It was her third pregnancy. After their daughter there had been another girl, this time stillborn. But this healthy bundle kicking inside her so vigorously seemed different somehow. Osric noticed that she was carrying this baby differently too. And in his heart he was certain: it would be a son.
A son. Osric was only in his twenties, but in those harsh times a labourer could not expect to live for very long. In the comfort of his house, a rich merchant might live to be old indeed. But Osric would probably be dead at forty. He had already lost three teeth.
A son who would be grown, with luck, before his father died. A son who might have a better life. “Maybe,” he said to Dorkes, “if he has better luck than me, he’ll be a carpenter.”
“And what will you call him, if he’s a boy?” she asked.
To which, after a little thought, he replied: “I’ll give him the name of our greatest English king. I’ll call him Alfred.”
But perhaps the most astonishing event that took place that year concerned Ralph Silversleeves.
In the month of August, just when another storm made it quite certain that the harvest would be ruined, he announced that he was going to be married.
He had met the girl in May. She was a large blonde creature, the daughter of a German merchant then residing at the German wharf by the mouth of the Walbrook. Her father was even quite rich. She had a large, flat face, large blue eyes, large hands, large feet and, as she cheerfully told anyone who cared to listen, a large appetite. Finding herself sturdy and unwed at the age of twenty-three, she had spotted Ralph and decided that she liked his clumsy ways; and nothing had given Ralph greater pleasure than the look of delight on his father’s face, and the astonished disbelief on Henri’s, when he had told them.
On a chain around his neck he proudly wore a talisman she had given him depicting a rampant lion. She said it was how she thought of him. They were to be married before Christmas.
Her name was Gertha.
That summer, there was one other important change in the Silversleeves family, but it happened so quietly that not even a ripple appeared on the surface of their lives.
During the month of June, Hilda realized that her husband was unfaithful. She could not say for sure when it had begun. The gap between them had slowly grown wider, until one day she discovered that, if the truth be told, neither of them wished any longer to cross it. She guessed there might be other women. Then, one evening in June, he went out and indicated he might not return that night.
Since her father Leofric had been unwell recently, she went to stay with him in her old home by the sign of the Bull. A few nights later, Henri went out again. By then she was sure.
When, at last, the impending crisis came, it did so rather unexpectedly.
Following the storms that ruined the harvest, the weather grew hot and dry. The heat of that wasted summer continued late into a tinder-dry September, and it seemed to most men that some conflagration was likely.
At the end of summer, in the year of Our Lord 1087, while besieging a French castle of no great importance, William, Duke of Normandy and King of England, was wounded. The wound festered. Very soon it was clear that William was dying.
Around his deathbed his family gathered. To Robert was given Normandy; to William Rufus, England; to young Henri, money. Odo, the dying king’s half-brother, was released from prison. Thus the stage was set for a generation of jealousy, intrigue and murder. Some days later, after a long, hot journey across country to the Norman ancestral church at Caen, the putrid corpse of King William the Conqueror, so swollen that it could not be forced into its coffin, burst over the bystanders, scattering entrails and much else besides.
Meanwhile, as quickly as he could, Rufus crossed the Channel to be crowned in England.
Two weeks later, on a warm, dry, October day, a small group of men paid a call on Barnikel the Dane at his house by All Hallows. When Barnikel heard what they wanted, he smiled. “I can provide what you need,” he said. “I have it all under lock and key.” Then, secretly, he sent for Osric.
Barnikel the Dane had no idea that his luck had just run out.
Ralph Silversleeves could hardly believe his good fortune. What a chance, if things worked out, to impress the new Norman king.
He understood the political situation, because Mandeville had patiently explained it to him.
“Robert will try to seize England from Rufus, because he wants to rule over as much as his father did. Odo will probably support him. If so, he’ll be able to bring in a huge party of knights from Kent. To my knowledge, because they don’t like Rufus, a number of the other barons are ready to join them. And you can be sure there’s a party in London ready to go with them if they think there’s profit in it. But,” the magnate continued, “most of the sheriffs and the countryside want the King of England, not the Duke of Normandy, to rule over them. So we are backing Rufus.” He had looked at Ralph bleakly. “Our job is to keep London quiet. Find the conspirators. Find their arms. Rufus will be grateful if we can turn something up.”
The next day, out of the blue, had come this unexpected piece of information, which, when he had thought it over carefully, caused Ralph to summon a dozen spies to him and declare: “We’re going to set a trap that will catch them all.”
Osric stood by the riverside and smiled. Everything was going to be all right.
Behind him, the grey mass of the Tower loomed. The great royal floor was almost completed now. Already, the first of the huge oak timbers that would stretch right across the building to take the roof had arrived at the site. The only trees big enough had been found nearly fifty miles away, and had to be shipped there by river. It would take another two years to complete the roofing, but even so, in the afternoon sun the great, grim keep seemed to suggest that already, Norman though it was, it had as much right to be there as the Celtic ravens on the slopes.
