Afton of Margate Castle by Angela Elwell Hunt Read Free Book Online

the quality that made Afton unique, he only knew she had always unsettled him. Perhaps it was God’s will the girl leave. He had never felt she belonged to him.
    Afton sprinted toward the cottage, and the ox quickened his pace now that its pen was it sight. Wido dreaded breaking the news to Corba. He led the ox into the pen, fastened the gate, and stooped to affectionately rub the tousled heads of Matthew and Kier, who were spinning their wooden tops on the impacted earth. Was it only a few days ago he felt like a king of the earth with a beautiful wife, five sons, a daughter, and a sheep? Now he knew full well that he was not a king.
    Corba was waiting in the doorway. “Lady Endeline was here,” she said stiffly, a broom in her hand. “We are to lose one of our children in place of the sheep that died.”
    “I know,” Wido answered, patting her shoulder as he passed. He settled onto a stool near the table. “The annual rents are to be paid next month instead of at Michaelmas.”
    “So soon?” Corba’s hands flexed instinctively over her unborn child. “The babe will not yet be born.”
    “It’s not the babe she wants,” Wido said, trying to keep his voice calm. He reached for the round loaf of brown bread on the rough table and broke off a generous hunk. “She wants the girl.”
    Corba abruptly drew in her breath and sat down. In the corner of the room a chicken clucked, a sure sign their best laying hen had laid yet another egg.
    “Nothing else will do?” Corba asked, her voice strangled.
    “Nothing else,” Wido answered, chewing his bread. The dark rye bread seemed tasteless in his mouth, and he swallowed it with great effort. “It would not be wise to argue, in any case.”
    Corba straightened her shoulders. “Then there will be one less mouth to feed and a dowry we may not have to pay, if all goes well,” she said, her eyes dark and wide. “If the girl minds her manners, she may stay as a handmaid for many years. It will be good for us.”
    “Aye.” Wido agreed. He muttered the words Corba wanted to hear even though he did not believe them: “This is a good thing.”
    The family ate supper together as they always did, the children scrambling for bread and scooping thick pottage from their wooden bowls. Wido found his eyes irresistibly drawn to Afton. She ate with her usual concentration, but once she looked up and frowned. “Mama,” she asked, one eyebrow raised delicately, “can’t we get some pomegranates for supper? They were delicious.”
    By all the saints, perhaps it was a good thing she was leaving.
    ***
    As the sun set, Corba bedded the children on their mattresses while Wido stirred the coals on the hearth in the center of the house. A fire was hardly necessary, the weather was so warm, but the glowing red embers comforted him.
    Wido watched the coals until he heard the regular breathing of sleeping children, then he joined Corba in their bed. Her back was to him, and when he touched her, her body convulsed in soundless sobbing. He held her until she lay exhausted from crying.
    The moon was shining through their open window when she spoke. “I never thought of us as poor,” she said, her voice remarkably clear. “We have each other, we have a home, we have children.”
    “We are not poor,” Wido said. “Even when my poor crops have failed, the lord’s generosity has sustained us.”
    “I have never counted that as charity,” Corba said, wiping her face with the light woolen blanket that covered them. “We give Perceval his due as lord, and he gives us our due as his villeins. It is a partnership.”
    “Aye,” Wido answered.
    “But today has taught me what poverty is. It is not that we lack clothing or furs, for we have what we need and no more.”
    Wido lightened his voice. “You have to agree, dear wife, that we could find use for a cow.”
    “No.” Corba’s voice was emphatic, and she gazed steadily into his eyes. “We are poor because we have no power. We have no