Son of Dust
By H.F.M. Prescott

448 Pages • $13.95

EXCERPT

Son of Dust
By H.F.M. Prescott

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Chapter 1

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust . . .
Shakespeare, Sonnets

Fulcun stood at one of the windows of the tower at Montgaudri; it was
the window that looked out over the castle yard where the hens were
picking, and where the washing hung from the line between the two old
thorn bushes, for it was Monday. Beyond the castle yard was the little
town, mud-and-wattle houses, yellowish-colored and thatched wit
h every shade between the fresh brown-gold of last year’s work and the
dead gray of twenty years back, huddled anyhow among orchards and patches of ground where the peas and beans grew in fresh rows. Beyond
the houses and the orchards and around it all ran the wooden pale of the township.

Behind him in the room, Dame Alianor, Geroy’s wife, who had just
finished setting up the warp of a new length of linen, settled herself on
the bench and began to work the loom with a quick, sharp clack. Dame Alianor was a thin, frail, bitter woman, hardy and reckless in her heart but weak in body. She was the daughter of that untamed old quarreler Baudri
of Boquenci; she had run away from Boquenci with Geroy one night in spring close on ten years ago. Before that, when they used to meet
secretly in the dim flour store of the mill at Boquenci, where the air was
dusty and full of the deep measured beat of the rushing water and the
turning wheel, she had worshipped Geroy. Now she did not.

Down below in the yard one of the men was driving in a fresh stake
behind the castle pale; Fulcun had found yesterday that some of the old
wood was rotted. It was not bad enough to shift yet, but he had told
Osmunt the steward it must be strengthened. The pale was made of stout
oak and beech trunks cut in half lengthwise and rammed deep into the
earth with the rounded side out and the flat within to the yard.

Fulcun watched the man swinging up the heavy mallet and bringing it
down on the wood—the sound came to him just a fraction of time after he saw the mallet fall. But though he watched the man intently he was not thinking of the work; only the regular shock of the blows seemed to mark
the time of the pulses that beat in his brain and through him, till he felt he
was himself the smitten vibrating wood.

Fulcun stood a moment longer, but he was not now watching the man at
the pale. His eyes had been caught by someone crossing the strip of green between Osmunt’s orchard and the alehouse. It was Custance; she had a
bag slung at her back and a stout long stick in her hand; she must be
going along Montgaudri hill to Johan, her father, who had the sheep in
the valley end.

It was Custance, who was in his mind day long and night long. This
morning he had known when he got up that today he would come upon her—somehow. He often did know at the beginning of a day that he
would certainly find her before evening. And standing at the window just now he had known something more, though he had not cared to think
about it too much—he had known that today was the day, come at last, almost against his will, when he must find her. He could not let her keep
him off any longer with her fierceness and her silence and with the
straight stare of her cold yet stormy eyes. After all, she was only his
serf’s girl; her father Johan wore Fulcun’s iron collar about his neck.

And yet for ten minutes and more he stood there still, his fingers gripping
the sill of the window as if someone might tear him from it. Custance had gone out of sight and now appeared again on the open hillside beyond the town. He could see her clear; she was half a mile away by this time,
walking steadily.

He turned sharply from the window and went across the room and down
the stairs into the hall and out to the door of the tower. Dame Alianor had started at his suddenness, and the servants in the hall stared as he went
past them; he did not look back. He took the outer stairs two at a time
with his sword held up in his hand.

In four minutes he was riding out of the gate of the castle; in six he was beyond the pale of the town and out on the open, warm hillside. The hill
was empty, but he knew his way. He remembered now that he must not
hurry while he was in sight of the tower. He settled down in his saddle
and rode soberly, but his fingers were sweating on the bridle.

It was high summer, and the sun so great in his afternoon strength that
the cloudless sky was drained of all color but a faint, languid blue. It was
very hot on the hillside, but now and again a little wayward wind brought with it a puff of clean coolness and then died, and the warm air closed
again. There was no sound but for the grasshoppers, and no movement
but the swallows’ long, delicate, gliding lapse, as they skimmed the slope below the level of his feet.

He pulled up and looked back. Montgaudri had sunk behind a lift of the
hill. He turned and for one second sat still in his saddle staring at nothing, feeling nothing but the thundering shake of his heart in his chest. Then
he was riding with the wind going by his ears, and the soft thunder of the hooves to listen to instead of the other that had made him almost afraid.

