Several bystanders laughed loudly at this, and one or two called out jeering remarks.

“They might give you some meat,” Richard said.

“They want me to be a whore!” she blazed.

“All right, all right,” Richard said. He downed his beer, put the cup on the floor inside the door, and stuffed the remains of the chicken leg inside his shirt.

“Come on,” Aliena said impatiently, though once again the need to deal with her younger brother had the effect of calming her. He did not seem angered by the idea that someone wanted his sister to become a whore, but he did look regretful at having to leave a place where there was chicken and beer to be had for the asking.

Most of the bystanders walked on, seeing that the fun was over, but one remained. It was the well-dressed woman they had seen in the jailhouse. She had given the jailer a penny, and he had called her Meg. She was looking at Aliena with an expression of curiosity mingled with compassion. Aliena had developed an aversion to being stared at, and she looked away angrily; then the woman spoke to her. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” she said.

A note of kindness in Meg’s voice made Aliena turn back. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “We’re in trouble.”

“I saw you at the jailhouse. My husband is in prison-I visit him every day. Why were you there?”

“Our father is there.”

“But you didn’t go inside.”

“We haven’t any money to pay the jailer.”

Meg looked over Aliena’s shoulder at the whorehouse door. “Is that what you’re doing here-trying to get money?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was until…”

“You poor thing,” Meg said. “My Annie would have been your age, if she’d lived… Why don’t, you come to the jailhouse with me tomorrow morning, and between us we’ll see if we can persuade Odo to act like a Christian and take pity on two destitute children.”

“Oh, that would be wonderful,” Aliena said. She was touched. There was no guarantee of success, but the fact that someone was willing to help brought tears to her eyes.

Meg was still looking hard at her. “Have you had any dinner?”

“No. Richard got something in… that place.”

“You’d better come to my house. I’ll give you some bread and meat.” She noticed Aliena’s wary look, and added: “And you don’t have to do anything for it.”

Aliena believed her. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind. Not many people have been kind to us. I don’t know how to thank you.

“No need,” she said. “Come with me.”

Meg’s husband was a wool merchant. At his house in the south of town, at his stall in the market on market days, and at the great annual fair held on St. Giles’s Hill, he bought fleeces brought to him by peasants from the surrounding countryside. He crammed them into great woolsacks, each holding the fleece of two hundred and forty sheep, and stored them in the barn at the back of his house. Once a year, when the Flemish weavers sent their agents to buy the soft, strong English wool, Meg’s husband would sell it all and arrange for the sacks to be shipped via Dover and Boulogne to Bruges and Ghent, where the fleece would be turned into top-quality cloth and sold all over the world at prices far too nigh for the peasants who kept the sheep. So Meg told Aliena and Richard over dinner, with that warm smile which said that whatever happens, there’s no need for people to be unkind to one another.

Her husband had been accused of selling short weight, a crime the city took very seriously, for its prosperity was based on a reputation for honest dealing. Judging by the way Meg spoke of it, Aliena thought he was probably guilty. His absence had made little different to the business, though. Meg had simply taken his place. In winter there was not much to do anyway: she had made a trip to Flanders; assured all her husband’s agents that the enterprise was functioning normally; and carried out repairs to the barn, enlarging it a little at the same time. When shearing began she would buy wool just as he had done. She knew how to judge its quality and set a price. She had already been admitted into the merchant’s guild of the city, despite the stain on her husband’s reputation, for there was a tradition of merchants helping each other’s families in times of trouble, and anyway he had not yet been proved guilty.

Richard and Aliena ate her food and drank her wine and sat by her fire talking until it began to get dark outside; then they went back to the priory to sleep. Aliena had nightmares again. This time she dreamed about her father. In the dream he was sitting on a throne in the prison, as tall and pale and authoritative as ever, and when she went to see him she had to bow as if he were the king. Then he spoke to her accusingly, saying she had abandoned him here in prison and gone to live in a whorehouse. She was outraged by the injustice of the charge, and said angrily that he had abandoned her. She was going to add that he had left her to the mercy of William Hamleigh, but she was reluctant to tell her father what William had done to her; then she saw that William was also in the room, sitting on a bed and eating cherries from a bowl. He spat a cherry pip at her and it hit her cheek, stinging her. Her father smiled and then William started throwing soft cherries at her. They splattered her face and dress, and she began to cry, because although the dress was old it was the only one she had, and now it was blotched all over with cherry juice like bloodstains.

She felt so unbearably sad in the dream that when she woke up and discovered it was not real she felt an enormous sense of relief, even though the reality-that she was homeless and penniless-was much worse than being pelted with soft cherries.

The light of dawn was seeping through the cracks in the walls of the guesthouse. All around her people were waking up and beginning to move around. Soon the monks came in, opened the doors and the shutters, and called everyone to breakfast.

Aliena and Richard ate hurriedly, then went to Meg’s house. She was ready to leave. She had made a spicy beef stew to warm up for her husband’s dinner, and Aliena told Richard to carry the heavy pot for her. Aliena wished they had something to give Father. She had not thought of it, but even if she had, she could not have bought anything. It was awful to think they could do nothing for him.

They walked up the High Street, entered the castle by the back gate, and then walked past the keep and down the hill to the jail. Aliena recalled what Odo had told her yesterday, when she had asked whether Father was all right. “No, he’s not,” the jailer had said. “He’s dying.” She had thought he was exaggerating to be cruel, but now she began to worry. She said to Meg: “Is there anything wrong with my father?”

“I don’t know, dear,” Meg said. “I’ve never seen him.”

“The jailer said he was dying.”

“That man is as mean as a cat. He probably said it just to make you miserable. Anyway, you’ll know in a moment.”

Aliena was not comforted, despite Meg’s good intentions, and she was full of dread as she walked through the doorway into the evil-smelling gloom of the jail.

Odo was warming his hands at the fire in the middle of the lobby. He nodded at Meg and looked at Aliena. “Have you got the money?” he said.

“I’ll pay for them,” Meg said. “Here’s two pennies, one for me and one for them.”

A crafty look came over Odo’s stupid face, and he said: “It’s twopence for them-a penny for each.”

“Don’t be such a dog,” Meg said. “You let them both in, or I’ll make trouble for you with the merchant guild, and you’ll lose the job.”

“All right, all right, no need for threats,” he said grumpily. He pointed to an archway in the stone wall to their right. “Bartholomew is that way.”

Meg said: “You’ll need a light.” She drew two candles from the pocket of her cloak and lit them at the fire, then gave one to Aliena. Her face looked troubled. “I hope all will be well,” she said, and she kissed Aliena. Then she went quickly through the opposite arch.