Until that day, Sal Clitheroe had never heard her husband scream. After that day she never heard it again, except in dreams. It was noon when she got to Brook Field. She knew the time by the quality of the light gleaming weakly through the pearl-grey cloud that sheeted the sky. The field was four flat acres of mud with a quick stream along one side and a low hill at the south end. The day was cold and dry, but it had rained for a week and, as she splashed through the puddles, the sticky sludge tried to pull off her home-made shoes.
It was hard going but she was a big, strong woman, and she did not tire easily.
Four men were harvesting a winter crop of turnips, bending and lifting and stacking the knobbly brown roots on broad shallow baskets called corves. When a corf was loaded the man would carry it to the foot of the hill and tumble the turnips into a stout oak four-wheeled cart. Their task was almost done, Sal saw, for this end of the field was bare of turnips and the men were working close to the hill. They were all dressed alike. They wore collarless shirts and homespun knee-breeches made by their wives, and waistcoats bought second-hand or discarded by rich men. Waistcoats never wore out. Sal’s father had had a fancy one, double-breasted with red and brown stripes and braided hems, cast off by some city dandy. She had never seen him in anything else, and he had been buried in it.
On their feet the labourers had hand-me-down boots, endlessly repaired. Each man had a hat and all were different: a cap of rabbit fur, a straw cartwheel with a wide brim, a tall felt hat, and a tricorne that might have belonged to a naval officer.
Sal recognised the fur cap. It belonged to her husband, Harry. She had made it herself, after she had caught the rabbit and killed it with a stone and skinned it and cooked it in a pot with an onion. But she would have known Harry without the hat, even at a distance, by his ginger beard.
Harry’s figure was slender but wiry, and he was deceptively strong: he loaded his corf with just as many turnips as the bigger men. Just looking at that lean, hard body at the far end of a muddy field gave Sal a little glow of desire inside, half pleasure and half anticipation, like coming in from the cold to the warm smell of a wood fire.
As she crossed the field she began to hear their voices. Every few minutes one would call to another, and there would be a short exchange ending in laughter. She could not make out the words but she could guess the kind of thing they were saying. It would be the mock-aggressive banter of working men, jovial insults and cheerful vulgarity, pleasantries that relieved the monotony of repetitive hard work.
A fifth man was watching them, standing by the cart, holding a short horsewhip. He was better dressed, with a blue tail coat and polished black knee boots. His name was Will Riddick, he was 30 years old, and he was the eldest son of the squire of Badford. The field was his father’s, as were the horse and cart. Will had thick black hair cut to chin length, and he looked discontented. She could guess why. Supervising the turnip harvest was not his job, and he felt it was beneath him; but the squire’s factor had fallen ill, and Sal guessed that Will had been drafted in to replace him, unwillingly.
At Sal’s side her child stumbled barefoot across the boggy ground, struggling to keep pace with her, until she turned and stooped and picked him up effortlessly, then walked on with him in one arm, his head on her shoulder. She held his thin, warm body a little tighter than she needed to, just because she loved him so much. She would have welcomed more children, but she had suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth. She had stopped hoping and had begun to tell herself that, poor as they were, one child was enough.
She was devoted to her child, probably too much so, for children were often taken away by illness or accident, and she knew that it would break her heart to lose him.
She had named him Christopher, but when he was learning to talk he had mangled his name to Kit, and that was what he was called now. He was six years old, and small for his age. Sal hoped that he
would grow up to be like Harry, slim but strong. He had certainly inherited his father’s red hair.
It was time for the midday meal, and Sal was carrying a basket with cheese, bread and three wrinkled apples. Some way behind her was another village wife, Annie Mann, a vigorous woman the same age as Sal; and two more on the same errand were approaching from the opposite direction, down the hill, baskets on their arms, children in tow. The men stopped work gratefully, wiping their muddy hands on their breeches and moving towards the stream, where they could sit on a bed of grass.
Sal reached the path and let Kit down gently.
Will Riddick took a watch on a chain from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it with a scowl. “It’s not noon yet,” he called out. He was lying, Sal felt sure, but no one else had a watch. “Keep working, you men,” he ordered. Sal was not surprised. Will had a mean streak. His father, the squire, could be hard hearted, but Will was worse. “Finish the job, then have your dinners,” he said. There was a note of disdain in the way he said your dinners, as if there was something contemptible about labourers’ meals. Will himself would be going back to the manor house for roast beef and potatoes, she thought, and probably a jug of strong beer to go with it.
Excerpted with permission from The Armour of Light, Ken Follett, Pan MacMillan.