The scowl remained on Edward’s face.
“The man’s always been loyal,” he repeated testily.
It was the moment for which John Wilson had prepared himself so carefully.
“Not so loyal, sire,” he interrupted. “He was with Your Majesty’s enemies at the time of Montfort.”
This time the king positively glared at him.
“The son was with Montfort, and he was killed. Not the father.”
But, unabashed, the merchant shook his head again.
“Jocelin gave his son his blessing when he left to fight at Lewes,” he said. “And Shockley was with him. It was at their fulling mill. I saw them both.”
This was the piece of information he had waited twenty-five years to use against them, ever since he had stood by the mill at his father’s side.
There was a terrible silence.
Although his instincts now told Edward that this man was not to be trusted, long experience warned him that his last, damning statement might be true. Perhaps, after all, the Godefrois should have been punished like the other rebels; inwardly he cursed this vicious merchant from Wilton who was ruining his day.
It was now that old Osmund, who had been standing quietly behind the group of courtiers after receiving the instructions for his work, by a single and splendid act of courage incurred the enmity of the Wilsons for his family for generations.
John Wilson had not seen the old mason come out of the royal apartments. And in his hatred for the Godefrois and Shockleys, he had even forgotten that Osmund had ever been present at the meeting at the mill, twenty-five years before. Even if he had remembered, since this was one of the few parts of his story with any basis in truth, he would never have expected what followed.
Osmund pushed his way through the circle of courtiers, stepped forward boldly and turning to the king announced:
“But I was there too, Your Majesty, when Hugh de Godefroi went away to fight, and his father cursed him at the mill and forbade him to go.”
It was a lie. But sixty years of loyalty to the knight of Avonsford made him say the words with ease.
John Wilson gazed at him in stupefaction.
“You lie,” he cried.
But on Edward’s face there was a smile of relief. Of the two, he was more inclined to believe the old mason. Besides, he wanted to.
“Say no more about Godefroi,” he snapped. “What’s your proof about this farm?”
For a moment John Wilson was shaking so hard with rage that he could not speak. It was Cristina now who touched his arm and looked pleadingly at the king. Slowly recovering himself, Wilson then drew out a sealed document and handed it to the king for his inspection. Having done this, and glared at the mason, his face relaxed and he waited confidently. This would settle it.
He was hopelessly wrong.
For the document which supported his massive fabrication of fraud and revenge, the evidence which he thought was his masterpiece, was his one terrible mistake. Indeed, it was a pathetic miscalculation that no learned man would ever have made. But John Wilson, though he was persuasive and cunning, was also illiterate.
Edward read it slowly and as he did so, his brow began to clear. Seeing this, John and Cristina looked at each other with satisfaction; obviously the king was impressed. But when he began to chuckle, their look changed to uncertainty, and when a moment later he laughed out loud, they became confused. Finally, the king without a word handed it to one of his courtiers, and in a moment the man had doubled up with mirth.
For the forgery which John Wilson had paid a poor priest – one of the band of semi-employed vicars choral who roamed about Sarum – to inscribe, was so lamentable that it was ridiculous. The deed purporting to convey the Shockley farm to Aaron and then assign it to Wilson was couched in a grotesque mixture of French, dog Latin and English that no literate cleric, or even merchant, would ever have perpetrated. The forms of transfer were wrong, it was not properly stamped or witnessed – it could not conceivably have passed through the hands of the highly educated Jew, even as an illicit transfer. Only one thing was genuine, and this was the seal of the Jew which Wilson had picked up out of the dust on Fisherton Bridge the month before.
Now Edward stopped laughing, and turning on Wilson he roared:
“Your document is a fraud, you rogue. You’re a forger. You shall go to jail!”
“But it has the Jew’s seal,” Wilson cried in alarm. “It must be real.”
“Fool! Don’t you know, a seal proves nothing?”
Wilson’s face fell. It was the seal that had given him the idea. He had put his faith in it, for he had always heard that a sealed document was absolute proof in any dispute. The fact that only a few years before, the king’s court, in considering a case of forgery like this, had very properly ruled that a seal, which could easily be mislaid or stolen should no longer constitute proof of authenticity was something of which neither he nor the miserable priest he had employed had been aware. He was trapped. He turned to Cristina in dismay and she immediately gave the king her most winning and appealing smile. Edward took no notice whatever.
“How dare you waste the king’s time and make accusations against the king’s loyal servants!” he thundered. “You shall be punished for this. Call the guard.”
In a moment John Wilson found himself surrounded by men at arms.
“Hold him under lock and key until I return,” the king ordered. And when they pointed to Cristina he added: “And her too.”
It took several hours spent in hunting before his temper improved: not only because of the way his time had been wasted, but because, despite Osmund’s defences, he could not throw off the nagging suspicion that a part of Wilson’s accusations might be true. Should he investigate the matter to find out the whole truth? What for – to discover a long-forgotten betrayal? He decided to put it out of his mind: the matter was in the past. He had no wish to know.
“Godefroi is my friend,” he muttered. But the seed of distrust had been sown.
The fate of John Wilson and his wife was decided by circumstances that had nothing to do with the Shockley farm.
It was a thoughtful young courtier who had been involved in the Scottish negotiations who decided the issue. He had studied the pair carefully that morning; while King Edward was sitting at his meal in the evening he came to the king’s side and quietly made the ingenious suggestion as a result of which, a little later, John and Cristina found themselves led into the room.
