Sarum (89 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
In the market place, the brightly-coloured awnings on the stalls were folded tight; the sheep and cattle pens were empty; the streets were silent.
Or almost so. For along the edge of the cheesemarket, where the trestle tables were stacked in piles, neatly chained beside the walls of the squat parish church of St Thomas, a single figure, dressed in a grey cloak with the long capuchon hood pulled over his head, was moving unsteadily through the shadows. There was only starlight to see by that night, but the stars were very bright. The figure moved along the western edge of the market, detached itself from the shadows, and moved up the centre of the street that led north past Blue Boar Row.
Peter Shockley was drunk.
Slowly he made his way up Castle Street.
Only when he reached the tall, severe house of Le Portier the aulnager did he stop, look for a stone in the road and finally begin to cast it up at the topmost window of the house’s pale, blank front.
Alicia was in there. It was her last night in her father’s house.
At the third attempt, he succeeded in hitting her window and a few moments later it opened and her face appeared, staring down into the starlit street.
He pulled back his hood. Her hair was a little longer than before. He could make it out, falling to her shoulders, and see her white nightshirt beneath. It seemed to him that, even from that distance, he could sense the warmth and even the scent of her body beneath.
“Alicia.”
She sighed. It was the third visit that week.
“Go home Peter, I can’t see you.”
He did not move.
“Come down,” he whispered urgently.
“No.”
Three times he had begged her to run away with him. “And then what would you do?” she demanded.
“Something,” he replied defiantly.
It was absurd. She was beginning to find him ridiculous. And yet – because she was almost tempted, because she was angry with herself for giving way to her father, because she knew that it was useless and because she was trying to make herself believe that she was going to be happy with the pleasant, middle-aged knight from Winchester who was such a fine catch for her – she treated Peter with scorn.
“Go away and forget about me,” she hissed into the darkness.
“Will you forget me?” he cried aloud.
“I already have. I’m in love with Geoffrey de Whiteheath.” She withdrew her head and he saw the window close.
He did not leave. He threw the stone up again, and again, but she did not appear. He threw it harder; and then a little too hard. He heard a pane of glass break. But still he did not move away.
A moment later the door of the house opened and the tall thin form of Alan Le Portier strode out of his house. He was carrying a stick.
“Go home at once, young man,” he ordered angrily. “You’ll pay for my window tomorrow.” He glared at him contemptuously as though he was a child. Peter felt his resentment rising.
“You’ve sold her,” he shouted, “you’ve sold her to a knight!” As his words echoed down the street, several heads appeared at other windows.
Le Portier stiffened. The charge was quite untrue, but it infuriated him to have such insults thrown at him.
“You brat.”
In the darkness and his fuddled state, Peter did not see him swing the stick; it caught him sharply on the arm.
“Be off,” the aulnager shouted.
Peter felt a surge of anger. He staggered towards Le Portier, and would have aimed a blow at him, except that at that moment, he saw behind him the figure of Alicia. She was standing in the doorway with a candle in her hand; and her face which suddenly looked older, was gazing at him with scorn.
He stood quite still.
“Go away, you child,” she said coldly, and then turned back into the house.
He stared at her, then her father. And then with a shrug he moved away down the street, watched by faces at every window.
It was his great misfortune that there was an unexpected witness to the whole business standing in the shadows fifty feet away.
William atte Brigge had lingered at a merchant’s lodgings near the northern gate until late that night and he had just begun to make his way through the town when he saw the young man loitering in the street. After pausing to observe him, he had seen with interest that it was young Shockley; and within minutes, his interest had turned to a malicious grin of pleasure. The boy had already broken a window and tried to assault the aulnager. Wondering what else he might do, he followed him.
At the market place he saw the youth kick the trestle tables by the cheesemarket moodily. He watched him pick up a stone and hurl it across the empty market place. He heard him cry out in rage.
The chance was too good to miss. Casting about, William found a large piece of wood that had been used to prop up one of the stalls. A moment later he had moved swiftly through the shadows, hurled the lump of wood through one of the windows of St Thomas’s church, and run quickly through the shadows towards the house of the bishop’s bailiff.
His satisfaction was complete when, a few minutes later, the bailiff strode into the market place and arrested the young man who was still mooning about near the stalls.
“I saw him throw a stone through Le Portier’s window,” he assured the official, “and then he came down here and broke the window of the church as well. Ask in Castle Street if you want witnesses.”
“I will,” the bailiff promised.
Ten days later Peter Shockley, brought before the Lord Bishop’s Court, was accused and promptly found guilty of causing a nuisance in the bishop’s market place and breaking a church window; he was sentenced to a morning in the stocks.
As the bailiff said to Edward Shockley afterwards: “I’m sorry about your boy, Shockley, but I can’t make exceptions.”
The Wilton merchant’s revenge was satisfactory; but it was not yet complete.
Punishment in the stocks was an unpredictable affair. A man could stand there all day and leave without a mark, or if he were unpopular, he might find all manner of objects thrown at him. With his hands and head locked in the heavy wooden yoke, he could not defend himself so he would probably emerge badly cut and bruised. Above all however, it was an undignified business, and when Edward Shockley heard the sentence he was filled with rage.
“You’ve disgraced the family,” he thundered. “After this, you’ll work at the fulling mill, but by God you’ll not be in charge.”
