“Well, you will be his overlord, so you’ll have to deal with him,” Edward granted. “We won’t impose him on you against your will. However, the prince is keen that he should have some further reward.” The king thought for a few moments, then said: “Don’t you have a cousin who is eligible for marriage?”
“Yes, Matilda,” said William. “We call her Tilly.”
Caris knew Tilly. She was at the nunnery school.
“That’s right,” said Edward. “She was your father Roland’s ward. Her father had three villages near Shiring.”
“Your majesty has a good memory for detail.”
“Marry Lady Matilda to Ralph and give him her father’s villages,” said the king.
Caris was appalled. “But she’s only twelve!” she burst out.
William said to her: “Hush!”
King Edward turned a cold gaze on her. “The children of the nobility must grow up fast, sister. Queen Philippa was fourteen when I married her.”
Caris knew she should shut up, but she could not. Tilly was only four years older than the daughter she might have had, if she had given birth to Merthin’s baby. “There’s a big difference between twelve and fourteen,” she said desperately.
The young king became even more frosty. “In the royal presence, people give their opinions only when asked. And the king almost never asks for the opinions of women.”
Caris realized she had taken the wrong tack. Her objection to the marriage was not based on Tilly’s age so much as Ralph’s character. “I know Tilly,” she said. “You can’t marry her to that brute Ralph.”
Mair said in a scared whisper: “Caris! Remember who you’re speaking to!”
Edward looked at William. “Take her away, Shiring, before she says something that cannot be overlooked.”
William took Caris’s arm and firmly marched her out of the royal presence. Mair followed. Behind them, Caris heard the king say: “I can see how she survived in Normandy – the locals must have been terrified of her.” The noblemen around him laughed.
“You must be mad!” William hissed.
“Must I?” Caris said. They were out of earshot of the king now, and she raised her voice. “In the last six weeks the king has caused the deaths of thousands of men, women and children, and burned their crops and their homes. And I have tried to save a twelve-year-old girl from being married to a murderer. Tell me again, Lord William, which of us is mad?”
51
In the year 1347 the peasants of Wigleigh suffered a poor harvest. The villagers did what they always did in such times: they ate less food, postponed the purchase of hats and belts, and slept closer together for warmth. Old Widow Huberts died earlier than expected; Janey Jones succumbed to a cough that she might have survived in a good year; and Joanna David’s new baby, who might otherwise have had a chance, failed to make it to his first birthday.
Gwenda kept an anxious eye on her two little boys. Sam, the eight-year-old, was big for his age, and strong: he had Wulfric’s physique, people said, though Gwenda knew that in truth he was like his real father, Ralph Fitzgerald. Even so, Sam was visibly thinner by December. David, named after Wulfric’s brother who had died when the bridge collapsed, was six. He resembled Gwenda, being small and dark. The poor diet had weakened him, and all through the autumn he suffered minor ailments: a cold, then a skin rash, then a cough.
All the same, she took the boys with her when she went with Wulfric to finish sowing the winter wheat on Perkin’s land. A bitterly cold wind swept across the open fields. She dropped seeds into the furrows, and Sam and David chased off the daring birds who tried to snatch the corn before Wulfric turned the earth over. As they ran, and jumped, and shouted, Gwenda marvelled that these two fully functioning miniature human beings had come from inside her body. They turned the chasing of the birds into some kind of competitive game, and she delighted in the miracle of their imagination. Once part of her, they were now able to have thoughts she did not know about.
Mud clung to their feet as they tramped up and down. A fast-running stream bordered the big field, and on the far bank stood the fulling mill Merthin had built nine years ago. The distant rumble of its pounding wooden hammers accompanied their work. The mill was run by two eccentric brothers, Jack and Eli – both unmarried men with no land – and an apprentice boy who was their nephew. They were the only villagers who had not suffered on account of the bad harvest: Mark Webber paid them the same wages all winter long.
It was a short midwinter day. Gwenda and her family finished sowing just as the grey sky began to darken, and the twilight gathered mistily in the distant woods. They were all tired.
There was half a sack of seed left over, so they took it to Perkin’s house. As they approached the place, they saw Perkin himself coming from the opposite direction. He was walking beside a cart on which his daughter, Annet, was riding. They had been to Kingsbridge to sell the last of the year’s apples and pears from Perkin’s trees.
Annet still retained her girlish figure, although she was now twenty-eight, and had had a child. She called attention to her youthfulness with a dress that was a little too short and a hair style that was charmingly disarrayed. She looked silly, Gwenda thought. Her opinion was shared by every woman in the village and none of the men.
Gwenda was shocked to see that Perkin’s cart was full of fruit. “What happened?” she said.
Perkin’s face was grim. “Kingsbridge folk are having a hard winter just like us,” he said. “They’ve no money to buy apples. We shall have to make cider with this lot.”
That was bad news. Gwenda had never known Perkin to come home from the market with so much unsold produce.
Annet seemed unworried. She held out a hand to Wulfric, who helped her down from the cart. As she stepped to the ground she stumbled, and fell against him with her hand on his chest. “Oops!” she said, and smiled at him as she recovered her balance. Wulfric flushed with pleasure.
You blind idiot, Gwenda thought.
They went inside. Perkin sat at the table, and his wife, Peg, brought him a bowl of pottage. He cut a thick slice from the loaf on the board. Peg served her own family next. Annet, her husband Billy Howard, Annet’s brother, Rob, and Rob’s wife. She gave a little to Annet’s four-year-old daughter, Amabel, and to Rob’s two small boys. Then she invited Wulfric and his family to sit down.
Gwenda spooned up the broth hungrily. It was thicker than the pottage she made: Peg was putting stale bread in, whereas in Gwenda’s house the bread never lasted long enough to go stale. Perkin’s family got cups of ale, but Gwenda and Wulfric were not offered any: hospitality went only so far in hard times.
Perkin was jocular with his customers, but otherwise a sourpuss, and the atmosphere in his house was always more or less dismal. He talked in a disheartened way about the Kingsbridge market. Most of the traders had had a bad day. The only ones doing any business were those who sold essentials such as corn, meat and salt. No one was buying the now-famous Kingsbridge Scarlet cloth.
Peg lit a lamp. Gwenda wanted to go home but she and Wulfric were waiting for their wages. The boys began to misbehave, running around the room and bumping into adults. “It’s getting near their bed time,” said Gwenda, though it was not really.
At last Wulfric said: “If you’ll give us our wages, Perkin, we’ll leave.”
“I haven’t got any money,” Perkin said.
Gwenda stared at him. He had never said anything like this in the nine years she and Wulfric had been working for him.
Wulfric said: “We must have our wages. We’ve got to eat.”
“You’ve had some pottage, haven’t you?” Perkin said.
Gwenda was outraged. “We work for money, not pottage!”
“Well, I haven’t got any money,” Perkin repeated. “I went to market to sell my apples, but no one bought them, so I’ve got more apples than we can eat, and no money.”