London

by Edward Rutherfurd

  And immediately felt her freeze. He turned to look at her, but she drew away. Then, as she glanced up nervously at his face and saw his sad, solemn eyes, she shook her head and gently but firmly removed his arm.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “I thought, perhaps . . .” he began.

  Again she shook her head, then took a deep breath.

  “Osric, you’ve been very kind to me, but . . .” Her brown eyes gazed at him calmly. “I do not love you.”

  He nodded, feeling the hot misery rise in his throat. “Is it because . . .?” He wanted to say, “Because of my face?” but found he could not.

  “Please go,” she said. And when he hesitated: “Go now.”

  Of course. He understood. Osric went back down the stairs and into the lodgings, where, for a long time, he sat quietly on his straw bed and wept silently because he was ill-favoured.

  He would have been surprised to know that, if anything, the grief of the pale little girl still staring out from the wall was greater than his, for her dilemma was not at all what he supposed.

  Indeed, though Dorkes had noticed his disfigured face at first, she had scarcely thought about it after that. She admired his courage and she liked his kindness. But what, she calmly and sadly asked herself, was the use of that? Osric had nothing. Even the meanest serf in a village had a hut to live in and a plot of land to work for himself. Osric had only a bed of straw. What would his life be? Hauling stones for Ralph Silversleeves who hated him, until he dropped. And what had she? A crippled mother to look after. With a man in her life, how could she care for her? Osric certainly couldn’t. Anyway, she had seen the crude couplings that took place in the lodgings, the ragged, half-starved children who scrabbled about in the hay and mud. “They live like vermin,” her mother had once remarked. “Don’t you do that.”

  Her only hope was that a craftsman or one of the serfs sent temporarily from an estate might like the look of her. If not, she would provide for her mother as best she could. And after that? Perhaps I shan’t live long, she thought.

  Consequently, she had been cautious with Osric, anxious to give the poor little fellow kindness but not too much hope. That morning, she had done, quickly and firmly, what she must, and had sent him away. Now, gazing out over the long city walls and back at the massive, rising Tower, she cursed the fate that had locked her in this grim prison.

  Above all, Osric must not guess the secret she had been living with now for all these weeks, which was that she loved him.

  In the days that followed, when Osric and Dorkes saw each other they smiled as usual but rarely spoke. Both kept their feelings to themselves. Here, it seemed, the matter rested. But not quite.

  It was Alfred’s wife who first noticed the change in Osric. Normally his weekly meals with the armourer and his family were happy occasions. Alfred had built a new house for himself adjoining the armoury, a stout, timber-framed structure consisting of a large main room with a loft divided into two parts, one for himself and his wife, the other for their six children. The apprentices slept in an outbuilding at the back.

  Alfred’s wife was a jolly, comfortable woman, the daughter of a butcher, and she presided over her noisy household with all the ease and confidence of a woman who has a loving husband and exactly one over the number of children she had always hoped for. However miserable his daily existence, Osric had usually cheered up by the time he reached the house, and often brought some little present he had carved to please the children.

  “You’re a mother to the fellow,” Alfred would tell his wife.

  “So much the better,” she would reply. “God knows he needs one.”

  So, when, towards the end of summer, she noticed that Osric was not himself, she was concerned. He seemed abstracted and ate little. Could it be, she asked Alfred, that the poor boy was in love? Alfred did not think so. But when, in the autumn, Osric came in looking pale as death, saying not a word and unable to eat at all, she became worried. She tried gently questioning him, but got nowhere. “Whatever it is,” she told Alfred, “it’s bad. Ask at the Tower. Try to find out.”

  A few days later Alfred reported back. “They say there’s a girl he seemed quite friendly with. I saw her actually. Quite a pretty little thing, in a timid sort of way! I even spoke to her.”

  “And?”

  “Oh. They were just friends, nothing more. She told me so herself.”

  At which his wife shook her head and smiled. “I’ll talk to her,” she said.

