Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [400]
He had had his share of trading misfortunes. The merchants who traded with the Netherlands, known as merchant adventurers and often funded by the great merchants of the wool staple, had been hit by the wars with Burgundy. And the huge eastern trade across the North Sea and into the Baltic, a trade which reached far into eastern Europe and even into Russia, had already been disrupted by disputes with the German traders of the Hanseatic towns. Shockley had imported pitch and fur from Russia and sent cloth to the Netherlands, and both these parts of his business had suffered. But these reverses had been more than balanced by his successes. Only two months before he had imported a load of twenty-five tons of woad for making dye through the port of Southampton on which he had made a handsome profit.
As he turned out of Endless Street, a group of tailors standing by the corner smiled at him and when one of them shouted: “You’ll soon be one of the forty-eight, Shockley,” he replied with a grin.
Minutes later he reached his destination: the little church at the west side of the market place. The man he was to meet was already waiting for him.
As they came together at the church door the great man gave him a friendly nod:
“So you want to join the forty-eight?”
“Of course.”
“Are you ready to contribute?”
“How much?”
The great man looked at him thoughtfully, assessing his wealth.
“An extra arch on this church,” he said with a smile.
There were several great merchants in Sarum, but none were better known than John Halle and William Swayne. Some believed that John Halle was the greater. It was said that he owned half the wool that came off Salisbury Plain; he had already represented the borough in Parliament and petitioned the king to get a new charter for the town. He was rich, arrogant and loud-mouthed. But powerful as Halle was, he was not a richer nor a greater man than his rival William Swayne, who had already served as mayor and whose voice in the council carried authority.
It was William Swayne now who walked with Michael Shockley into the little church of St Thomas the Martyr.
No project was dearer to the great man’s heart than the rebuilding of the church. Nearly ten years ago, when parts of the chancel near the altar had fallen down, it had been the merchants Swayne, Halle and Webb, together with members of the gentry like the Hungerford, Ludlow and Godmanstone families, who had decided not only to rebuild it but to extend the whole church as well. Though many helped, the prime mover was Swayne, and he intended the result to redound to his glory. He was even building, at his own expense, an entire aisle as a chapel for the powerful Tailors’ Guild, of which he had become the patron. And here there would be two chantries, where priests would say masses for the souls of the living and the dead – one for the tailors, and one for himself and his family. The chapel was no small size: the renewed church would be splendid indeed.
“So if you want to join the forty-eight,” he told Shockley frankly, “I shall expect to see you contribute to the building.”
It suited Shockley very well to do so.
“I’m already a good friend to the Tailors’ Guild,” he reminded Swayne. “I’ll be glad to contribute to their church.”
A few minutes later they parted. He had Swayne’s support. He walked across to the corner of the market in a state of happy excitement.
It was as he went by the poultry cross that the look of contentment on his face suddenly froze to one of rage.
There were very few things that disturbed the good temper of the merchant, but this was one of them. His blue eyes glittered in an angry stare. For he had just seen Eustace Godfrey.
It had been such a small, such a foolish event – truly nothing more than a chance and thoughtless remark made in a moment of irritation that had ended, ten years before, the centuries of good