Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [270]
The family had never forgiven the prosperous farmers at Shockley.
“Those Shockley folk are thieves,” he told his children. It was an article of faith. And now the Shockleys had taken a house in the new town as well, the new town that was going to ruin Wilton.
“Curse them, and curse that bridge,” he muttered.
But if he was angry when he contemplated the bishop’s bridge, it was nothing compared to the fury he experienced when he reached the market place.
There were a dozen people standing by his cart; some were curious, a few openly grinning. The Wilton man in whose care he had left it was looking glum; and in the centre of the group, calm but severe, stood a figure he dreaded: Alan Le Portier, the aulnager. His daughter Alicia stood just behind him.
The aulnager was pointing at the cart. “Your cloth?”
The assize of aulnage had been instituted by King Richard half a century before. It was a simple tax on cloth, together with a set of standard measures that must be observed. Alan Le Portier had chosen a different variant of the family name, but like his brother Canon Portehors, he was a thin, exacting man: and when the great William Longspée had recommended him for the post of aulnager, that grand noble had assured the royal officials with a laugh:
“You needn’t worry, he’s just like all his family: he’ll count every fibre in the cloth if he has to.”
As he approached, William looked from the aulnager’s face to his daughter’s. Alan was a little greyer than his brother. His thin face was refined but stern and the eyes were dark. The daughter Alicia, a pleasant looking girl of sixteen with hazel eyes, was watching him curiously. She often went round the market with her father whom she admired, and she knew all its ways.
The aulnager repeated the question.
“Your cloth?”
He nodded.
“A quarter inch too narrow.”
Who could have guessed that he would notice? By short-changing his customers this tiny fraction on the width, he could make a modest profit even at his discounted prices. He should never have left the cart where the piercing eyes of Le Portier might find it.
“You’ll be fined of course,” the aulnager told him matter-of-factly. “Better take it back to Wilton. You can’t sell it here.”
William hung his head. It could have been worse: the aulnager could have impounded the merchandise; but it would still be hard to dispose of the cloth now. And it was two months’ work. Without a word he took the long handles of the cart and began dragging it away. As he went, he heard Le Portier remark to his daughter:
“You have to watch that family.”
He cursed them all, under his breath.
The meeting that so interested young Osmund took place by the side of the river Avon that morning, half a mile south of the village of Avonsford.
Two splendid horses and a cart had been left beside the track above the river. Twenty feet away, a little group consisting of two men and a boy were conversing in low tones; below them on the edge of the river bank, a single figure in a long black cloak with a hood was pacing up and down, deep in thought. The other three glanced at him from time to time, anxiously.
Jocelin de Godefroi, Edward Shockley and his eighteen-year-old son Peter, were awaiting the decision of the hooded man below.
“If he will agree this morning to what we ask,” Edward had told his son, “it will be the most important thing I have ever done. It’ll make our fortune.”
Now they were waiting for the hooded man, and Shockley could hardly contain himself.
The family had prospered modestly. They had kept the farm of Shockley, which had now become their family name, but as a young man, Edward had taken the house in the new city as well, and there he had opened a small but profitable business by installing three large looms at which he employed weavers for making cloth. The times were busy; the family was trusted and well liked. Big, bluff Edward Shockley had become a member of the merchant guild