World Without End

81

Wulfric at forty was still the handsomest man Gwenda had ever seen. There were threads of silver now in his tawny hair, but they just made him look wise as well as strong. When he was young his broad shoulders had tapered dramatically to a narrow waist, whereas nowadays the taper was not so sharp nor the waist so slim – but he could still do the work of two men. And he would always be two years younger than she.

She thought she had changed less. She had the kind of dark hair that did not go grey until late in life. She was no heavier than she had been twenty years ago, although since having the children her breasts and belly were not quite as taut as formerly.

It was only when she looked at her son Davey, at his smooth skin and the restless spring in his step, that she felt her years. Now twenty, he looked like a male version of herself at that age. She, too, had had a face with no lines, and she had walked with a jaunty stride. A lifetime of working in the fields in all weathers had wrinkled her hands, and given her cheeks a raw redness just beneath the skin, and taught her to walk slowly and conserve her strength.

Davey was small like her, and shrewd, and secretive: since he was little she had never been sure what he was thinking. Sam was the opposite: big and strong, not clever enough to be deceitful, but with a mean streak that Gwenda blamed on his real father, Ralph Fitzgerald.

For several years now the two boys had been working alongside Wulfric in the fields – until two weeks ago, when Sam had vanished.

They knew why he had gone. All winter long he had been talking about leaving Wigleigh and moving to a village where he could earn higher wages. He had disappeared the moment the spring ploughing began.

Gwenda knew he was right about the wages. It was a crime to leave your village, or to accept pay higher than the levels of 1347, but all over the country restless young men were flouting the law, and desperate farmers were hiring them. Landlords such as Earl Ralph could do little more than gnash their teeth.

Sam had not said where he would go, and he had given no warning of his departure. If Davey had done the same, Gwenda would have known he had thought things out carefully and decided this was the best way. But she felt sure Sam had just followed an impulse. Someone had mentioned the name of a village, and he had woken up early the next morning and decided to go there immediately.

She told herself not to worry. He was twenty-two years old, big and strong. No one was going to exploit him or ill-treat him. But she was his mother, and her heart ached.

If she could not find him, no one else could, she figured, and that was good. All the same she yearned to know where he was living, and if he was working for a decent master, and whether the people were kind to him.

That winter, Wulfric had made a new light plough for the sandier acres of his holding, and one day in spring Gwenda and he went to Northwood to buy an iron ploughshare, the one part they could not make for themselves. As usual, a small group of Wigleigh folk travelled together to the market. Jack and Eli, who operated the fulling mill for Madge Webber, were stocking up on supplies: they had no land of their own so they bought all their food. Annet and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Amabel, had a dozen hens in a crate, to sell at the market. The bailiff, Nathan, came too, with his grown son Jonno, the childhood enemy of Sam.

Annet still flirted with every good-looking man who crossed her path, and most of them grinned foolishly and flirted back. On the journey to Northwood she chatted with Davey. Although he was less than half her age, she simpered and tossed her head and smacked his arm in mock reproach, just as if she were twenty-two rather than forty-two. She was not a girl any more, but she did not seem to know it, Gwenda thought sourly. Annet’s daughter, Amabel, who was as pretty as Annet had once been, walked a little apart, and seemed embarrassed by her mother.

They reached Northwood at mid-morning. After Wulfric and Gwenda had made their purchase, they went to get their dinner at the Old Oak tavern.

For as long as Gwenda could remember there had been a venerable oak outside the inn, a thick squat tree with malformed branches that looked like a bent old man in winter and cast a welcome deep shade in summer. Her sons had chased one another around it as little boys. But it must have died or become unstable, for it had been chopped down, and now there was a stump, as wide across as Wulfric was tall, used by the customers as a chair, a table, and – for one exhausted carter – a bed.

Sitting on its edge, drinking ale from a huge tankard, was Harry Ploughman, the bailiff of Outhenby.

Gwenda was taken back twelve years in a blink. What came to her mind, so forcefully that it brought tears to her eyes, was the hope that had lifted her heart as she and her family had set out, that morning in Northwood, to walk through the forest to Outhenby and a new life. The hope had been crushed, in less than a fortnight, and Wulfric had been taken back to Wigleigh – the memory still made her burn with rage – with a rope around his neck.

But Ralph had not had things all his own way since then. Circumstances had forced him to give Wulfric back the lands his father had held, which for Gwenda had been a savagely satisfying outcome, even though Wulfric had not been smart enough to win a free tenancy, unlike some of his neighbours. Gwenda was glad they were now tenants rather than labourers, and Wulfric had achieved his life’s ambition; but she still longed for more independence – a tenancy free of feudal obligations, with a cash rent to pay, the whole agreement written down in the manorial records so that no lord could go back on it. It was what most serfs wanted, and more of them were getting it since the plague.

Harry greeted them effusively and insisted on buying them ale. Soon after Wulfric and Gwenda’s brief stay at Outhenby, Harry had been made bailiff by Mother Caris, and he still held that position, though Caris had long ago renounced her vows, and Mother Joan was now prioress. Outhenby continued prosperous, to judge by Harry’s double chin and alehouse belly.

As they were preparing to leave with the rest of the Wigleigh folk, Harry spoke to Gwenda in a low voice. “I’ve got a young man called Sam labouring for me.”

Gwenda’s heart leaped. “My Sam?”

“Can’t possibly be, no.”

She was bewildered. Why mention him, in that case?

But Harry tapped his wine-red nose, and Gwenda realized he was being enigmatic. “This Sam assures me that his lord is a Hampshire knight I’ve never heard of, who has given him permission to leave his village and work elsewhere, whereas your Sam’s lord is Earl Ralph, who never lets his labourers go. Obviously I couldn’t employ your Sam.”

Gwenda understood. That would be Harry’s story if official questions were asked. “So, he’s in Outhenby.”

“Oldchurch, one of the smaller villages in the valley.”

“Is he well?” she asked eagerly.

“Thriving.”

“Thank God.”

“A strong boy and a good worker, though he can be quarrelsome.”

She knew that. “Is he living in a warm house?”

“Lodging with a good-hearted older couple whose own son has gone to Kingsbridge to be apprenticed to a tanner.”

Gwenda had a dozen questions, but suddenly she noticed the bent figure of Nathan Reeve leaning on the doorpost of the tavern entrance, staring at her. She suppressed a curse. There was so much she wanted to know, but she was terrified of giving Nate even a clue to Sam’s whereabouts. She needed to be content with what she had. And she was thrilled that at least she knew where he could be found.

She turned away from Harry, trying to give the impression of casually ending an unimportant conversation. Out of the corner of her mouth she said: “Don’t let him get into fights.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

She waved perfunctorily and went after Wulfric.

Walking home with the others, Wulfric carried the heavy ploughshare on his shoulder with no apparent effort. Gwenda was bursting to tell him the news, but she had to wait until the group straggled out along the road, and she and her husband were separated from the others by a few yards. Then she repeated the conversation, speaking quietly.

Wulfric was relieved. “At least we know where the lad has got to,” he said, breathing easily despite his load.

“I want to go to Outhenby,” Gwenda said.

Wulfric nodded. “I thought you might.” He rarely challenged her, but now he expressed a misgiving. “Dangerous, though. You’ll have to make sure no one finds out where you’ve gone.”

“Exactly. Nate mustn’t know.”

“How will you manage that?”

“He’s sure to notice that I’m not in the village for a couple of days. We’ll have to think of a story.”

“We can say you’re sick.”

“Too risky. He’ll probably come to the house to check.”

“We could say you’re at your father’s place.”

“Nate won’t believe that. He knows I never stay there longer than I have to.” She gnawed at a hangnail, racking her brains. In the ghost stories and fairy tales that people told around the fire on long winter evenings, the characters generally believed one another’s lies without question; but real people were less easily duped. “We could say I’ve gone to Kingsbridge,” she said at last.

“What for?”

“To buy laying hens at the market, perhaps.”

“You could buy hens from Annet.”

“I wouldn’t buy anything from that bitch, and people know it.”

“True.”

“And Nate knows I’ve always been a friend of Caris, so he’ll believe I could be staying with her.”

“All right.”

It was not much of a story, but she could not think of anything better. And she was desperate to see her son.

She left the next morning.

She slipped out of the house before dawn, wrapped in a heavy cloak against the cold March wind. She walked softly through the village in pitch darkness, finding her way by touch and memory. She did not want to be seen and questioned before she had even left the neighbourhood. But no one was up yet. Nathan Reeve’s dog growled quietly then recognized her tread, and she heard a soft thump as he wagged his tail against the side of his wooden kennel.

She left the village and followed the road through the fields. When dawn broke she was a mile away. She looked at the road behind her. It was empty. No one had followed her.

She chewed a crust of stale bread for breakfast, then stopped at mid-morning at a tavern where the Wigleigh-to-Kingsbridge road crossed the Northwood-to-Outhenby road. She recognized no one at the inn. She watched the door nervously as she ate a bowl of salt-fish stew and drank a pint of cider. Every time someone came in she got ready to hide her face, but it was always a stranger, and no one took any notice of her. She left quickly, and set off on the road to Outhenby.

She reached the valley around mid-afternoon. It was twelve years since she had been here, but the place had not changed much. It had recovered from the plague remarkably quickly. Apart from some small children playing near the houses, most of the villagers were at work, ploughing and sowing, or looking after new lambs. They stared at her across the fields, knowing she was a stranger, wondering about her identity. Some of them would recognize her close up. She had been here for only ten days, but those had been dramatic times, and they would remember. Villagers did not often see such excitement.

She followed the river Outhen as it meandered along the flat plain between two ranges of hills. She went from the main village through smaller settlements that she knew, from the time she had spent here, as Ham, Shortacre and Longwater, to the smallest and most remote, Oldchurch.

Her excitement grew as she approached, and she even forgot her sore feet. Oldchurch was a hamlet, with thirty hovels, none big enough to be a manor house or even a bailiff’s home. However, in accordance with the name there was an old church. It was several hundred years of age, Gwenda guessed. It had a squat tower and a short nave, all built of crude masonry, with tiny square windows placed apparently at random in the thick walls.

She walked to the fields beyond. She ignored a group of shepherds in a distant pasture: shrewd Harry Ploughman would not waste big Sam on such light work. He would be harrowing, or clearing a ditch, or helping to manage the eight-ox plough team. Searching the three fields methodically, she looked for a crowd of mostly men, with warm hats and muddy boots and big voices to call to one another across the acres; and a young man a head taller than the others. When she did not at first see her son, she suffered renewed apprehension. Had he already been recaptured? Had he moved to another village?

She found him in a line of men digging manure into a newly ploughed strip. He had his coat off, despite the cold, and he was hefting an oak spade, the muscles of his back and arms bunching and shifting under his old linen shirt. Her heart filled with pride to see him, and to think that such a man had come from her diminutive body.

They all looked up as she approached. The men stared at her in curiosity: Who was she and what was she doing here? She walked straight up to Sam and embraced him, even though he stank of horse dung. “Hello, Mother,” he said, and all the other men laughed.

She was puzzled by their hilarity.

A wiry man with one empty eye socket said: “There, there, Sam, you’ll be all right now,” and they laughed again.

Gwenda realized they thought it funny that a big man such as Sam should have his little mother come and check on him as if he were a wayward boy.

“How did you find me?” Sam said.

“I met Harry Ploughman at Northwood Market.”

“I hope no one tracked you here.”

“I left before it was light. Your father was to tell people I went to Kingsbridge. No one followed me.”

They talked for a few minutes, then he said he had to get back to work, or the other men would resent his leaving it all to them. “Go back to the village and find old Liza,” he said. “She lives opposite the church. Tell her who you are and she’ll give you some refreshment. I’ll be there at dusk.”

Gwenda glanced up at the sky. It was a dark afternoon, and the men would be forced to stop work in an hour or so. She kissed Sam’s cheek and left him.

She found Liza in a house slightly larger than most – it had two rooms rather than one. The woman introduced her husband, Rob, who was blind. As Sam had promised, Liza was hospitable: she put bread and pottage on the table and poured a cup of ale.

Gwenda asked about their son, and it was like turning on a tap. Liza talked unstoppably about him, from babyhood to apprenticeship, until the old man interrupted her harshly with one word: “Horse.”

They fell silent, and Gwenda heard the rhythmic thud of a trotting horse.

“Smallish mount,” blind Rob said. “A palfrey, or a pony. Too little for a nobleman or a knight, though it might be carrying a lady.”

Gwenda felt a shiver of fear.

“Two visitors within an hour,” Rob observed. “Must be connected.”

That was what Gwenda was afraid of.

She got up and looked out of the door. A sturdy black pony was trotting along the path between the houses. She recognized the rider immediately, and her heart sank: it was Jonno Reeve, the son of the bailiff of Wigleigh.

How had he found her?

She tried to duck quickly back into the house, but he had seen her. “Gwenda!” he shouted, and reined in his horse.

“You devil,” she said.

“I wonder what you’re doing here?” he said mockingly.

“How did you get here? No one was following me.”

“My father sent me to Kingsbridge, to see what mischief you might be making there, but on the way I stopped at the Cross Roads tavern, and they remembered you taking the road to Outhenby.”

She wondered whether she could outwit this shrewd young man. “And why should I not visit my old friends here?”

“No reason,” he said. “Where’s your runaway son?”

“Not here, though I hoped he might be.”

He looked momentarily uncertain, as if he thought she might be telling the truth. Then he said: “Perhaps he’s hiding. I’ll look around.” He kicked his horse on.

Gwenda watched him go. She had not fooled him, but perhaps she had planted a doubt in his mind. If she could get to Sam first she might be able to conceal him.

She walked quickly through the little house, with a hasty word to Liza and Rob, and left by the back door. She headed across the field, staying close to the hedge. Looking back towards the village, she could see a man on horseback moving out at an angle to her direction. The day was dimming, and she thought her own small figure might be indistinguishable against the dark background of the hedge.

She met Sam and the others coming back, their spades over their shoulders, their boots thick with muck. From a distance, at first sight, Sam could have been Ralph: the figure was the same, and the confident stride, and the set of the handsome head on the strong neck. But as he talked she could see Wulfric in him too: he had a way of turning his head, a shy smile and a deprecating gesture of the hand that exactly imitated his foster father.

The men spotted her. They had been tickled by her arrival earlier, and now the one-eyed man called out: “Hello, Mother!” and they all laughed.

She took Sam aside and said: “Jonno Reeve is here.”

“Hell!”

“I’m sorry.”

“You said you weren’t followed!”

“I didn’t see him, but he picked up my trail.”

“Damn. Now what do I do? I’m not going back to Wigleigh!”

“He’s looking for you, but he left the village heading east.” She scanned the darkening landscape but could not see much. “If we hurry back to Oldchurch we could hide you – in the church, perhaps.”

“All right.”

They picked up their pace. Gwenda said over her shoulder: “If you men come across a bailiff called Jonno… you haven’t seen Sam from Wigleigh.”

“Never heard of him, Mother,” said one, and the others concurred. Serfs were generally ready to help one another outwit the bailiff.

Gwenda and Ralph reached the settlement without seeing Jonno. They headed for the church. Gwenda thought they could probably get in: country churches were usually empty and bare inside, and generally left open. But if this one should turn out to be an exception, she was not sure what they would do.

They threaded through the houses and came within sight of the church. As they passed Liza’s front door, Gwenda saw a black pony. She groaned. Jonno must have doubled back under cover of the dusk. He had gambled that Gwenda would find Sam and bring him to the village, and he had been right. He had his father Nate’s low cunning.

She took Sam’s arm to hurry him across the road and into the church – then Jonno stepped out from Liza’s house.

“Sam,” he said. “I thought you’d be here.”

Gwenda and Sam stopped and turned.

Sam leaned on his wooden spade. “What are you going to do about it?”

Jonno was grinning triumphantly. “Take you back to Wigleigh.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

A group of peasants, mostly women, appeared from the west side of the village and stopped to watch the confrontation.

Jonno reached into his pony’s saddlebag and brought out some kind of metal device with a chain. “I’m going to put a leg iron on you,” he said. “And if you’ve got any sense you won’t resist.”

Gwenda was surprised by Jonno’s nerve. Did he really expect to arrest Sam all on his own? He was a beefy lad, but not as big as Sam. Did he hope the villagers would help him? He had the law on his side, but few peasants would think his cause just. Typical young man, he had no sense of his own limitations.

Sam said: “I used to beat the shit out of you when we were boys, and I’ll do the same today.”

Gwenda did not want them to fight. Whoever won, Sam would be wrong in the eyes of the law. He was a runaway. She said: “It’s too late to go anywhere now. Why don’t we discuss this in the morning?”

Jonno gave a disparaging laugh. “And let Sam slip away before dawn, the way you sneaked out of Wigleigh? Certainly not. He sleeps in irons tonight.”

The men Sam had been working with appeared, and stopped to see what was going on. Jonno said: “All law-abiding men have a duty to help me arrest this runaway, and anyone who hinders me will be subject to the punishment of the law.”

“You can rely on me,” said the one-eyed man. “I’ll hold your horse.” The others chuckled. There was little sympathy for Jonno. On the other hand, no villager spoke in Sam’s defence.

Jonno moved suddenly. With the leg iron in both hands, he stepped towards Sam and bent down, trying to snap the device on to Sam’s leg in one surprise move.

It might have worked on a slow-moving older man, but Sam reacted quickly. He stepped back then kicked out, landing one muddy boot on Jonno’s outstretched left arm.

Jonno gave a grunt of pain and anger. Straightening up, he drew back his right arm and swung the iron, intending to hit Sam over the head with it. Gwenda heard a frightened scream and realized it came from herself. Sam darted back another step, out of range.

Jonno saw that his blow was going to miss, and let go of the iron at the last moment.

It flew through the air. Sam flinched away, turning and ducking, but he could not dodge it. The iron hit his ear and the chain whipped across his face. Gwenda cried out as if she herself had been hurt. The onlookers gasped. Sam staggered, and the iron fell to the ground. There was a moment of suspense. Blood came from Sam’s ear and nose. Gwenda took a step towards him, stretching out her arms.

Then Sam recovered from the shock.

He turned back to Jonno and swung his heavy wooden spade in one graceful movement. Jonno had not quite recovered his balance after the effort of his throw, and he was unable to dodge. The edge of the spade caught him on the side of the head. Sam was strong, and the sound of wood on bone rang out across the village street.

Jonno was still reeling when Sam hit him again. Now the spade came straight down from above. Swung by both Sam’s arms, it landed on top of Jonno’s head, edge first, with tremendous force. This time the impact did not ring out, but sounded more like a dull thud, and Gwenda feared Jonno’s skull had cracked.

As Jonno slumped to his knees, Sam hit him a third time, another full-force blow with the oak blade, this one across his victim’s forehead. An iron sword could hardly have been more damaging, Gwenda thought despairingly. She stepped forward to restrain Sam, but the village men had had the same idea a moment earlier, and got there before her. They pulled Sam away, two of them holding each arm.

Jonno lay on the ground, his head in a pool of blood. Gwenda was sickened by the sight, and could not help thinking of the boy’s father, Nate, and how grieved he would be by his son’s injuries. Jonno’s mother had died of the plague, so at least she was in a place where grief could not afflict her.

Gwenda could see that Sam was not badly hurt. He was bleeding, but still struggling with his captors, trying to get free so that he could attack again. Gwenda bent over Jonno. His eyes were closed and he was not moving. She put a hand on his heart and felt nothing. She tried for a pulse, the way Caris had shown her, but there was none. Jonno did not seem to be breathing.

The implications of what had happened dawned on her, and she began to weep.

Jonno was dead, and Sam was a murderer.

82

On Easter Sunday that year, 1361, Caris and Merthin had been married ten years.

Standing in the cathedral, watching the Easter procession, Caris recalled their wedding. Because they had been lovers, off and on, for so long, they had seen the ceremony as no more than confirmation of a long-established fact, and they had foolishly envisaged a small, quiet event: a low-key service in St Mark’s church and a modest dinner for a few people afterwards at the Bell. But Father Joffroi had informed them, the day before, that by his calculation at least two thousand people were planning to attend the wedding, and they had been forced to move it to the cathedral. Then it turned out that, without their knowledge, Madge Webber had organized a banquet in the guild hall for leading citizens and a picnic in Lovers’ Field for everyone else in Kingsbridge. So, in the end, it had been the wedding of the year.

Caris smiled at the recollection. She had worn a new robe of Kingsbridge Scarlet, a colour the bishop probably thought appropriate for such a woman. Merthin had dressed in a richly patterned Italian coat, chestnut brown with gold threads, and had seemed to glow with happiness. They both had realized, belatedly, that their drawn-out love affair, which they had imagined to be a private drama, had been entertaining the citizens of Kingsbridge for years, and everyone wanted to celebrate its happy ending.

Her pleasant memories evaporated as her old enemy Philemon mounted the pulpit. In the decade since the wedding he had grown quite fat. His monkish tonsure and shaved face revealed a ring of blubber around his neck, and the priestly robes billowed like a tent.

He preached a sermon against dissection.

Dead bodies belonged to God, he said. Christians were instructed to bury them in a carefully specified ritual; the saved in consecrated ground, the unforgiven elsewhere. To do anything else with corpses was against God’s will. To cut them up was sacrilege, he said with uncharacteristic passion. There was even a tremor in his voice as he asked the congregation to imagine the horrible scene of a body being opened, its parts separated and sliced and pored over by so-called medical researchers. True Christians knew there was no excuse for these ghoulish men and women.

The phrase ‘men and women’ was not often heard from Philemon’s mouth, Caris thought, and could not be without significance. She glanced at her husband, standing next to her in the nave, and he raised his eyebrows in an expression of concern.

The prohibition against examining corpses was standard dogma, propounded by the church since before Caris could remember, but it had been relaxed since the plague. Progressive younger clergymen were vividly aware of how badly the church had failed its people then, and they were keen to change the way medicine was taught and practised by priests. However, conservative senior clergy clung to the old ways and blocked any change in policy. The upshot was that dissection was banned in principle and tolerated in practice.

Caris had been performing dissections at her new hospital from the start. She never talked about it outside the building: there was no point in upsetting the superstitious. But she did it every chance she got.

In recent years she had usually been joined by one or two younger monk-physicians. Many trained doctors never saw inside the body except when treating very bad wounds. Traditionally, the only carcases they were allowed to open were those of pigs, thought to be the animals most like humans in their anatomy.

Caris was puzzled as well as worried by Philemon’s attack. He had always hated her, she knew, though she had never been sure why. But since the great standoff in the snowfall of 1351 he had ignored her. As if in compensation for his loss of power over the town, he had furnished his palace with precious objects: tapestries, carpets, silver tableware, stained-glass windows, illuminated manuscripts. He had become ever more grand, demanding elaborate deference from his monks and novices, wearing gorgeous robes for services, and travelling, when he had to go to other towns, in a charette that was furnished like a duchess’s boudoir.

There were several important visiting clergymen in the choir for the service – Bishop Henri of Shiring, Archbishop Piers of Monmouth and Archdeacon Reginald of York – and presumably Philemon was hoping to impress them with this outburst of doctrinal conservatism. But to what end? Was he looking for promotion? The archbishop was ill – he had been carried into the church – but surely Philemon could not aspire to that post? It was something of a miracle that the son of Joby from Wigleigh should have risen to be prior of Kingsbridge. Besides, elevation from prior to archbishop would be an unusually big jump, a bit like going from knight to duke without becoming a baron or an earl in between. Only a special favourite could hope for such a rapid rise.

However, there was no limit to Philemon’s ambition. It was not that he felt himself to be superbly well qualified, Caris thought. That had been Godwyn’s attitude, arrogant self-confidence. Godwyn had assumed that God made him prior because he was the cleverest man in town. Philemon was at the opposite extreme: in his heart he believed he was a nobody. His life was a campaign to convince himself that he was not completely worthless. He was so sensitive to rejection that he could not bear to consider himself undeserving of any post, no matter how lofty.

She thought of speaking to Bishop Henri after the service. She might remind him of the ten-year-old agreement that the prior of Kingsbridge had no jurisdiction over the hospital of St Elizabeth on Leper Island, which came under the bishop’s direct control; so that any attack on the hospital was an attack on the rights and privileges of Henri himself. But, on further reflection, she realized that such a protest would confirm to the bishop that she was conducting dissections, and turn what might now be only a vague suspicion, easily ignored, into a known fact that must be dealt with. So she decided to remain silent.

Standing beside her were Merthin’s two nephews, the sons of Earl Ralph: Gerry, age thirteen, and Roley, ten. Both boys were enrolled in the monks’ school. They lived in the priory but spent much of their free time with Merthin and Caris at their house on the island. Merthin had his hand resting casually on the shoulder of Roley. Only three people in the world knew that Roley was not his nephew but his son. They were Merthin himself, Caris, and the boy’s mother, Philippa. Merthin tried not to show special favour to Roley, but found it hard to disguise his true feelings, and was especially delighted when Roley learned something new or did well at school.

Caris often thought about the child she had conceived with Merthin and then aborted. She always imagined it to have been a girl. She would be a woman now, Caris mused, twenty-three years old, probably married with children of her own. The thought was like the ache of an old wound, painful but too familiar to be distressing.

When the service was over they all left together. The boys were invited to Sunday dinner, as always. Outside the cathedral, Merthin turned to look back at the tower that now soared high over the middle of the church.

As he examined his almost-finished work, frowning at some detail visible only to him, Caris studied him fondly. She had known him since he was eleven years old, and had loved him almost as long. He was forty-five now. His red hair was receding from his brow, and stood up around his head like a curly halo. He had carried his left arm stiffly ever since a small carved stone corbel, dropped from the scaffolding by a careless mason, had fallen on his shoulder. But he still had the expression of boyish eagerness that had drawn the ten-year-old Caris to him on All Hallows’ Day a third of a century ago.

She turned to share his view. The tower appeared to stand neatly on the four sides of the crossing, and to be exactly two bays square, even though in fact its weight was held up by massive buttresses built into the exterior corners of the transepts, which themselves rested on new foundations separate from the old original ones. The tower looked light and airy, with slender columns and multiple window openings through which you could see blue sky in fine weather. Above the square top of the tower, a web of scaffolding was rising for the final stage, the spire.

When Caris brought her gaze back down to ground level she saw her sister approaching. Alice was only a year older at forty-five, but Caris felt she was from another generation. Her husband, Elfric, had died in the plague, but she had not remarried, becoming frumpy, as if she thought that was how a widow should be. Caris had quarrelled with Alice, many years ago, over Elfric’s treatment of Merthin. The passage of time had blunted the edge of their mutual hostility, but there was still a resentful tilt to Alice’s head when she said hello.

With her was Griselda, her stepdaughter, though only a year younger than Alice. Griselda’s son, known as Merthin Bastard, stood beside her, towering over her, a big man with superficial charm – just like his father, the long-gone Thurstan, and about as different from Merthin Bridger as could be. Also with her was her sixteen-year-old daughter, Petranilla.

Griselda’s husband, Harold Mason, had taken over the business after Elfric died. He was not much of a builder, according to Merthin, but he was doing all right, although he did not have the monopoly of priory repairs and extensions that had made Elfric rich. He stood next to Merthin now and said: “People think you’re going to build the spire with no formwork.”

