Sarum

  But despite her tomboy appearance, Mary had one unexpected enthusiasm: she had an unshakeable belief in all things religious. Often she would be seen driving her cart from the farm to Wilton Abbey with gifts of provisions that should have been sold at the market. And though the abbey was one of the greatest landowners at Sarum, and so well known for its extravagant and lax ways that only two years before the Dean of Salisbury had been forced to threaten some of its senior members with excommunication if they did not pay some of their debts, Mary always obstinately – and to the huge amusement of her father – referred to the inmates as “the poor nuns”.

  To Mary, the wishes of the nuns and the word of the priests were law. When the nuns sighed over the debts into which the wicked money-lenders had trapped them, or the vicar of the little church near the farm spoke harshly against the evil of the Jews and their usury, she knew that they must be right.

  As the cart trundled down the valley, she banged on its side and swore to her father.

  “No Jew shall ride with me again. Not if the king himself asks.”

  In the cathedral close that morning, a painful scene was taking place. Indeed, as Osmund the Mason faced his son, he could only gasp in disbelief at the insult.

  “You are telling me I may not work in the cathedral any more?”

  Edward Mason looked embarrassed, but nodded.

  “It’s what the guild of masons have decided,” he confessed.

  It was hard to take it in. For a moment Osmund could not speak.

  “But why?” he cried at last.

  Since the completion of the chapter house and cloisters, Osmund the Mason had known peace. His wonderful carving there had earned him respect.

  Each time the masons came to the great round table in the chapter house where their wages were paid, they would glance up at the wonderful carvings on the walls, and acknowledge no one had ever done anything better. Even the incident with Cristina, who had long since married William atte Brigge’s boy, had gradually been forgotten. And when the work on the tower had begun, he had been glad to have a new project.

  The building of the tower involved the creation of a new world. First the carpenters constructed an enormous wooden platform over the great central crossing of the nave and transepts. Like a wooden table top, resting on the four central pillars, this platform sealed off the base of the tower from the empty spaces below. Once this was done, the old roof above was removed, leaving the square platform open to the sky, and it was here, in their new and separate world a hundred feet above the ground, that the masons began to raise the four wails of the tower. The walls were solid – though not as thick as the main walls of the church below – and like them they were filled with a mixture of lime, mortar and rubble. At each corner of the great tower there was a spiral staircase.

  Osmund liked working in the tower, and as its walls slowly rose, he would often stand in the shadows they cast, staring up in admiration at their solemn mass, and at the square of sky even higher above. There were fewer masons now, but there was work for his clever hands to do, and around the huge stone lancet windows, he supervised a fine decoration of ballflowers.

  One thing concerned him, however. The tower had no buttresses, no outside supports to hold its stone and rubble walls together.

  “As they get higher, they will spring apart,” he complained to the canons. His fears were justified; careful plans were made, and he was only satisfied when an engineer showed him what they would do.

  “We shall wrap the whole tower in bands of iron, all the way round, pinned in place with big bolts, right through the wall,” the man explained.

  “But the bands will have to be thick,” the mason objected. “The strain could be enormous.”

  “They will be,” the engineer promised. “They’ll last five hundred years.”

  This was exactly what they did; as the walls of the huge tower slowly rose, the grey Chilmark stone was bound in with huge bands of iron.

  He loved the separate world of the tower in the sky, almost silent except for the tapping of the masons, the occasional squeaking of winches raising the stones, and the rustle of the wind over the high walls above. And he was contented. Both his daughters were married. He was respected in his work. The only cause of annoyance in recent years had been his only son’s joining King Edward in his wars in Wales. When that mountainous country, for the first time since Roman days, had been subdued and the English had acquired from the Welsh not only a fine new principality, but also a new skill in the use of the great longbow, Edward Mason, with his short strong fingers, had discovered that he was well-suited to master the archer’s art and he had returned from the wars with honour and with a pouch stuffed with the king’s silver coin. His son’s skill as a longbowman had not pleased Osmund at all.

  “You’re a mason,” he reminded him.

  And though Edward often practised his archery in his spare time at the butts outside the city, Osmund never came to watch him. When at last the time came to admit his son into the company of the master masons, he did so grudgingly.

  He was fifty-nine; both he and his wife had kept their health; he had still all but three of his teeth. True, it annoyed him that sometimes, when he was carving, he could not see the detail of his work clearly from close up, but he had grown so used over the years to feeling his carving with his hand that this small disability did not trouble him, and he found that his eyes picked out objects at a distance better than ever.

  But lately a change had come over him.

  At first he blamed his wife. Although her thin body was growing old, he had still been used to paying her mechanical attentions for which she was, at least sometimes, grateful. But recently he had found that his body did not respond as it had before. At first he had told himself that it was because his wife no longer attracted him, but as the months passed, he had to admit that this explanation was not enough. He began to stare at young girls, sometimes with lust, but at other times, challenging his own body to respond. And his body, he realised, was slowly failing him. He began to grow testy. He would snap at his wife for no particular reason, or he would deliberately stare at young women when he was with her, to suggest that they might arouse him if she did not.

