"It is shameful!" said he, and his tone was full of warmth. "I like not their dealings with you, these kinsmen of your former lord!"
"Good friend," said Alftrude, "how wilt thou do now? Thy cattle—thy money—the best of all thy gear! Great thy loss that evil market-day! Indeed I am abashed by the folk with whom I dwell!"
"Why, I must stint and save, that is all. It will be no new thing—so have I done all the days of my life. When I first came over to join the train of Ralf the Earl, I had nothing but two silver pieces, my pen and inkhorn, and my wits. That was fifteen years ago…. They have been lonely years in England since Idonea died."
"She was your wife?"
"Idonea was my wife. She was of Bayeux—daughter of Robert the deacon. I had her but two years in this misty island. A short sickness bore her off."
"Alack, alack! that is piteous!"
"She fretted ever for Normandy. I think it was as well she died."
Alftrude eyed him gravely, reflectively. Suddenly she shook with silent laughter.
"Oh! oh!" she cried when she had recovered her voice, in answer to his manifest surprise, "ye would have laughed, Son of Scrob, had ye seen a sight that mine eyes beheld three nights ago. Know that Ulwin will ever have the swine and the fowls to wander in and out of the house, as they were mankind, that they may eat up the scraps of food which he throweth by among the rushes. Upon that night, my husband's mother and I had gone aloft with the maidens, when a mad hubbub arose—Ulwin shouting, threatening, praying—with such grunts and shrieks besides, ye would have thought the Fiend himself was there. We hurried down, and there stood my good brother, smiting upon his bed with a flail as strongly as his quaking hand would let him—and the fattest pig tangled in the covering of fat Ulwin's bed!"
"Oh, gladsome sight!" exclaimed Richard. "Ye did work havoc upon that same Ulwin that day at the fair? Indeed I think I owe my life to a lady's finger-nails!"