Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [408]
But the greatest sight of all was the rich and powerful Tailors’ Guild: for with them they brought the finest figure in the carnival: the Giant and his companion Hob-Nob.
The giant was huge – over twelve feet high and dressed in the magnificent robes of a proud merchant. His headgear was the height of fashion – a huge turban over a wide circular brim, with the free end of the cloth draped around his neck and hanging down his back. Below it, his big broad face gazed benevolently over the crowd. This handsome figure – pagan as he certainly was – represented the Tailors’ Patron, St Christopher. In front of him, bobbing wildly from one side of the street to the other, went the hobby horse, Hob-Nob. In the form of a small horse and carried by a single man, this comic figure not only cleared a path for the giant but made frequent attacks upon the crowd, snapping at any one within his reach, to the delight of the children. The giant was a treasure of the town: in storage he was carefully preserved from the attention of rats by bags of arsenic and, in perfect condition, he was brought out in all his towering splendour on the great feast days of the year.
As he saw the procession go round the town, Godfrey’s heart was heavy. His wife, his children too, were happy in the city, but he was not. He belonged to no guild; he would never be asked to join the seventy-two, nor did he wish to. It seemed to him he had no place in Sarum’s busy life he could call his own. Slowly he started to walk along the street while the procession stamped past. The minstrels, the pie-sellers, the boisterous apprentices and solemn seniors of the guild, all dressed – as the laws insisted – to suit their station: he walked silently past the rich pageant of the city that could not include him. At the corner of Blue Boar chequer he saw Michael Shockley and his family. The merchant was dressed in a tunic of dazzling green and red, his chest puffed out like a turkey cock. He had even donned a pair of magnificent shoes with toes so long that they had to be curved up and fastened to garters round his knees with golden chains. The following day, no doubt, he would be chosen to join the forty-eight; next year he would ride with the Council in a scarlet cloak. Godfrey avoided him.
It was just after he had passed the George Inn that the figure of the bellfounder came puffing up beside him. His whole face was now as red as his pointed nose usually was, and the nose itself had taken on a deep magenta hue.
“Will you be seeing the bishop soon, sir, about the bell?” he panted.
He had forgotten the bell; even that failed to raise his spirits now.
“Soon, soon,” he promised, and continued on his way.
It was more in order to escape that he walked disconsolately through the gate into the quiet of the close. Even there, the sounds of the festivities of the summer solstice followed after him.
It was just before nine o’clock the next morning, as the members of the Tailors’ Guild, carrying their lighted tapers, were solemnly passing into St Thomas’s Church that William Swayne met Michael Shockley at the edge of the churchyard. The great merchant’s face was dark with anger.
“We’ve been cheated,” he exploded, “that cursed John Halle.”
Shockley stared at him in confusion.
“You mean the forty-eight?”
“I mean John Halle has another candidate no one knew about and he’s already got enough of his henchmen to support him. I can’t get you into the forty-eight.”
Shockley was silent for a moment.
“Who?” he asked finally.
“John Wilson – the one they call the spider.” Swayne grimaced in disgust. “God knows what he paid Halle for that.”
For, as usual, Wilson had moved quietly, but effectively. There was a great feast in the guildhall after the service. There were baked duck, roasted pheasants, hedgehog, peacock, hogs – all the delicacies of the splendid medieval cuisine. There were minstrels with harps, gitterns and trumpets. There was ale and mead.
And