Godfrey listened carefully. What the bellmaker said was all too true. Though he himself took an active interest in the cathedral – from the library in the cloisters to the new strainer arches that were at last being built to reinforce the bending pillars under the tower – it always appalled him that there were so few in the town who shared his enthusiasm. There was an air of laxness in the close too – the spire needed repair, someone had even opened a shop on the ground floor of the belfry – and he deplored it.
“So what do you suggest?”
“A bell, sir. St Osmund’s bell, a present from the city, to call the priests to prayer.”
Godfrey considered the idea.
“And why are you telling me?”
Now Benedict Mason was ready with his master stroke.
“The town needs someone to give a lead, sir,” he said earnestly. “A gentleman with the ear of the bishop: someone the people would listen to with respect.” He watched Eustace’s reaction carefully. “As for the cost,” he added, as though as an afterthought, “for St Osmund, I’d make the finest bell for . . .” he spread his hands.
Godfrey could picture it. Indeed, as the implications of it dawned on him, he felt his pulse quicken with excitement. Although he had taken little interest in the doings of the town or its parish churches, it had annoyed him that when the landed families like the Godmanstones had been asked to contribute to the rebuilding of St Thomas’s, Swayne and his followers had not even bothered to approach him. He had nothing to contribute, but it irked him to be ignored. This new idea was better, though. He could take the lead himself, raise contributions. If Swayne could have his chapel, Eustace Godfrey could, for a much smaller expenditure, have his bell, and it would be a pleasant thing to be able to approach the bishop as a benefactor of the cathedral. The more he considered it, the more it pleased him.
“You’re right,” he told the bell founder. “Come to my house tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do.”
After all, by tomorrow, the family’s financial position should be much improved.
There were several reasons why John Wilson was known as the spider.
One was that, when other men wore brightly coloured clothes he was invariably dressed in black; another was his curious way of walking, which he seemed to do by fits and starts, hovering silently at a corner of the market place, then suddenly moving forward towards some object, so that it was hard to keep track of his movements. Yet another was that for half a century, no one in Sarum had ever been certain of the true size of the Wilson fortune, nor the extent of the family’s network of operations. All that was known was that since the time of Walter and his son Edward, it had been growing. John’s father had made one massive gain that the world knew about when he had traded huge quantities of inferior embroidered silk to other cities for a short time, before the cities in question protested. And more recently, a merchant vessel of John Wilson’s had captured a French ship – an act of piracy that was not discouraged in the wars with France – which had yielded him yet another fortune.
He might be nearly as rich as the great Halle and Swayne: he might not. But since his operations were invisible, and since people could never be sure when they were going to be caught up in them, he was likened to a spider and his business to a spider’s web.
The spider was a pure merchant, having little to do with the craftsmen’s guilds, and he was not popular. His son Robert who acted as his agent in the port of Southampton, was seldom seen in Sarum, but was said to be like his father.
At six o’clock, John Wilson left his splendid house in the New Street chequer; no one noticed him leave. He had two important visits to make, and as usual, he knew exactly what he was doing. The first was to the house of the great John Halle.
At seven o’clock, as Lizzie Curtis walked along the edge of Vanners Chequer outside St Edmund’s Church, she had a sense that she was being watched. Twice she glanced into alleys as she passed by, but she could not see anything.
She was sure that she had heard something, though: a scuffle of feet and a rustling noise behind her.
It was light; there were people in the houses. Whoever was following her, she did not care. She tossed her head to show it, and this time she was sure she heard a laugh.
There were two things about Lizzie Curtis that mattered, as she knew very well: she was pretty and she was rich. Her father was one of the greatest butchers in the town, and he had no other child. And so, although she was intelligent, and friendly, she knew that there was no need for her to be either. She was seventeen.
She wore a bright blue surcoat over a trim yellow cotte, so fine it was almost like a petticoat. On her feet were yellow felt shoes that she slipped into pretty little wooden clogs, painted red, so that she made a dainty sound as she clip-clopped down the street. It was warm and the street was dusty, so she scooped up one corner of the outer garment in her hand, showing her petticoat and a tantalising glimpse of her ankles as she went by. The white wimple on her head did not hide the soft brown hair that peeped out in ringlets around her ears.
Was she being followed? There was an air of bravado about her as she tripped along, pretending not to care.
Lizzie Curtis cared what people thought of her. Every time she said something or made a gesture, she thought about it afterwards, remembering in detail people’s reactions. When she was alone, she practised expressions in front of the silver mirror her father had given her. And whenever she saw a fine lady in the town, she would study her every move, committing it to memory. She collected all the clothes she could – but the brightly coloured articles she saw in the market place never seemed to satisfy her imagination. She had a little coterie of friends, girls of her own age or a little younger, and they remained her friends as long as they admired her. Since she was often funny and usually courageous, the other girls followed her most of the time without complaint.
