The Forest (36 page)

‘Good,’ the merchant said and gave the boy an encouraging smile. Perhaps, he thought, since Jonathan was in a receptive mood, he would touch upon the question of ports.

Few subjects were dearer to his heart. For a start, there was the whole question of the great Staple port of Calais and its huge financial dealings. And then, of course, there was the vexed question of Southampton. Perhaps, he considered, he would explain Calais first, today.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, Jonathan?’

‘I was thinking. If I stay away from Alan Seagull, I can still play with Willie, can’t I?’

Henry Totton stared at him. For a moment he scarcely knew what he could say. Then he shrugged in disgust. He couldn’t help it.

‘I’m sorry, Father.’ The boy looked crestfallen. ‘Shall we go on?’

‘No. I think not.’ Totton looked down at the coins he had spread on the table, then out of the window at the street. ‘Play with whom you like, Jonathan,’ he said quietly, and waved him away.

‘You should see it, Dad!’ Willie Seagull’s face was shining as he helped his father, who was mending a fishing net.

It had been the very next morning after Totton had had his conversation with his son that Jonathan had taken Willie Seagull into his house for the first time.

‘Was Henry Totton there?’ the mariner broke off his humming to enquire.

‘No. Just Jonathan and me. And the servants, Dad. They have a cook and a scullion, and a stable boy and two other women …’

‘Totton’s got money, son.’

‘And I never knew, Dad – those houses, they don’t look so wide at the front, but they go back so far. Behind the counting house, there’s this great big hall, two floors high, with a gallery down the side. Then there’s more rooms at the back.’

‘I know, son.’ Totton’s was a very typical merchant’s house, but young Willie had never been in one before.

‘There’s this huge cellar. Whole length of the house. He’s got all sorts of stuff down there. Barrels of wine, bales of cloth. He’s got sacks of wool, too. There’s boatloads of it. And then’, Willie went on eagerly, ‘there’s this attic under the roof, big as the cellar. He’s got sacks of flour and malt, and God knows what up there.’

‘He would have, Willie.’

‘And outside, Dad. I never realized how long those
gardens are. They go from the street all the way to the lane at the back of the town.’

The layout of the Lymington burgage plots followed a pattern very typical in English medieval towns. The street frontage was sixteen and a half feet wide – the measure known as the rod, pole or perch. This was chosen because it was the standard width of the basic ploughing strip of the English common field. A strip two hundred and twenty yards long was called a furlong and four furlongs made an acre. The burgage plots were long and thin, therefore, just like a ploughed field. Henry Totton had two plots together, the second forming a yard with a rented workshop and his own stables. Behind this, his double garden, thirty-three feet wide, stretched back almost half a furlong.

Alan Seagull nodded. He wondered if Willie hankered after this sort of thing himself but, as far as he could see, his son was quite happy just to observe the merchant’s way of life. All the same, there were two warnings he decided it was time to give his son. ‘You know, Willie,’ he said quietly, ‘you mustn’t think that Jonathan will always be your friend.’

‘Why, Dad? He’s all right.’

‘I know. But one day things will change. It’ll just happen.’

‘I should mind that.’

‘Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. And there’s something else.’ Alan Seagull looked at his son carefully now.

‘Yes, Dad?’

‘There’s things you mustn’t tell him, even if he is your friend.’

‘You mean …?’

‘About our business, son. You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘You keep your mouth shut, don’t you?’

‘’Course I do.’

‘You mustn’t ever talk about that. Not to any Totton. You understand?’

‘I know,’ Willie said. ‘I won’t.’

The bet was made that night. It was Geoffrey Burrard who made it, in the Angel Inn.

But Henry Totton took it. He calculated and then he took it. Half of Lymington was witness.

The Angel Inn was a friendly establishment at the top of the High Street; all the classes of Lymington folk used the place, so it was no surprise that Burrard and Totton should have chanced to meet there that evening. The family of both men belonged to the class known as yeomen: free farmers owning their own land, or prosperous local merchants. Both were important figures in the little town – men of worship, as the saying was. Both lived in gabled houses with overhanging upper floors; each owned shares in two or three ships and exported wool through the great Staple entrepôt at Calais. If the Burrards had been in Lymington longer than the Tottons, the Tottons were no less devoted to the interests of the borough. In particular, the two men were united by a common cause.