  She was surprised, therefore, by Osric’s behaviour when he came to eat with them the very next evening.

  He still seemed pale, yet there was something, some secret, that appeared to be giving him an inner excitement. Unless he had made it up with the girl, she could not think what it might be.

  Above all, no one had ever seen him eat so much. When she produced a dish of stew, he had four helpings. Offered ale, he drank three tankards. He consumed twice as much as one of the normally ravenous apprentices. “Look at Osric,” the children cried. “He’s going to burst!”

  “Are you building up your strength for something?” Alfred asked him.

  “Yes. I need all the food I can get tonight,” he replied, refusing to say why, and when he finally left no one was any the wiser. But he departed contentedly, and that night, as he lay on his bed of straw, he smiled as he contemplated his plan.

  There was a mist hanging over the riverbank the next morning as Ralph made his usual rounds. People were stirring in the lodgings but they appeared only as vague figures, their coughs and voices sounding faint and disembodied in the clinging dampness. Even the great square of the Tower loomed indistinctly, as though in the mist some huge, phantom ship had strayed on to land.

  Ralph grunted. He had been to visit the ladies of the south bank the night before, but though they provided physical release, nowadays they gave him less and less satisfaction, and he had wandered back across the bridge at dawn in a bad temper.

  Besides, something else was annoying him.

  Where the devil was his whip? It had mysteriously vanished two days before. He had only put it down for a few minutes, and though he had issued horrible threats, none of the workers at the Tower seemed to have any knowledge of it. Over the years he had grown so used to the feel of it in his hand that now he felt curiously awkward, almost off balance, as he strode about. “If I don’t find it soon,” he muttered irritably, “I’ll have to get another one.”

  He did not bother to visit the sleeping quarters, but, as was his habit, stalked around the looming mass of the Tower, occasionally glancing towards the slopes as if to check that the ravens out there in the mist were still standing sentinel to protect those dark, damp walls.

  He had just turned the corner when he saw his whip.

  It was lying on the ground near the wall, undamaged by the look of it. Presumably the thief, having grown frightened, had found this way to return it to him.

  With a faint smile, he moved across and bent down to pick it up.

  Osric had been waiting for nearly an hour.

  He knew his plan was dangerous, but all that week as he had thought about it, he had asked himself what he had to lose. Dorkes did not want him. The rest of his life contained nothing to look forward to. What could they do to him that they had not already done? Wasn’t there some satisfaction, however small, in striking a blow at the overseer who had so humiliated him?

  So now, watching from his vantage point, he carefully calculated the moment for the blow to fall, took a deep breath, tensed himself and, through gritted teeth, muttered:

  “Now.”

  Osric’s efforts the evening before had not been in vain. Indeed his stomach had been so full he had wondered if he would burst. The soft, warm evacuation that sprang from him now and sailed down the north face of the Tower from the garderobe on which he sat was certainly greater by far than anything he had ever produced before. Having held himself in readiness for so long, the discharge burst out with wonderful
concentration. Soft, full, yet compact, it fell in blissful silence towards its mark.

  A second later, Osric, peeping down the chute, saw to his delight that his delivery had landed precisely on the overseer’s head.

  From below there was a cry of terror, then, as Ralph put his hand up, of stupefaction, and then, as he saw and smelt what was on his hand, of utter horror. But by the time he looked up to the orifice above, its occupant had vanished.

  With a scream of rage, the Norman raced round the building and up the staircase. He rushed to the garderobe, then ran from the hall to the chamber, the crypt, and even into the darkness of the strongroom. He found nothing. Bellowing in fury, he returned to the main hall, and was about to cast about further when a sudden and even more awful thought occurred to him.

  In a few moments, the first of the masons would be entering the Tower to begin their work. They would see him covered with this smelly and unsightly mess. He would be the laughing stock of the Tower, of all London. With a cry of despair, therefore, he raced out of the building and, moments later, was glimpsed running into the morning mist towards the city.

