London - Edward Rutherfurd [178]
But her greatest pleasure came from young David. It had not taken them long to become friends. During the day he went to school at nearby St Paul’s, but in the evenings she would sit with him. It was obvious that for over a year the boy had had no one to talk to at home. All she had to do was listen kindly and in no time he was sharing every confidence. She understood his grief that he could not go on the crusade. She promised him things would get better. She had never been a mother before and found she enjoyed it.
And then, of course, there was Brother Michael. Once a week, at her insistence, he came for a meal. Secretly she wished it could be more often.
Only two weeks after the coronation, however, this new rhythm of life was interrupted when Bull suddenly announced, “We’re going to Bocton for a few days.”
It was nightfall when they arrived, but she liked the place at once. The knight who had lived there had left a modest stone hall with a fine yard and large wooden outbuildings. It was not unlike the manor she had lived in before. But her astonishment came the next morning when, soon after sunrise, she stood and gazed out at the magnificent, sweeping view across the Weald of Kent. It was so lovely it made her gasp. “We always had this place,” Bull remarked softly, “until King William came.” Just for a moment, Ida felt a sense of kinship with him.
Her stay there was pleasant, if brief, but her feelings were mixed. She was glad Bull had such an estate, yet it reminded her poignantly of the life she had lost. And perhaps it was this sense of loss that caused her, soon after her return to London, to make the first major mistake of her marriage.
It happened on Michaelmas Day. She was returning home in the afternoon when she heard from the outside voices raised in anger. Moments later she walked in and found, to her surprise, three figures: Sampson Bull, red in the face, sitting at an oak table; Brother Michael; and, pale and faintly contemptuous, Pentecost Silversleeves. However, this was nothing to the shock she felt on hearing what her husband was saying.
“If this is how King Richard rules, then let him go to hell,” the merchant thundered. And then, to her horror: “London will get another king.” At which poor Ida blanched, for this was treason.
The reason for it was simple enough, though. It was about taxes. If the tension between the monarch and the city was ancient, it also had well-defined limits. The city’s annual tax was termed the farm. When the king was weak the city could negotiate a reduction in the farm, and choose its own sheriffs to collect it. When the king was strong, the farm went up and the king named the sheriffs, though not without reference to the citizens. As for its collection, this was done in whatever way the great men of London deemed best. The arrangements were announced at Michaelmas.
“And do you know what this cursed Richard has just done?” Bull thundered. “No sheriffs. He’s just sent in his stewards, like this creature here,” he gestured to the long-nosed Exchequer clerk, “without so much as a by-your-leave. They’re to bleed us for everything they can get. It’s iniquitous.”
The description was wholly fair. Silversleeves, using a sound and ancient principle, had just demanded an outrageous sum from the merchant. “Start high,” the Exchequer men had agreed, “and let them beat us down.” After all, the king’s crusade must be paid for.
But a member of the knightly class did not speak treason lightly, and Ida quietly reproved her husband: