Epic Historial Collection (169 page)

The second man said: “At least we can report exactly what happened, and take the bodies home for a Christian burial.”

There was a sudden commotion. Pa wrenched himself out of the grasp of the second man and dashed across the clearing. His captor moved to go after him, but was stopped by the older man-at-arms. “Let him go—what's the point in killing him now?”

Gwenda began to cry quietly.

“What about this child?” said the younger man.

They were going to murder her, Gwenda felt sure. She could see nothing through her tears, and she was sobbing too hard to plead for her life. She would die and go to Hell. She waited for the end.

“Let her go,” said the older man. “I wasn't born to kill little girls.”

The younger man released her and gave her a shove. She stumbled and fell to the ground. She got up, wiped her eyes so that she could see, and stumbled off.

“Go on, run away,” the man called after her. “It's your lucky day!”

 

Caris could not sleep. She got up from her bed and went into Mama's room. Papa was sitting on a stool, staring at the still figure in the bed.

Mama's eyes were closed and her face glistened, in the candlelight, with a film of perspiration. She seemed to be hardly breathing. Caris took her pale hand: it was terribly cold. She held it between her own, trying to warm it.

She said: “Why did they take her blood?”

“They think illness sometimes comes from an excess of one of the humors. They hope to take it away with the blood.”

“But it didn't make her better.”

“No. In fact, she seems worse.”

Tears came to Caris's eyes. “Why did you let them do it, then?”

“Priests and monks study the works of the ancient philosophers. They know more than we do.”

“I don't believe that.”

“It's hard to know what to believe, little buttercup.”

“If I was a doctor, I'd only do things that made people better.”

Papa was not listening. He was looking more intently at Mama. He leaned forward and slipped his hand under the blanket to touch her chest just below her left breast. Caris could see the shape of his big hand under the fine wool. He made a small choking sound in his throat, then moved his hand and pressed down more firmly. He held it there for a few moments.

He closed his eyes.

He seemed to fall slowly forward, until he was on his knees beside the bed, as if praying, with his big forehead resting on Mama's thigh, and his hand still on her chest.

She realized he was crying. It was the most frightening thing that had ever happened to her, much more frightening than seeing a man killed in the forest. Children cried, women cried, weak and helpless people cried, but Papa never cried. She felt as if the world was ending.

She had to get help. She let Mama's cold hand slip out of her own onto the blanket, where it lay motionless. She went back to her bedroom and shook the shoulder of the sleeping Alice. “You've got to wake up!” she said.

At first Alice would not open her eyes.

“Papa is crying!” Caris said.

Alice sat upright. “He can't be,” she said.

“Get up!”

Alice got out of bed. Caris took her older sister's hand and they went together into Mama's room. Papa was standing up now, looking down at the still face on the pillow, his face wet with tears. Alice stared at him in shock. Caris whispered: “I told you so.”

On the other side of the bed stood Aunt Petranilla.

Papa saw the girls standing in the doorway. He left his station by the bed and came to them. He put one arm around each of them, drew them both to him, and hugged them. “Your mama has gone to be with the angels,” he said quietly. “Pray for her soul.”

“Be brave, girls,” said Petranilla. “From now on, I will be your mama.”

Caris wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at her aunt. “Oh, no, you won't,” she said.

6

O
n Whitsunday in the year that Merthin was twenty-one, a river of rain fell on Kingsbridge Cathedral.

Great globules of water bounced off the slate roof; streams flooded the gutters; fountains gushed from the mouths of gargoyles; sheets of water unfolded down the buttresses; and torrents ran over the arches and down the columns, soaking the statues of the saints. The sky, the great church, and the town round about were all shades of wet gray paint.

Whitsunday commemorated the moment when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples of Jesus. The seventh Sunday after Easter, it fell in May or June, soon after most of England's sheep had been sheared; and so it was always the first day of the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair.

As Merthin splashed through the downpour to the cathedral for the morning service, pulling his hood forward over his brow in a vain attempt to keep his face dry, he had to pass through the fair. On the broad green to the west of the church, hundreds of traders had set out their stalls—then hastily covered them with sheets of oiled sacking or felted cloth to keep the rain off. Wool traders were the key figures in the fair, from the small operators who collected the produce of a few scattered villagers, to the big dealers such as Edmund who had a warehouse full of woolsacks to sell. Around them clustered subsidiary stalls selling just about everything else money could buy: sweet wine from the Rhineland, silk brocade threaded with gold from Lucca, glass bowls from Venice, ginger and pepper from places in the East that few people could even name. And finally there were the workaday tradespeople who supplied visitors and stallholders with their commonplace needs: bakers, brewers, confectioners, fortune-tellers, and prostitutes.

