London (52 page)

Then, thanks be to God, it came to him. The great monk Bernard of Clairvaux, that indefatigable founder of monasteries, the man who had inspired the previous crusade and who all Christendom declared a saint, Bernard himself had formulated the doctrine concerning Jews:

It is written that at the last the Jews also shall be converted to the true faith. If, however, we kill them, then they cannot be converted.

“The blessed Bernard himself said the Jews must not be harmed,” he shouted. “For they are to be converted.” Triumphantly he smiled at the old man.

The crowd hesitated. The two men could feel its mood in the balance. Then, glancing up for a second to heaven, Brother Michael did something he had never done before. “In any case,” he shouted, “it makes no difference. I know this man. He has converted already.” And before anyone could think of anything to say, he seized the old man by the arm, pushed him through the hesitating crowd, and marched him down the street, not even looking back until they had crossed into the West Cheap.

“You lied,” Abraham remarked.

“I’m sorry.”

The old man shrugged. “I’m Jewish,” he said wryly. “I shall never forgive you.” Which, though Brother Michael did not understand it, was a bitter Jewish joke.

They were not safe yet, however. The mob behind, now doubtless looting Abraham’s house, might change its mind, and there would be other mobs about too. Thinking quickly, the monk told Abraham: “I’ll take you to my brother’s house.”

But here again he was due for a shock. Encountering Bull, who was standing by St Mary-le-Bow in the company of Pentecost Silversleeves he explained what he wanted, only to be told by the merchant, “Sorry. I don’t want my house burned down. He must go elsewhere.”

“But you know him. You got Bocton from him. He could be killed otherwise,” Brother Michael protested.

Bull was adamant. “Too risky. Sorry.” And he turned his back.

To the monk’s surprise, it was Pentecost Silversleeves who solved the problem. “We shall take him to the Tower,” he announced. “The Jews are being protected there by the constable. Come on,” and he started to lead them in that direction. When, however, Brother Michael remarked that the Exchequer clerk at least showed some humanity, Silversleeves gave him a bland look. “You don’t understand,” he remarked coolly. “I’m protecting him because the Jews are chattels of the king.”

Not all the king’s Jewish chattels were so lucky. There were numerous assaults, and the mobs also, naturally, looted the houses of these rich foreigners. Before long, as news of the London riot spread, other towns started similar atrocities, the worst of which took place in York, where a substantial congregation was burned alive. King Richard was furious and had the perpetrators severely punished, but the London riot of September 1189, the first of its kind in England, was to mark the start of a gradual erosion of the Jewish community’s position that would have tragic consequences for a hundred years.

For Brother Michael, however, the image that remained, hauntingly, in his mind from that day was not of the angry mob, nor even of Abraham.

It was of a pale, proud face, a pair of large, dark brown eyes, and a long white neck.

If Sister Mabel kept cheerful, it was partly because early that year an important new interest had been added to her own life. She had a child.

Not of her own, but as near as she could get.

Sister Mabel never did things by half. When Simon the armourer suddenly died, leaving a widow and an infant son, she not only comforted the mother, she virtually adopted the little boy. As it happened that her brother the fishmonger had young children, she arrived at his house one day with the little fellow in her arms and announced, “Here’s a playmate for our babies.” The boy’s name was Adam. With his webbed hands and his white tuft, the Barnikel family soon dubbed him ‘little duck’, or ‘ducket’, and before long Adam Ducket he became.

Mabel was delighted with the arrangement. Hardly a day went by without her finding some cause to visit Adam and his mother, and indeed, the widow was glad enough of her assistance. “For his two daughters from his first wife,” she explained to Mabel, “are both married and they aren’t interested in us. That’s for sure.”

In other ways, though, the widow was lucky. Many of London’s humbler craftsmen owned little more than the tools of their trade, but whilst the armoury itself had been taken by a new master, Simon had left his widow a tiny, four-room house by Cornhill, and through letting out two of the rooms and working hard as a sempstress, she could get by.

