The Pillars of the Earth (36 page)

Alfred and Martha were asleep—Jack could tell by their breathing. Tom and Ellen did what they usually did under Tom’s cloak (Alfred said it was called “fucking”) then they, too, fell asleep. It seemed that Tom was not going to get up and set fire to the cathedral.

But what
was
he going to do? Would the family walk the roads until they starved to death?

When they were all asleep, and he could hear the four of them breathing in the slow, regular rhythm that indicated deep slumber, it occurred to Jack that
he
could set the cathedral on fire.

The thought made his heart race with fear.

He would have to get up very quietly. He could probably unbar the door and slip out without waking anyone. The church doors might be locked, but there would surely be a way to get in, especially for someone small.

Once inside, he knew how he would reach the roof. He had learned a lot in two weeks with Tom. Tom talked about buildings all the time, mostly addressing his remarks to Alfred; and although Alfred was not interested, Jack was. He had found out, among other things, that all large churches had staircases built into the walls to give access to the higher parts for repair work. He would find a staircase and climb up to the roof.

He sat up in the dark, listening to the breathing of the others. He could distinguish Tom’s by its slightly chesty wheeze, caused (Mother said) by years of inhaling stone dust. Alfred snored once, loudly, then turned over and was silent again.

Once he had set the fire, he would have to get back to the guesthouse quickly. What would the monks do if they caught him? In Shiring Jack had seen a boy of his own age tied up and flogged for stealing a cone of sugar from a spice shop. The boy had screamed and the springy switch had made his bottom bleed. It had seemed much worse than men killing one another in a battle as they had at Earlscastle, and the vision of the bleeding boy had haunted Jack. He was terrified of the same happening to him.

If I do this, he thought, I’ll never tell a soul.

He lay down again, pulled his cloak around him, and closed his eyes.

He wondered if the church door was locked. If it was, he could get in through the windows. Nobody would see him if he stayed on the north side of the close. The monks’ dormitory was south of the church, masked by the cloisters, and there was nothing on this side except the graveyard.

He decided just to go and have a look, to see if it was possible.

He hesitated a moment longer, then he stood up.

The new straw crunched under his feet. He listened again to the breathing of the four sleeping people. It was very silent: the mice had stopped moving in the straw. He took a step, and listened again. The others slept on. He lost patience and took three rapid steps to the door. When he stopped, the mice had decided they had nothing to fear, and started scrabbling again, but the people slept on.

He touched the door with his fingertips, then ran his hands down to the bar. It was an oak beam resting in paired brackets. He got his hands under it, gripped, and lifted. It was heavier than he had expected, and after lifting it less than an inch he had to drop it. The thud it made when it hit the brackets sounded very loud. He froze, listening. Tom’s wheezy breathing faltered. What will I say if I’m caught? thought Jack desperately. I’ll say I was going outside ... going outside ... I know, I’ll say I was going to relieve myself. He relaxed now that he had an excuse. He heard Tom turn over, and waited for the deep, dusty voice, but it did not come, and Tom began to breathe evenly again.

The edges of the door were outlined with ghostly silver. There must be a moon, Jack thought. He gripped the bar again, took a deep breath, and strained to lift it. This time he was ready for its weight. He raised it and pulled it toward himself, but he had not lifted it high enough, and it failed to clear the brackets. He raised it an inch more, and it came free. He held it against his chest, relieving the strain on his arms a little; then he slowly went down on one knee, then on both, and lowered the bar to the floor. He stayed in that position for a few moments, trying to quiet his breathing, while the ache in his arms eased. There was no sound from the others except the noises of sleep.

Gingerly, Jack opened the door a crack. Its iron hinge squeaked, and a cold draft came through the opening. He shivered. He wrapped his cloak closer around him and opened the door a little more. He slipped out and closed it behind him.

