London (30 page)

Thanks to Barnikel, Alfred now began to understand more of London’s character. In some ways the city was rural still. The Saxon settlement did not fill the huge walled enclosure; there were orchards and fields as well. Around the city lay great estates owned by the king, his chief men or the Church, and these landowners’ estates existed inside the city walls too. “The city’s divided into wards,” the Dane told him. “About ten on each hill. But some of the wards are privately owned. We call them sokes.” He reeled off the names of several nobles and churchmen who held these estates within London.

Yet London was still a world of its own. As he watched and listened to Barnikel each day, Alfred found himself constantly amazed. “The city is so rich,” Barnikel explained, “that it’s taxed like a whole shire.” Proudly he listed all the liberties that the city had won: trading concessions, fishing rights over miles of the Thames, hunting rights over the whole county of Middlesex that lay on its northern side and many others.

But it was not these things, but rather something else – something in the air, yet something very tangible – that truly impressed the sharp-eyed boy. For a time he could not find words to summarize this perception, but then one day, in a chance remark, the Dane provided them.

“The walls of London touch the sea,” he said.

Yes, the boy thought. That is it.

Resting as it did at the head of the long Thames Estuary, looking daily to the sea, the great walled settlement had for generations been a home to seafarers and traders from all over the northern world. And though they obeyed the authority of the island’s Saxon or Danish kings, these men of the seas did not expect to be interfered with too much. They organized their own guilds to regulate trade and defence. They knew their value to the king, and this was recognized. A great merchant like Barnikel’s grandfather, who had made three voyages to the Mediterranean, had been created a nobleman. Three generations of Barnikels had served as captains of the city’s Defence Guild, which could produce a formidable force. The city’s walls were so mighty that even King Canute had respected them. “No invader can take London,” these Anglo-Danish merchant barons liked to boast. “And no king is king unless we say so.”

It was London’s pride that Alfred sensed. “For the citizens of London,” the Dane explained, “are free.”

It was an old English custom that if a serf ran away to a town and lived there unclaimed for a year and a day, he was free. True, there were serfs and even slaves in the households of some of the landowners and rich merchants, though most of the apprentices were, like himself, free. But in London, he discovered, the word “free” meant something more. A merchant who paid his entrance fee, or an artisan who had completed his apprenticeship, became a freeman of the city. They had the right to trade, set up a stall, sell goods and vote at the Folkmoot. They paid the king’s taxes; and all others, whether they came from the next county or beyond the sea were “foreigners” and could not trade there until they had been awarded citizenship. No wonder, then, that the Londoners cherished their freedom. As the boy felt his dagger at his side, he flushed with pleasure to think he was to be part of it.

After a week, when Alfred’s strength had fully recovered, Barnikel turned to the boy one morning and remarked: “Your apprenticeship begins today.”

The quarter to which the Dane now led him lay just outside the city’s eastern wall. Here, a little stream ran down to the Thames, and along its banks were numerous workshops. It was a busy area, controlled by the city’s Defence Guild. As they approached a long wooden building and Alfred heard the familiar sound of hammer on anvil, he supposed that he was to be apprenticed to a blacksmith. It was only after they entered and he looked around him that his heart almost missed a beat.

They were in an armoury.

Of all the tradesmen, to a boy brought up as a blacksmith, the armourer was the prince of craftsmen. Gazing round at the coats of chain mail, the helmets, shields and swords, Alfred was speechless.

The master armourer who now approached was a tall, bony-faced man with a stoop. His mild blue eyes were kindly, but as he noticed the curious webbing on the boy’s hands he turned to Barnikel doubtfully. “Can he do the work?”

“He can,” the Dane answered firmly. And so Alfred’s apprenticeship began.

Perhaps no days in his life were ever happier. As the newest apprentice, Alfred was set to work on menial tasks – fetching water from the stream, stoking the fire and working the bellows. This he did without question and nobody took much notice of him.

