Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [271]
Jocelin de Godefroi was calmer.
Since the terrible reign of Stephen, the times had favoured his family. Though Edward of Salisbury and his brother had declared for the empress against the king in the Anarchy, they had kept their influence when Stephen finally prevailed, and no harm had come to their minor follower, Godefroi. Indeed, under Henry II and Richard, the family had not only prospered but won honour for itself when the great Ranulf de Godefroi had fought with Richard Coeur de Lion in the third crusade to the Holy Land. In the little church at Avonsford, a splendid tomb bore a statue of Ranulf, lying with his sword at his side, a broad cross on his chest and one leg crossed over the other, in the traditional posture of the deceased crusader knight. The little pewter badge which had been sold to him by monks in the Holy Land as a memento of his pilgrimage, had been set into the outer rim of the church bell. For these and other deeds, the family was honoured locally. They had obtained a second estate at Sarum too, this one held directly of the king, and now that the king was choosing some of the lesser nobles for the position, there was even a rumour that a notable gentleman such as Jocelin de Godefroi might be asked to serve as sheriff.
But in one important respect, Jocelin was very different from his ancestors: for though he had two estates, he had only one home: and that was England.
This state of affairs was new. For the first hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, many a Norman and Breton had held estates both in England and across the Channel; asked to state which was home, many would have had difficulty in replying; but when King John in his disastrous wars lost Normandy to the French king, those with estates in both regions were told they must choose – either they must give up their English estates and do homage to the French king or vice versa. The Godefroi family of Avonsford had chosen England. The loss had not been serious. Both monarchs, as feudal men themselves to whom the idea of the family was still far more important than any vague concept such as a nation, gave their vassals time to rearrange their affairs and the Godefroi estates in Normandy were satisfactorily disposed of by sale in due course. But as a result of this, Jocelin was the first of the family who had never known a second country as home and who, if asked his identity, would have answered not Norman, but English.
He was a fine figure, of medium height. Unlike his ancestors in Stephen’s reign, he was clean-shaven, and his hair, instead of being parted, was cut in a fringe across his forehead and curled carefully, with heated tongs, under the ears, giving his fine-boned, aquiline face an intellectual look. He wore the long cotte robe of linen that fell to his ankles and over it a surcoat lined with fox fur. His soft leather shoes, buttoned round the ankle, were embroidered with silver thread on their long points, and in his hand he held a three-cornered felt cap. On a golden chain round his neck hung two little amulets which commemorated his own two pilgrimages: one from St James of Compostella in Spain, and the other from the shrine of St Thomas à Becket, killed after his quarrel with Henry II at Canterbury, only seventy years ago. From his horse’s bridle hung two tiny emerald shields an inch across, bearing his coat of arms – a white swan on a red ground.
For no family in Sarum was more devoted to the cause of chivalry than that of Godefroi. At the end of the last century, when that irresponsible paragon of chivalry Richard I had started the jousting tournaments in the broad fields between the old castle of Sarisberie and the town of Wilton, no knight had supported them more vigorously than old Ranulf de Godefroi. His son, and now his grandson, were amongst the most prominent patrons and organisers of these festivals.
For all that however, Jocelin had a good head for business,