He lived, and he worked – painfully but with a remarkable perseverance; and as he grew older even the villagers would grudgingly admit that the ungainly boy with the surprisingly soft and dreamy eyes could carve figures in wood with a dexterity that far surpassed anyone else at Avonsford. His parents had died when he was thirteen and since then he had lived a lonely life, completing his work on the estate painfully, uncertain of how to express himself, and nursing a single passion and ambition as to how to better his lot.
His second piece of luck was that his uncle Nicholas had agreed to speak to the lord of the manor on his behalf that very day. He knew that Godefroi, whom he dared not address himself, respected the stoneworker and he was full of hope.
Now here was a third piece of luck. For before his eyes in the small market place that lay within the castle precincts, an extraordinary scene was developing that promised to provide a rich and unforeseen entertainment. With surprising determination, his bent little figure nudged and ducked its way to the front of the crowd to get a better view; and what he saw made his face break into a broad grin.
The two women were facing each other in the centre of the square.
The larger of the two seemed about to burst. She was a massively built figure, and the scarlet woollen robe she wore seemed to accentuate the rage that radiated from her. Despite the rolls of fat about her person, it was clear that she was powerful and dangerous. Her heavy cheeks which were, even when she was calm, as red as her dress, had now puckered up so that her eyes were no more than slits. Godric stared at her with a mixture of loathing and admiration: he knew her well: she was Herleva, wife of his own cousin William atte Brigge.
“Harlot! Thief!” the huge woman shouted; and then, her whole face contorted with venom, she hissed: “Bondwoman.”
The object of these insults was a blonde, handsome young woman in her mid-twenties whose light plumpness only added to the attractiveness of which she was comfortably aware. The simple shift she wore with a girdle at the waist was light blue, and set off her hair as she tossed her head in contempt at the older woman. Godric knew her too. She was the wife of a Saxon farmer, John of Shockley.
It was true that she had been a bondwoman, a lowly villein owned, like himself, by a Norman lord until she had married the freeman of Shockley. But at the intended insult she only smiled and then cried mockingly:
“A year and a day.”
The crowd laughed. It was well known that William atte Brigge had run away from the Avonsford estate when he was a boy and lived for a year and a day at the little town of Twyneham on the coast; a villein who escaped to a town for this period was allowed his freedom if his lord failed to claim him. He had become a tanner – an unpopular trade on account of the pungent smells the tannery always produced – and moved to Wilton, where he was disliked for his bad temper as much as his trade, and where he acquired the added name of atte Brigge because his house lay by a small wooden bridge over a backwater of the river.
“But your husband’s a freedman,” the younger woman added loudly, “because no Godefroi ever wanted to get him back.”
The crowd roared its approval. It was always said that the estate had been glad to be rid of a troublemaker.
For Herleva, this was too much. With a shout of rage she hurled herself towards the young woman, and in a moment had ripped her shift off one shoulder with her huge hands and knocked her to the ground, before crashing down on top of her. It was this that caused the scream which the Norman and the mason had heard on the ramparts.
Against the weight of Herleva, the younger woman had little chance. Her hair was pulled; slaps rained upon her face. But she fought back gamely, using her greater agility to kick the older woman savagely and to open scratches on her heavy jowled face that began to bleed profusely. The crowd did nothing to intervene. No better entertainment had been seen in years. Godric, who had no love for Herleva, saw the scratches open on her face and rubbed his thin hands together for joy.
The quarrel between the two women had its roots several generations before. When the descendants of Aelfwald the thane had lost their estates at the Conquest, the farm at Shockley in the Wylye valley was given to the Abbess of Wilton. She took pity on them however, and allowed them to stay on the farm as tenants. There they remained, still claiming their ancient thanely status, but living as modest farmers – free men under the law but little better off in reality than the more prosperous of the villeins. Soon after this, a dispute arose when the daughter of the family, who had married a burgess of Wilton, claimed that the tenancy had been promised to her rather than to her brother. The abbess in her court ruled against her and confirmed her brother in his tenancy; but the matter did not rest there. The burgess and his wife tried, without success, to take the matter to a higher court, and when the commissioners of the great Domesday land survey inspected the area, the clerks noted that the tenancy was in dispute. The years passed, but the burgess and his wife never lost their furious resentment: nor did their daughter, Herleva. And when she married William atte Brigge, that obstinate and greedy man had made the cause his own and sworn to the family of John of Shockley more than once:
“I’ll go to the king himself. You’ll be turned out before I die, I promise you.”
Such lawsuits were common; they could also last for generations: the threat lay like a cloud over the farmer’s life, and whenever William or Herleva saw one of the Shockley family, they never missed their chance to make matters worse by insulting them.
The screaming matches between the two women were not unusual either, but never before had one developed into a physical fight, and to Godric’s delight, the fight was reaching epic proportions.
Herleva’s weight had triumphed. She rolled the younger woman over and tore the clothes from her back. And as her victim screamed, Herleva, ignoring her own wounds and in an access of fury, was casting about for some object with which to belabour her.
