World Without End Page 0,311

people then told them at the end of the week that he could not pay them. But she bit her tongue, and said mildly: "He fed me through eighteen winters, even if he did sell me to outlaws at the end."

Peg tossed her head and abruptly began to pick up the bowls from the table.

Wulfric said: "We should go."

Gwenda did not move. Whatever advantages she could gain had to be won now. When she left this house, Perkin would consider that a bargain had been struck, and could not be renegotiated. She thought hard. Remembering how Peggy had given ale only to her own family, she said: "You won't fob us off with stale fish and watery beer. You'll feed us exactly the same as yourself and your family - meat, bread, ale, whatever it may be."

Peg made a deprecating noise. She had been planning to do just what Gwenda feared, it seemed.

Gwenda added: "That is, if you want Wulfric to do the same work as you and Rob." They all knew perfectly well that Wulfric did more work than Rob and twice as much as Perkin.

"All right," Perkin said.

"And this is strictly an emergency arrangement. As soon as you get money, you have to start paying us again at the old rate - a penny a day each."

"Yes."

There was a short silence. Wulfric said: "Is that it?"

"I think so," Gwenda said. "You and Perkin should shake hands on the bargain."

They shook hands.

Taking their children, Gwenda and Wulfric left. It was now full dark. Clouds hid the stars, and they had to make their way by the glimmer of light shining through cracks in shutters and around doors. Fortunately they had walked from Perkin's house to their own a thousand times before.

Wulfric lit a lamp and built up the fire while Gwenda put the boys to bed. Although there were bedrooms upstairs - they were still living in the large house that had been occupied by Wulfric's parents - nevertheless they all slept in the kitchen, for warmth.

Gwenda felt depressed as she wrapped the boys in blankets and settled them near the fire. She had grown up determined not to live the way her mother did, in constant worry and want. She had aspired to independence: a patch of land, a hard-working husband, a reasonable lord. Wulfric yearned to get back the land his father had farmed. In all those aspirations they had failed. She was a pauper, and her husband a landless labourer whose employer could not even pay him a penny a day. She had ended up exactly like her mother, she thought; and she felt too bitter for tears.

Wulfric took a pottery bottle from a shelf and poured ale into a wooden cup. "Enjoy it," Gwenda said sourly. "You won't be able to buy your own ale for a while."

Wulfric said conversationally: "It's amazing that Perkin has no money. He's the richest man in the village, apart from Nathan Reeve."

"Perkin has money," Gwenda said. "There's a jar of silver pennies under his fireplace. I've seen it."

"Then why won't he pay us?"

"He doesn't want to dip into his savings."

Wulfric was taken aback. "But he could pay us, if he wanted to?"

"Of course."

"Then why am I going to work for food?"

Gwenda let out an impatient grunt. Wulfric was so slow on the uptake. "Because the alternative was no work at all."

Wulfric was feeling that they had been hoodwinked. "We should have insisted on payment."

"Then why didn't you?"

"I didn't know about the jar of pennies under the fireplace."

"For God's sake, do you think a man as rich as Perkin can be impoverished by failing to sell one cartload of apples? He's been the largest landholder in Wigleigh ever since he got hold of your father's acres ten years ago. Of course he has savings!"

"Yes, I see that."

She stared into the fire while he finished the ale, then they went to bed. He put his arms around her, and she rested her head on his chest, but she did not want to make love. She was too angry. She told herself she should not take it out on her husband: Perkin had let them down, not Wulfric. But she was angry with Wulfric - furious. As she sensed him drifting off to sleep, she realized that her anger was not about their wages. That was the kind of misfortune that afflicted everyone from time to time, like bad weather and barley