He saw Custance before him; he passed her at a gallop as though he did
not see her, and then, a quarter of a mile beyond (he could not tell why he went so far), he pulled up and sat on his horse, waiting for her to come up.

As she came he watched her bare brown feet on the warm grass; her
black hair gleamed in the sun like a crow’s wing, her eyes were on the ground. He knew well enough that she had seen him, but he guessed
that she would not look up till she saw the shadow of his horse; he was
not sorry for that, for he could look at her the better when he had not to
meet her eyes. He wanted to look at her mouth, red and stubborn with a
sulky droop, and at her brown neck, and at a tear in her old
yellowish-white woolen gown that let him see her knee as she moved.

She looked up, and he jerked his head back, and next minute he was out
of the saddle and by her. She stood still and looked no higher than his
throat that was on a level with her eyes. He stretched out his hand and laid it on her shoulder and clutched it hard. She did not wince, but she lifted her eyes and said, “What do you want?” She did not call him “master” or
“lord,” and she looked at him without a change of the dark color in
her face.

He said, dropping his eyes from hers to the little hollow at the base of her throat, “Where are you going?” though he had meant to say something
quite different.

She told him. “To my father. He’s with the sheep away there,” and she nodded beyond him over the hill. “I’ve bread for him.” She had a
goatskin bag slung across her back.

Fulcun, staring down at her, shifted his hand from her shoulder to her
arm and moved closer. He had hold now of both her arms, but she
stood still.

“What do you want?” she said, and her voice was more angry than afraid.

She could feel Fulcun shaking. He told her, “You.” He snatched at the
stick, tore it from her hand, and threw it away, then he dragged her against him.

She fought herself off with a sudden surprising fierce strength, and as
they stood for a second she cried at him, “Like as your father had your mother!”

Fulcun’s chin went up as if she had struck him. He was not glad to be a bastard, though many men those days thought little of it.

He said through his teeth, “I do not care,” and put out his strength again,
and held her, struggling, for a moment glad to know that he must be
hurting her. But he thought she would never stop fighting to get free.

She was tiring. He tightened his arms and heard her give a sharp
breathless cry. He bent to get at her mouth, but she wrenched her face
away. She had no strength for more than that; yet he could see how
even now the muscles of her throat were all straining against him.

For a long second he was quite still, only holding her desperately close
with all his strength and staring down into her face. Her eyes came up
to his, glaring, wild with the terror and frantic impotent hate of an animal taken in a snare.

He knew that he could have her body now if he chose. He knew
suddenly, and with a great rush of blind pain, that it was no use, since
she hated him like this.

He cried out, “Custance, won’t you let me . . . let me? . . . Can’t you see
I love you, Custance!” And then lifting his head, “Oh! I can’t force you
. . . Let me!”

She did not answer, only she struggled faintly against him. He held her a second longer because it was so hard to let her go, and then he loosed his arms about her—it was no use to keep her. She pulled away from him
as far as she could.

He said again, “Can’t you understand? I love you. I only want—” He
stopped because he did not know himself what it was he only wanted.
It was a great deal. It was more than the thing his body wanted. “I love
you,” he said.

But she had never learned what love was. She grew fierce as she felt
herself safe, and she did not know at all what it was that had kept her safe.

“No,” says she. “I want none of that,” and suddenly broke away from
him and ran. As she went by his horse she clouted it on the shoulder, and when the animal bolted he heard her shrill laugh.

Left standing there, Fulcun had to choose between catching her or
catching the horse. He went for the horse, but it was a young wild
stallion and it had been scared, so it got away.

By that time it was too late to catch her. She was gone, and she had
made a fool of him. There was little forbearance in his mind when he
gave up chasing the horse. He came back, hot and angry, and sat down
on the grass. He would wait. She must come back this way, and she
should not leave him laughing again. As he sat there he tugged up
handfuls of the wiry, fine grass and flung them from him.

But as he waited, his anger died. What took its place was first a great soreness. He lay full length and buried his face in the grass and longed for kindness from her—just that, kindness and gentleness. And then, because
he was young enough still not to believe in any final denial, he began to
hope. He rolled over and lay at ease on his side, seeing the world very
great because his eyes were on a level with the smallest creatures—he
could see no more than a multitude of grass blades close by, and beyond,
the great green shoulder of the hill, and beyond that again, a steep of sky.

