London (54 page)

He had even tried to make friends with Bull’s family. To Ida he was studiously polite. She would never be his friend, but she was somewhat mollified by the fact that nowadays he always bowed to her and addressed her as a lady. The boy David was easier. To him, Pentecost always said stoutly, “I’m the king’s man.” He took the boy round the Exchequer once, telling him, “Here we do the king’s business.” But for Bull himself, nothing was good enough. Today’s incident of the kiddles was just one more way to persuade the powerful alderman that he and his master, Longchamp, were his friends. “And you’ll tell me about anything you hear,” he always requested.

It was as he was leaving, that Pentecost suddenly noticed that the little boy holding the woman’s hand looked vaguely familiar. For a moment he frowned in puzzlement, but then he realized what it was: the child had a white patch in his hair.

“Who’s he?” he asked. Mabel told him.

Pentecost walked back towards Bull’s house thoughtfully. He had not known that Simon the armourer had left a son. It seemed to him the news was good. There was a score to settle there. Father or son, it was all the same to him; and since the son was so young, that gave him plenty of time to think of something appropriate. Before long he was smiling, then grinning from ear to ear.

So when he entered Bull’s house, it was a shock to find the merchant looking grave. And when, after thanking him for his help over the kiddles, Bull took him by the arm and told him, “I think there’s something you ought to know,” poor Silversleeves went quite pale.

Brother Michael realized he was losing the battle during the month of May. That was the month the stranger came.

His name was Gilbert de Godefroi and he was a knight. His manor was called Avonsford, near the western castle of Sarum. And he was staying in Bull’s house.

His presence there was not so surprising. Whilst humble pilgrims lodged in hospices, a travelling knight would normally stay with a merchant. When, therefore, Godefroi arrived with a letter from a West Country merchant Bull knew, it was only natural for the alderman to offer him hospitality. The knight slept in the merchant’s hall, his groom in the stables.

Gilbert de Godefroi was in London to set his affairs in order before departing on crusade. He was tall and middle-aged. His face was sad and stern, his manner somewhat dry. They did not see him much, for he rose at dawn each day, and having been to prime, the first service at St Paul’s, he would ride to Westminster or exercise his horses in the woods at Islington; and after eating little in the evening, would retire. Upon his surcoat was a cross in red to mark the fact that he was on crusade. He was a perfect knight. Also a widower.

Godefroi had been there for four days when Brother Michael met him at the weekly family meal. He was impressed at once by the knight’s dignified manner. Young David was obviously in awe of him, and even Bull was quieter than usual, but what the monk could not have anticipated was the change in Ida.

That she paid the knight attention was proper: he was their guest. That she served him first was only courtesy. That she had dressed herself in the flowing robe of a lady, this, too, was understandable. But it was more than that. Ida was transformed. It was as though she had been a traveller in some strange country and had at last encountered someone who spoke her own tongue. Indeed, in the remarks she addressed to the knight she seemed almost to say aloud: “But these others would not understand.” Her husband she appeared to have forgotten entirely, and she hardly, Brother Michael thought, even notices me.

The knight said little and the monk left, deeply troubled. It grieved him to see Ida make a fool of his brother. And she’s making a fool of herself too, he thought.

In fact, it was worse than even Brother Michael had guessed. From the moment the knight had come, Ida had claimed his attention. She had let him know at once what quality of person she was and how she had been disparaged. She told him her ancestry, hoping to find a common connection. When she retired with Bull at night, her large brown eyes gave the knight a look that said: “Rescue me.” She even tried to join him at his prayers. All of which things Bull watched in silence.

By the next week, it seemed to the monk that the situation was even more serious. I must do something, he thought. So, upon some pretext, he returned again the next day, and the next, and it was on these visits that a further, and even graver, aspect of the business appeared.

