The Pillars of the Earth (88 page)

Mother’s response was predictably indignant. “He is educated,” she said. “He can read and write English and French, he knows his numbers, he can recite whole bookfuls of poetry—”

“Now, don’t misunderstand me willfully,” Tom said firmly. “Philip didn’t say that Jack is ignorant. Quite the opposite. He’s saying that Jack is so clever he should have
more
education.”

Jack was not pleased by these compliments. He shared his mother’s suspicion of churchmen. There was sure to be a catch in this somewhere.

“More?” Ellen said scornfully. “What more does that monk want him to learn? I’ll tell you. Theology. Latin. Rhetoric. Metaphysics. Cow shit.”

“Don’t dismiss it so quickly,” Tom said mildly. “If Jack takes up Philip’s offer, and goes to school, and learns to write at speed in a good secretary’s hand, and studies Latin and theology and all the other subjects you call cow shit, he could become a clerk to an earl or a bishop, and eventually he could be a wealthy and powerful man. Not all barons are the sons of barons, as the saying goes.”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “If he takes up Philip’s offer, you said. What is Philip’s offer, exactly?”

“That Jack becomes a novice monk—”

“Over my dead body!” Ellen shouted, leaping to her feet. “The damned Church is not having my son! Those treacherous lying priests took his father but they’re not taking him, I’ll put a knife in Philip’s belly first, so help me, I swear by all the gods.”

Tom had seen Mother in a tantrum before and he was not as impressed as he might have been. He said calmly: “What the devil is the matter with you, woman? The boy has been offered a magnificent opportunity.”

Jack was intrigued most of all by the words
Those treacherous lying priests took his father
.
What did she mean by that? He wanted to ask her but he did not get the chance.

“He’s not going to be a monk!” she yelled.

“If he doesn’t want to be a monk, he doesn’t have to.”

Mother looked sulky. “That sly prior has a knack of getting his own way in the end,” she said.

Tom turned to Jack. “It’s about time you said something, lad. What do
you
want to do with your life?”

Jack had never thought about that particular question, but the answer came out with no hesitation, as if he had made up his mind long ago. “I’m going to be a master builder, like you,” he said. “I’m going to build the most beautiful cathedral the world has ever seen.”

The red edge of the sun dropped below the horizon and night fell. It was time for the last ritual of Midsummer Eve: floating wishes. Jack had a candle end and a piece of wood ready. He looked at Ellen and Tom. They were both gazing at him, somewhat nonplussed: his certainty about his future had surprised them. Well, no wonder: it had surprised him too.

Seeing that they had no more to say, he jumped to his feet and ran across the meadow to the bonfire. He lit a dry twig at the fire, melted the base of his candle a little, and stuck it to the piece of wood; then he lit the wick. Most of the villagers were doing the same. Those who could not afford a candle made a sort of boat with dried grass and rushes, and twisted the grasses together in the middle to make a wick.

Jack saw Aliena standing quite near him. Her face was outlined by the red glow of the bonfire, and she looked deep in thought. On impulse he said: “What will you wish for, Aliena?”

She answered him without pausing for thought. “Peace,” she said. Then, looking somewhat startled, she turned away.

Jack wondered if he were crazy to love her. She liked him well enough—they had become friends—but the idea of lying naked together and kissing one another’s hot skin was as far from her heart as it was close to his own.

When everyone was ready, they knelt down beside the river, or waded into the shallows. Holding their flickering lights, they all made a wish. Jack closed his eyes tight and visualized Aliena, lying in a bed with her breasts peeping over the coverlet, holding her arms out to him and saying: “Make love to me, husband.” Then they all carefully floated their lights on the water. If the float sank or the flame blew out, it meant you would never get your wish. As soon as Jack let go, and the little craft moved away, the wooden base became invisible, and only the flame could be seen. He watched it intently for a while, then he lost track of it among the hundreds of dancing lights, bobbing on the surface of the water, flickering wishes floating downstream until they disappeared around the bend of the river and were lost from view.

All that summer, Jack told Aliena stories.

