Merthin smiled wryly. Edmund could be disarmingly blunt. Caris had inherited the trait. “For a while I thought I might marry Elizabeth Clerk,” he said.
Edmund said: “So did I.”
Caris said: “She’s a cold fish.”
“No, she’s not. But when she asked me, I backed off.”
Caris said: “Oh – so that’s why she’s so bad-tempered lately.”
Edmund said: “And why her mother won’t look at Merthin.”
“Why did you refuse her?” Caris asked.
“There’s only one woman in Kingsbridge I could marry – and she doesn’t want to be anyone’s wife.”
“But she doesn’t want to lose you.”
Merthin became angry. “What should I do?” he said. His voice was loud, and people around them stopped their conversations to listen. “Godwyn has fired me, you’ve rejected me and my brother is an outlaw. In God’s name, why should I stay here?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she said.
“That’s not enough!” he shouted.
The room was silent now. Everyone there knew them: the landlord, Paul Bell, and his curvy daughter Bessie; the grey-haired barmaid Sairy, Elizabeth’s mother; Bill Watkin, who had refused to employ Merthin; Edward Butcher, the notorious adulterer; Jake Chepstow, Merthin’s tenant; Friar Murdo, Matthew Barber and Mark Webber. They all knew the history of Merthin and Caris, and they were fascinated by the quarrel.
Merthin did not care. Let them listen. He said furiously: “I’m not going to spend my life hanging around you, like your dog Scrap, waiting for your attention. I’ll be your husband, but I won’t be your pet.”
“All right, then,” she said in a small voice.
Her sudden change of tone surprised him, and he was not sure what she meant. “All right, what?”
“All right, I’ll marry you.”
For a moment, he was too shocked to speak. Then he said suspiciously: “Do you mean it?”
She looked up at him at last and smiled shyly. “Yes, I mean it,” she said. “Just ask me.”
“All right.” He took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes, I will,” she said.
Edmund shouted: “Hoorah!”
Everyone in the tavern cheered and clapped.
Merthin and Caris started laughing. “Will you, really?” he said.
“Yes.”
They kissed, then he put his arms around her and squeezed as hard as he could. When he let her go, he saw that she was crying.
“Some wine for my betrothed,” he called out. “A barrel, in fact – give everyone a cup, so they can all drink our health!”
“Coming right up,” said the landlord, and they all cheered again.
A week later, Elizabeth Clerk became a novice nun.
40
Ralph and Alan were miserable. They were living on venison and cold water, and Ralph found himself dreaming about food he would normally scorn: onions, apples, eggs, milk. They slept in a different place every night, always lighting a fire. They each had a good cloak, but it was not enough out in the open, and they woke shivering every dawn. They robbed any vulnerable people they met on the road, but most of the loot was either paltry or useless: ragged clothes, animal fodder, and money, which would buy nothing in the forest.
Once they stole a big barrel of wine. They rolled it a hundred yards into the woods, drank as much as they could and fell asleep. When they woke up, hung over and ill-tempered, they realized they could not take the three-quarters-full barrel with them, so they just left it there.
Ralph thought nostalgically of his former life: the manor house, the roaring fires, the servants, the dinners. But, in his realistic moments, he knew he did not want that life either. It was too dull. That was probably why he had raped the girl. He needed excitement.
After a month in the forest, Ralph decided they had to get organized. They needed a base where they could build some kind of shelter and store food. And they had to plan their robberies so that they stole items that would be really valuable to them, such as warm clothing and fresh food.
Around the time he was coming to this realization, their wanderings brought them to a range of hills a few miles from Kingsbridge. Ralph recalled that the hillsides, bleak and bare in winter, were used for summer grazing by shepherds, who had built rough stone shelters in the folds of the landscape. As adolescents he and Merthin had discovered these crude buildings while out hunting, and had lit fires and cooked the rabbits and partridges they shot with their bows. Even in those days, he recalled, he had craved the thrill of the hunt: chasing and shooting a terrified creature, finishing it off with a knife or club – the ecstatic sense of power that came from taking a life.
No one would come here until the new season’s grass was thick. The traditional day was Whit Sunday, also the opening day of the Fleece Fair, still two months away. Ralph selected a hut that looked sturdy and they made it their home. There were no doors or windows, just a low entrance, but there was a hole in the roof to let smoke out, and they lit a fire and slept warm for the first time in a month.
Proximity to Kingsbridge gave Ralph another bright idea. The time to rob people, he realized, was when they were on their way to market. They were carrying cheeses, flagons of cider, honey, oatcakes: all the things that were produced by villagers and needed by townspeople – and by outlaws.
Kingsbridge market was on a Sunday. Ralph had lost track of the days of the week, but he found out by asking a travelling friar, before robbing him of three shillings and a goose. On the following Saturday, he and Alan made camp not far from the road to Kingsbridge, and stayed awake all night by their fire. At dawn they made their way to the road and lay in wait.
The first group to come along were carting fodder. Kingsbridge had hundreds of horses and very little grass, so the town constantly needed supplies of hay. However, it was no use to Ralph: Griff and Fletch had no end of grazing in the forest.
Ralph was not bored waiting. Preparing an ambush was like watching a woman get undressed. The longer the anticipation, the more intense the thrill.
Soon afterwards they heard singing. The hairs on the back of Ralph’s neck stood up: it sounded like angels. The morning was hazy, and when he first saw the singers they seemed to have haloes. Alan, obviously thinking the same as Ralph, even gave a sob of fear. But it was only the weak winter sun lighting the mist behind the travellers. They were peasant women, each carrying a basket of eggs – hardly worth robbing. Ralph let them go by without revealing himself.
The sun rose a little higher. Ralph began to worry that soon the road would become sufficiently crowded with market-goers to make robbery difficult. Then along came a family: a man and woman in their thirties with two adolescent children, a boy and a girl. They were vaguely familiar: no doubt he had seen them at Kingsbridge market during the years he lived there. They carried an assortment of goods. The husband had a heavy basket of vegetables on his back; the wife balanced on her shoulder a long pole bearing several live chickens, trussed; the boy had a heavy ham on his shoulder, and the girl a crock that probably contained salted butter. Ralph’s mouth watered at the thought of ham.
The excitement rose in his guts, and he gave Alan a nod.
As the family drew level, Ralph and Alan came out of the bushes at a run.
The woman screamed and the boy gave a shout of fear.
The man tried to shrug off his basket but, before it fell from his shoulders, Ralph ran him through, his sword piercing the man’s abdomen under the ribs and then rising up. The man’s scream of agony was cut off abruptly as the point of the sword penetrated his heart.
Alan swung at the woman and cut through most of her neck, so that blood spurted from her severed throat in a sudden red jet.
Exhilarated, Ralph turned to the son. The lad was quick to react: he had already dropped his ham and drawn a knife. While Ralph’s weapon was still on the upswing, the boy darted close and stabbed him. It was an unprofessional blow, too wild to do much damage. The knife completely missed Ralph’s chest, but the point caught in the flesh of his upper right arm, and the sudden agonizing pain made him drop his sword. The boy turned and ran away, going in the direction of Kingsbridge.