London (43 page)

One thing about that evening remained a mystery.

Just as the Dane and Osric were taking the body away, the labourer had turned to the old man. “By the way,” he demanded, “how did you come to turn up here so conveniently?”

Barnikel smiled. “I got a message. I came as fast as I could. As I didn’t see Ralph on the way to the Tower, I came here.” He grinned. “At just the right time.”

“But who sent the message?” the little fellow persisted.

“Oh, I see. Yes, that was certainly lucky.” He nodded. “A fellow came. From Hilda.”

Which was a mystery.

1097

It was one summer evening ten years later, as Hilda sat in the hall of the house by St Paul’s, that the mystery was solved.

Looking back on her life, she usually supposed that she was contented. Certainly, it had to be admitted that over the last decade things had generally worked out for the best. Osric had gone, though she sometimes saw his little son, who lived with Alfred and his family now. Barnikel too. But she was glad of that. A month after the great fire of eighty-seven he had suffered a huge stroke down at Billingsgate Wharf and had crashed out of this life into the hereafter. A year later the expected rebellion in Kent and London had taken place and been utterly crushed. “Thank God he wasn’t there to make a fool of himself,” she often murmured.

And now old Silversleeves had gone too. Two months before, on a wet April night, a merchant had arrived at the stout stone hall of Silversleeves with a written message for the old man. An hour later a servant had approached the master to find him sitting stiffly in his chair, apparently still reading the message on the table before him. Except that he was dead.

The Canon of St Paul’s had been buried in St Lawrence Silversleeves with every obsequy and honour. Three days later she and Henri had moved into the house, and in the coming weeks even she had been astonished to discover the full extent of the fortune he had bequeathed them.

There had been peace too, for Rufus reigned securely now. Recently he had built a huge hall of his own at Westminster, a fitting companion for the Confessor’s Abbey. He was strengthening the fortress beside Ludgate. And when she glanced up from the courtyard of her house, she could see, on the site where the Saxon St Paul’s had burnt down that fateful night, the outline of a great Norman cathedral, massively built in stone, that would soon dominate the entire skyline, just as the Tower dominated the river.

Yet whenever she stared at St Paul’s and remembered that great fire, she always found herself pondering certain mysteries.

The talisman belonging to Ralph had been found in the cathedral’s charred ruins. But what had he been doing there? And whose were the mysterious hands that had held her for two whole hours that night before she had been just as suddenly released near the Walbrook only to see half London burning? She had never been able to solve either puzzle, and she had not supposed that she ever would.

Now that their children were grown, it often happened that Hilda and her husband were alone in the evenings, and they had long since evolved a habit of politely ignoring each other by which they could tolerate the other’s presence quite comfortably.

Hilda, therefore, was quietly doing her embroidery; Henri was sitting by his father’s chessboard, playing against himself.

This evening, however, Hilda was irritable. The reason, she thought, was the house. She had always felt uncomfortable in the stern, stone hall. She wanted to go outside, or else to find some more intimate, congenial place. Blaming her husband for all this, she occasionally glanced at him with an expression of dislike.

It was after he had made some twenty moves on the chessboard that Henri, aware of her angry looks, calmly turned his eyes towards her and remarked: “You should try to conceal your thoughts.”

“You have no idea what is in my mind,” she snapped, resuming her needlework, then, after a few cross passes of the needle, added: “You know nothing about me at all.”

Henri resumed his chess, his face lit by a faint half-smile. “You might be very surprised by how much I know about you,” he replied.

“Such as what?” she shot back.

For a few moments he said nothing. Then, very quietly, he said: “Such as that you were Barnikel’s lover. And that you helped him commit treason.”

For half a minute there was silence in the stone hall, broken only by the faint tap of a chess piece moving.

“What do you mean?”

Henri did not look up from the board. “Do you remember the night of the great fire? I’m sure you do. You spent the night before it with Barnikel.”

She gasped. “How do you know?”

