Epic Historial Collection (304 page)

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 harvesttime, 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 labor 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 harvesttime. Today and tomorrow you will reap his barley in Brookfield.”

“The second day is normally forgiven. That's been the practise for a long time.”

“It was, in times of plentiful labor. 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 labored 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 toward 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 whom 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 behavior. 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 marry 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.

76

A
t 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. Afterward David and Ralph were guests of honor at a banquet given by Merthin in the guildhall. 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 laborers. It had eased temporarily now that the harvest was in and the autumn plowing 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 plowing began and the ground was soft enough for the serfs to sow seeds, the trouble would start again: laborers 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.