Fiction: "The Shopkeeper's Maidservant," Part 2 of 3.
"Never trust a one who assures you of many future dealings you will have together when you first meet."
The first installment for this story is here.
"...whereas [the King] could give only a Yes or a No to some neighbouring king or dangerous noble, the Fox [his Slave] could pare the Yes to the very quick and sweeten the No till it went down like wine.
He could make your weak enemy believe you were his best friend and your strong enemy believe you were twice as strong as you really were."
-C.S. Lewis
Part 2: Serving Sharneth in the face of Lord Bolvedere
Sharneth's growth in wisdom has great bearing upon my story, for as Desrek aged, he put Sharneth in charge of his shop. It was a shop such as the large towns have, though not approaching the manner of the shops of the cities! It was the place where a goodwife may buy salt and flour for her baking, and cloth and thread for her sewing. When Sharneth's work led him to trade in another town, he set me the task of keeping shop in his absence.
These circumstances led to the dreadful day when I faced a neighboring noble, Lord Bolvedere. I still remember his red face, and his heavy form, which he lugged up to the counter. I remember the cringing and the bowing and scraping of his two footmen--one carried his coat, and the other supported his arm. Bolvedere informed me he was there to buy a plot of my master's land, a goodly stretch of meadow that lay between two parts of Bolvedere’s fields and had a fresh spring. I said, “My master is traveling.”
This local lordling insisted it was urgent, and that my master would certainly want me to agree to the sale. Bolvedere added that once satisfied with this purchase of land, he would have many orders for Sharneth's shop in the future. “Can you not see that a prestigious customer would be invaluable to the health of my master's ventures?” he asked. Never trust a one who assures you of many future dealings you will have together when you first meet. Any gain that such a man speaks of should be accounted as loss. Great promises of future purchases will always set all my alarm-signals crying.
If I were free to do so, I would have spat on his boots right then. Better not to come into the shop than to come bringing those assurances to me. However, I was not free. Disrespect offered to a personage such as Lord Bolvedere by a servant such as myself could be punished harshly. Images of cold irons round my ankles and dust-dry bread in a mildewy dungeon displayed themselves to my mind’s eye.
Fear rattled at my spine. I pressed my heels hard against the floor, breathed in deeply, and stood firm behind the wooden counter, as though it were my shield. “Listen,” I counseled myself silently. “What is he telling me?” He was telling me that what he needed me to do was really quite simple. “All I need,” he was saying, “is for you to ratify the sale of the plot of land by writing your name on the document.”
I said nothing, and so Lord Bolvedere kept talking. A second cold shiver washed over me as I listened to this smarmy fat fool pile word upon word and build phrase upon phrase, to lay a trap for the vulnerable. When the lord finally stopped speaking, he pressed plume and parchment against my hand.
I often wondered afterward what would have happened if Sharneth himself stood where I did that day. The false sweetness of the Lord's promises might have lured him in quickly. One poorly-managed deal, one display of weakness, and Bolvedere would be back again and again, like a vulture coming back to the same carcass.
I could not tell the man that he was wrong, nor could I bring a show of strength to bear--I had none. Only weakness could be brought in to play. Fortunately, I had that. I heard my own voice begin speaking almost before my ears caught up with me: "I am not sure I am permitted to do this." And when I saw the lord’s face, I knew I had spoken a truth that was even truer than I even knew. In my haste, and in my fear, and in my anger, I had forgotten that it was the very law of the land: Manservants and maidservants cannot ratify sales of land.
This knowledge of that law now returned to my mind, quick as a bird in flight. I would not ratify the sale because I could not. If I had affixed my name to it--law or no law--I am certain that Bolvedere would have quickly taken it over, settling peasants to farm the plot of land, and guards to watch it. A greater authority could be petitioned to reverse the consequences, but the dispute would likely wear out my master’s patience. And what if those efforts were of no avail? In that case, servants of Bolvedere would be stationed as our neighbors!
Fortunately, there was the law and the law was good. Now that I had that certain knowledge, my master’s possession was as safe and secure as a landlocked bay. I could not help with the sale, I said, but offered bread and cheese and ale to Lord Bolvedere and his servants. (The footmen accepted; he did not.) I answered a few questions, and I did not fail to load them up with gifts before they left.
That evening, in the quiet candlelight of the house, I recorded the details of that day in a note for my master, along with my suggestions. I wrote and re-wrote that note, for proffering advice--even to Sharneth who had known me so long--was near to overstepping my authority. But I needn't have worried. By the time Sharneth returned three days later, the gossip against Lord Bolvedere's arrogance was so condemning that from pride alone, Sharneth would have refused.
So I could almost say the village gossips finally did something well. Unfortunately, the story was told and retold so many times that it began to change. The people of the village were very proud of my strong backbone to stand against Bolvedere, for even free men and women feared to cross his will. But in some tellings of that story, it was not Lord Bolvedere who was rejected, but a Lord of Faery, thrown out on his ear by a town guard. “Lords and Kings bow down to Marna, why not Lords and Kings of Faery?” sang the children. Better to not say such things, I thought. I had only taken my actions because I desired to escape one man’s traps--not to gain this name for myself.