London - Edward Rutherfurd [280]
Yet, despite all this good fortune, there was one thing that made him discontented. He felt guilty that it should do so since, he was the first to admit, none of his success could have happened but for his marriage. But all the same, it had rankled. Whatever I do in my life, he thought, I shall always have to call myself Bull. Always Bull. Never Ducket.
Yet it was not he, but Tiffany who had brought it up one day.
“You hate it, don’t you?” she said. He denied it, but she shook her head. “Yes you do.” And then she surprised him. “I hate it, too,” she declared.
It was perfectly true. She was proud of being a Bull, and proud of her fortune. But even so, it had often secretly irritated her that to her friends she was the girl who had married beneath her. Once she had overheard a young woman saying: “Tiffany’s husband? He’s the one with the patch in his hair and the funny hands. The Bulls couldn’t find her a proper husband, so they fished him out of the river.” The words had shocked her. “No,” she had wanted to tell her. “It was he who saved me from the river.” She had wanted to smack the girl’s face, but instead she inwardly resolved: I’ll show you. I’ll show you I have a husband to be proud of, and a better man than yours.
The College of Arms in Coldharbour was an awesome place. The cobblestone courtyard behind the gateway was brushed twice a day. The main building, facing the gate, was of stone below and timber above. Its great oak door was waxed and polished to a discreet glow. And having been admitted by a servant in gorgeous armorial livery, young Geoffrey Bull, formerly Ducket, found himself in a fine hall below whose timbered roof hung the colourful standards of many a knight and lord. After a short wait, a clerk, also in livery, conducted him through two more rooms to a grand, square chamber, in the middle of which, behind a dark table, sat no less a personage than the master of the royal heralds, Richard Spenser, Clarenceaux King of Arms and Earl Marshal of England. He gestured to the young man to state his business, which, after a moment’s nervous hesitation, Geoffrey did.
“I wondered, sir,” he concluded, “if I might have a coat of arms.” And blushed.
A mere merchant, a humble little fellow without even a yard of land to his name, asking for a coat of arms just as if he were a knight, nobly born, of ancient lineage? A tradesman, venturing into the heraldic holy of holies, amongst the banners of barons, earls and Plantagenet princes? Absurd. Intolerable. An outrage.
Except, of course, that in England, it was not so at all.
For just as London merchants could turn into country gentlemen, and the gentry’s younger sons could turn to trade, so in the dignities it awarded, feudal society’s appearances often masked a more practical reality. Even the coveted order of knighthood was not sacrosanct. A century before, Edward I had insisted that rich merchants become knights, so that they would then owe the feudal tax which paid for his army of mercenaries. And in the matter of heraldry, the system was more flexible still.
It was, after all, an artificial invention. Until the joust had become popular in the time of Lionheart, many nobles had never heard of a coat of arms. But it had soon become the fashion. It was colourful, dignified, heroic, even romantic. And as in every sphere of medieval life, steps had been taken to give the new fashion a proper order. Under the heralds, the College of Arms became like a huge, royal guild, with conditions of membership, regulations, and its own mystery – the rules and art of heraldic design. No wonder then that the dignity of arms was eagerly sought. A man with a coat of arms, no matter who he was, secretly felt himself to be one of King Arthur’s knights.