When Godwyn left, he took with him all the valuables from the monks’ treasury and all the charters. This included the nuns’ charters, which they had never succeeded in retrieving from his locked chest. He also took the sacred relics, including the bones of St Adolphus in their priceless reliquary.
Caris discovered this on the morning afterwards, the first day of January, the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. She went with Bishop Henri and Sister Elizabeth to the treasury off the south transept. Henri’s attitude to her was stiffly formal, which was worrying; but he was a peevish character, so perhaps he was like that with everyone.
The flayed skin of Gilbert Hereford was still nailed to the door, slowly turning hard and yellow, and giving off a faint but distinct whiff of rottenness.
But the door was not locked.
They went in. Caris had not been inside this room since Prior Godwyn stole the nuns’ one hundred and fifty pounds to build his palace. After that they had built their own treasury.
It was immediately obvious what had happened. The flagstones that disguised the vaults in the floor had been lifted and not put back, and the lid of the ironbound chest stood open. Vaults and chest were empty.
Caris felt that her contempt for Godwyn was vindicated. A trained physician, a priest and the leader of the monks, he had fled just at the moment when the people needed him most. Now, surely, everyone would realize his true nature.
Archdeacon Lloyd was outraged. “He took everything!”
Caris said to Henri: “And this is the man who wanted you to annul my election.”
Bishop Henri grunted noncommittally.
Elizabeth was desperate to find an excuse for Godwyn’s behaviour. “I’m sure the lord prior took the valuables with him for safekeeping.”
That stung the bishop into a response. “Rubbish,” he said crisply. “If your servant empties your purse and disappears without warning, he’s not keeping your money safe, he’s stealing it.”
Elizabeth tried a different tack. “I believe this was Philemon’s idea.”
“The sub-prior?” Henri looked scornful. “Godwyn is in charge, not Philemon. Godwyn is responsible.”
Elizabeth shut up.
Godwyn must have recovered from the death of his mother, Caris thought, at least temporarily. It was quite an achievement to persuade every single one of the monks to follow him. She wondered where they had gone.
Bishop Henri was thinking the same thing. “Where did the wretched cowards go?”
Caris remembered Merthin trying to persuade her to leave. “To Wales, or Ireland”, he had said. “A remote village where they don’t see a stranger from one year to the next.” She said to the bishop: “They will be hiding out in some isolated place where no one ever goes.”
“Find out exactly where,” he said.
Caris realized that all opposition to her election had vanished with Godwyn. She felt triumphant, and made an effort not to look too pleased. “I’ll make some inquiries in the town,” she said. “Somebody must have seen them leave.”
“Good,” said the bishop. “However, I don’t think they’re coming back soon, so in the meantime you’re going to have to manage as best you can with no men. Continue the services as normally as possible with the nuns. Get a parish priest to come into the cathedral for mass, if you can find one still alive. You cannot perform the mass, but you can hear confessions – there has been a special dispensation from the archbishop, because so many clergymen have died.”
Caris was not going to let him slide past the question of her election. “Are you confirming me as prioress?” she said.
“Of course,” he said irritably.
“In that case, before I accept the honour-”
“You have no decision to make, Mother Prioress,” he said indignantly. “It is your duty to obey me.”
She wanted the post desperately, but she resolved to pretend otherwise. She was going to drive a hard bargain. “We live in strange times, don’t we?” she said. “You’ve given nuns authority to hear confessions. You’ve shortened the training for priests, but you still can’t ordain them fast enough to keep up with deaths from the plague, I hear.”
“Is it your intention to exploit the difficulties the church is facing for some purpose of your own?”
“No, but there is something you need to do to make it possible for me to carry out your instructions.”
Henri sighed. Clearly he did not like being spoken to in this way. But, as Caris had suspected, he needed her more than she needed him. “Very well, what is it?”
“I want you to convene an ecclesiastical court and reopen my trial for witchcraft.”
“For heaven’s sake, why?”
“To declare me innocent, of course. Until that happens, it could be difficult for me to exercise authority. Anyone who disagrees with my decisions can all too easily undermine me by pointing out that I stand condemned.”
The tidy secretarial mind of Archdeacon Lloyd liked that idea. “It would be good to have the issue disposed of once and for all, my lord bishop.”
“Very well, then,” said Henri.
“Thank you.” She felt a surge of delight and relief, and bowed her head for fear that her triumph would show in her face. “I will do my best to bring honour to the position of prioress of Kingsbridge.”
“Lose no time in inquiring after Godwyn. I’d like some kind of answer before I leave town.”
“The alderman of the parish guild is a crony of Godwyn’s. He’ll know where they’ve gone if anyone does. I’ll go and see him.”
“Right away, please.”
Caris left. Bishop Henri was charmless, but he seemed competent, and she thought she could work with him. Perhaps he would be the kind of leader who made decisions based on the merits of the case, instead of siding with whomever he perceived as an ally. That would be a pleasant change.
Passing the Bell, she was tempted to go in and tell Merthin her good news. However, she thought she had better find Elfric first.
In the street in front of the Holly Bush she saw Duncan Dyer lying on the ground. His wife, Winnie, was sitting on the bench outside the tavern, crying. Caris thought the man must have been hurt, but Winnie said: “He’s drunk.”
Caris was shocked. “It isn’t even dinner time yet!”
“His uncle, Peter Dyer, caught the plague and passed away. His wife and children died too, so Duncan inherited all his money, and he just spends it on wine. I don’t know what to do.”
“Let’s get him home,” Caris said. “I’ll help you lift him.” They each took an arm and got Duncan to his feet. Holding him upright, they half dragged him down the street to his house. They put him on the floor and covered him with a blanket. Winnie said: “He’s like this every day. He’s says it’s not worth working, because we’re all going to die of the plague. What shall I do?”
Caris thought for a moment. “Bury the money in the garden, now, while he’s sleeping. When he wakes up, tell him he lost it all gambling with a chapman who left town.”
“I might do that,” Winnie said.
Caris crossed the street to Elfric’s house and went inside. Her sister, Alice, was sitting in the kitchen sewing stockings. They had not been close since Alice married Elfric, and what little was left of their relationship had been destroyed by Elfric’s testifying against Caris in the heresy trial. Forced to choose between sister and husband, Alice had been loyal to Elfric. Caris understood that, but it meant her sister had become like a stranger to her.
When Alice saw her she stood up and dropped her sewing. “What are you doing here?” she said.
“The monks have all disappeared,” Caris told her. “They must have left in the night.”
“So that was what it was!” Alice said.
“Did you see them?”
“No, but I heard a whole crowd of men and horses. They weren’t loud – in fact, now that I think of it, they must have been making an effort to be quiet – but you can’t keep horses silent, and men make a noise just walking along the street. They woke me, but I didn’t get up to see – it was too cold. Is that why you’ve entered my house for the first time in ten years?”
“You didn’t know they were going to run off?”
“Is that what they’ve done, run off? Because of the plague?”
“I assume so.”
“Surely not. What’s the use of physicians who flee from sickness?” Alice was troubled by this behaviour on the part of her husband’s patron. “I can’t understand it.”
“I was wondering if Elfric knew anything about it.”
“If he does, he hasn’t told me.”
“Where will I find him?”
“St Peter’s. Rick Silvers left some money to the church, and the priest decided to pave the floor of the nave.”
“I’ll go and ask him.” Caris wondered if she should make an attempt to be courteous. Alice had no children of her own, but she had a stepdaughter. “How is Griselda?” Caris said.
“Very well and happy,” Alice said with a touch of defiance, as if she thought Caris might prefer to hear otherwise.
“And your grandson?” Caris could not bring herself to use the child’s name, which was Merthin.
“Lovely. And another grandchild on the way.”
“I’m pleased for her.”
“Yes. It’s just as well she didn’t marry your Merthin, the way things have turned out.”
Caris refused to be drawn. “I’ll go and find Elfric.”
St Peter’s church was at the western end of the town. As Caris was threading her way through the winding streets, she came upon two men fighting. They were shouting curses at one another and punching wildly. Two women, presumably their wives, were screeching abuse, while a small crowd of neighbours looked on. The door of the nearest house had been broken down. On the ground nearby was a cage made of twigs and rushes containing three live chickens.
Caris went up to the men and stepped between them. “Stop it this instant,” she said. “I command you in the name of God.”
They did not take much persuading. They had probably expended their wrath with the first few blows and might even be grateful for an excuse to stop. They stepped back and dropped their arms.
“What’s this about?” Caris demanded.
They both started speaking at once, and so did their wives.
“One at a time!” Caris said. She pointed at the larger of the two men, a dark-haired fellow whose good looks were spoiled by a swelling around his eye. “You’re Joe Blacksmith, aren’t you? Explain.”
“I caught Toby Peterson stealing Jack Marrow’s chickens. He broke down the door.”
Toby was a smaller man with a gamecock bravado. He spoke through bleeding lips. “Jack Marrow owed me five shillings – I’m entitled to those chickens!”
Joe said: “Jack and all his family died of the plague two weeks ago. I’ve been feeding his chickens ever since. They’d be dead but for me. If anyone should take them, it ought to be me.”
Caris said: “Well, you’re both entitled to them, aren’t you? Toby because of the debt, and Joe because he kept them alive at his own expense.”
They looked taken aback at the thought that they might both be right.
Caris said: “Joseph, take one of the chickens out of the cage.”
Toby said: “Wait a moment-”
“Trust me, Toby,” Caris said. “You know I wouldn’t treat you unjustly, don’t you?”
“Well, I can’t deny that…”
Joe opened the cage and picked up a scrawny brown-feathered chicken by its feet. The bird’s head turned jerkily from side to side, as if it was bewildered to see the world upside down.
Caris said: “Now give it to Toby’s wife.”
“What?”
“Would I cheat you, Joseph?”
Joe reluctantly handed the chicken to Toby’s wife, a pretty, sulky type. “There you are, then, Jane.”
Jane took it with alacrity.
Caris said to her: “Now thank Joe.”
Jane looked petulant, but she said: “I thank you, Joseph Blacksmith.”
Caris said: “Now, Toby, give a chicken to Ellie Blacksmith.”
Toby obeyed, with a sheepish grin. Joe’s wife, Ellie, who was heavily pregnant, smiled and said: “Thank you, Toby Peterson.”
They were returning to normal, and beginning to realize the foolishness of what they had been doing.
Jane said: “What about the third chicken?”
“I’m coming to that,” Caris said. She looked at the watching crowd and pointed at a sensible-looking girl of eleven or twelve. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jesca, Mother Prior – the daughter of John Constable.”
“Take the other chicken to St Peter’s church and give it to Father Michael. Say that Toby and Joe will be coming to ask forgiveness for the sin of covetousness.”
“Yes, sister.” Jesca picked up the third chicken and went off.
Joe’s wife, Ellie, said: “You may remember, Mother Caris, that you helped my husband’s baby sister, Minnie, when she burned her arm in the forge.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Caris said. It had been a nasty burn, she remembered. “She must be ten now.”
“That’s right.”
“Is she well?”
“Right as rain, thanks to you, and God’s grace.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Would you care to step into my house for a cup of ale, Mother Prioress?”
“I’d love to, but I’m in a hurry.” She turned to the men. “God bless you, and no more fighting.”
Joe said: “Thank you.”
Caris walked away.
Toby called after her: “Thank you, mother.”
She waved without looking back.
She noticed several more houses that appeared to have been broken into, presumably to be looted after the occupants died. Someone ought to do something about it, she thought. But with Elfric as alderman, and a disappearing prior, there was no one to take the initiative.
She reached St Peter’s and found Elfric with a team of paviours and their apprentices in the nave. Stone slabs were stacked all around, and the men were preparing the ground, pouring sand and smoothing it with sticks. Elfric was checking that the surface was level, using a complicated piece of apparatus with a wooden frame and a dangling cord with a lead point at its end. The apparatus looked like a miniature gallows, and it reminded Caris that Elfric had tried to get her hanged for witchcraft ten years ago. She was surprised to find that she felt no hatred for him. He was too mean-spirited and small-minded for that. When she looked at him, she felt nothing but contempt.
She waited for him to finish, then said abruptly: “Did you know that Godwyn and all the monks have run away?”
She intended to surprise him, and she knew by his look of astonishment that he had no foreknowledge. “Why would they…? When…? Oh, last night?”
“You didn’t see them.”
“I heard something.”
“I saw them,” said a paviour. He leaned on his spade to talk. “I was coming out of the Holly Bush. It was dark, but they had torches. The prior was riding, and the rest walking, but they had a sight of baggage: wine casks and wheels of cheese and I don’t know what.”
Caris already knew that Godwyn had emptied the monks’ food stores. He had not tried to take any of the nuns’ supplies, which were kept separately. “What time was that?”
“Not late – nine or ten o’clock.”
“Did you speak to them?”
“Just to say goodnight.”
“Any clue as to where they might have been headed?”
The paviour shook his head. “They went over the bridge, but I didn’t see which road they took at Gallows Cross.”
Caris turned to Elfric. “Think back over the past few days. Did Godwyn say anything to you that, with hindsight, might relate to this? Mention any place names – Monmouth, York, Antwerp, Bremen?”
“No. I had no clue.” Elfric looked grumpy about not having been forewarned, which made Caris think he was telling the truth.
If Elfric was surprised, it was unlikely that anyone else had known what Godwyn planned. Godwyn was fleeing from the plague, and clearly he did not want anyone to follow him, bringing the disease with them. “Leave early, go far and stay long,” Merthin had said. Godwyn could be anywhere.
“If you hear from him, or any of the monks, please tell me,” Caris said.
Elfric said nothing.
Caris raised her voice to make sure the workmen heard. “Godwyn has stolen all the precious ornaments,” she said. There was a rumble of indignation. The men felt proprietorial about the cathedral ornaments – indeed, the wealthier craftsmen had probably helped pay for some of them. “The bishop wants them back. Anyone who helps Godwyn, even just by concealing his whereabouts, is guilty of sacrilege.”
Elfric looked bewildered. He had based his life on ingratiating himself with Godwyn. Now his patron had gone. He said: “There may be some perfectly innocent explanation…”
“If there is, why did Godwyn tell no one? Or even leave behind a letter?”
Elfric could not think of anything to say.
Caris realized she was going to have to speak to all the leading merchants, and the sooner the better. “I’d like you to call a meeting,” she said to Elfric. Then she thought of a more persuasive way of putting it. “The bishop wants the parish guild to meet today, after dinner. Please inform the members.”
“Very well,” said Elfric.
They would all be there, Caris knew, agog with curiosity.
She left St Peter’s and headed back towards the priory. As she passed the White Horse tavern, she saw something that made her pause. A young girl was talking to an older man, and there was something about the interaction that raised Caris’s hackles. She always felt the vulnerability of girls very sharply – perhaps because she remembered herself as an adolescent, perhaps because of the daughter she had never had. She drew back into a doorway and studied them.
The man was poorly dressed except for a costly fur hat. Caris did not know him, but she guessed he was a labourer and had inherited the hat. So many people had died that there was a glut of finery, and you saw odd sights like this all the time. The girl was about fourteen years old, and pretty, with an adolescent figure. She was trying to be coquettish, Caris saw with disapproval; though she was not very convincing. The man took money from his purse, and they seemed to be arguing. Then the man fondled the girl’s small breast.
Caris had seen enough. She marched up to the pair. The man took one look at her nun’s habit and walked quickly away. The girl looked both guilty and resentful. Caris said: “What are you doing – trying to sell your body?”
“No, mother.”
“Tell the truth! Why did you let him feel your breast?”
“I don’t know what to do! I haven’t got anything to eat, and now you’ve chased him away.” She burst into tears.
Caris could believe the girl was hungry. She looked thin and pale. “Come with me,” Caris said. “I’ll give you something to eat.”
She took the girl’s arm and steered her towards the priory. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Ismay.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
They reached the priory and Caris took Ismay to the kitchen, where the nuns’ dinner was being prepared under the supervision of a novice called Oonagh. The kitchener, Josephine, had fallen to the plague. “Give this child some bread and butter,” Caris said to Oonagh.
She sat and watched the girl eat. Ismay obviously had not had food for days. She ate half of a four-pound loaf before slowing down.
Caris poured her a cup of cider. “Why were you starving?” she asked.
“All my family died of the plague.”
“What was your father?”
“A tailor, and I can sew very neatly, but no one is buying clothes – they can get anything they want from the homes of dead people.”
“So that’s why you were trying to prostitute yourself.”
She looked down. “I’m sorry, Mother Prioress. I was so hungry.”
“Was that the first time that you tried?”
She shook her head and would not look at Caris.
Tears of rage welled up in Caris’s eyes. What kind of man would have sexual congress with a starving thirteen-year-old? What kind of God would drive a girl to such desperation? “Would you like to live here, with the nuns, and work in the kitchen?” she said. “You would have plenty to eat.”
Ismay looked up with eagerness. “Oh, yes, mother, I’d like that.”
“Then you shall. You can begin by helping to prepare the nuns’ dinner. Oonagh, here’s a new kitchen hand.”
“Thank you, Mother Caris, I need all the help I can get.”
Caris left the kitchen and went thoughtfully into the cathedral for the service of Sext. The plague was not just a physical sickness, she was beginning to realize. Ismay had escaped the disease, but her soul had been in peril.
Bishop Henri took the service, leaving Caris free to think. At the parish guild meeting she needed to talk about more than just the flight of the monks, she decided. It was time to get the town organized to deal with the effects of the plague. But how?
She mulled over the problems through dinner. For all sorts of reasons, this was a good time to make big decisions. With the bishop here to back up her authority, she might be able to push through measures that could otherwise meet with opposition.
This was also a good moment to get what she wanted from the bishop. That was a fertile thought…
After dinner she went to see the bishop in the prior’s house, where he was staying. He was at table with Archdeacon Lloyd. They had been fed by the nuns’ kitchen and were drinking wine while a priory servant cleared the table. “I hope you enjoyed your dinner, my lord bishop,” she said formally.
He was a little less peevish than usual. “It was fine, thank you, Mother Caris – a very tasty pike. Any news of the runaway prior?”
“He seems to have been careful to leave no clue as to his destination.”
“Disappointing.”
“As I walked through the town, making inquiries, I saw several incidents that disturbed me: a thirteen-year-old girl prostituting herself; two normally law-abiding citizens fighting over a dead man’s property; a man dead drunk at midday.”
“These are the effects of the plague. It’s the same everywhere.”
“I believe we must act to counter those effects.”
He raised his eyebrows. It seemed he had not thought of taking such action. “How?”
“The prior is overlord of Kingsbridge. He is the one to take the initiative.”
“But he has vanished.”
“As bishop, you are technically our abbot. I believe you must stay here in Kingsbridge permanently, and take charge of the town.”
This was in fact the last thing she wanted. Fortunately, there was little chance of the bishop agreeing: he had far too much to do elsewhere. She was just trying to back him into a corner.
He hesitated, and for a moment she worried that she might have misjudged him, and he might accept her suggestion. Then he said: “Out of the question. Every town in the diocese has the same problems. Shiring is worse. I have to try to hold together the fabric of Christianity here while my priests are dying. I have no time to worry about drunks and prostitutes.”
“Well, somebody must act as prior of Kingsbridge. The town needs a moral leader.”
Archdeacon Lloyd put in: “My lord bishop, there is also the question of who is to receive monies owed to the priory, maintain the cathedral and other buildings, manage the lands and the serfs…”
Henri said: “Well, you will have to do all that, Mother Caris.”
She pretended to consider the suggestion as if she had not already thought of it. “I could handle all the less important tasks – managing the monks’ money and their lands – but I could not do what you can do, my lord bishop. I could not perform the holy sacraments.”
“We’ve already discussed that,” he said impatiently. “I’m creating new priests as fast as I can. But you can do everything else.”
“It almost seems as if you’re asking me to be acting prior of Kingsbridge.”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
Caris was careful not to show her elation. It seemed too good to be true. She was prior for all purposes except those she did not care about. Were there any hidden snags she had not thought of?
Archdeacon Lloyd said: “You’d better let me write her a letter to that effect, in case she needs to enforce her authority.”
Caris said: “If you want the town to abide by your wishes, you may need to impress upon them that this is your personal decision. A meeting of the parish guild is about to begin. If you’re willing, bishop, I’d like you to attend it and make an announcement.”
“All right, let us go.”
They left Godwyn’s palace and walked up the main street to the guild hall. The members were all waiting to hear what had happened to the monks. Caris began by telling them what she knew. Several people had seen or heard the exodus yesterday after dark, although no one had realized or even suspected that every single one of the monks was leaving.
She asked them to be alert for talk among travellers about a large group of monks on the road with a lot of baggage.
“But we have to accept the likelihood that the monks will not return soon. And in connection with that, the lord bishop has an announcement.” She wanted the words to come from him, not her.
Henri cleared his throat and said: “I have confirmed the election of Caris as prioress, and I have appointed her acting prior. You will all please treat her as my representative and your overlord in all matters, excepting only those reserved to ordained priests.”
Caris watched the faces. Elfric was furious. Merthin smiled faintly, guessing that she had manoeuvred herself into this position, pleased for her and for the town, the rueful twist to his mouth showing that he knew this would keep her out of his arms. Everyone else seemed glad. They knew and trusted her, and she had won even more loyalty by staying while Godwyn fled.
She would make the most of it. “Three matters I want to take care of urgently on my first day as acting prior,” she said. “First, drunkenness. Today I saw Duncan Dyer unconscious in the street before dinner time. I believe this contributes to an atmosphere of debauchery in the town, which is the last thing we need during this dreadful crisis.”
There were loud sounds of approval. The parish guild was dominated by the older and more conservative of the town merchants. If they ever got drunk in the morning, they did it at home where no one could see.
Caris went on: “I want to give John Constable an extra deputy and instruct him to arrest anyone found drunk in daylight. He can put them in the jail until they sober up.”
Even Elfric was nodding.
“Second is the question of what happens to the property of people who die without heirs. This morning I found Joseph Blacksmith and Toby Peterson fighting in the street over three chickens belonging to Jack Marrow.”
There was laughter at the idea of grown men fighting over such trifles.
Caris had thought out her solution to that problem. “In principle, such property reverts to the lord of the manor, which for Kingsbridge residents means the priory. However, I don’t want the monastery buildings filled up with old clothes, so I propose to waive the rule for anyone whose possessions are worth less than two pounds. Instead, the two nearest neighbours should lock up the house, to make sure nothing is taken; then the property should be inventoried by the parish priest, who will also hear the claims of any creditors. Where there is no priest they can come to me. When any debts have been paid, the deceased’s personal possessions – clothing, furniture, food and drink – will be divided up among the neighbours, and any cash given to the parish church.”
There was widespread approval for this, too, most people nodding and murmuring agreement.
“Finally, I found a thirteen-year-old orphan girl trying to sell her body outside the White Horse. Her name is Ismay, and she did it because she had nothing to eat.” Caris looked around the room with a challenging stare. “Can anyone tell me how such a thing could possibly happen in a Christian town? All her family are dead – but did they have no friends or neighbours? Who allows a child to starve?”
Edward Butcher said in a low voice: “Ismay Taylor is a rather badly behaved child.”
Caris was not accepting excuses. “She’s thirteen!”
“I’m just saying that she might have been offered help and spurned it.”
“Since when did we allow children to make such decisions for themselves? If a child is orphaned, it is the duty of every one of us to take care of her. What does your religion mean, if not that?”
They all looked shamefaced.
“In future, whenever a child is orphaned, I want the two nearest neighbours to bring the child to me. Those who cannot be placed with a friendly family will move into the priory. The girls can live with the nuns, and we will turn the monks’ dormitory into a bedroom for boys. They can all have lessons in the morning and do suitable work in the afternoon.”
There was general approval for that, too.
Elfric spoke up. “Have you finished, Mother Caris?”
“I think so, unless anyone wants to discuss the details of what I have suggested.”
No one spoke up, and the members began to move in their seats as if the meeting was over.
Then Elfric said: “Some of the men here may remember that they elected me as alderman of the guild.”
His voice was full of resentment. Everyone fidgeted impatiently.
“We have now seen the prior of Kingsbridge accused of theft and condemned without trial,” he went on.
That went down badly. There was a rumble of dissent. No one thought Godwyn innocent.
Elfric ignored the mood of the room. “And we have sat here like slaves and let a woman dictate the laws of the city to us. By whose authority are drunks to be imprisoned? Hers. Who is the ultimate judge of inheritance? She is. Who will dispose of the city’s orphans? She will. What have you come to? Are you not men?”
Betty Baxter said: “No.”
The men laughed.
Caris decided not to intervene. It was unnecessary. She glanced at the bishop, wondering if he would assert himself against Elfric, and saw that he was sitting back, mouth clamped shut: plainly he, too, had realized that Elfric was fighting a losing battle.
Elfric raised his voice. “I say we reject a female prior, even acting prior, and we deny the right of the prioress to come to the parish guild and issue commandments!”
Several muttered mutinously. Two or three stood up, as if about to walk out in disgust. Someone called out: “Forget it, Elfric.”
He persisted. “And this is a woman who was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death!”
All the men were standing, now. One walked out of the door.
“Come back!” Elfric shouted. “I haven’t closed the meeting!”
No one took any notice.
Caris joined the group at the door. She made way for the bishop and the archdeacon. She was the last to leave. She turned back at the exit and looked at Elfric. He sat alone at the head of the room.
She went out.
It was twelve years since Godwyn and Philemon had visited the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest. Godwyn remembered being impressed by the neatness of the fields, the trimmed hedges, the cleared ditches and the apple trees in straight lines in the orchard. It was the same today. Evidently Saul Whitehead had not changed, either.
Godwyn and his caravan crossed a chequerboard of frozen fields towards the clustered buildings of the monastery. As they came closer, Godwyn saw that there had been some developments. Twelve years ago the little stone church with its cloister and dormitory had been surrounded by a scatter of small wooden structures: kitchen, stables, dairy, bakery. Now the flimsy timber outbuildings had gone, and the stone-built complex attached to the church had grown correspondingly. “The compound is more secure than it used to be,” Godwyn remarked.
“Because of the increase in outlawry by soldiers coming home from the French wars, I’d guess,” Philemon said.
Godwyn frowned. “I don’t recall being asked for my permission for the building programme.”
“You were not.”
“Hmm.” Unfortunately, he could hardly complain. Someone might ask how it was possible for Saul to have carried out such a programme without Godwyn’s knowledge, unless Godwyn had neglected his duty of supervision.
Besides, it suited his purpose now for the place to be easily closed to intruders.
The two-day journey had somewhat calmed him. The death of his mother had thrown him into a frenzy of fear. Every hour he remained in Kingsbridge, he had felt he was sure to die. He had got just enough grip on his emotions to address the meeting in the chapter house and organize the exodus. Despite his eloquence, a few of the monks had had misgivings about fleeing. Fortunately, they were all sworn to obedience, and the habit of doing as they were told had prevailed. Nevertheless, he had not begun to feel safe until his group had crossed the double bridge, torches blazing, and headed off into the night.
He still felt close to the edge. Every now and again he would be mulling something over and would decide to ask Petranilla what she thought, then he would realize he could not ask her advice ever again, and panic would rise like bile in his throat.
He was fleeing from the plague – but he should have done it three months ago, when Mark Webber died. Was he too late? He fought down terror. He would not feel safe until he was locked away from the world.
He wrenched his thoughts back to the present. There was no one in the fields at this time of year, but in a yard of beaten earth in front of the monastery he saw a handful of monks working: one shoeing a horse, another mending a plough, and a small group turning the lever of a cider press.
They all stopped what they were doing and stared, astonished, at the crowd of visitors approaching them: twenty monks, half a dozen novices, four carts and ten pack horses. Godwyn had left nobody behind but the priory servants.
One of those at the cider press detached himself from the group and came forward. Godwyn recognized him as Saul Whitehead. They had met on Saul’s annual visits to Kingsbridge, but now for the first time Godwyn noticed touches of grey in Saul’s distinctive ash-blond hair.
Twenty years ago they had been students together at Oxford. Saul had been the star pupil, quick to learn and agile in argument. He had also been the most devoutly religious of them all. He might have become prior of Kingsbridge if he had been less spiritual, and had thought strategically about his career instead of leaving such matters to God. As it was, when Prior Anthony had died and the election was held, Godwyn had easily outmanoeuvred Saul.
All the same, Saul was not weak. He had a streak of stubborn righteousness that Godwyn feared. Would he go along obediently with Godwyn’s plan today, or would he make trouble? Once again Godwyn fought down panic and struggled to remain cool.
He studied Saul’s face carefully. The prior of St John was surprised to see him, and clearly displeased. His expression was carefully composed into a look of polite welcome, but he was not smiling.
During the election campaign, Godwyn had made everyone believe that he himself did not want the job, but he had eliminated every other reasonable candidate including Saul. Did Saul suspect how he had been hoodwinked?
“Good day to you, Father Prior,” Saul said as he approached. “This is an unexpected blessing.”
So he was not going to be openly hostile. No doubt he would think that such behaviour conflicted with his vow of obedience. Godwyn was relieved. He said: “God bless you, my son. It is too long since I have visited my children at St John.”
Saul looked at the monks, the horses and the carts loaded with supplies. “This appears to be more than a simple visit.” He did not offer to help Godwyn down from his horse. It was as if he wanted an explanation before he would invite them in – which was ridiculous: he had no right to turn away his superior.
All the same, Godwyn found himself explaining. “Have you heard about the plague?”
“Rumours,” Saul said. “There are few visitors to bring us news.”
That was good. The lack of visitors was what drew Godwyn here. “The disease has killed hundreds in Kingsbridge. I feared it might wipe out the priory. That’s why I’ve brought the monks here. It may be the only way to ensure our survival.”
“You are welcome here, of course, whatever the reason for your visit.”
“It goes without saying,” Godwyn said stiffly. He felt angry that he had been nudged into justifying himself.
Saul looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure where everyone’s going to sleep…”
“I shall decide that,” Godwyn said, reasserting his authority. “You can show me around while your kitchen is preparing our supper.” He got down from his horse unaided and walked into the monastery.
Saul was obliged to follow.
The whole place had a bare, scrubbed look that expressed how serious Saul was about the monkish vow of poverty. But today Godwyn was more interested in how readily the place could be closed to outsiders. Fortunately, Saul’s belief in order and control had led him to design buildings with few entrances. There were only three ways into the priory: through the kitchen, the stable or the church. Each entrance had a stout door that could be firmly barred.
The dormitory was small, normally accommodating nine or ten monks, and there was no separate bedroom for the prior. The only way to fit twenty extra monks in was to let them sleep in the church.
Godwyn thought of taking over the dormitory for himself, but there was nowhere in the room to hide the cathedral treasures, and he wanted to keep them close. Fortunately, the little church had a small side chapel that could be closed off, and Godwyn took that for his own room. The rest of the Kingsbridge monks spread straw on the stamped-earth floor of the nave and made the best of it.
The food and wine went to the kitchen and the cellar, but Philemon brought the ornaments into Godwyn’s chapel-bedroom. Philemon had been chatting to the St John monks. “Saul has his own way of running things,” he reported. “He demands rigid obedience to God and the Rule of St Benedict, but they say he doesn’t set himself up on a pedestal. He sleeps in the dorm, eats the same food as the others, and in general takes no privileges. Needless to say, they like him for that. But there’s one monk who is constantly being punished – Brother Jonquil.”
“I remember him.” Jonquil had always been in trouble while a novice at Kingsbridge – for lateness, slovenliness, laziness and greed. He was without self-control, and had probably been drawn to the monastic life as a way of getting someone else to enforce the restraint he could not impose on himself. “I doubt that he will be much help to us.”
“He will break ranks, given half a chance,” Philemon said. “But he doesn’t carry any authority. No one will follow him.”
“And they have no complaints about Saul? Doesn’t he sleep late, or dodge unpleasant chores, or take the best wine for himself?”
“Apparently not.”
“Hmm.” Saul was as upright as ever. Godwyn was disappointed, but not very surprised.
During Evensong, Godwyn noted how solemn and disciplined the St John men were. Over the years, he had always sent problem monks here: the mutinous, the mentally ill, those inclined to question the church’s teachings and take an interest in heretical ideas. Saul had never complained, never sent anyone back. It seemed he was able to turn such people into model monks.
After the service, Godwyn sent most of the Kingsbridge men to the refectory for supper, keeping only Philemon and two strong young monks behind. When they had the church to themselves, he told Philemon to guard the door that gave entrance from the cloisters, then ordered the youngsters to move the carved wooden altar and dig a hole beneath where it normally stood.
When the hole was deep enough, Godwyn brought the cathedral ornaments from his chapel, ready to be buried beneath the altar. But before he could complete the job Saul came to the door.
Godwyn heard Philemon say: “The lord prior wishes to be alone.”
Next came Saul’s voice. “Then he may tell me so himself.”
“He has asked me to say so.”
Saul’s voice rose. “I will not be shut out of my own church – least of all by you!”
“Will you offer violence to me, the sub-prior of Kingsbridge?”
“I will pick you up and throw you in the fountain, if you continue to stand in my way.”
Godwyn intervened. He would have preferred to keep Saul in ignorance, but it was not to be. “Let him in, Philemon,” he called.
Philemon stepped aside and Saul marched in. He saw the baggage and, without asking permission, opened the neck of a sack and looked inside. “My soul!” he exclaimed, drawing out a silver-gilt altar cruet. “What’s all this?”
Godwyn was tempted to tell him not to interrogate his superiors. Saul might have accepted such a reproof: he believed in humility, at least in principle. But Godwyn did not want to let suspicion ferment in Saul’s mind, so he said: “I’ve brought the cathedral treasures with me.”
Saul made a face of distaste. “I realize that such gewgaws are thought appropriate in a great cathedral, but they will seem out of place at a humble cell in the forest.”
“You won’t have to look at them. I’m going to hide them. There’s no harm in your knowing where, though I intended to spare you the burden of that knowledge.”
Saul looked suspicious. “Why bring them at all?”
“For safekeeping.”
Saul was not so easily reassured. “I’m surprised the bishop was willing to let them be taken away.”
The bishop had not been asked, of course, but Godwyn did not say that. “At the moment, things are so bad in Kingsbridge that we’re not sure the ornaments are safe even at the priory.”
“Safer than here, though, surely? We are surrounded by outlaws, you know. Thank God you didn’t meet them on the road.”
“God is watching over us.”
“And over His jewellery, I hope.”
Saul’s attitude amounted almost to insubordination, but Godwyn did not reprimand him, fearing that an overreaction would suggest guilt. However, he noted that Saul’s humility had its limits. Perhaps after all Saul did know that he had been hoodwinked twelve years ago.
Now Godwyn said: “Please ask all the monks to stay in the refectory after supper. I will address them as soon as I have finished here.”
Saul accepted this dismissal and went out. Godwyn buried the ornaments, the priory charters, the relics of the saint, and almost all the money. The monks replaced the soil in the hole, tamped it down and put the altar back in its place. There was some loose earth left over, which they took outside and scattered.
Then they went to the refectory. The little room was crowded now, with the addition of the Kingsbridge men. A monk stood at the lectern, reading a passage from Mark’s gospel, but he fell silent when Godwyn walked in.
Godwyn motioned the reader to a seat and took his place. “This is a holy retreat,” he began. “God has sent this terrible plague to punish us for our sins. We have come here to purge those sins far away from the corrupting influence of the city.”
Godwyn had not intended to open a discussion, but Saul sang out: “What sins in particular, Father Godwyn?”
Godwyn improvised. “Men have challenged the authority of God’s holy church; women have become lascivious; monks have failed to separate themselves completely from female society; nuns have turned to heresy and witchcraft.”
“And how long will it take to purge these sins?”
“We will know we have triumphed when the plague dies away.”
Another St John monk spoke up, and Godwyn recognized Jonquil, a large, uncoordinated man with a wild look in his eyes. “How will you purge yourself?”
Godwyn was surprised that the monks here felt so free to question their superiors. “By prayer, meditation and fasting.”
“The fasting is a good idea,” said Jonquil. “We haven’t got much food to spare.”
There was a little laughter at that.
Godwyn was worried that he might lose control of his audience. He banged the lectern for quiet. “From now on, anyone who comes here from the outside world is a danger to us,” he said. “I want all doors to the precinct barred from the inside day and night. No monk is to go outside without my personal permission, which will be granted only in emergency. All callers are to be turned away. We are going to lock ourselves in until this terrible plague is over.”
Jonquil said: “But what if-”
Godwyn interrupted him. “I haven’t asked for comments, brother.” He glared around the room, staring them all into silence. “You are monks, and it is your duty to obey,” he said. “And now, let us pray.”
The crisis came the very next day.
Godwyn sensed that his orders had been accepted by Saul and the other monks in a provisional way. Everyone was taken by surprise, and on the spur of the moment they could think of no great objections; and so, in default of a strong reason for rebellion, they instinctively obeyed their superior. But he knew the time would come when they would have to make a real decision. However, he did not expect it so soon.
They were singing the office of Prime. It was freezing cold in the little church. Godwyn was stiff and aching after an uncomfortable night. He missed his palace with its fireplaces and soft beds. The grey light of a winter dawn was beginning to appear in the windows when there was a banging on the heavy west door of the church.
Godwyn tensed. He wished he had been given an extra day or two to consolidate his position.
He signalled that the monks should ignore the knocking and continue with the service. The knocking was then augmented by shouting. Saul stood up to go to the door, but Godwyn made sit-down signs with his hands and, after a hesitation, Saul obeyed. Godwyn was determined to sit tight. If the monks did nothing, the intruders must go away.
However, Godwyn began to realize that persuading people to do nothing was extraordinarily difficult.
The monks were too distracted to concentrate on the psalm. They were all whispering to one another and looking back over their shoulders towards the west end. The singing became ragged and uncoordinated and eventually petered out until only Godwyn’s voice was left.
He felt irate. If they had followed his lead, they could have ignored the disturbance. Angered by their weakness, he at last left his place and walked down the short nave to the door, which was barred. “What is it?” he shouted.
“Let us in!” came the muffled reply.
“You can’t come in,” Godwyn shouted back. “Go away.”
Saul appeared at his side. “Are you turning them away from the church?” he said in a horrified tone.
“I told you,” Godwyn replied. “No visitors.”
The banging resumed. “Let us in!”
Saul shouted: “Who are you?”
There was a pause, then the voice said: “We are men of the forest.”
Philemon spoke up. “Outlaws,” he said.
Saul said indignantly: “Sinners like us, and God’s children too.”
“That’s no reason to let them murder us.”
“Perhaps we should find out whether that’s what they intend.” Saul went to the window on the right of the door. The church was a low building, and the window ledges were just below eye level. None of them was glazed: they were closed against the cold by shutters of translucent linen. Saul opened the shutter and stood on tiptoe to look out. “Why have you come here?” he called.
Godwyn heard the reply. “One of our number is sick.”
Godwyn said to Saul: “I will speak to them.”
Saul stared at him.
“Come away from the window,” Godwyn said.
Reluctantly, Saul obeyed.
Godwyn shouted: “We cannot let you in. Go away.”
Saul looked at him with incredulity. “Are you going to turn away a sick man?” he said. “We are monks and physicians!”
“If the man has the plague, there is nothing we can do for him. By admitting him, we will kill ourselves.”
“That is in God’s hands, surely.”
“God does not permit us to commit suicide.”
“You don’t know what is wrong with the man. He may have a broken arm.”
Godwyn opened the corresponding window on the left of the door and looked out. He saw a group of six rough-looking characters standing around a stretcher that they had put down in front of the church door. Their clothes were costly but dirty, as if they were sleeping rough in their Sunday best. This was typical of outlaws, who stole fine clothes from travellers and made them shabby very quickly. The men were heavily armed, some with good-quality swords, daggers and longbows, which suggested they might be demobilized soldiers.
On the stretcher lay a man who was perspiring heavily – even though it was a frosty January morning – and bleeding from his nose. Suddenly, without wishing it, Godwyn saw in his imagination that scene in the hospital when his mother lay dying, and the trickle of blood on her upper lip kept returning, no matter how often the nun wiped it away. The thought that he might die like that made him so distracted that he wanted to throw himself from the roof of Kingsbridge Cathedral. How much better it would be to die in one brief instant of overwhelming pain than over three, four or five days of mad delirium and agonizing thirst. “That man has the plague!” Godwyn exclaimed, and he heard in his own voice a note of hysteria.
One of the outlaws stepped forward. “I know you,” he said. “You’re the prior of Kingsbridge.”
Godwyn tried to pull himself together. He looked with fear and anger at the man who was evidently the leader. He carried himself with the arrogant assurance of a nobleman, and he had once been handsome, though his looks had been marred by years of living rough. Godwyn said: “And who are you, that comes banging on a church door while the monks are singing psalms to God?”
“Some call me Tam Hiding,” the outlaw replied.
There was a gasp from the monks: Tam Hiding was a legend. Brother Jonquil shouted: “They will kill us all!”
Saul rounded on Jonquil. “Be silent,” he said. “All of us will die when God wills it, and not before.”
“Yes, father.”
Saul returned to the window and said: “You stole our chickens last year.”
“I’m sorry, father,” said Tam. “We were starving.”
“Yet now you come to me for help?”
“Because you preach that God forgives.”
Godwyn said to Saul: “Let me deal with this!”
Saul’s internal struggle was evident on his face, which looked alternately ashamed and mutinous; but at last he bowed his head.
Godwyn said to Tam: “God forgives those who truly repent.”
“Well, this man’s name is Win Forester, and he truly repents all his many sins. He would like to come into the church to pray for healing or, failing that, to die in a holy place.”
One of the other outlaws sneezed.
Saul came away from his window and stood facing Godwyn, hands on hips. “We cannot turn him away!”
Godwyn tried to make himself calm. “You heard that sneeze – don’t you understand what it means?” He turned to the rest of the monks, to make sure they heard what he said next. “They’ve all got the plague!”
They gave a collective murmur of fear. Godwyn wanted them frightened. That way they would support him if Saul decided to defy him.
Saul said: “We must help them, even if they have got the plague. Our lives are not our own, to be protected like gold hidden under the earth. We have given ourselves to God, to use as he wishes, and he will end our lives when it suits his holy purpose.”
“To let those outlaws in would be suicide. They’ll kill us all!”
“We are men of God. For us, death is the happy reunion with Christ. What do we have to fear, Father Prior?”
Godwyn realized that he was sounding frightened, whereas Saul was speaking reasonably. He forced himself to appear calm and philosophical. “It is a sin to seek our own death.”
“But if death comes to us in the course of our holy duty, we embrace it gladly.”
Godwyn realized he could debate all day with Saul and get nowhere. This was not the way to impose his authority. He closed his shutter. “Shut your window, Brother Saul, and come here to roe,” he said. He looked at Saul, waiting.
After a hesitation, Saul did as he was told.
Godwyn said: “What are your three vows, brother?”
There was a pause. Saul knew what was happening here. Godwyn was refusing to engage with him as an equal. At first, Saul looked as if he might refuse to answer, but his training took over, and he said: “Poverty, chastity, obedience.”
“And who must you obey?”
“God, and the Rule of St Benedict, and my prior.”
“And your prior stands before you now. Do you acknowledge me?”
“Yes.”
“You may say: ‘Yes, Father Prior.’ ”
“Yes, Father Prior.”
“Now I will tell you what you must do, and you will obey.” Godwyn looked around. “All of you – return to your places.”
There was a moment of frozen silence. No one moved and no one spoke. It could go either way, Godwyn thought: compliance or mutiny, order or anarchy, victory or defeat. He held his breath.
At last, Saul moved. He bowed his head and turned away. He walked up the short aisle and resumed his position in front of the altar.
All the others did the same.
There were a few more shouts from outside, but they sounded like parting shots. Perhaps the outlaws had realized they could not force a physician to treat their sick comrade.
Godwyn returned to the altar and turned to face the monks. “We will finish the interrupted psalm,” he said, and he began singing.
The singing was still ragged. The monks were far too excited to adopt the proper attitude. All the same, they were back in their places and following their routine. Godwyn had prevailed.
“Amen,” Godwyn repeated.
One of the monks sneezed.
Soon after Godwyn fled, Elfric died of the plague.
Caris was sorry for Alice, his widow; but aside from that she could hardly help rejoicing that he was gone. He had bullied the weak and toadied to the strong, and the lies he had told at her trial almost got her hanged. The world was a better place without him. Even his building business would be better off run by his son-in-law, Harold Mason.
The parish guild elected Merthin as alderman in Elfric’s place. Merthin said it was like being made captain of a sinking ship.
As the deaths went on and on, and people buried their relatives, neighbours, friends, customers and employees, the constant horror seemed to brutalize many of them, until no violence or cruelty seemed shocking. People who thought they were about to die lost all restraint and followed their impulses regardless of the consequences.
Together, Merthin and Caris struggled to preserve something like normal life in Kingsbridge. The orphanage was the most successful part of Caris’s programme. The children were grateful for the security of the nunnery, after the ordeal of losing their parents to the plague. Taking care of them, and teaching them to read and sing hymns, brought out long-suppressed maternal instincts in some of the nuns. There was plenty of food with fewer people competing for the winter stores. And Kingsbridge Priory was full of the sound of children.
In the town things were more difficult. There continued to be violent quarrels over the property of the dead. People just walked into empty houses and picked up whatever took their fancy. Children who had inherited money, or a warehouse full of cloth or corn, were sometimes adopted by unscrupulous neighbours greedy to get their hands on the legacy. The prospect of something for nothing brought out the worst in people, Caris thought despairingly.
Caris and Merthin were only partly successful against the decline in public behaviour. Caris was disappointed with the results of John Constable’s crackdown on drunkenness. The large numbers of new widows and widowers seemed frantic to find partners, and it was not unusual to see middle-aged people in a passionate embrace in a tavern or even a doorway. Caris had no great objection to this sort of thing in itself, but she found that the combination of drunkenness and public licentiousness often led to fighting. However, Merthin and the parish guild were unable to stop it.
Just at the moment when the townspeople needed their spines stiffened, the flight of the monks had the opposite effect. It demoralized everyone. God’s representatives had left: the Almighty had abandoned the town. Some said that the relics of the saint had always brought good fortune, and now that the bones had gone their luck had run out. The lack of precious crucifixes and candlesticks at the Sunday services was a weekly reminder that Kingsbridge was considered doomed. So why not get drunk and fornicate in the street?
Out of a population of about seven thousand, Kingsbridge had lost at least a thousand by mid-January. Other towns were similar. Despite the masks Caris had invented, the death toll was higher among the nuns, no doubt because they were continually in contact with plague victims. There had been thirty-five nuns, and now there were twenty. But they heard of places where almost every monk or nun had died, leaving a handful, or sometimes just one, to carry on the work; so they counted themselves fortunate. Meanwhile, Caris had shortened the period of novitiate and intensified the training so that she would have more help in the hospital.
Merthin hired the barman from the Holly Bush and put him in charge of the Bell. He also took on a sensible seventeen-year-old girl called Martina to nursemaid Lolla.
Then the plague seemed to die down. Having buried a hundred people a week in the run-up to Christmas, Caris found that the number dropped to fifty in January, then twenty in February. She allowed herself to hope that the nightmare might be coming to an end.
