London (28 page)

As the congregation started to move out, he remained where he was, and this time the two friends saw him. He bowed.

Leofric returned the bow briefly.

The Saxon is careful, he thought. So much the better. But the Dane, flushed with relief, turned to him with a contemptuous growl.

“We have an English king, thank God. So keep your great French nose out of our business.” He stomped out, while Leofric looked embarrassed.

The strange figure said nothing. He did not like people referring to his nose.

Leofric stared at the girl. Then he grimaced. After standing about in the cold all day, his back was hurting abominably. But it was not the pain that made him frown.

How innocent she looked. He had always thought of himself as a decent man. A man of his word. A good father. How, then, could he betray her like this?

He was sitting on a stout oak bench. Before him, on a trestle table, a fat-burning lamp smoked continuously. The hall was spacious. The timber walls were roughly plastered; on one hung an embroidery depicting a deer hunt. There were three small windows covered with oilcloth. The wooden floor was carpeted with rushes. In the middle stood a large brazier full of smouldering charcoal, its smoke drifting into the thatched roof above. Below was a large basement for storing goods; outside, a yard surrounded by outbuildings, and a little orchard. An improved version, in fact, of the old homestead of his ancestor Cerdic over at the Aldwych.

Again he considered the message he had received the day before. He was not sure what it meant, but he thought he guessed. And if he was right? Perhaps there was a way out. But he could not see it. He must do this terrible thing.

“Hilda.” He beckoned. How obediently she came.

Outside the snow had stopped. Only a pall of cloud remained, beneath which the city of London lay quiet.

Though Winchester, in the west, was still the senior Saxon royal seat, the London of Leofric the merchant was a busy place. Over ten thousand people – traders, craftsmen, and churchmen – dwelt there now. Like some huge, long-neglected walled garden, the ancient city had gradually been reclaimed. King Alfred had restored the Roman walls. A pair of Saxon villages, each with its own market, which the Saxons called
cheaps
, and a crude grid of streets had spread over the twin hills. Wharves appeared, and a new wooden bridge. Coins were minted there. But with its thatched and timbered houses, its barns, halls, wooden churches and muddy streets, Saxon London still had the air of a large market town.

Reminders of the Roman past remained, though. The line of the lower of the two great thoroughfares across the city was still discernible. Entering through the western gate, now called Ludgate, it crossed the western hill below St Paul’s and ended on the riverside slope of the eastern hill in the Saxon market of East Cheap. The outline of the upper Roman street was vaguer. Passing through the western wall at Newgate and crossing above St Paul’s, it lay under the long, open space of the West Cheap, but then, as it struck across to the eastern hill, it vanished ignominiously into some cowsheds where a Saxon track now led up to the eastern summit, known, because of the grain grown on its slopes, as Cornhill.

Of the great forum, not a trace remained. Of the amphitheatre, there was only a low outline in which some Saxon buildings had arisen and ash trees grew. Here and there, however, a broken arch or a marble stump might yet be found sheltering by a wattled fence, or brushing the thatched roof of some busy workshop.

The city’s only impressive building was the long, barn-like, Saxon structure of St Paul’s, with its high wooden roof. The most colourful place, the long stretch of the West Cheap, ran across from the cathedral, and was always full of stalls.

Halfway along the West Cheap on its southern side, beside a tiny Saxon church dedicated to St Mary, a lane led down to an old well beside which stood a handsome homestead which, for some reason already forgotten, was graced with a heavy hanging sign depicting a bull. And since it was his hall, people would often refer to the rich Saxon merchant who lived there as Leofric, who dwells at the Bull.

She stood meekly before him, dressed in a simple woollen smock. What a good girl Hilda was. He smiled. What was she? Thirteen? Her breasts had just formed. Her leggings, bound with leather thongs, showed well-shaped calves. She was a little thick in the ankle, he considered, but that was a minor fault. She had a broad, unworried forehead, and though her fair hair might be a little thin, her pale blue eyes had a calm innocence that was charming. Was there fire within? He was not sure. Perhaps it did not matter.

