Epic Historial Collection (178 page)

“Why would I want to look at a door?”

“It's carved. The story of the wise and foolish virgins.”

She gave a humorless laugh. “Don't tell me about virgins.”

They carried it through to the yard. Merthin did not understand women. Griselda had been cold to him ever since they had made love. If that was how she felt, why had she done it? She was making it clear she did not want to do it again. He could have reassured her that he felt the same way—in fact he loathed the prospect—but that would be insulting, so he said nothing.

They put down the stretcher and Merthin's helper left. Elfric was in the yard, his brawny body bent over a stack of timber, counting planks, tapping each beam with a piece of square-cut wood a couple of feet long, sticking his tongue into his cheek as he did whenever he faced a mental challenge. He glared at Merthin and carried on, so Merthin said nothing, but unwrapped the door and stood it up against a pile of stone blocks. He was extraordinarily proud of what he had done. He had followed the traditional pattern, but at the same time he had done something original that made people gasp. He could hardly wait to see the door installed in the church.

“Forty-seven,” Elfric said, then he turned to Merthin.

“I finished the door,” Merthin said proudly. “What do you think?”

Elfric looked at the door for a moment. He had a big nose, and his nostrils twitched in surprise. Then, without warning, he hit Merthin across the face with the stick he had been using to count. It was a solid piece of wood and the blow was hard. Merthin cried out in sudden agony, staggered back, and fell to the ground.

“You piece of filth!” Elfric yelled. “You defiled my daughter!”

Merthin tried to sputter a protest, but his mouth was full of blood.

“How dare you!” Elfric bellowed.

As if at a signal, Alice appeared from inside the house. “Snake!” she screamed. “You slithered into our home and deflowered our little girl!”

They were pretending to be spontaneous, but they must have planned this, Merthin thought. He spat blood and said: “Deflowered? She was no virgin!”

Elfric lashed out again with his improvised club. Merthin rolled out of the way, but the blow landed painfully on his shoulder.

Alice said: “How could you do this to Caris? My poor sister—when she finds out, it will break her heart.”

Merthin was stung into a response. “And you'll be sure to tell her, won't you, you bitch.”

“Well, you're not going to marry Griselda in secret,” Alice said.

Merthin was astonished. “Marry? I'm not marrying her. She hates me!”

With that, Griselda appeared. “I certainly don't want to marry you,” she said. “But I'll have to. I'm pregnant.”

Merthin stared at her. “That's not possible—we only did it once.”

Elfric laughed harshly. “It only takes once, you young fool.”

“I'm still not marrying her.”

“If you don't, you'll be sacked,” Elfric said.

“You can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“I don't care, I'm not going to marry her.”

Elfric dropped the club and picked up an axe.

Merthin said: “Jesus Christ!”

Alice took a step forward. “Elfric, don't commit murder.”

“Get out of the way, woman.” Elfric lifted the axe.

Merthin, still on the ground, scooted away, in fear of his life.

Elfric brought the axe down, not on Merthin, but on his door.

Merthin shouted: “No!”

The sharp blade sank into the face of the long-haired virgin and split the wood along the grain.

Merthin yelled: “Stop it!”

Elfric lifted the axe again and brought it down even harder. It split the door in two.

Merthin got to his feet. To his horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears. “You have no right!” He was trying to shout, but his voice came out in a whisper.

Elfric lifted the axe and turned toward him. “Stay back, boy—don't tempt me.”

Merthin saw a mad light in Elfric's eye, and backed away.

Elfric brought the axe down on the door again.

Merthin stood and watched with tears pouring down his face.

11

T
he two dogs, Skip and Scrap, greeted one another with joyful enthusiasm. They were from the same litter, though they did not look similar: Skip was a brown boy dog and Scrap a small black female. Skip was a typical village dog, lean and suspicious, whereas the city-dwelling Scrap was plump and contented.

It was ten years since Gwenda had picked Skip out of a litter of mongrel puppies, on the floor of Caris's bedroom in the wool merchant's big house, the day Caris's mother died. Since then, Gwenda and Caris had become close friends. They met only two or three times a year, but they shared their secrets. Gwenda felt she could tell Caris everything, and the information would never get back to her parents or anyone else in Wigleigh. She assumed Caris felt the same: because Gwenda did not talk to any other Kingsbridge girls, there could be no risk of her letting something slip in a careless moment.

Gwenda arrived in Kingsbridge on the Friday of Fleece Fair week. Her father, Joby, went to the fairground in front of the cathedral to sell the furs of squirrels he had trapped in the forest near Wigleigh. Gwenda went straight to Caris's house, and the two dogs were reunited.

As always, Gwenda and Caris talked about boys. “Merthin is in a strange mood,” Caris said. “On Sunday he was his normal self, kissing me in church—then, on Monday, he could hardly look me in the eye.”

“He's feeling guilty about something,” Gwenda said immediately.

“It's probably connected with Elizabeth Clerk. She's always had her eye on him, though she's a cold bitch and much too old for him.”

“Have you and Merthin done it yet?”

“Done what?”

“You know…When I was little, I used to call it grunting, because that was the noise grown-ups made while they were doing it.”

“Oh, that? No, not yet.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know…”

“Don't you want to?”

“Yes, but…don't you worry about spending your life doing some man's bidding?”

Gwenda shrugged. “I don't like the idea but, on the other hand, I don't worry about it.”

“What about you? Have you done it yet?”