He thought, “But I’ll teach her to love me. They say a woman always
loves a man afterward. And I’ll be as gentle as I can.” He let his mind slip into sweet imaginings, part of pure passion, part of something that should
be afterward. She would open her eyes from the languor of past delight
and he would be waiting for them. He would look down into her solemn, wide, unsmiling eyes and find that she was glad of him, as he was of her. And they would walk home together in the dusk, very close; but while he was thinking of the touch of her along his side, something in him, deep
down in his unknown mind, was craving for a contact that was not of the body, but something closer yet.
He lay there long, dreaming with his eyes open, and a sound—a small, distant, regular beat—came to his ears for a long time before it reached his mind. But he heard it at last, and raised his head, and then sat upright.
Cortilly church bell was ringing for Vespers.

He listened to it for a minute, frowning. Herfast was ringing it, that
rascal old priest with gray bristles all over his face and a dirty, half-grown tonsure on his head. Herfast spent most of his time digging in the croft
round his cottage. When he had to go to church (and he did not trouble
the church much, but today must be some feast) he would spit on the
ground and wipe his hands on his gown and go with no more care than
that. He was an ignorant old fool too. He knew no more than a few
prayers, and no one could hear them, he gabbled so fast; so they might
be right or wrong. And besides, for as long as Fulcun could remember,
he had kept a wife, if you liked to call her so, a gray-haired woman
now, with watery eyes, but she had been plump and almost comely once.

It was only old Herfast ringing the bell in the dusty, dim tower of the
church. Fulcun tried to keep his mind on that. Why should he care though Herfast rang all night? The faint, cracked voice of the bell meant nothing
to him. He clapped his hands over his ears to shut it out. He shut out the sound, but he shut himself in with his thought.

Here he was on the hill, in the warm-breathing world, where the su
n would soon go down and color everything with evening, and he was waiting here for Custance for his body’s fierce delight. And there, in the wattle church in the valley, where it would be twilight now, God sat. It
was God who spoke in the hoarse discordant voice of the bell. God
forbade him.

Fulcun jumped up and began to tramp about, hasty and aimless, through
the low-­growing, trim whin bushes and back along the smooth sheep
tracks. God forbade him his delight because it was sin. God forbade it,
and Custance must soon be here. But why need he listen? He stood still
once in his roaming and lifted his head. The sun had gone down behind
the high slopes of Perseigne forest that rose opposite the bare flank of Montgaudri hill, but above, the sky was full yet of colored light, and very high up there were some small fine clouds, warm with the sun, and softly cruddled like the wool of a sheep’s fell.

Fulcun thought, “God is up there too!” and because the sky was full of gentleness, and peace, and the remote but tender beauty of the evening,
his thoughts ran suddenly aside. If God was . . . like that at all . . . would
he not allow it because of the tenderness there was in love?

He stood there staring up, and then he muttered, in case God should not understand, “I love her—it’s not all lust.”

The bell rang on and then stopped. He turned, listening to the silence,
and it was a rebuke. He had wanted an answer, but now he knew that no answer would have made any difference. Presumably God had known
it too.

He flung himself down on the grass, his face hot, and his heart too, with a dogged, uneasy rebellion. The light in the sky was changing and fading to something more chill and pure. Soon Custance would be here.

He sat up with a shock of all the blood in his body. Someone was coming along the hill top.

But it was not Custance. It was a man. He saw that it was Geroy.

Geroy came near. Fulcun fixed his eyes on the iron shoe of his scabbard
that lay beside his leg on the grass. He only looked up when Geroy stood over against him, looking down.

“It is hot,” says Geroy. He looked hot.

“Where is your horse?” asked Fulcun, because he must say something,
and then he wished he had said anything else, for where, at that rate,
was his own?

“It went from me.” Geroy looked back the way he had come. “I got
down to—to see to one of the sheep and the brute bolted. It will be at Montgaudri by now very like.” He did not want to stay and talk, but as
he moved on he thought he must say something.

“What are you doing here?” he says over his shoulder.

“Nothing,” says Fulcun, and then, because he did not want Geroy to ask more, he nodded toward him. “What have you been doing to your hand?”

Geroy snatched it up and looked at it and put it behind him.

