Epic Historial Collection (39 page)

As he neared the other side, several large beams fell into the nave. The whole building seemed to shake, and the beam under Jack quivered like a bowstring. He stopped and held on tight. The tremor passed. He crawled on, and a moment later he reached the catwalk on the north side.

If his guess turned out to be wrong, and there was no opening from here into the ruins of the northwest tower, he would have to go back.

As he stood upright, he got a breath of cold night air. There must be some kind of gap. But would it be big enough for a small boy?

He took three paces to the west and stopped an instant before he would have stepped out into nothingness.

He found himself looking through a large hole out onto the moonlit ruins of the fallen tower. His knees went weak with relief. He was out of the inferno.

But he was high up, at roof level, and the top of the rubble pile was a long way below him, too far to jump. He could escape the flames now, but could he reach the ground without breaking his neck? Behind him, the flames were rapidly coming closer, and smoke was billowing out of the opening in which he stood.

This tower had once had a staircase around its inner wall, just as the other one still did, but most of this staircase had been destroyed in the collapse. However, where the wooden treads had been set into the wall with mortar, there were stumps of wood sticking out, sometimes just an inch or two long, sometimes more. Jack wondered whether he could climb down the stumps. It would be a precarious descent. He noticed a smell of scorching: his cloak was getting hot. In a moment it would catch fire. He had no choice.

He sat down, reached out for the nearest stump, held on with both hands, then eased one leg down until he found a foothold. Then he put the other foot down. Feeling his way with his feet, he eased himself down one step. The stumps held. He reached down once again, testing the strength of the next stump before putting his weight on it. This one felt a little loose. He trod gingerly, holding on tightly in case he should find himself swinging by his hands. Each perilous step down brought him nearer to the top of the rubble pile. As he descended, the stumps seemed to get smaller, as if the lower ones had suffered more severe damage. He put one foot, in its felt boot, on a stump no wider than his toe; and when he rested his weight on it his foot slipped. His other foot was on a larger stump, but when suddenly he put his full weight on it the other stump broke. He tried to hold on with his hands, but the stumps were so small that he could not grip hard, and he slipped, terrified, from his precarious perch and fell through the air.

He landed hard on his hands and knees on the top of the pile of rubble. For an instant he was so shocked and frightened he thought he must be dead; then he realized that he had been lucky enough to fall well. His hands stung and his knees would be massively bruised, but he was all right.

After a moment he climbed down the pile of rubble and jumped the last few feet to the ground.

He was safe. He felt weak with relief. He wanted to cry again. He had escaped. He felt proud: what an adventure he had had!

But it was not yet over. Out here there was only a whiff of smoke, and the noise of the fire, so deafening inside the roof space, now sounded like a distant wind. Only the reddish glow behind the windows proved that the church was on fire. Nevertheless, those last tremors must have disturbed someone's sleep, and any moment now a bleary-eyed monk would come stumbling out of the dormitory, wondering whether the earthquake he had felt had been real or only a dream. Jack had set fire to the church—a heinous crime in the eyes of a monk. He had to get away quickly.

He ran across the grass to the guesthouse. All was quiet and still. He stopped outside, panting. If he went in breathing like this he would wake them all. He tried to control his breathing but that seemed to make it worse. He would just have to stay here until it became normal again.

A bell rang, piercing the quiet, and went on, pealing urgently, an unmistakable alarm. Jack froze. If he went inside now they would know. But if he did not—

The door of the guesthouse opened, and Martha came out. Jack just stared at her, terrified.

“Where have you been?” she said softly. “You smell of smoke.”

A plausible lie came into Jack's head. “I've only just stepped out,” he said desperately. “I heard that bell.”

“Liar,” Martha said. “You've been gone for ages. I know, I was awake.”

He realized there was no fooling her. “Was anyone else awake?” he said fearfully.

“No, only me.”

“Don't tell them I was gone. Please?”

She heard the fear in his voice and spoke soothingly. “All right, I'll keep it a secret. Don't worry.”

“Thank you!”

At that moment Tom stepped out, scratching his head.

Jack was frightened. What would Tom think?

“What's going on?” Tom said sleepily. He sniffed. “I smell smoke.”

Jack pointed at the cathedral with a trembling arm. “I think…” he said, and then swallowed. It was going to be all right, he realized, with a grateful sense of relief. Tom would just assume that Jack had got up a moment earlier, as Martha had. Jack spoke again, more confidently this time. “Look at the church,” he said to Tom. “I think it's on fire.”

II

Philip had not yet got used to sleeping alone. He missed the stuffy air of the dormitory, the sound of other people shifting and snoring, the disturbance when one of the older monks got up to go to the latrine (followed, usually, by the other older ones, a regular procession which always amused the youngsters). Being alone did not bother Philip at nightfall, when he was always dead tired; but in the middle of the night, when he had been thoroughly roused by the service, he now found it difficult to go back to sleep. Instead of getting back into the big soft bed (it was a little embarrassing how quickly he had got used to
that
), he would build up the fire and read by candlelight, or kneel down and pray, or just sit thinking.

He had plenty to think about. The priory's finances were worse than he had anticipated. The main reason probably was that the whole organization generated very little cash. It owned vast acreages, but many farms were let at low rents on long leases, and some of them paid rent in kind—so many sacks of flour, so many barrels of apples, so many cartloads of turnips. Those farms that were not rented out were run by monks, but they never seemed to be able to produce a surplus of food for sale. The priory's other main asset was the churches it owned, and from which it received the tithes. Unfortunately, most of these were under the control of the sacrist, and Philip was having trouble finding out exactly how much he received and how he spent it. There were no written accounts. However, it was clear that the sacrist's income was too small, or his management of it too bad, to maintain the cathedral church in good repair; although over the years the sacrist had built up an impressive collection of jeweled vessels and ornaments.

