Epic Historial Collection (285 page)

“Good idea,” Merthin said. “We'll just lift the coffin out of the grave.”

Thomas returned to the priory and brought ropes, and they lifted the coffin out of the hole. They refixed the lid, then tied the ropes around the box in order to drag it across the ground and into the church.

As they were about to start, they heard a scream.

Caris let out a cry of fear.

They all looked toward the church. A figure was running toward them, eyes staring, blood coming from its mouth. Caris suffered a moment of utter terror when she suddenly believed every foolish superstition she had ever heard about spirits. Then she realized she was looking at Godwyn. Somehow he had found the strength to rise from his deathbed. He had staggered out of the church and seen their torches, and now in his madness he was running toward them.

They watched him, transfixed.

He stopped and looked at the coffin, then at the empty grave, and in the restless torchlight Caris thought she saw a glimmer of understanding on his grimacing face. Then he seemed to lose his strength, and he collapsed. He fell on the mound of earth beside Jonquil's empty grave, then he rolled down the mound and into the pit.

They all stepped forward and looked into the grave.

Godwyn lay there on his back, looking up at them with open, sightless eyes.

66

A
s soon as Caris got back to Kingsbridge, she decided to leave again.

The image of St.-John-in-the-Forest that stayed with her was not the graveyard, or the corpses Merthin and Thomas had dug up, but the neat fields with no one tilling them. As she rode home, with Merthin beside her and Thomas driving the cart, she saw a lot of land in the same state, and she foresaw a crisis.

The monks and nuns got most of their income from rents. Serfs grew crops and raised livestock on land belonging to the priory and, instead of paying a knight or an earl for the privilege, they paid the prior or prioress. Traditionally they brought a portion of their harvest to the cathedral—a dozen sacks of flour, three sheep, a calf, a cartload of onions—but nowadays most people paid cash.

If no one was cultivating the land, there would be no rent paid, obviously. And then what would the nuns eat?

The cathedral ornaments, the money, and the charters she had retrieved from St.-John-in-the-Forest were stashed safely in the new, secret treasury that Mother Cecilia had commissioned Jeremiah to build in a place where no one could easily find it. All the ornaments had been found except one, a gold candlestick given by the chandlers' guild, the group that represented the wax candle makers of Kingsbridge. That had disappeared.

Caris held a triumphant Sunday service featuring the rescued bones of the saint. She put Thomas in charge of the boys in the orphanage—some of them were old enough to require a strong male presence. She herself moved into the prior's palace, thinking with pleasure how appalled the late Godwyn would be that it was occupied by a woman. Then, as soon as she had dealt with these details, she went to Outhenby.

The Vale of Outhen was a fertile valley of heavy clay soil a day's journey from Kingsbridge. It had been given to the nuns a hundred years ago by a wicked old knight making a last-gasp attempt to win forgiveness for a lifetime of sins. Five villages stood at intervals along the banks of the River Outhen. On either side the great fields covered the land and the lower slopes of the hills.

The fields were divided into strips allocated to different families. As she had feared, many strips were not being cultivated. The plague had changed everything, but no one had had the brains—or perhaps the courage—to reorganize farming in the light of the new circumstances. Caris herself would have to do that. She had a rough idea of what was required, and she would work out the details as she went along.

With her was Sister Joan, a young nun recently out of her novitiate. Joan was a bright girl who reminded Caris of herself ten years ago—not in appearance, for she was black-haired and blue-eyed, but in her questioning mind and brisk skepticism.

They rode to the largest of the villages, Outhenby. The bailiff for the whole valley, Will, lived there in a large timber house next to the church. He was not at home, but they found him in the farthest field, sowing oats; a big, slow-moving man. The next strip had been left fallow, and wild grass and weeds were poking up, grazed by a few sheep.

Will Bailiff visited the priory several times a year, usually to bring the rents from the villages, so he knew Caris; but he was disconcerted to meet her on his home ground. “Sister Caris!” he exclaimed when he recognized her. “What brings you here?”

“I'm Mother Caris now, Will, and I've come to make sure the nuns' lands are being properly husbanded.”

“Ah.” He shook his head. “We're doing our best, as you see, but we've lost so many men that it's very, very difficult.”

Bailiffs always said that times were difficult—but in this case it was true.

Caris dismounted. “Walk with me and tell me about it.” A few hundred yards away, on the gentle slope of a hillside, she saw a peasant plowing with a team of eight oxen. He halted the team and looked at her curiously, so she headed that way.

Will began to recover his composure. Walking alongside her, he said: “A woman of God, such as yourself, can't be expected to know much about tilling the soil, of course; but I'll do my best to explain the finer points.”

“That would be kind.” She was used to being condescended to by men of Will's type. She had found that it was best not to challenge them, but rather to lull them into a false sense of security. That way, she learned more. “How many men have you lost to the plague?”

“Oh, many men.”

“How many?”

“Well, now, let me see, there was William Jones, and his two sons; then Richard Carpenter, and his wife—”

“I don't need to know their names,” she said, controlling her exasperation. “How many, roughly speaking?”

“I'd have to think about that.”

They had reached the plow. Managing the eight-ox team was a skilled job, and plowmen were often among the more intelligent villagers. Caris addressed the young man. “How many people in Outhenby have died of the plague?”

“About two hundred, I'd say.”

Caris studied him. He was short but muscular, with a bushy blond beard. He had a cocksure look, as young men often did. “Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Harry, and my father was Richard, Holy Sister.”

“I am Mother Caris. How do you work out that figure of two hundred?”

