A Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe

Author:Ann Wroe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466894945
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

(5)

PEYRE MARQUES

and the will to succeed

BACK AT THE SHOP, Gasc and Barbier were still working. The drain was cleared out, but there was no going home; they were now excavating the floor. All through the morning, fretfully, obsessively, Marques and his wife came in and urged them on. ‘Fellows,’ he said, ‘companhos, when you’re clearing that drain out, and doing all the other things, be really careful, because there must be a lot of other gold money round here in two or three places, that’s to say, in a little copper bowl in one place, and in a pewter pot somewhere else, and in other containers … by your faith, fellows, be terribly careful and look hard, because I promise you you’ll be really well rewarded if you find anything.’

The companhos was a bit overdone, and Alumbors went further. Standing at the top of the shop steps, pleading with them ‘for the love of God’ to look really hard, she called them ‘senhors’: the title for consuls and gentlemen of quality, applied to two workmen covered with mud and sweat and filth, delvers in darkness.

Both husband and wife seem scarcely to have left the scene, transfixed by the thought that more money might turn up. ‘We trust you, Johan Gasc’, they told him again and again. ‘We really do, much more than anyone else who’s here; please give us your word that you’ll look really carefully.’ They called him tu, in a familiar way; but then they also used his full name, because they did not know him. That rang a bit false; and besides, there were no more crocks of gold.

Marques could not understand it. He knew he had hidden at least two pots of money. Perhaps there had even been more than that. He remembered exactly what the vessels looked like, the copper sheen of one, the dull pewter of the other; he remembered scraping the earth away, and how deep the hole had been to hide them. His memory might be fading in some ways, but in others it was sharp enough, as his tenants said. He had had gold to save, and hide, in the old days. What had happened in his life since then to make him so confused, so hesitant and so unlucky?

* * *

He had not always cut such a sad figure. His family had been a good one, harness-makers and cloth-merchants in a town that made a living by cloth and livestock-trading. His father had died rich and honoured, called ‘En Marques’, or ‘the worthy’, even in the City, and Marques had inherited his house in Bal, the smartest part of the Bourg, which was rated at a high 12 deniers for tax in 1351.

As a teenager, Peyre was apprenticed to his uncle Bartelemi to learn the rules of the cloth trade. He lived in his house with him, ate at his table, was given clothes, shoes and a small wage, and was worked as hard as he could stand. Business was good.

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