One of the unlucky people to fall ill during this period was a dark-haired man in his thirties who might once have been good-looking. He was a visitor to the town. “I thought I had a cold yesterday,” he said when he came through the door. “But now I’ve got this nosebleed that won’t stop.” He was holding a bloody rag to his nostrils.
“I’ll find you somewhere to lie down,” she said through her linen mask.
“It’s the plague, isn’t it?” he said, and she was surprised to hear calm resignation in his voice in place of the usual panic. “Can you do anything to cure it?”
“We can make you comfortable, and we can pray for you.”
“That won’t do any good. Even you don’t believe in it, I can tell.”
She was shocked by how easily he had read her heart. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she protested weakly. “I’m a nun, I must believe it.”
“You can tell me the truth. How soon will I die?”
She looked hard at him. He was smiling at her, a charming smile that she guessed had melted a few female hearts. “Why aren’t you frightened?” she said. “Everyone else is.”
“I don’t believe what I’m told by priests.” He looked at her shrewdly. “And I have a suspicion that you don’t either.”
She was not about to have this discussion with a stranger, no matter how charming. “Almost everyone who falls ill with the plague dies within three to five days,” she said bluntly. “A few survive, no one knows why.”
He took it well. “As I thought.”
“You can lie down here.”
He gave her the bad-boy grin again. “Will it do me any good?”
“If you don’t lie down soon, you’ll fall down.”
“All right.” He lay on the palliasse she indicated.
She gave him a blanket. “What’s your name?”
“Tam.”
She studied his face. Despite his charm, she sensed a streak of cruelty. He might seduce women, she thought, but if that failed he would rape them. His skin was weathered by outdoor living, and he had the red nose of a drinker. His clothes were costly but dirty. “I know who you are,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll be punished for your sins?”
“If I believed that, I wouldn’t have committed them. Are you afraid you’ll burn in hell?”
It was a question she normally sidestepped, but she felt that this dying outlaw deserved a true answer. “I believe that what I do becomes part of me,” she said. “When I’m brave and strong, and care for children and the sick and the poor, I become a better person. And when I’m cruel, or cowardly, or tell lies, or get drunk, I turn into someone less worthy, and I can’t respect myself. That’s the divine retribution I believe in.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “I wish I’d met you twenty years ago.”
She made a deprecatory noise. “I would have been twelve.”
He raised an eyebrow suggestively.
That was enough, she decided. He was beginning to flirt – and she was beginning to enjoy it. She turned away.
“You’re a brave woman to do this work,” he said. “It will probably kill you.”
“I know,” she said, turning to face him again. “But this is my destiny. I can’t run away from people who need me.”
“Your prior doesn’t seem to think that way.”
“He’s vanished.”
“People can’t vanish.”
“I mean, no one knows where Prior Godwyn and the monks have gone.”
“I do,” said Tam.
The weather at the end of February was sunny and mild. Caris left Kingsbridge on a dun pony, heading for St-John-in-the-Forest. Merthin went with her, riding a black cob. Normally, eyebrows would have been raised by a nun going on a journey accompanied only by a man, but these were strange times.
The danger from outlaws had receded. Many had fallen victim to the plague, Tam Hiding had told her himself before he died. Also, the sudden drop in population had brought about a countrywide surplus of food, wine and clothing – all the things outlaws normally stole. Those outlaws who survived the plague could walk into ghost towns and abandoned villages and take whatever they wanted.
Caris had at first felt frustrated to learn that Godwyn was no farther than two days’ journey from Kingsbridge. She had imagined him gone to a place so distant that he would never return. However, she was glad of the chance to retrieve the priory’s money and valuables and, in particular, the nunnery’s charters, so vital whenever there was a dispute about property or rights.
When and if she was able to confront Godwyn, she would demand the return of the priory’s property, in the name of the bishop. She had a letter from Henri to back her up. If Godwyn still refused, that would prove beyond doubt that he was stealing it rather than keeping it safe. The bishop could then take legal action to get it back – or simply arrive at the cell with a force of men-at-arms.
Although disappointed that Godwyn was not permanently out of her life, Caris relished the prospect of confronting him with his cowardice and dishonesty.
As she rode away from the town she recalled that her last long journey had been to France, with Mair – a real adventure in every way. She felt bereft when she thought of Mair. Of all those who had died of the plague, she missed Mair the most: her beautiful face, her kind heart, her love.
But it was a joy to have Merthin to herself for two whole days. Following the road through the forest, side by side on their horses, they talked continuously, about anything that sprang to mind, just as they had when they were adolescents.
Merthin was as full of bright ideas as ever. Despite the plague, he was building shops and taverns on Leper Island, and he told her he planned to demolish the tavern he had inherited from Bessie Bell and rebuild it twice as big.
Caris guessed that he and Bessie had been lovers – why else would she have left her property to him? But Caris had only herself to blame. She was the one Merthin really wanted, and Bessie had been second best. Both women had known that. All the same, Caris felt jealous and angry when she thought of Merthin in bed with that plump barmaid.
They stopped at noon and rested by a stream. They ate bread, cheese and apples, the food that all but the wealthiest travellers carried. They gave the horses some grain: grazing was not enough for a mount that had to carry a man or woman all day. When they had eaten, they lay in the sun for a few minutes, but the ground was too cold and damp for sleep, and they soon roused themselves and moved on.
They quickly slipped back into the affectionate intimacy of their youth. Merthin had always been able to make her laugh, and she needed cheering up, with people dying every day in the hospital. She soon forgot to be angry about Bessie.
They were taking a route that had been followed by Kingsbridge monks for hundreds of years, and they stopped for the night at the usual half-way point, the Red Cow tavern in the small town of Lordsborough. They had roast beef and strong ale for supper.
By this time, Caris was aching for him. The last ten years seemed to have vanished from memory, and she longed to take him in her arms and make love to him the way they used to. But it was not to be. The Red Cow had two bedrooms, one for men and one for women – which was no doubt why it had always been the choice of the monks. Caris and Merthin parted company on the landing, and Caris lay awake, listening to the snores of a knight’s wife and the wheezing of a spice-seller, touching herself and wishing the hand between her thighs was Merthin’s.
She woke up tired and dispirited, and ate her breakfast porridge mechanically. But Merthin was so happy to be with her that her mood soon lifted. By the time they rode away from Lordsborough, they were talking and laughing as merrily as yesterday.
The second day’s journey was through dense woodland, and they saw no other travellers all morning. Their conversation became more personal. She learned more about his time in Florence: how he had met Silvia, and what kind of person she was. Caris wanted to ask: What was it like to make love to her? Was she different from me? How? But she held back, feeling that such questions would trespass on Silvia’s privacy, even though Silvia was dead. Anyway, she could guess a lot from Merthin’s tone of voice. He had been happy in bed with Silvia, she sensed, even if the relationship had not been as intensely passionate as his with Caris.
The unaccustomed hours on horseback were making her sore, so she was relieved to stop for dinner and get off the pony. When they had eaten they sat on the ground with their backs to a broad tree trunk, to rest and let their food go down before resuming the journey.
Caris was thinking about Godwyn, and wondering what she would find at St-John-in-the-Forest, when suddenly she realized that she and Merthin were about to make love. She could not have explained how she knew – they were not even touching – but she had no doubt. She turned to look at him and saw that he sensed it, too. He smiled at her ruefully, and in his eyes she saw ten years of hope and regrets, pain and tears.
He took her hand and kissed her palm, then he put his lips to the soft inside of her wrist, and closed his eyes. “I can feel your pulse,” he said quietly.
“You can’t tell much from the pulse,” she breathed. “You’ll have to give me a thorough examination.”
He kissed her forehead, and her eyelids, and her nose. “I hope you won’t be embarrassed by my seeing your naked body.”
“Don’t fret – I’m not taking my clothes off in this weather.”
They both giggled.
He said: “Perhaps you would be kind enough to lift the skirt of your robe, so that I may proceed with the check-up.”
She reached down and took hold of the hem of her dress. She was wearing hose that came up to her knees. She lifted her dress slowly, revealing her ankles, her shins, her knees, and then the white skin of her thighs. She was feeling playful, but in the back of her mind she wondered if he could detect the changes wrought in her body by the last ten years. She had got thinner, yet at the same time her bottom had spread. Her skin was a little less supple and smooth than it had been. Her breasts were not as firm and upright. What would he think? She suppressed the worry and played the game. “Is that sufficient, for medical purposes?”
“Not quite.”
“But I’m afraid I’m not wearing underdrawers – such luxuries are considered inappropriate for us nuns.”
“We physicians are obliged to be very thorough, no matter how distasteful we find it.”
“Oh, dear,” she said with a smile. “What a shame. All right, then.” Watching his face she slowly lifted her skirt until it was around her waist.
He stared at her body, and she could see that he was breathing harder. “My, my,” he said. “This is a very severe case. In fact -” he looked up at her face, swallowed, and said – “I can’t joke about this any more.”
She put her arms around him and pulled his body to her own, squeezing as hard as she could, clinging to him as if she were saving him from drowning. “Make love to me, Merthin,” she said. “Now, quickly.”
The priory of St-John-in-the-Forest looked tranquil in the afternoon light – a sure sign that something was wrong, Caris thought. The little cell was traditionally self-sufficient in food, and was surrounded by fields, moist with rain, that needed ploughing and harrowing. But no one was at work.
When they got closer, they saw that the little cemetery next to the church had a row of fresh graves. “It seems the plague may have reached this far,” Merthin said.
Caris nodded. “So Godwyn’s cowardly escape plan failed.” She could not help feeling a glow of vengeful satisfaction.
Merthin said: “I wonder if he himself has fallen victim.”
Caris found herself hoping he had, but was too ashamed to say so.
She and Merthin rode around the silent monastery to what was obviously the stable yard. The door was open, and the horses had been let out and were grazing a patch of meadow around a pond. But no one appeared to help the visitors unsaddle.
They walked through the empty stables into the interior. It was eerily quiet, and Caris wondered if all the monks were dead. They looked into a kitchen, which Caris observed was not as clean as it should be, and a bakery with a cold oven. Their footsteps echoed around the cool grey arcades of the cloisters. Then, approaching the entrance to the church, they met Brother Thomas.
“You found us!” he said. “Thank God.”
Caris embraced him. She knew that women’s bodies did not present a temptation to Thomas. “I’m glad you’re alive,” she said.
“I fell ill and got better,” he explained.
“Not many survive.”
“I know.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“Godwyn and Philemon planned it well,” Thomas said. “There was almost no warning. Godwyn addressed the chapter, and told the story of Abraham and Isaac to show that God sometimes asks us to do things that appear wrong. Then he told us we were leaving that night. Most of the monks were glad to get away from the plague, and those that had misgivings were instructed to remember their vow of obedience.”
Caris nodded. “I can imagine. It’s not hard to obey orders when they are so strongly in your own self-interest.”
“I’m not proud of myself.”
Caris touched the stump of his left arm. “I meant no reproof, Thomas.”
Merthin said: “All the same, I’m surprised no one leaked the destination.”
“That’s because Godwyn didn’t tell us where we were going. Most of us didn’t know even after we arrived – we had to ask the local monks what place this was.”
“But the plague caught up with you.”
“You’ve seen the graveyard. All the St John monks are there except Prior Saul, who is buried in the church. Almost all the Kingsbridge men are dead. A few ran away after the sickness broke out here – God knows what happened to them.”
Caris recalled that Thomas had always been close to one particular monk, a sweet-natured man a few years younger than he. Hesitantly she said: “And Brother Matthias?”
“Dead,” Thomas said brusquely; then tears came to his eyes, and he looked away, embarrassed.
Caris put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m very sorry.”
“So many people have suffered bereavement,” he said.
Caris decided it would be kinder not to dwell on Matthias. “What about Godwyn and Philemon?”
“Philemon ran away. Godwyn is alive and well – he hasn’t caught it.”
“I have a message for Godwyn from the bishop.”
“I can imagine.”
“You’d better take me to him.”
“He’s in the church. He set up a bed in a side chapel. He’s convinced that’s why he hasn’t fallen ill. Come with me.”
They crossed the cloisters and entered the little church. It smelled more like a dormitory. The wall painting of the Day of Judgement at the east end seemed grimly appropriate now. The nave was strewn with straw and littered with blankets, as if a crowd of people had been sleeping here; but the only person present was Godwyn. He was lying face down on the dirt floor in front of the altar, his arms stretched out sideways. For a moment she thought he was dead, then she realized this was simply the attitude of extreme penitence.
Thomas said: “You have visitors, Father Prior.”
Godwyn remained in position. Caris would have assumed he was putting on a show, but something about his stillness made her think he was sincerely seeking forgiveness.
Then he got slowly to his feet and turned round.
He was pale and thin, Caris saw, and he looked tired and anxious.
“You,” he said.
“You’ve been discovered, Godwyn,” she said. She was not going to call him ‘father’. He was a miscreant and she had caught him. She felt deep satisfaction.
He said: “I suppose Tam Hiding betrayed me.”
His mind was as sharp as ever, Caris noted. “You tried to escape justice, but you failed.”
“I have nothing to fear from justice,” he said defiantly. “I came here in the hope of saving the lives of my monks. My error was to leave it too late.”
“An innocent man doesn’t sneak away under cover of night.”
“I had to keep my destination secret. It would have defeated my purpose to allow anyone to follow us here.”
“You didn’t have to steal the cathedral ornaments.”
“I didn’t steal them. I took them for safekeeping. I shall return them to their rightful place when it’s safe to do so.”
“So why did you tell no one that you were taking them?”
“But I did. I wrote to Bishop Henri. Did he not receive my letter?”
Caris felt a growing sense of dismay. Surely Godwyn could not wriggle out of this? “Certainly not,” she said. “No letter was received, and I don’t believe one was sent.”
“Perhaps the messenger died of the plague before he could deliver it.”
“And what was the name of this vanishing messenger?”
“I never knew it. Philemon hired the man.”
“And Philemon is not here – how convenient,” she said sarcastically. “Well, you can say what you like, but Bishop Henri accuses you of stealing the treasure, and he has sent me here to demand its return. I have a letter ordering you to hand everything to me, immediately.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll take it to him myself.”
“That is not what your bishop commands you to do.”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s best.”
“Your refusal is proof of theft.”
“I’m sure I can persuade Bishop Henri to see things differently.”
The trouble was, Caris thought despairingly, that Godwyn might well do just that. He could be very plausible, and Henri, like most bishops, would generally avoid confrontation if he could. She felt as if the victory trophy was slipping through her hands.
Godwyn felt he had turned the tables on her, and he permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction. That infuriated her, but she had no more to say. All she could do now was return and tell Bishop Henri what had happened.
She could hardly believe it. Would Godwyn really return to Kingsbridge and resume his position as prior? How could he possibly hold his head up in Kingsbridge Cathedral? After all he had done to damage the priory, the town and the church? Even if the bishop accepted him, surely the townspeople would riot? The prospect was dire, yet stranger things had happened. Was there no justice?
She stared at him. The look of triumph on his face must be matched, she supposed, by the defeat on her own.
Then she saw something that turned the tables yet again.
On Godwyn’s upper lip, just below his left nostril, there was a trickle of blood.
Next morning, Godwyn did not get out of bed.
Caris put on her linen mask and nursed him. She bathed his face in rose water and gave him diluted wine whenever he asked for a drink. Every time she touched him, she washed her hands in vinegar.
Other than Godwyn and Thomas, there were only two monks left, both Kingsbridge novices. They, too, were dying of the plague; so she brought them down from the dormitory to lie in the church, and she took care of them as well, flitting around the dim-lit nave like a shade as she went from one dying man to the next.
She asked Godwyn where the cathedral treasures were, but he refused to say.
Merthin and Thomas searched the priory. The first place they looked was under the altar. Something had been buried there, quite recently, they could tell by the looseness of the earth. However, when they made a hole – Thomas digging surprisingly well with one hand – they found nothing. Whatever had been buried there had since been removed.
They checked every echoing room in the deserted monastery, and even looked in the cold bakery oven and the dry brewery tanks, but they found no jewels, relics or charters.
After the first night, Thomas quietly vacated the dormitory – without being asked – and left Merthin and Caris to sleep there alone. He made no comment, not even a nudge or a wink. Grateful for his discreet connivance, they huddled under a pile of blankets and made love. Afterwards, Caris lay awake. An owl lived somewhere in the roof, and she heard its nocturnal hooting, and occasionally the scream of a small animal caught in its talons. She wondered if she would become pregnant. She did not want to give up her vocation – but she could not resist the temptation of lying in Merthin’s arms. So she just refused to think about the future.
On the third day, as Caris, Merthin and Thomas ate dinner in the refectory, Thomas said: “When Godwyn asks for a drink, refuse to give it to him until he’s told you where he hid the treasure.”
Caris considered that. It would be perfectly just. But it would also amount to torture. “I can’t do that,” she said. “I know he deserves it, but all the same I can’t do it. If a sick man asks for a drink I must give it to him. That’s more important than all the jewelled ornaments in Christendom.”
“You don’t owe him compassion – he never showed any to you.”
“I’ve turned the church into a hospital, but I won’t let it become a torture chamber.”
Thomas looked as if he might be inclined to argue further, but Merthin dissuaded him with a shake of the head. “Think, Thomas,” he said. “When did you last see this stuff?”
“The night we arrived,” Thomas said. “It was in leather bags and boxes on a couple of horses. It was unloaded at the same time as everything else, and I think it was carried into the church.”
“Then what happened to it?”
“I never saw it again. But after Evensong, when we all went to supper, I noticed that Godwyn and Philemon stayed behind in the church with two other monks, Juley and John.”
Caris said: “Let me guess: Juley and John were both young and strong.”
“Yes.”
Merthin said: “So that’s probably when they buried the treasure under the altar. But when did they dig it up?”
“It had to be when nobody was in the church, and they could be sure of that only at mealtimes.”
“Were they absent from any other meals?”
“Several, probably. Godwyn and Philemon always acted as if the rules didn’t really apply to them. Their missing meals and services wasn’t unusual enough for me to remember every instance.”
Caris said: “Do you recall Juley and John being absent a second time? Godwyn and Philemon would have needed help again.”
“Not necessarily,” Merthin said. “It’s much easier to re-excavate ground that has already been loosened. Godwyn is forty-three and Philemon is only thirty-four. They could have done it without help, if they really wanted to.”
That night, Godwyn began to rave. Some of the time he seemed to be quoting from the Bible, sometimes preaching, and sometimes making excuses. Caris listened for a while, hoping for clues. “Great Babylon is fallen, and all the nations have drunk of the wrath of her fornication; and out of the throne proceeded fire, and thunder; and all the merchants of the earth shall weep. Repent, oh, repent, all ye who have committed fornication with the mother of harlots! It was all done for a higher purpose, all done for the glory of God, because the end justifies the means. Give me something to drink, for the love of God.” The apocalyptic tone of his delirium was probably suggested by the wall painting, with its graphic depiction of the tortures of hell.
Caris held a cup to his mouth. “Where are the cathedral ornaments, Godwyn?”
“I saw seven golden candlesticks, all covered with pearls, and precious stones, and wrapped in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and lying in an ark made of cedar wood, and sandalwood, and silver. I saw a woman riding upon a scarlet beast, having seven heads and ten horns, and full of the names of blasphemy.” The nave rang with the echoes of his ranting.
On the following day the two novices died. That afternoon, Thomas and Merthin buried them in the graveyard to the north of the priory. It was a cold, damp day, but they sweated with the effort of digging. Thomas performed the funeral service. Caris stood at the grave with Merthin. When everything was falling apart, the rituals helped to maintain a semblance of normality. Around them were the new graves of all the other monks except Godwyn and Saul. Saul’s body lay under the little chancel of the church, an honour reserved for the most highly regarded priors.
Afterwards Caris came back into the church and stared at Saul’s grave in the chancel. That part of the church was paved with flagstones. Obviously the flags had been lifted so that the grave could be dug. When they had been put back, one of the stones had been polished and carved with an inscription.
It was hard to concentrate, with Godwyn in the corner raving about beasts with seven heads.
Merthin noticed her thoughtful look and followed her gaze. He immediately guessed what she was thinking. In a horrified voice he said: “Surely Godwyn can’t have hidden the treasure in Saul Whitehead’s coffin?”
“It’s hard to imagine monks desecrating a tomb,” she said. “On the other hand, the ornaments wouldn’t have had to leave the church.”
Thomas said: “Saul died a week before you arrived. Philemon disappeared two days later.”
“So Philemon could have helped Godwyn dig up the grave.”
“Yes.”
The three of them looked at one another, trying to ignore the mad mumblings of Godwyn.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Merthin said.
Merthin and Thomas got their wooden shovels. They lifted the memorial slab and the paving stones around it, and started digging.
Thomas had developed a one-handed technique. He pushed the shovel into the earth with his good arm, tilted it, then ran his hand all the way down the shaft to the blade and lifted it. His right arm had become very muscular as a result of this kind of adaptation.
Nevertheless, it took a long time. Many graves were shallow, nowadays, but for Prior Saul they had dug down the full six feet. Night was falling outside, and Caris fetched candles. The devils in the wall painting seemed to move in the flickering light.
Both Thomas and Merthin were standing in the hole, with only their heads visible above floor level, when Merthin said: “Wait. Something’s here.”
Caris saw some muddy white material that looked like the oiled linen sometimes used for shrouds. “You’ve found the body,” she said.
Thomas said: “But where’s the coffin?”
“Was he buried in a box?” Coffins were only for the elite: poor people were interred in a shroud.
Thomas said: “Saul was buried in a coffin – I saw it. There’s plenty of wood here in the middle of the forest. All the monks were put in coffins, right up until Brother Silas fell ill – he was the carpenter.”
“Wait,” said Merthin. He pushed his shovel through the earth at the feet of the shroud and lifted a shovelful. Then he tapped with the blade, and Caris heard the dull thud of wood on wood. “Here’s the coffin, underneath,” he said.
Thomas said: “How did the body get out?”
Caris felt a shiver of fear.
Over in the corner, Godwyn raised his voice. “And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels, and the smoke of his torment will rise up for ever and ever.”
Thomas said to Caris: “Can’t you shut him up?”
“I’ve got no drugs with me.”
Merthin said: “There’s nothing supernatural here. My guess is that Godwyn and Philemon took the body out – and filled the coffin with their stolen treasures.”
Thomas pulled himself together. “We’d better look in the coffin, then.”
First they had to move the shrouded corpse. Merthin and Thomas bent down, grabbed it by the shoulders and knees, and lifted it. When they had raised it to the level of their shoulders, the only way they could get it farther was to toss it out on to the floor. It landed with a thump. They both looked fearful. Even Caris, who did not believe much of what she was told about the spirit world, felt frightened by what they were doing, and found herself glancing nervously over her shoulder into the shadowed corners of the church.
Merthin cleared the earth from the top of the coffin while Thomas went to fetch an iron bar. Then they lifted the lid of the casket.
Caris held two candles over the grave so that they could see better.
Inside the coffin was another shrouded body.
Thomas said: “This is very strange!” His voice was distinctly shaky.
“Let’s just think sensibly about this,” Merthin said. He was sounding calm and collected, but Caris – who knew him extraordinarily well – could tell that his composure was taking a big effort. “Who is in the coffin?” he said. “Let’s look.”
He bent down, grabbed the shroud in two hands, and ripped it open along the stitched seam at the head. The corpse was a week dead, and there was a bad smell, but it had not deteriorated much in the cold ground under the unheated church. Even in the unsteady light from Caris’s candles, there was no doubt about the identity of the dead man: the head was fringed with distinctively ash-blond hair.
Thomas said: “That’s Saul Whitehead.”
“In his rightful coffin,” said Merthin.
Caris said: “So who is the other corpse?”
Merthin closed the shroud around Saul’s blond head and replaced the coffin lid.
Caris knelt by the other corpse. She had dealt with many dead bodies, but she had never brought one up from its grave, and her hands were shaky. Nevertheless she opened the shroud and exposed the face. To her horror, the eyes were open and seemed to be staring. She forced herself to close the cold eyelids.
It was a big young monk she did not recognize. Thomas stood on tiptoe to look out of the grave and said: “That’s Brother Jonquil. He died the day after Prior Saul.”
Caris said: “And he was buried…?”
“In the cemetery… we all thought.”
“In a coffin?”
“Yes.”
“Except that he’s here.”
“His coffin weighed enough,” Thomas said. “I helped carry it…”
Merthin said: “I see what happened. Jonquil lay here in the church, in his coffin, prior to burial. While the other monks were at dinner, Godwyn and Philemon opened the coffin and took the body out. They dug up Saul’s tomb and tumbled Jonquil in on top of Saul’s coffin. They closed the grave. Then they put the cathedral treasures in Jonquil’s coffin and closed it again.”
Thomas said: “So we have to dig up Jonquil’s grave.”
Caris glanced up at the windows of the church. They were dark. Night had fallen while they were opening the tomb of Saul. “We could leave it until morning,” she said.
Both men were silent for a long moment, then Thomas said: “Let’s get it over with.”
Caris went to the kitchen, picked two branches from the firewood pile, lit them at the fire, then returned to the church.
As the three of them went outside they heard Godwyn cry: “And the winepress of the wrath of God was trodden outside the city, and the grapes gave forth blood, and the land was flooded to the height of the horses’ bridles.”
Caris shuddered. It was a vile image from the Revelation of St John the Divine, and it disgusted her. She tried to put it out of her mind.
They walked quickly to the cemetery in the red light of the torches. Caris was relieved to be away from that wall painting and out of earshot of Godwyn’s mad ravings. They found Jonquil’s headstone and began to excavate.
The two men had already dug two graves for the novices and re-dug Saul’s. This was their fourth since dinner time. Merthin looked tired and Thomas was sweating heavily. But they worked on doggedly. Slowly the hole got deeper and the pile of earth beside it rose higher. At last a shovel struck wood.
Caris passed Merthin the crowbar, then she knelt on the edge of the pit, holding both torches. Merthin prised open the coffin lid and threw it out of the grave.
There was no corpse in the box.
Instead it was packed tightly with bags and boxes. Merthin opened a leather bag and pulled out a jewelled crucifix. “Hallelujah,” he said wearily.
Thomas opened a box to reveal a row of parchment rolls, packed tightly together like fish in a crate: the charters.
Caris felt a weight of worry roll off her shoulders. She had got the nunnery charters back.
Thomas put his hand into another bag. When he looked at what he had got hold of, it was a skull. He gave a fearful cry and dropped it.
“St Adolphus,” Merthin said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Pilgrims travel hundreds of miles to touch the box that holds his bones.” He picked up the skull. “Lucky us,” he said, and put it back into the bag.
“If I may make a suggestion?” said Caris. “We have to carry this stuff all the way back to Kingsbridge in a cart. Why don’t we leave it in the coffin? It’s packed already, and the casket may serve to deter thieves.”
“Good idea,” Merthin said. “We’ll just lift the coffin out of the grave.”
Thomas returned to the priory and brought ropes, and they lifted the coffin out of the hole. They re-fixed the lid, then tied the ropes around the box in order to drag it across the ground and into the church.
As they were about to start, they heard a scream.
Caris let out a cry of fear.
They all looked towards the church. A figure was running towards them, eyes staring, blood coming from its mouth. Caris suffered a moment of utter terror when she suddenly believed every foolish superstition she had ever heard about spirits. Then she realized she was looking at Godwyn. Somehow he had found the strength to rise from his death bed. He had staggered out of the church and seen their torches, and now in his madness he was running towards them.
They watched him, transfixed.
He stopped and looked at the coffin, then at the empty grave, and in the restless torchlight Caris thought she saw a glimmer of understanding on his grimacing face. Then he seemed to lose his strength, and he collapsed. He fell on the mound of earth beside Jonquil’s empty grave, then he rolled down the mound and into the pit.
They all stepped forward and looked into the grave.
Godwyn lay there on his back, looking up at them with open, sightless eyes.
As soon as Caris got back to Kingsbridge, she decided to leave again.
The image of St-John-in-the-Forest that stayed with her was not the graveyard, nor the corpses Merthin and Thomas had dug up, but the neat fields with no one tilling them. As she rode home, with Merthin beside her and Thomas driving the cart, she saw a lot of land in the same state, and she foresaw a crisis.
The monks and nuns got most of their income from rents. Serfs grew crops and raised livestock on land belonging to the priory and, instead of paying a knight or an earl for the privilege, they paid the prior or prioress. Traditionally they brought a portion of their harvest to the cathedral – a dozen sacks of flour, three sheep, a calf, a cartload of onions – but nowadays most people paid cash.
If no one was cultivating the land, there would be no rent paid, obviously. And then what would the nuns eat?
The cathedral ornaments, the money and the charters she had retrieved from St-John-in-the-Forest were stashed safely in the new, secret treasury that Mother Cecilia had commissioned Jeremiah to build in a place where no one could easily find it. All the ornaments had been found except one, a gold candlestick given by the chandlers’ guild, the group that represented the wax-candle makers of Kingsbridge. That had disappeared.
Caris held a triumphant Sunday service featuring the rescued bones of the saint. She put Thomas in charge of the boys in the orphanage – some of them were old enough to require a strong male presence. She herself moved into the prior’s palace, thinking with pleasure how appalled the late Godwyn would be that it was occupied by a woman. Then, as soon as she had dealt with these details, she went to Outhenby.
The vale of Outhen was a fertile valley of heavy clay soil a day’s journey from Kingsbridge. It had been given to the nuns a hundred years ago by a wicked old knight making a last-gasp attempt to win forgiveness for a lifetime of sins. Five villages stood at intervals along the banks of the river Outhen. On either side the great fields covered the land and the lower slopes of the hills.
The fields were divided into strips allocated to different families. As she had feared, many strips were not being cultivated. The plague had changed everything, but no one had had the brains – or perhaps the courage – to reorganize farming in the light of the new circumstances. Caris herself would have to do that. She had a rough idea of what was required, and she would work out the details as she went along.
With her was Sister Joan, a young nun recently out of her novitiate. Joan was a bright girl who reminded Caris of herself ten years ago – not in appearance, for she was black-haired and blue-eyed, but in her questioning mind and brisk scepticism.
They rode to the largest of the villages, Outhenby. The bailiff for the whole valley, Will, lived there in a large timber house next to the church. He was not at home, but they found him in the farthest field, sowing oats; a big, slow-moving man. The next strip had been left fallow, and wild grass and weeds were poking up, grazed by a few sheep.
Will Bailiff visited the priory several times a year, usually to bring the rents from the villages, so he knew Caris; but he was disconcerted to meet her on his home ground. “Sister Caris!” he exclaimed when he recognized her. “What brings you here?”
“I’m Mother Caris now, Will, and I’ve come to make sure the nuns’ lands are being properly husbanded.”
“Ah.” He shook his head. “We’re doing our best, as you see, but we’ve lost so many men that it’s very, very difficult.”
Bailiffs always said that times were difficult – but in this case it was true.
Caris dismounted. “Walk with me and tell me about it.” A few hundred yards away, on the gentle slope of a hillside, she saw a peasant ploughing with a team of eight oxen. He halted the team and looked at her curiously, so she headed that way.
Will began to recover his composure. Walking alongside her, he said: “A woman of God, such as yourself, can’t be expected to know much about tilling the soil, of course; but I’ll do my best to explain the finer points.”
“That would be kind.” She was used to being condescended to by men of Will’s type. She had found that it was best not to challenge them, but rather to lull them into a false sense of security. That way, she learned more. “How many men have you lost to the plague?”
“Oh, many men.”
“How many?”
“Well, now, let me see, there was William Jones, and his two sons; then Richard Carpenter, and his wife-”
“I don’t need to know their names,” she said, controlling her exasperation. “How many, roughly speaking?”
“I’d have to think about that.”
They had reached the plough. Managing the eight-ox team was a skilled job, and ploughmen were often among the more intelligent villagers. Caris addressed the young man. “How many people in Outhenby have died of the plague?”
“About two hundred, I’d say.”
Caris studied him. He was short but muscular, with a bushy blond beard. He had a cocksure look, as young men often did. “Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Harry, and my father was Richard, holy sister.”
“I am Mother Caris. How do you work out that figure of two hundred?”
“There’s forty-two dead here in Outhenby, by my reckoning. It’s just as bad in Ham and Shortacre, making about a hundred and twenty. Longwater escaped completely, but every soul in Oldchurch is dead but old Roger Breton, which is about eighty people, making two hundred.”
She turned to Will. “Out of about how many in the whole valley?”
“Ah, now, let me see…”
Harry Ploughman said: “A thousand, near enough, before the plague.”
Will said: “That’s why you see me sowing my own strip, which should be done by labourers – but I have no labourers. They’ve all died.”
Harry said: “Or they’ve gone to work elsewhere for higher wages.”
Caris perked up. “Oh? Who offers higher wages?”
“Some of the wealthier peasants in the next valley,” Will said indignantly. “The nobility pay a penny a day, which is what labourers have always got and always should; but there are some people who think they can do as they please.”
“But they get their crops sowed, I suppose,” Caris said.
“But there’s right and wrong, Mother Caris,” said Will.
Caris pointed to the fallow strip where the sheep were. “And what about that land? Why has it not been ploughed?”
Will said: “That belonged to William Jones. He and his sons died, and his wife went to live with her sister in Shiring.”
“Have you looked for a new tenant?”
“Can’t get them, mother.”
Harry interjected again. “Not on the old terms, anyhow.”
Will glared at him, but Caris said: “What do you mean?”
“Prices have fallen, you see, even though it’s spring when corn is usually dear.”
Caris nodded. That was how markets worked, everyone knew: if there were fewer buyers, the price fell. “But people must live somehow.”
“They don’t want to grow wheat and barley and oats – but they have to grow what they’re told, at least in this valley. So a man looking for a tenancy would rather go elsewhere.”
“And what will he get elsewhere?”
Will interrupted angrily: “They want to do as they please.”
Harry answered Caris’s question. “They want to be free tenants, paying cash rent, rather than serfs working one day a week on the lord’s land; and they want to be able to grow different crops.”
“What crops?”
“Hemp, or flax, or apples and pears – things they know they can sell at the market. Maybe something different every year. But that’s never been allowed in Outhenby.” Harry seemed to recollect himself, and added: “No offence to your holy order, Mother Prioress, nor to Will Bailiff, an honest man as everyone knows.”
Caris saw how it was. Bailiffs were always conservative. In good times, it hardly mattered: the old ways sufficed. But this was a crisis.
She assumed her most authoritative manner. “All right, listen carefully, now, Will, and I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.” Will looked startled: he had thought he was being consulted, not commanded. “First, you are to stop ploughing the hillsides. It’s foolish when we’ve got good land uncultivated.”
“But-”
“Be quiet and listen. Offer every tenant an exchange, acre for acre, good valley bottom instead of hillside.”
“Then what will we do with the hillside?”
“Convert it to grazing, cattle on the lower slopes and sheep on the higher. You don’t need many men for that, just a few boys to herd them.”
“Oh,” said Will. It was plain that he wanted to argue, but he could not immediately think of an objection.
Caris went on: “Next, any valley-bottom land that is still untenanted should be offered as a free tenancy with cash rent to anyone who will take it on.” A free tenancy meant that the tenant was not a serf, and did not have to work on the lord’s land, or get his permission to marry or build a house. All he had to do was pay his rent.
“You’re doing away with all the old customs.”
She pointed at the fallow strip. “The old customs are letting my land go to waste. Can you think of another way to stop this happening?”
“Well,” said Will, and there was a long pause; then he shook his head silently.
“Thirdly, offer wages of two pence a day to anyone who will work the land.”
“Two pence a day!”
Caris felt she could not rely on Will to implement these changes vigorously. He would drag his feet and invent excuses. She turned to the cocksure ploughman. She would make him the champion of her reforms. “Harry, I want you to go to every market in the county over the next few weeks. Spread the word that anyone who is on the move can do well in Outhenby. If there are labourers looking for wages I want them to come here.”
Harry grinned and nodded, though Will still looked a bit dazed.
“I want to see all this good land growing crops this summer,” she said. “Is that clear?”
“Yes.” said Will. “Thank you, Mother Prioress.”
Caris went through all the charters with Sister Joan, making a note of the date and subject of each. She decided to have them copied, one by one – the idea Godwyn had proposed, though he had only pretended to be copying them as a pretext for taking them away from the nuns. But it was a sound notion. The more copies there were, the harder it was for a valuable document to disappear.
She was intrigued by a deed dated 1327 which assigned to the monks the large farm near Lynn, in Norfolk, that they called Lynn Grange. The gift was made on condition the priory took on, as a novice monk, a knight called Sir Thomas Langley.
Caris was taken back to her childhood, and the day she had ventured into the wood with Merthin, Ralph and Gwenda, and they had seen Thomas receive the wound that had caused him to lose his arm.
She showed the charter to Joan, who shrugged and said: “It’s usual for such a gift to be made when someone from a wealthy family becomes a monk.”
“But look who the donor is.”
Joan looked again. “Queen Isabella!” Isabella was the widow of Edward II and the mother of Edward III. “What’s her interest in Kingsbridge?”
“Or in Thomas?” said Caris.
A few days later she had a chance to find out. The bailiff of Lynn Grange, Andrew, came to Kingsbridge on his biannual visit. A Norfolk-born man of over fifty, he had been in charge of the grange ever since it was gifted to the priory. He was now white-haired and plump, which led Caris to believe that the grange continued to prosper despite the plague. Because Norfolk was several days’ journey away, the grange paid its dues to the priory in coins, rather than drive cattle or cart produce all that way, and Andrew brought the money in gold nobles, the new coin worth a third of a pound, with an image of King Edward standing on the deck of a ship. When Caris had counted the money and given it to Joan to stash in the new treasury, she said to Andrew: “Why did Queen Isabella give us this grange twenty-two years ago, do you know?”
To her surprise, Andrew’s pink face turned pale. He made several false starts at answering, then said: “It’s not for me to question her majesty’s decisions.”
“No, indeed,” Caris said in a reassuring tone. “I’m just curious about her motive.”
“She is a holy woman who has performed many pious acts.”
Like murdering her husband, Caris thought; but she said: “However, there must be a reason she named Thomas.”
“He petitioned the queen for a favour, like hundreds of others, and she graciously granted it, as great ladies sometimes do.”
“Usually when they have some connection with the petitioner.”
“No, no, I’m sure there’s no connection.”
His anxiety made Caris sure he was lying, and just as sure that he would not tell her the truth, so she dropped the subject, and sent Andrew off to have supper in the hospital.
Next morning she was accosted in the cloisters by Brother Thomas, the only monk left in the monastery. Looking angry, he said: “Why did you interrogate Andrew Lynn?”
“Because I was curious,” she said, taken aback.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I’m not trying to do anything.” She was offended by his aggressive manner, but she did not want to quarrel with him. To ease the tension, she sat on the low wall around the edge of the arcade. A spring sun was shining bravely into the quadrangle. She spoke in a conversational tone. “What’s this all about?”
Thomas said stiffly: “Why are you investigating me?”
“I’m not,” she said. “Calm down. I’m going through all the charters, listing them and having them copied. I came across one that puzzled me.”
“You’re delving into matters that are none of your business.”
She bridled. “I’m the prioress of Kingsbridge, and the acting prior – nothing here is secret from me.”
“Well, if you start digging up all that old stuff, you’ll regret it, I promise you.”
It sounded like a threat, but she decided not to challenge him. She tried a different tack. “Thomas, I thought we were friends. You have no right to forbid me to do anything, and I’m disappointed that you should even try. Don’t you trust me?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then enlighten me. What does Queen Isabella have to do with you, me and Kingsbridge?”
“Nothing. She’s an old woman now, living in retirement.”
“She’s fifty-three. She’s deposed one king, and she could probably depose another if she had a mind to. And she has some long-hidden connection with my priory which you are determined to keep from me.”
“For your own good.”
She ignored that. “Twenty-two years ago someone was trying to kill you. Was it the same person who, having failed to do away with you, paid you off by getting you admitted to the monastery?”
“Andrew is going to go back to Lynn and tell Isabella that you’ve been asking these questions – do you realize that?”
“Why would she care? Why are people so afraid of you, Thomas?”
“Everything will be answered when I’m dead. None of it will matter then.” He turned round and walked away.
The bell rang for dinner. Caris went to the prior’s palace, deep in thought. Godwyn’s cat, Archbishop, was sitting on the doorstep. It glared at her and she shooed it away. She would not have it in the house.
She had got into the habit of dining every day with Merthin. Traditionally the prior regularly dined with the alderman, though to do so every day was unusual – but these were unusual times. That, at any rate, would have been her excuse, had anyone challenged her; but nobody did. Meanwhile they both looked out eagerly for another excuse to go on a trip so that they could again be alone together.
He came in muddy from his building site on Leper Island. He had stopped asking her to renounce her vows and leave the priory. He seemed content, at least for the moment, to see her every day and hope for future chances to be more intimate.
A priory employee brought them ham stewed with winter greens. When the servant had gone, Caris told Merthin about the charter and Thomas’s reaction. “He knows a secret that could damage the old queen if it got out.”
“I think that must be right,” Merthin said thoughtfully.
“On All Hallows’ Day in 1327, after I ran away, he caught you, didn’t he?”
“Yes. He made me help him bury a letter. I had to swear to keep it secret – until he dies, then I am to dig it up and give it to a priest.”
“He told me all my questions would be answered when he died.”
“I think the letter is the threat he holds over his enemies. They must know that its contents will be revealed when he dies. So they fear to kill him – in fact they have made sure he remains alive and well by helping him become a monk of Kingsbridge.”
“Can it matter, still?”
“Ten years after we buried the letter, I told him I hadn’t ever let the secret out, and he said: ‘If you had, you’d be dead.’ That scared me more than the vow.”
“Mother Cecilia told me that Edward II did not die naturally.”
“How would she know a thing like that?”
“My uncle Anthony told her. So I presume the secret is that Queen Isabella had her husband murdered.”
“Half the country believes that anyway. But if there were proof… Did Cecilia say how he was killed?”
Caris thought hard. “No. Now that I think of it, what she said was: ‘The old king did not die of a fall.’ I asked her if he had been murdered – but she died without answering.”
“Still, why put out a false story about his death if not to cover up foul play?”
“And Thomas’s letter must somehow prove that there was foul play, and that the queen was in on it.”
They finished their dinner in thoughtful silence. In the monastery day, the hour after dinner was for rest or reading. Caris and Merthin usually lingered for a while. Today, however, Merthin was anxious about the angles of the roof timbers being erected in the new tavern, the Bridge, that he was building on Leper Island. They kissed hungrily, but he tore himself away and hurried back to the site. Disappointed, Caris opened a book called Ars Medica, a Latin translation of a work by the ancient Greek physician Galen. It was the cornerstone of university medicine, and she was reading it to find out what priests learned at Oxford and Paris; though she had so far found little that would help her.
The maid came back and cleared the table. “Ask Brother Thomas to come and see me, please,” Caris said. She wanted to make sure they were still friends despite their abrasive conversation.
Before Thomas arrived there was a commotion outside. She heard several horses, and the kind of shouting that indicated a nobleman wanting attention. A few moments later the door was flung open and in walked Sir Ralph Fitzgerald, lord of Tench.
He looked angry, but Caris pretended not to notice that. “Hello, Ralph,” she said as amiably as she could. “This is an unexpected pleasure. Welcome to Kingsbridge.”
“Never mind all that,” he said rudely. He walked up to where she sat and stood aggressively close. “Do you realize you’re ruining the peasantry of the entire county?”
Another figure followed him in and stood by the door, a big man with a small head, and Caris recognized his long-time sidekick, Alan Fernhill. Both were armed with swords and daggers. Caris was acutely aware that she was alone in the palace. She tried to defuse the scene. “Would you like some ham, Ralph? I’ve just finished dinner.”
Ralph was not to be diverted. “You’ve been stealing my peasants!”
“Peasants, or pheasants?”
Alan Fernhill burst out laughing.
Ralph reddened and looked more dangerous, and Caris wished she had not made that joke. “If you poke fun at me you’ll be sorry,” he said.
Caris poured ale into a cup. “I’m not laughing at you,” she said. “Tell me exactly what’s on your mind.” She offered him the ale.
Her shaking hand betrayed her fear, but he ignored the cup and wagged his finger at her. “Labourers have been disappearing from my villages – and when I inquire after them, I find they have moved to villages belonging to you, where they get higher wages.”
Caris nodded. “If you were selling a horse, and two men wanted to buy it, wouldn’t you give it to the one who offered the higher price?”
“That’s not the same.”
“I think it is. Have some ale.”
With a sudden sideswipe of his hand, he knocked the cup from her grasp. It fell to the floor, the ale spilling into the straw. “They’re my labourers.”
Her hand was bruised, but she tried to ignore the pain. She bent down, picked up the cup and set it on the sideboard. “Not really,” she said. “If they’re labourers, that means you’ve never given them any land, so they have the right to go elsewhere.”
“I’m still their lord, damn it! And another thing. I offered a tenancy to a free man the other day and he refused it, saying he could get a better bargain from Kingsbridge Priory.”
“Same thing, Ralph. I need all the people I can get, so I give them what they want.”
“You’re a woman, you don’t think things through. You can’t see that it will all end with everyone paying more for the same peasants.”
“Not necessarily. Higher wages might attract some of those who at present do no work at all – outlaws, for example, or those vagabonds who go around living off what they find in plague-emptied villages. And some who are now labourers might become tenants, and work harder because they’re cultivating their own land.”
He banged the table with his fist, and she blinked at the sudden noise. “You’ve no right to change the old ways!”
“I think I have.”
He grabbed the front of her robe. “Well, I’m not putting up with it!”
“Take your hands off me, you clumsy oaf,” she said.
At that moment, Brother Thomas came in. “You sent for me – what the devil is going on here?”
He stepped smartly across the room, and Ralph let go of Caris’s robe as if it had suddenly caught fire. Thomas had no weapons and only one arm, but he had got the better of Ralph once before; and Ralph was scared of him.
Ralph took a step back, then realized he had revealed his fear, and looked ashamed. “We’re done here!” he said loudly, and turned to the door.
Caris said: “What I’m doing in Outhenby and elsewhere is perfectly legitimate, Ralph.”
“It’s interfering with the natural order!” he said.
“There’s no law against it.”
Alan opened the door for his master.
“You wait and see,” said Ralph, and he went out.
In March that year, 1349, Gwenda and Wulfric went with Nathan Reeve to the midweek market at the small town of Northwood.
They were working for Sir Ralph now. Gwenda and Wulfric had escaped the plague, so far, but several of Ralph’s labourers had died of it, so he needed help; and Nate, the bailiff of Wigleigh, had offered to take them on. He could afford to pay normal wages, whereas Perkin had been giving them nothing more than their food.
As soon as they announced they were going to work for Ralph, Perkin discovered that he could now afford to pay them normal wages – but he was too late.
On this day they took a cartload of logs from Ralph’s forest to sell in Northwood, a town that had had a timber market since time immemorial. The boys, Sam and David, went with them: there was no one else to look after them. Gwenda did not trust her father, and her mother had died two years ago. Wulfric’s parents were long dead.
Several other Wigleigh folk were at the market. Father Gaspard was buying seeds for his vegetable garden, and Gwenda’s father, Joby, was selling freshly killed rabbits.
