Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [262]
He had found a way to repay the farmer for his kindness.
William was silent. No champion that he could ever hope to purchase would last for a minute before the trained skill of a knight like Godefroi, even if he dared to fight him at all. The swift blade of the Norman would slice any bold rustic or even a man-at-arms to pieces before he could get close. He looked from side to side, baffled.
“Well,” said the king with a show of impatience, “do you wish to proceed or not?”
The tanner scowled and hung his head.
“No, your Majesty,” he finally muttered.
“Case dismissed,” the king cried, with a wink to Godefroi; and to William’s fury, the entire court burst out laughing.
He was defeated – all his work for nothing, and mocked into the bargain. But as the tanner left, he turned to his wife and swore:
“One day, our family will have revenge.”
Christmas came, and in the castle of Sarisberie, King Stephen in the ancient and symbolic manner of the Norman king, summoned the local magnates to him and ceremonially wore his crown. But despite the king’s presence, the knight of Avonsford still did not summon his family from London.
“Let’s wait and see,” he said to John of Shockley.
As Christmas passed and the period of truce drew towards an end, he was conscious more than ever of a sense of desolation hanging over the dark castle on its high chalk hill.
It was in the spring of the year of the Lord 1140 that Richard de Godefroi, a Norman knight of modest attainments who had begun to grow weary of the world, discovered a satisfactory way to save his soul.
It came to him on January 5, when he had gone to the cathedral on the castle hill to pray and, as usual, he had knelt quietly by the tomb of Bishop Osmund. The day was bitterly cold. As he knelt and whispered his Ave Marias, his breath made little clouds of mist in front of him. Yet it seemed to Godefroi that, despite the cold, there was that day a special warmth – a sensation he thought he had noticed once or twice before – coming from the stone under which the saintly bishop lay; and while he remained beside it, he experienced a sense of peace. He remained at his prayers for longer than usual that day and, as usual, ended them with the request:
“In these godless times, show me, Osmund, what I must do.”
It was a few minutes later, as he left the church, that he noticed Nicholas. The fellow was squatting near the doorway, his large head bent over a piece of parchment, and he was so engrossed in studying it that he did not even notice the knight approach.
“What’s this, Masoun?” Godefroi asked him.
He looked up.
“This, my lord? It’s a great mystery. See,” and he lifted the parchment.
It was an elaborate design: a circle divided into four segments through which there twisted a single strip, like a serpent winding back and forth in great coils until it ended in a small circle at the centre. Godefroi frowned.
“A design?”
Nicholas nodded.
“It’s a miz-maze. Look.” His short, stubby finger pointed to the entrance to the pattern and then traced the winding path round the serpent, back and forth, coiling back upon itself before advancing to the next segment until finally it ended in the centre. The knight admired the little maze for its perfect, teasing symmetry.
“What’s it for?”
“Several have been laid out on the floors of churches,” Nicholas told him. “And some cut in the turf out of doors as well. There’s even one in Rome.” He looked at the design admiringly. “It’s a fine decoration of course, but they call them the Ways to Jerusalem, too.” He smiled. “They say that men do penance for their souls by going round them on their knees, if they can’t travel to Jerusalem.”
Godefroi smiled as well.
“It’s as good a penance as any, I suppose,” he remarked, and put the matter out of his thoughts.
It was only two days later, as he walked up through the beech wood to his favourite retreat, that the beauty of the little maze suddenly returned to his mind. And as he inspected the quiet arbour in its circle of yew trees under the open sky, he could not help thinking what a perfect spot