Caris understood. Formwork, or centering, was the wooden frame that held the masonry in place until the mortar dried.

Merthin said: “Not much room for formwork inside that narrow spire. And how would it be supported?” His tone was polite, but Caris could tell from its briskness that he did not like Harold.

“I could believe it if the spire was going to be round.”

Caris understood this, too. A round spire could be built by placing one circle of stones on top of another, each a little narrower than the last. No formwork was needed because the circle was self-supporting: the stones could not fall inwards because they pressed on one another. The same was not true of any shape with corners.

“You’ve seen the drawings,” Merthin said. “It’s an octagon.”

The corner turrets on the top of the square tower faced diagonally outwards, easing the eye as it progressed upwards to the different shape of the narrower spire. Merthin had copied this feature from Chartres. But it made sense only if the tower was octagonal.

Harold said: “But how can you build an octagonal tower without formwork?”

“Wait and see,” said Merthin, and he moved away.

As they walked down the main street Caris said: “Why won’t you tell people how you’re going to do it?”

“So that they can’t fire me,” he replied. “When I was building the bridge, as soon as I’d done the hard part they got rid of me, and hired someone cheaper.”

“I remember.”

“They can’t do that now, because no one else can build the spire.”

“You were a youngster then. Now you’re alderman. No one would dare sack you.”

“Perhaps not. But it’s nice to feel they can’t.”

At the bottom of the main street, where the old bridge had stood, there was a disreputable tavern called the White Horse. Caris saw Merthin’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Lolla, leaning on the wall outside, with a group of older friends. Lolla was an attractive girl, with olive skin and lustrous dark hair, a generous mouth and sultry brown eyes. The group was crowded around a dice game, and they were all drinking ale from large tankards. Caris was sorry, though not surprised, to see her stepdaughter carousing on the street at midday.

Merthin was angry. He went up to Lolla and took her arm. “You’d better come home for your dinner,” he said in a tight voice.

She tossed her head, shaking her thick hair in a gesture that was undoubtedly meant for the eyes of someone other than her father. “I don’t want to go home, I’m happy here,” she said.

“I didn’t ask what you wanted,” Merthin replied, and he jerked her away from the others.

A good-looking boy of about twenty detached himself from the crowd. He had curly hair and a mocking smile, and he was picking his teeth with a twig. Caris recognized Jake Riley, a lad of no particular profession who nevertheless always seemed to have money to spend. He sauntered over. “What’s going on?” he said. He spoke with the twig sticking out of his mouth like an insult.

“None of your damn business,” Merthin said.

Jake stood in his way. “The girl doesn’t want to leave.”

“You’d better get out of my way, son, unless you want to spend the rest of the day in the town stocks.”

Caris froze with anxiety. Merthin was in the right: he was entitled to discipline Lolla, who was still five years short of adulthood. But Jake was the kind of boy who might punch him anyway, and take the consequences. However, Caris did not intervene, knowing it might make Merthin angry with her instead of with Jake.

Jake said: “I suppose you’re her father.”

“You know perfectly well who I am, and you can call me Alderman, and speak respectfully to me, or suffer the consequences.”

Jake stared insolently at Merthin a moment longer then turned aside, casually saying: “Yes, all right.”

Caris was relieved that the confrontation had not turned into fisticuffs. Merthin never got into fights, but Lolla was capable of driving him to distraction.

They walked on towards the bridge. Lolla shook herself free of her father’s grasp and walked on ahead, arms folded under her breasts, head down, frowning and muttering to herself in a full-dress sulk.

This was not the first time Lolla had been seen in bad company. Merthin was horrified and enraged that his little girl should be so determined to seek out such people. “Why does she do it?” he said to Caris as they followed Lolla across the bridge to Leper Island.

“God knows.” Caris had observed that this kind of behaviour was more common in youngsters who had suffered the loss of a parent. After Silvia died, Lolla had been mothered by Bessie Bell, Lady Philippa, Merthin’s housekeeper Em, and of course Caris herself. Perhaps she was confused about who she should obey. But Caris did not voice this thought, as it might seem to suggest that Merthin had somehow failed as a parent. “I had terrible fights with Aunt Petranilla when I was that age.”

“What about?”

“Similar things. She didn’t like me spending time with Mattie Wise.”

“That’s completely different. You didn’t go to low taverns with rogues.”

“Petranilla thought Mattie was bad company.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I suppose not.”

“You learned a lot from Mattie.”

Lolla was undoubtedly learning a lot from handsome Jake Riley, but Caris kept that inflammatory thought to herself – Merthin was furious enough already.

The island was entirely built up now, and an integral part of the city. It even had its own parish church. Where once they had wandered across waste ground, they now followed a footpath that ran straight between houses and turned sharp corners. The rabbits had long gone. The hospital occupied most of the western end. Although Caris went there every day, she still felt a glow of pride when she looked at the clean grey stonework, the large windows in regular rows and the chimneys lined up like soldiers.

They passed through a gate into Merthin’s grounds. The orchard was mature, and blossom covered the apple trees like snow.

As always, they went in through the kitchen door. The house had a grand entrance on the river side which no one ever used. Even a brilliant architect can make a mistake, Caris thought with amusement; but, once again, she decided to give the thought no voice today.

Lolla stamped upstairs to her room.

From the front room a woman called: “Hello, everyone!” The two boys rushed into the parlour with glad cries. It was their mother, Philippa. Merthin and Caris greeted her warmly.

Caris and Philippa had become sisters-in-law when Caris married Merthin, but their past rivalry had continued to make Caris feel awkward in Philippa’s presence for some years. Eventually the boys had brought them together. When first Gerry then Roley enrolled at the priory school, it was natural for Merthin to look after his nephews, and then it became normal for Philippa to call at Merthin’s house whenever she was in Kingsbridge.

At first, Caris had felt jealous of Philippa for having attracted Merthin sexually. Merthin had never tried to pretend that his love for Philippa had been merely superficial. He clearly still cared about her. But Philippa nowadays cut a sad figure. She was forty-nine and looked older, her hair grey and her face lined with disappointment. She lived now for her children. She was a frequent guest of her daughter, Odila, the countess of Monmouth; and when she was not there she often visited Kingsbridge Priory to be close to her sons. She managed to spend very little time at Earlscastle with her husband Ralph.

“I’ve got to take the boys to Shiring,” she said, explaining her presence here. “Ralph wants them to attend the county court with him. He says it’s a necessary part of their education.”

“He’s right,” Caris said. Gerry would be the earl, if he lived long enough; and if he did not Roley would inherit the title. So they both needed to be familiar with courts.

Philippa added: “I intended to be in the cathedral for the Easter service, but my charette broke a wheel and I made an overnight stop.”

“Well, now that you’re here, let’s have dinner,” Caris said.

They went into the dining hall. Caris opened the windows that looked on to the river. Cool fresh air came in. She wondered what Merthin would do about Lolla. He said nothing, leaving her to stew upstairs, to Caris’s relief: a brooding adolescent at the dinner table could bring down everyone’s spirits.

They ate mutton boiled with leeks. Merthin poured red wine, and Philippa drank thirstily. She had become fond of wine. Perhaps it was her consolation.

While they were eating, Em came in looking anxious. “There’s somebody at the kitchen door to see the mistress,” she said.

Merthin said impatiently: “Well, who is it?”

“He wouldn’t mention his name, but he said the mistress would know him.”

“What kind of person?”

“A young man. By his clothes a peasant, not a town dweller.” Em had a snobbish dislike of villagers.

“Well, he sounds harmless. Let him come in.”

A moment later, in walked a tall figure with a hood pulled forward to cover most of his face. When he drew it back, Caris recognized Gwenda’s elder son, Sam.

Caris had known him all his life. She had seen him born, had watched his slimy head emerge from the small body of his mother. She had observed him as he grew and changed and became a man. She saw Wulfric in him now, in the way he walked and stood and raised a hand slightly as he was about to speak. She had always suspected that Wulfric was not in fact his father – but, close as she was to Gwenda, she had never mentioned her doubt. Some questions were better left unasked. However, the suspicion had inevitably returned when she heard that Sam was wanted for the murder of Jonno Reeve. For Sam when born had had a look of Ralph.

Now he came up to Caris, lifted his hand in that gesture of Wulfric’s, hesitated, then went down on one knee. “Save me, please,” he said.

Caris was horrified. “How can I save you?”

“Hide me. I’ve been on the run for days. I left Oldchurch in the dark and walked through the night and I’ve hardly rested since. Just now I tried to buy something to eat in a tavern and someone recognized me, and I had to run.”

He looked so desperate that she felt a surge of compassion. Nevertheless, she said: “But you can’t hide here, you’re wanted for murder!”

“It was no murder, it was a fight. Jonno struck first. He hit me with a leg iron – look.” Sam touched his face in two places, ear and nose, to indicate two scabbed gashes.

The physician in Caris could not help noting that the injuries were about five days old, and the nose was healing well enough though the ear really needed a stitch. But her main thought was that Sam should not be here. “You have to face justice,” she said.

“They’ll take Jonno’s side, they’re sure to. I ran away from Wigleigh, for higher wages in Outhenby. Jonno was trying to take me back. They’ll say he was entitled to chain a runaway.”

“You should have thought of that before you hit him.”

He said accusingly: “You employed runaways at Outhenby, when you were prioress.”

She was stung. “Runaways, yes – killers, no.”

“They will hang me.”

Caris was torn. How could she turn him away?

Merthin spoke. “There are two reasons why you can’t hide here, Sam. One is that it’s a crime to conceal a fugitive, and I’m not willing to put myself on the wrong side of the law for your sake, fond though I am of your mother. But the second reason is that everyone knows your mother is an old friend of Caris’s, and if the Kingsbridge constables are searching for you this is the first place they will look.”

“Is it?” Sam said.

He was not very bright, Caris knew – his brother Davey had all the brains.

Merthin said: “You could hardly think of a worse place than this to hide.” He softened. “Drink a cup of wine, and take a loaf of bread with you, and get out of town,” he said more kindly. “I’ll have to find Mungo Constable and report that you were here, but I can walk slowly.” He poured wine into a wooden cup.

“Thank you.”

“Your only hope is to go far away where you aren’t known and start a new life. You’re a strong boy, you’ll always find work. Go to London and join a ship. And don’t get into fights.”

Philippa said suddenly: “I remember your mother… Gwenda?”

Sam nodded.

Philippa turned to Caris. “I met her at Casterham, when William was alive. She came to me about that girl in Wigleigh who had been raped by Ralph.”

“Annet.”

“Yes.” Philippa turned back to Sam. “You must be the baby she had in her arms at the time. Your mother is a good woman. I’m sorry for her sake that you’re in trouble.”

There was a moment of quiet. Sam drained the cup. Caris was thinking, as no doubt Philippa and Merthin were too, about the passage of time, and how it can change an innocent, beloved baby into a man who commits murder.

In the silence, they heard voices.

It sounded like several men at the kitchen door.

Sam looked around him like a trapped bear. One door led to the kitchen, the other outside to the front of the house. He dashed to the front door, flung it open and ran out. Without pausing he headed down towards the river.

A moment later Em opened the door from the kitchen, and Mungo Constable came into the dining hall, with four deputies crowding behind him, all carrying wooden clubs.

Merthin pointed at the front door. “He just left.”

“After him, lads,” said Mungo, and they all ran through the room and out of the door.

Caris stood up and hurried outside, and the others followed her.

The house was built on a low, rocky bluff only three or four feet high. The river flowed rapidly past the foot of the little cliff. To the left, Merthin’s graceful bridge spanned the water; to the right was a muddy beach. Across the river, trees were coming into leaf in the old plague graveyard. Pokey little suburban hovels had grown up like weeds either side of the cemetery.

Sam could have turned left or right, and Caris saw with a feeling of despair that he had made the wrong choice. He had gone right, which led nowhere. She saw him running along the foreshore, his boots leaving big impressions in the mud. The constables were chasing him like dogs after a hare. She felt sorry for Sam, as she always felt sorry for the hare. It was nothing to do with justice, merely that he was the quarry.

Seeing he had nowhere to go, he waded into the water.

Mungo had stayed on the paved footpath at the front of the house, and now he turned in the opposite direction, to the left, and ran towards the bridge.

Two of the deputies dropped their clubs, pulled off their boots, got out of their coats and jumped into the water in their undershirts. The other two stood on the shoreline, presumably unable to swim, or perhaps unwilling to jump into the water on a cold day. The two swimmers struck out after Sam.

Sam was strong, but his heavy winter coat was now sodden and dragging him down. Caris watched with horrid fascination as the deputies gained on him.

There was a shout from the other direction. Mungo had reached the bridge and was running across, and he had stopped to beckon the two non-swimming deputies to follow him. They acknowledged his signal and ran after him. He continued across the bridge.

Sam reached the far shore just before the swimmers caught up with him. He gained his footing and staggered through the shallows, shaking his head, water running from his clothing. He turned and saw a deputy almost on him. The man stumbled, bending forward inadvertently, and Sam swiftly kicked him in the face with a heavy waterlogged boot. The deputy cried out and fell back.

The second deputy was more cautious. He approached Sam then stopped, still out of reach. Sam turned and ran forward, coming out of the water on to the turf of the plague graveyard; but the deputy followed him. Sam stopped again, and the deputy stopped. Sam realized he was being toyed with. He gave a roar of anger and rushed at his tormentor. The deputy ran back, but he had the river behind him. He ran into the shallows, but the water slowed him, and Sam was able to catch him.

Sam grabbed the man by the shoulders, turned him and headbutted him. On the far side of the river, Caris heard a crack as the poor man’s nose broke. Sam tossed him aside and he fell, spurting blood into the river water.

Sam turned again for the shore – but Mungo was waiting for him. Now Sam was lower down the slope of the foreshore and hampered by the water. Mungo rushed at him, stopped, let him come forward, then raised his heavy wooden club. He feinted, Sam dodged, then Mungo struck, hitting Sam on the top of his head.

It looked a dreadful blow, and Caris herself gasped with shock as if she had been hit. Sam roared with pain and reflexively put his hands over his head. Mungo, experienced in fighting with strong young men, hit him again with the club, this time in his unprotected ribs. Sam fell into the water. The two deputies who had run across the bridge now arrived on the scene. Both jumped on Sam, holding him down in the shallows. The two he had wounded took their revenge, kicking and punching him savagely while their colleagues held him down. When there was no fight left in him they at last let up and dragged him out of the water.

Mungo swiftly tied Sam’s hands behind his back. Then the constables marched the fugitive back towards the town.

“How awful,” said Caris. “Poor Gwenda.”

83

The town of Shiring had a carnival air during sessions of the county court. All the inns around the square were busy, their parlours crowded with men and women dressed in their best clothes, all shouting for drinks and food. The town naturally took the opportunity to hold a market, and the square itself was so closely packed with stalls that it took half an hour to move a couple of hundred yards. As well as the legitimate stallholders there were dozens of strolling entrepreneurs: bakers with trays of buns, a busking fiddle player, maimed and blind beggars, prostitutes showing their breasts, a dancing bear, a preaching friar.

Earl Ralph was one of the few people who could cross the square quickly. He rode with three knights ahead of him and a handful of servants behind, and his entourage went through the melee like a ploughshare, turning the crowd aside by the force of their momentum and their carelessness for the safety of people in their way.

They rode on up the hill to the sheriff’s castle. In the courtyard they wheeled with a flourish and dismounted. The servants immediately began shouting for ostlers and porters. Ralph liked people to know he had arrived.

He was tense. The son of his old enemy was about to be tried for murder. He was on the brink of the sweetest revenge imaginable, but some part of him feared it might not happen. He was so on edge that he felt slightly ashamed: he would not have wanted his knights to know how much this meant to him. He was careful to conceal, even from Alan Fernhill, how eager he was that Sam should hang. He was afraid something would go wrong at the last minute. No one knew better than he how the machinery of justice could fail: after all, he himself had escaped hanging twice.

He would sit on the judge’s bench during the trial, as was his right, and do his best to make sure there was no upset.

He handed his reins to a groom and looked around. The castle was not a military fortification. It was more like a tavern with a courtyard, though strongly built and well guarded. The sheriff of Shiring could live here safe from the vengeful relatives of the people he arrested. There were basement dungeons in which to keep prisoners, and guest apartments where visiting judges could stay unmolested.

Sheriff Bernard showed Ralph to his room. The sheriff was the king’s representative in the county, responsible for collecting taxes as well as administering justice. The post was lucrative, the salary usefully supplemented by gifts, bribes, and percentages skimmed off the top of fines and forfeited bail money. The relationship between earl and sheriff could be fractious: the earl ranked higher, but the sheriff’s judicial power was independent. Bernard, a rich wool merchant of about Ralph’s age, treated Ralph with an uneasy mixture of camaraderie and deference.

Philippa was waiting for Ralph in the apartment set aside for them. Her long grey hair was tied up in an elaborate headdress, and she wore an expensive coat in drab shades of grey and brown. Her haughty manner had once made her a proud beauty, but now she just looked like a grumpy old woman. She might have been his mother.

He greeted his sons, Gerry and Roley. He was not sure how to deal with children, and he had never seen much of his own: as babies they had been cared for by women, of course, and now they were at the monks’ school. He addressed them somewhat as if they were squires in his service, giving them orders at one moment and joshing them in a friendly way the next. He would find them easier to talk to when they were older. It did not seem to matter: they regarded him as a hero whatever he did.

“Tomorrow you shall sit on the judge’s bench in the court room,” he said. “I want you to see how justice is done.”

Gerry, the elder, said: “Can we look around the market this afternoon?”

“Yes – get Dickie to go with you.” Dickie was one of the Earlscastle servants. “Here, take some money to spend.” He gave them each a handful of silver pennies.

The boys went out. Ralph sat down across the room from Philippa. He never touched her, and tried always to keep his distance so that it would not happen by accident. He felt sure that she dressed and acted like an old woman to make sure he was not attracted to her. She also went to church every day.

It was a strange relationship for two people who had once conceived a child together, but they had been stuck in it for years and it would never change. At least it left him free to fondle servant girls and tumble tavern wenches.

However, they had to talk about the children. Philippa had strong views and, over the years, Ralph had realized it was easier to discuss things with her, rather than make unilateral decisions and then have a fight when she disagreed.

Now Ralph said: “Gerald is old enough to be a squire.”

Philippa said: “I agree.”

“Good!” said Ralph, surprised – he had expected an argument.

“I’ve already spoke to David Monmouth about him,” she added.

That explained her willingness. She was one jump ahead. “I see,” he said, playing for time.

“David agrees, and suggests we send him as soon as he is fourteen.”

Gerry was only just thirteen. Philippa was in fact postponing Gerry’s departure by almost a year. But this was not Ralph’s main worry. David, earl of Monmouth, was married to Philippa’s daughter, Odila. “Being a squire is supposed to turn a boy into a man,” Ralph said. “But Gerry will get too easy a ride with David. His stepsister is fond of him – she’ll probably protect him. He could have it too soft.” After a moment’s reflection, he added: “I expect that’s why you want him to go there.”

She did not deny it, but said: “I thought you would be glad to strengthen your alliance with the earl of Monmouth.”

She had a point. David was Ralph’s most important ally in the nobility. Placing Gerry in the Monmouth household would create another bond between the two earls. David might become fond of the boy. In later years, perhaps David’s sons would be squires at Earlscastle. Such family connections were priceless. “Will you undertake to make sure the boy isn’t mollycoddled there?” Ralph said.

“Of course.”

“Well, all right then.”

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled.” Philippa stood up.

But Ralph was not finished. “Now what about Roley? He could go too, so that they would be together.”

Philippa did not like this idea at all, Ralph could tell, but she was too clever to contradict him flatly. “Roley’s a bit young,” she said, as if thinking it over. “And he hasn’t properly learned his letters yet.”

“Letters aren’t as important to a nobleman as learning to fight. After all, he is second in line to the earldom. If anything should happen to Gerry…”

“Which God forbid.”

“Amen.”

“All the same, I think he should wait until he’s fourteen.”

“I don’t know. Roley’s always been a bit womanish. Sometimes he reminds me of my brother, Merthin.” He saw a flash of fear in her eyes. She was afraid of letting her baby go, he guessed. He was tempted to insist, just to torture her. But ten was young for a squire. “We’ll see,” he said noncommittally. “He’ll have to be toughened up sooner or later.”

“All in good time,” said Philippa.

The judge, Sir Lewis Abingdon, was not a local man, but a London lawyer from the king’s court, sent on tour to try serious cases in county-courts. He was a beefy type with a pink face and a fair beard. He was also ten years younger than Ralph.

Ralph told himself he should not be surprised. He was now forty-four. Half his own generation had been wiped out by the plague. Nevertheless, he continued to be startled by distinguished and powerful men who were younger than he.

They waited, with Gerry and Roley, in a side chamber at the Courthouse inn, while the jury assembled and the prisoners were brought down from the castle. It turned out that Sir Lewis had been at Crécy, as a young squire, though Ralph did not recall him. He treated Ralph with wary courtesy.

Ralph tried subtly to probe the judge and find out how tough he was. “The Statute of Labourers is difficult to enforce, we find,” he said. “When peasants see a way to make money, they lose all respect for the law.”

“For every runaway who is working for an illegal wage, there is an employer who is paying it,” the judge said.

“Exactly! The nuns of Kingsbridge Priory have never obeyed the statute.”

“Difficult to prosecute nuns.”

“I don’t see why.”

Sir Lewis changed the subject. “You have a special interest in this morning’s proceedings?” he asked. He had probably been told that it was unusual for Ralph to exercise his right to sit beside the judge.

“The murderer is a serf of mine,” Ralph admitted. “But the main reason I’m here is to give these boys a look at how justice works. One of them is likely to be the earl when I give up the ghost. They can watch the hangings tomorrow, too. The sooner they get used to seeing men die, the better.”

Lewis nodded agreement. “The sons of the nobility cannot afford to be soft-hearted.”

They heard the clerk of the court bang his gavel, and the hubbub from the next room died down. Ralph’s anxiety was not allayed: Sir Lewis’s conversation had not told him much. Perhaps that in itself was revealing: it might mean he was not easily influenced.

The judge opened the door and stood aside for the earl to go first.

At the near end of the room, two large wooden chairs were set on a dais. Next to them was a low bench. A murmur of interest arose from the crowd as Gerry and Roley sat on the bench. The people were always fascinated to see the children who would grow into their overlords. But more than that, Ralph thought, there was a look of innocence about the two prepubescent boys that was strikingly out of place in a court whose business was violence, theft and dishonesty. They looked like lambs in a pigpen.

Ralph sat in one of the two chairs and thought of the day, twenty-two years ago, when he had stood in this very courtroom as a criminal accused of rape – a ludicrous charge to bring against a lord when the so-called victim was one of his own serfs. Philippa had been behind that malicious prosecution. Well, he had made her suffer for it.

At that trial, Ralph had fought his way out of the room as soon as the jury pronounced him guilty, and then had been pardoned when he joined the king’s army and went to France. Sam was not going to escape: he had no weapon, and his ankles were chained. And the French wars seemed to have petered out, so there were no more free pardons.

Ralph studied Sam as the indictment was read. He had Wulfric’s build, not Gwenda’s: he was a tall lad, broad across the shoulders. He might have made a useful man-at-arms if he had been more nobly born. He did not really look like Wulfric, though something about the cast of his features rang a bell. Like so many accused men, he wore an expression of superficial defiance overlaying fear. That’s just how I felt, Ralph thought.

Nathan Reeve was the first witness. He was the father of the dead man but, more importantly, he testified that Sam was a serf of Earl Ralph’s and had not been given leave to go to Oldchurch. He said he had sent his son Jonno to follow Gwenda in the hope of tracking down the runaway. He was not likeable, but his grief was clearly genuine. Ralph was pleased: it was damning testimony.

Sam’s mother was standing next to him, the top of her head level with her son’s shoulder. Gwenda was not beautiful: her dark eyes were set close to a beaky nose, and her forehead and chin both receded sharply, giving her the look of a determined rodent. Yet there was something strongly sexual about her, even in middle age. It was more than twenty years since Ralph had lain with her, but he remembered her as if it were yesterday. They had done it in a room at the Bell in Kingsbridge, and he had made her kneel up on the bed. He could picture it now, and the memory of her compact body excited him. She had a lot of dark hair, he recollected.

Suddenly she met his eye. She held his gaze and seemed to sense what he was thinking. On that bed she had been indifferent and motionless, to begin with, accepting his thrusts passively because he had coerced her; but, at the end, something strange had come over her, and almost against her own will she had moved in rhythm with him. She must have remembered the same thing, for an expression of shame came over her plain face, and she looked quickly away.

Next to her was another young man, presumably the second son. This one was more like her, small and wiry, with a crafty look about him. He met Ralph’s gaze with a stare of intense concentration, as if he was curious what went on in the mind of an earl, and thought he might find the answer in Ralph’s face.

But Ralph was most interested in the father. He had hated Wulfric since their fight at the Fleece Fair of 1337. He touched his broken nose reflexively. Several other men had wounded him in later years, but none had hurt his pride so badly. However, Ralph’s revenge on Wulfric had been terrible. I deprived him of his birthright for a decade, Ralph thought. I lay with his wife. I gave him that scar across his cheek when he tried to stop me escaping from this very courtroom. I dragged him home when he tried to run away. And now I’m going to hang his son.

Wulfric was heavier than he used to be, but he carried it well. He had a salt-and-pepper beard that did not grow over the long scar of the sword wound Ralph had given him. His face was lined and weatherbeaten. Where Gwenda looked angry, Wulfric was grief-stricken. As the peasants of Oldchurch testified that Sam had killed Jonno with an oak spade, Gwenda’s eyes flashed defiance, whereas Wulfric’s broad forehead creased in anguish.

The foreman of the jury asked whether Sam had been in fear for his life.

Ralph was displeased. The question implied an excuse for the killer.

A thin peasant with one eye responded. “He wasn’t in fear of the bailiff, no. I think he was scared of his mother, though.” The crowd tittered.

The foreman asked whether Jonno had provoked the attack, another question that bothered Ralph by indicating sympathy for Sam.

“Provoked?” said the one-eyed man. “Only by hitting him across the face with a leg iron, if you call that provoking.” They laughed loudly.

Wulfric looked bewildered. How can people be amused, his expression said, when my son’s life is at stake?

Ralph was feeling more anxious. The foreman seemed unsound.

Sam was called to testify, and Ralph noticed that the young man resembled Wulfric more when he spoke. There was a tilt of the head and a gesture of the hand that immediately brought Wulfric to mind. Sam told how he had offered to meet Jonno the following morning, and Jonno had responded by trying to put an iron on his leg.

Ralph spoke to the judge in an undertone. “None of this makes any difference,” he said with suppressed indignation. “Whether he was in fear, whether he was provoked, whether he offered to meet the following day.”

Sir Lewis said nothing.

Ralph said: “The bare fact is that he’s a runaway and he killed the man who came to fetch him.”

“He certainly did that,” said Sir Lewis guardedly, giving Ralph no satisfaction.

