London - Edward Rutherfurd [170]
As she looked at the city before her, it seemed to Ida that the world had turned to stone. The great walled enclosure of London seemed like a vast prison. On the left, she could see the thickset stone fort by Ludgate. On the right, down by the waterside, the grey, square mass of the Tower, surly even in repose. All stone. Over the two low hills of London covered with houses loomed the dark, high, narrow line of Norman St Paul’s, dreary and forbidding. Even in the water beside her she noticed, as she glanced sideways over the wooden parapet, that they had started to build massive piers for a new bridge which, she rightly guessed, would also be made of stone. And now, as the horses’ hooves clip-clopped softly on the wooden bridge in the morning quiet, the sound of a striking bell came over the water with a solemn, sullen sound as though it, too, were made of stone, to summon stony hearts to stony prayer.
Ida was thirty-three. She was the daughter of a knight, the widow of a knight, and everything about her proclaimed her to be so. Below her stiff headdress her dark brown hair was fastened in a bun and covered by a wimple. Behind her veil was a long, handsome face. Beneath her broad-sleeved, trailing gown was a slim, pale body with small breasts and long legs. She had always known, modestly but definitively, that she was a lady. So why was it that no one, not even King Richard, seemed to care? For, on the king’s orders, this long-nosed clerk was taking her to be married to a vulgar merchant about whom she knew nothing except that his name was Sampson Bull.
“Can’t you tell me anything about him?” she had impatiently demanded of Silversleeves the day before.
After a little thought, he had only replied: “They say he has a very bad temper.”
How could they treat her this way? The reason was very simple. Thanks to the good management of his father, King Richard the Lionheart was one of the richest monarchs in Christendom – certainly far richer than his rival, the King of France. But a crusade was a costly business. When, two years before, the Pope had proclaimed the Third Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslim ruler Saladin, King Henry II had levied a special tax, the Saladin tithe. But even that was not enough, and before his arrival King Richard had informed his Exchequer that it must raise all the cash it could.
Richard, as it happened, had hardly set foot in England before. “Frankly,” he told his inner circle, “England seems wet and dull. But,” he cheerfully added, “we love it for the huge income it yields us.”
In the summer of 1189, therefore, everything was for sale: sheriffdoms, trading privileges, tax exemptions. “If you can find me a buyer,” he remarked, “I’ll sell London itself.” Amongst the king’s assets were numerous heiresses and widows, who, through the accidents of feudal vassalage, were his to protect and to bestow as he saw fit. This meant that when cash was urgently needed, he could sell these aristocratic ladies to the highest bidders.
Silversleeves understood his new king’s needs perfectly. Ida was the seventh widow he had ferreted out and sold within the space of less than six weeks. He was proud of this transaction. Ida was poor. She brought no estate with her. If Pentecost had not known that the rich widower Bull was looking for a noble wife, Ida would probably have been unsaleable. Now, however, because her impending marriage would help pay for the Third Crusade, Pentecost could turn and, seeing her tears, coolly remark: “Never mind, madam. At least you’re being sold in a good cause.”
It was a short while later, as they passed into the West Cheap and rode down the line of gaily coloured stalls, that Ida received the final shock. Just before they drew level with the little Norman church of St Mary-le-Bow, Silversleeves turned to her and, indicating a group of merchants by the church door, remarked: “That’s him. The one in red.” And then Ida, seeing the coarse,