Ken Follett - World Without End

Joby was near the priory gates, outside the Bell. With him was a rough-looking man in a yellow tunic, with a pack on his back – and a brown cow.

He waved Gwenda over. “I’ve found a cow,” he said.

Gwenda looked more closely. It was two years old, and thin, with a bad-tempered look, but it appeared healthy. “It seems fine,” she said.

“This is Sim Chapman,” he said, jerking a thumb at the yellow tunic. A chapman travelled from village to village selling small necessities – needles, buckles, hand mirrors, combs. He might have stolen the cow, but that would not bother Pa, if the price was right.

Gwenda said to her father: “Where did you get the money?”

“I’m not paying, exactly,” he replied, looking shifty.

Gwenda had expected him to have some scheme. “What, then?”

“It’s more of a swap.”

“What are you giving him in exchange for the cow?”

“You,” said Pa.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and then she felt a loop of rope dropped over her head and tightened around her body, pinning her arms to her sides.

She felt bewildered. This could not be happening. She struggled to free herself, but Sim just pulled the rope tighter.

“Now, don’t make a fuss,” Pa said.

She could not believe they were serious. “What do you think you’re doing?” she said incredulously. “You can’t sell me, you fool!”

“Sim needs a woman, and I need a cow,” Pa said. “It’s very simple.”

Sim spoke for the first time. “She’s ugly enough, your daughter.”

“This is ridiculous!” Gwenda said.

Sim smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Gwenda,” he said. “I’ll be good to you, as long as you behave yourself, and do as you’re told.”

They meant it, Gwenda saw. They actually thought they could make this exchange. A cold needle of fear entered her heart as she realized it might even happen.

Caris spoke up. “This joke has gone on long enough,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “Release Gwenda immediately.”

Sim was not intimidated by her air of command. “And who are you, to give orders?”

“My father is alderman of the parish guild.”

“But you’re not,” Sim said. “And even if you were, you’d have no authority over me or my friend Joby.”

“You can’t trade a girl for a cow!”

“Why not?” said Sim. “It’s my cow, and the girl is his daughter.”

Their raised voices attracted the attention of passers-by, who stopped to stare at the girl tied up with a rope. Someone said: “What’s happening?” Another replied: “He’s sold his daughter for a cow.” Gwenda saw a look of panic cross her father’s face. He was wishing he had done this up a 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 bad reputation, and the constable was assuming Sim was the cause of the trouble.

Sim turned obsequious, something he could obviously do quicker than changing his hat. “Beg pardon, Master Constable,” he said. “But when a man has paid an agreed price for his purchase, he must be allowed to leave Kingsbridge with his goods intact.”

“Ot course.” John had to agree. A market town depended on its reputation for fair dealing. “But what have you bought?”

“This girl.”

“Oh.” John looked thoughtful. “Who sold her?”