London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “There won’t be room for much of a window,” he had remarked to one of the masons, and the fellow had laughed.

  “It’ll be just a slit,” he answered the boy, “no wider than a man’s hand. No one will get in or out through there.”

  Two other features of the cellar also concerned Osric. The first was a large hole in the floor of the main, western chamber. At first he had been puzzled by this, but he soon learned its purpose, for since he was one of the smallest labourers, Ralph had promptly chosen him to go down into it. “Dig,” he had curtly ordered. And when the boy had foolishly asked “How far?”, Ralph had cursed him and explained: “Until you find water, you fool.” Although the Thames flowed nearby, and there was also a well not far from the bank, it was essential that the king’s castle should have its own secure water supply within its mighty walls. Day after day, therefore, Osric had gone down with pick and shovel, lowered by ropes, sending the earth and gravel he dug up to the surface in a bucket. Deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Tower’s mound he had gone until at last he had come to water. When they measured the well he had dug, they found it was forty feet deep.

  But it was the other feature that filled his heart with dread.

  The very day after refusing to let him be a carpenter, Ralph had suddenly called out, “Osric, since you are good at working down holes, I have a new job for you.” And before the little fellow’s face even had time to fall: “The tunnel, Osric. That’s the place for you.”

  A necessary feature of any large fortified building was its drain, and the Tower of London’s was intelligently conceived. Beginning in the corner, below a hole in the floor not far from the well, it was to run underground, sloping gently down for some fifty yards until it reached the river. At low tide the drain would be tolerably dry, but at high tide, the Thames water would flood the drain and flush it out.

  It was a low and narrow space, with just enough room for a few small fellows like Osric to use their picks in a crouching position. Each day he went down and dug away for hours while the loosened earth was dragged back up the tunnel in open sacks, and carpenters put up supports to keep the roof from collapsing. How many days or weeks it would take to bore this hole before the masons could move in to wall and roof it, Osric did not know. All he knew was that he felt like a mole in the ground and that his back was continually aching.

  It was after a week of this that he made a second, hopeful attempt at freedom.

  Bishop Gundulf of Rochester was a large man. His head was bald. His face was fleshy. Both his body and his manner of speech could best be described as rotund. But there was also a certain briskness in his movements, giving an indication of the very quick mind that made him an excellent administrator. If he experienced any distaste or amusement that late August afternoon as he stood facing the slow-witted overseer, nothing of it showed on his face. It was time to be tactful.

  He had just changed the design of the Tower of London, and Ralph Silversleeves was going to have to rebuild it.

  At first Ralph could not believe it. He gazed at the huge foundations already rising. Could it really be that the fat bishop wanted him to remove the tremendous mass of stone and begin all over again?

  “It is only the south-east corner, my friend,” the bishop said in a soothing tone.

  “It’s twenty-five bargeloads of stone,” Ralph retorted furiously. “And for God’s sake why?”

  The reason for the alteration was simple enough. The sister castle at Colchester had a semicircular projection towards the east at this same corner. The designer of the London Tower, seeing how well it looked, had decided to do the same thing here as well.

  “It will form the apse of the royal chapel, you see,” Gundulf continued blandly. “It will be a noble construction. And the king is delighted,” he added.

  If the slow brain of the overseer had registered this last hint, it did not show.

  “It will add weeks to the work. Months more likely,” he said sullenly.

  “The king is anxious that the work should proceed swiftly,” the bishop replied with firm politeness. It was an understatement: after a decade of trouble in England, William wanted the new stone castle of London completed without delay.

  “Not a chance,” Ralph grunted. He hated being bullied by clever men.

  Gundulf sighed, then struck.

  “I said to the king only the other day how willing you were, how well suited to your great task,” he remarked. “I shall be seeing him again shortly.”

  Since even he could not fail to see the implied threat, Ralph shrugged sulkily. “As you wish,” he muttered, and began to move away.

