The Pillars of the Earth (62 page)

Richard was standing over Father Ralph, with his sword at the priest’s throat. As Aliena came through the door she screamed: “Where’s the rest of my father’s money?”

“Gone,” the priest whispered.

She knelt by his head and put her knife to his face. “Gone where?”

“I spent it,” he confessed in a voice hoarse with fear.

Aliena wanted to stab him, or beat him, or throw him into a river; but none of it would do any good. He was telling the truth. She looked at the overturned barrel: a drinking man could get through a great deal of beer. She felt as if she might explode with frustration. “I’d cut off your ear if I could sell it for a penny,” she hissed at him. He looked as if he thought she might cut it off anyway.

Richard said anxiously: “He’s spent the money. Let’s take what we’ve got and go.”

He was right, Aliena realized reluctantly. Her anger began to evaporate, leaving behind a residue of bitterness. There was nothing to be gained by frightening the priest any more, and the longer they stayed, the more chance there was that someone would come in and cause trouble. She stood up. “All right,” she said. She put the gold coins back in the belt and buckled it around her waist beneath her cloak. She pointed a finger at the priest. “I may come back one day and kill you,” she spat.

She went out.

She strode away along the narrow street. Richard caught up with her hurrying. “You were wonderful, Allie!” he said excitedly. “You scared him half to death—and you got the money!”

She nodded. “Yes, I did,” she said sourly. She was still tense, but now that her fury had abated she felt deflated and unhappy.

“What shall we buy?” he said eagerly.

“Just a little food for our journey.”

“Shan’t we buy horses?”

“Not with a pound.”

“Still, we could get you some boots.”

She considered that. The clogs tortured her but the ground was too cold for bare feet. However, boots were expensive and she was reluctant to spend the money so quickly. “No,” she decided. “I’ll live a few more days without boots. We’ll keep the money for now.”

He was disappointed, but he did not dispute her authority. “What food shall we get?”

“Horsebread, hard cheese and wine.”

“Let’s get some pies.”

“They cost too much.”

“Oh.” He was silent for a moment, then he said: “You’re awfully grumpy, Allie.”

Aliena sighed. “I know.” She thought: Why do I feel this way? I should be proud. I brought us here from the castle, I defended my brother, I found my father, I got our money.

Yes, and I stuck a knife into a fat man’s belly, and made my brother kill him, and I held a burning stick to a priest’s face, and I was ready to put his eyes out.

“Is it because of Father?” said Richard sympathetically.

“No, it’s not,” Aliena replied. “It’s because of me.”

Aliena regretted not buying the boots.

On the road to Gloucester she wore the clogs until they made her feet bleed, then she walked barefoot until she could no longer stand the cold, whereupon she put the clogs on again. She found it helped not to look at her feet: they hurt more when she could see the sores and the blood.

In the hill country there were a lot of poor smallholdings where peasants grew an acre or so of oats or rye and kept a few scrawny animals. Aliena stopped on the outskirts of a village, when she thought they must be near Huntleigh, to speak to a peasant who was shearing a sheep in a fenced yard next to a low, wattle-and-daub farmhouse. He had the sheep’s head trapped in a wooden fixture like a stocks, and was cutting its wool with a long-bladed knife. Two more sheep waited uneasily nearby, and one that was already shorn was grazing in the field, looking naked in the cold air.

“It’s early for shearing,” Aliena said.

The peasant looked up at her and grinned good-humoredly. He was a young man with red hair and freckles, and his sleeves were rolled up, showing hairy arms. “Ah, but I need the money. Better the sheep go cold than I go hungry.”

“How much do you get?”

“Penny a fleece. But I have to go to Gloucester to get it, so I lose a day in the field, just when it’s spring and there’s a lot to do.” He was cheerful enough, despite his grumbling.

“What’s this village?” Aliena asked him.

“Strangers call it Huntleigh,” he said. Peasants never used the name of their village—to them it was just the village. Names were for outsiders. “Who are you?” he asked with frank curiosity. “What brings you here?”

“I’m the niece of Simon of Huntleigh,” Aliena said.

“Indeed. Well, you’ll find him in the big house. Go back along this road a few yards, then take the path through the fields.”