There was also the other inheritance. It was on this account that, thanks to Mabel, a small event now took place which was to have quite unforeseen consequences for the Ducket family. It concerned the little parcel of land at Windsor.

His widow had never understood why Simon had continued to hold these few acres, which yielded little return, but no subject had been closer to his heart. “My father had them, and his before,” he used to declare. “They say we were there in the days of good King Alfred.” To him the importance of this ancestral link was self-evident. Each year he had ridden the twenty miles to pay his rent and arrange with his now distant cousins, still serfs, alas, to work the land for him. Just before he died he had made her promise: “Never give up our land. Keep it for Adam.”

“But what am I to do about it?” she asked Mabel. “How would I even get there to make the arrangements?” Her answer came when Mabel appeared at Cornhill one morning with a small horse and cart belonging to her brother. “It smells of fish a bit,” Mabel remarked, “but it’ll do. You go to Windsor. We’ll look after the baby while you’re gone.” And so Adam’s mother set out to secure his inheritance.

She reached the hamlet on the second day. The place had changed little since the Domesday survey. She had no difficulty in recognizing her husband’s kin, for as soon as she arrived, she saw a fellow in the lane with a white patch in his hair just like her husband’s. And if, at first glance, she thought the fellow looked a little shifty, her fears were soon set to rest when he not only turned out to be the head of the family, but that very evening offered her a solution to her problem. “You don’t want to come out here every year,” he explained. “And there’s no need. We’ll work the land as usual. But from what it yields we’ll settle your rent with the lord’s steward and afterwards one of us will come to London with the balance for you.” He grinned. “I’ve two sons and a daughter who all want to visit London. You’d be doing me a favour if you would let them lodge with you a few days.”

By the next morning, the whole matter was settled with the steward and the widow was able to return, delighted with the easy way this tiresome business had been taken off her mind.

For Ida, the month of September passed pleasantly enough. The house of which she was now mistress had been enlarged in recent decades and was now a substantial building. Like most merchant houses, it was constructed of wood and plaster. Bull conducted his business on the ground floor; there was a fine upper floor where the hall and bedchamber were situated; and an attic floor where young David and the servants slept. However, two other features of the building, common to most of the houses in London then, gave the place its character.

The first concerned the construction of the different floors. Having completed the ground floor, the builders had not continued upwards in a straight line. Instead, the upper storey was actually larger in area than the one below, jutting out several feet into the lane, above the heads of the passersby. Few houses, as yet, had more than two storeys, but in those that did the third storey came out even further, making the narrow lanes almost like tunnels.

The other feature was that the overhanging front and sides of Bull’s house were supported by horizontal timbers that were no more or less than the great branches of pollarded oaks. These were used exactly as they were, uncut, sometimes even with the bark left on, and as a consequence, though hugely strong, they were by no means straight. The result was that all these timbered houses had a lopsided look, as if they were about to collapse, although in reality they could stand for centuries so long as they did not burn down.

The last risk was their weakness. Fire was endemic. That very year an ordinance had been made requiring the citizens to rebuild their ground floors in brick or stone and to replace their thatched roofs with tiles or other less flammable material. But as Sampson Bull had declared: “I’ll be damned if I’ll do it in a hurry. The expense is huge.”

Though used to running an estate, Ida found that she had plenty to do. If there were no serfs to supervise, she was nevertheless expected to take some part in her husband’s business, and within days she found herself glancing with a sharp eye at sacks of wool, bales of cloth and rolls of imported silk, just as before she would have inspected the grain or the feed for the cattle. The servants, thank God, were friendly. The two girls who worked in the kitchen seemed genuinely delighted to have a mistress again, and on the first Saturday Bull took her to Smithfield to purchase a fine new mare.

But her greatest pleasure came from young David. It had not taken them long to become friends. During the day he went to school at nearby St Paul’s, but in the evenings she would sit with him. It was obvious that for over a year the boy had had no one to talk to at home. All she had to do was listen kindly and in no time he was sharing every confidence. She understood his grief that he could not go on the crusade. She promised him things would get better. She had never been a mother before and found she enjoyed it.

