Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [241]
“Make the boy one of your shepherds,” he begged, “and I’ll vouch for him that you won’t be disappointed. He’s not cut out for the fields.”
Godefroi had not committed himself. He disliked being manoeuvred.
“But he didn’t say no,” Nicholas told his nephew.
Since it was the day after Hokeday, the second Tuesday after Easter, there was much to do. On Hokeday, the community’s sheep were folded on the lord of the manor’s lands where they would remain until Martinmas in November, so that the lord would have the benefit of their richest manure during the summer months for his fields. All through the morning Godric helped the other villeins to erect the stout wattle sheepfolds on the slopes above the valley. Then at noon he was summoned to help one of the teams of oxen which were harnessed two by two to pull the heavy plough. It was to turn the huge field which was to lie fallow that season. By mid-afternoon, the reeve had no further work for him, and he was told he could go.
This was an unexpected piece of good luck since there were still many hours of daylight left, and he was hardly even tired. It did not take him long to return to the village, collect his dog, and set out down the valley.
It was quite by chance that he found his opportunity to take his revenge on William that day.
He had walked down the valley with no particular object except to stay clear of the village in case the reeve changed his mind; but as it was a fine day and the dog Harold was eager to go forward, he soon found himself skirting the castle walls and turning east across the lightly wooded bowl of land below.
He had gone another mile before he stopped abruptly; for it was only then that he realised suddenly that he had carelessly entered a forbidden area.
Without thinking, he had entered the royal forest of Clarendon.
The Norman royal forests covered a huge area, almost a fifth of the kingdom, and Sarum lay at the centre of some of the greatest. To the west, between the rivers Wylye and Nadder lay the ancient woods of Grovely, and past that running north to south just as it had in King Alfred’s day, the broad band of Selwood. To the south west, where the grass-covered agger of the old Roman road to Dorchester could still be seen, was another hunting area, the wild and desolate region of Cranborne Chase. But it was immediately to the east of the place where the five rivers met that the largest forest in the south of the island began. Here, stretching roughly north to south, from the north eastern edge of Salisbury plain, down past Sarum and on in a huge broadening sweep that did not end until it reached the Solent, lay forty-seven miles of continuous woodland and wasteland. Through the Middle Ages the names given to its various parts would become well known in the island’s history: from Savernake in the north, Clarendon just past the village of Britford below Sarum, to the so-called New Forest that stretched to the coast. Within its bounds lay not only woodland but open lawns – grasslands where livestock could graze – and areas of wilderness. And almost the whole of it, every deer, every boar and every tree belonged to the king and was reserved for his hunting.
It was protected by strict forest laws. A man might, with a licence, pick up dead wood for his fire; but if he touched a living tree he would be fined. No farmer could turn his pigs or cattle loose to graze anywhere in this vast area unless he paid a fee to the agisters who regulated all the forest pasturing; and though a man might kill one of the unreserved warren animals or fowl – the hares, foxes, squirrels, the partridges, pheasants or woodcock – woe betide him if he touched a deer. That offence was punishable by maiming or death.
Godric knew that he had already committed a crime. For Harold had not been lawed.
It was a sensible precaution which the foresters enforced strictly: any but the smallest dogs were forbidden to enter the forest unless three claws from their