The Mate He Gave Away novel · Chapter 19 of 40

Chapter 19: Greyford Mill

We came into Greyford on market morning with the oxen steaming.

The square was full.

It always was on market day, but nobody was buying.

The stalls were half empty.

A woman sold three turnips off a cloth.

On the steps of the reeve's house stood the lockup, a stone box with a barred door.

My father sat inside it on a bench, with his white hair uncombed and his hands loose between his knees.

He saw me over the heads of the crowd.

He didn't smile.

He shook his head at me, very slightly. Go home, Clemmie.

I didn't go home.

The royal reeve came out onto his steps when he heard the carts.

He was a round man in a fur-trimmed coat, with the king's raven stitched on his chest and four men with staves behind him.

He'd been reeve here since the Writ. He'd taken half of my father's grinding every week for eight years.

He looked at the carts, then at Corvin, then at me.

"Clemency Millward," he said. "I'd heard you were coming."

"Then you'll have the release ready."

"For forty silver crowns, I'll have it ready."

"I've brought the fine."

He smiled and held out his hand.

I turned around and pulled the canvas off the first cart.

Forty sacks of flour, with a russet wolf painted on every one.

The reeve's smile went away.

"That's not coin."

I pointed past him, at the board nailed to the post by the well.

Every village under the Writ had one.

The reeve's own prices, chalked fresh every week, for flour bought back from the king's half.

One sack of rye flour. One silver crown.

"Your board says a sack of flour is worth a crown in Greyford," I said. "You set that price. You chalked it yourself on Monday."

Somebody in the crowd made a noise.

"So here's forty crowns," I said. "At your price."

"Fines are paid in coin."

The smith's wife pushed to the front of the crowd.

She was a big woman with burn scars on her forearms, and she'd written the letter that brought me here.

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