Osric looked around him. The place where the Tower drain came down to the riverbank was well hidden, some carpenters’ huts screening it from view. Barnikel’s boat could pull right up to the grille and be loaded unseen. It would take only a few moments to open the grille. Then it was up the passage to the inner grille, for which Alfred had once again supplied the key.
While Barnikel kept watch by the boat, he would empty the secret chamber and bring out the arms. Before the autumn dawn, they would be on their way down the river with nobody the wiser.
Exactly who the arms were for, he did not know and did not ask. As far as he was concerned, if the Dane said they were needed, that was good enough. The risk, he judged, was slight. It was one more blow against the Norman king. Besides, as he declared to the Dane: “What a present, anyway, to welcome the birth of my son.”
The birth was very near. Two days ago he had thought Dorkes was going into labour. Certainly, before the week was out, the child would be born. He and Dorkes were both sure it was going to be a boy.
The operation at the Tower was set to take place the following night. Satisfied that everything was in order, Osric was looking forward to it.
That same evening Henri had gone out, intimating that he might not return. So, leaving the children with the servants at home, Hilda had decided to spend the night at her father’s house. She had already passed a pleasant hour there when, while the evening sun was still glowing, she slipped out for a stroll along the West Cheap.
It was just as she was returning by St Mary-le-Bow that she saw the German girl, who immediately hailed her. Hilda sighed. As a Saxon, she usually felt at home with the city’s German merchants, who were good-hearted and hard-working. She liked her future sister-in-law, too, but found her exhausting. Today Gertha was radiating enthusiasm.
Hilda asked after Ralph.
“He is very well. He is wonderful. I have just seen him.” Beaming at Hilda, she seemed positively excited by the memory. “He is so clever.” And then, apparently unaware of the look of bafflement that crossed Hilda’s face at this news, she took Hilda by the arm, pressed her into t
he wall of St Mary-le-Bow and, suddenly becoming very confidential, imparted a still more surprising, and much more interesting, item of information.
“He told me not to tell anyone,” she whispered, “but we are family.” She glanced round to make sure they were not overheard. “Can you keep a secret?”
Faint stars were just appearing over the little church of All Hallows, and in the great hollow below deep shadows were gathering round the Tower like a moat when Hilda came quietly to the stout thatched homestead of Barnikel the Dane.
As he moved about, lighting the lamps, she watched him thoughtfully. There was more grey than red in his beard now. When she had first given him the bad news, she had been distressed at how old and tired he had looked. But now he seemed stronger again. Taking a jug from a table, he poured them each a goblet of wine.
She gazed, half sorry for him, yet half admiring.
“What will you do?” she asked.
It was a poor peasant in the forests of Essex who had given Ralph his clue. He had been found with a sword, and they had taken him to the castle at Colchester. They were curious as to how he obtained the weapon and questioned him closely. He had borne it bravely, but after the joints of his fingers had been crushed he had been persuaded to talk.
He had owned the sword for a long time, since he had lived in the forest with Hereward the Wake’s men. But that had been more than fifteen years ago. “And those people are all dead now,” he said.
The guard at Colchester had sent the fellow to London, giving Ralph the chance to question him. The fellow did not tell him much. Except for one thing. The arms, he admitted, had come from London, where there was a man whom the rebels trusted. About this man he swore he knew nothing, until, just before he died, he remembered one detail: “He had a red beard.”
It was not much. God knew, there were plenty of men with red beards in the old Anglo-Danish city. Plenty of Normans had red beards, come to that. But gradually, as Ralph considered all the facts he knew, a pattern began to form in his mind.
A hater of Normans; a member of the old Defence Guild; a friend of Alfred the armourer. Then there were other things he knew. The pieces fell into place until he cried with rage, “I’ve been duped,” and then, with a smile of cruel satisfaction: “But now I can catch them all.”
And so he had set his trap.
“Tomorrow morning he’s going to come at dawn. He’s going to raid this house, your store at Billingsgate, and Alfred’s armoury. If he finds arms, he’s got you. If not, his spies are going to watch you to see if you lead them to anything,” Hilda said anxiously.
As he listened, the old Dane had only nodded. “They’ll find nothing,” he assured her. “As for our being watched . . .” He shrugged. “There will just have to be a slight change of plan.”
And then he told her about Osric and the secret of the Tower.
As she listened, and realized the danger that the old man and his friends were in, she felt nervous, and then moved. “Why are you doing it?” she asked.
It was simple, he explained. If Robert became king, he would have huge territories to control. “And he’s not the man his father was.” Norman rule would weaken. “And then . . .” The heirs of the old English line were still alive. So were King Harold’s family. For some time he showed her all the things that might happen until at last, with a smile, she shook her head.
“You just don’t give up, do you?”
He grinned, almost boyishly. “I’m too old to give up. If an old man gives up, he dies.”
“Do you feel so old?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Sometimes.” He smiled. “Not with you.” And she blushed, knowing this was true.
There was a low fire in the brazier in the centre of the room. He stoked it a little and then sat down beside it in a big oak chair, motioning her to a bench, and for several minutes they sat there, quite contentedly, in silence. She noticed that in repose his face, though it did not look younger, had a vigour about it, like that of a splendid old lion that has not lost his force. Meditatively, he drank his wine.
