London (33 page)

Beside the riverbank were moored three large wooden barges, one full of rubble, the second piled with ragstone from Kent, and the third containing a hard, pale stone from Caen in Normandy. Gangs of men were dragging handcarts from the river up to the foundations of the Tower.

They were massive. The keep itself was over a hundred feet square, and whenever he stared down into the growing foundations, young Osric’s heart sank. The trench that stretched before him each morning seemed endless. Not only was it long and deep, its width too was amazing: at their base, the walls of the new Tower were as much as twenty-six feet wide. As the masons quietly tap-tapped on the anvil of London, whole bargeloads of stone disappeared into this vast cavity like molten ore into an enormous open mould.

How hard the work was. For months he had hauled the carts up the mound until his small back was almost breaking. Often, his face red from the heat and exertion, his mouth and eyes full of dust, he would try to rest his weary body until a flick of Ralph’s whip or a kick from one of the foremen sent him miserably back to his task. His stubby hands, once raw, were now covered with calluses. Only one thing made his life bearable, and that was to watch the carpenters.

There was a great deal of work for carpenters on a building site like this. There were wooden ramps, hoists and scaffolding; in due course there would also be beams to make, and floorboards. Whenever he had a spare moment, he would hang around them, watching all they did. It was only natural. Coming from a family that had always supplied the village with craftsmen, he was instinctively drawn to such men. And in their turn, the carpenters, sensing his ability, would let him wander among them and sometimes show him the tricks of their trade.

How he longed to work with the carpenters! It was this desire that had inspired him to make his courageous move. Thanks to a kindly craftsman, he had been practising on ends of wood for three weeks, and now, at last, he had produced something to be proud of. It was quite modest, a simple joint of two pieces of wood, but so perfectly planed, so neatly fitted, that any one of the carpenters would have been happy to call it his own work.

This was the offering he had placed in Ralph Silversleeves’s hands with the plea, “Could I not help the carpenters, sir?”

As Ralph turned it over in his large hands, he was thoughtful. If this serf of his master’s could be turned into a good craftsman, Mandeville would no doubt be glad of it. Certainly this squat little fellow with his large head and his split nose was of no particular value as a heavy labourer. At that moment, Osric was about to get his heart’s desire.

But for one fatal mistake.

“So, you think you could be a carpenter?” Ralph idly enquired.

Supposing it would help his cause, Osric replied eagerly: “Oh yes, sir. My older brother is a fine craftsman. I’m sure I could be one too.” And then wondered why a strange flicker almost like a wince of pain passed across the overseer’s face.

Poor Osric. He could not have known about the nerve he had struck. If I can never hope to equal my clever older brother, thought Ralph, why should this miserable fellow hope to equal his?

Calmly, therefore, and, it seemed, with a kind of grim pleasure, the big-nosed Norman delivered his verdict.

“Your brother is a carpenter, Osric. But you are only a beast of burden, and so, my little friend, you shall remain.”

Then, for no obvious reason, he flicked his whip across the boy’s solemn face before sending him back to work.

The two men sat facing each other across a table. For a while neither of them spoke as they considered their dangerous work, though either could have said, “If we get caught, they’ll kill us.”

It was Barnikel who had called the meeting in his house by the little church of All Hallows, which now overlooked the rising Tower, and he had done so for a simple reason. For the first time in the ten years of their criminal activities, he had just confessed: “I’m worried.” And he had outlined his problem.

To which Alfred had just offered a solution.

When Alfred the armourer looked back, it often amazed him how easily he had been drawn into the business. He had hardly realized it was happening. It had all started ten years ago, the summer that Barnikel’s wife had suddenly died. All Barnikel’s friends and family had rallied round, taking turns to keep him company. His children had encouraged the young apprentice to go too. Then, one evening, just as he was leaving, the Dane had put his huge arm round Alfred’s shoulders and muttered into his ear: “Would you do a little job for me? It could be dangerous.” He had hardly thought about it. Didn’t he owe the Dane everything? “Of course,” he had replied. “Your master the armourer will tell you what to do,” Barnikel had said quietly, and left it at that.

