World Without End

86

The priests said Sunday was a day of rest, but it had never been so for Gwenda. Today, after church in the morning and then dinner, she was working with Wulfric in the garden behind their house. It was a good garden, half an acre with a hen house, a pear tree, and a barn. In the vegetable patch at the far end, Wulfric was digging furrows and Gwenda sowing peas.

The boys had gone to another village for a football game, their usual recreation on Sundays. Football was the peasant equivalent of the nobility's tournaments: a mock battle in which the injuries were sometimes real. Gwenda just prayed her sons would come home intact.

Today Sam returned early. 'The ball burst,' he said grumpily.

'Where's Davey?' Gwenda asked.

'He wasn't there.'

'I thought he was with you.'

'No, he quite often goes off on his own.'

'I didn't know that.' Gwenda frowned. 'Where does he go?'

Sam shrugged. 'He doesn't tell me.'

Perhaps he was seeing a girl, Gwenda thought. Davey was close about all sorts of things. If it was a girl, who was she? There were not many eligible girls in Wigleigh. The survivors of the plague had remarried quickly, as if eager to repopulate the land; and those born since were too young. Perhaps he was meeting someone from the next village, at a rendezvous in the forest. Such assignations were as common as heartache.

When Davey came home, a couple of hours later, Gwenda confronted him. He made no attempt to deny that he had been sneaking off. 'I'll show you what I've been doing, if you like,' he said. 'I can't keep it secret forever. Come with me.'

They all went, Gwenda, Wulfric, and Sam. The Sabbath was observed to the extent that no one worked in the fields, and the Hundredacre was deserted as the four of them walked across it in a blustery spring breeze. A few strips looked neglected: there were still villagers who had more land than they could cope with. Annet was one such - she had only her eighteen-year-old daughter Amabel to help her, unless she could hire labor, which was still difficult. Her strip of oats was getting weedy.

Davey led them half a mile into the forest and stopped at a clearing off the beaten track. 'This is it,' he said.

For a moment Gwenda did not know what he was talking about. She was standing on the edge of a nondescript patch of ground with low bushes growing between the trees. Then she looked again at the bushes. They were a species she had never seen before. It had a squarish stem with pointed leaves growing in clusters of four. The way it had covered the ground made her think it was a creeping plant. A pile of uprooted vegetation at one side showed that Davey had been weeding. 'What is it?' she said.

'It's called madder. I bought the seeds from a sailor that time we went to Melcombe.'

'Melcombe?' Gwenda said. 'That was three years ago.'

'That's how long it's taken.' Davey smiled. 'At first I was afraid it wouldn't grow at all. He told me it needed sandy soil and would tolerate light shade. I dug over the clearing and planted the seeds, but the first year I got only three or four feeble plants. I thought I'd wasted my money. Then, the second year, the roots spread underground and sent up shoots, and this year it's all over the place.'

Gwenda was astonished that her child could have kept this from her for so long. 'But what use is madder?' she said. 'Does it taste good?'

Davey laughed. 'No, it's not edible. You dig up the roots, dry them, and grind them to a powder that makes a red dye. It's very costly. Madge Webber in Kingsbridge pays seven shillings for a gallon.'

That was an astonishing price, Gwenda reflected. Wheat, the most expensive grain, sold for about seven shillings a quarter, and a quarter was sixty-four gallons. 'This is sixty-four times as precious as wheat!' she said.

Davey smiled. 'That's why I planted it.'

'Why you planted what?' said a new voice. They all turned to see Nathan Reeve, standing beside a hawthorn tree as bent and twisted as he was. He wore a triumphant grin: he had caught them red-handed.

Davey was quick with an answer. 'This is a medicinal herb called...hagwort,' he said. Gwenda could tell he was improvising, but Nate would not be sure. 'It's good for my mother's wheezy chest.'

Nate looked at Gwenda. 'I didn't know she had a wheezy chest.'

'In the winter,' Gwenda said.

'A herb?' Nate said skeptically. 'There's enough here to dose all Kingsbridge. And you've been weeding it, to get more.'

'I like to do things properly,' Davey said.

It was a feeble response, and Nate ignored it. 'This is an unauthorized crop,' he said. 'First of all, serfs need permission for what they plant - they can't go raising anything they like. That would lead to total chaos. Secondly, they can't cultivate the lord's forest, even by planting herbs.'