He said, “A dog bit it,” and moved on. He wanted to get away from
Fulcun. Not that he cared what Fulcun might say. He went off with a
swing of his shoulders, whistling, and then, when he was a little bit away from Fulcun, smiling to himself.

Fulcun did not watch him go. He was only glad that he had gone so
easily and without question. For the sun was down, and Custance must

come very soon. He had thought she would have been here before this.

Then he saw her coming and stood up. She came very slowly. He felt the blood going up to his face and his hand was so hard on his sword hilt
that it shook. He had a thought then. He slipped his cloak from his
shoulder ring and laid it down on the grass. There would be dew soon.
He put the silver ring into his pouch. He was surprised as he did it that he could think of such small things.

He took two strides toward her and then stopped. Custance had stopped
too. She stood there with her hands at her mouth and her knuckles crushed against her teeth. He knew that she was biting her own fingers. He saw
that; he saw her rent gown that showed the curve of one breast; he saw a green grass stain all down her side from shoulder to knee; he saw a bright
red bruise on her cheek; and he knew that she shook so that she could
hardly stand.

He said “Custance!”

She turned her head aside as if she wanted to find a place to run to, but
she did not run.

“Custance, what has happened?” he asked her, but he knew, and she
would not tell him.

“Who?” he said after a minute, and went a step toward her. He meant no harm—he had forgotten that he had ever meant it, but she went back with
a strangled cry. When he stood still again she dropped her hands from her mouth and suddenly huddled the gown together across her breast.

“Lord Geroy,” she told him, and her eyes came up to his and he saw
loathing in them, ugly and agonized. She loathed him, with Geroy,
because he was a man.

When she had gone on, stumbling stiffly along the road, her hands again
at her mouth, Fulcun stood there very still for a long time. He moved at
last, but only to sit down, his knees drawn up, his head down on them,
and one wrist clenched in the other hand. Twilight came and the dark,
but he dared not move because of the thoughts that went round and
again round in his head.

This afternoon she had gone away from him. He had not taken her by his strength as he might. She had gone away. And while he had sat here
waiting, Geroy— He gripped his wrist tighter and heard himself give a strange grunt of pain. But in the blackness of his mind there was not only pain; there was shame and loathing too. Geroy had done what Fulcun had waited to do. Fulcun knew now the vile face of it—this was the work of
the flesh.

Sitting there as the dusk turned to dark, and as the stars came out and
wheeled slowly over the dim crowns of the hills, he hated himself, and Geroy; he hated the whole of humankind. He knew now, he thought
once with a kind of drunken clarity, how God must hate the vile and
shameful flesh.

He got up at last, his hair dank with dew, and dew beads all over the
iron of his scabbard. A nightjar screamed as it hunted somewhere over
toward Belesme. As he went he heard a fox barking down in the valley,
but they were small sounds in a great loneliness. He came, without any satisfaction, in sight of the lights in Montgaudri tower. He was not glad
to leave the empty hills; there at least he was only one man moving in
a great space of clean air, but in Montgaudri there were men like a herd
of cattle, men doing the shameful work of the flesh even now in the dark. And Geroy was there—Geroy. He hated Geroy—a vile hate it was.

And Custance was there too, in that little cottage near the gate. He
wanted her still—and that was vile. His thoughts, sharpened by
weariness, would not be controlled. He could not keep the crowding imaginations from his mind, and yet he sickened at them.

Fulcun came from the dark stairway of the tower at Montgaudri into a
dim and smoky light. The hall was hot that May night, though the fire
was out, for they had barred the shutters, and up in the rafters the smoke
hung yet like a cloud. It was so late that down here, round about the
hearth, the house serfs already lay sprawling or huddled, and as Fulcun
stood, the heavy air was full of a faint mutter of sound; snores,
long-drawn sleepy sighs, the sharp rustle of straw when someone
flung over to be more at ease.

Fulcun looked down at them, and beyond to the other end of the hall
where the light burned—two torches stuck in brackets, whose flames,
sucked aside now by the draft of the opening door, swayed, wreathed in drifting smoke.

At the high table with his back to the torches Geroy sat. He was drinking. Fulcun saw the light burn and blur on the silver rim of the horn as he
lifted it. There were two other men with him—no, three, if you were to
count the fellow who lay sprawling with his face on the table, Walchelin
the Freeman by his bald head. On Geroy’s left Osmunt the steward sat,
big and black-­bearded. On his left was a small man, gray-haired.

