Page 100 of The Armor of Light

‘Are you talking about Alderman Hornbeam?’

‘I thought it was him. What’s he doing at a grain auction? He’s a clothier.’

‘Perhaps he’s just curious – same as us.’

‘Curious as a snake.’

As the price of the lot rose, a discontented muttering spread through the crowd. They would never be able to afford bread made from this wheat.

Joanie said: ‘The farmer who’s selling this lot is making a great deal of money.’

Something clicked in Sal’s brain, and she said: ‘It might not be a farmer.’

‘Who else would have wheat to sell?’

‘Someone who bought it from a farmer at harvest time and hoarded it until the price went sky high.’ She recalled a word from a newspaper. ‘A speculator.’

‘Eh?’ said Jarge, struck by this thought. ‘Isn’t that against the law?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Sal.

‘Then it damn well ought to be.’

Sal agreed with that.

The grain was sold at a price beyond her imagining. It was also beyond the means of any Kingsbridge baker.

Several men started to pick up the sacks and load them onto a handcart. Each sack held a bushel and weighed about sixty pounds, so the men worked in pairs, each grasping one end of the sack, then together swinging the sack onto the cart. Sal did not recognize any of them. They had to be out-of-towners. ‘I wonder who bought the grain?’ Sal said aloud.

A woman in front of her turned around. Sal knew her vaguely; her name was Mrs Dodds. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but that man in a yellow waistcoat talking to the auctioneer now is Silas Child, the grain merchant from Combe.’

Joanie said: ‘Do you think he’s the buyer?’

‘Seems likely, doesn’t it? And those men picking up the sacks are probably his bargees.’

‘But that means the grain will go out of Kingsbridge.’

‘It does.’

‘Well, that’s not right,’ said Joanie angrily. ‘Kingsbridge grain shouldn’t go to Combe.’

‘It may be going farther than that,’ said Mrs Dodds. ‘I’ve heard it said that our grain is being sold to France, for the French are richer than us.’

‘How can people sell grain to the enemy?’

‘Some men will do anything for money.’

Jarge said: ‘That’s the truth, devil take ’em.’

The handcart was loaded quickly and two men took it away, each holding one handle. The cart turned into Main Street, the men leaning back and heaving on the handles to prevent it running away down the slope.

Sal said: ‘Kit and Sue, follow that cart, see where it goes, then run back here as fast as you can and tell me.’

The children raced away.

Sime Jackson appeared and said to Sal: ‘That load of a hundred bushels is going to France, people are saying.’ The notion had spread through the crowd already.

Some of the women clustered around the second cart, haranguing the men. At a distance, Sal heard the words ‘France’ and ‘Silas Child’, and then someone shouted ‘Bread and peace!’ That was the slogan they had yelled at the king in London.