One matter she often thought about – how would she make men admire her too? She was not certain yet, and as she was unsure, she generally played hard to get: flirting just enough to lead them on, then tossing her head and treating them with scorn. So far she had only tried this technique on the youths she met in the town, and it had seemed to work satisfactorily. Once she had been careless and let a young apprentice kiss her, but then, terrified that he would boast about it, she had pretended to be angry and flounced away.
Lizzie Curtis knew what she wanted. She wanted to be a fine lady – one of those gorgeous figures occasionally to be seen in the town wearing magnificent cloaks trimmed with ermine, and tall, fantastic headdresses made of tissues or brocades and studded with jewels, that rose over their heads in the spectacular if uncomfortable fashion of the time. Could her rich father find her a husband who could give her such things? He would have to be a gentleman, for the wives of merchants, however rich, were not permitted to wear the dress of the nobility and so she supposed that this ambition would not be satisfied.
She was thinking about this very subject as she tripped along.
They attacked her at the corner of Parson’s chequer.
It was done so suddenly that she did not even have time to scream before they held her; there were six of them. Hustling her across the street they pulled her to a doorway; she felt one of them holding her hands, then she felt the rope. Moments later she was bound securely.
And then she knew what was happening and with a sigh of relief she smiled. She gazed round their faces.
“How much?” she asked.
There were many ways of raising money for the parish church or for charity. The most usual were the scotale evenings when beer was sold at rowdy parties by the church, but more amusing was the practice of roping, when groups of youths carrying a rope held women and girls to ransom in the street and threatened to tie them up if they did not pay a fine. This practice was reserved for Hocktide, however, soon after Easter, which was why, as an afterthought, Lizzie cried:
“Tisn’t Hocktide anyway. I’ll pay you nothing.”
> She knew them all now: Reginald Shockley was the eldest, a pleasant-faced boy of her own age; the youngest was little Tom Mason, the bellfounder’s son, who was staring at her with enormous admiring eyes.
“A penny,” they cried.
“Nothing,” she protested.
“A ha’penny then or stay there,” Shockley suggested.
She shook her head laughing.
“You’ll get nothing, I tell you.”
They considered.
“A kiss then,” one of them cried, and there was applause.
“Never,” she tossed her head.
“Why not?”
“I’ll kiss the man I marry,” she assured them. This was a tactical mistake.
“I’ll marry you,” each of them offered.
“You’re none of you good enough,” she answered.
“Tell us who you’ll marry then,” one of them suggested, “and we’ll untie you.” To which she agreed.
So they untied her and she told them:
“I want a knight with a castle – who’ll do as I say.”
And though the words were spoken in jest, there was enough truth in them to make Reginald Shockley look sad, which she noticed with interest.
She liked him; although they had never been particular friends. But as the roping party moved away, she called him back, and to his astonishment gave him a kiss before running away, leaving him blushing happily in the middle of the street.
Apart from the welcome interruption by Benedict Mason, Godfrey had passed an irritating two hours. When he first arrived at Wilson’s house, they told him that the merchant had just gone out. Three times he went back, each time without any luck and the confidence he had felt when he began the evening was beginning to ebb away.
The streets were nearly empty now. Many of the craft guilds had feasts – some of them repeated for several nights – before the great day, so that most of the folk seemed to be indoors.
It had been annoying, too, seeing Michael Shockley: doubly so because the merchant he had insulted ten years ago was now certainly richer than he was.
The clock in the belfry was striking eight when he returned for the fourth time to be told that Wilson was now at home.
He wished, as he entered, that he could recover the confidence he had felt when he began.
John Wilson’s house occupied a corner tenement so that it was, in effect, two houses. The entrance was through a handsome stone arch over which there was a solar chamber. It led into a walled courtyard and beyond that, there was a pleasant garden. The buildings formed an L-shape round the courtyard and were partly wooden and partly stone. Everything about the place confirmed the impression that, whatever the real extent of Wilson’s fortune might be, he was certainly rich.
Moments later, Godfrey was ushered into the main hall.
John Wilson sat at a large oak table. He did not get up when Eustace entered, but motioned him to a chair opposite him. To his surprise, he saw that the merchant was not alone: for standing in the corner, he recognised the silent figure of his son Robert.
Although Wilson’s hall was not large, it was comfortable. It had a high, hammer beam roof with little figures carved on the ends of the rafters; the windows were of rhenish glass, from Germany, prettily decorated with roses and lilies in the powdered style in which the continental glass-makers specialised. In front of him was a plate of salted tongues which he was eating with a silver spoon, and a bowl of raisins. As an act of courtesy, he pushed the bowl of raisins towards Eustace, but neither he nor his son spoke.
“It is a personal matter,” Eustace remarked, glancing at Robert.
Wilson did not look up from his place, but nodded curtly.
“It concerns your son,” Godfrey persisted. But if he expected the merchant to take the hint and send the young man away, it did not work.
“Concerns you,” Wilson called over his shoulder. “You’d better stay.”
Eustace felt less confident of his mission every second. In the silent moments that followed, Wilson ate a salted tongue.
