Tim Severin - Sworn Brother

'No,' I replied, 'I did not come to you as a spy. I was sent in good faith by the queen. What I learned has nothing to do with Aelfgifu.'

'So what is it that you have learned?'

'I know that you are forging the king's coinage. And that you are not alone in this felony, though I would not be wrong in believing you are the prime agent.'

Brithmaer was calm. 'And how do you think that this felony, as you call it, is enacted? Everyone knows that the coinage of England is the most strictly controlled in all Europe and the penalties for forgery are severe. Counterfeit coins would be noticed immediately by the king's officers and traced back to the forger. He would be lucky only to lose a hand, more likely it would be his life. Only a fool or a knave would seek to forge the coins of the king of England.'

'Of the present king of England, yes,' I replied, 'but not the coins of a previous king.'

'Go on,' said Brithmaer. There was an edge to his voice now.

'I discovered quite by accident that the two elderly workers who strike coins at night in your workshop are not producing coins with the head of Knut. They make coins which carry the head and markings of King Ethelred. At first it made no sense, but then I saw coins which had arrived from the northern lands, from Sweden and Norway. Many of them had the test marks, the nicks and scratches. Most of them were old, from Ethelred's times, when the English paid vast amounts of Danegeld to buy off the raiders. It seems that huge numbers of Ethelred's coins are in circulation in the north lands, and now they are coming back in trade. Thurulf spends a great deal of time counting them in the storerooms.'

'There's nothing wrong with that,' Brithmaer murmured.

'No, but Thurulf remarked to me how the numbers of the old coins never seemed to diminish, but kept piling up. That made me think about something else which was not quite right. I had noticed that here in the exchange you accept large amounts of inferior jewellery made with base metals and cheap alloys. You say it is for the jewellery business, yet your so-called jeweller is nothing more than a workaday craftsman. He is an engraver, familiar with the cutting and maintenance of striking irons and he knows nothing about jewellery. Yet I found very little of the broken jewellery. It had disappeared. Then I realised that the engraver had the skill and equipment in his workshop to melt down the low-grade metals, and turn out blanks for stamping into coins.'

'You seem to have done a great deal of imagining,' said Brithmaer. 'Your story is a fantasy. Who would want low-grade coins from a dead king?'

'That is the clever part,' I replied. 'It would be reckless to issue forged coins in England. They would be quickly identified. But forge coins which you then issue in the north lands, where the coins of England are regarded as honest, and few people would detect that the coins were counterfeit. Cutting or nicking the coins would not reveal the purity of the metal. And if it did, and the coins are revealed as fakes, then the coins carry the markings of long-dead moneyers, and could never be traced back to their maker. However, there has to be one more link in the chain.'

'And that is?'

'The link that interests me now. You can obtain the base metals from the cheap jewellery, make low-grade coins, forge the marks of other moneyers, but you still need to distribute the coins in the north lands. And for that you need the cooperation of dishonest merchants and ship owners who make regular trading voyages there and put the coins into general circulation. These, I suspect, are the people who visit your private office, even in winter. So my request to you now is that you will arrange with one of these men for me to be smuggled aboard ship, no questions asked. It is in your interests. Once I am out of England, I would no longer be in a position to report you to the authorities.'

'Would it not be more sensible for me to arrange for you to vanish permanently?' Brithmaer said. He was no more emotional than if he was suggesting a money-changing commission.

'Two wax impressions taken from the striking irons used in the forgery will be delivered to the king's regent if I vanish mysteriously or fail to report by springtime.'

Brithmaer regarded me thoughtfully. There was a long pause while he considered his alternatives. 'Very well. I'll make the arrangements you request. There's a merchant ship due to visit King's Lynn in two week's time. The captain trades from Norway and is one of the very few who makes the winter crossing of the English Sea. I will send you to King's Lynn with Thurulf. It's about time he returned to Norwich, which is nearby. If he meets up with any of the king's officials he will say that you are travelling as his assistant. I will also write a note to inform the ship captain that you are to be taken on as supercargo. It would be hypocritical to wish you a safe journey. Indeed, I hope I never see you again. Should you ever return to England, I think you will find no trace of the conspiracy which you say you have uncovered.'

And with that I left the service of Brithmaer the king's moneyer, and master forger. I never saw him again, but I did not forget him. For years to come, every time I was offered an English coin in payment or as change in a market place, I turned it over to see the name of the maker and rejected it if it had been minted in Derby or in Winchester.

'You Icelanders really get around, don't you?' commented Brithmaer's accomplice as he watched the low coastline of England disappear in our wake. The Norwegian shipmaster had not informed the port reeve of our impending departure before he ordered his crew to weigh anchor on the early tide. I suspected the harbour official was accustomed to seeing our ship slip out of port at strange hours and had been bribed to look the other way.

I barely heard the captain's comment, for I was still brooding on the thought that every mile was taking me further away from Aelfgifu. Unhappiness had haunted me throughout the three-day journey to King's Lynn with Thurulf. We had travelled on ponies, with two servants leading a brace of packhorses and I did not know how much Brithmaer had told his nephew about why I had to travel posing as his assistant or the need for discretion. Our servants blew loudly on trumpets and rang bells whenever we approached settlements or passed through woodland, and I had suggested to Thurulf that it might be wiser to proceed with less ostentation, as I did not wish to attract the attention of the authorities.

Thurulf grinned back at me and said, 'Quite the reverse. If we used the king's highway in a manner that might be considered surreptitious, people would take us to be skulking criminals or robbers. Then they would be entitled to attack, even kill us. Honest travellers are required to announce their presence with as much fanfare as possible.'

Thurulf had brought me to the quay where the Norwegian vessel was berthed. There he handed me over to her captain with a note from Brithmaer to say that I was to be taken abroad, on a one-way trip, and that it would be wise to keep me out of sight until we left England. Then he had turned back to rejoin his family in Norwich. The gloom of parting from a friend was added to my heartache for Aelfgifu.

'Know someone by the name of Grettir Asmundarson, by any chance? He's one of your countrymen.' The captain's voice again broke into my thoughts. The name was vaguely familiar, but for a moment I couldn't place it. 'Got quite a reputation. They call him Grettir the Strong. Killed his first man when he was only sixteen and was condemned to three year's exile. Decided to spend part of it in Norway. He asked me to make some purchases for him while I was in England, but they cost rather more than I had anticipated. I'm hoping you could tell me the best way of dealing with him so he'll pay up without any trouble. He's a dangerous character, quick to anger.' The captain was trying to strike up a conversation so he could find out just who I was.