[piosenniel]

A fair sized crowd had settled themselves in the Common Room, waiting out the rain. Today was market day in Bywater, and the yard of the Green Dragon had always served as a place for the locals to set out their wares on trestle tables from the Inn and do their weekly trading. Some brought produce from their gardens, and some brought livestock. And some offered the cloth they’d woven, while others offered their jams and jellies and soaps and lotions. And candles, and paper and inks, buttons of wood and buttons of horn . . . all sorts of things needed and things desired.

Cook fell to talking with Celandine, one of the candle makers from Hobbiton. She was the one who supplied the Inn with candles for the lanterns in the rooms. Beeswax they were made of. A lovely buttery gold color with a clean, pleasant scent as they burned. She made the ones, too, that Cook liked to use when she candled the hens’ eggs to see how they were coming along. And the pinecones, dipped in a thin layer of pitchy wax, that were often used to start the bigger blazes in the Inn’s fireplace during the winter season.

‘Rain looks as if it could go on all day,’ sighed Celandine, her two woven baskets filled with candles tucked neatly by her feet. Cook eyed the baskets and then looked round the room at the other weekly merchants, most huddled over mugs of ale or hot tea, their wet cloaks draped over the backs of their chairs in an effort to dry them.

‘There’s no reason we can’t have our market day. No reason at all.’ Cook was talking to herself, but her voice carried to the tables near her, and Celandine looked up, her face creased in a frown. ‘Not in the mud, Vinca! Surely you are joking!’

Cook laughed. ‘No, not in the mud, you ninny!’ She motioned for those near her to gather closer. ‘Some of you brawny lads can arrange the long tables round the edge of the room. The folk here with goods to trade can lay them out on the tables and there’ll be plenty of room for buyers to circulate about and see what’s offered.’ She pointed to some of the young men, indicating they should get started on the job.

‘The rain’ll be good for business. Nothing much else to do but come to the Inn for a pint. The good folk can wet their whistles and replenish their supplies all under the Inn’s roof!’

Clapping her hands, she got the attention of the others in the Inn. There was a general enthusiasm for her idea and soon there a number of patrons busy arranging the tables as she’d asked, while others ran out to their wagons to bring in the goods they’d hoped to sell in the yard that day . . .