The Pillars of the Earth (73 page)

It was a long ride, and the sun was high when they approached the village. There were twenty or thirty houses surrounded by three big fields, all of them now stubble. Near the houses, at the edge of one of the fields, were three large oak trees in a group. As William and his men drew near, he saw that most of the villagers appeared to be sitting in the shade of the oaks, eating their dinner. He spurred his horse into a canter for the last few hundred yards, and the others followed suit. They halted in front of the villagers in a cloud of dust.

As the villagers were scrambling to their feet, swallowing their horsebread and trying to keep the dust out of their eyes, William’s mistrustful gaze observed a curious little drama. A middle-aged man with a black beard spoke quietly but urgently to a plump red-cheeked girl with a plump, red-cheeked baby. A young man joined them and was hastily shooed away by the older man. Then the girl walked off toward the houses, apparently under protest, and disappeared in the dust. William was intrigued. There was something furtive about the whole scene, and he wished Mother were here to interpret it.

He decided to do nothing about it for the moment. He addressed Arthur in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. “Five of my free tenants here are in arrears, is that right?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Who is the worst?”

“Athelstan hasn’t paid for two years, but he was very unlucky with his pigs—”

William spoke over Arthur, cutting him off. “Which one of you is Athelstan?”

A tall, stoop-shouldered man of about forty-five years stepped forward. He had thinning hair and watery eyes.

William said: “Why don’t you pay me rent?”

“Lord, it’s a small holding, and I’ve no one to help me, now that my boys have gone to work in the town, and then there was the swine fever—”

“Just a moment,” William said. “Where did your sons go?”

“To Kingsbridge, lord, to work on the new cathedral there, for they want to marry, as young men must, and my land won’t support three families.”

William tucked away in his memory, for future reflection, the information that the young men had gone to work on Kingsbridge Cathedral. “Your holding is big enough to support one family, at any rate, but still you don’t pay your rent.”

Athelstan began to talk about his pigs again. William stared malevolently at him without listening. I know why you haven’t paid, he thought; you knew your lord was ill and you decided to cheat him while he was incapable of enforcing his rights. The other four delinquents thought the same. You rob us when we’re weak!

For a moment he was full of self-pity. The five of them had been chuckling over their cleverness, he felt sure. Well, now they would learn their lesson. “Gilbert and Hugh, take this peasant and hold him still,” he said quietly.

Athelstan was still talking. The two knights dismounted and approached him. His tale of swine fever tailed off into nothing. The knights took him by the arms. He turned pale with fear.

William spoke to Walter in the same quiet voice. “Have you got your chain-mail gloves?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Put them on. Teach Athelstan a lesson. But make sure he lives to spread the word.”

“Yes, lord.” Walter took from his saddlebag a pair of leather gauntlets with fine chain mail sewn to the knuckles and the backs of the fingers. He pulled them on slowly. All the villagers watched in dread, and Athelstan began to moan with terror.

Walter got off his horse, walked over to Athelstan and punched him in the stomach with one mailed fist. The thud as the blow landed was sickeningly loud. Athelstan doubled over, too winded to cry out. Gilbert and Hugh pulled him upright, and Walter punched his face. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose. One of the onlookers, a woman who was presumably his wife, screamed out and jumped on Walter, yelling: “Stop! Leave him! Don’t kill him!”

Walter brushed her off, and two other women grabbed her and pulled her back. She continued to scream and struggle. The other peasants watched in mutinous silence as Walter beat Athelstan systematically until his body was limp, his face covered with blood and his eyes closed in unconsciousness.

“Let him go,” William said at last.

Gilbert and Hugh released Athelstan. He slumped to the ground and lay still. The women released the wife and she ran to him, sobbing, and knelt beside him. Walter took off the gauntlets and wiped the blood and pieces of flesh off the chain mail.

William had already lost interest in Athelstan. Looking around the village, he saw a new-looking two-story wooden structure built on the edge of the brook. He pointed to it and said to Arthur: “What’s that?”

“I haven’t seen it before, lord,” Arthur said nervously.

