The Pillars of the Earth (99 page)

“I’ve always got you.”

“I can’t take care of you!” he protested.

“Why not?” A small spark of anger flared in her. “I’ve looked after you for six long years!”

“I’ve been fighting a war—all you’ve done is sell wool.”

And knife an outlaw, she thought; and throw a dishonest priest to the floor, and feed and clothe and protect you when you could do nothing but bite your knuckles and look terrified. But the spark had died and the anger had gone, and she merely said: “I was joking, of course.”

He grunted, not sure whether to be offended by that remark; then he shook his head irritably and said: “Anyway, you shouldn’t be so quick to reject Alfred.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” she said.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Alfred. Don’t you understand? Something’s wrong with
me
.”

He put down the saddle and pointed his finger at her. “That’s right, and I know what it is. You’re completely selfish. You think only of yourself.”

It was so monstrously unjust that she was unable to feel angry. Tears came to her eyes. “How can you say that?” she protested miserably.

“Because everything would be all right if only you would marry Alfred, but still you refuse.”

“For me to marry Alfred wouldn’t help you.”

“Yes, it would.”

“How?”

“Alfred said he would help me fight on, if I was his brother-in-law. I’d have to cut down a bit—he can’t afford all my men-at-arms—but he promised me enough for a war-horse and new weapons, and my own squire.”

“When?” Aliena said in astonishment. “When did he say this?”

“Just now. At the priory.”

Aliena felt humiliated, and Richard had the grace to look a little shamefaced. The two men had been negotiating over her like horse dealers. She got to her feet, and without another word she left the house.

She walked back up to the priory and entered the close from the south side, jumping across the ditch by the old water mill. The mill was quiet today since it was a holiday. She would not have walked that way if the mill had been working, for the pounding of the hammers as they felted the cloth always gave her a headache.

The priory close was deserted, as she had expected. The building site was quiet. This was the hour when the monks studied or rested; and everyone else was in the meadow today. She wandered across to the cemetery on the north side of the building site. The carefully tended graves, with their neat wooden crosses and bunches of fresh flowers, told the truth: the town had not yet got over the massacre. She stopped beside Tom’s stone tomb, adorned with a simple marble angel carved by Jack. Seven years ago, she thought, my father arranged a perfectly reasonable marriage for me. William Hamleigh wasn’t old, he wasn’t ugly, and he wasn’t poor. He would have been accepted with a sigh of relief by any other girl in my position. But I refused him, and look at the trouble that has followed: our castle attacked, my father jailed, my brother and me destitute—even the burning of Kingsbridge and the killing of Tom are consequences of my obstinacy.

Somehow the death of Tom seemed worse than all the other sorrows, perhaps because he had been loved by so many people, perhaps because he was the second father Jack had lost.

And now I’m refusing another perfectly reasonable proposal, she thought. What gives me the right to be so particular? My fastidiousness has caused enough trouble. I should accept Alfred, and be thankful that I don’t have to work for Mistress Kate.

She turned away from the grave and walked over to the building site. She stood in what would be the crossing and looked at the chancel. It was finished but for the roof, and the builders were getting ready for the next phase, the transepts: already the plan had been laid out on the ground on either side of her with stakes and string, and the men had started digging the foundations. The towering walls in front of her cast long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. It was a mild day, but the cathedral felt cold. Aliena looked for a long time at the rows of round arches, large at ground level, small above, and mid-sized on top. There was something deeply satisfying about the regular rhythm of arch, pier, arch, pier.

If Alfred really was willing to finance Richard, Aliena still had a chance to fulfill her vow to her father, that she would take care of Richard until he won back the earldom. In her heart she knew she had to marry Alfred. She just could not face it.

She walked along the southern side aisle, dragging her hand along the wall, feeling the rough texture of the stones, running her fingernails over the shallow grooves made by the stonemason’s toothed chisel. Here in the aisles, under the windows, the wall was decorated with blind arcading, like a row of filled-in arches. The arcading served no purpose but it added to the sense of harmony Aliena felt when she looked at the building. Everything in Tom’s cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.

In the southeast corner of the church, a low doorway led to a narrow spiral staircase. On impulse Aliena went through the doorway and climbed the stairs. When she lost sight of the doorway, and could not yet see the top of the stairs, she began to feel peculiar, for the passage looked as if it might wind upward forever. Then she saw daylight: there was a small slit window in the turret wall, put there to light the steps. Eventually she emerged onto the wide gallery over the aisle. It had no windows to the outside, but on the inside it looked into the roofless church. She sat on the sill of one of the inner arches, leaning against the pillar. The cold stone caressed her cheek. She wondered whether Jack had carved this one. It occurred to her that if she fell from here she might die. But it was not really high enough: she might just break her legs, and lie in agony until the monks came and found her.

She decided to climb to the clerestory. She returned to the turret staircase and went on up. The next stage was shorter, but still she found it frightening, and her heart was beating loudly by the time she reached the top. She stepped into the clerestory passage, a narrow tunnel in the wall. She edged along the passage until it came out onto the inner sill of a clerestory window. She held on to the pillar that divided the window. When she looked down at the seventy-five-foot drop, she started to shake.

She heard footsteps on the turret stairs. She found herself breathing hard, as if she had been running. There had been no one else in sight. Had someone crept up behind her, trying to sneak up on her? The steps came along the clerestory passage. She let go of the pillar and stood teetering on the edge. A figure appeared on the sill. It was Jack. Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it.

“What are you doing?” he said warily.

“I ... I was seeing how your cathedral is coming along.”

He pointed to the capital above her head. “I did that.”