“I had you followed,” he remarked mildly. “I had you followed for years.”

“Why?” Suddenly she felt very cold.

Henri shrugged. “Because you are my wife,” he replied, as though that answered everything.

Her mind went back to the evening of the fire. She frowned. “The night of the fire. Somebody grabbed me . . .”

“Of course.” He smiled. “I guessed you were running to Barnikel. It was too risky. You could have been arrested.” He paused. “Besides, it worked out perfectly. You couldn’t have set things up better.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It wasn’t a good idea for Ralph to get married.”

“Ralph? He died at St Paul’s.”

“I don’t think so. I think he encountered your friend Barnikel at the Tower.” Henri smiled. “My father often said that when I played chess, my strategy was indifferent but my tactics were good. He was right.” He paused. “You see, my dear wife, it was you who gave me the chance. When you were obviously about to warn Barnikel, it occurred to me, after my men stopped you, to send your message to warn Barnikel after all. So one of my men went. He said he came from you and told him to kill Ralph when he reached the Tower. Since Ralph disappeared, I feel sure he did.” The master tactician gently sighed. “Either Ralph would arrest your lover or your lover would kill Ralph. Either way, a neat move.”

“
You
killed Ralph.”

“No. I assume Barnikel did that.”

“You are the devil.”

“Perhaps. But please consider that if Ralph had married and had heirs, your own children’s inheritance would have been cut in half.”

“You should be arrested.”

“I committed no crime. Which is more, my dear, than I can say for you.”

She got up. She felt ill. She had to get out of that accursed hall.

Minutes later, she was walking down the hill to Ludgate, then out, across the Fleet, and past St Bride’s. She let the soft breeze from the river below brush her hair. She did not stop until she reached the old jetty at the Aldwych.

And as she sat on the ground and stared along the river, first round the curve to Westminster, and then along the stately stretch to the placid Tower, she thought of her rich children, and the passing of the years, and realized to her astonishment that she was not even angry any more.

That, she now saw, was for her personally the meaning of the Norman Conquest.

It would have surprised her, some minutes after she had gone, to see her husband.

He was still sitting at his chessboard, but having concluded his game, he had taken out a piece of parchment, which he was now studying carefully. It was the message his father had received just before he died. As he read it once again, Henri’s face was calm, but his lips had twisted into a faint half-smile.

The message announced that the Becket family of the Norman city of Caen were planning to move to London.

THE SAINT

1170

A June morning in the Palace of Westminster. In the long chamber beside the king’s great hall, all was quiet and orderly.

By the door a few courtiers murmured in hushed tones; in the centre, quill pens scratching softly upon parchment, ink supplied by the monks of Westminster Abbey, seven scribes were busy at their writing desks. From the far end, at the table where some of the most powerful men in England were sitting, came a curious clicking sound. They were moving the chequers.

How grave they looked. How awesome. The treasurer, the justiciar, the Bishop of Winchester, Master Thomas Brown and their clerks. Noblemen and sheriffs trembled before them.

Halfway down the chamber, with his back to the wall, stood a quiet young man with a very long nose. The men at the table knew him well. A promising clerk. But, why, on this warm June day, should his face be as white as a ghost’s?

His name was Pentecost Silversleeves.

They knew. They were looking at him. They all knew about the night before
.

The Palace of Westminster. In the century since the Conquest, the small island of Thorney, now a kind of royal platform beside the Thames, had become magnificent. It was entirely surrounded by a wall. Several bridges crossed the Tyburn stream that flowed around it. The great Abbey of Edward the Confessor still dominated the place, but nowadays was accompanied, as though it had acquired a little sister, by the modest Norman church of St Margaret, which stood beside it to serve the local parish.

Westminster had also increased its dignity when, a few years previously, the Pope had canonized its founder, Edward the Confessor. Like France and several other countries, England now had a royal saint. His tomb, moved to the centre of the Abbey, had become a shrine, and Westminster was confirmed as the spiritual centre of the kingdom.

