Now, as he rode back, he could sense that the men behind had little confidence in him. Somehow, he had no idea how, he had the feeling that he had been duped. He was even becoming suspicious of his own spies.
And then he saw the wagon.
There was clearly something suspicious about it. It was large and covered, and was obviously carrying a heavy load as it creaked along, pulled by four big horses. Beside the driver sat a figure in a hood.
It was now that Ralph lost his presence of mind. It seemed to the overwrought Norman that at last he might have found his quarry. Forgetting entirely his instructions from Mandeville, he rode straight at the wagon, as though it might take wings and fly, bellowing at the driver to stop. “Halt and uncover, you traitors,” he screamed. “You dogs!”
Only as he drew up, panting, beside them, did the mysterious figure throw back her hood and cast at him a look of utter scorn. It was Hilda.
“Idiot!” she cried so that all his men could hear. “Henri always told me you were a fool.” Then, whipping back the cover from the wagon, she revealed its harmless cargo. “Flagons of wine,” she shouted. “A present from your own brother to your father. I’m taking them up to Hatfield.” And she made as if to strike him with the driver’s whip so convincingly that he backed away hastily, puce in the face.
There was laughter from the men. Humiliated and enraged, Ralph shouted for them to follow, and without even glancing behind, rode quickly down the lane towards London.
Five weeks later, by the church of St Bride, where no one seemed to be about, Barnikel of Billingsgate allowed himself to place a chaste kiss upon the forehead of his new conspirator.
Then they walked contentedly along the riverbank.
It did not occur to either of them that this time they were being discreetly followed.
1081
It was in his twentieth year that Osric became aware of the girl. She was sixteen.
He did not tell anyone about her. Not even his friend Alfred the armourer.
It was curious to see the two men together. Alfred was master of the armoury now. The shock of white hair over his forehead had become almost invisible since the rest of his hair had gone grey. He had become rather stout. He gave orders to his apprentices in a voice of authority, and his wife and four children obeyed him in all things.
But he had not forgotten the day when Barnikel had found him starving by the London Stone, and so, trying to pass on that kindness to another, he did all he could to help his poor little friend. Not only did his family see to it that Osric had a square meal at least once a week, but he had even offered to buy the serf his freedom several times. Here, however, he had been unsuccessful. By one means or another, Ralph had always contrived to stop him. “I’m sorry,” Alfred had told the young fellow. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Though based on little enough, Ralph’s hatred for the serf had by now hardened into a habit. “In a way, Osric,” he had once sneered, “I think I almost love you.” It was perfectly true. The little labourer was a living object he could hurt whenever he wished; if Osric loathed him in return, it only gave him more satisfaction. And nothing gave him greater pleasure than thwarting Osric’s attempts to break free. “Don’t worry,” he promised, “I’ll never let you go.”
She was small. Her long dark hair was parted in the middle; her skin was white. The only colour in her face came from her lips, which were small but red. All of which suggested, though Osric did not know it, that her ancestry was Celtic, perhaps Roman too.
The labourers were quartered in a series of wooden buildings set along the inside of the old Roman wall by the riverbank. Here they had been left to make their own arrangements. Some, like Osric, claimed nothing more than a particular patch of straw. Others, having found women, had with bits of wood or bales of straw constructed for themselves what privacy they could, so that by now whole families had colonized this or that corner of the place. They were a motley collection. Some were serfs sent by landholders who owed service to the king; some were slaves; a number, like Osric, bore mutilations that showed them to have been guilty of some crime. Discipline was lax. Ralph cared little for what passed amongst the labourers so long as they worked.
Her father had been the cook and while he was alive they had eaten well. But two years ago he had died, and since then their life had been hard. Her mother, used for sundry odd jobs, was sickly, her hands increasingly swollen and aching from arthritis, and with no one else in the world to help them, the girl had to do what she could to protect her. A sickly serf woman without a family did not live long in these times. The girl’s name was Dorkes.
He had first noticed her in December. The labourers were kept working at the Tower in all weathers, but that winter had been particularly harsh, and one day, two weeks before Christmas, the order was given: “Stop work.”
“When it freezes like this,” the foreman explained to him, “the wet mortar turns to ice and then it cracks.” The next day, many of the serfs were sent back to their villages while the men remaining were led out and told, “Now we have to cover the walls.”
It was a big but necessary task to insulate the huge open tops of the walls. It was also a smelly one, for the material used was a mixture of warmed dung and straw. “But it works,” the foreman assured him, and soon the huge, grey walls were crowned with layers of manure and thatch.
Despite the cold, at the end of each day Osric was anxious to wash himself and so he would quite often go down to the Thames bank and jump into the water fully clothed before hurrying back to the barn where he could strip and dry his clothes by the brazier. It was at this time that he became aware there was another person in the camp who also went down to the water, at dawn and at dusk, to wash herself. This was Dorkes.
She was very clean, and very quiet. Those were the first things the little fellow noticed about her. Also that she seemed physically rather underdeveloped. A little mouse, he thought, and smiled at her. But he did not, just then, pay her any other attention. He had other things to think about.