Ralph looked at the spectators while the jury questioned Sam. Merthin was in the crowd, with his wife. Before becoming a nun Caris had enjoyed dressing fashionably, and after renouncing her vows she had reverted to type. Today she wore a gown made of two contrasting fabrics, one blue and the other green, with a fur-trimmed cloak of Kingsbridge Scarlet and a little round hat. Ralph remembered that Caris had been a childhood friend of Gwenda’s, in fact she had been there the day they all saw Thomas Langley kill two men-at-arms in the woods. Merthin and Caris would be hoping, for Gwenda’s sake, that Sam would be treated mercifully. Not if I have anything to do with it, Ralph thought.

Caris’s successor as prioress, Mother Joan, was in court, presumably because the nunnery owned the vale of Outhenby and was therefore the illegal employer of Sam. Joan ought to be in the dock with the accused, Ralph thought; but when he caught her eye she gave him an accusing glance, as if she thought the murder was his fault more than hers.

The prior of Kingsbridge had not shown up. Sam was Prior Philemon’s nephew, but Philemon would not want to draw attention to the fact that he was the uncle of a murderer. Philemon had once had a protective affection for his younger sister, Ralph recalled; but perhaps that had faded with the years.

Sam’s grandfather, the disreputable Joby, was present, a white-haired old man now, bent and toothless. Why was he here? He had been at odds with Gwenda for years, and was not likely to have much affection for his grandson. He had probably come to steal coins from people’s purses while they were absorbed in the trial.

Sam stood down and Sir Lewis spoke briefly. His summing-up pleased Ralph. “Was Sam Wigleigh a runaway?” he asked. “Did Jonno Reeve have the right to arrest him? And did Sam kill Jonno with his spade? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then Sam is guilty of murder.”

Ralph was surprised and relieved. There was no nonsense about whether Sam was provoked. The judge was sound after all.

“What is your verdict?” the judge asked.

Ralph looked at Wulfric. The man was stricken. This is what happens to those who defy me, Ralph thought, and he wished he could say it out loud.

Wulfric caught his eye. Ralph held his gaze, trying to read Wulfric’s mind. What emotion was there? Ralph saw that it was fear. Wulfric had never shown fear to Ralph before, but now he crumbled. His son was going to die, and that had weakened him fatally. A profound satisfaction filled Ralph’s being as he stared into Wulfric’s frightened eyes. I have crushed you at last, he thought, after twenty-four years. Finally, you’re scared.

The jury conferred. The foreman seemed to be arguing with the others. Ralph watched them impatiently. Surely they could not be in doubt, after what the judge had said? But there was no certainty with juries. It can’t all go wrong at this stage, Ralph thought, can it?

They seemed to come to a resolution, though he could not guess who had prevailed. The foreman stood up.

“We find Sam Wigleigh guilty of murder,” he said.

Ralph kept his eyes fixed on his old enemy. Wulfric looked as if he had been stabbed. His face went pale and he closed his eyes as if in pain. Ralph tried not to smile in triumph.

Sir Lewis turned to Ralph, and Ralph tore his gaze away from Wulfric. “What are your thoughts about the sentence?” said the judge.

“There’s only one choice, as far as I’m concerned.”

Sir Lewis nodded. “The jury has made no recommendation for mercy.”

“They don’t want a runaway to get away with murdering his bailiff.”

“The ultimate penalty, then?”

“Of course!”

The judge turned back to the court. Ralph locked his gaze on Wulfric again. Everyone else looked at Sir Lewis. The judge said: “Sam Wigleigh, you have murdered the son of your bailiff, and you are sentenced to death. You shall be hanged in Shiring market square tomorrow at dawn, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

Wulfric staggered. The younger son grabbed his father’s arm and held him upright, otherwise he might have fallen to the floor. Let him drop, Ralph wanted to say; he’s finished.

Ralph looked at Gwenda. She was holding Sam’s hand, but she was looking at Ralph. Her expression surprised him. He expected grief, tears, screams, hysterics. But she stared back at him steadily. There was hatred in her eyes, and something else: defiance. Unlike her husband, she did not look crushed. She did not believe the case was over.

She looked, Ralph thought with dismay, as if she had something up her sleeve.

84

Caris was in tears as Sam was taken away, but Merthin could not pretend to be grief-stricken. It was a tragedy for Gv/enda, and he felt desperately sorry for Wulfric. However, it was no bad thing, for the rest of the world, that Sam should be hanged. Jonno Reeve had been carrying out the law. It might well be a bad law, an unjust law, an oppressive law – but that did not give Sam the right to kill Jonno. After all, Nate Reeve was also bereaved. The fact that nobody liked Nate made no difference.

A thief was brought up before the bench, and Merthin and Caris left the courtroom and went into the parlour of the tavern. Merthin got some wine and poured a cup for Caris. A moment later, Gwenda came up to where they sat. “It’s noon,” she said. “We have eighteen hours to save Sam.”

Merthin looked up at her in surprise. “What do you propose?” he said.

“We must get Ralph to ask the king to pardon him.”

That seemed highly unlikely. “How would you persuade him to do that?”

“I can’t, obviously,” Gwenda said. “But you can.”

Merthin felt trapped. He did not believe Sam deserved a pardon. On the other hand, it was hard to refuse a pleading mother. He said: “I intervened with my brother on your behalf once before – do you remember?”

“Of course,” Gwenda said. “Over Wulfric not inheriting his father’s land.”

“He turned me down flat.”

“I know,” she said. “But you have to try.”

“I’m not sure I’m the best person.”

“Who else would he even listen to?”

That was right. Merthin had little chance of success, but no one else had any.

Caris could see that he was reluctant, and she threw her weight in on Gwenda’s side. “Please, Merthin,” she said. “Think how you would feel if it was Lolla.”

He was about to say that girls don’t get into fights, then he realized that in Lolla’s case it was all too likely. He sighed. “I think this is a doomed enterprise,” he said. He looked at Caris. “But, for your sake, I’ll try.”

Gwenda said: “Why don’t you go now?”

“Because Ralph is still in court.”

“It’s almost dinner time. They’ll be finished soon. You could wait in the private chamber.”

He had to admire her resolve. “All right,” he said.

He left the parlour and walked around to the back of the tavern. A guard was standing outside the judge’s private room. “I’m the earl’s brother,” Merthin said to the sentry. “Alderman Merthin of Kingsbridge.”

“Yes, alderman, I know you,” the guard said. “I’m sure it will be all right for you to wait inside.”

Merthin went into the little room and sat down. He felt uncomfortable asking his brother for a favour. The two of them had not been close for decades. Ralph had long ago turned into something Merthin did not recognize. Merthin did not know the man who could rape Annet and murder Tilly. It seemed impossible that such a one could have grown from the boy Merthin had called his brother. Since their parents had died, they had not met except on formal occasions, and even then they spoke little. It was presumptuous of him to use their relationship as justification for asking for a privilege. He would not have done it for Gwenda. But for Caris, he had to.

He did not wait long. After a few minutes the judge and the earl came in. Merthin noticed that his brother’s limp – the result of a wound suffered in the French wars – was getting worse as he aged.

Sir Lewis recognized Merthin and shook hands. Ralph did the same and said ironically: “A visit from my brother is a rare pleasure.”

It was not an unfair jibe, and Merthin acknowledged it with a nod. “On the other hand,” he said, “I suppose that if anyone is entitled to plead with you for mercy, I am.”

“What need do you have of mercy? Did you kill someone?”

“Not yet.”

Sir Lewis chuckled.

Ralph said: “What, then?”

“You and I have known Gwenda since we were all children together.”

Ralph nodded. “I shot her dog with that bow you made.”

Merthin had forgotten that incident. It was an early sign of how Ralph was going to turn out, he realized with hindsight. “Perhaps you owe her mercy on that account.”

“I think Nate Reeve’s son is worth more than a damn dog, don’t you?”

“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. Just that you might balance cruelty then with kindness now.”

“Balance?” Ralph said, with anger rising in his voice, and Merthin knew then that his cause was lost. “Balance?” He tapped his broken nose. “What should I balance against this?” He pointed a finger aggressively at Merthin. “I’ll tell you why I won’t give Sam a pardon. Because I looked at Wulfric’s face in the courtroom today, as his son was declared guilty of murder, and do you know what I saw there? Fear. That insolent peasant is afraid of me, at last. He has been tamed.”

“He means so much to you?”

“I’d hang six men to see that look.”

Merthin was ready to give up, then he thought of Gwenda’s grief, and he tried once more. “If you’ve conquered him, your work is done, isn’t it?” he argued. “So let the boy go. Ask the king for a pardon.”

“No. I want to keep Wulfric the way he is.”

Merthin wished he had not come. Putting pressure on Ralph only brought out the worst in him. Merthin was appalled by his vengefulness and malice. He never wanted to speak to his brother again. The feeling was familiar: he had been through this with Ralph before. Somehow it always came as a shock to be reminded of what he was really like.

Merthin turned away. “Well, I had to try,” he said. “Goodbye.”

Ralph became cheery. “Come up to the castle for dinner,” he said. “The sheriff lays a good table. Bring Caris. We’ll have a real talk. Philippa’s with me – you like her, don’t you?”

Merthin had no intention of going. “Let me speak to Caris,” he said. Caris would rather have dinner with Lucifer, he knew.

“I may see you later, then.”

Merthin made his escape.

He returned to the parlour. Caris and Gwenda looked expectantly at him as he crossed the room. He shook his head. “I did my best,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Gwenda had expected this. She was disappointed but not surprised. She had felt she had to try through Merthin. The other remedy she had at her disposal was so much more drastic.

She thanked Merthin perfunctorily and left the inn, heading for the castle on the hill. Wulfric and Davey had gone to a cheap tavern in the suburbs where they could get a filling dinner for a farthing. Wulfric was no good at this sort of thing anyway. His strength and honesty were useless in negotiations with Ralph and his kind.

Besides, Wulfric could not be allowed even to know about how she hoped to persuade Ralph.

As she was walking up the hill she heard horses behind her. She stopped and turned. It was Ralph and his entourage with the judge. She stood still and looked hard at Ralph, making sure he caught her eye as he passed. He would guess she was coming to see him.

A few minutes later she entered the courtyard of the castle, but access to the sheriff’s house was barred. She made her way to the porch of the main building and spoke to the marshal of the hall. “My name is Gwenda from Wigleigh,” she said. “Please tell Earl Ralph I need to see him in private.”

“Yes, yes,” said the marshal. “Look around you: all these people need to see the earl, the judge or the sheriff.”

There were twenty or thirty people standing around the courtyard, some clutching rolls of parchment.

Gwenda was prepared to take a terrible risk to save her son from hanging – but she would not get the opportunity unless she succeeded in speaking to Ralph before dawn.

“How much?” she said to the marshal.

He looked at her with a little less disrespect. “I can’t promise he’ll see you.”

“You can give him my name.”

“Two shillings. Twenty-four silver pennies.”

It was a lot of money, but Gwenda had all their savings in her purse. However, she was not yet ready to hand over the money. “What is my name?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I just told you. How can you give Earl Ralph my name if you can’t remember it?”

He shrugged. “Tell me again.”

“Gwenda from Wigleigh.”

“All right, I’ll mention it to him.”

Gwenda slipped her hand into her purse, brought out a handful of little silver coins and counted twenty-four. It was four weeks’ wages for a labourer. She thought of the backbreaking work she had done to earn the money. Now this idle, supercilious doorkeeper was going to get it for doing next to nothing.

The marshal held out his hand.

She said: “What’s my name?”

“Gwenda.”

“Gwenda from where?”

“Wigleigh.” He added: “That’s where this morning’s murderer came from, isn’t it?”

She gave him the money. “The earl will want to see me,” she said as forcefully as she could.

The marshal pocketed the coins.

Gwenda retreated into the courtyard, not knowing whether she had wasted her money.

A moment later she saw a familiar figure with a small head on wide shoulders: Alan Fernhill. That was a piece of luck. He was crossing from the stables to the hall. The other petitioners did not recognize him. Gwenda stood in his way. “Hello, Alan,” she said.

“It’s Sir Alan now.”

“Congratulations. Will you tell Ralph that I want to see him?”

“I don’t need to ask you what it’s about.”

“Say I want to meet him in private.”

Alan raised an eyebrow. “No offence, but you were a girl last time. You’re twenty years older today.”

“Do you think perhaps we should let him decide?”

“Of course.” He grinned insultingly. “I know he remembers that afternoon at the Bell.”

Alan had been there, of course. He had watched Gwenda take off her dress, and stared at her naked body. He had seen her walk to the bed and kneel on the mattress, facing away. He had laughed coarsely when Ralph said she was better looking from behind.

She hid her revulsion and shame. “I was hoping he would remember,” she said as neutrally as she could.

The other petitioners realized Alan must be someone important. They began to crowd around, speaking to him, begging and pleading. He pushed them aside and went into the hall.

Gwenda settled down to wait.

After an hour it was clear Ralph was not going to see her before dinner. She found a patch of ground that was not too muddy and sat with her back to a stone wall, but she never took her eyes off the entrance to the hall.

A second hour passed, and a third. Noblemen’s dinners often went on all afternoon. Gwenda wondered how they could keep on eating and drinking for such a long time. Why did they not burst?

She had eaten nothing all day, but she was too tense to feel hungry.

It was grey April weather, and the sky began to darken early. Gwenda shivered on the cold ground, but she stayed where she was. This was her only chance.

Servants came out and lit torches around the courtyard. Lights appeared behind the shutters in some of the windows. Night fell, and Gwenda realized there were about twelve hours left until dawn. She thought of Sam, sitting on the floor in one of the underground chambers beneath the castle, and wondered if he was cold. She fought back tears.

It’s not over yet, she told herself; but her courage was weakening.

A tall figure blocked the light from the nearest torch. She looked up to see Alan. Her heart leaped.

“Come with me,” he said.

She jumped to her feet and moved towards the hall door.

“Not that way.”

She looked inquiringly at him.

“You said privately, didn’t you?” Alan said. “He’s not going to see you in the chamber he shares with the countess. Come this way.”

She followed him through a small door near the stables. He led her through several rooms and up a staircase. He opened a door to a narrow bedchamber. She stepped inside. Alan did not follow her in, but closed the door from the outside.

It was a low room almost completely filled by a bedstead. Ralph stood by the window in his undershirt. His boots and outer clothing were piled on the floor. His face was flushed with drink, but his speech was clear and steady. “Take off your dress,” he said with a smile of anticipation.

Gwenda said: “No.”

He looked startled.

“I’m not taking my clothes off,” she said.

“Why did you tell Alan you wanted to see me in private?”

“So that you would think I was willing to have sex with you.”

“But if not… why are you here?”

“To beg you to ask the king for a pardon.”

“But you’re not offering yourself to me?”

“Why would I? I did that once before, and you broke your word. You reneged on the deal. I gave you my body, but you didn’t give my husband his land.” She allowed the contempt she felt to be heard in her tone of voice. “You would do the same again. Your honour is nothing. You remind me of my father.”

Ralph coloured. It was an insult to tell an earl that he could not be trusted, and even more offensive to compare him with a landless labourer who trapped squirrels in the woods. Angrily he said: “Do you imagine this is the way to persuade me?”

“No. But you’re going get that pardon.”

“Why?”

“Because Sam is your son.”

Ralph stared at her for a moment. “Hah,” he said contemptuously. “As if I would believe that.”

“He is your son,” she repeated.

“You can’t prove that.”

“No, I can’t,” she said. “But you know that I lay with you at the Bell in Kingsbridge nine months before Sam was born. True, I lay with Wulfric, too. So which of you is his father? Look at the boy! He has some of Wulfric’s mannerisms, yes – he has learned those, in twenty-two years. But look at his features.”

She saw a thoughtful expression appear on Ralph’s face, and knew that something she had said had hit the mark.

“Most of all, think about his character,” she said, pressing home. “You heard the evidence at the trial. Sam didn’t just fight Jonno off, as Wulfric would have done. He didn’t knock him down then help him up again, which would have been Wulfric’s way. Wulfric is strong, and quick to anger, but he’s tender-hearted. Sam is not. Sam hit Jonno with a spade, a blow that would have knocked any man senseless; then, before Jonno fell, Sam hit him again, even harder, although he was already helpless; and then, before Jonno’s limp form reached the ground, Sam hit him a third time. If the Oldchurch peasants hadn’t jumped on Sam and restrained him, he would have continued to lash out with that bloody spade until Jonno’s head was smashed to a pulp. He wanted to kill!” She realized she was crying, and wiped the tears away with her sleeve.

Ralph was staring at her with a horrified look.

“Where does the killer instinct come from, Ralph?” she said. “Look in your own black heart. Sam is your son. And, God forgive me, he’s mine.”

When Gwenda had gone, Ralph sat on the bed in the little chamber, staring at the flame of the candle. Was it possible? Gwenda would lie, if it suited her, of course; there was no question of trusting her. But Sam could be Ralph’s son as easily as Wulfric’s. They had both lain with Gwenda at the crucial time. The truth might never be known for sure.

Even the possibility that Sam might be his child was enough to fill Ralph’s heart with dread. Was he about to hang his own son? The dreadful punishment he had devised for Wulfric might be inflicted on himself.

It was already night. The hanging would take place at dawn. Ralph did not have long to decide.

He picked up the candle and left the little room. He had intended to satisfy a carnal desire there. Instead he had been given the shock of his life.

He went outside and crossed the courtyard to the cell block. On the ground floor of the building were offices for the sheriff’s deputies. He went inside and spoke to the man on guard duty. “I want to see the murderer, Sam Wigleigh.”

“Very good, my lord,” the jailer said. “I’ll show you the way.” He led Ralph into the next room, carrying a lamp.

There was a grating set in the floor, and a bad smell. Ralph looked down through the grating. The cell was nine or ten feet deep with stone walls and a dirt floor. There was no furniture: Sam sat on the floor with his back against the wall. Beside him was a wooden jug, presumably containing water. A small hole in the floor appeared to be the toilet. Sam glanced up, then looked away indifferently.

“Open up,” said Ralph.

The jailer unlocked the grating with a key. It swung up on a hinge.

“I want to go down.”

The jailer was surprised, but did not dare argue with an earl. He picked up a ladder that was leaning against the wall and slid it into the cell. “Take care, please, my lord,” he said nervously. “Remember, the villain has nothing to lose.”

Ralph climbed down, carrying his candle. The smell was disgusting, but he hardly cared. He reached the foot of the ladder and turned.

Sam looked up at him resentfully and said: “What do you want?”

Ralph stared at him. He crouched down and held the candle close to Sam’s face, studying his features, trying to compare them with the face he saw when he looked into a mirror.

“What is it?” Sam said, spooked by Ralph’s intense stare.

Ralph did not answer. Was this his own child? It could be, he thought. It could easily be. Sam was a good-looking boy, and Ralph had been called handsome in his youth, before his nose got broken. In court earlier, Ralph had thought that something about Sam’s face rang a bell, and now he concentrated, searching his memory, trying to think who Sam reminded him of. That straight nose, the dark-eyed gaze, the head of thick hair that girls would envy…

Then he got it.

Sam looked like Ralph’s mother, the late Lady Maud.

“Dear God,” he said, and it came out as a whisper.

“What?” said Sam, his voice betraying fear. “What is this?”

Ralph had to say something. “Your mother…” he began, then he trailed off. His throat was constricted with emotion, making it difficult for him to get words out. He tried again. “Your mother has pleaded for you… most eloquently.”

Sam looked wary and said nothing. He thought Ralph had come here to mock him.

“Tell me,” Ralph said. “When you hit Jonno with that spade… did you mean to kill him? You can be honest, you have nothing more to fear.”

“Of course I meant to kill him,” Sam said. “He was trying to take me in.”

Ralph nodded. “I would have felt the same,” he said. He paused, staring at Sam, then said it again. “I would have felt the same.”

He stood up, turned to the ladder, hesitated, then turned back and put the candle on the ground next to Sam. Then he climbed up.

The jailer replaced the grating and locked it.

Ralph said to him: “There will be no hanging. The prisoner will be pardoned. I will speak to the sheriff immediately.”

As he left the room, the jailer sneezed.

85

When Merthin and Caris returned from Shiring to Kingsbridge, they found that Lolla had gone missing.

Their long-standing house servants, Arn and Em, were waiting at the garden gate and looked as if they had been stationed there all day. Em began to speak but burst into incoherent sobs, and Arn had to break the news. “We can’t find Lolla,” he said, distraught. “We don’t know where she is.”

At first Merthin misunderstood. “She’ll be here by supper time,” he said. “Don’t upset yourself, Em.”

“But she didn’t come home last night, nor the night before,” Arn said.

Merthin realized then what they meant. She had run away. A blast of fear like a winter wind chilled his skin and gripped his heart. She was only sixteen. For a moment he could not think rationally. He just pictured her, half way between child and adult, with the intense dark-brown eyes and sensual mouth of her mother, and an expression of blithe false confidence.

When rationality returned to him, he asked himself what had gone wrong. He had been leaving Lolla in the care of Arn and Em for a few days at a time ever since she was five years old, and she had never come to any harm. Had something changed?

He realized that he had hardly spoken to her since Easter Sunday, two weeks ago, when he had taken her by the arm and pulled her away from her disreputable friends outside the White Horse. She had sulked upstairs while the family ate dinner, and had not emerged even when Sam was arrested. She had still been in a snit a few days later, when Merthin and Caris had kissed her goodbye and set out for Shiring.

Guilt stabbed him. He had treated her harshly, and driven her away. Was Silvia’s ghost watching, and despising him for his failure to care for their daughter?

The thought of Lolla’s disreputable friends came back to him. “That fellow Jake Riley is behind this,” he said. “Have you spoken to him, Arn?”

“No, master.”

“I’d better do that right away. Do you know where he lives?”

“He lodges next to the fishmonger’s behind St Paul’s church.”

Caris said to Merthin: “I’ll go with you.”

They crossed the bridge back into the city and headed west. The parish of St Paul took in the industrial premises along the waterfront: abattoirs, leather tanners, sawmills, manufactories, and the dyers that had sprung up like September mushrooms since the invention of Kingsbridge Scarlet. Merthin headed for the squat tower of St Paul’s church, visible over the low roofs of the houses. He found the fish shop by smell, and knocked at a large, run-down house next door.

It was opened by Sal Sawyers, poor widow of a jobbing carpenter who had died in the plague. “Jake comes and goes, alderman,” she said. “I haven’t seen him for a week. He can do as he pleases, so long as he pays the rent.”

Caris said: “When he left, was Lolla with him?”

Sal warily looked sideways at Merthin. “I don’t like to criticize,” she said.

Merthin said: “Please just tell me what you know. I won’t be offended.”

“She’s usually with him. She does anything Jake wants, I’ll say no more than that. If you look for him, you’ll find her.”

“Do you know where he might have gone?”

“He never says.”

“Can you think of anyone who might know?”

“He doesn’t bring his friends here, except for her. But I believe his pals are usually to be found at the White Horse.”

Merthin nodded. “We’ll try there. Thank you, Sal.”

“She’ll be all right,” Sal said. “She’s just going through a wild phase.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Merthin and Caris retraced their steps until they came to the White Horse, on the riverside near the bridge. Merthin recalled the orgy he had witnessed here at the height of the plague, when the dying Davey Whitehorse had given away all his ale. The place had stood empty for several years afterwards, but now it was once again a busy tavern. Merthin often wondered why it was popular. The rooms were cramped and dirty, and there were frequent fights. About once a year someone was killed there.

They went into a smoky parlour. It was mid-afternoon, but there were a dozen or so desultory drinkers sitting on benches. A small group was clustered around a backgammon board, and several small piles of silver pennies on the table indicated that money was being wagered on the outcome. A red-cheeked prostitute called Joy looked up hopefully at the newcomers, then saw who they were and relapsed into bored indolence. In a corner, a man was showing a woman an expensive-looking coat, apparently offering it for sale; but when he saw Merthin he folded the garment quickly and put it out of sight, and Merthin guessed it was stolen property.

The landlord, Evan, was eating a late dinner of fried bacon. He stood up, wiping his hands on his tunic, and said nervously: “Good day to you, alderman – an honour to have you in the house. May I draw you a pot of ale?”

“I’m looking for my daughter, Lolla,” Merthin said briskly.

“I haven’t seen her for a week,” said Evan.

Sal had said exactly the same about Jake, Merthin recalled. He said to Evan: “She may be with Jake Riley.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that they’re friendly,” Evan said tactfully. “He’s been gone about the same length of time.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“He’s a close-lipped type, is Jake,” said Evan. “If you asked him how far it was to Shiring, he’d shake his head and frown and say it was none of his business to know such things.”

The whore, Joy, had been listening to the conversation, and now she chipped in. “He’s open-handed, though,” she said. “Fair’s fair.”

Merthin gave her a hard look. “And where does his money come from?”

“Horses,” she said. “He goes around the villages buying foals from peasants, and sells them in the towns.”

He probably stole horses from unwary travellers, too, Merthin thought sourly. “Is that what he’s doing now – buying horses?”

Evan said: “Very likely. The big fair season is coming up. He could be acquiring his stock-in-trade.”

“And perhaps Lolla went with him.”

“Not wishing to give offence, alderman, but it’s quite likely.”

“It’s not you who has given offence,” Merthin said. He nodded a curt farewell and left the tavern, with Caris following.

“That’s what she’s done,” he said angrily. “She’s gone off with Jake. She probably thinks it’s a great adventure.”

“I’m afraid I think you’re right,” Caris said. “I hope she doesn’t become pregnant.”

“I wish that was the worst I feared.”

They headed automatically for home. Crossing the bridge, Merthin stopped at the highest point and looked out over the suburban rooftops to the forest beyond. His little girl was somewhere out there with a shady horse dealer. She was in danger, and there was nothing he could do to protect her.

When Merthin went to the cathedral the next morning, to check on the new tower, he found that all work had stopped. “Prior’s orders,” said Brother Thomas when Merthin questioned him. Thomas was almost sixty years old, and showing his age. His soldierly physique was bent and he shuffled around the precincts unsteadily. “There’s been a collapse in the south aisle,” he added.

Merthin glanced at Bartelmy French, a gnarled old mason from Normandy, who was sitting outside the lodge sharpening a chisel. Bartelmy shook his head in silent negation.

“That collapse was twenty-four years ago, Brother Thomas,” Merthin said.

“Ah, yes, you’re right,” said Thomas. “My memory’s not as good as it used to be, you know.”

Merthin patted his shoulder. “We’re all getting older.”

Bartelmy said: “The prior is up the tower, if you want to see him.”

Merthin certainly did. He went into the north transept, stepped through a small archway, and climbed a narrow spiral stair within the wall. As he passed from the old crossing into the new tower, the colour of the stones changed from the dark grey of storm clouds to the light pearl of the morning sky. It was a long climb: the tower was already more than three hundred feet high. However, he was used to it. Almost every day for eleven years he had climbed a stair that was higher each time. It occurred to him that Philemon, who was quite fat nowadays, must have had a compelling reason to drag his bulk up all these steps.

Near the top, Merthin passed through a chamber that housed the great wheel, a wooden winding mechanism twice as high as a man, used for hoisting stones, mortar and timber up to where they were needed. When the spire was finished the wheel would be left here permanently, to be used for repair work by future generations of builders, until the trumpets sounded on the Day of Judgement.