“I have a daughter, Isabella,” he began at last.
He did not dwell on her beauty, although, since neither father nor son spoke a word, it was hard to know whether they fully appreciated it or not. But he did explain, firmly and at some length, her ancestry. He also explained the position of the Godfrey family now, as he saw it, and here, several times, Wilson interrupted him.
“You were in the Gascon trade?”
“Yes. I still hope to resume it.”
Wilson shook his head.
“No good.”
“Talbot’s expedition to Bordeaux failed, but many of the Gascons like English rule.” This was true. “We may yet live to see a king of England crowned king of France again.”
Here Wilson halted with the salted tongue only half way to his lips.
“Hope not. With France as well it makes the king too powerful.” This was a view many men in Parliament had formed in the early years of the present king’s reign: the English squires and merchants had no wish for a powerful half-foreign king whom they could not control. “Gascony’s finished anyway,” Wilson remarked, to close the subject.
But when Godfrey outlined his own connections to the bishops, to the royal house, and his intention that his son should stand for parliament, Wilson finally stopped eating, and leaned back in his chair, his hard, narrow-set eyes staring at him in curiosity and wonder, that Eustace mistook for admiration.
“You need money for such fine connections,” he said at last.
Godfrey inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“I’ve got money,” Wilson remarked pleasantly. “No connections.”
The irony of this remark was lost on Eustace. Wilson’s trading connections would have made him gasp if he had been capable of understanding them. There were the part shares in the two-masted ships that set out from the western port of Bristol for the trading emporiums of Spain and Portugal. There were his extensive connections in London. Above all, there was the huge business of import and export which Robert oversaw at Southampton. While the old wool business of Winchester had declined, the sophisticated cloth business of Salisbury had burgeoned through the ever-growing southern port. The great convoys of Italian galleys that visited Flanders and London never failed to call there and take up huge quantities of the Salisbury rays he still dealt in. And from these and other traders Robert bought silks and satin velvets, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, even oranges from the warm Mediterranean and sent them to his father at Sarum. There was almost nothing Wilson did not have a hand in that was profitable. It was these southern markets, especially the Italian connection through Southampton, that had allowed Salisbury to outstrip most other cities in England. But of the details of these crucial businesses, poor Godfrey was largely ignorant.
Thinking that he had impressed Wilson he came straight to his concluding point.
“With help, my son can raise the family to new heights. And I can assure you that I shall secure him a good marriage. I propose that your son Robert should make an alliance with Isabella that could be useful to both our families.”
He had brought himself to say the last words in a tone that suggested he was prepared to regard the lowly Wilson family on a par with his own; he was proud of this piece of diplomacy.
Now he looked at them both expectantly.
The small, hard man in the chair appeared to be thinking, but he did not speak. What of Robert himself though, Godfrey wondered – what did the young man for whom he had proposed this fine alliance make of it all?
Like his father, Robert was thin and sallow, but his face was a little broader and more oval-shaped. He wore his hair in the fashionable manner, covering only the top of his head and cut in a circular fringe above the ears, below which his head and face were immaculately clean shaven. He did not move from the corner but, in the half shadow, his face seemed to be expressionless.
Robert Wilson seldom spoke. Though he was twenty-one, he might have
been twice that age; there was no hint of youth about him. Even as a boy, he had always held himself severely and, some suspected scornfully, apart from the other children. No one had ever seen him indulge in any amusement. Indeed, Eustace suddenly realised, he knew very little about the young man except that he was reputed to be a highly respected businessman already and that, as John Wilson’s heir, he must have a large fortune. If he spoke little, his dark brown eyes took in everything, and if his face never gave any hint of what he was thinking, John Wilson was obviously impressed with his ability, for he now trusted him with the Southampton business entirely.
For a moment, in the rather disconcerting silence, Godfrey wondered whether he had done the right thing. But he put the thought from him. The boy could not be so bad. Times were changing. His lovely Isabella must have a rich husband and there was an end to it.
Since no one spoke, and the fact he could not see Robert properly was beginning to irritate him, Godfrey suddenly called out:
“Well, Master Robert, what do you think?” It was an attempt at heartiness that sounded, he realised, rather forced.
In reply, Robert moved forward into the light so that Eustace could see his face. But instead of speaking, he only looked at his father inquiringly.
And now at last John Wilson was ready to give his opinion. He laid down his fork carefully on the table and pushed the plate away from him, resting his arms in the space it had occupied. When he spoke his voice was very quiet so that Godfrey had to lean forward slightly to hear it, but his soft words seemed to cut into the space between them like a knife.
“When the city of Salisbury lent the king money on the security of the customs dues of Southampton, the Bishop of Winchester tried to embezzle the dues and leave us out of pocket. Why should I have wanted his friendship?”
There had been some accusations of this kind in the past, Godfrey knew, but it seemed to him beside the point.
“He was on the king’s council,” he reminded the merchant. But Wilson seemed not to hear him.
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