The stallholders responded bravely to the rain, joking with one another, trying to create the carnival atmosphere; but the weather would be bad for their profits. Some people had to do business, rain or shine: Italian and Flemish buyers needed soft English wool for thousands of busy looms in Florence and Bruges. But more casual customers would stay at home: a knight's wife would decide she could manage without nutmeg and cinnamon; a prosperous peasant would make his old coat last another winter; a lawyer would judge that his mistress did not really need a gold bangle.

Merthin was not going to buy anything. He had no money. He was an unpaid apprentice, living with his master, Elfric Builder. He was fed at the family table, he slept on the kitchen floor, and he wore Elfric's cast-off clothes, but he got no wages. In the long winter evenings he carved ingenious toys that he sold for a few pennies—a jewel box with secret compartments, a cockerel whose tongue poked out when its tail was pressed—but in summer there was no spare time, for craftsmen worked until dark.

However, his apprenticeship was almost over. In less than six months, on the first day of December, he would become a full member of the carpenters' guild of Kingsbridge at the age of twenty-one. He could hardly wait.

The great west doors of the cathedral were open to admit the thousands of townspeople and visitors who would attend today's service. Merthin stepped inside, shaking the rain off his clothes. The stone floor was slippery with water and mud. On a fine day, the interior of the church would be bright with shafts of sunlight, but today it was murky, the stained-glass windows dim, the congregation shrouded in dark, wet clothes.

Where did all the rain go? There were no drainage ditches around the church. The water—thousands and thousands of gallons of it—just soaked into the ground. Did it go on down, farther and farther, until it fell as rain again in Hell? No. The cathedral was built on a slope. The water traveled underground, seeping down the hill from north to south. The foundations of large stone buildings were designed to let water flow through, for a buildup was dangerous. All this rain eventually passed into the river on the southern boundary of the priory grounds.

Merthin imagined he could feel the underground rush of the water, its drumming vibration transmitted through the foundations and the tiled floor and sensed by the soles of his feet.

A small black dog scampered up to him, wagging its tail, and greeted him joyfully. “Hello, Scrap,” he said, and patted her. He looked up to see the dog's mistress, Caris; and his heart skipped a beat.

She wore a cloak of bright scarlet that she had inherited from her mother. It was the only splash of color in the gloom. Merthin smiled broadly, happy to see her. It was hard to say what made her so beautiful. She had a small, round face with neat, regular features; mid-brown hair; and green eyes flecked with gold. She was not so different from a hundred other Kingsbridge girls. But she wore her hat at a jaunty angle, there was a mocking intelligence in her eyes, and she looked at him with a mischievous grin that promised vague but tantalizing delights. He had known her for ten years, but it was only in the last few months that he had realized he loved her.

She drew him behind a pillar and kissed him on the mouth, the tip of her tongue running lightly across his lips.

They kissed every chance they got: in church, in the marketplace, when they met on the street, and—best of all—when he was at her house and they found themselves alone. He lived for those moments. He thought about kissing her before he went to sleep and again as soon as he woke up.

He visited her house two or three times a week. Her father, Edmund, liked him, though her aunt Petranilla did not. A convivial man, Edmund often invited Merthin to stay for supper, and Merthin accepted gratefully, knowing it would be a better meal than he would get at Elfric's house. He and Caris would play chess or checkers, or just sit talking. He liked to watch her while she told a story or explained something, her hands drawing pictures in the air, her face expressing amusement or astonishment, acting every part in a pageant. But, most of the time, he was waiting for those moments when he could steal a kiss.

He glanced around the church: no one was looking their way. He slipped his hand inside her coat and touched her through the soft linen of her dress. Her body was warm. He held her breast in his palm, small and round. He loved the way her flesh yielded to the press of his fingertips. He had never seen her naked, but he knew her breasts intimately.

In his dreams they went farther. Then, they were alone somewhere, a clearing in the woods or the big bedchamber of a castle; and they were both naked. But, strangely, his dreams always ended a moment too soon, just before he entered her; and he would wake up frustrated.

One day, he would think; one day.

They had not yet spoken about marriage. Apprentices could not marry, so he had to wait. Caris must, surely, have asked herself what they were going to do when he finished his term; but she had not voiced those thoughts. She seemed content to take life one day at a time. And he had a superstitious fear of talking about their future together. It was said that pilgrims should not spend too much time planning their journey, for they might learn of so many hazards that they would decide not to go.

A nun walked past, and Merthin withdrew his hand guiltily from Caris's bosom; but the nun did not notice them. People did all sorts of things in the vast space of the cathedral. Last year Merthin had seen a couple having sexual congress up against the wall of the south aisle, in the darkness of the Christmas Eve service—although they had been thrown out for it. He wondered if he and Caris could stay here throughout the service, dallying discreetly.

