The Town House Read Online Free PDF Page A

soon as he could walk – lay other knowledge all concerned with the risks and the difficulties and the ferocious punishments which awaited any who made an unsuccessful attempt. Once off his manor without leave a serf was a marked man; for miles around a rider on a swift horse would raise the hue-and-cry, and while that was on any stranger would be challenged and asked to explain himself. When he was overtaken, he would be brought back, whipped and branded. Such a fate few serfs were prepared to face in order to gain ‘freedom’ which was just a word to them. The dues and the duties of villeinage might be heavy or light – it depended upon the lord of the manor, upon his steward or bailiff, upon old custom, but whether heavy or light they had worn calloused places upon the bodies and minds of the bondsmen and unless something out of the ordinary disagreeable happened, as it had happened in my case, no man in his senses would throw himself out into the unknown world. At least, so it was at Rede, which, as I have said before, was much behind the times in every way. I had never known a man to run away, and should never have done so myself had I not been driven. Having run I intended, if possible, to make good my attempt.
    I did not know then, though I know it now, that the great forest stretched, with but few large clearings, from the Wash to the Thames river, but I knew it was large and I hoped that Kate and I could stay in its shelter for a long time, and then, perhaps emerge at Colchester, which was the only town besides Norwich which I knew by name. I knew it because of its oyster beds; every year, when my lord made his after-harvest visit, great creels of them were hurried up on horseback to lay upon his table. Where this town lay I did not know except that it was southward and my hope of reaching it was only a hope. For the woods, while offering shelter from the hue-and-cry along the roads, had dangers of their own. In the densest thickets there were wolves, and the even more dangerouswild boars and everywhere there were the game wardens. Merely by entering the forest Kate and I were committing a felony and making ourselves liable to savage punishment, if caught.
    All this we knew, yet, having found one another, we walked along in good spirits. On this first day of our journey the wood was mainly of beech trees, which do not encourage undergrowth. The great grey tree trunks rose straight and smooth as the pillars of a church, and under our feet was a carpet of leaves dropped in the autumns of by-gone years. We travelled until a grey dusk was thick amongst the trees. Then I remembered stories of men who had been lost in fogs, or in forests, or in great open spaces like sheep-runs and gone round and round, re-treading the same path. Lest we do the same and find ourselves, in the morning, back at Rede, I called a halt. We threw ourselves down under a tree so old that its roots in places grew clear of the soil, making little low caves. We crouched in one, ate bread and mutton and apples, the first food we had ever taken together. I thought of that, blasphemously perhaps, thinking that it was a kind of communion; and as I did so Kate put up her hand and touched the twisted arch of root under which we sat.
    ‘This is our very first house,’ she said.
    Something began in my belly and swelled and swelled until it reached my head; I forgot all my fears, forgot our present plight and the future’s uncertainties. I felt brave and powerful, tireless, undefeatable.
    ‘You shall have better, sweetheart. I will build it myself, a snug, trig house, as sound as this tree.’ I reached out my longer arm and laid a finger on the tree trunk.
    Kate laughed and said, ‘I’m glad you were touching wood!’
    I laughed too. Rede seemed far away, here in the wood’s quiet, with night gathering about us we might have been alone in the world, another Adam, another Eve in a new Garden of Eden. We finished our meal and afterwards slept in each