They met on Sundays, occasionally at first and then regularly, in the glade by the little waterfall. He told her about Charlemagne and his knights, and William of Orange and the Saracens. He became completely absorbed in the stories while he was telling them. Aliena liked to watch the expressions change on his young face. He was indignant about injustice, appalled by treachery, thrilled by the bravery of a knight and moved to tears by a heroic death; and his emotions were catching, so that she too was moved. Some of the poems were too long to recite in one afternoon, and when he had to tell a story in installments he always broke off at a moment of tension, so that Aliena spent all week wondering what would happen next.

She never told anyone about these meetings. She was not sure why. Perhaps it was that they would not understand the fascination of stories. Whatever the reason, she just let people believe that she was going on her usual Sunday afternoon ramble; and without consulting her Jack did the same; then it got to the point where they could not tell anyone without appearing to confess to something they felt guilty about; and so, rather by accident, the meetings became secret.

One Sunday Aliena read “The Romance of Alexander” to him, just for a change. Unlike Jack’s poems of courtly intrigue, international politics and sudden death in battle, Aliena’s romance featured love affairs and magic. Jack was very taken with these new storytelling elements, and the following Sunday he embarked upon a new romance of his own invention.

It was a hot day in late August. Aliena was wearing sandals and a light linen dress. The forest was still and silent but for the tinkling of the waterfall and the rise and fall of Jack’s voice. The story began in a conventional way, with a description of a brave knight, big and strong, mighty in battle, and armed with a magic sword, who was assigned a difficult task: to travel to a far eastern land and bring back a grapevine that grew rubies. But it rapidly deviated from the usual pattern. The knight was killed and the story focused on his squire, a brave but penniless young man of seventeen who was hopelessly in love with the king’s daughter, a beautiful princess. The squire vowed to fulfill the task given to his master, even though he was young and inexperienced and had only a piebald pony and a bow.

Instead of vanquishing an enemy with one tremendous blow of a magic sword, as the hero generally did in these stories, the squire fought desperate losing battles and won only by luck or ingenuity, generally escaping death by a hair. He was often scared by the enemies that he faced—unlike Charlemagne’s fearless knights—but he never turned back from his mission. All the same, his task, like his love, seemed hopeless.

Aliena found herself more captivated by the pluck of the squire than she had been by the might of his master. She chewed her knuckles in anxiety when he rode into enemy territory, gasped when a giant’s sword barely missed him, and sighed when he lay down his lonely head to sleep and dream of the faraway princess. His love for her seemed of a piece with his general indomitability.

In the end, he brought home the grapevine that grew rubies, astonishing the entire court. “But the squire did not care
that
much,” Jack said with a contemptuous snap of his fingers, “for all those barons and earls. He was interested in one person only. That night, he stole into her room, evading the guards with a cunning ruse he had learned on his journey east. At last he stood beside her bed and gazed upon her face.” Jack looked into Aliena’s eyes as he said this. “She woke at once, but she was not afraid. The squire reached out and gently took her hand.” Jack mimed the story, reaching for Aliena’s hand and holding it in both of his. She was mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze and the power of the young squire’s love, and she hardly noticed that Jack was holding her hand. “He said to her, ‘I love you dearly,’ and kissed her on the lips.” Jack leaned over and kissed Aliena. His lips touched hers so gently that she hardly felt it. It happened very quickly, and he resumed the story instantly. “The princess fell asleep,” he continued. Aliena thought: Did that really happen? Did Jack kiss me? She could hardly believe it, but she could still feel the touch of his mouth on hers. “The next day, the squire asked the king if he could marry the princess, as his reward for bringing home the jeweled vine.” Jack kissed me without thinking, Aliena decided. It was just part of the story. He doesn’t even realize what he did. I’ll just forget about it. “The king refused him. The squire was heartbroken. All the courtiers laughed. That very day the squire left that land, riding on his piebald pony; but he vowed that one day he would return, and on that day he would marry the beautiful princess.” Jack stopped, and let go of Aliena’s hand.

“And then what happened?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Jack replied. “I haven’t thought of it yet.”

