London (35 page)

“The cart itself is built of arms!” Barnikel exclaimed with delight, hugging the little carpenter so warmly that for a moment Osric feared he might not breathe again.

He would be taking out a consignment, the Dane told Alfred, the following week.

It was quite by chance that, two days later, Hilda had an encounter with Ralph. It took place on the hill from Ludgate to St Paul’s, and Hilda was in a very bad temper. This, however, had nothing to do with Ralph.

Her anger was caused by an embroidery.

It was in those years, in King William’s England, that the largest and most famous piece of needlework that has probably ever been undertaken was made. The Bayeux Tapestry, as this extraordinary work was called, was not, in fact, a woven tapestry at all, but a huge embroidery of coloured wools stitched, in the time-honoured Anglo-Saxon manner, on linen. Though only about twenty inches high, it was an astounding seventy-seven yards long. It pictured some six hundred humans, thirty-seven ships, as many trees, and seven hundred animals. And it celebrated the Norman Conquest.

More than this, it was the first known example of English state propaganda. Arranged in the form of a huge, Anglo-Saxon strip cartoon, its stylized figures depicted, in dozens of scenes, the Norman king’s version of the events leading to the Conquest and a detailed account of the Battle of Hastings. It was commissioned by the king’s half-brother, Odo, who, though bishop of the Norman city of Bayeux, which yielded him a fine income, was also a soldier and administrator just as ruthless and ambitious as the king himself. And it was embroidered by English women, mostly in Kent, before it was finally stitched together.

There were good reasons why this magnificent work of art should so infuriate Hilda. She had not wanted to take part, but Henri had forced her to join the ladies who had been meeting in the king’s hall at Westminster to work on the project. “You will please Bishop Odo,” he had said, even though it was Odo who had been granted half of Kent and one of Odo’s knights who now occupied her own family’s ancestral estate at Bocton. Henri knew this, but did not care. The tapestry, with its vivid portrayal of events, always reminded her painfully of the loss of her old home, of her country, and of the long years of service to her husband’s cold and cynical nature.

As she returned from the ladies at Westminster that morning, therefore, Hilda’s anger was still raging.

And then she saw Ralph.

It was clear that he was excited. His heavy face was animated, his normally dull eyes were shining as, unasked, he fell into step beside her.

“Would you like to know a secret?” he began.

Sometimes Hilda felt sorry for Ralph. Partly it was because Henri despised him, but perhaps more it was because he was still unmarried.

Indeed, he had no woman. Sometimes he would cross the bridge to the south side where a small community of whores dwelt along the bankside, but even these ladies, it was said, were not enthusiastic for his blunt attentions. Occasionally she had suggested finding him a wife, but Henri had discouraged her. “Then he’ll have heirs to inherit,” he would remind her. And once he had remarked drily: “I look after the family money. And I intend to outlive him.” So as the curious fellow strode by her side, she forced herself to give him a smile.

If he had not seen his sister-in-law quite so soon after his meeting with the great Mandeville, Ralph might not have been so indiscreet. He liked Hilda. “I’m not such a fool as Henri thinks,” he had once plaintively told her. Now, flushed with excitement, he could not resist the chance to impress her.

“I have been given an important mission,” he said.

The conversation between Ralph and Mandeville had been brief but important. It was the business of the great magnate to be well informed, and little that passed in south-east England escaped his notice. From the interview, Ralph learned that there were indeed fears of further trouble in the countryside. “In the rebellion of three years ago,” Mandeville had told him, “we think they got arms from London. We want to put a stop to that.”

Having considered the matter, Mandeville had decided that to oversee the little operation he had in mind he needed a man who was suspicious, small-minded and ruthless.

“It’s a good opportunity for you to show what you can do,” he informed Ralph as he explained the plan. “You will need to be patient, and you will need spies.”

“I’ll tear apart every cart that leaves London,” the overseer cried.

“You will do no such thing,” Mandeville replied. “In fact, I want you to relax the inspection of goods leaving the city.” He smiled. “The trick is to lull their suspicions. Have men posted in the woods instead, and when they see any suspicious shipments, follow them. We don’t just want to stop the arms. I want them to lead us to any rebels. Above all, tell nobody. Do you understand?”

