Ermoin has been told off to cart a great load of firewood up to the
house; and Ragenold is mending a hole in the roof of a barn. Bodo goes
whistling off in the cold with his oxen and his little boy; and it is no
use to follow him farther, because he ploughs all day and eats his meal
under a tree with the other ploughmen, and it is very monotonous.

Let us go back and see what Bodo's wife, Ermentrude, is doing. She is
busy too; it is the day on which the chicken-rent is due--a fat pullet
and five eggs in all. She leaves her second son, aged nine, to look
after the baby Hildegard and calls on one of her neighbours, who has to
go up to the big house too. The neighbour is a serf and she has to take
the steward a piece of woollen cloth, which will be sent away to St
Germain to make a habit for a monk. Her husband is working all day in
the lord's vineyards, for on this estate the serfs generally tend the
vines, while the freemen do most of the ploughing. Ermentrude and the
serf's wife go together up to the house. There all is busy. In the men's
workshop are several clever workmen--a shoemaker, a carpenter, a
blacksmith, and two silversmiths; there are not more, because the best
artisans on the estates of St Germain live by the walls of the abbey, so
that they can work for the monks on the spot and save the labour of
carriage. But there were always some craftsmen on every estate, either
attached as serfs to the big house, or living on manses of their own,
and good landowners tried to have as many clever craftsmen as possible.
Charlemagne ordered his stewards each to have in his district 'good
workmen, namely, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths, shoemakers,
turners, carpenters, swordmakers, fishermen, foilers, soapmakers, men
who know how to make beer, cider, perry, and all other kinds of
beverages, bakers to make pasty for our table, netmakers who know how to
make nets for hunting, fishing, and fowling, and others too many to be
named'.[2] And some of these workmen are to be found working for the