None of them had any answer to that. Those were the rules. It was frustrating: often peasants knew they could make money by growing nonstandard crops that were in demand and fetched high prices: hemp for rope, flax for expensive underclothing, or cherries to delight rich ladies. But many lords and their bailiffs refused permission, out of instinctive conservatism.

Nate's expression was venomous. 'One son a runaway and a murderer,' he said. 'The other defies his lord. What a family.'

He was entitled to feel angry, Gwenda thought. Sam had killed Jonno and got away with it. Nate would undoubtedly hate her family to his dying day.

Nate bent down and roughly pulled a plant out of the ground. 'This will come before the manor court,' he said with satisfaction; and he turned and limped away through the trees.

Gwenda and her family followed. Davey was undaunted. 'Nate will impose a fine, and I'll pay it,' he said. 'I'll still make money.'

'What if he orders the crop destroyed?' Gwenda said.

'How?'

'It could be burned, or trampled.'

Wulfric put in: 'Nate wouldn't do that. The village wouldn't stand for it. A fine is the traditional way to deal with this.'

Gwenda said: 'I just worry about what Earl Ralph will say.'

Davey made a deprecatory gesture with his hand. 'No reason why the earl should find out about a little thing like this.'

'Ralph takes a special interest in our family.'

'Yes, he does,' Davey said thoughtfully. 'I still don't understand what made him pardon Sam.'

The boy was not stupid. Gwenda said: 'Perhaps Lady Philippa persuaded him.'

Sam said: 'She remembers you, Mother. She told me that when I was at Merthin's house.'

'I must have done something to endear myself to her,' Gwenda said, extemporizing. 'Or it could be that she just felt compassion, one mother for another.' It was not much of a story, but Gwenda did not have a better one.

In the days since Sam had been released they had had several conversations about what might account for Ralph's pardon. Gwenda just pretended to be as perplexed as everyone else. Fortunately Wulfric had never been the suspicious type.

They reached their house. Wulfric looked at the sky, said there was another good hour of light left, and went into the garden to finish sowing peas. Sam volunteered to help him. Gwenda sat down to mend a rip in Wulfric's hose. Davey sat opposite Gwenda and said: 'I've got another secret to tell you.'

She smiled. She did not mind him having a secret if he told his mother. 'Go on.'

'I have fallen in love.'

'That's wonderful!' She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. 'I'm very happy for you. What's she like?'

'She's beautiful.'

Gwenda had been speculating, before she found out about the madder, that Davey might be meeting a girl from another village. Her intuition had been right. 'I had a feeling about this,' she said.

'Did you?' He seemed anxious.

'Don't worry, there's nothing wrong. It just occurred to me that you might be meeting someone.'

'We go to the clearing where I'm growing the madder. That's sort of where it started.'

'And how long has this been going on?'

'More than a year.'

'It's serious, then.'

'I want to marry her.'

'I'm so pleased.' She looked fondly at him. 'You're still only twenty, but that's old enough if you've found the right person.'

'I'm glad you think so.'

'What village is she from?'

'This one, Wigleigh.'

'Oh?' Gwenda was surprised. She had not been able to think of a likely girl here. 'Who is she?'

'Mother, it's Amabel.'

'No!'

'Don't shout.'

'Not Annet's daughter!'

'You're not to be angry.'

'Not to be angry!' Gwenda struggled to calm herself. She was as shocked as if she had been slapped. She took several deep breaths. 'Listen to me,' she said. 'We have been at odds with that family for more than twenty years. That cow Annet broke your father's heart and never left him alone afterwards.'

'I'm sorry, but that's all in the past.'

'It's not - Annet still flirts with your father every chance she gets!'

'That's your problem, not ours.'

Gwenda stood up, her sewing falling from her lap. 'How can you do this to me? That bitch would be part of our family! My grandchildren would be her grandchildren. She'd be in and out of this house all the time, making a fool of your father with her coquettish ways and then laughing at me.'

'I'm not going to marry Annet.'

'Amabel will be just as bad. Look at her - she's just like her mother!'

'She's not, actually - '

'You can't do this! I absolutely forbid it!'

'You can't forbid it, Mother.'

'Oh, yes I can - you're too young.'

'That won't last forever.'

Wulfric's voice came from the doorway. 'What's all the shouting?'

'Davey says he wants to marry Annet's daughter - but I won't permit it.' Gwenda's voice rose to a shriek. 'Never! Never! Never!'

