March 24

"We'll have to work inside," he said. "The silver'll cool too fast in this cold air." And we went inside to rouse our visitors and get them to clear a spot large enough for his workbench.

Years later, someone who learned who I was said to my face that Father was a cheat and traitor and craft whore. Yet Father wasn't doing anything that I wouldn't do right now to keep the English out of Wales, and it is 25 years later. I wish it were so easy today that I could just mint coins to keep them out. They just don't belong here, any more than they belong in France, and I know that too from experience.

Everyone was soon awake. Father sent me and Gryffyd sent Tail-Beard to bring in his bench. Father has worked before only in summer, and only outside at the covered fireplace in the yard. The move inside to the fire in the hovel was cramping, and the fire had to be kept hot to soften the silver. It was going to be warm in there.

Father brought out his scale and weights. He told Gryffyd that he wanted each of the chests opened and wanted five random planchets taken from each for him to weigh. The Franks opened the chests and Father chose 20 blank coins from among them. Then he sat at his bench, set a weight on one pan of his small scale, and in the other pan measured each planchet, one after the other, against it. The tilt of the scale was the same for every planchet, and I could tell that Father was impressed with the consistency, if not their weight. He admired good craftsmanship.

"They're light," Father said.

Gryffyd shrugged.

"I'm taking my fee by weight," Father said. "Not in pennies."

Gryffyd nodded at the Franks. "Take it up with them," he said.

"You take it up with them," Father replied. "They're in your charge." There was a moment of rebalancing between them, then Gryffyd went and talked with the two knights. Despite the difference in language, it took only a short time for the Franks to understand what Father was demanding, to consider it, and to agree.

Father turned to me. "Go get the dies," he said.

The dies are how coins are made. There are two of them, one for each face of the coin. They are like the split molds potters use to shape fancy clay vases, but they are small and carved with small, fine detail, and of hard metal, harder than iron.

The dies were hidden but not in the vault where I'd hidden our meat. They were hidden each time in a different place, and this time, because it was winter and we were not expecting to use the dies and wanted to keep them at all times far away from anyone who might visit and search for them, we had hidden them in a place a hundred or more paces up the creek.

I put on my cloak and went out to get them.