  At work, he had now taken to wandering unasked amongst the other masons, inspecting their work, and gruffly correcting them. And though every mason admitted that no one was a finer carver than old Osmund, these criticisms were soon resented. Often he would pick on his own son, rebuking him publicly for some piece of imagined sloppiness or poor finish, and Edward bore this patiently. But frequently he would berate others too, even his fellow master masons, telling them curtly: “The line is weak,” or silently shaking his head as he gazed at their efforts. Several times Edward had privately warned him that this behaviour was giving offence, but his father had taken no notice.

  At last, when these inspections had become a habit, the masons’ guild acted. The work on the tower could only use a few workers and Osmund’s testy comments had become too much of a nuisance.

  “There are younger men who can carve,” they told Edward. “It is time for your father to leave the work in the cathedral to others.” It was a harsh decision, but Edward knew that if the guild had decided, it was useless to argue.

  “Let me tell him,” he requested.

  Now Edward had delivered their message. He knew they were right. But as he watched his father’s thickset body first bristle with indignation and then suddenly sag, he wished he had protested against it.

  There was a long pause before Osmund spoke again.

  “What shall I do?” It was terrible, after so many years, to hear the note of despair in his father’s voice.

  “There is plenty of work in the close.”

  It was true: houses for the clergy were still being built; there were still constant alterations being made to the bishop’s palace even though Bishop de la Corner, a royal official, was seldom at Sarum. But none of this mattered to Osmund. Only the day before he h
ad completed a series of carvings of little dogs’ heads which were to be installed half way up the tower. He had been pleased with them. He shook his head in confusion. There were so many other carvings he had wished to do.

  “But I have always worked in the cathedral,” he protested. It was his home, his life.

  There was another awkward pause before Edward replied.

  “The guild has decided. I’m sorry.” There was nothing else he could say. And after a little time, during which neither of them spoke, he turned away and started to walk towards the cathedral.

  Osmund watched him go.

  Was it really possible that he, the master mason, had been rejected? He could not believe it. But as he stood there, the realisation grew. It seemed to fall on him like a crushing weight.

  It was worse than his humiliation by Cristina: at least he had brought that upon himself. But the recent sense of his failing powers, and now this sudden rejection by the masons’ guild were terrible blows he had done nothing to deserve. He felt suddenly weak and helpless.

  Edward was passing round the corner of the building; he did not look back.

  The mason’s shoulders hunched forward. He hung his head. “Then my life is over,” he murmured. Suddenly, he was an old man.

  But then, as he stared at the cathedral he had loved, and that Edward was now entering, his round face suddenly contorted into a look of furious hatred and rage.

  He loathed them all: his wife, the masons, even his own son.

  “Do what you like then,” he muttered bitterly. “You can’t carve, but you’re still young.” And with a curse he turned his back on the cathedral.

  For in all his life, this was the first time that Osmund had truly discovered the deadly sin of envy.

  Shortly after the feast of Edward the Confessor, in the month of October 1289, King Edward I of England left Westminster and rode with his attendants to Sarum.

  The party was in excellent spirits, for all knew that important plans, which might change the course of the island’s history, were ready to take shape. The king himself was in high good humour.

  Indeed in 1289, King Edward had good reason to be optimistic.

  His kingdom was at peace, and prospering mightily; its population was increasing, agriculture booming. Its huge exports of wool, except for a few years of dispute with Flanders the decade before, had grown continuously to the busy cities of France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries. Five years before, he had also extended his territory when he had subdued the unruly Celtic chiefs of Wales, and garrisoned their mountainous country with the series of great castles like Caernarvon that he understood how to build so well. His son had been accepted by the warring Welsh as the first English Prince of Wales and their principality, for the first time since Roman days, had become united again with England.

  Since then, Edward had spent three busy years in the last of his continental possessions, the rich province of Gascony whose Bordeaux wines the English loved, and whose affairs he had thoroughly organised as was his habit.

  Now he had turned his attention back to England once again.

  There were two great affairs of state to be dealt with. The first was a complete and overdue reform of the royal and feudal administration. There was petty corruption everywhere. And already, within two months of his return, the vigorous king set his chosen officials, fresh from their work in Gascony, on an investigation into abuses that had half the sheriffs and justices of England trembling.

  The second affair of state was still more important: for it was nothing less than the joining of England and her warlike neighbour Scotland into a single kingdom.

  The opportunity had come about by chance when King Alexander of Scotland had been killed in a fall from his horse at the age of only forty-four, leaving as heiress to his kingdom the child of his daughter and the King of Norway – a little girl, Margaret. She was known as the Maid of Norway and the regents governing Scotland had at once decided that she should return from Norway to her future kingdom; they also began to look for a husband for her.