He emerged on top of the tower. A stiff, cold breeze was blowing, though none had been noticeable at ground level. A leaded walkway ran around the inside of the tower’s summit. Scaffolding stood around an octagonal hole, ready for the masons who would build the spire. Dressed stones were piled nearby, and a heap of mortar was drying up wastefully on a wooden board.

There were no workmen here. Prior Philemon stood on the far side with Harold Mason. They were deep in conversation, but stopped guiltily when Merthin came into view. He had to shout into the wind to make himself heard. “Why have you stopped the building?”

Philemon had his answer ready. “There’s a problem with your design.”

Merthin looked at Harold. “You mean some people can’t understand it.”

“Experienced people say it can’t be built,” Philemon said defiantly.

“Experienced people?” Merthin repeated scornfully. “Who in Kingsbridge is experienced? Who has built a bridge? Who has worked with the great architects of Florence? Who has seen Rome, Avignon, Paris, Rouen? Certainly not Harold here. No offence, Harold, but you’ve never even been to London.”

Harold said: “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s impossible to build an octagonal tower with no formwork.”

Merthin was about to say something sarcastic, but stopped himself. Philemon must have more than this, he realized. The prior had deliberately chosen to fight this battle. Therefore he must have weapons more formidable than the mere opinion of Harold Mason. He had presumably won some support among members of the guild – but how? Other builders who were prepared to say that Merthin’s spire was impossible must have been offered some incentive. That probably meant construction work for them. “What is it?” he said to Philemon. “What are you hoping to build?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Philemon blustered.

“You’ve got an alternative project, and you’ve offered Harold and his friends a piece of it. What’s the building?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A bigger palace for yourself? A new chapter house? It can’t be a hospital, we’ve already got three. Come on, you might as well tell me. Unless you’re ashamed of it.”

Philemon was stung into a response. “The monks wish to build a Lady chapel.”

“Ah.” That made sense. The cult of the Virgin was increasingly popular. The church hierarchy approved because the wave of piety associated with Mary counterbalanced the scepticism and heresy that had afflicted congregations since the plague. Numerous cathedrals and churches were adding a special small chapel at the east end – the holiest part of the building – dedicated to the Mother of God. Merthin did not like the architecture: on most churches, a Lady chapel looked like an afterthought, which of course it was.

What was Philemon’s motive? He was always trying to ingratiate himself with someone – that was his modus operandi. A Lady chapel at Kingsbridge would undoubtedly please conservative senior clergy.

This was the second move Philemon had made in that direction. On Easter Sunday, from the pulpit of the cathedral, he had condemned dissection of corpses. He was mounting a campaign, Merthin realized. But what was its purpose?

Merthin decided to do nothing more until he had figured out what Philemon was up to. Without saying anything further, he left the roof and started down the series of staircases and ladders to the ground.

Merthin arrived home at the dinner hour, and Caris came in from the hospital a few minutes later. “Brother Thomas is getting worse,” he said to Caris. “Is there anything that can be done for him?”

She shook her head. “There’s no cure for senility.”

“He told me the south aisle had collapsed as if it had happened yesterday.”

“That’s typical. He remembers the distant past but doesn’t know what’s going on today. Poor Thomas. He’ll probably deteriorate quite fast. But at least he’s in a familiar place. Monasteries don’t change much over the decades. His daily routine is probably the same as it has always been. That will help.”

As they sat down to mutton stew with leeks and mint, Merthin explained the morning’s developments. The two of them had been battling Kingsbridge priors for decades: first Anthony, then Godwyn, and now Philemon. They had thought that the granting of the borough charter would put an end to the constant jockeying. It had certainly improved matters, but it seemed Philemon had not given up yet.

“I’m not really worried about the spire,” Merthin said. “Bishop Henri will overrule Philemon, and order the building restarted, just as soon as he hears. Henri wants to be bishop of the tallest cathedral in England.”

“Philemon must know that,” Caris said thoughtfully.

“Perhaps he simply wants to make the gesture towards a Lady chapel, and get the credit for trying, while blaming his failure on someone else.”

“Perhaps,” Caris said doubtfully.

In Merthin’s mind there was a more important question. “But what is he really after?”

“Everything Philemon does is driven by the need to make himself feel important,” Caris said confidently. “My guess is he’s after a promotion.”

“What job could he have in mind? The archbishop of Monmouth seems to be dying, but surely Philemon can’t hope for that position?”

“He must know something we don’t.”

Before they could say any more, Lolla walked in.

Merthin’s first reaction was a feeling of relief so powerful that it brought tears to his eyes. She was back, and she was safe. He looked her up and down. She had no apparent injuries, she walked with a spring in her step, and her face showed only the usual expression of moody discontent.

Caris spoke first. “You’re back!” she said. “I’m so glad!”

“Are you?” Lolla said. She often pretended to believe that Caris did not like her. Merthin was not fooled, but Caris could be thrown into doubt, for she was sensitive about not being Lolla’s mother.

“We’re both glad,” Merthin said. “You gave us a scare.”

“Why?” said Lolla. She hung her cloak on a hook and sat at the table. “I was perfectly all right.”

“But we didn’t know that, so we were terribly worried.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Lolla said. “I can take care of myself.”

Merthin suppressed an angry retort. “I’m not sure you can,” he said as mildly as possible.

Caris stepped in to try to lower the temperature. “Where did you go?” she asked. “You’ve been away for two weeks.”

“Different places.”

Merthin said tightly: “Can you give us one or two examples?”

“Mudeford Crossing. Casterham. Outhenby.”

“And what have you been doing?”

“Is this the catechism?” she said petulantly. “Do I have to answer all these questions?”

Caris put a restraining hand on Merthin’s arm and said to Lolla: “We just want to know that you haven’t been in danger.”

Merthin said: “I’d also like to know who you’ve been travelling with.”

“Nobody special.”

“Does that mean Jake Riley?”

She shrugged and looked embarrassed. “Yes,” she said, as if it were a trivial detail.

Merthin had been ready to forgive and embrace her, but she was making that difficult. Trying to keep his voice neutral, he said: “What sleeping arrangements did you and Jake have?”

“That’s my business!” she cried.

“No, it’s not!” he shouted back. “It’s mine, too, and your stepmother’s. If you’re pregnant, who will care for your baby? Are you confident that Jake is ready to settle down and be a husband and father? Have you talked to him about that?”

“Don’t speak to me!” she yelled. Then she burst into tears and stomped up the stairs.

Merthin said: “Sometimes I wish we lived in one room – then she wouldn’t be able to pull that trick.”

“You weren’t very gentle with her,” Caris said with mild disapproval.

“What am I supposed to do?” Merthin said. “She talks as if she’s done nothing wrong!”

“She knows the truth, though. That’s why she’s crying.”

“Oh, hell,” he said.

There was a knock, and a novice monk put his head around the door. “Pardon me for disturbing you, alderman,” he said. “Sir Gregory Longfellow is at the priory, and would be grateful for a word with you, as soon as is convenient.”

“Damn,” said Merthin. “Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” the novice said, and left.

Merthin said to Caris: “Perhaps it’s just as well to give her time to cool off.”

“You, too,” Caris said.

“You’re not taking her side, are you?” he said with a touch of irritation.

She smiled and touched his arm. “I’m on your side, always,” she said. “But I remember what it was like to be a sixteen-year-old girl. She’s as worried as you are about her relationship with Jake. But she’s not admitting it, even to herself, because that would wound her pride. So she resents you for speaking the truth. She has constructed a fragile defence around her self-esteem, and you just tear it down.”

“What should I do?”

“Help her build a better fence.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“I’d better go and see Sir Gregory.” Merthin stood up.

Caris put her arms around him and kissed him on the lips. “You’re a good man doing your best, and I love you with all my heart,” she said.

That took the edge off his frustration, and he felt himself calm down as he strode across the bridge and up the main street to the priory. He did not like Gregory. The man was sly and unprincipled, willing to do anything for his master the king, just as Philemon had been when he served Godwyn as prior. Merthin wondered uneasily what Gregory wanted to discuss with him. It was probably taxes – always the king’s worry.

Merthin went first to the prior’s palace where Philemon, looking pleased with himself, told him that Sir Gregory was to be found in the monks’ cloisters to the south of the cathedral. Merthin wondered what Gregory had done to win himself the privilege of holding audience there.

The lawyer was getting old. His hair was white, and his tall figure was stooped. Deep lines had appeared like brackets either side of that sneering nose, and one of the blue eyes was cloudy. But the other eye saw sharply enough, and he recognized Merthin instantly, though they had not met for ten years. “Alderman,” he said. “The archbishop of Monmouth is dead.”

“Rest his soul,” Merthin said automatically.

“Amen. The king asked me, as I was passing through his borough of Kingsbridge, to give you his greetings, and tell you this important news.”

“I’m grateful. The death is not unexpected. The archbishop has been ill.” The king certainly had not asked Gregory to meet with Merthin purely to give him interesting information, he thought suspiciously.

“You’re an intriguing man, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Gregory said expansively. “I first met your wife more than twenty years ago. Since then I’ve seen the two of you slowly but surely take control of this town. And you’ve got everything you set your hearts on: the bridge, the hospital, the borough charter, and each other. You’re determined, and you’re patient.”

It was condescending, but Merthin was surprised to detect a grain of respect in Gregory’s flattery. He told himself to remain mistrustful: men such as Gregory praised only for a purpose.

“I’m on my way to see the monks of Abergavenny, who must vote for a new archbishop.” Gregory leaned back in his chair. “When Christianity first came to England, hundreds of years ago, monks elected their own superiors.” Explaining was an old man’s habit, Merthin reflected: the young Gregory would not have bothered. “Nowadays, of course, bishops and archbishops are too important and powerful to be chosen by small groups of pious idealists living detached from the world. The king makes his choice, and his holiness the pope ratifies the royal decision.”

Even I know it’s not that simple, Merthin thought. There’s usually some kind of power struggle. But he said nothing.

Gregory continued: “However, the ritual of the monks” election still goes on, and it is easier to control it than to abolish it. Hence my journey.”

“So you’re going to tell the monks whom to elect,” Merthin said.

“To put it bluntly, yes.”

“And what name will you give them?”

“Didn’t I say? It’s your bishop, Henri of Mons. Excellent man: loyal, trustworthy, never makes trouble.”

“Oh, dear.”

“You’re not pleased?” Gregory’s relaxed air evaporated, and he became keenly attentive.

Merthin realized that this was what Gregory had come for: to find out how the people of Kingsbridge – as represented by Merthin – would feel about what he was planning, and whether they would oppose him. He collected his thoughts. The prospect of a new bishop threatened the spire and the hospital. “Henri is the key to the balance of power in this town,” he said. “Ten years ago, a kind of armistice was agreed between the merchants, the monks and the hospital. As a result, all three have prospered mightily.” Appealing to Gregory’s interest – and the king’s – he added: “That prosperity is of course what enables us to pay such high taxes.”

Gregory acknowledged this with a dip of his head.

“The departure of Henri obviously puts into question the stability of our relationships.”

“It depends on who replaces him, I should have thought.”

“Indeed,” said Merthin. Now we come to the crux, he thought. He said: “Have you got anyone in mind?”

“The obvious candidate is Prior Philemon.”

“No!” Merthin was aghast. “Philemon! Why?”

“He’s a sound conservative, which is important to the church hierarchy in these times of scepticism and heresy.”

“Of course. Now I understand why he preached a sermon against dissection. And why he wants to build a Lady chapel.” I should have foreseen this, Merthin thought.

“And he has let it be known that he has no problem with taxation of the clergy – a constant source of friction between the king and some of his bishops.”

“Philemon has been planning this for some time.” Merthin was angry with himself for letting it sneak up on him.

“Since the archbishop fell ill, I imagine.”

“This is a catastrophe.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Philemon is quarrelsome and vengeful. If he becomes bishop he will create constant strife in Kingsbridge. We have to prevent him.” He looked Gregory in the eye. “Why did you come here to forewarn me?” As soon as he had asked the question, the answer came to him. “You don’t want Philemon either. You didn’t need me to tell you what a troublemaker he is – you knew already. But you can’t just veto him, because he has already won support among senior clergy.” Gregory just smiled enigmatically – which Merthin took to mean he was right. “So what do you want me to do?”

“If I were you,” Gregory said, “I’d start by finding another candidate to put up as the alternative to Philemon.”

So that was it. Merthin nodded pensively. “I’ll have to think about this,” he said.

“Please do.” Gregory stood up, and Merthin realized the meeting was over. “And let me know what you decide,” Gregory added.

Merthin left the priory and walked back to Leper Island, musing. Who could he propose as bishop of Kingsbridge? The townspeople had always got on well with Archdeacon Lloyd, but he was too old – they might succeed in getting him elected only to have to do the whole thing again in a year’s time.

He had not thought of anyone by the time he got home. He found Caris in the parlour and was about to ask her when she pre-empted him. Standing up, with a pale face and a frightened expression, she said: “Lolla’s gone again.”

86

The priests said Sunday was a day of rest, but it had never been so for Gwenda. Today, after church in the morning and then dinner, she was working with Wulfric in the garden behind their house. It was a good garden, half an acre with a hen house, a pear tree and a barn. In the vegetable patch at the far end, Wulfric was digging furrows and Gwenda sowing peas.

The boys had gone to another village for a football game, their usual recreation on Sundays. Football was the peasant equivalent of the nobility’s tournaments: a mock battle in which the injuries were sometimes real. Gwenda just prayed her sons would come home intact.

Today Sam returned early. “The ball burst,” he said grumpily.

“Where’s Davey?” Gwenda asked.

“He wasn’t there.”

“I thought he was with you.”

“No, he quite often goes off on his own.”

“I didn’t know that.” Gwenda frowned. “Where does he go?”

Sam shrugged. “He doesn’t tell me.”

Perhaps he was seeing a girl, Gwenda thought. Davey was close about all sorts of things. If it was a girl, who was she? There were not many eligible girls in Wigleigh. The survivors of the plague had remarried quickly, as if eager to repopulate the land; and those born since were too young. Perhaps he was meeting someone from the next village, at a rendezvous in the forest. Such assignations were as common as heartache.

When Davey came home, a couple of hours later, Gwenda confronted him. He made no attempt to deny that he had been sneaking off. “I’ll show you what I’ve been doing, if you like,” he said. “I can’t keep it secret for ever. Come with me.”

They all went, Gwenda, Wulfric and Sam. The Sabbath was observed to the extent that no one worked in the fields, and the Hundredacre was deserted as the four of them walked across it in a blustery spring breeze. A few strips looked neglected: there were still villagers who had more land than they could cope with. Annet was one such – she had only her eighteen-year-old daughter Amabel to help her, unless she could hire labour, which was still difficult. Her strip of oats was getting weedy.

Davey led them half a mile into the forest and stopped at a clearing off the beaten track. “This is it,” he said.

For a moment Gwenda did not know what he was talking about. She was standing on the edge of a nondescript patch of ground with low bushes growing between the trees. Then she looked again at the bushes. They were a species she had never seen before. It had a squarish stem with pointed leaves growing in clusters of four. The way it had covered the ground made her think it was a creeping plant. A pile of uprooted vegetation at one side showed that Davey had been weeding. “What is it?” she said.

“It’s called madder. I bought the seeds from a sailor that time we went to Melcombe.”

“Melcombe?” Gwenda said. “That was three years ago.”

“That’s how long it’s taken.” Davey smiled. “At first I was afraid it wouldn’t grow at all. He told me it needed sandy soil and would tolerate light shade. I dug over the clearing and planted the seeds, but the first year I got only three or four feeble plants. I thought I’d wasted my money. Then, the second year, the roots spread underground and sent up shoots, and this year it’s all over the place.”

Gwenda was astonished that her child could have kept this from her for so long. “But what use is madder?” she said. “Does it taste good?”

Davey laughed. “No, it’s not edible. You dig up the roots, dry them and grind them to a powder that makes a red dye. It’s very costly. Madge Webber in Kmgsbridge pays seven shillings for a gallon.”

That was an astonishing price, Gwenda reflected. Wheat, the most expensive grain, sold for about seven shillings a quarter, and a quarter was sixty-four gallons. “This is sixty-four times as precious as wheat!” she said.

Davey smiled. “That’s why I planted it.”

“Why you planted what?” said a new voice. They all turned to see Nathan Reeve, standing beside a hawthorn tree as bent and twisted as he was. He wore a triumphant grin: he had caught them red-handed.

Davey was quick with an answer. “This is a medicinal herb called… hagwort,” he said. Gwenda could tell he was improvising, but Nate would not be sure. “It’s good for my mother’s wheezy chest.”

Nate looked at Gwenda. “I didn’t know she had a wheezy chest.”

“In the winter,” Gwenda said.

“A herb?” Nate said sceptically. “There’s enough here to dose all Kingsbridge. And you’ve been weeding it, to get more.”

“I like to do things properly,” Davey said.

It was a feeble response, and Nate ignored it. “This is an unauthorized crop,” he said. “First of all, serfs need permission for what they plant – they can’t go raising anything they like. That would lead to total chaos. Secondly, they can’t cultivate the lord’s forest, even by planting herbs.”

None of them had any answer to that. Those were the rules. It was frustrating: often peasants knew they could make money by growing non-standard crops that were in demand and fetched high prices: hemp for rope, flax for expensive underclothing, or cherries to delight rich ladies. But many lords and their bailiffs refused permission, out of instinctive conservatism.

Nate’s expression was venomous. “One son a runaway and a murderer,” he said. “The other defies his lord. What a family.”

He was entitled to feel angry, Gwenda thought. Sam had killed Jonno and got away with it. Nate would undoubtedly hate her family to his dying day.

Nate bent down and roughly pulled a plant out of the ground. “This will come before the manor court,” he said with satisfaction; and he turned and limped away through the trees.

Gwenda and her family followed. Davey was undaunted. “Nate will impose a fine, and I’ll pay it,” he said. “I’ll still make money.”

“What if he orders the crop destroyed?” Gwenda said.

“How?”

“It could be burned, or trampled.”

Wulfric put in: “Nate wouldn’t do that. The village wouldn’t stand for it. A fine is the traditional way to deal with this.”

Gwenda said: “I just worry about what Earl Ralph will say.”

Davey made a deprecatory gesture with his hand. “No reason why the earl should find out about a little thing like this.”

“Ralph takes a special interest in our family.”

“Yes, he does,” Davey said thoughtfully. “I still don’t understand what made him pardon Sam.”

The boy was not stupid. Gwenda said: “Perhaps Lady Philippa persuaded him.”

Sam said: “She remembers you, mother. She told me that when I was at Merthin’s house.”

“I must have done something to endear myself to her,” Gwenda said, extemporising. “Or it could be that she just felt compassion, one mother for another.” It was not much of a story, but Gwenda did not have a better one.

In the days since Sam had been released they had had several conversations about what might account for Ralph’s pardon. Gwenda just pretended to be as perplexed as everyone else. Fortunately Wulfric had never been the suspicious type.

They reached their house. Wulfric looked at the sky, said there was another good hour of light left and went into the garden to finish sowing peas. Sam volunteered to help him. Gwenda sat down to mend a rip in Wulfric’s hose. Davey sat opposite Gwenda and said: “I’ve got another secret to tell you.”

She smiled. She did not mind him having a secret if he told his mother. “Go on.”

“I have fallen in love.”

“That’s wonderful!” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I’m very happy for you. What’s she like?”

“She’s beautiful.”

Gwenda had been speculating, before she found out about the madder, that Davey might be meeting a girl from another village. Her intuition had been right. “I had a feeling about this,” she said.

“Did you?” He seemed anxious.

“Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong. It just occurred to me that you might be meeting someone.”

“We go to the clearing where I’m growing the madder. That’s sort of where it started.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“More than a year.”

“It’s serious, then.”

“I want to marry her.”

“I’m so pleased.” She looked fondly at him. “You’re still only twenty, but that’s old enough if you’ve found the right person.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“What village is she from?”

“This one, Wigleigh.”

“Oh?” Gwenda was surprised. She had not been able to think of a likely girl here. “Who is she?”

“Mother, it’s Amabel.”

“No!”

“Don’t shout.”

“Not Annet’s daughter!”

“You’re not to be angry.”

“Not to be angry!” Gwenda struggled to calm herself. She was as shocked as if she had been slapped. She took several deep breaths. “Listen to me,” she said. “We have been at odds with that family for more than twenty years. That cow Annet broke your father’s heart and never left him alone afterwards.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s all in the past.”

“It’s not – Annet still flirts with your father every chance she gets!”

“That’s your problem, not ours.”

Gwenda stood up, her sewing falling from her lap. “How can you do this to me? That bitch would be part of our family! My grandchildren would be her grandchildren. She’d be in and out of this house all the time, making a fool of your father with her coquettish ways and then laughing at me.”

“I’m not going to marry Annet.”

“Amabel will be just as bad. Look at her – she’s just like her mother!”

“She’s not, actually-”

“You can’t do this! I absolutely forbid it!”

“You can’t forbid it, Mother.”

“Oh, yes I can – you’re too young.”

“That won’t last for ever.”

Wulfric’s voice came from the doorway. “What’s all the shouting?”

“Davey says he wants to marry Annet’s daughter – but I won’t permit it.” Gwenda’s voice rose to a shriek. “Never! Never! Never!”

Earl Ralph surprised Nathan Reeve when he said he wanted to look at Davey’s strange crop. Nate mentioned the matter in passing, on a routine visit to Earlscastle. A bit of unlicensed cultivation in the forest was a trivial breach of the rules, regularly dealt with by a fine. Nate was a shallow man, interested in bribes and commissions, and he had little conception of the depth of Ralph’s obsession with Gwenda’s family: his hatred of Wulfric, his lust for Gwenda, and now the likelihood that he was Sam’s real father. So Nate was startled when Ralph said he would inspect the crop next time he was in the neighbourhood.

Ralph rode with Alan Fernhill from Earlscastle to Wigleigh on a fine day between Easter and Whitsun. When they reached the small timber manor house, there was the old housekeeper, Vira, bent and grey now but still hanging on. They ordered her to prepare their dinner, then found Nate and followed him into the forest.

Ralph recognized the plant. He was no farmer, but he knew the difference between one bush and another, and on his travels with the army he had observed many crops that did not grow naturally in England. He leaned down from his saddle and pulled up a handful. “This is called madder,” he said. “I’ve seen it in Flanders. It’s grown for the red dye that has the same name.”

Nate said: “He told me it was a herb called hagwort, used to cure a wheezy chest.”

“I believe it does have medicinal properties, but that’s not why people cultivate it. What will his fine be?”

“A shilling would be the usual amount.”

“It’s not enough.”

Nate looked nervous. “So much trouble is caused, lord, when these customs are flouted. I would rather not-”

“Never mind,” Ralph said. He kicked his horse and trotted through the middle of the clearing, trampling the bushes. “Come on, Alan,” he said. Alan imitated him, and the two of them cantered around in tight circles, flattening the growth. After a few minutes all the shrubs were destroyed.

Ralph could see that Nate was shocked by the waste, even though the planting was illegal. Peasants never liked to see crops despoiled. Ralph had learned in France that the best way of demoralizing the population was to burn the harvest in the fields.

“That will do,” he said, quickly getting bored. He was irritated by Davey’s insolence in planting this crop, but that was not the main reason he had come to Wigleigh. The truth was that he wanted to see Sam again.

As they rode back to the village he scanned the fields, looking for a tall young man with thick dark hair. Sam would stand out, because of his height, among these stunted serfs hunched over their spades. He saw him, at a distance, in Brookfield. He reined in and peered across the windy landscape at the twenty-two-year-old son he had never known.

Sam and the man he thought was his father – Wulfric – were ploughing with a horse-drawn light plough. Something was wrong, for they kept stopping and adjusting the harness. When they were together it was easy to see the differences between them. Wulfric’s hair was tawny, Sam’s dark; Wulfric was barrel-chested, ox-like, where Sam was broad-shouldered but lean, like a horse; Wulfric’s movements were slow and careful, but Sam was quick and graceful.

It was the oddest feeling to look at a stranger and think: my son. Ralph believed himself immune to womanish emotions. If he had been subject to feelings of compassion or regret he could not have lived as he had. But the discovery of Sam threatened to unman him.

He tore himself away, and cantered back to the village; then he succumbed again to curiosity and sentiment, and sent Nate to find Sam and bring him to the manor house.

He was not sure what he intended to do with the boy: talk to him, tease him, invite him to join them for dinner, or what. He might have foreseen that Gwenda would not leave him free to choose. She showed up with Nate and Sam, and Wulfric and Davey followed them in. “What do you want with my son?” she demanded, speaking to Ralph as if he were an equal rather than her overlord.

Ralph spoke without forethought. “Sam was not born to be a serf tilling the fields.” he said. He saw Alan Fernhill look at him in surprise.

Gwenda looked puzzled. “Only God knows what we are born for,” she said, playing for time.

“When I want to know about God, I’ll ask a priest, not you,” Ralph said to her. “Your son has something of the mettle of a fighting man. I don’t need to pray to see that – it’s obvious to me, as it would be to any veteran of the wars.”

“Weil, he’s not a fighting man, he’s a peasant, and the son of a peasant, and his destiny is to grow crops and raise livestock like his father.”

“Never mind his father.” Ralph remembered what Gwenda had said to him in the sheriff’s castle at Shiring, when she had persuaded him to pardon Sam. “Sam has the killer instinct,” he said. “It’s dangerous in a peasant, but priceless in a soldier.”

Gwenda looked scared as she began to divine Ralph’s purpose. “What are you getting at?”

Ralph realized where this chain of logic was leading him. “Let Sam be useful, rather than dangerous. Let him learn the arts of war.”

“Ridiculous, he’s too old.”

“He’s twenty-two. It’s late, but he’s fit and strong. He can do it.”

“I don’t see how.”

Gwenda was pretending to find practical objections, but he could see through her simulation, and knew that she hated the idea with all her heart. That made him all the more determined. With a smile of triumph he said: “Easily enough. He can be a squire. He can come and live at Earlscastle.”

Gwenda looked as if she had been stabbed. Her eyes closed for a moment, and her olive-skinned face paled. She mouthed the word “No” but no sound came out.

“He’s been with you for twenty-two years,” Ralph said. “That’s long enough.” Now it’s my turn, he thought, but instead he said: “Now he’s a man.”

Because Gwenda was temporarily silent, Wulfric spoke up. “We won’t permit it,” he said. “We are his parents, and we do not consent to this.”

“I didn’t ask for your consent,” Ralph said contemptuously. “I’m your earl, and you are my serfs. I don’t request, I command.”

Nate Reeve put in: “Besides, Sam is over the age of twenty-one, so the decision is his, not his father’s.”

Suddenly they all turned and looked at Sam.

Ralph was not sure what to expect. Becoming a squire was something many young men of all classes dreamed about, but he did not know whether Sam was one of them. Life in the castle was luxurious and exciting, by comparison with breaking your back in the fields; but, on the other hand, men-at-arms died young, or – worse than that – came home crippled, to live the rest of their miserable days begging outside taverns.

However, as soon as Ralph saw Sam’s face he knew the truth. Sam was smiling broadly, and his eyes gleamed with eagerness. He could hardly wait to go.

