World Without End (133 page)

Ralph felt stabbed. He had not expected her to display such revulsion. Was he so repellent?

Gregory looked reproachfully at Ralph. 'This was not the moment to raise the matter.'

Philippa cried: 'So it's true! God save me!'

Ralph caught Odila's eye. She was staring at him in horror. What had he ever done to earn her dislike?

Philippa said: 'I can't bear it.'

'Why?' Ralph said. 'What is so wrong? What right have
you
to look down on me and my family?' He looked around at the company: his brother, his ally Gregory, the bishop, the prioress, minor noblemen, and leading citizens. They were all silent, shocked and intrigued by Philippa's outburst.

Philippa ignored his question. Addressing Gregory, she said: 'I will not do it! I will not, do you hear me?' She was white with rage, but tears ran down her cheeks. Ralph thought how beautiful she was, even while she was rejecting and humiliating him so painfully.

Gregory said coolly: 'It is not your decision, Lady Philippa, and it certainly is not mine. The king will do as he pleases.'

'You may force me into a wedding dress, and you may march me up the aisle,' Philippa raged. She pointed at Bishop Henri. 'But when the bishop asks me if I take Ralph Fitzgerald to be my husband I will not say yes! I will not! Never, never, never!'

She stormed out of the room, and Odila followed.

When the banquet was over, the townspeople returned to their homes, and the important guests went to their rooms to sleep off the feast. Caris supervised the clearing up. She felt sorry for Philippa, profoundly sorry, knowing - as Philippa did not - that Ralph had killed his first wife. But she was concerned about the fate of an entire town, not just one person. Her mind was on her scheme for Kingsbridge. Things had gone better than she had imagined. The townspeople had cheered her, and the bishop had agreed to everything she proposed. Perhaps civilization would return to Kingsbridge, despite the plague.

Outside the back door, where there was a pile of meat bones and crusts of bread, she saw Godwyn's cat, Archbishop, delicately picking at the carcass of a duck. She shooed it away. It scampered a few yards then slowed to a stiff walk, its white-tipped tail arrogantly upstanding.

Deep in thought, she went up the stairs of the palace, thinking of how she would begin implementing the changes agreed to by Henri. Without pausing, she opened the door of the bedroom she shared with Merthin and stepped inside.

For a moment she was disoriented. Two men stood in the middle of the room, and she thought,
I must be in the wrong house,
and then
I must be in the wrong room,
before she remembered that her room, being the best bedroom, had naturally been given to the bishop.

The two men were Henri and his assistant, Canon Claude. It took Caris a moment to realize that they were both naked, with their arms around one another, kissing.

She stared at them in shock. 'Oh!' she said.

They had not heard the door. Until she spoke, they did not realize they were observed. When they heard her gasp of surprise, they both turned toward her. A look of horrified guilt came over Henri's face, and his mouth fell open.

'I'm sorry!' Caris said.

The men sprang apart, as if hoping they might be able to deny what was going on; then they remembered they were naked. Henri was plump, with a round belly and fat arms and legs, and gray hair on his chest. Claude was younger and slimmer, with very little body hair except for a blaze of chestnut at his groin. Caris had never before looked at two erect penises at the same time.

'I beg your pardon!' she said, mortified with embarrassment. 'My mistake. I forgot.' She realized that she was babbling and they were dumbstruck. It did not matter: nothing that anyone could say would make the situation any better.

Coming to her senses, she backed out of the room and slammed the door.

Merthin walked away from the banquet with Madge Webber. He was fond of this small, chunky woman, with her chin jutting out in front and her bottom jutting out behind. He admired the way she had carried on after her husband and children had died of the plague. She had continued the enterprise, weaving cloth and dyeing it red according to Caris's recipe. She said to him: 'Good for Caris. She's right, as usual. We can't go on like this.'

'You've continued normally, despite everything,' he said.

'My only problem is finding the people to do the work.'

'Everyone is the same. I can't get builders.'

'Raw wool is cheap, but rich people will still pay high prices for good scarlet cloth,' Madge said. 'I could sell more if I could produce more.'

