Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “Have you considered the prospect of making a new alliance?” he asked.

  She smiled.

  “Marriage you mean? I suppose so?”

  He smiled with self-satisfaction. “I’ve a candidate. A fine catch.” He blew out his cheeks complacently.

  “Really? Already?” She could not help laughing. “Who?”

  “A knight with a splendid estate.” He paused for effect. “Jocelin de Godefroi. He is most interested.”

  For Jocelin de Godefroi, at the age of fifty-seven, had emerged from his grief at the loss of his son to the realisation that he must begin his life again – not for himself, but for his little grandson.

  “The boy’s three,” he considered as he looked at the child his son had left behind. “If I can live seventeen years, he’ll be twenty. Just about able to fend for himself.” But could he do it? In seventeen years he would be seventy-four, and few men reached such an age at that time. He still had his health though: he must try. But as he gazed at the child, he knew something else was missing. “The child needs a mother and this place needs a woman,” he decided. “I must find a wife.”

  And so he allowed the fact to be known and waited to see what happened. It was not long before Le Portier approached him.

  The idea of the Le Portier girl attracted him – not a noble family admittedly, but respectable enough; besides, she’d been the wife of Geoffrey de Whiteheath for twenty years and she knew about managing an estate. And she was only thirty-six. As he thought about it, for the first time in many weeks his face broke into a smile.

  Perhaps he could give her a child! He certainly felt capable of it.

  “I’ve two estates after all,” he considered. “I could leave one to my grandson Roger and the other to the child, if it’s a boy.” And so he sent for Walter and told him: “Bring her here to take a look at me.” And he made preparations.

  Alicia was standing at the corner of the market place, by Blue Boar Row, when Peter Shockley saw her. He stood quite still, staring at her, hardly able to believe that it was she. He had been out at the Shockley farm where his father now liked to spend the summer and had not been in the city for several days. He had known nothing about either the death of her husband or her own return. In a few long strides, he was in front of her.

  “You have not changed.” He smiled down at her.

  Alicia started. She had almost forgotten him. No one had been further from her mind at that moment – she was sure of it. But there he was, a little stouter, but a remarkably good-looking man, she could not help admitting.

  It only took him a few moments to learn her story; and also the fact that she was going to see Godefroi that very day.

  “He’s looking for a wife,” he said thoughtfully.

  She smiled. “I know.” And then, rather to her own surprise she heard herself say, as she gazed straight into his blue eyes:

  “But perhaps he won’t find one.”

  The courtship of Peter Shockley took one week.

  He had told himself that he had not been waiting for her twenty years: it was surprising to him now how comfortably that lie fell away. He found a sense of joy and excitement that he had forgotten suddenly awaken now in her presence; and when on the third day he took her hand and drew her to him in a kiss, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

  “It’s as though we’d always been together,” he said simply.

  “I know,” she replied.

  But it was not the truth. For her, their meeting had not been – as it was for Peter – an act of fate. And the idea of marrying Shockley had not really occurred to her until later that day, when she had been eagerly ushered by her brother into the great hall at Avonsford and seen the perfectly preserved knight, his grey hair carefully curled with heated tongs, advancing towards her. He was old. In his eye, she saw at once, was a sadness. She had known both before.

  “My answer is no,” she told Walter afterwards, to his great distress.

  It was nothing to his distress a week later when she announced that she would marry Shockley.

  “But you’ve become a lady. A fit wife for a knight!” he protested. It had pleased him to be brother-in-law to Geoffrey de Whiteheath; to be allied to Godefroi would be an even greater advantage. “Shockley’s nothing but a merchant.”

  “I have money,” she reminded him. “I can do as I like.”

  And to the delight of old Edward Shockley, they were married the following month.

  On the day of their marriage, Peter gave her, for the second time, a little locket on a silver chain.

  For Peter, his marriage was like being reborn, and when on the night of their wedding he led Alicia to the room in the old Shockley farm which Edward and his wife had occupied before them and took her in his arms, it seemed that all his years fell away and he was, once again, the eighteen-year-old boy united at last with his bride. All this Alicia knew; and if she could not feel the same, she concealed the fact, glad to feel his happiness. So it was with surprise that in the middle of the night, she woke and pulled him to her once more, but this time with a little gasp of unexpected passion.

  When Jocelin de Godefroi heard about the marriage of Alicia and Peter Shockley he became white with anger.

  “This merchant goes too far,” he muttered, “if he supposes he can take the bride of a Godefroi.” It was not only his family pride that was hurt; the business was an affront to him personally.

  For several days he brooded about it.

  Peter was in such a state of happiness in the first days of his marriage that he hardly noticed the fact that Godefroi had not visited the mill on his customary rounds of the estate; and so when, two weeks after his wedding, he saw Jocelin approaching he came out to greet him quite unsuspecting. His face fell in utter confusion as the knight, sitting bolt upright in the saddle and with a distant look in his eyes, told him:

  “I’m afraid I shall be wanting another tenant for this mill, Shockley. You’re to leave at the end of the month.”