Earl Ralph surprised Nathan Reeve when he said he wanted to look at Davey's strange crop. Nate mentioned the matter in passing, on a routine visit to Earlscastle. A bit of unlicensed cultivation in the forest was a trivial breach of the rules, regularly dealt with by a fine. Nate was a shallow man, interested in bribes and commissions, and he had little conception of the depth of Ralph's obsession with Gwenda's family: his hatred of Wulfric, his lust for Gwenda, and now the likelihood that he was Sam's real father. So Nate was startled when Ralph said he would inspect the crop next time he was in the neighborhood.

Ralph rode with Alan Fernhill from Earlscastle to Wigleigh on a fine day between Easter and Whitsun. When they reached the small timber manor house, there was the old housekeeper, Vira, bent and gray now but still hanging on. They ordered her to prepare their dinner, then found Nate and followed him into the forest.

Ralph recognized the plant. He was no farmer, but he knew the difference between one bush and another, and on his travels with the army he had observed many crops that did not grow naturally in England. He leaned down from his saddle and pulled up a handful. 'This is called madder,' he said. 'I've seen it in Flanders. It's grown for the red dye that has the same name.'

Nate said: 'He told me it was a herb called hagwort, used to cure a wheezy chest.'

'I believe it does have medicinal properties, but that's not why people cultivate it. What will his fine be?'

'A shilling would be the usual amount.'

'It's not enough.'

Nate looked nervous. 'So much trouble is caused, lord, when these customs are flouted. I would rather not - '

'Never mind,' Ralph said. He kicked his horse and trotted through the middle of the clearing, trampling the bushes. 'Come on, Alan,' he said. Alan imitated him, and the two of them cantered around in tight circles, flattening the growth. After a few minutes all the shrubs were destroyed.

Ralph could see that Nate was shocked by the waste, even though the planting was illegal. Peasants never liked to see crops despoiled. Ralph had learned in France that the best way of demoralizing the population was to burn the harvest in the fields.

'That will do,' he said, quickly getting bored. He was irritated by Davey's insolence in planting this crop, but that was not the main reason he had come to Wigleigh. The truth was that he wanted to see Sam again.

As they rode back to the village, he scanned the fields, looking for a tall young man with thick dark hair. Sam would stand out, because of his height, among these stunted serfs hunched over their spades. He saw him, at a distance, in Brookfield. He reined in and peered across the windy landscape at the twenty-two-year-old son he had never known.

Sam and the man he thought was his father - Wulfric - were plowing with a horse-drawn light plow. Something was wrong for they kept stopping and adjusting the harness. When they were together, it was easy to see the differences between them. Wulfric's hair was tawny, Sam's dark; Wulfric was barrel-chested, oxlike, where Sam was broad-shouldered but lean, like a horse; Wulfric's movements were slow and careful, but Sam was quick and graceful.

It was the oddest feeling to look at a stranger and think: my son. Ralph believed himself immune to womanish emotions. If he had been subject to feelings of compassion or regret, he could not have lived as he had. But the discovery of Sam threatened to unman him.

He tore himself away and cantered back to the village; then he succumbed again to curiosity and sentiment, and sent Nate to find Sam and bring him to the manor house.

He was not sure what he intended to do with the boy: talk to him, tease him, invite him to join them for dinner, or what. He might have foreseen that Gwenda would not leave him free to choose. She showed up with Nate and Sam, and Wulfric and Davey followed them in. 'What do you want with my son?' she demanded, speaking to Ralph as if he were an equal rather than her overlord.

Ralph spoke without forethought. 'Sam was not born to be a serf tilling the fields,' he said. He saw Alan Fernhill look at him in surprise.

Gwenda looked puzzled. 'Only God knows what we are born for,' she said, playing for time.

'When I want to know about God, I'll ask a priest, not you,' Ralph said to her. 'Your son has something of the mettle of a fighting man. I don't need to pray to see that - it's obvious to me, as it would be to any veteran of the wars.'

'Well, he's not a fighting man, he's a peasant, and the son of a peasant, and his destiny is to grow crops and raise livestock like his father.'

'Never mind his father.' Ralph remembered what Gwenda had said to him in the sheriff's castle at Shiring, when she had persuaded him to pardon Sam. 'Sam has the killer instinct,' he said. 'It's dangerous in a peasant, but priceless in a soldier.'