But now the circle of spectators suddenly parted and fell silent, as Richard de Godefroi strode towards the two women. He was closely followed by their husbands – both looking frightened – who had been hastily summoned from other parts of the castle. At the sight of the Norman knight, even Herleva forgot her fury and got to her feet awkwardly. Shockley’s wife pulled her torn clothes hastily over her breasts.
In the silence Godefroi’s voice was icy.
“You are breaking the peace. Do you want the ducking stool or to be put in the stocks?”
The knight’s words would certainly be enough in the hundred or borough court to ensure such a punishment for them; and besides the indignity, the ducking stool, in particular, could be a hazardous affair if the victim was held under the water for too long. Shockley’s wife shivered.
“Take your women away,” the knight ordered the two men curtly. “If they break the peace again, I’ll see they answer for it in court.” He waved at the crowd peremptorily. “Disperse,” he cried. Then he turned on his heel and stalked away.
John of Shockley led his wife quickly from the scene. But William stood gazing at Herleva’s face. His black brows contracted furiously.
He was a striking figure. In many respects he was typical of the ancient river folk who were still to be found in Fisherton and other hamlets along the five rivers. He had their long fingers and toes; and his narrow face with its close-set eyes was an almost exact replica of the face of Godric Body. But there all resemblance between the tanner and his cousin ended. William atte Brigge was tall, spare and strong: his hair was dark; and his eyes were jet-black, hard and cruel.
And he was in a rage – not because his wife had attacked the Shockley woman, but because she had made a fool of him. As Herleva drew herself up, a little shaken by what she had done, he gave her a vicious look that made even that large woman blench. Then he looked around the square.
Godric had been so engrossed by the drama taking place in front of him that he had not noticed he was the only person left after the crowd had broken up. Suddenly he reali
sed that the tanner was striding towards him.
William atte Brigge glowered at him. The sight of his crippled kinsman, whom he loathed because he was deformed, always angered him, and now he was sure the youth was laughing at him. His mouth contracted into a snarl. As he strode across the little square, he glanced quickly about him to make sure that there was no one watching; then, seeing they were alone, he kicked the boy as hard as he could, so that he rolled helplessly on the ground. Without a word, he kicked the boy three more times before walking away. He had relieved some of his temper.
In silence Godric watched him go. The kicks had hurt. But crippled as he was, it took more than his rich cousin William to break his spirit, and as he slowly got up, he managed a grin.
“You’ll pay for those kicks,” he muttered. The thought gave him comfort.
It was as he left the castle for his home up the valley that he noticed John of Shockley and his wife. They were standing together in the shadow of the gateway and he could see that they were arguing furiously. He instinctively liked the farmer, and he was glad that his handsome wife had scratched Herleva. Yes, he decided, he would make William pay for his villainy.
He would have been disappointed if he could have heard what John was saying to his wife.
“You must make peace with Herleva,” he urged.
“She started it. She called me a harlot,” she protested.
“You must turn the other cheek; walk away.”
“Never. I scratched hers,” his fiery wife replied with satisfaction.
But still John only shook his head.
“We must make peace with them, not provoke them,” he pleaded.
It seemed to the girl that sometimes her husband was weak. It was not lack of courage, she was sure of that; but his honest blue eyes always grew troubled at any suggestion of a quarrel. He would run his hand over his fair, close-cropped beard nervously, and search endlessly for a compromise where some other men would rather fight.
The threat from William cast a shadow over his life which nothing she could say would dispel. Each night he prayed that William would drop his suit and be reconciled, for the memory of his grandfather’s loss of the family estates was like an open wound in his mind.
“Do not anger William,” he used to caution his wife. “We could lose the last thing that we have.”
But she would toss her head with impatience and retort: “If you’re a thane, why are you so timid?”
Yet she had seen him face a bull that had broken loose, and which no other man would go near, with perfect coolness: so he could not be a coward. She did not understand it.
Nor could John of Shockley explain his feelings himself. He only knew that he loved his farm, and that to him, peace seemed more important than it did to other men.
“Will you go to Herleva?” he asked hopelessly.
She shook her head.
“Not until William comes to you.”
Godefroi entered the church alone.
It was a large, three-aisled structure with heavy, rounded arches which the Normans had built in the outer ring of the castle. Like most Norman churches, it was designed in the form of a simple cross, and to this Bishop Roger was adding splendid embellishments.
He was glad to enter its quiet, solemn spaces and leave behind the noise and the brawling that had so irritated him a few moments before.
For Richard de Godefroi had important matters to consider.
The stately arches and the cool light pleased him. Forty years before when the church had first been completed, it was nearly destroyed by fire. It was then that Roger had started to rebuild this new and heavier structure on the shell of the original, and the work of rebuilding that kept Nicholas and many others so busy had been going on ever since. A few of the tombs and the pillars had been painted, but while the work on the roof continued, much of the decoration of the interior had been held over. The bare stone, so solemn and simple, suited his mood. He felt his irritation fall away and breathed more easily.
