The tallest boy crossed his arms, his tattered sleeves flapping. His bare legs were brown with filth. “My mother says you won’t be so high and holy, Annabel Chapman, now that our lord is here. Woe to the Chapmans.” The rest of the boys took up the chant. “Woe to the Chapmans. Woe to the Chapmans. Woe to the Chapmans.”
She stomped through the circle of boys, staring straight ahead as Stephen had done. The boys continued their taunts and insults, but she held her head erect and pretended to ignore them. They drifted down the road, launching a few weak insults at Stephen as they rounded the bend, their gloating laughter disappearing with them.
Stephen was coming toward her. She waited for him to catch up.
“I’ll walk with you,” Stephen said, giving her a sympathetic lift of his brows. “Are you going to the hallmote?”
Annabel nodded. “I have to go to the butcher’s to get a goose for Mother, but I thought I might see how my family fares in the court first.” She tried to look unworried, but she couldn’t fool her friend. They walked together down the dusty road.
“My mother is waiting for me at home to help her patch a leak in the roof. But I will stay with you at the hallmote if you need me,” Stephen offered.
“No, I’d rather you didn’t stay.” Annabel’s cheeks heated at the thought of her friend seeing her family’s name scorned and abused in front of nearly everyone they knew. She’d rather bear her shame alone. “I’ll be fine.”
The two of them passed an old woman bent over the field of beans next to the road. Let her not notice me, Annabel prayed as she ducked her head.
The older woman straightened as much as the hump in her back allowed and leveled her narrowed gaze at Annabel. “A Chapman. It will be your turn to tend the fields now that the new master has come, dearie!” She cackled a high-pitched laugh.
Annabel stared at the ground. Today wasn’t the first time she’d experienced the villagers’ contempt, but she blushed again at what must be going through Stephen’s mind.
It seemed to take forever to walk past the woman, for her lingering laughter to fade away. Stephen said softly, “Don’t let it bother you.”
Annabel tried to smile and say something flippant, but she couldn’t think of anything. Dread slowed her feet. Fear crept up her spine and gripped her around the throat as she came closer to the place where her family’s fate would be decided. She imagined each person at the hallmote today, derision and glee mingling on their face, as they too anticipated her family’s reckoning.
Annabel stopped and faced Stephen. “You better go on back home. Give your mother my love.” She gave him a little wave and started to turn away.
“You always have a home with us,” Stephen said.
“Thank you.” She waved again as she walked toward her fate. His words seemed to emphasize even more the trouble she was in.
She would refuse to marry Bailiff Tom, of course, and under church law no one could force her to marry. But by doing so her family would lose the only offer of help they were likely to receive — Tom’s offer to pay the lord for the work the Chapmans had not done. The lord would get what was owed him, one way or another. Would the jury order that their home be seized and given to the lord? Or would they devise some other punishment? The old lord had lived far away and never came to Glynval, choosing to send his steward instead, a man who accepted bribes. But the new lord, it was rumored, had come to Glynval to build a proper house and live here. His new steward would make sure he received all that was owed to him.
Annabel shivered at the thought of the new lord, Lord le Wyse. He was getting harder to force from her mind.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she remembered the things she’d heard about him. Exaggerations, surely. He couldn’t be as frightening as people said. But they would all soon find out.
As she rounded another curve in the road, the houses and shops of Glynval came into view. Each wattle-and-daub structure was made of white plaster and a thatched roof. Chicken coops, looking just like the houses, only smaller, crowded in the backyards along with slick, muddy pigsties full of snorting swine. The animals filled the air with their pungent stench. Annabel wrinkled her nose and hurried on, forcing herself to go to the manorial court meeting first before going on to the butcher’s to get the goose. Besides, the butcher is probably at the hallmote with everyone else.