The Pillars of the Earth (14 page)

All the monks watched intently as Johnny repeated the simple action of dipping the towel and letting the baby suck. As he touched the towel to the baby’s lips, some of the monks would open their own mouths, Philip saw with amusement. It was a slow way of feeding the baby, but no doubt feeding babies was a slow business anyway.

Peter of Wareham, who had succumbed to the general fascination with the baby and consequently had forgotten to be critical of anything for some time, now recovered himself and said: “It would be less trouble to find the child’s mother.”

Francis said: “I doubt it. The mother is probably unmarried, and was overtaken in moral transgression. I imagine she is young. Perhaps she managed to keep her pregnancy secret; then, when her time was near, she came out into the forest, and built a fire; gave birth alone, then abandoned the child to the wolves and went back to wherever she came from. She will make sure she can’t be found.”

The baby had fallen asleep. On impulse, Philip took it from Johnny. He held it to his chest, supporting it with his hand, and rocked it. “The poor thing,” he said. “The poor, poor thing.” The urge to protect and care for the baby suffused him like a flush. He noticed that the monks were staring at him, astonished at his sudden display of tenderness. They had never seen him caress anyone, of course, for physical affection was strictly prohibited in the monastery. Obviously they had thought him incapable of it. Well, he thought, they know the truth now.

Peter of Wareham spoke again. “We’ll have to take the child to Winchester, then, and try to find a foster mother.”

If this had been said by anyone else, Philip might not have been so quick to contradict it; but Peter said it, and Philip spoke hastily, and his life was never quite the same afterward. “We’re not going to give him to a foster mother,” he said decisively. “This child is a gift from God.” He looked around at them all. The monks gazed back at him wide-eyed, hanging on his words. “We’ll take care of him ourselves,” he went on. “We’ll feed him, and teach him, and bring him up in the ways of God. Then, when he is a man, he will become a monk himself, and that way we will give him back to God.”

There was a stunned silence.

Then Peter said angrily: “It’s impossible! A baby cannot be brought up by monks!”

Philip caught his brother’s eye, and they both smiled, sharing memories. When Philip spoke again, his voice was heavy with the weight of the past. “Impossible? No, Peter. On the contrary, I’m quite sure it can be done, and so is my brother. We know from experience. Don’t we, Francis?”

On the day Philip now thought of as the last day, his father had come home wounded.

Philip had been the first to see him, riding up the twisting hillside path to the little hamlet in mountainous North Wales. Six-year-old Philip ran out to meet him, as usual; but this time Da did not swing his little boy up onto the horse in front of him. He was riding slowly, slumped in the saddle, holding the reins in his right hand, his left arm hanging limp. His face was pale and his clothes were splashed with blood. Philip was at once intrigued and scared, for he had never seen his father appear weak.

Da said: “Fetch your mother.”

When they got him into the house, Mam cut off his shirt. Philip was horrified: the sight of his thrifty mother willfully ruining good clothes was more shocking than the blood. “Don’t worry about me now,” Da had said, but his normal bark had weakened to a murmur and nobody took any notice—another shocking event, for normally his word was law. “Leave me, and get everyone up to the monastery,” he said. “The damned English will be here soon.” There was a monastery with a church at the top of the hill, but Philip could not understand why they should go there when it was not even Sunday. Mam said: “If you lose any more blood you won’t be able to go anywhere, ever.” But Auntie Gwen said she would raise the alarm, and went out.

Years later, when he thought about the events that followed, Philip realized that at this moment everyone had forgotten about him and his four-year-old brother, Francis, and nobody thought to take them to the safety of the monastery. People were thinking of their own children, and assumed that Philip and Francis were all right because they were with their parents; but Da was bleeding to death and Mam was trying to save him, and so it happened that the English caught all four of them.

