Sarum (80 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
His own gloom was made deeper when, in early November, he saw the girl Mary. She was standing in the street at Avonsford as he was riding through one evening, and though her head was lowered in respect, he was aware of her squinting up at him as he passed. He paused to say a word to her, but after he told her that perhaps the young man might escape with his life, she only shook her head morosely and pointed to her stomach.
He stared at her.
“Pregnant?”
She nodded.
“We’ll do what we can for him.”
She looked up. Her face seemed to wear a kind of scorn, though it was hard to tell.
“He’s killed a deer, hasn’t he? So he’ll behung.” Her voice was flat, but bitter.
He could not remember what he had replied before he had ridden on, but he knew that she was probably right.
Nor as the day approached did there seem to be any more hope. News came that the rebels now had taken not only Worcester and Hereford, but two more castles in the south west as well.
“Perhaps the forest justices will not come,” he suggested to the warden: but Waleran shook his head:
“The king holds all the country except the west. They’ll come.”
It was only on the night before the swanimote that Nicholas came to him with a last proposal. He arrived at the manor at dusk; his round face seemed thinner than usual, drawn with worry; his short, thick fingers were clasped round a small leather pouch which he handed solemnly to the knight and asked him to open it. Godefroi counted the contents out on the table. The bag contained nine marks: six pounds: a sum that it must have taken him years to collect. Nicholas stood awkwardly, afraid to look at Godefroi, but obviously determined.
“What’s this, Masoun?” the knight asked.
“For the agister,” Nicholas replied solemnly.
“Nine marks.”
“It’s all I have my lord.”
Godefroi frowned.
“You mean you wish me to bribe him?” He thought of the stiff, humourless agister, always so precise with every detail of his accounts.
Nicholas reddened, but nodded.
The knight of Avonsford was half angry and half amused.
“You really think he’d take it?”
“Men say he does,” the stoneworker mumbled.
Godefroi was astounded. He had known Nicholas all his life and he knew he would not lie. Obviously there were underhand dealings at Sarum that he did not know about.
“And you dare to ask me to do this?” he thundered.
Nicholas looked at the floor. His stubby hands trembled, but he did not move.
“I am only a poor villein, my lord. The agister would not speak to me.”
But he’d take the fellow’s money, Godefroi thought.
“Get out!” he roared.
Nicholas left hastily. But the nine marks remained on the table.
The following morning, moved by curiosity as much as anything else, Godefroi went early to the agister’s house. Without a word, he tossed him the little bag; and was astonished by the response. With exactly the same blank stare and fixed smile with which he did everything else, Le Portier carefully counted the money.
“You want the boy to get off?” he asked.
“Obviously,” the knight replied drily.
The agister’s expression was serene.
“Nine marks is not enough.”
“It’s all there is.”
Le Portier shook his head. Scarcely able to believe his ears, Godefroi demanded:
“How much then?”
“For Godric Body? Twelve marks.”
With a gesture of contempt the knight gave him three more marks. The agister bowed politely.
“How will you get him off?”
Le Portier considered carefully before speaking.
“The deer was a raskell, you know,” he said thoughtfully. The meant that it was not fit enough for the king’s hunting. “The crime would still be serious, but the court would be less interested. Fewer questions asked.” He paused. “Then,” he pursed his thin lips, “I saw an identical snare set the other day, and a man running away from it. Godric Body was locked up by them, so it probably wasn’t him that set the original snare at all.”
Godefroi listened carefully.
“As for his slitting the deer’s thoat,” Le Portier went on, “I shall say I told him to, seeing her leg was broken. I assumed he had set the snare you see, so in that sense he was caught bloody-handed. Of course, if he didn’t, he wasn’t.” He appeared satisfied. “Of course, the dog will have to be lawed. He’ll pay a fine for that.”
Godefroi could not help admiring the fellow’s cleverness.
“You should have been a priest,” he muttered darkly, and strode away. It was well known that the forest officers often made a profitable business out of their offices, usually by making illegal charges – a mild if reprehensible form of extortion. But the agister’s calm game with the boy’s life appalled him.
“I hope I see you hang one day,” he called back to him; at which Le Portier only stared and gave his tight-lipped smile.
A strange fellow, the knight concluded. He knew nothing of Le Portier’s distant ancestry, and the idea that the agister’s Porteus ancestors had fought with the real King Arthur would have astonished him indeed. And so it was with a flash of insight that he murmured:
“As stiff and exact as an ancient Roman: but his only point of honour is the precision with which he takes money – anyone’s.”
As he rode to the castle of Sarisberie, his anger gradually subsided.
At least, he thought, he had saved the boy.
The meeting of the swanimote took most of the morning, but at last the court was convened.
It was held in a hall in the castle: Waleran presided. All the forest officers were present: the inspecting knights, the verderers, foresters, woodwards and agisters. Each wore on their tunic the badge of their office – a bow for the warden, a horn for the foresters. A jury of twelve was selected from those present and then the court was in session. Though it was strictly a private court, the doors were left open and a small crowd pushed their way inside. Godefroi stood at the front; Nicholas a few paces from him. Out of the corner of his eye, the knight saw both the girl Mary and William atte Brigge working their way through the throng as the proceedings began.