The big port of Southampton had been a significant town when Lymington was only a hamlet. Centuries before, Southampton had been granted jurisdiction over all the smaller harbours along that part of the southern coast, and the rights to collect any royal customs and taxes on cargoes shipped in and out. The mayor of Southampton was even called ‘Admiral’ in royal documents. But by the time of the Hundred Years War, when Lymington was supplying the king with vessels of its own, this overlordship of the bigger port seemed an offence to Lymington’s pride. ‘We’ll collect the customs for ourselves,’ the Lymington burgesses declared. ‘We’ve got our own borough to support.’ Indeed, there had been sporadic disputes and court cases, now, for over a hundred and sixty years.

The fact that several of the burgesses of Southampton were his kinsmen in no way diluted Totton’s commitment to this cause. After all, his own interests lay in Lymington. With his precise mind he went into the whole matter thoroughly and advised his fellow burgesses: ‘The issue of royal customs is still in Southampton’s favour, but if we limit our claims to keelage and wharfage tolls, I’m sure we can win.’ He was right.

‘Where would we be without you, Henry?’ Burrard would say approvingly.

He was a big, handsome, florid-faced man, some years older than Totton. Exuberant, where Totton was quiet, impetuous where Totton was careful, the two friends had one other rather surprising passion in common.

Burrard and Totton loved to bet. They frequently bet against each other. Burrard would bet on a hunch and was quite successful. Henry Totton bet on probabilities.

In a way, for Totton, everything was a wager. You calculated the odds. It was what he did with every business transaction; even the great tides of history, it seemed to him, were just a series of bets that had gone one way or the other. Look at the history of Lymington. Back in the days of Rufus the lords of the manor were a mighty Norman family; but when Rufus had been killed in the New Forest and his young brother Henry had taken the throne, they had foolishly supported Henry’s other brother, Robert of Normandy. The result? Henry took Lymington and most of their other estates, and granted them to a different family. Since then, for three and a half centuries, the lordship had passed down by family descent until the Wars of the Roses, when they had supported the Lancastrian side. Well enough; until 1461 when the Lancastrians had lost a great battle and the new Yorkist king had beheaded the lord of the manor. So another family held Lymington now.

Even his own modest family had taken part in that dangerous game of fortune. Totton had secretly been rather
proud when his favourite uncle had become a follower of that most aristocratic adventurer of all, the Earl of Warwick who, because of his power to change the fortune of whichever side he joined, was known as the Kingmaker. ‘I’m a yeoman now,’ he had told Henry before setting off, ‘but I’ll come back a gentleman.’ Serving the mighty Kingmaker a man might indeed advance to a fortune. Nine years ago, however, just after Easter, the Forest had echoed with the news: ‘There’s been another battle. The Kingmaker’s slain. His widow’s come to Beaulieu seeking sanctuary.’ Henry’s favourite uncle had been killed, too, and Henry had been sorry. But he did not feel it as a tragedy, nor even as cruel fate. His uncle had made a bet and lost. That was all.

It was a cast of mind that kept him calm and even-tempered in adversity: a strength, on the whole though his wife had sometimes thought it made him cold.

So when Burrard had proposed the wager, he had calculated carefully.

‘I bet you, Henry,’ his friend had exclaimed, ‘that the next time you have a vessel going across, fully laden, to the Isle of Wight, I can run a laden boat against you and get back first.’

‘At least one of your ships is faster than anything I’ve got,’ Totton had stated.

‘I won’t run one of my own.’

‘Whose, then?’

Burrard considered a moment, then grinned. ‘I’ll run Seagull against you.’ He watched Totton, eyes gleaming.

‘Seagull?’ Totton frowned. He thought of his son and the mariner. He preferred to keep some distance between them. ‘I don’t want to have wagers with Seagull, Geoffrey.’