  Osric waited. His legs, pressed hard against the wall, held him securely in a sitting position some ten feet up in the shadows of the great fireplace. He heard Ralph’s cries and smiled. He heard the Norman’s disappearing feet.

  Then, after a time, he came down.

  A few days later, Dorkes, to her great surprise, found herself accosted by the cheerful armourer’s wife. At first, as they walked together towards Billingsgate, the girl was reserved and noncommittal, but gradually, as the older woman’s warmth and understanding conquered her, she admitted a little; and finally, without wanting to, she broke down.

  Yet none of this was as surprising as what happened next.

  Calmly and kindly the woman explained to her that she and her husband were Osric’s friends; she told her how Alfred had tried to buy Osric out of serfdom. “He may even succeed one day,” she added. Then she made her offer.

  “We’ll look after your mother. Even Ralph doesn’t want a pair of useless hands. We’ll see she doesn’t starve, and if Ralph allows, we’ll take her in to live in our house.”

  “But . . .” The girl hesitated. “If I have children and Osric . . .”

  The woman completed the sentence for her. “If Osric dies?” She shrugged. “In so far as possible, we’ll look after them. I don’t think they’ll starve.” She paused. “You may get a better offer, of course. If so, you should take it. But it’s something at least.” She smiled. “My husband is a master armourer. He has some standing here.”

  As they walked back, Dorkes was silent. She hardly knew what to think or what to say. But at last, being young, and weary, she replied: “Thank you. Yes.”

  And so it was that a few nights later, Osric looked up in astonishment to see, by the soft glow of the brazier, a small, pale figure approaching him.

  A year passed before Dorkes’s mother was taken into the armourer’s house. During this time the main floor of the Tower was completed and the huge oak rafters for its ceiling prepared.

  Osric and Dorkes, having made what private space they could for themselves in the lodgings, lived together undisturbed. There was no marriage ceremony, no official sanctification of any kind, but in those conditions none was expected. The other inhabitants of the place referred to Dorkes simply as young Osric’s woman, and to him as her man. There was nothing more to say.

  Except when, a short while after her mother had left, Dorkes quietly told Osric that she was going to have a child.

  As the months continued to pass, it seemed to Alfred the armourer that he and his wife had done a fine thing and that, all in all, life in Norman London was tolerable enough.

  Or would have been, but for a nagging problem that now began to grow: one which, if he could not solve it, threatened to engulf them all.

  On a late autumn morning in the year of Our Lord 1083, Leofric the merchant, who dwelt by the sign of the Bull in the West Cheap, stood near his house in momentary indecision.

  The two sights that claimed his attention were so interesting to him that he kept turning his head from side to side as he tried to watch both.

  The first was a half-built church.

  For if the Conqueror had brought castles to England, he had also brought something else of great importance: the Continental Church. After all, he had promised the Pope that in return for his blessing, he would reform the English Church, and he was a man of his word. At the earliest opportunity, therefore, he had removed the Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury and replaced him with Lanfranc, a Norman priest of the greatest distinction. Following his first inspection of his new flock, Lanfranc’s verdict was simple: “Disgraceful.” And he set about cleaning things up.

  Some years before, there had been a fire along the West Cheap. Leofric’s house had been spared, but the little Saxon church of St Mary at the top of the lane had been burnt to cinders. Now, Archbishop Lanfranc himself had ordered it rebuilt, to serve as his own church in London.

  Halfway along the Cheap, therefore, just behind the stalls of mercers, drapers and ribbon-sellers, a small but handsome church was now rising. Like the Tower in the east, it was square, sturdy and built of stone. The crypt, which was mostly above ground, was already completed. It had a nave, four bays long and two aisles. Even the vaulting was stone, though here the builders had also used some Roman bricks they had found nearby. But the most striking feature, which had already impressed the inhabitants of the city, was that like those of Westminster Abbey, the stout arches of this little church were in the impressive, Romanesque style – rounded like a bow. As a consequence, even before the building was done, the church had acquired the special name it was to keep: St Mary-le-Bow.