  It was a heaven-sent opportunity, and Edward seized it at once. If the Maid should be married to his own son, then at last the two kingdoms could merge – a spectacular piece of diplomacy to crown the other triumphs of his reign. He had already been negotiating from Gascony with the Scots. The negotiations had gone well: now, even as he rode towards the cathedral city, four Scots commissioners were on their way to Salisbury to meet his officials there.

  He was a splendid figure: tall, broad-shouldered, with a long reach that made him formidable in the joust, but at the same time, he possessed the mind of a lawyer – an unusual combination that made him one of the most remarkable monarchs of his age. Though he sometimes showed his father’s dreamy and religious qualities – for he loved pageantry and had already promised the pope to go on crusade – this ruthless administrator and soldier had also learned many lessons from Montfort, not least of which was how to make use of the new parliaments to tame the magnates and to raise taxes.

  His magnificent mane of hair and his beard were all white now – but the effect was still handsome. His eyes missed nothing, though, from his father, he had inherited one drooping eyelid that sometimes gave the wholly erroneous impression that he was half asleep.

  His spirits were high as he rode towards Sarum. While his officials negotiated he would hunt in the forest of Clarendon, and visit the cathedral.

  Soon, Osmund knew, King Edward and his retinue would walk through the great west door.

  Outside, it was a bright October morning, but inside the cathedral the candles were lit and the brightly painted interior shimmered with gold and silver ornaments and magnificent hangings of embroidered silk. At the end of the nave, next to the choir, a party of knights and officials, including old Jocelin de Godefroi, resplendent in a long blue cloak, and his grandson waited to greet the monarch; below this group stood the mayor and burgesses. Osmund could see the bluff figure of Peter Shockley among them. The rest of the nave was filled with humbler folk like himself. All eyes were on the west door where very shortly the king, accompanied by the sheriff of Wiltshire and the dean of the cathedral, would appear. There was an excited murmur of anticipation.

  Osmund stood a little apart from the crowd. In the last month he had become a changed man. Instead of the stocky, upright figure with a big, round head and ruddy face, there was now only a shadow of the master mason. His heavy head hung forward sadly; his shoulders were stooped; his cheeks had become hollow and pallid; the effect was made worse by his refusal to shave so that now a thin, uneven straggle of grey hairs, halfway between stubble and a beard, sprouted from his chin. His proud waddle had given way to a shuffle. In less than a month he had succeeded in turning himself into an old man. Since he had been turned out of the cathedral, he had withdrawn not only from the world of the masons, whom he carefully avoided, but even from his wife. Only in Edward’s presence did he come to life: for if his son approached, his shoulders would suddenly hunch forward like a threatening animal, and his face would twist into an angry grimace.

  “Here is a master builder,” he would snarl, “a builder of towers who can’t carve.”

  He had been offered other work, but he had refused it. “I’m too old. Can’t see,” he would explain bitterly, and when one of the canons had protested, he had shuffled away.

  He had been seen in the city though, walking along the riverbank opposite the close, apparently staring blankly at the swans; but if an observer watched carefully, he would have seen that the mason’s eyes shifted constantly and sadly to the soaring grey mass of the cathedral opposite.

  He had only come to the cathedral today because a messenger had come from the dean with an order for him to do so.

  “The king has admired the carvings in the chapter house and he wishes to see the mason who did them. You will attend the service.” And so, grumbling at the order, but secretly gratified, he had come. Even so, he had insisted on standing apart, several yards fro
m his son and his wife, in his own determined isolation.

  He looked around the cathedral. It was a splendid spectacle; even now, he could not restrain a small smile of satisfaction when he saw it, and if the king were to take notice of him above the lesser masons who had dared to cast him out, so much the better. Imperceptibly, his back began to straighten.

  In the crowd, heads were turning eagerly. At any moment the king would come.

  And then suddenly the mason’s face contracted to a frown. He glanced from side to side to see if anyone else had noticed it, but it seemed they had not. Puzzled, he shook his head.

  Why was it that he had the impression that something was wrong?

  He stared around the cathedral, trying to analyse what it was that had caught his attention, peering into the shadowy spaces. Everything looked normal. But still his frown remained.

  Then he heard it: a faint, an almost imperceptible murmur that seemed to be coming from the ground. It was somewhere in front of him but he could not say how far. He listened carefully; was it just a whisper in the crowd; could it be the tramp of feet of the king’s retinue outside, or the clergy in their heavy vestments moving about in the choir? He did not think so.

  By the choir screen he could see a thin haze of incense rising: he could smell its sweet scent.

  Forgetting his old age, all his senses seemed to come to life. Under his feet he was sure he could detect a subtle, insidious trembling in the flagstones, unnoticed by the crowd whose attention was elsewhere, but there all the same.

  He listened again. It was more than a murmur; it was a faint creaking and it was definitely coming from the stones of the cathedral itself.

  Something was wrong.

  He stared at the shapes of the great arches ahead. Was it his imagination or was there something about them that was slightly different?