The Pillars of the Earth (134 page)

“Awaiting collection, lord—you see the owner’s mark on the sacks. ...”

It was true: each sack was marked with a letter or symbol. That might be a trick, of course, but there was no way William could establish the truth. He found it maddening. But it was not his way to accept this kind of situation. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’ve been robbing me.”

Wulfric was respectfully insistent, even though his voice was shaking. “I’m honest, lord.”

“There’s never been an honest miller yet.”

“Lord—” Wulfric swallowed hard. “Lord, I’ve never cheated you by so much as a grain of wheat—”

“I’ll bet you’ve been robbing me blind.”

Sweat ran down Wulfric’s face despite the cold weather. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I’m ready to swear by Jesus and the saints—”

“Shut your mouth.”

Wulfric was silent.

William was letting himself get madder and madder but he still had not decided what to do. He wanted to give Wulfric a bad scare, perhaps let Walter beat him up with the chain-mail gloves, possibly take some or all of Wulfric’s own flour. ... Then his eye fell on Maggie, holding the tray with one cup of ale on it, her pretty face rigid with fear, her big young breasts swelling under the floury tunic; and he thought of the perfect punishment for Wulfric. “Grab the wife,” he said to Walter out of the corner of his mouth. To Wulfric he said: “I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Maggie saw Walter moving toward her but she was too late to escape. As she turned away, Walter grabbed her arm and pulled. The tray fell with a crash and beer spilled on the floor as Maggie was jerked back. Walter twisted her arm behind her back and held her. She was shaking with fear.

Wulfric said: “No, leave her, please!” in a panicky voice.

William gave a satisfied nod. Wulfric was going to see his young wife raped by several men and he would be powerless to save her. Another time he would make sure to have enough grain to satisfy his lord.

William said: “Your wife’s getting plump on bread made from stolen flour, Wulfric, while the rest of us are tightening our belts. Let’s see just how fat she is, shall we?” He nodded to Walter.

Walter grasped the neck of Maggie’s tunic and pulled sharply down. The garment ripped and fell away. Underneath she wore a linen shirt that reached her knees. Her ample breasts rose and fell as she panted with fear. William stood in front of her. Walter twisted her arm harder, so that she arched her back in pain, and her breasts stuck out even more. William looked at Wulfric, then put his hands on her breasts and kneaded them. They were soft and heavy in his hands.

Wulfric took a step forward and said: “You devil—”

“Hold him,” William snapped, and Louis grabbed the miller by both arms and held him still.

William ripped off the girl’s undershirt.

His throat went dry as he stared at her voluptuous white body.

Wulfric said: “No, please—”

William felt his desire rising. “Hold her down,” he said.

Maggie began to scream.

William unbuckled his sword belt and dropped it on the floor as the knights took Maggie by the arms and legs. She had no hope of resisting four strong men, but all the same she kept writhing and screaming. William liked that. Her breasts jiggled as she moved, and her thighs opened and closed, alternately hiding and revealing her sex. The four knights pinned her down on the threshing floor.

William knelt between her legs and lifted the skirt of his tunic. He looked up at her husband. Wulfric was distraught. He was staring in horror and mumbling pleas for mercy which could not be heard over the screaming. William savored the moment: the terrified woman, the knights holding her down, the husband looking on.

Then Wulfric’s eyes flickered away.

William sensed danger. Everyone in the room was staring at him and the girl. The only thing that could conceivably divert Wulfric’s attention was the possibility of rescue. William turned his head and looked toward the doorway.

At that moment something heavy and hard hit him on the head.

He roared with pain and collapsed on top of the girl. His face banged against hers. Suddenly he could hear men shouting, lots of them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Walter fall as if he, too, had been clubbed. The knights released their hold on Maggie. William looked at her face and read shock and relief there. She started to wriggle out from under him. He let her go and rolled away fast.