But perhaps the most obvious change had taken place by the riverbank, for here stood the great hall.

Westminster Hall, rebuilt by William Rufus, was one of the largest royal halls in Europe. Over eighty yards long, it needed two lines of central pillars to hold up its massive wooden roof. So large was it that under its high, Norman windows the king’s judges could hold three sessions simultaneously in different corners. Beside the great hall stood the courtyards, chambers and living quarters of the royal palace. Although the king himself was usually travelling around his huge domains, increasingly his administration was to be found in this one location. And of all its different offices, none was better known or more dreaded than the court now in progress.

“A hundred then.”

Master Thomas Brown spoke quietly. A clerk moved one of the chequers. The court proceeded imperviously while a sheriff sitting at one end of the table nodded nervously. After the throne, this table, known as the great Exchequer, was the most important piece of furniture in the kingdom.

It was a curious thing to look at. Ten feet long and five wide, it had a ledge four fingers high running round its edge, giving it the appearance of a gaming table. Covering its surface was the black cloth marked into squares by white lines that gave the court its name.

Depending on the square it occupied, a chequer might represent a thousand pounds, or ten, or even the humble silver penny that was a common labourer’s daily wage. The chequered cloth was, therefore, nothing more than a kind of abacus, a primitive manual computer on which the revenues and expenses of the kingdom could be reckoned and reviewed.

Every year, at the spring and autumn feasts of Easter and Michaelmas, the sheriffs of the counties of England came to the Exchequer to render their accounts.

First, in an outer chamber, the sacks of silver pennies they brought were tested for quality and counted. If good, twenty dozen pennies weighed a pound. Since the Normans called the English penny an
esterlin
, which transcribed into Latin became
sterlingus
, the unit of account had become known as the pound sterling.

Next, the sheriff was given a tally – a hazel stick cut with notches to mark the amounts he had paid in. To provide each party with a record, the stick was then split lengthwise from just below the handle; the two tallies being known as the foil and counterfoil. Since the sheriff’s counterfoil, which established the amount to his credit, was always the longer piece, including the handle, it was also known as the stock.

In this manner, in the twelfth century, the terms Exchequer, sterling, counterfoil and stock entered the language of English finance.

Finally, after satisfying the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the great table, the sheriff’s transactions would be recorded by the scribes.

This was a slower, but all-important process. The scribes would begin by making a draft on tablets of waxed wood, which they scraped with a stylus. The drafts would then be fair-copied on to parchment.

Parchment was not merely plentiful at this time, it was cheap. True, the finest, unblemished vellum made from the scraped and stretched skins of calves was rare and highly prized, but vellum was only needed for such works of art as illustrated books. For ordinary documents, the supply of skins from cattle, sheep or even squirrel was almost unlimited. In England’s Exchequer, the cost of parchment was less than the ink. “And sheepskin parchment is best,” Master Thomas Brown would wisely declare, “because if anyone tries to tamper with the record, it almost always shows.”

There was, however, one feature of the English system of record-keeping that was peculiar to the island. Usually, parchment records were folded and made into books. When William the Conqueror had surveyed his new kingdom, it was into mighty volumes that his Domesday Book had been made up. In the generations following, however, for some reason English record-keepers had decided to preserve the Crown’s accounts rolled into cylinders instead, for which reason they became known not as books but as the Rolls, or, often, the Pipe Rolls.

The coins themselves were, at this date, still kept in the treasury – the
thesaurus
as the Latin clerks termed it – in King Alfred’s old capital of Winchester. But until conveyed there, they were stored in the chapel known as the Pyx in Westminster Abbey next door.

Such was the Exchequer.

Was he screaming? Was he shouting out the awful truth? He put his hand up to his mouth to make sure, then held his tongue between his teeth
.
The nightmare of the night before
.

Pentecost Silversleeves was a very strange young man.