Gwenda found her voice. “Don’t do it, Sam!” she said. “Don’t be tempted. Don’t let your mother see you blinded by an arrow, or mutilated by the swords of French knights, or crippled by the hooves of their warhorses!”

Wulfric said: “Don’t go, son. Stay in Wigleigh and live a long life.”

Sam began to look doubtful.

Ralph said: “All right, lad. You’ve listened to your mother, and to the peasant father who raised you. But the decision is yours. What will you do? Live out your life here in Wigleigh, tilling the fields alongside your brother? Or escape?”

Sam paused only for a moment. He looked guiltily at Wulfric and Gwenda, then turned to Ralph. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll be a squire, and thank you, my lord!”

“Good lad,” Ralph said.

Gwenda began to cry. Wulfric put his arm around her. Looking up at Ralph, he said: “When shall he go?”

“Today,” Ralph said. “He can ride back to Earlscastle with me and Alan after dinner.”

“Not so soon!” Gwenda cried.

No one took any notice of her.

Ralph said to Sam: “Go home and fetch anything you want to bring with you. Have dinner with your mother. Come back and wait for me in the stables. Meanwhile, Nate can requisition a mount to carry you to Earlscastle.” He turned away, having finished with Sam and his family. “Now, where’s my dinner?”

Wulfric and Gwenda went out with Sam, but Davey stayed behind. Had he already found out that his crop had been trampled? Or was it something else? “What do you want?” Ralph said.

“Lord, I have a boon to ask.”

This was almost too good to be true. The insolent peasant who had planted madder in the woods without permission was now a supplicant. What a satisfying day this was turning out to be. “You can’t be a squire, you’ve got your mother’s build,” Ralph told him, and Alan laughed.

“I want to marry Amabel, the daughter of Annet,” said the young man.

“That won’t please your mother.”

“I will be of age in less than a year.”

Ralph knew all about Annet, of course. He had nearly been hanged for her sake. His history was entwined with hers almost as much as with Gwenda’s. He recalled that all her family had died in the plague. “Annet still has some of the lands her father held.”

“Yes, lord, and she is willing for them to be transferred to me when I marry her daughter.”

Such a request would not normally have been refused, although all lords would charge a tax, called an entry fee, on the transfer. However, there was no obligation on a lord to consent. The right of lords to refuse such requests on a whim, and blight the course of a serf’s life, was one of the peasants’ greatest gripes. But it provided the ruler with a means of discipline that could be extraordinarily effective.

“No,” said Ralph. “I will not transfer the land to you.” He grinned. “You and your bride can eat madder.”

87

Caris had to prevent Philemon becoming bishop. This was his boldest move yet, but he had made his preparations carefully, and he had a chance. If he succeeded, he would have control of the hospital again, giving him the power to destroy her life’s work. But he could do worse than that. He would revive the blind orthodoxy of the past. He would appoint hard-hearted priests like himself in the villages, close schools for girls and preach sermons against dancing.

She had no say in the choice of a bishop, but there were ways to exert pressure.

She began with Bishop Henri.

She and Merthin travelled to Shiring to see the bishop in his palace. On the way, Merthin stared at every dark-haired girl that came into view, and when there was no one he scanned the woods at the side of the road. He was looking for Lolla, but they reached Shiring without seeing any sign of her.

The bishop’s palace was on the main square, opposite the church and beside the Wool Exchange. It was not a market day, so the square was clear but for the scaffold that stood there permanently, a stark warning to villains of what the people of the county did to those who broke the law.

The palace was an unpretentious stone building with a hall and chapel on the ground floor and a series of offices and private apartments upstairs. Bishop Henri had imposed upon the place a style that Caris thought was probably French. Each room looked like a painting. The place was not decorated extravagantly, like Philemon’s palace in Kingsbridge, where the profusion of rugs and jewels suggested a robber’s cave. However, there was something pleasantly artful about everything in Henri’s house: a silver candlestick placed to catch the light from a window; the polished gleam of an ancient oak table; spring flowers in the cold fireplace; a small tapestry of David and Jonathan on the wall.

Bishop Henri was not an enemy, but he was not quite an ally either, Caris thought nervously as they waited for him in the hall. He would probably say that he tried to rise above Kingsbridge quarrels. She, more cynically, thought that whatever decision he had to make, he remained unshakeably focused on his own interests. He disliked Philemon, but he might not allow that to affect his judgement.

Henri came in followed, as always, by Canon Claude. The two of them did not seem to age. Henri was a little older than Caris, and Claude perhaps ten years younger, but they both looked like boys. Caris had noticed that clergy often aged well, better than aristocrats. She suspected it was because most priests – with some notorious exceptions – led lives of moderation. Their regime of fasting obliged them to eat fish and vegetables on Fridays and saints’ days and all through Lent, and in theory they were never allowed to get drunk. By contrast, noblemen and their wives indulged in orgies of meat-eating and heroic wine-drinking. That might be why their faces became lined, their skin flaky and their bodies bent, while clerics stayed fit and spry later into their quiet, austere lives.

Merthin congratulated Henri on having been nominated archbishop of Monmouth, then got straight to the point. “Prior Philemon has stopped work on the tower.”

Henri said with studied neutrality: “Any reason?”

“There’s a pretext, and a reason,” Merthin said. “The pretext is a fault in the design.”

“And what is the alleged fault?”

“He says an octagonal spire can’t be built without formwork. It is generally true, but I’ve found a way around it.”

“Which is…?”

“Rather simple. I will build a round spire, which will need no formwork, then give its exterior a cladding of thin stones and mortar in the shape of an octagon. Visually, it will be an octagonal spire, but structurally it will be a cone.”

“Have you told Philemon this?”

“No. If I do, he’ll find another pretext.”

“What is his real reason?”

“He wants to build a Lady chapel instead.”

“Ah.”

“It’s part of a campaign to ingratiate himself with senior clergy. He preached a sermon against dissection when Archdeacon Reginald was there. And he has told the king’s advisers that he will not campaign against taxation of the clergy.”

“What is he up to?”

“He wants to be bishop of Shiring.”

Henri raised his eyebrows. “Philemon always had nerve, I’ll give him that.”

Claude spoke for the first time. “How do you know?”

“Gregory Longfellow told me.”

Claude looked at Henri and said: “Gregory would know if anyone does.”

Caris could tell that Henri and Claude had not anticipated that Philemon would be so ambitious. To make sure they did not overlook the significance of the revelation, she said: “If Philemon gets his wish, you as archbishop of Monmouth will have endless work adjudicating disputes between Bishop Philemon and the townspeople of Kingsbridge. You know how much friction there has been in the past.”

Claude said: “We certainly do.”

“I’m glad we’re in agreement,” Merthin said.

Thinking aloud, Claude said: “We must put forward an alternative candidate.”

That was what Caris had hoped he would say. “We have someone in mind,” she said.

Claude said: “Who?”

“You.”

There was a silence. Caris could tell that Claude liked the idea. She guessed he might be quietly envious of Henri’s promotion, and wondering whether it was his destiny always to be a kind of assistant to Henri. He could easily cope with the post of bishop. He knew the diocese well and handled most of the practical administration already.

However, both men were now surely thinking about their personal lives. She had no doubt they were all but husband and wife: she had seen them kissing. But they were decades past the first flush of romance, and her intuition told her they could tolerate a part-time separation.

She said: “You would still be working together a good deal.”

Claude said: “The archbishop will have many reasons to visit Kingsbridge and Shiring.”

Henri said: “And the bishop of Kingsbridge will need to come to Monmouth often.”

Claude said: “It would be a great honour to be bishop.” With a twinkle in his eye he added: “Especially under you, archbishop.”

Henri looked away, pretending not to notice the double meaning. “I think it’s a splendid idea,” he said.

Merthin said: “The Kingsbridge guild will back Claude – I can guarantee that. But you, Archbishop Henri, will have to put the suggestion to the king.”

“Of course.”

Caris said: “If I may make one suggestion?”

“Please.”

“Find another post for Philemon. Propose him as, I don’t know, archdeacon of Lincoln. Something he would like, but that would take him many miles from here.”

“That’s a sound idea,” Henri said. “If he’s up for two posts, it weakens his case for either one. I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”

Claude stood up. “This is all very exciting,” he said. “Will you have dinner with us?”

A servant came in and addressed Caris. “There’s someone asking for you, mistress,” the man said. “It’s only a boy, but he seems distressed.”

Henri said: “Let him come in.”

A boy of about thirteen appeared. He was dirty, but his clothes were not cheap, and Caris guessed he came from a family that was comfortably off but suffering some kind of crisis. “Will you come to my house, Mother Caris?”

“I’m not a nun any more, child, but what’s the problem?”

The boy spoke fast. “My father and mother are ill and so is my brother, and my mother heard someone say you were at the bishop’s palace and said to fetch you, and she knows you help the poor but she can pay, but will you please come, please?”

This type of request was not unusual, and Caris carried a leather case of medical supplies with her wherever she went. “Of course I’ll come, lad,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Giles Spicers, mother, and I’m to wait and bring you.”

“All right.” Caris turned to the bishop. “Go ahead with your dinner, please. I’ll join you as soon as I can.” She picked up her case and followed the boy out.

Shiring owed its existence to the sheriff’s castle on the hill, just as Kingsbridge did to the priory. Near the market square were the grand houses of the leading citizens, the wool merchants and sheriff’s deputies and royal officials such as the coroner. A little farther out were the homes of moderately prosperous traders and craftsmen, goldsmiths and tailors and apothecaries. Giles’s father was a dealer in spices, as his name indicated, and Giles led Caris to a street in this neighbourhood. Like most houses of this class, it had a stone-built ground floor that served as warehouse and shop, and flimsier timber living quarters above. Today the shop was closed and locked. Giles led Caris up the outside staircase.

She smelled the familiar odour of sickness as soon as she walked in. Then she hesitated. There was something special about the smell, something that struck a chord in her memory that for some reason made her feel very frightened.

Rather than ponder it, she walked through the living room into the bedroom, and there she found the dreadful answer.

Three people lay on mattresses around the room: a woman of her own age, a slightly older man and an adolescent boy. The man was farthest gone in sickness. He lay moaning and sweating in a fever. The open neck of his shirt showed that he had a rash of purple-black spots on his chest and throat. There was blood on his lips and nostrils.

He had the plague.

“It’s come back,” said Caris. “God help me.”

For a moment fear paralysed her. She stood motionless, staring at the scene, feeling powerless. She had always known, in theory, that the plague might return – that was half the reason she had written her book – but even so she was not prepared for the shock of once again seeing that rash, that fever, that nosebleed.

The woman lifted herself on one elbow. She was not so far gone: she had the rash and the fever, but did not appear to be bleeding. “Give me something to drink, for the love of God,” she said.

Giles picked up a jug of wine, and at last Caris’s mind started to work and her body unfroze. “Don’t give her wine – it will make her thirstier,” she said. “I saw a barrel of ale in the other room – draw her a cup of that.”

The woman focused on Caris. “You’re the prioress, aren’t you?” she said. Caris did not correct her. “People say you’re a saint. Can you make my family well?”

“I’ll try, but I’m not a saint, just a woman who has observed people in sickness and health.” Caris took from her bag a strip of linen and tied it over her mouth and nose. She had not seen a case of the plague for ten years, but she had got into the habit of taking this precaution whenever she dealt with patients whose illness might be catching. She moistened a clean rag with rose water and bathed the woman’s face. As always, the action soothed the patient.

Giles came back with a cup of ale, and the woman drank. Caris said to him: “Let them have as much to drink as they want, but give them ale or watered wine.”

She moved to the father, who did not have long to live. He was not speaking coherently and his eyes failed to focus on Caris. She bathed his face, cleaning the dried blood from around his nose and mouth. Finally she attended to Giles’s elder brother. He had only recently succumbed, and was still sneezing, but he was old enough to realize how seriously ill he was, and he looked terrified.

When she had finished she said to Giles: “Try to keep them comfortable and give them drinks. There’s nothing else you can do. Do you have any relations? Uncles or cousins?”

“They’re all in Wales.”

She made a mental note to warn Bishop Henri that he might need to make arrangements for an orphan boy.

“Mother said to pay you,” the boy said.

“I haven’t done much for you,” Caris said. “You can pay me sixpence.”

There was a leather purse beside his mother’s bed. He took out six silver pennies.

The woman raised herself again. Speaking more calmly now, she said: “What’s wrong with us?”

“I’m sorry,” said Caris. “It’s the plague.”

The woman nodded fatalistically. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Don’t you recognize the symptoms from last time?”

“We were living in a small town in Wales – we escaped it. Are we all going to die?”

Caris did not believe in deceiving people about such important questions. “A few people survive it,” she said. “Not many, though.”

“May God have mercy on us, then,” said the woman.

Caris said: “Amen.”

All the way back to Kingsbridge, Caris brooded on the plague. It would spread, of course, just as fast as last time. It would kill thousands. The prospect filled her with rage. It was like the senseless carnage of war, except that war was caused by men, and the plague was not. What was she going to do? She could not sit back and watch as the events of thirteen years ago were cruelly repeated.

There was no cure for the plague, but she had discovered ways to slow its murderous progress. As her horse jogged the well-worn road through the forest, she thought over what she knew about the illness and how to combat it. Merthin was quiet, recognizing her mood, probably guessing accurately what she was thinking about.

When they got home, she explained to him what she wanted to do. “There will be opposition,” he warned. “Your plan is drastic. Those who did not lose family and friends last time may imagine they are invulnerable, and say you’re overreacting.”

“That’s where you can help me,” she said.

“In that case, I recommend we divide up the potential objectors and deal with them separately.”

“All right.”

“You have three groups to win over: the guild, the monks and the nuns. Let’s start with the guild. I’ll call a meeting – and I won’t invite Philemon.”

Nowadays the guild met in the Cloth Exchange, a large new stone building on the main street. It enabled traders to do business even in bad weather. It had been paid for by profits from Kingsbridge Scarlet.

But before the guild convened, Caris and Merthin met individually with the leading members, to win their support in advance, a technique Merthin had developed long ago. His motto was: “Never call a meeting until the result is a foregone conclusion.”

Caris herself went to see Madge Webber.

Madge had married again. Much to everyone’s amusement, she had enchanted a villager as handsome as her first husband and fifteen years her junior. His name was Anselm, and he seemed to adore her, though she was as plump as ever and covered her grey hair with a selection of exotic caps. Even more surprising, in her forties she had conceived again and given birth to a healthy baby girl, Selma, now eight years old and attending the nuns’ school. Motherhood had never kept Madge from doing business, and she continued to dominate the market in Kingsbridge Scarlet, with Anselm as her lieutenant.

Her home was still the large house on the main street that she and Mark had moved into when she first began to profit from weaving and dyeing. Caris found her and Anselm taking delivery of a consignment of red cloth, trying to find room for it in the overcrowded storeroom on the ground floor. “I’m stocking up for the Fleece Fair,” Madge explained.

Caris waited while she checked the delivery, then they went upstairs, leaving Anselm in charge of the shop. As Caris entered the living room she was vividly reminded of the day, thirteen years ago, when she had been summoned here to see Mark – the first Kingsbridge victim of the plague. She suddenly felt depressed.

Madge noticed her expression. “What is it?” she said.

You could not hide things from women the way you could from men. “I walked in here thirteen years ago because Mark was ill,” Caris said.

Madge nodded. “That was the beginning of the worst time of my life,” she said in her matter-of-fact voice. “That day, I had a wonderful husband and four healthy children. Three months later I was a childless widow with nothing to live for.”

“Days of grief,” Caris said.

Madge went to the sideboard, where there were cups and a jug, but instead of offering Caris a drink she stood staring at the wall. “Shall I tell you something strange?” she said. “After they died, I couldn’t say Amen to the paternoster.” She swallowed, and her voice went quieter. “I know what the Latin means, you see. My father taught me. ‘Fiat voluntas tua: Thy will be done.’ I couldn’t say that. God had taken my family, and that was sufficient torture – I would not acquiesce in it.” Tears came to her eyes as she remembered. “I didn’t want God’s will to prevail, I wanted my children back. ‘Thy will be done.’ I knew I’d go to hell, but still I couldn’t say Amen.”

Caris said. “The plague has come back.”

Madge staggered, and clutched the sideboard for support. Her solid figure suddenly looked frail, and as the confidence went from her face she appeared old. “No,” she said.

Caris pulled a bench forward and held Madge’s arm while she sat on it. “I’m sorry to shock you,” she said.

“No,” Madge said again. “It can’t come back. I can’t lose Anselm and Selma. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.” She looked so white and drawn that Caris began to fear she might suffer some kind of attack.

Caris poured wine from the jug into a cup. She gave it to Madge, who drank it automatically. A little of her colour came back.

“We understand it better now,” Caris said. “Perhaps we can fight it.”

“Fight it? How can we do that?”

“That’s what I’ve come to tell you. Are you feeling a little better?”

Madge met Caris’s eye at last. “Fight it,” she said. “Of course that’s what we must do. Tell me how.”

“We have to close the city. Shut the gates, man the walls, prevent anyone coming in.”

“But the city has to eat.”

“People will bring supplies to Leper Island. Merthin will act as middleman, and pay them – he contracted the plague last time and survived, and no one has ever got it twice. Traders will leave their goods on the bridge. Then, when they have gone, people will come out from the city and get the food.”

“Could people leave the city?”

“Yes, but they couldn’t come back.”

“What about the Fleece Fair?”

“That may be the hardest part,” Caris said. “It must be cancelled.”

“But Kingsbridge merchants will lose hundreds of pounds!”

“It’s better than dying.”

“If we do as you say, will we avoid the plague? Will my family survive?”

Caris hesitated, resisting the temptation to tell a reassuring lie. “I can’t promise,” she said. “The plague may already have reached us. There may be someone right now dying alone in a hovel near the waterfront, with nobody to get help. So I fear we may not escape entirely. But I believe my plan gives you the best chance of still having Anselm and Selma by your side at Christmas.”

“Then we’ll do it,” Madge said decisively.

“Your support is crucial,” Caris said. “Frankly, you will lose more money than anyone else from the cancellation of the fair. For that reason, people are more likely to believe you. I need you to say how serious it is.”

“Don’t worry,” said Madge. “I’ll tell them.”

“A very sound idea,” said Prior Philemon.

Merthin was surprised. He could not remember a time when Philemon had agreed readily with a proposal of the guild’s. “Then you will support it,” he said, to make sure he had heard aright.

“Yes, indeed,” said the prior. He was eating a bowl of raisins, stuffing handfuls into his mouth as fast as he could chew them. He did not offer Merthin any. “Of course,” he said, “it wouldn’t apply to monks.”

Merthin sighed. He might have known better. “On the contrary, it applies to everyone,” he said.

“No, no,” said Philemon, in the tone of one who instructs a child. “The guild has no power to restrict the movements of monks.”

Merthin noticed a cat at Philemon’s feet. It was fat, like him, with a mean face. It looked just like Godwyn’s cat, Archbishop, though that creature must be long dead. Perhaps it was a descendant. Merthin said: “The guild has the power to close the city gates.”

“But we have the right to come and go as we please. We’re not subject to the authority of the guild – that would be ridiculous.”

“All the same, the guild controls the city, and we have decided that no one can enter while the plague is rife.”

“You cannot make rules for the priory.”

“But I can for the city, and the priory happens to be in the city.”

“Are you telling me that if I leave Kingsbridge today, you will refuse me admission tomorrow?”

Merthin was not sure. It would be highly embarrassing, at a minimum, to have the prior of Kingsbridge standing outside the gate demanding admission. He had been hoping to persuade Philemon to accept the restriction. He did not want to put the resolve of the guild to the test quite so dramatically. However, he tried to make his answer sound confident. “Absolutely.”

“I shall complain to the bishop.”

“Tell him he can’t enter Kingsbridge.”

The personnel of the nunnery had hardly changed in ten years, Caris realized. Nunneries were like that, of course: you were supposed to stay for ever. Mother Joan was still prioress, and Sister Oonagh ran the hospital under the supervision of Brother Sime. Few people came here for medical care, now: most preferred Caris’s hospital on the island. Those patients Sime did have, devoutly religious for the most part, were cared for in the old hospital, next to the kitchens, while the new building was used for guests.

Caris sat down with Joan, Oonagh and Sime in the old pharmacy, now used as the prioress’s private office, and explained her plan. “People outside the walls of the old city who fall victim to the plague will be admitted to my hospital on the island,” she said. “While the plague lasts, the nuns and I will stay within the building night and day. Nobody will leave, except those lucky few who recover.”

Joan asked: “What about here in the old city?”

“If the plague gets into the city despite our precautions, there may be too many victims for the accommodation you have. The guild has ruled that plague victims and their families will be confined to their homes. The rule applies to anyone who lives in a house struck by plague: parents, children, grandparents, servants, apprentices. Anyone caught leaving such a house will be hanged.”

“It’s very harsh,” Joan said. “But if it prevents the awful slaughter of the last plague, it’s worth while.”

“I knew you’d see that.”

Sime was saying nothing. The news of the plague seemed to have deflated his arrogance.

Oonagh said: “How will the victims eat, if they’re imprisoned in their homes?”

“Neighbours can leave food on the doorstep. No one may go in – except monk-physicians and nuns. They will visit the sick, but they must have no contact with the healthy. They will go from the priory to the home, and from the home back to the priory, without entering any other building or even speaking to anyone on the street. They should wear masks at all times, and wash their hands in vinegar each time they touch a patient.”

Sime was looking terrified. “Will that protect us?” he said.

“To some degree,” Caris said. “Not completely.”

“But then it will be highly dangerous for us to attend the sick!”

Oonagh answered him. “We have no fear,” she said. “We look forward to death. For us, it is the longed-for reunion with Christ.”

“Yes, of course,” said Sime.

The next day, all the monks left Kingsbridge.

88

Gwenda felt murderously angry when she saw what Ralph had done to Davey’s madder plants. Wanton destruction of crops was a sin. There should be a special place in hell for noblemen who despoiled what peasants had sweated to grow.

But Davey was not dismayed. “I don’t think it matters,” he said. “The value is in the roots, and he hasn’t touched them.”

“That would have been too much like work,” Gwenda said sourly, but she cheered up.

In fact the shrubs recovered remarkably quickly. Ralph probably did not know that madder propagated underground. Throughout May and June, as reports began to reach Wigleigh of an outbreak of the plague, the roots sent up new shoots and, at the beginning of July, Davey decided it was time to harvest the crop. One Sunday Gwenda, Wulfric and Davey spent the afternoon digging up the roots. They would first loosen the soil around the plant, then pull it out of the ground, then strip its foliage, leaving the root attached to a short stem. It was back-aching work of the kind Gwenda had done all her life.

They left half the plantation untouched, in the hope that it would regenerate itself next year.

They pulled a handcart piled with madder roots back through the woods to Wigleigh, then unloaded the roots into the barn and spread them in the hayloft to dry.

Davey did not know when he would be able to sell his crop. Kingsbridge was a closed city. The people still bought supplies, of course, but only through brokers. Davey was doing something new, and he would need to explain the situation to his buyer. It would be awkward to do that through an intermediary. But perhaps he would have to try. He had to dry the roots first, then grind them to a powder, and that would take time anyway.

Davey had said no more about Amabel, but Gwenda felt sure he was still seeing the girl. He pretended to be cheerfully resigned to his fate. If he had really given her up, he would have moped resentfully.

All Gwenda could do was hope he would get over her before he was old enough to marry without permission. She still could hardly bear even to think of her family being joined to Annet’s. Annet had never ceased to humiliate her by flirting with Wulfric, who continued to grin foolishly at every stupid coquettish remark. Now that Annet was in her forties, with broken veins in her rosy cheeks and grey streaks among her fair ringlets, her behaviour was not just embarrassing but grotesque; yet Wulfric reacted as if she were still a girl.

And now, Gwenda thought, my son has fallen into the same trap. It made her want to spit. Amabel looked just like Annet twenty-five years ago, a pretty face with flyaway curls, a long neck and narrow white shoulders, and small breasts like the eggs that mother and daughter sold at markets. She had the same way of tossing her hair, the same trick of looking at a man with mock reproach and hitting his chest with the back of her hand in a gesture that pretended to be a smack but was in fact a caress.

However, Davey was at least physically safe and well. Gwenda was more worried about Sam, living now with Earl Ralph at the castle, learning to be a fighting man. In church she prayed he would not be injured hunting, or learning to use a sword, or fighting in a tournament. She had seen him every day for twenty-two years, then suddenly he had been taken from her. It’s hard to be a woman, she thought. You love your baby with all your heart and soul, and then one day he just leaves.

For several weeks she looked for an excuse to travel to Earlscastle and check on Sam. Then she heard that the plague had struck there, and that decided her. She would go before the harvest got under way. Wulfric would not go with her: he had too much to do on the land. Anyway, she had no fear of travelling alone. “Too poor to be robbed, too old to be raped,” she joked. The truth was that she was too tough for either. And she carried a long knife.

She walked across the drawbridge at Earlscastle on a hot July day. On the battlements of the gatehouse a rook stood like a sentry, the sun glinting off his glossy black feathers. He cawed a warning at her. It sounded like: “Go, go!” She had escaped the plague once, of course; but that might have been luck: she was risking her life by coming here.

The scene in the lower compound was normal, if a little quiet. A woodcutter was unloading a cart full of firewood outside the bakehouse, and a groom was unsaddling a dusty horse in front of the stables, but there was no great bustle of activity. She noticed a small group of men and women outside the west entrance of the little church, and crossed the baked-earth ground to investigate. “Plague victims inside,” a maidservant said in answer to her inquiry.

She stepped through the door, feeling dread like a cold lump in her heart.

Ten or twelve straw mattresses were lined up on the floor so that the occupants could face the altar, just as in a hospital. About half the patients seemed to be children. There were three grown men. Gwenda scanned their faces fearfully.

None of them was Sam.

She knelt down and said a prayer of thanks.

Outside, she approached the woman she had spoken to earlier. “I’m looking for Sam from Wigleigh,” she said. “He’s a new squire.”

The woman pointed to the bridge leading to the inner compound. “Try the keep.”

Gwenda took the route indicated. A sentry at the bridge ignored her. She climbed the steps to the keep.

The great hall was dark and cool. A big dog slept on the cold stones of the fireplace. There were benches around the walls and a pair of large armchairs at the far end of the room. Gwenda noticed that there were no cushions, no upholstered seats and no wall hangings. She deduced that Lady Philippa spent little time here and took no interest in the furnishings.

Sam was sitting near a window with three younger men. The parts of a suit of armour were laid out on the floor in front of them, arranged in order from faceplate to greaves. Each of the men was cleaning a piece. Sam was rubbing the breastplate with a smooth pebble, trying to remove rust.

She stood watching him for a moment. He wore new clothes in the red-and-black livery of the earl of Shiring. The colours suited his dark good looks. He seemed to be at ease, talking in a desultory way with the others while they all worked. He appeared healthy and well fed. It was what Gwenda had hoped for, but all the same she suffered a perverse pang of disappointment that he was doing so well without her.

He glanced up and saw her. His face registered surprise, then pleasure, then amusement. “Lads,” he said, “I am the oldest among you, and you may think I’m capable of looking after myself, but it’s not so. My mother follows me everywhere to make sure I’m all right.”