Nate, the bailiff, was a stunted man with a twisted back, and he could not lift logs. He dealt with customers while Wulfric and Gwenda did the lifting. At midday he gave them a penny to buy their dinner at the Old Oak, one of the taverns around the square. They got bacon boiled with leeks and shared it with the boys. David, at eight years of age, still had a child’s appetite, but Sam was a fast-growing ten and perpetually hungry.
While they were eating, they overheard a conversation that caught Gwenda’s attention.
There was a group of young men standing in a corner, drinking large tankards of ale. They were all poorly dressed, except one with a bushy blond beard who had the superior clothes of a prosperous peasant or a village craftsman: leather trousers, good boots and a new hat. The sentence that caused Gwenda to prick up her ears was: “We pay two pence a day for labourers at Outhenby.”
She listened hard, trying to learn more, but caught only scattered words. She had heard that some employers were offering more than the traditional penny a day, because of the shortage of workers caused by the plague. She had hesitated to believe such stories, which sounded too good to be true.
She said nothing for the moment to Wulfric, who had not heard the magic words, but her heart beat faster. She and her family had endured so many years of poverty. Was it possible that life might get better for them?
She had to find out more.
When they had eaten, they sat on a bench outside, watching the boys and some other children running around the broad trunk of the tree that gave the tavern its name. “Wulfric,” she said quietly. “What if we could earn two pence a day – each?”
“How?”
“By going to Outhenby.” She told him what she had overheard. “It could be the beginning of a new life for us,” she finished.
“Am I never to get back my father’s lands, then?”
She could have hit him with a stick. Did he really still think that was going to happen? How foolish could he be?
She tried to make her voice as gentle as possible. “It’s twelve years since you were disinherited,” she said. “In that time Ralph has become more and more powerful. And there’s never been the least sign that he might mellow towards you. What do you think the chances are?”
He did not answer that question. “Where would we live?”
“They must have houses in Outhenby.”
“But will Ralph let us go?”
“He can’t stop us. We’re labourers, not serfs. You know that.”
“But does Ralph know it?”
“Let’s not give him the chance to object.”
“How could we manage that?”
“Well…” She had not thought this through, but now she saw that it would have to be done precipitately. “We could leave today, from here.”
It was a scary thought. They had both lived their entire lives in Wigleigh. Wulfric had never even moved house. Now they were contemplating going to live in a village they had never seen without even going back to say goodbye.
But Wulfric was worrying about something else. He pointed at the hunchbacked bailiff, crossing the square to the chandler’s shop. “What would Nathan say?”
“We won’t tell him what we’re planning. We’ll give him some story – say we want to stay here overnight, for some reason, and return home tomorrow. That way, nobody will know where we are. And we’ll never go back to Wigleigh.”
“Never go back,” Wulfric said despondently.
Gwenda controlled her impatience. She knew her husband. Once Wulfric was set on a course he was unstoppable, but he took a long time to decide. He would come round to this idea eventually. He was not closed-minded, just cautious and deliberate. He hated to make decisions in a rush – whereas she thought it was the only way.
The young man with the blond beard came out of the Old Oak. Gwenda looked around: none of the Wigleigh folk was in sight. She stood up and accosted the man. “Did I hear you say something about two pence a day for labourers?” she said.
“That’s right, mistress,” he replied. “In the vale of Outhenby, just half a day south-west of here. We need all we can get.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the ploughman of Outhenby. My name is Harry.”
Outhenby must be a large and prosperous village to have a ploughman all of its own, Gwenda reasoned. Most ploughmen worked for a group of villages. “And who is lord of the manor?”
“The prioress of Kingsbridge.”
“Caris!” That was wonderful news. Caris could be trusted. Gwenda’s spirits lifted further.
“Yes, she is the current prioress,” Harry said. “A very determined woman.”
“I know.”
“She wants her fields cultivated so that she can feed the sisters, and she’s not listening to excuses.”
“Do you have houses at Outhenby for labourers to live in? With their families?”
“Plenty, unfortunately. We’ve lost many people to the plague.”
“You said it was south-west of here.”
“Take the southerly road to Badford, then follow the Outhen upstream.”
Caution returned to Gwenda. “I’m not going,” she said quickly.
“Ah. Of course.” He did not believe her.
“I was really asking on behalf of a friend.” She turned away.
“Well, tell your friend to come as soon as he can – we’ve got spring ploughing and sowing to finish yet.”
“All right.”
She felt slightly dizzy, as if she had taken a draught of strong wine. Two pence a day – working for Caris – and miles away from Ralph, Perkin and flirty Annet! It was a dream.
She sat back down beside Wulfric. “Did you hear all that?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he said. He pointed to a figure standing by the tavern door. “And so did he.”
Gwenda looked. It was her father.
“Put that horse in the traces,” Nate said to Wulfric around mid-afternoon. “It’s time to go home.”
Wulfric said: “We’ll be needing our wages for the week so far.”
“You’ll be paid on Saturday as usual,” Nate said dismissively. “Hitch that nag.”
Wulfric did not move towards the horse. “I’ll trouble you to pay me today,” he insisted. “I know you’ve got the money, you’ve sold all that timber.”
Nate turned and looked directly at him. “Why should you be paid early?” he said irritably.
“Because I shan’t be returning to Wigleigh with you tonight.”
Nate was taken aback. “Why not?”
Gwenda took over. “We’re going to Melcombe,” she said.
“What?” Nate was outraged. “People like you have no business travelling to Melcombe!”
“We met a fisherman who needs crew for two pence a day.” Gwenda had worked out this story to throw any pursuit off the scent.
Wulfric added: “Our respects to Sir Ralph, and may God be with him in the future.”
Gwenda added: “But we don’t expect to see him ever again.” She said it just to hear the sweet sound of it: never to see Ralph again.
Nathan said indignantly: “He may not wish you to leave!”
“We’re not serfs, we have no land. Ralph cannot forbid us.”
“You’re the son of a serf,” Nathan said to Wulfric.
“But Ralph denied me my inheritance,” Wulfric replied. “He cannot now demand my fealty.”
“It’s a dangerous thing for a poor man to stand on his rights.”
“That’s true,” Wulfric conceded. “But I’m doing it, all the same.”
Nate was beaten. “You shall hear more of this,” he said.
“Would you like me to put the horse to the cart?”
Nate scowled. He could not do it himself. Because of his back, he had difficulty with complicated physical tasks, and the horse was taller than he. “Yes, of course,” he said.
“I’ll be glad to. Would you kindly pay me first?”
Looking furious, Nate took out his purse and counted six silver pennies.
Gwenda took the money and Wulfric hitched up the horse.
Nate drove away without another word.
“Well!” said Gwenda. “That’s done.” She looked at Wulfric. He was smiling broadly. She asked him: “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel as if I’ve been wearing a collar for years, and suddenly it’s been taken off.”
“Good.” That was how she wanted him to feel. “Now let’s find a place to stay the night.”
The Old Oak was in a prime position in the market square, and charged top prices. They walked around the little town looking for somewhere cheaper. Eventually they went into the Gate House, where Gwenda negotiated accommodation for the four of them – supper, a mattress on the floor and breakfast – for a penny. The boys would need a decent night’s sleep and some breakfast if they were to walk all morning.
She could hardly sleep for excitement. She was also worried. What was she taking her family to? She had only the word of one man, a stranger, for what they would find when they reached Outhenby. She really ought to have sought confirmation before committing herself.
But she and Wulfric had been stuck in a hole for ten years, and Harry Ploughman of Outhenby was the first person to offer them a way out of it.
The breakfast was meagre: thin porridge and watery cider. Gwenda bought a big loaf of new bread for them to eat on the road, and Wulfric filled his leather flask with cold water from a well. They passed through the city gate an hour after sunrise and set off on the road south.
As they walked, she thought about Joby, her father. As soon as he learned that she had not returned to Wigleigh, he would remember the conversation he had overheard, and he would guess she had gone to Outhenby. He would not be fooled by the story about Melcombe: he was an accomplished deceiver himself, too experienced to be taken in by a simple ruse. But would anyone think to ask him where she had gone? Everyone knew she never spoke to her father. And, if they did ask him, would he blurt out what he suspected? Or would some vestige of paternal feeling cause him to protect her?
There was nothing she could do about it, so she put him out of her mind.
It was good weather for travelling. The ground was soft with recent rain, and there was no dust; but today was a dry day with fitful sunshine, neither cold nor hot. The boys quickly grew tired, especially David, the younger, but Wulfric was good at distracting them with songs and rhymes, quizzing them about the names of trees and plants, playing number games and telling stories.
Gwenda could hardly believe what they had done. This time yesterday, it had looked as if their life would never change: hard work, poverty and frustrated aspirations would be their lot for ever. Now they were on the road to a new life.
She thought of the house where she had lived with Wulfric for ten years. She had not left much behind: a few cooking pots, a stack of newly chopped firewood, half a ham and four blankets. She had no clothes other than what she was wearing, and neither did Wulfric or the boys; no jewellery, ribbons, gloves or combs. Ten years ago, Wulfric had had chickens and pigs in his yard, but they had gradually been eaten or sold during the years of penury. Their meagre possessions could be replaced with a week’s wages at the promised Outhenby rates.
In accordance with Harry’s directions they took the road south to a muddy ford across the Outhen, then turned west and followed the river upstream. As they progressed, the river narrowed, until the land funnelled between two ranges of hills. “Good, fertile soil,” Wulfric said. “It’ll need the heavy plough, though.”
At noon they came to a large village with a stone church. They went to the door of a timber manor house next to the church. With trepidation, Gwenda knocked. Was she about to be told that Harry Ploughman did not know what he was talking about, and there was no work here? Had she made her family walk half a day for nothing? How humiliating it would be to have to return to Wigleigh and beg to be taken on again by Nate Reeve.
A grey-haired woman came to the door. She looked at Gwenda with the suspicious glare that villagers everywhere gave to strangers. “Yes?”
“Good day, mistress,” Gwenda said. “Is this Outhenby?”
“It is.”
“We’re labourers looking for work. Harry Ploughman told us to come here.”
“Did he, now?”
Was there something wrong, Gwenda wondered, or was this woman just a grumpy old cow? She almost asked the question out loud. Stopping herself, she said: “Does Harry live at this house?”
“Certainly not,” the woman replied. “He’s just a ploughman. This is the bailiff’s house.”
Some conflict between bailiff and ploughman, Gwenda guessed. “Perhaps we should see the bailiff, then.”
“He’s not here.”
Patiently, Gwenda said: “Would you be kind enough to tell us where we might find him?”
The woman pointed across the valley. “North Field.”
Gwenda turned to look in the direction indicated. When she turned back, the woman had disappeared into the house.
Wulfric said: “She didn’t seem pleased to see us.”
“Old women hate change,” Gwenda commented. “Let’s find this bailiff.”
“The boys are tired.”
“They can rest soon.”
They set off across the fields. There was plenty of activity on the strips. Children were picking stones off ploughed land, women were sowing seeds and men were carting manure. Gwenda could see the ox team in the distance, eight mighty beasts patiently dragging the plough through the wet, heavy soil.
They came upon a group of men and women trying to move a horse-drawn harrow that had got stuck in a ditch. Gwenda and Wulfric joined in pushing it out. Wulfric’s broad back made the difference, and the harrow was freed.
All the villagers turned and looked at Wulfric. A tall man with an old burn mark disfiguring one side of his face said amiably: “You’re a useful fellow – who are you?”
“I’m Wulfric, and my wife is Gwenda. We’re labourers looking for work.”
“You’re just what we need, Wulfric,” the man said. “I’m Carl Shaftesbury.” He stuck out his hand to shake. “Welcome to Outhenby.”
Ralph came eight days later.
Wulfric and Gwenda had moved into a small, well-built house with a stone chimney and an upstairs bedroom where they could sleep separately from the boys. They got a wary reception from the older, more conservative villagers – notably Will Bailiff and his wife, Vi, who had been so rude to them on the day they arrived. But Harry Ploughman and the younger set were excited by the changes and glad to have help in the fields.
They were paid two pence a day, as promised, and Gwenda looked forward eagerly to the end of their first full week, when they each got twelve pence – a shilling! – double the highest sum they had ever earned. What would they do with all that money?
Neither Wulfric nor Gwenda had worked anywhere but Wigleigh, and they were surprised to find that not all villages were the same. The ultimate authority here was the prioress of Kingsbridge, and that made a difference. Ralph’s rule was personal and arbitrary: appealing to him was hazardous. By contrast, Outhenby folk seemed to know what the prioress would want in most situations, and they could settle disputes by figuring out what she would say if asked to adjudicate.
A mild disagreement of this kind was going on when Ralph came.
They were all walking home from the fields at sundown, the adults work-weary, the children running on ahead, and Harry Ploughman bringing up the rear with the unharnessed oxen. Carl Shaftesbury, the man with the burned face, who was a newcomer like Gwenda and Wulfric, had caught three eels at dawn for his family’s supper, as it was Friday. The question was whether labourers had the same right as tenants to take fish from the Outhen river on fast days. Harry Ploughman said the privilege extended to all Outhenby residents. Vi Bailiff said that tenants owed customary dues to the landlord, which labourers did not, and those who had extra duties should have extra privileges.
Will Bailiff was called upon for a decision, and he ruled against his wife. “I believe the Mother Prioress would say that if the church wishes people to eat fish, then fish must be provided for them to eat,” he said; and that was accepted by everyone.
Looking towards the village, Gwenda saw two horsemen.
A cold wind gusted suddenly.
The visitors were half a mile away across the fields, and heading for the houses at an angle to the path the villagers were taking. She could tell they were men-at-arms. They had big horses and their clothes looked bulky – men of violence generally wore heavily padded coats. She nudged Wulfric.
“I’ve seen them,” he said grimly.
Such men had no casual reason to come to a village. They despised the people who grew the crops and cared for the livestock. They normally visited only to take from the peasants those things they were too proud to provide for themselves, bread and meat and drink. Their view of what they were entitled to, or how much they should pay, always differed from that of the peasants; so there was invariably trouble.
Within the next couple of minutes all the villagers saw them, and the group went quiet. Gwenda noticed that Harry turned the oxen slightly and headed for the far end of the village, though she could not immediately guess why.
Gwenda felt sure the two men had come to find runaway labourers. She found herself praying they would turn out to be the former employers of Carl Shaftesbury or one of the other newcomers. However, as the villagers came closer to the horsemen she recognized Ralph Fitzgerald and Alan Fernhill, and her heart sank.
This was the moment she had dreaded. She had known there was a chance Ralph would find out where they had gone: her father could make a good guess, and he could not be relied upon to keep his mouth shut. And although Ralph had no right to take them back, he was a knight and a nobleman, and such people generally did as they pleased.
It was too late to run. The group was walking along a path between broad ploughed fields: if some of them broke away and fled, Ralph and Alan would immediately see them and give chase; and then Gwenda and her family would lose whatever protection they might gain from being with other villagers. They were trapped in the open.
She called to her boys: “Sam! David! Come here!”
They did not hear, or did not want to, and they ran on. Gwenda went after them, but they thought it was a game, and tried to outrun her. They were almost at the village now, and she found she was too tired to catch them. Almost in tears, she shouted: “Come back!”
Wulfric took over. He ran past her and easily caught up with David. He scooped the boy up in his arms. But he was too late to catch Sam, who ran laughing in among the scattered houses.
The horsemen were reined in by the church. As Sam ran towards them, Ralph nudged his horse forward, then leaned down from the saddle and picked the boy up by his shirt. Sam gave a shout of fright.
Gwenda screamed.
Ralph sat the boy on his horse’s wither.
Wulfric, carrying David, came to a stop in front of Ralph.
Ralph said: “Your son, I presume.”
Gwenda was appalled. She was afraid for her son. It would be beneath Ralph’s dignity to attack a child, but there might be an accident. And there was another danger.
Seeing Ralph and Sam together, Wulfric might realize they were father and son.
Sam was still a little boy, of course, with a child’s body and face, but he had Ralph’s thick hair and dark eyes, and his bony shoulders were wide and square.
Gwenda looked at her husband. Wulfric’s expression showed no sign that he had seen what was so obvious to her. She surveyed the faces of the other villagers. They seemed oblivious to the stark truth – except for Vi Bailiff, who was giving Gwenda a hard stare. That old battleaxe might have guessed. But no one else had – yet.
Will came forward and addressed the visitors. “Good day to you, sirs. I’m Will, the bailiff of Outhenby. May I ask-”
“Shut your mouth, bailiff,” said Ralph. He pointed at Wulfric. “What is he doing here?”
Gwenda sensed a slight easing of tension as the other villagers realized they were not the target of the lord’s wrath.
Will replied: “My lord, he’s a labourer, hired on the authority of the prioress of Kingsbridge-”
“He’s a runaway, and he’s got to come home,” Ralph said.
Will fell silent, frightened.
Carl Shaftesbury said: “And what authority do you claim for this demand?”
Ralph peered at Carl, as if memorizing his face. “Watch your tongue, or I’ll disfigure the other side of your face.”
Will said nervously: “We don’t want any bloodshed.”
“Very wise, bailiff,” said Ralph. “Who is this insolent peasant?”
“Never you mind who I am, knight,” said Carl rudely. “I know who you are. You’re Ralph Fitzgerald, and I saw you convicted of rape and sentenced to death at Shiring court.”
“But I’m not dead, am I?” Ralph said.
“You should be, though. And you have no feudal rights over labourers. If you try to use force, you’ll be taught a sharp lesson.”
Several people gasped. This was a reckless way to speak to an armed knight.
Wulfric said: “Be quiet, Carl. I don’t want you killed for my sake.”
“It’s not for your sake,” Carl said. “If this thug is allowed to drag you off, next week someone will come for me. We have to stick together. We’re not helpless.”
Carl was a big man, taller than Wulfric and almost as broad, and Gwenda could see that he meant what he said. She was appalled. If they started fighting there would be terrible violence – and her Sam was still sitting on the horse with Ralph. “We’ll just go with Ralph,” she said frantically. “It will be better.”
Carl said: “No, it won’t. I’m going to stop him taking you away, whether you want me to or not. It’s for my own good.”
There was a murmur of assent. Gwenda looked around. Most of the men were holding shovels or hoes, and they looked ready to swing them, though they also looked scared.
Wulfric turned his back on Ralph and spoke in a low, urgent voice. “You women, take the children into the church – quickly, now!”
Several women snatched up toddlers and grabbed youngsters by the arms. Gwenda stayed where she was, and so did several of the younger women. The villagers instinctively moved closer together, standing shoulder to shoulder.
Ralph and Alan looked disconcerted. They had not expected to face a crowd of fifty or more belligerent peasants. But they were on horseback, so they could get away any time they wanted.
Ralph said: “Well, perhaps I’ll just take this little boy to Wigleigh.”
Gwenda gasped with horror.
Ralph went on: “Then, if his parents want him, they can come back where they belong.”
Gwenda was beside herself. Ralph had Sam, and he could ride away at any moment. She fought down a hysterical scream. If he turned his horse, she decided, she would throw herself at him and try to drag him off the saddle. She moved a step closer.
Then, behind Ralph and Alan, she saw the oxen. Harry Ploughman was driving them through the village from the other end. Eight massive beasts lumbered up to the scene in front of the church, then stopped, looking around dumbly, not knowing which way to go. Harry stood behind them. Ralph and Alan found themselves in a triangular trap, hemmed in by the villagers, the oxen and the stone church.
Harry had planned this to stop Ralph riding away with Wulfric and herself, Gwenda guessed. But the tactic did just as well for this situation.
Carl said: “Put the child down, Sir Ralph, and go in peace.”
The trouble was, Gwenda thought, it was now difficult for Ralph to back down without losing face. He was going to have to do something to avoid looking foolish, which was the ultimate horror for proud knights. They talked all the time about their honour, but that meant nothing – they were thoroughly dishonourable when it suited them. What they really prized was their dignity. They would rather die than be humiliated.
The tableau was frozen for several moments: the knight and the child on the horse, the mutinous villagers, and the dumb oxen.
Then Ralph lowered Sam to the ground.
Tears of relief came to Gwenda’s eyes.
Sam ran to her, threw his arms around her waist and began to cry.
The villagers relaxed, the men lowering their shovels and hoes.
Ralph pulled on his horse’s reins and shouted: “Hup! Hup!” The horse reared. He dug in his spurs and rode straight at the crowd. They scattered. Alan rode behind him. The villagers desperately threw themselves out of the way, ending up in tangled heaps on the muddy ground. They were trampled by one another but not, miraculously, by the horses.
Ralph and Alan laughed loudly as they rode out of the village, as if the entire encounter had been nothing more than a huge joke.
But, in reality, Ralph had been shamed.
And that, Gwenda felt sure, meant that he would be back.
Earlscastie had not changed. Twelve years ago, Merthin recalled, he had been asked to demolish the old fortress and build a new, modern palace fit for an earl in a peaceful country. But he had refused, preferring to design the new bridge at Kingsbridge. Since then, it seemed, the project had languished, for here was the same figure-eight wall with two drawbridges, and the old-fashioned keep ensconced in the upper loop, where the family lived like frightened rabbits at the end of a burrow, unaware that there was no longer any danger from the fox. The place must have been much the same in the days of Lady Aliena and Jack Builder.
Merthin was with Caris, who had been summoned here by the countess, Lady Philippa. Earl William had fallen sick, and Philippa thought her husband had the plague. Caris had been dismayed. She had thought the plague was over. No one had died of it in Kingsbridge for six weeks.
Caris and Merthin had set out immediately. However, the messenger had taken two days to travel from Earlscastie to Kingsbridge, and they had taken the same time to get here, so the likelihood was that the earl would now be dead, or nearly so. “All I will be able to do is give him some poppy essence to ease the final agony,” Caris had said as they rode along.
“You do more than that,” Merthin had said. “Your presence comforts people. You’re calm and knowledgeable, and you talk about things they understand, swelling and confusion and pain – you don’t try to impress them with jargon about humours, which just makes them feel more ignorant and powerless and frightened. When you’re there, they feel that everything possible is being done; and that’s what they want.”
“I hope you’re right.”
If anything, Merthin was understating. More than once he had seen a hysterical man or woman change, after just a few calming moments with Caris, into a sensible person capable of coping with whatever should happen.
Her inborn gift had been augmented, since the advent of the plague, by an almost supernatural reputation. Everyone for miles around knew that she and her nuns had carried on caring for the sick, despite the risk to themselves, even when the monks had fled. They thought she was a saint.
The atmosphere inside the castle compound was subdued. Those who had routine tasks were performing them: fetching firewood and water, feeding horses and sharpening weapons, baking bread and butchering meat. Many others – secretaries, men-at-arms, messengers – sat around doing nothing, waiting for news from the sick room.
The rooks cawed a sarcastic welcome as Merthin and Caris crossed the inner bridge to the keep. Merthin’s father, Sir Gerald, always claimed to be directly descended from Jack and Aliena’s son, Earl Thomas. As Merthin counted the steps to the great hall, placing his feet carefully in the smooth hollows worn by thousands of boots, he reflected that his ancestors had probably trodden on just these old stones. To him, such notions were intriguing but trivial. By contrast his brother Ralph was obsessed with restoring the family to its former glory.
Caris was ahead of him, and the sway of her hips as she climbed the steps made his lips twitch in a smile. He was frustrated by not being able to sleep with her every night, but the rare occasions when they could be alone together were all the more thrilling. Yesterday they had spent a mild spring afternoon making love in a sunlit forest glade, while the horses grazed nearby, oblivious to their passion.
It was an odd relationship, but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it. If I wanted a normal relationship, Merthin told himself, I should have picked a normal girl.
The hall was full of people. Some were working, laying down fresh straw, building up the fire, preparing the table for dinner; and others were simply waiting. At the far end of the long room, sitting near the foot of the staircase that led up to the earl’s private quarters, Merthin saw a well-dressed girl of about fifteen. She stood up and came towards them with a rather stately walk, and Merthin realized she must be Lady Philippa’s daughter. Like her mother she was tall, with an hourglass figure. “I am the Lady Odila,” she said with a touch of hauteur that was pure Philippa. Despite her composure, the skin around her young eyes was red and creased with crying. “You must be Mother Caris. Thank you for coming to attend my father.”
Merthin said: “I’m the alderman of Kingsbridge, Merthin Bridger. How is Earl William?”
“He is very ill, and both my brothers have been laid low.” Merthin recalled that the earl and countess had two boys of nineteen and twenty or thereabouts. “My mother asks that the lady prioress should come to them immediately.”
Caris said: “Of course.”
Odila went up the stairs. Caris took from her purse a strip of linen cloth and fastened it over her nose and mouth, then followed.
Merthin sat on a bench to wait. Although he was reconciled to infrequent sex, that did not stop him looking out eagerly for extra opportunities, and he surveyed the building with a keen eye, figuring out the sleeping arrangements. Unfortunately the house had a traditional layout. This large room, the great hall, would be where almost everyone ate and slept. The staircase presumably led to a solar, a bedroom for the earl and countess. Modern castles had a whole suite of apartments for family and guests, but there appeared to be no such luxury here. Merthin and Caris might lie side by side tonight, on the floor here in the hall, but they could do nothing more than sleep, not without causing a scandal.
After a while, Lady Philippa emerged from the solar and came down the stairs. She entered a room like a queen, aware that all eyes were on her, Merthin always thought. The dignity of her posture only emphasized the alluring roundness of her hips and her proud bosom. However, today her normally serene face was blotchy and her eyes were red. Her fashionably piled hairstyle was slightly awry, with stray locks of hair escaping from her headdress, adding to her air of glamorous distraction.
Merthin stood up and look at her expectantly.
She said: “My husband has the plague, as I feared; and so do both my sons.”
The people around murmured in dismay.
It might turn out to be no more than the last remnants of the epidemic, of course; but it could just as easily be the start of a new outbreak – God forbid, Merthin thought.
He said: “How is the earl feeling?”
Philippa sat on the bench next to him. “Mother Caris has eased his pain. But she says he’s near the end.”
Their knees were almost touching. He felt the magnetism of her sexuality, even though she was drowning in grief and he was dizzy with love for Caris. “And your sons?” he said.
She looked down at her lap, as if studying the pattern of gold and silver threads woven into her blue gown. “The same as their father.”
Merthin said quietly: “This is very hard for you, my lady, very hard.”
She gave him a wary glance. “You’re not like your brother, are you.”
Merthin knew that Ralph had been in love with Philippa, in his own obsessive way, for many years. Did she realize that? Merthin did not know. Ralph had chosen well, he thought. If you were going to have a hopeless love, you might as well pick someone singular. “Ralph and I are very different,” he said neutrally.
“I remember you as youngsters. You were the cheeky one – you told me to buy a green silk to match my eyes. Then your brother started a fight.”
“I sometimes think the younger of two brothers deliberately tries to be the opposite of the elder, just to differentiate himself.”
“It’s certainly true of my two. Rollo is strong-willed and assertive, like his father and grandfather; and Rick has always been sweet-natured and obliging.” She began to cry. “Oh, God, I’m going to lose them all.”
Merthin took her hand. “You can’t be sure what will happen,” he said gently. “I caught the plague in Florence, and I survived. My daughter didn’t catch it at all.”
She looked up at him. “And your wife?”
Merthin looked down at their entwined hands. Philippa’s was perceptibly more wrinkled than his, he saw, even though there was only four years’ difference in their ages. He said: “Silvia died.”
“I pray to God that I will catch it. If all my men die, I want to go too.”
“Surely not.”
“It’s the fate of noblewomen to marry men they don’t love – but I was lucky, you see, in William. He was chosen for me, but I loved him from the start.” Her voice began to fail her. “I couldn’t bear to have someone else…”
“You feel that way now, of course.” It was odd to be talking like this while her husband was still alive, Merthin thought. But she was so stricken by grief that she had little thought for niceties, and said just what was in her mind.
She collected herself with an effort. “What about you?” she said. “Have you remarried?”
“No.” He could hardly explain that he was having a love affair with the prioress of Kingsbridge. “I think I could, though, if the right woman were… willing. You might come to feel the same, eventually.”
“But you don’t understand. As the widow of an earl with no heirs, I would have to marry someone King Edward chose for me. And the king would have no thought for my wishes. His only concern would be who should be the next earl of Shiring.”
“I see.” Merthin had not thought of that. He could imagine that an arranged marriage might be particularly loathsome to a widow who had truly loved her first husband.
“How dreadful of me to be speaking of another husband while my first is alive,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Merthin patted her hand sympathetically. “It’s understandable.”
The door at the top of the stairs opened and Caris came out, drying her hands on a cloth. Merthin suddenly felt uncomfortable about holding Philippa’s hand. He was tempted to thrust it away from him, but realized how guilty that would look, and managed to resist the impulse. He smiled at Caris and said: “How are your patients?”
Caris’s eyes went to their linked hands, but she said nothing. She came down the stairs, untying her linen mask.
Philippa unhurriedly withdrew her hand.
Caris took off her mask and said: “I’m very sorry to have to tell you, my lady, that Earl William is dead.”
“I need a new horse,” said Ralph Fitzgerald. His favourite mount, Griff, was getting old. The spirited bay palfrey had suffered a sprain in its left hind leg that had taken months to heal, and now it was lame again in the same leg. Ralph felt sad. Griff was the horse Earl Roland had given him when he was a young squire, and it had been with him ever since, even going to the French wars. It might serve him a few years longer for unhurried trips from village to village within his domain, but its hunting days were over.
“We could go to Shiring market tomorrow and buy another,” Alan Fernhill said.
They were in the stable, looking at Griff’s fetlock. Ralph liked stables. He enjoyed the earthy smell, the strength and beauty of the horses, and the company of rough-handed men engrossed in physical tasks. It took him back to his youth, when the world had seemed a simple place.
He did not at first respond to Alan’s suggestion. What Alan did not know was that Ralph did not have the money to buy a horse.
The plague had at first enriched him, through the inheritance tax: land that normally passed from father to son once in a generation had changed hands twice or more in a few months, and he got a payment every time – traditionally the best beast, but often a fixed sum in cash. But then land had started to fall into disuse for lack of people to farm it. At the same time, agricultural prices had dropped. The upshot was that Ralph’s income, in money and produce, fell drastically.
Things were bad, he thought, when a knight could not afford a horse.
Then he remembered that Nate Reeve was due to come to Tench Hall today with the quarterly dues from Wigleigh. Every spring that village was obliged to provide its lord with twenty-four hoggets, year-old sheep. They could be driven to Shiring market and sold, and they should raise enough cash to pay for a palfrey, if not a hunter. “All right,” Ralph said to Alan. “Let’s see if the bailiff of Wigleigh is here.”
They went into the hall. This was a feminine zone, and Ralph’s spirits dropped immediately. Tilly was sitting by the fire, nursing their three-month-old son, Gerry. Mother and baby were in vigorous good health, despite Tilly’s youth. Her slight, girlish body had changed drastically: she now had swollen breasts with large, leathery nipples at which the baby sucked greedily. Her belly sagged loosely like that of an old woman. Ralph had not lain with her for many months and he probably never would again.
Nearby sat the grandfather after whom the baby was named, Sir Gerald, with Lady Maud. Ralph’s parents were now old and frail, but every morning they walked from their house in the village to the manor house to see their grandson. Maud said the baby looked like Ralph, but he could not see the resemblance.
Ralph was pleased to see that Nate was also in the hall.
The hunchbacked bailiff sprang up from his bench. “Good day to you, Sir Ralph,” he said.
He had a hangdog look about him, Ralph observed. “What’s the matter with you, Nate?” he said. “Have you brought my hoggets?”
“No, sir.”
“Why the devil not?”
“We’ve got none, sir. There are no sheep left in Wigleigh, except for a few old ewes.”
Ralph was shocked. “Has someone stolen them?”
“No, but some have been given to you already, as heriot when their owners died, and then we couldn’t find a tenant to take over Jack Shepherd’s land, and many sheep died over the winter. Then there was no one to look to the early lambs this spring, so we lost most of those, and some of the mothers.”
“But this is impossible!” Ralph said angrily. “How are noblemen to live if their serfs let the livestock perish?”
“We thought perhaps the plague was over, when it died down in January and February, but now it seems to be coming back.”
Ralph repressed a shudder of terror. Like everyone else, he had been thanking God that he had escaped the plague. Surely it could not return?
Nate went on: “Perkin died this week, and his wife, Peg, and his son, Rob, and his son-in-law, Billy Howard. That’s left Annet with all those acres to manage, which she can’t possibly do.”
“Well, there must be a heriot due on that property, then.”
“There will be, when I can find a tenant to take it over.”
Parliament was in the process of passing new legislation to stop labourers flitting about the country demanding even higher wages. As soon as the ordinance became law, Ralph would enforce it and get his workers back. Even then, he now realized, he would be desperate to find tenants.
Nate said: “I expect you’ve heard of the death of the earl.”
“No!” Ralph was shocked again.
“What’s that?” Sir Gerald said. “Earl William is dead?”
“Of the plague,” Nate explained.
Tilly said: “Poor Uncle William!”
The baby sensed her mood and wailed.
Ralph spoke over the noise. “When did this happen?”
“Only three days ago,” Nate replied.
Tilly gave the baby the nipple again, and he shut up.
“So William’s elder son is the new earl,” Ralph mused. “He can’t be more than twenty.”
Nate shook his head. “Rollo also died of the plague.”
“Then the younger son-”
“Dead too.”
“Both sons!” Ralph’s heart leaped. It had always been his dream to become the earl of Shiring. Now the plague had given him the opportunity. And the plague had also improved his chances, for many likely candidates for the title had been wiped out.
He caught his father’s eye. The same thought had occurred to Sir Gerald.
Tilly said: “Rollo and Rick dead – it’s so awful.” She began to cry.
Ralph ignored her and tried to think through the possibilities. “Let’s see, what surviving relatives are there?”
Gerald said to Nate: “I presume the countess died too?”
“No, sir. Lady Philippa lives. So does her daughter, Odila.”
“Ah!” said Gerald. “So, whoever the king chooses will have to marry Philippa in order to become earl.”
Ralph was thunderstruck. Since he was a lad he had dreamed of marrying Lady Philippa. Now there was an opportunity to achieve both his ambitions at one stroke.
But he was already married.
Gerald said: “That’s it, then.” He sat back in his chair, his excitement gone as quickly as it had come.
Ralph looked at Tilly, suckling their child and weeping at the same time. Fifteen years old and barely five feet tall, she stood like a castle wall between him and the future he had always yearned for.
He hated her.
Earl William’s funeral took place at Kingsbridge Cathedral. There were no monks except Brother Thomas, but Bishop Henri conducted the service and the nuns sang the hymns. Lady Philippa and Lady Odila, both heavily veiled, followed the coffin. Despite their dramatic black-clad presence, Ralph found the occasion lacked the momentous feeling that usually attended the funeral of a magnate, the sense of historical time passing by like the flow of a great river. Death was everywhere, every day, and even noble deaths were now commonplace.
He wondered whether someone in the congregation was infected, and was even now spreading the disease through his breath, or the invisible beams from his eyes. The thought made Ralph shaky. He had faced death many times, and learned to control his fear in battle; but this enemy could not be fought. The plague was an assassin who slid his long knife into people from behind then slipped away before he was spotted. Ralph shuddered and tried not to think about it.
Next to Ralph was the tall figure of Sir Gregory Longfellow, a lawyer who had been involved in suits concerning Kingsbridge in the past. Gregory was now a member of the king’s council, an elite group of technical experts who advised the monarch – not on what he should do, for that was the job of Parliament, but on how he could do it.
Royal announcements were often made at church services, especially big ceremonies such as this. Today Bishop Henri took the opportunity to explain the new Ordinance of Labourers. Ralph guessed that Sir Gregory had brought the news and stayed to see how it was received.
Ralph listened attentively. He had never been summoned to Parliament, but he had talked about the labour crisis to Earl William, who had sat with the Lords, and to Sir Peter Jeffries, who represented Shiring in the Commons; so he knew what had been discussed.
“Every man must work for the lord of the village where he lives, and may not move to another village or work for another master, unless his lord should release him,” the bishop said.
Ralph rejoiced. He had known this was coming but he was delighted that at last it was official.
Before the plague there had never been a shortage of labourers. On the contrary, many villages had more than they knew what to do with. When landless men could find no paid work they sometimes threw themselves on the charity of the lord – which was an embarrassment to him, whether he helped them or not. So, if they wanted to move to another village, the lord was if anything relieved, and certainly had no need of legislation to keep them where they were. Now the labourers had the whip hand – a situation that obviously could not be allowed to continue.
There was a rumble of approval from the congregation at the bishop’s announcement. Kingsbridge folk themselves were not much affected, but those in the congregation who had come in from the countryside for the funeral were predominantly employers rather than employees. The new rules had been devised by and for them.
The bishop went on: “It is now a crime to demand, to offer or to accept wages higher than those paid for similar work in 1347.”
Ralph nodded approval. Even labourers who stayed in the same village had been demanding more money. This would put a stop to that, he hoped.
Sir Gregory caught his eye. “I see you nodding,” he said. “Do you approve?”
“It’s what we wanted,” Ralph said. “I’ll begin to enforce it in the next few days. There are a couple of runaways from my territory that I particularly want to bring home.”
“I’ll come with you, if I may,” the lawyer said. “I should like to see how things work out.”
The priest at Outhenby had died of the plague, and there had been no services at the church since; so Gwenda was surprised when the bell began to toll on Sunday morning.
Wulfric went to investigate and came back to report that a visiting priest, Father Derek, had arrived; so Gwenda washed the boys’ faces quickly and they all went out.
It was a fine spring morning, and the sun bathed the old grey stones of the little church in a clear light. All the villagers turned out, curious to view the newcomer.
Father Derek turned out to be a well-spoken city clergyman, too richly dressed for a village church. Gwenda wondered whether any special significance attached to his visit. Was there a reason why the church hierarchy had suddenly remembered the existence of this parish? She told herself that it was a bad habit always to imagine the worst, but all the same she felt something was wrong.
She stood in the nave with Wulfric and the boys, watching the priest go through the ritual, and her sense of doom grew stronger. A priest usually looked at the congregation while he was praying or singing, to emphasize that all this was for their benefit, not a private communication between himself and God; but Father Derek’s gaze went over their heads.
She soon found out why. At the end of the service, he told them of a new law passed by the king and Parliament. “Landless labourers must work for the lord in their village of origin, if required,” he said.
Gwenda was outraged. “How can that be?” she shouted out. “The lord is not obliged to help the labourer in hard times – I know, my father was a landless labourer, and when there was no work we went hungry. So how can the labourer owe loyalty to a lord who gives him nothing?”
A rumble of agreement broke out, and the priest had to raise his voice. “This is what the king has decided, and the king is chosen by God to rule over us, so we must all do as he wishes.”
“Can the king change the custom of hundreds of years?” Gwenda persisted.
“These are difficult times. I know that many of you have come to Outhenby in the last few weeks-”
“Invited by the ploughman,” the voice of Carl Shaftesbury interrupted. His scarred face was livid with rage.
“Invited by all the villagers,” the priest acknowledged. “And they were grateful to you for coming. But the king in his wisdom has ruled that this kind of thing must not go on.”
“And poor people must remain poor,” Carl said.
“God has ordained it so. Each man in his place.”
Harry Ploughman said: “And has God ordained how we are to till our fields with no help? If all the newcomers leave, we will never finish the work.”
“Perhaps not all the newcomers will have to leave,” said Derek. “The new law says only that they must go home if required.”
That quietened them. The immigrants were trying to figure out whether their lords would be able to track them down; the locals were wondering how many labourers would be left here. But Gwenda knew what her own future held. Sooner or later Ralph would come back for her and her family.
By then, she decided, they would be gone.
The priest retired and the congregation began to drift to the door. “We’ve got to leave here,” Gwenda said to Wulfric in a low voice. “Before Ralph comes back for us.”
“Where will we go?”
“I don’t know – but perhaps that’s better. If we don’t know where we’re going, no one else will.”
“But how will we live?”
“We’ll find another village where they need labourers.”
“Are there many others, I wonder?”
He was always slower-thinking than she. “There must be lots,” she said patiently. “The king didn’t pass this ordinance just for Outhenby.”
“Of course.”
“We should leave today,” she said decisively. “It’s Sunday, so we’re not losing any work.” She glanced at the church windows, estimating the time of day. “It’s not yet noon – we could cover a good distance before nightfall. Who knows, we could be working in a new place tomorrow morning.”
“I agree,” Wulfric said. “There’s no telling how fast Ralph might move.”
“Say nothing to anyone. We’ll go home, pick up whatever we want to take with us and just slip away.”
“All right.”
They reached the door and stepped outside into the sunshine, and Gwenda saw that it was already too late.
Six men on horseback were waiting outside the church: Ralph, his sidekick Alan, a tall man in London clothes, and three dirty, scarred, evil-looking ruffians of the kind that could be hired for a few pennies in any low tavern.
Ralph caught Gwenda’s eye and smiled triumphantly.
Gwenda looked around desperately. A few days ago the men of the village had stood shoulder to shoulder against Ralph and Alan – but this was different. They were up against six men, not two. The villagers were unarmed, coming out of church, whereas previously they had been returning from the fields with tools in their hands. And, most important, on that first occasion they had believed they had right on their side, whereas today they were not so sure.
Several men met her eye and looked quickly away. That confirmed her suspicion. The villagers would not fight today.
Gwenda was so disappointed that she felt weak. Fearing that she might fall down, she leaned on the stonework of the church porch for support. Her heart had turned into something heavy and cold and damp, like a clod from a winter grave. A grim hopelessness possessed her completely.
For a few days they had been free. But it had just been a dream. And now the dream was over.
Ralph rode slowly through Wigleigh, leading Wulfric by a rope around his neck.
They arrived late in the afternoon. For speed, Ralph had let the two small boys ride, sharing the horses of the hired men. Gwenda was walking behind. Ralph had not bothered to tie her in any way. She could be relied upon to follow her children.
Because it was Sunday, most of the Wigleigh folk were outside their houses, enjoying the sun, as Ralph had anticipated. They all stared in horrified silence at the dismal procession. Ralph hoped the sight of Wulfric’s humiliation might deter others from going in search of higher wages.
They reached the small manor house that had been Ralph’s home before he moved to Tench Hall. He released Wulfric and sent him and his family off to their old home. He paid off the hired men, then took Alan and Sir Gregory into the manor house.
It was kept clean and ready for his visits. He ordered Vira to bring wine then prepare supper. It was too late now to go on to Tench: they could not get there before nightfall.
Gregory sat down and stretched out his long legs. He seemed like a man who could make himself comfortable anywhere. His straight dark hair was now tweeded with grey, but his long nose with its flared nostrils still gave him a supercilious look. “How do you feel that went?” he said.
Ralph had been thinking about the new ordinance all the way home, and he had his answer ready. “It’s not going to work,” he said.
Gregory raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
Alan said: “I agree with Sir Ralph.”
“Reasons?”
Ralph said: “First of all, it’s difficult to find out where the runaways have gone.”
Alan put in: “It was only by luck that we traced Wulfric. Someone had overheard him and Gwenda planning where to go.”
“Second,” Ralph went on, “recovering them is too troublesome.”
Gregory nodded. “I suppose we have been all day at it.”
“And I had to hire those ruffians and get them horses. I can’t spend my time and money chasing all over the countryside after runaway labourers.”
“I see that.”
“Third, what is to stop them running away again next week?”
Alan said: “If they keep their mouths shut about where they’re headed, we might never find them.”
“The only way it will work,” Ralph said, “is if someone can go to a village, find out who the migrants are and punish them.”
Gregory said: “You’re talking about a sort of Commission of Labourers.”
“Exactly. Appoint a panel in each county, a dozen or so men who go from place to place ferreting out runaways.”
“You want someone else to do the work for you.”
It was a taunt, but Ralph was careful not to appear stung. “Not necessarily – I’ll be one of the commissioners, if you wish. It’s just the way the job is to be done. You can’t reap a field of grass one blade at a time.”
“Interesting,” said Gregory.
Vira brought a jug and some goblets, and poured wine for the three of them.
Gregory said: “You’re a shrewd man, Sir Ralph. You’re not a Member of Parliament, are you?”
“No.”
“Pity. I think the king would find your counsel helpful.”
Ralph tried not to beam with pleasure. “You’re very kind.” He leaned forward. “Now that Earl William is dead, there is of course a vacancy-” He saw the door open, and broke off.
Nate Reeve came in. “Well done, Sir Ralph, if I may say so!” he said. “Wulfric and Gwenda back in the fold, the two hardest-working people we’ve got.”
Ralph was annoyed with Nate for interrupting at such a crucial moment. He said irritably: “I trust the village will now be able to pay more of its dues.”
“Yes, sir… if they stay.”
Ralph frowned. Nate had immediately fastened on the weakness in his position. How was he going to keep Wulfric in Wigleigh? He could not chain a man to a plough all day and all night.
Gregory spoke to Nate. “Tell me, bailiff, do you have a suggestion for your lord?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“I thought you might.”
Nate took that as an invitation. Addressing Ralph, he said: “There is one thing you could do that would guarantee that Wulfric would stay here in Wigleigh until the day he dies.”
Ralph sensed a trick, but had to say: “Go on.”
“Give him back the lands his father held.”
Ralph would have yelled at him, except that he did not want to give Gregory a bad impression. Controlling his anger, he said firmly: “I don’t think so.”
“I can’t get a tenant for the land,” Nate persisted. “Annet can’t manage it, and she has no male relations living.”
“I don’t care,” said Ralph. “He can’t have the land.”
Gregory said: “Why not?”
Ralph did not want to admit that he still held a grudge against Wulfric because of a fight twelve years ago. Gregory had formed a good impression of Ralph, and Ralph did not want to spoil it. What would the king’s counsellor think of a knight who acted against his own interests in pursuit of a boyhood squabble? He cast about for a plausible excuse. “It would seem to be rewarding Wulfric for running away,” he said finally.
“Hardly,” said Gregory. “From what Nate says, you’d be giving him something that no one else wants.”
“All the same, it sends the wrong signal to the other villagers.”
“I think you’re being too scrupulous,” Gregory said. He was not the kind of man to keep his opinions tactfully to himself. “Everyone must know you’re desperate for tenants,” he went on. “Most landlords are. The villagers will see that you’re simply acting in your own interest, and consider that Wulfric is the lucky beneficiary.”
Nate added: “Wulfric and Gwenda will work twice as hard ii they’ve got their own land.”
Ralph felt cornered. He was desperate to look good in Gregory’s eyes. He had started but not finished a discussion about the earldom. He could not put that at risk just because of Wulfric.
He had to give in.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. He realized he was speaking through gritted teeth, and made an effort to be nonchalant. “After all, he has been brought home and humiliated. That may be enough.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“All right, Nate,” Ralph said. For a moment words stuck in his throat, he hated so much to give Wulfric his heart’s desire. But this was more important. “Tell Wulfric he can have his father’s lands back.”
“I’ll do that before nightfall,” Nate said, and he left.
Gregory said: “What were you saying about the earldom?”
Ralph picked his words carefully. “After Earl Roland died at the battle of Crécy, I thought the king might have considered making me the earl of Shiring, especially as I had saved the life of the young prince of Wales.”
“But Roland had a perfectly good heir – who himself had two sons.”
“Exactly. And now all three are dead.”
“Hmm.” Gregory took a draught from his goblet. “This is good wine.”
“Gascon,” said Ralph.