Indeed he did. A position of trust. A secret commission. Bursting with pride, Ralph had walked through the city. It was hardly surprising that, seeing Hilda and anxious to impress her, he had instantly decided:

“I can tell you, of course, because you’re my own family.”

If it had not been for her irritation over the morning’s needlework, Ralph’s confidence might not even have interested her. But now, as she looked at his heavy face, a brutish version of her own husband’s, and thought of the wretched English – her own people – whom he would trap and no doubt kill, she experienced a feeling of revulsion.

The truth was, she realized, that she had become sick of them all, of Henri, of Ralph, of the Normans and their rule. There was, of course, nothing she could do about any of it. Except, perhaps, for one thing.

“You must be very proud,” she said to Ralph as she left him.

She was due to go up to her father-in-law’s estate at Hatfield the next week, where she would stay for a month. It was not a prospect she relished much, and so she had arranged to enjoy a quiet walk with Barnikel that evening, knowing it was the last they would have for some time.

When they met at St Bride’s, therefore, and began their usual stroll towards the Aldwych, she quietly confided to him everything that Ralph had told her, adding: “I know, after all, that you are no friend of the Normans. So if you know who should be warned, will you do it?”

It was then, on seeing Barnikel’s evident dismay at the news, and shrewdly guessing he must be more closely involved than she had realized, that Hilda, with a sudden and generous impulse, caught the older man’s arm and softly asked: “Is there some way, dear friend, that I can help you?”

The road north from London first passed across marshy meadows and fields and then, as the ground began to rise, entered the forest of Middlesex near the old Saxon village of Islington.

Ten days after his meeting with Mandeville, a hot Ralph Silversleeves, accompanied by a dozen armed riders, rode southwards out of the forest in a lather of frustration.

He had just come from a meeting with his men, and it had not been a happy experience. His spies had found nothing. “Not so much as a pitchfork,” one of them told him grumpily. “Maybe they were tipped off,” he had added. “Impossible!” Ralph had cried. When another had asked him, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” he had struck the fellow in a fury.

Now, as he rode back, he could sense that the men behind had little confidence in him. Somehow, he had no idea how, he had the feeling that he had been duped. He was even becoming suspicious of his own spies.

And then he saw the wagon.

There was clearly something suspicious about it. It was large and covered, and was obviously carrying a heavy load as it creaked along, pulled by four big horses. Beside the driver sat a figure in a hood.

It was now that Ralph lost his presence of mind. It seemed to the overwrought Norman that at last he might have found his quarry. Forgetting entirely his instructions from Mandeville, he rode straight at the wagon, as though it might take wings and fly, bellowing at the driver to stop. “Halt and uncover, you traitors,” he screamed. “You dogs!”

Only as he drew up, panting, beside them, did the mysterious figure throw back her hood and cast at him a look of utter scorn. It was Hilda.

“Idiot!” she cried so that all his men could hear. “Henri always told me you were a fool.” Then, whipping back the cover from the wagon, she revealed its harmless cargo. “Flagons of wine,” she shouted. “A present from your own brother to your father. I’m taking them up to Hatfield.” And she made as if to strike him with the driver’s whip so convincingly that he backed away hastily, puce in the face.

There was laughter from the men. Humiliated and enraged, Ralph shouted for them to follow, and without even glancing behind, rode quickly down the lane towards London.

Five weeks later, by the church of St Bride, where no one seemed to be about, Barnikel of Billingsgate allowed himself to place a chaste kiss upon the forehead of his new conspirator.

Then they walked contentedly along the riverbank.

It did not occur to either of them that this time they were being discreetly followed.

1081

It was in his twentieth year that Osric became aware of the girl. She was sixteen.

He did not tell anyone about her. Not even his friend Alfred the armourer.

It was curious to see the two men together. Alfred was master of the armoury now. The shock of white hair over his forehead had become almost invisible since the rest of his hair had gone grey. He had become rather stout. He gave orders to his apprentices in a voice of authority, and his wife and four children obeyed him in all things.

