Suddenly, he moved.

He withdrew his hand, turned away from her and stood up. “This is wrong,” he said.

And she knew that she had lost.

Tears came to her eyes. She picked up her dress from the floor and held it in front of her, covering her nakedness.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done any of those things. I Misled you. I’ve been cruel.”

No, you haven’t, she thought. I’ve been cruel. I’ve misled you. But you were too strong. You’re too loyal, too faithful. You’re too good for me.

But she said nothing.

He kept his gaze steadfastly away from her. “You must go to the cowshed,” he said. “Go to sleep. We’ll feel differently in the morning. It might be all right then.”

She ran out through the back door, not bothering to get dressed. It was moonlight, but there was no one to see her, and she would not have cared anyway. She was inside the cowshed in seconds.

At one end of the wooden building was a raised loft where clean straw was kept. That was where she made her bed each night. She climbed the ladder and threw herself down, too miserable to care about the sharp prickle of straw on her bare skin. She wept with disappointment and shame.

When eventually she calmed down, she stood up and put her dress on, then wrapped a blanket around her. As she did so, she thought she heard a step outside. She looked through a gap in the rough wattle-and-daub of the wall.

The moon was almost full, and she could see clearly. Wulfric was outside. He walked towards the door of the cowshed. Gwenda’s heart leaped. Perhaps it was not all over yet. But he hesitated at the door, then walked away. He returned to the house, turned at the kitchen door, came back to the cowshed and turned again.

She watched him pace up and down, her heart thudding, but she did not move. She had done all she could to encourage him. He had to take the last step himself.

He stopped at the kitchen door. His body was profiled by the moonlight, a silver line running from his forelock to his boots. She saw clearly as he reached into his drawers. She knew what he was going to do: she had seen her older brother do the same thing. She heard Wulfric groan as he began to rub himself with the motion that caricatured lovemaking. She stared at him, beautiful in the moonlight, wasting his desire, and she felt as if her heart would break.

20

Godwyn moved against Blind Carlus on the Sunday before the birthday of St Adolphus.

On that Sunday every year, a special service was held in Kingsbridge Cathedral. The bones of the saint were carried around the church by the prior, followed by the monks in procession; and they prayed for good harvest weather.

As always, it was Godwyn’s job to prepare the church for the service – placing candles, getting incense ready and moving furniture – helped by novices and employees such as Philemon. The Feast of St Adolphus required a secondary altar, an elaborately carved wooden table set on a platform that could be moved about the church as required. Godwyn placed this altar on the eastern edge of the crossing and put on it a pair of silver-gilt candlesticks. As he did so he anxiously mulled over his position.

Now that he had persuaded Thomas to stand for election as prior, his next step was to eliminate the opposition. Carlus ought to be an easy target – but in a way that was a disadvantage, for Godwyn did not want to appear callous.

He placed in the centre of the altar a reliquary cross, a bejewelled gold crucifix with a core of wood from the True Cross. This, the actual timber upon which Christ was killed, had been miraculously found a thousand years ago by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, and pieces of it had found their way to churches all over Europe.

As Godwyn was arranging the ornaments on the altar he saw Mother Cecilia nearby, and broke off from his work to speak to her. “I understand that Earl Roland has recovered his mind,” he said. “Praise God.”

“Amen,” she said. “The fever was on him so long that we feared for his life. Some evil humour must have entered his brain after his skull was fractured. Nothing he said made sense. Then, this morning, he woke up and spoke normally.”

“You cured him.”

“God cured him.”

“Still, he should be grateful to you.”

She smiled. “You’re young, Brother Godwyn. You’ll learn that men of power never show gratitude. Whatever we give them, they accept as their right.”

Her condescension annoyed Godwyn, but he concealed his irritation. “At any rate, we can now hold the election for prior, at last.”

“Who will win?”

“Ten monks have promised firmly to vote for Carlus, and only seven for Thomas. With the candidates’ own votes, that makes the score eleven to eight, with six uncommitted.”

“So it could go either way.”

“But Carlus is in the lead. Thomas could do with your support, Mother Cecilia.”

“I don’t have a vote.”

“But you have influence. If you were to say that the monastery needs stricter control and a measure of reform, and you felt Thomas was more likely to deliver such a programme, it would sway some of the waverers.”

“I ought not to take sides.”

“Perhaps not, but you could say that you will not continue to subsidize the monks unless they manage their money better. What could be wrong with that?”

Her bright eyes glittered with amusement: she was not so easily persuaded. “That would be a coded message of support for Thomas.”

“Yes.”

“I am strictly neutral. I will happily work with whomever the monks choose. And that’s my last word, brother.”

He bowed his head deferentially. “I respect your decision, of course.”

She nodded and moved away.

Godwyn was pleased. He had never expected her to endorse Thomas. She was conservative. Everyone assumed she favoured Carlus. But Godwyn could now spread the word that she would be content with either candidate. In effect, he had undermined her implicit support for Carlus. She might even be cross when she heard what use he was making of her words, but she would not withdraw her statement of neutrality.

I am so clever, he thought; I really deserve to be prior.

Neutralizing Cecilia was helpful, but it would not be enough to crush Carlus. Godwyn needed to give the monks a vivid demonstration of how incompetent Carlus was to lead them. He was hoping anxiously for such an opportunity today.

Carlus and Simeon were in the church now, rehearsing the service. Carlus was the acting prior, so he had to lead the procession, carrying the ivory-and-gold reliquary that contained the bones of the saint. Simeon, the treasurer and Carlus’s crony, was walking him through it, and Godwyn could see Carlus counting his paces, so that he would be able to do it on his own. The congregation was impressed when Carlus moved around confidently despite his blindness: it seemed like a minor miracle.

The procession always began at the east end of the church, where the relics were stored under the high altar. The prior would unlock the cupboard and remove the reliquary. He would carry it along the north aisle of the chancel, around the north transept, down the north aisle of the nave, across the west end, and back up the centre of the nave and into the crossing. There he would climb two steps to place it on the second altar that Godwyn had put in position ready. The holy relics would remain there, for the congregation to stare at, throughout the service.

Looking around the church, Godwyn’s eye fell on the repairs in the south aisle of the chancel, and he stepped closer to see how they were coming along. Merthin was no longer involved, having been sacked by Elfric, but his startlingly simple method was still being operated. Instead of expensive wooden formwork supporting the new masonry while the mortar set, each stone was held in place by a simple rope, draped over the long edge of the stone and weighted with a rock. The system could not be used to build the ribs of the vault, which were composed of long, slender stones laid end to end, so formwork had to be made for those elements; but, all the same, Merthin had saved the priory a small fortune in carpentry.