Epic Historial Collection (76 page)

By contrast with the deserted town outside the walls, the priory close was humming with activity.

William reined in and looked around, trying to take it all in. There were so many people, and there was so much going on, that at first he found it somewhat bewildering. Then the scene resolved into three sections.

Nearest him, at the western end of the priory close, there was a market. The stalls were set up in neat north-south rows, and several hundred people were milling about in the aisles, buying food and drink, hats and shoes, knives, belts, ducklings, puppies, pots, earrings, wool, thread, rope, and dozens of other necessities and luxuries. The market was clearly thriving, and all the pennies, halfpennies and farthings that were changing hands must add up to a great deal of money.

It was no wonder, William thought bitterly, that the market at Shiring was in decline, when there was a flourishing alternative here at Kingsbridge. The rents from stall holders, tolls on suppliers, and taxes on sales that should have been going into the earl of Shiring's treasury were instead filling the coffers of Kingsbridge Priory.

But a market needed a license from the king, and William was sure Prior Philip did not have one. He was probably planning to apply as soon as he was caught, like the Northbrook miller. Unfortunately it would not be so easy for William to teach Philip a lesson.

Beyond the market was a zone of tranquillity. Adjacent to the cloisters, where the crossing of the old church used to be, there was an altar under a canopy, with a white-haired monk standing in front of it reading from a book. On the far side of the altar, monks in neat rows were singing hymns, although at this distance their music was drowned by the noise of the marketplace. There was a small congregation. This was probably nones, a service conducted for the benefit of the monks, William thought: all work and marketing would stop for the main Michaelmas service, of course.

At the far side of the priory close, the east end of the cathedral was being built. This was where Prior Philip was spending his rake-off from the market, William thought sourly. The walls were thirty or forty feet high, and it was already possible to see the outlines of the windows and the arches of the arcade. Workers swarmed all over the site. William thought there was something odd about the way they looked, and realized after a moment that it was their colorful dress. They were not regular laborers, of course—the paid work force would be on holiday today. These people were volunteers.

He had not expected that there would be so
many
of them. Hundreds of men and women were carrying stones and splitting timber and rolling barrels and heaving cartloads of sand up from the river, all working for nothing but forgiveness of their sins.

The sly prior had a crafty setup, William observed enviously. The people who came to work on the cathedral would spend money at the market. People who came to the market would give a few hours to the cathedral, for their sins. Each hand washed the other.

He kicked his horse forward and rode across the graveyard to the building site, curious to see it more closely.

The eight massive piers of the arcade marched down either side of the site in four opposed pairs. From a distance, William had thought he could see the round arches joining one pier with the next, but now he realized the arches were not built yet—what he had seen was the wooden falsework, made in the same shape, upon which the stones would rest while the arches were being constructed and the mortar was drying. The falsework did not rest on the ground, but was supported on the out-jutting moldings of the capitals on top of the piers.

Parallel with the arcade, the outer walls of the aisles were going up, with regular spaces for the windows. Midway between each window opening, a buttress jutted out from the line of the wall. Looking at the open ends of the unfinished walls, William could see that they were not solid stone: they were in fact double walls with a space in between. The cavity appeared to be filled with rubble and mortar.

The scaffolding was made of stout poles roped together, with trestles of flexible saplings and woven reeds laid across the poles.

A lot of money had been spent here, William noted.

He rode on around the outside of the chancel, followed by his knights. Against the walls were wooden lean-to huts, workshops and lodges for the craftsmen. Most of them were locked shut now, for there were no masons laying stones or carpenters making falsework today. However, the supervising craftsmen—the master masons and the master carpenter—were directing the volunteer laborers, telling them where to stack the stones, timber, sand and lime they were carrying up from the riverside.

William rode around the east end of the church to the south side, where his way was blocked by the monastic buildings. Then he turned back, marveling at the cunning of Prior Philip, who had his master craftsmen busy on a Sunday and his laborers working for no pay.

As he reflected on what he was seeing, it seemed devastatingly clear that Prior Philip was largely responsible for the decline in the fortunes of the Shiring earldom. The farms were losing their young men to the building site, and Shiring—jewel of the earldom—was being eclipsed by the growing new town of Kingsbridge. Residents here paid rent to Philip, not William, and people who bought and sold goods at this market generated income for the priory, not the earldom. And Philip had the timber, the sheep farms and the quarry that had once enriched the earl.

William and his men rode back across the close to the market. He decided to take a closer look. He urged his horse into the crowd. It inched forward. The people did not scatter fearfully out of his path. When the horse nudged them, they looked up at William with irritation or annoyance rather than dread, and moved out of the way in their own good time, with a somewhat condescending air. Nobody here was frightened of him. It made him nervous. If people were not scared there was no telling what they might do.

He went down one row and back up the next, with his knights trailing behind him. He became frustrated with the slow movement of the crowd. It would have been quicker to walk; but then, he felt sure, these insubordinate Kingsbridge people would probably have been cocky enough to jostle him.

He was halfway along the return aisle when he saw Aliena.

He reined in abruptly and stared at her, transfixed.

She was no longer the thin, strained, frightened girl in clogs that he had seen here on Whitsunday three years ago. Her face, then drawn with tension, had filled out again, and she had a happy, healthy look. Her dark eyes flashed with humor and her curls tumbled about her face when she shook her head.

She was so beautiful that she made William's head swim with desire.

