As the villagers were scrambling to their feet, swallowing their horsebread and trying to keep the dust out of their eyes, William’s mistrustful gaze observed a curious little drama. A middle-aged man with a black beard spoke quietly but urgently to a plump red-cheeked girl with a plump, red-cheeked baby. A young man joined them and was hastily shooed away by the older man. Then the girl walked off toward the houses, apparently under protest, and disappeared in the dust. William was intrigued. There was something furtive about the whole scene, and he wished Mother were here to interpret it.
He decided to do nothing about it for the moment. He addressed Arthur in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. “Five of my free tenants here are in arrears, is that right?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Who is the worst?”
“Athelstan hasn’t paid for two years, but he was very unlucky with his pigs—”
William spoke over Arthur, cutting him off. “Which one of you is Athelstan?”
A tall, stoop-shouldered man of about forty-five years stepped forward. He had thinning hair and watery eyes.
William said: “Why don’t you pay me rent?”
“Lord, it’s a small holding, and I’ve no one to help me, now that my boys have gone to work in the town, and then there was the swine fever—”
“Just a moment,” William said. “Where did your sons go?”
“To Kingsbridge, lord, to work on the new cathedral there, for they want to marry, as young men must, and my land won’t support three families.”
William tucked away in his memory, for future reflection, the information that the young men had gone to work on Kingsbridge Cathedral. “Your holding is big enough to support one family, at any rate, but still you don’t pay your rent.”
Athelstan began to talk about his pigs again. William stared malevolently at him without listening. I know why you haven’t paid, he thought; you knew your lord was ill and you decided to cheat him while he was incapable of enforcing his rights. The other four delinquents thought the same. You rob us when we’re weak!
For a moment he was full of self-pity. The five of them had been chuckling over their cleverness, he felt sure. Well, now they would learn their lesson. “Gilbert and Hugh, take this peasant and hold him still,” he said quietly.
Athelstan was still talking. The two knights dismounted and approached him. His tale of swine fever tailed off into nothing. The knights took him by the arms. He turned pale with fear.
William spoke to Walter in the same quiet voice. “Have you got your chain-mail gloves?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Put them on. Teach Athelstan a lesson. But make sure he lives to spread the word.”
“Yes, lord.” Walter took from his saddlebag a pair of leather gauntlets with fine chain mail sewn to the knuckles and the backs of the fingers. He pulled them on slowly. All the villagers watched in dread, and Athelstan began to moan with terror.
Walter got off his horse, walked over to Athelstan and punched him in the stomach with one mailed fist. The thud as the blow landed was sickeningly loud. Athelstan doubled over, too winded to cry out. Gilbert and Hugh pulled him upright, and Walter punched his face. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose. One of the onlookers, a woman who was presumably his wife, screamed out and jumped on Walter, yelling: “Stop! Leave him! Don’t kill him!”
Walter brushed her off, and two other women grabbed her and pulled her back. She continued to scream and struggle. The other peasants watched in mutinous silence as Walter beat Athelstan systematically until his body was limp, his face covered with blood and his eyes closed in unconsciousness.
“Let him go,” William said at last.
Gilbert and Hugh released Athelstan. He slumped to the ground and lay still. The women released the wife and she ran to him, sobbing, and knelt beside him. Walter took off the gauntlets and wiped the blood and pieces of flesh off the chain mail.
William had already lost interest in Athelstan. Looking around the village, he saw a new-looking two-story wooden structure built on the edge of the brook. He pointed to it and said to Arthur: “What’s that?”
“I haven’t seen it before, lord,” Arthur said nervously.
William thought he was lying. “It’s a water mill, isn’t it?”
Arthur shrugged, but his indifference was unconvincing. “I can’t imagine what else it would be, right there by the stream.”
How could he be so insolent, when he had just seen a peasant beaten half to death on William’s orders? Almost desperately, William said: “Are my serfs allowed to build mills without my permission?”
“No, lord.”
“Do you knowwhythis is prohibited?”