The object of his quest was a modest stone tomb that lay on the north side of the bishop’s new presbytery. It was here that the knight liked to pray, and as he sank to his knees he touched the bare slab affectionately. Beneath it lay the remains of the former bishop, the saintly Osmund who had built the first church. Richard could just remember him, a quiet, white-haired man whom children used to follow in the street. It was Osmund who had brought such an air of sanctity to the cathedral on its bleak castle hill; it was he who had collected the canons and other priests who had turned the grim castle into a place of learning; and it was Osmund who had begun to set out the rules for the ordering of the cathedral and its services which later, under the name of the Sarum missal, would be used all over England and beyond. He had been, and to Godefroi he still was, the guiding spirit of the place. That the previous king had given the bishopric of this holy man to the evil Roger was a crime which even the loyal knight had found it hard to forgive.
Alone now, Godefroi raised his long, aquiline face and spoke aloud to the bishop’s tomb.
“What shall I do, to save my soul?”
It was not an unusual question. Like every man from the king downwards, Godefroi knew very well that the whole world was in a state of perpetual war – not just between order and chaos, but between God and the Devil, the spirit and the flesh. This was the universal conflict, which would not be resolved until the Day of Judgement, which gave all life its dazzling colour and its terrible poignancy. Whatever his position, feudal lord or knight, burgess or villein – even Bishop Roger himself – each man knew that he must make his peace with God, or after death suffer perpetual hellfire.
Yet for a Norman knight to save his soul, the Church had devised some attractive choices. He could, like other men, do penances; he could endow the church with lands, or better yet, he could travel.
In his grandfather’s day it had been easy. When Pope Urban II, in the year of Our Lord 1095, had announced the First Crusade, the previous Richard de Godefroi had gladly gone. What more could any knight ask for than the chance to purge his soul in the warfare he knew best and most enjoyed? He thought with envy of those days and of his grandfather’s tales of the privations they had endured and the brave campaigns in those distant lands under the parching sun. These had been the stories that fired his imagination when he was a child.
It was not only the thought of winning honour in arms that attracted him. Deep within him he felt a restlessness, a wanderlust that, despite his contented life on his manor, seemed to grow stronger and more urgent with the passing of the years. He could not explain it. Yet the explanation was simple. For the Norman conquerors of England were mainly Norsemen, cousins of the Danish Vikings, who had only settled in northern France a century and a half before. It was not only to England either that this tribe of adventurers had gone: they were inveterate wanderers. Norman knights had already made names for themselves as mercenaries in Italy, where they had first seized tracts of land and then become the most powerful allies of the pope. They had made themselves lords of Sicily. Kinsmen of his own, he knew, had sailed their long ships all over the Mediterranean and in those warmer climes carved for themselves splendid fiefs which made his modest manor look humble indeed. They journeyed south and served the church just as in earlier centuries, his pagan Viking forbears had roamed the northern world and when they had died, been buried or burned with their ships, so that their spirits could make the still greater journey over the soul-bridge to join their ancestors and the northern gods. The spirit of the roaming Norse adventurer – though now he spoke French and lived off the land – was still in his blood.
The crusade had been so easy: a warrior could travel, fight for God, and have all his sins forgiven him. He could have asked for nothing more. But alas, in his own generation there had been no crusade. Which left the next alternative – a pilgrimage, preferably to the Holy Land.
And this was the problem facing Richard de Godefroi. For years he had been working to provide
for his wife and three children; both his estates were now in perfect order. For years, not a day had gone by when he did not dream of setting out on his life’s great adventure. He yearned to go, and it was time to begin.
“I’m almost fifty,” he murmured. “If I don’t go soon, it will be too late.”
But now, just when he was ready, a foolish king and a group of unscrupulous and powerful lords were threatening to tear the country apart in a feudal war, If it broke out, he knew he could not leave his family; and in the current uncertainty, his own feudal overlord, William of Sarisberie, would probably not give him permission to go as far as one of the shrines in Italy, let alone to the Holy Land.
He remained at the tomb of Osmund for half an hour, supposing that he was praying, but in fact weighing up the likely dispositions of the great feudal magnates; and realising with a sigh that he was reaching no conclusion, he rose at last, and made his way slowly out of the church.
It came as no surprise to him that Nicholas was waiting for him respectfully just outside the door. He gave a thin smile, and, remembering their interrupted conversation, cut the villein short before he could make a tiresome speech.
“Your nephew, Godric Body,” he said abruptly. “What was it you wanted?”
As he looked out over the sunlit fields the following morning, it seemed to Godric Body that his life was not without hope. His uncle was working on his behalf with the lord of the manor, and the bruises from William atte Brigge’s attack were not as bad as he had thought.
He stretched his hand down and ruffled the smooth hairs on the neck of the young dog that stood expectantly by his side. Named Harold, it was an animal of uncertain parentage, though he called it a strakur – the lowest kind of hunting dog, which roughly resembled a lurcher – and it had a black and tan coat and a bright and watchful pair of eyes. Godric looked down at his companion with a mischievous grin.