Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [325]
As they completed the task, Roger allowed himself one questioning look at old Jocelin.
“Is this wise?” His grandfather was a respected knight of the shire, who had acted as a local coroner and as one of the crown escheators, and whose duty was to support the king in all things; and since it was well known that the king’s policy was now to harass the Jewish community as much as possible, surely they should leave the old man where he was. But the knight only shook his head.
“To Avonsford,” he ordered curtly. “He can recover or die there.” And the reluctant little procession moved on.
As it did so, no one noticed that, when they had lifted the old man into the cart, the seal with which he signed his documents had slipped out from the folds of his clothes and tumbled onto the dusty road.
It was John, son of William atte Brigge, who noticed it half an hour later. He stoooped and picked it up then put it carefully into the pouch that hung from his belt.
He did not yet know what, but he would find a use for it, he was sure.
While the cart bumped along from Salisbury into the courtyard of Avonsford manor, and while Aaron was carried into the house, Mary Shockley said nothing. But as soon as they were clear of Avonsford and rattling down the valley towards the city, she burst out: “Why does the knight pick up that old Jew? And why should we carry him?”
“Aaron helped my father start the mill,” Peter reminded her calmly.
“Then we should be ashamed,” she replied hotly. “He’s a usurer.”
Peter shrugged.
“I’d have thrown the old Jew in the river,” she added defiantly; at which her brother Christopher grinned. For Mary’s outbursts were well known.
She was a splendid figure – a twenty-year-old girl as big as her brother and probably stronger. With her fine, athletic body and her long flaxen hair she was a perfect throwback to her Saxon forebears, except in one respect. For from her mother she had taken two features: a band of light freckles across her forehead, and her extraordinary violet eyes. Unlike her mother, Mary’s eyes never varied: they were always violet and they were dazzling. As a child, she had been a tomboy, outrunning and outwrestling all the other children; and now, though she was a striking, blonde young woman, her father had to confess: “She’s a beauty, but she’s still like a man – and as obstinate as a donkey.” Even Alicia, with all her determination, had long since given up trying to make her daughter dress and behave in the demure manner proper to a young woman.
“If we ever find her a husband, he’ll have to take her as she is,” she admitted ruefully.
And when old Jocelin, chiding his handsome grandson for not yet having taken a wife, laughingly remarked that the merchant’s daughter, though hardly noble, was still a fine-looking girl, Roger, the hero of the joust, protested: “Why grandfather, she’d break me over her knee.”
At least her character made the settling of the Shockley properties very simple. “She’ll have the farm, of course,” Peter had said. “And Christopher will run the business.” Both children were content with this: for Christopher was already showing a quick grasp of the expanding Shockley affairs, whereas Mary was only happy when she was overseeing – or more likely working beside – the labourers on the farm.
But despite her tomboy appearance, Mary had one unexpected enthusiasm: she had an unshakeable belief in all things religious. Often she would be seen driving her cart from the farm to Wilton Abbey with gifts of provisions that should have been sold at the market. And though the abbey was one of the greatest landowners at Sarum, and so well known for its extravagant and lax ways that only two years before the Dean of Salisbury had been forced to threaten some of its senior members with excommunication if they did not pay some of their debts, Mary always obstinately – and to the huge amusement of her father – referred to the inmates as “the poor nuns”.
To Mary, the wishes of the nuns and the