Annet still retained her girlish figure, although she was now twenty-eight, and had had a child. She called attention to her youthfulness with a dress that was a little too short and a hair style that was charmingly disarrayed. She looked silly, Gwenda thought. Her opinion was shared by every woman in the village and none of the men.

Gwenda was shocked to see that Perkin’s cart was full of fruit. “What happened?” she said.

Perkin’s face was grim. “Kingsbridge folk are having a hard winter just like us,” he said. “They’ve no money to buy apples. We shall have to make cider with this lot.”

That was bad news. Gwenda had never known Perkin to come home from the market with so much unsold produce.

Annet seemed unworried. She held out a hand to Wulfric, who helped her down from the cart. As she stepped to the ground she stumbled, and fell against him with her hand on his chest. “Oops!” she said, and smiled at him as she recovered her balance. Wulfric flushed with pleasure.

You blind idiot, Gwenda thought.

They went inside. Perkin sat at the table, and his wife, Peg, brought him a bowl of pottage. He cut a thick slice from the loaf on the board. Peg served her own family next. Annet, her husband Billy Howard, Annet’s brother, Rob, and Rob’s wife. She gave a little to Annet’s four-year-old daughter, Amabel, and to Rob’s two small boys. Then she invited Wulfric and his family to sit down.

Gwenda spooned up the broth hungrily. It was thicker than the pottage she made: Peg was putting stale bread in, whereas in Gwenda’s house the bread never lasted long enough to go stale. Perkin’s family got cups of ale, but Gwenda and Wulfric were not offered any: hospitality went only so far in hard times.

Perkin was jocular with his customers, but otherwise a sourpuss, and the atmosphere in his house was always more or less dismal. He talked in a disheartened way about the Kingsbridge market. Most of the traders had had a bad day. The only ones doing any business were those who sold essentials such as corn, meat and salt. No one was buying the now-famous Kingsbridge Scarlet cloth.

Peg lit a lamp. Gwenda wanted to go home but she and Wulfric were waiting for their wages. The boys began to misbehave, running around the room and bumping into adults. “It’s getting near their bed time,” said Gwenda, though it was not really.

At last Wulfric said: “If you’ll give us our wages, Perkin, we’ll leave.”

“I haven’t got any money,” Perkin said.

Gwenda stared at him. He had never said anything like this in the nine years she and Wulfric had been working for him.

Wulfric said: “We must have our wages. We’ve got to eat.”

“You’ve had some pottage, haven’t you?” Perkin said.

Gwenda was outraged. “We work for money, not pottage!”

“Well, I haven’t got any money,” Perkin repeated. “I went to market to sell my apples, but no one bought them, so I’ve got more apples than we can eat, and no money.”

Gwenda was so shocked that she did not know what to say. It had never occurred to her that Perkin might not pay them. She felt a stab of fear as she realized there was nothing she could do about it.

Wulfric said slowly: “Well, what’s to be done about it? Shall we go to the Long Field and take the seeds back out of the ground?”

“I’ll have to owe you this week’s wages,” Perkin said. “I’ll pay you when things get better.”

“And next week?”

“I won’t have any money next week, either – where do you think it’s to come from?”

Gwenda said: “We’ll go to Mark Webber. Perhaps he can employ us at the fulling mill.”

Perkin shook his head. “I spoke to him yesterday, in Kingsbridge, and asked if he could hire you. He said no. He’s not selling enough cloth. He’ll continue to employ Jack and Eli and the boy, and stockpile the cloth until trade picks up, but he can’t take on any extra hands.”

Wulfric was bewildered. “How are we to live? How will you get your spring ploughing done?”

“You can work for food,” Perkin offered.

Wulfric looked at Gwenda. She choked back a scornful retort. She and her family were in deep trouble, and this was not the moment to antagonize anyone. She thought fast. They did not have much choice: eat, or starve. “We’ll work for food, and you’ll owe us the money,” she said.

Perkin shook his head. “What you’re suggesting may be fair-”

“It is fair!”

“All right, it is fair, but just the same I can’t do it. I don’t know when I’ll have the money. Why, I could owe you a pound come Whitsun! You can work for food, or not at all.”

“You’ll have to feed all four of us.”

“Yes.”

“But only Wulfric will work.”

“I don’t know-”

“A family wants more than food. Children need clothes. A man must have boots. If you can’t pay me, I will have to find some other way of providing such things.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” She paused. The truth was, she had no idea. She fought down panic. “I may have to ask my father how he manages.”

Peg put in: “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you – Joby will tell you to steal.”

Gwenda was stung. What right did Peg have to take a supercilious attitude? Joby had never employed people then told them at the end of the week that he could not pay them. But she bit her tongue, and said mildly: “He fed me through eighteen winters, even if he did sell me to outlaws at the end.”

Peg tossed her head and abruptly began to pick up the bowls from the table.

Wulfric said: “We should go.”

Gwenda did not move. Whatever advantages she could gain had to be won now. When she left this house, Perkin would consider that a bargain had been struck, and could not be renegotiated. She thought hard. Remembering how Peggy had given ale only to her own family, she said: “You won’t fob us off with stale fish and watery beer. You’ll feed us exactly the same as yourself and your family – meat, bread, ale, whatever it may be.”

Peg made a deprecating noise. She had been planning to do just what Gwenda feared, it seemed.

Gwenda added: “That is, if you want Wulfric to do the same work as you and Rob.” They all knew perfectly well that Wulfric did more work than Rob and twice as much as Perkin.

“All right,” Perkin said.

“And this is strictly an emergency arrangement. As soon as you get money, you have to start paying us again at the old rate – a penny a day each.”

“Yes.”

There was a short silence. Wulfric said: “Is that it?”

“I think so,” Gwenda said. “You and Perkin should shake hands on the bargain.”

They shook hands.

Taking their children, Gwenda and Wulfric left. It was now full dark. Clouds hid the stars, and they had to make their way by the glimmer of light shining through cracks in shutters and around doors. Fortunately they had walked from Perkin’s house to their own a thousand times before.

Wulfric lit a lamp and built up the fire while Gwenda put the boys to bed. Although there were bedrooms upstairs – they were still living in the large house that had been occupied by Wulfric’s parents – nevertheless they all slept in the kitchen, for warmth.

Gwenda felt depressed as she wrapped the boys in blankets and settled them near the fire. She had grown up determined not to live the way her mother did, in constant worry and want. She had aspired to independence: a patch of land, a hard-working husband, a reasonable lord. Wulfric yearned to get back the land his father had farmed. In all those aspirations they had failed. She was a pauper, and her husband a landless labourer whose employer could not even pay him a penny a day. She had ended up exactly like her mother, she thought; and she felt too bitter for tears.

Wulfric took a pottery bottle from a shelf and poured ale into a wooden cup. “Enjoy it,” Gwenda said sourly. “You won’t be able to buy your own ale for a while.”

Wulfric said conversationally: “It’s amazing that Perkin has no money. He’s the richest man in the village, apart from Nathan Reeve.”