Although Peter Shockley had regained his father’s good graces, he nearly lost his mill the following spring.
The new disaster that nearly destroyed the Shockleys’ plans when the building of the mill had hardly begun was the one contingency which neither Godefroi nor Edward Shockley had even considered.
It was the fault of King Henry III, and resulted from events which had nothing to do with Sarum.
The problem lay in France. Nearly all the disasters that embarrassed Henry so many times during his fifty-six-year reign originated in his passion for intrigues across the English Channel – an interest which almost none of his subjects shared. Yet it was understandable enough. He could not forget the great empire in western France that his grandfather Henry II had ruled and his father John had lost. He would not accept that Normandy was gone. And when a few years before the new French king Louis had overrun the province of Poitou on the Atlantic coast, of which he was still at least the nominal overlord, it added insult to injury. He was determined to get his mighty inheritance back.
In order to understand the true state of affairs it must be remembered that the high politics of Europe were still entirely a feudal business. Though the English wool merchants, the Flemish and Italian clothmakers during the peace might raise their countries’ wealth to new heights, the kingdom and provinces of Europe in which the merchants operated remained related to each other by family ties. The ties were endless. They crossed the continent like huge and intricate spiders’ webs; and the shifting family ambitions and alliances of the rulers frequently overrode all considerations of peace, prosperity, or even common sense.
Of no one was this situation more true than King Henry III of England. His second wife was the daughter of the lord of Provence, that sunny southern region of France where the troubadour poets and minstrels had their origin. His mother Isabella, after the death of King John, had returned to France, thrown out her own daughter who was engaged to the head of the great Poitou house of Lusignan, with whose father she had once been in love, and married him herself. Henry was also cousin to the King of Aragon, who had claims on southern France, and brother-in-law to the German emperor, who was anxious to weaken the French and seize northern Italy.
To all these, and many others, Henry was a dupe.
In the year 1242 he had undertaken what was, even by his own remarkable standards of incompetence, one of the most botched and pointless expeditions of his long reign. It had begun, as always, in an elaborate intrigue – so elaborate that none of the parties probably even understood it. In this, the lords of the Midi, aided by the King of Aragon, the Lusignans and even the German emperor were to push the King of France out of the south western regions, part of which would then be returned to Henry. The enterprise was so absurd that some of the participants had even made treaties with Louis of France before it had started. The magnates of England, who already had a shrewd idea of Henry’s talents for diplomacy, refused to accompany him; consequently he took a scutage payment from them in lieu of service, tallaged the Jews, and set out. His allies in the south, who had a similarly just idea of his talents as a military commander, were delighted to take his money instead. And that was the last he saw of it. The campaign fizzled out almost as soon as it began. Henry returned to England. In the space of a few months, for no return whatever, he had just lost the then incredible sum of forty thousand pounds. As usual, he was bankrupt.
In 1244 a second and apparently quite unrelated event took place in London. The body of a child was found in the churchyard of St Benet’s; and some of those concerned made the preposterous claim that a Hebrew inscription had been cut into the child’s flesh. Absurd though the whole business was, the canons of St Paul’s Cathedral chose to believe it and the little corpse was buried by the high altar.
It was exactly what the king needed. The Jews must be guilty. He fined them – a sum three times greater than the largest levy ever taken before, twelve times the usual annual rate – sixty thousand marks. Which was, coincidentally, since the mark was two thirds of the pound, just forty thousand pounds.
Late that year, Aaron came to Godefroi and Edward Shockley and told them:
“I do not know if I can promise the loan any more. I am almost ruined.”
For a week they heard no further news. It was well known that all over the island the Jewish communities were struggling to find ways to make the preposterous payment.
After a week, the other participants decided to hold a meeting.
The conference between Godefroi and the two Shockleys was one that Peter remembered for the rest of his life. For it was there that he heard views expressed by the knight that amazed him, and began the process of his political education.
One thing that was certain was that neither family could finance the mill without the loan.
“I’d have to sell Shockley,” his father explained.
“And I’d gladly advance the money in cash,” Godefroi declared, “but at present . . .” He made an empty gesture with his hands.
It was well known that, like many of his class, the knight of Avonsford lived up to, and sometimes even beyond his considerable means. Not that he was foolish in the management of his estates. In the booming times he took full advantage of his situation. As the population of England grew, not only the wool growers but all agriculturalists were reaping the benefits. The open fields at Avonsford were now sowed three times a year instead of twice, and the sale at New Salisbury market of his winter wheat, spring oats and barley brought him a handsome income. Not only had his flocks of sheep increased, but he had even experimented, like other landlords in the region, with new strains such as the fine-woolled Lincoln sheep, so that part of his flocks now produced the crisp Lindsey wool that fetched the highest price of all in the market. In these ways Jocelin had made sure that his ten-year-old son Hugh would one day come into a splendid inheritance.
But ready cash was another matter. A gentleman must live in the manner proper to his class. Everyone who knew the songs of the French troubadours, or read the ever more elaborate tales of King Arthur and his knights knew that. His entertainments, his passion for jousting, the handsome new wing with its fine pointed windows that he had added to the stout old Norman hall – all had taken their toll.
“There’s plenty of wealth,” he told his son, “but no money.” And in this he was typical of many of the nobility.
The two men reviewed every option, even that of approaching the Cahorsin merchants. “But they’ll rob us blind,” Shockley complained. And it was only after some time that Godefroi suddenly gave way to the outburst that so surprised young Peter.