Merthin said thoughtfully: 'You know, I saw a faster type of loom in Florence - a treadle loom.'

'Oh?' She looked at him with alert curiosity. 'I never heard of that.'

He wondered how to explain. 'In any loom, you stretch a number of threads over the frame to form what you call the warp, then you weave another thread crossways through the warp, under one thread and over the next, under and over, from one side to the other and back again, to form the weft.'

'That's how simple looms work, yes. Ours are better.'

'I know. To make the process quicker, you attach every second warp thread to a movable bar, called a heddle, so that when you shift the heddle, half the threads are lifted away from the rest. Then, instead of going over and under, over and under, you can simply pass the weft thread straight through the gap in one easy movement. Then you drop the heddle below the warp for the return pass.'

'Yes. By the way, the weft thread is wound on a bobbin.'

'Each time you pass the bobbin through the warp from left to right, you have to put it down, then use both hands to move the heddle, then pick up the bobbin again and bring it back from right to left.'

'Exactly.'

'In a treadle loom, you move the heddle with your feet. So you never have to put the bobbin down.'

'Really? My soul!'

'That would make a difference, wouldn't it?'

'A huge difference. You could weave twice as much - more!'

'That's what I thought. Shall I build one for you to try?'

'Yes, please!'

'I don't remember exactly how it was constructed. I think the treadle operated a system of pulleys and levers...' He frowned, thinking. 'Anyway, I'm sure I can figure it out.'

Late in the afternoon, as Caris was passing the library, she met Canon Claude coming out, carrying a small book. He caught her eye and stopped. They both immediately thought of the scene Caris had stumbled upon an hour ago. At first Claude looked embarrassed, but then a grin lifted the corners of his mouth. His put his hand to his face to cover it, obviously feeling it was wrong to be amused. Caris remembered how startled the two naked men had been and she, too, felt inappropriate laughter bubbling up inside her. On impulse, she said what was in her mind: 'The two of you did look funny!' Claude giggled despite himself, and Caris could not help chuckling too, and they made each other worse, until they fell into one another's arms, tears streaming down their cheeks, helpless with laughter.

That evening, Caris took Merthin to the southwest corner of the priory grounds, where the vegetable garden grew alongside the river. The air was mild, and the moist earth gave up a fragrance of new growth. Caris could see spring onions and radishes. 'So, your brother is to be the earl of Shiring,' she said.

'Not if Lady Philippa has anything to do with it.'

'A countess has to do what she is told by the king, doesn't she?'

'All women should be subservient to men, in theory,' Merthin said with a grin. 'Some defy convention, though.'

'I can't think who you mean.'

Merthin's mood changed abruptly. 'What a world,' he said. 'A man murders his wife, and the king elevates him to the highest rank of the nobility.'

'We know these things happen,' she said. 'But it's shocking when it's your own family. Poor Tilly.'

Merthin rubbed his eyes as if to erase visions. 'Why have you brought me here?'

'To talk about the final element in my plan: the new hospital.'

'Ah. I was wondering...'

'Could you build it here?'

Merthin looked around. 'I don't see why not. It's a sloping site, but the entire priory is built on a slope, and we're not talking about putting up another cathedral. One story or two?'

'One. But I want the building divided into medium-size rooms, each containing just four or six beds, so that diseases don't spread so quickly from one patient to everyone else in the place. It must have its own pharmacy - a large, well-lit room - for the preparation of medicines, with a herb garden outside. And a spacious, airy latrine with piped water, very easy to keep clean. In fact the whole building must have lots of light and space. But, most importantly, it has to be at least a hundred yards from the rest of the priory. We have to separate the sick from the well. That's the key feature.'

'I'll do some drawings in the morning.'

She glanced around and, seeing that they were not observed, she kissed him. 'This is going to be the culmination of my life's work, do you realize that?'

'You're thirty-two - isn't it a little early to be talking about the culmination of your life's work?'

'It hasn't happened yet.'

'It won't take long. I'll start on it while I'm digging the foundations for the new tower. Then, as soon as the hospital is built, I can switch my masons to work on the cathedral.'