Geroy drank and lowered the horn and leaned over the table peering
into the shadows.

“Who is that come in?” says he.

Fulcun did not answer. The gray-haired man was Herfast the priest from Cortilly. He must have come up to Montgaudri as soon as he had said Vespers.

Fulcun went up the hall, stepping over the sleeping serfs. He saw that the three at the table were all very drunk, Osmunt the least of them. Besides, Fulcun thought, Osmunt had done him no wrong, but to look at Geroy stabbed him with a fresh torment of hot jealousy, loathing, desire, and
shame. And Herfast—Herfast had rung that bell this evening that Fulcun
had listened to on the hill, and here he was, a drunken swine of a priest
who kept a woman. Fulcun felt that he and they were all deep sunk in mire—they were all men.

He stood a moment looking at them across the table as if they were
strangers. Geroy’s face was flushed and his eyes very bright. He had
both his hands now spread on the table, palms down, to keep himself
steady. He had laid the horn on the table and the wine dribbled from the
lip and spread in a dark shining pool. He stared at Fulcun standing there
in his gray gown, long and lean, with his thin face hard and shut, and
lines about his mouth.

Says he, with a loud laugh, “What mischief have you been at this s
ummer night, Fulcun Heron?”

Fulcun’s eyes dropped to Geroy’s left hand. There was that fresh red
gash on the back of it—shaped like a crescent moon—the mark of teeth.

Geroy felt his look and snatched his hand off the table. But Fulcun did
not ask again how he came by the mark. He knew.

He said to Herfast, “Welcome, priest,” and nodded to Osmunt. To
Geroy he said, “Who is serving you? I’m hungry.”

Geroy told him. “Baudri. He’s gone for more wine.”

Fulcun went round the end of the table and sat down by Osmunt, but
not close to him. Osmunt turned and said, “If this weather holds we’ll be shearing sheep in a week.”

Fulcun says, “Aye,” and thought of Custance going to Johan, who was
with the sheep. When Baudri came in with an earthen jar of wine, he
told him to fetch bread and meat and another horn. The lad brought
them and Fulcun began to eat and found that he was indeed very hungry.
He did not pay any attention to the others, nor they to him, except that Osmunt turned to him now and again at first. But he soon stopped even
that; everyone was used to Fulcun’s fits of silence.

Geroy was telling stories, all of the same kind, and when he and the
others had done laughing he would lay his arm over young Baudri’s
shoulder and explain to him the point of the tale. When Baudri laughed
Geroy was pleased. “You’re young but you’ll learn,” he says. He was
very fond of Baudri, who was a well-made little lad with bright blue
eyes and a sweet singing voice.
Fulcun finished eating and leaned down and reached for a handful of
rushes to wipe his knife on. When he had done that he shut it and put
it back in its sheath at his belt. As soon as Baudri had given him some
more wine he would go off and leave them.

Geroy and the others were merrier now. Osmunt was talking very loud
of a girl at Cortilly. Herfast said she was a rare one. Fulcun thought to
himself with sour unwilling amusement that Osmunt had better not talk so loud because Richereda slept in the great chamber next door, and she was known to have a tongue and little respect for her husband’s size.

Then Geroy cried, cutting across the end of Osmunt’s tale:

“But hark ye—hark ye—I’ll tell you—”

He began to tell them that the Cortilly girl was a slut to Johan Shepherd’s Custance. “And today, look you,” Geroy lapsed into giggles but pulled himself up. “Today—” he went on.

Fulcun listened because he could not move. When he did move he sent
his chair back with a crash that rang through the hall.

Geroy and Osmunt and Herfast turned, staring, their faces blank with surprise. Down in the hall folk sat up from their straw and stared too.

Fulcun did not know what was in his mind and in his face till he felt
Osmunt catch his wrists and found that the steward was standing between him and Geroy. But he knew then that he had wanted only to take
Geroy’s throat in his bare hands and choke the words there.

Geroy was standing now. He tried to push Osmunt away so as to see
Fulcun. Fulcun stood quite still and Osmunt let his wrists go, but he
did not move aside, and then Geroy’s legs betrayed him and he sat
down abruptly.

“Curse you, Fulcun,” he says very loud and angry. “What flea’s bitten
you?”

Fulcun remembered suddenly that Geroy could not know—could not
guess. He muttered, because he could not think of anything to say:

“It’s your foul mouth. I—” Then he caught sight of little Baudri’s face, flushed and scared. “Can’t you keep it shut in front of the lad?”