The situation at the time had often been tense. King William’s hold on his lands was by no means secure yet. In London, Mandeville was edgy and curfews were frequently imposed. Meanwhile the needs of the Norman garrison kept the armourers occupied. Many times after the evening curfew bell had signalled the end of labour, Alfred and his master had toiled on alone.

And then one autumn evening, the master had remarked to Alfred, “I’ve one more job tonight. But you can go.” When Alfred volunteered to help, the older man had continued quietly: “This one is for Barnikel. You don’t have to stay.”

In the short silence that followed, Alfred had understood. “I’ll do it,” he had said.

After that fateful night, master and apprentice had often stayed late in the workshop. Since their work was ostensibly for Mandeville, their strange hours gave rise to no suspicion. All the same, they were careful, always barring the door and keeping their official work on hand so that they could hide the illicit arms and display the regular ones while the door was being opened.

For Alfred, it was wonderful training. There was almost nothing now that he could not tackle. Helmets, swords, shields and spearheads he made by the dozen. The fact that he had concealed his skill from his fellow apprentices now came in doubly useful. For while they knew that he had made progress, those who saw him by day would have been astonished to see how at night, side by side with the master, his fingers flew. As they stored the arms they produced secretly under the floor, only one thing had puzzled him. Who exactly were these weapons for?

Then, one night, Barnikel had come with packhorses and removed the arms. Where he was going he would not say. Soon afterwards, however, a huge rebellion had broken out in the north and east of Britain, the Danes had landed in support, and in East Anglia a brave English noble named Hereward the Wake had led a revolt.

On that occasion, King William had ruthlessly crushed the rebels and devastated much of the north. Four years later, the Danes had tried again. This year, with William’s son in rebellion in Normandy, more rumours were flying.

Alfred had also noticed something else. Each time, the request for arms had come not at the time of the revolt, but many months before.

Yet this should not have surprised him. After all, the great Nordic network – that huge pattern of Viking settlements linking traders from the Arctic to the Mediterranean – was very much alive. Beyond the Thames Estuary lay the vast highway of the northern waters, where the voices of the sagas echoed still, and scarcely a month passed without some new whispers stealing around the seas. Barnikel the Viking trader still heard many things.

And now, with the king over the sea in Normandy, it seemed that Barnikel knew something else. In the last three months they had made spears, swords and a huge quantity of arrowheads. Who were they for? Was Hereward the Wake still at large in the forests, as some believed? Were Norsemen even now making ready their Viking longships? No one knew, but the king was rebuilding his Tower in stone, and Mandeville, it was said, had spies in every street. No one, so far as he was aware, suspected the armourer, but it was plain that, this time, Barnikel was concerned.

The last decade had changed Alfred too. He was a fully fledged armourer now. Before long, he would take over from the old master. Four years ago he had married; already there were three children. He was more cautious nowadays. Of course, if Barnikel was right, if King William was ousted by a revolt and replaced, perhaps, with a Danish king, then his secret work would, no doubt, be well rewarded. But if he was wrong . . .

“The trouble,” Barnikel had explained, “is that I daren’t risk the packhorses any more. There are too many spies. We need something else.”

It was then that Alfred had made his suggestion.

Now, having considered it, the Dane nodded his huge red beard. “It might work,” he agreed. “But we’d need a good carpenter we could trust. Do we know one?”

Two days later, on a quiet summer evening, Hilda made her way down the hill from St Paul’s and passed out of the city through Ludgate.

The Tower was not the Conqueror’s only new castle in London. Though on a much smaller scale, here on the city’s western side a pair of new forts were being erected beside the gate nearest the river. But their looming presence did not affect Hilda’s mood. Indeed, she was smiling, for she was going to meet the man she called her lover.

It was fortunate, Hilda realized, that she had never loved her husband. Thanks to this, she had suffered no great disappointment, since she had always seen him for what he was.

