Sir Gregory caught his eye. “I see you nodding,” he said. “Do you approve?”

“It’s what we wanted,” Ralph said. “I’ll begin to enforce it in the next few days. There are a couple of runaways from my territory that I particularly want to bring home.”

“I’ll come with you, if I may,” the lawyer said. “I should like to see how things work out.”

69

The priest at Outhenby had died of the plague, and there had been no services at the church since; so Gwenda was surprised when the bell began to toll on Sunday morning.

Wulfric went to investigate and came back to report that a visiting priest, Father Derek, had arrived; so Gwenda washed the boys’ faces quickly and they all went out.

It was a fine spring morning, and the sun bathed the old grey stones of the little church in a clear light. All the villagers turned out, curious to view the newcomer.

Father Derek turned out to be a well-spoken city clergyman, too richly dressed for a village church. Gwenda wondered whether any special significance attached to his visit. Was there a reason why the church hierarchy had suddenly remembered the existence of this parish? She told herself that it was a bad habit always to imagine the worst, but all the same she felt something was wrong.

She stood in the nave with Wulfric and the boys, watching the priest go through the ritual, and her sense of doom grew stronger. A priest usually looked at the congregation while he was praying or singing, to emphasize that all this was for their benefit, not a private communication between himself and God; but Father Derek’s gaze went over their heads.

She soon found out why. At the end of the service, he told them of a new law passed by the king and Parliament. “Landless labourers must work for the lord in their village of origin, if required,” he said.

Gwenda was outraged. “How can that be?” she shouted out. “The lord is not obliged to help the labourer in hard times – I know, my father was a landless labourer, and when there was no work we went hungry. So how can the labourer owe loyalty to a lord who gives him nothing?”

A rumble of agreement broke out, and the priest had to raise his voice. “This is what the king has decided, and the king is chosen by God to rule over us, so we must all do as he wishes.”

“Can the king change the custom of hundreds of years?” Gwenda persisted.

“These are difficult times. I know that many of you have come to Outhenby in the last few weeks-”

“Invited by the ploughman,” the voice of Carl Shaftesbury interrupted. His scarred face was livid with rage.

“Invited by all the villagers,” the priest acknowledged. “And they were grateful to you for coming. But the king in his wisdom has ruled that this kind of thing must not go on.”

“And poor people must remain poor,” Carl said.

“God has ordained it so. Each man in his place.”

Harry Ploughman said: “And has God ordained how we are to till our fields with no help? If all the newcomers leave, we will never finish the work.”

“Perhaps not all the newcomers will have to leave,” said Derek. “The new law says only that they must go home if required.”

That quietened them. The immigrants were trying to figure out whether their lords would be able to track them down; the locals were wondering how many labourers would be left here. But Gwenda knew what her own future held. Sooner or later Ralph would come back for her and her family.

By then, she decided, they would be gone.

The priest retired and the congregation began to drift to the door. “We’ve got to leave here,” Gwenda said to Wulfric in a low voice. “Before Ralph comes back for us.”

“Where will we go?”

“I don’t know – but perhaps that’s better. If we don’t know where we’re going, no one else will.”

“But how will we live?”

“We’ll find another village where they need labourers.”

“Are there many others, I wonder?”

He was always slower-thinking than she. “There must be lots,” she said patiently. “The king didn’t pass this ordinance just for Outhenby.”

“Of course.”

“We should leave today,” she said decisively. “It’s Sunday, so we’re not losing any work.” She glanced at the church windows, estimating the time of day. “It’s not yet noon – we could cover a good distance before nightfall. Who knows, we could be working in a new place tomorrow morning.”

“I agree,” Wulfric said. “There’s no telling how fast Ralph might move.”

“Say nothing to anyone. We’ll go home, pick up whatever we want to take with us and just slip away.”

“All right.”

They reached the door and stepped outside into the sunshine, and Gwenda saw that it was already too late.

Six men on horseback were waiting outside the church: Ralph, his sidekick Alan, a tall man in London clothes, and three dirty, scarred, evil-looking ruffians of the kind that could be hired for a few pennies in any low tavern.

Ralph caught Gwenda’s eye and smiled triumphantly.

Gwenda looked around desperately. A few days ago the men of the village had stood shoulder to shoulder against Ralph and Alan – but this was different. They were up against six men, not two. The villagers were unarmed, coming out of church, whereas previously they had been returning from the fields with tools in their hands. And, most important, on that first occasion they had believed they had right on their side, whereas today they were not so sure.

Several men met her eye and looked quickly away. That confirmed her suspicion. The villagers would not fight today.

Gwenda was so disappointed that she felt weak. Fearing that she might fall down, she leaned on the stonework of the church porch for support. Her heart had turned into something heavy and cold and damp, like a clod from a winter grave. A grim hopelessness possessed her completely.

For a few days they had been free. But it had just been a dream. And now the dream was over.

Ralph rode slowly through Wigleigh, leading Wulfric by a rope around his neck.

They arrived late in the afternoon. For speed, Ralph had let the two small boys ride, sharing the horses of the hired men. Gwenda was walking behind. Ralph had not bothered to tie her in any way. She could be relied upon to follow her children.

Because it was Sunday, most of the Wigleigh folk were outside their houses, enjoying the sun, as Ralph had anticipated. They all stared in horrified silence at the dismal procession. Ralph hoped the sight of Wulfric’s humiliation might deter others from going in search of higher wages.

They reached the small manor house that had been Ralph’s home before he moved to Tench Hall. He released Wulfric and sent him and his family off to their old home. He paid off the hired men, then took Alan and Sir Gregory into the manor house.

It was kept clean and ready for his visits. He ordered Vira to bring wine then prepare supper. It was too late now to go on to Tench: they could not get there before nightfall.

Gregory sat down and stretched out his long legs. He seemed like a man who could make himself comfortable anywhere. His straight dark hair was now tweeded with grey, but his long nose with its flared nostrils still gave him a supercilious look. “How do you feel that went?” he said.

Ralph had been thinking about the new ordinance all the way home, and he had his answer ready. “It’s not going to work,” he said.

Gregory raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

Alan said: “I agree with Sir Ralph.”

“Reasons?”

Ralph said: “First of all, it’s difficult to find out where the runaways have gone.”

Alan put in: “It was only by luck that we traced Wulfric. Someone had overheard him and Gwenda planning where to go.”

“Second,” Ralph went on, “recovering them is too troublesome.”