Sarum (107 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
As a youth he had attended the king on his expeditions to Wales: the revenues from the estates allowed him to do so in style. He jousted. He could afford it. He entertained sumptuously at Avonsford; the estates almost supported this and could have recovered. He married: a lady from Cornwall. She had wonderful Celtic looks – rich brown hair and dazzling blue eyes, which were greatly admired – and a tiny dowry. He had chosen her because she was the most beautiful woman watching a tournament at which he had triumphed. He provided her with magnificent dresses from London and the knight of Avonsford and his lady were pronounced the most handsome couple in the region. The estates groaned. He built a fine walled garden and planted it with mulberry trees, nut trees, roses, vines and willows; it was only luck that he never found time to build the fine new hall he was always planning. And lastly, he made splendid benefactions to hospitals and religious orders: and this the estates could in no way support.
By these means, not suddenly but steadily over the years, he extended his credit on every side.
And it was while he did so that the king’s maltote tax came and the price he was paid for his wool dropped. It was from this cut in his income that he never recovered. He did nothing about it except, once, curse his steward.
By 1300, the situation was serious.
By 1305, it had become desperate.
He knew it. He was not a fool. But still he went on, for besides being a perfect model of chivalry, he was also spoilt, and inside him the small, insistent voice that sooner or later, as the centuries pass, beggars almost every aristocrat, said: “If you do not keep up your state, people will scorn you.”
For a man like Roger de Godefroi, there was only one way out of his difficulty.
He had two daughters now, and a baby son. The daughters would have to be married off, the son provided for, and as he admitted to himself: “I’ve my sword and nothing else to make my fortune.”
There had been opportunities. The king had been forced to make several campaigns in Scotland against the rebels Wallace and Bruce; he should have gone, but there had always seemed to be too much to be done at Avonsford. Now he could delay no longer.
“I have to bring myself to the attention of the magnates, and the king,” he told his wife. “It’s now or never.”
An opportunity came in 1305; for that year there was a great tournament at Sarum, in the lists between the old castle and the town of Wilton.
Retinues came from all over the country; the whole area was buzzing with armed men. The cathedral chapter with the Church’s suspicion of tournaments, and already harassed by an unruly mayor and council who were trying to avoid paying the bishop their taxes, issued a furious order, with the king’s authority, threatening excommunication on any of those attending who disturbed the peace of the city. It was a useless threat: the whole of Sarum was in genial uproar. And Godefroi swore:
“This is my chance.”
Of all the retinues attending the joust, none was more splendid than that of the knight of Avonsford. His grey charger was magnificent. He was attended by a squire and two pages. On his shield, his surcoat and all his accoutrements shone the noble device of the white swan on the red ground.
“If I show my skill,” he explained to his wife, “the king will hear of it. On the next campaign it could mean a command – and that could be valuable.”
He had planned for the joust meticulously. His weapons were splendid; he had obtained the latest armour – a light chain mail, with extra protection provided by solid plates of steel on the outer arm, legs and feet. It was the most sophisticated equipment available and he had paid dearly for it – with borrowed money. But it was a calculated gamble, for he knew that few knights were better prepared for war.
And what a magnificent affair it had been. Roger’s spirits always rose when he saw the dazzling array of tents, flags and the brightly dressed crowds that made these pageants such a cheerful spectacle; and as he walked his horse along the edge of the lists, and looked at the other knightly competitors, he experienced that strange but familiar sense of timelessness that these festivals always seemed to have. “Surely,” he thought, “there is nothing better in this world than to be a knight.”
But that day, for the first time, he also experienced another sensation: it was quite new to him, and it was uncomfortable.
Before the proper tournament began, there was often a burlesque of some kind; on this occasion it was two women tumblers, dressed as knights, who entered the lists on horses and cavorted around grotesquely, swearing oaths in a mixture of broken French and English of the most ribald kind. The crowd applauded wildly. Even the priests of whom many, despite the bishop’s strictures, were to be seen in the crowd, rocked with laughter. Pieces of the women’s armour fell off; one of them wore a cooking pot on her head at which the children threw things as she whirled past, and both shook their weapons with indecent gestures while the people roared their approval. To complete this good-natured farce, the heralds solemnly sounded their trumpets and the two women with exaggerated pomp took their positions at each end of the lists. Bets were placed. Several women threw their gloves to be worn as gages, and then the women charged. Once, twice, three times they rode at each other down the lists, waving their lances in a ludicrous parody of the knightly contests until one of them was finally knocked off her horse, while the crowd, from magnate to churl, hooted with delight and derision.
Godefroi watched in silence. To his surprise, the spectacle no longer amused him. His brow darkened. Suddenly, without wanting to, he remembered his terrible debts. For all the brave show he was making, nothing could take them away. And then, as he sat on his magnificent grey charger, with weapons and armour he could not pay for, about to fight to keep his estates, he was afflicted with a terrible sense of emptiness. A wave of desolation seemed to cover him. He shook his head in surprise at the awful thought that had just thrust itself so unpleasantly upon him. Was even his own jousting, perhaps, like the vulgar display of these two women, nothing more than an elaborate, a fantastic charade? His armour, his shield with the white swan gleaming upon it; was all this really, as the church’s preachers often warned, mere vanity? He did not know. He tried to put the ugly thought from him. But it would not go away.
Roger triumphed at the joust that day. He was noticed and admired and as he had hoped, several magnates approached him and urged:
“Come to the next great meeting, Godefroi, when the king is there. It will be to your advantage.”