  “I shall tell the king,” the bishop smoothly concluded, to punish the surly fellow for boring him, “that you will be able to complete the new task on exactly the same schedule as before. Not a day will be lost,” he called gaily. “He will be very pleased.”

  Only moments after this, young Osric made his move.

  Osric had often seen the portly bishop before, when Gundulf came to inspect the work.

  Like many people in high position, Bishop Gundulf had easily assumed that mantle of cheerful politeness which protects and eases the path of those in public life. As he went round the building site, his courteous nods, even to the serfs, cost him nothing.

  It was natural enough, therefore, that the little serf working miserably in the dark tunnel should have formed the plan he had.

  Every instinct, even a physical craving in his fingertips, told him he should be a craftsman. Could this be wrong? Or had God decided he must suffer like this for his sins? The one thing he was sure of was that Ralph Silversleeves was no agent of God: he was the devil. But Bishop Gundulf, who was in charge of everything, was a man of God, and he looked kindly. Surely even a humble serf like him might approach a man of God?

  Anyway, he thought, I’ve nothing else to lose.

  He had waited for an opportunity. Now, as he came out from his shift in the tunnel and saw the bishop standing in front of the building site, he decided to take his chance. Running over to the carpenters’ workshop, he seized the piece of work he had done and shyly approached the great man.

  Bishop Gundulf was surprised when he saw the earnest little figure caked in earth standing before him with his lump of wood. Nevertheless, he asked kindly, “What is it, my son?”

  In a few words Osric explained. “This is my work. I want to be a carpenter.”

  As he gazed at the serf, it was not difficult for Gundulf to guess the rest. The work, he saw, was good. His eyes strayed towards the carpenters’ workshop. Perhaps he should place the boy there to see what they could make of him. And he was about to stride over there when he heard a cry of rage behind him.

  It was Ralph.

  The moment he caught sight of them, he had realized what Osric was up to. Already in a furious temper about the change of plan, the sight of the wretched little serf going to Gundulf behind his back was more than he could bear. As he raced to the bishop’s side, his cry of rage was practically a howl.

  “He says he wants to be a carpenter,” Gundulf observed mildly.

  “Never.”

  “The craftsman’s talents are a gift from God, you know,” the bishop remarked. “We are supposed to use them.”

  And then Ralph had his inspiration.

  “You don’t understand,” he replied. “We can’t trust him with a knife or sharp tools of any kind. He’s only labouring here because he tried to kill one of the king’s knights. That’s why they slit his nose.”

  “He doesn’t look very dangerous.”

  “But he is.”

  Gundulf sighed. He was not sure he believed the overseer. On the other hand he’d given him enough trouble for one day. And the work on the Tower must go smoothly on.

  “As you wish,” he said with a shrug.

  And so it was that Osric, though he did not understand what they were saying, since they spoke to each other in Norman French, perceived that the last hope in his young life ha
d been extinguished.

  A few moments later, held by the ear, he found himself back at the entrance to the tunnel. Ralph was shouting at him.

  “You think you’ll be a carpenter behind my back, do you? Well, look around you. This earth and this stone are what you are going to dig and carry for the rest of your life, little carpenter. You’ll do that and nothing else until your back breaks.” He gave a grim smile. “This Tower will be your life, Osric, and it will be your death, because I shall make you work building it until you die.” Then he threw him bodily into the tunnel with the curt order: “Work another shift.”

  So intent was he upon this important task that Ralph Silversleeves did not take any notice of the other people standing around. Even if he had, there was nothing remarkable about the presence of Alfred the armourer.

  In fact, Alfred was inside the Tower for a good reason. He had been told that he would be making the great metal grilles that would fit over the drain and the well, and he had come by to get an idea of the size of these cavities.

  With mild interest he had watched and listened as Ralph raved at the solemn little fellow. After Ralph had gone, he walked over to the tunnel entrance. On the ground he noticed the little example of Osric’s woodwork, which had fallen when Ralph had thrown him down. Alfred picked it up thoughtfully.

