by Norah Lofts
A Tree of Life Book
Published by arrangement with the author’s Estate.
Copyright © Clive Lofts 2018.
Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, 1975. Published in the USA by Doubleday, 1975.
Cover illustration ©Peter Dickinson 2018
The moral right of the late Norah Lofts to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978-1-905806-66-9
Tree of Life Publishing
United Kingdom
Also by Norah Lofts from Tree of Life Publishing:
Esther
How Far to Bethlehem?
Jassy
Bless This House
The Devil in Clevely
Scent of Cloves
The Lute Player
The Town House
The House at Old Vine
The House at Sunset
The Lost Queen
Eleanor The Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Hester Roon
Michael And All Angels
ONE
August 1451
When Sir Godfrey Tallboys decided to build his house he was thirty-five years old and at the very peak of his career as knight errant. 1451, still only eight months old, had been a wonderful year for him. He was not only acknowledged as the premier knight in England, he was, for once, clear of debt and had a hundred pounds in hand. The Michaelmas and Christmas tournaments were still to come. Now, if ever, he could give his sweet Sybilla the thing she had long craved for—a house of her own.
He was a man of action, not of thought. He lived for the moment, seldom looking backward—and then only to pleasant things—and even less seldom taking thought of tomorrow. But he accepted, as he accepted everything else associated with his way of life, that the day would come when his eyes would lose keenness, his arms their strength and then he would need a place to which to retire, a wall upon which to hang his armour and some pasture for Arcol, his great horse. However, when he thought of that day, it always seemed far distant; eight, ten years. He would not have considered the building when he did, had it not been for Sybilla and the children.
Not that she nagged. A sweeter, more amenable woman never lived but, ever since the birth of Henry, who was now six years old, she had been saying that it would be pleasant to have a home of her own. And in the past eighteen months or so she had drawn his attention to a fact which he—unobservant outside his trade—would not have noticed; the Tallboys family was increasingly unwelcome.
She said, cool and tolerant as was her way, ‘it is understandable…’ She listed the places where she and the children stayed while he rode in tournaments, or went to take part in one of the recurrent wars between rival nobles or against the Scots or the Welsh.
At Moyidan in Suffolk which Sir Godfrey’s brother James had inherited, being the firstborn, there were two children; a girl, sturdy but remarkably lacking in beauty and grace; and a boy, weakly of body and dull of mind. No fond father and mother could help contrasting their offspring with Henry, big and handsome and precocious, and Richard, a bare year younger and so forward that he might almost have been Henry’s twin. And look at Margaret, an angel child, so very pretty, three years old; and John, now a year old, again big, handsome and forward.
Sybilla well understood why they were no longer welcomed At Moyidan.
At Beauclaire, where Godfrey’s pretty sister Alys ruled as Lady Astallon, there was less cause for that kind of envy. Lady Astallon had produced a son, handsome and lively, and a daughter, very pretty. But Beauclaire was a huge and complicated place and Lady Astallon had waiting ladies who took sides when Henry and Richard squabbled, as they did interminably.
The third family house—that of Godfrey’s second brother who, like many second sons, had gone into the church—was at Bywater, where William Tallboys was Bishop, a most estimable man, given to good works. But he kept such a bad table and children, growing and active, needed food. In her cool, reasonable way Sybilla had said, ‘We cannot stay with William again. The boys were hungry all the time and when I went into the kitchen that sloven who called herself housekeeper, ordered me away most rudely.’
It was plain, even to Sir Godfrey, that a house of her own was Sybilla’s necessity as well as her right.
‘ I will ride to Intake tomorrow and put the building in hand,’ he said.
The choice of place was obvious. Sir Godfrey was not, like many younger sons, a landless knight. In this, as in so many other ways, he had been singularly fortunate.
‘It need not be large house. Or grand,’ Sybilla said. She knew that when he had money he was inclined to be free with it. ‘We shall not be able to afford a large household. A hall to live in, the kitchen and four bedchambers will be enough.’
He knew many women who would have wished to choose their own site, given their own orders to the building, but that was not her way.
In the morning she rose early to see him off as she always did, even when his errand was peaceful and his absence to be brief. As his horse’s feet rang hollow on the drawbridge—they were spending the summer at Beauclaire—she called after him, ‘My love, let it not be damp.’
Intake was rather less than five miles from the family manor at Moyidan and when, on the second day Sir Godfrey arrived just as dinner was being served, his brother St James and his wife Emma groaned inwardly, thinking that he had ridden ahead and that somewhere behind him on the road was a wagon bringing Sybilla and her brood and behind them his squire, Eustace, and that great horse Arcol who must have corn everyday.
Their obvious relief when he said that he was alone showed even Sir Godfrey that Sybilla had not been imagining the lack of warmth in recent welcomes; and when they heard that his purpose was to choose the site and build a house they became positively joyful. What a wise decision! Children needed a settled home. Sybilla would relish a place of her own.
