For the stoneworker had an important matter of his own on his mind, a subject that he wished to broach only at the right time. He glanced down at his short, stubby fingers while he considered whether to speak.
“You have a villein on your estate,” he said finally. “Godric Body.”
Godefroi knew the young fellow well – a meagre insignificant little serf of seventeen. The boy’s mother, he knew, had been Nicholas’s sister; his father a fisherman. Both were dead and he had no relations, so far as the knight knew, except Nicholas and a cousin of the boy’s father, who was something of a troublemaker.
“Well? What do you want?” His voice was sharp and cold; he had learnt that it was best to be severe when people asked for favours, as it was clear the fellow was about to do.
Nicholas cleared his throat.
But as he did so, the air was pierced with a scream.
Godric Body could not believe his luck.
In the first place, he had eaten meat the evening before. It was not a thing he often did, except when he snared a rabbit or received his modest share of the meat from the cullings of livestock that took place at midsummer and the start of winter. But his uncle Nicholas and his family, though humble villeins like himself with little land, were far better off. Thanks to his skill the stoneworker often received twice the normal labourer’s wage of a silver penny a day and his family not only ate meat, but on occasion shared it with their poor relation.
“My wife looks like a pear,” Nicholas remarked with satisfaction as the cheerful little woman with her huge posterior bustled about the room; “and my children are like apples.” As Godric looked at their rosy cheeks and round faces he had to agree that the description was exact.
If he closed his eyes, he could still taste the salted pork, smell its aroma: it brought a smile to his usually dispirited face.
Godric Body was small and thin. The narrow face which he inherited from his fisherman father always seemed to be pale and pinched; shocks of reddish hair grew unevenly, like tufts of grass, on his head, giving him an untidy look. His hands were thin and delicate and looked unsuited to the rough work which was his lot. And worst of all, he had been born with a hunchback – not a pronounced and grotesque hump, but an unmistakable curvature that thrust his head savagely forward and caused the other children to call him Godric the rat. His parents had hoped he would not live, his mother because she feared he would be unable to work, his father because he loathed to see what he called a runt.
He lived, and he worked – painfully but with a remarkable perseverance; and as he grew older even the villagers would grudgingly admit that the ungainly boy with the surprisingly soft and dreamy eyes could carve figures in wood with a dexterity that far surpassed anyone else at Avonsford. His parents had died when he was thirteen and since then he had lived a lonely life, completing his work on the estate painfully, uncertain of how to express himself, and nursing a single passion and ambition as to how to better his lot.
His second piece of luck was that his uncle Nicholas had agreed to speak to the lord of the manor on his behalf that very day. He knew that Godefroi, whom he dared not address himself, respected the stoneworker and he was full of hope.
Now here was a third piece of luck. For before his eyes in the small market place that lay within the castle precincts, an extraordinary scene was developing that promised to provide a rich and unforeseen entertainment. With surprising determination, his bent little figure nudged and ducked its way to the front of the crowd to get a better view; and what he saw made his face break into a broad grin.
The two women were facing each other in the centre of the square.
The larger of the two seemed about to burst. She was a massively built figure, and the scarlet woollen robe she wore seemed to accentuate the rage that radiated from her. Despite the rolls of fat about her person, it was clear that she was powerful and dangerous. Her heavy cheeks which were, even when she was calm, as red as her dress, had now puckered up so that her eyes were no more than slits. Godric stared at her with a mixture of loathing and admiration: he knew her well: she was Herleva, wife of his own cousin William atte Brigge.
“Harlot! Thief!” the huge woman shouted; and then, her whole face contorted with venom, she hissed: “Bondwoman.”
The object of these insults was a blonde, handsome young woman in her mid-twenties whose light plumpness only added to the attractiveness of which she was comfortably aware. The simple shift she wore with a girdle at the waist was light blue, and set off her hair as she tossed her head in contempt at the older woman. Godric knew her too. She was the wife of a Saxon farmer, John of Shockley.
It was true that she had been a bondwoman, a lowly villein owned, like himself, by a Norman lord until she had married the freeman of Shockley. But at the intended insult she only smiled and then cried mockingly:
“A year and a day.”
The crowd laughed. It was well known that William atte Brigge had run away from the Avonsford estate when he was a boy and lived for a year and a day at the little town of Twyneham on the coast; a villein who escaped to a town for this period was allowed his freedom if his lord failed to claim him. He had become a tanner – an unpopular trade on account of the pungent smells the tannery always produced – and moved to Wilton, where he was disliked for his bad temper as much as his trade, and where he acquired the added name of atte Brigge because his house lay by a small wooden bridge over a backwater of the river.
“But your husband’s a freedman,” the younger woman added loudly, “because no Godefroi ever wanted to get him back.”
The crowd roared its approval. It was always said that the estate had been glad to be rid of a troublemaker.
For Herleva, this was too much. With a shout of rage she hurled herself towards the young woman, and in a moment had ripped her shift off one shoulder with her huge hands and knocked her to the ground, before crashing down on top of her. It was this that caused the scream which the Norman and the mason had heard on the ramparts.
Against the weight of Herleva, the younger woman had little chance. Her hair was pulled; slaps rained upon her face. But she fought back gamely, using her greater agility to kick the older woman savagely and to open scratches on her heavy jowled face that began to bleed profusely. The crowd did nothing to intervene. No better entertainment had been seen in years. Godric, who had no love for Herleva, saw the scratches open on her face and rubbed his thin hands together for joy.
