He turned from the wall, his face a picture of misery. His eyes raked the crowd and found Annet. She looked furious. Gwenda waited for her to meet Wulfric’s eye, but she seemed determined not to look at him. Gwenda wondered what was going through her mind.
Annet walked towards the door, head held high. Her father, Perkin, and the family followed. Would she not even speak to Wulfric?
The same thought must have occurred to him, for he went after her. “Annet!” he said. “Wait.”
The place went quiet.
Annet turned. Wulfric stood before her. “We’ll still get married, won’t we?” he said. Gwenda winced to hear the undignified note of pleading in his voice. Annet stared at him, apparently about to speak, but she said nothing for a long moment, and Wulfric spoke again. “Lords need good serfs to farm the land. Perhaps Ralph will give me a smaller holding-”
“You broke his nose,” she said harshly. “He will never give you anything.”
Gwenda recalled how pleased Annet had been, at the time, to have two men fighting over her.
Wulfric said: “Then I’ll be a labourer. I’m strong, I’ll never lack for work.”
“But you’ll be poor all your life. Is that what you’re offering me?”
“We’ll be together – just as we dreamed, that day in the forest, when you told me you loved me, don’t you remember?”
“And what would life be like for me, married to a landless labourer?” Annet demanded angrily. “I’ll tell you.” She lifted her arm and pointed at Gwenda’s mother, Ethna, standing with Joby and the three little ones. “I would be like her – grim-faced with worry and as thin as a broom handle.”
Joby was stung by this. He waved the stump of his severed hand at Annet. “You watch your mouth, you haughty minx.”
Perkin stepped in front of his daughter and made a patting gesture with both hands. “Forgive her, Joby, she’s overwrought, she means no harm.”
Wulfric said: “No disrespect to Joby, but I’m not like him, Annet.”
“But you are!” she said. “You’ve got no land. It’s why he’s poor, and it’s why you’ll be poor, and your children will be hungry and your wife will be drab.”
It was true. In hard times the landless were the first to suffer. Dismissing your employees was the quickest way to save money. All the same, Gwenda found it hard to believe that a woman would turn down the chance of spending her life with Wulfric.
Yet that seemed to be what Annet was doing.
Wulfric thought so, too. Plaintively, he said: “Don’t you love me any more?”
He had lost all his dignity and he looked pathetic; yet, at that moment, Gwenda felt more passion for him than ever before.
“I can’t eat love,” Annet said, and she walked out of the church.
Two weeks later, she married Billy Howard.
Gwenda went to the wedding, as did everyone in the village except Wulfric. Despite the poor harvest, there was a good feast. By this marriage two large landholdings were united: Perkin’s hundred acres with Billy’s forty. Furthermore, Perkin had asked Ralph to give him Wulfric’s family’s lands. If Ralph agreed, Annet’s children could be heirs to almost half the village. But Ralph had gone to Kingsbridge, promising a decision as soon as he returned.
Perkin broached a barrel of his wife’s strongest ale and slaughtered a cow. Gwenda ate and drank heartily. Her future was too uncertain for her to turn down good food.
She played with her little sisters, Cathie and Joanie, throwing and catching a wooden ball; then she took baby Eric on her knee and sang to him. After a while her mother sat beside her and said: “What will you do now?”
In her heart Gwenda was not completely reconciled with Ethna. They talked, and Ma asked concerned questions. Gwenda still resented her mother for forgiving Joby, but she answered the questions. “I’ll live in Wulfric’s barn as long as I can,” she said. “Perhaps I can stay there indefinitely.”
“And if Wulfric moves out – leaves the village, say?”
“I don’t know.”
For now, Wulfric was still working in the fields, ploughing in the stubble and harrowing the fallow on the land that had been his family’s, and Gwenda was helping him. They were paid the daily labourer’s rate by Nathan, as they would have no part of the next harvest. Nathan was keen for them to stay, otherwise the land would deteriorate rapidly. They would continue until Ralph announced who the new tenant would be. At that point, they would have to offer themselves for hire.
“Where is Wulfric now?” Ethna asked.
“I assume he’s not disposed to celebrate this wedding.”
“How does he feel about you?”
Gwenda gave her mother a candid look. “He tells me I’m the best friend he’s ever had.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But it doesn’t mean ‘I love you,’ does it?”
“No,” said her mother. “No, it doesn’t mean that.”
Gwenda heard music. Aaron Appletree was playing a bagpipe, running up and down the scale in preparation for a tune. She saw Perkin coming out of his house with a pair of small drums attached to his belt. The dancing was about to begin.
She was in no mood to dance. She could have talked to the old women, but they would only ask the same questions as her mother, and she did not want to spend the rest of the day explaining her predicament. She recalled the last village wedding, and Wulfric slightly drunk, dancing around with great leaps, embracing all the women, though still favouring Annet. Without him there was no festival for Gwenda. She gave Eric back to her mother and drifted away. Her dog, Skip, stayed behind, knowing that such parties provided a banquet of dropped food and discarded scraps.
She went into Wulfric’s house, half hoping he might be there, but the place was empty. It was a sturdy timber house, of post-and-beam construction, but with no chimney – such luxuries were for the rich. She looked in both ground-floor rooms and the upstairs bedroom. The place was as tidy and clean as it had been when his mother was alive, but that was because he used only one room. He ate and slept in the kitchen. The place was cold and unhomely. It was a family house with no family.
She went to the barn. It was full of bundled hay, for winter fodder, and sheaves of barley and wheat waiting to be threshed. She climbed the ladder to the loft and lay down in the hay. After a while she fell asleep.
When she woke up it was dark. She had no idea what time it was. She stepped outside to look at the sky. There was a low moon behind streaks of cloud, and she calculated that it was only an hour or two after nightfall. As she stood by the barn door, still half asleep, she heard weeping.
She knew instantly that it was Wulfric. She had heard him cry once before, when he saw the bodies of his parents and his brother lying on the floor of Kingsbridge Cathedral. He cried with great sobs that seemed torn from the depths of his chest. Tears came to her own eyes as she listened to his grief.
After a while, she went into the house.
She could see him by the light of the moon. He lay face down in the straw, his back heaving as he sobbed. He must have heard her lift the latch, but he was too distraught to care, and he did not look up.
Gwenda knelt beside him and tentatively touched his mane of hair. He made no response. She rarely touched him, and to stroke his hair was an unknown delight. Her caress seemed to soothe him, for his weeping subsided.
After a while, she dared to lie down beside him. She expected him to push her away, but he did not. He turned his face to her, eyes closed. She dabbed at his cheeks with her sleeve, wiping away the tears. She was thrilled to be this close to him, and to be permitted these small intimacies. She longed to kiss his closed eyelids, but she was afraid that would be a step too far, and she restrained herself.