Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [405]
Although Wilson’s hall was not large, it was comfortable. It had a high, hammer beam roof with little figures carved on the ends of the rafters; the windows were of rhenish glass, from Germany, prettily decorated with roses and lilies in the powdered style in which the continental glass-makers specialised. In front of him was a plate of salted tongues which he was eating with a silver spoon, and a bowl of raisins. As an act of courtesy, he pushed the bowl of raisins towards Eustace, but neither he nor his son spoke.
“It is a personal matter,” Eustace remarked, glancing at Robert.
Wilson did not look up from his place, but nodded curtly.
“It concerns your son,” Godfrey persisted. But if he expected the merchant to take the hint and send the young man away, it did not work.
“Concerns you,” Wilson called over his shoulder. “You’d better stay.”
Eustace felt less confident of his mission every second. In the silent moments that followed, Wilson ate a salted tongue.
“I have a daughter, Isabella,” he began at last.
He did not dwell on her beauty, although, since neither father nor son spoke a word, it was hard to know whether they fully appreciated it or not. But he did explain, firmly and at some length, her ancestry. He also explained the position of the Godfrey family now, as he saw it, and here, several times, Wilson interrupted him.
“You were in the Gascon trade?”
“Yes. I still hope to resume it.”
Wilson shook his head.
“No good.”
“Talbot’s expedition to Bordeaux failed, but many of the Gascons like English rule.” This was true. “We may yet live to see a king of England crowned king of France again.”
Here Wilson halted with the salted tongue only half way to his lips.
“Hope not. With France as well it makes the king too powerful.” This was a view many men in Parliament had formed in the early years of the present king’s reign: the English squires and merchants had no wish for a powerful half-foreign king whom they could not control. “Gascony’s finished anyway,” Wilson remarked, to close the subject.
But when Godfrey outlined his own connections to the bishops, to the royal house, and his intention that his son should stand for parliament, Wilson finally stopped eating, and leaned back in his chair, his hard, narrow-set eyes staring at him in curiosity and wonder, that Eustace mistook for admiration.
“You need money for such fine connections,” he said at last.
Godfrey inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“I’ve got money,” Wilson remarked pleasantly. “No connections.”
The irony of this remark was lost on Eustace. Wilson’s trading connections would have made him gasp if he had been capable of understanding them. There were the part shares in the two-masted ships that set out from the western port of Bristol for the trading emporiums of Spain and Portugal. There were his extensive connections in London. Above all, there was the huge business of import and export which Robert oversaw at Southampton. While the old wool business of Winchester had declined, the sophisticated cloth business of Salisbury had burgeoned through the ever-growing southern port. The great convoys of Italian galleys that visited Flanders and London never failed to call there and take up huge quantities of the Salisbury rays he still dealt in. And from these and other traders Robert bought silks and satin velvets, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, even oranges from the warm Mediterranean and sent them to his father at Sarum. There was almost nothing Wilson did not have a hand in that was profitable. It was these southern markets, especially the Italian connection through Southampton, that had allowed Salisbury to outstrip most other cities in England. But of the details of these crucial businesses, poor Godfrey was largely ignorant.
Thinking that he had impressed Wilson he came straight to his concluding point.
“With help, my son can raise the family to new heights. And I can assure you that I shall secure him a good marriage. I propose that your son Robert should make an alliance with Isabella that could be useful to both