At the end of the first day he went back with the other apprentices to their lodgings. Usually apprentices were not paid, but lived free in their master’s house, but the armourer was a widower who disliked this arrangement. Instead, on the slope of Cornhill his sister had a house, divided into tenements, and just behind it lay outbuildings where the noisy apprentices lodged together.

The armoury being large, there were eight other apprentices of varying ages, and as he performed his duties, Alfred had a chance to observe them. One struck unevenly with the hammer; another gripped the tongs too tightly, introducing stress into his work. Another used a chisel badly. He noticed all this but kept his thoughts to himself.

On the third day, however, he was given a small piece of work to do: some metal filing and a dented helmet that needed hammering out. He did both jobs carefully and handed them to the master, who took them without comment.

The next day, the master called him to help another apprentice, a year older than himself, who was putting rivets in a helmet. Alfred held the helmet while the other put the rivet in. Then the master said: “Let the new boy try.” With ill grace the older apprentice changed places. But when Alfred began to rivet, he made a complete mess of it. With a grunt of irritation the master turned to the older boy. “Show him how to do it,” he remarked, and walked away.

But if Alfred thought that was the end of the matter, he was wrong. That evening, as the apprentices were leaving, the master called him over and, hovering by the forge, asked him in a soft voice: “Why did you do that?”

“Do what, sir?”

“I’ve watched you. You hold a hammer as if it’s part of your arm. You deliberately made a mistake today. Why?”

Alfred looked at him carefully, then confessed. “I’ve worked at my father’s forge since before I can remember, sir. But I’m new here, and I nearly starved before Barnikel brought me to you. If the other apprentices get jealous, they could make my life hell. Even drive me out.” He grinned wryly. “So I want them to think they’re teaching me until we’re friends.”

He blushed, afraid this might sound conceited. “I’m only a smith, though,” he added quickly. “I want to learn to be an armourer.”

The master nodded thoughtfully. “Work hard, Alfred,” he said quietly. “And we’ll see.”

As the weeks went by, besides learning his craft, his work in the armoury taught young Alfred something of great significance for the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. If the fleet was readying itself to defend the island at sea, preparations on land were a very different matter. “We’ve been expecting an attack ever since winter,” he remarked in astonishment, “yet nobody’s ready.”

The English kingdom had no standing army, nor forces of hired mercenaries. Her army was the
fyrd
– a levy of landowners and peasants. Not a day passed without some flustered Saxon landowner appearing with equipment in need of urgent attention: a blunt sword or battle-axe; a heavy, round Saxon shield with straps on the back that always needed replacing. Alfred could hardly believe they were so disorganized.

Above all, they would bring in their armour.

The armour of the warriors of Anglo-Saxon England was the same as that used all over Europe: the coat of chain mail. Known probably since the Bronze Age, the principle of chain mail was simple and convenient. Small, riveted rings of metal, usually about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, were linked together to form a long shirt that reached past the knees. Being loose and flexible – unlike the later suits of plate armour – a coat of chain mail could be altered to fit different wearers. Many of the coats Alfred saw had belonged to the wearers’ fathers. They were valuable – ordinary foot soldiers could seldom afford them – and treasured accordingly.

But they had two disadvantages. They became worn and torn, and above all, the large surface area of so many links made them very prone to rust. As the most junior apprentice, Alfred was given the tedious job of cleaning them, so that soon, whenever the owners of these garments appeared, a cheerful cry would go up from the other apprentices: “Alfred! Rust!”

Still, he was happy. The other apprentices had quickly accepted him. Nor did Barnikel forget him. Every week he was summoned to the Dane’s hall for a hearty meal, and though he was only a poor apprentice in a rich man’s house, he felt almost part of the family. He also came to know Leofric’s daughter, who was often there, and so admired her gentle simplicity that by midsummer he was half in love with her himself.

It was towards the end of June that his life at the armoury began to change.

They had been told to produce a dozen new coats of mail. Alfred found this prospect exciting, though the master cursed the short notice and the other apprentices groaned. Before each coat of mail could be begun, however, there was one miserable task to perform, and this was to make the wire for the links.

