“Do you think I’m peculiarly attracted to women who aren’t free?” he said idly to Philippa.

“No, why?”

“It does seem odd that after twelve years of loving a nun, and nine months of celibacy, I should fall for my brother’s wife.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said quickly. “It was no marriage. I was wedded against my will, I shared his bed for no more than a few days, and he will be happy if he never sees me again.”

He patted her shoulder apologetically. “But still, we have to be secretive, just as I did with Caris.” What he was not saying was that a man was entitled, by law, to kill his wife if he caught her committing adultery. Merthin had never known it happen, certainly among the nobility, but Ralph’s pride was a terrible thing. Merthin knew, and had told Philippa, that Ralph had killed his first wife, Tilly.

She said: “Your father loved your mother hopelessly for a long time, didn’t he?”

“So he did!” Merthin had almost forgotten that old story.

“And you fell for a nun.”

“And my brother spent years pining for you, the happily married wife of a nobleman. As the priests say, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. But enough of this. Do you want some supper?”

“In a moment.”

“There’s something you want to do first?”

“You know.”

He did know. He knelt between her legs and kissed her belly and her thighs. It was a peculiarity of hers that she always wanted to come twice. He began to tease her with his tongue. She groaned, and pressed the back of his head. “Yes,” she said. “You know how I like that, especially when I’m full of your seed.”

He lifted his head. “I do,” he said. Then he bent again to his task.

The spring brought a respite in the plague. People were still dying, but fewer were falling ill. On Easter Sunday, Bishop Henri announced that the Fleece Fair would take place as usual this year.

At the same service, six novices took their vows and so became full-fledged monks. They had all had an extraordinarily short novitiate, but Henri was keen to raise the number of monks at Kingsbridge, and he said the same thing was going on all over the country. In addition five priests were ordained – they, too, benefiting from an accelerated training programme – and sent to replace plague victims in the surrounding countryside. And two Kingsbridge monks came down from university, having received their degrees as physicians in three years instead of the usual five or seven.

The new doctors were Austin and Sime. Caris remembered both of them rather vaguely: she had been guest master when they left, three years ago, to go to Kingsbridge College in Oxford. On the afternoon of Easter Monday she showed them around the almost-completed new hospital. No builders were at work as it was a holiday.

Both had the bumptious self-confidence that the university seemed to instil in its graduates along with medical theories and a taste for Gascon wine. However, years of dealing with patients had given Caris a confidence of her own, and she described the hospital’s facilities and the way she planned to run it with brisk assurance.

Austin was a slim, intense young man with thinning fair hair. He was impressed with the innovative new cloister-like layout of the rooms. Sime, a little older and round-faced, did not seem eager to learn from Caris’s experience: she noticed that he always looked away when she was talking.

“I believe a hospital should always be clean,” she said.

“On what grounds?” Sime inquired in a condescending tone, as if asking a little girl why Dolly had to be spanked.

“Cleanliness is a virtue.”

“Ah. So it has nothing to do with the balance of humours in the body.”

“I have no idea. We don’t pay too much attention to the humours. That approach has failed spectacularly against the plague.”

“And sweeping the floor has succeeded?”

“At a minimum, a clean room lifts patients’ spirits.”

Austin put in: “You must admit, Sime, that some of the masters at Oxford share the Mother Prioress’s new ideas.”

“A small group of the heterodox.”

Caris said: “The main point is to take patients suffering from the type of illnesses that are transmitted from the sick to the well and isolate them from the rest.”

“To what end?” said Sime.

“To restrict the spread of such diseases.”

“And how is it that they are transmitted?”

“No one knows.”

A little smile of triumph twitched Sime’s mouth. “Then how do you know by what means to restrict their spread, may I ask?”

He thought he had trumped her in argument – it was the main thing they learned at Oxford – but she knew better. “From experience,” she said. “A shepherd doesn’t understand the miracle by which lambs grow in the womb of a ewe, but he knows it won’t happen if he keeps the ram out of the field.”

“Hm.”

Caris disliked the way he said: “Hm.” He was clever, she thought, but his cleverness never touched the world. She was struck by the contrast between this kind of intellectual and Merthin’s kind. Merthin’s learning was wide, and the power of his mind to grasp complexities was remarkable – but his wisdom never strayed far from the realities of the material world, for he knew that if he went wrong his buildings would fall down. Her father, Edmund, had been like that, clever but practical. Sime, like Godwyn and Anthony, would cling to his faith in the humours of the body regardless of whether his patients lived or died.

Austin was smiling broadly. “She’s got you there, Sime,” he said, evidently amused that his smug friend had failed to overwhelm this uneducated woman. “We may not know exactly how illnesses spread, but it can’t do any harm to separate the sick from the well.”

Sister Joan, the nuns’ treasurer, interrupted their conversation. “The bailiff of Outhenby is asking for you, Mother Caris.”

“Did he bring a herd of calves?” Outhenby was obliged to supply the nuns with twelve one-year-old calves every Easter.

“Yes.”

“Pen the beasts and ask the bailiff to come here, please.”

Sime and Austin took their leave and Caris went to inspect the tiled floor in the latrines. The bailiff found her there. It was Harry Ploughman. She had sacked the old bailiff, who was too slow to respond to change, and she had promoted the brightest young man in the village.

He shook her hand, which was over-familiar of him, but Caris liked him and did not mind.

She said: “It must be a nuisance, your having to drive a herd all the way here, especially when the spring ploughing is under way.”

“It is that,” he said. Like most ploughmen, he was broad-shouldered and strong-armed. Strength as well as skill was required for driving the communal eight-ox team as they pulled the heavy plough through wet clay soil. He seemed to carry with him the air of the healthy outdoors.

“Wouldn’t you rather make a money payment?” Caris said. “Most manorial dues are paid in cash these days.”

“It would be more convenient.” His eyes narrowed with peasant shrewdness. “But how much?”

“A year-old calf normally fetches ten to twelve shillings at market, though prices are down this season.”

“They are – by half. You can buy twelve calves for three pounds.”

“Or six pounds in a good year.”

He grinned, enjoying the negotiation. “There’s your problem.”

“But you would prefer to pay cash.”

“If we can agree the amount.”

“Make it eight shillings.”

“But then, if the price of a calf is only five shillings, where do we villagers get the extra money?”

“I tell you what. In future, Outhenby can pay the nunnery either five pounds or twelve calves – the choice is yours.”

Harry considered that, looking for snags, but could find none. “All right,” he said. “Shall we seal the bargain?”