“But I thought you were already married,” Gregory said. “Have I made a mistake?”

Ralph caught Alan’s eye, and saw that he was keenly curious to hear what Ralph would say next.

Ralph sighed. “My wife is very ill,” he said. “She hasn’t long to live.”

Gwenda lit the fire in the kitchen of the old house where Wulfric had lived since he was born. She found her cooking pots, filled one with water at the well and threw in some early onions, the first step in making a stew. Wulfric brought in more firewood. The boys happily went out to play with their old friends, unaware of the depth of the tragedy that had befallen their family.

Gwenda busied herself with household chores as the evening darkened outside. She was trying not to think. Everything that came into her mind just made her feel worse: the future, the past, her husband, herself. Wulfric sat and looked into the flames. Neither of them spoke.

Their neighbour, David Johns, appeared with a big jug of ale. His wife was dead of the plague, but his grown-up daughter, Joanna, followed him in. Gwenda was not happy to see them: she wanted to be miserable in private. But their intentions were kind, and it was impossible to spurn them. Gwenda glumly wiped the dust from some wooden cups, and David poured ale for everyone.

“We’re sorry things worked out this way, but we’re glad to see you,” he said as they drank.

Wulfric emptied his cup with one huge swallow and held it out for more.

A little later Aaron Appletree and his wife Ulla came in. She carried a basket of small loaves. “I knew you wouldn’t have any bread, so I made some,” she said. She handed them around and the house filled with the mouth-watering smell. David Johns poured them some ale, and they sat down. “Where did you get the courage to run away?” Ulla asked admiringly. “I would have died of fright!”

Gwenda began to tell the story of their adventures. Jack and Eli Fuller arrived from the mill, bringing a dish of pears baked in honey. Wulfric ate plenty and drank deep. The atmosphere lightened, and Gwenda’s mood lifted a little. More neighbours came, each bringing a gift. When Gwenda told how the villagers of Outhenby with their spades and hoes had faced down Ralph and Alan, everyone rocked with delighted laughter.

Then she came to the events of today, and she descended into despair again. “Everything was against us,” she said bitterly. “Not just Ralph and his ruffians, but the king and the church. We had no chance.”

The neighbours nodded gloomily.

“And then, when he put a rope around my Wulfric’s neck…” She was filled with bleak despair. Her voice cracked, and she could not go on. She took a gulp of ale and tried again. “When he put a rope around Wulfric’s neck – the strongest and bravest man I’ve ever known, any of us has ever known, led through the village like a beast, and that heartless, crass, bullying Ralph holding the rope – I just wanted the heavens to fall in and kill us all.”

These were strong words, but the others agreed. Of all the things the gentry could do to peasants – starve them, cheat them, assault them, rob them – the worst was to humiliate them. They never forgot it.

Suddenly Gwenda wanted the neighbours to leave. The sun had gone down and it was dusk outside. She needed to lie down and close her eyes and be alone with her thoughts. She did not want to talk even to Wulfric. She was about to ask everyone to go when Nate Reeve walked in.

The room went quiet.

“What do you want?” Gwenda said.

“I bring you good news,” he said brightly.

She made a sour face. “There can be no good news for us today.”

“I disagree. You haven’t heard it yet.”

“All right, what is it?”

“Sir Ralph says Wulfric is to have his father’s lands back.”

Wulfric leaped to his feet. “As a tenant?” he said. “Not just to labour on?”

“As a tenant, on the same terms as your father,” said Nate expansively, as if he were making the concession himself, rather than simply passing on a message.

Wulfric beamed with joy. “That’s wonderful!”

“Do you accept?” Nate said jovially, as if it were a mere formality.

Gwenda said: “Wulfric! Don’t accept!”

He looked at her, bewildered. As usual, he was slow to see beyond the immediate.

“Discuss the terms!” she urged him in a low voice. “Don’t be a serf like your father. Demand a free tenancy, with no feudal obligations. You’ll never be in such a strong bargaining position again. Negotiate!”

“Negotiate?” he said. He wavered briefly, then gave in to the happiness of the occasion. “This is the moment I’ve been hoping for for the last twelve years. I’m not going to negotiate.” He turned to Nate. “I accept,” he said, and held up his cup.

They all cheered.

70

The hospital was full again. The plague, which had seemed to retreat during the first three months of 1349, came back in April with redoubled virulence. On the day after Easter Sunday, Caris looked wearily at the rows of mattresses crammed together in a herringbone pattern, packed so tightly that the masked nuns had to step gingerly between them. Moving around was a little easier, however, because there were so few family members at the bedsides of the sick. Sitting with a dying relative was dangerous – you were likely to catch the plague yourself – and people had become ruthless. When the epidemic began, they had stayed with their loved ones regardless, mothers with children, husbands with wives, the middle-aged with their elderly parents, love overcoming fear. But that had changed. The most powerful of family ties had been viciously corroded by the acid of death. Nowadays the typical patient was brought in by a mother or father, a husband or wife, who then simply walked away, ignoring the piteous cries that followed them out. Only the nuns, with their face masks and their vinegar-washed hands, defied the disease.

Surprisingly, Caris was not short of help. The nunnery had enjoyed an influx of novices to replace the nuns who had died. This was partly because of Caris’s saintly reputation. But the monastery was experiencing the same kind of revival, and Thomas now had a class of novice monks to train. They were all searching for order in a world gone mad.

This time the plague had struck some leading townspeople who had previously escaped. Caris was dismayed by the death of John Constable. She had never much liked his rough-and-ready approach to justice – which was to hit troublemakers over the head with a stick and ask questions afterwards – but it was going to be more difficult to maintain order without him. Fat Betty Baxter, baker of special buns for every town festivity, shrewd questioner at parish guild meetings, was dead, her business awkwardly shared out between four squabbling daughters. And Dick Brewer had died, the last of Caris’s father’s generation, a cohort of men who knew how to make money and how to enjoy it.

Caris and Merthin had been able to slow the spread of the disease by cancelling major public gatherings. There had been no big Easter procession in the cathedral, and there would be no Fleece Fair this Whitsun. The weekly market was held outside the city walls, in Lovers’ Field, and most townspeople stayed away. Caris had wanted such measures when the plague first struck, but Godwyn and Elfric had opposed her. According to Merthin, some Italian cities had even closed their gates for a period of thirty or forty days, called a trentine or a quarantine. It was now too late to keep the disease out, but Caris still thought restrictions would save lives.

One problem she did not have was money. More and more people bequeathed their wealth to the nuns, having no surviving relatives, and many of the new novices brought with them lands, flocks, orchards and gold. The nunnery had never been so rich.