  The mortgage to Aaron had been paid off many years ago; the mill lay on Godefroi’s land; Shockley might fight dispossesion in the courts, but even if he won, Godefroi could make his life a misery. As the knight rode away, he gazed after him in horrified disbelief.

  He did not know what to do. He had become so used, over the years, to keeping matters to himself, that for two more days he went moodily about his business, unable to decide on any course of action and unable to speak about the matter even to his wife, On the third day, however, Alicia, who had waited patiently for his mood to pass, demanded firmly that he tell her what was on his mind; and after she had heard, she told him:

  “You must ask your father to speak to him.”

  But Peter refused. Edward was old and frail, and besides, the Shockley affairs were in his hands now.

  “I’ll find a solution,” he told her moodily.

  Alicia said nothing. But the next morning when Peter had gone, she retired to her room for half an hour. When she had finished, she smiled to herself at the result; and at noon that day the servants of Avonsford manor were surprised to see a woman dressed not in the plain, simple cotte and pelisse of a merchant’s wife, but in the richly embroidered robes of a lady, with wimple and cap, ride calmly into the courtyard and call peremptorily to one of the grooms to help her dismount.

  In the twenty years as the mistress of Geoffrey de Whiteheath’s household, she had learnt all the elegant ways of a lady, and when a few moments later she swept into Jocelin’s hall, even he, despite her new position, automatically rose and bowed respectfully.

  She wasted no time, and she addressed him in French.

  “I know, seigneur, that you propose to eject my new husband from his mill.”

  He inclined his head stiffly, but under the steady gaze of her violet eyes he could not help himself blushing. She pursued her advantage calmly and masterfully.

  “I came to see you without his knowledge since – you will forgive my conceit – I feared I mi
ght be the cause. But perhaps I am wrong and my choice of husband was of no interest to you.”

  The knight smiled at the neat way that she almost forced him to pay her a compliment.

  “Madame,” he replied, with frank admiration, and using the same terms of formal courtesy, “I should have been proud had you expressed an interest in my poor manor of Avonsford.”

  “Then I wish you to know, seigneur, that your manor and its occupant were of great interest to me,” she replied graciously. “But after twenty years with a man whom I loved, but who was from the start my senior by a generation, I decided to try to bring happiness to the merchant whom I had deserted for him when I was young. It seems that instead I have brought Shockley only a great misfortune, and I am sorry that it should come from a man whom, if circumstances had been different, I might have loved.” And with a graceful curtsey, she swept out of the room.

  That evening, after visiting his little grandson, Jocelin de Godefroi went to the garderobe where he kept his books and took down from the wall the sheet of burnished steel that he liked to use as a mirror.

  “You’re too old for her,” he told himself frankly. “But what a woman.”

  The next day, to his surprise, Peter Shockley received a message from Avonsford manor that Godefroi had changed his mind and that the mill should remain in his hands. He never discovered why.

  Through that summer, although great events were taking place in the island, many at Sarum chose to ignore them: Peter Shockley because he was concerned with his mill and his marriage, Godefroi for sound reasons of politics.

  “The business between the king and Montfort could still go either way in the end,” he judged. “If I’m to preserve the estates for my grandson, we must stay out of trouble.” Sarum with its garrison remained quiet, and although Montfort’s party knew that he had been opposed to them, his only son had died in their cause and they did not disturb him.

  The events of 1264 were fraught with danger and opportunity. Montfort was in control again; the king and his son Edward, in whose name he was governing once more, were safely in his hands. But he was threatened on every side; the supporters of Henry gathered across the Channel and threatened to invade with Louis of France; the friends of Prince Edward, the great lords from the border with Wales, were preparing to attack again, and across the Channel, another powerful voice, the legate of the pope, still refused to accept the new arrangements in England. In October he excommunicated Simon and all those who supported the Provisions.

  Despite the uncertainty, however, most of the island was still with Montfort: the freemen of England had a government bound by Magna Carta and the Provisions. They had no wish to turn the clock back.

  It was at the end of the year that the great event took place which made Godefroi shake his head with surprise and Peter Shockley clap his hands together and exclaim to Alicia: “At last! Now we shall see the king get some good advice.”

  For it was in December that Simon de Montfort summoned his most famous parliament to meet in London at the end of January.

  This famous assembly was by no means a parliament of the nation. Barons loyal to Simon were summoned by writs at once while others, who were loyal to the king, were summoned late. As before, knights were called from the shires. And as well as the Bishop, the Dean of Salisbury was summoned. But it was a single, tentative innovation that gave the gathering its fame and caused Shockley such excitement. For from London and a small selection of boroughs, chiefly in the north, Montfort summoned burgesses.

  “It’s time they heard some of the men who run this country’s trade,” Peter cried.

  Alicia watched her husband fondly. She had lived with men like Geoffrey de Whiteheath and Godefroi for too many years to suppose that they would listen to a mere merchant.

  “The merchants will be present to reassure the towns which might be trouble spots,” she said calmly. “They’ll stand about and be flattered to be there, that’s all.”

  Peter nodded.

  “That may be so,” he replied shrewdly, “but the point is that once they’ve been summoned, they’ll have to be asked to future parliaments as well. Next time, other boroughs will demand to send burgesses. And in time, those burgesses will speak.”

