Sarum (77 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
It seemed to Godric Body that the world was a brighter place than it had been before.
All morning he had helped at the sheep-washing, which was carried out in a small pool that the men had created with a wattle dam just below a bend in the little stream that ran across the edge of the high ground.
It was two months since Godefroi had let him work with the shepherds. From morning till night he had been busy on the slopes, his life now regulated by the calendar of the shepherd’s year. At Helenmas at the start of May, the fat lambs had been rounded up and sold; in two days’ time, at the midsummer feast of St John, while the workers in the open fields began to weed the corn, on the slopes above the old ewes would be taken away to market. Today, all the spare villeins were up to help with the washing and shearing. There were almost a thousand sheep to be got through. Expertly the men held the sheep between their knees as they worked with the iron shears to cut away the thick fleeces that the new summer growth underneath was lifting up.
He liked to see the shorn sheep scuttle away as soon as they were freed, with their close-cropped coats gleaming in the sun.
Harold usually accompanied him to his work. The dog was growing more skilled every day, and despite his youth, was learning patience, his bright eyes watching the sheep by the hour, and helping Godric to herd them from ridge to ridge. To celebrate his new life, Godric had made himself a fine shepherd’s crook, and on its curling handle he had carved a figure that captured the dog’s sleek, eager form and character exactly. With the crook in his hand and the dog at his side he experienced a contentment he had never known before.
Nor was this all. He had reason to believe that he was making headway with Mary.
In recent weeks, even the smith and his family had welcomed him.
“If the lord keeps him as a shepherd,” Mary’s mother told her, “you could do worse.”
He had pressed his suit with her, gently but firmly; and he had not been slow to discover how to win her.
He wooed her with food.
The pig he had cleverly salted had lasted some time. He ate it slowly, sometimes alone so that Mary would not take his invitation for granted, and sometimes with her.
His revenge on William atte Brigge was complete. When the tanner had discovered his loss, he had been beside himself with rage and attempted to raise the hue and cry: but since the pig had never been found, he was helpless. It preyed on his mind. In Wilton and in Sarisberie he would suddenly seize a passer-by and cross-question them about it until, to all but himself, the matter had become a joke. And when he realised that people were laughing at him, it made his fury even worse.
“Have you seen a pig?” men in the market place would call out as soon as they saw him coming. And someone else, to anger him further, would be sure to reply:
“Yes, at Shockley farm.”
Once he cross-questioned Mary; but her look of squinting suspicion easily put him off and he gave it up.
Godric had tempted the girl with a remarkable variety of foods that he had been able to trap without risk. On the common land he could take a hare, a pheasant or partridge. And there was another tasty and prolific animal he loved, a newcomer to the island – for it was only after the Norman conquest that the first rabbits appeared in the area. The natives called them coneys, and Godric was especially skilled both at snaring them, and at the delicate business of roasting the small animal’s rich, dark meat.
Twice, even three times a week, he would bring Mary to his little hut to share some new delicacy, and each time he would slyly watch the eager look in her eyes as she saw the meal he had prepared for her.
Gradually her manner softened towards him. Her face seemed to have become less pinched, its lines a little fuller. Once or twice she had even smiled, and now she allowed him to kiss her; he even thought he detected the beginnings of enthusiasm. But he did not try to take matters too fast, and continued his calculated routine until soon their meetings had become, for her, a habit there was no reason to break. By the end of May it was generally known that the two were walking out together. Even Godefroi was aware of the fact, and once or twice gave the couple a friendly nod as he passed.
At their last few meetings Godric was aware of a new mood in the girl: a certain shyness and hesitancy, as though a struggle was taking place within her. The look of defensive suspicion in her eyes had changed to a softer uncertainty and fear. He had understood, and pressed on.
It was early evening that shearing day when Mary came up from the valley. She was walking alone.
In the fields, the wheat and the barley were already showing green; the hay in the meadow below was turning to gold. She left the fields behind her.
All day she had been working in the dairy beside the manor house where the great vats of milk were brought and the cheeses of cow’s and goat’s milk were made. She carried a small goat’s cheese with her now and half a loaf of bread.
As she looked at the ridge in front of her, Mary knew that once she was over it there could be no turning back. She did not hesitate.
She had considered her future carefully. She was still very young, but then her life might well be short, nor was there any reason why it should be particularly pleasant. After that – Heaven or Hell she supposed. Who knew? Meanwhile, there were only two things she needed to know: she must eat and, if possible, she must find a man.
She had just passed puberty; soon these questions would become urgent; and her prospects were not good.
She had, for the moment, one tiny advantage. Her body was still almost that of a child, yet it had a certain awkward freshness about it that the young shepherd with his bent back, at any rate, had found appealing; and in her wisdom she had realised: I shall never look any better than I do now: probably worse.
Sometimes, in moments of weakness, she had allowed her mind to wander and consider which men she had seen that she found attractive. The knight of Avonsford was one. Handsome, greying, remote, so far from the clumsy peasant folk of the little village; so tall, so straight: she tried to imagine what might go on in his mind. He was a figure from another world, however, only to dream of. But when she thought of the men she knew in Avonsford, there were none that attracted her; and of those she had seen on her occasional visits to Sarisberie or Wilton, none that had ever spoken to her.