But she had other ideas. “Let's go to the front,” she said. She took his hand and led him through the crowd. He knew many of the people there, though not all: Kingsbridge was one of the larger cities in England, with about seven thousand inhabitants, and no one knew everybody. He followed Caris to the crossing, where the nave met the transepts. There they came up against a wooden barrier blocking entrance to the eastern end, or chancel, which was reserved for clergy.

Merthin found himself standing next to Buonaventura Caroli, the most important of the Italian merchants, a heavyset man in a richly embroidered coat of thick wool cloth. He came originally from Florence—which he said was the greatest city in the Christian world, more than ten times the size of Kingsbridge—but he now lived in London, managing the large business his family had with English wool producers. The Carolis were so rich they loaned money to kings, but Buonaventura was amiable and unpretentious—though people said that in business he could be implacably hard.

Caris greeted the man in a casually familiar way: he was staying at her house. He gave Merthin a friendly nod, even though he must have guessed, from Merthin's age and hand-me-down clothing, that he was a mere apprentice.

Buonaventura was looking at the architecture. “I have been coming to Kingsbridge for five years,” he said, making idle conversation, “but until today I have never noticed that the windows of the transepts are much bigger than those in the rest of the church.” He spoke French with an admixture of words from the dialect of the Italian region of Tuscany.

Merthin had no trouble understanding. He had grown up, like most sons of English knights, speaking Norman French to his parents and English to his playmates; and he could guess the meanings of many Italian words because he had learned Latin in the monks' school. “I can tell you why the windows are like that,” he said.

Buonaventura raised his eyebrows, surprised that an apprentice should claim such knowledge.

“The church was built two hundred years ago, when these narrow lancet windows in the nave and chancel were a revolutionary new design,” Merthin went on. “Then, a hundred years later, the bishop wanted a taller tower, and he rebuilt the transepts at the same time, putting in the bigger windows that had by then come into fashion.”

Buonaventura was impressed. “And how do you happen to know this?”

“In the monastery library there is a history of the priory, called
Timothy's Book
, that tells all about the building of the cathedral. Most of it was written in the time of the great Prior Philip, but later writers have added to it. I read it as a boy at the monks' school.”

Buonaventura looked hard at Merthin for a moment, as if memorizing his face, then he said casually: “It's a fine building.”

“Are the buildings very different in Italy?” Merthin was fascinated by talk of foreign countries, their life in general and their architecture in particular.

Buonaventura looked thoughtful. “I believe the principles of building are the same everywhere. But in England I have never seen domes.”

“What's a dome?”

“A round roof, like half a ball.”

Merthin was astonished. “I never heard of such a thing! How is it built?”

Buonaventura laughed. “Young man, I am a wool merchant. I can tell whether a fleece comes from a Cotswold sheep or a Lincoln sheep, just by rubbing the wool between my finger and thumb, but I don't know how a henhouse is built, let alone a dome.”

Merthin's master, Elfric, arrived. He was a prosperous man, and he wore expensive clothes, but they always looked as if they belonged to someone else. A habitual sycophant, he ignored Caris and Merthin, but made a deep bow to Buonaventura and said: “Honored to have you in our city once again, sir.”

Merthin turned away.

“How many languages do you think there are?” Caris said to him.

She was always saying crazy things. “Five,” Merthin replied without thinking.

“No, be serious,” she said. “There's English, and French, and Latin, that's three. Then the Florentines and the Venetians speak differently, though they have words in common.”

“You're right,” he said, entering into the game. “That's five already. Then there's Flemish.” Few people could make out the tongue of the traders who came to Kingsbridge from the weaving towns of Flanders: Ypres, Bruges, Ghent.

“And Danish.”

“The Arabs have their own language, and when they write, they don't even use the same letters as we do.”

“And Mother Cecilia told me that all the barbarians have their own tongues that no one even knows how to write down—Scots, Welsh, Irish, and probably others. That makes eleven, and there might be people we haven't even heard of!”

Merthin grinned. Caris was the only person he could do this with. Among their friends of the same age, no one understood the thrill of imagining strange people and different ways of life. She would ask a random question: What is it like to live at the edge of the world? Are the priests wrong about God? How do you know you're not dreaming, right now? And they would be off on a speculative voyage, competing to come up with the most outlandish notions.

The roar of conversation in the church suddenly quieted, and Merthin saw that the monks and nuns were seating themselves. The choirmaster, Blind Carlus, came in last. Although he could not see, he walked without assistance in the church and the monastic buildings, moving slowly, but as confident as a sighted man, familiar with every pillar and flagstone. Now he sang a note in his rich baritone, and the choir began a hymn.

Merthin was quietly skeptical about the clergy. Priests had power that was not always matched by their knowledge—rather like his employer, Elfric. However, he liked going to church. The services induced a kind of trance in him. The music, the architecture, and the Latin incantations enchanted him, and he felt as if he were asleep with his eyes open. Once again he had the fanciful sensation that he could feel the rainwater flowing in torrents far beneath his feet.