Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [235]
If he closed his eyes, he could still taste the salted pork, smell its aroma: it brought a smile to his usually dispirited face.
Godric Body was small and thin. The narrow face which he inherited from his fisherman father always seemed to be pale and pinched; shocks of reddish hair grew unevenly, like tufts of grass, on his head, giving him an untidy look. His hands were thin and delicate and looked unsuited to the rough work which was his lot. And worst of all, he had been born with a hunchback – not a pronounced and grotesque hump, but an unmistakable curvature that thrust his head savagely forward and caused the other children to call him Godric the rat. His parents had hoped he would not live, his mother because she feared he would be unable to work, his father because he loathed to see what he called a runt.
He lived, and he worked – painfully but with a remarkable perseverance; and as he grew older even the villagers would grudgingly admit that the ungainly boy with the surprisingly soft and dreamy eyes could carve figures in wood with a dexterity that far surpassed anyone else at Avonsford. His parents had died when he was thirteen and since then he had lived a lonely life, completing his work on the estate painfully, uncertain of how to express himself, and nursing a single passion and ambition as to how to better his lot.
His second piece of luck was that his uncle Nicholas had agreed to speak to the lord of the manor on his behalf that very day. He knew that Godefroi, whom he dared not address himself, respected the stoneworker and he was full of hope.
Now here was a third piece of luck. For before his eyes in the small market place that lay within the castle precincts, an extraordinary scene was developing that promised to provide a rich and unforeseen entertainment. With surprising determination, his bent little figure nudged and ducked its way to the front of the crowd to get a better view; and what he saw made his face break into a broad grin.
The two women were facing each other in the centre of the square.
The larger of the two seemed about to burst. She was a massively built figure, and the scarlet woollen robe she wore seemed to accentuate the rage that radiated from her. Despite the rolls of fat about her person, it was clear that she was powerful and dangerous. Her heavy cheeks which were, even when she was calm, as red as her dress, had now puckered up so that her eyes were no more than slits. Godric stared at her with a mixture of loathing and admiration: he knew her well: she was Herleva, wife of his own cousin William atte Brigge.
“Harlot! Thief!” the huge woman shouted; and then, her whole face contorted with venom, she hissed: “Bondwoman.”
The object of these insults was a blonde, handsome young woman in her mid-twenties whose light plumpness only added to the attractiveness of which she was comfortably aware. The simple shift she wore with a girdle at the waist was light blue, and set off her hair as she tossed her head in contempt at the older woman. Godric knew her too. She was the wife of a Saxon farmer, John of Shockley.
It was true that she had been a bondwoman, a lowly villein owned, like himself, by a Norman lord until she had married the freeman of Shockley. But at the intended insult she only smiled and then cried mockingly:
“A year and a day.”
The crowd laughed. It was well known that William atte Brigge had run away from the Avonsford estate when he was a boy and lived for a year and a day at the little town of Twyneham on the coast; a villein who escaped to a town for this period was allowed his freedom if his lord failed to claim him. He had become a tanner – an unpopular trade on account of the pungent smells the tannery always produced – and moved to Wilton, where he was disliked for his bad temper as much as his trade, and where he acquired the added name of atte Brigge because his house lay