Nothing in Philip’s short experience of life had prepared him for the appearance of the two men-at-arms as they kicked the door open and burst into the one-room house. In other circumstances they would not have been frightening, for they were the kind of big, clumsy adolescents who mocked old women and abused Jews and got into fistfights outside alehouses at midnight. But now (Philip understood years later, when at last he was able to think objectively about that day) the two young men were possessed by bloodlust. They had been in a battle, they had heard men scream in agony and seen friends fall down dead, and they had been scared, literally, out of their wits. But they had won the battle and survived, and now they were in hot pursuit of their enemies, and nothing could satisfy them but more blood, more screaming, more wounds and more death; and all this was written on their twisted faces as they came into the room like foxes into a henhouse.

They moved very fast, but Philip could remember each step forever afterward, as if it had all taken a very long time. Both men wore light armor, just a short vest of chain mail and a leather helmet with iron bands. Both had their swords drawn. One was ugly, with a big bent nose and a squint, and his teeth were bared in a dreadful ape-like grin. The other had a luxuriant beard that was matted with blood—someone else’s, presumably, for he did not seem to be wounded. Both men scanned the room without breaking stride. Their merciless, calculating eyes dismissed Philip and Francis, noted Mam, and focused on Da. They were almost upon him before anyone else could move.

Mam had been bending over him, tying a bandage to his left arm. She straightened up and turned on the intruders, her eyes blazing with hopeless courage. Da sprang to his feet and got his good hand to the hilt of his sword. Philip let out a cry of terror.

The ugly man raised his sword above his head and brought it down hilt-first on Mam’s head, then pushed her aside without stabbing her, probably because he did not want to risk getting his blade stuck in a body while Da was still alive. Philip figured that out years later: at the time he just ran to his mother, not understanding that she could no longer protect him. Mam stumbled, stunned, and the ugly man went by her, raising his sword again. Philip clung to his mother’s skirts as she staggered, dazed; but he could not help looking at his father.

Da got his weapon clear of its scabbard and raised it defensively. The ugly man struck downward and the two blades clashed, ringing like a bell. Like all small boys, Philip thought his father was invincible; and this was the moment when he learned the truth. Da was weak from loss of blood. When the two swords met, his dropped; and the attacker lifted his blade just a little and struck again quickly. The blow landed where the big muscles of Da’s neck grew out of his broad shoulders. Philip began to scream when he saw the sharp blade slice into his father’s body. The ugly man drew his arm back for a stab, and thrust the point of the sword into Da’s belly.

Paralyzed with terror, Philip looked up at his mother. His eyes met hers just as the other man, the bearded one, struck her down. She fell to the floor beside Philip with blood streaming from a head wound. The bearded man changed his grip on his sword, reversing it so that it pointed downward and holding it in both hands; then he raised it high, almost like a man about to stab himself, and brought it down hard. There was a sickening crack of breaking bone as the point entered Mam’s chest. The blade went in deep; so deep (Philip noted, even then when he was consumed by blind hysterical fear) that it must have come through her back and stuck in the ground, fixing her to the floor like a nail.

Philip looked wildly for his father again. He saw him slump forward over the ugly man’s sword and spew out a huge gout of blood. His assailant stepped back and jerked at the sword, trying to disengage it. Da stumbled another step and stayed with him. The ugly man gave a cry of rage and twisted his sword in Da’s belly. This time it came out, Da fell to the floor and his hands went to his open abdomen, as if to cover the gaping wound. Philip had always imagined people’s insides to be more or less solid, and he was mystified and nauseated by the ugly tubes and organs that were falling out of his father. The attacker lifted his sword high, point downward, over Da’s body, as the bearded man had over Mam, and delivered the final blow in the same way.

The two Englishmen looked at one another, and quite unexpectedly Philip read relief on their faces. Together, they turned and looked at him and Francis. One nodded and the other shrugged, and Philip realized they were going to kill him and his brother by cutting them open with those sharp swords, and when he realized how much it was going to
hurt
,
the terror boiled up inside him until he felt as if his head would burst.

The man with blood in his beard stooped swiftly and picked Francis up by one ankle. He held him upside-down in the air while the little boy screamed for his mother, not understanding that she was dead. The ugly man pulled his sword out of Da’s body and brought his arm back ready to stab Francis through the heart.