They saw her and laughed. Sam put down his work and came over. Mother and son sat on a bench in a corner near the staircase that led to the upstairs rooms. “I’m having a wonderful time,” Sam said. “Everyone plays games here most days. We go hunting and hawking, we have wrestling matches and contests of horsemanship, and we play football. I’ve learned so much! It’s a bit embarrassing to be grouped with these adolescents all the time, but I can put up with that. I just have to master the skill of using a sword and shield while riding a horse at the same time.”

He was already speaking differently, she noticed. He was losing the slow rhythms of village speech. And he used French words for ‘hawking’ and ‘horsemanship’. He was becoming assimilated into the life of the nobility.

“What about the work?” she said. “It can’t be all play.”

“Yes, there’s plenty of work.” He gestured at the others cleaning the armour. “But it’s easy by comparison with ploughing and harrowing.”

He asked about his brother, and she told him all the news from home: Davey’s madder had regenerated, they had dug up the roots, Davey was still involved with Amabel, no one had fallen sick of the plague yet. While they were talking, she began to feel that she was being watched, and she knew her feeling was not fanciful. After a moment, she looked over her shoulder.

Earl Ralph was standing at the top of the staircase in front of an open door, evidently having stepped out of his room. She wondered how long he had been looking at her. She met his gaze. His stare was intense, but she could not read it, did not understand what it meant. She began to feel the look was uncomfortably intimate, and she glanced away.

When she looked back, he had gone.

The next day, when she was on the road and half way home, a horseman came up behind her, riding fast, then slowed down and stopped.

Her hand went to the long dagger in her belt.

The rider was Sir Alan Fernhill. “The earl wants to see you,” he said.

“Then he had better come himself, instead of sending you,” she replied.

“You’ve always got a smart answer, haven’t you? Do you imagine it endears you to your superiors?”

He had a point. She was taken aback, perhaps because in all the years he had been Ralph’s sidekick she had never known Alan to say anything intelligent. If she was really smart she would suck up to people such as Alan, not poke fun at them. “All right,” she said wearily. “The earl bids me to him. Must I walk all the way back to the castle?”

“No. He has a lodge in the forest, not far from here, where he sometimes stops for refreshment during a hunt. He’s there now.” He pointed into the woods beside the road.

Gwenda did not much like this but, as a serf, she had no right to decline a summons from her earl. Anyway, if she did refuse she felt sure Alan would knock her down and tie her up and carry her there. “Very well,” she said.

“Jump up on the saddle in front of me, if you like.”

“No, thanks, I’d rather walk.”

At this time of year the undergrowth was thick. Gwenda followed the horse into the woods, taking advantage of the path it trampled through the nettles and ferns. The road behind them swiftly disappeared into the greenery. Gwenda wondered nervously what whim had caused Ralph to arrange this forest meeting. It could not be good news for her or her family, she felt.

They walked a quarter of a mile and came to a low building with a thatched roof. Gwenda would have assumed it to be a verderer’s cottage. Alan looped his reins around a sapling and led the way inside.

The place had about it the same bare utilitarian look Gwenda had noted at Earlscastle. The floor was beaten earth, the walls unfinished wattle-and-daub, the ceiling nothing more than the underside of the thatch. The furniture was minimal: a table, some benches and a plain wooden bedstead with a straw mattress, A door at the back stood half open on a small kitchen where, presumably, Ralph’s servants prepared food and drink for him and his fellow huntsmen.

Ralph was sitting at the table with a cup of wine. Gwenda stood in front of him, waiting. Alan leaned against the wall behind her. “So, Alan found you,” Ralph said.

“Is there no one else here?” Gwenda said nervously.

“Just you, me and Alan.”

Gwenda’s anxiety went up a notch. “Why do you want to see me?”

“To talk about Sam, of course.”

“You’ve taken him from me. What else is there to say?”

“He’s a good boy, you know… our son.”

“Don’t call him that.” She looked at Alan. He showed no surprise: clearly he had been let in on the secret. She was dismayed. Wulfric must never find out. “Don’t call him our son,” she said. “You’ve never been a father to him. Wulfric raised him.”

“How could I raise him? I didn’t even know he was mine! But I’m making up for lost time. He’s doing well, did he tell you?”

“Does he get into fights?”

“Of course. Squires are supposed to fight. It’s practice for when they go to war. You should have asked whether he wins.”

“It’s not the life I wanted for him.”

“It’s the life he was made for.”

“Did you bring me here to gloat?”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

Reluctantly, she sat opposite him at the table. He poured wine into a cup and pushed it towards her. She ignored it.

He said: “Now that I know we have a son together, I think we should be more intimate.”

“No, thank you.”

“You’re such a killjoy.”

“Don’t you talk to me about joy. You’ve been a blight on my life. With all my heart I wish I had never set eyes on you. I don’t want to be intimate with you, I want to get away from you. If you went to Jerusalem it wouldn’t be far enough.”

His face darkened with anger, and she regretted the extravagance of her words. She recalled Alan’s rebuke. She wished she could say no simply and calmly, without stinging witticisms. But Ralph aroused her ire like no one else.

“Can’t you see?” she said, trying to be reasonable. “You have hated my husband for, what, a quarter of a century? He broke your nose and you slashed his cheek open. You disinherited him, then you were forced to give him back his family’s lands. You raped the woman he once loved. He ran away and you dragged him back with a rope around his neck. After all tnat, even having a son together cannot make you and me friends.”

“I disagree,” he said. “I think we can be not just friends, but lovers.”

“No!” It was what she had feared, in the back of her mind, ever since Alan had reined in on the road in front of her.

Ralph smiled. “Why don’t you take off your dress?”

She tensed.

Alan leaned over her from behind and slipped the long dagger out of her belt with a smooth motion. He had obviously premeditated the move, and it happened too quickly for her to react.

But Ralph said: “No, Alan – that won’t be necessary. She’ll do it willingly.”

“I will not!” she said.

“Give her back the dagger, Alan.”

Reluctantly, Alan reversed the knife, holding it by the blade, and offered it to her.

She snatched it and leaped to her feet. “You may kill me but I’ll take one of you with me, by God,” she said.

She backed away, holding the knife at arm’s length, ready to fight.

Alan stepped towards the door, moving to cut her off.

“Leave her be,” Ralph said. “She’s not going anywhere.”

She had no idea why Ralph was so confident, but he was dead wrong. She was getting out of this hut and then she was going to run away as fast as she could, and she would not stop until she dropped.

Alan stayed where he was.

Gwenda got to the door, reached behind her and lifted the simple wooden latch.

Ralph said: “Wulfric doesn’t know, does he?”

Gwenda froze. “Doesn’t know what?”

“He doesn’t know that I’m Sam’s father.”

Gwenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “No, he doesn’t.”

“I wonder how he would feel if he found out.”

“It would kill him,” she said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Please don’t tell him,” she begged.

“I won’t… so long as you do as I say.”

What could she do? She knew Ralph was drawn to her sexually. She had used that knowledge, in desperation, to get in to see him at the sheriff’s castle. Their encounter at the Bell all those years ago, a vile memory to her, had lived in his recollection as a golden moment, probably much enhanced by the passage of time. And she had put into his head the idea of reliving that moment.

This was her own fault.

Could she somehow disabuse him? “We aren’t the same people we were all those years ago,” she said. “I will never be an innocent young girl again. You should go back to your serving wenches.”

“I don’t want serving girls, I want you.”

“No,” she said. “Please.” She fought back tears.

He was implacable. “Take off your dress.”

She sheathed her knife and unbuckled her belt.

89

The moment Merthin woke up, he thought of Lolla.

She had been missing now for three months. He had sent messages to the city authorities in Gloucester, Monmouth, Shaftesbury, Exeter, Winchester and Salisbury. Letters from him, as alderman of one of the great cities of the land, were treated seriously, and he had received careful replies to them all. Only the mayor of London had been unhelpful, saying in effect that half the girls in the city had run away from their fathers, and it was no business of the mayor’s to send them home.

Merthin had made personal inquiries in Shiring, Bristol and Melcombe. He had spoken to the landlord of every tavern, giving them a description of Lolla. They had all seen plenty of dark-haired young women, often in the company of handsome rogues called Jake, or Jack, or Jock; but none could say for sure that they had seen Merthin’s daughter, or heard the name Lolla.

Some of Jake’s friends had also vanished, along with a girlfriend or two, the other missing women all some years older than Lolla.

Lolla might be dead – Merthin knew that – but he refused to give up hope. It was unlikely she had caught the plague. The new outbreak was ravaging towns and villages, and taking away most of the children under ten. But survivors of the first wave, such as Lolla and himself, must have been people who for some reason had the strength to resist the illness, or – in a very few cases, such as his own – to recover from it; and they were not falling sick this time. However, the plague was only one of the hazards to a sixteen-year-old girl running away from home, and Merthin’s fertile imagination tortured him, in the small hours of the night, with thoughts of what might have happened to her.

One town not ravaged by the plague was Kingsbridge. The illness had affected about one house in a hundred in the old town, as far as Merthin could tell from the conversations he held, shouted across the city gate, with Madge Webber, who was acting as alderman inside the city walls while Merthin managed affairs outside. The Kingsbridge suburbs, and other towns, were seeing something like one in five afflicted. But had Caris’s methods overcome the plague, or merely delayed it? Would the illness persist, and eventually overcome the barriers she had put up? Would the devastation be as bad as last time in the end? They would not know until the outbreak had run its course – which might be months or years.

He sighed and got up out of his lonely bed. He had not seen Caris since the city was closed. She was living at the hospital, a few yards from Merthin’s house, but she could not leave the building. People could go in but not come out. Caris had decided she would have no credibility unless she worked side by side with her nuns, so she was stuck.

Merthin had spent half his life separated from her, it seemed. But it did not get any easier. In fact he ached for her more now, in middle age, than he had as a youngster.

His housekeeper, Em, was up before him, and he found her in the kitchen, skinning rabbits. He ate a piece of bread and drank some weak beer, then went outside.

The main road across the island was already crowded with peasants and their carts bringing supplies. Merthin and a team of helpers spoke to each of them. Those bringing standard products with agreed prices were the simplest: Merthin sent them across the inner bridge to deposit their goods at the locked door of the gatehouse, then paid them when they came back empty. With those bringing seasonal produce such as fruits and vegetables he negotiated a price before allowing them to deliver. For some special consignments, a deal had been made days earlier, when he placed the order: hides for the leather trade; stones for the masons, who had recommenced building the spire under Bishop Henri’s orders; silver for the jewellers; iron, steel, hemp and timber for the city’s manufacturers, who had to continue working even though they were temporarily cut off from most of their customers. Finally there were the one-off cargoes, for which Merthin would need to take instructions from someone in the city. Today brought a vendor of Italian brocade who wanted to sell it to one of the city’s tailors; a year-old ox for the slaughterhouse; and Davey from Wigleigh.

Merthin listened to Davey’s story with amazement and pleasure. He admired the lad for his enterprise in buying madder seeds and cultivating them to produce the costly dye. He was not surprised to learn that Ralph had tried to scuttle the project: Ralph was like most noblemen in his contempt for anything connected with manufacture or trade. But Davey had nerve as well as brains, and he had persisted. He had even paid a miller to grind the dried roots into powder.

“When the miller washed the grindstone afterwards, his dog drank some of the water that ran off,” Davey told Merthin. “The dog pissed red for a week, so we know the dye works!”

Now he was here with a handcart loaded with old four-gallon flour sacks full of what he believed to be precious madder dye.

Merthin told him to pick up one of the sacks and bring it to the gate. When they got there, he called out to the sentry on the other side. The man climbed to the battlements and looked down. “This sack is for Madge Webber,” Merthin shouted up. “Make sure she gets it personally, would you, sentry?”

“Very good, alderman,” said the sentry.

As always, a few plague victims from the villages were brought to the island by their relatives. Most people now knew there was no cure for the plague and simply let their loved ones die, but a few were ignorant or optimistic enough to hope that Caris could work a miracle. The sick were left outside the hospital doors, like supplies at the city gate. The nuns came out for them at night when the relatives had gone. Now and again a lucky survivor emerged in good health, but most patients went out through the back door and were buried in a new graveyard on the far side of the hospital building.

At midday Merthin invited Davey to dinner. Over rabbit pie and new peas, Davey confessed he was in love with the daughter of his mother’s old enemy. “I don’t know why Ma hates Annet, but it’s all so long in the past, and it’s nothing to do with me or Amabel,” he said, with the indignation of youth against the irrationality of parents. When Merthin nodded sympathetically, Davey asked: “Did your parents stand in your way like this?”

Merthin thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I wanted to be a squire and spend my life as a knight fighting for the king. I was heartbroken when they apprenticed me to a carpenter. However, in my case it worked out quite well.”

Davey was not pleased by this anecdote.

In the afternoon access to the inner bridge was closed off at the island end, and the gates of the city were opened. Teams of porters came out and picked up everything that had been left, and carried the supplies to their destinations in the city.

There was no message from Madge about the dye.

Merthin had a second visitor that day. Towards the end of the afternoon, as trading petered out, Canon Claude arrived.

Claude’s friend and patron, Bishop Henri, was now installed as archbishop of Monmouth. However, his replacement as bishop of Kingsbridge had not been chosen. Claude wanted the position, and had been to London to see Sir Gregory Longfellow. He was on his way back to Monmouth, where he would continue to work as Henri’s right-hand man for the moment.

“The king likes Philemon’s line on taxation of the clergy,” he said over cold rabbit pie and a goblet of Merthin’s best Gascon wine. “And the senior clergy liked the sermon against dissection and the plan to build a Lady chapel. On the other hand, Gregory dislikes Philemon – says he can’t be trusted. The upshot is, the king has postponed a decision by ruling that the monks of Kingsbridge cannot hold an election while they are in exile at St-John-in-the-Forest.”

Merthin said: “I assume the king sees little point in selecting a bishop while the plague rages and the city is closed.”

Claude nodded agreement. “I did achieve something, albeit small,” he went on. “There is a vacancy for an English ambassador to the pope. The appointee has to live in Avignon. I suggested Philemon. Gregory seemed intrigued by the idea. At least, he didn’t rule it out.”

“Good!” The thought of Philemon being sent so far away lifted Merthin’s spirits. He wished there were something he could do to weigh in on Claude’s side; but he had already written to Gregory pledging the support of the guild, and that was the limit of his influence.

“One more piece of news – sad news, in fact,” Claude said. “On my way to London, I went to St-John-in-the-Forest. Henri is still abbot, technically, and he sent me to reprimand Philemon for decamping without permission. Waste of time, really. Anyway, Philemon has adopted Caris’s precautions, and would not let me in, but we talked through the door. So far, the monks have escaped the plague. But your old friend Brother Thomas has died of old age. I’m sorry.”

“God rest his soul,” Merthin said sadly. “He was very frail towards the end. His mind was going, too.”

“The move to St John probably didn’t help him.”

“Thomas encouraged me when I was a young builder.”

“Strange how God sometimes takes the good men from us and leaves the bad.”

Claude left early the next morning.

As Merthin was going through his daily routine, one of the carters came back from the city gate with a message. Madge Webber was on the battlements and wanted to talk to Merthin and Davey.

“Do you think she’ll buy my madder?” Davey said as they walked across the inner bridge.

Merthin had no idea. “I hope so,” he said.

They stood side by side in front of the closed gate and looked up. Madge leaned over the wall and shouted down: “Where did this stuff come from?”

“I grew it,” Davey said.

“And who are you?”

“Davey from Wigleigh, son of Wulfric.”

“Oh – Gwenda’s boy?”

“Yes, the younger one.”

“Well, I’ve tested your dye.”

“It works, doesn’t it?” Davey said eagerly.

“It’s very weak. Did you grind the roots whole?”

“Yes – what else would I have done?”

“You’re supposed to remove the hulls before grinding.”

“I didn’t know that.” Davey was crestfallen. “Is the powder no good?”

“As I said, it’s weak. I can’t pay the price of pure dye.”

Davey looked so dismayed that Merthin’s heart went out to him.

Madge said: “How much have you got?”

“Nine more four-gallon sacks like the one you have,” Davey said despondently.

“I’ll give you half the usual price – three shillings and sixpence a gallon. That’s fourteen shillings a sack, so exactly seven pounds for ten sacks.”

Davey’s face was a picture of delight. Merthin wished Caris were with him just to share it. “Seven pounds!” Davey repeated.

Thinking he was disappointed, Madge said: “I can’t do better than that – the dye just isn’t strong enough.”

But seven pounds was a fortune to Davey. It was several years’ wages for a labourer, even at today’s rates. He looked at Merthin. “I’m rich!” he said.

Merthin laughed and said: “Don’t spend it all at once.”

The next day was Sunday. Merthin went to the morning service at the island’s own little church of St Elizabeth of Hungary, patron saint of healers. Then he went home and got a stout oak spade from his gardener’s hut. With the spade over his shoulder, he walked across the outer bridge, through the suburbs and into his past.

He tried hard to remember the route he had taken through the forest thirty-four years ago with Caris, Ralph and Gwenda. It seemed impossible. There were no pathways other than deer runs. Saplings had become mature trees, and mighty oaks had been felled by the king’s woodcutters. Nevertheless, to his surprise there were still recognizable landmarks: a spring gurgling up out of the ground where he remembered the ten-year-old Caris kneeling to drink; a huge rock that she said looked as if it must have fallen from heaven; a steep-sided little valley with a boggy bottom where she had got mud in her boots.

As he walked, his recollection of that day of childhood became more vivid. He remembered how the dog, Hop, had followed them, and Gwenda had followed her dog. He felt again the pleasure of having Caris understand his joke. His face reddened at the recollection of how incompetent he had been, in front of Caris, with the bow he had made – and how easily his younger brother had mastered the weapon.

Most of all, he remembered Caris as a girl. They had been pre-adolescent, but nevertheless he had been bewitched by her quick wits, her daring, and the effortless way she had assumed command of the little group. It was not love, but it was a kind of fascination that was not unlike love.

Remembrance distracted him from pathfinding, and he lost his bearings. He began to feel as if he was in completely unfamiliar territory – then, suddenly, he emerged into a clearing and knew he was in the right place. The bushes were more extensive; the trunk of the oak tree was even broader; and the clearing in between was gay with a scatter of summer flowers, as it had not been on that November day in 1327. But he was in no doubt: it was like a face he had not seen for years, changed but unmistakable.

A shorter and skinnier Merthin had crawled under that bush to hide from the big man crashing through the undergrowth. He remembered how the exhausted, panting Thomas had stood with his back to that oak tree and drawn his sword and dagger.

He saw in his imagination the events of that day played out again. Two men in yellow-and-green livery had caught up with Thomas and asked him for a letter. Thomas had distracted the men by telling them they were being observed by someone hiding in a bush. Merthin had felt sure he and the other children would be murdered – then Ralph, just ten years old, had killed one of the men-at-arms, showing the quick and deadly reflexes that had served him so well, years later, in the French wars. Thomas had despatched the other man, though not before receiving the wound that had ended in his losing his left arm – despite, or perhaps because of, the treatment given him in the hospital at Kingsbridge Priory. Then Merthin had helped Thomas bury the letter.

“Just here,” Thomas had said. “Right in front of the oak tree.”

There was a secret in the letter, Merthin knew now; a secret so potent that high-ranking people were frightened of it. The secret had given Thomas protection, though he had nevertheless sought sanctuary in a monastery and spent his life there.

“If you hear that I’ve died,” Thomas had said to the boy Merthin, “I’d like you to dig up this letter and give it to a priest.”

Merthin the man hefted his spade and began to dig.

He was not sure whether this was what Thomas had intended. The buried letter was a precaution against Thomas’s being killed by violence, not dying of natural causes at the age of fifty-eight. Would he still have wanted the letter dug up? Merthin did not know. He would decide what to do when he had read the letter. He was irresistibly curious about what was in it.

His memory of where he had buried the bag was not perfect, and with his first try he missed the spot. He got down about eighteen inches and realized his mistake: the hole had been only about a foot deep, he was sure. He tried again a few inches to the left.

This time he got it right.

A foot down, the spade struck something that was not earth. It was soft, but unyielding. He put the spade to one side and scrabbled with his fingers in the hole. He felt a piece of ancient, rotting leather. Gently, he dislodged the earth and lifted the object. It was the wallet Thomas had worn on his belt all those years ago.

He wiped his muddy hands on his tunic and opened it.

Inside was a bag made of oiled wool, still intact. He loosened the drawstring of the bag and reached in. He pulled out a sheet of parchment, rolled into a scroll and sealed with wax.

He handled it gently, but all the same the wax crumbled as soon as he touched it. With careful fingertips he unrolled the parchment. It was intact: it had survived thirty-four years in the earth remarkably well.

He saw immediately that it was not an official document but a personal letter. He could tell by the handwriting, which was the painstaking scrawl of an educated nobleman, rather than the practised script of a clerk.

He began to read. The salutation ran:

From Edward, the second of that name, King of England, at Berkeley Castle; by the hand of his faithful servant, Sir Thomas Langley; to his beloved eldest son, Edward; royal greeting and fatherly love.

Merthin felt scared. This was a message from the old king to the new. The hand holding the document shook, and he looked up from it and scanned the greenery around him, as if there might be someone peering at him through the bushes.

My beloved son, you will soon hear that I am dead. Know that it is not true.

Merthin frowned. This was not what he had expected.

Your mother, the queen, the wife of my heart, has corrupted and subverted Roland, earl of Shiring, and his sons, who sent murderers here; but I was forewarned by Thomas, and the murderers were killed.

So Thomas had not been the assassin, after all, but the saviour of the king.

Your mother, having failed to kill me once, would surely try again, for she and her adulterous consort cannot feel safe while I live. So I have changed clothes with one of the slain murderers, a man of my height and general appearance, and I have bribed several people to swear that the dead body is mine. Your mother will know the truth when she sees the body, but she will go along with the pretence; for if I am thought to be dead, I will be no threat to her, and no rebel or rival to the throne can claim my support.

Merthin was amazed. The nation had thought Edward II to be dead. All Europe had been fooled.

But what had happened to him afterwards?

I will not tell you where I plan to go, but know that I intend to leave my kingdom of England and never return. However, I pray that I will again see you, my son, before I die.

Why had Thomas buried this letter instead of delivering it? Because he had feared for his own life, and had seen the letter as a powerful weapon in his defence. Once Queen Isabella had committed herself to the pretence of her husband’s death, she had needed to deal with those few people who knew the truth. Merthin now recalled that while he was still an adolescent the earl of Kent had been convicted of treason and beheaded for maintaining that Edward II was still alive.

Queen Isabella had sent men to kill Thomas, and they had caught up with him just outside Kingsbridge. But Thomas had disposed of them, with the help of the ten-year-old Ralph. Afterwards, Thomas must have threatened to expose the whole deception – and he had proof, in the form of the old king’s letter. That evening, as he lay in the hospital at Kingsbridge Priory, Thomas had negotiated with the queen, or more likely with Earl Roland and his sons as her agents. He had promised to keep the secret, on condition that he was accepted as a monk. He would feel safe in the monastery – and, in case the queen should be tempted to renege, he had said that the letter was in a safe place and would be revealed on his death. The queen therefore needed to keep him alive.

Old Prior Anthony had known something of this, and as he lay dying had told Mother Cecilia, who on her own deathbed had repeated part of the story to Caris. People might keep secrets for decades, Merthin reflected, but they felt compelled to tell the truth when death was near. Caris had also seen the incriminating document that gave Lynn Grange to the priory on condition Thomas was accepted as a monk. Merthin now understood why Caris’s disingenuous inquiries about this document had caused such trouble. Sir Gregory Longfellow had persuaded Ralph to break into the monastery and steal all the nuns’ charters in the hope of finding the incriminating letter.

Had the destructive power of this sheet of vellum been lessened by the passage of time? Isabella had lived a long life, but she had died three years ago. Edward II himself was almost certainly dead – if alive he would be seventy-seven now. Would Edward III fear the revelation that his father had remained alive when the world thought him dead? He was too strong a king, now, to be seriously threatened, but he would face great embarrassment and humiliation.

So what was Merthin to do?

He remained where he was, on the grassy floor of the forest among the wild flowers, for a long time. At last he rolled up the scroll, replaced it in the bag and put the bag back in the old leather pouch.

He put the pouch back into the ground and filled up the hole. He also filled in his first, erroneous hole. He smoothed the earth on top of both. He stripped some leaves off the bushes and scattered them in front of the oak tree. He stood back and looked at his work. He was satisfied: the excavations were no longer visible to the casual glance.

Then he turned his back on the clearing and went home.

90

At the end of August, Earl Ralph made a tour of his landholdings around Shiring, accompanied by his long-term sidekick, Sir Alan Fernhill, and his new-found son, Sam. He enjoyed having Sam along, his child yet a grown man. His other sons, Gerry and Roley, were too young for this son of thing. Sam did not know about his paternity, but Ralph nursed the secret with pleasure.

They were horrified by what they saw as they went around. Hundreds of Ralph’s serfs were dead or dying, and the corn was standing unharvested in the fields. As they rode from one place to the next, Ralph’s anger and frustration grew. His sarcastic remarks cowed his companions, and his bad temper turned his horse skittish.

In each village, as well as the serfs’ landholdings, some acres were kept exclusively for the earl’s personal use. They should have been cultivated by his employees and by serfs who were obliged to work for him one day a week. These lands were in the worst state of all. Many of his employees had died; so had some of the serfs who owed him labour; other serfs had negotiated more favourable tenancies after the last plague, so that they no longer had to work for the lord; and, finally, it was impossible to find labourers for hire.

When Ralph came to Wigleigh he went around the back of the manor house and looked into the big timber barn, which at this time of year should have been filling with grain ready for milling – but it was empty, and a cat had given birth to a litter of kittens in the hay loft.

“What will we do for bread?” he roared at Nathan Reeve. “With no barley to make ale, what will we drink? You’d better have a plan, by God.”

Nate looked churlish. “All we can do is reallocate the strips,” he said.

Ralph was surprised by his surliness. Nate was usually sycophantic. Then Nate glared at young Sam, and Ralph realized why the worm had turned. Nate hated Sam for killing Jonno, his son. Instead of punishing Sam, Ralph had first pardoned him, then made him a squire. No wonder Nate looked resentful.

Ralph said: “There must be one or two young men in the village who could farm some extra acres.”

“Ah, yes, but they aren’t willing to pay an entry fee,” Nate said.

“They want land for nothing?”

“Yes. They can see that you have too much land and not enough labour, and they know when they’re in a strong bargaining position.” In the past Nate had been quick to abuse uppity peasants, but now he seemed to be enjoying Ralph’s dilemma.

“They act as if England belongs to them, not to the nobility,” Ralph said angrily.

“It is disgraceful, lord,” said Nate more politely, and a sly look came over his face. “For example, Wulfric’s son Davey wants to marry Amabel and take over her mother’s land. It would make sense: Annet has never been able to manage her holding.”

Sam spoke up. “My parents won’t pay the entry fee – they’re against the marriage.”

Nate said: “Davey could pay it himself, though.”

Ralph was surprised. “How?”

