World Without End Page 0,37

down, then stood up again. It was hard to listen to a woman in distress. He could not think about scaffolding while that sound filled the house. Can't stay, can't leave, can't sit still.

He went upstairs.

She was lying face down on the straw-filled palliasse that was her bed. Her dress was rucked up around her chubby thighs. The skin on the back of her legs was very white and looked soft.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Go away."

"Don't cry."

"I hate you."

He knelt down and patted her back. "I can't sit in the kitchen and listen to you crying."

She rolled over and looked at him, her face wet with tears. "I'm ugly and fat, and you hate me."

"I don't hate you." He wiped her wet cheeks with the back of his hand.

She took his wrist and drew him to her. "Don't you? Truly?"

"No. But..."

She put her hand behind his head, pulled him down, and kissed him. He groaned, more aroused than ever. He lay beside her on the mattress. I will leave her in a moment, he told himself. I'll just comfort her a little more, then I'll get up and go down the stairs.

She took his hand and pushed it up her skirt, placing it between her legs. He felt the wiry hair, the soft skin beneath, and the moist divide, and he knew he was lost. He stroked her roughly, his finger slipping inside. He felt as if he would burst. "I can't stop," he said.

"Quickly," she said, panting. She pulled up his shirt and pushed down his drawers, and he rolled on to her.

He felt himself losing control as she guided him inside her. The remorse hit him before it was over. "Oh, no," he said. The explosion began with his first thrust, and in an instant it was finished. He slumped on top of her, his eyes closed. "Oh, God," he said. "I wish I was dead."

Chapter 7

Buonaventura Caroli made his shock announcement at breakfast on Monday, the day after the big banquet at the guild hall.

Caris felt a little unwell as she took her seat at the oak table in the dining hall of her father's house. She had a headache and a touch of nausea. She ate a small dish of warm bread-and-milk to settle her stomach. Recalling that she had enjoyed the wine at the banquet, she wondered whether she had drunk too much of it. Was this the morning-after feeling that men and boys joked about when they boasted how much strong drink they could take?

Father and Buonaventura were eating cold mutton, and Aunt Petranilla was telling a story. "When I was fifteen, I was betrothed to a nephew of the earl of Shiring," she said. "It was considered a good match: his father was a knight of the middling sort, and mine a wealthy wool merchant. Then the earl and his only son both died in Scotland, at the battle of Loudon Hill. My fiance, Roland, became the earl - and broke off the engagement. He is still the earl today. If I had married Roland before the battle, I would now be the countess of Shiring." She dipped toast in her ale.

"Perhaps it was not the will of God," said Buonaventura. He threw a bone to Scrap, who pounced on it as if she had not seen food for a week. Then he said to Papa: "My friend, there is something I should tell you before we begin the day's business."

Caris felt, from his tone of voice, that he had bad news; and her father must have had the same intuition, for he said: "This sounds ominous."

"Our trade has been shrinking for the last few years," Buonaventura went on. "Each year my family sells a little less cloth, each year we buy a little less wool from England."

"Business is always like that," said Edmund. "It goes up, it goes down, no one knows why."

"But now your king has interfered."

It was true. Edward III had seen the money being made in wool and had decided that more of it must go to the crown. He had introduced a new tax of one pound per woolsack. A sack was standardized at 364 pounds weight, and sold for about four pounds in money; so the extra tax was a quarter of the value of the wool, a huge slice.

Buonaventura went on: "What is worse, he has made it difficult to export wool from England. I have had to pay large bribes."

"The ban on exports