London - Edward Rutherfurd [95]
“A man with cash.”
“Suppose, though, that a man owes you a debt and can’t pay?”
“He’ll be ruined,” Henri replied coolly.
“But then you lose what you lent him.”
“Unless I seize all he has in payment. But if that’s worth nothing, then I lose.”
“So as long as he owes you money, you fear him?” Seeing Henri nod, he went on. “But now consider this. What if this man can in fact pay you what he owes, but chooses not to? Now you fear him because he has your money, but since he can pay, he does not fear you.”
“I agree.”
“Very well then. Suppose now, Henri, that you need that money badly. He offers to settle for less than he owes. Do you take it?”
“I might have to.”
“Indeed you might. And now, do you not agree, he has made money out of you? Therefore, because of the debt he owed, he was stronger.”
“It will depend on whether he wants to do business with me again,” Henri said.
Silversleeves shook his head. “No. It will depend on many things,” he replied. “On timing, on whether you need each other, on other opportunities, on who has more powerful friends. It is a question of hidden balances. Just like this game of chess.” He paused deliberately. “Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.” He smiled, then reached out his hand again. “Checkmate.”
But Silversleeves’s mind was on a greater game, the game in which debt would be a weapon and which he had been secretly playing for the last twenty-five years against Becket, the merchant of Caen. In this game, he was about to make a devastating move. Leofric the Saxon was going to serve his purpose very well. He had only a little longer to wait. Then there was the Dane. The great, red-bearded lout who had insulted him that day. Barnikel had been peripheral to the game, a mere pawn, but he could be fitted in. The plan would take care of Barnikel quite beautifully, so perfect was its hidden symmetry.
He was still smiling when Henri stood up, went to the window and called to him excitedly: “Father, look! There’s something in the sky.”
In the last hour the clouds had cleared to reveal a cold, hard winter night of stars, in the midst of which was now a most extraordinary sight.
Silently it hung in the sky, its tail stretching behind it in a long fan. All over Europe, from Ireland to Russia, from the islands of Scotland to the rocky shores of Greece, men looked up at the great, bearded star in horror and wondered what it meant.
The appearance of Halley’s Comet in January 1066 is well recorded in the chronicles of the time. It was universally agreed that it must be a portent of ill omen, of some disaster that was about to befall mankind. In the island of England especially, threatened from so many sides, they had good reason to be afraid.
The boy with the white patch in his light brown hair gazed up at the great comet with fascination. His name was Alfred, after the great king. He was fourteen, and he had just taken a decision that infuriated his father and filled his mother with grief. He felt her nudge him now.
“You oughtn’t to go. That star’s a sign, Alfred. You stay put.”
He chuckled and his blue eyes twinkled. “You really think that God Almighty sent that star to warn me, Mother? You think He wants the whole world to look up and say, ‘Ah, that’s God warning young Alfred not to go to London’?”
“You never know.”
He kissed her. She was a warm, simple woman and he loved her. But he had made up his mind. “You and Father will be fine. He’s already got one son to help in the smithy. There’s nothing for me around here.”
The harsh light from Halley’s Comet illuminated a pleasant scene. Here, in the flat, low-lying landscape twenty miles west of London, the Thames meandered through lush meadows and fields that now gleamed