The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [216]
“Well, he was wrong,” Uncle Simon said. “Aunt Edith is dead. What’s more, since your father’s disgrace, I’ve lost half of my lands to that fat rogue Percy Hamleigh. It’s hard times here. So you can turn right around and go back to Winchester. I’m not taking you in.”
Aliena was shaken. He seemed so hard. “But we’re your kin!” she said.
He had the grace to look slightly ashamed, but his reply was harsh. “You’re not my kin. You used to be my first wife’s niece. Even when Edith was alive she never saw her sister, because of that pompous ass your mother married.”
“We’ll work,” Aliena pleaded. “We’re both willing—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” he said. “I’m not having you.”
Aliena was shocked. He was so definite. It was clear there was no point in arguing with him or begging. But she had suffered so many disappointments and reverses of this kind that she felt bitter rather than sad. A week ago something like this would have made her burst into tears. Now she felt like spitting at him. She said: “I’ll remember this when Richard is the earl and we take the castle back.”
He laughed. “Shall I live so long?”
Aliena decided not to stay and be humiliated any longer. “Let’s go,” she said to Richard. “We’ll look after ourselves.” Uncle Simon had already turned away and was looking at the horse with the high wither. The men with him were a little embarrassed. Aliena and Richard walked away.
When they were out of earshot, Richard said plaintively: “What are we going to do, Allie?”
“We’re going to show these heartless people that we’re better than they are,” she said grimly, but she did not feel brave, she was just full of hatred, for Uncle Simon, for Father Ralph, for Odo Jailer, for the outlaws, for the verderer, and most of all for William Hamleigh.
“It’s a good thing we’ve got some money,” Richard said.
It was. But the money would not last forever. “We can’t just spend it,” she said as they walked along the path that led back to the main road. “If we use it all up on food and things like that, we’ll just be destitute again when it’s all gone. We’ve got to do something with it.”
“I don’t see why,” Richard said. “I think we should buy a pony.”
She stared at him. Was he joking? There was no smile on his face. He simply did not understand. “We’ve got no position, no title, and no land,” she said patiently. “The king won’t help us. We can’t get ourselves hired as laborers —we tried, in Winchester, and no one would take us on. But somehow we have to make a living and turn you into a knight.”
“Oh,” he said. “I see.”
She could tell that he did not really see. “We need to establish ourselves in some occupation that will feed us and give us at least a chance of making enough money to buy you a good horse.”
“You mean I should become an apprentice to a craftsman?”
Aliena shook her head. “You have to become a knight, not a carpenter. Have we ever met anyone who had an independent livelihood but no skills?”
“Yes,” Richard said unexpectedly. “Meg in Winchester.”
He was right. Meg was a wool merchant although she had never been an apprentice. “But Meg has a market stall.” They passed the red-haired peasant who had given them directions. His four shorn sheep were grazing in the field, and he was tying their fleeces into bundles with cord made
of reeds. He looked up from his work and waved. It was people such as he who took their wool into the towns and sold it to wool merchants. But the merchant had to have a place of business....
Or did he?
An idea was forming in Aliena’s mind.
She turned back abruptly.
Richard said: “Where are you going?”
She was too excited to answer him. She leaned on the peasant’s fence. “How much did you say you could get for your wool?”
“Penny a fleece,” he said.
“But you have to spend all day going to Gloucester and back.”
“That’s the trouble.”
“Suppose I buy your wool? That would save you the journey.”
Richard said: “Allie! We don’t need wool!”
“Shut up, Richard.” She did not want to explain her idea to him now—she was impatient to try it out on the