fox, Bertron Chandler, and Samuel Fuller found him wounded and robbed on the road. Your father admitted to them right before he died that what he’d done was immoral and illegal.”

She’d never really gotten the details from anyone about her father’s death. And she’d been so upset to see his bloodied, bruised and dead body, that she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to find out more of what happened, even tho the man who’d brought him in was the stepfather of her best friend, Cecily.

“What did my father say?” she asked in challenge.

“He said he did it for his family,” said Samuel, stepping forward. He approached her with an apologetic look on his face.

“All right, let’s go,” announced Oliver, turning toward the door. “Brother Germain, gentlemen, - the horse and cart are out back so let’s go get them.”

As the people filed out of her home, Samuel stayed there, looking at the ground. Then he slowly dug into his pocket and pulled out something and held his hand forward. “Your father managed to keep this hidden from the bandits, and wanted me to give it to you.” He dropped a gold ring with a small ruby embedded, into her outstretched palm.

Muriel took the ring in her shaking hand, holding it up to realize it was her mother’s wedding ring. Her father had bought it for her once he’d been titled a Master Weaver, using many months of his pay to do so. She was surprised to see it, as she had thought it had been buried along with her mother.

“What is it?” asked Isaac, coming closer.

“It’s . . . Mother’s ring,” she told him in a soft voice, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes. “Samuel, why didn’t you tell me this a sennight ago?” she asked the man.

He looked down to the ground again, and bit his lip. Then he looked back up in remorse before he answered. “Muriel, your father gave it to me, and told me with his dying breath not to let the guild know about it, or they’d take it. I’m sorry, I should have given it to you right away . . . but I was frightened.”

“You were frightened for yourself, and I can’t blame you,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “I understand. And Isaac and I will never say anything about this to them. They don’t have to know you kept the information from them in order to help us. Thank you, Samuel. You are a good friend.”

The man seemed too choked up to answer, and just turned and walked out the door, leaving her standing there alone with Isaac.

“Muriel, what will we do?” asked Isaac, putting his arm around her shoulder. “We can’t survive without our loom.”

Muriel slipped the ring onto her finger, feeling the presence of her mother as well as her father in its essence. She knew she could sell the ring and have enough money to pay the two months worth of rent on the baron’s land, but it was the last remembrance of her parents, and her heart told her not to do it.

“We haven’t lost the marshlands yet,” she told him. “If we can make it through the month, we’ll have money as well as wool from the shepherds who use the land. We can give up the shop if we have to, since there is no need for it anymore. I will talk to Cecily and see if she can convince her family to help us. Their place is small and crowded with her younger siblings and mother there as well, but perhaps they can fit one more. You have spent almost seven years in your apprenticeship, and are very skilled at your craft, Isaac. Perhaps Samuel will take you on as a journeyman since he doesn’t have one. Then you will start earning pay for your work as well as have a place to live and food to eat.”

“And you, Muriel? What will you do? Will you work for Samuel as well?”

“Nay,” she said with a shake of her head. “Samuel already has a spinster – Cecily. I won’t take pay away from her nor you. I’ll find another way to earn money, and stay here at the shop until they take that away too.”

“Nay, I won’t leave you,” he said, shaking his head.

“You have to, brother.” She pulled herself together and busied herself, brushing off her skirts so Isaac wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “Now get your things together and we’ll go to Cecily’s house at once. If Samuel takes you as his journeyman, we might be able to convince him to buy back our loom from the guild. It is the only choice we have.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked around the room. They didn’t have much left. She’d noticed their things disappearing for months now, and had a feeling her father was having difficulties paying his debts, and was selling things off for coin. But he’d kept the finances to himself, saying he didn’t want Muriel to worry. And when she’d confronted him about it, he’d denied any problem, saying they had so much money he’d soon have enough for a dowry for her to attract a successful merchant man to marry.

Muriel had dreamed about someday getting married, but not to a merchant and certainly not to a peasant. Her mother had died six years earlier, but she remembered her mother telling her that she was special and someday would marry a man who was powerful and wealthy and one she would also love. She was twelve at the time, and they’d planned on sending her to work in a lord’s castle. But at the death of her mother, she ended up staying to help her father and brother instead.

She and Cecily had always talked of someday having wonderful things happen to them. But now it looked like she’d never have a chance for anything remotely close. No matter what her father had done with their money or breaking rules, it didn’t matter. Because she knew he would have done anything in the world to give his children the best life possible. And now she felt the same way about Isaac. She would do whatever she could to see him succeed in life as well.

“Take what you need, and I will pack up a bag with what’s left and try to sell some of our things on the docks today.” She looked around the room, knowing she would miss this place. It was the house Isaac was born in, and she remembered the day well when things in their life had turned for the better. Her father had accomplished becoming a Master at his trade. Then her mother had become pregnant with another child, making her father very happy. But her mother had died in childbirth along with their baby sister, and since that day, her father’s heart had no longer been in his work. She’d seen his quality of work slipping over the years as he’d become tired. So she had always made sure that she and Isaac fixed whatever wasn’t up to par. That way, they brought the expected quality back to her family’s trade, securing that their cloth was the best in town.

“But Muriel, we don’t have enough things to sell to earn the rent you owe the baron.” Isaac picked up a wooden cup and handed it to her and she stuck it in her travel bag.