What a strange evening it was, she thought. She had done all she could. She should probably go. Yet she felt no inclination to depart. Her father always fell asleep by sunset. God knew where her husband was. After a short while, without a word, she pulled the bench close, leaned across, and laid her head on his chest.
He did not move. Then, after a few moments, she felt his great, gnarled hand begin to stroke her hair. It was surprising how gentle and how comforting it felt. She started to play with his beard, and felt him chuckle.
“I expect many women have done that in your life,” she said softly.
“A few,” he replied.
“What a pity – ” she began, and then stopped.
“What?”
She had been about to say, “What a pity I never married your son.” Instead she replied, “Nothing,” and he did not press her.
As the minutes passed, she found herself considering her life. Henri’s cold image arose. Putting it out of her mind, she thought: I’d rather have married this older man, even as he is now, with his magnificent courage, and his big, warm heart. And suddenly, wanting to express her affection and to do something for him, she moved round and, smiling softly into his eyes, kissed him on the lips.
She felt him quiver. She kissed him again.
“If you go on doing that . . .” he whispered.
“Do,” she said happily, rather to her own astonishment.
It had been a long time since Barnikel had made love and he had supposed that such a thing might no longer easily come to pass. Yet as he rose and took in his arms the young woman whom he had loved first as a daughter and then as a woman, all doubts seemed to vanish.
As for Hilda, experiencing for the first time the slow and delicate caresses of an older man and brought gently and lovingly to ardour, she found a warmth that was infinitely touching.
They stayed together until the early hours, when she stole back through the streets to her father’s house and slipped up to the chamber where he was asleep.
And so, after, a dozen years, Barnikel’s last love was consummated.
Soon after dawn, as Barnikel had requested, she slipped out of her father’s house and delivered two messages. One to Alfred. One to Osric.
And it did not occur to Hilda that on both her journey to Barnikel and her journey back, she had, as usual, been followed.
It was not until mid-morning that Ralph Silversleeves, accompanied by half a dozen men-at-arms, visited Barnikel at his warehouse at Billingsgate. Politely the Norman informed the Dane that they must make a search, and Barnikel, though he shrugged irritably, let them go about their business. Three of the men then went up to his house by All Hallows.
They were thorough. They took two hours, but at the end of the morning they gave up. At the same time, a man arrived from Alfred’s armoury. They had found nothing there either.
“I hope you have now set your mind at rest,” the Dane remarked to Ralph drily, taking the grimace he received in reply as a sign of assent.
As Ralph left, however, he had such an overwhelming sense of having been duped that once on the quay he told his men: “There are arms here somewhere. We’re not giving up.” And he was as good as his word. To the fury of the boatmen, he started inspecting their cargoes. Four more of the little warehouses were investigated. They went up the street and moved along the East Cheap, poking at carts and stalls, first to the terror of the traders, soon to their jeers. But if Ralph had ever been afraid of making a fool of himself, he did not seem to care now. Red-faced and determined, he ploughed on, moving eastwards towards the Tower.
It was in the early afternoon, within the lodgings by the Tower, that a new life entered the family of Osric the labourer. It brought him such joy that as he stood outside, gazing over the Tower into the sky, the squat little fellow was unable to speak for several minutes.
For he had been right. He had a son.
Bar
nikel was restless. He had been in his house all afternoon. The events of the last twenty-four hours had been taxing, and during the afternoon he had felt tired. Now, however, unable to bear his confinement any longer, he finally ventured out into the East Cheap to take the air.
It was still warm, although in the west the sky had turned a deep magenta. The stallholders in the market were packing up as he strolled along the East Cheap in the direction of Candlewick Street. It was just before he reached the end of the market that he saw Alfred walking calmly towards him.
Both men thought quickly. If they were being followed, it would be wisest to do nothing suspicious. They prepared to pass each other, therefore, with nothing more than a polite nod, and would have done so if, at that precise moment, a small figure had not suddenly rushed to join them, tugging at their sleeves with urgency.
It was Osric. He had been walking about the place for almost an hour in a daze of happiness. He had been told by Hilda at dawn that he must avoid Barnikel, but on seeing his two friends together, the little fellow had been so excited that for a moment he had forgotten everything and run up to them, his round face glowing.
“Oh sir,” he cried, “oh Alfred. I have such news.” And as Alfred paused and Barnikel looked down, he burst out: “I have a son!” Then he beamed at them as if they were all at the gates of Paradise.
So the two men, who in their own crisis had quite forgotten Osric’s family concerns, gathered round laughing and hugged the little fellow.
There was no moon that night, and a thin pall of cloud blown by a rising wind from the west was now hiding even the stars. As the boat slipped up the dark river, the only light came from a small fire that had started somewhere on the city’s western hill.
Softly the boat bumped into the mud by the entrance to the Tower drain.
Osric was alone. His response to the Dane’s message that morning had been simple. Since Barnikel was being watched, he had better stay in his house. “I can manage alone,” he said.
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