London - Edward Rutherfurd [153]
The London over which they ruled was larger than before. Many more houses had appeared along the roads leading out of the city; whilst on the western side, outside Newgate, where the River Fleet became the Holborn, the city’s new outer limit was marked by stones known as the city’s bar. But if nowadays the streets of London and its trading were regulated by proud merchants like Sampson Bull, those grim sentinels of the Norman Conquest still remained. Standing guard over the city in the west were the fortifications by Ludgate; in the east, the mighty Tower. The castles of London belonged to the king and his magnates, and both still spoke that single, surly word: “Obey”.
But as Alderman Bull completed the business of the wardmote and dismissed its members with a wave of his hand, he was not thinking about the king. He had a far more cheerful subject on his mind. Minutes later, as he walked up the gentle slope of Cornhill, he allowed his mind to dwell upon it pleasantly.
Bocton. He was going to get it back.
It was a century since Leofric the Saxon had lost the ancestral Kentish estate to a certain St Malo, follower of the Conqueror, and the Bulls had assumed it was gone for good. But twenty years ago young Jean de St Malo had gone on the Second Crusade, mortgaging his estate to do so. The crusade was a disaster; the knight had returned broken, and after years of struggle had finally given up. Bocton had just passed to his creditor. Yesterday, that gentleman had called upon the alderman to acquaint him with the situation.
He was a short, neat, elegant man. He wore a black silk cloak and a skullcap. His name was Abraham.
“As soon as I realized it had been in your family, I came to you,” Abraham explained. “As you know, I can’t keep the place anyway.”
And Bull, with a grin, replied: “Thank God for that.”
There were many moneylenders in London nowadays. Expanding trade, the huge scale of operations in the Plantagenets’ sprawling European empire, and the overseas expenses of the crusades all needed financing. Norman, Italian and French moneylenders provided huge sums of money; so did that most Christian, crusading order, the Knights Templar; and so did the Jewish community of England. Their methods were not markedly different, with one exception. While most moneylenders held estates, and the Templars even became specialists in land management, the Jews were still prohibited from owning land. So when a Jewish financier repossessed an estate, he always sold it.
Abraham named a price. Bull explained that once his ship returned he could pay it. “And Bocton will be ours again,” he had told his wife and children. A crowning achievement.
Had he any doubts that the voyage would be a success? None. Did he trust Abraham to wait a little? Certainly. His word was good. Was there anything that worried the merchant about the transaction? Well, perhaps. There was one discordant note sounding at the back of his mind.
He had not told his mother. But that was a problem for another day.
His journey up Cornhill had been for a particular purpose and now, having reached the summit, he looked down upon the second reason for his cheerfulness that morning.
It was a small sailing ship. At a time when most cargo was carried overseas by foreign merchants, Bull had, the previous month, become one of the few Londoners to own his own vessel. Though the sleek, many-oared longships of the Norsemen were still to be seen, his own stout little ship was of the south European type more often used in London now. Broad-beamed, deep of draught and usually propelled by a single mainsail, it was clumsy and slow, its rudder set at an angle at the stern’s side, so that the vessel was steered rather as a riverman steers his boat with a single oar. However, the cog, as it was called, could also sail with a small crew in all weathers, and carried a prodigious load.
In the bowels of this particular ship rested a third of Bull’s fortune in the form of wool bound for Flanders. When it returned laden with silks, spices and luxury goods, the profits from the voyage