Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [384]
“The terms are these,” he explained to Edward. “If he takes a knight, he repays the loan, plus one twentieth of the ransom; if not, then he either repays the loan without interest, or he loses his security.”
“And what’s his security for the loan?” Edward asked.
Walter grinned.
“Some of his best fields – and the fulling mill.”
How cleverly his father had baited the trap! Edward chuckled as he thought of it. If young Godefroi captured a knight, there was a good chance of profit; but if not, then they both knew very well that the Godefroi estate would be more short of cash than ever.
“You see,” Walter muttered. “We’ll get that Shockley mill.”
Although Edward had no liking for young Thomas de Godefroi, he watched the preparations for the war with admiration, and he could see why the young noble, who had viewed his own estate with so little interest, should be so full of enthusiasm now. Many parties of men came through. There were the Welsh foot soldiers, dressed in green and white. There were men at arms, knights and squires. One of the most splendid sights was the mounted archers. They rode proudly, their six-foot bows of yew, maple or oak slung behind them; they even rode about the battlefield, only dismounting to shoot their deadly hail of arrows – up to twelve in a minute with a range of almost four hundred yards and a force that could penetrate armour. And Thomas himself looked handsome, Edward had to admit, as he rode out of Sarum, with the white swan on his surcoat, on his way to seek his fortune.
The campaign of the Black Prince against King John the Good of France was a triumph beyond even Thomas’s hopes. In 1355 they had campaigned around Bordeaux. The next year they had pushed further still. And on September 16, 1356, against a much larger French force, the twenty-five-year-old Prince had led his army to the great victory of Poitiers.
It was the stuff of legend.
Before the battle, Thomas had heard the stirring address the Black Prince made to his troops; and with the prince he had knelt to ask God’s blessing; he had joined in the triumph when the King of France himself was captured, and he had been standing just outside the legendary feast when the prince, in his most famous gesture of chivalry, treated the fallen king like an honoured guest. What knights had been captured – the flower of French chivalry. And what ransoms agreed. The King of France was to pay three million crowns – five times King Edward’s yearly income. Huge territories had been gained as well. How proud he was to have acquitted himself with honour in these noble proceedings: why, even the prince himself had smiled upon him.
There was only one problem: he had fought so valiantly, pressing on into every fray, that he had forgotten to capture a knight. He was returning almost empty-handed.
He was one of the few that did so. Almost every man at arms found plunder. Many even stayed on in the distracted kingdom for several years, forming themselves into mercenary companies whose profiteering would be remembered in France for generations. But when he had been invited by a friendly knight to join one of these, he had refused.
“A Godefroi fights for honour,” he had stated coldly, “not for money.”
And so honour was all that he brought back.
It was not enough.
Gilbert and his son behaved with quiet dignity, as befitted them, when they transferred some of their best fields and the profitable fulling mill into Walter Wilson’s hands. By this transaction Walter became a direct tenant-in-chief of the king. But more important, he was Shockley’s landlord.
Edward had never seen him so exultant.
“We’ve half ruined those Godefrois,” he cried in triumph. “Now we’ll kick out that cursed Shockley too.”
But it was this plan that caused Edward, for the first time, to contradict his father.
In their many negotiations, which were always carefully orchestrated,