Gwenda looked scared as she began to divine Ralph's purpose. 'What are you getting at?'

Ralph realized where this chain of logic was leading him. 'Let Sam be useful, rather than dangerous. Let him learn the arts of war.'

'Ridiculous, he's too old.'

'He's twenty-two. It's late, but he's fit and strong. He can do it.'

'I don't see how.'

Gwenda was pretending to find practical objections, but he could see through her simulation, and knew that she hated the idea with all her heart. That made him all the more determined. With a smile of triumph he said: 'Easily enough. He can be a squire. He can come and live at Earlscastle.'

Gwenda looked as if she had been stabbed. Her eyes closed for a moment, and her olive-skinned face paled. She mouthed the word 'No,' but no sound came out.

'He's been with you for twenty-two years,' Ralph said. 'That's long enough.' Now it's my turn, he thought, but instead he said: 'Now he's a man.'

Because Gwenda was temporarily silent, Wulfric spoke up. 'We won't permit it,' he said. 'We are his parents, and we do not consent to this.'

'I didn't ask for your consent,' Ralph said contemptuously. 'I'm your earl, and you are my serfs. I don't request, I command.'

Nate Reeve put in: 'Besides, Sam is over the age of twenty-one, so the decision is his, not his father's.'

Suddenly they all turned and looked at Sam.

Ralph was not sure what to expect. Becoming a squire was something many young men of all classes dreamed about, but he did not know whether Sam was one of them. Life in the castle was luxurious and exciting, by comparison with breaking your back in the fields; but, on the other hand, men-at-arms died young, or - worse than that - came home crippled, to live the rest of their miserable days begging outside taverns.

However, as soon as Ralph saw Sam's face he knew the truth. Sam was smiling broadly, and his eyes gleamed with eagerness. He could hardly wait to go.

Gwenda found her voice. 'Don't do it, Sam!' she said. 'Don't be tempted. Don't let your mother see you blinded by an arrow, or mutilated by the swords of French knights, or crippled by the hooves of their warhorses!'

Wulfric said: 'Don't go, son. Stay in Wigleigh and live a long life.'

Sam began to look doubtful.

Ralph said: 'All right, lad. You've listened to your mother, and to the peasant father who raised you. But the decision is yours. What will you do? Live out your life here in Wigleigh, tilling the fields alongside your brother? Or escape?'

Sam paused only for a moment. He looked guiltily at Wulfric and Gwenda, then turned to Ralph. 'I'll do it,' he said. 'I'll be a squire, and thank you, my lord!'

'Good lad,' Ralph said.

Gwenda began to cry. Wulfric put his arm around her. Looking up at Ralph, he said: 'When shall he go?'

'Today,' Ralph said. 'He can ride back to Earlscastle with me and Alan after dinner.'

'Not so soon!' Gwenda cried.

No one took any notice of her.

Ralph said to Sam: 'Go home and fetch anything you want to bring with you. Have dinner with your mother. Come back and wait for me in the stables. Meanwhile, Nate can requisition a mount to carry you to Earlscastle.' He turned away, having finished with Sam and his family. 'Now, where's my dinner?'

Wulfric and Gwenda went out with Sam, but Davey stayed behind. Had he already found out that that his crop had been trampled? Or was it something else? 'What do you want?' Ralph said.

'Lord, I have a boon to ask.'

This was almost too good to be true. The insolent peasant who had planted madder in the woods without permission was now a supplicant. What a satisfying day this was turning out to be. 'You can't be a squire, you've got your mother's build,' Ralph told him, and Alan laughed.

'I want to marry Amabel, the daughter of Annet,' said the young man.

'That won't please your mother.'

'I will be of age in less than a year.'

Ralph knew all about Annet, of course. He had nearly been hanged for her sake. His history was entwined with hers almost as much as with Gwenda's. He recalled that all her family had died in the plague. 'Annet still has some of the lands her father held.'

'Yes, lord, and she is willing for them to be transferred to me when I marry her daughter.'

Such a request would not normally have been refused, although all lords would charge a tax, called an entry fee, on the transfer. However, there was no obligation on a lord to consent. The right of lords to refuse such requests on a whim, and blight the course of a serf's life, was one of the peasants' greatest gripes. But it provided the ruler with a means of discipline that could be extraordinarily effective.

'No,' said Ralph. 'I will not transfer the land to you.' He grinned. 'You and your bride can eat madder.'