It sounded a reluctant admission and from what Ned recalled, on their first meeting Meg had claimed that the estate had been settled and there was no need for the meddling of lawyers. Apparently that wasn’t so. There was nothing like a prosperous estate to draw the vultures, though frequently monetary value had little to do with the rancour engendered in family battles. He’d heard of one bitter dispute between cousins that raged for years in the courts, over a scrap of land barely large enough to support a cow. It must have cost the equal to a hundred acres by the time it went through appeals, petitions and judgements.
But could blood or family throw their kin to the wolves? Having seen what he had, Ned had no doubt that such actions would be accounted merciful when weighed against years of perceived insult or degradation at family gatherings. After all there was nothing like cheek by jowl association to build up a really good generation encompassing loathing. From the bleak look of despair on Meg Black’s face perhaps this was not the best line to pursue.
Ned thought it might be more instructive to plunge into another area of interest as a distraction. “What can you tell me about the way you trade with this vessel and cargo?”
That certainly distracted her. Rather than worrying about renegade members of her family, Meg now looked at him as if he had spouted horns, a tail and went moo. “Why do you want to know?” she asked suspiciously.
This, he suspected, was another touchy subject. “Because despite the obvious interest of Sir Thomas More, we still have no reason for the murders, and I still feel that we are missing something here.”
Margaret Black displayed a great reticence to when it came to divulging the mystical intricacies of the smugglers craft. Ned had made no move to leave and was just stood in place, smiling patiently. This was one skirmish he was going to win.
Eventually after a few attempts at further frowning intimidation and a long glaring silence, Meg Black gave a frustrated sigh and yielded to his question. “So be it, Ned.”
If you gave coin for reluctance, Meg Black would be richer by a hundred angels. He ignored the tone and gave a small courtly bow as a concession to her compliance.
A twitched, sceptical eye brow was its only acknowledgement. “As I’ve already said, all cargo has to pass through the customs house, where the collectors and their clerks weigh and evaluate the cargo for taxes and duties.”
“What? Everything on the ship?On every ship?” Ned was more than surprised. That was a pretty tall order for so few officials and so much cargo. He did a quick calculation. There must be forty ships arriving or leaving here every day.
Meg’s frown eased as she continued the explanation. “Yes. The controller of customs has two more sets of retainers. One inspects the ships at the docks and they’re called land-waiters. The second are down Gravesend way and they row out to the ships to check that nothing extra has been picked up or dropped off in the estuaries near Greenwich or Tilbury, along the way. They’re the tide-waiters.”
For the second time since he’d arrived Ned noticed how her blue grey eyes sparkled when she wasn’t frowning. His better angel made a pointed reminder about the business at hand and Ned only slightly guiltily asked his next question. “So what happens once the customs men have had a look at the cargo? What are they after?”
“Officially they search for any banned items that aren’t covered in the purchased exemption issued by a royal officer in accordance with the statutes. Like the grain importing during February.”
Oh yes he remembered that little scam, the ever lucrative royal licences. “So even if it isn’t wheat or oats, you still have to buy a right to ship your cargo?” To Ned that sounded bizarre.
“No Ned, not quite. This is how it works. This vessel is to sail to Bristol and discharge half its cargo. Then according to arrangements already made, one of the local merchant’s will load fifty dickers of leather hides. That is fifty bundles of ten. But before that, he would have to pay thirteen shillings for the licence per dicker and he would have to buy the hides at forty to fifty shillings a dicker.”
Ned was aghast. That was a quarter of the cost added as a duty. “By sweet Jesu, that’s expensive!”
Meg Black shook her head and gave him a questioning frown, as if he’d fallen for the simplest cozener’s play at a market stall. “Of course it would be! If a merchant paid for a licence for everything, they’d soon find themselves in prison for debt.”
Then she adopted what Ned normally thought of as her ‘the cat who’d got the cream’ smile. “What we do is simple. We form an association to buy a licence exactly like we did for the grain. Then we stretch the coverage, so that instead of fifty dickers of hide we would ship a few hundred.”
Ahh thought, Ned, the cony-catchers trick. Watch the right hand while the left changes the dice. “What about all the customs officers? Wouldn’t they be able to check? It seems like a very simple matter to poke your head in the hold and match up numbers.”
At his question Meg Black gave one of her supercilious knowing smiles and shook her head. “No it isn’t. Remember Ned, most of the customs officers are merchants as well, and although land and tide waiters are supposed to get a reward for any contraband they find, well…”
She gave the slightest twitch of a shrug and Ned got the message. Of course, gifts and bribes, the grease on the wheels of commerce. Any potential reward would naturally be from the Royal Exchequer. Their reputation for speedy payment was legendary-you could expect Judgement Day to happen first.
Meg Black gave a simple nod at his recognition and continued. “When the cargo is checked at any port, all you have to do is get the cooperation of the local customs collector. A share in the cargo usually does it.”
And Ned had thought a lawyer’s contract was complex. This arrangement of evasion was beginning to look more convoluted than a right of lease to three tenants, five sub tenants, and six owners. “But how can you afford to pay for all the…the ‘gifts’?” Ned knew that bribes were a fact of life. However a gentleman tended to avoid the word ‘bribe’. ‘Gifts’ sounded much more honourable.
“That’s worked into the shipping costs. On average it costs one twentieth of the normal duties and taxes for any shipment, though it’s usually a good idea to pay up most of the duty on wool, cloth and grain, for at least a third to a half of the shipment. The officials, however, take the prissage duties on wine very seriously. Its one tun given over out of a cargo of twenty tuns, unless of course they are offloaded before the ship reaches the docks.”
Ned just shook his head in bemusement. No wonder merchants could be so well off. Maybe he was in the wrong profession. But somehow although it provided valuable background to the chicanery of trade, it still seemed unlikely to have been the cause of such a vile double murder, or so hinted his daemon.
At his clear aghast-ness, Meg gave one of her mischievous smiles and pressed on. “Well Ned, that isn’t the difficult part. Albrecht and I have to juggle the different weights and measures accepted in the English, Hanse, Imperial and French ports.”
Meg Black tapped the open ledger meaningfully to draw his attention. If that last part on duty evasion wasn’t complicated enough to strain a man’s brain, the calculation of shipping weights was a truly arcane art. Her tables of notations went on for several pages. To Ned it made less sense than the legal Latin-French he frequently had to struggle through. None the less he nodded acquiescence. As Meg explained the squiggly ciphers, he wasn’t going to thought a lackbrain.
“The accepted standard for any cargo is a tun, based on the wine tuns shipped from Bordeaux. As you know, that holds two hundred and fifty two gallons.”