And then, of course, there was Brother Michael. Once a week, at her insistence, he came for a meal. Secretly she wished it could be more often.

Only two weeks after the coronation, however, this new rhythm of life was interrupted when Bull suddenly announced, “We’re going to Bocton for a few days.”

It was nightfall when they arrived, but she liked the place at once. The knight who had lived there had left a modest stone hall with a fine yard and large wooden outbuildings. It was not unlike the manor she had lived in before. But her astonishment came the next morning when, soon after sunrise, she stood and gazed out at the magnificent, sweeping view across the Weald of Kent. It was so lovely it made her gasp. “We always had this place,” Bull remarked softly, “until King William came.” Just for a moment, Ida felt a sense of kinship with him.

Her stay there was pleasant, if brief, but her feelings were mixed. She was glad Bull had such an estate, yet it reminded her poignantly of the life she had lost. And perhaps it was this sense of loss that caused her, soon after her return to London, to make the first major mistake of her marriage.

It happened on Michaelmas Day. She was returning home in the afternoon when she heard from the outside voices raised in anger. Moments later she walked in and found, to her surprise, three figures: Sampson Bull, red in the face, sitting at an oak table; Brother Michael; and, pale and faintly contemptuous, Pentecost Silversleeves. However, this was nothing to the shock she felt on hearing what her husband was saying.

“If this is how King Richard rules, then let him go to hell,” the merchant thundered. And then, to her horror: “London will get another king.” At which poor Ida blanched, for this was treason.

The reason for it was simple enough, though. It was about taxes. If the tension between the monarch and the city was ancient, it also had well-defined limits. The city’s annual tax was termed the farm. When the king was weak the city could negotiate a reduction in the farm, and choose its own sheriffs to collect it. When the king was strong, the farm went up and the king named the sheriffs, though not without reference to the citizens. As for its collection, this was done in whatever way the great men of London deemed best. The arrangements were announced at Michaelmas.

“And do you know what this cursed Richard has just done?” Bull thundered. “No sheriffs. He’s just sent in his stewards, like this creature here,” he gestured to the long-nosed Exchequer clerk, “without so much as a by-your-leave. They’re to bleed us for everything they can get. It’s iniquitous.”

The description was wholly fair. Silversleeves, using a sound and ancient principle, had just demanded an outrageous sum from the merchant. “Start high,” the Exchequer men had agreed, “and let them beat us down.” After all, the king’s crusade must be paid for.

But a member of the knightly class did not speak treason lightly, and Ida quietly reproved her husband: “You should be careful what you say about the king.”

In the months following, Brother Michael often blamed himself. If I had just led her out, he would think, she would not have heard. I should have guessed the way things would go. However, partly because he was curious to listen himself, he had not. And certainly, nothing in her life had prepared Ida for what came next.

For, quite coolly, her husband now addressed himself to the clerk.

“The king’s a fool. The barons of London are not to be trifled with like this.”

Ida knew that the rich London burghers liked to call themselves barons, but had always supposed it a piece of foolish pretension. However, if she expected a sharp reaction from the king’s man, none came. Silversleeves knew better. A strong king like William the Conqueror or Henry II could dominate the city, but during the anarchic period before King Henry, which older folk could still remember, the Londoners in their huge walled city had been capable of holding the balance of power in the kingdom. Besides, the cautious Exchequer man, though determined to do his master’s work, was equally anxious in these uncertain times to make as few enemies as possible. To Ida’s surprise, therefore, he now sat down opposite Bull at the oak table and remarked in a voice that was almost apologetic, “Richard, you must understand, knows nothing of England, and cares less.”

“Then the city will oppose him.”

“The king is powerful at present,” Silversleeves observed. “I think you’ll have to pay.”

“This year, yes. Next year, perhaps not. After that,” Bull looked at him steadily, “we shall see.” He shrugged. “With a bit of luck he’ll be killed on crusade and we’ll be rid of him.”