Epic Historial Collection (86 page)

Aliena clearly did not know how to take this proposal: it was unlike any known way of doing business. It was new to Philip, too: he had just made it up.

Aliena spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “I would have to offer you a slightly lower price than you could get by waiting. Moreover, the price of wool might go up between now and next summer—it has every year I've been in the business.”

“So I lose a little and you gain a little,” Philip said. “But I'll be able to carry on building for another year.”

“And what will you do next year?”

“I don't know. Perhaps I'll sell you the following year's wool.”

Aliena nodded. “It makes sense.”

Philip took her hands and looked into her eyes. “If you do this, Aliena, you'll save the cathedral,” he said fervently.

Aliena looked very solemn. “You saved me, once, didn't you?”

“I did.”

“Then I'll do the same for you.”

“God bless you!” In an excess of gratitude he hugged her; then he remembered she was a woman and detached himself hastily. “I don't know how to thank you,” he said. “I was at my wits' end.”

Aliena laughed. “I'm not sure I deserve this much gratitude. I'll probably do very well out of the arrangement.”

“I hope so.”

“Let's drink a cup of wine together to seal the bargain,” she said. “I'll just pay the carter.”

The ox cart was empty and the wool stacked neatly. Philip and Francis stepped outside while Aliena settled up with the carter. The sun was going down and the building workers were walking back to their homes. Philip's elation returned. He had found a way to carry on, despite all the setbacks. “Thank God for Aliena!” he said.

“You didn't tell me she was so beautiful,” Francis said.

“Beautiful? I suppose she is.”

Francis laughed. “Philip, you're blind! She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She's enough to make a man give up the priesthood.”

Philip looked sharply at Francis. “You ought not to talk like that.”

“Sorry.”

Aliena came out and locked the barn; then they went into her home. It was a large house with a main room and a separate bedroom. There was a beer barrel in the corner, a whole ham hanging from the ceiling, and a white linen cloth on the table. A middle-aged woman servant poured wine from a flask into silver goblets for the guests. Aliena lived comfortably. If she's so beautiful, Philip wondered, why hasn't she got a husband? There was no shortage of aspirants: she had been courted by every eligible young man in the county, but she had turned them all down. He felt so grateful to her that he wanted her to be happy.

Her mind was still on practicalities. “I won't have the money until after the Shiring Fleece Fair,” she said when they had toasted their agreement.

Philip turned to Francis. “Will Maud wait?”

“How long?”

“The fair is three weeks from Thursday.”

Francis nodded. “I'll tell her. She'll wait.”

Aliena untied her headdress and shook out her curly dark hair. She gave a tired sigh. “The days are too short,” she said. “I can't get everything done. I want to buy more wool but I've got to find enough carters to take it all to Shiring.”

Philip said: “And next year you'll have even more.”

“I wish we could make the Flemish come here to buy. It would be so much easier for us than taking all our wool to Shiring.”

Francis interjected: “But you can.”

They both looked at him. Philip said: “How?”

“Hold your own fleece fair.”

Philip began to see what he was driving at. “Can we?”

“Maud gave you exactly the same rights as Shiring. I wrote your charter myself. If Shiring can hold a fleece fair, so can you.”

Aliena said: “Why, that would be wonderful—we wouldn't have to cart all these sacks to Shiring. We could do the business here, and ship the wool directly to Flanders.”

“That's the least of it,” Philip said excitedly. “A fleece fair makes as much in a week as a Sunday market makes in a whole year. We can't do it this year, of course—nobody will know about it. But we can spread the news, at this year's Shiring Fleece Fair, that we're going to hold our own next year, and make sure all the buyers know the date….”

Aliena said: “It will make a big difference to Shiring. You and I are the biggest sellers of wool in the county, and if we both withdraw, the Shiring fair will be less than half its usual size.”

Francis said: “William Hamleigh will lose money. He'll be as mad as a bull.”

Philip could not help a shudder of revulsion. A mad bull was just what William was like.

“So what?” said Aliena. “If Maud has given us permission, we can go ahead. There's nothing William can do about it, is there?”

“I hope not,” Philip said fervently. “I certainly hope not.”

W
ORK STOPPED AT NOON
on Saint Augustine's Day. Most of the builders greeted the midday bell with a sigh of relief. They normally worked from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, so they needed the rest they got on holy days. However, Jack was too absorbed in his work to hear the bell.

He was mesmerized by the challenge of making soft, round shapes out of hard rock. The stone had a will of its own, and if he tried to make it do something it did not want to do, it would fight him, and his chisel would slip, or dig in too deeply, spoiling the shapes. But once he had got to know the lump of rock in front of him he could transform it. The more difficult the task, the more fascinated he was. He was beginning to feel that the decorative carving demanded by Tom was too easy. Zigzags, lozenges, dogtooth, spirals and plain roll moldings bored him, and even these leaves were rather stiff and repetitive. He wanted to carve natural-looking foliage, pliable and irregular, and copy the different shapes of real leaves, oak and ash and birch, but Tom would not let him. Most of all he wanted to carve scenes from stories, Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, and the Day of Judgment, with monsters and devils and naked people, but he did not dare to ask.

