London - Edward Rutherfurd [112]
As for herself? She lived in the fine stone house near St Paul’s. Henri had already given her two children, a boy and a girl. He was thoughtful. He paid her every attention. Indeed, she supposed that Henri might have been a good husband if it had not been for the fact that his heart was entirely cold.
“You certainly have a fine position,” Leofric had remarked to her. It was true. She had even met the king, for the Silversleeves family had attended him several times at the king’s hall at Westminster when he held court there at Whitsun. King William, bulky, florid, with a large moustache and piercing eyes, had addressed her in French, which, thanks to her husband, she now spoke prettily, and had been so pleased with her replies that he had turned to his entire court. “You see,” he had declared, “here is a young Norman with an English wife proving that the two can live contentedly together.” And he had beamed at her. “Well done,” Henri had whispered, and she had felt proud of herself.
The following year, however, a less happy incident had occurred in the same place.
Her father’s attitude to the Norman king was pragmatic: “I don’t like it, but he’s probably here to stay, so we must make the best of it.” Consequently, on hearing that the king wanted falcons for his hunting, Leofric had gone to great trouble and expense to find a magnificent pair of hawks, and when Hilda and her husband were next summoned to court, he brought them and gave them to her with the instruction: “Present them to William from me.”
With delight, therefore, she had watched as her husband’s servants carried in the two heavy cages and the king exclaimed with pleasure: “I’ve never seen finer ones. Where did you get them?” And she had been completely unprepared when Henri, in front of her and without a blush, had quickly interposed:
“I searched far and wide, sire.”
Then he had smiled at her.
She could not contradict her husband in front of the king. She could only stare at him. But after a moment, as a cold pain shot through her, she felt something die. Perhaps, she considered afterwards, she might have forgiven him if he had not smiled at her.
So now, as she walked out to meet her lover, she felt only a sense of duty for Henri. Nothing more.
Just across the wooden bridge over the Fleet, where once there had been a sacred well, there now stood a little stone church dedicated to a Celtic saint often associated with such watery places: St Bridget, or, as she was called in this case, St Bride. And by the little church of St Bride’s, which stared across to Ludgate, he was waiting for her patiently.
Barnikel of Billingsgate was in love.
The Conquest of England had hit the Dane hard. The lands he owned in Essex had been taken by the Normans. For a while he had wondered if he would be ruined, but he had managed to hold his business together in London, and to his great surprise Silversleeves had remained scrupulous about paying him the interest on Leofric’s old debt. Even his youngest son, whom he had so passionately intended for the Saxon’s girl, had made an excellent marriage. The boy lived with his father-in-law now, whose business he would in due course take over. “Things could be far worse,” his wife had liked to remind him. But then she herself had suddenly died and for some months afterwards the Dane had felt the heart go out of him.
Since then two things had kept him going. The first was his secret battle against the Norman conquerors. That he had vowed to continue until his dying day.
The second was Hilda.
They had been shy of each other at first, both regretting the family rift, but once Barnikel’s son was married, they felt less awkward when they met in the West Cheap and often paused to exchange a few friendly words. Learning where she took her evening walks,