“There's forty-two dead here in Outhenby, by my reckoning. It's just as bad in Ham and Shortacre, making about a hundred and twenty. Longwater escaped completely, but every soul in Oldchurch is dead but old Roger Breton, which is about eighty people, making two hundred.”

She turned to Will. “Out of about how many in the whole valley?”

“Ah, now, let me see…”

Harry Plowman said: “A thousand, near enough, before the plague.”

Will said: “That's why you see me sowing my own strip, which should be done by laborers—but I have no laborers. They've all died.”

Harry said: “Or they've gone to work elsewhere for higher wages.”

Caris perked up. “Oh? Who offers higher wages?”

“Some of the wealthier peasants in the next valley,” Will said indignantly. “The nobility pay a penny a day, which is what laborers have always got and always should; but there are some people who think they can do as they please.”

“But they get their crops sowed, I suppose,” Caris said.

“But there's right and wrong, Mother Caris,” said Will.

Caris pointed to the fallow strip where the sheep were. “And what about that land? Why has it not been plowed?”

Will said: “That belonged to William Jones. He and his sons died, and his wife went to live with her sister in Shiring.”

“Have you looked for a new tenant?”

“Can't get them, Mother.”

Harry interjected again. “Not on the old terms, anyhow.”

Will glared at him, but Caris said: “What do you mean?”

“Prices have fallen, you see, even though it's spring when corn is usually dear.”

Caris nodded. That was how markets worked, everyone knew: if there were fewer buyers, the price fell. “But people must live somehow.”

“They don't want to grow wheat and barley and oats—but they have to grow what they're told, at least in this valley. So a man looking for a tenancy would rather go elsewhere.”

“And what will he get elsewhere?”

Will interrupted angrily: “They want to do as they please.”

Harry answered Caris's question. “They want to be free tenants, paying cash rent, rather than serfs working one day a week on the lord's land; and they want to be able to grow different crops.”

“What crops?”

“Hemp, or flax, or apples and pears—things they know they can sell at the market. Maybe something different every year. But that's never been allowed in Outhenby.” Harry seemed to recollect himself, and added: “No offense to your holy order, Mother Prioress, nor to Will Bailiff, an honest man as everyone knows.”

Caris saw how it was. Bailiffs were always conservative. In good times, it hardly mattered: the old ways sufficed. But this was a crisis.

She assumed her most authoritative manner. “All right, listen carefully, now, Will, and I'll tell you what you're going to do.” Will looked startled: he had thought he was being consulted, not commanded. “First, you are to stop plowing the hillsides. It's foolish when we've got good land uncultivated.”

“But—”

“Be quiet and listen. Offer every tenant an exchange, acre for acre, good valley bottom instead of hillside.”

“Then what will we do with the hillside?”

“Convert it to grazing, cattle on the lower slopes and sheep on the higher. You don't need many men for that, just a few boys to herd them.”

“Oh,” said Will. It was plain that he wanted to argue, but he could not immediately think of an objection.

Caris went on: “Next, any valley bottomland that is still untenanted should be offered as a free tenancy with cash rent to anyone who will take it on.” A free tenancy meant that the tenant was not a serf, and did not have to work on the lord's land, or get his permission to marry or build a house. All he had to do was pay his rent.

“You're doing away with all the old customs.”

She pointed at the fallow strip. “The old customs are letting my land go to waste. Can you think of another way to stop this happening?”

“Well,” said Will, and there was a long pause; then he shook his head silently.

“Thirdly, offer wages of twopence a day to anyone who will work the land.”

“Twopence a day!”

Caris felt she could not rely on Will to implement these changes vigorously. He would drag his feet and invent excuses. She turned to the cocksure plowman. She would make him the champion of her reforms. “Harry, I want you to go to every market in the county over the next few weeks. Spread the word that anyone who is on the move can do well in Outhenby. If there are laborers looking for wages, I want them to come here.”

Harry grinned and nodded, though Will still looked a bit dazed.

“I want to see all this good land growing crops this summer,” she said. “Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Will. “Thank you, Mother Prioress.”

 

Caris went through all the charters with Sister Joan, making a note of the date and subject of each. She decided to have them copied, one by one—the idea Godwyn had proposed, though he had only pretended to be copying them as a pretext for taking them away from the nuns. But it was a sound notion. The more copies there were, the harder it was for a valuable document to disappear.

She was intrigued by a deed dated 1327 which assigned to the monks the large farm near Lynn, in Norfolk, that they called Lynn Grange. The gift was made on condition the priory took on, as a novice monk, a knight called Sir Thomas Langley.

Caris was taken back to her childhood, and the day she had ventured into the wood with Merthin, Ralph, and Gwenda, and they had seen Thomas receive the wound that had caused him to lose his arm.

She showed the charter to Joan, who shrugged and said: “It's usual for such a gift to be made when someone from a wealthy family becomes a monk.”

“But look who the donor is.”

Joan looked again. “Queen Isabella!” Isabella was the widow of Edward II and the mother of Edward III. “What's her interest in Kingsbridge?”

“Or in Thomas?” said Caris.

A few days later she had a chance to find out. The bailiff of Lynn Grange, Andrew, came to Kingsbridge on his biannual visit. A Norfolk-born man of over fifty, he had been in charge of the grange ever since it was gifted to the priory. He was now white-haired and plump, which led Caris to believe that the grange continued to prosper despite the plague. Because Norfolk was several days' journey away, the grange paid its dues to the priory in coins, rather than drive cattle or cart produce all that way, and Andrew brought the money in gold nobles, the new coin worth a third of a pound, with an image of King Edward standing on the deck of a ship. When Caris had counted the money and given it to Joan to stash in the new treasury, she said to Andrew: “Why did Queen Isabella give us this grange twenty-two years ago, do you know?”