Ken Follett - World Without End

She left the next morning.

She slipped out of the house before dawn, wrapped in a heavy cloak against the cold March wind. She walked softly through the village in pitch darkness, finding her way by touch and memory. She did not want to be seen and questioned before she had even left the neighbourhood. But no one was up yet. Nathan Reeve’s dog growled quietly then recognized her tread, and she heard a soft thump as he wagged his tail against the side of his wooden kennel.

She left the village and followed the road through the fields. When dawn broke she was a mile away. She looked at the road behind her. It was empty. No one had followed her.

She chewed a crust of stale bread for breakfast, then stopped at mid-morning at a tavern where the Wigleigh-to-Kingsbridge road crossed the Northwood-to-Outhenby road. She recognized no one at the inn. She watched the door nervously as she ate a bowl of salt-fish stew and drank a pint of cider. Every time someone came in she got ready to hide her face, but it was always a stranger, and no one took any notice of her. She left quickly, and set off on the road to Outhenby.

She reached the valley around mid-afternoon. It was twelve years since she had been here, but the place had not changed much. It had recovered from the plague remarkably quickly. Apart from some small children playing near the houses, most of the villagers were at work, ploughing and sowing, or looking after new lambs. They stared at her across the fields, knowing she was a stranger, wondering about her identity. Some of them would recognize her close up. She had been here for only ten days, but those had been dramatic times, and they would remember. Villagers did not often see such excitement.

She followed the river Outhen as it meandered along the flat plain between two ranges of hills. She went from the main village through smaller settlements that she knew, from the time she had spent here, as Ham, Shortacre and Longwater, to the smallest and most remote, Oldchurch.

Her excitement grew as she approached, and she even forgot her sore feet. Oldchurch was a hamlet, with thirty hovels, none big enough to be a manor house or even a bailiff’s home. However, in accordance with the name there was an old church. It was several hundred years of age, Gwenda guessed. It had a squat tower and a short nave, all built of crude masonry, with tiny square windows placed apparently at random in the thick walls.

She walked to the fields beyond. She ignored a group of shepherds in a distant pasture: shrewd Harry Ploughman would not waste big Sam on such light work. He would be harrowing, or clearing a ditch, or helping to manage the eight-ox plough team. Searching the three fields methodically, she looked for a crowd of mostly men, with warm hats and muddy boots and big voices to call to one another across the acres; and a young man a head taller than the others. When she did not at first see her son, she suffered renewed apprehension. Had he already been recaptured? Had he moved to another village?

She found him in a line of men digging manure into a newly ploughed strip. He had his coat off, despite the cold, and he was hefting an oak spade, the muscles of his back and arms bunching and shifting under his old linen shirt. Her heart filled with pride to see him, and to think that such a man had come from her diminutive body.

They all looked up as she approached. The men stared at her in curiosity: Who was she and what was she doing here? She walked straight up to Sam and embraced him, even though he stank of horse dung. “Hello, Mother,” he said, and all the other men laughed.

She was puzzled by their hilarity.

A wiry man with one empty eye socket said: “There, there, Sam, you’ll be all right now,” and they laughed again.

Gwenda realized they thought it funny that a big man such as Sam should have his little mother come and check on him as if he were a wayward boy.

“How did you find me?” Sam said.

“I met Harry Ploughman at Northwood Market.”

“I hope no one tracked you here.”

“I left before it was light. Your father was to tell people I went to Kingsbridge. No one followed me.”

They talked for a few minutes, then he said he had to get back to work, or the other men would resent his leaving it all to them. “Go back to the village and find old Liza,” he said. “She lives opposite the church. Tell her who you are and she’ll give you some refreshment. I’ll be there at dusk.”

Gwenda glanced up at the sky. It was a dark afternoon, and the men would be forced to stop work in an hour or so. She kissed Sam’s cheek and left him.

She found Liza in a house slightly larger than most – it had two rooms rather than one. The woman introduced her husband, Rob, who was blind. As Sam had promised, Liza was hospitable: she put bread and pottage on the table and poured a cup of ale.

Gwenda asked about their son, and it was like turning on a tap. Liza talked unstoppably about him, from babyhood to apprenticeship, until the old man interrupted her harshly with one word: “Horse.”

They fell silent, and Gwenda heard the rhythmic thud of a trotting horse.

“Smallish mount,” blind Rob said. “A palfrey, or a pony. Too little for a nobleman or a knight, though it might be carrying a lady.”

Gwenda felt a shiver of fear.

“Two visitors within an hour,” Rob observed. “Must be connected.”

That was what Gwenda was afraid of.

She got up and looked out of the door. A sturdy black pony was trotting along the path between the houses. She recognized the rider immediately, and her heart sank: it was Jonno Reeve, the son of the bailiff of Wigleigh.

How had he found her?

She tried to duck quickly back into the house, but he had seen her. “Gwenda!” he shouted, and reined in his horse.

“You devil,” she said.

“I wonder what you’re doing here?” he said mockingly.

“How did you get here? No one was following me.”

“My father sent me to Kingsbridge, to see what mischief you might be making there, but on the way I stopped at the Cross Roads tavern, and they remembered you taking the road to Outhenby.”

She wondered whether she could outwit this shrewd young man. “And why should I not visit my old friends here?”

“No reason,” he said. “Where’s your runaway son?”

“Not here, though I hoped he might be.”

He looked momentarily uncertain, as if he thought she might be telling the truth. Then he said: “Perhaps he’s hiding. I’ll look around.” He kicked his horse on.

Gwenda watched him go. She had not fooled him, but perhaps she had planted a doubt in his mind. If she could get to Sam first she might be able to conceal him.

She walked quickly through the little house, with a hasty word to Liza and Rob, and left by the back door. She headed across the field, staying close to the hedge. Looking back towards the village, she could see a man on horseback moving out at an angle to her direction. The day was dimming, and she thought her own small figure might be indistinguishable against the dark background of the hedge.

She met Sam and the others coming back, their spades over their shoulders, their boots thick with muck. From a distance, at first sight, Sam could have been Ralph: the figure was the same, and the confident stride, and the set of the handsome head on the strong neck. But as he talked she could see Wulfric in him too: he had a way of turning his head, a shy smile and a deprecating gesture of the hand that exactly imitated his foster father.

The men spotted her. They had been tickled by her arrival earlier, and now the one-eyed man called out: “Hello, Mother!” and they all laughed.

She took Sam aside and said: “Jonno Reeve is here.”

“Hell!”

“I’m sorry.”