“This is all the doing of the king,” he raged. “The king with his damned foreign schemes and his damned foreign family. He’ll ruin us all.”
In his innocence, Peter had always assumed that the knight was a loyal follower of the king. But Godefroi’s next words, though they were spoken in anger, made his mouth fall open.
“I tell you, Shockley, the man’s a child; the only good government we’ve had was when he was a child, and there were regents to govern in his name. We’re English. We don’t need his foreigners; we don’t need his extravagance and frankly, except as a figurehead, I sometimes think we don’t need him.”
Astonished as Peter was by such sacrilege against the pious monarch, Godefroi’s view was widely shared amongst the gentry, and among the magnates too. The king might not have forgotten his lost lands, but most of his feudal subjects had. The magnates disliked the foreign favourites who were given key positions at court; the knights disliked the scutages that the king levied on the magnates and which the magnates in turn passed on to them. Several times when the king had made demands for money which his barons thought unreasonable, they had reminded him of his father’s Magna Carta which limited his powers; and though he did not tell Shockley, Godefroi had heard a rumour that several of the magnates were planning to try to force a council of four on the king which would effectively administer the realm in his name.
These were heady ideas for a provincial merchant’s son; he did not know what to think. But one thing he did know: the king had spent too much money and had damaged his family’s business; and at some point, he was sure, something must be done. It was the most important political lesson he ever learned.
Two months dragged by. The oak already felled to make the mill machinery lay on the ground. By the empty site, two cartloads of stones lay in undisturbed heaps. And then at last Aaron of Wilton called for a meeting at the manor house.
“Gentlemen,” he told them. “I have raised the money.” He paused and Edward Shockley noticed the new lines of pain and worry that had collected around his eyes. “But I tell you this,” he went on, “if the king tallages us like that again, it will be the last loan I shall be able to make.”
“And the interest rate?” Godefroi knew very well that the Jews would be forced to increase their rates to stay in business.
“I agreed a rate,” Aaron replied with aloofness. “It remains the same.”
It was then that Jocelin de Godefroi disappeared for a few moments into the garderobe chamber where he kept his most valuable possessions and returned with a little leather-bound book which he placed in Aaron’s hands. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s little history, translated into French, that had belonged to his great-grandfather.
“To remember this day,” he said solemnly, and he was glad to see that, for once, the Jew flushed with pleasure.
Two days later a messenger arrived at the manor and was ushered into the knight’s presence. With a low bow he declared that he came from Aaron of Wilton and handed Godefroi a small package.
In the package was another small book.
It was a little set of stories called
The Fox Fables
, written by a Jew of Oxford called, in French, Benedict le Pointur, and known to the Jews as Berechiah ha Nakdan. Godefroi had heard of it, for the fables were one of the classics of the great renaissance of Jewish writing that had taken place in England the previous century, before the sporadic persecutions had begun. It, too, was translated into French and charmingly illustrated. The knight smiled. “The fellow’s too proud to take a gift without giving one in return,” he muttered. But he was pleased with the book, and put it in the garderobe.
“And now,” he said cheerfully to Edward Shockley the next day. “Let work on our mill begin.”
1248
When exactly it was that his mentor Bartholomew turned against him Osmund the mason could never say with certainty. But he thought it was probably the day, about a year after he began his apprenticeship, that he brought a carving of a swan that he was making for Jocelin de Godefroi into the masons’ lodgings.
It was a small piece, carved of oak, which was to fit into a niche set in the big, studded door of the manor house at Avonsford; he had worked on it for several days and he was proud of it, and by the guttering candlelight, while the masons chatted, he put the finishing touches to it.
The masons liked young Osmund. He was quiet, and modest, and never pushed himself forward unless first spoken to. When one of the men noticed what he was doing, inspected the work, and then called his friends over to see what the young fellow had done, they were delighted to find that he had such a talent.
“He can carve,” they agreed. “The young fellow has the touch. We’ll teach you,” they promised him, “how to carve in stone.”
It was a moment of acceptance. From that evening, his life changed. The older masons began to speak to him freely. Robert himself, the deputy to the great Nicholas of Ely, came by where he was working to look him over again and say a few words; and often one of the older men would call him over to where one of the more intricate pieces of work was being done and show him the techniques, the mysteries, of the mason’s art.
He was discovering the broad friendship and companionship that linked, right across the whole country, the network of medieval masons.
It was not surprising that Bartholomew became cold. He was a competent, hardworking fellow, with little talent, and just enough imagination to see that the new apprentice was his superior.
He found fault with the new apprentice where he could; but it was not easy. Once or twice, when he had complained to the older masons about some supposed incompetence of the little fellow with the big round head, he had seen a look in their eyes which told him that it was their respect for him, not for Osmund, that was dwindling. Soon he stopped complaining. But he did as little as possible to help his protégé, and it was all the more galling to realise that the quiet little fellow was rapidly ceasing to need his guidance anyway.
Within another three months, he scarcely addressed Osmund at all; and by the next Michaelmas, he had even begun surreptitiously placing obstacles in the young man’s way – leaving a pile of dust mixed with lime beside the place where he was working so that it would blow into his face and irritate his eyes, or discreetly removing pieces of stone which Osmund was about to work.
At first Osmund was hardly aware of these small attacks. But gradually he began to sense a certain method in them; he also noticed that every time some mishap had occurred to him, Bartholomew would appear soon afterwards, apparently casually and by chance, to see how he was getting on. Serveral times he was aware of the young man staring at him with unconcealed malice, although he had done nothing to offend him.