Her mind was wandering. Richard had said something. “What?” she said.

“I said, I didn’t know Alfred proposed marriage to you last year.”

“You had more important things on your mind. That was about the time Robert of Gloucester was taken captive.”

“Alfred was kind, to build you a house.”

“Yes, he was. And here it is.” She looked at him while he looked at the house. He was crestfallen. She felt sorry for him: he had come from an earl’s castle, and even the large town house they had had before the fire had been a comedown for him. Now he had to get used to the kind of dwelling occupied by laborers and widows.

She took his horse’s bridle. “Come. There’s room for the horse at the back.” She led the huge beast through the one-room house and out through the back door. There were rough low fences separating the yards. She tied the horse to a fence post and began to take off the heavy wooden saddle. From nowhere, grass and weeds had seeded the burned earth. Most people had dug a privy, planted vegetables and built a pigsty or a hen house in their yard, but Aliena’s was still untouched.

Richard lingered in the house, but there was not much to look at, and after a moment he followed Aliena into the yard, “The house is a bit bare-no furniture, no pots, no bowls…”

“I haven’t any money,” Aliena said apathetically.

“You haven’t done anything to the garden, either,” he said, looking around distastefully.

“I haven’t got the energy,” she said crossly, and she handed him the big saddle and went into the house.

She sat on the floor with her back to the wall. It was cool in here. She could hear Richard dealing with his horse in the yard. After she had been sitting still for a few moments she saw a rat poke its snout up out of the straw. Thousands of rats and mice must have perished in the fire, but now they were beginning to be seen again. She looked around for something to kill it with, but there was nothing to hand, and anyway the creature disappeared again.

What am I going to do? she thought. I can’t live like this for the rest of my life. But the mere idea of beginning a new enterprise exhausted her. She had rescued herself and her brother from penury once, but the effort had used up all her reserves, and she could not do it again. She would have to find some passive way of life, controlled by someone else, so that she could live without making decisions or taking initiatives. She thought of Mistress Kate, in Winchester, who had kissed her lips, and squeezed her breast, and said: “My dear girl, you need never want for money, or anything else. If you work for me we’ll both be rich.” No, she thought, not that; not ever.

Richard came in carrying his saddlebags. “If you can’t look after yourself, you’d better find someone else to look after you,” he said.

“I’ve always got you.”

“I can’t take care of you!” he protested.

“Why not?” A small spark of anger flared in her. “I’ve looked after you for six long years!”

“I’ve been fighting a war-all you’ve done is sell wool.”

And knife an outlaw, she thought; and throw a dishonest priest to the floor, and feed and clothe and protect you when you could do nothing but bite your knuckles and look terrified. But the spark had died and the anger had gone, and she merely said: “I was joking, of course.”

He grunted, not sure whether to be offended by that remark; then he shook his head irritably and said: “Anyway, you shouldn’t be so quick to reject Alfred.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” she said.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Alfred. Don’t you understand? Something’s wrong with me.”

He put down the saddle and pointed his finger at her. “That’s right, and I know what it is. You’re completely selfish. You think only of yourself.”

It was so monstrously unjust that she was unable to feel angry. Tears came to her eyes. “How can you say that?” she protested miserably.

“Because everything would be all right if only you would marry Alfred, but still you refuse.”

“For me to marry Alfred wouldn’t help you.”

“Yes, it would.”

“How?”

“Alfred said he would help me fight on, if I was his brother-in-law. I’d have to cut down a bit-he can’t afford all my men-at-arms-but he promised me enough for a war-horse and new weapons, and my own squire.”

“When?” Aliena said in astonishment. “When did he say this?”

“Just now. At the priory.”

Aliena felt humiliated, and Richard had the grace to look a little shamefaced. The two men had been negotiating over her like horse dealers. She got to her feet, and without another word she left the house.

She walked back up to the priory and entered the close from the south side, jumping across the ditch by the old water mill. The mill was quiet today since it was a holiday. She would not have walked that way if the mill had been working, for the pounding of the hammers as they felted the cloth always gave her a headache.

The priory close was deserted, as she had expected. The building site was quiet. This was the hour when the monks studied or rested; and everyone else was in the meadow today. She wandered across to the cemetery on the north side of the building site. The carefully tended graves, with their neat wooden crosses and bunches of fresh flowers, told the truth: the town had not yet got over the massacre. She stopped beside Tom’s stone tomb, adorned with a simple marble angel carved by Jack. Seven years ago, she thought, my father arranged a perfectly reasonable marriage for me. William Hamleigh wasn’t old, he wasn’t ugly, and he wasn’t poor. He would have been accepted with a sigh of relief by any other girl in my position. But I refused him, and look at the trouble that has followed: our castle attacked, my father jailed, my brother and me destitute-even the burning of Kingsbridge and the killing of Tom are consequences of my obstinacy.

Somehow the death of Tom seemed worse than all the other sorrows, perhaps because he had been loved by so many people, perhaps because he was the second father Jack had lost.

And now I’m refusing another perfectly reasonable proposal, she thought. What gives me the right to be so particular? My fastidiousness has caused enough trouble. I should accept Alfred, and be thankful that I don’t have to work for Mistress Kate.

She turned away from the grave and walked over to the building site. She stood in what would be the crossing and looked at the chancel. It was finished but for the roof, and the builders were getting ready for the next phase, the transepts: already the plan had been laid out on the ground on either side of her with stakes and string, and the men had started digging the foundations. The towering walls in front of her cast long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. It was a mild day, but the cathedral felt cold. Aliena looked for a long time at the rows of round arches, large at ground level, small above, and mid-sized on top. There was something deeply satisfying about the regular rhythm of arch, pier, arch, pier.

If Alfred really was willing to finance Richard, Aliena still had a chance to fulfill her vow to her father, that she would take care of Richard until he won back the earldom. In her heart she knew she had to marry Alfred. She just could not face it.

She walked along the southern side aisle, dragging her hand along the wall, feeling the rough texture of the stones, running her fingernails over the shallow grooves made by the stonemason’s toothed chisel. Here in the aisles, under the windows, the wall was decorated with blind arcading, like a row of filled-in arches. The arcading served no purpose but it added to the sense of harmony Aliena felt when she looked at the building. Everything in Tom’s cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.