Geroy, who had honestly forgotten Baudri, and almost forgotten Fulcun, growled something that no one heard.

Fulcun wanted nothing now but to be away from them. He turned to
Baudri. “Pick up that chair.” He waited, and then, “Now—away to
bed with you.” He drove the boy before him to the door.

As he went through after him and turned to latch it, Fulcun heard Geroy
cry out something with a great shout of laughter. The words came to
him and stuck in his mind, though just then they had no meaning for him because he could think of nothing but Geroy’s tale. Geroy had told it well. Fulcun could see it happen in his mind.

Out on the tower under the clear stars, Fulcun was for a moment eased.
Then his thoughts caught him up again, and for an hour he tramped,
over and back across the narrow space as fast as he could go, and his iron-scabbard-shoe rapped on the pale every time he swung about. He
could not go fast enough to outpace his thoughts.

It was all aimless torment, until at last a new thought came. For a minute
he stood still, now for the first time hearing Geroy’s words that had been
in his ears since he shut the door of the hall.

“Ho!” Geroy had cried. “There’ll be another of us with a shaved crown soon.”

Fulcun went on with his tramping, six steps and turn, six steps and turn,
but he went slower and almost stopped sometimes and then on again.

Was that the way of it? Was it the only way to escape from the hot and shameful torment of human flesh? If he went to Saint-Évroult and they shaved his crown and gave him a gray gown and a rope instead of a
sword belt, would that set him free? He tried to reason it out and could not.

Then suddenly he went over to one corner of the tower and knelt down
and pushed his head and his clasped hands against the hard, still wood.
He did not pray, but somehow his thoughts cleared.

This must be the way. A sudden thought of Custance in his arms this very afternoon stabbed and frightened him. If he were a monk, shut up in a
square, guarded cloister, he would be safe; he could separate himself
from his own flesh, and from more than the flesh, because he had wanted more. In his sick mind he now assembled, under one shamed
condemnation, one terrified loathing, both lust and love.

He sat back on his heels and stared dully, in a great weariness, at the
sky. The stars were very bright; those over the horizon trembled like
white flames. It must be nearly dawn.

It was a week after that night, one wet noonday just before dinner, that Fulcun went out after Geroy into the yard. Geroy was hurrying because
of the straight pelting rain, but Fulcun caught him up in the stable.

“Geroy,” says Fulcun, “I am going to Saint-Céneri tomorrow.”

“Oh, aye,” says Geroy, and that was all. They were not good friends
these days. Fulcun blamed himself but could not speak friendly to Geroy. Certainly he could not tell him what he intended.

Next morning, a fine, fair morning with a galloping wind and white
cloud, Fulcun mounted in the yard at Montgaudri. He rode armed, and
as he settled himself in the saddle and took his spear from Osmunt and felt the fringes of the white and blue banner that hung from below the spearhead
slide across his hand, he thought, “I shall not ride out like this again!”
The thought was strange and painful.

Osmunt’s lad, Neel the Archer, came with him, and a couple more Montgaudri men, freeholders from the valley. When they were all
mounted Fulcun stooped and kissed Geroy and waved his hand to
Dame Alianor and little Baudri up on the outer steps of the tower.
Then the horse moved on from a pressure of his knee.

Just as they came to the gate they met four or five of the women of the township coming in with their buckets swinging on the yokes to draw
water from the castle well; it was the only well in Montgaudri. Custance
was among them. Fulcun saw her, and then he saw nothing else.

He rode out of the gate looking neither to right nor left. He forgot that this was the last time he would ride armed out of Montgaudri. He did not look back.

Custance, as she hurried to draw up her second bucket before the other women should go away and leave her, thought unwillingly of Fulcun,
with a heavy, angry ache that she did not understand. Geroy had wronged her; but Fulcun—he had betrayed her. So she felt and did not in the least know why. She caught the bucket from the hook and had it swinging
from the yoke again. As she turned to go, someone said:

“Well, wench! Not even good morning?”

It was Geroy. She raised her eyes for one second.

“No,” she said, with no breath to say more. She hurried by him clumsily
so that some of the water slopped out of the buckets and splashed on
the dry, trodden ground. She must catch up the other women, but they
were almost out of sight.

He went after her.

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