“All right,” he said immediately, confirming her instinct. She watched, thrilled, as he took out his purse. A moment later she held in her hand twenty-eight gold florins.

She examined one carefully. It was a bit larger than a silver penny. On one side was St John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence, and on the other the flower of Florence. She placed it on a balance to compare its weight with that of a new-minted florin her father kept for the purpose. The coin was good.

“Thank you,” she said, hardly believing her success.

“I’m Harry Mercer of Cheapside, London,” he said. “My father is the largest cloth merchant in England. When you’ve got more of this scarlet, come to London. We’ll buy as much as you can bring us.”

“Let’s weave it all!” she said to her father when she returned home. “You’ve got forty sacks of wool left. We’ll turn it all into red cloth.”

“It’s a big enterprise,” he said thoughtfully.

Caris was sure her scheme would work. “There are plenty of weavers, and they’re all poor. Peter isn’t the only dyer in Kingsbridge, we can teach the others to use the alum.”

“Others will copy you, once the secret gets out.”

She knew he was right to think of snags, but all the same she felt impatient. “Let them copy,” she said. “They can make money too.”

He was not going to be pushed into anything. “The price will come down if there’s a lot of cloth for sale.”

“It will have to fall a long way before the business becomes unprofitable.”

He nodded. “That’s true. But can you sell that much in Kingsbridge and Shiring? There aren’t that many rich people.”

“Then I’ll take it to London.”

“All right.” He smiled. “You’re so determined. It’s a good plan – but even if it were a bad one, you’d probably make it work.”

She went immediately to Mark Webber’s house and arranged for him to begin work on another sack of wool. She also arranged for Madge to take one of Edmund’s ox-carts and four sacks of wool, and go around neighbouring villages looking for weavers.

But the rest of Caris’s family were not happy. Next day, Alice came to dinner. As they sat down, Petranilla said to Edmund: “Alice and I think you should reconsider your cloth-making project.”

Caris wanted him to tell her that the decision was made and it was too late to go back. But instead he said mildly: “Really? Tell me why.”

“You’ll be risking just about every penny you’ve got, that’s why!”

“Most of it’s at risk now,” he said. “I’ve got a warehouse full of wool that I can’t sell.”

“But you could make a bad situation worse.”

“I’ve decided to take that chance.”

Alice broke in: “It’s not fair on me!”

“Why not?”

“Caris is spending my inheritance!”

His face darkened. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.

Petranilla clamped her mouth shut, recognizing the undertone in his low voice; but Alice did not notice how angry he was, and ploughed on. “We have to think about the future,” she said. “Why should Caris be allowed to spend my birthright?”

“Because it’s not yours yet, and perhaps it never will be.”

“You can’t just throw away money that should come to me.”

“I won’t be told what to do with my money – especially by my children,” he said, and his voice was so taut with anger that even Alice noticed.

More quietly, she said: “I didn’t intend to annoy you.”

He grunted. It was not much of an apology, but he could never remain grumpy for long. “Let’s have dinner and say no more about it,” he said; and Caris knew that her project had survived another day.

After dinner she went to see Peter Dyer, to warn him of the large quantity of work coming his way. “It can’t be done,” he said.

That took her by surprise. He always looked gloomy, but he normally did what she wanted. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to dye it all,” she said. “I’ll give some of the work to others.”

“It’s not the dyeing,” he said. “It’s the fulling.”

“Why?”

“We’re not allowed to full the cloth ourselves. Prior Godwyn has issued a new edict. We have to use the priory’s fulling mill.”

“Well, then, we’ll use it.”

“It’s too slow. The machinery is old, and keeps breaking down. It’s been repaired again and again, so the wood is a mixture of new and old, which never sorts well. It’s no faster than a man treading in a bath of water. But there’s only one mill. It will barely cope with the normal work of Kingsbridge weavers and dyers.”

This was maddening. Surely her whole scheme could not fail because of a stupid ruling by her cousin Godwyn? She said indignantly: “But if the mill can’t do the work, the prior must permit us to tread the cloth by foot!”

Peter shrugged. “Tell him that.”

“I will!”

She marched off towards the priory but, before she got there, she thought again. The hall of the prior’s house was used for his meetings with townspeople, but all the same it would be unusual for a woman to go in alone without an appointment, and Godwyn was increasingly touchy about such things. Moreover, a straight confrontation might not be the best way to change his mind. She realized she would do better to think this through. She returned to her house and sat down with her father in the parlour.

“Young Godwyn is on weak ground here,” Edmund said immediately. “There never was a charge for using the fulling mill. According to legend, it was built by a townsman, Jack Builder, for the great Prior Philip; and, when Jack died, Philip gave the town the right to use the mill in perpetuity.”

“Why did people stop using it?”

“It fell into disrepair, and I think there was an argument about who should pay for its upkeep. The argument was never resolved, and people went back to treading cloth themselves.”

“Why, then, he has no right to charge a fee, nor to force people to use it!”

“No, indeed.”

Edmund sent a message to the priory asking when it might be convenient for Godwyn to see him, and the reply came back saying he was free right away, so Edmund and Caris crossed the street and went to the prior’s house.

Godwyn had changed a lot in a year, Caris thought. There was no boyish eagerness left. He seemed wary, as if he expected them to be aggressive. She was beginning to wonder whether he had the strength of character to be prior.

Philemon was with him, pathetically eager as ever to fetch chairs and pour drinks, but with a new touch of assurance in his manner, the look of someone who knew he belonged here.

“So, Philemon, you’re an uncle now,” Caris said. “What do you think of your new nephew, Sam?”

“I’m a novice monk,” he said prissily. “We give up all worldly relations.”

Caris shrugged. She knew he was fond of his sister Gwenda but, if he wanted to pretend otherwise, she was not going to argue.

Edmund laid out the problem starkly for Godwyn. “Work on the bridge will have to stop if the wool merchants of Kingsbridge can’t improve their fortunes. Happily, we have come up with a new source of income. Caris has discovered how to produce high-quality scarlet cloth. Only one thing stands in the way of the success of this new enterprise: the fulling mill.”

“Why?” said Godwyn. “The scarlet cloth can be fulled at the mill.”

“Apparently not. It’s old and inefficient. It can barely handle the existing production of cloth. It has no capacity for extra. Either you build a new fulling mill-”

“Out of the question,” Godwyn interrupted. “I have no spare cash for that sort of thing.”

“Very well, then,” said Edmund. “You’ll have to permit people to full cloth in the old way, by putting it in a bath of water and stamping on it with their bare feet.”

The look that came over Godwyn’s face was familiar to Caris. It was compounded of resentment, injured pride and mulish obstinacy. In childhood he had looked like that whenever he was opposed. It meant he would try to bully the other children into submission or, failing that, stamp his foot and go home. Wanting his own way was only part of it. He seemed, Caris thought, to feel humiliated by disagreement, as if the idea that someone might think him wrong was too wounding to be borne. Whatever the explanation, she knew as soon as she saw the look that he was not going to be reasonable.