And what was he? Henri Silversleeves was clever and hard-working. She had observed him in his business dealings. If he lacked his father’s sense of strategy, he was a master of the swift stroke. He despised Ralph, though he had learned to be polite to him. “Why Father insists he inherits half the family fortune, I can’t think,” he had once remarked to her. “At least, thank God, he hasn’t any children of his own.” Henri’s passion, she knew, was for the Silversleeves fortune. It was like a fortress of which he was the constable, and which she knew he would never surrender. And so competent was he that nowadays his father frequently spent time at an estate he had obtained near Hatfield, a day’s journey north of London.

For Hilda’s family, the marriage had achieved its objective. When the Conqueror confiscated most of the estates in Kent, her father, Leofric, had lost Bocton, just as he had feared. But Silversleeves had come to the rescue, and it was a joy now to see her father, free of his debts, building a solid fortune to hand on to her brother Edward. Yes, she thought, she had done the right thing.

As for herself? She lived in the fine stone house near St Paul’s. Henri had already given her two children, a boy and a girl. He was thoughtful. He paid her every attention. Indeed, she supposed that Henri might have been a good husband if it had not been for the fact that his heart was entirely cold.

“You certainly have a fine position,” Leofric had remarked to her. It was true. She had even met the king, for the Silversleeves family had attended him several times at the king’s hall at Westminster when he held court there at Whitsun. King William, bulky, florid, with a large moustache and piercing eyes, had addressed her in French, which, thanks to her husband, she now spoke prettily, and had been so pleased with her replies that he had turned to his entire court. “You see,” he had declared, “here is a young Norman with an English wife proving that the two can live contentedly together.” And he had beamed at her. “Well done,” Henri had whispered, and she had felt proud of herself.

The following year, however, a less happy incident had occurred in the same place.

Her father’s attitude to the Norman king was pragmatic: “I don’t like it, but he’s probably here to stay, so we must make the best of it.” Consequently, on hearing that the king wanted falcons for his hunting, Leofric had gone to great trouble and expense to find a magnificent pair of hawks, and when Hilda and her husband were next summoned to court, he brought them and gave them to her with the instruction: “Present them to William from me.”

With delight, therefore, she had watched as her husband’s servants carried in the two heavy cages and the king exclaimed with pleasure: “I’ve never seen finer ones. Where did you get them?” And she had been completely unprepared when Henri, in front of her and without a blush, had quickly interposed:

“I searched far and wide, sire.”

Then he had smiled at her.

She could not contradict her husband in front of the king. She could only stare at him. But after a moment, as a cold pain shot through her, she felt something die. Perhaps, she considered afterwards, she might have forgiven him if he had not smiled at her.

So now, as she walked out to meet her lover, she felt only a sense of duty for Henri. Nothing more.

Just across the wooden bridge over the Fleet, where once there had been a sacred well, there now stood a little stone church dedicated to a Celtic saint often associated with such watery places: St Bridget, or, as she was called in this case, St Bride. And by the little church of St Bride’s, which stared across to Ludgate, he was waiting for her patiently.

Barnikel of Billingsgate was in love.

The Conquest of England had hit the Dane hard. The lands he owned in Essex had been taken by the Normans. For a while he had wondered if he would be ruined, but he had managed to hold his business together in London, and to his great surprise Silversleeves had remained scrupulous about paying him the interest on Leofric’s old debt. Even his youngest son, whom he had so passionately intended for the Saxon’s girl, had made an excellent marriage. The boy lived with his father-in-law now, whose business he would in due course take over. “Things could be far worse,” his wife had liked to remind him. But then she herself had suddenly died and for some months afterwards the Dane had felt the heart go out of him.

Since then two things had kept him going. The first was his secret battle against the Norman conquerors. That he had vowed to continue until his dying day.

The second was Hilda.

They had been shy of each other at first, both regretting the family rift, but once Barnikel’s son was married, they felt less awkward when they met in the West Cheap and often paused to exchange a few friendly words. Learning where she took her evening walks, he had fallen into the habit of strolling out across the Fleet at times when she might be there. For a long time, even a year after his wife had died, the Dane had supposed he felt only a fatherly affection for her, while she, perceiving the truth far sooner, said nothing.