The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [253]
He had decided to begin at Northbrook, a small village somewhat remote from the castle. The villagers were a mixture of serfs and freemen. The serfs were William’s property, and could not do anything without his permission. They owed him so many days’ work at certain times of year, plus a share of their own crops. The freemen just paid him rent, in cash or in kind. Five of them were in arrears. William had a notion they thought they could get away with it because they were far from the castle. It might be a good place to begin the shake-up.
It was a long ride, and the sun was high when they approached the village. There were twenty or thirty houses surrounded by three big fields, all of them now stubble. Near the houses, at the edge of one of the fields, were three large oak trees in a group. As William and his men drew near, he saw that most of the villagers appeared to be sitting in the shade of the oaks, eating their dinner. He spurred his horse into a canter for the last few hundred yards, and the others followed suit. They halted in front of the villagers in a cloud of dust.
As the villagers were scrambling to their feet, swallowing their horsebread and trying to keep the dust out of their eyes, William’s mistrustful gaze observed a curious little drama. A middle-aged man with a black beard spoke quietly but urgently to a plump red-cheeked girl with a plump, red-cheeked baby. A young man joined them and was hastily shooed away by the older man. Then the girl walked off toward the houses, apparently under protest, and disappeared in the dust. William was intrigued. There was something furtive about the whole scene, and he wished Mother were here to interpret it.
He decided to do nothing about it for the moment. He addressed Arthur in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. “Five of my free tenants here are in arrears, is that right?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Who is the worst?”
“Athelstan hasn’t paid for two years, but he was very unlucky with his pigs—”
William spoke over Arthur, cutting him off. “Which one of you is Athelstan?”
A tall, stoop-shouldered man of about forty-five years stepped forward. He had thinning hair and watery eyes.
William said: “Why don’t you pay me rent?”
“Lord, it’s a small holding, and I’ve no one to help me, now that my boys have gone to work in the town, and then there was the swine fever—”
“Just a moment,” William said. “Where did your sons go?”
“To Kingsbridge, lord, to work on the new cathedral there, for they want to marry, as young men must, and my land won’t support three families.”
William tucked away in his memory, for future reflection, the information that the young men had gone to work on Kingsbridge Cathedral. “Your holding is big enough to support one family, at any rate, but still you don’t pay your rent.”
Athelstan began to talk about his pigs again. William stared malevolently at him without listening. I know why you haven’t paid, he thought; you knew your lord was ill and you decided to cheat him while he was incapable of enforcing his rights. The other four delinquents thought the same. You rob us when we’re weak!
For a moment he was full of self-pity. The five of them had been chuckling over their cleverness, he felt sure. Well, now they would learn their lesson. “Gilbert and Hugh, take this peasant and hold him still,” he said quietly.
Athelstan was still talking. The two knights dismounted and approached him. His tale of swine fever tailed off into nothing. The knights took him by the arms. He turned pale with fear.
William spoke to Walter in the same quiet voice. “Have you got your chain-mail gloves?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Put them on. Teach Athelstan a lesson. But