Back o' the Moon, and other stories — Text and Context

irst general cloth-market of the spring. They had come in with their oilskin budgets of grey cloth on their shoulders, and their mastiffs and terriers and lurchers at their heels; and such as had risen while it was yet night bore the lanterns that they had now extinguished. The air was misty and chill, and the hills grey, and a thin vapour of breathing lay over all the market-place; but a brightness trembled in the haze, and the hoarse calling of the Horwick cocks and the fainter crowings that answered them over the misty heights made a cheerful din. The two long pieceboards, not yet dried of the night’s damp, were stacked with the bales and budgets, and the weavers leaned against them and ate their breakfasts as they talked. On the cobbles of the “Cross Pipes,” opposite the Piece Hall, packmen were loosing the wame-tows of a string of horses. By the winding Fullergate the merchants and dyers arrived, and there mingled with the noises of the market and of the morning the incessant light pattering of wood-soled clogs on the hard earth.

Under the arches of the raised Piece Hall the fullers and dyers and merchants moved, and the arcades sounded with the shuffle of their leather shoes and the hum of their voices as they discussed the arrival of the new Supervisor of Excise, now breakfasting in the “Cross Pipes” opposite. The bailiff’s books, wherein he entered his proper market charges, lay unopened on the small table at the top of the steps, and his two clerks moved among the Back o’ th’ Mooiners at the pieceboards. The square stone pillars were placarded with lists, broadsheets, handbills and public notices, and against the pillar immediately behind the bailiff’s table Matthew Moon, the merchant, leaned.

His fists were doubled deep in his breeches pockets, and his brow was closely contracted. He was forty, heavily built, with a square and solid head. As he moved slightly, there showed over the brown homespun of his shoulder one corner of a proclamation. The royal arms were visible, and the letters, plain and heavy and black, “COIN....” He moved again, and the letters became hidden.

There advanced to the bailiff’s table and flung one leg over it, a huge red man. He was red-haired, red-faced, red-whiskered, red as a red setter, and on his head was a cap of red foxskin. The table creaked beneath his weight, and the spread-out of his buckskin-covered thigh hid half the width of it. An old coat, of a wide and flaring cut, seemed to add even more to his bulk, and it was spotted with stains of vivid orange, apparently the eating of some acid. His accent, as he spoke, was not the curt and grudging accent of those parts.

“So we’ve got William Huggins’s successor, Matthew,” he said cheerfully; “have you seen him yet?”

As Matthew Moon moved slightly again, the “....ING” of the proclamation showed.

“Nor I. Well, we must entertain him. King’s Excise or not, William Huggins was always companionable. A fair show of the lads here. You’ll be at the meeting to-night?”

The merchant grunted. Presently he said, “What sort o’ man does Sally say he is?”

“I don’t know. Sally’s out of heart, with Jim and Haigh all these months in York. Small wonder.”

Matthew Moon frowned again, and was silent for a minute. Then he looked up and said, “Ye said entertainment, Arthur. Supervisors must take their chance o’ that. Don’t start taking it heady. Tongues tie knots that teeth can’t loose, and we don’t want the speech and confession of Arthur Monjoy yet. Two in York’s enough. Shall I be at the meeting? Yes; but don’t go and take things too headstrong.”

The big man laughed. “If I remember, they wanted to set the dogs on Huggins at first; none of that,” he said; and as the merchant moved away the whole word “COINING” showed on the stone pillar.