Ken Follett - World Without End

The street was jammed by hundreds of men, women and children shouting, laughing and jostling for space. They all had their backs to Ralph. He looked over their heads.

At the front of this unruly procession was a cart drawn by an ox. Tied to the back of the cart was a half-naked woman. Ralph had seen this kind of thing before: to be whipped through the town was a common punishment. The woman wore only a skirt of rough wool secured at the waist by a cord. Her face, when he could see it, was begrimed, and her hair was filthy, so that at first he thought she was old. Then he saw her breasts and realized she was only in her twenties.

Her hands were bound together and attached by the same rope to the back end of the cart. She stumbled along behind it, sometimes falling and being dragged writhing through the mud until she managed to get back on her feet. The town constable followed, vigorously lashing her bare back with a bull whip, a strip of leather at the end of a stick.

The crowd, led by a knot of young men, were taunting the woman, shouting insults, laughing, and throwing mud and rubbish. She delighted them by responding, screaming imprecations and spitting at anyone who got near her.

Ralph and Stephen urged their horses into the crowd. Ralph raised his voice. “Clear the way!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Make way for the earl!”

Stephen did the same.

No one took any notice.

To the south of the priory, the ground sloped steeply down to the river. The bank on that side was rocky, unsuitable for loading barges and rafts, so all the wharves were on the more accessible south side, in the suburb of Newtown. The quiet north side bloomed at this time of year with shrubbery and wild flowers. Merthin and Caris sat on a low bluff overlooking the water.

The river was swollen with rain. It moved faster than it used to, Merthin noticed, and he could see why: the channel was narrower than formerly. That was because of the development of the riverside. When he was a child, most of the south bank had been a wide, muddy beach with a swampy field beyond. The river then had flowed at a stately pace, and as a boy he had floated on his back from one side to the other. But the new wharves, protected from flooding by stone walls, squeezed the same quantity of water into a smaller funnel, through which it hurried as if eager to get past the bridge. Beyond the bridge, the river widened and slowed around Leper Island.

“I’ve done something terrible,” Merthin said to Caris.

Unfortunately, she looked particularly lovely today. She wore a dark red linen dress, and her skin seemed to glow with vitality. She had been angry at the trial of Crazy Nell, but now she just seemed worried, and that gave her a vulnerable look that tugged at Merthin’s heart. She must have noticed how he had been unable to meet her eye all week. But what he had to tell her was probably worse than anything she had imagined.

He had spoken to no one about this since the row with Griselda, Elfric and Alice. No one even knew that his door had been destroyed. He was longing to unburden himself, but he had held back. He did not want to talk to his parents: his mother would be judgemental and his father would just tell him to be a man. He might have talked to Ralph, but there had been a coolness between them since the fight with Wulfric: Merthin thought Ralph had behaved like a bully, and Ralph knew it.

He dreaded telling Caris the truth. For a moment he asked himself why. It was not that he was afraid of what she would do. She might be scornful – she was good at that – but she could not say anything worse than the things he said to himself constantly.

What he truly feared, he realized, was hurting her. He could bear her anger: it was her pain he could not face.

She said: “Do you still love me?”

He was not expecting the question, but he answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“And I love you. Anything else is just a problem we can solve together.”

He wished she were right. He wished it so badly that tears came to his eyes. He looked away so that she would not see. A mob of people was moving on to the bridge, following a slow-moving cart, and he realized this must be Crazy Nell being whipped through the town on her way to Gallows Cross in Newtown. The bridge was already crowded with departing stallholders and their carts, and the traffic was almost at a standstill.

“What’s the matter?” Caris said. “Are you crying?”

“I lay with Griselda,” Merthin said abruptly.

Caris’s mouth dropped open. “ Griselda? ” she said unbelievingly.

“I’m so ashamed.”

“I thought it must be Elizabeth Clerk.”

“She’s too proud to offer herself.”

Caris’s reaction to that surprised him. “Oh, so you would have done it with her, too, if she’d suggested it?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Griselda! Dear St Mary, I thought I was worth more than that.”

“You are.”

“ Lupa ,” she said, using the Latin word for a whore.

“I don’t even like her. I hated it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Are you saying you wouldn’t be so sorry if you’d enjoyed it?”

“No!” Merthin was dismayed. Caris seemed determined to misinterpret everything he said.

“Whatever got into you?”

“She was crying.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Do you do that to every girl you see crying?”

“Of course not! I was just trying to explain to you how it happened even though I really didn’t want it to.”

Her scorn got worse with everything he said. “Don’t talk rubbish,” she said. “If you hadn’t wanted it to happen, it wouldn’t have.”

“Listen to me, please,” he said frustratedly. “She asked me, and I said no. Then she cried, and I put my arm around her to comfort her, then-”

“Oh, spare me the sickening details – I don’t want to know.”

He began to feel resentful. He knew he had done wrong, and he expected her to be angry, but her contempt stung. “All right,” he said, and he shut up.

But silence was not what she wanted. She stared at him in dissatisfaction, then said: “What else?”

He shrugged. “What’s the point in my speaking? You just pour scorn on everything I say.”

“I don’t want to listen to pathetic excuses. But there’s something you haven’t told me – I can feel it.”

He sighed. “She’s pregnant.”

Caris’s reaction surprised him again. All the anger left her. Her face, until now taut with indignation, seemed to collapse. Only sadness remained. “A baby,” she said. “Griselda is going to have your baby.”

“It may not happen,” he said. “Sometimes…”

Caris shook her head. “Griselda is a healthy girl, well fed. There’s no reason she should miscarry.”

“Not that I’d wish it,” he said, though he was not quite sure that was true.

“But what will you do?” she said. “It will be your child. You will love it, even if you hate its mother.”

“I’ve got to marry her.”

Caris gasped. “Marry! But that would be for ever.”

“I’ve fathered a child, so I should take care of it.”

“But to spend your whole life with Griselda!”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to,” she said decisively. “Think. Elizabeth Clerk’s father didn’t marry her mother.”

“He was a bishop.”

“There’s Maud Roberts, in Slaughterhouse Ditch – she has three children, and everyone knows the father is Edward Butcher.”

“He’s already married, and has four other children with his wife.”

“I’m saying they don’t always force people to marry. You could just carry on as you are.”

“No, I couldn’t. Elfric would throw me out.”