Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [243]
“It’s inside.” He led the way.
The hut was a simple affair. Under a thatch roof, the outer, larger compartment was a storeroom containing two chickens in a cage, his farming tools, several sections of wattle and half a dozen wooden stakes together with the other debris of his poor life. The floor was of earth. The inner compartment was smaller, about twelve feet square, its floor covered with dried rushes and in the middle, a small open fire in a grate under a hole in the roof. In the far wall there was a little square opening to let in some light, and this, in the manner of modest cottages, was covered with a thin sheet of lambskin, stretched and oiled so that it was translucent.
But what she noticed at once when she gingerly entered, was that on a spit over the fire was a small piece of salted pork. Despite herself, her eyes brightened as she sniffed the aroma. It was a month since she had last eaten meat.
“Want some?” he asked quietly.
She stood quite still. He knew the temptation she felt.
“Where d’you get it?” Her voice was low, a little frightened.
“Doesn’t matter. Want some?”
Still she hesitated. He took out his knife and began to cut a piece. Without looking at her, he could feel her weakening.
There was a chair with a rush seat in front of the fire. Slowly she came forward and sat in it.
They ate it all.
When they had done, he turned to her and looked at her seriously.
“You won’t tell?”
She stared at the floor. They both knew the seriousness of what they had done. At best a thief would be fined; he might be hanged.
She shook her head.
“If they ask you ever, you had no meat,” he reminded her.
She nodded.
Then she got up and he escorted her out. “There’s more,” he whispered as they emerged into the night.
“Where?”
He smiled.
“Nowhere they’ll ever find it.”
She was impressed by his caution.
Slowly he took her home; at the door of her father’s cottage he kissed her on the cheek and she did not protest.
Then Godric and his dog walked home, and the young man smiled to himself once more. He had taken the first step with Mary. Now there was a bond between them.
Midsummer’s Eve was to be a busy day at the manor of Avonsford, and it began with a brief but important meeting between Richard de Godefroi and John of Shockley.
On several occasions in recent months the farmer had approached the knight for advice on the continual threats from William to reopen the lawsuit against him, and although Godefroi thought the Saxon worried more than he should, he had listened patiently each time and given John sensible advice about how to proceed.
“Above all, give no sign that you’re afraid of him. And in the name of God keep your wife out of trouble,” he counselled.
But now he had sent for the farmer to ask a favour in return.
It concerned his own wife.
By midsummer, the political situation in England had become alarming. Only the previous week, in the little fortified port of Twyneham, a merchant from France had assured him that the Empress Matilda was planning to cross the Channel to England later that year, and that she could count on the support of Robert, Earl of Gloucester – one of the many bastard sons of the last king – and his allies who held the great western towns of Bristol and Gloucester on the river Severn, both of which were impregnable. Despite the fact that Matilda, with her high-handed ways, had made herself unpopular in many quarters, despite the fact that both the pope and King Louis of France were staunchly for Stephen, the rebel party was convinced that it could topple him.
In Godefroi’s opinion, they could be right. The good-natured king had shown too many signs of weakness. Matilda’s second husband, the vicious Geoffrey of Anjou, was still seeking by every means to wrest Normandy from Stephen’s ally and brother Theobald. The king’s support south of the Channel could crumble at any time. Apart from the glorious Battle of the Standard the previous year, when he had trounced an invading army of Scots in Yorkshire, he had few decisive actions to his credit.