“I suppose it comes into Melcombe.”
“Yes.”
“Delicious.” Gregory drank some more. He seemed to be about to say something, so Ralph remained silent. Gregory took a long time choosing his words. At last he said: “There is, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kingsbridge, a letter that… ought not to exist.”
Ralph was mystified. What was coming now?
Gregory went on: “For many years, this document was in the hands of someone who could be relied upon, for various complicated reasons, to keep it safe. Lately, however, certain questions have been asked, suggesting to me that the secret may be in danger of getting out.”
All this was too enigmatic. Ralph said impatiently: “I don’t understand. Who has been asking embarrassing questions?”
“The prioress of Kingsbridge.”
“Oh.”
“It’s possible she may have simply picked up some hint, and her questions may be harmless. But what the king’s friends fear is that the letter may have got into her possession.”
“What is in the letter?”
Once again, Gregory chose his words warily, tiptoeing across a raging river on carefully placed stepping stones. “Something touching the king’s beloved mother.”
“Queen Isabella.” The old witch was still alive, living in splendour in her castle at Lynn, spending her days reading romances in her native French, so people said.
“In short,” said Gregory, “I need to find out whether the prioress has this letter or not. But no one must know of my interest.”
Ralph said: “Either you have to go to the priory and search through the nuns’ documents… or the documents must come to you.”
“The second of those two.”
Ralph nodded. He was beginning to understand what Gregory wanted him to do.
Gregory said: “I have made some very discreet inquiries, and discovered that no one knows exactly where the nuns’ treasury is.”
“The nuns must know, or some of them.”
“But they won’t say. However, I understand you’re an expert in… persuading people to reveal secrets.”
So Gregory knew of the work Ralph had done in France. There was nothing spontaneous about this conversation, Ralph realized. Gregory must have planned it. In fact it was probably the real reason he had come to Kingsbridge. Ralph said: “I may be able to help the king’s friends solve this problem…”
“Good.”
“…if I were promised the earldom of Shiring as my reward.”
Gregory frowned. “The new earl will have to marry the old countess.”
Ralph decided to hide his eagerness. Instinct told him that Gregory would have less respect for a man who was driven, even just partly, by lust for a woman. “Lady Philippa is five years older than I am, but I have no objection to her.”
Gregory looked askance. “She’s a very beautiful woman,” he said. “Whoever the king gives her to should think himself a lucky man.”
Ralph realized he had gone too far. “I don’t wish to appear indifferent,” he said hastily. “She is indeed a beauty.”
“But I thought you were already married,” Gregory said. “Have I made a mistake?”
Ralph caught Alan’s eye, and saw that he was keenly curious to hear what Ralph would say next.
Ralph sighed. “My wife is very ill,” he said. “She hasn’t long to live.”
Gwenda lit the fire in the kitchen of the old house where Wulfric had lived since he was born. She found her cooking pots, filled one with water at the well and threw in some early onions, the first step in making a stew. Wulfric brought in more firewood. The boys happily went out to play with their old friends, unaware of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen their family.
Gwenda busied herself with household chores as the evening darkened outside. She was trying not to think. Everything that came into her mind just made her feel worse: the future, the past, her husband, herself. Wulfric sat and looked into the flames. Neither of them spoke.
Their neighbour, David Johns, appeared with a big jug of ale. His wife was dead of the plague, but his grown-up daughter, Joanna, followed him in. Gwenda was not happy to see them: she wanted to be miserable in private. But their intentions were kind, and it was impossible to spurn them. Gwenda glumly wiped the dust from some wooden cups, and David poured ale for everyone.
“We’re sorry things worked out this way, but we’re glad to see you,” he said as they drank.
Wulfric emptied his cup with one huge swallow and held it out for more.
A little later Aaron Appletree and his wife Ulla came in. She carried a basket of small loaves. “I knew you wouldn’t have any bread, so I made some,” she said. She handed them around and the house filled with the mouth-watering smell. David Johns poured them some ale, and they sat down. “Where did you get the courage to run away?” Ulla asked admiringly. “I would have died of fright!”
Gwenda began to tell the story of their adventures. Jack and Eli Fuller arrived from the mill, bringing a dish of pears baked in honey. Wulfric ate plenty and drank deep. The atmosphere lightened, and Gwenda’s mood lifted a little. More neighbours came, each bringing a gift. When Gwenda told how the villagers of Outhenby with their spades and hoes had faced down Ralph and Alan, everyone rocked with delighted laughter.
Then she came to the events of today, and she descended into despair again. “Everything was against us,” she said bitterly. “Not just Ralph and his ruffians, but the king and the church. We had no chance.”
The neighbours nodded gloomily.
“And then, when he put a rope around my Wulfric’s neck…” She was filled with bleak despair. Her voice cracked, and she could not go on. She took a gulp of ale and tried again. “When he put a rope around Wulfric’s neck – the strongest and bravest man I’ve ever known, any of us has ever known, led through the village like a beast, and that heartless, crass, bullying Ralph holding the rope – I just wanted the heavens to fall in and kill us all.”
These were strong words, but the others agreed. Of all the things the gentry could do to peasants – starve them, cheat them, assault them, rob them – the worst was to humiliate them. They never forgot it.
Suddenly Gwenda wanted the neighbours to leave. The sun had gone down and it was dusk outside. She needed to lie down and close her eyes and be alone with her thoughts. She did not want to talk even to Wulfric. She was about to ask everyone to go when Nate Reeve walked in.
The room went quiet.
“What do you want?” Gwenda said.
“I bring you good news,” he said brightly.
She made a sour face. “There can be no good news for us today.”
“I disagree. You haven’t heard it yet.”
“All right, what is it?”
“Sir Ralph says Wulfric is to have his father’s lands back.”
Wulfric leaped to his feet. “As a tenant?” he said. “Not just to labour on?”
“As a tenant, on the same terms as your father,” said Nate expansively, as if he were making the concession himself, rather than simply passing on a message.
Wulfric beamed with joy. “That’s wonderful!”
“Do you accept?” Nate said jovially, as if it were a mere formality.
Gwenda said: “Wulfric! Don’t accept!”
He looked at her, bewildered. As usual, he was slow to see beyond the immediate.
“Discuss the terms!” she urged him in a low voice. “Don’t be a serf like your father. Demand a free tenancy, with no feudal obligations. You’ll never be in such a strong bargaining position again. Negotiate!”
“Negotiate?” he said. He wavered briefly, then gave in to the happiness of the occasion. “This is the moment I’ve been hoping for for the last twelve years. I’m not going to negotiate.” He turned to Nate. “I accept,” he said, and held up his cup.
They all cheered.
The hospital was full again. The plague, which had seemed to retreat during the first three months of 1349, came back in April with redoubled virulence. On the day after Easter Sunday, Caris looked wearily at the rows of mattresses crammed together in a herringbone pattern, packed so tightly that the masked nuns had to step gingerly between them. Moving around was a little easier, however, because there were so few family members at the bedsides of the sick. Sitting with a dying relative was dangerous – you were likely to catch the plague yourself – and people had become ruthless. When the epidemic began, they had stayed with their loved ones regardless, mothers with children, husbands with wives, the middle-aged with their elderly parents, love overcoming fear. But that had changed. The most powerful of family ties had been viciously corroded by the acid of death. Nowadays the typical patient was brought in by a mother or father, a husband or wife, who then simply walked away, ignoring the piteous cries that followed them out. Only the nuns, with their face masks and their vinegar-washed hands, defied the disease.
Surprisingly, Caris was not short of help. The nunnery had enjoyed an influx of novices to replace the nuns who had died. This was partly because of Caris’s saintly reputation. But the monastery was experiencing the same kind of revival, and Thomas now had a class of novice monks to train. They were all searching for order in a world gone mad.
This time the plague had struck some leading townspeople who had previously escaped. Caris was dismayed by the death of John Constable. She had never much liked his rough-and-ready approach to justice – which was to hit troublemakers over the head with a stick and ask questions afterwards – but it was going to be more difficult to maintain order without him. Fat Betty Baxter, baker of special buns for every town festivity, shrewd questioner at parish guild meetings, was dead, her business awkwardly shared out between four squabbling daughters. And Dick Brewer had died, the last of Caris’s father’s generation, a cohort of men who knew how to make money and how to enjoy it.
Caris and Merthin had been able to slow the spread of the disease by cancelling major public gatherings. There had been no big Easter procession in the cathedral, and there would be no Fleece Fair this Whitsun. The weekly market was held outside the city walls, in Lovers’ Field, and most townspeople stayed away. Caris had wanted such measures when the plague first struck, but Godwyn and Elfric had opposed her. According to Merthin, some Italian cities had even closed their gates for a period of thirty or forty days, called a trentine or a quarantine. It was now too late to keep the disease out, but Caris still thought restrictions would save lives.
One problem she did not have was money. More and more people bequeathed their wealth to the nuns, having no surviving relatives, and many of the new novices brought with them lands, flocks, orchards and gold. The nunnery had never been so rich.
It was small consolation. For the first time in her life she felt tired – not just weary from hard work, but drained of energy, short of will power, enfeebled by adversity. The plague was worse than ever, killing two hundred people a week, and she did not know how she was going to carry on. Her muscles ached, her head hurt, and sometimes her vision seemed to blur. Where would it end, she wondered dismally. Would everyone die?
Two men staggered in through the door, both bleeding. Caris hurried forward. Before she got within touching distance she picked up the sweetly rotten smell of drink on them. They were both nearly helpless, although it was not yet dinner time. She groaned in frustration: this was all too common.
She knew the men vaguely: Barney and Lou, two strong youngsters employed in the abattoir owned by Edward Slaughterhouse. Barney had one arm hanging limp, possibly broken. Lou had a dreadful injury to his face: his nose was crushed and one eye was a ghastly pulp. Both seemed too drunk to feel pain. “It was a fight,” Barney slurred, his words only just comprehensible. “I didn’t mean it. He’s my best friend. I love him.”
Caris and Sister Nellie got the two drunks lying down on adjacent mattresses. Nellie examined Barney and said his arm was not broken but dislocated, and sent a novice to fetch Matthew Barber, the surgeon, who would try to relocate it. Caris bathed Lou’s face. There was nothing she could do to save his eye: it had burst like a soft-boiled egg.
This kind of thing made her furious. The two men were not suffering from a disease or an accidental injury: they had harmed one another while drinking to excess. After the first wave of the plague, she had managed to galvanize the townspeople into restoring law and order; but the second wave had done something terrible to people’s souls. When she called again for a return to civilized behaviour, the response had been apathetic. She did not know what to do next, and she felt so tired.
As she contemplated the two maimed men lying shoulder to shoulder on the floor, she heard a strange noise from outside. For an instant, she was transported back three years, to the battle of Crécy, and the terrifying booming sound made by King Edward’s new machines that shot stone balls into the enemy ranks. A moment later the noise came again and she realized it was a drum – several drums, in fact, being struck in no particular rhythm. Then she heard pipes and bells whose notes failed to form any kind of tune; then hoarse cries, wailing, and shouts that might have indicated triumph or agony, or both. It was not unlike the noise of battle, but without the swish of deadly arrows or the screams of maimed horses. Frowning, she went outside.
A group of forty or so people had come on to the cathedral green, dancing a mad antic jig. Some played on musical instruments, or rather sounded them, for there was no melody or harmony to the noise. Their flimsy light-coloured clothes were ripped and stained, and some were half naked, carelessly exposing the intimate parts of their bodies. All those who did not have instruments were carrying whips. A crowd of townspeople followed, staring in curiosity and amazement.
The dancers were led by Friar Murdo, fatter than ever but cavorting energetically, sweat pouring down his dirty face and dripping from his straggly beard. He led them to the great west door of the cathedral, where he turned to face them. “We have all sinned!” he roared.
His followers cried out in response, inarticulate shrieks and groans.
“We are dirt!” he said thrillingly. “We wallow in lasciviousness like pigs in filth. We yield, quivering with desire, to our fleshly lusts. We deserve the plague!”
“Yes!”
“What must we do?”
“Suffer!” they called. “We must suffer!”
One of the followers dashed forward, flourishing a whip. It had three leather thongs, each of which appeared to have sharp stones attached to a knot. He threw himself at Murdo’s feet and began to lash his own back. The whip tore the thin material of his robe and drew blood from the skin of his back. He cried out in pain, and the rest of Murdo’s followers groaned in sympathy.
Then a woman came forward. She pulled her robe down to her waist and turned, exposing her bare breasts to the crowd; then lashed her bare back with a similar whip. The followers moaned again.
As they came forward in ones and twos, flogging themselves, Caris saw that many of them had bruises and half-healed cuts on their skin: they had done this before, some of them many times. Did they go from town to town repeating the performance? Given Murdo’s involvement, she felt sure that sooner or later someone would start collecting money.
A woman in the watching crowd suddenly ran forward screaming: “Me, too, I must suffer!” Caris was surprised to see that it was Mared, the browbeaten young wife of Marcel Chandler. Caris could not imagine that she had committed many sins, but perhaps she had at last seen a chance to make her life dramatic. She threw off her dress and stood stark naked before the friar. Her skin was unmarked, in fact she looked beautiful.
Murdo gazed at her for a long moment then said: “Kiss my feet.”
She knelt in front of him, exposing her rear obscenely to the crowd, and lowered her face to his filthy feet.
He took a whip from another penitent and handed it to her. She lashed herself, then shrieked in pain, and red marks appeared instantly on her white skin.
Several more ran forward eagerly from the crowd, mostly men, and Murdo went through the same ritual with each. Soon there was an orgy. When they were not whipping themselves they were banging their drums and clanging their bells and dancing their fiendish jig.
Their actions had a mad abandon, but Caris’s professional eye noted that the strokes of the whips, though dramatic and undoubtedly painful, did not appear to inflict permanent damage.
Merthin appeared beside Caris and said: “What do you think of this?”
She frowned and said: “Why does it make me feel indignant?”
“I don’t know.”
“If people want to whip themselves, why should I object? Perhaps it makes them feel better.”
“I agree with you, though,” Merthin said. “There’s generally something fraudulent about anything Murdo is involved with.”
“That’s not it.”
The mood here was not one of penitence, she decided. These dancers were not looking back contemplatively over their lives, feeling sorrow and regret for sins committed. People who genuinely repented tended to be quiet, thoughtful and undemonstrative. What Caris sensed in the air here was quite different. It was excitement.
“This is a debauch,” she said.
“Only instead of drink, they’re overindulging in self-loathing.”
“And there’s a kind of ecstasy in it.”
“But no sex.”
“Give them time.”
Murdo led the procession off again, heading out of the priory precincts. Caris noticed that some of the flagellants had produced bowls and were begging coins from the crowd. They would go through the principal streets of the town like this, she guessed. They would probably finish up at one of the larger taverns, where people would buy them food and drink.
Merthin touched her arm. “You look pale,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Just tired,” she said curtly. She had to soldier on regardless of how she felt, and it did not help her to be reminded of her tiredness. However, it was kind of him to notice, and she softened her tone to say: “Come to the prior’s house. It’s almost dinner time.”
They walked across the green as the procession disappeared. They stepped inside the palace. As soon as they were alone, Caris put her arms around Merthin and kissed him. She suddenly felt very physical, and she thrust her tongue into his mouth, which she knew he liked. In response, he took both her breasts in his hands and squeezed gently. They had never kissed like this inside the palace, and Caris wondered vaguely whether something about Friar Murdo’s bacchanal had weakened her normal inhibitions.
“Your skin is hot,” Merthin said in her ear.
She wanted Merthin to pull down her robe and put his mouth to her nipples. She felt she was losing control, and might find herself recklessly making love right here on the floor, where they might so easily be caught.
Then a girl’s voice said: “I didn’t mean to spy.”
Caris was shocked. She sprang guiltily away from Merthin. She turned around, looking for the speaker. At the far end of the room, sitting on a bench, was a young woman holding a baby. It was Ralph Fitzgerald’s wife. “Tilly!” said Caris.
Tilly stood up. She looked exhausted and frightened. “I’m so sorry to startle you,” she said.
Caris was relieved. Tilly had attended the nuns’ school and lived at the nunnery for years, and she was fond of Caris. She could be trusted not to make a fuss about the kiss she had seen. But what was she doing here? “Are you all right?” Caris said.
“I’m a bit tired,” Tilly said. She staggered, and Caris caught her arm.
The baby cried. Merthin took the child and rocked him expertly. “There, there, my little nephew,” he said. The crying fell to a mild grizzle of discontent.
Caris said to Tilly: “How did you get here?”
“I walked.”
“From Tench Hall? Carrying Gerry?” The baby was now six months old, and no easy burden.
“It took me three days.”
“My goodness. Has something happened?”
“I ran away.”
“Didn’t Ralph come after you?”
“Yes, with Alan. I hid in the forest while they went by. Gerry was very good and didn’t cry.”
The picture brought a lump to Caris’s throat. “But…” She swallowed. “But why did you run away?”
“Because my husband wants to kill me,” Tilly said, and she burst into tears.
Caris sat her down and Merthin brought her a cup of wine. They let her sob. Caris sat on the bench beside her and put an arm around her shoulders while Merthin cradled baby Gerry. When at last Tilly had cried herself out, Caris said: “What has Ralph done?”
Tilly shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just the way he looks at me. I know he wants to murder me.”
Merthin muttered: “I wish I could say my brother is incapable of that.”
Caris said: “But why would he want to do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t know,” Tilly said miserably. “Ralph went to Uncle William’s funeral. There was a lawyer from London there, Sir Gregory Longfellow.”
“I know him,” Caris said. “A clever man, but I don’t like him.”
“It started after that. I have a feeling it’s all to do with Gregory.”
Caris said: “You wouldn’t have walked all this way, carrying a baby, because of something you just imagined.”
“I know it sounds fanciful, but he just sits and glares at me hatefully. How can a man look at his wife like that?”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Caris said. “You’re safe here.”
“Can I stay?” she begged. “You won’t send me back, will you?”
“Certainly not,” said Caris. She caught Merthin’s eye. She knew what he was thinking. It would be rash to give Tilly a guarantee. Fugitives might take refuge in churches, as a general principle, but it was very doubtful whether a nunnery had the right to shelter a knight’s wife and keep her from him indefinitely. Moreover Ralph would certainly be entitled to make her give up the baby, his son and heir. All the same, Caris put as much confidence into her voice as she could and said: “You can stay here just as long as you like.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Caris silently prayed that she would be able to keep her promise.
“You could live in one of the special guest rooms upstairs in the hospital,” she said.
Tilly looked troubled. “But what if Ralph should come in?”
“He wouldn’t dare. But if it makes you feel safer, you can have Mother Cecilia’s old room, at the end of the nuns’ dormitory.”
“Yes, please.”
A priory servant came in to lay the table for dinner. Caris said to Tilly: “I’ll take you to the refectory. You can have dinner with the nuns, then lie down in the dormitory and rest.” She stood up.
Suddenly she felt dizzy. She put a hand on the table to steady herself. Merthin, still holding baby Gerry, said anxiously: “What’s wrong?”
“I’ll be fine in a moment,” Caris said. “I’m just tired.”
Then she fell to the floor.
Merthin felt a tidal wave of panic. For an instant, he was stunned. Caris had never been ill, never helpless – she was the one who took care of the sick. He could not think of her as a victim.
The moment passed like a blink. Fighting down his fear, he carefully handed the baby to Tilly.
The servant girl had stopped laying the table and stood staring in shock at the unconscious form of Caris on the floor. Merthin deliberately made his voice calm but urgent and said to her: “Run to the hospital and tell them Mother Caris is ill. Bring Sister Oonagh. Go on, now, as quick as you can!” She hurried away.
Merthin knelt beside Caris. “Can you hear me, my darling?” he said. He picked up her limp hand and patted it, then touched her cheek, then lifted an eyelid. She was out cold.
Tilly said: “She’s got the plague, hasn’t she?”
“Oh, God.” Merthin took Caris in his arms. He was a slight man, but he had always been able to lift heavy objects, building stones and timber beams. He lifted her easily and stood upright, then laid her gently on the table. “Don’t die,” he whispered. “Please don’t die.”
He kissed her forehead. Her skin was hot. He had felt it when they embraced a few minutes ago, but he had been too excited to worry. Perhaps that was why she had been so passionate: fever could have that effect.
Sister Oonagh came in. Merthin was so grateful to see her that tears came to his eyes. She was a young nun, only a year or two out of her novitiate, but Caris thought highly of her nursing skill, and was grooming her to take responsibility for the hospital one day.
Oonagh wrapped a linen mask over her mouth and nose and tied it in a knot behind her neck. Then she touched Caris’s forehead and cheek. “Did she sneeze?” she said.
Merthin wiped his eyes. “No,” he answered. He felt sure he would have noticed: a sneeze was an ominous sign.
Oonagh pulled down the front of Caris’s robe. To Merthin she looked agonizingly vulnerable with her small breasts exposed. But he was glad to see there was no rash of purple-black spots on her chest. Oonagh covered her up again. She looked up Caris’s nostrils. “No bleeding,” she said. She felt Caris’s pulse thoughtfully.
After a few moments she looked at Merthin. “This may not be the plague, but it seems a serious illness. She’s feverish, her pulse is rapid and her breathing is shallow. Carry her upstairs, lie her down and bathe her face with rose water. Anyone who attends her must wear a mask and wash their hands as if she had the plague. That includes you.” She gave him a linen strip.
Tears rolled down his face as he tied the mask. He carried Caris upstairs, put her on the mattress in her room and straightened her clothing. The nuns brought rose water and vinegar. Merthin told them of Caris’s instructions regarding Tilly, and they took the young mother and baby to the refectory. Merthin sat beside Caris, patting her forehead and cheeks with a rag damped with the fragrant liquid, praying for her to come round.
At last she did. She opened her eyes, frowned in puzzlement, then looked anxious and said: “What happened?”
“You fainted,” he said.
She tried to sit up.
“Keep still,” he said. “You’re sick. It’s probably not the plague, but you have a serious illness.”
She must have felt weak, for she lay back on the pillow without further protest. “I’ll just rest for an hour,” she said.
She was in bed for two weeks.
After three days the whites of her eyes turned the colour of mustard, and Sister Oonagh said she had the yellow jaundice. Oonagh prepared an infusion of herbs sweetened with honey, which Caris drank hot three times a day. The fever receded, but Caris remained weak. She inquired anxiously about Tilly every day, and Oonagh answered her questions, but refused to discuss any other aspect of life in the nunnery, in case it should tire Caris. Caris was too enfeebled to fight her.
Merthin did not leave the prior’s palace. In the daytime he sat downstairs, close enough to hear her call, and his employees came to him for instructions about the various buildings they were putting up or tearing down. At night he lay on a mattress beside her and slept lightly, waking every time her breathing changed or she turned over in her bed. Lolla slept in the next room.
At the end of the first week, Ralph showed up.
“My wife has disappeared,” he said as he walked into the hall of the prior’s palace.
Merthin looked up from a drawing he was making on a large slate. “Hello, brother,” he said. Ralph looked shifty, he thought. Clearly he had mixed feelings about Tilly’s disappearance. He was not fond of her, but on the other hand no man likes his wife to run away.
Perhaps I have mixed feelings, too, Merthin thought guiltily. After all, I did help his wife to leave him.
Ralph sat on a bench. “Have you got any wine? I’m parched.”
Merthin went to the sideboard and poured from a jug. It crossed his mind to say he had no idea where Tilly could be, but his instinct revolted from the idea of lying to his own brother, especially about something so important. Besides, Tilly’s presence at the priory could not be kept secret: too many nuns, novices and employees had seen her here. It was always best to be honest, Merthin thought, except in dire emergency. Handing the cup to Ralph he said: “Tilly is here, at the nunnery, with the baby.”
“I thought she might be.” Ralph lifted the cup in his left hand, showing the stumps of his three severed fingers. He took a long draught. “What’s the matter with her?”
“She ran away from you, Ralph.”
“You should have let me know.”
“I feel bad about that. But I couldn’t betray her. She’s frightened of you.”
“Why take sides with her against me? I’m your brother!”
“Because I know you. If she’s scared, there’s probably a reason.”
“This is outrageous.” Ralph was trying to appear indignant, but the act was unconvincing.
Merthin wondered what he really felt.
“We can’t throw her out,” Merthin said. “She’s asked for sanctuary.”
“Gerry’s my son and heir. You can’t keep him from me.”
“Not indefinitely, no. If you start a legal action, I’m sure you’ll win. But you wouldn’t try to separate him from his mother, would you?”
“If he comes home, she will.”
That was probably true. Merthin was casting around for another way of persuading Ralph when Brother Thomas came in, bringing Alan Fernhill with him. With his one hand, Thomas was holding Alan’s arm, as if to prevent him from running away. “I found him snooping,” he said.
“I was just looking around,” Alan protested. “I thought the monastery was empty.”
Merthin said: “As you see, it’s not. We’ve got one monk, six novices and a couple of dozen orphan boys.”
Thomas said: “Anyway, he wasn’t in the monastery, he was in the nuns’ cloisters.”
Merthin frowned. He could hear a psalm being sung in the distance. Alan had timed his incursion well: all the nuns and novices were in the cathedral for the service of Sext. Most of the priory buildings were deserted at this hour. Alan had probably been walking around unhindered for some time.
This did not seem like idle curiosity.
Thomas added: “Fortunately, a kitchen hand saw him and came to fetch me out of the church.”
Merthin wondered what Alan had been looking for. Tilly? Surely he would not have dared to snatch her from a nunnery in broad daylight. He turned to Ralph. “What are you two plotting?”
Ralph batted the question off to Alan. “What did you think you were doing?” he said wrathfully, though Merthin thought the anger was faked.
Alan shrugged. “Just looking around while I waited for you.”
It was not plausible. Idle men-at-arms waited for their masters in stables and taverns, not cloisters.
Ralph said: “Well… don’t do it again.”
Merthin realized that Ralph was going to stick with this story. I was honest with him, but he’s not being honest with me, he thought sadly. He returned to the more important subject. “Why don’t you leave Tilly be for a while?” he said to Ralph. “She’ll be perfectly all right here. And perhaps, after a while, she’ll realize you mean her no harm, and come back to you.”
“It’s too shaming,” Ralph said.
“Not really. A noblewoman sometimes spends a few weeks at a monastery, if she feels the need to retire from the world for a while.”
“Usually when she’s been widowed, or her husband has gone off to war.”
“Not always, though.”
“When there’s no obvious reason, people always say she wants to get away from her husband.”
“How bad is that? You might like some time away from your wife.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Ralph said.
Merthin was startled by this response. He had not expected Ralph to be so easily persuaded. It took him a moment to get over the surprise. Then he said: “That’s it. Give her three months, then come back and talk to her.” Merthin had a feeling that Tilly would never relent, but at least this proposal would postpone the crisis.
“Three months,” said Ralph. “All right.” He stood up to go.
Merthin shook his hand. “How are Mother and Father? I haven’t seen them for months.”
“Getting old. Father doesn’t leave their house now.”
“I’ll come and visit as soon as Caris is better. She’s recovering from yellow jaundice.”
“Give her my best wishes.”
Merthin went to the door and watched Ralph and Alan ride away. He felt deeply disturbed. Ralph was up to something, and it was not simply getting Tilly back.
He returned to his drawing and sat staring at it without seeing it for a long time.
By the end of the second week it was clear that Caris was going to get better. Merthin was exhausted but happy. Feeling like a man reprieved, he put Lolla to bed early and went out for the first time.
It was a mild spring evening, and the sun and balmy air made him light-headed. His own tavern, the Bell, was closed for rebuilding, but the Holly Bush was doing brisk business, customers sitting on benches outside with their tankards. There were so many people out enjoying the weather that Merthin stopped and asked the drinkers if it was a holiday today, thinking he might have lost track of the date. “Every day’s a holiday now,” one said. “What’s the point in working, when we’re all going to die of the plague? Have a cup of ale.”
“No, thanks.” Merthin walked on.
He noticed that many people wore very fancy clothes, elaborate headgear and embroidered tunics that they would not normally have been able to afford. He presumed they had inherited these garments, or perhaps just taken them from wealthy corpses. The effect was a bit nightmarish: velvet hats on filthy hair, gold threads and food stains, ragged hose and jewel-encrusted shoes.
He saw two men dressed all in women’s clothing, floor-length gowns and wimples. They were walking along the main street arm in arm, like merchants’ wives showing off their wealth – but they were unmistakably male, with big hands and feet and hair on their chins. Merthin began to feel disoriented, as if nothing could be relied on any more.
As the dusk thickened, he crossed the bridge to Leper Island. He had built a street of shops and taverns there, between the two parts of the bridge. The work was finished, but the buildings were untenanted, with boards nailed across their doors and windows to keep vagrants out. No one lived there but rabbits. The premises would remain empty until the plague died out and Kingsbridge returned to normal, Merthin supposed. If the plague never went away, they would never be occupied; but, in that eventuality, renting his property would be the least of his worries.
He returned to the old city just as the gate was closing. There seemed to be a huge party going on at the White Horse inn. The house was full of lights, and the crowd filled the road in front of the building. “What’s going on?” Merthin asked a drinker.
“Young Davey’s got the plague, and he has no heirs to bequeath the inn to, so he’s giving all the ale away,” the man said, grinning with delight. “Drink as much as you can hold, it’s free!”
He and many other people had clearly been working on the same principle, and dozens of them were reeling drunk. Merthin pushed his way into the crowd. Someone was banging a drum and others were dancing. He saw a circle of men and looked over their shoulders to see what they were hiding. A very drunk woman of about twenty years was bending over a table while a man entered her from behind. Several other men were clearly waiting their turn. Merthin turned away in distaste. At the side of the building, half concealed by empty barrels, his eye lit on Ozzie Ostler, a wealthy horse dealer, kneeling in front of a younger man and sucking his penis. That was against the law, in fact the penalty was death, but clearly no one cared. Ozzie, a married man who was on the parish guild, caught Merthin’s eye but did not stop, in fact he continued with more enthusiasm, as if excited by being watched. Merthin shook his head, amazed. Just outside the tavern door was a table laden with partly eaten food: joints of roasted meat, smoked fish, puddings and cheese. A dog was standing on the table tearing at a ham. A man was throwing up into a bowl of stew. Beside the tavern door Davey Whitehorse sat in a big wooden chair with a huge cup of wine. He was sneezing and sweating, and the characteristic trickle of blood came from his nose, but he was looking around and cheering the revellers on. He seemed to want to kill himself with drink before the plague finished him off.
Merthin felt nauseated. He left the scene and hurried back to the priory.
To his surprise, he found Caris up and dressed. “I’m better,” she said. “I’m going to return to my usual work tomorrow.” Seeing his sceptical look, she added: “Sister Oonagh said I could.”
“If you’re taking orders from someone else, you can’t be back to normal,” he said; and she laughed. The sight brought tears to his eyes. She had not laughed for two weeks, and there had been moments when he had wondered whether he would ever hear the sound again.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
He told her about his walk around the town, and the disturbing sights he had seen. “None of it was very wicked,” he said. “I just wonder what they’ll do next. When all their inhibitions have gone, will they start to kill one another?”
A kitchen hand brought a tureen of soup for their supper. Caris sipped warily. For a long time, all food had made her feel sick. However, she seemed to find the leek soup palatable, and drank a bowlful.
When the maid had cleared away, Caris said: “While I was ill, I thought a lot about dying.”
“You didn’t ask for a priest.”
“Whether I’ve been good or bad, I don’t think God will be fooled by a last-minute change of heart.”
“What, then?”
“I asked myself if there was anything I really regretted.”
“And was there?”
“Lots of things. I’m bad friends with my sister. I haven’t any children. I lost that scarlet coat my father gave my mother on the day she died.”
“How did you lose it?”
“I wasn’t allowed to bring it with me when I entered the nunnery. I don’t know what happened to it.”
“What was your biggest regret?”
“There were two. I haven’t built my hospital; and I’ve spent too little time in bed with you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, the second one is easily rectified.”
“I know.”
“What about the nuns?”
“Nobody cares any more. You saw what it was like in the town. Here in the nunnery, we’re too busy dealing with the dying to fuss about the old rules. Joan and Oonagh sleep together every night in one of the upstairs rooms of the hospital. It doesn’t matter.”
Merthin frowned. “It’s odd that they do that, and still go to church services in the middle of the night. How do they reconcile the two things?”
“Listen. St Luke’s Gospel says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none.’ How do you think the bishop of Shiring reconciles that with his chest full of robes? Everybody takes what they like from the teachings of the church, and ignores the parts that don’t suit them.”
“And you?”
“I do the same, but I’m honest about it. So I’m going to live with you, as your wife, and if anyone questions me I shall say that these are strange times.” She got up, went to the door and barred it. “You’ve been sleeping here for two weeks. Don’t move out.”
“You don’t have to lock me in,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll stay voluntarily.” He put his arms around her.
She said: “We started something a few minutes before I fainted. Tilly interrupted us.”
“You were feverish.”
“In that way, I still am.”
“Perhaps we should pick up where we left off.”
“We could go to bed first.”
“All right.”
Holding hands, they went up the stairs.
Ralph and his men hid in the forest north of Kingsbridge, waiting. It was May, and the evenings were long. When night fell Ralph encouraged the others to take a nap while he sat up, watching.
With him were Alan Fernhill and four hired men, soldiers demobilized from the king’s army, fighters who had failed to find their niche in peacetime. Alan had hired them at the Red Lion in Gloucester. They did not know who Ralph was and had never seen him in daylight. They would do as they were told, take their money, and ask no questions.
Ralph stayed awake, noting the passing of time automatically, as he had when with the king in France. He had found that, if he tried too hard to figure out how many hours had gone by, he became doubtful; but, if he simply guessed, what came into his head was always right. Monks used a burning candle, marked with rings for the hours, or an hourglass with sand or water trickling through a narrow funnel; but Ralph had a better measure in his head.
He sat very still, with his back to a tree, staring into the low fire they had built. He could hear the rustle of small animals in the undergrowth and the occasional hoot of a predatory owl. He never felt so calm as in the waiting hours before action. There was quiet, and darkness, and time to think. The knowledge of danger to come, which made most men jumpy, actually soothed him.
The main risk tonight did not in fact come from the hazards of fighting. There would be some hand-to-hand combat, but the enemy would consist of fat townsmen or soft-skinned monks. The real peril was that Ralph might be recognized. What he was about to do was shocking. It would be talked of with outrage in every church in the land, perhaps in Europe. Gregory Longfellow, for whom Ralph was doing this, would be the loudest in condemning it. If the fact ever got out that Ralph was the villain, he would be hanged.
But if he succeeded, he would be the earl of Shiring.
When he judged it was two hours past midnight, he roused the others.
They left their tethered horses and walked out of the woodland and along the road to the city. Alan was carrying the equipment, as he always had when they fought in France. He had a short ladder, a coil of rope, and a grappling iron they had used when attacking city walls in Normandy. In his belt were a mason’s chisel and a hammer. They might not need these tools, but they had learned that it was best to be prepared.
Alan also had several large sacks, rolled up tightly and tied with string in a bundle.
When they came within sight of the city, Ralph gave out hoods with holes for the eyes and mouth, and they all put them on. Ralph also wore a mitten on his left hand, to conceal the tell-tale stumps of his three missing fingers. He was completely unrecognizable – unless, of course, he should be captured.
They all pulled felt bags over their boots, tying them to their knees, to muffle their footsteps.
It was hundreds of years since Kingsbridge had been attacked by an army, and security was slack, especially since the advent of the plague. Nevertheless, the southern entrance to the town was firmly closed. At the townward end of Merthin’s great bridge was a stone gatehouse barred with a mighty wooden door. But the river defended the town only on the east and south sides. To the north and west no bridge was needed, and the town was protected by a wall that was in poor repair. That was why Ralph was approaching from the north.
Mean houses huddled outside the walls like dogs at the back of a butcher’s shop. Alan had scouted the route several days ago, when the two of them had come to Kingsbridge and inquired about Tilly. Now Ralph and the hired men followed Alan, padding between the hovels as quietly as possible. Even paupers in the suburbs could raise the alarm if awakened. A dog barked, and Ralph tensed, but someone cursed the animal and it fell silent. In another moment they came to a place where the wall was broken down and they could easily clamber over the fallen stones.
They found themselves in a narrow alley behind some warehouses. It came out just inside the north gate of the city. At the gate, Ralph knew, was a sentry in a booth. The six men approached silently. Although they were now within the walls, a sentry would question them if he saw them, and shout for help if he was not satisfied with their answers. But, to Ralph’s relief, the man was fast asleep, sitting on a stool and leaning against the side of his box, a stub of candle guttering on a shelf beside him.
All the same, Ralph decided not to risk the man’s waking up. He tiptoed close, leaned into the booth, and slit the sentry’s throat with a long knife. The man woke up and tried to scream with pain, but all that came out of his mouth was blood. As he slumped, Ralph caught him and held him for the few moments it took him to lose consciousness. Then he propped the body back up against the wall of the booth.
He wiped his bloody blade on the dead man’s tunic and sheathed the knife.
The large double door that stopped the gateway had within it a smaller, man-sized doorway. Ralph unbarred this little door, ready for a quick getaway later.
The six men walked silently along the street that led to the priory.
There was no moon – Ralph had chosen tonight for that reason – but they were faintly lit by starlight. He looked anxiously at the upstairs windows of the houses on either side. If sleepless people happened to look out, they would see the unmistakably sinister sight of six masked men. Fortunately it was not quite warm enough to leave windows open at night, and all the shutters were closed. Just the same, Ralph pulled up the hood of his cloak and dragged it forward as far as it would go, in the hope of shadowing his face and concealing the mask; then he signed to the others to do the same.
This was the city where he had spent his adolescence, and the streets were familiar. His brother Merthin still lived here, although Ralph was not sure exactly where.
They went down the main street, past the Holly Bush, closed for the night and locked up hours ago. They turned into the cathedral close. The entrance had tall ironbound timber gates, but they stood open, not having been closed for years, their hinges rusted and seized up.
The priory was dark except for a dim light in the windows of the hospital. Ralph reckoned this would be the time when the monks and nuns were sleeping most deeply. In an hour or so they would be wakened for the service of Matins, which started and finished before dawn.
Alan, who had reconnoitred the priory, led the team around the north side of the church. They walked silently through the graveyard and past the prior’s palace, then turned along the narrow strip of land that divided the east end of the cathedral from the river bank. Alan propped his short ladder up against a blank wall and whispered: “Nuns’ cloisters. Follow me.”
He went up the wall and over the roof. His feet made little noise on the slates. Happily, he did not need to use the grappling iron, which might have made an alarming clang.
The others followed, Ralph last.
On the inside, they dropped from the roof and landed with soft thumps on the turf of the quadrangle. Once there, Ralph looked warily at the regular stone columns of the cloisters around him. The arches seemed to stare at him like watchmen, but nothing stirred. It was a good thing monks and nuns were not allowed to have pet dogs.
Alan led them around the deep-shadowed walkway and through a heavy door. “Kitchen,” he whispered. The room was dimly lit by the embers of a big fire. “Move slowly so that you don’t knock over any pots.”
Ralph waited, letting his eyes adjust. Soon he could make out the outlines of a big table, several barrels and a stack of cooking vessels. “Find somewhere to sit or lie down, and try to make yourselves comfortable,” he said to them. “We stay here until they all get up and go into the church.”
Peering out of the kitchen an hour later, Ralph counted the nuns and novices shuffling out of the dormitory and heading through the cloisters towards the cathedral, some carrying lamps that threw antic shadows on the vaulted ceiling. “Twenty-five,” he whispered to Alan. As he had expected, Tilly was not among them. Visiting noblewomen were not expected to attend services in the middle of the night.
When they had all disappeared, he moved. The others remained behind.
There were only two places where Tilly might be sleeping: the hospital, and the nuns’ dormitory. Ralph had guessed she would feel safer in the dormitory, and headed there first.
He went softly up the stone steps, his boots still muffled by felt overshoes. He peeped into the dorm. It was lit by a single candle. He was hoping that all the nuns would be in the church, for he did not want miscellaneous people confusing the situation. He was afraid one or two might have stayed behind, because of illness or laziness. But the room was empty – not even Tilly was there. He was about to retreat when he saw a door at the far end.
He padded the length of the dormitory, picking up the candle, and went through the door silently. The unsteady light revealed the young head of his wife on a pillow, her hair in disarray around her face. She looked so innocent and pretty that Ralph felt a stab of remorse, and had to remind himself of how much he hated her for standing in the way of his advancement.
The baby, his son Gerry, lay in a crib next to her, eyes closed, mouth open, sleeping peacefully.
Ralph crept closer and, with a swift movement, clamped his right hand hard over Tilly’s mouth, waking her and at the same time stopping her making any noise.
Tilly opened her eyes wide and stared at him in dread.
He put the candle down. In his pocket he had an assortment of useful odds and ends, including rags and leather thongs. He stuffed a rag into Tilly’s mouth to keep her quiet. Despite his mask and glove, he had a feeling she recognized him, even though he had not spoken. Perhaps she could smell him, like a dog. It did not matter. She was not going to tell anyone.
He tied her hands and feet with leather thongs. She was not struggling now, but she would later. He checked that her gag was secure. Then he settled down to wait.
He could hear the singing from the church: a strong choir of females, and a ragged few male voices trying to match them. Tilly kept staring at him with big, pleading eyes. He turned her over so that he could not see her face.
She had guessed he was going to kill her. She had read his mind. She must be a witch. Perhaps all women were witches. Anyway, she had known his intention almost as soon as he had formed it. She had started to watch him, especially in the evenings, her fearful eyes following him around the room, no matter what he did. She had lain stiff and alert beside him at night while he fell asleep, and in the mornings when he awoke she was invariably up already. Then, after a few days of this, she had disappeared. Ralph and Alan had searched for her without success, then he had heard a rumour that she had taken refuge in Kingsbridge Priory.
Which happened to fit in with his plans very neatly.
The baby snuffled in his sleep, and it occurred to Ralph that he might cry. What if the nuns came back just then? He thought it through. One or two would probably come in here to see if Tilly needed help. He would just kill them, he decided. It would not be the first time. He had killed nuns in France.
At last he heard them shuffling back into the dormitory.
Alan would be watching from the kitchen, counting them as they returned. When they were all safely inside the room, Alan and the other four men would draw their swords and make their move.
Ralph lifted Tilly to her feet. Her face was streaked with tears. He turned her so that her back was to him, then put an arm around her waist and lifted her, hoisting her on to his hip. She was as light as a child.
He drew his long dagger.
From outside, he heard a man say: “Silence, or you die!” It was Alan, he knew, although the hood muffled the voice.
This was a crucial moment. There were other people on the premises – nuns and patients in the hospital, monks in their own quarters – and Ralph did not want them to appear and complicate matters.
Despite Alan’s warning, there were several shouts of shock and shrieks of fear – but, Ralph thought, not too loud. So far, so good.
He threw open the door and stepped into the dormitory carrying Tilly on his hip.
He could see by the light of the nuns’ lamps. At the far end of the room, Alan had a woman in his grasp, his knife to her throat, in the same pose as Ralph with Tilly. Two more men stood behind Alan. The other two hirelings would be on guard at the foot of the stairs.
“Listen to me,” Ralph said.
When he spoke, Tilly jerked convulsively. She had recognized his voice. But that did not matter so long as no one else did.
There was a terrified silence.
Ralph said: “Which of you is treasurer?”
No one spoke.
Ralph touched the edge of his blade to the skin of Tilly’s throat. She began to struggle, but she was too small, and he held her easily. Now, he thought, now is the time to kill her; but he hesitated. He had killed many people, women as well as men, but suddenly it seemed terrible to stick a knife into the warm body of someone he had embraced and kissed and slept with, the woman who had borne his child.
Also, he told himself, the effect on the nuns would be more shocking if one of their own died.
He nodded to Alan.
With one strong cut, Alan slit the throat of the nun he was holding. Blood gushed out of her neck on to the floor.
Someone screamed.
It was not merely a cry or a shriek, but a fortissimo yell of pure terror that might have awakened the dead, and it went on until one of the hired men hit the screamer a mighty blow over her head with his club and she fell unconscious to the floor, blood trickling down her cheek.
Ralph said again: “Which of you is treasurer?”
Merthin had woken up briefly when the bell rang for Matins and Caris slipped out of bed. As usual, he turned over and fell into a light doze, so that when she returned it seemed as if she had been away only for a minute or two. She was cold when she got back into bed, and he drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her. They often stayed awake for a while, talking, and usually made love before going to sleep. It was Merthin’s favourite time.
She pressed up against him, her breasts squashed comfortably against his chest. He kissed her forehead. When she had warmed up, he reached between her legs and gently stroked the soft hair there.
But she was feeling talkative. “Did you hear yesterday’s rumour? Outlaws in the woods north of town.”
“It seems a bit unlikely,” he said.
“I don’t know. The walls are decrepit on that side.”
“But what are they going to steal? Anything they want is theirs for the taking. If they need meat, there are thousands of sheep and cattle unguarded in the fields, with no one to claim ownership.”
“That’s what makes it strange.”
“These days, stealing is like leaning over the fence to breathe your neighbour’s air.”
She sighed. “Three months ago I thought this terrible plague was over.”
“How many more people have we lost?”
“We’ve buried a thousand since Easter.”
That seemed about right to Merthin. “I hear that other towns are similar.”
He felt her hair move against his shoulder as she nodded in the dark. She said: “I believe something like a quarter of the population of England is gone already.”
“And more than half the priests.”
“That’s because they make contact with so many people every time they hold a service. They can hardly escape.”
“So half the churches are closed.”
“A good thing, if you ask me. I’m sure crowds spread the plague faster than anything.”
“Anyway, most people have lost respect for religion.”
To Caris, that was no great tragedy. She said: “Perhaps they’ll stop believing in mumbo-jumbo medicine, and start thinking about what treatments actually make a difference.”
“You say that, but it’s hard for ordinary people to know what is a genuine cure and what a false remedy.”
“I’ll give you four rules.”
He smiled in the dark. She always had a list. “All right.”
“One: If there are dozens of different remedies for a complaint, you can be sure none of them works.”
“Why?”
“Because if one worked, people would forget the rest.”
“Logical.”
“Two: Just because a remedy is unpleasant doesn’t mean it’s any good. Raw larks’ brains do nothing for a sore throat, even though they make you heave; whereas a nice cup of hot water and honey will soothe you.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Three: Human and animal dung never does anyone any good. It usually makes them worse.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“Four: If the remedy looks like the disease – the spotted feathers of a thrush for the pox, say, or sheep’s urine for yellow jaundice – it’s probably imaginative rubbish.”
“You should write a book about this.”
She made a scornful noise. “Universities prefer ancient Greek texts.”
“Not a book for university students. One for people like you – nuns and midwives and barbers and wise women.”
“Wise women and midwives can’t read.”
“Some can, and others have people who can read for them.”
“I suppose people might like a little book that tells them what to do about the plague.”
She was thoughtful for a few moments.
In the silence, there was a scream.
“What was that?” Merthin said.
“It sounded like a shrew being caught by an owl,” she said.
“No, it didn’t,” he said, and he got up.
One of the nuns stepped forward and addressed Ralph. She was young – they were nearly all young – with black hair and blue eyes. “Please don’t hurt Tilly,” she begged. “I’m Sister Joan, the treasurer. We’ll give you anything you want. Please don’t do any more violence.”