“Thank you.”

The village sat in the middle of its plowed fields like a pig in a wallow. There were twenty or so small dwellings clustered around the manor house, which was not much bigger than the home of a prosperous peasant. Aunt Edith and Uncle Simon were not very wealthy, it seemed. A group of men stood outside the manor house with a couple of horses. One of them appeared to be the lord: he wore a scarlet coat. Aliena looked at him more closely. It was twelve or thirteen years since she had seen her Uncle Simon, but she thought this was he. She remembered him as a big man, and now he looked smaller, but no doubt that was because Aliena had grown. His hair was thinning and he had a double chin which she did not recall. Then she heard him say: “He’s very high in the wither, this beast,” and she recognized the rasping, slightly breathy voice.

She began to relax. From now on they would be fed and clothed and cared for and protected: no more horsebread and hard cheese, no more sleeping in barns, no more walking the roads with one hand on her knife. She would have a soft bed and a new dress and a dinner of roast beef.

Uncle Simon caught her eye. At first he did not know who she was. “Look at this,” he said to his men. “A handsome wench and a boy soldier to visit us.” Then something else came into his eyes, and Aliena knew he had realized they were not total strangers. “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

Aliena said: “Yes, Uncle Simon, you do.”

He jumped, as if scared by something. “By the saints! The voice of a ghost!”

Aliena did not understand that, but a moment later he explained. He came over to her, peering hard at her, as if he were about to look at her teeth like a horse; and he said: “Your mother had the same voice, like honey pouring out of a jar. You’re as beautiful as she was too, by Christ.” He put out his hand to touch her face, and she quickly stepped back out of reach. “But you’re as stiff-necked as your damned father, I can see that. I suppose he sent you here, did he?”

Aliena bristled. She did not like to hear Father referred to as “your damned father.” But if she protested, he would take it as further proof that she was stiff-necked; so she bit her tongue and answered him submissively. “Yes. He said Aunt Edith would take care of us.”

“Well, he was wrong,” Uncle Simon said. “Aunt Edith is dead. What’s more, since your father’s disgrace, I’ve lost half of my lands to that fat rogue Percy Hamleigh. It’s hard times here. So you can turn right around and go back to Winchester. I’m not taking you in.”

Aliena was shaken. He seemed so hard. “But we’re your kin!” she said.

He had the grace to look slightly ashamed, but his reply was harsh. “You’re not my kin. You used to be my first wife’s niece. Even when Edith was alive she never saw her sister, because of that pompous ass your mother married.”

“We’ll work,” Aliena pleaded. “We’re both willing—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” he said. “I’m not having you.”

Aliena was shocked. He was so definite. It was clear there was no point in arguing with him or begging. But she had suffered so many disappointments and reverses of this kind that she felt bitter rather than sad. A week ago something like this would have made her burst into tears. Now she felt like spitting at him. She said: “I’ll remember this when Richard is the earl and we take the castle back.”

He laughed. “Shall I live so long?”

Aliena decided not to stay and be humiliated any longer. “Let’s go,” she said to Richard. “We’ll look after ourselves.” Uncle Simon had already turned away and was looking at the horse with the high wither. The men with him were a little embarrassed. Aliena and Richard walked away.

When they were out of earshot, Richard said plaintively: “What are we going to do, Allie?”

“We’re going to show these heartless people that we’re better than they are,” she said grimly, but she did not feel brave, she was just full of hatred, for Uncle Simon, for Father Ralph, for Odo Jailer, for the outlaws, for the verderer, and most of all for William Hamleigh.

“It’s a good thing we’ve got some money,” Richard said.

It was. But the money would not last forever. “We can’t just spend it,” she said as they walked along the path that led back to the main road. “If we use it all up on food and things like that, we’ll just be destitute again when it’s all gone. We’ve got to
do
something with it.”

“I don’t see why,” Richard said. “I think we should buy a pony.”