  “Perhaps,” she said doubtfully. “But I wouldn’t count on it.”

  For all that, as the days of January passed, he became excited. Wiltshire was sending knights. Had the old man wished to take part, his friend Jocelin de Godefroi might have been one of them. But there were other local Wiltshire knights like Scudamore, Hussey, or Richard of Zeals, to whom Peter knew he could speak freely. The prospect of these men being joined by burgesses like himself in their national councils enthralled him, and at the end of January he announced: “I’m going to London to see this parliament.”

  Alicia raised her eyebrows.

  “You can’t take part.”

  “I know.” His eyes were shining. “Not this time. But I can watch.”

  Alicia got up and kissed him. “Go and watch then.” And then, after a brief pause she added: “but mind you get back by summer, because –” she gave him a happy smile “– I’m pregnant.”

  At which Peter gave a great shout of joy.

  For Peter Shockley, the visit in February 1265 to Simon de Montfort’s great parliament in London was a disappointment.

  It was not what he had expected. He had supposed that he would see a great assembly – the king surrounded by his council taking important decisions. He had hoped to witnesss them hearing complaints against royal officials, appointing new sheriffs and even designing a new peace with the pope and King Louis of France. It would, he supposed, be a grand affair. But when he arrived in the great port, he could see no sign of such an assembly at all. True, a large stone building with a wooden roof was pointed out to him by a friendly merchant as the hall where the assembly would meet; but each time he went by, the place seemed half deserted.

  Even so, he was soon aware of activity. Little groups of men bustled about between lodgings or greeted each other in the streets – knights from the shires lounged together in the inns chatting idly but, he soon gathered, with serious purpose. It was clear that what was taking place was not a single assembly, but a huge network of informal groups and committees which would in due course come together in some common purpose. But apart from the dean, who only gave him a cursory nod, he never seemed to see anyone he knew, and after two days of fruitlessly walking about and engaging people in desultory conversations, he began to feel rather lonely.

  He had hoped, also, to hear several important subjects discussed. One of these was the wool trade with Flanders, which the recent disturbances had disrupted.

  “If the wool trade goes, there’s no money for the king’s wars or Montfort’s peace,” he had stated accurately to Alicia.

  Another personal concern was the plight of the Jews.

  He had good reason to be concerned. In numerous recent ventures, including the extension to the mill, he had wanted to borrow money. He disliked borrowing from Cahorsin merchants and his dealings with Aaron of Wilton had been perfectly satisfactory in the past.

  “The business often needs money,” he told Alicia. “Why should I be put to inconvenience to get it?”

  But this was exactly what had happened. For the needless persecution of the Jewish community had gone from bad to worse. There had been more ritual murder accusations, more trials; and there had been constant levies, including a second stupendous assessment of sixty thousand marks. These repeated persecutions and tallages had reduced the community to a pitiable state: to his certain knowledge, the group at Wilton was almost completely ruined.

  A week before he left, he had encountered Aaron in the city. It was a shocking sight; the Jew, always so robust and only twelve years his senior, seemed an old man. He walked slowly and stiffly; his once fine robe was frayed at the edges where it touched the ground. That the financier should have been reduced to such a state offended Shockley.

  �
�I am going to the parliament,” he told Aaron proudly. “And when I get there I shall say something about the treatment the Jews are receiving.”

  But to his surprise Aaron had taken him by the arm and begged:

  “Don’t do so. It can only harm you, and it won’t help me.” And when Peter protested the Jew reminded him: “Look what happened to the Franciscans.”

  It was sadly true that when, ten years before, the Franciscan order had protested against the inhumanity – and plain mendacity – of the Jewish persecutions and blood-accusations, the prejudice against the Jews had been so strong that they themselves had been universally execrated. Peter had continued his donations to the brotherhood in New Salisbury, but he knew of many others who had not.

  “But Montfort’s a reformer,” he countered.

  Aaron smiled ruefully.

  “My friend, Simon de Montfort is almost as extravagant as the king. He’s in debt to Jewish moneylenders up to his ears. He hates us more than anyone.”

  Peter had parted from him despondently. And at London, whenever he had been able to strike up a conversation with those who were taking part in the proceedings, he found that even the burghers from York and Lincoln had little interest in these and other practical affairs which concerned him.

  “There are high politics to be dealt with first, friend,” one of them told him seriously. “Until we settle which party holds which castles, and whether Prince Edward will come to terms with the council as well as his father, nothing else can be done I assure you.”

  These were matters about which the merchant had no opinions. After four days he decided to go. But he was not discouraged – indeed, what he had seen made him more determined than ever to take part in the future.

  “This is not my parliament,” he thought. “But the next one will be. Or the next.”

  In fact, the parliament of 1265, which lasted into March, accomplished a great deal. The feudal questions of the king and prince’s castles were settled, leaving Montfort secure but the royal party appeased. New officers of state were appointed, cases heard, and the wool trade with Flanders was reopened. Even Montfort’s dislike of the Jews was modified later that year when he realised that he must either lift some of the burdens upon them or destroy them as a source of government funds completely.