Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [268]
Canon Stephen nodded.
“Yes. You are slothful because you do not like the work. But God did not make you to be happy: he made you to serve, and only by serving him will you earn any heavenly reward.”
Osmund hung his large head. Though a part of him still rebelled, he knew that the canon, though harsh, was just. He turned to go.
“Stop.” The voice of the canon was relentless. “That is not all. You are hiding another sin, my son.”
How could he know? The youth felt the canon’s eyes on his back, and did not want to turn around.
“Well?”
Osmund still did not speak.
“Then I will tell you,” the cutting voice went on. “The sin is avarice.” He hissed the word.
So he knew.
He was paid a penny a day; he was poor.
“Men who should know better are tempting you to work for them, when you are needed here,” the canon accused. “Ungodly men.”
It was true, every word. And yet it had not seemed such a crime.
For this was what he had been waiting for so anxiously all morning. The men returning from their meeting had promised to offer him a penny and a half to work for them: an excellent wage, that might last a year until the work was completed. He knew them well. They had not seemed so ungodly. He turned round slowly, wondering how the canon had found out.
“You would desert your work here for money, Osmund. You are young. But the love of money is avarice, and that is a sin.” He paused, fixing the youth with his terrible gaze, then asked more kindly: “You cut stone well. They tell me you also carve wood.”
Osmund nodded. He had carved a fine door for Godefroi at the manor of Avonsford and he knew the priest had seen it. But the canon’s next words astonished him.
“Should you like to work at the cathedral?”
Osmund stared at Portehors, hardly daring to believe the question. To work in the cathedral with the masons – his dream? The priest regarded him shrewdly.
“They are paid a penny and a quarter a day,” he said quietly, “but not more.” He waited a moment before continuing. “You could start at Michaelmas, if you work well on the watercourses. Do you want to?”
“Oh yes,” his voice was almost pleading. He could not help it.
“Good.” The priest paused a moment. “Of course, if you work for Shockley and his friends, you will never work for the cathedral. Ever.”
Osmund paled, but did not speak.
Stephen Portehors watched him calmly; he was not a canon of the cathedral for nothing.
He had seen young Osmund’s work at Avonsford. He suspected the young fellow had talent.
It was at this moment that the Shockleys and Godefroi came riding down the street and the canon turned to face them.
The hair of the ferret-faced man who stood by the bridge, though it might once have been destined to shoot straight up from his head like a tuft of black grass, had – since it was rarely washed or brushed – relapsed instead into a dozen or so matted strands that stood in dispirited clumps like a small bush that had been charred. And in this tangled mess on his head, as it did on all things, the dust of New Salisbury had settled too.
William atte Brigge was about to experience the worst day of his life.
He was angry already. As he looked at the scene before him his small, close-set eyes were glittering with rage.
He had come with his small cart from Wilton that morning. He had crossed the Avon at Fisherton bridge and gone straight to the market place in the middle of the bishop’s new town. There he had left it with another trader from Wilton who had a stall, and made his way past the rising cathedral building to the southern tip of the new settlement, where the river curved round before turning south on its slow way to the coast.
To a casual observer, his behaviour now might have seemed strange.
In front of him was a new stone bridge. It crossed the river in two short leaps, between which lay a little island. On his left stood a cluster of buildings that was the hospital of St Nicholas; on the island stood the little chapel of St John, both of them built there by Bishop Bingham for travellers. It was a pleasant spot, the water murmuring soothingly