Sworn Brother (14 page)

By
mid-December
I was so racked by longing to see Aelgifu that
I
asked Brithmaer for permission to look through his existing stock of jewellery for items which might catch the queen’s eye. He sent me to Thurulf with a note telling him to show me the inventory in the strongroom. Thurulf was glad to see me. We had adjacent rooms at Brithmaer’s home, but each morning went our separate ways —
I
to the exchange, Thurulf to the workshop floor. Once or twice a week we met up after working hours and, if we could avoid Brithmaer’s attention, slipped out of the house to visit the taverns by the docks. We always timed our return to be outside the heavily guarded door to the mint when Brithmaer’s two night workers reported for duty, and we entered — unnoticed, we hoped — with them. The night workers were both veterans of the moneyer’s bench, too old and worn-out for full-time labour. One had an eye disease and was nearly blind, so he sat at the bench and worked by touch. The other was stone deaf after years among the din of hammers. The men spent a few hours each night at their well-remembered places at the workbench, in lamplight, and
I
would often fall asleep to the patient clink, clink of their hammers. The general opinion was that it was an act of charity for Brithmaer to give them part-time employment.

‘What are you doing here at this time of day?’ said Thurulf, obviously pleased when
I
showed up mid-morning with Brithmaer’s note. He was glumly counting up the contents of the bags of the old-issue coins stored in the strongroom before they were melted down for new coinage. It was a job he particularly loathed. ‘The bags never seem to grow any less,’ he said. ‘Goes to prove that people are hoarders. Just when you think you’ve cleared the backlog, another batch of old coins comes in.’

Thurulf put aside the wooden tally stick on which he was cutting the number of bags of coin, a notch for each bag. Locking the door behind him, he took me to where the jewellery was kept. At the far end of the minting floor was the workroom for the craftsman who cut the faces of the striking irons. He was a suspicious, surly figure and unpopular with the other workers, who resented that he was paid far more than them. I never learned his name because he only came to the mint one day a week, went straight to his workroom and locked himself inside to get on with his job.

‘There’s not enough work in preparing striking irons to keep a craftsman employed, even one day a week,’ explained Thurulf, relishing his chance to display his moneyer’s expertise. ‘When all the striking irons for a new coin issue have been made, another full set of irons won’t be needed until the king decides a new design for his coin, and that might not be for several years. In the meantime the work is mainly repairing and refacing damaged and worn-out striking irons. So my uncle decided that his craftsman might as well make and repair jewellery during his extra hours.’

Thurulf pushed open the door to the workroom. It was a cubbyhole equipped with the same sort of heavy workbench that was used in the main workshop, a small crucible for melting metal and an array of punches and engraving tools for cutting the faces of the striking irons. The only difference was the large iron-bound chest tucked under the bench. I helped Thurulf tug this out and heave it up on the bench. He unlocked it, rummaged inside and

And produced jewellery, which he spread out. ‘It’s mostly
repairs
,’
he
said, ‘replacing
a missing
stone in a necklace, tightening
up the mounts,
mending a clasp, straightening, cleaning and polishing an
item so
that
it will
catch the customer’s
eye. A lot of what is here is rubbish — imitation gold,
low-grade silver, broken odds
and ends.’

He picked through the
better pieces on
the bench, and selected a handsome pendant,
silver with a
blue stone set in its centre and an attractive pattern of curved
lines radiating from the mount
.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘you can see how this pendant is
hung
on a chain through
that loop
.
When my uncle
acquired the piece
,
the loop was cracked and flattened and our man had to reshape and solder it. Then he went over the decoration lines
again with
his engraving tool — they were a bit
faded
—
and
made them more distinct.’

I took the
pendant from Thurulf
.
It was easy to detect where the mend had been done and the scratches of the new
engraving. ‘Your
man’s
not very skilled
,
is he?’ I commented.