The chance had come the very next year. For in May 1306, King Edward I summoned his nobles to witness the knighting of his dissolute son at Westminster. It was an event of huge significance and one of the last acts of his reign. The king was sick and old and, for better or worse, his son Edward would soon succeed him. It was an occasion full of pomp and feudal ceremony. The prince performed his vigil in Westminster Abbey and was knighted the next day. Then he in turn knighted some three hundred young noblemen at the high altar, and after this there was a huge feast.
The Feast of Swans – King Edward’s last great ceremony – was remembered for long afterwards. Every symbol of Arthurian chivalry was worked into the proceedings. Men said it was as if the Round Table had been reborn. This was no idle show. Edward, with deliberate calculation, was determined to spare no effort to impress upon his nobles the feudal duties they owed his son, by appealing to their chivalry. His calculation was, as always, sound and Godefroi, as he watched the magnificent feast from one of the lower tables, felt his heart expand with joy and loyal emotion.
By an astounding chance the king had chosen as the theme for the feast, the image of two swans: no doubt, Godefroi assumed, to symbolise himself and his son. There were splendid hangings representing swans around the walls: and at the end of each table was a chair with a high back carved in the same shape. For King Edward knew very well that though his nobles might swear loyalty to a man upon one day, it would be the symbol that they remembered in later times and which might keep them steadfast.
But the high point came when two swans were brought in and placed upon the table before the king. Old Edward, though he had been brought to Westminster on a litter, rose to his feet, squared his broad shoulders as he had used to do when he was young, and swore before God and the swans that he would go to Scotland yet again to crush the rebels, and after that, turn on the infidels in the Holy Land. It was a rousing speech, a heroic vow worthy of the chivalrous king, and the whole hall rang with applause.
Soon after this Godefroi’s moment arrived. Two magnates, walking together up the table to pay their respects to the king, beckoned to him to join them. His heart beating excitedly, he walked beside them. Surely it must bring good luck that the king had chosen the device on his own coat of arms as the theme for such a feast. He was wearing it now, as a badge upon his tunic. He pushed his chest out, so that the king could not fail to see it.
Even as an old man, Edward I was impressive. Though his large form was slumped in his chair, Roger noticed at once the great mane of snow white hair, and the famous drooping eyelid. But his handsome, leonine face was terribly sunken and it was obvious that he was ravaged with pain. Nonetheless, he gave a slow, but courteous nod to the two magnates.
“This is Roger de Godefroi, Your Majesty,” one of them said pleasantly. “He distinguished himself at the Sarum tournament last year.”
While he spoke, Roger saw that the king’s eyes were fixed on his badge; but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
For a moment Edward was silent. Then, in little more than a whisper he said:
“So I heard.”
His eyes had not left the badge.
“His own coat of arms is a swan, sire. A coincidence,” the other said hopefully.
Edward did not reply; nor did his eyes move.
“He is the grandson of Jocelin de Godefroi, whom Your Majesty will remember,” the first continued, “and he is anxious to serve you in Scotland.”
There was silence. In the back of his mind, Edward remembered a scene. It had been at the time of the negotiations with the Scottish commissioners before the confounded Maid of Norway died and caused him all this trouble. The details came back to him now. There had been doubt about the family’s loyalty: a hint of duplicity. Perhaps it had all been untrue, but he had no time to take chances.
For a second the great eyes flashed into Godefroi’s face. They were not unkind, but they were tired.
“You come rather late, monsieur,” he said calmly. “I have all the men I need.”
Roger bowed. The king’s eyes moved on, to rest elsewhere. The interview was over. As were Godefroi’s hopes.
A year later, Edward I was dead, and the ignominious reign of his son began. The times had been depressing. Edward II was as unfit to rule as his father had been outstanding. He infuriated the magnates by ignoring them in favour of his favourites. He was thought to be a homosexual.
By 1309, the king’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, had been banished the kingdom, the Bishop of Salisbury being one of those who had insisted upon his departure. In that year, also, at Sarum, the river Avon had flooded its banks, run across the close, and burst through the cathedral’s great west doors, eddying around the stone tombs in the nave.
But all these national and local disasters meant nothing to Roger.
For by the end of the year he had sold the second estate.
He was not completely ruined. He managed to retain the fulling mill, and the original estate at Avonsford with its modest manor house was still intact. But the fact remained, half his inheritance was gone and the days of splendid living were over.
There was nothing he could do. He managed the Avonsford estate as best he could, but his heart was never in it. Steady application was needed; he did not know how to apply himself steadily. In a fit of enthusiasm, he restored the old miz-maze above the valley and would spend long hours up there alone. But he was neither praying nor reading, and he himself would have had difficulty in saying how he had passed the time.
To his son Gilbert, as the boy grew up, he gave only one piece of advice:
“Go to the wars if you can. If you do well, perhaps you can get back the estate I lost.”
He hoped the boy would forgive him. But he was not sure that he would. And Gilbert would gaze at his father, and draw his own conclusions.
High on the pinnacle, like a series of eagle’s nests, the little scaffolding had hung round the top of the spire.
For the last fifty feet of the slender spire, as it tapered to its final, miraculous point, it had been necessary to reverse the previous method and construct the scaffolding around the outside of the cone. It was held there by horizontal supports which passed through the shell of the masonry.
And now the work was done, the scaffolding dismantled, retreating from the dizzying height where the cone was so thin that it was hard to imagine it sustaining even a man and a bucket. As it was withdrawn, the holes through which the supports had passed were filled with stone plugs with iron handles so that they could be opened and used again for future repairs.
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