She was wearing a scarlet robe, richly embroidered, and her expressive hands glinted with rings. There was an older woman with her, standing a little to one side, like a servant. Plenty of money, Mother had said; that was how Richard had been able to become a squire and join King Stephen's army equipped with fine weapons. Damn her. She had been destitute, a penniless, powerless girl—how had she done it?

She was at a stall that carried bone needles, silk thread, wooden thimbles and other sewing necessities, discussing the goods animatedly with the short, dark-haired Jew who was selling them. Her stance was assertive, and she was relaxed and self-confident. She had recovered the poise she had possessed as daughter of the earl.

She looked much older. She
was
older, of course: William was twenty-four, so she must be twenty-one now. But she looked more than that. There was nothing of the child in her now. She was mature.

She looked up and met his eye.

Last time he had locked glances with her, she had blushed for shame, and run away. This time she stood her ground and stared back at him.

He tried a knowing smile.

An expression of scathing contempt came over her face.

William felt himself flush red. She was as haughty as ever, and she scorned him now as she had five years ago. He had humiliated and ravished her, but she was no longer terrified of him. He wanted to speak to her, and tell her that he could do again what he had done to her before; but he was not willing to shout it over the heads of the crowd. Her unflinching gaze made him feel small. He tried to sneer at her, but he could not, and he knew he was making a foolish grimace. In an agony of embarrassment he turned away and kicked his horse on; but even then the crowd slowed him down, and her withering look burned into the back of his neck as he moved away from her by painful inches.

When at last he emerged from the marketplace he was confronted by Prior Philip.

The short Welshman stood with his hands on his hips and his chin thrust aggressively forward. He was not quite as thin as he used to be, and what little hair he had was turning prematurely from black to gray, William saw. He no longer looked too young for his job. Now his blue eyes were bright with anger. “Lord William!” he called in a challenging tone.

William tore his mind away from the thought of Aliena and remembered that he had a charge to make against Philip. “I'm glad to come across you, Prior.”

“And I you,” Philip said angrily, but the shadow of a doubtful frown crossed his brow.

“You're holding a market here,” William said accusingly.

“So what?”

“I don't believe King Stephen ever licensed a market in Kingsbridge. Nor did any other king, to my knowledge.”

“How dare you?” said Philip.

“I or anybody—”

“You!” Philip shouted, overriding him. “How dare you come in here and talk about a license—you, who in the past month have gone through this county committing arson, theft, rape, and at least one murder!”

“That's nothing to do—”

“How dare you come into a monastery and talk about a license!” Philip yelled. He stepped forward, wagging his finger at William, and William's horse sidestepped nervously. Somehow Philip's voice was more penetrating than William's and William could not get a word in. A crowd of monks, volunteer workers and market customers was gathering around, watching the row. Philip was unstoppable. “After what you've done, there is only
one
thing you should say: ‘Father, I have sinned!' You should get down on your
knees
in this priory! You should beg for forgiveness, if you want to escape the fires of hell.”

William blanched. Talk of hell filled him with uncontrollable terror. He tried desperately to interrupt Philip's flow, saying: “What about your market? What about your market?”

Philip hardly heard. He was in a fury of indignation. “Beg forgiveness for the awful things you have done!” he shouted. “On your knees! On your knees, or you'll burn in hell!”

William was almost frightened enough to believe that he would suffer hellfire unless he knelt and prayed in front of Philip right now. He knew he was overdue for confession, for he had killed many men in the war, on top of the sins he had committed during his tour of the earldom. What if he were to die before he confessed? He began to feel shaky at the thought of the eternal flames and the devils with their sharp knives.

Philip advanced on him, pointing his finger and shouting: “On your knees!”

William backed his horse. He looked around desperately. The crowd hemmed him in. His knights were behind him, looking bemused: they could not decide how to cope with a spiritual threat from an unarmed monk. William could not take any more humiliation. After Aliena, this was too much. He pulled on the reins, making his massive war-horse rear dangerously. The crowd parted in front of its mighty hooves. When its forefeet hit the ground again he kicked it hard, and it lunged forward. The onlookers scattered. He kicked it again, and it broke into a canter. Burning with shame, he fled out through the priory gate, with his knights following, like a pack of snarling dogs chased off by an old woman with a broom.

 

William confessed his sins, in fear and trembling, on the cold stone floor of the little chapel at the bishop's palace. Bishop Waleran listened in silence, his face a mask of distaste, as William catalogued the killings, the beatings and the rapes he was guilty of. Even while he confessed, William was filled with loathing for the supercilious bishop, with his clean white hands folded over his heart, and his translucent white nostrils slightly flared, as if there were a bad smell in the dusty air. It tormented William to beg Waleran for absolution, but his sins were so heavy that no ordinary priest could forgive them. So he knelt, possessed by fear, while Waleran commanded him to light a candle in perpetuity in the chapel at Earlscastle, and then told him his sins were absolved.

The fear lifted slowly, like a fog.

They came out of the chapel into the smoky atmosphere of the great hall and sat by the fire. Autumn was turning to winter and it was cold in the big stone house. A kitchen hand brought hot spiced bread made with honey and ginger. William began to feel all right at last.

Then he remembered his other problems. Bartholomew's son Richard was making a bid for the earldom, and William was too poor to raise an army big enough to impress the king. He had raked in considerable cash in the past month, but it was still not sufficient. He sighed, and said: “That damned monk is drinking the blood of the Shiring earldom.”