“What will you do?”
“That’s why I’ve come to talk to you. We may have to stop work on the bridge.”
He stared at her. “No,” he said quietly.
“I’m very sorry, but my father doesn’t have the money. He’s put it all into fleeces that he can’t sell.”
Merthin looked as if he had been slapped. After a moment he said: “We have to find another way!”
Her heart went out to him, but she could think of nothing hopeful to say. “My father pledged seventy pounds to the bridge. He’s paid out half already. The rest, I’m afraid, is in woolsacks at his warehouse.”
“He can’t be completely penniless.”
“Very nearly. And the same applies to several other citizens who promised money for the bridge.”
“I could slow down,” Merthin said desperately. “Lay off some craftsmen, and run down the stocks of materials.”
“Then you wouldn’t have a bridge ready by next year’s fair, and we’d be in worse trouble.”
“Better than giving up altogether.”
“Yes, it would be,” she said. “But don’t do anything yet. When the Fleece Fair is over, we’ll think again. I just wanted you to know the situation.”
Merthin still looked pale. “I appreciate it.”
The raft came back, and Jimmie waited to take her to the shore. As she walked on board, she said casually: “And how is Elizabeth Clerk?”
Merthin pretended to be a little surprised by the question. “She’s fine, I think,” he said.
“You seem to be seeing a lot of her.”
“Not especially. We’ve always been friends.”
“Yes, of course,” Caris said, though it was not really true. Merthin had completely ignored Elizabeth for most of last year, when he and Caris were spending so much time together. But it would have been undignified to contradict him, so she said no more.
She waved goodbye and Jimmie pushed the raft off. Merthin was trying to give the impression that his relationship with Elizabeth was not a romance. Perhaps that was true. Or perhaps he was embarrassed to admit to Caris that he was in love with someone else. She could not tell. One thing she felt sure of: it was a romance on Elizabeth’s side. Caris could tell, just by the way Elizabeth looked at him. Elizabeth might be an ice maiden, but she was hot for Merthin.
The raft bumped against the opposite bank. Caris stepped off and walked up the hill into the centre of the city.
Merthin had been deeply shaken by her news. Caris felt like crying when she recalled the shock and dismay on his face. That was how he had looked when she had refused to rekindle their love affair.
She still did not know how she was going to spend her life. She had always assumed that, whatever she did, she would live in a comfortable house paid for by a profitable business. Now even that ground was moving under her feet. She racked her brains for some way out of the mess. Her father was oddly serene, as if he had not yet grasped the scale of his losses; but she knew that something had to be done.
Walking up the main street she passed Elfric’s daughter, Griselda, carrying her six-month-old baby. It was a boy, and she had named him Merthin, a permanent reproach to the original Merthin for not marrying her. Griselda was still maintaining a pretence of injured innocence. Everyone else now accepted that Merthin was not the father, though some townspeople still thought he should have married her anyway, as he had lain with her.
As Caris came to her own house, her father came out. She stared at him in astonishment. He was dressed only in his underwear: a long undershirt, drawers and hose. “Where are your clothes?” she said.
He looked down at himself and made a disgusted sound. “I’m getting absent-minded,” he said, and he went back indoors.
He must have taken his coat off to go to the privy, she thought, then forgotten to put it on again. Was that just his age? He was only forty-eight, and besides, it seemed worse than mere forgetfulness. She felt unnerved.
He returned normally dressed, and they crossed the main street together and entered the priory grounds. Edmund said: “Did you tell Merthin about the money?”
“Yes. He was terribly shocked.”
“What did he say?”
“That he could spend less by slowing the pace.”
“But then we wouldn’t have a bridge in time for next year.”
“But, as he said, that would be better than abandoning the bridge half built.”
They came to the stall of Perkin Wigleigh, selling laying hens. His flirtatious daughter, Annet, had a tray of eggs held up by a strap around her neck. Behind the counter Caris saw her friend Gwenda, who was now working for Perkin. Eight months pregnant, with heavy breasts and a swollen belly, Gwenda stood with one hand on her hip, stretching in the classic pose of the expectant mother with an aching back.
Caris calculated that she, too, would now be eight months pregnant, if she had not taken Mattie’s potion. After the abortion her breasts had leaked milk, and she could not help feeling that this was her body’s reproach for what she had done. She suffered pangs of regret but, whenever she thought about it logically, she knew that if she had her time over again she would do the same.
Gwenda caught Caris’s eye and smiled. Against all the odds, Gwenda had got what she wanted: Wulfric for her husband. He was there now, strong as a horse and twice as handsome, lifting a stack of wooden crates on to the flatbed of a cart. Caris was thrilled for Gwenda. “How do you feel today?” she said.
“My back’s been hurting all morning.”
“Not long, now.”
“A couple of weeks, I think.”
Edmund said: “Who’s this, my dear?”
“Don’t you remember Gwenda?” said Caris. “She’s been a guest at your house at least once a year for the past ten years!”
Edmund smiled. “I didn’t recognize you, Gwenda – it must be the pregnancy. You look well, though.”
They moved on. Wulfric had not been given his inheritance, Caris knew: Gwenda had failed in that task. Caris was not sure exactly what had gone on, last September, when Gwenda had gone to plead with Ralph, but it seemed Ralph had made some kind of promise then reneged. Anyway, Gwenda now hated Ralph with a passion that was almost frightening.
Nearby was a line of stalls at which local cloth merchants were selling brown burel, the loosely woven fabric that was bought by all but the rich for their home-made clothing. They seemed to be doing good business, unlike the wool merchants. Raw wool was a wholesale business – the absence of a few big buyers could ruin the market. But cloth was retail. Everyone needed it, everyone bought it. A bit less, perhaps, when times were hard, but they still needed clothes.
A vague thought formed in the back of Caris’s mind. When merchants could not sell their wool, they sometimes had it woven and tried to sell it as cloth. But it was a lot of work, and there was not much profit in brown burel. Everyone bought the cheapest, and sellers had to keep the price down.
She looked at the cloth stalls with new eyes. “I wonder what fetches the most money?” she said. The burel was twelve pence per yard. You had to pay half as much again for cloth that had been fulled – thickened by pounding in water – and still more for colours other than the natural dull brown. Peter Dyer’s stall featured green, yellow and pink cloth at two shillings – twenty-four pence – per yard, even though the colours were not very bright.
She turned to her father, to tell him the notion that was forming in her mind; but, before she could speak, something happened to distract her.
Being at the Fleece Fair reminded Ralph unpleasantly of the same event a year ago, and he touched his misshapen nose. How had that occurred? It had started with him harmlessly teasing the peasant girl, Annet, then teaching her oafish paramour a lesson in respect; but somehow it had ended up in humiliation for Ralph.