  And that night, following a long conversation with young Osric, he told his friend the Dane: “I think I’ve found the little fellow we need.”

  “Can you trust him? With your life?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why? What does he want?”

  Alfred grinned.

  “He wants revenge.”

  Revenge was sweet. The plan was not without risk, but Osric felt confident. Above all, he felt proud.

  Secretly, at night, he would sneak out of the labourers’ quarters by the Tower and make his way to the Dane’s house nearby. There, in a storeroom at the back, he and Alfred would work, his stubby fingers instinctively feeling their way forward so that soon, by careful trial and error, he had evolved a piece of carpentry so neat, so ingenious and so deceptive that the master armourer cried out: “You are a craftsman indeed!”

  The task the Dane had set him was to convert a huge wagon he possessed so that he could conceal arms in it. But where he had expected the little carpenter to design a secret compartment under the cart, Osric had hit on a more ingenious solution. “If they search you, that’s the first thing they’ll look for,” he had pointed out. Rather than touch the floor of the wagon, he had instead concentrated on the solid beams that made its frame. Working with care and sheer inspiration, he had hollowed these out, preserving their outside appearance with stops and sliding panels, and doing so with such thoroughness that a quite remarkable quantity of dismantled swords, spearheads and arrowheads could be snugly lodged within. By the time he had finished, his work was invisible.

  “The cart itself is built of arms!” Barnikel exclaimed with delight, hugging the little carpenter so warmly that for a moment Osric feared he might not breathe again.

  He would be taking out a consignment, the Dane told Alfred, the following week.

  It was quite by chance that, two days later, Hilda had an encounter with Ralph. It took place on the hill from Ludgate to St Paul’s, and Hilda was in a very bad temper. This, however, had nothing to do with Ralph.

  Her anger was caused by an embroidery.

  It was in those years, in King William’s England, that the largest and most famous piece of needlework that has probably ever been undertaken was made. The Bayeux Tapestry, as this extraordinary work was called, was not, in fact, a woven tapestry at all, but a huge embroidery of coloured wools stitched, in the time-honoured Anglo-Saxon manner, on linen. Though only about twenty inches high, it was an astounding seventy-seven yards long. It pictured some six hundred humans, thirty-seven ships, as many trees, and seven hundred animals. And it celebrated the Norman Conquest.

  More than this, it was the first known example of English state propaganda. Arranged in the form of a huge, Anglo-Saxon strip cartoon, its stylized figures depicted, in dozens of scenes, the Norman king’s version of the events leading to the Conquest and a detailed account of the Battle of Hastings. It was commissioned by the king’s half-brother, Odo, who, though bishop of the Norman city of Bayeux, which yielded him a fine income, was also a soldier and administrator just as ruthless and ambitious as the king himself. And it was embroidered by English women, mostly in Kent, before it was finally stitched together.

  There were good reasons why this magnificent work of art should so infuriate Hilda. She had not wanted to take part, but Henri had forced her to join the ladies who had been meeting in the king’s hall at Westminster to work on the project. “You will please Bishop Odo,” he had said, even though it was Odo who had been granted half of Kent and one of Odo’s knights who now occupied her own family’s ancestral estate at Bocton. Henri knew this, but did not care. The tapestry, with its vivid portrayal of events, always reminded her painfully of the loss of her old home, of her country, and of the long years of service to her husband’s cold and cynical nature.

  As she returned from the ladies at Westminster that morning, therefore, Hilda’s anger was still raging.

  And then she saw Ralph.

  It was clear that he was excited. His heavy face was animated, his normally dull eyes were shining as, unasked, he fell into step beside her.

  “Would you like to know a secret?” he began.

  Sometimes Hilda felt sorry for Ralph. Partly it was because Henri despised him, but perhaps more it was because he was still unmarried.

