He rode into the castle in high good humour, inspected its solid walls, the bishop’s fine house and the stout tower. The treasure he found there astonished him.
“I think the bishop was richer than I!” he cried. And he took it all.
Nor was this all. The canons of the cathedral had decided to buy an exemption from the ancient geld tax levied on their lands, and offered him the princely sum of two thousand pounds for this privilege. This was another windfall which pleased the monarch still more, and as a token of his gratitude he donated forty marks towards the completion of the cathedral roof.
“I like your Sarisberie,” he remarked to Godefroi when the knight came to pay his respects. “Before he rebelled its bishop served me well; and now the diocese has made me rich.”
He admired the cathedral enormously, and told the canons:
“Whatever we say about Roger now he is dead, he certainly knew how to build.”
It was a few days before Christmas, when he was holding an open court in the castle hall in the presence of a group of magnates and knights which included Godefroi, that the king was surprised to see a curious party approaching. It consisted of William atte Brigge, John of Shockley, their wives, both walking demurely behind them and a little gaggle of witnesses. William, still flushed with his triumph in the matter of Godric Body and the pig, looked hard and confident; the farmer on the other hand was very pale and his mild blue eyes wore a startled, pained expression.
When they were asked what their business was, it was William who cried out:
“The king promised me justice here, when he camped before Devizes.”
As Stephen stared at the tanner, he dimly remembered, and he grinned.
“The fellow’s right, I did.” And turning to the knights he cried. “Let’s hear what he wants.”
As William explained his complaint, the king listened carefully. It was long and involved and after a time, he cut him short.
“You say this matter dates from the time of your wife’s grandfather?” William agreed. “That’s fifty years ago?” It was.
Stephen gazed around the hall. For all his faults, he was a clever man. He had already sized up the respective characters not only of William, but of the stolid, blue-eyed farmer who stood silent and woebegone throughout the tanner’s litany of complaint.
“We’ll grant you your wish,” he said finally. “Your case shall be tried.” He paused. “But not by jury.”
William’s face fell. Although the system was not yet in regular use, he had assumed quite reasonably that if he requested it, the king – who was well known to dislike violence – would grant him a trial by jury. For months the cunning farmer had been carefully preparing his evidence and, more important, coaching his chosen witnesses.
The king gazed at him imperturbably.
“This is an ancient quarrel, William atte Brigge. It shall be settled by the ancient and time-honoured means that applied in our predecessor’s reigns for all property disputes. I order a trial by battle.”
He leaned back in order to watch the reaction. The tanner’s brow had clouded. He was thinking furiously.
But a still more extraordinary change had come over John of Shockley. It was as though a huge weight had been lifted from his mind. For years he had dreaded the complex process of swearing and evidence, the intricate business of courts where, though he was by no means a fool, he felt trapped and helpless against the clever tanner. But now his brow cleared; his blue eyes lost their troubled look and suddenly gazed out with a clear, bold stare. The descendant of the family of Aelfwald the thane and Aelfgifu had no fear of fighting for his lands, if God was on his side. And he believed that He was.
The king, glancing from one to the other, smiled.
But William had not come so far for nothing.
“I have the right to choose a champion,” he stated.
Stephen frowned. The surly fellow was right, unfortunately. And no doubt he had the money to hire a thug who would kill this honest farmer. He wished he could deny it.
“Do you also wish to choose a champion to fight for you?” he asked John of Shockley hopefully.
But John of Shockley, if he was aware of his danger, seemed content to fight for himself.
There was an awkward pause.
And then Godefroi saw what he should do. Coolly, to the astonishment of the two parties, and the delighted grin of the king, he stepped forward.
“I am John of Shockley’s champion,” he announced.
He had found a way to repay the farmer for his kindness.
William was silent. No champion that he could ever hope to purchase would last for a minute before the trained skill of a knight like Godefroi, even if he dared to fight him at all. The swift blade of the Norman would slice any bold rustic or even a man-at-arms to pieces before he could get close. He looked from side to side, baffled.
“Well,” said the king with a show of impatience, “do you wish to proceed or not?”
The tanner scowled and hung his head.
“No, your Majesty,” he finally muttered.
“Case dismissed,” the king cried, with a wink to Godefroi; and to William’s fury, the entire court burst out laughing.
He was defeated – all his work for nothing, and mocked into the bargain. But as the tanner left, he turned to his wife and swore:
“One day, our family will have revenge.”
Christmas came, and in the castle of Sarisberie, King Stephen in the ancient and symbolic manner of the Norman king, summoned the local magnates to him and ceremonially wore his crown. But despite the king’s presence, the knight of Avonsford still did not summon his family from London.
“Let’s wait and see,” he said to John of Shockley.
As Christmas passed and the period of truce drew towards an end, he was conscious more than ever of a sense of desolation hanging over the dark castle on its high chalk hill.
It was in the spring of the year of the Lord 1140 that Richard de Godefroi, a Norman knight of modest attainments who had begun to grow weary of the world, discovered a satisfactory way to save his soul.
It came to him on January 5, when he had gone to the cathedral on the castle hill to pray and, as usual, he had knelt quietly by the tomb of Bishop Osmund. The day was bitterly cold. As he knelt and whispered his Ave Marias, his breath made little clouds of mist in front of him. Yet it seemed to Godefroi that, despite the cold, there was that day a special warmth – a sensation he thought he had noticed once or twice before – coming from the stone under which the saintly bishop lay; and while he remained beside it, he experienced a sense of peace. He remained at his prayers for longer than usual that day and, as usual, ended them with the request:
“In these godless times, show me, Osmund, what I must do.”