She stared at him. Was he joking? There was no smile on his face. He simply did not understand. “We’ve got no position, no title, and no land,” she said patiently. “The king won’t help us. We can’t get ourselves hired as laborers—we tried, in Winchester, and no one would take us on. But somehow we have to make a living and turn you into a knight.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

She could tell that he did not really see. “We need to establish ourselves in some occupation that will feed us and give us at least a chance of making enough money to buy you a good horse.”

“You mean I should become an apprentice to a craftsman?”

Aliena shook her head. “You have to become a knight, not a carpenter. Have we ever met anyone who had an independent livelihood but no skills?”

“Yes,” Richard said unexpectedly. “Meg in Winchester.”

He was right. Meg was a wool merchant although she had never been an apprentice. “But Meg has a market stall.” They passed the red-haired peasant who had given them directions. His four shorn sheep were grazing in the field, and he was tying their fleeces into bundles with cord made of reeds. He looked up from his work and waved. It was people such as he who took their wool into the towns and sold it to wool merchants. But the merchant had to have a place of business. ...

Or did he?

An idea was forming in Aliena’s mind.

She turned back abruptly.

Richard said: “Where are you going?”

She was too excited to answer him. She leaned on the peasant’s fence. “How much did you say you could get for your wool?”

“Penny a fleece,” he said.

“But you have to spend all day going to Gloucester and back.”

“That’s the trouble.”

“Suppose I buy your wool? That would save you the journey.”

Richard said: “Allie! We don’t need wool!”

“Shut up, Richard.” She did not want to explain her idea to him now—she was impatient to try it out on the peasant.

The peasant said: “That would be a kindness.” But he looked dubious, as if he suspected trickery.

“I couldn’t offer you a penny a fleece, though.”

“Aha! I thought there’d be a snag.”

“I could give you twopence for four fleeces.”

“But they’re worth a penny each!” he protested.

“In Gloucester. This is Huntleigh.”

He shook his head. “I’d rather have fourpence and lose a day in the field than have twopence and gain a day.”

“Suppose I offer you threepence for four fleeces.”

“I lose a penny.”

“And save a day’s journey.”

He looked bewildered. “I never heard of nothing like this before.”

“It’s as if I were a carter, and you paid me a penny to take your wool to market.” She found his slowness exasperating. “The question is, is an extra day in the fields worth a penny to you, or not?”

“It depends what I do with the day,” he said thoughtfully.

Richard said: “Allie, what are we going to do with four fleeces?”

“Sell them to Meg,” she said impatiently. “For a penny each. That way we’re a penny better off.”

“But we have to go all the way to Winchester for a penny!”

“No, stupid. We buy wool from fifty peasants and take the whole lot to Winchester. Don’t you see? We could make fifty pennies! We could feed ourselves
and
save up for a good horse for you!”

She turned back to the peasant. His cheerful grin had gone, and he was scratching his ginger-colored head. Aliena was sorry she had perplexed him, but she wanted him to accept her offer. If he did, she would know it was possible for her to fulfill her vow to her father. But peasants were stubborn. She felt like taking him by the collar and shaking him. Instead, she reached inside her cloak and fumbled in her purse. They had changed the gold bezants for silver pennies at the goldsmith’s house in Winchester, and now she took out three pennies and showed them to the peasant. “Here,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

The sight of the silver helped the peasant make up his mind. “Done,” he said, and took the money.

Aliena smiled. It looked as if she might have found the answer.

That night she used a bundled fleece for a pillow. The smell of sheep reminded her of Meg’s house.

When she woke up in the morning she discovered that she was not pregnant.

Things were looking up.

Four weeks after Easter, Aliena and Richard entered Winchester with an old horse pulling a homemade cart bearing a huge sack which contained two hundred and forty fleeces—the precise number which made up a standard woolsack.

At that point they discovered taxes.

Previously they had always entered the city without attracting any attention, but now they learned why city gates were narrow and constantly manned by customs officers. There was a toll of one penny for every cartload of goods taken into Winchester. Fortunately, they still had a few pennies left, and they were able to pay; otherwise they would have been turned away.

Most of the fleeces had cost them between one half and three quarters of a penny each. They had paid seventy-two pence for the old horse, and the rickety cart had been thrown in. Most of the rest of the money had been spent on food. But tonight they would have a pound of silver
and
a horse and cart.