Adventure Magazine Cover — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

50 the Friday Market? Willebald was clay that I molded and gilded till God put him to bed under a noble lid in the New Kirk. A worthy man, but loutish and slow like one of his Lockers. Yet when I saw him on the plain-stones by the English harbor, I knew that he was a weapon made for my hand.” .Her voice had become even and gentle as of one who remembers far-away things. The Cluniac, having dipped his hands in a silver basin, was drying them in the bra- zier’s heat. Presently he set to picking his teeth daintily with a quill and fell into the — listener’s pose. From long experience he knew the atmosphere which heralds confi- dences and was willing to humor the pro- vider of such royal! fare. “You have never journeyed to King’s Lynne?” said the voice from the bed. “There is little to see there but mud-bars and fens and a noisy sea. There I dwelt - when I was fifteen years of age, a maid hungry alike in soul and body. I knew If was of the seed of Forester John and through him the child of a motley of ancient kings, but war and famine had stripped our house to the bone. “And now I, the last of the stock, dwelt with a miserly mother’s uncle who did ship- wright’s work for the foreign captains. The mirror told me that I was fair to look on, - though ill-nourished, and my soul assured me that F had no fear. Therefore I had hope, but I ate my heart out waiting on fortune.” : | ‘She was looking at the monk with unsee- ing eyes, her head half-turned toward him. “Then came Willebald one March morn- ing. I saw him walk up the jetty in a new red cloak, a personable man with a broad beard and a jolly laugh. I knew him by re- pute as the luckiest of the Flemish ven- turers. In him I saw my fortune. That night he supped at my uncle’s house, and a week later he sought me in marriage. My uncle would have bargained, but I had be- come a grown woman and he was silenced.— “With Willebald I made no terms, for I read his heart and knew that in a little he would be wax to me. So we were wed, and I took to him no dowry but a ring which came to me from my forebears and a brain that gold does not buy.” The monkey by her side broke mto a chattering. | ' “Peace, Peterkin,” she said. “You mind ertheless it is a good story. Adventure me of the babbling of the merchant-folk, when I spurred Willebald into new roads. He had done as his father before him and bought wool and salted fish from the En- glish, paying with the stuffs of our Flemish looms. A good trade of small and sure prof- its, but I sought bigger quarries. For, mark you, there was much in England that had a value in this country of ours which no Englishman guessed.” “Of what nature?” the monk asked with curiosity in his voice. “Roman things: Once in that land of bogs and forests there were bustling Roman towns and rich Roman houses, which disap- peared as every tide brought in new robbers from the sea Yes, but not all. Much of the preciousness was hidden and the place of its hiding forgotten. Bit by bit the churls found the treasure-trove, but they did not tell their lords. They melted ‘down jewels and sold them piecemeal to Jews for Jews’ prices, and what they did not recognize as precious they wantonly destroyed. “T have seen the marble heads of heathen gods broken with the hammer to make mor- tar of and great cups of onyx and alabaster — used as water-troughs for a thrall’s mon- grels. Knowing the land, I sent pedlers north and west to collect such stuff, and what I bought for pence I sold for much gold in Germany. and throughout the French cities. , : “Thus Willebald amassed wealth, till it was no longer worth his while to travel the seas. We lived snug in Flanders, and our servants throughout the broad earth were busy getting us gear.” The Cluniac was all interest. The mak- ing of money lay very near the heart of his order. “Tt have heard wondrous tales of your en- terprise,” he told her. “T would fain know the truth.” : ‘“Packman’s tricks,” she laughed. ‘“Nev- For I turned my eyes to the East, whence came those things that make the pride of life. The merchants of Venice were princes, and it was in my head to make those of Bruges no worse. What did I profit that the wind turned daily the sails of our three hundred mills if we limited ourselves to common burgherwares and the narrow Northern markets?) We sent emissaries up the Rhine and beyond the Alps to the Venice princes and brought hither the spices and confections 300 Comic S (EO)