Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [383]
Though Thomas certainly did not know it, the chivalrous notions that he had learnt in the splendid hall at Whiteheath, and which were now reaching their greatest flowering, came from several sources. The courtly troubadours of southern France had supplied the idea of courtly manners, and that every knight must serve a lady. The Church, with its cult of the Blessed Virgin, had reminded the knight that it was the lady of religion he must serve. The stoic philosophers of ancient times, through the writings of Boethius a thousand years before, who was so well-loved that the Saxon King Alfred had chosen to translate him, had told the nobleman that he was above the triumphs and misfortunes of this world, which he must suffer bravely and gracefully. This was the final amalgam, with its philosophical, religious and sexual appeal, that was now so wonderfully mixed together in the tales of King Arthur and his chivalrous knights; and there was no finer exponent of the knight’s calling than Edward, Prince of Wales, the Black Prince.
“He’s only a year or two older than me,” Thomas would remind himself as he strove to emulate his hero.
For if the plague had left the country a dark and desolate wasteland, it seemed to Thomas that the glittering triumphs of English arms and chivalry were shining through the darkness.
The enthusiasm for the campaign amongst most of those taking part went far beyond chivalry. Never had the prospects of profit been better: for the highest and the lowest. A Welsh foot soldier was paid two pence a day; a mounted archer six pence – and this when the yearly wage of a ploughman was supposed to be about twelve shillings a year, so that even the foot soldier would earn the labourer’s yearly wage in just seventy-two days. It was not only wages that attracted, in any case: it was plunder. Every foot soldier stood a good chance of finding loot in the rich provinces of France; as for a knight, he would hope to capture a nobleman.
“There’s your path to fortune,” Gilbert reminded his son. “We must have a knight to ransom. That’ll save the estate.”
The ransoms were huge. A French knight could often be sold back to his family for over a thousand pounds. Indeed, so valuable were captured nobles that a thriving commodity market in them had developed. Captives were sold between knights, or even to syndicates of merchants for cash against an anticipated ransom, so that a French nobleman might after a little time find that he was owned by a confusing collection of men spread all over the country, each of whom had a percentage interest in his life.
But if the remedy was clear, there was one problem: the cost of entry.
It was not only the armour with its burnished plates for the forearm and the front of the leg. It was not only a squire and a servant to accompany the knight. It was also the warhorse. For the high-bred charger, the destrier, was a necessity. With names as high-sounding as their noble owners, these splendid equine aristocrats were often imported from as far away as Spain and Sicily. Wonderful to look upon, magnificent in action, one of these beasts could cost an astounding hundred pounds.
And as usual, the estate was short of cash.
In his six years of trading since the plague, Walter Wilson had done spectacularly well. Exactly how he had managed to save a hundred pounds even Edward could never quite work out. But it was the possession of this remarkable sum that now allowed him to make the most brilliant transaction of his career.
For late in 1354 he lent this entire sum to Gilbert de Godefroi to equip his