“He sold that new crop he grew in the forest.”

“Madder. Obviously we didn’t do a sufficiently thorough job of trampling it. How much did he get?”

“No one knows. But Gwenda has bought a young milking cow, and Wulfric has a new knife… and Amabel wore a yellow scarf to church on Sunday.”

And Nate had been offered a fat bribe, Ralph guessed. “I hate to reward Davey’s disobedience,” he said. “But I’m desperate. Let him have the land.”

“You would have to give him special permission to marry against his parents’ will.”

Davey had asked Ralph for this, and Ralph had turned him down, but that was before the plague decimated the peasantry. He did not like to revisit such decisions. However, it was a small price to pay. “I shall give him permission,” he said.

“Very well.”

“But let’s go and see him. I’d like to make the offer in person.”

Nate was startled, but of course made no objection.

The truth was that Ralph wanted to see Gwenda again. There was something about her that made his throat go dry. His last encounter with her, in the little hunting lodge, had not satisfied him for long. He had thought about her often in the weeks since then. He got little satisfaction nowadays from the kind of women he normally lay with: young prostitutes, tavern wenches and maidservants. They all pretended to be delighted by his advances, though he knew they just wanted the present of money that came afterwards. Gwenda, by contrast, made no secret of the fact that she loathed him and shuddered at his touch; and that pleased him, paradoxically, because it was honest and therefore real. After their meeting in the hunting lodge he had given her a purse of silver pennies, and she had thrown it back at him so hard that it had bruised his chest.

“They’re in Brookfield today, turning their reaped barley,” Nate said. “I’ll take you there.”

Ralph and his men followed Nate out of the village and along the bank of the stream at the edge of the great field. Wigleigh was always windy, but today the summer breeze was soft and warm, like Gwenda’s breasts.

Some of the strips of land here had been reaped, but in others Ralph despaired to see overripe oats, barley rank with weeds, and one patch of rye that had been reaped but not bundled, so that the crop lay scattered on the ground.

A year ago he had thought that all his financial troubles were over. He had come home from the most recent French war with a captive, the Marquis de Neuchatel, and had negotiated a ransom of fifty thousand pounds. But the marquis’s family had not been able to raise the money. Something similar had happened to the French king, Jean II, captured by the prince of Wales at the battle of Poitiers. King Jean had stayed in London for four years, technically a prisoner, though living in comfort at the Savoy, the new palace built by the Duke of Lancaster. The king’s ransom had been reduced, but still it had not been paid in full. Ralph had sent Alan Fernhill to Neuchatel to renegotiate his prisoner’s ransom, and Alan had reduced the price to twenty thousand, but again the family had failed to pay it. Then the marquis had died of the plague, so Ralph was insolvent again, and had to worry about the harvest.

It was midday. The peasants were having their dinner at the side of the field. Gwenda, Wulfric and Davey were sitting on the ground under a tree eating cold pork with raw onions. They all jumped to their feet when the horses came near. Ralph went over to Gwenda’s family and waved the rest away.

Gwenda wore a loose green dress that hid her shape. Her hair was tied back, making her face more rat-like. Her hands were dirty, with earth under the nails. But, when Ralph looked at her, in his imagination he saw her naked, ready, waiting for him with an expression of resigned disgust at what he was about to do; and he felt aroused.

He looked away from her to her husband. Wulfric stared back at him with a level gaze, neither defiant nor cowed. There was a little grey now in his tawny beard, but still it would not grow over the scar of the sword cut Ralph had given him. “Wulfric, your son wants to marry Amabel and take over Annet’s land.”

Gwenda responded. She had never learned to speak only when spoken to. “You’ve stolen one son from me – will you take the other now?” she said bitterly.

Ralph ignored her. “Who will pay the heriot?”

Nate put in: “It’s thirty shillings.”

Wulfric said: “I haven’t got thirty shillings.”

Davey said calmly: “I can pay it.”

He must have done very well out of his madder crop, Ralph thought, to be so cool about such a large sum of money. “Good,” he said. “In that case-”

Davey interrupted him. “But on what terms are you offering it?”

Ralph felt his face redden. “What do you mean?”

Nate intervened again. “The same terms as those upon which Annet holds the land, of course.”

Davey said: “Then I thank the earl, but I will not accept his gracious offer.”

Ralph said: “What the devil are you talking about?”

“I would like to take over the land, my lord, but only as a free tenant, paying cash rent, without customary dues.”

Sir Alan said threateningly: “Do you dare to haggle with the earl of Shiring, you insolent young dog?”

Davey was scared but defiant. “I’ve no wish to offend, lord. But I want to be free to grow whatever crop I can sell. I don’t want to cultivate what Nate Reeve chooses regardless of market prices.”

Davey had inherited that streak of stubborn determination from Gwenda, Ralph thought. He said angrily: “Nate expresses my wishes! Do you think you know better than your earl?”

“Forgive me, lord, but you neither till the soil nor go to market.”

Alan’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. Ralph saw Wulfric glance at his scythe, lying on the ground, its sharp blade gleaming in the sunlight. On Ralph’s other side, young Sam’s horse skittered nervously, picking up its rider’s tension. If it came to a fight, Ralph thought, would Sam fight for his lord, or for his family?

Ralph did not want a fight. He wanted to get the harvest in, and killing his peasants would make that harder. He restrained Alan with a gesture. “This is how the plague undermines morality,” he said disgustedly. “I will give you what you want, Davey, because I must.”

Davey swallowed drily and said: “In writing, lord?”

“You’re demanding a copyhold, too?”

Davey nodded, too frightened to speak.

“Do you doubt the word of your earl?”

“No, lord.”

“Then why demand a written lease?”

“For the avoidance of doubt in future years.”

They all said that when they asked for a copyhold. What they meant was that if the lease was written down the landlord could not easily alter the terms. It was yet another encroachment on time-honoured traditions. Ralph did not want to make a further concession – but, once again, he had no option if he wanted to get the harvest in.

And then he thought of a way he could use this situation to gain something else he wanted, and he cheered up.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give you a written lease. But I don’t want men leaving the fields during the harvest. Your mother can come to Earlscastle to collect the document next week.”

Gwenda walked to Earlscastle on a baking hot day. She knew what Ralph wanted her for, and the prospect made her miserable. As she crossed the drawbridge into the castle, the rooks seemed to laugh derisively at her plight.

The sun beat down mercilessly on the compound, where the walls blocked the breeze. The squires were playing a game outside the stables. Sam was among them, and too absorbed to notice Gwenda.

They had tied a cat to a post at eye level in such a way that it could move its head and legs. A squire had to kill the cat with his hands tied behind his back. Gwenda had seen the game before. The only way for the squire to achieve his object was to headbutt the wretched animal, but the cat naturally defended itself by scratching and biting the attacker’s face. The challenger, a boy of about sixteen, was hovering near the post, watched by the terrified cat. Suddenly the boy jerked his head. His forehead smashed into the cat’s chest, but the animal lashed out with its clawed paws. The squire yelped with pain and jumped back, his cheeks streaming blood, and all the other squires roared with laughter. Enraged, the challenger rushed at the post and butted the cat again. He was scratched worse, and he hurt his head, which they found even funnier. The third time he was more careful. Getting close, he feinted, making the cat lash out at thin air; then he delivered a carefully aimed strike right at the beast’s head. Blood poured from its mouth and nostrils and it slumped unconscious, though still breathing. He butted it a final time to kill it, and the others cheered and clapped.

Gwenda felt sickened. She did not much like cats – she preferred dogs – but it was unpleasant to see any helpless creature tormented. She supposed that boys had to do this sort of thing to prepare them for maiming and killing human beings in war. Did it have to be that way?

She moved on without speaking to her son. Perspiring, she crossed the second bridge and climbed the steps to the keep. The great hall was mercifully cool.

She was glad Sam had not seen her. She was hoping to avoid him as long as possible. She did not want him to suspect that anything was wrong. He was not notably sensitive, but he might detect his mother’s distress.

She told the marshal of the hall why she was here, and he promised to let the earl know. “Is Lady Philippa in residence?” Gwenda asked hopefully. Perhaps Ralph would be inhibited by the presence of his wife.

But the marshal shook his head. “She’s at Monmouth, with her daughter.”

Gwenda nodded grimly and settled down to wait. She could not help thinking about her encounter with Ralph at the hunting lodge. When she looked at the unadorned grey wall of the great hall she saw him, staring at her as she undressed, his mouth slightly open in anticipation. As much as the intimacy of sex was a joy with the man she loved, so much was it loathsome with one she hated.

The first time Ralph had coerced her, more than twenty years ago, her body had betrayed her, and she had felt a physical pleasure, even while experiencing a spiritual revulsion. The same thing had happened with Alwyn the outlaw in the forest. But it had not occurred this time with Ralph in the hunting lodge. She attributed the change to age. When she had been a young girl, full of desire, the physical act had triggered an automatic response – something she could not help, although it had made her even more ashamed. Now in her maturity her body was not so vulnerable, the reflex not so ready. She could at least be grateful for that.

The stairs at the far end of the hall led to the earl’s chamber. Men were going up and down constantly: knights, servants, tenants, bailiffs. After an hour, the marshal told her to go up.

She was afraid Ralph would want sex there and then, but she was relieved to find that he was having a business day. With him were Sir Alan and two priest-clerks sitting at a table with writing materials. One of the clerks handed her a small vellum scroll.

She did not look at it. She could not read.

“There,” said Ralph. “Now your son is a free tenant. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

She had wanted freedom for herself, as Ralph knew. She had never achieved it – but Ralph was right, Davey had. That meant that her life had not been completely without purpose. Her grandchildren would be free and independent, growing what crops they chose, paying their rent and keeping for themselves everything else they earned. They would never know the miserable existence of poverty and hunger that Gwenda had been born to.

Was that worth all she had been through? She did not know.

She took the scroll and went to the door.

Alan came after her and spoke in a low voice as she was going out. “Stay here tonight, in the hall,” he said. The great hall was where most of the castle’s residents slept. “Tomorrow, be at the hunting lodge two hours after midday.”

She tried to leave without replying.

Alan barred her way with his arm. “Understand?” he said.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “I will be there in the afternoon.”

He let her go.

She did not speak to Sam until late in the evening. The squires spent the whole afternoon at various violent games. She was glad to have the time to herself. She sat in the cool hall alone with her thoughts. She tried to tell herself that it was nothing for her to have sexual congress with Ralph. She was no virgin, after all. She had been married for twenty years. She had had sex thousands of times. It would all be over in a few minutes, and it would leave no scars. She would do it and forget it.

Until the next time.

That was the worst of it. He could go on coercing her indefinitely. His threat to reveal the secret of Sam’s paternity would terrify her as long as Wulfric was alive.

Surely Ralph would tire of her soon, and go back to the firm young bodies of his tavern wenches?

“What’s the matter with you?” Sam said when at dusk the squires came in for supper.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Davey’s bought me a milking cow.”

Sam looked a bit envious. He was enjoying life, but squires were not paid. They had little need of money – they were provided with food, drink, accommodation and clothing – but, all the same, a young man liked to have a few pennies in his wallet.

They talked about Davey’s forthcoming wedding. “You and Annet are going to be grandmothers together,” Sam said. “You’ll have to make your peace with her.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Gwenda snapped. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ralph and Alan emerged from the chamber when supper was served. All the residents and visitors assembled in the hall. The kitchen staff brought in three large pike baked with herbs. Gwenda sat near the foot of the table, well away from Ralph, and he took no notice of her.

After dinner she lay down to sleep in the straw on the floor beside Sam. It was a comfort to her to lie next to him, as she had when he was little. She remembered listening to his childish breathing, soft and contented, in the silence of the night. Drifting off, she thought about how children grew up to defy their parents’ expectations. Her own father had wanted to treat her like a commodity to be traded, but she had angrily refused to be used that way. Now each of her sons was taking his own road through life, and in both cases it was not the one she had planned. Sam would be a knight, and Davey was going to marry Annet’s daughter. If we knew how they would turn out, she thought, would we be so eager to have them?

She dreamed that she went to Ralph’s hunting lodge and found that he was not there, but there was a cat on his bed. She knew she had to kill the cat, but she had her hands tied behind her back, so she butted it with her head until it died.

When she woke up she wondered if she could kill Ralph at the lodge.

She had killed Alwyn, all those years ago, sticking his own knife into his throat and pushing it up into his head until its point had come out through his eye. She had killed Sim Chapman, too, holding his head under the water while he wriggled and thrashed, keeping him there until he breathed the river into his lungs and died. If Ralph went to the hunting lodge alone, she might be able to kill him, if she chose her moment well.

But he would not be on his own. Earls never went anywhere alone. He would have Alan with him, as he had before. It was unusual for him to travel with only one companion. It was unlikely he would have none.

Could she kill them both? No one else knew she was going to meet them there. If she killed them and simply walked on home she would not even be suspected. No one knew of her motive – it was a secret, that was the whole point. Someone might realize she had been near the lodge at the time, but they would only ask her whether she had seen any suspicious-looking men in the vicinity – it would not occur to them that big strong Ralph might have been murdered by a small middle-aged woman.

But could she do it? She thought about it, but she knew in her heart it was hopeless. They were experienced men of violence. They had been at war, off and on, for twenty years, most recently in the campaign of the winter before last. They had quick reflexes and their reactions were deadly. Many French knights had wanted to kill them, and had died trying.

She might have killed one, using guile and surprise, but not two.

She was going to have to submit to Ralph.

Grimly she went outside and washed her face and hands. When she came back into the great hall, the kitchen staff were putting out rye bread and weak ale for breakfast. Sam was dipping the stale bread into his ale to soften it. “You’ve got that look again,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said. She drew her knife and cut a slab of the bread. “I’ve got a long walk ahead of me.”

“Is that what you’re worried about? You shouldn’t really go on your own. Most women don’t like to travel alone.”

“I’m tougher than most women.” She was pleased that he showed concern for her. It was something his real father, Ralph, would never have done. Wulfric had had some influence over the boy, after all. But she was embarrassed that he had read her expression and divined her state of mind. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I could come with you,” he offered. “I’m sure the earl would let me. He doesn’t need any squires today – he’s going off somewhere with Alan Fernhill.”

That was the last thing she wanted. If she failed to keep her rendezvous, Ralph would let out the secret. She could readily imagine the pleasure Ralph would take in that. He would not need much provocation. “No,” she said firmly. “Stay here. You never know when your earl will call for you.”

“He won’t call for me. I should come with you.”

“I absolutely forbid it.” Gwenda swallowed a mouthful of her bread and stuffed the rest into her wallet. “You’re a good boy to worry about me, but it’s not necessary.” She kissed his cheek. “Take care of yourself. Don’t run unnecessary risks. If you want to do something for me, stay alive.”

She walked away. At the door, she turned. He was watching her thoughtfully. She forced herself to give what she hoped was a carefree smile. Then she went out.

On the road, Gwenda began to worry that someone might find out about her liaison with Ralph. Such things had a way of getting out. She had met him once, she was about to do so a second time, and she feared there might be more such occasions. How long would it be before someone saw her leaving the road and heading into the woods at a certain point in her journey, and wondered why? What if someone should stumble by accident into the hunting lodge at the wrong moment? How many people would notice that Ralph went off with Alan whenever Gwenda was travelling from Earlscastle to Wigleigh?

She stopped at a tavern just before noon and had some ale and cheese. Travellers generally left such places in a group, for safety, but she made sure to wait behind so that she would be alone on the road. When she came to the point where she had to turn into the woods she looked ahead and behind, to make sure there was no one watching. She thought she saw a movement in the trees a quarter of a mile back, and she peered into the hazy distance, trying to make out more clearly what she had seen; but no one was there. She was just getting jumpy.

She thought again about killing Ralph as she waded through the summer undergrowth. If by some lucky chance Alan was not here, might she find an opportunity? But Alan was the one person in the world who knew she was meeting Ralph here. If Ralph were killed, Alan would know who had done it. She would have to kill him, too. And that seemed impossible.

There were two horses outside the lodge. Ralph and Alan were inside, sitting at the little table, with the remains of a meal in front of them: half a loaf, a ham bone, the rind of a cheese and a wine flask. Gwenda closed the door behind her.

“Here she is, as promised,” Alan said with a satisfied air. Clearly he had been given the job of getting her to come to the rendezvous, and he was relieved she had obeyed orders. “Just perfect for your dessert,” he said. “Like a raisin, wrinkled but sweet.”

Gwenda said to Ralph: “Why don’t you get him out of here?”

Alan stood up. “Always the insolent remark,” he said. “Will you never learn?” But he left the room, going into the kitchen and slamming the door behind him.

Ralph smiled at her. “Come here,” he said. She moved obediently closer to him. “I’ll tell Alan not to be so rude, if you like.”

“Please don’t!” she said, horrified. “If he starts being nice to me, people will wonder why.”

“As you please.” He took her hand and tried to draw her closer. “Sit on my lap.”

“Couldn’t we just fuck and get it over with?”

He laughed. “That’s what I like about you – you’re honest.” He stood up, held her shoulders and looked into her eyes; then he bent his head and kissed her.

It was the first time he had done this. They had had sex twice without ever kissing. Now Gwenda was revolted. As his lips pressed against hers she felt more violated than when he had thrust his penis into her. He opened his mouth, and she tasted his cheesy breath. She pulled away, disgusted. “No,” she said.

“Remember what you stand to lose.”

“Please don’t do this.”

He started to become angry. “I will have you!” he said loudly. “Get that dress off.”

“Please let me go,” she said. He started to say something, but she raised her voice to speak over him. The walls were thin, and she knew that Alan in the kitchen could hear her pleading, but she did not care. “Don’t force me, I beg you!”

“I don’t care what you say!” he shouted. “Get on that bed!”

“Please don’t make me!”

The front door flew open.

Both Gwenda and Ralph turned and stared.

Sam stood there.

Gwenda said: “Oh, God, no!”

The three of them were frozen still for a split second, and in that moment Gwenda guessed, all at once, what had happened. Sam had been worried about her and – disobeying her orders – he had followed her from Earlscastle, staying out of sight but never far behind. He had seen her leave the road and head into the woods – she had caught a flash of movement when she looked behind, but she had dismissed it. He had found the hut, arriving a minute or two after her. He must have stood outside and heard the shouting. It must have been obvious that Ralph was in the process of forcing Gwenda to submit to unwanted sex – although, recalling in a flash what they had said, Gwenda realized they had not mentioned the true reason she had to submit. The secret had not been revealed – yet.

Sam drew his sword.

Ralph leaped to his feet. As Sam rushed at him, Ralph managed to get his own sword out. Sam swung at Ralph’s head, but Ralph raised his sword just in time to parry the stroke.

Gwenda’s son was trying to kill his father.

Sam was in terrible danger. Hardly more than a boy, he was up against a battle-hardened soldier.

Ralph shouted: “Alan!”

Then Gwenda realized Sam was up against not one but two veterans.

She dashed across the room. As the kitchen door came open, she stood on the far side of the doorway and flattened herself against the wall. She drew the long dagger from her belt.

The door flew wide and Alan stepped into the room.

He looked at the two fighters and did not see Gwenda. He paused for an instant, taking in the scene in front of him. Sam’s sword swept through the air again, aimed at Ralph’s neck; and again Ralph took the blow on his own sword.

Alan could see instantly that his master was under furious attack. His hand went to the hilt of his sword, and he took a pace forward. Then Gwenda stabbed him in the back.

She thrust the long dagger in and upwards as hard as she could, pushing with a fieldworker’s strength, thrusting through the muscles of Alan’s back, up through kidneys and stomach and lungs, hoping to reach his heart. The knife was ten inches long, pointed and sharp, and it sliced through his organs; but it did not kill him immediately.

He roared with pain then suddenly went silent. Staggering, he turned and grabbed her, pulling her to him in a wrestler’s embrace. She stabbed him again, in the stomach this time, with the same upward stroke through the vital organs. Blood came out of his mouth. He went limp and his arms fell to his sides. He stared for a moment with a look of utter incredulity at the contemptible little woman who had ended his life. Then his eyes closed and he fell to the floor.

Gwenda looked at the other two.

Sam struck and Ralph parried; Ralph stepped back and Sam advanced; Sam struck again and Ralph parried again. Ralph was defending himself vigorously, but not attacking.

Ralph was fearful of killing his son.

Sam, not knowing that his opponent was his father, had no such scruples, and pressed forward, slashing with his sword.

Gwenda knew this could not go on for long. One of them would hurt the other, and then it would become a fight to the death. Holding her bloody knife ready, she looked desperately for a chance to intervene, and stab Ralph the way she had stabbed Alan.

“Wait,” Ralph said, holding up his left hand; but Sam was angry, and thrust at him regardless. Ralph parried and spoke again. “Wait!” He was gasping from exertion, but he managed to get a few words out. “There’s something you don’t know.”

“I know enough!” Sam yelled, and Gwenda could hear the note of boyish hysteria in his big man’s voice. He swung again.

“You don’t!” Ralph shouted.

Gwenda knew what Ralph wanted to tell Sam. He was going to say: I am your father.

It must not happen.

“Listen to me!” Ralph said, and at last Sam responded. He stepped back, though he did not lower his sword.

Ralph panted, catching his breath in preparation for speaking; and, as he paused, Gwenda ran at him.

He spun around to face her, at the same time swinging his sword to the right in a flat arc. His blade hit hers, knocking the knife out of her hand. She was completely defenceless, and she knew that if he slashed at her with the return stroke she would be killed.

But, for the first time since Sam had drawn his sword, Ralph’s guard was open, leaving the front of his body undefended.

Sam stepped forward and thrust his sword into Ralph’s chest.

The pointed tip of the blade passed through Ralph’s light summer tunic and entered his body on the left side of his breastbone. It must have slipped between two ribs, for the blade sank farther in. Sam gave a bloodthirsty cry of triumph and pushed harder. Ralph staggered backwards under the impact. His shoulders hit the wall behind him, but still Sam came forward, pushing with all his might. The sword seemed to pass all the way through Ralph’s chest. There was a strange thud as the point came out of his back and stuck into the timber of the wall.

Ralph’s eyes looked into Sam’s face, and Gwenda knew what he was thinking. Ralph understood that he had been wounded fatally. And, in the last few seconds of his life, he knew that he had been killed by his own son.

Sam let go of the sword, but it did not fall. It was embedded in the wall, impaling Ralph gruesomely. Sam stepped back, aghast.

Ralph was not yet dead. His arms waved feebly in an effort to grab the sword and pull it out of his chest, but he was not able to coordinate his movements. Gwenda realized in a ghastly flash that he looked a bit like the cat the squires had tied to the post.

She stooped and quickly picked up her dagger from the floor.

Then, incredibly, Ralph spoke.

“Sam,” he said. “I am…” Then blood spurted from his mouth in a sudden flood, cutting off his speech.

Thank God, Gwenda thought.

The torrent stopped as quickly as it had started, and he spoke again. “I am-”

This time he was stopped by Gwenda. She leaped forward and thrust her dagger into his mouth. He made a gruesome choking noise. The blade sank into his throat.

She let go of the knife and stepped back.

She stared in horror at what she had done. The man who had tormented her for so long was nailed to the wall as if crucified, with a sword through his chest and a knife in his mouth. He made no sound, but his eyes showed that he was alive, as they looked from Gwenda to Sam and back again, in agony and terror and despair.

They stood still, staring at him, silent, waiting.

At last his eyes closed.

91

The plague faded away in September. Caris’s hospital gradually emptied, as patients died without being replaced by new ones. The vacant rooms were swept and scrubbed, and juniper logs were burned in the fireplaces, filling the hospital with a sharp autumn fragrance. Early in October, the last victim was laid to rest in the hospital’s graveyard. A smoky-red sun rose over Kingsbridge Cathedral as four strong young nuns lowered the shrouded corpse into the hole in the ground. The body was that of a crookbacked weaver from Outhenby but, as Caris gazed into the grave, she saw her old enemy, the plague, lying on the cold earth. Under her breath, she said: “Are you really dead, or will you come back again?”

When the nuns returned to the hospital after the funeral, there was nothing to do.

Caris washed her face, brushed her hair and put on the new dress she had been saving for this day. It was the bright red of Kingsbridge Scarlet. Then she walked out of the hospital for the first time in half a year.

She went immediately into Merthin’s garden.

His pear trees cast long shadows in the morning sun. The leaves were beginning to redden and crisp, while a few late fruits still hung on the boughs, round-bellied and brown. Arn, the gardener, was chopping firewood with an axe. When he saw Caris he was at first startled and frightened; then he realized what her appearance meant, and his face split in a grin. He dropped his axe and ran into the house.

In the kitchen, Em was boiling porridge over a cheerful fire. She looked at Caris as at a heavenly apparition. She was so moved that she kissed Caris’s hands.

Caris went up the stairs and into Merthin’s bedroom.

He was standing at the window in his undershirt, looking out at the nver that flowed past the front of the house. He turned towards her, and her heart faltered to see his familiar, irregular face, the gaze of alert intelligence and the quick humour in the twist of his lips. His golden-brown eyes looked lovingly at her, and his mouth widened in a welcoming smile. He showed no surprise: he must have noticed that there had been fewer and fewer patients arriving at the hospital, and he would have been expecting her to reappear any day. He looked like a man whose hopes have been fulfilled.

She stood beside him at the window. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she put hers around his waist. There was a little more grey in his red beard than six months ago, she thought, and his halo of hair seemed to have receded a little farther, unless it was her imagination.

For a moment, they both looked out at the river. In the grey morning light, the water was the colour of iron. The surface shifted endlessly, mirror-bright or deep black in irregular patterns, always changing and always the same.

“It’s over,” Caris said.

Then they kissed.

Merthin announced a special Autumn Fair to celebrate the reopening of the town. It was held during the last week of October. The wool-dealing season was over, but anyway fleeces were no longer the principal commodity traded in Kingsbridge, and thousands of people came to buy the scarlet cloth for which the town was now famous.

At the Saturday-night banquet that opened the fair, the guild honoured Caris. Although Kingsbridge had not totally escaped the plague, it had suffered much less than other cities, and most people felt they owed their lives to her precautions. She was everyone’s hero. The guildsmen insisted on marking her achievement, and Madge Webber devised a new ceremony in which Caris was presented with a gold key, symbolizing the key to the city gate. Merthin felt very proud.

Next day, Sunday, Merthin and Caris went to the cathedral. The monks were still at St-John-in-the-Forest, so the service was taken by Father Michael from St Peter’s parish church in the town. Lady Philippa, countess of Shiring, showed up.

Merthin had not seen Philippa since Ralph’s funeral. Not many tears had been shed for his brother, her husband. The earl would normally have been buried at Kingsbridge Cathedral but, because the town had been closed, Ralph had been interred in Shiring.

His death remained a mystery. His body had been found in a hunting lodge, stabbed through the chest. Alan Fernhill lay on the floor nearby, also dead of stab wounds. The two men appeared to have had dinner together, for the remains of a meal were still on the table. Obviously there had been a fight, but it was not clear whether Ralph and Alan had inflicted fatal wounds on one another or someone else had been involved. Nothing had been stolen: money was found on both bodies, their costly weapons lay beside them, and two valuable horses were cropping the grass in the clearing outside. Because of that, the Shiring coroner inclined to the theory that the two men had killed one another.

