London - Edward Rutherfurd [181]
So perhaps it was not surprising that, having drunk more than she realized, Sister Mabel felt a little flushed; nor even that, as they passed through the cloister where a brazier was burning, she should have suggested to Brother Michael that they sit by its warmth and talk a while.
They sat quietly in the glow from the charcoal. Brother Michael, too, was feeling relaxed. They spoke of their families, and by and by it came about that she asked him if he had ever loved a woman. “Yes,” he answered, he supposed he had. “But I took my vows to this,” he said, indicating the long cloister of their religious home.
“No one would have married me,” she confessed.
And it was then, with a giggle, that Sister Mabel made her move. Pulling up her habit to a little above the knee, she gave him a curious smile and stuck out one leg. “I used to think my legs were all right,” she said. “What do you think?”
It was a strong, plump little leg with freckled skin and surprisingly few hairs, and those so fair that they scarcely showed. A pretty enough leg, many would have said. Brother Michael gazed at it.
There was no mistaking her intention, but he was not shocked. Indeed, he was touched. Realizing that this was the first and only sexual advance Mabel would make in her life, kindly Brother Michael kissed her gently on the forehead and remarked: “A fine leg indeed, Sister Mabel, with which to serve God.”
Then he quietly rose and walked away through the cloisters and out of St Bartholomew’s into the great, blank emptiness of Smithfield.
Two days later, having consoled herself with the thought that if the Devil was after Brother Michael, he had failed this time, she told her confessor cheerfully, “It’s over for me. I shall go to hell and there’s nothing you can do about it. But Brother Michael’s still all right.”
On the last night of December, a secret meeting took place.
The seven men who arrived separately and unnoticed at the house near the London Stone were all of the rank of alderman. At their discussion, which lasted an hour, they not only agreed upon what they wanted, but devised the strategies and tactics they would use. “The first thing to be addressed,” their leader announced to general agreement, “is the question of the farm.” But there were other, deeper matters also to be considered.
It was towards the end of the meeting when someone remarked that what they needed was a stooge, that Alderman Sampson Bull, after a moment’s thought, declared: “I know exactly the man. Leave it to me.” When they asked him who, he smiled and answered:
“Silversleeves.”
Nor was it simply chance that only days later messengers came to London with important and frightening news.
John, the king’s brother, had arrived on England’s shores.
APRIL 1190
Pentecost Silversleeves gazed at the Barnikel family. They did not like him, but that did not matter. They were not important. There was the stout, red-haired fishmonger and his children, another woman he did not know holding the hand of a little boy, and that curious creature Sister Mabel.
“It’s not fair,” Sister Mabel protested.
He knew that.
“I paid for those nets,” the fishmonger reminded him.
“I fear,” Pentecost said smoothly, “there will be no compensation.”
“Then there’s one law for the rich and one for the poor,” Mabel stated in disgust. At which Silversleeves smiled.
“Of course,” he said.
Kiddles. The perennial problem of the Thames. Not that on this occasion Barnikel’s nets had actually damaged Bull’s ship, but the sight of them in the river one morning had infuriated the rich merchant. He had spoken to Silversleeves, who had spoken to the chancellor, and within a day their removal was ordered, despite the fact that the fishmonger, who, though not poor, was only a modest