The Town House Read Free Page B

deliberately, courting all blame. I had heard that day, somewhere in the yard, that my lord was on his way to Rede, and I thought, he is old andclumsy, and he does not love her. She is very small. There may be hurt and it is better that I, who love her.… That was part of my thought, but not all. There was the reined-in desire of the last five months, and there was the wish to forestall, to be first, despite all custom.
    Afterwards I took her face between my hands with their calloused palms and blackened nails and I said,
    ‘Now you belong to me.’
    So then my Lord Bowdegrave came to Rede and there was much commotion, with the paying of the rents and the taking of tallies of all his stacks and beasts and flitches and honey-combs. Then, one fine morning, Kate and I were called into the hall, just as, long ago, my father and I had been called when it was to ask consent for me to go to the monks’ school. Walking over the fresh rushes, hand in hand with Kate, I was grateful that that consent had been refused.
    I had warned Kate not to make herself look pretty. I still, in my serf’s heart, admitted the old lord’s right, but by the mere action of forestalling him I had taken a step out of bondage. I had risen up, under the moon and said,‘You belong to me’; later I saw the falseness of that. If you lay claim to a piece of land you should be able to prove your right in the face of all men; if you cannot do so any man who trespasses there does you more wrong than if he walked on common land. I was anxious, therefore, that she should not appear in the hall with her hair newly washed and streaming over her shoulders, wearing the wreath of flowers which marked the bride-to-be. Kate had laughed and asked,‘Shall I smear wood ash on my face?’
    Even had she done so it would not have hidden the fine shapeliness of her bones, the thickness of her honey-coloured hair or the blue of her eyes. I saw the old man look at her; first with that pitiable, old-man lustful look, wishing he were ten, twenty years younger; then in another fashion. Even as the steward hastily named us, Walter, the smith’s son, Kate, the shepherd’s daughter, no relation according to the Kin Book, I saw the old man straighten himself and shift a little in his seat.
    ‘Both of this manor which will neither gain nor lose labour thereby,’ chanted the steward.
    ‘Have done,’ said my lord. He dragged his eyes away from Kate, and shifting a little more, turned to me.
    ‘You’re my smith, eh?’
    ‘Yes, my lord.’
    ‘Then this is an ill choice, surely. You need a wench capable of working the bellows for you at a pinch, and breeding good strong boys. Thislittle maid is altogether too fine and delicate for your purpose.’ His face had grown fat and purple since I last looked at him; in it his eyes shone, his lips were wet, with lechery. He leaned forward a little and reached out his great mottled hand to take Kate by the wrist.
    ‘I can find you better employment; in the still room of my house at Abhurst. You’d like that, eh?’
    Without giving her time to answer – for what did it matter whether she said yes or no? – he said to the steward, ‘Have her ready to ride, pillion to Jack or Will, when I go.’
    To describe a moment of boundless rage, folks often speak of ‘seeing red’. A true word. I saw red then. My Lord Bowdegrave, the chair upon which he sat, the tapestry on the wall behind him, the steward standing by, were all gulped up before my eyes in a great red wave into which I plunged my fist with all my might behind it. I felt, but did not see, the smash of my knuckles upon the great leering face. The next instant something hit me across the back of my skull and the redness gave way to burst of sparks and then to blackness.
    The utter black pricked out with stars, and there I was, lying flat on my back with my face to the sky. There was not an inch of me that was not in pain. My hide had been broken in a score of places and the whole