Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [302]
The forces of King Henry and his son Edward were camped beside the town when, after dawn, they saw the army of Simon de Montfort in battle line upon the chalk ridge above, with the Londoners on the left wing. The night before, Simon’s army had been given absolution by the Bishop of Worcester. They wore crusader crosses on their breasts.
The battle was brief. Prince Edward attacked up the hill, cut the Londoners off from the rest of Simon’s force, and managed to drive them into some nearby marshes through which he pursued them for several hours. When he returned to the battleground, however, he found that his own victory had been a side issue and that in the meantime Montfort had completely routed the rest of the army. The king and his brother were prisoners, and the battle was all over.
There were very few knights killed in the engagement. One, who had valiantly ridden to the aid of the Londoners as he saw them being driven back, was trapped in their flight, toppled accidentally from his horse by men at arms who did not stop to help him, and butchered a few moments later by a group of Prince Edward’s foot soldiers. He was identified afterwards by the white swan on his shield.
On the king’s side, although they lost, the main battle was so brief and decisive that the casualties were not large. Amongst them however was an elderly knight, who should not have been fighting at all, named Geoffrey de Whiteheath.
It was in June that Alicia quietly returned to the house in Castle Street. It astonished her to realise that she had not been to Sarum for twenty years.
Outwardly she had changed very little: only the little lines around her eyes, which were not unattractive, suggested her age. Her hair still had no streaks of grey. As for her inner feelings – she was not sure herself.
She had not been unhappy. She had given Geoffrey de Whiteheath a child a year after their marriage, but it had been a girl, and for some reason, though she had tried, there had been no son to follow. Geoffrey had slipped into old age without the son he had married her for and she had watched his broad, handsome face gradually sink in upon itself and gather lines of age and sadness he could not conceal. Their daughter had been married the year before and after this he had been left alone with a wife who had failed him and a fine estate which no longer brought him joy.
When – though he had difficulty in clambering into his chain mail – he insisted on going to join King Henry, she knew what was in his mind and did not try to stop him. And when he bade her a loving and courteous goodbye, she had been glad to see the eager look on his old face as he rode off to his final battle, from which, she was well aware, he had no intention of returning.
The estate had passed to his brother; she was left with comfortable means, and she had left Winchester without regrets.
But what next?
“I’m neither young nor old,” she thought as she approached the growing city of her childhood.
She found it fuller than it had been before. The half-empty chequers in the northern part of the new town were now almost all built over. People had been drawn to the thriving market town from all over the southern half of the island – from Bristol, London, Norwich, and even further afield: it was teeming.
And above its roofs now rose the long grey line of the nearly completed cathedral.
Her father had died five years before and her brother Walter had succeeded him. She spent three pleasant days in her brother’s house. She inspected the cathedral and marvelled at its long, clean lines. She paid a visit of respect to her uncle Portehors, who was now very frail, but who insisted on stiffly walking beside her to show her the completed watercourses in the streets; but she saw few other faces that she knew.
It was on the third evening of her visit, when they were alone together, that her brother broached the subject that was on his mind. He was like her father, she thought,