“I am Tam Hiding,” Ralph said. “Where are the keys to the nuns’ treasury?”
“I have them here on my belt.”
“Take me there.”
Joan hesitated. Perhaps she sensed that Ralph did not know where the treasury was. On their reconnaissance trip, Alan had been able to scout the nunnery quite thoroughly before he was caught. He had plotted their way in, identified the kitchen as a good hiding place, and located the nuns’ dormitory; but he had not been able to find the treasury. Clearly Joan did not want to reveal its location.
Ralph had no time to lose. He did not know who might have heard that scream. He pressed the point of his knife into Tilly’s throat until it drew blood. “I want to go to the treasury,” he said.
“All right, just don’t hurt Tilly! I’ll show you the way.”
“I thought you would,” Ralph said.
He left two of the hired men in the dormitory to keep the nuns quiet. He and Alan followed Joan down the steps to the cloisters, taking Tilly.
At the foot of the stairs, the other two hired men were detaining at knife point three more nuns. Ralph guessed that those on duty in the hospital had come to investigate the scream. He was pleased: another threat had been neutralized. But where were the monks?
He sent the extra nuns up into the dormitory. He left one hired man on guard at the foot of the stairs and took the other with him.
Joan led them into the refectory, which was at ground level directly under the dorm. Her flickering lamp revealed trestle tables, benches, a lectern and a wall painting of Jesus at a wedding feast.
At the far end of the room Joan moved a table to reveal a trapdoor in the floor. It had a keyhole just like a normal upright door. She turned a key in the lock and lifted the trapdoor. It gave on to a narrow spiral of stone steps. She descended the stairs. Ralph left the hired man on guard and went down, awkwardly carrying Tilly, and Alan followed him.
Ralph reached the bottom of the staircase and looked around him with a satisfied air. This was the holy of holies, the nuns’ secret treasury. It was a cramped underground room like a dungeon, but better built: the walls were of ashlar, smoothly squared-off stones as used in the cathedral, and the floor was paved with closely set flagstones. The air felt cool and dry. Ralph put Tilly, trussed like a chicken, on the floor.
Most of the room was taken up by a huge lidded box, like a coffin for a giant, chained to a ring in the wall. There was not much else: two stools, a writing desk, and a shelf bearing a stack of parchment rolls, presumably the nunnery’s account books. On a hook on the wall hung two heavy wool coats, and Ralph guessed they were for the treasurer and her assistant to wear when working down here in the coldest months of the winter.
The box was far too large to have come down the staircase. It must have been brought here in pieces and assembled in situ. Ralph pointed to the clasp, and Joan unlocked it with another of the keys on her belt.
Ralph looked inside. There were scores more parchment rolls, obviously all the charters and title deeds that proved the nunnery’s ownership of its property and rights; a pile of leather and wool bags that undoubtedly held jewelled ornaments; and another, smaller chest that probably contained money.
At this point he had to be subtle. His object was those charters, but he did not want that to be apparent. He had to steal them, but appear not to have done so.
He ordered Joan to open the small chest. It contained a few gold coins. Ralph was puzzled by how little money there was. Perhaps more was hidden somewhere in this room, possibly behind stones in the wall. However, he did not stop to ponder: he was only pretending to be interested in the money. He poured the coins into the purse at his belt. Meanwhile, Alan unrolled a capacious sack and began filling it with cathedral ornaments.
Having let Joan see that, Ralph ordered her back up the stairs.
Tilly was still here, watching with wide, terrified eyes, but it did not matter what she saw. She would never have a chance to tell.
Ralph unrolled another sack and began loading the parchment rolls into it as fast as he could.
When they had bagged everything, Ralph told Alan to break up the wooden chests with his hammer and chisel. He took the wool coats from the hook, bundled them up, and held the tip of his candle flame to the bundle. The wool caught fire immediately. He piled wood from the chests on top of the burning wool. Soon there was a merry bonfire, and the smoke caught in his throat.
He looked at Tilly, lying helpless on the floor. He drew his knife. Then, once again, he hesitated.
From the prior’s palace, a small door led directly into the chapter house, which itself communicated with the north transept of the cathedral. Merthin and Caris took this route in their search for the source of the scream. The chapter house was empty, and they went into the church. Their single candle was too dim to illuminate the vast interior, but they stood in the centre of the crossing and listened hard.
They heard the click of a latch.
Merthin said: “Who’s there?” and was ashamed of the fear that made his voice tremble.
“Brother Thomas,” they heard.
The voice came from the south transept. A moment later Thomas moved into the light of their candle. “I thought I heard someone scream,” he said.
“So did we. But there’s no one here in the church.”
“Let’s look around.”
“What about the novices, and the boys?”
“I told them to go back to sleep.”
They passed through the south transept into the monks’ cloisters. Once again they saw no one and heard nothing. From here, they followed a passage through the kitchen stores to the hospital. The patients lay in their beds as normal, some sleeping and some moving and groaning in pain – but, Merthin realized after a moment, there were no nuns in the room.
“This is strange,” said Caris.
The scream might have come from here, but there was no sign of emergency, or of any kind of disturbance.
They went into the kitchen, which was deserted, as they would have expected.
Thomas sniffed deeply, as if trying to pick up a scent.
Merthin said: “What is it?” He found himself whispering.
“Monks are clean,” Thomas murmured in reply. “Someone dirty has been here.”
Merthin could not smell anything unusual.
Thomas picked up a cleaver, the kind a cook would use to chop through meat and bones.
They went to the kitchen door. Thomas held up the stump of his left arm in a warning gesture and they halted. There was a faint light in the nuns’ cloisters. It seemed to be coming from the recess at the near end. It was the reflected gleam of a distant candle, Merthin guessed. It might be coming from the nuns’ refectory, or from the flight of stone steps that led up to their dormitory; or both.
Thomas stepped out of his sandals and went forward, his bare feet making no sound on the flagstones. He melted into the shadows of the cloister. Merthin could just about make him out as he edged towards the recess.
A faint but pungent aroma came to Merthin’s nose. It was not the smell of dirty bodies that Thomas had detected in the kitchen, but something quite different and new. A moment later Merthin identified it as smoke.
Thomas must have picked it up too, for he froze in place up against the wall.
Someone unseen gave a grunt of surprise, then a figure stepped out from the recess into the cloister walk, faintly but clearly visible, the weak light outlining the silhouette of a man with some kind of hood covering his entire head and face. The man turned towards the refectory door.
Thomas struck.
The cleaver glinted briefly in the dark, then there was a sickening thud as it sank into the man’s body. He gave a shout of terror and pain. As he fell Thomas swung again, and the man’s cry turned into a sickening gurgle, then stopped. He hit the stone pavement with a lifeless thump.
Beside Merthin, Caris gasped with horror.
Merthin ran forward. “What’s going on?” he cried.
Thomas turned to him, making go-back motions with the cleaver. “Quiet!” he hissed.
The light changed in a heartbeat. Suddenly the cloisters were illuminated with the bright glow of a flame.
Someone came running out of the refectory with a heavy tread. It was a big man carrying a sack in one hand and a blazing torch in the other. He looked like a ghost, until Merthin realized he was wearing a crude hood with holes for the eyes and mouth.
Thomas stepped in front of the running man and raised his cleaver. But he was a moment too late. Before he could strike, the man cannoned into him, sending him flying.
Thomas crashed into a pillar, and there was a crack that sounded like his head hitting the stone. He slumped to the ground, out cold. The running man lost his balance and fell to his knees.
Caris pushed past Merthin and knelt beside Thomas.
Several more men appeared, all hooded, some carrying torches. It seemed to Merthin that some emerged from the refectory and others came down the stairs from the dorm. At the same time he heard the sound of women screaming and wailing. For a moment the scene was chaos.
Merthin rushed to Caris’s side and tried to protect her, with his body, from the stampede.
The intruders saw their fallen comrade and they all paused in their rush, suddenly shocked into stillness. By the light of their torches they could see that he was unquestionably dead, his neck sliced almost all the way through, his blood spilled copiously over the stone floor of the cloisters. They looked around, moving their heads from side to side, peering through the holes in their hoods, looking like fish in a stream.
One of them spotted Thomas’s cleaver, red with blood, lying on the ground next to Thomas and Caris, and pointed at it to show the others. With a grunt of anger, he drew a sword.
Merthin was terrified for Caris. He stepped forward, attracting the swordsman’s attention. The man moved towards Merthin and raised his weapon. Merthin retreated, drawing the man away from Caris. As the danger to her receded he felt more frightened for himself. Walking backwards, shaking with fear, he slipped on the dead man’s blood. His feet flew from under him and he fell flat on his back.
The swordsman stood over him, weapon raised high to kill him.
Then one of the others intervened. He was the tallest of the intruders, and moved with surprising speed. With his left hand, he grabbed the upraised arm of Merthin’s assailant. He must have had authority, for without speaking he simply shook his hooded head from side to side in negation, and the swordsman lowered his weapon obediently.
Merthin noticed that his saviour wore a mitten on his left hand, but nothing on the right.
The interaction lasted only as long as it might take a man to count to ten, and ended as suddenly as it had begun. One of the hooded men turned towards the kitchen and broke into a run, and the others followed. They must have planned to escape that way, Merthin realized: the kitchen had a door that gave on to the cathedral green, and that was the quickest way out. They disappeared, and without the blaze of their torches the cloisters went dark.
Merthin stood still, unsure what to do. Should he run after the intruders, go up to the dormitory and find out why the nuns were screaming, or find out where the fire was?
He knelt beside Caris. “Is Thomas alive?” he said.
“I think he’s banged his head, and he’s unconscious, but he’s breathing, and there’s no blood.”
Behind him, Merthin heard the familiar voice of Sister Joan. “Help me, please!” He turned. She stood in the doorway of the refectory, her face lit up grotesquely by the candle lamp in her hand, her head wreathed in smoke like a fashionable hat. “For God’s sake, come quickly!”
He stood up. Joan disappeared back into the refectory, and Merthin ran after her.
Her lamp threw confusing shadows, but he managed to avoid falling over the furniture as he followed her to the end of the room. Smoke was pouring from a hole in the floor. Merthin saw immediately that the hole was the work of a careful builder: it was perfectly square, with neat edges and a well-made trapdoor. He guessed this was the nuns’ hidden treasury, built in secrecy by Jeremiah. But tonight’s thieves had found it.
He got a lungful of smoke, and coughed. He wondered what was burning down there, and why, but he had no intention of finding out – it looked too dangerous.
Then Joan screamed at him: “Tilly is in there!”
“Dear God,” Merthin said despairingly; and he went down the steps.
He had to hold his breath. He peered through the smoke. Despite his fear, his builder’s eye noticed that the spiral stone staircase was well made, each step exactly the same size and shape, and each set at precisely the same angle to the next; so that he was able to go down with confidence even when he could not see what was underfoot.
In a second he reached the underground chamber. He could see flames near the middle of the room. The heat was intense, and he knew he would not be able to stand it for more than a few instants. The smoke was thick. He was still holding his breath, but now his eyes began to water, and his vision blurred. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and peered into the murk. Where was Tilly? He could not see the floor.
He dropped to his knees. Visibility improved slightly: the smoke was less dense lower down. He moved around on all fours, staring into the corners of the room, sweeping with his hands where he could not see. “Tilly!” he shouted. “Tilly, where are you?” The smoke caught in his throat and he suffered a coughing fit that would have drowned any reply she made.
He could not last any longer. He was coughing convulsively, but every breath seemed to choke him with more smoke. His eyes watered copiously and he was nearly blind. In desperation, he went so close to the fire that the flames began to singe his sleeve. If he collapsed and lost consciousness, he would die for certain.
Then his hand touched flesh.
He grabbed. It was a human leg, a small leg, a girl’s leg. He pulled her towards him. Her clothes were smouldering. He could hardly see her face and could not tell whether she was conscious, but she was tied hand and foot with leather thongs, so she could not move of her own accord. Striving to stop coughing, he got his arms under her and picked her up.
As soon as he stood upright the smoke became blindingly thick. Suddenly he could not remember which way the stairs were. He staggered away from the flames and crashed into the wall, almost dropping Tilly. Left or right? He went left and came to a corner. Changing his mind, he retraced his steps.
He felt as if he was drowning. His strength gone, he dropped to his knees. That saved him. Once again he found he could see better close to the floor, and a stone step appeared, like a vision from heaven, right in front of him.
Desperately holding on to the limp form of Tilly, he moved forward on his knees and made it to the staircase. With a last effort, he got to his feet. He put one foot on the lowest step and hauled himself up; then he managed the next step. Coughing uncontrollably, he forced himself upward until there were no more steps. He staggered, fell to his knees, dropped Tilly and collapsed on the refectory floor.
Someone bent over him. He spluttered: “Close the trapdoor – stop the fire!” A moment later he heard a bang as the wooden door slammed shut.
He was grabbed under the arms. He opened his eyes for a moment and saw Caris’s face, upside down; then his vision blurred. She dragged him across the floor. The smoke thinned and he began to suck air into his lungs. He sensed the transition from indoors to out, and tasted clean night air. Caris put him down and he heard her footsteps run back inside.
He gasped, coughed, gasped and coughed. Slowly he began to breathe more normally. His eyes stopped watering, and he saw that dawn was breaking. The faint light showed him a crowd of nuns standing around him.
He sat upright. Caris and another nun dragged Tilly out of the refectory and put her beside him. Caris bent over her. Merthin tried to speak, coughed, and tried again. “How is she?”
“She’s been stabbed through the heart,” Caris said. She began to cry. “She was dead before you got to her.”
Merthin opened his eyes to bright daylight. He had slept late: the angle of the sun’s rays shining through the bedroom window told him it was the middle of the morning. He recalled the events of the previous night like a bad dream, and for a moment he cherished the thought that they might not really have happened. But his chest hurt when he breathed, and the skin of his face was painfully scorched. The horror of Tilly’s murder came back to him. And Sister Nellie, too – both innocent young women. How could God permit such things to happen?
He realized what had awakened him when his eye lit on Caris, putting a tray down on the small table near the bed. Her back was to him but he could tell, by the hunch of her shoulders and the set of her head, that she was angry. It was not surprising. She was grieving for Tilly, and enraged that the sanctity and safety of the nunnery had been violated.
Merthin got up. Caris pulled two stools to the table and they both sat down. He studied her face fondly. There were lines of strain around her eyes. He wondered if she had slept. There was a smear of ash on her left cheek, so he licked his thumb and gently wiped it off.
She had brought new bread with fresh butter and a jug of cider. Merthin found he was hungry and thirsty, and he tucked in. Caris, bottling up fury, ate nothing.
Through a mouthful of bread Merthin said: “How is Thomas this morning?”
“He’s lying down in the hospital. His head hurts, but he can talk coherently and answer questions, so there’s probably no permanent damage to his brain.”
“Good. There will have to be an inquest on Tilly and Nellie.”
“I’ve sent a message to the sheriff of Shiring.”
“They will probably blame it on Tam Hiding.”
“Tam Hiding is dead.”
He nodded. He knew what was coming. His spirits had been lifted by the breakfast, but now they sank again. He swallowed and pushed away his plate.
Caris went on: “Whoever it was that came here last night, he wanted to conceal his identity, so he told a lie – not knowing that Tam died in my hospital three months ago.”
“Who do you think it could have been?”
“Someone we know – hence the masks.”
“Perhaps.”
“Outlaws don’t wear masks.”
It was true. Living outside the law, they did not care who knew about them and the crimes they committed. Last night’s intruders were different. The masks strongly suggested they were respected citizens who were afraid of being recognized.
Caris went on with merciless logic. “They killed Nellie to make Joan open up the treasury – but they had no need to kill Tilly: they were already inside the treasury by then. They wanted her dead for some other reason. And they were not content to leave her to be suffocated by smoke and burned to death: they also stabbed her fatally. For some reason, they had to be sure she was dead.”
“What does that tell you?”
Caris did not answer the question. “Tilly thought Ralph wanted to kill her.”
“I know.”
“One of the hooded men was about to do away with you, at one point.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she had to stop. She took a sip of Merthin’s cider, composing herself; then she went on. “But the leader stopped him. Why would he do that? They had already murdered a nun and a noblewoman – why scruple to kill a mere builder?”
“You think it was Ralph.”
“Don’t you?”
“Yes.” Merthin sighed heavily. “Did you see his mitten?”
“I noticed he was wearing gloves.”
Merthin shook his head. “Only one. On his left hand. Not a glove with fingers, but a mitten.”
“To hide his injury.”
“I can’t be sure, and we certainly couldn’t prove anything, but I have a dreadful conviction about it.”
Caris stood up. “Let’s inspect the damage.”
They went to the nuns’ cloisters. The novices and the orphans were cleaning the treasury, bringing sacks of charred wood and ashes up the spiral staircase, giving anything not completely destroyed to Sister Joan and carrying the detritus out to the dunghill.
Laid out on a refectory table Merthin saw the cathedral ornaments: gold and silver candlesticks, crucifixes and vessels, all finely wrought and studded with precious stones. He was surprised. “Didn’t they take these?” he said.
“Yes – but they seem to have had second thoughts, and dumped them in a ditch outside town. A peasant on his way in with eggs to sell found them this morning. Luckily he was honest.”
Merthin picked up a gold aquamanile, a jug for washing the hands, made in the shape of a cockerel, the feathers of its neck beautifully chased. “It’s hard to sell something like this. Only a few people could afford to buy it, and most of those would guess it had been stolen.”
“The thieves could have melted it down and sold the gold.”
“Obviously they decided that was too much trouble.”
“Perhaps.”
She was not convinced. Nor was Merthin: his own explanation did not quite fit. The robbery had been carefully planned, that was evident. So why would the thieves not have made up their minds in advance about the ornaments? Either to take them or leave them behind?
Caris and Merthin went down the steps and into the chamber, Merthin’s stomach clenching in fear as he was grimly reminded of last night’s ordeal. More novices were cleaning the walls and floor with mops and buckets.
Caris sent the novices away to take a break. When she and Merthin were alone, she picked up a length of wood from a shelf and used it to prise up one of the flagstones underfoot. Merthin had not previously noticed that the stone was not fitted as tightly as most, having a narrow gap all around it. Now he saw that underneath was a spacious vault containing a wooden box. Caris reached into the hole and pulled out the box. She opened it with a key from her belt. It was full of gold coins.
Merthin was surprised. “They missed that!”
“There are three more concealed vaults,” Caris told him. “Another in the floor and two in the walls. They missed them all.”
“They can’t have looked very hard. Most treasuries have hiding places. People know that.”
“Especially robbers.”
“So maybe the cash wasn’t their first priority.”
“Exactly.” Caris locked the chest and put it back in its vault.
“If they didn’t want the ornaments, and they weren’t sufficiently interested in cash to search the treasury thoroughly for hidden vaults, why did they come here at all?”
“To kill Tilly. The robbery was a cover.”
Merthin thought about that. “They didn’t need an elaborate cover story,” he said after a pause. “If all they wanted was to kill Tilly, they could have done it in the dormitory and been far away from here by the time the nuns got back from Matins. If they had done it carefully – suffocated her with a feather pillow, say – we would not even have been sure she had been murdered. It would have looked as if she had died in her sleep.”
“Then there’s no explanation for the attack. They ended up with next to nothing – a few gold coins.”
Merthin looked around the underground chamber. “Where are the charters?” he said.
“They must have burned. It doesn’t much matter. I’ve got copies of everything.”
“Parchment doesn’t burn very well.”
“I’ve never tried to light it.”
“It smoulders, shrinks and distorts, but it doesn’t catch fire.”
“Perhaps the charters have been retrieved from the debris.”
“Let’s check.”
They climbed back up the steps and left the vault. Outside in the cloisters, Caris asked Joan: “Have you found any parchment among the ashes?”
She shook her head. “Nothing at all.”
“Could you have missed it?”
“I don’t think so – not unless it has burned to cinders.”
“Merthin says it doesn’t burn.” She turned to him. “Who would want our charters? They’re no use to anyone else.”
Merthin followed the thread of his own logic, just to see where it might lead. “Suppose there’s a document that you’ve got – or you might have, or they think you might have – and they want it.”
“What could it be?”
Merthin frowned. “Documents are intended to be public. The whole point of writing something down is so that people can look at it in the future. A secret document is a strange thing…” Then he thought of something.
He drew Caris away from Joan, and walked casually around the cloisters with her until he was sure they could not be overheard. Then he said: “But, of course, we do know of one secret document.”
“The letter Thomas buried in the forest.”
“Yes.”
“But why would anyone imagine it might be in the nunnery’s treasury?”
“Well, think. Has anything happened lately that might arouse such a suspicion?”
A look of dismay came over Caris’s face. “Oh, my soul,” she exclaimed.
“There is something.”
“I told you about Lynn Grange being given to us by Queen Isabella for accepting Thomas, all those years ago.”
“Did you speak to anyone else about it?”
“Yes – the bailiff of Lynn. And Thomas was angry that I had done so, and said there would be dire consequences.”
“So someone is afraid you might have got hold of Thomas’s secret letter.”
“Ralph?”
“I don’t think Ralph is aware of the letter. I was the only one of us children who saw Thomas burying it. He’s certainly never mentioned it. Ralph must be acting on behalf of someone else.”
Caris looked scared. “Queen Isabella?”
“Or the king himself.”
“Is it possible that the king ordered Ralph to invade a nunnery?”
“Not personally, no. He would have used an intermediary, someone loyal, ambitious, and with absolutely no scruples. I came across such men in Florence, hanging around the Doge’s palace. They’re the scum of the earth.”
“I wonder who it was?”
“I think I can guess,” said Merthin.
Gregory Longfellow met Ralph and Alan two days later at Wigleigh, in the small timber manor house. Wigleigh was more discreet than Tench. At Tench Hall there were too many people watching Ralph’s every move: servants, followers, his parents. Here in Wigleigh the peasants had their own backbreaking business to do, and no one would question Ralph about the contents of the sack Alan was carrying.
“I gather it went off as planned,” Gregory said. News of the invasion of the nunnery had spread all over the county in no time.
“No great difficulty,” Ralph said. He was a bit let down by Gregory’s muted reaction. After all the trouble that had been taken to get the charters, Gregory might have shown some elation.
“The sheriff has announced an inquest, of course,” Gregory said dourly.
“They’ll blame it on outlaws.”
“You were not recognized?”
“We wore hoods.”
Gregory looked at Ralph strangely. “I did not know that your wife was at the nunnery.”
“A useful coincidence,” Ralph said. “It enabled me to kill two birds with one stone.”
The strange look intensified. What was the lawyer thinking? Was he going to pretend to be shocked that Ralph had killed his wife? If so, Ralph was ready to point out that Gregory was complicit in everything that had happened at the nunnery – he had been the instigator. He had no right to judge. Ralph waited for Gregory to speak. But, after a long pause, all he said was: “Let’s have a look at these charters.”
They sent the housekeeper, Vira, on a lengthy errand, and Ralph made Alan stand at the door to keep out casual callers. Then Gregory tipped the charters out of the sack on to the table. He made himself comfortable and began to examine them. Some were rolled and tied with string, others bundled flat, a few sewn together in booklets. He opened one, read a few lines in the strong sunlight coming through the open windows, then threw the charter back into the sack and picked up another.
Ralph had no idea what Gregory was looking for. He had only said that it might embarrass the king. Ralph could not imagine what kind of document Caris might possess that would embarrass a king.
He got bored watching Gregory read, but he was not going to leave. He had delivered what Gregory wanted, and he was going to sit here until Gregory confirmed his half of the deal.
The tall lawyer worked his way patiently through the documents. One caught his attention, and he read it all the way through, but then he threw it in the sack with the others.
Ralph and Alan had spent most of the last week in Bristol. It was not likely that they would be asked to account for their movements, but they had taken precautions anyway. They had caroused at taverns every evening except the night they went to Kingsbridge. Their companions would remember the free drinks, but probably would not recall that on one night of the week Ralph and Alan had been absent – or, if they did, they certainly would not know whether it was the fourth Wednesday after Easter or the Thursday but two before Whitsun.
At last the table was clear and the sack was full again. Ralph said: “Did you not find what you were looking for?”
Gregory did not answer the question. “You brought everything?”
“Everything.”
“Good.”
“So you haven’t found it?”
Gregory chose his words carefully, as always. “The specific item is not here. However, I did come across a deed that may explain why this… issue… has arisen in recent months.”
“So you’re satisfied,” Ralph persisted.
“Yes.”
“And the king need no longer be anxious.”
Gregory looked impatient. “You should not concern yourself with the king’s anxieties. I’ll do that.”
“Then I can expect my reward immediately.”
“Oh, yes,” said Gregory. “You shall be the earl of Shiring by harvest time.”
Ralph felt a glow of satisfaction. The earl of Shiring – at last. He had won the prize he had always longed for, and his father was still alive to hear the news. “Thank you,” he said.
“If I were you,” said Gregory, “I should go and woo Lady Philippa.”
“Woo her?” Ralph was astonished.
Gregory shrugged. “She has no real choice in the matter, of course. But still, the formalities should be observed. Tell her that the king has given you permission to ask for her hand in marriage, and say you hope she will learn to love you as much as you love her.”
“Oh,” said Ralph. “All right.”
“Take her a present,” said Gregory.
On the morning of Tilly’s burial, Caris and Merthin met on the roof of the cathedral at dawn.
The roof was a world apart. Calculating the acreage of slates was a perennial geometry exercise in the advanced mathematics class at the priory school. Workmen needed constant access for repairs and maintenance, so a network of walkways and ladders linked the slopes and ridges, corners and gulleys, turrets and pinnacles, gutters and gargoyles. The crossing tower had not yet been rebuilt, but the view from the top of the west façade was impressive.
The priory was already busy. This would be a big funeral. Tilly had been a nobody in life, but now she was the victim of a notorious murder, a noblewoman killed in a nunnery, and she would be mourned by people who had never spoken three words to her. Caris would have liked to discourage mourners, because of the risk of spreading the plague, but there was nothing she could do.
The bishop was already here, in the best room of the prior’s palace – which was why Caris and Merthin had spent the night apart, she in the nuns’ dormitory and he and Lolla at the Holly Bush. The grieving widower, Ralph, was in a private room upstairs at the hospital. His baby, Gerry, was being taken care of by the nuns. Lady Philippa and her daughter Odila, the only other surviving relatives of the dead girl, were also staying at the hospital.
Neither Merthin nor Caris had spoken to Ralph when he arrived yesterday. There was nothing they could do, no way to get justice for Tilly, for they could prove nothing; but all the same they knew the truth. So far they had told no one what they believed: there was no point. During today’s obsequies they would have to pretend something like normalcy with Ralph. It was going to be difficult.
While the important personages slept, the nuns and the priory employees were hard at work preparing the funeral dinner. Smoke was rising from the bakery, where dozens of long four-pound loaves of wheat bread were already in the oven. Two men were rolling a new barrel of wine across to the prior’s house. Several novice nuns were setting up benches and a trestle table on the green for the common mourners.
As the sun rose beyond the river, throwing a slanting yellow light on the rooftops of Kingsbridge, Caris studied the marks made on the town by nine months of plague. From this height she could see gaps in the rows of houses, like bad teeth. Timber buildings collapsed all the time, of course – because of fire, rain damage, incompetent construction or just old age. What was different now was that no one bothered to repair them. If your house fell down you just moved into one of the empty homes in the same street. The only person building anything was Merthin, and he was seen as a mad optimist with too much money.
Across the river, the gravediggers were already at work in another newly consecrated cemetery. The plague showed no signs of relenting. Where would it end? Would the houses just continue to fall down, one at a time, until there was nothing left, and the town was a wasteland of broken tiles and scorched timbers, with a deserted cathedral in the middle and a hundred-acre graveyard at its edge?
“I’m not going to let this happen,” she said.
Merthin did not at first understand. “The funeral?” he said, frowning.
Caris made a sweeping gesture to take in the city and the world beyond it. “Everything. Drunks maiming one another. Parents abandoning their sick children on the doorstep of my hospital. Men queuing to fuck a drunken woman on a table outside the White Horse. Livestock dying in the pastures. Half-naked penitents whipping themselves then collecting pennies from bystanders. And, most of all, a young mother brutally murdered here in my nunnery. I don’t care if we are all going to die of the plague. As long as we’re still alive, I’m not going to let our world fall apart.”
“What are you going to do?”
She smiled gratefully at Merthin. Most people would have told her she was powerless to fight the situation, but he was always ready to believe in her. She looked at the stone angels carved on a pinnacle, their faces blurred by two hundred years of wind and rain, and she thought of the spirit that had moved the cathedral builders. “We’re going to re-establish order and routine here. We’re going to force Kingsbridge people to return to normal, whether they like it or not. We’re going to rebuild this town and its life, despite the plague.”
“All right,” he said.
“This is the moment to do it.”
“Because everyone is so angry about Tilly?”
“And because they’re frightened at the thought that armed men can come into the town at night and murder whomever they will. They think no one’s safe.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going to tell them it must never happen again.”
“This must never happen again!” she cried, and her voice rang out across the graveyard and echoed off the ancient walls of the cathedral.
A woman could never speak out as part of a service in church, but the graveside ceremony was a grey area, a solemn moment that took place outside the church, a time when lay people such as the family of the deceased would sometimes make speeches or pray aloud.
All the same, Caris was sticking her neck out. Bishop Henri was officiating, backed up by Archdeacon Lloyd and Canon Claude. Lloyd had been diocesan clerk for decades, and Claude was a colleague of Henri’s from France. In such distinguished clerical company, it was audacious for a nun to make an unscheduled speech.
Such considerations had never meant much to Caris, of course.
She spoke just as the small coffin was being lowered into the grave. Several of the congregation had begun to cry. The crowd was at least five hundred strong, but they fell silent at the sound of her voice.
“Armed men have come into our town at night and killed a young woman in the nunnery – and I will not stand for it,” she said.
There was a rumble of assent from the crowd.
She raised her voice. “The priory will not stand for it – the bishop will not stand for it – and the men and women of Kingsbridge will not stand for it!”
The support became louder, the crowd shouting: “No!” and “Amen!”
“People say the plague is sent by God. I say that when God sends rain we take shelter. When God sends winter, we build up the fire. When God sends weeds, we pull them up by the roots. We must defend ourselves!”
She glanced at Bishop Henri. He was looking bemused. He had had no warning of this sermon, and if he had been asked for his permission he would have refused it; but he could tell that Caris had the people on her side, and he did not have the nerve to intervene.
“What can we do?”
She looked around. All faces were turned to her expectantly. They had no idea what to do, but they wanted a solution from her. They would cheer at anything she said, if only it gave them hope.
“We must rebuild the city wall!” she cried.
They roared their approval.
“A new wall that is taller, and stronger, and longer than the broken-down old one.” She caught the eye of Ralph. “A wall that will keep murderers out!”
The crowd shouted: “Yes!” Ralph looked away.
“And we must elect a new constable, and a force of deputies and sentries, to uphold the law and enforce good behaviour.”
“Yes!”
“There will be a meeting of the parish guild tonight to work out the practical details, and the guild’s decisions will be announced in church next Sunday. Thank you and God bless you all.”
At the funeral banquet, in the grand dining hall of the prior’s palace, Bishop Henri sat at the head of the table. On his right was Lady Philippa, the widowed countess of Shiring. Next to her was seated the chief mourner, Tilly’s widower, Sir Ralph Fitzgerald.
Ralph was delighted to be next to Philippa. He could stare at her breasts while she concentrated on her food, and every time she leaned forward he could peek down the square neckline of her light summer dress. She did not know it yet, but the time was not far away when he would command her to take off her clothes and stand naked in front of him, and he would see those magnificent breasts in their entirety.
The dinner provided by Caris was ample but not extravagant, he noted. There were no gilded swans or towers of sugar, but there was plenty of roasted meat, boiled fish, new bread, beans and spring berries. He helped Philippa to some soup made of minced chicken with almond milk.
She said to him gravely: “This is a terrible tragedy. You have my most profound sympathy.”
People had been so compassionate that sometimes, for a few moments, Ralph thought of himself as the pitiable victim of a dreadful bereavement, and forgot that he was the one who had slid the knife into Tilly’s young heart. “Thank you,” he said solemnly. “Tilly was so young. But we soldiers get used to sudden death. One day a man will save your life, and swear eternal friendship and loyalty; and the next day he is struck down by a crossbow bolt through the heart, and you forget him.”
She gave him an odd look that reminded him of the way Sir Gregory had regarded him, with a mixture of curiosity and distaste, and he wondered what it was about his attitude to Tilly’s death that provoked this reaction.
Philippa said: “You have a baby boy.”
“Gerry. The nuns are looking after him today, but I’ll take him home to Tench Hall tomorrow. I’ve found a wet nurse.” He saw an opportunity to drop a hint. “Of course, he needs someone to mother him properly.”
“Yes.”
He recalled her own bereavement. “But you know what it is to lose your spouse.”
“I was fortunate to have my beloved William for twenty-one years.”
“You must be lonely.” This might not be the moment to propose, but he thought to edge the conversation towards the subject.
“Indeed. I lost my three men – William and our two sons. The castle seems so empty.”
“But not for long, perhaps.”
She stared at him as if she could not believe her ears, and he realized he had said something offensive. She turned away and spoke to Bishop Henri on her other side.
On Ralph’s right was Philippa’s daughter, Odila. “Would you like some of this pasty?” he said to her. “It’s made with peacocks and hares.” She nodded, and he cut her a slice. “How old are you?” he asked.
“I’ll be fifteen this year.”
She was tall, and had her mother’s figure already, a full bosom and wide, womanly hips. “You seem older,” he said, looking at her breasts.
He intended it as a compliment – young people generally wanted to seem older – but she blushed and looked away.
Ralph looked down at his trencher and speared a chunk of pork cooked with ginger. He ate it moodily. He was not very good at what Gregory called wooing.
Caris was seated on the left of Bishop Henri, with Merthin, as alderman, on her other side. Next to Merthin was Sir Gregory Longfellow, who had come for the funeral of Earl William three months ago and had not yet left the neighbourhood. Caris had to suppress her disgust at being at a table with the murdering Ralph and the man who had, almost certainly, put him up to it. But she had work to do at this dinner. She had a plan for the revival of the town. Rebuilding the walls was only the first part. For the second, she had to get Bishop Henri on her side.
She poured the bishop a goblet of clear red Gascon wine, and he took a long draught. He wiped his mouth and said: “You preach a good sermon.”
“Thank you,” she said, noting the ironic reproof that underlay his compliment. “Life in this town is degenerating into disorder and debauchery, and if we’re to put it right we need to inspire the townspeople. I’m sure you agree.”
“It’s a little late to ask whether I agree with you. However, I do.” Henri was a pragmatist who did not re-fight lost battles. She had been counting on that.
She served herself some heron roasted with pepper and cloves, but did not begin to eat: she had too much to say. “There’s more to my plan than the walls and the constabulary.”
“I thought there might be.”
“I believe that you, as the bishop of Kingsbridge, should have the tallest cathedral in England.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Two hundred years ago this was one of England’s most important priories. It should be so again. A new church tower would symbolize the revival – and your eminence among bishops.”
He smiled wryly, but he was pleased. He knew he was being flattered, and he liked it.
Caris said: “The tower would also serve the town. Being visible from a distance, it would help pilgrims and traders find their way here.”
“How would you pay for it?”
“The priory is wealthy.”
He was surprised again. “Prior Godwyn complained of money problems.”
“He was a hopeless manager.”
“He struck me as rather competent.”
“He struck a lot of people that way, but he made all the wrong decisions. Right at the start he refused to repair the fulling mill, which would have brought him an income; but he spent money on this palace, which returned him nothing.”
“And how have things changed?”
“I’ve sacked most of the bailiffs and replaced them with younger men who are willing to make changes. I’ve converted about half the land to grazing, which is easier to manage in these times of labour shortage. The rest I’ve leased for cash rents with no customary obligations. And we’ve all benefited from inheritance taxes and from the legacies of people who died without heirs because of the plague. The monastery is now as rich as the nunnery.”
“So all the tenants are free?”
“Most. Instead of working one day a week on the demesne farm, and carting the landlord’s hay, and folding their sheep on the landlord’s field, and all those complicated services, they just pay money. They like it better and it certainly makes our life simpler.”
“A lot of landlords – abbots especially – revile that type of tenancy. They say it ruins the peasantry.”
Caris shrugged. “What have we lost? The power to impose petty variations, favouring some serfs and persecuting others, keeping them all subservient. Monks and nuns have no business tyrannizing peasants. Farmers know what crops to sow and what they can sell at market. They work better left to themselves.”
The bishop looked suspicious. “So you feel the priory can pay for a new tower?”
He had been expecting her to ask him for money, she guessed. “Yes – with some assistance from the town’s merchants. And that’s where you can help us.”
“I thought there must be something.”
“I’m not asking you for money. What I want from you is worth more than money.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“I want to apply to the king for a borough charter.” As she said the words, Caris felt her hands begin to shake. She was taken back to the battle she had fought with Godwyn, ten years ago, that had ended in her being accused of witchcraft. The issue then had been the borough charter, and she had nearly died fighting for it. Circumstances now were completely different, but the charter was no less important. She put down her eating knife and clasped her hands together in her lap to keep them still.
“I see,” said Henri noncommittally.
Caris swallowed hard and went on. “It’s essential for the regeneration of the town’s commercial life. For a long time Kingsbridge has been held back by the dead hand of priory rule. Priors are cautious and conservative, and instinctively say no to any change or innovation. Merchants live by change – they’re always looking for new ways to make money, or at least the good ones are. If we want the men of Kingsbridge to help pay for our new tower, we must give them the freedom they need to prosper.”
“A borough charter.”
“The town would have its own court, set its own regulations, and be ruled by a proper guild, rather than the parish guild we have now, which has no real power.”
“But would the king grant it?”
“Kings like boroughs, which pay lots of taxes. But, in the past, the prior of Kingsbridge has always opposed a charter.”
“You think priors are too conservative.”
“Timid.”
“Well,” said the bishop with a laugh, “timidity is a thing you’ll never be accused of.”
Caris pressed her point. “I think a charter is essential if we’re to build the new tower.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“So, do you agree?”
“To the tower, or the charter?”
“They go together.”
Henri seemed amused. “Are you making a deal with me, Mother Caris?”
“If you’re willing.”
“All right. Build me a tower, and I’ll help you get a charter.”
“No. It has to be the other way around. We need the charter first.”
“So I must trust you.”
“Is that difficult?”
“To be honest, no.”
“Good. Then we’re agreed.”
“Yes.”
Caris leaned forward and looked past Merthin. “Sir Gregory?”
“Yes, Mother Caris?”
She forced herself to be polite to him. “Have you tried this rabbit in sugar gravy? I recommend it.”
Gregory accepted the bowl and took some. “Thank you.”
Caris said to him: “You will recall that Kingsbridge is not a borough.”
“I certainly do.” Gregory had used that fact, more than a decade ago, to outmanoeuvre Caris in the royal court in the dispute over the fulling mill.
“The bishop thinks it’s time for us to ask the king for a charter.”
Gregory nodded. “I believe the king might look favourably on such a plea – especially if it were presented to him in the right way.”
Hoping that her distaste was not showing on her face, she said: “Perhaps you would be kind enough to advise us.”
“May we discuss this in more detail later?”
Gregory would require a bribe, of course, though he would undoubtedly call it a lawyer’s fee. “By all means,” she said, repressing a shudder.
The servants began clearing away the food. Caris looked down at her trencher. She had not eaten anything.
“Our families are related,” Ralph was saying to Lady Philippa. “Not closely, of course,” he added hastily. “But my father is descended from that earl of Shiring who was the son of Lady Aliena and Jack Builder.” He looked across the table at his brother Merthin, the alderman. “I think I inherited the blood of the earls, and my brother that of the builders.”
He looked at Philippa’s face to see how she took that. She did not seem impressed.
“I was brought up in the household of your late father-in-law, Earl Roland,” he went on.
“I remember you as a squire.”
“I served under the earl in the king’s army in France. At the battle of Crécy, I saved the life of the prince of Wales.”
“My goodness, how splendid,” she said politely.
He was trying to get her to see him as an equal, so that it would seem more natural when he told her that she was to be his wife. But he did not appear to be getting through to her. She just looked bored and a bit puzzled by the direction of his conversation.
The dessert was served: sugared strawberries, honey wafers, dates and raisins, and spiced wine. Ralph drained a cup of wine and poured more, hoping that the drink would help him relax with Philippa. He was not sure why he found it difficult to talk to her. Because this was his wife’s funeral? Because Philippa was a countess? Or because he had been hopelessly in love with her for years, and could not believe that now, at last, she really was to be his wife?
“When you leave here, will you go back to Earlscastle?” he asked her.
“Yes. We depart tomorrow.”
“Will you stay there long?”
“Where else would I go?” She frowned. “Why do you ask?”
“I will come and visit you there, if I may.”
Her response was frosty. “To what end?”
“I want to discuss with you a subject that it would not be appropriate to raise here and now.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I’ll come and see you in the next few days.”
She looked agitated. In a raised voice she said: “What could you possibly have to say to me?”
“As I said, it wouldn’t be appropriate to speak of it today.”
“Because this is your wife’s funeral?”
He nodded.
She went pale. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You can’t mean to suggest…”
“I told you, I don’t want to discuss it now.”
“But I must know!” she cried. “Are you planning to propose marriage to me?”
He hesitated, shrugged, and then nodded.
“But on what grounds?” she said. “Surely you need the king’s permission!”
He looked at her and raised his eyebrows briefly.
She stood up suddenly. “No!” she said. Everyone around the table looked at her. She stared at Gregory. “Is this true?” she said. “Is the king going to marry me to him?” She jerked a thumb contemptuously at Ralph.
Ralph felt stabbed. He had not expected her to display such revulsion. Was he so repellent?
Gregory looked reproachfully at Ralph. “This was not the moment to raise the matter.”
Philippa cried: “So it’s true! God save me!”
Ralph caught Odila’s eye. She was staring at him in horror. What had he ever done to earn her dislike?
Philippa said: “I can’t bear it.”
“Why?” Ralph said. “What is so wrong? What right have you to look down on me and my family?” He looked around at the company: his brother, his ally Gregory, the bishop, the prioress, minor noblemen and leading citizens. They were all silent, shocked and intrigued by Philippa’s outburst.
Philippa ignored his question. Addressing Gregory, she said: “I will not do it! I will not, do you hear me?” She was white with rage, but tears ran down her cheeks. Ralph thought how beautiful she was, even while she was rejecting and humiliating him so painfully.
Gregory said coolly: “It is not your decision, Lady Philippa, and it certainly is not mine. The king will do as he pleases,”
“You may force me into a wedding dress, and you may march me up the aisle,” Philippa raged. She pointed at Bishop Henri. “But when the bishop asks me if I take Ralph Fitzgerald to be my husband I will not say yes! I will not! Never, never, never!”
She stormed out of the room, and Odila followed.
When the banquet was over, the townspeople returned to their homes, and the important guests went to their rooms to sleep off the feast. Caris supervised the clearing up. She felt sorry for Philippa, profoundly sorry, knowing – as Philippa did not – that Ralph had killed his first wife. But she was concerned about the fate of an entire town, not just one person. Her mind was on her scheme for Kingsbridge. Things had gone better than she imagined. The townspeople had cheered her, and the bishop had agreed to everything she proposed. Perhaps civilization would return to Kingsbridge, despite the plague.
Outside the back door, where there was a pile of meat bones and crusts of bread, she saw Godwyn’s cat, Archbishop, delicately picking at the carcase of a duck. She shooed it away. It scampered a few yards then slowed to a stiff walk, its white-tipped tail arrogantly upstanding.
Deep in thought, she went up the stairs of the palace, thinking of how she would begin implementing the changes agreed to by Henri. Without pausing, she opened the door of the bedroom she shared with Merthin and stepped inside.
For a moment she was disoriented. Two men stood in the middle of the room, and she thought: I must be in the wrong house, and then: I must be in the wrong room, before she remembered that her room, being the best bedroom, had naturally been given to the bishop.
The two men were Henri and his assistant, Canon Claude. It took Caris a moment to realize that they were both naked, with their arms around one another, kissing.
She stared at them in shock. “Oh!” she said.
They had not heard the door. Until she spoke, they did not realize they were observed. When they heard her gasp of surprise they both turned towards her. A look of horrified guilt came over Henri’s face, and his mouth fell open.
“I’m sorry!” Caris said.
The men sprang apart, as if hoping they might be able to deny what was going on; then they remembered they were naked. Henri was plump, with a round belly and fat arms and legs, and grey hair on his chest. Claude was younger and slimmer, with very little body hair except for a blaze of chestnut at his groin. Caris had never before looked at two erect penises at the same time.
“I beg your pardon!” she said, mortified with embarrassment. “My mistake. I forgot.” She realized that she was babbling and they were dumbstruck. It did not matter: nothing that anyone could say would make the situation any better.
Coming to her senses, she backed out of the room and slammed the door.
Merthin walked away from the banquet with Madge Webber. He was fond of this small, chunky woman, with her chin jutting out in front and her bottom jutting out behind. He admired the way she had carried on after her husband and children had died of the plague. She had continued the enterprise, weaving cloth and dyeing it red according to Caris’s recipe. She said to him: “Good for Caris. She’s right, as usual. We can’t go on like this.”
“You’ve continued normally, despite everything,” he said.
“My only problem is finding the people to do the work.”
“Everyone is the same. I can’t get builders.”
“Raw wool is cheap, but rich people will still pay high prices for good scarlet cloth,” Madge said. “I could sell more if I could produce more.”
Merthin said thoughtfully: “You know, I saw a faster type of loom in Florence – a treadle loom.”
“Oh?” She looked at him with alert curiosity. “I never heard of that.”
He wondered how to explain. “In any loom, you stretch a number of threads over the frame to form what you call the warp, then you weave another thread crossways through the warp, under one thread and over the next, under and over, from one side to the other and back again, to form the weft.”
“That’s how simple looms work, yes. Ours are better.”
“I know. To make the process quicker, you attach every second warp thread to a movable bar, called a heddle, so that when you shift the heddle, half the threads are lifted away from the rest. Then, instead of going over and under, over and under, you can simply pass the weft thread straight through the gap in one easy movement. Then you drop the heddle below the warp for the return pass.”
“Yes. By the way, the weft thread is wound on a bobbin.”
“Each time you pass the bobbin through the warp from left to right, you have to put it down, then use both hands to move the heddle, then pick up the bobbin again and bring it back from right to left.”
“Exactly.”
“In a treadle loom, you move the heddle with your feet. So you never have to put the bobbin down.”
“Really? My soul!”
“That would make a difference, wouldn’t it?”
“A huge difference. You could weave twice as much – more!”
“That’s what I thought. Shall I build one for you to try?”
“Yes, please!”
“I don’t remember exactly how it was constructed. I think the treadle operated a system of pulleys and levers…” He frowned, thinking. “Anyway, I’m sure I can figure it out.”
