Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [348]
Godefroi watched in silence. To his surprise, the spectacle no longer amused him. His brow darkened. Suddenly, without wanting to, he remembered his terrible debts. For all the brave show he was making, nothing could take them away. And then, as he sat on his magnificent grey charger, with weapons and armour he could not pay for, about to fight to keep his estates, he was afflicted with a terrible sense of emptiness. A wave of desolation seemed to cover him. He shook his head in surprise at the awful thought that had just thrust itself so unpleasantly upon him. Was even his own jousting, perhaps, like the vulgar display of these two women, nothing more than an elaborate, a fantastic charade? His armour, his shield with the white swan gleaming upon it; was all this really, as the church’s preachers often warned, mere vanity? He did not know. He tried to put the ugly thought from him. But it would not go away.
Roger triumphed at the joust that day. He was noticed and admired and as he had hoped, several magnates approached him and urged:
“Come to the next great meeting, Godefroi, when the king is there. It will be to your advantage.”
The chance had come the very next year. For in May 1306, King Edward I summoned his nobles to witness the knighting of his dissolute son at Westminster. It was an event of huge significance and one of the last acts of his reign. The king was sick and old and, for better or worse, his son Edward would soon succeed him. It was an occasion full of pomp and feudal ceremony. The prince performed his vigil in Westminster Abbey and was knighted the next day. Then he in turn knighted some three hundred young noblemen at the high altar, and after this there was a huge feast.
The Feast of Swans – King Edward’s last great ceremony – was remembered for long afterwards. Every symbol of Arthurian chivalry was worked into the proceedings. Men said it was as if the Round Table had been reborn. This was no idle show. Edward, with deliberate calculation, was determined to spare no effort to impress upon his nobles the feudal duties they owed his son, by appealing to their chivalry. His calculation was, as always, sound and Godefroi, as he watched the magnificent feast from one of the lower tables, felt his heart expand with joy and loyal emotion.
By an astounding chance the king had chosen as the theme for the feast, the image of two swans: no doubt, Godefroi assumed, to symbolise himself and his son. There were splendid hangings representing swans around the walls: and at the end of each table was a chair with a high back carved in the same shape. For King Edward knew very well that though his nobles might swear loyalty to a man upon one day, it would be the symbol that they remembered in later times and which might keep them steadfast.
But the high point came when two swans were brought in and placed upon the table before the king. Old Edward, though he had been brought to Westminster on a litter, rose to his feet, squared his broad shoulders as he had used to do when he was young, and swore before God and the swans that he would go to Scotland yet again to crush the rebels, and after that, turn on the infidels in the Holy Land. It was a rousing speech, a heroic vow worthy of the chivalrous king, and the whole hall rang with applause.
Soon after this Godefroi’s moment arrived. Two magnates, walking