Epic Historial Collection (219 page)

“Of course I knew, but I acted as if I didn't.”

“Yes, I can understand that.”

“Oh, stop being so understanding. You're such a weakling.”

His face froze. After a long pause he said: “All right, then, I'll stop being so understanding. Just give me the information. What's your plan?”

“I don't have a plan, you fool. I just know I don't want to have a baby.”

“So you don't have a plan, and I'm a fool and a weakling. Do you want anything from me?”

“No!”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Don't be so logical!”

He sighed. “I'm going to stop trying to be what you tell me to be, because you make no sense.” He went around the room putting out the lamps. “I'm glad we're having a baby, and I'd like us to be married and look after the child together—assuming this mood you're in is only temporary.” He put his drawing implements in a leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. “But for now, you're so cantankerous that I'd rather not speak to you at all. And besides, I have work to do.” He went to the door, then paused. “On the other hand, we could kiss and make up.”

“Go away!” she yelled.

He ducked through the low door and disappeared into the stairwell.

Caris began to cry.

 

Merthin had no idea whether the people of Kingsbridge would rally to the cause. They all had work and worries of their own: would they see the communal effort to build the bridge as being more important? He was not sure. He knew, from his reading of
Timothy's Book
, that at moments of crisis Prior Philip had often prevailed by calling on the ordinary people to make a massive effort. But Merthin was not Philip. He had no right to lead people. He was just a carpenter.

They made a list of cart owners and divided it up by streets. Edmund rounded up ten leading citizens, and Godwyn picked ten senior monks, and they went around in pairs. Merthin was teamed with Brother Thomas.

The first door they knocked on was Lib Wheeler's. She was continuing Ben's business with hired labor. “You can have both my carts,” she said. “And the men to drive them. Anything to give that damned earl a poke in the eye.”

But their second call brought a refusal. “I'm not well,” said Peter Dyer, who had a cart for delivering the bales of woolen cloth he dyed yellow and green and pink. “I can't travel.”

He looked perfectly all right, Merthin thought; he was probably scared of a confrontation with the earl's men. There would be no fight, Merthin felt sure; but he could understand the fear. What if all the citizens felt that way?

Their third call was on Harold Mason, a young builder who was hoping for several years of work building the bridge. He agreed immediately. “Jake Chepstow will come, too,” he said. “I'll make sure of that.” Harold and Jake were pals.

After that, almost everybody said yes.

They did not need to be told how important the bridge was—everyone who had a cart was a trader, obviously—and they had the additional incentive of a pardon for their sins. But the most important factor seemed to be the promise of an unexpected holiday. Most people said: “Is so-and-so going?” When they heard that their friends and neighbors had volunteered, they did not want to be left out.

When they had made all their calls, Merthin left Thomas and went down to the ferry. They had to take the carts across overnight, to be ready to leave at sunrise. The ferry carried only one cart at a time—two hundred carts would take several hours. That was why they needed a bridge, of course.

An ox was revolving the great wheel, and carts were already crossing the river. On the other side, the owners turned their beasts out to graze in the pasture, then came back on the ferry and went to bed. Edmund had got John Constable and half a dozen of his deputies to spend the night in Newtown, guarding carts and beasts.

The ferry was still working when Merthin went to bed an hour or so after midnight. He lay thinking about Caris for a while. Her quirkiness and unpredictability were part of what he loved, but sometimes she was impossible. She was the cleverest individual in Kingsbridge, but also hopelessly irrational at times.

Most of all, though, he hated to be called weak. He was not sure he would ever forgive Caris for that jibe. Earl Roland had humiliated him, ten years ago, by saying he could not be a squire, and was fit only to be apprenticed to a carpenter. But he was not weak. He had defied Elfric's tyranny, he had routed Prior Godwyn over the bridge design, and he was about to save the entire town. I might be small, he thought, but by God I'm strong.

Still he did not know what to do about Caris, and he fell asleep worrying.

Edmund woke him at first light. By then almost every cart in Kingsbridge was on the far side of the river, in a straggly line that led through the suburb of Newtown and half a mile into the forest. It took a couple more hours to ferry the people over. The excitement of organizing what was effectively a pilgrimage diverted Merthin's mind from the problem of Caris and her pregnancy. Soon the pasture on the far side was a scene of good-natured chaos, as dozens of people caught their horses and oxen, led them to their carts, and backed them into the traces. Dick Brewer brought over a huge barrel of ale and gave it away—“to encourage the expedition,” he said—with mixed results: some people were so encouraged they had to lie down.

A crowd of spectators gathered on the city side of the river, watching. As the line of carts at last began to move off, a great cheer went up.

But stones were only half the problem.

Merthin turned his attention to the next challenge. If he were to begin laying stones as soon as they arrived from the quarry, he had to empty the cofferdams in two days instead of two weeks. As the cheering died down, he raised his voice and addressed the crowd. This was the moment to catch their interest, when the excitement was fading and they were beginning to wonder what to do next.

“I need the strongest men left in town!” he shouted. They went quiet, intrigued. “Are there any strong men in Kingsbridge?” This was partly a come-on: the work would be heavy, but asking only for strong people also threw down a challenge that the young men would find hard to resist. “Before the carts get back from the quarry tomorrow night, we have to empty the water out of the cofferdams. It will be the hardest work you've ever done—so no weaklings, please.” As he said this, he looked at Caris in the crowd and caught her eye, and he saw her flinch: she remembered using that word, and she knew she had insulted him. “Any woman who thinks she is the equal of the men can join in,” he went on. “I need you to find a bucket and meet me on the shore opposite Leper Island as soon as possible. Remember—only the strongest!”

