World Without End

On the afternoon of Whit Sunday, the parish guild gave a banquet at the guild hall for the most important visiting buyers. Edmund Wooler was the alderman, and Caris went with him to be hostess, so Merthin had to amuse himself without her.

Fortunately, Elfric and Alice were also at the banquet, so he could sit in the kitchen, listening to the rain and thinking. The weather was not cold, but there was a small fire for cooking, and its red glow was cheerful.

He could hear Elfric’s daughter, Griselda, moving about upstairs. It was a fine house, although smaller than Edmund’s. There was just a hall and a kitchen downstairs. The staircase led to an open landing, where Griselda slept, and a closed bedroom for the master and his wife. Merthin slept in the kitchen.

There had been a time, three or four years ago, when Merthin had been tormented at night by fantasies of climbing the stairs and slipping under the blankets next to Griselda’s warm, plump body. But she considered herself superior to him, treating him like a servant, and she had never given him the least encouragement.

Sitting on a bench, Merthin looked into the fire and visualized the wooden scaffolding he would build for the masons who would reconstruct the collapsed vaulting in the cathedral. Wood was expensive, and long tree trunks were rare – the owners of woodland usually yielded to the temptation of selling the timber before it was fully mature. So builders tried to minimize the amount of scaffolding. Rather than build it up from floor level, they saved timber by suspending it from the existing walls.

While he was thinking, Griselda came into the kitchen and took a cup of ale from the barrel. “Would you like some?” she said. Merthin accepted, amazed by her courtesy. She surprised him again by sitting on a stool opposite him to drink.

Griselda’s paramour, Thurstan, had disappeared three weeks ago. No doubt she now felt lonely, which would be why she wanted Merthin’s company. The drink warmed his stomach and relaxed him. Searching for something to say, he asked: “What happened to Thurstan?”

She tossed her head like a frisky mare. “I told him I didn’t want to marry him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too young for me.”

That did not sound right to Merthin. Thurstan was seventeen, Griselda twenty, but Griselda was not notably mature. More likely, he thought, Thurstan was too low-class. He had arrived in Kingsbridge from nowhere a couple of years ago, and had worked as an unskilled labourer for several of the town’s craftsmen. He had probably got bored, with Griselda or with Kingsbridge, and simply moved on.

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I should marry someone my own age, someone with a sense of responsibility – perhaps a man who could take over my father’s enterprise one day.”

It occurred to Merthin that she might mean him. Surely not, he thought; she’s always looked down on me. Then she got up from her stool and came and sat on the bench beside him.

“My father is spiteful to you,” she said. “I’ve always thought that.”

Merthin was astonished. “Well, it’s taken you long enough to say so – I’ve been living here six and a half years.”

“It’s hard for me to go against my family.”

“Why is he so vile to me, anyway?”

“Because you think you know better than him, and you can’t hide it.”

“Maybe I do know better.”

“See what I mean?”

He laughed. It was the first time she had ever made him laugh.

She shifted closer on the bench, so that her thigh in the woollen dress was pressed against his. He was in his worn linen shirt, which came to mid-thigh, with the undershorts that all men wore, but he could feel the warmth of her body through their clothes. What had brought this on? He looked incredulously at her. She had glossy dark hair and brown eyes. Her face was attractive in a fleshy way. She had a nice mouth for kissing.

She said: “I like being indoors in a rainstorm. It feels cosy.”

He felt himself becoming aroused, and looked away from her. What would Caris think, he asked himself, if she walked in here now? He tried to quell his desire, but that only made it worse.

He looked back at Griselda. Her lips were moist and slightly parted. She leaned towards him. He kissed her. Immediately, she thrust her tongue into his mouth. It was a sudden, shocking intimacy that he found thrilling, and he responded in the same way. This was not like kissing Caris-

That thought arrested him. He tore himself away from Griselda and stood up.

She said: “What’s the matter?”

He did not want to tell her the truth, so he said: “You never seemed to like me.”

She looked a

“You’ve changed very suddenly.”

She stood up and moved towards him. He stepped away until his back was to the wall. She took his hand and pressed it to her bosom. Her breasts were round and heavy, and he could not resist the temptation to feel them. She said: “Have you ever done it – the real thing – with a girl?”

He found he could not speak, but he nodded.

“Have you thought about doing it with me?”

“Yes,” he managed.

“You can do it to me now, if you like, while they’re out. We can go upstairs and lie on my bed.”

“No.”

She pressed her body to his. “Kissing you has made me go all hot and slippery inside.”

He pushed her away. The shove was rougher than he intended, and she fell backwards, landing on her well-cushioned bottom. “Leave me alone,” he said.

He was not sure he meant it, but she took him at his word. “Go to hell, then,” she swore. She got to her feet and stomped upstairs.

He stayed where he was, panting. Now that he had rejected her, he regretted it.

Apprentices were not very attractive to young women, who did not want to be forced to wait years before marrying. All the same, Merthin had courted several Kingsbridge girls. One, Kate Brown, had been sufficiently fond of him to let him go all the way, one warm summer afternoon a year ago, in her father’s orchard. Then her father had died suddenly, and her mother had taken the family to live in Portsmouth. It was the only time Merthin had lain with a woman. Was he mad to turn down Griselda’s offer?

He told himself he had had a lucky escape. Griselda was a mean-spirited girl who did not really like him. He should be proud of having resisted temptation. He had not followed his instinct like a dumb beast; he had made a decision, like a man.

Then Griselda started to cry.

Her weeping was not loud, but all the same he could hear everything. He went to the back door. Like every house in town, Elfric’s had a long, narrow strip of land at the back with a privy and a rubbish tip. Most householders kept chickens and a pig, and grew vegetables and fruits, but Elfric’s yard was used to store stacks of lumber and stones, coils of rope, buckets and barrows and ladders. Merthin stared at the rain falling on the yard, but Griselda’s sobbing still reached his ears.

He decided to leave the house, and got as far as the front door, but then he could not think where to go. At Caris’s house there was only Petranilla, who would not welcome him. He thought of going to his parents, but they were the last people he wanted to see when he was in this state. He could have talked to his brother, but Ralph was not due to arrive in Kingsbridge until later in the week. Besides, he realized, he could not leave the house without a coat – not because of the rain, he did not mind getting wet, but because of the bulge in front of his clothing that would not subside.

He tried to think of Caris. She would be sipping wine, he thought, and eating roast beef and wheat bread. He asked himself what she was wearing. Her best dress was a soft pinkish-red with a square-cut neckline that showed off the pale skin of her slender neck. But Griselda’s crying kept intruding on his thoughts. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her he was sorry to make her feel spurned, and explain to her that she was an attractive person but they were not right for one another.