The quarrel between the two women had its roots several generations before. When the descendants of Aelfwald the thane had lost their estates at the Conquest, the farm at Shockley in the Wylye valley was given to the Abbess of Wilton. She took pity on them however, and allowed them to stay on the farm as tenants. There they remained, still claiming their ancient thanely status, but living as modest farmers – free men under the law but little better off in reality than the more prosperous of the villeins. Soon after this, a dispute arose when the daughter of the family, who had married a burgess of Wilton, claimed that the tenancy had been promised to her rather than to her brother. The abbess in her court ruled against her and confirmed her brother in his tenancy; but the matter did not rest there. The burgess and his wife tried, without success, to take the matter to a higher court, and when the commissioners of the great Domesday land survey inspected the area, the clerks noted that the tenancy was in dispute. The years passed, but the burgess and his wife never lost their furious resentment: nor did their daughter, Herleva. And when she married William atte Brigge, that obstinate and greedy man had made the cause his own and sworn to the family of John of Shockley more than once:
“I’ll go to the king himself. You’ll be turned out before I die, I promise you.”
Such lawsuits were common; they could also last for generations: the threat lay like a cloud over the farmer’s life, and whenever William or Herleva saw one of the Shockley family, they never missed their chance to make matters worse by insulting them.
The screaming matches between the two women were not unusual either, but never before had one developed into a physical fight, and to Godric’s delight, the fight was reaching epic proportions.
Herleva’s weight had triumphed. She rolled the younger woman over and tore the clothes from her back. And as her victim screamed, Herleva, ignoring her own wounds and in an access of fury, was casting about for some object with which to belabour her.
But now the circle of spectators suddenly parted and fell silent, as Richard de Godefroi strode towards the two women. He was closely followed by their husbands – both looking frightened – who had been hastily summoned from other parts of the castle. At the sight of the Norman knight, even Herleva forgot her fury and got to her feet awkwardly. Shockley’s wife pulled her torn clothes hastily over her breasts.
In the silence Godefroi’s voice was icy.
“You are breaking the peace. Do you want the ducking stool or to be put in the stocks?”
The knight’s words would certainly be enough in the hundred or borough court to ensure such a punishment for them; and besides the indignity, the ducking stool, in particular, could be a hazardous affair if the victim was held under the water for too long. Shockley’s wife shivered.
“Take your women away,” the knight ordered the two men curtly. “If they break the peace again, I’ll see they answer for it in court.” He waved at the crowd peremptorily. “Disperse,” he cried. Then he turned on his heel and stalked away.
John of Shockley led his wife quickly from the scene. But William stood gazing at Herleva’s face. His black brows contracted furiously.
He was a striking figure. In many respects he was typical of the ancient river folk who were still to be found in Fisherton and other hamlets along the five rivers. He had their long fingers and toes; and his narrow face with its close-set eyes was an almost exact replica of the face of Godric Body. But there all resemblance between the tanner and his cousin ended. William atte Brigge was tall, spare and strong: his hair was dark; and his eyes were jet-black, hard and cruel.
And he was in a rage – not because his wife had attacked the Shockley woman, but because she had made a fool of him. As Herleva drew herself up, a little shaken by what she had done, he gave her a vicious look that made even that large woman blench. Then he looked around the square.
Godric had been so engrossed by the drama taking place in front of him that he had not noticed he was the only person left after the crowd had broken up. Suddenly he realised that the tanner was striding towards him.
William atte Brigge glowered at him. The sight of his crippled kinsman, whom he loathed because he was deformed, always angered him, and now he was sure the youth was laughing at him. His mouth contracted into a snarl. As he strode across the little square, he glanced quickly about him to make sure that there was no one watching; then, seeing they were alone, he kicked the boy as hard as he could, so that he rolled helplessly on the ground. Without a word, he kicked the boy three more times before walking away. He had relieved some of his temper.
In silence Godric watched him go. The kicks had hurt. But crippled as he was, it took more than his rich cousin William to break his spirit, and as he slowly got up, he managed a grin.
“You’ll pay for those kicks,” he muttered. The thought gave him comfort.
It was as he left the castle for his home up the valley that he noticed John of Shockley and his wife. They were standing together in the shadow of the gateway and he could see that they were arguing furiously. He instinctively liked the farmer, and he was glad that his handsome wife had scratched Herleva. Yes, he decided, he would make William pay for his villainy.
He would have been disappointed if he could have heard what John was saying to his wife.
“You must make peace with Herleva,” he urged.
“She started it. She called me a harlot,” she protested.
“You must turn the other cheek; walk away.”
“Never. I scratched hers,” his fiery wife replied with satisfaction.
But still John only shook his head.
“We must make peace with them, not provoke them,” he pleaded.
It seemed to the girl that sometimes her husband was weak. It was not lack of courage, she was sure of that; but his honest blue eyes always grew troubled at any suggestion of a quarrel. He would run his hand over his fair, close-cropped beard nervously, and search endlessly for a compromise where some other men would rather fight.
The threat from William cast a shadow over his life which nothing she could say would dispel. Each night he prayed that William would drop his suit and be reconciled, for the memory of his grandfather’s loss of the family estates was like an open wound in his mind.
“Do not anger William,” he used to caution his wife. “We could lose the last thing that we have.”
But she would toss her head with impatience and retort: “If you’re a thane, why are you so timid?”
Yet she had seen him face a bull that had broken loose, and which no other man would go near, with perfect coolness: so he could not be a coward. She did not understand it.