They started to walk back. She could tell that his real enthusiasm was for the tower. 'How tall will it be?'

'Four hundred and five feet.'

'How high is Salisbury?'

'Four hundred and four.'

'So it
will
be the highest building in England.'

'Until someone builds a higher one, yes.'

So he would achieve his ambition too, she thought. She put her arm through his as they walked to the prior's palace. She felt happy. That was strange, wasn't it? Thousands of Kingsbridge people had died of the plague, and Tilly had been murdered, but Caris felt hopeful. It was because she had a plan, of course. She always felt better when she had a plan. The new walls, the constabulary, the tower, the borough charter, and most of all the new hospital: how would she find time to organize it all?

Arm in arm with Merthin, she walked into the prior's house. Bishop Henri and Sir Gregory were there, deep in conversation with a third man who had his back to Caris. There was something unpleasantly familiar about the newcomer, even from behind, and Caris felt a tremor of unease. Then he turned around and she saw his face: sardonic, triumphant, sneering, and full of malice.

It was Philemon.

74

Bishop Henri and the other guests left Kingsbridge the next morning.

Caris, who had been sleeping in the nuns' dormitory, returned to the prior's palace after breakfast and went upstairs to her room.

She found Philemon there.

It was the second time in two days that she had been startled by men in her bedroom. However, Philemon was alone and fully dressed, standing by the window looking at a book. Seeing him in profile, she realized that the trials of the last six months had left him thinner.

She said: 'What are you doing here?'

He pretended to be surprised by the question. 'This is the prior's house. Why should I not be here?'

'Because it's not your room!'

'I am the subprior of Kingsbridge. I have never been dismissed from that post. The prior is dead. Who else should live here?'

'Me, of course.'

'You're not even a monk.'

'Bishop Henri made me acting prior - and last night, despite your return, he did not dismiss me from this post. I am your superior, and you must obey me.'

'But you're a nun, and you must live with the nuns, not with the monks.'

'I've been living here for months.'

'Alone?'

Suddenly Caris saw that she was on shaky ground. Philemon knew that she and Merthin had been living more or less as man and wife. They had been discreet, not flaunting their relationship, but people guessed these things, and Philemon had a wild beast's instinct for weakness.

She considered. She could insist on Philemon's leaving the building immediately. If necessary, she could have him thrown out: Thomas and the novices would obey her, not Philemon. But what then? Philemon would do all he could to call attention to what Merthin and she were up to in the palace. He would create a controversy, and leading townspeople would take sides. Most would support Caris, almost whatever she did, such was her reputation; but there would be some who would censure her behavior. The conflict would weaken her authority and undermine everything else she wanted to do. It would be better to admit defeat.

'You may have the bedroom,' she said. 'But not the hall. I use that for meetings with leading townspeople and visiting dignitaries. When you're not attending services in the church, you will be in the cloisters, not here. A subprior does not have a palace.' She left without giving him a chance to argue. She had saved face, but he had won.

She had been reminded last night of how wily Philemon was. Questioned by Bishop Henri, he seemed to have a plausible explanation for everything dishonorable that he had done. How did he justify deserting his post at the priory and running away to St.-John-in-the-Forest? The monastery had been in danger of extinction, and the only way to save it had been to flee, in accordance with the saying 'Leave early, go far, and stay long.' It was still, by general consent, the only sure way to avoid the plague. Their sole mistake had been to remain too long in Kingsbridge. Why, then, had no one informed the bishop of this plan? Philemon was sorry, but he and the other monks were only obeying the orders of Prior Godwyn. Then why had he run away from St. John when the plague caught up with them there? He had been called by God to minister to the people of Monmouth, and Godwyn had given him permission to leave. How come Brother Thomas did not know about this permission, in fact denied firmly that it had ever been given? The other monks had not been told of Godwyn's decision for fear it would cause jealousy. Why, then, had Philemon left Monmouth? He had met Friar Murdo, who had told him that Kingsbridge Priory needed him, and he regarded this as a further message from God.