It was a few minutes later, as he left the church, that he noticed Nicholas. The fellow was squatting near the doorway, his large head bent over a piece of parchment, and he was so engrossed in studying it that he did not even notice the knight approach.
“What’s this, Masoun?” Godefroi asked him.
He looked up.
“This, my lord? It’s a great mystery. See,” and he lifted the parchment.
It was an elaborate design: a circle divided into four segments through which there twisted a single strip, like a serpent winding back and forth in great coils until it ended in a small circle at the centre. Godefroi frowned.
“A design?”
Nicholas nodded.
“It’s a miz-maze. Look.” His short, stubby finger pointed to the entrance to the pattern and then traced the winding path round the serpent, back and forth, coiling back upon itself before advancing to the next segment until finally it ended in the centre. The knight admired the little maze for its perfect, teasing symmetry.
“What’s it for?”
“Several have been laid out on the floors of churches,” Nicholas told him. “And some cut in the turf out of doors as well. There’s even one in Rome.” He looked at the design admiringly. “It’s a fine decoration of course, but they call them the Ways to Jerusalem, too.” He smiled. “They say that men do penance for their souls by going round them on their knees, if they can’t travel to Jerusalem.”
Godefroi smiled as well.
“It’s as good a penance as any, I suppose,” he remarked, and put the matter out of his thoughts.
It was only two days later, as he walked up through the beech wood to his favourite retreat, that the beauty of the little maze suddenly returned to his mind. And as he inspected the quiet arbour in its circle of yew trees under the open sky, he could not help thinking what a perfect spot it would be for such a construction. Could it be that Bishop Osmund had been answering his prayer?
He decided to speak to Nicholas and look at the little design again.
In February 1140, while the kingdom of England enjoyed a brief period of peace, and while the ewes were lambing in the darkened sheep-houses on the slopes below, Nicholas, called Masoun, directed a small team of men in a curious labour.
On the surface of the ancient disk barrow in its circle of yew trees, they cut a strange design: dividing the circle into four segments they laid out a winding path that led from its outer edge, through each segment in turn, until at last, exactly as on the parchment’s design, it arrived at the centre. It was an infuriating path. First it seemed to be going straight to the centre, then it would turn away, advancing and retreating, looping back on itself again and again, and finally flinging back to the outer edge before curving round, entering the next segment, and repeating the process again. Only on the last of the four journeys, when it seemed the path was about to fly off to the outer edge once more, did it suddenly and unexpectedly lead straight to the centre. It was, Godefroi shrewdly realised, a perfect allegory for the spiritual life: a subtle and perfect substitute for a pilgrimage.
“The man who designed this was a wise fellow,” he remarked to Nicholas, but though the craftsman nodded, he was only aware of its geometric symmetry.
The making of the miz-maze was simple. The path was two feet wide, and was marked out by cutting a furrow into the packed chalk soil on each side so that the effect was of a green grass pattern laid over a white chalk base. Its measurements had an almost mystic symmetry which especially delighted the knight: it was thirty-six paces in diameter; and the journey through the maze was 660 paces from the entrance to the opening of the inner circle and 666 paces to the exact centre.
The men worked carefully and steadily.
Three days before the end of the month, the work was completed.
In the years that followed, the miz-maze of Godefroi, lord of Avonsford was greatly admired. But it was the cool, determined piety of the knight which was admired still more, and made him, throughout Sarum, an object of awe.
For it soon became known that he had set himself a secret regime – secret because he practised it at dawn, and never spoke of it. For the rest of the day he managed his estate, performed his duties at the castle or in attending on his overlord as required; but during all the years the Anarchy raged and his family remained in London, he used to go silently up to the miz-maze at dawn each day, winter and summer, regardless of the weather, and alone on his knees he would make his way slowly round it to the centre. It used to take him an hour.
Why did he do it? It was not fanaticism certainly: he was a level-headed man. It was rather a grim, self-disciplined disgust with the world that led to his penance which, though it never gave him peace of mind, brought him a certain satisfaction.
By this means, it was calculated, he travelled over a hundred miles a year and, there could be no doubt, earned himself remission from many years of hell-fire.
And who should not try to save his soul at such a time? For at the castle of Sarisberie that stared so grimly over the five rivers below and the sweeping chalk ridges above, there could be no doubt that the times were very evil.
On March 1, 1140, three days after Godefroi’s miz-maze was completed, there was a total eclipse of the sun and it surprised no-one that, soon afterwards, the Anarchy broke out again.
New Sarum
THE FOUNDING
1244
And now, at the place where the five rivers met there was a new presence in the valley: in the gentle curve of the river a mile below the castle hill, a large area had been cleared and there, where before had been only broad meadows dotted with trees, a huge building site, several hundred acres in extent, was slowly rising.
It was larger than anything the people of Sarum had ever seen before. It seemed at times like a vast, strange plant, slowly unfolding through the coating of dust which covered it like pollen – or a huge creature emerging from its chrysalis; yet already its streets with their houses of wood and plaster, and its open ground with its enormous, half-built cathedral of grey stone, were teeming with activity, and already it could be seen that its outlines were to be stately and majestic. For this was the spacious city of New Salisbury.