Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [347]
By these means, not suddenly but steadily over the years, he extended his credit on every side.
And it was while he did so that the king’s maltote tax came and the price he was paid for his wool dropped. It was from this cut in his income that he never recovered. He did nothing about it except, once, curse his steward.
By 1300, the situation was serious.
By 1305, it had become desperate.
He knew it. He was not a fool. But still he went on, for besides being a perfect model of chivalry, he was also spoilt, and inside him the small, insistent voice that sooner or later, as the centuries pass, beggars almost every aristocrat, said: “If you do not keep up your state, people will scorn you.”
For a man like Roger de Godefroi, there was only one way out of his difficulty.
He had two daughters now, and a baby son. The daughters would have to be married off, the son provided for, and as he admitted to himself: “I’ve my sword and nothing else to make my fortune.”
There had been opportunities. The king had been forced to make several campaigns in Scotland against the rebels Wallace and Bruce; he should have gone, but there had always seemed to be too much to be done at Avonsford. Now he could delay no longer.
“I have to bring myself to the attention of the magnates, and the king,” he told his wife. “It’s now or never.”
An opportunity came in 1305; for that year there was a great tournament at Sarum, in the lists between the old castle and the town of Wilton.
Retinues came from all over the country; the whole area was buzzing with armed men. The cathedral chapter with the Church’s suspicion of tournaments, and already harassed by an unruly mayor and council who were trying to avoid paying the bishop their taxes, issued a furious order, with the king’s authority, threatening excommunication on any of those attending who disturbed the peace of the city. It was a useless threat: the whole of Sarum was in genial uproar. And Godefroi swore:
“This is my chance.”
Of all the retinues attending the joust, none was more splendid than that of the knight of Avonsford. His grey charger was magnificent. He was attended by a squire and two pages. On his shield, his surcoat and all his accoutrements shone the noble device of the white swan on the red ground.
“If I show my skill,” he explained to his wife, “the king will hear of it. On the next campaign it could mean a command – and that could be valuable.”
He had planned for the joust meticulously. His weapons were splendid; he had obtained the latest armour – a light chain mail, with extra protection provided by solid plates of steel on the outer arm, legs and feet. It was the most sophisticated equipment available and he had paid dearly for it – with borrowed money. But it was a calculated gamble, for he knew that few knights were better prepared for war.
And what a magnificent affair it had been. Roger’s spirits always rose when he saw the dazzling array of tents, flags and the brightly dressed crowds that made these pageants such a cheerful spectacle; and as he walked his horse along the edge of the lists, and looked at the other knightly competitors, he experienced that strange but familiar sense of timelessness that these festivals always seemed to have. “Surely,” he thought, “there is nothing better in this world than to be a knight.”
But that day, for the first time, he also experienced another sensation: it was quite new to him, and it was uncomfortable.
Before the proper tournament began, there was often a burlesque of some kind; on this occasion it was two women tumblers, dressed as knights, who entered the lists on horses and cavorted around grotesquely, swearing oaths in a mixture of broken French and English of the most ribald kind. The crowd applauded wildly. Even the priests of whom many, despite the bishop’s strictures, were to be seen in the crowd, rocked with laughter. Pieces of the women’s armour fell