He was not sure whether he had won them over. As he finished, he spotted the tall figure of Mark Webber, and pushed through the throng to him. “Mark, will you encourage them?” he said anxiously.

Mark was a gentle giant, much liked in the town. Even though he was poor, he had influence, especially among adolescents. “I'll make sure the lads join in,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Next, Merthin found Ian Boatman. “I'm going to need you all day, I hope,” he said. “Ferrying people out to the cofferdams and back. You can work for pay or an indulgence—your choice.” Ian was excessively fond of his wife's younger sister, and would probably prefer the indulgence, either for a past sin or for one he was hoping to commit soon.

Merthin made his way through the streets to the shore where he was preparing to build the bridge. Could the cofferdams be emptied in two days? He really had no idea. He wondered how many gallons of water were in each. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? There must be a way of calculating. The Greek philosophers had probably worked out a method but, if they had, it had not been taught at the priory school. To find out, he would probably have to go to Oxford, where there were mathematicians famous all over the world, according to Godwyn.

He waited at the river's edge, wondering if anyone would come.

The first to arrive was Megg Robbins, the strapping daughter of a corn dealer, with muscles enlarged by years of lifting sacks of grain. “I can outdo most of the men in this town,” she said, and Merthin did not doubt it.

A group of young men came next, then three novice monks.

As soon as Merthin had ten people with buckets, he got Ian to row them and him to the nearer of the two dams.

Inside the rim of the dam, he had built a ledge just above water level, strong enough for men to stand on. From the ledge four ladders reached all the way down to the riverbed. In the center of the dam, floating on the surface, was a large raft. Between the raft and the ledge there was a gap of about two feet, and the raft was held in a central position by protruding wooden spokes that reached almost to the wall and prevented movement of more than a few inches in any direction.

“You work in pairs,” he told them. “One on the raft, one on the ledge. The one on the raft fills his bucket and passes it to the one on the ledge, who tosses the water over the edge into the river. As the empty bucket is passed back, another full one is passed forward.”

Megg Robbins said: “What happens when the water level inside falls, and we can't reach one another?”

“Good thinking, Megg. You'd better be my forewoman in charge here. When you can no longer reach, you work in threes, with one on a ladder.”

She caught on fast. “And then fours, with two on a ladder…”

“Yes. Though by then we'll need to rest the men and bring in fresh ones.”

“Right.”

“Get started. I'll bring over another ten—you've got plenty of room still.”

Megg turned away. “Pick your partners, everyone!” she called.

The volunteers started to dip their buckets. He heard Megg say: “Let's keep a rhythm going. Dip, lift, pass, chuck! One, two, three, four. How about a song to give us the swing of it?” She raised her voice in a lusty contralto. “Oh,
there
was
once
a
come
ly
knight…
”

They knew the song, and all joined in the next line: “His
blade
was
straight
and
true, oh!
”

Merthin watched. Everyone was soaking wet in a few minutes. He could see no apparent fall in the level of the water. It was going to be a long job.

He climbed over the side and into Ian's boat.

By the time he reached the bank there were thirty more volunteers with buckets.

He got the second cofferdam started, with Mark Webber as foreman, then doubled the numbers in both locations, then started replacing tired workers with fresh ones. Ian Boatman became exhausted and handed the oars over to his son. The water inside the dams fell inch by wearisome inch. As the level fell, the work went ever more slowly, for the buckets had to be lifted greater and greater distances to the rim.

Megg was the first to discover that a person could not hold a full bucket in one hand and an empty one in the other and still keep balance on a ladder. She devised a one-way bucket chain, with full buckets going up one ladder and empty ones down another. Mark instituted the same system in his dam.

The volunteers worked an hour and rested an hour, but Merthin did not stop. He was organizing the teams, supervising the transport of volunteers to and from the dams, replacing buckets that broke. Most of the men drank ale during their rest periods, and in consequence there were several accidents during the afternoon, with people dropping buckets and falling off ladders. Mother Cecilia came to take care of the injured, with the help of Mattie Wise and Caris.

Too soon, the light began to fail, and they had to stop. But both coffers were more than half-empty. Merthin asked everyone to come back in the morning, then went home. After a few spoonfuls of his mother's soup he fell asleep at the table, waking only long enough to wrap a blanket around himself and lie down in the straw. When he woke the next morning, his first thought was to wonder whether any of the volunteers would show up for the second day.

He hurried down to the river at first light with an anxious heart. Both Mark Webber and Megg Robbins were there already, Mark eating his way through a doorstep of bread and Megg lacing a pair of high boots in the hope of keeping her feet dry. No one else showed up for the next half hour, and Merthin began to wonder what he would do with no volunteers. Then some of the young men arrived, carrying their breakfast with them, followed by the novice monks, then a whole crowd.

Ian Boatman turned up, and Merthin got him to row Megg out with some volunteers, and they began again.

The work was harder today. Everyone was aching from yesterday's efforts. Every bucket had to be lifted ten feet or more. But the end was in sight. The levels continued to drop, and the volunteers began to glimpse the riverbed.

In the middle of the afternoon, the first of the carts arrived back from the quarry. Merthin directed the owner to unload his stone in the pasture and ferry his cart back across the river to the town. A short while later, in Megg's coffer, the raft bumped the riverbed.