‘The harvest will be in by the week’s end if the weather holds,’ Sir James said. ‘I will lend you six or seven of my fellows to help with the building.’
The institution of serfdom was dying out but the Lord of the manor of Moyidan still had some tenants who paid for their strips of land in the great open fields by tending his as well and by doing at all times anything they were told to.
‘That would be kind. And what builder would you commend?’
‘Hobson of Baildon,’ James said without hesitation. ‘He made an excellent job of our new barn. I’ll send a boy in to tell him to meet you there, first thing tomorrow morning.’
Anything to speed on the work. Let the house be finished by Christmas!
Intake lay, shaped like a dish, embraced on one side by the river Wren and on three by Layer Wood. It was not a manor—it never had been; it was, as its name implied, intake land snatched from the forest. Sir Godfrey’s great-grandfather had had a surplus of serfs at Moyidan, some of them bit discontented, and one day he had told them that any man who liked to go and hew himself a field, build himself a hovel, was free to go and do so. They could live rent-free for five years; after that they would pay ten shillings a year.
A number of men had taken advantage of this offer. The strongest and most determined had survived. Intake now consisted of eight small enclosed farms, each tenant still paying ten shillings a year. Much less in purcha
sing power than it had been in the old man’s time but fixed in some obscure legal way. And in any case, four pounds a year was spending money for a family who ate at other people’s tables and slept in other people’s beds. And though Sir Godfrey was careless, inclined to lend and to spend, Sybilla was thrifty and very clever at refurbishing older gowns and head-dresses, so that she was always abreast of the latest fashion at small cost.
On this hot August morning—the weather was holding—Master Hobson was waiting; his rather sorry-looking horse tied to a tree. He was a prosperous man and could well have afforded a better mount but he was cautious; if you looked prosperous people thought they had been overcharged. He kept a good table, had money saved and his wife had the silk gown of every respectable woman’s ambition; but it was never worn outside her own house.
He greeted Sir Godfrey with happy servility. This would be a good job and the money was certain. Before he dismounted Sir Godfrey looked out over his village, seeing in his single-minded way nothing but potential sites. There seemed to be unoccupied land near the river but he remembered Sybilla’s last words and turned his attention to a space that lay between the edge of the village common and the fringe of the wood. It had been a farm once and was now covered with light, secondary growth, self-sown saplings, brambles, bracken and gay wildflowers. The ruins of the original clod-built farmhouse could still be seen. A good spot, he thought, well away from the river. The oak tree would be a bit of a drawback.
It stood almost in the centre of the site, Layer Wood’s last outpost. It had been a well-grown tree when the Normans landed at Hastings and by the time the first settlers came to Intake it offered more of an obstacle than they could tackle.
Master Hobson looked about with an experienced, calculating eye. The ruined farmhouse would make a shelter for his workmen and save the building of the lodge which was the rule when they were employed beyond walking distance of their homes. He can also see a use for the huge tree.
He gave no sign of satisfaction. It was a sound rule to make any job sound as difficult as possible.
‘Take a bit of clearing, sir.’ He sounded gloomy.
Sir Godfrey looked rather helpless. He was out of his depth. If the wood had been full of Welsh archers, or the undergrowth crawling with Scottish reivers, he would have known what to do; but the decision on whether to build to the left or to the right of the great tree was a difficult one. The site seemed to demand that the house should be in the centre and this was impossible because of the tree. Not that it mattered; there was plenty of room on either side.
The builder, now applying another sound rule, became helpful.
‘We could use that tree, sir. Centre the house around it, like. Spare planting a king post. Good branches too. Left and right. Beams.
‘You couldn’t have a tree growing in the middle of the house.’
It wouldn’t be growing. Not with its top lopped and all the bark off and its roots under the floor.’
So Godfrey tried, and failed, to visualise this and said, dubiously, ‘I suppose you know best. But…’ there was a word he wanted, it eluded him for a second or two is worth so often did; a word used as men as well as of wood. ‘Seasoned! I thought timber had to be seasoned.’
‘Thass right sir. The planking, panelling and such, anything likely to warp. Not things this size.’ Hobson regarded the tree with covert approval; the time it would save; not only as a king pin but with the staircase, if Sir Godfrey wanted—as so many people did these days—to have his house on two floors. The inner side of the staircase could be fixed into the great trunk for at least half the way.
Aloud he said, ‘It’d take a bit of contriving. But it could be done. Now, what size place was you thinking of, Sir?’
‘Not large. A hall, a kitchen and four sleeping chambers.’ That was what Sybilla had told him. But he had been thinking. Sybilla been so patient, had waited so long, the place should be worthy of her. He said recklessly, ‘And a solar, and a still-room. And a stool-room.’
Sybilla deserved a solar. A place to which a lady could withdraw from the hurly-burly of life in the hall; she deserved a still-room, too, for often enough he had embraced her and said, ‘You smell very sweet,’ and she had said, ‘I have been helping in the still-room.’ The stool-room was definitely an extravagance.