For if Ida made approaches to the knight, young David was in love. Brother Michael watched as, day by day, the fair, fresh-faced boy followed the stern knight around. David would watch Godefroi practise with his sword and mace, or help his groom, a young fellow only a few years older than himself, to clean the knight’s mail to keep it from rusting. He was fascinated, too, by the knight’s shield, which had a white swan depicted on a red background. This choosing of a personal coat of arms as an adornment in jousting was a knightly custom that had sprung up in the last few decades, and it seemed to the boy further proof that Godefroi was a hero, an impression that was confirmed when, now and then, the knight himself paused to talk to him in his quiet, serious way. When he swung into the saddle of his magnificent charger, however, it seemed to David Bull that the knight was almost a god.

It was as Godefroi clattered out of the yard one morning, watched by David, Brother Michael and Ida, that the boy turned to his stepmother and remarked, “I wish my father was like that.”

Ida only laughed. And then she said the hurtful thing.

“Don’t be silly,” she told him. “Just look at your father. You can see at once that he’s only a merchant.” Then, with a sigh, “Nobles are born, not made.” Though, to cheer him up she added: “I’ll find you a noble wife. Perhaps your son could be a knight.”

And so the London merchant’s son came to understand that not only was his powerful father wrong in his attitudes, not only was he of lower rank than the feudal knight, but God had actually created him inferior. He had not known this before.

But it was true. Except in London itself, Norman and Plantagenet rule had produced one huge change in English society. The Anglo-Saxon noble had boasted of his warrior ancestry, but his nobility had actually derived from his wealth. A man with enough land was noble; rich London merchants became thanes. In time of war, they had led the old English levy drawn from their fields.

Their Norman supplanters were quite separate from the English people. Godefroi might run his estate at Avonsford like his Saxon predecessor, but he had another in Normandy. He could speak English, but his first language was still French. He did not lead his peasants to war, because the old, untrained English levy was hardly used any more. Lionheart’s troops were hired – tough archers from Wales and the terrifying
routiers
, the mercenaries from the Continent. The knight might be rich, or very poor. Bull could have bought even Godefroi twice over. But he belonged to a separate, European, military aristocracy, a caste united in a vast cousinship that looked upon all others with disdain. It was a perception of nobility that, once rooted in the island of Britain, would haunt its society.

Alderman Sampson Bull saw, cannily, that his family could, over time, buy and marry its way into this nobility. Ida knew it too, but regretted the fact. As for young David, when he looked at the knight he saw only magic. And from now on, when he looked at his father, he would see him as base and, despite the fact they were father and son, secretly despise him. This was Ida’s latest gift to her husband.

All this the monk observed, and he grieved. It was at the next family visit, however, that the real shock came.

After the meal, he had gone outside with his brother and the boy. The hall was quiet; Ida had gone to supervise the larder; the knight was sitting alone in silence. Only by chance had Brother Michael gone back and seen them.

Godefroi was standing, as quiet and motionless as ever. Ida had re-entered and was standing in front of him, saying something softly. Then she reached out her hand and touched the knight on the arm. With that tiny gesture, it seemed to Brother Michael that he knew. Turning pale, he backed out.

The awful dream came that night. He saw her pale body intertwined with the knight’s, saw her long neck stretch in ecstasy, saw him possess her. He saw her dark eyes, her long hair falling over her breasts; he heard her utter a small cry. And awoke with a huge, cold anguish that caused him first to sit bolt upright, then to pace his little cell. Nor did he find it possible to sleep again, but paced up and down the five night hours before dawn with that same terrible image of Ida’s lovemaking continuing all the time, now this way, now that, before him.

It was soon after dawn and the birds were in their full May chorus when he made his way across Smithfield and down towards St Paul’s. There, by the door, as a single bell summoned a few chaste souls to prime, he saw the silent figure of Godefroi approaching.

When the pious knight heard what he had to say, he did not even deign to show surprise. “You accuse me of adultery, monk?” he coldly enquired. “You suggest I should leave? I have no need to leave.” And he strode into St Paul’s without another word.

Had he been wrong? Brother Michael put his hand on his forehead. Did he really suspect this pious knight? Confused, he returned, hardly knowing what to think.

Three days later, Gilbert de Godefroi was ready to depart. Ida offered him her glove to wear as a gage upon his journey – a courtly gesture from the knightly world. But this he refused with a solemn look, reminding her: “I am a pilgrim to the Holy Land.” And Brother Michael sighed with relief.

