The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [144]
Jonathan had never witnessed anguish, but he did now. ‘Father.’
Totton turned.
‘It’s all right. We’re all safe.’ The boy took a step forward. ‘We were blown down the coast.’ Totton was still staring at him as though he were a ghost. ‘There was a shipwreck in the storm. Alan Seagull is still out there.’
‘Jonathan?’
‘I’m quite all right, Father.’
‘Jonathan?’
‘Did your boat get home?’
His father was still in a daze. ‘Oh. Yes.’
‘So you won your bet.’
‘My bet?’ The merchant stared. ‘My bet?’ He blinked. ‘Dear God, what’s that when I have you?’
So Jonathan ran to him.
And then Henry Totton suddenly burst into tears.
It was some minutes, as he lay in his father’s arms, before Jonathan gently disengaged himself and reached for the purse around his waist. ‘I brought you something, Father,’ he said. ‘Look.’ And he opened it and took out the contents. They were golden coins. ‘Ducats,’ he said.
‘So they are, Jonathan.’
‘Do you know what they’re worth, Father?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘So do I.’ And, to his father’s astonishment, he repeated, entirely correctly, the values the merchant had told him in their lesson three weeks before.
‘That’s exactly right,’ said Totton with delight.
‘You see, Father,’ the boy said happily. ‘I remember some of what you tell me.’
‘The ducats are yours, Jonathan.’ He smiled.
‘I got them for you,’ said his son. He paused a moment. ‘Can we share them?’
‘Why not?’ said Henry Totton.
THE ARMADA TREE
1587
‘You will go with me, a little way, upon my journey?’
The moment she had spoken he had felt his heart sinking. It was an order, of course. ‘Willingly,’ he had lied, feeling almost like a schoolboy.
He was forty and she was his mother.
The road from Sarum towards the south-east – it was a wide, grassy track, really – made a gentle progress across the broad meadows in which the city lay and then rose slowly, in stages, on to the higher ground. The cathedral was more than three miles behind them before they started the long drag up and over the high ridge, which was the south-eastern lip of the broad basin where Sarum’s five rivers met. Although there was a hint of sharpness in the breeze, that September morning, the weather was fine.
It was no light matter when Albion’s mother took to the road. Only upon the bridegroom’s thrice repeated promise of the best room in the house of Salisbury’s richest merchant had she consented to come to the wedding festivities without bringing her own furniture. Even so, as well as the carriage in which she travelled with coachman, groom and outrider, there was the wagon behind, groaning under the weight of two manservants, two maids and such a prodigious quantity of chests containing her dresses, gowns, shoes and formidable collection of toiletries – the coachman swore that one of the chests had a Roman priest in it, too – that one could only thank God the autumn weather was still dry for otherwise it must surely have stuck in the mud. But then his mother had firm views about how things should be done and, Albion reflected a little sadly as he rode beside the carriage, she did not stint herself. So the horses, at least, were glad when, cresting the ridge, the lady abruptly called a halt and ordered her litter.
The groom and the manservants silently assembled it, slotted in the poles and brought it to the carriage door. As his mother stepped out, Albion observed that she was already wearing wooden pattens on her feet to protect them from the mud. She had planned this halt, therefore. He should have guessed. She pointed, now, to the path along the ridge. Evidently she wished to go up there and expected him to accompany her. Dismounting, he walked up behind as the four men carried the litter and so, a curious little procession silhouetted against the sky, they made their way along the chalk rim as the small