The problem for both of them lay on the table in front of Leofric. It was a short stick, nine inches long, scored with notches of various widths and depths. This was a tally. The notches marked his debts and showed that Leofric was facing ruin.

How had he got into this mess? Like other large London traders, he had two main lines of business. He imported French wine and other goods through a merchant in the Norman city of Caen, and he sold English wool for export to the great clothmakers of Flanders in the Low Countries. The trouble was that recently his operations had grown too large. Small fluctuations in the price of wine or wool could be critical to his fortunes. Then a cargo of wool had been lost at sea. The loan from Barnikel had helped him over that problem. “But even so,” he confessed to his wife, “I owe Becket in Caen for the last shipment of wine, and he’s going to have to wait for his money.”

The family had always kept the old Bocton estate in Kent. Many successful merchants in London had such estates; Barnikel himself had a big landholding in Essex. At present, it was only the revenues from his land that allowed Leofric to keep his business going.

And here was the danger.

“For if England is attacked,” he reasoned, “and Harold loses, then many estates, including my own, will probably be confiscated by the winner.” Either way, the harvest might be lost. With his finances on a knife edge, it could mean ruin.

Leofric pondered. He glanced to the corner where his wife and son sat in the shadows. If only little Edward were twenty, old enough to marry well and fend for himself, instead of ten. If only it were not necessary to provide a dowry for his daughter. If only his own debts were less. How like him the boy already looked. What must he do to protect those estates for him?

And now this message, strange and disturbing. How much did the long-nosed Norman know about his business affairs? And why should the fellow want to help him? As for his offer . . .

Leofric was not used to moral dilemmas. For the Saxon, as for his ancestors, a thing was either right or wrong, and that was the end of it. But this was not so easy. He gazed at Hilda and sighed. Her life should be simple, even placid. Could he really consider sacrificing her to keep his son’s estates? Many men would, of course. In the Anglo-Saxon world, as all over Europe, daughters were bargaining chips in all classes of society.

“I may need your help,” he began.

He spoke for some time in a low tone, and she listened quietly. What did he want her to say? Did he want her to protest? All he knew was that when he had finished, he heard her gentle reply with a sinking heart.

“I will do whatever you wish, Father, if you are in need of help.”

Gloomily he thanked her and then motioned her away.

No, he decided, he could not do it. There must be some other way. But why, he wondered, did some accursed little voice inside him caution: You never know what may happen?

It was just then that his thoughts were interrupted by a neighbour’s voice calling from outside.

“Leofric. Come here and look!”

He watched the chessmen thoughtfully, as though they might move of their own accord. In the candlelight, his long nose cast a shadow on the chequered board before him.

For a moment his mind returned to the events of that afternoon. He had planned his moves, considered every eventuality. He only had to wait a little longer. Since he had been waiting for twenty-five years, he could afford to be patient.

“Your move,” he remarked, and the young man sitting opposite reached forward.

Both sons resembled their father. Both were sombre; both bore the burden of the family nose. But Henri had his father’s brains, which the slightly larger and more thickset Ralph had not. Ralph was out in the town somewhere. Drinking, probably. Henri made his move.

No one knew exactly when the game of chess had first reached England. Certainly King Canute had played. Originally from the Orient, in the West it had undergone certain alterations. The Oriental king’s minister had become a queen, whilst the pair of magnificent elephants bearing howdahs – strange figures to the Europeans – had been transformed, because the shape of the howdah vaguely resembled a mitre, into a pair of bishops.

The hall in which this game of chess was being played was rare indeed in Saxon London, for it was built of stone. It was situated just below St Paul’s, at the top of the steep hill down towards the Thames. This was London’s finest quarter, where several great churchmen and nobles had their houses – a sure sign that its owner was a man of some importance.

