Page 132 of The Pillars of the Earth

“Penny a fleece. But I have to go to Gloucester to get it, so I lose a day in the field, just when it’s spring and there’s a lot to do.” He was cheerful enough, despite his grumbling.

“What’s this village?” Aliena asked him.

“Strangers call it Huntleigh,” he said. Peasants never used the name of their village—to them it was just the village. Names were for outsiders. “Who are you?” he asked with frank curiosity. “What brings you here?”

“I’m the niece of Simon of Huntleigh,” Aliena said.

“Indeed. Well, you’ll find him in the big house. Go back along this road a few yards, then take the path through the fields.”

“Thank you.”

The village sat in the middle of its plowed fields like a pig in a wallow. There were twenty or so small dwellings clustered around the manor house, which was not much bigger than the home of a prosperous peasant. Aunt Edith and Uncle Simon were not very wealthy, it seemed. A group of men stood outside the manor house with a couple of horses. One of them appeared to be the lord: he wore a scarlet coat. Aliena looked at him more closely. It was twelve or thirteen years since she had seen her Uncle Simon, but she thought this was he. She remembered him as a big man, and now he looked smaller, but no doubt that was because Aliena had grown. His hair was thinning and he had a double chin which she did not recall. Then she heard him say: “He’s very high in the wither, this beast,” and she recognized the rasping, slightly breathy voice.

She began to relax. From now on they would be fed and clothed and cared for and protected: no more horsebread and hard cheese, no more sleeping in barns, no more walking the roads with one hand on her knife. She would have a soft bed and a new dress and a dinner of roast beef.

Uncle Simon caught her eye. At first he did not know who she was. “Look at this,” he said to his men. “A handsome wench and a boy soldier to visit us.” Then something else came into his eyes, and Aliena knew he had realized they were not total strangers. “I know you, don’t I?” he said.

Aliena said: “Yes, Uncle Simon, you do.”

He jumped, as if scared by something. “By the saints! The voice of a ghost!”

Aliena did not understand that, but a moment later he explained. He came over to her, peering hard at her, as if he were about to look at her teeth like a horse; and he said: “Your mother had the same voice, like honey pouring out of a jar. You’re as beautiful as she was too, by Christ.” He put out his hand to touch her face, and she quickly stepped back out of reach. “But you’re as stiff-necked as your damned father, I can see that. I suppose he sent you here, did he?”

Aliena bristled. She did not like to hear Father referred to as “your damned father.” But if she protested, he would take it as further proof that she was stiff-necked; so she bit her tongue and answered him submissively. “Yes. He said Aunt Edith would take care of us.”

“Well, he was wrong,” Uncle Simon said. “Aunt Edith is dead. What’s more, since your father’s disgrace, I’ve lost half of my lands to that fat rogue Percy Hamleigh. It’s hard times here. So you can turn right around and go back to Winchester. I’m not taking you in.”

Aliena was shaken. He seemed so hard. “But we’re your kin!” she said.

He had the grace to look slightly ashamed, but his reply was harsh. “You’re not my kin. You used to be my first wife’s niece. Even when Edith was alive she never saw her sister, because of that pompous ass your mother married.”

“We’ll work,” Aliena pleaded. “We’re both willing—”

“Don’t waste your breath,” he said. “I’m not having you.”

Aliena was shocked. He was so definite. It was clear there was no point in arguing with him or begging. But she had suffered so many disappointments and reverses of this kind that she felt bitter rather than sad. A week ago something like this would have made her burst into tears. Now she felt like spitting at him. She said: “I’ll remember this when Richard is the earl and we take the castle back.”

He laughed. “Shall I live so long?”

Aliena decided not to stay and be humiliated any longer. “Let’s go,” she said to Richard. “We’ll look after ourselves.” Uncle Simon had already turned away and was looking at the horse with the high wither. The men with him were a little embarrassed. Aliena and Richard walked away.

When they were out of earshot, Richard said plaintively: “What are we going to do, Allie?”

“We’re going to show these heartless people that we’re better than they are,” she said grimly, but she did not feel brave, she was just full of hatred, for Uncle Simon, for Father Ralph, for Odo Jailer, for the outlaws, for the verderer, and most of all for William Hamleigh.

“It’s a good thing we’ve got some money,” Richard said.

It was. But the money would not last forever. “We can’t just spend it,” she said as they walked along the path that led back to the main road. “If we use it all up on food and things like that, we’ll just be destitute again when it’s all gone. We’ve got todosomething with it.”

“I don’t see why,” Richard said. “I think we should buy a pony.”

She stared at him. Was he joking? There was no smile on his face. He simply did not understand. “We’ve got no position, no title, and no land,” she said patiently. “The king won’t help us. We can’t get ourselves hired as laborers—we tried, in Winchester, and no one would take us on. But somehow we have to make a living and turn you into a knight.”

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

She could tell that he did not really see. “We need to establish ourselves in some occupation that will feed us and give us at least a chance of making enough money to buy you a good horse.”

“You mean I should become an apprentice to a craftsman?”