The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [115]
‘Can you swim?’ Willie asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Jonathan replied and soon discovered his new friend could swim like a fish.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll teach you,’ Willie promised.
On level ground Jonathan could run faster than Willie; but if he tried to catch the smaller boy, Willie could dodge him every time. Willie also brought him into games with the other fishermen’s children down by the quay, which made him very proud.
And when, encountering Alan Seagull by the waterfront one afternoon, Willie had said to that magical personage, ‘This is Jonathan; he’s my friend,’ young Jonathan Totton had known true happiness. ‘Willie Seagull says I’m his friend,’ he had told his father proudly that evening. But Henry Totton had said nothing.
Sometimes Willie was taken by his father on his ship and would be gone for a day or two. How Jonathan envied him then. He had not even dared to ask if he could go too; but he was sure the answer would be no.
‘Come, Jonathan,’ the merchant now said, ‘there is something I want to show you.’
The room in which they were standing was not large. At the front, it gave on to the street. In the middle stood a heavy table and around the walls were several oak cupboards and chests, the latter with impressive locks. There was also a large hourglass, of which the merchant was very proud and by which he could tell the precise time. This was the counting house where Henry Totton conducted his business. On the table, Jonathan could see, his father had arranged a number of items and, guessing at once that these were intended for his instruction, he gave an inward sigh. He hated these sessions with his father. He knew they were meant for his own good; but that was just the trouble.
To Henry Totton the world was simple: all things of interest were shapes and numbers. If he saw a shape he understood it. He would make shapes for Jonathan out of parchment or paper. ‘See,’ he would show him, ‘if you turn it this way, it looks different. Or spin it and you produce this figure.’ He would rotate triangles into cones, build squares into cubes. ‘Fold it,’ he would say of a square, ‘and you have a triangle, or a rectangle, or a little tent.’ He would invent games for his son with numbers, too, assuming these would delight him. And all poor Jonathan could do, to whom such things seemed dull, was yearn for the long grass in the fields, or the sound of the birds in the woods, or the salty smells down by the wharf.
He would try so hard to be good at these things, to please his father. And just because he was so anxious, his mind would seize up and nothing would make sense and, red-faced, he would say foolish things and see his father try to hide his despair.
Today’s lesson, he could see at once, was meant to be straightforward and practical. Spread out on the table were a series of coins.
‘Can you tell me’, Totton asked quietly, ‘what they are?’
The first was a penny. That was easy. Then a half-groat: twopence; and a groat: four pence. Standard English coinage. There was a shilling: twelve pence; a ryal, worth more than ten shillings. But the next – a splendid gold coin with the figure of the Archangel Michael killing a dragon on it – Jonathan had not seen before.
‘That’s an angel,’ Totton said. ‘Valuable and rare. But now’ – he produced another coin – ‘what’s this?’
Jonathan had no idea. It was a French crown. Then came a ducat and a double ducat. ‘That’s the best coin of all, for sea trade,’ Totton explained. ‘Spanish, Italians, Flemings – they’ll all take a ducat.’ He smiled. ‘Now let me explain the relative value of each. For you will have to learn to use them all.’
The use of European currency was not only for the merchant who traded overseas. Foreign coins were found at inland