In another sense, there was no mystery. Ralph had been a man of violence, and it was no surprise that he had died a violent death. They that live by the sword shall die by the sword, Jesus said, although that verse was not often quoted by the priests of King Edward III’s reign. If anything was remarkable, it was that Ralph had survived so many military campaigns, so many bloody battles, and so many charges by the French cavalry, to die in a squabble a few miles from his home.

Merthin had surprised himself by weeping at the funeral. He wondered what he was sad about. His brother had been a wicked man who caused a great deal of misery, and his death was a blessing. Merthin had not been close to him since he murdered Tilly. What was there to mourn? In the end, Merthin decided he was grieving for a Ralph that might have been – a man whose violence was not indulged but controlled; whose aggression was directed, not by ambition for personal glory, but by a sense of justice. Perhaps it had once been possible for Ralph to grow into such a man. When the two of them had played together, aged five and six, floating wooden boats on a muddy puddle, Ralph had not been cruel and vengeful. That was why Merthin cried.

Philippa’s two boys had been at the funeral, and they were with her today. The elder, Gerry, was Ralph’s son by poor Tilly. The younger, Roley, was believed by everyone to be Ralph’s son by Philippa, though in fact he was Merthin’s. Fortunately, Roley was not a small, lively redhead like Merthin. He was going to be tall and dignified like his mother.

Roley was clutching a small wooden carving, which he presented solemnly to Merthin. It was a horse, and he had done it rather well for a ten-year-old, Merthin realized. Most children would have sculpted the animal standing firmly on all four feet, but Roley had made it move, its legs in different positions and its mane flying in the wind. The boy had inherited his real father’s ability to visualize complex objects in three dimensions. Merthin felt an unexpected lump in his throat. He bent down and kissed Roley’s forehead.

He gave Philippa a grateful smile. He guessed she had encouraged Roley to give him the horse, knowing what it would mean to him. He glanced at Caris and saw that she, too, understood its significance; though nothing was said.

The atmosphere in the great church was joyful. Father Michael was not a charismatic preacher, and he went through the mass in a mumble. But the nuns sang as beautifully as ever, and an optimistic sun shone through the rich dark colours of the stained-glass windows.

Afterwards they walked around the fair in the crisp autumn air. Caris held Merthin’s arm and Philippa walked on his other side. The two boys ran on ahead while Philippa’s bodyguard and lady-in-waiting followed behind. Business was good, Merthin saw. Kingsbridge craftsmen and traders were already beginning to rebuild their fortunes. The town would recover from this epidemic faster than from the last.

Senior members of the guild were going around checking weights and measures. There were standards for the weight of a woolsack, the width of a piece of cloth, the size of a bushel and so on, so that people knew what they were buying. Merthin encouraged guildsmen to perform these checks ostentatiously, so that buyers could see how carefully the town monitored its tradesmen. Of course, if they really suspected someone of cheating, they would check discreetly and then, if he was guilty, get rid of him quietly.

Philippa’s two sons ran excitedly from one stall to the next. Watching Roley, Merthin said quietly to Philippa: “Now that Ralph has gone, is there any reason why Roley should not know the truth?”

She looked thoughtful. “I wish I could tell him – but would it be for his sake, or ours? For ten years he’s believed Ralph to be his father. Two months ago he wept at Ralph’s graveside. It would be a terrible shock to tell him now that he is another man’s son.”

They were speaking in low voices, but Caris could hear, and she said: “I agree with Philippa. You have to think of the child, not of yourself.”

Merthin saw the sense of what they were saying. It was a small sadness on a happy day.

“There is another reason,” Philippa said. “Gregory Longfellow came to see me last week. The king wants to make Gerry earl of Shiring.”

“At the age of thirteen?” Merthin said.

“The title of earl is always hereditary, once it has been granted, although baronies are not. Anyway, I would administer the earldom for the next three years.”

“As you did all the time Ralph was away fighting the French. You’ll be relieved the king isn’t asking you to marry again.”

She made a face. “I’m too old.”

“So Roley will be second in line for the earldom – provided we keep our secret.” If something should happen to Gerry, Merthin thought, my son will become earl of Shiring. Fancy that.

“Roley would be a good ruler,” Philippa said. “He’s intelligent and quite strong-willed, but not cruel like Ralph.”

Ralph’s mean nature had been obvious at an early age: he had been ten, Roley’s age now, when he shot Gwenda’s dog. “But Roley might prefer to be something else.” He looked again at the carved wooden horse.

Philippa smiled. She did not smile often, but when she did it was dazzling. She was still beautiful, he thought. She said: “Give in to it, and be proud of him.”

Merthin recalled how proud his father had been when Ralph became the earl. But he knew he would never feel the same way. He would be proud of Roley, whatever he did, as long as he did it well. Perhaps the boy would become a stonemason, and carve saints and angels. Perhaps he would be a wise and merciful nobleman. Or he might do something else, something his parents had never anticipated.

Merthin invited Philippa and the boys to dinner, and they all left the cathedral precincts. They walked over the bridge against the flow of loaded carts coming to the fair. They crossed Leper Island together and went through the orchard into the house.

In the kitchen they found Lolla.

As soon as she saw her father, she burst into tears. He put his arms around her and she sobbed on his shoulder. Wherever she had been, she must have got out of the habit of washing, for she smelled like a pigsty, but he was too happy to care.

It was a while before they could get any sense out of her. When at last she spoke, she said: “They all died!” Then she burst into fresh tears. After a whiie she calmed down, and spoke more coherently. “They all died,” she repeated, suppressing her sobs. “Jake, and Boyo, Netty and Hal, Joanie and Chalkie and Ferret, one by one, and nothing I did made any difference!”

They had been living in the forest, Merthin gathered, a group of youngsters pretending to be nymphs and shepherds. The details came out gradually. The boys would kill a deer every now and again, and sometimes they would go away for a day and come back with a barrel of wine and some bread. Lolla said they bought their supplies, but Merthin guessed they had robbed travellers. Lolla had somehow imagined they could live like that for ever: she had not thought about how things might be different in the winter. But, in the end, it was the plague rather than the weather that brought the idyll to an end. “I was so frightened,” Lolla said. “I wanted Caris.”

Gerry and Roley listened with mouths agape. They idolized their older cousin Lolla. Although she had come home in tears, the story of her adventure only enhanced her in their eyes.

“I never want to feel like that again,” Lolla said. “So powerless, with my friends all sick and dying around me.”

“I can understand that,” Caris said. “It’s how I felt when my mother died.”

“Will you teach me to heal people?” Lolla said to her. “I want to really help them, as you do, not just sing hymns and show them a picture of an angel. I want to understand about bones and blood, and herbs and things that make people better. I want to be able to do something when a person is sick.”

“Of course I’ll teach you, if that’s what you want,” Caris said. “I would be pleased.”

Merthin was astonished. Lolla had been rebellious and bad-tempered for some years now, and part of her rejection of authority had been a pretence that Caris, her stepmother, was not really her parent, and need not be respected. He was delighted by the turnaround. It was almost worth the agony of worry he had been through.

A moment later, a nun came into the kitchen. “Little Annie Jones is having a fit, and we don’t know why,” she said to Caris. “Can you come?”

“Of course,” Caris said.

Lolla said: “Can I go with you?”

“No,” said Caris. “Here’s your first lesson: you have to be clean. Go and wash, now. You can come with me tomorrow.”

As she was leaving, Madge Webber came in. “Have you heard the news?” she said, her face grim. “Philemon is back.”

On that Sunday, Davey and Amabel were married at the little church in Wigleigh.

Lady Philippa gave permission for the manor house to be used for the party. Wulfric killed a pig and roasted it whole over a fire in the yard. Davey had bought sweet currants, and Annet baked them in buns. There was no ale – much of the barley harvest had rotted in the fields for want of reapers – but Philippa had sent Sam home with a present of a barrel of cider.

Gwenda still thought, every day, about that scene in the hunting lodge. In the middle of the night she stared into the darkness and saw Ralph with her knife in his mouth, the hilt sticking out between his brown teeth, and Sam’s sword nailing him to the wall.

When she and Sam had retrieved their weapons, pulling them grimly out of Ralph, and the corpse had fallen to the floor, it had looked as if the two dead men had killed one another. Gwenda had smeared blood on their unstained weapons and left them where they lay. Outside, she had loosened the horses’ tethers, so that they could survive for a few days, if necessary, until someone found them. Then she and Sam had walked away.

The Shiring coroner had speculated that outlaws might have been involved in the deaths, but in the end had come to the conclusion Gwenda expected. No suspicion had fallen on her or Sam. They had got away with murder.

She had told Sam an edited version of what had happened between her and Ralph. She pretended that this was the first time he had tried to coerce her, and she said he had simply threatened to kill her if she refused. Sam was awestruck to think that he had killed an earl, but he had no doubt that his action had been justified. He had the right temperament for a soldier, Gwenda realized: he would never suffer agonies of remorse over killing.

Nor did she, even though she often recalled the scene with revulsion. She had killed Alan Fernhill and finished Ralph off, but she had not a twinge of regret. The world was a better place without both of them. Ralph had died in the agony of knowing that his own son had stabbed him through the heart, and that was exactly what he deserved. In time, she felt sure, the vision of what she had done would cease to come to her by night.

She put the memory out of her mind and looked around the hall of the manor house at the carousing villagers.

The pig was eaten, and the men were drinking the last of the cider. Aaron Appletree produced his bagpipes. The village had had no drummer since the death of Annet’s father, Perkin. Gwenda wondered whether Davey would take up drumming now.

Wulfric wanted to dance, as he always did when he had had a bellyful of drink. Gwenda partnered him for the first number, laughing as she tried to keep up with his cavorting. He lifted her, swung her through the air, crushed her to his body, and put her down again only to circle her with great leaps. He had no sense of rhythm, but his sheer enthusiasm was infectious. Afterwards she declared herself exhausted, and he danced with his new daughter-in-law, Amabel.

Then, of course, he danced with Annet.

His eye fell on her as soon as the tune ended and he let go of Amabel. Annet was sitting on a bench at one side of the hall of the manor house. She wore a green dress that was girlishly short and showed her dainty ankles. The dress was not new, but she had embroidered the bosom with yellow and pink flowers. As always, a few ringlets had escaped from her headdress, and they hung around her face. She was twenty years too old to dress that way, but she did not know it, and nor did Wulfric.

Gwenda smiled as they began to dance. She wanted to look happy and carefree, but she realized her expression might be more like a grimace, and she gave up trying. She tore her gaze away from them and watched Davey and Amabel. Perhaps Amabel would not turn out quite like her mother. She had some of Annet’s coquettish ways, but Gwenda had never seen her actually flirting, and right now she seemed uninterested in anyone but her husband.

Gwenda scanned the room and located her other son, Sam. He was with the young men, telling a story, miming it, holding the reins of an imaginary horse and almost falling off. He had them spellbound. They probably envied his luck in becoming a squire.

Sam was still living at Earlscastle. Lady Philippa had kept on most of the squires and men-at-arms, for her son Gerry would need them to ride and hunt with him, and practise with the sword and the lance. Gwenda hoped that, during the period of Philippa’s regency, Sam would learn a more intelligent and merciful code than he would have got from Ralph.

There was not much else to look at, and Gwenda’s gaze returned to her husband and the woman he had once wanted to marry. As Gwenda had feared, Annet was making the most of Wulfric’s exuberance and inebriation. She gave him sexy smiles when they danced apart, and when they came together she clung to him, Gwenda thought, like a wet shirt.

The dance seemed to go on for ever, Aaron Appletree repeating the bouncy melody endlessly on his bagpipes. Gwenda knew her husband’s moods, and now she saw the glint in his eye that always appeared when he was about to ask her to lie with him. Annet knew exactly what she was doing, Gwenda thought furiously. She shifted restlessly on her bench, willing the music to stop, trying not to let her anger show.

However, she was seething with indignation when the tune ended with a flourish. She made up her mind to get Wulfric to calm down and sit beside her. She would keep him close for the rest of the afternoon, and there would be no trouble.

But then Annet kissed him.

While he still had his hands on her waist she stood on tiptoe and tilted her face and kissed him full on the lips, briefly but firmly; and Gwenda boiled over.

She jumped up from her bench and strode across the hall. As she passed the bridal couple her son, Davey, saw the expression on her face and tried to detain her, but she ignored him. She went up to Wulfric and Annet, who were still gazing at one another and smiling stupidly. She poked Annet’s shoulder with her finger and said loudly: “Leave my husband alone!”

Wulfric said: “Gwenda, please-”

“Don’t you say anything,” Gwenda said. “Just stay away from this whore.”

Annet’s eyes flashed defiance. “It’s not dancing that whores are paid for.”

“I’m sure you know all about what whores do.”

“How dare you!”

Davey and Amabel intervened. Amabel said to Annet: “Please don’t make a scene, Ma.”

Annet said: “It’s not me, it’s Gwenda!”

Gwenda said: “I’m not the one trying to seduce someone else’s husband.”

Davey said: “Mother, you’re spoiling the wedding.”

Gwenda was too enraged to listen. “She always does this. She jilted him twenty-three years ago, but she’s never let him go!”

Annet began to cry. Gwenda was not surprised. Annet’s tears were just another means of getting her way.

Wulfric reached out to pat Annet’s shoulder, and Gwenda snapped: “Don’t touch her!” He jerked back his hand as if burned.

“You don’t understand,” Annet sobbed.

“I understand you all too well,” Gwenda said.

“No, you don’t,” Annet said. She wiped her eyes and gave Gwenda a surprisingly direct, candid look. “You don’t understand that you have won. He’s yours. You don’t know how he adores you, respects you, admires you. You don’t see the way he looks at you when you’re speaking to someone else.”

Gwenda was taken aback. “Well,” she mumbled, but she did not know what else to say.

Annet went on: “Does he eye younger women? Does he ever sneak away from you? How many nights have you slept apart in the last twenty years – two? Three? Can’t you see that he will never love another woman as long as he lives?”

Gwenda looked at Wulfric and realized that all this was true. In fact it was obvious. She knew it and so did everyone. She tried to remember why she was so angry with Annet, but somehow the logic of it had slipped her mind.

The dancing had stopped and Aaron had put down his pipes. All the villagers now gathered around the two women, mothers of the bridal couple.

Annet said: “I was a foolish and selfish girl, and I made a stupid decision, and lost the best man I’ve ever met. And you got him. Sometimes I can’t resist the temptation to pretend it happened the other way around, and he’s mine. So I smile at him, and I pat his arm; and he’s kind to me because he knows he broke my heart.”

“You broke your own heart,” Gwenda said.

“I did. And you were the lucky girl who benefited from my folly.”

Gwenda was dumbfounded. She had never looked at Annet as a sad person. To her, Annet had always been a powerful, threatening figure, ever scheming to take Wulfric back. But that was never going to come to pass.

Annet said: “I know it annoys you when Wulfric is nice to me. I’d like to say it won’t happen again, but I know my own weakness. Do you have to hate me for it? Don’t let this spoil the joy of the wedding and of the grandchildren we both want. Instead of regarding me as your lifelong enemy, couldn’t you think of me as a bad sister, who sometimes misbehaves and makes you cross, but still has to be treated as one of the family?”

She was right. Gwenda had always thought of Annet as a pretty face with an empty head, but on this occasion Annet was the wiser of the two, and Gwenda felt humbled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps I could try.”

Annet stepped forward and kissed Gwenda’s cheek. Gwenda felt Annet’s tears on her face. “Thank you,” Annet said.

Gwenda hesitated, then put her arms around Annet’s bony shoulders and hugged her.

All around them, the villagers clapped and cheered.

A moment later, the music began again.

Early in November, Philemon arranged a service of thanksgiving for the end of the plague. Archbishop Henri came with Canon Claude. So did Sir Gregory Longfellow.

Gregory must have come to Kingsbridge to announce the king’s choice of bishop, Merthin thought. Formally, he would tell the monks that the king had nominated a certain person, and it would be up to the monks to elect that person or someone else; but, in the end, the monks usually voted for whomever the king had chosen.

Merthin could read no message in Philemon’s face, and he guessed that Gregory had not yet revealed the king’s choice. The decision meant everything to Merthin and Caris. If Claude got the job, their troubles were over. He was moderate and reasonable. But if Philemon became bishop, they faced more years of squabbling and lawsuits.

Henri took the service, but Philemon preached the sermon. He thanked God for answering the prayers of Kingsbridge monks and sparing the town from the worst effects of the plague. He did not mention that the monks had fled to St-John-in-the-Forest and left the townspeople to fend for themselves; nor that Caris and Merthin had helped God to answer the monks’ prayers by closing the town gates for six months. He made it sound as if he had saved Kingsbridge.

“I makes my blood boil,” Merthin said to Caris, not troubling to keep his voice down. “He’s completely twisting the facts!”

“Relax,” she said. “God knows the truth, and so do the people. Philemon isn’t fooling anyone.”

She was right, of course. After a battle, the soldiers on the winning side always thanked God, but all the same they knew the difference between good generals and bad.

After the service, Merthin as alderman was invited to dine at the prior’s palace with the archbishop. He was seated next to Canon Claude. As soon as grace had been said, a general hubbub of conversation broke out, and Merthin spoke to Claude in a low, urgent voice. “Does the archbishop know yet who the king has chosen as bishop?”

Claude replied with an almost imperceptible nod.

“Is it you?”

Claude’s head shake was equally minimal.

“Philemon, then?”

Again the tiny nod.

Merthin’s heart sank. How could the king pick a fool and coward such as Philemon in preference to someone as competent and sensible as Claude? But he knew the answer: Philemon had played his cards well. “Has Gregory instructed the monks yet?”

“No.” Claude leaned closer. “He will probably tell Philemon informally tonight after supper, then speak to the monks in chapter tomorrow morning.”

“So we’ve got until the end of the day.”

“For what?”

“To change his mind.”

“You won’t do that.”

“I’m going to try.”

“You’ll never succeed.”

“Bear in mind that I’m desperate.”

Merthin toyed with his food, eating little and fighting to keep his patience, until the archbishop rose from the table; then he spoke to Gregory. “If you would walk with me in the cathedral, I would speak to you about something I feel sure will interest you deeply,” he said, and Gregory nodded assent.

They paced side by side up the nave, where Merthin could be sure no one was lurking close enough to hear. He took a deep breath. What he was about to do was dangerous. He was going to try to bend the king to his will. If he failed he could be charged with treason – and executed.

He said: “There have long been rumours that a document exists, somewhere in Kingsbridge, that the king would dearly love to destroy.”

Gregory was stone-faced, but he said: “Go on.” That was as good as confirmation.

“This letter was in the possession of a knight who has recently died.”

“Has he!” said Gregory, startled.

“You obviously know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Gregory answered like a lawyer. “Let us say, for the sake of argument, that I do.”

“I would like to do the king the service of restoring that document to him – whatever it may be.” He knew perfectly well what it was, but he could adopt a cautious pretence of ignorance as well as Gregory.

“The king would be grateful,” said Gregory.

“How grateful?”

“What did you have in mind?”

“A bishop more in sympathy with the people of Kingsbridge than Philemon.”

Gregory looked hard at him. “Are you trying to blackmail the king of England?”

Merthin knew this was the point of danger. “We Kingsbridge folk are merchants and craftsmen,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “We buy, we sell, we make deals. I’m just trying to make a bargain with you. I want to sell you something, and I’ve told you my price. There’s no blackmail, no coercion. I make no threats. If you don’t want what I’m selling, that will be the end of the matter.”

They reached the altar. Gregory stared at the crucifix that surmounted it. Merthin knew exactly what he was thinking. Should he have Merthin arrested, taken to London, and tortured until he revealed the whereabouts of the document? Or would it be simpler and more convenient to the king just to nominate a different man as bishop of Kingsbridge?

There was a long silence. The cathedral was cold, and Merthin pulled his cloak closer around him. At last Gregory said: “Where is the document?”

“Close by. I’ll take you there.”

“Very well.”

“And our bargain?”

“If the document is what you believe it to be, I will honour my side of the arrangement.”

“And make Canon Claude bishop?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” said Merthin. “We’ll need to walk a little way into the woods.”

They went side by side down the main street and across the bridge, their breath making clouds in the air. A wintry sun shone with little warmth as they walked into the forest. Merthin found the way easily this time, having followed the same route only a few weeks earlier. He recognized the little spring, the big rock and the boggy valley. They came quickly to the clearing with the broad oak tree, and he went straight to the spot where he had dug up the scroll.

He was dismayed to see that someone else had got here first.

He had carefully smoothed the loose earth and covered it with leaves but, despite that, someone had found the hiding place. There was a hole a foot deep, and a pile of recently excavated earth beside it. And the hole was empty.

He stared at the hole, appalled. “Oh, hell,” he said.

Gregory said: “I hope this isn’t some kind of charade-”

“Let me think,” Merthin snapped.

Gregory shut up.

“Only two people knew about this,” Merthin said, thinking aloud. “I haven’t told anyone, so Thomas must have. He was getting senile before he died. I think he spilled the beans.”

“But to whom?”

“Thomas spent the last few months of his life at St-John-in-the-Forest, and the monks were keeping everyone else out, so it must have been a monk.”

“How many are there?”

“Twenty or so. But not many would know enough about the background to understand the significance of an old man’s mumblings about a buried letter.”

“That’s all very well, but where is it now?”

“I think I know,” said Merthin. “Give me one more chance.”

“Very well.”

They walked back to the town. As they crossed the bridge, the sun was setting over Leper Island. They went into the darkening cathedral, walked to the south-west tower, and climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the little room where the costumes for the mystery play were kept.

Merthin had not been here for eleven years, but dusty storerooms did not change much, especially in cathedrals, and this was the same. He found the loose stone in the wall and pulled it out.

All Philemon’s treasures were behind the stone, including the love note carved in wood. And there, among them, was a bag made of oiled wool. Merthin opened the bag and drew from it a vellum scroll.

“I thought so,” he said. “Philemon got the secret out of Thomas when Thomas was losing his mind.” No doubt Philemon was keeping the letter to be used as a bargaining counter if the decision on the bishopric went the wrong way – but now Merthin could use it instead.

He handed the scroll to Gregory.

Gregory unrolled it. A look of awe came over his face as he read. “Dear God,” he said. “Those rumours were true.” He rolled it up again. He had the look of a man who has found something he has been seeking for many years.

“Is it what you expected?” Merthin said.

“Oh, yes.”

“And the king will be grateful?”

“Profoundly.”

“So your part of the bargain…?”

“Will be kept,” said Gregory. “You shall have Claude as your bishop.”

“Thank God,” said Merthin.

Eight days later, early in the morning, Caris was at the hospital, teaching Lolla how to tie a bandage, when Merthin came in. “I want to show you something,” he said. “Come to the cathedral.”

It was a bright, cold winter’s day. Caris wrapped herself in a heavy red cloak. As they were crossing the bridge into the city, Merthin stopped and pointed. “The spire is finished,” he said.

Caris looked up. She could see its shape through the spider web of flimsy scaffolding that still surrounded it. The spire was immensely tall and graceful. As her eye followed its upward taper, Caris had the feeling that it might go on for ever.

She said: “And is it the tallest building in England?”

He smiled. “Yes.”

They walked up the main street and into the cathedral. Merthin led the way up the staircase within the walls of the central tower. He was used to the climb, but Caris was panting by the time they emerged into the open air at the summit of the tower, on the walkway that ran round the base of the spire. Up here the breeze was stiff and cold.

They looked at the view while Caris caught her breath. All Kingsbridge was laid out to the north and west: the main street, the industrial district, the river, and the island with the hospital. Smoke rose from a thousand chimneys. Miniature people hurried through the streets, walking or riding or driving carts, carrying tool bags or baskets of produce or heavy sacks; men and women and children, fat and thin, their clothing poor and worn or rich and heavy, mostly brown and green but with flashes of peacock blue and scarlet. The sight of them all made Caris marvel: each individual had a different life, every one of them rich and complex, with dramas in the past and challenges in the future, happy memories and secret sorrows, and a crowd of friends and enemies and loved ones.

“Ready?” Merthin said.

Caris nodded.

He led her up the scaffolding. It was an insubstantial affair of ropes and branches, and it always made her nervous, though she did not like to say so: if Merthin could climb it, so could she. The wind made the whole structure sway a little, and the skirts of Caris’s robe flapped around her legs like the sails of a ship. The spire was as tall again as the tower, and the climb up the rope ladders was strenuous.

They stopped half way for a rest. “The spire is very plain,” Merthin said, not needing to catch his breath. “Just a roll moulding at the angles.” Caris realized that other spires she had seen featured decorative crochets, bands of coloured stone or tile, and window-like recesses. The simplicity of Merthin’s design was what made it seem to go on for ever.

Merthin pointed down. “Hey, look what’s happening!”

“I’d rather not look down…”

“I think Philemon is leaving for Avignon.”

She had to see that. She was standing on a broad platform of planks, but all the same she had to hold on tight with both hands to the upright pole to convince herself that she was not falling. She swallowed hard and directed her gaze down the perpendicular side of the tower to the ground below.

It was worth the effort. A charette drawn by two oxen was outside the prior’s palace. An escort consisting of a monk and a man-at-arms, both on horseback, waited patiently. Philemon stood beside the charette while the monks of Kingsbridge came forward, one by one, and kissed his hand.

When they had all done, Brother Sime handed him a black-and-white cat, and Caris recognized the descendant of Godwyn’s cat Archbishop.

Philemon climbed into the carriage and the driver whipped the oxen. The vehicle lumbered slowly out of the gate and down the main street. Caris and Merthin watched it cross the double bridge and disappear into the suburbs.

“Thank God he’s gone,” said Caris.

Merthin looked up. “Not much farther to the top,” he said. “Soon you will be higher off the ground than any woman in England has ever stood.” He began to climb again.

The wind grew stronger but, despite her anxiety, Caris felt exhilarated. This was Merthin’s dream, and he had made it come true. Every day for hundreds of years people for miles around would look at this spire and think how beautiful it was.

They reached the top of the scaffolding and stood on the stage that encircled the peak of the spire. Caris tried to forget that there was no railing around the platform to stop them falling off.

At the point of the spire was a cross. It had looked small from the ground, but now Caris saw that it was taller than she.

“There’s always a cross at the top of a spire,” Merthin said. “That’s conventional. Aside from that, practice varies. At Chartres, the cross bears an image of the sun. I’ve done something different.”

Caris saw that, at the foot of the cross, Merthin had placed a life-size stone angel. The kneeling figure was not gazing up at the cross, but out to the west, over the town. Looking more closely, Caris saw that the angel’s features were not conventional. The small round face was clearly female, and looked vaguely familiar, with neat features and short hair.

Then she realized that the face was her own.

She was amazed. “Will they let you do that?” she said.

Merthin nodded. “Half the town thinks you’re an angel already.”

“I’m not, though,” she said.

“No,” he said with the familiar grin that she loved so much. “But you’re the closest they’ve seen.”

The wind blustered suddenly. Caris grabbed Merthin. He held her tightly, standing confidently on spread feet. The gust died away as quickly as it had come, but Merthin and Caris remained locked together, standing there at the top of the world, for a long time afterwards.