A quarter of a century had passed since he had come to London from the Norman city of Caen, where his family were prominent merchants. Such a move was not unusual. At the mouth of the brook that descended between the city’s twin hills, there lay two enclosed wharves. On the eastern side was the wharf of the German merchants; on the western side, that of the French-speaking merchants from Norman towns such as Rouen and Caen. Chiefly engaged in the lucrative wine trade, these foreigners had been granted many commercial privileges and some settled permanently and became burghers of London.

Would he have stayed here if he had not lost the girl in Caen? Probably not. He had been so sure she was his; he had loved her since she was a child. What had he loved? Was it her little snub nose, so different from his own heavy protuberance? As the years passed, that was the only thing he could precisely recall about her, yet deep within him, the sharp remembrance of that pain remained like a lodestar to guide him on his way.

And to have lost her to a Becket. Whenever his family’s hatred of these rival merchants had begun, it had certainly existed by his grandfather’s day. It was not just a question of business. There was something in their character. And it was not just that they were quick, lively, clever and charming, though that was bad enough. They all had a truculence, a deep-seated egotism that irritated many, and which his family had learned to loathe.

She had been his. Until one day, round a corner, he had heard young Becket talking to her. They were laughing.

“How will you kiss him, my dear? The nose is an impenetrable barrier – don’t you see? A fortress that no one has ever got past. It’s magnificent, of course. One admires it like a mountain. But don’t you know that since Noah’s Flood, no member of that family has ever been kissed?”

He had turned away. He was fifteen. The very next day, she had been cool towards him. A year later she had married young Becket. After that, his home town had become hateful to him.

The years of Edward the Confessor had been good for him. In London he had married and prospered, made useful friends in Edward’s cosmopolitan court, and become a valued benefactor of St Paul’s cathedral, a man of importance.

He had also gained a new name.

It had happened one morning soon after his marriage. Walking along the stalls in the West Cheap he had paused at a long table where some silversmiths were working. Fascinated, he had leaned over the table to watch them, and remained there some time. It was when he was finally moving away that the voice had called out: “Look, that one must be rich. He’s got silver sleeves.”

Silver sleeves. He thought about it. Silversleeves. And since it made no reference to his nose, and suggested he was rich, he decided to adopt it. Silversleeves: a rich man’s name. “And soon I’ll deserve it,” he had promised his wife.

Now, as Silversleeves gazed at the chessboard, he allowed himself a faint smile. He loved chess, with its play of power and its secret harmonies. In his years of trading he had learned to look for similar patterns in his business. And had found them. Sometimes subtle, often cruel, the affairs of men were like an elaborate game to Silversleeves.

He enjoyed playing chess with Henri. Though Henri lacked his father’s deep strategy, he was a masterful tactician, brilliant in improvising sudden solutions. Silversleeves had tried to teach his younger son too, but Ralph could not follow the game, getting into embarrassed rages while Henri looked on with mild contempt.

If he was secretly disappointed in Ralph, however, Silversleeves never showed it. Indeed, like many a clever father he felt a protective affection for his stupid son, doing his best to make the brothers friends and assuring their mother: “They will share my fortune equally.”

Nevertheless, it was Henri who would one day run the business. Already the young man thoroughly understood the details of making, shipping and storing wine. He also knew his customers. And at quiet times like this, Silversleeves could share other, deeper thoughts with him to improve his understanding. This evening, his mind full of the calculations of the last few days, he decided to broach a most important subject.

“I have an interesting case to consider,” he began. “A man with debts.” He gazed at his son thoughtfully. “Who, generally, is stronger, Henri – a man with cash or a man with debts?”

“A man with cash.”

“Suppose, though, that a man owes you a debt and can’t pay?”

“He’ll be ruined,” Henri replied coolly.

“But then you lose what you lent him.”

“Unless I seize all he has in payment. But if that’s worth nothing, then I lose.”

“So as long as he owes you money, you fear him?” Seeing Henri nod, he went on. “But now consider this. What if this man
can
in fact pay you what he owes, but chooses not to? Now you fear him because he has your money, but since he
can
pay, he does not fear you.”