With the departure of the knight both Ida and young David seemed to grow listless. David even became quite unwell and his studies began to suffer. In midsummer, therefore, the Alderman asked Brother Michael to give his son some help.

No one could call young David a scholar, but he was curious enough, and pleasant; and for his uncle he had a huge respect. “You are so learned,” he would say in genuine amazement, which encouraged the monk to tell him all he knew.

Brother Michael’s knowledge of the world was typical of a moderately learned man of his time: a pleasant mixture of fact and folklore culled from the library he used to enjoy at Westminster Abbey. He could give his nephew a good account of the great patchwork of states that made Europe, with its ports and rivers, its cities and shrines. He could speak knowingly of Rome and of the Holy Land. But at the edge of this huge medieval world, his knowledge began to blur into fabulous terrains beyond.

“South of the Holy Land lies Egypt,” he could correctly inform David, “from which Moses led the Jews across the desert. And by the mouth of the great River Nile lies the city of Babylon.” This was the name the medieval world gave to Cairo.

“And if you travel up the Nile?” the boy eagerly asked.

“Then,” the monk confidently told him, for he had read it in a book, “you come to the land of China.”

About London’s history, he could also instruct his nephew. “London was founded long, long ago,” he explained, “long before even Rome. A great hero called Brutus first built it. Then he journeyed on and founded ancient Troy.” He told him how the Romans had come and gone and how King Alfred had rebuilt the walls.

“And who were the kings before Alfred?” the boy asked.

“There were many ancient English kings,” the monk replied. “But the most famous, long ago, were two. One was good King Arthur with his Knights of the Round Table.”

“And the other?”

“The other,” he could affirm, “was old King Cole.” For so, in the history books, it was written.

Often, as he instructed the boy, Ida would come and sit beside them.

On a fine early autumn day Sister Mabel might have been expected to be in a good humour. Yet this morning she was not. The cause of her fury was to be found in a small church she had just been visiting.

The church of St Lawrence Silversleeves was a handsome little building, which stood on a narrow plot between a ropemaker’s house and a bakery. Down the hill in the Vintry were the Thameside warehouses of the Norman wine merchants, over which one could see the river. It was built in stone, except for its roof, which was wooden; it was four bays long and could, had its congregation ever been so many, have conveniently contained a hundred souls. Sister Mabel had just been to visit the curate of this modest church.

The curate of St Lawrence Silversleeves was a poor sickly fellow with a wife and two children. Technically, of course, since he was in holy orders, the long-suffering woman with whom he lived was not called his wife but his concubine. But few, even amongst the strictest churchgoers, would have considered his moral crime a grave one. Most of the curates in London were married – because if they did not have a wife, they would starve.

The situation at St Lawrence Silversleeves was typical. The Silversleeves family appointed the vicar, who enjoyed the income from its endowment. If there was no one in the family who wanted the position, it would probably go to some friend or connection. He, like as not, would be vicar of several other churches as well, all of whose incomes he accumulated. And to carry out the duties of each, he would appoint a curate, to whom he paid a pittance – so small that if the wretched fellow did not have a wife to earn their keep, he could scarcely put wood on the fire.

The curate of St Lawrence Silversleeves was thirty-five. His hair was grey and sparse, and he suffered from dizzy spells. His wife, who worked in the bakery next door, was stouter but suffered from varicose veins. And his two sallow daughters reminded Mabel of nothing so much as a pair of broken candles. They all lived together in a huddled little tenement behind the church; and so miserable were they that, one Christmas two years ago, even the Silversleeves family had given them a shilling.

Sister Mabel went to them as often as she could. Today, after a busy session with pestle and mortar in her larder, she had brought a philtre of wood lettuce to cure the man’s failing vision and betony for his giddy spells. She brought savine for his wife’s swollen feet and whey bread because both their children had worms. She had spent an hour with them dispensing these medicines and her own, blunt comfort, and now she had emerged with a single thought in her mind. “Damn that Silversleeves. He must do something for them. I shall make him.”