Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [455]
She came to him.
“No man has done more for the poor in Salisbury than Master Shockley,” the mayor kindly declared.
She stared at him, and, for a moment, he was aware of her pale, plain face with its high cheekbones, pock-marked skin, and eyes that measured everything.
“Good, Master Shockley.” He blushed.
She was about to move on when she paused.
“Who are the Justices who look after the poor?” she demanded.
“Thomas Forest” she was told, “is one.”
“Well, where is he?”
Forest came forward and made a graceful bow.
She turned to Shockley – half terrifying, half mischievous.
“Does he perform this duty well?”
All eyes were upon him. There was an awkward silence. He looked at Forest, who had gone a little pale.
Then he spoke the truth.
“No, my lady,” he answered.
“Ha!”
To his astonishment, she broke out into a loud, raucous laugh.
Forest had scarcely spoken to him at all after that.
It was a brief moment of glory. But he had met her. His family and the town had seen it.
“The only trouble was,” he chuckled afterwards, “she almost ruined us.”
It was not just the present to the monarch, which was usually returned as charitable gifts. It was the fees charged by her staff.
“They’re like a plague of locusts,” he protested.
There were bakers, littermen, footmen, musicians, porters, yeomen, the serjeant-at-arms, who took a full forty shillings; the king of heralds, who took fifty; and the trumpeters who provided the fanfares when the queen entered the city and who demanded three pounds in gold.
“Never again, we pray!” he cried. It was not only the aristocrats in their houses who dreaded the honour of a royal visit; it was the burghers of every town in the country too.
So what in the world, he wondered, could Forest want with him now?
The Forests began their wooing of Edward Shockley in September 1580 with an invitation to Avonsford Manor.
He did not hesitate about going.
“Forest’s sure to be up to something,” he thought cheerfully. “I wonder what.”
When he arrived, he found two surprises awaiting him.
The first was that the Wilsons of Christchurch were staying there: not only old Jack, and his wife Nellie, but their three fine seafaring sons as well. It made him smile both with pleasure and amusement to see them: for one was the image of the father, another the male likeness of Nellie, and the third a tall, big-chested amalgam of the two.
Nellie had not grown fat, but she had grown stout and it suited her. Her hair was grey, but her eyes still sparkled; she still favoured a doublet that laced across the front; she wore a modest ruff, and she set the whole off with a jaunty little conical brimmed hat in which she stuck a feather. Her three hearty sons, all in their twenties, obeyed her even faster than they obeyed Captain Jack.
For a second, as they came face to face, he saw her hesitate. He understood. He bowed low.
“Mistress Wilson.”
If the Forests were not even aware of who she was, the secret past of Nellie Godfrey would never pass his lips. She saw it in his eyes and gave him a grateful smile.
He had no doubt they were all there for a reason, but Forest was obviously in no hurry to enlighten them.
He was more concerned that they meet his son.
Giles Forest was a pleasant-looking young man of the same age as the eldest Wilson boy. But there the resemblance ended. Slim, dark, with fine, delicate features and tapering fingers, his thin legs encased in a silken hose, his hair teased into curls, he was the perfect model of the courtier. He had spent the last few years at Oxford, and so to Shockley the young man was almost a stranger. But it was clear at once that he was determined to make himself agreeable to the merchant.
The other surprise was a change