In most castles human needs were catered for by places called garderobes, so-called because the smell of them were supposed to deter moths, so that furs and woollen clothes hanging there were protected. There was a stone seat—very cold in winter—and a hole; the excreta made a dark, slimy track down the outside wall to end in the moat. In summer not too unsightly, for ferns and other plants took shallow root and flourished.
However, at Beauclaire more civilised custom had taken over; copper pots set in velvet covered stools.
Why should Sybilla be less comfortable in her own house than she had been in Beauclaire?
Master Hobson approved the order which meant building an extra room; the principal he deplored. Outside the house was the place for that; at some distance from the house, screened by a few bushes and emptied not less than once a month. Still, grand gentleman had their own ways.
‘Now, as to the outside. In what style?’
‘I had thought… something like the new part of Moyidan.’
It was new in that it had been added, by his enterprising great-grandfather, to the haunch of the cold draughty castle. But it had already been old when Sir Godfrey knew it, his home from which at nine years old he had been torn away and sent to join the pages at Beauclaire. He would now have denied, and believed himself, that he had ever been homesick or felt ill-done-by. Those first wretched weeks have been the beginning of his very successful career; page, squire, knight. But something in him remembered, not the bad, because he had a happy nature, the good; and amongst the good was the face of his birthplace.
‘Half-timbered,’ Master Hobson said. ‘With pargeting?’
An unfamiliar word.
‘What is that?’
‘A way of working plaster, sir. Very pretty.’
It was an art and Master Hobson’s son-in-law was an expert at it. Pargeting had become the fashion as timber became harder and harder to obtain and the width of plaster between the outer beams widened. Master Hobson did not much like his son-in-law, a sour, scornful young man. A rebel too. But he was a good plasterer where plain work was concerned and his other fancy stuff, the pargeting, was much admired.
For Sybilla the best! So Godfrey agreed to the pargeting. Then, most crucial of all, there was the question of time.
‘When can you be ready?’
Master Hobson had another rule; faced with a downright question, say ‘Ah’. Long drawn out, giving you time to think.
‘Ah. A bit hard to say, sir. Dependent on the weather. You can’t plaster in a frost. Better leave that. But we will waste no time. And that you may be sure, sir.’
Never give a positive date. If you did, and exceeded by so little as a day, all you had was complaints; and if luck and weather and all else favoured you and the job was done before the given time, customers expected a bit off the price.
‘I’ll get along now, sir, and draw up a bit of a plan. Let you have it—at Moyidan, sir?’
‘No need,’ Sir Godfrey said. He was back on his own ground. He had laid out camps in his time. ‘We can settle it now’.
He took up a twig and with a sure, steady hand drew in the dust under the old oak. Hall and the solar at the front. Kitchen just behind the hall—he and Sybilla spent such a long time in places where food grew cold between cooking place and table. Behind the solar the still-room. Neat and four-square. Upstairs the same.
Then he drew an oblong which completed but did not enclose the shape made by the house with its two back-jutting wings. Stables tending to attract flies.
‘And the stables here,’ he said.
‘Very clear, sir,’ Master Hobson said.
‘And what would be the cost?’ Godfrey asked.<
br />
‘Ah.’ The hesitation was perfunctory, so there again Master Hobson knew the rules. Where price was concerned it was simple—extract the last possible penny.
‘Solar, still-room, stool-room and stables,’ he said thoughtfully, carefully naming the extras. ‘A bit hard to say, sir, and a bit dependent on the weather. I’d say—a bit of a guess, sir, and I could be wronging myself—a hundred and ten. Pounds.’
He waited for the expostulations. They did not come. Sir Godfrey said, ‘Yes. I could manage that.’ He would’ve won £10 in prize money, or their worth in prizes, by the time the building was completed.
‘Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. My brother of Moyidan has promised to lend six or seven men to speed the work.’
A curious expression came into Master Hobson’s shrewd little eyes.
‘Ah. I’m taking it they’d be craftsmen, sir.’
Sir Godfrey looked puzzled.
Hobson went on, ‘Guild members? Carpenters? Masons?’ He knew the answer to that!
‘Why no. Just ordinary men. As soon as the harvest is in.’
‘They might be useful clearing the ground and so forth. Fetching and carrying. But they couldn’t build, sir, not less they’d done their ‘prentice time and joined the Guild. None of my men would work alongside unskilled chaps.’
And why indeed should they? Craftsmen spent from eight to twelve years as apprentices, unpaid and often overworked; then they qualified as journeyman, paid by the day; finally, if they were good enough, they were taken into the Guild of their particular trade and sworn to observe its standards and it rules and regulations. And how would you like it, Hobson thought, if you was called on to play about in a tournament with a lot of chaps straight from the plough-tail?
‘I see. I didn’t realise,’ Sir. Godfrey said. There were millions of things in the world about him that he did not realise. He was single-minded and observant, illiterate and all his life had been part of the system designed to make him exactly what he was—a first class fighting machine.
