World Without End Page 0,394

we've got good land uncultivated."

"But-"

"Be quiet and listen. Offer every tenant an exchange, acre for acre, good valley bottom instead of hillside."

"Then what will we do with the hillside?"

"Convert it to grazing, cattle on the lower slopes and sheep on the higher. You don't need many men for that, just a few boys to herd them."

"Oh," said Will. It was plain that he wanted to argue, but he could not immediately think of an objection.

Caris went on: "Next, any valley-bottom land that is still untenanted should be offered as a free tenancy with cash rent to anyone who will take it on." A free tenancy meant that the tenant was not a serf, and did not have to work on the lord's land, or get his permission to marry or build a house. All he had to do was pay his rent.

"You're doing away with all the old customs."

She pointed at the fallow strip. "The old customs are letting my land go to waste. Can you think of another way to stop this happening?"

"Well," said Will, and there was a long pause; then he shook his head silently.

"Thirdly, offer wages of two pence a day to anyone who will work the land."

"Two pence a day!"

Caris felt she could not rely on Will to implement these changes vigorously. He would drag his feet and invent excuses. She turned to the cocksure ploughman. She would make him the champion of her reforms. "Harry, I want you to go to every market in the county over the next few weeks. Spread the word that anyone who is on the move can do well in Outhenby. If there are labourers looking for wages I want them to come here."

Harry grinned and nodded, though Will still looked a bit dazed.

"I want to see all this good land growing crops this summer," she said. "Is that clear?"

"Yes." said Will. "Thank you, Mother Prioress."

Caris went through all the charters with Sister Joan, making a note of the date and subject of each. She decided to have them copied, one by one - the idea Godwyn had proposed, though he had only pretended to be copying them as a pretext for taking them away from the nuns. But it was a sound notion. The more copies there were, the harder it was for a valuable document to disappear.

She was intrigued by a deed dated 1327 which assigned to the monks the large farm near Lynn, in Norfolk, that they called Lynn Grange. The gift was made on condition the priory took on, as a novice monk, a knight called Sir Thomas Langley.

Caris was taken back to her childhood, and the day she had ventured into the wood with Merthin, Ralph and Gwenda, and they had seen Thomas receive the wound that had caused him to lose his arm.

She showed the charter to Joan, who shrugged and said: "It's usual for such a gift to be made when someone from a wealthy family becomes a monk."

"But look who the donor is."

Joan looked again. "Queen Isabella!" Isabella was the widow of Edward II and the mother of Edward III. "What's her interest in Kingsbridge?"

"Or in Thomas?" said Caris.

A few days later she had a chance to find out. The bailiff of Lynn Grange, Andrew, came to Kingsbridge on his biannual visit. A Norfolk-born man of over fifty, he had been in charge of the grange ever since it was gifted to the priory. He was now white-haired and plump, which led Caris to believe that the grange continued to prosper despite the plague. Because Norfolk was several days' journey away, the grange paid its dues to the priory in coins, rather than drive cattle or cart produce all that way, and Andrew brought the money in gold nobles, the new coin worth a third of a pound, with an image of King Edward standing on the deck of a ship. When Caris had counted the money and given it to Joan to stash in the new treasury, she said to Andrew: "Why did Queen Isabella give us this grange twenty-two years ago, do you know?"

To her surprise, Andrew's pink face turned pale. He made several false starts at answering, then said: "It's not for me to question her majesty's decisions."

"No, indeed," Caris said in a reassuring tone. "I'm just curious about her motive."

"She is a holy woman who has performed many pious acts."

Like murdering her husband, Caris thought; but she said: "However, there must be a reason she