The Pillars Of The Earth Page 0,210

delayed by carts such as Aliena's. She stopped and stood on top of her sack of wool and looked for wool merchants. She could see only one. She got down and headed the horse in that direction.

The man was doing good business. He had a large space roped off with a shed behind it. The shed was made of hurdles, light timber frames filled in with woven twigs and reeds, and it was obviously a temporary structure erected each market day. The merchant was a swarthy man whose left arm ended at the elbow. Attached to his stump he had a wooden comb, and whenever a fleece was offered to him he would put his arm into the wool, tease out a portion with the comb, and feel it with his right hand before giving a price. Then he would use the comb and his right hand together to count out the number of pennies he had agreed to pay. For large purchases he weighed the pennies in a balance.

Aliena pushed her way through the crowd to the bench. A peasant offered the merchant three rather thin fleeces tied together with a leather belt. "A bit sparse," said the merchant. "Three farthings each." A farthing was a quarter of a penny. He counted out two pennies, then took a small hatchet and with a quick, practiced stroke cut a third penny into quarters. He gave the peasant the two pennies and one of the quarters. "Three times three farthings is twopence and a farthing." The peasant took the belt off the fleeces and handed them over.

Next, two young men dragged a whole sack of wool up to the counter. The merchant examined it carefully. "It's a full sack, but the quality's poor," he said. "I'll give you a pound."

Aliena wondered how he could be so sure the sack was full. Perhaps you could tell with practice. She watched him weigh out a pound of silver pennies.

Some monks were approaching with a huge cart piled high with sacks of wool. Aliena decided to get her business done before the monks. She beckoned to Richard, and he dragged their sack of wool off the cart and brought it up to the counter.

The merchant examined the wool. "Mixed quality," he said. "Half a pound."

"What?" Aliena said incredulously.

"A hundred and twenty pennies," he said.

Aliena was horrified. "But you just paid a pound for a sack!"

"It's because of the quality."

"You paid a pound for poor quality!"

"Half a pound," he repeated stubbornly.

The monks arrived and crowded the stall, but Aliena was not going to move: her livelihood was at stake, and she was more frightened of destitution than she was of the merchant. "Tell me why," she insisted. "There's nothing wrong with the wool, is there?"

"No."

"Then give me what you paid those two men."

"No."

"Why not?" she almost screamed.

"Because nobody pays a girl what they would pay a man."

She wanted to strangle him. He was offering her less than she had paid. It was outrageous. If she accepted his price, all her work would have been for nothing. Worse than that, her scheme for providing a livelihood for herself and her brother would have failed, and her brief period of independence and self-sufficiency would be over. And why? Because he would not pay a girl the same as he paid a man!

The leader of the monks was looking at her. She hated people to stare at her. "Stop staring!" she said rudely. "Just do your business with this godless peasant."

"All right," the monk said mildly. He beckoned to his colleagues and they dragged up a sack.

Richard said: "Take the ten shillings, Allie. Otherwise we'll have nothing but a sack of wool!"

Aliena stared angrily at the merchant as he examined the monks' wool. "Mixed quality," he said. She wondered if he ever pronounced wool good quality. "A pound and twelvepence a sack."

Why did it have to happen that Meg went away? thought Aliena bitterly. Everything would have been all right if she had stayed.

"How many sacks have you got?" said the merchant.

A young monk in novice's robes said: "Ten," but the leader said: "No, eleven." The novice looked as if he was inclined to argue, but he said nothing.

"That's eleven and a half pounds of silver, plus twelvepence." The merchant began to weigh out the money.

"I won't give in," Aliena said to Richard. "We'll take the wool somewhere else-Shiring, perhaps, or Gloucester."

"All that way! And what if we can't sell it there?"

He was right-they might have the same