How he hated it. A long, thin iron bar was heated in the forge to soften it, and then its end was worked through a steel draw plate with a hole in the middle. The heaviest apprentice would begin, dragging the rod through the plate; then repeating the process again with another plate which had a smaller hole. And again; and again, so that the rod was stripped and stretched as it came through. But once it was reduced, the later drawing out was done by Alfred. Holding the thick wire in gripping tongs attached to a broad leather belt around his waist, he would haul himself backwards across the workshop floor like a man in a tug of war, until his whole body was aching.

At the end of one day of this activity, the apprentices were leaving to go drinking together when the master called out: “I need help. Alfred will stay behind.”

There was a sympathetic laugh from the others as he brusquely ordered the boy to tend the bellows, and for another two hours he kept Alfred busy with menial tasks before sending him home.

A few days later the same thing occurred, except that this time the master made another junior apprentice stay too and kept them both occupied for three hours before letting them go.

The making of a coat of mail fascinated Alfred. It was so simple, yet so exacting. First the wire was formed into rings with open ends. This was done by winding it round a metal spindle and then making a cut down the length of the coil. The newly formed rings were then pushed through a tapering hole in a steel block to force one of the ends neatly to overlap the other. The rings were softened in the brazier and then, while hot, each was put in a mould and given two taps with a hammer to flatten the overlapping ends. Now, using piercing tongs, one apprentice punched a tiny hole through the flattened ends. “That’s where the rivet will go,” he explained. After that, another prised the ends gently apart again so that the rings could be linked together, and tossed them into a bucket of oil. “Always use oil,” the master admonished them. “If you put hot iron in water it cools too fast and becomes brittle.”

But what astonished Alfred was how at the end of this process, the work had been so precisely done that he could never see any difference between the rings. In fact the links rarely varied by more than twelve-thousandths of one inch.

The third time the master ordered Alfred to stay late, the other apprentices groaned, and two of them even offered to take his place. But the master only grunted, “The newest apprentice does the dirty work,” and waved them away.

This time, however, after an hour, the master called Alfred to him. Speaking little, he made the boy perform each of the tasks – winding and cutting, overlapping, piercing and opening – correcting him when necessary, nodding quietly once he had got it right. Then, leading the boy to a large trestle table in the middle of the workshop, he instructed: “Now watch.”

The art of the master armourer was like that of the master tailor. First he would lay out the open rings in rows so that each could be linked to four others – two diagonally above and two below. The shape of the coat was like a long shirt, with elbow-length sleeves. The lower part was slit back and front for ease when riding. The top was formed into a hood that could be pushed back off the head on to the shoulders. The neck was slit like the top of a shirt and tightened with laces, whilst a flap, held in place with a strap, usually came across the front of the hood to protect the mouth.

Whereas a tailor could cut and fold his cloth, the armourer had to rearrange the rings geometrically, and this arrangement resembled nothing so much as a knitting pattern. Here, a link would be joined to five others instead of four; there, one would be left dangling loose. When finished, however, so close and intricate was the workmanship that it was almost impossible to find the different joins.

For several hours now, Alfred had watched enthralled as the master showed him how this was done, demonstrating the geometry, the lines of stress, the need for ease of movement in the metal shirt that had already protected fighting men for over a thousand years. As he worked by lamplight, the master explained: “Always rivet the same way, from the outside. You can feel why.” When Alfred ran his hands over the coat, he realized that the outside was rough, while the inside, where the rivets were flattened and which would rest against a leather undercoat, was smooth as cloth.

On some of the rivet heads the master would stamp his personal mark. And then the coat of mail was complete.

Or almost. One thing still remained. The iron used by the medieval armourers was relatively soft. To toughen it for battle, it had to be case-hardened. Now, therefore, the master rolled up the finished garment in crushed charcoal, packed it in an iron box, and put it into the forge. Soon it glowed red-hot.