‘You aren’t. You know Seagull never bets anyway.’ Strangely enough, this was true. The sailor might have a devil-may-care attitude in most of his dealings with the world, but for some reason known only to himself he would
never bet. ‘The wager’s with me, Henry. Just you and me.’ Burrard beamed. ‘Come on, Henry,’ he boomed affectionately.

Totton considered. Why was Burrard betting on Seagull? Did he know the relative speeds of the boats? Unlikely. Almost certainly he just had a hunch that Seagull was a cunning rascal who would somehow pull it off. He, on the other hand, had observed Seagull’s boat many times and had also taken careful note of the speed of a neat little vessel at Southampton in which he had recently acquired a quarter share. The Southampton vessel was definitely a little faster.

‘The bet is against Seagull’s vessel,’ he stated. ‘You have to persuade Seagull to make the crossing for you or the bet’s off.’

‘Agreed,’ his friend confirmed.

Totton nodded slowly. He was just weighing up the factors when young Jonathan appeared in the doorway. It might not be such a bad thing, he thought, for his son to see his hero the mariner lose a race. ‘Very well. Five pounds,’ he said.

‘Oh-ho! Henry!’ Burrard whooped, causing other faces in the place to turn in their direction. ‘That’s a big one.’ Five pounds was a large wager indeed.

‘Too rich for you?’ Totton asked.

‘No. No. I didn’t say that.’ Even Burrard’s cheerful face was looking a bit taken aback, though.

‘If you’d prefer not …’

‘Done. Five pounds!’ Burrard cried. ‘But you can buy me a drink, Henry, by God, for that.’

As young Jonathan advanced, it was obvious to the boy from all the faces round that, whatever it was, his father had just done something that had impressed the men of Lymington.

It was perhaps to hide a trace of nervousness that Geoffrey Burrard, catching sight of young Jonathan,
greeted him with unusual bluster. ‘Ho! Sirrah!’ he cried, ‘What adventures have you been having?’

‘None, Sir.’ Jonathan was not quite sure how to respond, but he knew that Burrard was a man to treat with respect.

‘Why, I supposed you’d been out slaying dragons.’ Burrard smiled at Jonathan and, seeing the boy look doubtful, added: ‘When I was your age, you know, there was a dragon in the Forest.’

‘Indeed,’ Totton nodded. ‘The Bisterne dragon, no less.’

Jonathan looked at them both. He knew the story of the Bisterne dragon. All the Forest children did. But because it concerned a knight and such an antique beast, he had just assumed it was an ancient tale like that of King Arthur. ‘I thought that was in olden times,’ he said.

‘Actually not.’ Totton shook his head. ‘It’s quite true,’ he explained seriously. ‘There really was a dragon – or so it was called – when I was young. And the knight at Bisterne killed it.’

Looking at his face, Jonathan could see that his father was telling the truth. He never teased him anyway. ‘Oh,’ Jonathan said, ‘I didn’t know.’

‘What’s more,’ Burrard continued in a serious tone and with a wink to the company that the boy did not see, ‘there was another dragon seen over at Bisterne the other day. Probably descended from the first one, I should think. They’re going to hunt it, I believe, so you’d better be quick if you want so see it.’

‘Really?’ Jonathan stared at him. ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

‘Yes. But they killed the last one, didn’t they? Quite a sight, I should think, when it’s flying.’

Henry Totton smiled and shook his head. ‘You’d better get home,’ he said kindly and kissed his son. So Jonathan obediently left.

By the time Henry Totton came home himself, he’d forgotten about the dragon.

They set out soon after dawn. Willie would have been ready to go the day before, as soon as he heard about it, but as Jonathan pointed out, they needed a full day, starting at dawn. For it was a twelve-mile walk each way to Bisterne, where the dragon was.

‘I’ll be with Willie until dusk,’ he had said to the cook as he slipped out quickly, before anyone could ask him where he was going.

The journey, although quite long, was a very easy one. The manor of Bisterne lay in the southern portion of the Avon valley below Ringwood near the place called Tyrrell’s Ford. So they only had to cross the western half of the Forest, move along its southern edge and then descend into the valley beyond. Leaving early, even at a walk, they could be there by mid-morning, with no need to return until late afternoon.