‘Frankly, no. But then most of our clients aren’t too discerning,
said
Thurulf blithely
.
‘He’s a working engraver,, not an artist. Now look at
this
.
Here’s something he could
repair
if
only he had
the
right stones
to
fill
the holes.’ He handed me a necklace made of red
amber beads strung on a silver chain. After
every
third bead a crystal
,
the size of half a walnut, was held in a fine silver
claw
.
Like nuggets of smooth,
fresh
ice, the crystals threw
back
the light from flat surfaces cut and polished on them. Originally there had been seven crystals, but now three of them were missing, though the silver mounts remained. Had the necklace been entire, it
would
have
been spectacular. As it was, it looked like a gap-toothed grin.

‘I thought you said your uncle’s workshop made jewellery,’ I commented.

‘Nothing
complicated
,’
Thurulf replied, lifting a leather pouch from the chest and unfastening
the drawstring.
‘
This
is
what
we specialise in,’ and he pulled out a necklace.

heart gave a little
lurch
.
It was a necklace, made very simply by joining a chain of silver coins together with links of gold. I had seen one around Aelfgifu’s neck. It was the only item she had worn on the day we first made love.

‘Your uncle said that I could look through the chest to pick out anything which I thought the queen might like.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Thurulf amiably, ‘though I doubt that you’ll find much that has been overlooked. My uncle knows his clients and his stock down to the tiniest item.’

He was right. I picked through the box of broken jewellery and managed to find no more than a couple of bead necklaces, some heavy brooches, and a finger ring which I thought might please Aelfgifu. They added up to a feeble excuse to visit her.

“Would it be possible to make up a coin necklace for her?’ I enquired. ‘I know that she would like that.’

‘You’d have to ask my uncle,’ Thurulf said. ‘He’s the coin expert. Even hoards them. But that’s what you’d expect from a moneyer, I suppose. Here, I’ll show you.’

He tipped the contents of a second pouch over the workbench and a cascade of coins tumbled out in a little pile. I picked through them, turning them over in my fingers. They were of all different sizes, some broad and thin, others as thick and chunky as nuggets. Most were silver, but some were gold or copper or bronze, and a few were even struck from lead. Some had holes in the centre, others were hexagons or little squares, though the majority were round, or nearly so. Many were smooth with handling, but occasionally you could still see the writing clearly and the images. On one coin I read the Greek script that the Irish monks had taught me; on another I saw runes that I had learned in Iceland. On several was a script with curves and loops like the surface of the sea riffled by a breeze. Nearly all were stamped with symbols — pyramids, squares, a sword, a tree, a leaf, several crosses, the head of a king, a God shown with two faces, and one with two triangles which overlapped to make a six-pointed star.

I slid the coins about on the bench like counters in a board game, trying to align a sequence that would make a handsome necklace for my love. Instead I found my thoughts flying out like Hugin and Munin, Odinn’s birds, his scouts who fly out across the world to observe and report to their master all that happens. By what routes, I wondered, had these strange coins reached a little box in a strongroom belonging to a moneyer for King Knut? How far had they come? Who had made them and why were these symbols chosen? My fingertips sensed a vast, unknown world that I had never imagined, a world across which these little rounds and squares of precious metal had travelled by paths I would like to explore.

I assembled a row of coins, alternately gold and silver, that looked well. But when I turned them over to check their reverse sides, I was disappointed. Three of the coins were blemished. Someone had dug fierce little nicks in the surface with something sharp. ‘A pity about those nicks and pits,’ I said. ‘They ruin the surface and destroy the images.’

‘You find those marks all the time,’ Thurulf said casually. ‘Nearly half the old-issue silver coins that we get from the northern lands carry those cuts and scratches. It’s something foreigners do to them, especially in Sweden and the land of the Bus. They don’t trust coins. They think they might be fakes: a lead base coated with silver, or a bronze core which has a gold wash applied to make it look like solid gold. It’s possible to achieve that effect, even in this small workshop. So when they are offered a coin in payment, they jab the point of a knife into it or scratch the surface to check that the metal is genuine all the way through.’