She looked up. The stone was carved with the figure of a man who appeared to be holding the weight of the arch on his back. His body was twisted as if in pain. Aliena stared at it. She had never seen anything quite like it. Without thinking, she said: “That’s how I feel.”

When she looked back at him he was beside her, holding her arm gently but firmly. “I know,” he said.

She looked at the drop. The thought of falling all that way made her sick with fear. He tugged at her arm. She allowed herself to be led into the clerestory passage.

They went all the way down the turret stairs and came out on the ground. Aliena felt weak. Jack turned to her and said in a conversational tone: “I was reading in the cloisters, and looked up and saw you in the clerestory.”

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say
I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage;
but instead she said: “I think I’m going to marry Alfred.”

He stared at her. He looked stunned. Then his face became sad, with an old, wise sadness that was beyond his years. She thought he was going to cry, but he did not. Instead there was anger in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, hesitated, then spoke at last.

In a voice like the cold north wind he Said: “You would have done better to jump off the clerestory.”

He turned from her and walked back into the monastery.

I’ve lost him forever, Aliena thought; and she felt as if her heart would break.

Jack was seen sneaking out of the monastery on Lammas Day. It was not a serious offense in itself, but he had been caught several times before, and the fact that this time he had gone out to speak to an unmarried woman made the whole thing more grave. His transgression was discussed in chapter the following day, and he was ordered to be kept in close confinement. That meant he was restricted to the monastic buildings, the cloisters and the crypt, and any time he went from one building to another he had to be accompanied.

He hardly noticed. He was so devastated by Aliena’s announcement that nothing else made much difference. If he had been flogged instead of just confined, he felt, he would have been equally oblivious.

There was now no question of his working on the cathedral, of course; but much of the pleasure had gone out of that since Alfred had taken charge. Now he spent the free afternoons reading. His Latin had improved by leaps and bounds and he could read anything, albeit slowly; and as he was supposed to be reading to improve his Latin, rather than for any other purpose, he was allowed to use any book that took his fancy. Small though the library was, it had several works of philosophy and mathematics, and Jack had plunged into them with enthusiasm.

Much of what he read was disappointing. There were pages of genealogies, repetitive accounts of miracles performed by long-dead saints, and endless theological speculation. The first book that really appealed to Jack told the whole history of the world from the Creation to the founding of Kingsbridge Priory, and when he finished it he felt he knew everything that had ever happened. He realized after a while that the book’s claim to tell
all
events was implausible, for after all, things were going on everywhere all the time, not just in Kingsbridge and England, but in Normandy, Anjou, Paris, Rome, Ethiopia, and Jerusalem, so the author must have left a lot out. Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

Even more intriguing were the puzzles. One philosopher asked why a weak man can move a heavy stone with a lever. This had never seemed strange to Jack before, but now the question tormented him. He had spent several weeks at the quarry at one time, and he recalled that when a stone could not be moved with a crowbar a foot long, the solution was generally to use a crowbar two feet long. Why should the same man be unable to move the stone with a short lever yet able to move it with a long one? That question led to others. The cathedral builders used a huge winding wheel to lift large stones and timbers up to the roof. The load at the end of the rope was much too heavy for a man to lift with his hands, but the same man could turn the wheel that wound the rope, and the load would rise. How was that possible?

Such speculations distracted him for a while, but his thoughts returned again and again to Aliena. He would stand in the cloisters, with a heavy book on a lectern in front of him, and recall that morning in the old mill when he had kissed her. He could remember every instant of that kiss, from the first soft touch of lips to the thrilling sensation of her tongue in his mouth. His body had pressed hers from thighs to shoulders, so that he could feel the contours of her breasts and her hips. The memory was so intense that it was like experiencing it all over again.

Why had she changed? He still believed that the kiss was real and her subsequent coldness was false. He felt he knew her. She was loving, sensual, romantic, imaginative, and warm. She was also thoughtless and imperious, and she had learned to be tough; but she was not cold, not cruel, not heartless. It was
not
in character for her to marry for money a man she did not love. She would be unhappy, she would regret it, she would be sick with misery; he knew it and in her heart she must know it too.

One day when he was in the writing room, a priory servant who was sweeping the floor stopped for a rest, leaned on his broom, and said: “Big celebration coming up in your family, then.”

Jack was studying a map of the world drawn on a big sheet of vellum. He looked up. The speaker was a gnarled old man too feeble now for heavy work. He probably had Jack confused with someone else. “Why’s that, Joseph?”

“Didn’t you know? Your brother’s getting married.”

“I have no brothers,” Jack said automatically, but his heart had gone cold.

“Stepbrother, then,” said Joseph.

“No, I didn’t know.” Jack had to ask the question. He gritted his teeth. “Who is he marrying?”

“That Aliena.”

So she was determined to go through with it. Jack had been harboring a secret hope that she would change her mind. He looked away so that Joseph should not see the despair on his face. “Well, well,” he said, trying to make his voice sound unemotional.

“Yes—her that used to be so high-and-mighty, until she lost everything in the fire.”

“Did—did you say when?”

“Tomorrow. They’re going to get wed in the new parish church Alfred built.”

Tomorrow!

Aliena was going to marry Alfred tomorrow. Until now Jack had never really believed it would happen. Now the reality burst on him like a thunderclap. Aliena was going to get married tomorrow. Jack’s life would end tomorrow.

He looked down at the map on the lectern in front of him. What did it matter whether the center of the world was Jerusalem or Wallingford? Would he be happier if he knew how levers worked? He had told Aliena that she should jump from the clerestory rather than marry Alfred. What he should have said was that he, Jack, might as well jump from the clerestory.