Late in the afternoon, as Caris was passing the library, she met Canon Claude coming out, carrying a small book. He caught her eye and stopped. They both immediately thought of the scene Caris had stumbled upon an hour ago. At first Claude looked embarrassed, but then a grin lifted the corners of his mouth. His put his hand to his face to cover it, obviously feeling it was wrong to be amused. Caris remembered how startled the two naked men had been and she, too, felt inappropriate laughter bubbling up inside her. On impulse, she said what was in her mind: “The two of you did look funny!” Claude giggled despite himself, and Caris could not help chuckling too, and they made each other worse, until they fell into one another’s arms, tears streaming down their cheeks, helpless with laughter.
That evening, Caris took Merthin to the south-west corner of the priory grounds, where the vegetable garden grew alongside the river. The air was mild, and the moist earth gave up a fragrance of new growth. Caris could see spring onions and radishes. “So, your brother is to be the earl of Shiring,” she said.
“Not if Lady Philippa has anything to do with it.”
“A countess has to do what she is told by the king, doesn’t she?”
“All women should be subservient to men, in theory,” Merthin said with a grin. “Some defy convention, though.”
“I can’t think who you mean.”
Merthin’s mood changed abruptly. “What a world,” he said. “A man murders his wife, and the king elevates him to the highest rank of the nobility.”
“We know these things happen,” she said. “But it’s shocking when it’s your own family. Poor Tilly.”
Merthin rubbed his eyes as if to erase visions. “Why have you brought me here?”
“To talk about the final element in my plan: the new hospital.”
“Ah. I was wondering…”
“Could you build it here?”
Merthin looked around. “I don’t see why not. It’s a sloping site, but the entire priory is built on a slope, and we’re not talking about putting up another cathedral. One storey or two?”
“One. But I want the building divided into medium-sized rooms, each containing just four or six beds, so that diseases don’t spread so quickly from one patient to everyone else in the place. It must have its own pharmacy – a large, well-lit room – for the preparation of medicines, with a herb garden outside. And a spacious, airy latrine with piped water, very easy to keep clean. In fact the whole building must have lots of light and space. But, most importantly, it has to be at least a hundred yards from the rest of the priory. We have to separate the sick from the well. That’s the key feature.”
“I’ll do some drawings in the morning.”
She glanced around and, seeing that they were not observed, she kissed him. “This is going to be the culmination of my life’s work, do you realize that?”
“You’re thirty-two – isn’t it a little early to be talking about the culmination of your life’s work?”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“It won’t take long. I’ll start on it while I’m digging the foundations for the new tower. Then, as soon as the hospital is built, I can switch my masons to work on the cathedral.”
They started to walk back. She could tell that his real enthusiasm was for the tower. “How tall will it be?”
“Four hundred and five feet.”
“How high is Salisbury?”
“Four hundred and four.”
“So it will be the highest building in England.”
“Until someone builds a higher one, yes.”
So he would achieve his ambition too, she thought. She put her arm through his as they walked to the prior’s palace. She felt happy. That was strange, wasn’t it? Thousands of Kingsbridge people had died of the plague, and Tilly had been murdered, but Caris felt hopeful. It was because she had a plan, of course. She always felt better when she had a plan. The new walls, the constabulary, the tower, the borough charter, and most of all the new hospital: how would she find time to organize it all?
Arm in arm with Merthin, she walked into the prior’s house. Bishop Henri and Sir Gregory were there, deep in conversation with a third man who had his back to Caris. There was something unpleasantly familiar about the newcomer, even from behind, and Caris felt a tremor of unease. Then he turned around and she saw his face: sardonic, triumphant, sneering, and full of malice.
It was Philemon.
Bishop Henri and the other guests left Kingsbridge the next morning. Caris, who had been sleeping in the nuns’ dormitory, returned to the prior’s palace after breakfast and went upstairs to her room.
She found Philemon there.
It was the second time in two days that she had been startled by men in her bedroom. However, Philemon was alone and fully dressed, standing by the window looking at a book. Seeing him in profile, she realized that the trials of the last six months had left him thinner.
She said: “What are you doing here?”
He pretended to be surprised by the question. “This is the prior’s house. Why should I not be here?”
“Because it’s not your room!”
“I am the sub-prior of Kingsbridge. I have never been dismissed from that post. The prior is dead. Who else should live here?”
“Me, of course.”
“You’re not even a monk.”
“Bishop Henri made me acting prior – and last night, despite your return, he did not dismiss me from this post. I am your superior, and you must obey me.”
“But you’re a nun, and you must live with the nuns, not with the monks.”
“I’ve been living here for months.”
“Alone?”
Suddenly Caris saw that she was on shaky ground. Philemon knew that she and Merthin had been living more or less as man and wife. They had been discreet, not flaunting their relationship, but people guessed these things, and Philemon had a wild beast’s instinct for weakness.
She considered. She could insist on Philemon’s leaving the building immediately. If necessary, she could have him thrown out: Thomas and the novices would obey her, not Philemon. But what then? Philemon would do all he could to call attention to what Merthin and she were up to in the palace. He would create a controversy, and leading townspeople would take sides. Most would support Caris, almost whatever she did, such was her reputation; but there would be some who would censure her behaviour. The conflict would weaken her authority and undermine everything else she wanted to do. It would be better to admit defeat.
“You may have the bedroom,” she said. “But not the hall. I use that for meetings with leading townspeople and visiting dignitaries. When you’re not attending services in the church, you will be in the cloisters, not here. A sub-prior does not have a palace.” She left without giving him a chance to argue. She had saved face, but he had won.
She had been reminded last night of how wily Philemon was. Questioned by Bishop Henri, he seemed to have a plausible explanation for everything dishonourable that he had done. How did he justify deserting his post at the priory and running away to St-John-in-the-Forest? The monastery had been in danger of extinction, and the only way to save it had been to flee, in accordance with the saying: “Leave early, go far and stay long.” It was still, by general consent, the only sure way to avoid the plague. Their sole mistake had been to remain too long in Kingsbridge. Why, then, had no one informed the bishop of this plan? Philemon was sorry, but he and the other monks were only obeying the orders of Prior Godwyn. Then why had he run away from St John when the plague caught up with them there? He had been called by God to minister to the people of Monmouth, and Godwyn had given him permission to leave. How come Brother Thomas did not know about this permission, in fact denied firmly that it had ever been given? The other monks had not been told of Godwyn’s decision for fear it would cause jealousy. Why, then, had Philemon left Monmouth? He had met Friar Murdo, who had told him that Kingsbridge Priory needed him, and he regarded this as a further message from God.
Caris concluded that Philemon had run from the plague until he had realized he must be one of those fortunate people who were not prone to catch it. Then he had learned from Murdo that Caris was sleeping with Merthin in the prior’s palace, and he had immediately seen how he could exploit that situation to restore his own fortunes. God had nothing to do with it.
But Bishop Henri had believed Philemon’s tale. Philemon was careful to appear humble to the point of obsequiousness. Henri did not know the man, and failed to see beneath the surface.
She left Philemon in the palace and walked to the cathedral. She climbed the long, narrow spiral staircase in the north-west tower and found Merthin in the mason’s loft, drawing designs on the tracing floor in the light from the tall north-facing windows.
She looked with interest at what he had done. It was always difficult to read plans, she found. The thin lines scratched in the mortar had to be transformed, in the viewer’s imagination, into thick walls of stone with windows and doors.
Merthin regarded her expectantly as she studied his work. He was obviously anticipating a big reaction.
At first she was baffled by the drawing. It looked nothing like a hospital. She said: “But you’ve drawn… a cloister!”
“Exactly,” he said. “Why should a hospital be a long narrow room like the nave of a church? You want the place to be light and airy. So, instead of cramming the rooms together, I’ve set them around a quadrangle.”
She visualized it: the square of grass, the building around, the doors leading to rooms of four or six beds, the nuns moving from room to room in the shelter of the covered arcade. “It’s inspired!” she said. “I would never have thought of it, but it will be perfect.”
“You can grow herbs in the quadrangle, where the plants will have sunshine but be sheltered from the wind. There will be a fountain in the middle of the garden, for fresh water, and it can drain through the latrine wing to the south and into the river.”
She kissed him exuberantly. “You’re so clever!” Then she recalled the news she had to tell him.
He must have seen her face fall, for he said: “What’s the matter?”
“We have to move out of the palace,” she said. She told him about her conversation with Philemon, and why she had given in. “I foresee major conflicts with Philemon – I don’t want this to be the one on which I make my stand.”
“That makes sense,” he said. His tone of voice was reasonable, but she knew by his face that he was angry. He stared at his drawing, though he was not really thinking about it.
“And there’s something else,” she said. “We’re telling everyone they have to live as normally as possible – order in the streets, a return to real family life, no more drunken orgies. We ought to set an example.”
He nodded. “A prioress living with her lover is about as abnormal as could be, I suppose,” he said. Once again his equable tone was contradicted by his furious expression.
“I’m very sorry,” she said.
“So am I.”
“But we don’t want to risk everything we both want – your tower, my hospital, the future of the town.”
“No. But we’re sacrificing our life together.”
“Not entirely. We’ll have to sleep separately, which is painful, but we’ll have plenty of opportunities to be together.”
“Where?”
She shrugged, “Here, for example.” An imp of mischief possessed her. She walked away from him across the room, slowly lifting the skirt of her robe, and went to the doorway at the top of the stairs. “I don’t see anyone coming,” she said as she raised her dress to her waist.
“You can hear them, anyway,” he said. “The door at the foot of the stairs makes a noise.”
She bent over, pretending to look down the staircase. “Can you see anything unusual, from where you are?”
He chuckled. She could usually pull him out of an angry mood by being playful. “I can see something winking at me,” he laughed.
She walked back towards him, still holding her robe up around her waist, smiling triumphantly. “You see, we don’t have to give up everything.”
He sat on a stool and pulled her towards him. She straddled his thighs and lowered herself on to his lap. “You’d better get a straw mattress up here,” she said, her voice thick with desire.
He nuzzled her breasts. “How would I explain the need for a bed in a mason’s loft?” he murmured.
“Just say that masons need somewhere soft to put their tools.”
A week later Caris and Thomas Langley went to inspect the rebuilding of the city wall. It was a big job but simple and, once the line had been agreed, the actual stonework could be done by inexperienced young masons and apprentices. Caris was glad the project had begun so promptly. It was necessary that the town be able to defend itself in troubled times – but she had a more important motive. Getting the townspeople to guard against disruption from outside would lead naturally, she hoped, to a new awareness of the need for order and good behaviour among themselves.
She found it deeply ironic that fate had cast her in this role. She had never been a rule keeper. She had always despised orthodoxy and flouted convention. She felt she had the right to make her own rules. Now here she was clamping down on merrymakers. It was a miracle that no one had yet called her a hypocrite.
The truth was that some people flourished in an atmosphere of anarchy, and others did not. Merthin was one of those who were better off without constraints. She recalled the carving he had made of the wise and foolish virgins. It was different from anything anyone had seen before – so Elfric had made that his excuse for destroying it. Regulation only served to handicap Merthin. But men such as Barney and Lou, the slaughterhouse workers, had to have laws to stop them maiming one another in drunken fights.
All the same, her position was shaky. When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.
She was mulling over this as she returned with Thomas to the priory. Outside the cathedral she found Sister Joan pacing up and down in a state of agitation. “I’m so angry with Philemon,” she said. “He claims you have stolen his money, and I must give it back!”
“Just calm down,” Caris said. She led Joan into the porch of the church, and they sat on a stone bench. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
“Philemon came up to me after Terce and said he needed ten shillings to buy candles for the shrine of St Adolphus. I said I would have to ask you.”
“Quite right.”
“He became very angry and shouted that it was the monks’ money, and I had no right to refuse him. He demanded my keys, and I think he would have tried to snatch them from me, but I pointed out that they would be no use to him, as he didn’t know where the treasury was.”
“What a good idea it was to keep that secret,” Caris said.
Thomas was standing beside them, listening. He said: “I notice he picked a time when I was off the premises – the coward.”
Caris said: “Joan, you did absolutely right to refuse him, and I’m sorry he tried to bully you. Thomas, go and find him and bring him to me at the palace.”
She left them and walked through the graveyard, deep in thought. Clearly, Philemon was set on making trouble. But he was not the kind of blustering bully whom she could have overpowered with ease. He was a wily opponent, and she must watch her step.
When she opened the door of the prior’s house, Philemon was there in the hall, sitting at the head of the long table.
She stopped in the doorway. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I specifically told you-”
“I was looking for you,” he said.
She realized she would have to lock the building. Otherwise he would always find a pretext for flouting her orders. She controlled her anger. “You looked for me in the wrong place,” she said.
“I’ve found you now, though, haven’t I?”
She studied him. He had shaved and cut his hair since his arrival, and he wore a new robe. He was every inch the priory official, calm and authoritative. She said: “I’ve been speaking to Sister Joan. She’s very upset.”
“So am I.”
She realized he was sitting in the big chair, and she was standing in front of him, as if he were in charge and she a supplicant. How clever he was at manipulating these things. She said: “If you need money, you must ask me.”
“I’m the sub-prior!”
“And I’m the acting prior, which makes me your superior.” She raised her voice. “So the first thing you must do is stand up when you’re speaking to me!”
He started, shocked by her tone; then he controlled himself. With insulting slowness he pulled himself out of the chair.
Caris sat down in his place and let him stand.
He seemed unabashed. “I understand you’re using monastery money to pay for the new tower.”
“By order of the bishop, yes.”
A flash of annoyance crossed his face. He had hoped to ingratiate himself and make the bishop his ally against Caris. Even as a child he had toadied unendingly to people in authority. That was how he had gained admission to the monastery.
He said: “I must have access to the monastery’s money. It’s my right. The monks’ assets should be in my charge.”
“The last time you were in charge of the monks’ assets, you stole them.”
He went pale: that arrow had struck the bull’s eye. “Ridiculous,” he blustered, trying to cover his embarrassment. “Prior Godwyn took them for safekeeping.”
“Well, nobody is going to take them for ‘safekeeping’ while I’m acting prior.”
“You should at least give me the ornaments. They are sacred jewels, to be handled by priests, not women.”
“Thomas has been dealing with them quite adequately, taking them out for services and restoring them to our treasury afterwards.”
“It’s not satisfactory-”
Caris remembered something, and interrupted him. “Besides, you haven’t yet returned all that you took.”
“The money-”
“The ornaments. There’s a gold candlestick missing, a gift from the chandlers’ guild. What happened to that?”
His reaction surprised her. She was expecting another blustering denial. But he looked embarrassed and said: “That was always kept in the prior’s room.”
She frowned. “And…?”
“I kept it separate from the other ornaments.”
She was astonished. “Are you telling me that you have had the candlestick all this time?”
“Godwyn asked me to look after it.”
“And so you took it with you on your travels to Monmouth and elsewhere?”
“That was his wish.”
This was a wildly implausible tale, and Philemon knew it. The fact was that he had stolen the candlestick. “Do you still have it?”
He nodded uncomfortably.
At that moment, Thomas came in. “There you are!” he said to Philemon.
Caris said: “Thomas, go upstairs and search Philemon’s room.”
“What am I looking for?”
“The lost gold candlestick.”
Philemon said: “No need to search. You’ll see it on the prie-dieu.”
Thomas went upstairs and came down again carrying the candlestick. He handed it to Caris. It was heavy. She looked at it curiously. The base was engraved with the names of the twelve members of the chandlers’ guild in tiny letters. Why had Philemon wanted it? Not to sell or melt down, obviously: he had had plenty of time to get rid of it but he had not done so. It seemed he had just wanted to have his own gold candlestick. Did he gaze at it and touch it when he was alone in his room?
She looked at him and saw tears in his eyes.
He said: “Are you going to take it from me?”
It was a stupid question. “Of course,” she replied. “It belongs in the cathedral, not in your bedroom. The chandlers gave it for the glory of God and the beautification of church services, not the private pleasure of one monk.”
He did not argue. He looked bereft, but not penitent. He did not understand that he had done wrong. His grief was not remorse for wrongdoing, but regret for what had been taken from him. He had no sense of shame, she realized.
“I think that ends our discussion about your access to the priory’s valuables,” she said to Philemon. “Now you may go.” He went out.
She handed the candlestick back to Thomas. “Take it to Sister Joan and tell her to put it away,” she said. “We’ll inform the chandlers that it has been found, and use it next Sunday.”
Thomas went off.
Caris stayed where she was, thinking. Philemon hated her. She wasted no time wondering why: he made enemies faster than a tinker made friends. But he was an implacable foe and completely without scruples. Clearly he was determined to make trouble for her at every opportunity. Things would never get better. Each time she overcame him in one of these little skirmishes, his malice would burn hotter. But if she let him win he would only be encouraged in his insubordination.
It was going to be a bloody battle, and she could not see how it would end.
The flagellants came back on a Saturday evening in June.
Caris was in the scriptorium, writing her book. She had decided to begin with the plague and how to deal with it, then go on to lesser ailments. She was describing the linen face masks she had introduced in the Kingsbridge hospital. It was hard to explain that the masks were effective but did not offer total immunity. The only certain safeguard was to leave town before the plague arrived and stay away until it had gone, but that was never going to be an option for the majority of people. Partial protection was a difficult concept for people who believed in miracle cures. The truth was that some masked nuns still caught the plague, but not as many as would otherwise have been expected. She decided to compare the masks to shields. A shield did not guarantee that a man would survive attack, but it certainly gave him valuable protection, and no knight would go into battle without one. She was writing this down, on a pristine sheet of blank parchment, when she heard the flagellants, and groaned in dismay.
The drums sounded like drunken footsteps, the bagpipes like a wild creature in pain and the bells like a parody of a funeral. She went outside just as the procession entered the precincts. There were more of them this time, seventy or eighty, and they seemed wilder than before: their hair long and matted, their clothing a few shreds, their shrieks more lunatic. They had already been around the town and gathered a long tail of followers, some looking on in amusement, others joining in, tearing their clothes and lashing themselves.
She had not expected to see them again. The pope, Clement VI, had condemned flagellants. But he was a long way away, at Avignon, and it was up to others to enforce his rulings.
Friar Murdo led them, as before. When he approached the west front of the cathedral, Caris saw to her astonishment that the great doors were open wide. She had not authorized that. Thomas would not have done it without asking her. Philemon must be responsible. She recalled that Philemon on his travels had met up with Murdo. She guessed that Murdo had forewarned Philemon of this visit and they had conspired together to get the flagellants into the church. No doubt Philemon would argue that he was the only ordained priest in the priory, therefore he had the right to decide what kind of services were conducted.
But what was Philemon’s motive? Why did he care about Murdo and the flagellants?
Murdo led the procession through the tall central doorway and into the nave. The townspeople crowded in afterwards. Caris hesitated to join in such a display, but she felt the need to know what was going on, so she reluctantly followed the crowd inside.
Philemon was at the altar. Friar Murdo joined him. Philemon raised his hands for quiet, then said: “We come here today to confess our wickedness, repent our sins and do penance in propitiation.”
Philemon was no preacher, and his words drew a muted reaction; but the charismatic Murdo immediately took over. “We confess that our thoughts are lascivious and our deeds are filthy!” he cried, and they shouted their approval.
The proceedings took the same form as before. Worked into a frenzy by Murdo’s preaching, people came to the front, cried out that they were sinners and flogged themselves. The townspeople looked on, mesmerized by the violence and nudity. It was a performance, but the lashes were real, and Caris shuddered to see the weals and cuts on the backs of the penitents. Some of them had done this many times before, and were scarred. Others had recent wounds that were reopened by the fresh whipping.
Townspeople soon joined in. As they came forward, Philemon held out a collection bowl, and Caris realized that his motivation was money. Nobody got to confess and kiss Murdo’s feet until they put a coin in Philemon’s bowl. Murdo was keeping an eye on the takings, and Caris assumed the two men would share out the coins afterwards.
There was a crescendo of drumming and piping as more and more townspeople came forward. Philemon’s bowl filled up rapidly. Those who had been ‘forgiven’ danced ecstatically to the mad music.
Eventually all the penitents were dancing and no more were coming forward. The music built to a climax and stopped suddenly, whereupon Caris noticed that Murdo and Philemon had disappeared. She assumed they had slipped out through the south transept to count their takings in the monks’ cloisters.
The spectacle was over. The dancers lay down, exhausted. The spectators began to disperse, drifting out through the open doors into the clean air of the summer evening. Soon Murdo’s followers found the strength to leave the church, and Caris did the same. She saw that most of the flagellants were heading for the Holly Bush.
She returned with relief to the cool hush of the nunnery. As dusk gathered in the cloisters, the nuns attended Evensong and ate their supper. Before going to bed, Caris went to check on the hospital. The place was still full: the plague raged unabated.
She found little to criticize. Sister Oonagh followed Caris’s principles: face masks, no bloodletting, fanatical cleanliness. Caris was about to go to bed when one of the flagellants was brought in.
It was a man who had fainted in the Holly Bush and cracked his head on a bench. His back was still bleeding, and Caris guessed that loss of blood was as much responsible as the blow to his head for the loss of consciousness.
Oonagh bathed his wounds with salt water while he was unconscious. To bring him round, she set fire to the antler of a deer and wafted the pungent smoke under his nose. Then she made him drink two pints of water mixed with cinnamon and sugar, to replace the fluid his body had lost.
But he was only the first. Several more men and women were brought in suffering from some combination of loss of blood, excess of strong drink and injuries received in accidents or fights. The orgy of flagellation increased the number of Saturday-night patients tenfold. There was also a man who had flogged himself so many times that his back was putrid. Finally, after midnight, a woman was brought in after having been tied up, flogged and raped.
Fury stoked up in Caris as she worked with the other nuns to tend these patients. All their injuries arose from the perverted notions of religion put about by men such as Murdo. They said the plague was God’s punishment for sin, but people could avoid the plague by punishing themselves another way. It was as if God were a vengeful monster playing a game with insane rules. Caris believed that God’s sense of justice must be more sophisticated than that of the twelve-year-old leader of a boys’ gang.
She worked until Matins on Sunday morning, then went to sleep for a couple of hours. When she got up, she went to see Merthin.
He was now living in the grandest of the houses he had built on Leper Island. It was on the south shore, and stood in a broad garden newly planted with apple and pear trees. He had hired a middle-aged couple to take care of Lolla and maintain the place. Their names were Arnaud and Emily, but they called one another Arn and Em. Caris found Em in the kitchen, and was directed to the garden.
Merthin was showing Lolla how her name was written, using a pointed stick to form the letters in a patch of bare earth, and he made her laugh by drawing a face in the ‘o’. She was four years old, a pretty girl with olive skin and brown eyes.
Watching them, Caris suffered a pang of regret. She had been sleeping with Merthin for almost half a year. She did not want to have a baby, for it would mean the end of all her ambitions; yet a part of her was sorry that she had not become pregnant. She was torn, which was probably why she had taken the risk. But it had not happened. She wondered whether she had lost the ability to conceive. Perhaps the potion Mattie Wise had given her to abort her pregnancy a decade ago had harmed her womb in some way. As always, she wished she knew more about the body and its ills.
Merthin kissed her and they walked around the grounds, with Lolla running in front of them, playing in her imagination an elaborate and impenetrable game that involved talking to each tree. The garden looked raw, all the plants new, the soil carted in from elsewhere to enrich the island’s stony ground. “I’ve come to talk to you about the flagellants,” Caris said, and she told him about last night at the hospital. “I want to ban them from Kingsbridge,” she finished.
“Good idea,” Merthin said. “The whole performance is just another money-maker for Murdo.”
“And Philemon. He was holding the bowl. Will you talk to the parish guild?”
“Of course.”
As acting prior, Caris was in the position of lord of the manor, and she could theoretically have banned the flagellants herself, without asking anyone else. However, her application for a borough charter was before the king, and she expected soon to hand over the government of the town to the guild, so she treated the current situation as a transition. Besides, it was always smarter to win support before trying to enforce a rule.
She said: “I’d like to have the constable escort Murdo and his followers out of town before the midday service.”
“Philemon will be furious.”
“He shouldn’t have opened the church to them without consulting anyone.” Caris knew there would be trouble, but she could not allow fear of Philemon’s reaction to prevent her doing the right thing for the town. “We’ve got the pope on our side. If we handle this discreetly and move fast, we can solve the problem before Philemon’s had breakfast.”
“All right,” said Merthin. “I’ll try to get the guildsmen together at the Holly Bush.”
“I’ll meet you there in an hour.”
The parish guild was badly depleted, like every other organization in town, but a handful of leading merchants had survived the plague, including Madge Webber, Jake Chepstow and Edward Slaughterhouse. The new constable, John’s son Mungo, attended, and his deputies waited outside for their instructions.
The discussion did not last long. None of the leading citizens had taken part in the orgy, and they ail disapproved of such public displays. The pope’s ruling clinched the matter. Formally, Caris as prior promulgated a by-law forbidding whipping in the streets and public nudity, with violators to be expelled from the town by the constable on the instructions of any three guildsmen. The guild then passed a resolution supporting the new law.
Then Mungo went upstairs and roused Friar Murdo from his bed.
Murdo did not go quietly. Coming down the stairs he raved, he wept, he prayed and he cursed. Two of Mungo’s deputies took him by the arms and half carried him out of the tavern. In the street he became louder. Mungo led the way, and the guildsmen followed. Some of Murdo’s adherents came to protest and were themselves put under escort. A few townspeople tagged along as the group headed down the main street towards Merthin’s bridge. None of the citizens objected to what was being done, and Philemon did not appear. Even some who had flogged themselves yesterday said nothing today, looking a bit shamefaced about it all.
The crowd fell away as the group crossed the bridge. With a reduced audience, Murdo became quieter. His righteous indignation was replaced by smouldering malevolence. Released at the far end of the double bridge, he stumped away through the suburbs without looking back. A handful of disciples trailed after him uncertainly.
Caris had a feeling she would not see him again.
She thanked Mungo and his men, then returned to the nunnery.
In the hospital, Oonagh was releasing the overnight accident cases to make room for new plague victims. Caris worked in the hospital until midday, then left gratefully and led the procession into the church for the main Sunday service. She found she was looking forward to an hour or two of psalms and prayers and a boring sermon: it would seem restful.
Philemon had a thunderous look when he led Thomas and the novice monks in. He had obviously heard about the expulsion of Murdo. No doubt he had seen the flagellants as a source of income for himself independent of Caris. That hope had been dashed, and he was livid.
For a moment, Caris wondered what he would do in his anger. Then she thought: Let him do what he likes. If it were not this, it would be something else. Whatever she did, sooner or later Philemon would be angry with her. There was no point in worrying about it.
She nodded off during the prayers and woke up when he began to preach. The pulpit seemed to heighten his charmlessness, and his sermons were poorly received, in general. However, today he grabbed the attention of his audience at the start by announcing that his subject would be fornication.
He took as his text a verse from St Paul’s first letter to the early Christians at Corinth. He read it in Latin, then translated it in ringing tones: “Now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone who is a fornicator!”
He elaborated tediously on the meaning of keeping company. “Don’t eat with them, don’t drink with them, don’t live with them, don’t talk to them.” But Caris was wondering anxiously where he was going with this. Surely he would not dare to attack her directly from the pulpit? She glanced across the choir to Thomas, on the other side with the novice monks, and caught a worried look from him.
She looked again at Philemon’s face, dark with resentment, and realized he was capable of anything.
“Who does this refer to?” he asked rhetorically. “Not to outsiders, the saint specifically writes. It is for God to judge them. But, he says, you are judges within the fellowship.” He pointed at the congregation. “You!” He looked down again at the book and read: “Put away from among yourselves that wicked person!”
The congregation was quiet. They sensed that this was not the usual generalized exhortation to better behaviour. Philemon had a message.
“We must look around ourselves,” he said. “In our town – in our church – in our priory! Are there any fornicators? If so, they must be put out!”
There was no doubt now in Caris’s mind that he was referring to her. And the more astute townspeople would have come to the same conclusion. But what could she do? She could hardly get up and contradict him. She could not even walk out of the church, for that would underline his point and make it obvious, to the stupidest member of the congregation, that she was the target of his tirade.
So she listened, mortified. Philemon was speaking well for the first time ever. He did not hesitate or stumble, he enunciated clearly and projected his voice, and he managed to vary his usual dull monotone. For him, hatred was inspirational.
No one was going to put her out of the priory, of course. Even if she had been an incompetent prioress the bishop would have kept her on, simply because the scarcity of clergy was chronic. Churches and monasteries all over the country were closing because there was no one to hold services or sing psalms. Bishops were desperate to appoint more priests, monks and nuns, not sack them. Anyway, the townspeople would have revolted against any bishop who tried to get rid of Caris.
All the same, Philemon’s sermon was damaging. It would now be more difficult for the town’s leaders to turn a blind eye to Caris’s liaison with Merthin. This kind of thing undermined people’s respect. They would forgive a man for a sexual peccadillo more readily than a woman. And, as she was painfully aware, her position invited the accusation of hypocrisy.
She sat grinding her teeth through the peroration, which was the same message shouted louder, and the remainder of the service. As soon as the nuns and monks had processed out of the church, she went to her pharmacy and sat down to compose a letter to Bishop Henri, asking him to move Philemon to another monastery.
Instead, Henri promoted him.
It was two weeks after the expulsion of Friar Murdo. They were in the north transept of the cathedral. The summer day was hot, but the interior of the church was always cool. The bishop sat on a carved wooden chair, and the others on benches: Philemon, Caris, Archdeacon Lloyd and Canon Claude.
“I’m appointing you prior of Kingsbridge,” Henri said to Philemon.
Philemon smirked with delight and shot a triumphant look at Caris.
She was appalled. Two weeks ago she had given Henri a long list of sound reasons why Philemon could not be permitted to continue in a responsible position here – starting with his theft of a gold candlestick. But it seemed her letter had had the opposite effect.
She opened her mouth to protest, but Henri glared at her and raised his hand, and she decided to remain silent and find out what else he had to say. He continued to address Philemon. “I’m doing this despite, not because of, your behaviour since you returned here. You’ve been a malicious troublemaker, and if the church were not desperate for people I wouldn’t promote you in a hundred years.”
Then why do it now? Caris wondered.
“But we have to have a prior, and it simply is not satisfactory for the prioress to play that role, despite her undoubted ability.”
Caris would have preferred him to appoint Thomas. But Thomas would have refused, she knew. He had been scarred by the bitter struggle over who was to succeed Prior Anthony, twelve years ago, and had sworn then never again to get involved in a priory election. In fact the bishop might well have spoken to Thomas, without Caris’s knowledge, and learned this.
“However, your appointment is fenced about with provisos,” Henri said to Philemon. “First, you will not be confirmed in the role until Kingsbridge has obtained its borough charter. You are not capable of running the town and I won’t put you in that position. In the interim, therefore, Mother Caris will continue as acting prior, and you will live in the monks’ dormitory. The palace will be locked up. If you misbehave in the waiting period, I will rescind the appointment.”
Philemon looked angry and wounded by this, but he kept his mouth shut tight. He knew he had won and he was not going to argue about the conditions.
“Secondly, you will have your own treasury, but Brother Thomas is to be the treasurer, and no money will be spent nor precious objects removed without his knowledge and consent. Furthermore, I have ordered the building of a new tower, and I have authorized payments according to a schedule prepared by Merthin Bridger. The priory will make these payments from the monks’ funds, and neither Philemon nor anyone else shall have the power to alter this arrangement. I don’t want half a tower.”
Merthin would get his wish, at least, Caris thought gratefully.
Henri turned to Caris. “I have one more command to issue, and it is for you, Mother Prioress.”
Now what? she thought.
“There has been an accusation of fornication.”
Caris stared at the bishop, thinking about the time she had surprised him and Claude naked. How did he dare to raise this subject?
He went on: “I say nothing about the past. But for the future, it is not possible that the prioress of Kingsbridge should have a relationship with a man.”
She wanted to say: But you live with your lover! However, she suddenly noticed the expression on Henri’s face. It was a pleading look. He was begging her not to make the accusation that, he well knew, would show him up as a hypocrite. He knew that what he was doing was unjust, she realized, but he had no choice. Philemon had forced him into this position.
She was tempted, all the same, to sting him with a rebuke. But she restrained herself. It would do no good. Henri’s back was to the wall and he was doing his best. Caris clamped her mouth shut.
Henri said: “May I have your assurance, Mother Prioress, that from this moment on there will be absolutely no grounds for the accusation?”
Caris looked at the floor. She had been here before. Once again her choice was to give up everything she had worked for – the hospital, the borough charter, the tower – or to part with Merthin. And, once again, she chose her work.
She raised her head and looked him in the eye. “Yes, my lord bishop,” she said. “You have my word.”
She spoke to Merthin in the hospital, surrounded by other people. She was trembling and close to tears, but she could not see him in private. She knew that if they were alone her resolve would weaken, and she would throw her arms around him and tell him that she loved him, and promise to leave the nunnery and marry him. So she sent a message, and greeted him at the door of the hospital, then spoke to him in a matter-of-fact voice, her arms folded tightly across her chest so that she would not be tempted to reach out with a fond gesture and touch the body she loved so much.
When she had finished telling him about the bishop’s ultimatum and her decision, he looked at her as if he could kill her. “This is the last time,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“If you do this, it’s permanent. I’m not going to wait around any more, hoping that one day you will be my wife.”
She felt as if he had hit her.
He went on, delivering another blow with each sentence. “If you mean what you’re saying, I’m going to try to forget you now. I’m thirty-three years old. I don’t have for ever – my father is dying at the age of fifty-eight. I’ll marry someone else and have more children and be happy in my garden.”
The picture he painted tortured her. She bit her lip, trying to control her grief, but hot tears ran down her face.
He was remorseless. “I’m not going to waste my life loving you,” he said, and she felt as if he had stabbed her. “Leave the nunnery now, or stay there for ever.”
She tried to look steadily at him. “I won’t forget you. I will always love you.”
“But not enough.”
She was silent for a long moment. It wasn’t like that, she knew. Her love was not weak or inadequate. It just presented her with impossible choices. But there seemed no point in arguing. “Is that what you really believe?” she said.
“It seems obvious.”
She nodded, though she did not really agree. “I’m sorry,” she said. “More sorry than I have ever been in my whole life.”
“So am I,” he said, and he turned away and walked out of the building.
Sir Gregory Longfellow at last went back to London, but he returned surprisingly quickly, as if he had bounced off the wall of that great city like a football. He showed up at Tench Hall at supper time looking harassed, breathing hard through his flared nostrils, his long grey hair matted with perspiration. He walked in with something less than his usual air of being in command of all men and beasts that crossed his path. Ralph and Alan were standing by a window, looking at a new broad-bladed style of dagger called a basilard. Without speaking, Gregory threw his tall figure into Ralph’s big carved chair: whatever might have happened, he was still too grand to wait for an invitation to sit.
Ralph and Alan stared at him expectantly. Ralph’s mother sniffed censoriously: she disliked bad manners.
Finally Gregory said: “The king does not like to be disobeyed.”
That scared Ralph.
He looked anxiously at Gregory, and asked himself what he had done that could possibly be interpreted as disobedient by the king. He could think of nothing. Nervously he said: “I’m sorry his majesty is displeased – I hope it’s not with me.”
“You’re involved,” Gregory said with annoying vagueness. “And so am I. The king feels that when his wishes are frustrated it sets a bad precedent.”
“I quite agree.”
“That is why you and I are going to leave here tomorrow, ride to Earlscastle, see the Lady Philippa, and make her marry you.”
So that was it. Ralph was mainly relieved. He could not be held responsible for Philippa’s recalcitrance, in all fairness – not that fairness made much difference to kings. But, reading between the lines, he guessed that the person taking the blame was Gregory, and so Gregory was now determined to rescue the king’s plan and redeem himself.
There was fury and malice in Gregory’s expression. He said: “By the time I have finished with her, I promise you, she will beg you to marry her.”
Ralph could not imagine how this was to be achieved. As Philippa herself had pointed out, you could lead a woman up the aisle but you could not force her to say “I do”. He said to Gregory: “Someone told me that a widow’s right to refuse remarriage is actually guaranteed by Magna Carta.”
Gregory gave him a malevolent look. “Don’t remind me. I made the mistake of mentioning that to his majesty.”
Ralph wondered, in that case, what threats or promises Gregory planned to use to bend Philippa to his will. Himself, he could think of no way to marry her short of abducting her by force, and carrying her off to some isolated church where a generously bribed priest would turn a deaf ear to her cries of “No, never!”
They set off early next morning with a small entourage. It was harvest time and, in the North Field, the men were reaping tall stalks of rye while the women followed behind, binding the sheaves.
Lately Ralph had spent more time worrying about the harvest than about Philippa. This was not because of the weather, which was fine, but the plague. He had too few tenants and almost no labourers. Many had been stolen from him by unscrupulous landlords such as Prioress Caris, who seduced other lords’ men by offering high wages and attractive tenancies. In desperation, Ralph had given some of his serfs free tenancies, which meant they had no obligation to work on his land – an arrangement that left Ralph denuded of labour at harvest time. In consequence, it was likely that some of his crops would rot in the fields.
However, he felt his troubles would be over if he could marry Philippa. He would have ten times the land he now controlled, plus income from a dozen other sources including courts, forests, markets and mills. And his family would be restored to its rightful place in the nobility. Sir Gerald would be the father of an earl before he died.
He wondered again what Gregory had in mind. Philippa had set herself a challenging task, in defying the formidable will and powerful connections of Gregory. Ralph would not have wished to be standing in her beaded silk shoes.
They arrived at Earlscastle shortly before noon. The sound of the rooks quarrelling on the battlements always reminded Ralph of the time he had spent here as a squire in the service of Earl Roland – the happiest days of his life, he sometimes thought. But the place was very quiet now, without an earl. There were no squires playing violent games in the lower compound, no warhorses snorting and stamping as they were groomed and exercised outside the stables, no men-at-arms throwing dice on the steps of the keep.
Philippa was in the old-fashioned hall with Odila and a handful of female attendants. Mother and daughter were working on a tapestry together, sitting side by side on a bench in front of the loom. The picture looked as if it would show a forest scene, when finished. Philippa was weaving brown thread for the tree trunks and Odila bright green for the leaves.
“Very nice, but it needs more life,” Ralph said, making his voice cheerful and friendly. “A few birds and rabbits, and maybe some dogs chasing a deer.”
Philippa was as immune to his charm as ever. She stood up and stepped back, away from him. The girl did the same. Ralph noticed that mother and daughter were equal in height. Philippa said: “Why have you come here?”
Have it your way, Ralph thought resentfully. He half turned away from her. “Sir Gregory here has something to say to you,” he said, and he went to a window and looked out, as if bored.
Gregory greeted the two women formally, and said he hoped he was not intruding on them. It was rubbish – he did not give a hoot for their privacy – but the courtesy seemed to mollify Philippa, who invited him to sit down. Then he said: “The king is annoyed with you, countess.”
Philippa bowed her head. “I am very sorry indeed to have displeased his majesty.”
“He wishes to reward his loyal servant, Sir Ralph, by making him earl of Shiring. At the same time, he will be providing a young, vigorous husband for you, and a good stepfather for your daughter.” Philippa shuddered, but Gregory ignored that. “He is mystified by your stubborn defiance.”
Philippa looked scared, as well she might. Things would have been different if she had had a brother or an uncle to stick up for her, but the plague had wiped out her family. As a woman without male relations, she had no one to defend her from the king’s wrath. “What will he do?” she said apprehensively.
“He has not mentioned the word ‘treason’… yet.”
Ralph was not sure Philippa could legally be accused of treason, but all the same the threat caused her to turn pale.
Gregory went on: “He has asked me, in the first instance, to reason with you.”
Philippa said: “Of course, the king sees marriage as a political matter-”
“It is political,” Gregory interrupted. “If your beautiful daughter, here, were to fancy herself in love with the charming son of a scullery maid, you would say to her, as I say to you, that noblewomen may not marry whomever they fancy; and you would lock her in her room and have the boy flogged outside her window until he renounced her for ever.”
Philippa looked affronted. She did not like being lectured on the duties of her station by a mere lawyer. “I understand the obligations of an aristocratic widow,” she said haughtily. “I am a countess, my grandmother was a countess, and my sister was a countess until she died of the plague. But marriage is not just politics. It is also a matter of the heart. We women throw ourselves on the mercy of the men who are our lords and masters, and who have the duty of wisely deciding our fate; and we beg that what we feel in our hearts be not entirely ignored. Such pleas are usually heard.”
She was upset, Ralph could see, but still in control, still full of contempt. That word ‘wisely’ had a sarcastic sting.
“In normal times, perhaps you would be right, but these are strange days,” Gregory replied. “Usually, when the king looks around him for someone worthy of an earldom, he sees a dozen wise, strong, vigorous men, loyal to him and keen to serve him in any way they can, any of whom he could appoint to the title with confidence. But now that so many of the best men have been struck down by the plague, the king is like a housewife who goes to the fishmonger at the end of the afternoon – forced to take whatever is left on the slab.”
Ralph saw the force of the argument, but also felt insulted. However, he pretended not to notice.
Philippa changed her tack. She waved a servant over and said: “Bring us a jug of the best Gascon wine, please. And Sir Gregory will be having dinner here, so let’s have some of this season’s lamb, cooked with garlic and rosemary.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Gregory said: “You’re most kind, countess.”
Philippa was incapable of coquetry. To pretend that she was simply being hospitable, with no ulterior motive, was beyond her. She returned straight to the subject. “Sir Gregory, I have to tell you that my heart, my soul and my entire being revolt against the prospect of marrying Sir Ralph Fitzgerald.”
“But why?” said Gregory. “He’s a man like any other.”
“No, he’s not,” she said.
They were speaking about Ralph as if he were not there, in a way that he found deeply offensive. But Philippa was desperate, and would say anything; and he was curious to know just what it was about him that she disliked so much.
She paused, collecting her thoughts. “If I say rapist, torturer, murderer… the words just seem too abstract.”
Ralph was taken aback. He did not think of himself that way. Of course, he had tortured people in the king’s service, and he had raped Annet, and he had murdered several men, women and children in his days as an outlaw… At least, he consoled himself, Philippa did not appear to have guessed that he was the hooded figure who had killed Tilly, his own wife.
Philippa went on: “Human beings have within them something that prevents them from doing such things. It is the ability… no, the compulsion to feel another’s pain. We can’t help it. You, Sir Gregory, could not rape a woman, because you would feel her grief and agony, you would suffer with her, and this would compel you to relent. You could not torture or murder for the same reason. One who lacks the faculty to feel another’s pain is not a man, even though he may walk on two legs and speak English.” She leaned forward, lowering her voice, but even so Ralph heard her clearly. “And I will not lie in bed with an animal.”
Ralph burst out: “I am not an animal!”
He expected Gregory to back him up. Instead, Gregory seemed to give in. “Is that your final word, Lady Philippa?”
Ralph was astonished. Was Gregory going to let that pass, as if it might be even half true?
Philippa said to Gregory: “I need you to go back to the king and tell him that I am his loyal and obedient subject, and that I long to win his favour, but that I could not marry Ralph if the Archangel Gabriel commanded me.”
“I see.” Gregory stood up. “We will not stay to dinner.”
Was that all? Ralph had been waiting for Gregory to produce his surprise, a secret weapon, some irresistible bribe or threat. Did the clever court lawyer really have nothing up his costly brocade sleeve?
Philippa seemed equally startled to find the argument so suddenly terminated.
Gregory went to the door, and Ralph had no choice but to follow. Philippa and Odila stared at the two of them, unsure what to make of this cool walkout. The ladies-in-waiting fell silent.
Philippa said: “Please, beg the king to be merciful.”
“He will be, my lady,” said Gregory. “He has authorized me to tell you that, in the light of your obstinacy, he will not force you to marry a man you loathe.”
“Thank you!” she said. “You have saved my life.”
Ralph opened his mouth to protest. He had been promised! He had committed sacrilege and murder for this reward. Surely it could not be taken from him now?
But Gregory spoke first. “Instead,” he said, “it is the king’s command that Ralph will marry your daughter.” He paused, and pointed at the tall fifteen-year-old girl standing beside her mother. “Odila,” he said, as if there were any need to emphasize who he was talking about.
Philippa gasped and Odila screamed.
Gregory bowed. “Good day to you both.”
Philippa cried: “Wait!”
Gregory took no notice, and went out.
Stunned, Ralph followed.
Gwenda was weary when she woke up. It was harvest time, and she was spending every hour of the long August days in the fields. Wulfric would swing the scythe tirelessly from sunrise to nightfall, mowing down the corn. Gwenda’s job was to bundle the sheaves. All day long she bent down and scooped up the mown stalks, bent and scooped, bent and scooped until her back seemed to burn with pain. When it was too dark to see, she staggered home and fell into bed, leaving the family to feed themselves with whatever they could find in the cupboard.
Wulfric woke at dawn, and his movements penetrated Gwenda’s deep slumber. She struggled to her feet. They all needed a good breakfast, and she put cold mutton, bread, butter and strong beer on the table. Sam, the ten-year-old, got up, but Davy, who was only eight, had to be shaken awake and pulled to his feet.
“This holding was never farmed by one man and his wife,” Gwenda said grumpily as they ate.
Wulfric was irritatingly positive. “You and I got the harvest in on our own, the year the bridge collapsed,” he said cheerfully.
“I was twelve years younger then.”
“But you’re more beautiful now.”
She was in no mood for gallantry. “Even when your father and brother were alive, you took on hired labour at harvest time.”
“Never mind. It’s our land, and we planted the crops, so we’ll benefit from the harvest, instead of earning just a penny a day wages. The more we work, the more we get. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
“I always wanted to be independent and self-sufficient, if that’s what you mean.” She went to the door. “A west wind, and a few clouds in the sky.”
Wulfric looked worried. “We need the rain to hold off for another two or three days.”
“I think it will. Come on, boys, time to go to the field. You can eat walking along.” She was bundling the bread and meat into a sack for their dinner when Nate Reeve hobbled in through the door. “Oh, no!” she said. “Not today – we’ve almost got our harvest in!”
“The lord has a harvest to get in, too,” said the bailiff.
Nate was followed in by his ten-year-old son, Jonathan, known as Jonno, who immediately started making faces at Sam.
Gwenda said: “Give us three more days on our own land.”
“Don’t bother to dispute with me about this,” Nate said. “You owe the lord one day a week, and two days at harvest time. Today and tomorrow you will reap his barley in Brookfield.”
“The second day is normally forgiven. That’s been the practice for a long time.”
“It was, in times of plentiful labour. The lord is desperate now. So many people have negotiated free tenancies that he has hardly anyone to bring in his harvest.”
“So those who negotiated with you, and demanded to be freed of their customary duties, are rewarded, while people like us, who accepted the old terms, are punished with twice as much work on the lord’s land.” She looked accusingly at Wulfric, remembering how he had ignored her when she told him to argue terms with Nate.
“Something like that,” Nate said carelessly.
“Hell,” Gwenda said.
“Don’t curse,” said Nate. “You’ll get a free dinner. There will be wheat bread and a new barrel of ale. Isn’t that something to look forward to?”
“Sir Ralph feeds oats to the horses he means to ride hard.”
“Don’t be long, now!” Nate went out.
His son, Jonno, poked out his tongue at Sam. Sam made a grab for him, but Jonno slipped out of his grasp and ran after his father.