William thought he was lying. “It’s a water mill, isn’t it?”

Arthur shrugged, but his indifference was unconvincing. “I can’t imagine what else it would be, right there by the stream.”

How could he be so insolent, when he had just seen a peasant beaten half to death on William’s orders? Almost desperately, William said: “Are my serfs allowed to build mills without my permission?”

“No, lord.”

“Do you know
why
this is prohibited?”

“So that they will bring their grain to the lord’s mills and pay him to grind it for them.”

“And the lord will profit.”

“Yes, lord.” Arthur spoke in the condescending tone of one who explains something elementary to a child. “But if they pay a fine for building a mill, the lord will profit just the same.”

William found his tone maddening. “No, he won’t profit just the same. The fine is never as much as the peasants would otherwise have to pay. That’s why they love to build mills. And that’s why my father would never let them.” Without giving Arthur the chance to reply, he kicked his horse and rode over to the mill. His knights followed, and the villagers tailed along behind them in a ragged crowd.

William dismounted. There was no doubt about what the building was. A large waterwheel was turning under the pressure of the fast-flowing stream. The wheel turned a shaft which went through the side wall of the mill. It was a solid wooden construction, made to last. Whoever built it had clearly expected to be free to use it for years.

The miller stood outside the open door, wearing a prepared expression of injured innocence. In the room behind him were sacks of grain in neat stacks. William dismounted. The miller bowed to him politely, but was there not a hint of scorn in his look? Once again William had the painful sense that these people thought he was a nobody, and his inability to impose his will on them made him feel impotent. Indignation and frustration welled up in him, and he yelled at the miller furiously. “Whatever made you think you could get away with this? Do you imagine that I’m stupid? Is that it? Is that what you think?” Then he punched the man in the face.

The miller gave an exaggerated cry of pain and fell to the ground quite unnecessarily.

William stepped over him and went inside. The shaft of the waterwheel was connected, by a set of wooden gears, to the shaft of the grindstone on the upper floor. The milled grain fell through a chute to the threshing floor at ground level. The second floor, which had to bear the weight of the grindstone, was supported by four stout timbers (taken from William’s forest without permission, undoubtedly). If the timbers were cut the whole building would fall.

William went outside. Hugh Axe carried the weapon from which he got his name strapped to his saddle. William said: “Give me your battle-ax.” Hugh obliged. William went back inside and began to attack the timber supports of the upper floor.

It gave him great satisfaction to feel the blade of the ax thud into the building that the peasants had so carefully constructed in their attempt to cheat him of his milling fees. They aren’t laughing at me now, he thought savagely.

Walter came in and stood watching. William hacked a deep notch in one of the supports and then cut halfway through a second. The platform above, which carried the enormous weight of the millstone, began to tremble. William said: “Get a rope.” Walter went out.

William cut into the other two timbers as deeply as he dared. The building was ready to collapse. Walter came back with some rope. William tied the rope to one of the timbers, then carried the other end outside and tied it around the neck of his war-horse.

The peasants watched in sullen silence.

When the rope was fixed, William said: “Where’s the miller?”

The miller approached, still trying to look like one who is being unjustly dealt with.

William said: “Gervase, tie him up and put him inside.”

The miller made a break for it, but Gilbert tripped him and sat on him, and Gervase tied his hands and feet with leather thongs. The two knights picked him up. He began to struggle and plead for mercy.

One of the villagers stepped out of the crowd and said: “You can’t do this. It’s murder. Even a lord can’t murder people.”

William pointed a trembling finger at him. “If you open your mouth again I’ll put you inside with him.”

For a moment the man looked defiant; then he thought better of it and turned away.

The knights came out of the mill. William walked his horse forward until it had taken up the slack in the rope. He slapped its rump, and it took the strain.

Inside the building, the miller began to scream. The noise was bloodcurdling. It was the sound of a man in mortal terror, a man who knew that within the next few moments he was going to be crushed to death.