“Not properly. I said yes to a boy from the next village, years ago, just to see what it was like. It's a nice warm glow, like drinking wine. That was the only time. But I'd let Wulfric do it any time he liked.”

“Wulfric? This is new!”

“I know. I mean, I've known him since we were small, when he used to pull my hair and run away. Then one day, soon after Christmas, I looked at him as he came into church, and I realized he'd become a man. Well, not just a man, but a really gorgeous man. He had snow in his hair and a sort of mustard-colored scarf around his neck, and he just looked glowing.”

“Do you love him?”

Gwenda sighed. She did not know how to say what she felt. It was not just love. She thought about him all the time, and she did not know how she could live without him. She daydreamed about kidnapping him and locking him up in a hut deep in the forest so that he could never escape from her.

“Well, the look on your face answers my question,” Caris said. “Does he love you?”

Gwenda shook her head. “He never even speaks to me. I wish he'd do something to show that he knows who I am, even if it was only pulling my hair. But he's in love with Annet, the daughter of Perkin. She's a selfish cow, but he adores her. Her father and his are the two wealthiest men in the village. Her father raises laying hens and sells them, and his father has fifty acres.”

“You make it sound hopeless.”

“I don't know. What's hopeless? Annet might die. Wulfric might suddenly realize he's always loved me. My father might be made earl and order him to marry me.”

Caris smiled. “You're right. Love is never hopeless. I'd like to see this boy.”

Gwenda stood up. “I was hoping you'd say that. Let's go and find him.”

They left the house, the dogs following at their heels. The rainstorms that had lashed the town earlier in the week had given way to occasional showers, but the main street was still a stream of mud. Because of the fair, the mud was mixed with animal droppings, rotten vegetables, and all the litter and filth of a thousand visitors.

As they splashed through the disgusting puddles, Caris asked about Gwenda's family.

“The cow died,” Gwenda said. “Pa needs to buy another, but I don't know how he's going to do it. He only has a few squirrel furs to sell.”

“A cow costs twelve shillings this year,” Caris said with concern. “That's a hundred and forty-four silver pennies.” Caris always did arithmetic in her head: she had learned Arabic numbers from Buonaventura Caroli, and she said that made it easy.

“For the last few winters that cow has kept us alive—especially the little ones.” The pain of extreme hunger was familiar to Gwenda. Even with the cow to give milk, four of Ma's babies had died. No wonder Philemon had longed to be a monk, she thought: it was worth almost any sacrifice to have hearty meals provided every day without fail.

Caris said: “What will your father do?”

“Something underhand. It's difficult to steal a cow—you can't slip it into your satchel—but he'll have a crafty scheme.” Gwenda was sounding more confident than she felt. Pa was dishonest, but not clever. He would do anything he could, legal or not, to get another cow, but he might just fail.

They passed through the priory gates into the wide fairground. The traders were wet and miserable on the sixth day of bad weather. They had exposed their stock to the rain and got little in return.

Gwenda felt awkward. She and Caris almost never talked about the disparity in wealth between the two families. Every time Gwenda visited, Caris would quietly give her a present to take home: a cheese, a smoked fish, a bolt of cloth, a jar of honey. Gwenda would thank her—and she was always profoundly grateful—but no more would be said. When Pa tried to make her take advantage of Caris's trust by stealing from the house, Gwenda would argue that she would then be unable to visit again, whereas this way she came home with something two or three times a year. Even Pa could see the sense of that.

Gwenda looked for the stall where Perkin would be selling his hens. Annet would probably be there and, wherever Annet was, Wulfric would not be far away. Gwenda was right. There was Perkin, fat and sly, greasily polite to his customers, curt to everyone else. Annet was carrying a tray of eggs, smiling coquettishly, the tray pulling her dress tight against her breasts, her fair hair straying from her hat in wisps that played around her pink cheeks and her long neck. And there was Wulfric, looking like an archangel who had lost his way and wandered among humankind by mistake.

“There he is,” Gwenda murmured. “The tall one with—”

“I can tell which one he is,” Caris said. “He looks good enough to eat.”

“You see what I mean.”

“He's a bit young, isn't he?”

“Sixteen. I'm eighteen. Annet is eighteen too.”

“All right.”

“I know what you're thinking,” Gwenda said. “He's too handsome for me.”

“No—”

“Handsome men never fall for ugly women, do they?”

“You're not ugly—”

“I've seen myself in a glass.” The memory was painful, and Gwenda grimaced. “I cried when I realized what I looked like. I have a big nose and my eyes are too close together. I resemble my father.”

Caris protested: “You have beautiful soft brown eyes, and wonderful thick hair.”

“But I'm not in Wulfric's class.”

Wulfric was standing side-on to Gwenda and Caris, giving them a good view of his carved profile. They both admired him for a moment—then he turned, and Gwenda gasped. The other side of his face was completely different: bruised and swollen, with one eye closed.

She ran up to him. “What happened to you?” she cried.

He was startled. “Oh, hello, Gwenda. I had a fight.” He half-turned away, obviously embarrassed.

“Who with?”

“Some squire of the earl's.”

“You're hurt!”

He looked impatient. “Don't worry, I'm fine.”

He did not understand why she was concerned, of course. Perhaps he even thought she was reveling in his misfortune. Then Caris spoke. “Which squire?” she said.

Wulfric looked at her with interest, realizing from her dress that she was a wealthy woman. “His name is Ralph Fitzgerald.”