The first thing he saw above him was a wild-looking man with a woodsman’s ax, and he thought: For God’s sake, who is it? The father of the girl? He saw Guillaume rise and turn, and in the next instant the ax came down hard on Guillaume’s unprotected neck, its sharp blade cutting deep into his flesh. Guillaume fell on William, dead. His blood spurted all over William’s tunic.

William pushed the corpse off him. When he was able to look up again he saw that the mill had been invaded by a crowd of ragged, wild-haired, unwashed men armed with clubs and axes. There were a lot of them. He realized he was in trouble. Had the villagers come to the rescue of Maggie? How dare they! There would be some hangings in this village before the end of the day. Enraged, he scrambled to his feet and reached for his sword.

He did not have it. He had dropped his belt in order to rape the girl.

Hugh Axe, Ugly Gervase and Louis were fighting fiercely against what looked like a huge mob of beggars. There were several dead peasants on the ground, but nevertheless the three knights were slowly being driven back across the threshing floor. William saw the naked Maggie, still screaming, forcing her way frantically through the melee toward the door, and even in his confusion and fear he felt a spasm of regretful desire for that round white backside. Then he saw that Wulfric was fighting hand to hand with some of the attackers. Why was the miller fighting the men who had rescued his wife? What the devil was going on?

Bewildered, William looked around for his sword belt. It was lying on the floor almost at his feet. He picked it up and drew the sword, then took three steps back to stay clear of the fighting a moment longer. Looking past the fracas, he saw that most of the attackers were not fighting at all—they were picking up sacks of flour and running out with them. William began to understand. This was
not
a rescue operation by outraged villagers. This was a raiding party from outside. They were not interested in Maggie, and they had not known that William and his knights were inside the mill. All they wanted to do was rob the mill and steal William’s flour.

It was obvious who the raiders must be: outlaws.

He felt a surge of heat. This was his chance to strike back at the rabid pack who had been terrorizing the county and emptying his barns.

His knights were overwhelmingly outnumbered. There were at least twenty attackers. William was astonished at the courage of the outlaws. Peasants would normally scatter like chickens before a band of knights, whether they outnumbered the knights by two to one or ten to one. But these people fought hard, and were not discouraged when one of their number fell. They seemed ready to die if necessary. Perhaps that was because they were going to die anyway, of starvation, unless they could steal this flour.

Louis was fighting two men at the same time when a third came up behind him and clubbed him with an ironheaded carpenter’s hammer. Louis fell down and stayed down. The man dropped the hammer and picked up Louis’s sword. Now there were two knights against twenty outlaws. But Walter was recovering from the blow to his head, and he now drew his sword and entered the melee. William raised his weapon and joined in.

The four of them made a formidable fighting team. The outlaws were driven back, desperately parrying the flashing swords with their clubs and axes. William began to think their morale might crack and they might flee in disorder. Then one of them shouted: “The rightful earl!”

It was some kind of rallying cry. Others took it up, and the outlaws fought more fiercely. The repeated cry, “The rightful earl—the rightful earl!,” struck a chill into William’s heart even as he was fighting for his life. It meant that whoever was commanding this army of outlaws had set his sights on William’s title. William fought harder, as if this skirmish might determine the future of the earldom.

Only half the outlaws were actually fighting the knights, William realized. The rest were moving the flour. The combat settled into a steady exchange of thrust and parry, swipe and dodge. Like soldiers who know that the retreat must be sounded soon, the outlaws had begun to fight in a cautious, defensive style.

Behind the fighting outlaws, the others were carrying the last of the flour sacks out of the mill. The outlaws began to retreat, backing through the doorway that led from the threshing floor into the house. William realized that whatever happened now, the outlaws had got away with most of the flour. In no time at all the whole county would know that they had stolen it from under his nose. He was going to be a laughingstock. The thought enraged him so much that he pressed a fierce attack on his opponent and stabbed the man through the heart with a classic thrust.

Then an outlaw caught Hugh with a lucky jab and stabbed his right shoulder, putting him out of action. Now there were two outlaws in the doorway holding off the three surviving knights. That in itself was humiliating enough; but then, with monumental arrogance, one of the outlaws waved the other away. The man disappeared, and the last outlaw stepped back a pace, into the single room of the miller’s house.