The warden lost no time. As Godric was brought in, he turned sharply to the agister.
“Make your statement, Le Portier,” he ordered.
Godefroi watched intently as the agister rose. His face was calm, and the knight thought he allowed the hint of a smile to cross his face as he glanced in his direction.
“The accusation is not quite as previously stated,” he began smoothly.
But he got no further.
For the court was interrupted by a shout.
On the morning before the trial, Mary knew very well that Godric Body was about to be hung; and as she considered her new situation, the future was bleak.
She was poor; she was ill-favoured, and soon she would have a child. If she had not secured Godric, perhaps she might have found another man, though it had always been doubtful; but who would marry her now? She knew the answer very well. And she was only fourteen.
Once again, she had to ask herself the questions she had pondered the midsummer before. Would her life be long? She thought she could see it. She might work in the manor dairy for another forty years if she was lucky; or she might work in the fields and probably die sooner. Meanwhile, there would be the child to support.
“I wish it would die,” she thought.
But she was sure the child within her was healthy.
Her situation was made all the plainer for her by the behaviour of the people in the village. Nicholas was too preoccupied with his own plans to have given the girl much more than a passing thought; most of the other villeins and their families, though they sympathised, instinctively avoided her, and even her parents were cool, fearing that she might be a liability to them.
“We can’t afford to keep you and the child,” her mother told her bluntly. “You’d have to keep yourselves.”
She had been allowed to see Godric two days before. He asked her to bring him some pieces of wood from his cottage so that he could fashion another shepherd’s crook to pass the time. But when she had brought them to him, he had been withdrawn: not because he had wished to hurt her, but from a feeling of helplessness.
“Is there a chance for you?” she had asked.
He had shaken his head; and soon afterwards she had gone.
On the morning of the trial, knowing nothing of Le Portier’s bribe, she went into Sarisberie; and as she had expected, William atte Brigge was in the little market place with the other men. When she asked if he were still offering the reward for information about the pig she had learned that he was. And so she told him all she knew, because, after all, she reasoned perfectly, it must be done soon so that Godric could testify to the truth of it and tell them where the pig was buried. William atte Brigge roared with exultation, and better still, he gave her the money on the spot, took her by the arm and dragged her towards the court, just as the crowd was going in.
It had seemed the sensible thing to do.
While the buzz of excitement and surprise continued, the warden considered the interruption carefully.
“You accuse Godric Body of killing a second animal in the forest?”
“I do.” There was triumph in the tanner’s eye.
“If the slaying occurred within the forest bounds,” the warden said, “then it falls within the consideration of this court.” He glanced around and down at Godric. He was conscious that time was passing. “Very well. We’ll hear both charges together. You have witnesses?”
The tanner grinned. And when he pointed at Mary, the face of Godric Body fell in disbelief.
While the tanner took his place before the warden, and all eyes were upon the squinting girl, Le Portier moved quietly to where Godefroi was standing. Unobserved, he removed the small bag of coins from his belt and dropped it into the knight’s hand. Shaking his head he murmured:
“No hope.”
The trial of Godric Body before the justices of the Forest Eyre did not take long.
On the first day of December, as a light rain was falling, he was led out to the gallows erected the day before in the market place in the castle. Godefroi and Nicholas were in the crowd who were watching; so was Mary. But as he stood on the platform under the gallows and the rope was slipped over his head, it was not at her, but at his dog Harold, now duly lawed and brought there at his special request by his uncle, that he sadly gazed.
There was no sound from the crowd – neither the cry of triumph which it reserved for a villain, nor the moan it gave for a popular man – as the gallowsman gave him the shove that sent him off the platform to drop and dangle in the air. His small, hunched body jerked helplessly as the noose did its work; and as his pale, pinched face grew purple, his desperate eyes, even as they started from their sockets, never once left the dog.
It was soon over.
Just after he had gone, Harold suddenly slipped his collar and lurched across the cobbles to where his master’s body hung, so that Nicholas had to drag him away.
In the month of December 1139, several events of significance took place in the castle of Sarisberie.
On December 10, as he was visiting the market, Godefroi heard terrible cries coming from the bishop’s house, as though a madman were raging through the place. After a few moments, a servant ran out and the knight asked him what was amiss.
“The bishop, sir. The quartan fever has grown worse. I think it is a crisis. Four men are trying to hold him down and he’s quite delirious.”
It was now a month since Roger had been seen outside his house, and the whole town knew that the sickness had taken control of his massive frame.
“What is he shouting about?”
The servant grimaced.
“His castles and his treasure, sir. It’s the loss of them that caused the fever I think.”
Godefroi stared up at the house sadly. Its thick stone walls, decorated so beautifully in the zig-zag patterns Roger particularly favoured, were a tribute to his taste and wealth.
“Does the thought of God and his Church give his mind no relief?”
“No, sir.”
There was a crash from within.
“Dear God I think he’s broken loose again,” the man exclaimed, and hurried away.
On December 11, Bishop Roger died.
The next event, which followed soon afterwards, was the visit of the king. A truce had been arranged for the holy season and in his customary easy-going way, Stephen treated it as though it were a lasting peace.
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