London - Edward Rutherfurd [196]
During this happy ceremony, a red-faced Alderman Sampson Bull stood somewhat apart from his fellows, who tried not to look at his large body shaking almost continuously with silent tears.
When the tragedy of his son had become known to him the previous night and he had returned home with David’s body, it was perhaps not surprising that, in his grief, he had blamed Ida. “It was you who turned him against me and filled his head with nonsense,” he cried in anguish. “Now see what you have done. Get out of my house,” he bellowed, “for ever.” When she refused, he struck her.
So guilty did she feel, so shocked and sorry for the merchant as she witnessed the full extent of his agony, that she let him strike her. Nor did she say anything when, as she stumbled up, he struck her again, breaking two of her teeth.
But the third time, before the blow fell, she begged him: “Do not strike me again.” And as he paused, she told him the thing she had been about to tell him for a little while: “I’m pregnant.”
Strangely, in his pain that day it was his brother Michael to whom Bull went for comfort.
1215
The castle of Windsor was a pleasant sight. Constructed over the last century, it occupied a single hill, covered with oak woods, and rose like a guardian over the placid meadows by the River Thames. It commanded a magnificent view of the hamlets and countryside around. Around the broad summit, above the trees, there was a high curtain wall with battlements. But where the Tower of London was square and grim, this other great royal castle further up the Thames had a sedate, almost kindly presence.
Silversleeves had only gone three miles from the castle gates when he wished he hadn’t. The sun had been out when he left that June morning, but now it was raining hard. As the lush meadows all around roared with the din of falling water, and the raindrops gathered on the end of his nose, he cut a sorry figure.
The truth was, as every new Exchequer clerk was told nowadays: “Old Silversleeves is a bit of a joke.” It was not simply his age. After all, the mighty Earl Marshal, one of the greatest officers of the kingdom, was still fighting in the saddle at over seventy. But poor Silversleeves, with his stooping shoulders and his nose that seemed to grow even longer with advancing years – Silversleeves whose half-century at the Exchequer had never led to advancement – Silversleeves was certainly an object of fun. The legend of Henry II chasing him out of Westminster Hall was now told in several amusing versions. His last-minute changes of allegiance were cautionary tales. And if it were not for the fact that he carried the entire Exchequer Rolls in his head and could compute sets of figures quicker than most men could blink, he would probably have been retired years before.
But at least he could console himself he had been important enough to be present at the great meeting three days before in the meadow near the castle called Runnymede.
King Richard the Lionheart had not been a good king. He was never in England. When he had died in battle and his brother John succeeded, some people had hoped things would get better. Certainly no one could have predicted the disasters of John’s reign. He had murdered his nephew, poor young Arthur of Brittany. Then, in a series of ill-judged campaigns, he had lost almost all his father’s empire across the Channel. Henry had quarrelled with Becket, but John managed to quarrel with the Pope so thoroughly that England was placed under an Interdict. For years, there