The horse tossed its head, trying to slacken the rope around its neck. William yelled at it and kicked its rump to make it pull, then shouted at his knights: “Heave on the rope, you men!” The four knights grabbed the taut rope and pulled with the horse. The villagers’ voices were raised in protest, but they were all too frightened to interfere. Arthur was standing to one side, looking sick.

The miller’s screams became more shrill. William imagined the blind terror that must be possessing the man as he waited for his dreadful death. None of these peasants will ever forget the revenge of the Hamleighs, he thought.

The timber creaked loudly; then there was a loud crack as it broke. The horse bounded forward and the knights let go of the rope. A corner of the roof sagged. The women began to wail. The wooden walls of the mill seemed to shudder; the miller’s screams rose higher; there was a mighty crash as the upper floor gave way; the screaming was cut off abruptly; and the ground shook as the grindstone landed on the threshing floor. The walls splintered, the roof caved in, and in a moment the mill was nothing but a pile of firewood with a dead man inside it.

William began to feel better.

Some of the villagers ran forward and began to dig into the debris frantically. If they were hoping to find the miller alive they would be disappointed. His body would be a grisly sight. That was all to the good.

Looking around, William spotted the red-cheeked girl with the red-cheeked baby, standing at the back of the crowd, as if she were trying to be inconspicuous. He remembered how the man with the black beard—presumably her father—had been keen to keep her out of sight. He decided to solve that mystery before leaving the village. He caught her eye and beckoned her. She looked behind her, hoping he was pointing at someone else. “You,” William said. “Come here.”

The man with the black beard saw her and gave a grunt of exasperation.

William said: “Who’s your husband, wench?”

The father said: “She has no—”

He was too late, however, for the girl said: “Edmund.”

“So you
are
married. But who’s your father?”

“I am,” said the man with the black beard. “Theobald.”

William turned to Arthur. “Is Theobald a freeman?”

“He’s a serf, lord.”

“And when a serfs daughter marries, is it not the lord’s right, as her owner, to enjoy her on the wedding night?”

Arthur was shocked. “Lord! That primitive custom has not been enforced in this part of the world in living memory!”

“True,” said William. “The father pays a fine, instead. How much did Theobald pay?”

“He hasn’t paid yet, lord, but—”

“Not paid! And she with a fat red-cheeked child!”

Theobald said: “We never had the money, lord, and she was with child by Edmund, and wanted to be wed, but we can pay now, for we’ve got the crop in.”

William smiled at the girl. “Let me see the baby.”

She stared at him fearfully.

“Come. Give it to me.

She was afraid but she could not bring herself to hand over her baby. William stepped closer and gently took the child from her. Her eyes filled with terror but she did not resist him.

The baby began to squall. William held it for a moment, then grasped both its ankles in one hand and with a swift motion threw it into the air as high as he could.

The girl screamed like a banshee and gazed into the air as the baby flew upward.

The father ran forward with his arms outstretched to catch it as it fell.

While the girl was looking up and screaming, William took a handful of her dress and ripped it. She had a pink, rounded young body.

The father caught the baby safely.

The girl turned to run, but William caught her and threw her to the ground.

The father handed the baby to a woman and turned to look at William.

William said: “As I wasn’t given my due on the wedding night, and the fine hasn’t been paid, I’ll take what’s owed me now.”

The father rushed at him.

William drew his sword.

The father stopped.

William looked at the girl, lying on the ground, trying to cover her nakedness with her hands. Her fear aroused him. “And when I’ve done, my knights will have her too,” he said with a contented smile.

In three years Kingsbridge had changed beyond recognition.

William had not been here since the Whitsunday when Philip and his army of volunteers had frustrated Waleran Bigod’s scheme. Then it had been forty or fifty wooden houses clustered around the priory gate and scattered along the muddy footpath that led to the bridge. Now, he saw as he approached the village across the undulating fields, there were three times as many houses, at least. They formed a brown fringe all around the gray stone wall of the priory and completely filled the space between the priory and the river. Several of the houses looked large. Within the priory close there were new stone buildings, and the walls of the church seemed to be going up fast. There were two new quays beside the river. Kingsbridge had become a town.