Since his job for Alfred and Barnikel three years before, there had been no more adventures. Apart from the outbreak in the north, England had remained quiet. Whatever Barnikel had hoped for when he shipped the arms, it appeared to have come to nothing. Osric suspected that the old Dane had continued to stockpile arms, but he was not sure.
His life was bearable, though. Most of the time, of course, there was the sheer daily drudgery – pulling carts of rubble, hauling buckets of stone up to the masons, or carrying wood from the carpenters. Gradually, however, he had added another activity.
Ever since he had discovered his skill with Barnikel’s wagon, the little fellow, almost unable to help himself, had taken to picking up bits of wood or begging timber ends from the carpenters. Sitting by the light of the brazier in the evenings, he would then carve them. Every week or so he turned out something – a little figure, a child’s toy – and soon even the carpenters and masons were referring to him as “the little craftsman”. It was said affectionately, though with some amusement, as if he were a sort of mascot. After all, he was not a member of their craft; he was only a beast of burden. Still, he did not mind, and as he went about his daily business, they would often show him what they were doing and explain it to him.
And here was the strangest thing. Despite the fact that he was being sacrificed to the building of the Tower, whenever he entered its grim walls, Osric found that he was fascinated.
The great cellars were finished now, covered over with huge rafters and floorboards, except for the south-eastern corner, which had a vaulting of stone. The spiral stairs down to the cellars were already sealed off with a massive, iron-studded oak door locked with a large key made by Alfred the armourer. “The arms for the whole garrison will be stored down there,” the foreman told Osric.
The walls of the main floor were growing rapidly. As was usual with such Norman strongholds, the main entrance was on this level, a handsome doorway in the south wa
ll, reached by a high wooden staircase on the outside. Though almost as thick as the cellar’s, the walls of the main floor were punctuated with numerous recesses leading to narrow windows and other apertures. Two of these especially intrigued the young labourer.
The first was about ten feet across, in the western wall of the main hall. One could walk right into it, as though it was a small room, and looking up inside, Osric could see that it went up about twelve feet, and that just below the top there was a small hole in the wall leading to the outside.
“Whatever is it for?” he asked the masons.
They laughed. “It’s for the fire,” they explained. And when he looked mystified: “The king’s hall will be above this room, so instead of a brazier in the middle which will send smoke up through the floorboards, he wants these fireplaces. They have them in France, you know. There’s to be another in the eastern chamber.”
And so it was that in the Tower of London the kingdom of England received its first fireplaces. They did not have chimneys, however. The smoke just went out through a hole in the wall.
Two other cavities, these ones in the northern wall, also seemed curious. Each narrow little passage led to the outer edge of the wall, where, in a nook, there was a stone bench with a hole in it. “Look through the hole,” one of the masons suggested, and when he did, Osric found himself gazing down a short, steep chute into open space with a twenty-foot drop down the outside of the north wall. “The French call it a garderobe,” the mason explained. “You’ve guessed what it’s for?” And when Osric nodded: “We fit a wooden gutter down the chute that overhangs the wall. That way you get a clean drop to the cesspit below. You’ll be digging that later.”
Osric considered the thing. “Draughty on your backside.”
The mason laughed. “Encourages people not to hang about.”
It was in June that the incident occurred. It was nothing really. One warm evening, a group of men who had been drinking were sitting by the riverside when little Dorkes came down to the water. She did not stay there long, only scooping up the clear water to wash her arms and face before returning. But as she passed the men, her eyes carefully looking at the ground, one of them, a little drunk, tried to grab her round the waist, calling out: “I’ve caught a mouse. Give us a kiss.”
Another girl might have laughed it off, but Dorkes did not know how to handle a drunken man. Burying her chin in her chest, she shook her head and tried to break free. The man’s hands felt for her small breasts as he grinned at the others.
And then something hit him.
Osric, coming on the scene, did not wait to argue, but threw himself so violently at the fellow that although the little labourer was only half his size, the man was knocked to the ground. For a moment after, Osric thought the bigger man or his friends might go for him or throw him in the river. Instead, a cry of laughter went up.
“The little craftsman’s a fighter!” Then: “Osric, we didn’t know she was your girl!” From that day it was a regular joke on the building site. “How’s your girl, Osric?”
It caused him, for the first time, to look at her.
There were plenty of opportunities. Sometimes he would watch her when she went down to the river in the early morning. As it was summer, she wore only a simple shift, so that when, like most of the women, she stepped into the stream fully dressed to wash, he got a good idea of her body as she came out. He discovered that she was not, as he had imagined, flat-chested, but had small, nicely formed breasts.
At nights, as she sat with her mother by the fire, he would sit a little way off and study her face. Before long, what had seemed a pale, unremarkable profile became beautiful.
But more even than these features, he now saw something else. Timid she might be, but with what quiet determination she defended her mother as, with every passing month, the poor woman became more useless thanks to her crippled hands. Always keeping her dignity, never begging, Dorkes would do little jobs for people for which she would be paid with food or even an item of clothing, thereby keeping herself and her mother from destitution.