But he had not forgotten the day when Barnikel had found him starving by the London Stone, and so, trying to pass on that kindness to another, he did all he could to help his poor little friend. Not only did his family see to it that Osric had a square meal at least once a week, but he had even offered to buy the serf his freedom several times. Here, however, he had been unsuccessful. By one means or another, Ralph had always contrived to stop him. “I’m sorry,” Alfred had told the young fellow. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Though based on little enough, Ralph’s hatred for the serf had by now hardened into a habit. “In a way, Osric,” he had once sneered, “I think I almost love you.” It was perfectly true. The little labourer was a living object he could hurt whenever he wished; if Osric loathed him in return, it only gave him more satisfaction. And nothing gave him greater pleasure than thwarting Osric’s attempts to break free. “Don’t worry,” he promised, “I’ll never let you go.”

She was small. Her long dark hair was parted in the middle; her skin was white. The only colour in her face came from her lips, which were small but red. All of which suggested, though Osric did not know it, that her ancestry was Celtic, perhaps Roman too.

The labourers were quartered in a series of wooden buildings set along the inside of the old Roman wall by the riverbank. Here they had been left to make their own arrangements. Some, like Osric, claimed nothing more than a particular patch of straw. Others, having found women, had with bits of wood or bales of straw constructed for themselves what privacy they could, so that by now whole families had colonized this or that corner of the place. They were a motley collection. Some were serfs sent by landholders who owed service to the king; some were slaves; a number, like Osric, bore mutilations that showed them to have been guilty of some crime. Discipline was lax. Ralph cared little for what passed amongst the labourers so long as they worked.

Her father had been the cook and while he was alive they had eaten well. But two years ago he had died, and since then their life had been hard. Her mother, used for sundry odd jobs, was sickly, her hands increasingly swollen and aching from arthritis, and with no one else in the world to help them, the girl had to do what she could to protect her. A sickly serf woman without a family did not live long in these times. The girl’s name was Dorkes.

He had first noticed her in December. The labourers were kept working at the Tower in all weathers, but that winter had been particularly harsh, and one day, two weeks before Christmas, the order was given: “Stop work.”

“When it freezes like this,” the foreman explained to him, “the wet mortar turns to ice and then it cracks.” The next day, many of the serfs were sent back to their villages while the men remaining were led out and told, “Now we have to cover the walls.”

It was a big but necessary task to insulate the huge open tops of the walls. It was also a smelly one, for the material used was a mixture of warmed dung and straw. “But it works,” the foreman assured him, and soon the huge, grey walls were crowned with layers of manure and thatch.

Despite the cold, at the end of each day Osric was anxious to wash himself and so he would quite often go down to the Thames bank and jump into the water fully clothed before hurrying back to the barn where he could strip and dry his clothes by the brazier. It was at this time that he became aware there was another person in the camp who also went down to the water, at dawn and at dusk, to wash herself. This was Dorkes.

She was very clean, and very quiet. Those were the first things the little fellow noticed about her. Also that she seemed physically rather underdeveloped. A little mouse, he thought, and smiled at her. But he did not, just then, pay her any other attention. He had other things to think about.

Since his job for Alfred and Barnikel three years before, there had been no more adventures. Apart from the outbreak in the north, England had remained quiet. Whatever Barnikel had hoped for when he shipped the arms, it appeared to have come to nothing. Osric suspected that the old Dane had continued to stockpile arms, but he was not sure.

His life was bearable, though. Most of the time, of course, there was the sheer daily drudgery – pulling carts of rubble, hauling buckets of stone up to the masons, or carrying wood from the carpenters. Gradually, however, he had added another activity.

Ever since he had discovered his skill with Barnikel’s wagon, the little fellow, almost unable to help himself, had taken to picking up bits of wood or begging timber ends from the carpenters. Sitting by the light of the brazier in the evenings, he would then carve them. Every week or so he turned out something – a little figure, a child’s toy – and soon even the carpenters and masons were referring to him as “the little craftsman”. It was said affectionately, though with some amusement, as if he were a sort of mascot. After all, he was not a member of their craft; he was only a beast of burden. Still, he did not mind, and as he went about his daily business, they would often show him what they were doing and explain it to him.