Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [396]
For tomorrow was the eve of the feast of St John.
There were several feasts of St John. There was the feast of St John of Patmos in May; of St John’s Day in Harvest in August, to remember the beheading of John the Baptist; but by far the greatest celebration was the one about to take place: the feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist. And the importance of this great feast was not surprising: for the Nativity of St John fell on Midsummer’s Day.
On Midsummer’s Eve 1456, well aware of the town’s good fortune, the citizens of Salisbury had reason to celebrate.
At six o’clock, Eustace Godfrey left his house in the Meadow ward at the south east corner of the city.
His handsome face was determined but cheerful as he made his way towards New Street. He wore a long, red robe lined with fox fur – his best – and on his head was a small circlet of gold. For the plan in his head this evening would, he was sure, put his family on the road back to their former glory; and as always when he began a new project, he was optimistic.
For tonight he was going to marry off both his children.
His confidence seemed well-founded.
“After all, anyone in this city would be proud to marry a Godefroi,” he reminded his wife.
It was his grandfather who had finally sold the Avonsford estate. Like nearly every landlord in England, even great magnates like John of Gaunt and the Bishop of Winchester, the Godefroi family had found it was more economic to let all their land to tenants; for rising wages and a general agricultural depression had gradually made their estates too costly to run themselves. But whereas the large landholders still had handsome rents to live on, the Godefrois had not, and they failed to keep their expenditure down. By 1420 the lords of Avonsford had sold their manor and the remaining land to the Earl of Salisbury and, no longer lords of anything, they had gone to live in Salisbury.
By the time of Eustace’s father, the family themselves had adopted the anglicised name of Godfrey by which they were known in the town; though it still annoyed Eustace to discover a lowly merchant or craftsman who bore the same name and to think that other men might not make the distinction.
For he was still a nobleman. When the reeves collected the rent for his house he always made sure that their records correctly entered: Eustace Godfrey, Gentleman. He was pleased that the tall, four-storeyed house with its courtyard was in the ward furthest removed from the bustle of the town and nearest to the precincts of the close and the handsome old hall of the Grey Friars. From the top floor windows he could see the roof of the bishop’s palace: and when recently some houses in the close, formerly reserved for the clergy, had been rented to laymen, he had nearly moved to one of them. He liked to feel that he lived close to the bishop.
His most treasured possession was the heavy parchment scroll that bore the splendid Godefroi family tree. Nothing gave him more joy than to know that his wife, the daughter of a brewer from Wilton and to whom he had been devotedly married for twenty years, still looked at this document with awe.
Almost equally treasured were his children: Oliver, a good-looking, intelligent young man of nineteen studying for the law, and Isabella, sixteen, slim and dark, of whom he could only shake his head and murmur: “She is a jewel.”
Now it was time that the boy should make an alliance and the jewel should be bestowed.
He had considered the opportunities carefully, and also the advantages his children had. About the former he was optimistic but a little hazy; about the latter, certain.
“You have a noble name,” he told Oliver. “And equally important – you have connections.”
And connections there were, of a kind.
There was the bishop, for instance.
Godfrey did not share the townsmen’s scorn of the cathedral – indeed, during the last half century the diocese had been blessed with several distinguished and scholarly bishops, great men like Chandler and the noted preacher Hallam.