“That’s because you go hunting and hawking all the time!”
“But what should I do?”
“You should make the land produce wealth! There’s so much to be done—repairing the damage caused by the war and the famine, bringing in new farming methods, clearing woodland and draining swamps—that’s how to increase your wealth! Not by stealing the quarry that King Stephen gave to Kingsbridge Priory.”
“I’ve never taken anything that wasn’t mine.”
“You’ve never done anything else!” Aliena flared. She was angry enough now to say things that were better left unsaid. “You’ve never worked for anything. You took my money for your stupid weapons, you took the job Philip gave you, you took the earldom when it was handed to you on a plate by me. Now you can’t even run it withouttakingthings that don’t belong to you!” She turned away and stormed off.
Richard came after her, but someone waylaid him, bowing and asking him how he was. Aliena heard him make a polite reply, then get embroiled in a conversation. So much the better: she had said her piece and did not want to argue with him any further. She reached the bridge and looked back. Someone else was talking to him now. He waved at her, indicating that he still wanted to speak to her, but he was stuck. She saw Jack, Tommy and Sally beginning a game with a stick and a ball. She stared at them, playing together in the sunshine, and she felt she could not bear to separate them. But how else, she thought, can I lead a normal life?
She crossed the bridge and entered the town. She wanted to be alone for a while.
She had taken a house in Winchester, a big place with a shop on the ground floor, a living room upstairs, a separate bedchamber, and a large storeroom at the end of the yard for her cloth. But the closer she got to moving, the less she wanted to do it.
The streets of Kingsbridge were hot and dusty, and the air was full of the flies that bred on the innumerable dunghills. All the shops were closed and the houses were locked up. The town was deserted. Everyone was in the meadow.
She went to Jack’s house. That was where the others would come when the apple bobbing was over. The door of the house stood open. She frowned in annoyance. Who had left it like that? Too many people had keys: herself, Jack, Richard and Martha. There was nothing much to steal. Aliena certainly did not have her money there: for years now Philip had let her keep it in the priory treasury. But the place would be full of flies.
She stepped inside. It was dark and cool. Flies danced in the air in the middle of the room, bluebottles crawled over the linen and a pair of wasps disputed angrily around the stopper of the honeypot.
And Alfred was sitting at the table.
Aliena gave a small scream of fright, then recovered herself and said: “How did you get in?”
“I’ve got a key.”
He had kept it a long time, Aliena thought. She looked at him. His broad shoulders were bony and his face had a shrunken look. She said: “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
She found she was trembling, not from fear but from anger. “I don’t want to see you, now or ever again,” she spat. “You treated me like a dog, and then when Jack took pity on you and hired you, you betrayed his trust and took all his craftsmen to Shiring.”
“I need money,” he said, with a mixture of pleading and defiance in his voice.
“Then work.”
“Building has stopped at Shiring. I can’t get a job here at Kingsbridge.”
“Then go to London—go to Paris!”
He persisted with ox-like stubbornness. “I thought you would help me out.”
“There’s nothing for you here. You’d better go away.”
“Have you no pity?” he said, and now the defiance was gone and the tone was all pleading.
She leaned on the table to steady herself. “Alfred, don’t you understand that Ihateyou?”
“Why?” he said. He looked injured, as if it came as a surprise to him.
Dear God, he’s stupid, she thought; it’s the nearest he’s got to an excuse. “Go to the monastery if you want charity,” she said wearily. “Prior Philip’s capacity for forgiveness is superhuman. Mine isn’t.”
“But you’re mywife,”Alfred said.
That was rich. “I’m not your wife,” she hissed. “You’re not my husband. You never were. Now get out of this house.”
To her surprise he grabbed her by the hair. “You are my wife,” he said. He pulled her to him over the table, and with his free hand he grasped her breast and squeezed hard.
