It was the sense of sorrow in the early lines that moved the knight, as the poem told how Euridice sleeps with her ladies under an orchard tree and awakens half mad after a dream in which the faery king has told her that he will steal her away the very next day.
Where’ere thou be thou wilt be fetched
And torn apart your limbs be all
None can help you, no one shall:
Tomorrow lady, we shall call.
And Gilbert smiled and shook his head as the tale related how poor Sir Orfeo took all his useless precautions, standing guard over his queen with a thousand armed knights.
They formed in ranks on every side
And said with her they would abide
And die there for her, every one
Before the queen be from them gone
And yet from the midst of that array
By magic she vanished away.
Gilbert closed his eyes with a smile of contentment as the story related how Sir Orfeo became a ragged minstrel and beggar, wandering the world in search of his wife. For all his cautious management of his own estate, he identified with the pilgrim knight who gave up everything completely. He listened intently, familiar as the tale was, as Sir Orfeo at last saw the faery king, hunting in the forest with his lords and ladies. And then came, for him, the most touching moment of all, when the ragged Sir Orfeo sees that one of the ladies is his own wife, and approaches her.
Then he beheld her, and she him too
And neither to other a word did speak;
She for pity, to see him so,
Who had been a king, now so weak.
And then a tear fell from her eye:
And the other women the tear did spy
And made her swiftly ride away.
What was it about that meeting and parting, as though the hero’s wife were separated from him by a pane of glass, that always made the tears start from Godefroi’s eyes? Was it the sense of loss? He was not sure exactly.
But soon his eyes were glowing with delight again as Sir Orfeo followed the riders back to the faery castle and played his harp before the faery king. And when he was offered a reward for his playing, Gilbert’s face relaxed in pleasure as Sir Orfeo replied:
‘Sir’, he said, ‘I beseech thee
That thou wouldest give to me
That fair lady that I see
That sleeps under the orchard tree.’
And at last, having won his queen, the king, still disguised as a minstrel, returns to his astonished court and faithful servants:
To Winchester at last came he
And then Gilbert reached out and took Rose’s hand and whispered:
“I’d have wandered a hundred years to find you.” And his wife, turning her head and smiling, squeezed his hand in return and said:
“I want us all to be together. Send for Thomas tomorrow.”
Before the young vicar left, Gilbert asked him if he had heard any news of the plague. He replied confidently that he had not.
“But I pray every hour for my little flock at Avonsford,” he replied stoutly, “and I’m sure we shall be spared.”
Gilbert himself was less certain; and the next morning, after he had sent his groom on horseback to Winchester to collect his son, prepared himself to ride into the city to see if there was any news.
It was just as he was leaving that he was stopped at the courtyard gates by a small but extraordinary delegation.
The Mason family now consisted of six people: Edward’s two grandsons, John and Nicholas; their widowed stepmother and her three young children. Since the death of their father Richard, three years before, John and Nicholas, both in their late twenties, had worked hard to support the second family Peter had left behind, and the house the whole family occupied in Avonsford, though crowded, had an air of cleanness and prosperity about it that pleased the knight. Though both men had followed the family calling as masons, John was also a bowman, and had recently returned from Crécy with a modest fortune in booty that was now the family’s reserve against times of trouble.
But it was their stepmother Agnes who ruled them all. Godefroi gazed at her with a mixture of dislike and admiration. She was a small, square-jawed woman whose precise age he could never guess, with sandy red hair and little grey eyes that were honest, but seemed to dart about constantly. With her busy, jerky movements, she often reminded him of a red squirrel; she defended her little family with a fiery determination that did not make her popular in the village, and the aggressiveness in her nature that he sensed behind the respect she had to show him always made the knight feel uncomfortable in her presence. All the same, he had to admire her spirit.
It was this little red-haired woman who now stood in front of him, while John and Nicholas, their large heads respectfully bared, kept silent, and holding her arms akimbo bluntly announced:
“Sir, we want to rent the old sheep house. What’s the price?”
He looked down at her in surprise. The old sheep house was still standing – a long, stone building that lay in a dip some distance away on the high ground. But since he had reduced his flocks, the ridges around it had not been grazed, and the place was now deserted and tumbling down. What could she want it for? Not wishing to waste time he shrugged.
“Sixpence a year.” It was a nominal figure.
Agnes nodded.
“Can we take it right away?”
“Take it when you like,” he answered. And without paying her any more attention he rode away.
As soon as he was gone she turned to the two men.
“Hurry,” she told them. “We must be gone at once.”