Wearily, Gwenda and her family trudged across the fields to where Ralph’s barley stood waving in the breeze. They got down to work. Wulfric reaped and Gwenda bundled. Sam followed behind, picking up the stray stalks she missed, gathering them until he had enough for a sheaf, then passing them to her to be tied. David had small, nimble fingers, and he plaited straws into tough cords for tying the sheaves. Those other families still working under old-style tenancies laboured alongside them, while the cleverer serfs reaped their own crops.
When the sun was at its highest, Nate drove up in a cart with a barrel on the back. True to his word, he provided each family with a big loaf of delicious new wheat bread. Everyone ate their fill, then the adults lay down in the shade to rest while the children played.
Gwenda was dozing off when she heard an outbreak of childish screaming. She knew immediately, from the voice, that neither of her boys was making the noise, but all the same she leaped to her feet. She saw her son Sam fighting with Jonno Reeve. Although they were roughly the same age and size, Sam had Jonno on the ground and was punching and kicking him mercilessly. Gwenda moved towards the boys, but Wulfric was quicker, and he grabbed Sam with one hand and hauled him off.
Gwenda looked at Jonno in dismay. The boy was bleeding from his nose and mouth, and his face around one eye was inflamed and already beginning to swell. He was holding his stomach, moaning and crying. Gwenda had seen plenty of scraps between boys, but this was different. Jonno had been beaten up.
Gwenda stared at her ten-year-old son. His face was unmarked: it looked as if Jonno had not landed a single blow. Sam showed no sign of remorse at what he had done. Rather, he looked smugly triumphant. It was a vaguely familiar expression, and Gwenda searched her memory for its likeness. She did not take long to recall who she had seen looking like that after giving someone a beating.
She had seen the same expression on the face of Ralph Fitzgerald, Sam’s real father.
Two days after Ralph and Gregory visited Earlscastle, Lady Philippa came to Tench Hall.
Ralph had been considering the prospect of marrying Odila. She was a beautiful young girl, but you could buy beautiful young girls for a few pennies in London. Ralph had already had the experience of being married to someone who was little more than a child. After the initial excitement wore off, he had been bored and irritated by her.
He wondered for a while whether he might marry Odila and get Philippa too. The idea of marrying the daughter and keeping the mother as his mistress intrigued him. He might even have them together. He had once had sex with a mother-daughter pair of prostitutes in Calais, and the element of incest had created an exciting sense of depravity.
But, on reflection, he knew that was not going to happen. Philippa would never consent to such an arrangement. He might look for ways to coerce her, but she was not easily bullied. “I don’t want to marry Odila,” he had said to Gregory as they rode home from Earlscastle.
“You won’t have to,” Gregory had said, but he refused to elaborate.
Philippa arrived with a lady-in-waiting and a bodyguard but without Odila. As she entered Tench Hall, for once she did not look proud. She did not even look beautiful, Ralph thought: clearly she had not slept for two nights.
They had just sat down to dinner: Ralph, Alan, Gregory, a handful of squires and a bailiff. Philippa was the only woman in the room.
She walked up to Gregory.
The courtesy he had shown her previously was forgotten. He did not stand, but rudely looked her up and down, as if she were a servant girl with a grievance. “Well?” he said at last.
“I will marry Ralph.”
“Oh!” he said in mock surprise. “Will you, now?”
“Yes. Rather than sacrifice my daughter to him, I will marry him myself.”
“My lady,” he said sarcastically, “you seem to think that the king has led you to a table laden with dishes, and asked you to choose which you like best. You are mistaken. The king does not ask what is your pleasure. He commands. You disobeyed one command, so he issued another. He did not give you a choice.”
She looked down. “I am very sorry for my behaviour. Please spare my daughter.”
“If it were up to me, I would decline your request, as punishment for your intransigence. But perhaps you should plead with Sir Ralph.”
She looked at Ralph. He saw rage and despair in her eyes. He felt excited. She was the most haughty woman he had ever met, and he had broken her pride. He wanted to lie with her now, right away.
But it was not yet over.
He said: “You have something to say to me?”
“I apologize.”
“Come here.” Ralph was sitting at the head of the table, and she approached and stood by him. He caressed the head of a lion carved into the arm of his chair. “Go on,” he said.
“I am sorry that I spurned you before. I would like to withdraw everything I said. I accept your proposal. I will marry you.”
“But I have not renewed my proposal. The king orders me to many Odila.”
“If you ask the king to revert to his original plan, surely he will grant your plea.”
“And that is what you are asking me to do.”
“Yes.” She looked him in the eye and swallowed her final humiliation. “I am asking you… I am begging you. Please, Sir Ralph, make me your wife.”
Ralph stood up, pushing his chair back. “Kiss me, then.”
She closed her eyes.
He put his left arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He kissed her lips. She submitted unresponsively. With his right hand, he squeezed her breast. It was as firm and heavy as he had always imagined. He ran his hand down her body and between her legs. She flinched, but remained unresistingly in his embrace, and he pressed his palm against the fork of her thighs. He grasped her mound, cupping its triangular fatness in his hand.
Then, holding that position, he broke the kiss and looked around the room at his friends.
At the same time as Ralph was created earl of Shiring, a young man called David Caerleon became earl of Monmouth. He was only seventeen, and related rather distantly to the dead man, but all nearer heirs to the title had been wiped out by the plague.
A few days before Christmas that year, Bishop Henri held a service in Kingsbridge Cathedral to bless the two new earls. Afterwards David and Ralph were guests of honour at a banquet given by Merthin in the guild hall. The merchants were also celebrating the granting of a borough charter to Kingsbridge.
Ralph considered David to have been extraordinarily lucky. The boy had never been outside the kingdom, nor had he ever fought in battle, yet he was an earl at seventeen. Ralph had marched all through Normandy with King Edward, risked his life in battle after battle, lost three fingers, and committed countless sins in the king’s service, yet he had had to wait until the age of thirty-two.
However, he had made it at last, and sat next to Bishop Henri at the table, wearing a costly brocade coat woven with gold and silver threads. People who knew him pointed him out to strangers, wealthy merchants made way for him and bowed their heads respectfully as he passed, and the maidservant’s hand shook with nervousness as she poured wine into his cup. His father, Sir Gerald, confined to bed now but hanging on tenaciously to life, had said: “I’m the descendant of an earl, and the father of an earl. I’m satisfied.” It was all profoundly gratifying.
Ralph was keen to talk to David about the problem of labourers. It had eased temporarily now that the harvest was in and the autumn ploughing was finished: at this time of year the days were short and the weather was cold, so not much work could be done in the fields. Unfortunately, as soon as the spring ploughing began and the ground was soft enough for the serfs to sow seeds, the trouble would start again: labourers would recommence agitating for higher wages, and if refused would illegally run off to more extravagant employers.
The only way to stop this was for the nobility collectively to stand firm, resist demands for higher pay and refuse to hire runaways. This was what Ralph wanted to say to David.
However, the new earl of Monmouth showed no inclination to talk to Ralph. He was more interested in Ralph’s stepdaughter, Odila, who was near his own age. They had met before, Ralph gathered: Philippa and her first husband, William, had often been guests at the castle when David had been a squire in the service of the old earl. Whatever their history, they were friends now: David was talking animatedly and Odila was hanging on every word – agreeing with his opinions, gasping at his stories and laughing at his jokes.
Ralph had always envied men who could fascinate women. His brother had the ability, and consequently was able to attract the most beautiful women, despite being a short, plain man with red hair.
All the same, Ralph felt sorry for Merthin. Ever since the day that Earl Roland had made Ralph a squire and condemned Merthin to be a carpenter’s apprentice, Merthin had been doomed. Even though he was the elder, it was Ralph who was destined to become the earl. Merthin, now sitting on the other side of Earl David, had to console himself with being a mere alderman – and having charm.
Ralph could not even charm his own wife. She hardly spoke to him. She had more to say to his dog.
How was it possible, Ralph asked himself, for a man to want something as badly as he had wanted Philippa, and then to be so dissatisfied when he got it? He had yearned for her since he was a squire of nineteen. Now, after three months of marriage, he wished with all his heart that he could get rid of her.
Yet it was hard for him to complain. Philippa did everything a wife was obliged to do. She ran the castle efficiently, as she had been doing ever since her first husband had been made earl after the battle of Crécy. Supplies were ordered, bills were paid, clothes were sewn, fires were lit, and food and wine arrived on the table unfailingly. And she submitted to Ralph’s sexual attentions. He could do anything he liked: tear her clothes, thrust his fingers ungently inside her, take her standing up or from behind – she never complained.
But she did not reciprocate his caresses. Her lips never moved against his, her tongue never slipped into his mouth, she never stroked his skin. She kept a vial of almond oil handy, and lubricated her unresponsive body with it whenever he wanted sex. She lay as still as a corpse while he grunted on top of her. The moment he rolled off, she went to wash herself.
The only good thing about the marriage was that Odila was fond of little Gerry. The baby brought out her nascent maternal instinct. She loved to talk to him, sing him songs and rock him to sleep. She gave him the kind of affectionate mothering he would never really get from a paid nurse.
All the same, Ralph was regretful. Philippa’s voluptuous body, which he had stared at with longing for so many years, was now revolting to him. He had not touched her for weeks, and he probably never would again. He looked at her heavy breasts and round hips, and wished for the slender limbs and girlish skin of Tilly. Tilly, whom he had stabbed with a long, sharp knife that went up under her ribs and into her beating heart. That was a sin he did not dare to confess. How long, he wondered wretchedly, would he suffer for it in purgatory?
The bishop and his colleagues were staying in the prior’s palace, and the Monmouth entourage filled the priory’s guest rooms, so Ralph and Philippa and their servants were lodging at an inn. Ralph had chosen the Bell, the rebuilt tavern owned by his brother. It was the only three-storey house in Kingsbridge, with a big open room at ground level, male and female dormitories above, and a top floor with six expensive individual guest rooms. When the banquet was over, Ralph and his men removed to the tavern, where they installed themselves in front of the fire, called for more wine and began to play at dice. Philippa remained behind, talking to Caris and chaperoning Odila with Earl David.
Ralph and his companions attracted a crowd of admiring young men and women such as always gathered around free-spending noblemen. Ralph gradually forgot his troubles in the euphoria of drink and the thrill of gambling.
He noticed a young fair-haired woman watching him with a yearning expression as he cheerfully lost stacks of silver pennies on the throw of the dice. He beckoned her to sit beside him on the bench, and she told him her name was Ella. At moments of tension she grabbed his thigh, as if captured by the suspense, though she probably knew exactly what she was doing – women usually did.
He gradually lost interest in the game and transferred his attention to her. His men carried on betting while he got to know Ella. She was everything Philippa was not: happy, sexy, and fascinated by Ralph. She touched him and herself a lot – she would push her hair off her face, then pat his arm, then hold her hand to her throat, then push his shoulder playfully. She seemed very interested in his experiences in France.
To Ralph’s annoyance, Merthin came into the tavern and sat down with him. Merthin was not running the Bell himself – he had rented it to the youngest daughter of Betty Baxter – but he was keen that the tenant should make a success of it, and he asked Ralph if everything was to his satisfaction. Ralph introduced his companion, and Merthin said: “Yes, I know Ella,” in a dismissive tone that was uncharacteristically discourteous.
Today was only the third or fourth time the two brothers had met since the death of Tilly. On previous occasions, such as Ralph’s wedding to Philippa, there had hardly been time to talk. All the same Ralph knew, from the way his brother looked at him, that Merthin suspected him of being Tilly’s killer. The unspoken thought was a looming presence, never addressed but impossible to ignore, like the cow in the cramped one-room hovel of a poor peasant. If it was mentioned, Ralph felt that would be the last time they ever spoke.
So tonight, as if by mutual consent, they once again exchanged a few meaningless platitudes, then Merthin left, saying he had work to do. Ralph wondered briefly what work he was going to do at dusk on a December evening. He really had no idea how Merthin spent his time. He did not hunt, or hold court, or attend on the king. Was it possible to spend all day, every day, making drawings and supervising builders? Such a life would have driven Ralph mad. And he was baffled by how much money Merthin seemed to make from his enterprises. Ralph himself had been short of money even when he had been lord of Tench. Merthin never seemed to lack it.
Ralph turned his attention back to Ella. “My brother’s a bit grumpy,” he said apologetically.
“It’s because he hasn’t had a woman for half a year.” She giggled. “He used to shag the prioress, but she had to throw him out after Philemon came back.”
Ralph pretended to be shocked. “Nuns aren’t supposed to be shagged.”
“Mother Caris is a wonderful woman – but she’s got the itch, you can tell by the way she walks.”
Ralph was aroused by such frank talk from a woman. “It’s very bad for a man,” he said, playing along. “To go for so long without a woman.”
“I think so too.”
“It leads to… swelling.”
She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows. He glanced down at his own lap. She followed his gaze. “Oh, dear,” she said. “That looks uncomfortable.” She put her hand on his erect penis.
At that moment, Philippa appeared.
Ralph froze. He felt guilty and scared, and at the same time he was furious with himself for caring whether Philippa saw what he was doing or not.
She said: “I’m going upstairs – oh.”
Ella did not release her hold. In fact she squeezed Ralph’s penis gently, while looking up at Philippa and smiling triumphantly.
Philippa flushed red, her face registering shame and distaste.
Ralph opened his mouth to speak, then did not know what to say. He was not willing to apologize to his virago of a wife, feeling that she had brought this humiliation on herself. But he also felt somewhat foolish, sitting there with a tavern tart holding his prick while his wife, the countess, stood in front of them looking embarrassed.
The tableau lasted only a moment. Ralph made a strangled sound, Ella giggled, and Philippa said “Oh!” in a tone of exasperation and disgust. Then Philippa turned and walked away, head held unnaturally high. She approached the broad staircase and went up, as graceful as a deer on a hillside, and disappeared without looking back.
Ralph felt both angry and ashamed, though he reasoned that he had no need to feel either. However, his interest in Ella diminished visibly, and he took her hand away.
“Have some more wine,” she said, pouring from the jug on the table, but Ralph felt the onset of a headache and pushed the wooden cup away.
Ella put a restraining hand on his arm and said in a low, warm voice: “Don’t leave me in the lurch now that you’ve got me all, you know, excited.”
He shook her off and stood up.
Her face hardened and she said: “Well, you’d better give me something by way of compensation.”
He dipped into his purse and took out a handful of silver pennies. Without looking at Ella, he dumped the money on the table, not caring whether it was too much or too little.
She began to scoop up the coins hastily.
Ralph left her and went upstairs.
Philippa was on the bed, sitting upright with her back against the headboard. She had taken off her shoes but was otherwise fully dressed. She stared accusingly at Ralph as he walked in.
He said: “You have no right to be angry with me!”
“I’m not angry,” she said. “But you are.”
She could always twist words around so that she was in the right and he in the wrong.
Before he could think of a reply, she said: “Wouldn’t you like me to leave you?”
He stared at her, astonished. This was the last thing he had expected. “Where would you go?”
“Here,” she said. “I won’t become a nun, but I could live in the convent nevertheless. I would bring just a few servants: a maid, a clerk and my confessor. I’ve already spoken to Mother Caris, and she is willing.”
“My last wife did that. What will people think?”
“A lot of noblewomen retire to nunneries, either temporarily or permanently, at some point in their lives. People will think you’ve rejected me because I’m past the age for conceiving children – which I probably am. Anyway, do you care what people say?”
The thought briefly flashed across his mind that he would be sorry to see Gerry lose Odila. But the prospect of being free of Philippa’s proud, disapproving presence was irresistible. “All right, what’s stopping you? Tilly never asked permission.”
“I want to see Odila married first.”
“Who to?”
She looked at him as if he were stupid.
“Oh,” he said. “Young David, I suppose.”
“He is in love with her, and I think they would be well suited.”
“He’s under age – he’ll have to ask the king.”
“That’s why I’ve raised it with you. Will you go with him to see the king, and speak in support of the marriage? If you do this for me, I swear I will never ask you for anything ever again. I will leave you in peace.”
She was not asking him to make any sacrifices. An alliance with Monmouth could do Ralph nothing but good. “And you’ll leave Earlscastle, and move into the nunnery?”
“Yes, as soon as Odila is married.”
It was the end of a dream, Ralph realized, but a dream that had turned into a sour, bleak reality. He might as well acknowledge the failure and start again.
“All right,” he said, feeling regret mingled with liberation. “It’s a bargain.”
Easter came early in the year 1350, and there was a big fire blazing in Merthin’s hearth on the evening of Good Friday. The table was laid with a cold supper: smoked fish, soft cheese, new bread, pears and a flagon of Rhenish wine. Merthin was wearing clean underclothes and a new yellow robe. The house had been swept, and there were daffodils in a jug on the sideboard.
Merthin was alone. Lolla was with his servants, Arn and Em. Their cottage was at the end of the garden but Lolla, who was five, loved to stay there overnight. She called it going on pilgrimage, and took a travelling bag containing her hair brush and a favourite doll.
Merthin opened a window and looked out. A cold breeze blew across the river from the meadow on the south side. The last of the evening was fading, the light seeming to fall out of the sky and sink into the water, where it disappeared in the blackness.
He visualized a hooded figure emerging from the nunnery. He saw it tread a worn diagonal across the cathedral green, hurry past the lights of the Bell and descend the muddy main street, the face shadowed, speaking to no one. He imagined it reaching the foreshore. Did it glance sideways into the cold black river, and remember a moment of despair so great as to give rise to thoughts of self-destruction? If so, the recollection was quickly dismissed, and it stepped forward on to the cobbled roadbed of his bridge. It crossed the span and made landfall again on Leper Island. There it diverted from the main road and passed through low shrubbery, across scrubby grass cropped by rabbits, and around the ruins of the old lazar house until it came to the south-west shore. Then it tapped on Merthin’s door.
He closed the window and waited. No tap came. He was wishfully a little ahead of schedule.
He was tempted to drink some wine, but he did not: a ritual had developed, and he did not want to change the order of events.
The knock came a few moments later. He opened the door. She stepped inside, threw back her hood and dropped the heavy grey cloak from her shoulders.
She was taller than he by an inch or more, and a few years older. Her face was proud, and could be haughty, although now her smile radiated warmth like the sun. She wore a robe of bright Kingsbridge Scarlet. He put his arms around her, pressing her voluptuous body to his own, and kissed her wide mouth. “My darling,” he said. “Philippa.”
They made love immediately, there on the floor, hardly undressing. He was hungry for her, and she was if anything more eager. He spread her cloak on the straw, and she lifted the skirt of her robe and lay down. She clung to him like one drowning, her legs wrapped around his, her arms crushing him to her soft body, her face buried in his neck.
She had told him that, after she left Ralph and moved into the priory, she had thought no one would ever touch her again until the nuns laid out her cold body for burial. The thought almost made Merthin cry.
For his part, he had loved Caris so much that he felt no other woman would ever arouse his affection. For him as well as Philippa, this love had come as an unexpected gift, a spring of cold water bubbling up in a baking-hot desert, and they both drank from it as if they were dying of thirst.
Afterwards they lay entwined by the fire, panting, and he recalled the first time. Soon after she moved to the priory she had taken an interest in the building of the new tower. A practical woman, she had trouble filling the long hours that were supposed to be spent in prayer and meditation. She enjoyed the library but could not read all day. She came to see him in the mason’s loft, and he showed her the plans. She quickly got into the habit of visiting every day, talking to him while he worked. He had always admired her intelligence and strength, and in the intimacy of the loft he came to know the warm, generous spirit beneath her stately manner. He discovered that she had a lively sense of humour, and he learned how to make her laugh. She responded with a rich, throaty chuckle that, somehow, led him to think of making love to her. One day she had paid him a compliment. “You’re a kind man,” she had said. “There aren’t enough of them.” Her sincerity had touched him, and he had kissed her hand. It was a gesture of affection, but one she could reject, if she wished, without drama: she simply had to withdraw her hand and take a step back, and he would have known he had gone a little too far. But she had not rejected it. On the contrary, she had held his hand and looked at him with something like love in her eyes, and he had wrapped his arms around her and kissed her lips.
They had made love on the mattress in the loft, and he had not remembered until afterwards that Caris had encouraged him to put the mattress there, with a joke about masons needing a soft place for their tools.
Caris did not know about him and Philippa. No one did except Philippa’s maid and Am and Em. She went to bed in her private room on the upper floor of the hospital soon after nightfall, at the same time as the nuns retired to their dormitory. She slipped out while they were asleep, using the outside steps that permitted important guests to come and go without passing through the common people’s quarters. She returned by the same route before dawn, while the nuns were singing Matins, and appeared at breakfast as if she had been in her room all night.
He was surprised to find that he could love another woman less than a year after Caris had left him for the final time. He certainly had not forgotten Caris. On the contrary, he thought about her every day. He felt the urge to tell her about something amusing that had happened, or he wanted her opinion on a knotty problem, or he found himself performing some task the way she would want it done, such as carefully bathing Lolla’s grazed knee with warm wine. And then he saw her most days. The new hospital was almost finished, but the cathedral tower was barely begun, and Caris kept a close eye on both building projects. The priory had lost its power to control the town merchants, but nevertheless Caris took an interest in the work Merthin and the guild were doing to create all the institutions of a borough – establishing new courts, planning a wool exchange and encouraging the craft guilds to codify standards and measures. But his thoughts about her always had an unpleasant aftertaste, like the bitterness left at the back of the throat by sour beer. He had loved her totally, and she had, in the end, rejected him. It was like remembering a happy day that had ended with a fight.
“Do you think I’m peculiarly attracted to women who aren’t free?” he said idly to Philippa.
“No, why?”
“It does seem odd that after twelve years of loving a nun, and nine months of celibacy, I should fall for my brother’s wife.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said quickly. “It was no marriage. I was wedded against my will, I shared his bed for no more than a few days, and he will be happy if he never sees me again.”
He patted her shoulder apologetically. “But still, we have to be secretive, just as I did with Caris.” What he was not saying was that a man was entitled, by law, to kill his wife if he caught her committing adultery. Merthin had never known it happen, certainly among the nobility, but Ralph’s pride was a terrible thing. Merthin knew, and had told Philippa, that Ralph had killed his first wife, Tilly.
She said: “Your father loved your mother hopelessly for a long time, didn’t he?”
“So he did!” Merthin had almost forgotten that old story.
“And you fell for a nun.”
“And my brother spent years pining for you, the happily married wife of a nobleman. As the priests say, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. But enough of this. Do you want some supper?”
“In a moment.”
“There’s something you want to do first?”
“You know.”
He did know. He knelt between her legs and kissed her belly and her thighs. It was a peculiarity of hers that she always wanted to come twice. He began to tease her with his tongue. She groaned, and pressed the back of his head. “Yes,” she said. “You know how I like that, especially when I’m full of your seed.”
He lifted his head. “I do,” he said. Then he bent again to his task.
The spring brought a respite in the plague. People were still dying, but fewer were falling ill. On Easter Sunday, Bishop Henri announced that the Fleece Fair would take place as usual this year.
At the same service, six novices took their vows and so became full-fledged monks. They had all had an extraordinarily short novitiate, but Henri was keen to raise the number of monks at Kingsbridge, and he said the same thing was going on all over the country. In addition five priests were ordained – they, too, benefiting from an accelerated training programme – and sent to replace plague victims in the surrounding countryside. And two Kingsbridge monks came down from university, having received their degrees as physicians in three years instead of the usual five or seven.
The new doctors were Austin and Sime. Caris remembered both of them rather vaguely: she had been guest master when they left, three years ago, to go to Kingsbridge College in Oxford. On the afternoon of Easter Monday she showed them around the almost-completed new hospital. No builders were at work as it was a holiday.
Both had the bumptious self-confidence that the university seemed to instil in its graduates along with medical theories and a taste for Gascon wine. However, years of dealing with patients had given Caris a confidence of her own, and she described the hospital’s facilities and the way she planned to run it with brisk assurance.
Austin was a slim, intense young man with thinning fair hair. He was impressed with the innovative new cloister-like layout of the rooms. Sime, a little older and round-faced, did not seem eager to learn from Caris’s experience: she noticed that he always looked away when she was talking.
“I believe a hospital should always be clean,” she said.
“On what grounds?” Sime inquired in a condescending tone, as if asking a little girl why Dolly had to be spanked.
“Cleanliness is a virtue.”
“Ah. So it has nothing to do with the balance of humours in the body.”
“I have no idea. We don’t pay too much attention to the humours. That approach has failed spectacularly against the plague.”
“And sweeping the floor has succeeded?”
“At a minimum, a clean room lifts patients’ spirits.”
Austin put in: “You must admit, Sime, that some of the masters at Oxford share the Mother Prioress’s new ideas.”
“A small group of the heterodox.”
Caris said: “The main point is to take patients suffering from the type of illnesses that are transmitted from the sick to the well and isolate them from the rest.”
“To what end?” said Sime.
“To restrict the spread of such diseases.”
“And how is it that they are transmitted?”
“No one knows.”
A little smile of triumph twitched Sime’s mouth. “Then how do you know by what means to restrict their spread, may I ask?”
He thought he had trumped her in argument – it was the main thing they learned at Oxford – but she knew better. “From experience,” she said. “A shepherd doesn’t understand the miracle by which lambs grow in the womb of a ewe, but he knows it won’t happen if he keeps the ram out of the field.”
“Hm.”
Caris disliked the way he said: “Hm.” He was clever, she thought, but his cleverness never touched the world. She was struck by the contrast between this kind of intellectual and Merthin’s kind. Merthin’s learning was wide, and the power of his mind to grasp complexities was remarkable – but his wisdom never strayed far from the realities of the material world, for he knew that if he went wrong his buildings would fall down. Her father, Edmund, had been like that, clever but practical. Sime, like Godwyn and Anthony, would cling to his faith in the humours of the body regardless of whether his patients lived or died.
Austin was smiling broadly. “She’s got you there, Sime,” he said, evidently amused that his smug friend had failed to overwhelm this uneducated woman. “We may not know exactly how illnesses spread, but it can’t do any harm to separate the sick from the well.”
Sister Joan, the nuns’ treasurer, interrupted their conversation. “The bailiff of Outhenby is asking for you, Mother Caris.”
“Did he bring a herd of calves?” Outhenby was obliged to supply the nuns with twelve one-year-old calves every Easter.
“Yes.”
“Pen the beasts and ask the bailiff to come here, please.”
Sime and Austin took their leave and Caris went to inspect the tiled floor in the latrines. The bailiff found her there. It was Harry Ploughman. She had sacked the old bailiff, who was too slow to respond to change, and she had promoted the brightest young man in the village.
He shook her hand, which was over-familiar of him, but Caris liked him and did not mind.
She said: “It must be a nuisance, your having to drive a herd all the way here, especially when the spring ploughing is under way.”
“It is that,” he said. Like most ploughmen, he was broad-shouldered and strong-armed. Strength as well as skill was required for driving the communal eight-ox team as they pulled the heavy plough through wet clay soil. He seemed to carry with him the air of the healthy outdoors.
“Wouldn’t you rather make a money payment?” Caris said. “Most manorial dues are paid in cash these days.”
“It would be more convenient.” His eyes narrowed with peasant shrewdness. “But how much?”
“A year-old calf normally fetches ten to twelve shillings at market, though prices are down this season.”
“They are – by half. You can buy twelve calves for three pounds.”
“Or six pounds in a good year.”
He grinned, enjoying the negotiation. “There’s your problem.”
“But you would prefer to pay cash.”
“If we can agree the amount.”
“Make it eight shillings.”
“But then, if the price of a calf is only five shillings, where do we villagers get the extra money?”
“I tell you what. In future, Outhenby can pay the nunnery either five pounds or twelve calves – the choice is yours.”
Harry considered that, looking for snags, but could find none. “All right,” he said. “Shall we seal the bargain?”
“How should we do that?”
To her surprise, he kissed her.
He held her slender shoulders in his rough hands, bent his head, and pressed his lips to hers. If Brother Sime had done this she would have recoiled. But Harry was different, and perhaps she had been titillated by his air of vigorous masculinity. Whatever the reason, she submitted to the kiss, letting him pull her unresisting body to his own, and moving her lips against his bearded mouth. He pressed up against her so that she could feel his erection. She realized that he would cheerfully take her here on the newly laid tiles of the latrine floor, and that thought brought her to her senses. She broke the kiss and pushed him away. “Stop!” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He was unabashed. “Kissing you, my dear,” he said.
She realized that she had a problem. No doubt gossip about her and Merthin was widespread: they were probably the two best-known people in Shiring. While Harry surely did not know the truth, the rumours had been enough to embolden him. This kind of thing could undermine her authority. She must squash it now. “You must never do anything like that again,” she said as severely as she could.
“You seemed to like it!”
“Then your sin is all the greater, for you have tempted a weak woman to perjure her holy vows.”
“But I love you.”
It was true, she realized, and she could guess why. She had swept into his village, reorganized everything and bent the peasants to her will. She had recognized Harry’s potential and elevated him above his fellows. He must think of her as a goddess. It was not surprising that he had fallen in love with her. He had better fall out of love as soon as possible. “If you ever speak to me like that again, I’ll have to get another bailiff in Outhenby.”
“Oh,” he said. That stopped him short more effectively than the accusation of sin.
“Now, go home.”
“Very well, Mother Caris.”
“And find yourself another woman – preferably one who has not taken a vow of chastity.”
“Never,” he said, but she did not believe him.
He left, but she stayed where she was. She felt restless and lustful. If she could have felt sure of being alone for a while she would have touched herself. This was the first time in nine months that she had been bothered by physical desire. After finally splitting up with Merthin she had fallen into a kind of neutered state, in which she did not think about sex. Her relationships with other nuns gave her warmth and affection: she was fond of both Joan and Oonagh, though neither loved her in the physical way Mair had. Her heart beat with other passions: the new hospital, the tower, and the rebirth of the town.
Thinking of the tower, she left the hospital and walked across the green to the cathedral. Merthin had dug four enormous holes, the deepest anyone had ever seen, outside the church around the foundations of the old tower. He had built great cranes to lift the earth out. Throughout the wet autumn months, ox-carts had lumbered all day long down the main street and across the first span of the bridge to dump the mud on rocky Leper Island. There they had picked up building stones from Merthin’s wharf, then climbed the street again, to stack the stones around the grounds of the church in ever-growing piles.
As soon as the winter frost was over, his masons had begun laying the foundations. Caris went to the north side of the cathedral and looked into the hole in the angle formed by the outside wall of the nave and the outside wall of the north transept. It was dizzyingly deep. The bottom was already covered with neat masonry, the squared-off stones laid in straight lines and joined by thin layers of mortar. Because the old foundations were inadequate, the tower was being built on its own new, independent foundations. It would rise outside the existing walls of the church, so no demolition would be needed over and above what Elfric had already done in taking down the upper levels of the old tower. Only when it was finished would Merthin remove the temporary roof Elfric had built over the crossing. It was a typical Merthin design: simple yet radical, a brilliant solution to the unique problems of the site.
As at the hospital, no builders were at work on Easter Monday, but she saw movement in the hole and realized someone was walking around on the foundations. A moment later she recognized Merthin. She went to one of the surprisingly flimsy rope-and-branch ladders the masons used, and clambered shakily down.
She was glad to reach the bottom. Merthin helped her off the ladder, smiling. “You look a little pale,” he said.
“It’s a long way down. How are you getting on?”
“Fine. It will take many years.”
“Why? The hospital seems more complicated, and that’s finished.”
“Two reasons. The higher we go, the fewer masons will be able to work on it. Right now I’ve got twelve men laying the foundations. But as it rises it will get narrower, and there just won’t be room for them all. The other reason is that mortar takes so long to set. We have to let it harden over a winter before we put too much weight on it.”
She was hardly listening. Watching his face, she was remembering making love to him in the prior’s palace, between Matins and Lauds, with the first gleam of daylight coming in through the open window and falling over their naked bodies like a blessing.
She patted his arm. “Well, the hospital isn’t taking so long.”
“You should be able to move in by Whitsun.”
“I’m glad. Although we’re having a slight respite from the plague: fewer people are dying.”
“Thank God,” he said fervently. “Perhaps it may be coming to an end.”
She shook her head bleakly. “We thought it was over once before, remember? About this time last year. Then it came back worse.”
“Heaven forbid.”
She touched his cheek with her palm, feeling his wiry beard. “At least you’re safe.”
He looked faintly displeased. “As soon as the hospital is finished we can start on the wool exchange.”
“I hope you’re right to think that business must pick up soon.”
“If it doesn’t, we’ll all be dead anyway.”
“Don’t say that.” She kissed his cheek.
“We have to act on the assumption that we’re going to live.” He said it irritably, as if she had annoyed him. “But the truth is that we don’t know.”
“Let’s not think about the worst.” She put her arms around his waist and hugged him, pressing her breasts against his thin body, feeling his hard bones against her yielding flesh.
He pushed her away violently. She stumbled backwards and almost fell. “Don’t do that!” he shouted.
She was as shocked as if he had slapped her. “What’s the matter?”
“Stop touching me!”
“I only…”
“Just don’t do it! You ended our relationship nine months ago. I said it was the last time, and I meant it.”
She could not understand his anger. “But I only hugged you.”
“Well, don’t. I’m not your lover. You have no right.”
“I have no right to touch you?”
“No!”
“I didn’t think I needed some kind of permission.”
“Of course you knew. You don’t let people touch you.”
“You’re not people. We’re not strangers.” But as she said these things she knew she was wrong and he was right. She had rejected him, but she had not accepted the consequences. The encounter with Harry from Outhenby had fired her lust, and she had come to Merthin looking for release. She had told herself she was touching him in affectionate friendship, but that was a lie. She had treated him as if he were still available to her, as a rich and idle lady might put down a book and pick it up again. Having denied him the right to touch her all this time, it was wrong of her to try to reinstate the privilege just because a muscular young ploughman had kissed her.
All the same, she would have expected Merthin to point this out in a gentle and affectionate way. But he had been hostile and brutal. Had she thrown away his friendship as well as his love? Tears came to her eyes. She turned away from him and went back to the ladder.
She found it hard to climb up. It was tiring, and she seemed to have lost her energy. She stopped for a rest, and looked down. Merthin was standing on the bottom of the ladder, steadying it with his weight.
When she was almost at the top, she looked down again. He was still there. It occurred to her that her unhappiness would be over if she fell. It was a long drop to those unforgiving stones. She would die instantly.
Merthin seemed to sense what she was thinking, for he gave an impatient wave, indicating that she should hurry up and get off the ladder. She thought of how devastated he would be if she killed herself, and for a moment she enjoyed imagining his misery and guilt. She felt sure God would not punish her in the afterlife, if there was an afterlife.
Then she climbed the last few rungs and stood on solid ground. How foolish she had been, just for a moment. She was not going to end her life. She had too much to do.
She returned to the nunnery. It was time for Evensong, and she led the procession into the cathedral. As a young novice she had resented the time wasted in services. In fact Mother Cecilia had taken care to give her work that permitted her to be excused for much of the time. Now she welcomed the chance to rest and reflect.
This afternoon had been a low moment, she decided, but she would recover. All the same she found herself fighting back tears as she sang the psalms.
For supper the nuns had smoked eel. Chewy and strongly flavoured, it was not Caris’s favourite dish. Tonight she was not hungry, anyway. She ate some bread.
After the meal she retired to her pharmacy. Two novices were there, copying out Caris’s book. She had finished it soon after Christmas. Many people had asked for copies: apothecaries, prioresses, barbers, even one or two physicians. Copying the book had become part of the training of nuns who wanted to work in the hospital. The copies were cheap – the book was short, and there were no elaborate drawings or costly inks – and the demand seemed never-ending.
Three people made the room feel crowded. Caris was looking forward to the space and light of the pharmacy in the new hospital.
She wanted to be alone, so she sent the novices away. However, she was not destined to get her wish. A few moments later Lady Philippa came in.
Caris had never warmed to the reserved countess, but sympathized with her plight, and was glad to give sanctuary to any woman fleeing from a husband such as Ralph. Philippa was an easy guest, making few demands, spending a lot of time in her room. She had only a limited interest in sharing the nuns’ life of prayer and self-denial – but Caris of all people could understand that.
Caris invited her to sit on a stool at the bench.
Philippa was a remarkably direct woman, despite her courtly manners. Without preamble, she said: “I want you to leave Merthin alone.”
“What?” Caris was astonished and offended.
“Of course you have to talk to him, but you should not kiss or touch him.”
“How dare you?” What did Philippa know – and why did she care?
“He’s not your lover any more. Stop bothering him.”
Merthin must have told her about their quarrel this afternoon. “But why would he tell you…?” Before the question was out of her mouth, she guessed the answer.
Philippa confirmed it with her next utterance. “He’s not yours, now – he’s mine.”
“Oh, my soul!” Caris was flabbergasted. “You and Merthin?”
“Yes.”
“Are you… have you actually…”
“Yes.”
“I had no idea!” She felt betrayed, though she knew she had no right. When had this happened? “But how… where…?”
“You don’t need to know the details.”
“Of course not.” At his house on Leper Island, she supposed. At night, probably. “How long…?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Caris could work it out. Philippa had been here less than a month. “You moved fast.”
It was an unworthy jibe, and Philippa had the grace to ignore it. “He would have done anything to keep you. But you threw him over. Now let him go. It’s been difficult for him to love anyone else, after you – but he has managed it. Don’t you dare interfere.”
Caris wanted to rebuff her furiously, tell her angrily that she had no right to give orders and make moral demands – but the trouble was that Philippa was in the right. Caris had to let Merthin go, for ever.
She did not want to show her heartbreak in front of Philippa. “Would you leave me now, please?” she said with an attempt at Philippa’s style of dignity. “I would like to be alone.”
Philippa was not easily pushed around. “Will you do as I say?” she persisted.
Caris did not like to be cornered, but she had no spirit left. “Yes, of course,” she said.
“Thank you.” Philippa left.
When she was sure Philippa was out of earshot, Caris began to cry.
Philemon as prior was no better than Godwyn. He was overwhelmed by the challenge of managing the assets of the priory. Caris had made a list, during her spell as acting prior, of the monks’ main sources of income:
1. Rents
2. A share of profits from commerce and industry (tithing)
3. Agricultural profits on land not rented out
4. Profits from grain mills and other, industrial mills
5. Waterway tolls and a share of all fish landed
6. Stallage in markets
7. Proceeds of justice – fees and fines from courts
8. Pious gifts from pilgrims and others
9. Sale of books, holy water, candles, etc.
She had given the list to Philemon, and he had thrown it back at her as if insulted. Godwyn, better than Philemon only in that he had a certain superficial charm, would have thanked her and quietly ignored her list.
In the nunnery, she had introduced a new method of keeping accounts, one she had learned from Buonaventura Caroli when she was working for her father. The old method was simply to write in a parchment roll a short note of every transaction, so that you could always go back and check. The Italian system was to record income on the left-hand side and expenditure on the right, and add them up at the foot of the page. The difference between the two totals showed whether the institution was gaining or losing money. Sister Joan had taken this up with enthusiasm, but when she offered to explain it to Philemon he refused curtly. He regarded offers of help as insults to his competence.
He had only one talent, and it was the same as Godwyn’s: a flair for manipulating people. He had shrewdly weeded the new intake of monks, sending the modern-minded physician, Brother Austin, and two other bright young men to St-John-in-the-Forest, where they would be too far away to challenge his authority.
But Philemon was the bishop’s problem now. Henri had appointed him and Henri would have to deal with him. The town was independent, and Caris had her new hospital.
The hospital was to be consecrated by the bishop on Whit Sunday, which was always seven weeks after Easter. A few days beforehand, Caris moved her equipment and supplies into the new pharmacy. There was plenty of room for two people to work at the bench, preparing medicines, and a third to sit at a writing desk.
Caris was preparing an emetic, Oonagh was grinding dried herbs, and a novice, Greta, was copying out Caris’s book, when a novice monk came in with a small wooden chest. It was Josiah, a teenage boy usually called Joshie. He was embarrassed to be in the presence of three women. “Where shall I put this?” he said.
Caris looked at him. “What is it?”
“A chest.”
“I can see that,” she said patiently. The fact that someone was capable of learning to read and write did not, unfortunately, make him intelligent. “What does the chest contain?”
“Books.”
“And why have you brought me a chest of books?”
“I was told to.” Realising, after a moment, that this answer was insufficiently informative, he added: “By Brother Sime.”
Caris raised her eyebrows. “Is Sime making me a gift of books?” She opened the chest.
Joshie made his escape without answering the question.
The books were medical texts, all in Latin. Caris looked through them. They were the classics: Avicenna’s Poem on Medicine, Hippocrates’ Diet and Hygiene, Galen’s On the Parts of Medicine, and De Urinis by Isaac Judaeus. All had been written more than three hundred years ago.
Joshie reappeared with another chest.
“What now?” said Caris.
“Medical instruments. Brother Sime says you are not to touch them. He will come and put them in their proper places.”
Caris was dismayed. “Sime wants to keep his books and instruments here? Is he planning to work here?”
Joshie did not know anything about Sime’s intentions, of course.
Before Caris could say any more, Sime appeared, accompanied by Philemon. Sime looked around the room then, without explanation, began unpacking his things. He moved some of Caris’s vessels from a shelf and replaced them with his books. He took out sharp knives for opening veins, and the teardrop-shaped glass flasks used for examining urine samples.
Caris said neutrally: “Are you planning to spend a great deal of time here in the hospital, Brother Sime?”
Philemon answered for him, clearly having anticipated the question with relish. “Where else?” he said. His tone was indignant, as if Caris had challenged him already. “This is the hospital, is it not? And Sime is the only physician in the priory. How shall people be treated, if not by him?”
Suddenly the pharmacy did not seem so spacious any more.
Before Caris could say anything a stranger appeared. “Brother Thomas told me to come here,” he said. “I am Jonas Powderer, from London.”
The visitor was a man of about fifty dressed in an embroidered coat and a fur hat. Caris noted his ready smile and affable manner, and guessed that he made his living by selling things. He shook hands, then looked around the room, nodding with apparent approval at Caris’s neat rows of labelled jars and vials. “Remarkable,” he said. “I have never seen such a sophisticated pharmacy outside London.”
“Are you a physician, sir?” Philemon asked. His tone was cautious: he was not sure of Jonas’s status.
“Apothecary. I have a shop in Smithfield, next to St Bartholomew’s hospital. I shouldn’t boast, but it is the largest such business in the city.”
Philemon relaxed. An apothecary was a mere merchant, well below a prior in the pecking order. With a hint of a sneer he said: “And what brings the biggest apothecary in London all the way down here?”
“I was hoping to acquire a copy of the Kingsbridge Panacea.”
“The what?”
Jonas smiled knowingly. “You cultivate humility, Father Prior, but I see this novice nun making a copy right here in your pharmacy.”
Caris said: “The book? It’s not called a panacea.”
“Yet it contains cures for all ills.”
There was a certain logic to that, she realized. “But how do you know of it?”
“I travel a good deal, searching for rare herbs and other ingredients, while my sons take care of the shop. I met a nun of Southampton who showed me a copy. She called it a panacea, and told me it was written in Kingsbridge.”
“Was the nun Sister Claudia?”
“Yes. I begged her to lend me the book just long enough to make a copy, but she would not be parted from it.”
“I remember her.” Claudia had made a pilgrimage to Kingsbridge, stayed in the nunnery and nursed plague victims with no thought for her own safety. Caris had given her the book in thanks.
“A remarkable work,” Jonas said warmly. “And in English!”
“It’s for healers who aren’t priests, and therefore don’t speak much Latin.”
“There is no other book of its kind in any language.”
“Is it so unusual?”
“The arrangement of subjects!” Jonas enthused. “Instead of the humours of the body, or the classes of illness, the chapters refer to the pains of the patient. So, whether the customer’s complaint is stomach ache, or bleeding, or fever, or diarrhoea, or sneezing, you can just go to the relevant page!”
Philemon said impatiently: “Suitable enough for apothecaries and their customers, I am sure.”
Jonas appeared not to hear the note of derision. “I assume, Father Prior, that you are the author of this invaluable book.”
“Certainly not!” he said.
“Then who…?”
“I wrote it,” Caris said.
“A woman!” Jonas marvelled. “But where did you get all the information? Virtually none of it appears in other texts.”
“The old texts have never proved very useful to me, Jonas. I was first taught how to make medicines by a wise woman of Kingsbridge, called Mattie, who sadly left town for fear of being persecuted as a witch. I learned more from Mother Cecilia, who was prioress here before me. But gathering the recipes and treatments is not difficult. Everyone knows a hundred of them. The difficulty is to identify the few effective ones in all the dross. What I did was to keep a diary, over the years, of the effects of every cure I tried. In my book, I included only those I have seen working, with my own eyes, time after time.”
“I am awestruck to be speaking to you in person.”
“Well, you shall have a copy of my book. I’m flattered that someone should come such a long way for it!” She opened a cupboard. “This was intended for our priory of St-John-in-the-Forest, but they can wait for another copy.”
Jonas handled it as if it were a holy object. “I am most grateful.” He produced a bag of soft leather and gave it to Caris. “And, in token of my gratitude, accept a modest gift from my family to the nuns of Kingsbridge.”
Caris opened the bag and took out a small object swathed in wool. When she unwrapped the material she found a gold crucifix embedded with precious stones.
Philemon’s eyes glittered with greed.
Caris was startled. “This is a costly present!” she exclaimed. That was less than charming, she realized. She added: “Extraordinarily generous of your family, Jonas.”
He made a deprecatory gesture. “We are prosperous, thanks be to God.”
Philemon said enviously: “That – for a book of old women’s nostrums!”
Jonas said: “Ah, Father Prior, you are above such things, of course. We do not aspire to your intellectual heights. We do not try to understand the body’s humours. Just as a child sucks on a cut finger because that eases the pain, so we administer cures only because they work. As to why and how these things happen, we leave that to greater minds than ours. God’s creation is too mysterious for the likes of us to comprehend.”
Caris thought Jonas was speaking with barely concealed irony. She saw Oonagh smother a grin. Sime, too, picked up the undertone of mockery, and his eyes flashed anger. But Philemon did not notice, and he seemed mollified by the flattery. A sly look came over his face, and Caris guessed he was wondering how he could share in the credit for the book – and get some jewelled crucifixes for himself.
The Fleece Fair opened on Whit Sunday, as always. It was traditionally a busy day for the hospital, and this year was no exception. Elderly folk fell ill after making a long journey to the fair; babies and children got diarrhoea from strange food and foreign water; men and women drank too much in the taverns and injured themselves and each other.
For the first time, Caris was able to separate the patients into two categories. The rapidly diminishing number of plague victims, and others who had catching illnesses such as stomach upsets and poxes, went into the new building, which was officially blessed by the bishop early in the day. Victims of accidents and fights were treated in the old hospital, safe from the risk of infection. Gone were the days when someone would come into the priory with a dislocated thumb and die there of pneumonia.
The crisis came on Whit Monday.
Early in the afternoon Caris happened to be at the fair, taking a stroll after dinner, looking around. It was quiet by comparison with the old days, when hundreds of visitors and thousands of townspeople thronged not just the cathedral green but all the principal streets. Nevertheless, this year’s fair was better than expected after last year’s cancellation. Caris figured that people had noticed how the grip of the plague seemed to be weakening. Those who had survived so far thought they must be invulnerable – and some were, though others were not, for it continued to kill people.
Madge Webber’s cloth was the talking point of the fair. The new looms designed by Merthin were not just faster – they also made it easier to produce complex patterns in the weave. She had sold half her stock already.
