Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [377]
“So what do you want?” he asked.
That had been the beginning. And how clever his father had been.
“Go to the abbess,” Walter told the young merchant. “Tell her you can’t pay as much for the land.”
“And then?”
“I’ll pay you a fixed rent for it and make what I can. I’ll try and find labourers, but if I can’t, the boy here and I will have to do our best. That way we all survive and you keep your farm for no trouble.”
There was sense in this. The abbess of Wilton from whom the Shockleys held the farm had many properties already vacant because of the plague. She would be glad enough to keep a good tenant even at a reduced rent for the time being. As for Stephen, he certainly hadn’t the time to oversee the farm and try to find workers, who would in any case cost him more. The fact that he himself already had a workforce concealed in his cottage was something Walter carefully did not mention.
It worked. Two days later both Wilton Abbey and Stephen Shockley were receiving a sharply reduced, fixed rent for the farm. And Walter Wilson, now a subtenant instead of a villein, had the use of all the Shockley land for four pence an acre – less than half its value the year before.
But when Edward grinned at his father and said happily: “So we’re Shockley’s tenants now, not his villeins any more!” Walter turned on him viciously.
“Fool. We only need Shockley this year. Next year, we kick him out.”
And when he looked puzzled, Walter only grunted.
“You’ll see.”
His father’s extraordinary foresight was shown again when they discussed how to farm the land that first year. He had assumed that they would look for stock, including sheep, so that at worst they could get some return from selling wool. But Walter shook his head.
“This year, corn,” he announced. “Sow every acre we can. Especially wheat.”
“But half the people are dead,” Edward suggested. “There’ll be fewer mouths to feed – no market for corn.”
But Walter only gave him a look of contempt.
“They’ll be crying out for corn,” he answered curtly.
And by the next summer they were. For in the confusion following the plague, many fields still lay uncultivated, and furthermore, there was a tendency amongst landlords to put all their efforts into making sure their own demesne land was sown and harvested and then to keep back most of their corn and store it in case of further trouble. As Walter had foreseen, there was a shortage and the price of wheat had soared.
In the autumn of 1349 the Wilsons, while they paid Stephen Shockley a pittance, made a huge profit.
It was not their only source of wealth. For the commodity even more in demand than corn was the labour to produce it. And Walter possessed that too.
For the little group – the old man, Elias, the two women and the children – were all, undeniably, his. Each, individually, had nowhere to go. And so he housed them, he clothed them, he fed them. And he terrorised them. He did it by sheer cunning and force of character.
They worked the Shockley land: he made them plough until they almost dropped. At harvest time, when extra help should have been called in, he kept them in the fields from before dawn until night fell. As the harvest time drew near its close, and the work was not finished, he even lit torches in the fields so that they could work on after dark.
At other times, when the work was lighter, he hired them out, singly or as a group, insisting that their day’s wages should be paid directly to him. If they complained he would snarl: “Look after you, don’t I?” And his menacing character was so strong that they were too frightened even to run away.
Once Edward told him: “I think the women will die if you work them so hard.”
But Walter was not concerned. “They’ll last a few years,” he said gruffly. “That’s all we need them for.”
Between his own children he made a