  Hardly a day went by without Leofric watching the progress on this fine new building for at least an hour. It might be Norman, and on his doorstep, but it pleased him.

  The other sight, however, was becoming stranger every moment.

  On the northern side of the Cheap, not a hundred yards from where he was standing, lay the narrow street of Ironmonger Lane. And by this corner, for five minutes at least, a most curious figure had been lurking. His hood was pulled over his head. He was stooping in a futile attempt to conceal his height and, presumably, his identity; and from his hood peeped out the edge of a large, red beard.

  But why should he be lurking there? For up Ironmonger Lane there lay only one quarter – a new one – known by the name of its most recent inhabitants: the Jewry.

  As well as his military followers, William the Conqueror had brought one other group with him to England: the Norman Jews. They were a privileged class. Under the king’s special protection, but discouraged from entering most occupations, this community had come to specialize in the making of loans. Not that the merchants of London were any strangers to simple finance. The loan and its necessary accompaniment, interest, had long existed there, as they had always done in any place where there are merchants and some kind of currency. Leofric, Barnikel and Silversleeves had all undertaken loans bearing interest or its equivalent. But this community of specialists was a novelty in the Anglo-Danish city.

  So why should Barnikel be lurking there? It was not simply his dress but also his actions that were so strange.

  First he would advance a little way up the lane, then stop, turn, shuffle back to the bottom, then turn again, press forward, receive some inward check and come back down again. Leofric watched his old friend do this three times before, fearing that he might have gone mad, he started towards him. But evidently Barnikel had caught sight of him, for with a strange agility he scuttled off down the Poultry and vanished behind some stalls, leaving Leofric to ponder the question: What could the Dane be up to?

  It was Hilda who discovered the answer the very next evening as she walked with Barnikel past St Bride’s, towards St Clement Danes.

  Little had changed for Hilda. Her life had been quiet. There had been one more child. If i
t was possible for a disappointed woman to mellow, she had done so. Her chaste rendezvous with the Dane by the banks of the Thames were perhaps her greatest pleasure.

  Recently, though, she had noticed a change in her friend. It was not just that he was preoccupied; suddenly he appeared older. The grey hairs in his red beard seemed more noticeable; a slight tremor in his hand told her that some nights he drank too much.

  Her father had let her know about the curious scene he had witnessed by the Jewry, so now, when she judged the moment was right, she gently asked her old friend if anything was the matter. At first he would not tell her. But when they reached the little ruined jetty at Aldwych, she made him sit on a stone, and there, gazing sadly over the Thames, he at last confessed.

  His debts had slowly grown, it seemed. She suspected his secret activities had been part of the cause, but did not ask. Since the Conquest, many Danish merchants had suffered from competition with the Normans. Recently there had also been heavy taxes on Londoners to pay for King William’s castle-building. Barnikel was not ruined, but he needed money. “So soon I must go to the Jewry,” he said bleakly, and shaking his head explained: “I have lent, but I have never had to borrow before.” It obviously distressed him.

  “But doesn’t Silversleeves owe you money?” she asked, remembering her father’s old debt.

  He nodded. “He pays the interest.”

  “So why not claim it back?” she demanded.

  He rose. “And let the Norman know I need it? Let him see me crawl?” Suddenly he was almost his usual self again. “Never!” he thundered. “I’d sooner go to the Jews.”

  And Hilda could only marvel, as most women do, at the vanity of men. But she thought she saw what to do.

  And so, later that day, she visited her father and suggested to him: “Go to Silversleeves. Don’t tell him Barnikel’s in trouble, or that I told you. Just say that the debt’s been on your conscience and ask him to repay it. He’ll do it for you, and if it happens naturally, Barnikel needn’t guess.”