Only one of the knights could stand in the doorway and fight the outlaw. William pushed forward, shouldering Walter and Gervase aside: he wanted this man for himself. As their swords clashed, William realized immediately that this man was no dispossessed peasant: he was a hardened fighting man like William himself. For the first time he looked into the outlaw’s face; and the shock was so great he almost dropped his sword.

His opponent was Richard of Kingsbridge.

Richard’s face blazed with hatred. William could see the scar on his mutilated ear. The force of Richard’s rancor frightened William more than his flashing sword. William had thought he had crushed Richard finally, but now Richard was back, at the head of a ragamuffin army that had made a fool of William.

Richard came at William hard, taking advantage of his momentary shock. William sidestepped a thrust, raised his sword, parried a slash and stepped back. Richard pressed forward, but now William was partly shielded by the doorway, which restricted Richard’s attack to stabbing strokes. Nevertheless Richard drove William farther back, until William was on the threshing floor of the mill and Richard was in the doorway. Now, however, Walter and Gervase went at Richard. Under pressure from the three of them he retreated again. As soon as he backed through the doorway, Walter and Gervase were squeezed out, and it was William against Richard.

William realized that Richard was in a nasty position. As soon as he gained ground he found himself fighting three men. When William tired he could give place to Walter. It was almost impossible for Richard to hold all three of them off indefinitely. He was fighting a losing battle. Perhaps today would not end in humiliation for William after all. Perhaps he would kill his oldest enemy.

Richard must have been thinking along the same lines and presumably he had come to the same conclusion. However, there was no apparent loss of energy or determination. He looked at William with a savage grin that William found unnerving, and leaped forward with a long thrust. William dodged it and stumbled. Walter lunged forward to defend William from the coup de grâce—but instead of coming on, Richard turned on his heel and fled.

William stood up and Walter bumped into him, while Gervase tried to squeeze past them. It took a moment for the three to disentangle themselves, but in that moment Richard crossed the little room, slipped out and banged the door shut. William went after him and threw the door open. The outlaws were making their escape—and, in a final humiliating stroke, they were riding off on the horses of William’s knights. As William burst out of the house he saw his own mount, a superb war-horse that had cost him a king’s ransom, with Richard in the saddle. The horse had obviously been untied and held ready. William was struck by the mortifying thought that this was the second time Richard had stolen his war-horse. Richard kicked its sides, and it reared up—it was not kind to strangers—but Richard was a good horseman and he stayed on. He sawed on the reins and got the horse’s head down. In that moment William darted forward and lunged at Richard with his sword; but the horse was bucking, and William missed, sticking the point of his blade into the wood of the saddle. Then the horse took off, bolting down the village street after the other fleeing outlaws.

William watched them go with murder in his heart.

The rightful earl, he thought. The rightful earl.

He turned around. Walter and Gervase stood behind him. Hugh and Louis were wounded, he did not know how badly, and Guillaume was dead, his blood all over the front of William’s tunic. William was completely humiliated. He could hardly hold up his head.

Fortunately the village was deserted: the peasants had fled, not waiting to see William’s wrath. The miller and his wife had also vanished, of course. The outlaws had taken all the knights’ horses, leaving only the two carts and their oxen.

William looked at Walter. “Did you see who that was, that last one?”

“Yes.”

Walter was in the habit of using as few words as possible when his master was in a rage.

William said: “It was Richard of Kingsbridge.”

Walter nodded.

“And they called him the rightful earl,” William finished.

Walter said nothing.

William went back through the house and into the mill.

Hugh was sitting up, his left hand pressed to his right shoulder. He looked pale.

William said: “How does it feel?”

“This is nothing,” Hugh said. “Who
were
those people?”

“Outlaws,” William said shortly. He looked around. There were seven or eight outlaws lying dead or wounded on the floor. He spotted Louis flat on his back with his eyes open. At first he thought the man was dead; then Louis blinked.