The following morning, when Peter Shockley was led out by two of the bailiff’s men and placed in the stocks, it seemed to him that his life, which two months before had appeared so full of promise, was now in ruins. I’ve lost the mill, he thought bleakly, and I’ve lost Alicia. As he stared across the market place and thought of Alicia in the arms of the knight from Winchester, his eyes filled with tears; a street urchin, not out of malice but for amusement, threw an apple at him which struck him in the mouth and made his lip bleed. He had never felt so without friends.
Yet his morning in the stocks did bring him one unexpected friend.
It was mid-morning when he became aware of a figure standing quietly by his side; and though the yoke over his neck prevented him from turning his head to look, he could see a pair of feet in rough sandals and the edge of a grey robe that was none too clean. This told him that his companion must be a Franciscan.
There were two orders of friars who had become a familiar sight at Sarum during his lifetime; the Dominicans – the black-robed order of preachers and intellectuals, who had set up their first house near Wilton – and the grey friars, followers of one of the church’s newest saints, Francis of Assisi. Unlike most of the priesthood or the monks, the grey friars were dedicated to a life of simplicity. They usually lived and worked amongst the poor, and they had already earned the respect of the people of Salisbury by their devotion to such humble tasks. When the first group from Italy had arrived at Sarum fifteen years before, the bishop had given them a modest house in St Ann Street just outside the close, and the king, too, was known to favour them.
Though he knew their reputation, Peter had never spoken with one of the friars before and he stared with curiosity as the grey figure now moved round the stocks and came to face him.
He was a young man – little older than himself – with dark hair and a clean-shaven, sallow face.
“What brings you to the stocks?” He spoke with a strong Italian accent.
“My sins,” Peter replied dismally. “And a girl,” he added. “What about you?”
The sallow young man smiled. He had very white, even teeth.
“The same two things,” he laughed. “I am Brother Giovanni.” And without being asked, he sat comfortably on the ground in front of the stocks. “What’s your story?” he demanded.
As the enquiry was friendly, and as he had nothing else to do, Peter told the friar his whole story, about the mill, his losing Alicia, and the night when he broke the window. “The funny thing is,” he confessed, “I may have been drunk, but I don’t remember throwing anything at the church window at all.”
The friar made no comment, but his cheerful presence was a comfort to Peter and soon they were talking easily. Giovanni told him about his own life in Italy, which was that of a merchant family very like his own, and though Peter did not realise it, over an hour passed without incident in this way.
“The worst of it is,” Peter told him, “my father won’t forgive me either now. He says I’ve disgraced the family.”
“He will,” the friar assured him. “Give him time.”
“What can I do to please him?” Peter asked.
“Work like hell, I should think,” Giovanni answered with a pleasant grin.
Eventually one of the other friars called his friend away, and Peter once again resumed his lonely stand.
The sun continued to rise slowly. Little beads of sweat formed on his forehead; but the market place was occupied with other matters and although there were people standing near the stocks, no one seemed to take any notice of him.
It was nearly midday when he saw William atte Brigge lope into the open.
The trader looked about him surreptitiously as he made his way slowly towards the stocks. Peter saw that he was carrying a basket of rotting vegetables and in his hands, a turnip, and that he was grinning quietly to himself. Two little boys, guessing his intentions, joined him.
Nothing had been thrown at him since the boy’s apple had hit him in the mouth; the presence of the friar had deterred the urchins from their usual sport of tossing whatever refuse they could find lying about at any victim in the stocks. But obviously William, with his hatred of the Shockleys, was determined to see that there was a little sport at his expense before the stocks were opened at noon.
When he was comfortably in range, William set his basket down and motioned the two children to take their pick of the contents; a moment later a large cabbage hit Peter in the face and the two boys hooted with triumph.
The rotting vegetables would do him little harm; but it was the turnip that William held that Peter’s eyes were fixed upon. There was something about it which looked odd, and suddenly he made out what it was: cunningly embedded in it there was a large lump of flint. Its edges were razor sharp.
His eyes grew wide with horror. He opened his mouth to shout for help; but before the cry was half out, he saw the trader from Wilton coil his body like a spring and hurl the terrible missile at him with all his might.
He felt the back of his head crack against the top of the stocks as he instinctively tried to dodge; his face winced and his eyes closed tightly. He heard a thump and a cry. But he felt nothing. Could William have missed?
As he opened his eyes, he saw with astonishment that the young friar was lying three feet in front of him, struggling to get up; blood was streaming from a huge gash in his forehead. In the background, William had picked up his basket and was scurrying hastily away.
How the friar had seen what was happening and managed to throw himself in the stone’s path he never knew.
“Why did you do that?” he asked in wonder.
Young Giovanni looked up at him ruefully.
“Didn’t they tell you, Franciscans are all a bit simpleminded?” Then he fainted.
A number of the men in the market had seen what had happened and they stared after the departing trader with disgust. Two men hurried from their stalls to help the friar to his feet and a third went in search of the bishop’s bailiff. Within minutes Peter found himself free.
The next day he and his father went to visit the friars’ house. Giovanni was already up and about, but he had a large, jagged wound on his forehead that he would carry as a scar for the rest of his life. He was cheerful.
“Made it up with your father yet?” he asked.
Peter Shockley was never a religious man, but for the rest of his life he was known to make regular donations to the Franciscan friars of New Salisbury.
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