World Without End Page 0,64

quiet alley - but he was not smart enough to have foreseen the public reaction. Gwenda realized the bystanders might be her only hope.

Caris waved to a monk who came out of the priory gates. "Brother Godwyn!" she called. "Come and settle an argument, please." She looked triumphantly at Sim. "The priory has jurisdiction over all bargains agreed at the Fleece Fair," she said. "Brother Godwyn is the sacrist. I think you'll have to accept his authority."

Godwyn said: "Hello, cousin Caris. What's the matter?"

Sim grunted with disgust. "Your cousin, is he?"

Godwyn gave him a frosty look. "Whatever the dispute is here, I shall try to give a fair judgement, as a man of God - you can depend on me for that, I hope."

"And very glad to hear it, sir," Sim said, becoming obsequious.

Joby was equally oily. "I know you, brother - my son Philemon is devoted to you. You've been the soul of kindness to him."

"All right, enough of that," Godwyn said. "What's going on?"

Caris said: "Joby here wants to sell Gwenda for a cow. Tell him he can't."

Joby said: "She's my daughter, sir, and she's eighteen years old and a maid, so she's mine to do with what I will."

Godwyn said: "All the same, it seems a shameful business, selling your children."

Joby became pathetic. "I wouldn't do it, sir, only I've three more at home, and I'm a landless labourer, with no means to feed the children through the winter, unless I have a cow, and our old one has died."

There was a sympathetic murmur from the growing crowd. They knew about winter hardship, and the extremes to which a man might have to go to feed his family. Gwenda began to despair.

Sim said: "Shameful you may think it, Brother Godwyn, but is it a sin?" He spoke as if he already knew the answer, and Gwenda guessed he might have had this argument before, in a different place.

With obvious reluctance, Godwyn said: "The Bible does appear to sanction selling your daughter into slavery. The book of Exodus, chapter twenty-one."

"Well, there you are, then!" said Joby. "It's a Christian act!"

Caris was outraged. "The book of Exodus!" she said scornfully.

One of the bystanders joined in. "We are not the children of Israel," she said. She was a small, chunky woman with an underbite that gave her jaw a determined look. Although dressed poorly, she was assertive. Gwenda recognized her as Madge, the wife of Mark Webber. "There is no slavery today," Madge said.

Sim said: "Then what of apprentices, who get no pay, and may be beaten by their master? Or novice monks and nuns? Or those who skivvy for bed and board in the palaces of the nobility?"

Madge said: "Their life may be hard, but they can't be bought and sold - can they, Brother Godwyn?"

"I don't say that the trade is lawful," Godwyn responded. "I studied medicine at Oxford, not law. But I can find no reason, in Holy Scripture or the teachings of the Church, to say that what these men are doing is a sin." He looked at Caris and shrugged. "I'm sorry, cousin."

Madge Webber folded her arms across her chest. "Well, chapman, how are you going to take the girl out of town?"

"At the end of a rope," he said. "Same way I brought the cow in."

"Ah, but you didn't have to get the cow past me and these people."

Gwenda's heart leaped with hope. She was not sure how many of the bystanders supported her, but if it came to a fight they were more likely to side with Madge, who was a townswoman, than with Sim, an outsider.

"I've dealt with obstinate women before," Sim said, and his mouth twisted as he spoke. "They've never given me much trouble."

Madge put her hand on the rope. "Perhaps you've been lucky."

He snatched the rope away. "Keep your hands off my property and you won't get hurt."

Deliberately, Madge put a hand on Gwenda's shoulder.

Sim shoved Madge roughly, and she staggered back; but there was a murmur of protest from the crowd.

A bystander said: "You wouldn't do that if you'd seen her husband."

There was a ripple of laughter. Gwenda recalled Madge's husband, Mark, a gentle giant. If only he would show up!

But it was John Constable who arrived, his well-developed nose for trouble bringing him to any crowd almost as soon as it gathered. "We'll have no shoving," he said. "Are you causing trouble, chapman?"

Gwenda became hopeful again. Chapmen had a