But Godric had spoken to her, which was why she had been so suspicious. After all, she knew she must not hope for much from life: it was her only way of protecting herself from humiliation. If he spoke to her, therefore, it was only because he could find nobody better. But he spoke to her all the same, and if that was because he thought he would not find anyone better, then at least, she conceded with a shrug, he was being practical.
For since she had always known she would have a struggle to survive, she had no use for anything that was not practical. And indeed, as time went on, it was the young man’s competence that did attract her. She admired the way he carved; she liked the way he fed her; several times in the previous weeks, if she had not been so cautious she would have smiled.
Her father now spoke well of him: that was a point in his favour.
And strangely, his bodily affliction gradually became an attraction to her as well. Not because she felt sorry for him – she did not think she could afford the luxury of feeling sorry for anyone. But as she considered her own unattractive features, she was comforted by the thought: at least he can never despise me.
So it was, at the ripe season of the year, that she had struck her bargain with fate in deciding to make the little fellow with his bent back a present of her life.
As she passed, the men on the slopes turned to watch her. It was as though, by some ancient instinct, they knew what her journey meant.
The shadows were just starting to lengthen when she reached the place where the men were shearing. Over a wide area, the ground was white with wisps of wool and the dust in the air shimmered over the place like a haze. And here too, as she walked by, the men glanced up from their busy work to stare at her.
The shearing had been going on ever since early morning, and though it would probably be two more days until it was completed, the pace had slackened. Here and there men were standing together by the piles of sacks containing the fresh wool, quietly chatting. The place had the air of an untidy camp. The sharp-sweet smell of sheep-droppings was everywhere.
Godric was busy helping the men collect the wool, and though Harold rose and ambled over to greet her, he did not notice her at first. When he did, he smiled and came towards her.
“Finished at the dairy?”
She nodded.
He noticed the little package she was carrying.
“What’s this?”
She held out the little cheese, her face impassive.
“It’s for you.”
He looked at her carefully, then took it solemnly from her. She had never given him a present before and he knew what it meant: she had made her decision. The men standing nearby were grinning.
“We’ll be some time,” he began . . . but from thirty yards away he heard the voice of the reeve.
“Godric Body: you’ve finished for today.”
There was laughter all around. Godric blushed, and glanced towards the reeve, who was smiling broadly. It was not often that the reeve gave him a friendly look. “Go!” he shouted.
Godric looked down at the girl. For the first time since he had started to court her, he now felt awkward.
“Shall we walk?”
She nodded. “That way.” She pointed across the high ground, away from the valley.
As they moved away, and he felt the sun on his back, she slipped her arm through his. Ahead of them Harold happily bounded, chasing his own shadow across the turf.
They walked for nearly half an hour, neither saying much. Here and there was a clump of trees, but almost all the ground was bare. The grasses were just beginning to become parched. The chalk ridges were mostly deserted as the sheep had been driven to the shearing.
At the outer edge of the land where the Avonsford flocks were grazed, there was a dip in the ground, at one end of which lay a long stone building. Centuries before it had been a farmhouse; now it was used only for sheep; and on the open land a little way off there was a large, round depression in the ground, some five feet deep at its centre, which even now, at the dry height of summer, contained more than a foot of water.
Here they sat down and ate the bread and cheese she had brought.
Mary squinted at the pond curiously. There seemed to be no stream to feed it, and Godric, following her gaze explained:
“This is a dew pond. It was made up here for the sheep.” And he outlined how, once in a generation, the men would go and line the bottom of the pond with clay and straw, packing them so tight that no water was lost. “And then,” he went on, “when the dew falls on the ground around, it drains into the pool so that the sheep can drink here right through the summer.”
And as he enthusiastically explained about it, Mary decided that she was glad he was a shepherd, and that she was even proud of him.
It was a pleasant spot, but she was not ready to stop yet; the sheep house was still too near the place where the men were shearing; so after a little time she made him get up and they walked on.
They walked together for another half an hour, with nothing, now, except the blue butterflies for company.
It was evening, but still warm when they reached the henge.
Only a third of the huge sarsens were still standing, and less than a third of the smaller bluestones within the ancient circle. The earth wall and ditch was only a little bigger than one of the earth banks dividing the strips of furrows in the open fields. The ceremonial avenue had almost disappeared and only one of the two gateway pillars remained. As the midsummer sun bathed the worn grey stones in its red-gold light, the ancient henge seemed a quiet, harmless place.
“They say giants built it,” he remarked. “It’s magic.”
She took his hand.
“Come,” she said softly.
As the sun sank over the henge, he was not aware of the fact that at dawn its first rays would run to the centre of the sacred circle up the faint path of the great avenue, nor that the moon that day rose opposite the place where the sun had set; nor in the exultation that took both of them by surprise, did he know that the place was reserved for the shedding of blood.
He knew that when she was pregnant they would marry, and he was content.
On St John’s Day, June 24, 1139, the crisis that had so long been threatening Stephen’s reign at last broke, and the period of English history known as the Anarchy was begun.
The trouble was not unexpected. The chances that the weak rule of Stephen would be challenged from within, or more likely, by his sterner-minded cousin the Empress Matilda, had been growing stronger every year. “There’s more of the spirit of the Conqueror and his sons in the Empress than in Stephen,” Godefroi himself had had to admit. And the rumours of her expected arrival were constantly growing.
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