the villagers turned out, curious to view the newcomer.
Father Derek turned out to be a well-spoken city clergyman, too richly dressed for a village church. Gwenda wondered whether any special significance attached to his visit. Was there a reason why the church hierarchy had suddenly remembered the existence of this parish? She told herself that it was a bad habit always to imagine the worst, but all the same she felt something was wrong.
She stood in the nave with Wulfric and the boys, watching the priest go through the ritual, and her sense of doom grew stronger. A priest usually looked at the congregation while he was praying or singing, to emphasize that all this was for their benefit, not a private communication between himself and God; but Father Derek's gaze went over their heads.
She soon found out why. At the end of the service, he told them of a new law passed by the king and Parliament. "Landless labourers must work for the lord in their village of origin, if required," he said.
Gwenda was outraged. "How can that be?" she shouted out. "The lord is not obliged to help the labourer in hard times - I know, my father was a landless labourer, and when there was no work we went hungry. So how can the labourer owe loyalty to a lord who gives him nothing?"
A rumble of agreement broke out, and the priest had to raise his voice. "This is what the king has decided, and the king is chosen by God to rule over us, so we must all do as he wishes."
"Can the king change the custom of hundreds of years?" Gwenda persisted.
"These are difficult times. I know that many of you have come to Outhenby in the last few weeks-"
"Invited by the ploughman," the voice of Carl Shaftesbury interrupted. His scarred face was livid with rage.
"Invited by all the villagers," the priest acknowledged. "And they were grateful to you for coming. But the king in his wisdom has ruled that this kind of thing must not go on."
"And poor people must remain poor," Carl said.
"God has ordained it so. Each man in his place."
Harry Ploughman said: "And has God ordained how we are to till our fields with no help? If all the newcomers leave, we will never finish the work."
"Perhaps not all the newcomers will have to leave," said Derek. "The new law says only that they must go home if required."
That quietened them. The immigrants were trying to figure out whether their lords would be able to track them down; the locals were wondering how many labourers would be left here. But Gwenda knew what her own future held. Sooner or later Ralph would come back for her and her family.
By then, she decided, they would be gone.
The priest retired and the congregation began to drift to the door. "We've got to leave here," Gwenda said to Wulfric in a low voice. "Before Ralph comes back for us."
"Where will we go?"
"I don't know - but perhaps that's better. If we don't know where we're going, no one else will."
"But how will we live?"
"We'll find another village where they need labourers."
"Are there many others, I wonder?"
He was always slower-thinking than she. "There must be lots," she said patiently. "The king didn't pass this ordinance just for Outhenby."
"Of course."
"We should leave today," she said decisively. "It's Sunday, so we're not losing any work." She glanced at the church windows, estimating the time of day. "It's not yet noon - we could cover a good distance before nightfall. Who knows, we could be working in a new place tomorrow morning."
"I agree," Wulfric said. "There's no telling how fast Ralph might move."
"Say nothing to anyone. We'll go home, pick up whatever we want to take with us and just slip away."
"All right."
They reached the door and stepped outside into the sunshine, and Gwenda saw that it was already too late.
Six men on horseback were waiting outside the church: Ralph, his sidekick Alan, a tall man in London clothes, and three dirty, scarred, evil-looking ruffians of the kind that could be hired for a few pennies in any low tavern.
Ralph caught Gwenda's eye and smiled triumphantly.
Gwenda looked around desperately. A few days ago the men of the village had stood shoulder to shoulder against Ralph and Alan - but this was different. They were up against six men, not two. The villagers were unarmed, coming out of church, whereas previously