The cloud was breaking up, and the moon came and went in the restless sky. There was a cold wind. Jack was momentarily tempted to return to the stuffy warmth of the house. The enormous church with its fallen tower loomed over the rest of the priory, silver and black in the moonlight, its mighty walls and tiny windows making it look more like a castle. It was ugly.

All was quiet. Outside the priory walls, in the village, there might be a few people sitting up late, drinking ale by the glow of the fireside or sewing by rushlights, but here nothing moved. Still Jack hesitated, looking at the church. It looked back at him accusingly, as if it knew what was on his mind. He shook off the spooky feeling with a shrug, and walked across the broad green to the west end.

The door was locked.

He walked around to the north side and looked at the cathedral windows. Some church windows had lengths of translucent linen stretched across them, to keep out the cold, but these seemed to have nothing. They were big enough for him to crawl through, but they were too high to reach. He explored the stonework with his fingers, feeling the cracks in the wall where the mortar had worn away, but they were not big enough to give him toeholds. He needed something to use as a ladder.

He considered fetching stones from the fallen tower and constructing an improvised staircase, but the unbroken stones were too heavy, and the broken ones were too uneven. He had a feeling that he had seen something, during the course of the day, that would serve his purpose exactly, and he racked his brains to remember it. It was like trying to see something out of the corner of his eye: it always remained just out of sight. Then he glanced across the moonlit graveyard to the stable, and it came back to him: a little wooden mounting block, with two or three steps, to help short people climb on large horses. One of the monks had been standing on it to comb a horse’s mane.

He made his way across to the stable. It was the kind of thing that might not get put away at night, since it was hardly worth stealing. He walked quietly, but the horses heard him all the same, and one or two of them snorted and coughed. He stopped, frightened. There might be grooms sleeping in the stable. He stood still for a moment, listening for the sound of human movement, but none came, and the horses went quiet.

He could not see the mounting block. Perhaps it was up against the wall. Jack peered into the moon-shadows. It was hard to see anything. Cautiously, he went right up to the stable and walked along its length. The horses heard him again, and now his closeness made them nervous: one of them whinnied. Jack froze. A man’s voice called out: “Quiet, quiet.” As he stood there like a scared statue, he saw the mounting block right under his nose, so close that he would have fallen over it with one more step. He waited a few moments. There was no more noise from the stable. He bent down, picked it up, and hefted it on his shoulder. He turned around and padded back across the grass to the church. The stable was quiet.

When he climbed to the top step of the block he was still not high enough to reach the windows. It was irritating: he could not even look in. He had not finally made up his mind to do the deed, but he did not want to be prevented by practical considerations: he wanted to decide for himself. He wished he were as tall as Alfred.

There was one more thing to try. He stood back, took a short run, jumped one-footed onto the block, then sprang up. He reached the windowsill easily, and got a grip on the stone frame. With a jerk he pulled himself up until he could half-sit on the sill. But when he tried to crawl through the opening he had a surprise. The window was blocked by iron latticework which he had not seen from outside, presumably because it was black. Jack examined it with both hands, kneeling on the sill. There was no way through: it was probably there specifically to prevent people from getting in when the church was shut.

Disappointed, he jumped down to the ground. He picked up the mounting block and carried it back to where he had found it. This time the horses made no noise.

He looked at the fallen northwest tower, on the left-hand side of the main door. He climbed carefully over the stones at the edge of the heap, peering toward the interior of the church, looking for a way through the rubble. When the moon went behind a cloud he waited, shivering, for it to come out again. He was worried that his weight, small though it was, might shift the balance of the stones and cause a landslide, which would wake everyone even if it did not kill him. As the moon reappeared he scanned the pile and decided to risk it. He began to ascend with his heart in his mouth. Most of the stones were firm but one or two wobbled precariously under his weight. It was the kind of climb he would have enjoyed in daylight, with help near at hand and nothing on his conscience; but now he was too anxious, and his normal surefootedness left him. He slipped on a smooth surface and almost fell down; and there he decided to stop.

