and that all came in by the gates and paid their money, for wily
merchants were sometimes known to burrow under fences or climb over them
so as to avoid the toll. Then the streets of Paris were crowded with
merchants bringing their goods, packed in carts and upon horses and
oxen; and on the opening day all regular trade in Paris stopped for a
month, and every Parisian shopkeeper was in a booth somewhere in the
fair, exchanging the corn and wine and honey of the district for rarer
goods from foreign parts. Bodo's abbey probably had a stall in the fair
and sold some of those pieces of cloth woven by the serfs in the women's
quarter, or cheeses and salted meat prepared on the estates, or wine
paid in rent by Bodo and his fellow-farmers. Bodo would certainly take a
holiday and go to the fair. In fact, the steward would probably have
great difficulty in keeping his men at work during the month;
Charlemagne had to give a special order to his stewards that they should
'be careful that our men do properly the work which it is lawful to
exact from them, and that they do not waste their time in running about
to markets and fairs'. Bodo and Ermentrude and the three children, all
attired in their best, did not consider it waste of time to go to the
fair even twice or three times. They pretended that they wanted to buy
salt to salt down their winter meat, or some vermilion dye to colour a
frock for the baby. What they really wanted was to wander along the
little rows of booths and look at all the strange things assembled
there; for merchants came to St Denys to sell their rich goods from the
distant East to Bodo's betters, and wealthy Frankish nobles bargained
there for purple and silken robes with orange borders, stamped leather
jerkins, peacock's feathers, and the scarlet plumage of flamingos (which
they called 'phoenix skins'), scents and pearls and spices, almonds and
raisins, and monkeys for their wives to play with.[25] Sometimes these
merchants were Venetians, but more often they were Syrians or crafty
Jews, and Bodo and his fellows laughed loudly over the story of how a