The last area of his domain was the tanning pits: it was here that the final result was stored. The first pit was the handling pit, where the fresh leathers would be turned and stirred for days in a weak oak solution, until they reached a uniform colour. Then they were taken out and stored in the other pits, the great ones, where the leathers rested in a fresh solution for at least a year and a day, before being removed ready for smoothing with a setting pin — a long, blunt knife — and then dried slowly in a dark shed with a free flow of air. Tanning was not a fast process.
There were several jobs to do today. He had some skins ready for the handling pit, and he’d get his apprentice to start the stirring and mixing process. First, though, Wymond had a fresh cartload of cattle hides to clean. They’d been brought from the butchers after the slaughtering yesterday, and he had to immerse them to wash away the loose blood and dung. If any had been brined, the salt would also have to be removed. He busied himself with that, feeling the thickness of the pelts, pulling away odd lumps of fat from the skins, before thrusting them into the Exe’s fast-flowing waters. Down here he had constructed his own little leat, and at the far end he had installed a metal grate. The skins went into the river and were caught by the grate. There he could pummel them with a club, like a washerwoman with her linen, until the worst of the dirt and muck was cleaned off.
He was finished, and was reaching into the chilly waters to rescue his skins, just as his son appeared.
‘Vin, what are you doing down here?’
Vince glanced at his father with a half-apologetic smile. ‘Maybe you’d offer me a job if I needed one?’
‘No, boy! You’re going to be the big master at the city, you are,’ Wymond said loudly. He reached out to his lad and ruffled his hair affectionately. ‘You’ll be Mayor, or master or somesuch! You learn your joinery, lad, and when you have, we’ll buy you a small shop to start trading, and get you working to make as many saddles as will fill the whole of Devonshire. There won’t be a place for anything other than my son’s saddles! Ha ha! With my leather, your wood and Jack’s work to finish the saddles, we’ll all be rich, eh?’
‘I hope so.’
‘There’s something the matter, isn’t there, boy?’ Wymond said.
He was a medium-height, thickset man with deep brown eyes that were mostly hidden in among the wrinkles about his eyes. Looking at him, Vince suddenly realised how old he was. Although Wymond still worked as hard as ever he had, his black hair was turned grizzled, with wings of white at either temple. His face was as square as Vince’s, but the jowls drooped on either side like a mastiff’s, and his face was as brown and rugged as his finished goods. As he put his arm about Vince’s shoulders, the boy tried not to pull a face as he caught the smell of old flesh, rotten meat, dung and urine. It was the odour he had grown up with, and he had never been so grateful for anything as he was for the chance of leaving that stench behind. He recalled with a shudder all those days when, as a lad, he’d been sent out before the rakers to find any decent-sized lumps of dogshit, bringing them back in his old bucket, carrying it two-handed because it was so heavy and he was so small. The smell of dogs could still make him want to heave even now.
‘Did you hear about the German who fell from his horse?’ Vince began.
‘Yeah. Showing off, I heard. So what?’
‘Well, I think it was one of my saddles that broke. It was one of the cheaper frames that was supposed to go to-’
‘You sold off a duff one?’ Wymond said sharply. ‘Christ, what were you doing? Flogging off crap to your mate Jack so you could make a few pennies at your master’s expense?’
Vince glowered. ‘No! I was told to make them by Joel himself. He was selling them to all and sundry to get hold of some extra money. I had to knock them up, and then take them round to Jack’s master for him to make up. But they were supposed to be sold off for market. They shouldn’t have affected anyone in Exeter!’
‘What does your master say?’
‘He threatened to thrash me, said that the saddle frames were my responsibility and that I must have sold the wrong one to Henry.’
‘Then you deserve a thrashing, you arsehole,’ Wymond said, and he slapped Vince about the cheeks with a brawny hand. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing, playing at being a master, when you’re still an apprentice? You need your head bashed to get some God-damned sense into you, do you?’
‘Stop it!’ Vince said, putting his forearms up to protect his face. He couldn’t force his father to stop — Wymond was stronger than him — but he didn’t have to take so much punishment. ‘It wasn’t me, it was him. He’s been an arse just recently, since Henry visited.’
‘Henry? Someone told me he was dead,’ Wymond said.
‘That’s right. Some bastard shoved a knife under his ribs in the Charnel Chapel — the one dedicated to St Edward.’
Wymond’s eyes narrowed, and he looked away. He rested his arm on his son’s shoulder again as though nothing had happened. ‘That sodding place,’ he said. ‘Nothing good can ever come out of there.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my brother and others died there, Vin. My brother, your uncle, was murdered there, and they built the chapel to try to atone for their crimes, but they couldn’t. It’s builded on shame and lies and the blood of decent men.’
Baldwin had been relieved to find himself back at the Talbot Inn before curfew the night before. Curfew might not mean that all men must be at their homes any longer, but it did mean that the hour was late, and it was the time when certain people with sharp knives and hard cudgels would take to the shadows, preparing to knock some sound financial sense into those foolhardy enough to walk without protection and with over-filled purses. A city like Exeter attracted people of all sorts, and along with the legitimate businessmen were always some who’d be looking for an easier means of earning their income.
Among these, he always felt, were the beggars, and when he walked back to the Cathedral the following morning, he noticed with interest the one-legged figure squatting at the side of the Fissand Gate entrance. He recalled the fellow from the last journey he had made to Exeter, investigating the murder of the boy-Bishop’s glovemaker. At the time, he recalled that his wife had been impressed with this man.
His wife. The thought of Jeanne drove everything else from his mind, and he walked past the begging bowl without noticing.
The sun was feebly trying to penetrate thick clouds overhead, and the gloomy light lent a dreary aspect to the Close. At other times, it must have appeared bright and cheery, Baldwin considered as he glanced about him. The houses along the Canon’s way were all limed oak and whitewashed cob. Flags fluttered near the Fissand Gate entrance, there was a pleasing colour to much of the reddish-brown stonework and those, together with the green turf, would have been delightful on a bright summer’s day; especially when the Cathedral’s western front was complete, with all the saints and patrons of the Cathedral carved in stone and set in niches about the wall. Their painted figures would brighten the whole area, with marvellous crimsons and greens, yellows and golds. Baldwin had no idea what the image screen would look like when it was done — and it would not be completed for many years after his death — but he had seen enough at other cathedrals to know how it would likely appear.
Today the place was grey and dismal, however. It wasn’t only the lack of bright sunshine; there was a pall that hung over the area, as though the dead man’s soul had permeated every stone with his misery and pain, and was calling out for revenge.