He was high enough to look down on the roof of the aisle that ran along the north side of the nave. He was hoping that there might be a hole in the roof, or perhaps a gap between the roof and the pile of rubble, but it was not so: the roof continued unbroken into the ruins of the tower, and there appeared to be nowhere to slip through. Jack was half disappointed and half relieved.

He climbed down again, backward, looking over his shoulder to find a foothold. The closer he got to the ground, the better he felt. He jumped the last few feet and landed gratefully on the grass.

He returned to the north side of the church and walked on around. He had seen several churches in the last two weeks and all of them were roughly the same shape. The largest part was the nave, which was always to the west. Then there were two arms, which Tom called transepts, sticking out to the north and south. The east end was called the chancel and it was shorter than the nave. Kingsbridge was individual only in that its west end had two towers, one on each side of the entrance, as it were to match the transepts.

There was a door in the north transept. Jack tried it and found it locked. He walked on, around the east end: no door there at all. He paused to look across the grassed courtyard. In the far southeast corner of the priory close there were two houses, the infirmary and the prior’s house. Both were dark and silent. He went on, around the east end and along the south side of the chancel until he came to the out-jutting south transept. At the end of the transept, like a hand on an arm, was the round building they called the chapter house. Between the transept and the chapter house was a narrow alley leading into the cloisters. Jack went through the alley.

He found himself in a square quadrangle, with a lawn in the middle and a covered walkway all around. The pale stone of the arches was ghostly white in the moonlight, and the shadowed walkway was impenetrably dark. Jack waited a moment to let his eyes adjust.

He had emerged onto the east side of the square. To his left he could make out the door to the chapter house. Farther to his left, at the southern end of the east walk, he could see, facing him, another door, which he thought probably led to the monks’ dormitory. To his right, another door led into the south transept of the church. He tried it. It was locked.

He went along the north walk. There he found a door leading into the nave of the church. It, too, was locked.

On the west walk there was nothing until he came to the southwest corner, where he found the door to the refectory. What a lot of food had to be found, he thought, to feed all those monks every day. Nearby was a fountain with a basin: the monks washed their hands before meals.

He continued along the south walk. Halfway along there was an arch. Jack turned through it and found himself in a little passage, with the refectory on his right and the dormitory on his left. He imagined all the monks fast asleep on the floor just the other side of the stone wall. At the end of the passage there was nothing but a muddy slope leading down to the river. Jack stood there for a moment, looking at the water a hundred yards away. For no particular reason, he remembered a story about a knight who had his head cut off but lived on; and involuntarily he imagined the headless knight coming out of the river and walking up the slope toward him. There was nothing there, but still he was scared. He turned around and hurried back to the cloisters. He felt safer there.

He hesitated under the arch, looking into the moonlit quadrangle. There must be a way to sneak into such a big building, he felt, but he could not think where else to look. In a way he was glad. He had been contemplating doing something appallingly dangerous, and if it turned out to be impossible, so much the better. On the other hand, he dreaded the thought of leaving this priory and taking to the road again in the morning: the endless walking, the hunger, Tom’s disappointment and anger, Martha’s tears. It could all be avoided, just by one little spark from the flint he carried in the little pouch hanging from his belt!

Something moved at the corner of his vision. He started, and his heart beat faster. He turned his head and saw, to his horror, a ghostly figure, carrying a candle, gliding silently along the east walk toward the church. A scream rose in his throat and he fought it down. Another figure followed the first. Jack stepped back into the archway, out of sight, and put his fist in his mouth, biting his skin to stop himself from crying aloud. He heard an eerie moaning sound. He stared in sheer terror. Then realization dawned: what he was seeing was a procession of monks going from the dormitory to the church for the midnight service, singing a hymn as they went. The panicky feeling persisted for a moment, even when he had understood what he was looking at; then relief washed over him, and he began to shake uncontrollably.