  Indeed, he had no woman. Sometimes he would cross the bridge to the south side where a small community of whores dwelt along the bankside, but even these ladies, it was said, were not enthusiastic for his blunt attentions. Occasionally she had suggested finding him a wife, but Henri had discouraged her. “Then he’ll have heirs to inherit,” he would remind her. And once he had remarked drily: “I look after the family money. And I intend to outlive him.” So as the curious fellow strode by her side, she forced herself to give him a smile.

  If he had not seen his sister-in-law quite so soon after his meeting with the great Mandeville, Ralph might not have been so indiscreet. He liked Hilda. “I’m not such a fool as Henri thinks,” he had once plaintively told her. Now, flushed with excitement, he could not resist the chance to impress her.

  “I have been given an important mission,” he said.

  The conversation between Ralph and Mandeville had been brief but important. It was the business of the great magnate to be well informed, and little that passed in south-east England escaped his notice. From the interview, Ralph learned that there were indeed fears of further trouble in the countryside. “In the rebellion of three years ago,” Mandeville had told him, “we think they got arms from London. We want to put a stop to that.”

  Having considered the matter, Mandeville had decided that to oversee the little operation he had in mind he needed a man who was suspicious, small-minded and ruthless.

  “It’s a good opportunity for you to show what you can do,” he informed Ralph as he explained the plan. “You will need to be patient, and you will need spies.”

  “I’ll tear apart every cart that leaves London,” the overseer cried.

  “You will do no such thing,” Mandeville replied. “In fact, I want you to relax the inspection of goods leaving the city.” He smiled. “The trick is to lull their suspicions. Have men posted in the woods instead, and when they see any suspicious shipments, follow them. We don’t just want to stop the arms. I want them to lead us to any rebels. Above all, tell nobody. Do you understand?”

  Indeed he did. A position of trust. A secret commission. Bursting with pride, Ralph had walked through the city. It was hardly surprising that, seeing Hilda and anxious to impress her, he had instantly decided:

  “I can tell you, of course, because you’re my own family.”

  If it had not been for her
irritation over the morning’s needlework, Ralph’s confidence might not even have interested her. But now, as she looked at his heavy face, a brutish version of her own husband’s, and thought of the wretched English – her own people – whom he would trap and no doubt kill, she experienced a feeling of revulsion.

  The truth was, she realized, that she had become sick of them all, of Henri, of Ralph, of the Normans and their rule. There was, of course, nothing she could do about any of it. Except, perhaps, for one thing.

  “You must be very proud,” she said to Ralph as she left him.

  She was due to go up to her father-in-law’s estate at Hatfield the next week, where she would stay for a month. It was not a prospect she relished much, and so she had arranged to enjoy a quiet walk with Barnikel that evening, knowing it was the last they would have for some time.

  When they met at St Bride’s, therefore, and began their usual stroll towards the Aldwych, she quietly confided to him everything that Ralph had told her, adding: “I know, after all, that you are no friend of the Normans. So if you know who should be warned, will you do it?”

  It was then, on seeing Barnikel’s evident dismay at the news, and shrewdly guessing he must be more closely involved than she had realized, that Hilda, with a sudden and generous impulse, caught the older man’s arm and softly asked: “Is there some way, dear friend, that I can help you?”

  The road north from London first passed across marshy meadows and fields and then, as the ground began to rise, entered the forest of Middlesex near the old Saxon village of Islington.

  Ten days after his meeting with Mandeville, a hot Ralph Silversleeves, accompanied by a dozen armed riders, rode southwards out of the forest in a lather of frustration.

  He had just come from a meeting with his men, and it had not been a happy experience. His spies had found nothing. “Not so much as a pitchfork,” one of them told him grumpily. “Maybe they were tipped off,” he had added. “Impossible!” Ralph had cried. When another had asked him, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?” he had struck the fellow in a fury.