The blow was never struck. A commanding voice rang out, and the two men froze. The screaming stopped, and Philip realized it was he who had been doing it. He looked at the door and saw Abbot Peter, standing there in his homespun robe, with the wrath of God in his eyes, holding a wooden cross in his hand like a sword.

When Philip relived that day in his nightmares, and woke up sweating and screaming in the dark, he would always be able to calm himself, and eventually relax into sleep again, by bringing to mind that final tableau, and the way the screaming and the wounds had been swept aside by the unarmed man with the cross.

Abbot Peter spoke again. Philip did not understand the language he used—it was English, of course—but the meaning was clear, for the two men looked ashamed, and the bearded one put Francis down quite gently. Still talking, the monk strode confidently into the room. The men-at-arms backed off a step, almost as if they were afraid of him—they with their swords and armor, and him with a wool robe and a cross! He turned his back on them, a gesture of contempt, and crouched to speak to Philip. His voice was matter-of-fact. “What’s your name?”

“Philip.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. And your brother’s?”

“Francis.”

“That’s right.” The abbot looked at the bleeding bodies on the earth floor. “That’s your Mam, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Philip, and he felt panic come over him as he pointed to the mutilated body of his father and said: “And that’s my Da!”

“I know,” the monk said soothingly. “You mustn’t scream anymore, you must answer my questions. Do you understand that they’re dead?”

“I don’t know,” Philip said miserably. He knew what it meant when animals died, but how could that happen to Mam and Da?

Abbot Peter said: “It’s like going to sleep.”

“But their eyes are open!” Philip yelled.

“Hush. We’d better close them, then.”

“Yes,” Philip said. He felt as if that would resolve something.

Abbot Peter stood up, took Philip and Francis by the hand, and led them across the floor to their father’s body. He knelt down and took Philip’s right hand in his. “I’ll show you how,” he said. He moved Philip’s hand over his father’s face, but suddenly Philip was afraid to touch his father, because the body looked so strange, pale and slack and hideously wounded, and he snatched his hand away. Then he looked anxiously at Abbot Peter—a man no one disobeyed—but the abbot was not angry with him. “Come,” he said gently, and took Philip’s hand again. This time Philip did not resist. Holding Philip’s forefinger between his own thumb and finger, the monk made the boy touch his father’s eyelid and bring it down until it covered the dreadfully staring eyeball. Then the abbot released Philip’s hand and said: “Close his other eye.” Unaided now, Philip reached out, touched his father’s eyelid, and closed it. Then he felt better.

Abbot Peter said: “Shall we close your Mam’s eyes, too?”

“Yes.”

They knelt beside her body. The abbot wiped blood off her face with his sleeve. Philip said: “What about Francis?”

“Perhaps he should help, too,” said the abbot.

“Do what I did, Francis,” Philip said to his brother. “Close Mam’s eyes, like I closed Da’s, so she can sleep.”

“Are they asleep?” said Francis.

“No, but it’s
like
sleeping,” Philip said authoritatively, “so she should have her eyes shut.”

“All right, then,” said Francis, and without hesitation he reached out a chubby hand and carefully closed his mother’s eyes.

Then the abbot picked them both up, one in each arm, and without another glance at the men-at-arms he carried them out of the house and all the way up the steep hillside path to the sanctuary of the monastery.

He fed them in the monastery kitchen; then, so that they should not be left idle with their thoughts, he told them to help the cook prepare the monks’ supper. On the following day he took them to see their parents’ bodies, washed and dressed and with the wounds cleaned and repaired and partly concealed, lying in coffins side by side in the nave of the church. There too were several of their relatives, for not all the villagers had made it to the monastery in time to escape the invading army. Abbot Peter took them to the funeral, and made sure they watched the two coffins being lowered into the single grave. When Philip cried, Francis cried too. Someone hushed them, but Abbot Peter said: “Let them weep.” Only after that, when they had taken to their hearts the knowledge that their parents had really gone and were never coming back, did he at last talk about the future.

Among their relatives there was not a single family left entire: in every case, either the father or the mother had been killed. There were no relations to look after the boys. That left two options. They could be given, or even sold, to a farmer who would use them as slave labor until they grew old enough and big enough to run away. Or they could be given to God.