They had spent an anxious and unpleasant day. The bare hut in which they had been kept had a leaking roof. It had been used as a kennels some time before and it smelt musty. By evening the place had become cold, and by nightfall their teeth were chattering. They had been given no food. Now, suddenly, they were blinking in the bright light of the king’s sumptuous apartments, faced by Edward and his companions, and listening to the remarkable proposition that the young courtier was putting to them so coolly.
His logic was impeccable. The Scottish negotiations had been progressing well, but in the last week the final completion had dragged unnecessarily over some minor details, and the cause, he had discovered, was the secretary to one of the commissioners, who was against the business and had influence with his master.
“The only way to keep him happy is to amuse him,” the young man explained to the king. “Then he lets things go along, even if he doesn’t really approve. If he isn’t amused, he just invents trivial obstacles all the time.”
“How do you amuse him?”
“Women, Your Majesty. His appetite’s insatiable. We’ve given him three local wenches already, but he got bored with them.” He grinned. “But did you notice the merchant’s wife this morning? She’s extraordinary.”
Edward gazed at the young fellow with a mixture of admiration for his cunning, and contempt for his methods. His devotion to his own Spanish wife was well known. He even used to take the queen with him on campaign.
“You want to send her to the Scot – as a price for their release?” He shook his head in disgust. “I won’t do it.”
“No sire, there’s no need,” the courtier responded. “They’ll both do it of their free will.” And briefly he outlined his simple plan. “Have I your permission?”
Edward grimaced.
“I suppose so.”
When John Wilson heard the smiling young man make his proposal, he recapitulated it carefully:
“You’re going to set me free with no trial?”
The courtier nodded:
“The king is considering it, despite your impertinent fraud.”
“And when I’m free, you’ll grant me a farm?”
“Precisely. Your own farm.”
“But my wife has to lie for a week with the Scot?”
“If you want the farm, yes. You will be doing the king a useful service,” he added with a smile.
John Wilson paused, without looking at his wife.
“If the Scot wants her for longer,” he said thoughtfully, “do I get more?”
Even the courtier’s bland smile faltered for an instant at the coolness of the question; but he recovered quickly.
“Perhaps.”
Only then did John turn to Cristina. Neither spoke, but between them there passed a look of perfect complicity.
“She’ll do it,” he said cheerfully.
The young courtier smiled; the king, with his drooping eyelid, watched unblinking. And an hour later a small charter granting John Wilson and his heirs tenancy of a farmstead consisting of one virgate of land with a messuage thereon was dropped contemptuously into his hands. The messuage in question was a small cottage; the land was mediocre. But it was enough to satisfy his modest aspirations. It lay next door to the Shockley farm.
The agreement between the Scots and English commissioners for the government of Scotland during the minority of its child queen, and the recommendation that the king’s son should be married in due course to the Maid of Norway, was presented to King Edward at Salisbury on November 6, 1289.
After this, the king hunted in the New Forest, travelling as far south as Christchurch and the shallow harbour by the sea. He stayed in the region for a month before returning to London for Christmas, after which he held a parliament there until the end of February. During Lent, Edward was in the upper Thames valley and at Easter he stayed at his park at Woodstock. He then returned to the Sarum area when he visited the convent at Amesbury, that lay two miles from the old henge and where his mother was now a nun, for a family conference. After this, the busy monarch returned once again to London for one of the most important parliaments of his reign.
The summer Parliament of 1290 was remarkable in England’s history for many reasons. The reforming legalist king had never been more active: creating order out of the creaking feudal administration, looking for ways to raise revenue from his increasingly wealthy kingdom; the settlement with Scotland was discussed, and substantial subsidies were granted by the church from its vast possessions.
He also issued some of his most famous laws. One of these was the great statute Quo Warranto by which he attempted to regulate, even if he could not completely cut back, the undisciplined power of some of the feudal magnates. The statute challenged any magnate who claimed a jurisdiction, or liberty, over an area to show by what charter he held this right. If no clear right could be demonstrated, then the jurisdiction should revert to the king. These actions were not always successful, however. One of the liberties he challenged was of the Abbey of Wilton over the nearby hundred of Chalke. But even Edward was defeated by the nuns.
And another milestone in history was passed during these proceedings when, on July 18, 1290, the King decided one further matter of great importance.
For on that day, Edward I of England in his Council at Westminster, expelled the Jews from his kingdom.
As it happened, this day was also the Fast of the Ninth of Ab in the Jewish calendar: the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem and many disasters thereafter.
The entire community was given until the feast of All Saints, the day after Hallowe’en, to be gone. They were to be allowed to leave under the king’s protection, unmolested.
It was not a complete surprise: their position had long been untenable, and as they had been ruined, they were no longer a source of profit to the crown. It was generally believed that his mother had urged the king to expel them when he visited Amesbury. The church subsidy that immediately followed was, in part, a thanks offering to Edward for this pious act.
Two days before Hallowe’en, Aaron of Wilton was placed once again in the Shockley cart. He had decided, rather than travel to London, to embark with half a dozen others from the remnants of the Wilton community on a small ship that would leave from the port of Christchurch and cross to France. It was Peter Shockley who had insisted that his cart should be used to convey his old friend, and since he and Christopher were detained on business, he had abruptly ordered Mary, despite her protests, to accompany Aaron and see to it that he was safely put aboard his ship.