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 I hate you?"
"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 my wife," 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.
Aliena was taken completely by surprise. This was the last thing she had expected from a man who had slept in the same room as her for nine months without ever managing to perform the sexual act. Automatically she screamed and pulled away from him, but he had a firm grip on her hair and he jerked her back. "There's nobody to hear you scream," he said. "They're all across the river."
She was suddenly terribly afraid. They were alone, and he was very strong. After all the miles she had covered on the roads, all the years she had risked her neck traveling, she was being attacked at home by the man she had married!
He saw the fear in her eyes and said: "Scared, are you? Perhaps you'd better be nice." Then he kissed her mouth. She bit his lip as hard as she could. He gave a roar of pain.
She did not see the punch coming. It exploded on her cheek with such force that she had the terrified thought that he must have smashed her bones. For a moment she lost her vision and her balance. She reeled away from the table and' felt herself falling. The rushes on the floor softened the impact as she hit the ground. She shook her head to clear it and reached for the knife strapped to her left arm. Before she could draw it, both her wrists were seized, and she heard Alfred say: "I know about that little dagger. I've seen you undress, remember?" He released her hands, punched her face again, and grabbed the dagger himself.
Aliena tried to wriggle away. He sat on her legs and put his left hand to her throat. She thrashed her arms. Suddenly the point of the dagger was an inch from her eyeball. "Be still, or I'll put out your eyes," he said.
She froze. The idea of being blind terrified her. She had seen men who had been blinded as a punishment. They walked the streets begging, their empty sockets staring horribly at passersby.