As soon as he entered the city, Godefroi went straight to the house of William Shockley. It was a natural choice, for few men were better informed. His house stood in the High Street, and though his primary business was in the export of wool and cloth, he had turned the whole floor on the street level into a store. Here one could find oysters from Poole, wine and fruit, woad, soap and oil imported through the lesser ports like Christchurch and Lymington or the great and growing port of Southampton on the south coast; there were herrings and salt fish brought over from Ireland through the trading city of Bristol in the west, and from more distant markets, pepper, dates, ginger, and fine silk clothes shipped through Southampton or the huge emporium of London. Not only was it a delight to inspect these wonders, but the carriers who brought them also brought news, and this was what made the merchant doubly valuable. He was the soul of the place, a big, bluff figure with a ruddy face, inclined to stoutness, and who loved to wear the brightest and most splendid clothes that he could find. His loose flowing surcoat, buttoned at the front, that fell like a dress to his knees, was of the most gorgeous brocade, worked with gold, that he had brought from London. His capuchon was wound into a huge turban on his head and he usually strutted amiably about the store, dispensing information.
But today, as soon as he saw the knight, he drew him to one side and whispered to him gravely.
“You have heard of this plague? It has come to Southampton.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Word reached me this morning. Two dead already.”
“Is the city prepared?” Godefroi asked.
Shockley grimaced.
“I warned the mayor and the aldermen. It’s all I can do; but no one believes me and anyway, in the city, what precautions are possible? Personally,” he admitted, “I’m taking the family to the farm today.”
Godefroi nodded grimly. The merchant had six children and he could hardly blame him for wanting them out of the teeming streets of Salisbury.
When he left a few minutes later, he found that the merchant’s assistants had strapped two small panniers onto his horse. “Malmsey wine, just in from Christchurch,” William explained. “It’s a good protection against disease.”
The arrival of the Black Death at Sarum was discovered that afternoon.
The two carts containing William Shockley, his plump wife, their six children, and two servants, had trundled slowly out of the city on the Wilton road in the early afternoon; an hour later they had reached the small collection of timbered buildings beside Grovely Wood that was the Shockley farm. William and his wife were both relieved to be there; the children anxious to run into the spacious freedom of the surrounding woods.
He had sent word ahead and was glad to see that the Wilsons had opened the house to air it and already lit the fire in the main room where the food would be cooked. The house however, though prepared, was silent and deserted.
“Damn that Wilson,” he remarked. The fellow should have waited to help them unload; it was not the first time he had been guilty of slackness; and irritably he had stomped down the path that led to Wilson’s cottage, accompanied by two of his children.
The surly villein was standing at the door. As usual, he made no move to welcome the merchant as he came up and when Shockley told him pleasantly enough to go up to the farm to help, he started off without a word. Meanwhile, as they always did, the two Shockley children dived into Wilson’s cottage to satisfy their curiosity, and it was his fair-haired daughter of twelve who now came out with a puzzled expression and called to her father.
“Come and look at Peter.”
The fire in the dark little room had gone out and Wilson’s wife was sitting silently, as she usually did in one corner. In the other, young Peter Wilson lay on a bed of straw. As he entered, Shockley was not conscious of anything especially wrong, beyond the general air of silent hatred he always sensed when he went into Wilson’s little dwelling, but as he came near him, he had a sudden sensation that the boy was very hot. He bent down to look. And as he did so, Peter Wilson sat up bolt upright, and with a terrible retching sound, coughed into his face.
“Out of here. Out!” he roared at his astonished children. A moment later all three had tumbled out of the cottage and were running up the path again. “We leave the farm at once,” he cried.
As they passed Walter Wilson, Shockley was almost certain that the cottager had grinned.
Rose de Godefroi’s cook, Margery Dubber, had her own ideas about how to deal with all kinds of illness. She was a large, solid middle-aged woman with greenish eyes that stared in different directions; when the two women unpacked the Malmsey wine from Christchurch and Rose gave her the recipe for its use, neither eye looked convinced.
“You must boil the wine until a third of it’s gone,” Rose told her. “Then add peppers, ginger and nutmeg and let it simmer for an hour more; then I want you to add this Treacle Venice.” She produced a thick syrup made from honey. “And aqua vitae,” she added. Rose suspected that the spirits were the best part of the cure. “Boil them all up again and we’ll keep the plague at bay.” And so, morning and evening, the Godefrois and their entire household now began to drink this fortifying brew.
But as soon as she was by herself the cook muttered:
“If the plague comes here, it’ll be Margery Dubber’s cures they need.”
When they had taken the bottles of Malmsey wine from their straw packing, neither the cook nor Rose had noticed the flea which had fallen out of the basket and leaped at once into the deep folds of the lady’s cloak.
News that the plague had reached the Shockley farm came to them the next day; but at Avonsford there was still no sign of it.
The only thing disturbing the Godefrois’ calm was the failure of their son Thomas to arrive.
If anything was needed to confirm the view in the village of Avonsford that Agnes Mason was not only wilful, but a little strange in the head, it was her behaviour two days after the lord of the manor began his mysterious preparations for the invisible plague.
The knight’s actions seemed odd; but then the workings of a noble’s mind were often beyond their ken, and could not be questioned. For a villager to behave as Agnes did, however, was inexplicable and outrageous. Why did the two Mason men stand for it?
Within an hour of receiving the knight’s permission, she led her little family out of the village and up onto the ridges. She and her two stepsons each pulled behind them a small handcart piled high with provisions – grain, household possessions, clothes, and certain other items, the need for which her family could not understand.