Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [329]
His magnificent mane of hair and his beard were all white now – but the effect was still handsome. His eyes missed nothing, though, from his father, he had inherited one drooping eyelid that sometimes gave the wholly erroneous impression that he was half asleep.
His spirits were high as he rode towards Sarum. While his officials negotiated he would hunt in the forest of Clarendon, and visit the cathedral.
Soon, Osmund knew, King Edward and his retinue would walk through the great west door.
Outside, it was a bright October morning, but inside the cathedral the candles were lit and the brightly painted interior shimmered with gold and silver ornaments and magnificent hangings of embroidered silk. At the end of the nave, next to the choir, a party of knights and officials, including old Jocelin de Godefroi, resplendent in a long blue cloak, and his grandson waited to greet the monarch; below this group stood the mayor and burgesses. Osmund could see the bluff figure of Peter Shockley among them. The rest of the nave was filled with humbler folk like himself. All eyes were on the west door where very shortly the king, accompanied by the sheriff of Wiltshire and the dean of the cathedral, would appear. There was an excited murmur of anticipation.
Osmund stood a little apart from the crowd. In the last month he had become a changed man. Instead of the stocky, upright figure with a big, round head and ruddy face, there was now only a shadow of the master mason. His heavy head hung forward sadly; his shoulders were stooped; his cheeks had become hollow and pallid; the effect was made worse by his refusal to shave so that now a thin, uneven straggle of grey hairs, halfway between stubble and a beard, sprouted from his chin. His proud waddle had given way to a shuffle. In less than a month he had succeeded in turning himself into an old man. Since he had been turned out of the cathedral, he had withdrawn not only from the world of the masons, whom he carefully avoided, but even from his wife. Only in Edward’s presence did he come to life: for if his son approached, his shoulders would suddenly hunch forward like a threatening animal, and his face would twist into an angry grimace.
“Here is a master builder,” he would snarl, “a builder of towers who can’t carve.”
He had been offered other work, but he had refused it. “I’m too old. Can’t see,” he would explain bitterly, and when one of the canons had protested, he had shuffled away.
He had been seen in the city though, walking along the riverbank opposite the close, apparently staring blankly at the swans; but if an observer watched carefully, he would have seen that the mason’s eyes shifted constantly and sadly to the soaring grey mass of the cathedral opposite.
He had only come to the cathedral today because a messenger had come from the dean with an order for him to do so.
“The king has admired the carvings in the chapter house and he wishes to see the mason who did them. You will attend the service.” And so, grumbling at the order, but secretly gratified, he had come. Even so, he had insisted on standing apart, several yards from his son and his wife, in his own determined isolation.
He looked around the cathedral. It was a splendid spectacle; even now, he could not restrain a small smile of satisfaction when he saw it, and if the king were to take notice of him above the lesser masons who had dared to cast him out, so much the better. Imperceptibly, his back began to straighten.
In the crowd, heads were turning eagerly. At any moment the king would come.
And then suddenly the mason’s face contracted to