Philip could not get all the details until he had time to tour the monastery's far-flung properties, but the outline was already clear; and the old prior had for some years been borrowing from moneylenders in Winchester and London just to meet everyday expenses. Philip had become quite depressed when he realized how bad it was.

However, as he thought and prayed about it, the solution became clear. Philip had a three-stage plan. He would begin by taking control of the priory's finances personally. At present, each of the monastic officials controlled parts of the property, and fulfilled his responsibility with the income from that property: the cellarer, the sacrist, the guest-master, the novice-master and the infirmarer all had “their” farms and churches. Naturally, none of them would ever confess to having too much money, and if they had any surplus they took care to spend it, for fear that something would be taken away from them. Philip had decided to appoint a new official, called the purser, whose job it would be to receive all monies due to the priory, with no exceptions, and then give out to each official just what he needed.

The purser would naturally be someone Philip trusted. His first inclination had been to give the job to Cuthbert Whitehead, the cellarer; but then he had recalled Cuthbert's aversion to writing things down. That was no good. From now on all income and outgoings were to be written in a great book. Philip had decided to appoint the young kitchener, Brother Milius, as purser. The other monastic officials would not like the idea no matter who got the job, but Philip was the boss, and anyway the majority of monks, who knew or suspected that the priory was in trouble, would support reforms.

When he had control of the money, Philip would implement stage two of his plan.

All the distant farms would be leased for cash rents. This would put an end to expensive transportation of goods across long distances. There was a property of the priory's in Yorkshire that paid a “rent” of twelve lambs, and faithfully sent them all the way to Kingsbridge each year, even though the cost of transport was more than the value of the lambs, and anyway half of them always died en route. In future, only the nearest farms would produce food for the priory.

He also planned to change the present system under which each farm produced a little of everything—some grain, some meat, some milk and so on. Philip had thought for years that this was wasteful. Every farm managed to produce only enough of each item for its own needs—or perhaps it would be truer to say that every farm always managed to consume just about everything it produced. Philip wanted each farm to concentrate on one thing. All the grain would be grown in a group of villages in Somerset, where the priory also owned several mills. The lush hillsides of Wiltshire would graze cattle for butter and beef. The little cell of St-John-in-the-Forest would breed goats and make cheese.

But Philip's most important scheme was to convert all the middle-ranking farms—those with poor or indifferent soil, especially the hill properties—to sheep farming.

He had spent his boyhood in a monastery that farmed sheep (everyone farmed sheep in that part of Wales), and he had seen the price of wool rise slowly but steadily, year by year, ever since he could remember, right up to the present. Sheep would solve the priory's cash problem permanently, in time.

That was stage two of the plan. Stage three was to demolish the cathedral church and build a new one.

The present church was old, ugly and impractical; and the fact that the northwest tower had fallen down was a sign that the whole structure might be weak. Modern churches were taller, longer, and—most important—lighter. They were also designed to display the important tombs and saintly relics that pilgrims came to see. These days, more and more, cathedrals had additional small altars and special chapels dedicated to particular saints. A well-designed church that catered to the multiplying demands of today's congregations would draw many more worshipers and pilgrims than Kingsbridge could attract at the moment; and by doing so it could pay for itself, in the long run. When Philip had put the priory's finances on a sound footing, he would build a new church which would symbolize the regeneration of Kingsbridge.

It would be his crowning achievement.

He thought he would have enough money to begin rebuilding in about ten years' time. It was a rather daunting thought—he would be almost forty! However, within a year or so he hoped to be able to afford a program of repairs which would make the present building respectable, if not impressive, by the Whitsun after next.

Now that he had a plan he felt cheerful and optimistic again. Mulling over the details, he dimly heard a distant bang, like the slamming of a big door. He wondered vaguely whether someone was up and about in the dormitory or the cloisters. He supposed that if there were trouble he would find out about it soon enough, and his thoughts drifted back to rents and tithes. Another important source of wealth for monasteries was gifts from the parents of boys who became novices, but to attract the right sort of novices the monastery needed a flourishing school—

His reflections were interrupted again, this time by a louder bang that actually made his house shake slightly. That was definitely
not
a door slamming, he thought. Whatever is going on over there? He went to the window and opened the shutter. The cold night blew in, making him shiver. He looked out over the church, the chapter house, the cloisters, the dormitory and the kitchen buildings beyond. They all appeared peaceful in the moonlight. The air was so frosty that his teeth hurt when he breathed. But there was something else about the air. He sniffed. He could smell smoke.

He frowned anxiously, but he could see no fire.

He drew his head into the room and sniffed again, thinking that he might be smelling smoke from his own fireplace, but it was not so.

Mystified and alarmed, he pulled on his boots rapidly, picked up his cloak, and ran out of the house.

The smell of smoke became stronger as he hurried across the green toward the cloisters. There was no doubt that some part of the priory was on fire. His first thought was that it must be the kitchen—nearly all fires started in kitchens. He ran through the passage between the south transept and the chapter house and across the cloister square. In daytime he would have gone through the refectory to the kitchen courtyard, but at night it was locked, so he went out through the arch in the south walk and turned right to the back of the kitchen. There was no sign of fire here, nor in the brewery or the bakehouse, and the smell of smoke now seemed a little less. He ran a little farther, and looked past the corner of the brewery, across the green to the guesthouse and the stables. All seemed quiet over there.