All the important people in Kingsbridge joined the parish guild. It was a new idea to most of them, but they liked the thought that Kingsbridge was now a town, not a village, and their vanity was touched by the appeal to them, as leading citizens, to provide a stone church.

Aliena and Alfred recruited the members and organized the first guild dinner, in mid-September. The major absentees were Prior Philip, who was somewhat hostile to the enterprise, although not enough to prohibit it; Tom Builder, who declined because of Philip’s feeling; and Malachi, who was excluded by his religion.

Meanwhile, Ellen had woven a bale of cloth from Aliena’s surplus wool. It was coarse and colorless, but it was good enough for monks’ robes, and the priory cellarer, Cuthbert Whitehead, had bought it. The price was cheap, but it was still double the cost of the original wool, and even after paying Ellen a penny a day Aliena was better off by half a pound. Cuthbert was keen to buy more cloth at that price, so Aliena bought Philip’s surplus wool to add to her own stock, and found a dozen more people, mostly women, to weave it. Ellen agreed to make another bale, but she would not felt it, for she said the work was too hard; and most of the others said the same.

Aliena sympathized. Felting, or fulling, was heavy work. She remembered how she and Richard had gone to a master fuller in Winchester and asked him to employ them. The fuller had had two men pounding cloth with bats in a trough while a woman poured water in. The woman had shown Aliena her raw, red hands, and when the men had put a bale of wet cloth on Richard’s shoulder it had brought him to his knees. Most people could manage to felt a small amount, enough to make clothes for themselves and their families, but only strong men could do it all day. Aliena told her weavers to go ahead and make loose-woven cloth, and she would hire men to felt it, or sell it to a master fuller in Winchester.

The guild dinner was held in the wooden church. Aliena organized the food. She parceled out the cooking among the members, most of whom had at least one domestic servant. Alfred and his men constructed a long table made of trestles and boards. They bought strong ale and a barrel of wine.

They sat at either side of the table, with nobody at the head or foot, for all were to be equal within the guild. Aliena wore a deep-red silk dress ornamented by a gold brooch with rubies in it, and a dark gray pelisse with fashionably wide sleeves. The parish priest said grace: he of course was delighted by the idea of the guild, for a new church would increase his prestige and multiply his income.

Alfred presented a budget and timetable for the building of the new church. He spoke as if this were all his own work, but Aliena knew that Tom had done most of it. The building would take two years and cost ninety pounds, and Alfred proposed that the guild’s forty members should each pay sixpence a week. It was a little more than some of them had reckoned on, Aliena could tell by their faces. They all agreed to pay it, but Aliena thought the guild could expect one or two to default.

She herself could pay it easily. Looking around the table, she realized she was probably the richest person there. She was in a small minority of women: the only others were a brewster with a reputation for good strong ale, a tailor who employed two seamstresses and some apprentices, and the widow of a shoemaker, who managed the business her husband had left. Aliena was the youngest woman there, and younger than any of the men except Alfred, who was a year or two younger than she.

Aliena missed Jack. She had not yet heard the second installment of the story of the young squire. Today was a holiday, and she would have liked to meet him in the glade. Perhaps she still could, later on.

The talk around the table was of the civil war. Stephen’s wife, Queen Matilda, had put up more of a fight than anyone expected: she had recently taken the city of Winchester and captured Robert of Gloucester. Robert was the brother of the Empress Maud and the commander in chief of her military forces. Some people said Maud was only a figurehead, and Robert was the true leader of the rebellion. In any event, the capture of Robert was almost as bad for Maud as the capture of Stephen had been for the loyalists, and everyone had an opinion on what direction the war would take next.

The drink at this feast was stronger than that provided by Prior Philip, and as the meal progressed, the revelers became quite raucous. The parish priest failed to act as a restraining influence, probably because he was drinking as much as anyone else. Alfred, who was sitting next to Aliena, seemed preoccupied, but even he became flushed. Aliena herself was not fond of strong drink, and she took a cup of apple cider with her dinner.

When most of the food was finished, someone proposed a toast to Alfred and Aliena. Alfred beamed with pleasure as he acknowledged it. After that the singing began, and Aliena started to wonder how soon she could slip away.