Caris was talking to Madge when the fight started. Madge was embarrassing her by saying, as she had often said before, that without Caris she would still be a penniless weaver. Caris was about to give her customary denial when they heard shouts.
Caris recognized immediately the deep-chested sound of aggressive young men. It came from the neighbourhood of an ale barrel thirty yards away. The shouts increased rapidly, and a young woman screamed. Caris hurried over to the place, hoping to stop the fight before it got out of control.
She was a little too late.
The fracas was well under way. Four of the town’s young tearaways were fighting fiercely with a group of peasants, identifiable as such by their rustic clothing, and probably all from the same village. A pretty girl, no doubt the one who had screamed, was struggling to separate two men who were punching one another mercilessly. One of the town boys had drawn a knife, and the peasants had heavy wooden shovels. As Caris arrived, more people were joining in on both sides.
She turned to Madge, who had followed her. “Send someone to fetch Mungo Constable, quick as you can. He’s probably in the basement of the guild hall.” Madge hurried off.
The fight was getting nastier. Several town boys had knives out. A peasant lad was lying on the ground bleeding copiously from his arm, and another was fighting on despite a gash in his face. As Caris watched, two more townies started kicking the peasant on the ground.
Caris hesitated another moment, then stepped forward. She grabbed the nearest fighter by the shirt. “Willie Bakerson, stop this right now!” she shouted in her most authoritative voice.
It almost worked.
Willie stepped back from his opponent, startled, and looked at Caris guiltily. She opened her mouth to speak again, but at that instant a shovel struck her a violent blow on the head that had surely been intended for Willie.
It hurt like hell. Her vision blurred, she lost her balance, and the next thing she knew she hit the ground. She lay there dazed, trying to recover her wits, while the world seemed to sway around her. Then someone grabbed her under the arms and dragged her away.
“Are you hurt, Mother Caris?” The voice was familiar, though she could not place it.
Her head cleared at last, and she struggled to her feet with the help of her rescuer, whom she now identified as the muscular corn merchant Megg Robbins. “I’m just a bit stunned,” Caris said. “We have to stop these boys killing each other.”
“Here come the constables. Let’s leave it to them.”
Sure enough, Mungo and six or seven deputies appeared, all wielding clubs. They waded into the fight, cracking heads indiscriminately. They were doing as much damage as the original fighters, but their presence confused the battleground. The boys looked bewildered, and some ran off In a remarkably few moments the fight was over.
Caris said: “Megg, run to the nunnery and fetch Sister Oonagh, and tell her to bring bandages.”
Megg hurried away.
The walking wounded quickly disappeared. Caris began to examine those who were left. A peasant boy who had been knifed in the stomach was trying to hold his guts in: there was little hope for him. The one with the gashed arm would live if Caris could stop the bleeding. She took off his belt, wound it around his upper arm and tightened it until the flow of blood slowed to a trickle. “Hold that there,” she told him, and moved on to a town boy who seemed to have broken some bones in his hand. Her head was still hurting but she ignored it.
Oonagh and several more nuns appeared. A moment later, Matthew Barber arrived with his bag. Between them they patched up the wounded. Under Caris’s instructions, volunteers picked up the worst victims and carried them to the nunnery. “Take them to the old hospital, not the new one,” she said.
She stood up from a kneeling position and felt dizzy. She grabbed Oonagh to steady herself. “What’s the matter?” said Oonagh.
“I’ll be all right. We’d better get to the hospital.”
They threaded their way through the market stalls to the old hospital. When they went in they saw immediately that none of the wounded were here. Caris cursed. “The fools have taken them all to the wrong place,” she said. It was going to take a while for people to learn the importance of the difference, she concluded.
She and Oonagh went to the new building. The cloister was entered through a wide archway. As they went in, they met the volunteers corning out. “You brought them to the wrong place!” Caris said crossly.
One said: “But, Mother Caris-”
“Don’t argue, there’s no time,” she said impatiently. “Just carry them to the old hospital.”
Stepping into the cloisters, she saw the boy with the gashed arm being carried into a room where, she knew, there were five plague victims. She rushed across the quadrangle. “Stop!” she yelled furiously. “What do you think you’re doing?”
A man’s voice said: “They are carrying out my instructions.”
Caris stopped and looked around. It was Brother Sime. “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “He’s got a knife wound – do you want him to die of the plague?”
His round face turned pink. “I don’t propose to submit my decision to you for approval, Mother Caris.”
That was stupid and she ignored it. “All these injured boys must be kept away from plague victims, or they’ll catch it!”
“I think you’re overwrought. I suggest you go and lie down.”
“Lie down?” She was outraged. “I’ve just patched up all these men – now I’ve got to look at them properly. But not here!”
“Thank you for your emergency work, mother. You can now leave me to examine the patients thoroughly.”
“You idiot, you’ll kill them!”
“Please leave the hospital until you have calmed down.”
“You can’t throw me out of here, you stupid boy! I built this hospital with the nuns’ money. I’m in charge here.”
“Are you?” he said coolly.
Caris realized that, although she had not anticipated this moment, he almost certainly had. He was flushed but he had his feelings under control. He was a man with a plan. She paused, thinking fast. Looking around, she saw that the nuns and volunteers were all watching, waiting to see how this would turn out.
“We have to attend to these boys,” she said. “While we’re standing here arguing, they’re bleeding to death. We’ll compromise, for now.” She raised her voice. “Put every one down exactly where they are, please.” The weather was warm, there was no need for the patients to be indoors. “We’ll see to their needs first, then decide later where they are to be bedded.”
The volunteers and nuns knew and respected Caris, whereas Sime was new to them; and they obeyed her with alacrity.
Sime saw that he was beaten, and a look of utter fury came over his face. “I cannot treat patients in these circumstances,” he said, and he stalked out.
Caris was shocked. She had tried to save his pride with her compromise, and she had not thought he would walk away from sick people in a fit of petulance.
She quickly put him out of her mind as she began to look again at the injured.
For the next couple of hours she was busy bathing wounds, sewing up gashes and administering soothing herbs and comforting drinks. Matthew Barber worked alongside her, setting broken bones and fixing dislocated joints. Matthew was in his fifties, now, but his son Luke assisted him with equal skill.
The afternoon was cooling into evening when they finished. They sat on the cloister wall to rest. Sister Joan brought them tankards of cool cider. Caris still had a headache. She had been able to ignore it while she was busy but now it bothered her. She would go to bed early, she decided.
While they were drinking their cider, young Joshie appeared. “The lord bishop asks you to attend on him in the prior’s palace at your convenience, Mother Prioress.”
She grunted irritably. No doubt Sime had complained. This was the last thing she needed. “Tell him I’ll come immediately,” she said. In a lower voice she added: “Might as well get it over with.” She drained her tankard and left.
Wearily she walked across the green. The stallholders were packing up for the night, covering their goods and locking their boxes. She passed through the graveyard and entered the palace.
Bishop Henri sat at the head of the table. Canon Claude and Archdeacon Lloyd were with him. Philemon and Sime were also there. Godwyn’s cat, Archbishop, was sitting on Henri’s lap, looking smug. The bishop said: “Please sit down.”
She sat beside Claude. He said kindly: “You look tired, Mother Caris.”
“I’ve spent the afternoon patching up stupid boys who got into a big fight. Also, I got a bang on the head myself.”
“We heard about the fight.”
Henri added: “And about the argument in the new hospital.”
“I assume that’s why I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“The whole idea of the new place is to separate patients with infectious illnesses-”
“I know what the argument is about,” Henri interrupted. He addressed the group. “Caris ordered that those injured in the fight be taken to the old hospital. Sime countermanded her orders. They had an unseemly row in front of everyone.”
Sime said: “I apologize for that, my lord bishop.”
Henri ignored that. “Before we go any farther, I want to get something clear.” He looked from Sime to Caris and back again. “I am your bishop and, ex officio, the abbot of Kingsbridge Priory. I have the right and power to command you all, and it is your duty to obey me. Do you accept that, Brother Sime?”
Sime bowed his head. “I do.”
Henri turned to Caris. “Do you, Mother Prioress?”
There was no argument, of course. Henri was completely in the right. “Yes,” she said. She felt confident that Henri was not stupid enough to force injured hooligans to catch the plague.
Henri said: “Allow me to state the arguments. The new hospital was built with the nuns’ money, to the specifications of Mother Caris. She intended it to provide a place for plague victims and others whose illnesses may, according to her, be spread from the sick to the well. She believes it is essential to compartmentalize the two types of patient. She feels she is entitled, in all the circumstances, to insist that her plan be carried out. Is that fair, mother?”
“Yes.”
“Brother Sime was not here when Caris conceived her plan, so he could not be consulted. However, he has spent three years studying medicine at the university, and has been awarded a degree. He points out that Caris has no training and, apart from what she has picked up by practical experience, little understanding of the nature of disease. He is a qualified physician and, more than that, he is the only one in the priory, or indeed in Kingsbridge.”
“Exactly,” said Sime.
“How can you say I have no training?” Caris burst out. “After all the years I’ve cared for patients-”
“Be quiet, please,” Henri said, hardly raising his voice; and something in his quiet tone caused Caris to shut up. “I was about to mention your history of service. Your work here has been invaluable. You are known far and wide for your dedication during the plague that is still with us. Your experience and practical knowledge are priceless.”
“Thank you, bishop.”
“On the other hand, Sime is a priest, a university graduate… and a man. The learning he brings with him is essential to the proper running of a priory hospital. We do not want to lose him.”
Caris said: “Some of the masters at the university agree with my methods – ask Brother Austin.”
Philemon said: “Brother Austin has been sent to St-John-in-the-Forest.”
“And now we know why,” Caris said.
The bishop said: “I have to make this decision, not Austin nor the masters at the university.”
Caris realized that she had not prepared for this showdown. She was exhausted, she had a headache, and she could hardly think straight. She was in the middle of a power struggle, and she had no strategy. If she had been fully alert she would not have come when the bishop called. She would have gone to bed and got over her bad head and woken up refreshed in the morning, and she would not have met with Henri until she had worked out her battle plan.
Was it yet too late for that?
She said: “Bishop, I don’t feel adequate to this discussion tonight. Perhaps we could postpone it until tomorrow, when I’m feeling better.”
“No need,” said Henri. “I’ve heard Sime’s complaint, and I know your views. Besides, I will be leaving at sunrise.”
He had made up his mind, Caris realized. Nothing she said would make any difference. But what had he decided? Which way would he jump? She really had no idea. And she was too tired to do anything but sit and listen to her fate.
“Humankind is weak,” Henri said. “We see, as the apostle Paul puts it, as through a glass, darkly. We err, we go astray, we reason poorly. We need help. That is why God gave us His church, and the pope, and the priesthood – to guide us, because our own resources are fallible and inadequate. If we follow our own way of thinking, we will fail. We must consult the authorities.”
It looked as if he was going to back Sime, Caris concluded. How could he be so stupid?
But he was. “Brother Sime has studied the ancient texts of medical literature, under the supervision of the masters at the university. His course of study is endorsed by the church. We must accept its authority, and therefore his. His judgement cannot be subordinated to that of an uneducated person, no matter how brave and admirable she may be. His decisions must prevail.”
Caris felt so weary and ill that she was almost glad the interview was over. Sime had won; she had lost; and all she wanted to do was sleep. She stood up.
Henri said: “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mother Caris…”
His voice tailed off as she walked away.
She heard Philemon say: “Insolent behaviour.”
Henri said quietly: “Let her go.”
She reached the door and went out without turning back.
The full meaning of what had happened became clear to her as she walked slowly through the graveyard. Sime was in charge of the hospital. She would have to follow his orders. There would be no separation of different categories of patient. There would be no face masks or hand washing in vinegar. Weak people would be made weaker by bleeding; starved people would be made thinner by purging; wounds would be covered with poultices made of animal dung to encourage the body to produce pus. No one would care about cleanliness or fresh air.
She spoke to nobody as she walked across the cloisters, up the stairs, and through the dormitory to her own room. She lay face down on her bed, her head pounding.
She had lost Menhin, she had lost her hospital, she had lost everything.
Head injuries could be fatal, she knew. Perhaps she would go to sleep now and never wake up.
Perhaps that would be for the best.
Merthin’s orchard had been planted in the spring of 1349. A year later most of the trees were established, and came out in a scatter of brave leaves. Two or three were struggling, and only one was inarguablv dead. He did not expect any of them to bear fruit yet but, by July, to his surprise, one precocious sapling had a dozen or so tiny dark-green pears, small as yet and as hard as stones, but promising ripeness in the autumn.
One Sunday afternoon he showed them to Lolla, who refused to believe that they would grow into the tangy, juicy fruits she loved. She thought – or pretended to think – that he was playing one of his teasing games. When he asked her where she imagined ripe pears came from, she looked at him reproachfully and said: “The market, silly!”
She, too, would ripen one day, he thought, although it was hard to imagine her bony body rounding out into the soft shape of a woman. He wondered whether she would bear him grandchildren. She was five years old, so that day might be only a decade or so away.
His thoughts were on ripeness when he saw Philippa coming towards him through the garden, and it struck him how round and full her breasts were. It was unusual for her to visit him in daylight, and he wondered what had brought her here. In case they were observed, he greeted her with only a chaste kiss on the cheek, such as a brother-in-law might give without arousing comment.
She looked troubled, and he realized that for a few days now she had been more reserved and thoughtful than usual. As she sat beside him on the grass he said: “Something on your mind?”
“I’ve never been good at breaking news gently,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”
“Good God!” He was too shocked to hold back his reaction. “I’m surprised because you told me…”
“I know. I was sure I was too old. For a couple of years my monthly cycle was irregular, and then it stopped altogether – I thought. But I’ve been vomiting in the morning, and my nipples hurt.”
“I noticed your breasts as you came into the garden. But can you be sure?”
“I’ve been pregnant six times previously – three children and three miscarriages – and I know the feeling. There’s really no doubt.”
He smiled. “Well, we’re going to have a child.”
She did not return the smile. “Don’t look pleased. You haven’t thought through the implications. I’m the wife of the earl of Shiring. I haven’t slept with him since October, haven’t lived with him since February, yet in July I’m two or at most three months pregnant. He and the whole world will know that the baby is not his, and that the countess of Shiring has committed adultery.”
“But he wouldn’t…”
“Kill me? He killed Tilly, didn’t he?”
“Oh, my God. Yes, he did. But…”
“And if he killed me, he might kill my baby, too.”
Merthin wanted to say it was not possible, that Ralph would not do such a thing – but he knew otherwise.
“I have to decide what to do,” said Philippa.
“I don’t think you should try to end the pregnancy with potions – it’s too dangerous.”
“I won’t do that.”
“So you’ll have the baby.”
“Yes. But then what?”
“Suppose you stayed in the nunnery, and kept the baby secret? The place is full of children orphaned by the plague.”
“But what couldn’t be kept secret is a mother’s love. Everyone would know that the child was my particular care. And then Ralph would find out.”
“You’re right.”
“I could go away – vanish. London, York, Paris, Avignon. Not tell anyone where I was going, so that Ralph could never come after me.”
“And I could go with you.”
“But then you wouldn’t finish your tower.”
“And you would miss Odila.”
Philippa’s daughter had been married to Earl David for six months. Merthin could imagine how hard it would be for Philippa to leave her. And the truth was that he would find it agony to abandon his tower. All his adult life he had wanted to build the tallest building in England. Now that he had at last begun, it would break his heart to abandon the project.
Thinking of the tower brought Caris to mind. He knew, intuitively, that she would be devastated by this news. He had not seen her for weeks: she had been ill in bed after suffering a blow on the head at the Fleece Fair, and now, though she was completely recovered, she rarely emerged from the priory. He guessed that she had lost some kind of power struggle, for the hospital was being run by Brother Sime. Philippa’s pregnancy would be another shattering blow for Caris.
Philippa added: “And Odila, too, is pregnant.”
“So soon! That’s good news. But even more reason why you can’t go into exile and never see her, or your grandchild.”
“I can’t run, and I can’t hide. But, if I do nothing, Ralph will kill me.”
“There must be a way out of this,” Merthin said.
“I can think of only one answer.”
He looked at her. She had thought this out already, he realized. She had not told him about the problem until she had the solution. But she had been careful to show him that all the obvious answers were wrong. That meant he was not going to like the plan she had settled on.
“Tell me,” he said.
“We have to make Ralph think the baby is his.”
“But then you’d have to…”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
The thought of Philippa sleeping with Ralph was loathsome to Merthin. This was not so much jealousy, though that was a factor. What weighed most with him was how terrible she would feel about it. She had a physical and emotional revulsion from Ralph. Merthin understood the revulsion, though he did not share it. He had lived with Ralph’s brutishness all his life, and the brute was his brother, and somehow that fact remained no matter what Ralph did. All the same, it made him sick to think that Philippa would have to force herself to have sex with the man she hated most in the world.
“I wish I could think of a better way,” he said.
“So do I.”
He looked hard at her. “You’ve already decided.”
“Yes.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“So am I.”
“But will it even work? Can you… seduce him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll just have to try.”
The cathedral was symmetrical. The mason’s loft was at the west end in the low north tower, overlooking the north porch. In the matching south-west tower was a room of similar size and shape that looked over the cloisters. It was used to store items of small value that were used only rarely. All the costumes and symbolic objects employed in the mystery plays were there, together with an assortment of not-quite-useless things: wooden candlesticks, rusty chains, cracked pots, and a book whose vellum pages had rotted with age so that the words penned so painstakingly were no longer legible.
Merthin went there to check how upright the wall was, by dangling a lead pointer on a long string from the window; and while there he made a discovery.
There were cracks in the wall. Cracks were not necessarily a sign of weakness: their meaning had to be interpreted by an experienced eye. All buildings moved, and cracks might simply show how a structure was adjusting to accommodate change. Merthin judged that most of the cracks in the wall of this storeroom were benign. But there was one that puzzled him by its shape. It did not look normal. A second glance told him that someone had taken advantage of a natural crack to loosen a small stone. He removed the stone.
He realized immediately that he had found someone’s secret hiding place. The space behind the stone was a thief’s stash. He took the objects out one by one. There was a woman’s brooch with a large green stone; a silver buckle; a silk shawl; and a scroll with a psalm written on it. Right at the back he found the object that gave him the clue to the identity of the thief. It was the only thing in the hole that had no monetary value. A simple piece of polished wood, it had letters carved into its surface that read: M:Phmn:AMAT.
M was just an initial. Amat was the Latin for ‘loves’. And Phmn was surely Philemon.
Someone whose name began with M, boy or girl, had once loved Philemon and given him this; and he had hidden it with his stolen treasures.
Since childhood Philemon had been rumoured to be light-fingered. Around him, things went missing. It seemed that this was where he hid them. Merthin imagined him coming up here alone, perhaps at night, to pull out the stone and gloat over his loot. No doubt it was a kind of sickness.
There had never been any rumours about Philemon having lovers. Like his mentor Godwyn, he seemed to be one of that small minority of men in whom the need for sexual love was weak. But someone had fallen for him, at some time, and he cherished the memory.
Merthin replaced the objects, putting them back exactly the way he had found them – he had a good memory for that sort of thing. He replaced the loose stone. Then, thoughtfully, he left the room and went back down the spiral staircase.
Ralph was surprised when Philippa came home.
It was a rare fine day in a wet summer, and he would have liked to be out hawking, but to his anger he was not able to go. The harvest was about to begin, and most of the twenty or thirty stewards, bailiffs and reeves in the earldom needed to see him urgently. They all had the same problem: crops ripening in the fields and insufficient men and women to harvest them.
He could do nothing to help. He had taken every opportunity to prosecute labourers who defied the ordinance by leaving their villages in search of higher wages – but those few who could be caught just paid the fine out of their earnings and ran off again. So his bailiffs had to make do. However, they all wanted to explain their difficulties to him, and he had no choice but to listen and give his approval to their makeshift plans.
The hall was full of people: bailiffs, knights and men-at-arms, a couple of priests, and a dozen or more loitering servants. When they all went quiet, Ralph suddenly heard the rooks outside, their harsh call sounding like a warning. He looked up and saw Philippa in the doorway.
She spoke first to the servants. “Martha! This table is still dirty from dinner. Fetch hot water and scrub it, now. Dickie – I’ve just seen the earl’s favourite courser covered with what looks like yesterday’s mud, and you’re here whittling a stick. Get back to the stables where you belong and clean up that horse. You, boy, put that puppy outside, it’s just pissed on the floor. The only dog allowed in the hall is the earl’s mastiff, you know that.” The servants were galvanized into action, even those to whom she had not spoken suddenly finding work to do.
Ralph did not mind Philippa issuing orders to the domestic servants. They got lazy without a mistress to harry them.
She came up to him and made a deep curtsey, as was only appropriate after a long absence. She did not offer to kiss him.
He said neutrally: “This is… unexpected.”
Philippa said irritably: “I shouldn’t have had to make the journey at all.”
Ralph groaned inwardly. “What brings you here?” he said. Whatever it was, there would be trouble, he felt sure.
“My manor of Ingsby.”
Philippa had a small number of properties of her own, a few villages in Gloucestershire that paid tribute to her rather than to the earl. Since she had gone to live at the nunnery, the bailiffs from these villages had been visiting her at Kingsbridge Priory, Ralph knew, and accounting to her directly for their dues. But Ingsby was an awkward exception. The manor paid tribute to him and he passed it on to her – which he had forgotten to do since she left. “Damn,” he said. “It slipped my mind.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “You’ve got a lot to think about.”
That was surprisingly conciliatory.
She went upstairs to the private chamber, and he returned to his work. Half a year of separation had improved her a little, he thought as another bailiff enumerated the fields of ripening corn and bemoaned the shortage of reapers. Still, he hoped she did not plan to stay long. Lying beside her at night was like sleeping with a dead cow.
She reappeared at supper time. She sat next to Ralph and spoke politely to several visiting knights during the meal. She was as cool and reserved as ever – there was no affection, not even any humour – but he saw no sign of the implacable, icy hatred she had shown after their wedding. It was gone, or at least deeply hidden. When the meal was over she retired again, leaving him to drink with the knights.
He considered the possibility that she was planning to come back permanently, but in the end he dismissed the idea. She would never love him or even like him. It was just that a long absence had blunted the edge of her resentment. The underlying feeling would probably never leave her.
He assumed she would be asleep when he went upstairs but, to his surprise, she was at the writing desk, in an ivory-coloured linen nightgown, a single candle throwing a soft light over her proud features and thick dark hair. In front of her was a long letter in a girlish hand, which he guessed was from Odila, now the countess of Monmouth. Philippa was penning a reply. Like most aristocrats, she dictated business letters to a clerk, but wrote personal ones herself.
He stepped into the garderobe, then came out and took off his outer clothing. It was summer, and he normally slept in his underdrawers.
Philippa finished her letter, stood up – and knocked over the jar of ink on the desk. She jumped back, too late. Somehow it fell towards her, disfiguring her white nightdress with a broad black stain. She cursed. He was mildly amused: she was so prissily particular that it was funny to see her splashed with ink.
She hesitated for a moment, then pulled the nightdress off over her head.
He was startled. She was not normally quick to take off her clothes. She had been disconcerted by the ink, he realized. He stared at her naked body. She had put on a little weight at the nunnery: her breasts seemed larger and rounder than before, her belly had a slight but discernible bulge, and her hips had an attractive swelling curve. To his surprise, he felt aroused.
She bent down to mop the ink off the tiled floor with her bundled-up nightgown. Her breasts swayed as she rubbed the tiles. She turned, and he got a full view of her generous behind. If he had not known her better, he would have suspected her of trying to inflame him. But Philippa had never tried to inflame anyone, let alone him. She was just awkward and embarrassed. And that made it even more stimulating to stare at her exposed nakedness while she wiped the floor.
It was several weeks since he had been with a woman, and the last one had been a very unsatisfactory whore in Salisbury.
By the time Philippa stood up, he had an erection.
She saw him staring. “Don’t look at me,” she said. “Go to bed.” She threw the soiled garment into the laundry hamper.
She went to the clothes press and lifted its lid. She had left most of her clothes here when she went to Kingsbridge: it was not considered seemly to dress richly when living in a nunnery, even for noble guests. She found another nightdress. Ralph raked her with his eyes as she lifted it out. He stared at her uplifted breasts, and the mound of her sex with its dark hair, and his mouth went dry.
She caught his look. “Don’t you touch me,” she said.
If she had not said that, he would probably have lain down and gone to sleep. But her swift rejection stung him. “I’m the earl of Shiring and you’re my wife,” he said. “I’ll touch you any time I like.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, and she turned away to put on the gown.
That angered him. As she lifted the garment to put it on over her head, he slapped her bottom. It was a hard slap on bare skin, and he could tell that it hurt her. She jumped and cried out. “So much for not daring,” he said. She turned to him, a protest on her lips, and on impulse he punched her in the mouth. She was knocked back and fell to the floor. Her hands flew to her mouth, and blood seeped through her fingers. But she was on her back, naked, with her legs spread, and he could see the triangle of hair at the fork of her thighs, with its cleft slightly parted in what looked like an invitation.
He fell on her.
She wriggled furiously, but he was bigger than she, and strong. He overcame her resistance effortlessly. A moment later he was inside her. She was dry, but somehow that excited him.
It was all over quite quickly. He rolled off her, panting. After a few moments he looked at her. There was blood on her mouth. She did not look back at him: her eyes were closed. Yet it seemed to him that there was a curious expression on her face. He thought about it for a while until he worked it out; then he was even more puzzled than before.
She looked triumphant.
Merthin knew that Philippa had returned to Kingsbridge, because he saw her maid in the Bell. He expected his lover to come to his house that night, and was disappointed when she did not. No doubt she felt awkward, he thought. No lady would be comfortable with what she had done, even though the reasons were compelling, even though the man she loved knew and understood.
Another night went by without her appearing, then it was Sunday and he felt sure he would see her in church. But she did not come to the service. It was almost unheard-of for the nobility to miss Sunday mass. What had kept her away?
After the service he sent Lolla home with Arn and Em, then went across the green to the old hospital. On the upper floor were three rooms for important guests. He took the outside staircase.
In the corridor he came face to face with Caris.
She did not bother to ask what he was doing here. “The countess doesn’t want you to see her, but you probably should,” she said.
Merthin noted the odd turn of phrase: Not ‘The countess doesn’t want to see you,’ but ‘The countess doesn’t want you to see her.’ He looked at the bowl Caris was carrying. It contained a bloodstained rag. Fear struck his heart. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing too serious,” Caris said. “The baby is unharmed.”
“Thank God.”
“You’re the father, of course?”
“Please don’t ever let anyone hear you say that.”
She looked sad. “All the years you and I were together, and I only conceived that one time.”
He looked away. “Which room is she in?”
“Sorry to talk about myself. I’m the last thing you’re interested in. Lady Philippa is in the middle room.”
He caught the poorly suppressed grief in her voice and paused, despite his anxiety for Philippa. He touched Caris’s arm. “Please don’t believe I’m not interested in you,” he said. “I’ll always care what happens to you, and whether you’re happy.”
She nodded, and tears came to her eyes. “I know,” she said. “I’m being selfish. Go and see Philippa.”
He left Caris and entered the middle room. Philippa was kneeling on the prie-dieu with her back to him. He interrupted her prayers. “Are you all right?”
She stood up and turned to him. Her face was a mess. Her lips were swollen to three times their normal size, and badly scabbed.
He guessed that Caris had been bathing the wound – hence the bloody rag. “What happened?” he said. “Can you speak?”
She nodded. “I sound queer, but I can talk.” Her voice was a mumble, but comprehensible.
“How badly are you hurt?”
“My face looks awful, but it’s not serious. Other than that, I’m fine.”
He put his arms around her. She laid her head on his shoulder. He waited, holding her. After a while, she began to cry. He stroked her hair and her back while she shook with sobs. He said: “There, there,” and kissed her forehead, but he did not try to silence her.
Slowly, her weeping subsided.
He said: “Can I kiss your lips?”
She nodded. “Gently.”
He brushed them with his own. He tasted almonds: Caris had smeared the cuts with oil. “Tell me what happened,” he said.
“It worked. He was fooled. He will be sure it’s his baby.”
He touched her mouth with his fingertip. “And he did this?”
“Don’t be angry. I tried to provoke him, and succeeded. Be glad he hit me.”
“Glad! Why?”
“Because he thinks he had to force me. He believes I would not have submitted without violence. He has no inkling that I intended to seduce him. He will never suspect the truth. Which means I’m safe – and so is our baby.”
He put his hand on her belly. “But why didn’t you come and see me?”
“Looking like this?”
“I want to be with you even more when you’re hurt.” He moved his hand to her breast. “Besides, I’ve missed you.”
She took his hand away. “I can’t go from one to the other like a whore.”
“Oh.” He had not thought of it that way.
“Do you understand?”
“I think so.” He could see that a woman would feel cheap – although a man might be proud of doing exactly the same thing. “But how long…?”
She sighed, and moved away. “It’s not how long.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve agreed to tell the world that this is Ralph’s baby, and I’ve made sure he’ll believe that. Now he’s going to want to raise it.”
Merthin was dismayed. “I hadn’t thought about the details, but I imagined you would continue to live in the priory.”
“Ralph won’t allow his child to be raised in a nunnery, especially if it’s a boy.”
“So what will you do, go back to Earlscastle?”
“Yes.”
The child was nothing yet, of course; not a person, not even a baby, just a swelling in Philippa’s belly. But all the same Merthin felt a stab of grief. Lolla had become the great joy of his life, and he had been looking forward eagerly to another child.
But at least he had Philippa for a little while longer. “When will you go?” he asked.
“Immediately,” she said. She saw the look on his face, and tears came to her eyes. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am – but I would just feel wrong, making love to you and planning to return to Ralph. It would be the same with any two men. The fact that you’re brothers just makes it uglier.”
His eyes blurred with tears. “So it’s over with us already? Now?”
She nodded. “And there’s another thing I have to tell you, one more reason why we can never be lovers again. I’ve confessed my adultery.”
Merthin knew that Philippa had her own personal confessor, as was appropriate for a high-ranking noblewoman. Since she came to Kingsbridge, he had been living with the monks, a welcome addition to their thinned ranks. So now she had told him of her affair. Merthin hoped he could keep the secrets of the confessional.
Philippa said: “I have received absolution, but I must not continue the sin.”
Merthin nodded. She was right. They had both sinned. She had betrayed her husband, and he had betrayed his brother. She had an excuse: she had been forced into the marriage. He had none. A beautiful woman had fallen in love with him and he had loved her back, even though he had no right. The yearning ache of grief and loss he was feeling now was the natural consequence of such behaviour.
He looked at her – the cool grey-green eyes, the smashed mouth, the ripe body – and realized that he had lost her. Perhaps he had never really had her. In any case it had always been wrong, and now it was over. He tried to speak, to say goodbye, but his throat seemed to seize up, and nothing came out. He could hardly see for crying. He turned away, fumbled for the door, and somehow got out of the room.
A nun was coming along the corridor carrying a jug. He could not see who it was, but he recognized Caris’s voice when she said: “Merthin? Are you all right?”
He made no reply. He went in the opposite direction and passed through the door and down the outside staircase. Weeping openly, not caring who saw, he walked across the cathedral green, down the main street and across the bridge to his island.
September 1350 was cold and wet, but all the same there was a sense of euphoria. As damp sheaves of wheat were gathered in the surrounding countryside, only one person died of the plague in Kingsbridge: Marge Taylor, a dressmaker sixty years old. No one caught the disease in October, November or December. It seemed to have vanished, Merthin thought gratefully – at least for the time being.
The age-old migration of enterprising, restless people from countryside to town had been reversed during the plague, but now it recommenced. They came to Kingsbridge, moved into empty houses, fixed them up and paid rent to the priory. Some started new businesses – bakeries, breweries, candle manufactories – to replace the old ones that had disappeared when the owners and all their heirs died off. Merthin, as alderman, had made it easier to open a shop or a market stall, sweeping away the lengthy process of obtaining permission that had been imposed by the priory. The weekly market grew busier.
One by one Merthin rented out the shops, houses and taverns he had built on Leper Island, his tenants either enterprising newcomers or existing tradesmen who wanted a better location. The road across the island, between the two bridges, had become an extension of the main street, and therefore prime commercial property – as Merthin had foreseen, twelve years ago, when people had thought he was mad to take the barren rock as payment for his work on the bridge.
Winter drew in, and once again the smoke from thousands of fires hung over the town in a low brown cloud; but the people still worked and shopped, ate and drank, played dice in taverns and went to church on Sundays. The guild hall saw the first Christmas Eve banquet since the parish guild had become a borough guild.
Merthin invited the prior and prioress. They no longer had power to overrule the merchants, but they were still among the most important people in town. Philemon came, but Caris declined the invitation: she had become worryingly withdrawn.
Merthin sat next to Madge Webber. She was now the richest merchant and the largest employer in Kingsbridge, perhaps in the whole county. She was deputy alderman, and probably should have been alderman but that it was unusual to have a woman in that position.
Among Merthin’s many enterprises was a workshop turning out the treadle looms that had improved the quality of Kingsbridge Scarlet. Madge bought more than half his production, but enterprising merchants came from as far away as London to place orders for the rest. The looms were complex pieces of machinery that had to be made accurately and assembled with precision, so Merthin had to employ the best carpenters available; but he priced the finished product at more than double what it cost him to make, and still people could hardly wait to give him the money.
Several people had hinted that he should marry Madge, but the idea did not tempt him or her. She had never been able to find a man to match Mark, who had had the physique of a giant and the disposition of a saint. She had always been chunky, but these days she was quite fat. Now in her forties, she was growing into one of those women who looked like barrels, almost the same width all the way from shoulders to bottom. Eating and drinking well were now her chief pleasures, Merthin thought as he watched her tuck into gingered ham with a sauce made of apples and cloves. That and making money.
At the end of the meal they had a mulled wine called hippocras. Madge took a long draught, belched, and moved closer to Merthin on the bench. “We have to do something about the hospital,” she said.
“Oh?” He was not aware of a problem. “Now that the plague has ended, I would have thought people didn’t have much need of a hospital.”
“Of course they do,” she said briskly. “They still get fevers and bellyache and cancer. Women want to get pregnant and can’t, or they suffer complications giving birth. Children burn themselves and fall out of trees. Men are thrown by their horses or knifed by their enemies or have their heads broken by angry wives-”
“Yes, I get the picture,” Merthin said, amused by her garrulousness. “What’s the problem?”
“Nobody will go to the hospital any more. They don’t like Brother Sime and, more importantly, they don’t trust his learning. While we were all coping with the plague, he was at Oxford reading ancient textbooks, and he still prescribes remedies such as bleeding and cupping that no one believes in any more. They want Caris – but she never appears.”
“What do people do when they’re sick, if they don’t go to the hospital?”
“They see Matthew Barber, or Silas Pothecary, or a newcomer called Maria Wisdom, who specializes in women’s problems.”
“So what’s worrying you?”
“They’re starting to mutter about the priory. If they don’t get help from the monks and nuns, they say, why should they pay towards building the tower?”
“Oh.” The tower was a huge project. No individual could possibly finance it. A combination of monastery, nunnery and city funds was the only way to pay for it. If the town defaulted, the project could be threatened. “Yes, I see,” said Merthin worriedly. “That is a problem.”
It had been a good year for most people, Caris thought as she sat through the Christmas Day service. People were adjusting to the devastation of the plague with astonishing speed. As well as bringing terrible suffering and a near-breakdown of civilized life, the disease had provided the opportunity for a shake-up. Almost half the population had died, by her calculations; but one effect was that her remaining peasants were farming only the most fertile soils, so each man produced more. Despite the Ordinance of Labourers, and the efforts of noblemen such as Earl Ralph to enforce it, she was gratified to see that people continued to move to where the pay was highest, which was usually where the land was most productive. Grain was plentiful and herds of cattle and sheep were growing again. The nunnery was thriving and, because Caris had reorganized the monks’ affairs as well as the nuns’ after the flight of Godwyn, the monastery was now more prosperous than it had been for a hundred years. Wealth created wealth, and good times in the countryside brought more business to the towns, so Kingsbridge craftsmen and shopkeepers were beginning to return to their former affluence.
As the nuns left the church at the end of the service, Prior Philemon spoke to her. “I need to talk to you, Mother Prioress. Would you come to my house?”
There had been a time when she would have politely acceded to such a request without hesitation, but those days were over. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
He reddened immediately. “You can’t refuse to speak to me!”
“I didn’t. I refused to go to your palace. I decline to be summoned before you like a subordinate. What do you want to talk about?”
“The hospital. There have been complaints.”
“Speak to Brother Sime – he’s in charge of it, as you well know.”
“Is there no reasoning with you?” he said exasperatedly. “If Sime could solve the problem I would be talking to him, not you.”
By now they were in the monks’ cloisters. Caris sat on the low wall around the quadrangle. The stone was cold. “We can talk here. What do you have to say to me?”
Philemon was annoyed, but he gave in. He stood in front of her, and now he was the one who seemed like a subordinate. He said: “The townspeople are unhappy about the hospital.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Merthin complained to me at the guild’s Christmas dinner. They don’t come here any more, but see charlatans like Silas Pothecary.”
“He’s no more of a charlatan than Sime.”
Philemon realized that several novices were standing nearby, listening to the argument. “Go away, all of you,” he said. “Get to your studies.”
They scurried off.
Philemon said to Caris: “The townspeople think you ought to be at the hospital.”
“So do I. But I won’t follow Sime’s methods. At best, his cures have no effect. Much of the time they make patients worse. That’s why people no longer come here when they’re ill.”
“Your new hospital has so few patients that we’re using it as a guest house. Doesn’t that bother you?”
That jibe went home. Caris swallowed and looked away. “It breaks my heart,” she said quietly.
“Then come back. Figure out a compromise with Sime. You worked under monk-physicians in the early days, when you first came here. Brother Joseph was the senior doctor then. He had the same training as Sime.”
“You’re right. In those days, we felt that the monks sometimes did more harm than good, but we could work with them. Most of the time we didn’t call them in at all, we just did what we thought best. When they did attend, we didn’t always follow their instructions exactly.”
“You can’t believe they were always wrong.”
“No. Sometimes they cured people. I remember Joseph opening a man’s skull and draining accumulated fluid that had been causing unbearable headaches – it was very impressive.”
“So do the same now.”
“It’s no longer possible. Sime put an end to that, didn’t he? He moved his books and equipment into the pharmacy and took charge of the hospital. And I’m sure he did so with your encouragement. In fact it was probably your idea.” She could tell from Philemon’s expression that she was right. “You and he plotted to push me out. You succeeded – and now you’re suffering the consequences.”
“We could go back to the old system. I’ll make Sime move out.”
She shook her head. “There have been other changes. I’ve learned a lot from the plague. I’m surer than ever that the physicians’ methods can be fatal. I won’t kill people for the sake of a compromise with you.”
“You don’t realize how much is at stake.” He had a faintly smug look.
So, there was something else. She had been wondering why he had brought this up. It was not like him to fret about the hospital: he had never cared much for the work of healing. He was interested only in what would raise his status and defend his fragile pride. “All right,” she said. “What have you got up your sleeve?”
“The townspeople are talking about cutting off funds for the new tower. Why should they pay extra to the cathedral, they say, when they’re not getting what they want from us? And now that the town is a borough, I as prior can no longer enforce the payment.”
“And if they don’t pay…?”
“Your beloved Merthin will have to abandon his pet project,” Philemon said triumphantly.
Caris could see that he thought this was his trump card. And, indeed, there had been a time when the revelation would have jolted her. But no longer. “Merthin isn’t my beloved any more, is he?” she said. “You put a stop to that, too.”
A look of panic crossed his face. “But the bishop has set his heart on this tower – you can’t put that at risk!”
Caris stood up. “Can’t I?” she said. “Why not?” She turned away, heading for the nunnery.
He was flabbergasted. He called after her: “How can you be so reckless?”
She was going to ignore him, then she changed her mind and decided to explain. She turned back. “You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And when you’ve lost everything-” Her façade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. “When you’ve lost everything, you’ve got nothing to lose.”
The first snow fell in January. It formed a thick blanket on the roof of the cathedral, smoothed out the delicate carving of the spires, and masked the faces of the angels and saints sculpted over the west door. The new masonry of the tower foundations had been covered with straw to insulate the new mortar against winter frost, and now the snow overlaid the straw.
There were few fireplaces in a priory. The kitchen had fires, of course, which was why work in kitchens was always popular with novices. But there was no fire in the cathedral, where the monks and nuns spent seven or eight hours every day. When churches burned down, it was usually because some desperate monk had brought a charcoal brazier into the building, and a spark had flown from the fire to the timber ceiling. When not in church or labouring, the monks and nuns were supposed to walk and read in the cloisters, which were out of doors. The only concession to their comfort was the warming room, a small chamber off the cloisters where a fire was lit in the most severe weather. They were allowed to come into the warming room from the cloisters for short periods.
As usual, Caris ignored rules and traditions, and permitted nuns to wear woollen hose in the winter. She did not believe that God needed his servants to get chilblains.
Bishop Henri was so worried about the hospital – or rather, about the threat to his tower – that he drove from Shiring to Kingsbridge through the snow. He came in a charette, a heavy wooden cart with a waxed canvas cover and cushioned seats. Canon Claude and Archdeacon Lloyd came with him. They paused at the prior’s palace only long enough to dry their clothes and drink a warming cup of wine before summoning a crisis meeting with Philemon, Sime, Caris, Oonagh, Merthin and Madge.
Caris knew it would be a waste of time but she went anyway: it was easier than refusing, which would have required her to sit in the nunnery and deal with endless messages begging, commanding and threatening her.
She looked at the snowflakes falling past the glazed windows as the bishop drearily summarized a quarrel in which she really had no interest. “This crisis has been brought about by the disloyal and disobedient attitude of Mother Caris,” Henri said.
That stung her into a response. “I worked in the hospital here for ten years,” she said. “My work, and the work of Mother Cecilia before me, are what made it so popular with the townspeople.” She pointed a rude finger at the bishop. “You changed it. Don’t try to blame others. You sat in that chair and announced that Brother Sime would henceforth be in charge. Now you should take responsibility for the consequences of your foolish decision.”
“You must obey me!” he said, his voice rising to a screech in frustration. “You are a nun – you have taken a vow.” The grating sound disturbed the cat, Archbishop, and it stood up and walked out of the room.
“I realize that,” Caris said. “It puts me in an intolerable position.” She spoke without forethought, but as the words came out she realized they were not really ill-considered. In fact they were the fruit of months of brooding. “I can no longer serve God in this way,” she went on, her voice calm but her heart pounding. “That is why I have decided to renounce my vows and leave the nunnery.”
Henri actually stood up. “You will not!” he shouted. “I will not release you from your holy vows.”
“I expect God will, though,” she said, scarcely disguising her contempt.
That made him angrier. “This notion that individuals can deal with God is wicked heresy. There has been too much of such loose talk since the plague.”
“Do you think that might have happened because, when people approached the church for help during the plague, they so often found that its priest and monks -” here she looked at Philemon – “had fled like cowards?”
Henri held up a hand to stifle Philemon’s indignant response. “We may be fallible but, all the same, it is only through the church and its priests that men and women may approach God.”
“You would think that, of course,” Caris said. “But that doesn’t make it right.”
“You’re a devil!”
Canon Claude intervened. “All things considered, my lord bishop, a public quarrel between yourself and Caris would not be helpful.” He gave her a friendly smile. He had been well disposed towards her ever since the day she had caught him and the bishop kissing and had said nothing about it. “Her present non-cooperation must be set against many years of dedicated, sometimes heroic service. And the people love her.”
Henri said: “But what if we do release her from her vows? How would that solve the problem?”
At this point, Merthin spoke for the first time. “I have a suggestion,” he said.
Everyone looked at him.
He said: “Let the town build a new hospital. I will donate a large site on Leper Island. Let it be staffed by a convent of nuns quite separate from the priory, a new group. They will be under the spiritual authority of the bishop of Shiring, of course, but have no connection with the prior of Kingsbridge or any of the physicians at the monastery. Let the new hospital have a lay patron, who would be a leading citizen of the town, chosen by the guild, and would appoint the prioress.”
They were all quiet for a long moment, letting this radical proposal sink in. Caris was thunderstruck. A new hospital… on Leper Island… paid for by the townspeople… staffed by a new order of nuns… having no connection with the priory…
She looked around the group. Philemon and Sime clearly hated the idea. Henri, Claude and Lloyd just looked bemused.
At last the bishop said: “The patron will be very powerful – representing the townspeople, paying the bills and appointing the prioress. Whoever plays that role will control the hospital.”
“Yes,” said Merthin.
“If I authorize a new hospital, will the townspeople be willing to resume paying for the tower?”
Madge Webber spoke for the first time. “If the right patron is appointed, yes.”
“And who should it be?” said Henri.
Caris realized that everyone was looking at her.
A few hours later, Caris and Merthin wrapped themselves in heavy cloaks, put on boots and walked through the snow to the island, where he showed her the site he had in mind. It was on the west side, not far from his house, overlooking the river.
She was still dizzy from the sudden change in her life. She was to be released from her vows as a nun. She would become a normal citizen again, after almost twelve years. She found she could contemplate leaving the priory without anguish. The people she had loved were all dead: Mother Cecilia, Old Julie, Mair, Tilly. She liked Sister Joan and Sister Oonagh well enough, but it was not the same.
And she would still be in charge of a hospital. Having the right to appoint and dismiss the prioress of the new institution, she would be able to run the place according to the new thinking that had grown out of the plague. The bishop had agreed to everything.
“I think we should use the cloister layout again,” Merthin said. “It seemed to work really well for the short time you were in charge.”
She stared at the sheet of unmarked snow and marvelled at his ability to imagine walls and rooms where she could see only whiteness. “The entrance arch was used almost like a hall,” she said. “It was the place where people waited, and where the nuns first examined the patients before deciding what to do with them.”
“You would like it larger?”
“I think it should be a real reception hall.”
“All right.”
She was bemused. “This is hard to believe. Everything has turned out just as I would have wanted it.”
He nodded. “That’s how I worked it out.”
“Really?”
“I asked myself what you would wish for, then I figured out how to achieve it.”
She stared at him. He had said it lightly, as if merely explaining the reasoning process that had led him to his conclusions. He seemed to have no idea how momentous it was to her that he should be thinking about her wishes and how to achieve them.
She said: “Has Philippa had the baby yet?”
“Yes, a week ago.”
“What did she have?”
“A boy.”
“Congratulations. Have you seen him?”
“No. As far as the world is concerned, I’m only his uncle. But Ralph sent me a letter.”
“Have they named him?”
“Roland, after the old earl.”
Caris changed the subject. “The river water isn’t very pure this far downstream. A hospital really needs clean water.”
“I’ll lay a pipe to bring you water from farther upstream.”
The snowfall eased and then stopped, and they had a clear view of the island.
She smiled at him. “You have the answer to everything.”
He shook his head. “These are the easy questions: clean water, airy rooms, a reception hall.”
“And what are the difficult ones?”
He turned to face her. There were snowflakes in his red beard. He said: “Questions like: Does she still love me?”
They stared at one another for a long moment.
Caris was happy.