Ever since he had defended her, the girl had been friendly towards Osric. Quite often they would chat together, or walk about. Sometimes he would see her gaunt mother with her helpless, gnarled hands watching them, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking, and since she never granted him more than a sad nod, he seemed unlikely to find out. Dorkes knew, of course, that the men teased him about her, but she did not seem to mind. But Osric noticed that despite her quiet smile, she was still guarded with him, whether from timidity or for some other reason he was not sure.
He fell in love in July. He could not say exactly why. One evening he was watching her and he felt a sudden wave of protective tenderness. The next day he kept looking about to catch sight of her. That night he saw her in his dreams, and by the following day it seemed to him that his entire life would somehow have meaning if he could live with her.
“And then,” he murmured to himself, “I could look after her.” The thought was so exciting that even the miserable sheds where they lodged seemed to the little fellow to be bathed in a warm new light.
A few days later he and Dorkes met Ralph Silversleeves together.
It was Ralph’s habit to walk around the site early in the morning, before work began. Sometimes he stopped to investigate the lodgings; usually not. Always, though, as if it were his personal castle, he walked proudly round the outside of the growing Tower. He had just done this when he encountered the two young people walking up from the river.
Ralph had heard the men’s jokes about Osric and the girl, but as he considered the little labourer such a miserable object, he thought it hardly likely that any girl would look at him. Now, seeing them together, he suddenly wondered: could it possibly be true? Could the miserable Osric have a woman when he, Ralph, had none? Seized with a sudden fit of secret jealousy, he gazed at the girl and then remarked: “Whatever are you doing, walking round with this poor little runt?” And to Osric: “Why don’t you leave this pretty girl alone, Osric? You’ll embarrass her with your face, you’re so hideous.” Then, giving the boy a quick cut across the back with his whip, he moved on.
Neither of them spoke. “I always ignore him,” the girl whispered after a moment.
But though he knew Ralph was his enemy, the Norman’s words had given Osric a shock, and he kept silent.
At low tide, there were several places along the banks of the Thames where the clear water collected in pools. That same afternoon, when the sun was shining so brightly that you could see the sky in the water, Osric slipped down to the river alone.
As the years had passed, once he had forgotten the pain of having his nose slit and grown used to his awkward breathing, Osric had not thought much about his appearance. Nor, in a world almost without glass, was there much likelihood of him catching sight of himself. But now, in one of these pools, he gazed in surprise at his own reflection.
Then he burst into tears.
He had not known that his hair was already thin. He had forgotten how the little mess that had been his nose was a smudge of purple which made him look ridiculous. As he stared at his overlarge head, his bent little body and the disfiguring blotch in the middle of his face, he wanted to wail out loud, but for fear of attracting attention he choked it back and instead, in a stifled little whisper, told himself, “It’s no good. I’m a freak.”
Duly humbled, he went sadly to his work.
Yet in the days that followed, though at first he wanted to put his hand in front of his unsightly face whenever he saw her, he was never able to detect the revulsion he supposed the girl must feel. If she was hiding it, she did it very well. She smiled at him quietly, just as she always had.
He began to look at other men, assessing their disadvantages. One had a limp, another a crushed hand, a third a running sore. Perhaps, he consoled himself, I am not the most ill-favoured of all.
If only she could love me, he thought. He would protect her. He wo
uld die for her. In this state of mind, three more weeks of his life passed.
The masons were working on what would become the chapel crypt now. It was a large space, about forty-five feet long into the eastern apse. Already they had started to build the vault.
Osric enjoyed watching this. First the carpenters made big, semicircular arches of wood that were raised on scaffolding like a series of humpback bridges. Then the masons would clamber on top and lay the stones, each carefully cut into a wedge shape with the broad end upwards, so that when the stones were all slotted into place, the arch held itself up with tremendous strength.
But before long, he was witnessing another new feature of the Tower.
One morning he arrived to find the masons grumbling about “another cursed change”. Moments later Ralph appeared and angrily told him to go and fetch his pick. Soon he was hard at work.
The wall between the crypt and the chamber on the eastern side of the Tower was over twenty feet thick. After the masons had cut a narrow entrance into this wall from the crypt, Osric and three other men were told to dig into the rubble filling within the wall and hollow out a chamber. And so, with the carpenters providing props to hold up the masonry over their heads, they dug away for days, like miners going into a rock face, until they had created a hidden chamber about fifteen feet square. “It’s like a cave,” Osric said, and grinned. And the analogy was apt, for the walls of a medieval castle were not there simply to divide spaces. They were complete entities, into which men could cut and burrow as into a mountain.
“This will be the strongroom,” Ralph told them, “where valuables will be kept.” It was to be fitted with a massive oak door.
On an overcast Sunday morning at the start of autumn Osric declared his love.
Along the old Roman wall beside the Tower there were stairs leading up to the battlements, and since there was no work being done that day, Osric and the girl had gone up there to enjoy the view of the river. It was pleasantly quiet, and finding himself alone with her, the little fellow was suddenly so overcome with tenderness for her small pale form that he gently put his arm round her waist.