Eventually Tom made him stop work. “It's a holiday, lad,” he said. “Besides, you're still my apprentice, and I want you to help me clear up. All tools must be locked away before dinner.”

Jack put away his hammer and chisels, and carefully deposited the stone on which he had been working in Tom's shed; then he went around the site with Tom. The other apprentices were tidying up and sweeping away the stone chips, sand, lumps of dried mortar and wood shavings that littered the site. Tom picked up his compasses and level while Jack collected his yardsticks and plumb lines, and they took everything to the shed.

In the shed Tom kept his poles. These were long iron rods, square in cross-section and dead straight, all exactly the same length. They were kept in a special wooden rack which was locked. They were measuring sticks.

As they continued around the site, picking up mortarboards and shovels, Jack was thinking about the poles. “How long is a pole?” he asked.

Some of the masons heard him and laughed. They often found his questions amusing. Edward Short, a diminutive old mason with leathery skin and a twisted nose, said: “A pole is a pole,” and they laughed again.

They enjoyed teasing the apprentices, especially if it gave them a chance to show off their superior knowledge. Jack hated to be laughed at for his ignorance but he put up with it because he was so curious. “I don't understand,” he said patiently.

“An inch is an inch, a foot is a foot, and a pole is a pole,” said Edward.

A pole was a unit of measurement, then. “So how many feet are there in a pole?”

“Aha! That depends. Eighteen, in Lincoln. Sixteen in East Anglia.”

Tom interrupted to give a sensible answer. “On this site there are fifteen feet to a pole.”

A middle-aged woman mason said: “In Paris they don't use the pole at all—just the yardstick.”

Tom said to Jack: “The whole plan of the church is based on poles. Fetch me one and I'll show you. It's time you understood these things.” He gave Jack a key.

Jack went to the shed and took a pole from the rack. It was quite heavy. Tom liked to explain things, and Jack loved to listen. The organization of the building site made an intriguing pattern, like the weaving on a brocade coat, and the more he understood, the more fascinated he became.

Tom was standing in the aisle at the open end of the half-built chancel, where the crossing would be. He took the pole and laid it on the ground so that it spanned the aisle. “From the outside wall to the middle of the pier of the arcade is a pole.” He turned the pole end over end. “From there to the middle of the nave is a pole.” He turned it over again, and it reached the middle of the opposite pier. “The nave is two poles wide.” He turned it over again, and it reached to the wall of the far aisle. “The whole church is four poles wide.”

“Yes,” said Jack. “And each bay must be a pole long.”

Tom looked faintly annoyed. “Who told you that?”

“Nobody. The bays of the aisles are square, so if they're a pole wide they must be a pole long. And the bays of the nave are the same length as the bays of the aisles, obviously.”

“Obviously,” said Tom. “You should be a philosopher.” In his voice was a mixture of pride and irritation. He was pleased that Jack was quick to understand, irritated that the mysteries of masonry should be so easily grasped by a mere boy.

Jack was too caught up in the splendid logic of it all to pay attention to Tom's sensitivities. “The chancel is four poles long, then,” he said. “And the whole church will be twelve poles when it's finished.” He was struck by another thought. “How high will it be?”

“Six poles high. Three for the arcade, one for the gallery, and two for the clerestory.”

“But what's the point of having everything measured by poles? Why not build it all higgledy-piggledy, like a house?”

“First, because it's cheaper this way. All the arches of the arcade are identical, so we can reuse the falsework arches. The fewer different sizes and shapes of stone we need, the fewer templates I have to make. And so on. Second, it simplifies every aspect of what we're doing, from the original laying-out—everything is based on a pole square—to painting the walls—it's easier to estimate how much whitewash we'll need. And when things are simple, fewer mistakes are made. The most expensive part of a building is the mistakes. Third, when everything is based on a pole measure, the church just looks right. Proportion is the heart of beauty.”

Jack nodded, enchanted. The struggle to control an operation as ambitious and intricate as building a cathedral was endlessly fascinating. The notion that the principles of regularity and repetition could both simplify the construction and result in a harmonious building was a seductive idea. But he was not sure whether proportion was the heart of beauty. He had a taste for wild, spreading, disorderly things: high mountains, aged oaks, and Aliena's hair.

 

He ate his dinner ravenously but quickly, then he left the village, heading north. It was a warm early-summer day, and he was barefoot. Ever since he and his mother had come to live in Kingsbridge for good, and he had become a worker, he had enjoyed returning to the forest periodically. At first he had spent the time getting rid of surplus energy, running and jumping, climbing trees and shooting ducks with his sling. That was when he was getting used to the new, taller, stronger body he now had. The novelty of that had worn off. Now when he walked in the forest he thought about things: why proportion should be beautiful, how buildings stayed standing, and what it would be like to stroke Aliena's breasts.

He had worshiped her from a distance for years. His abiding picture of her was from the first time he had seen her, as she came down the stairs to the hall at Earlscastle, and he had thought she must a princess in a story. She had continued to be a remote figure. She talked to Prior Philip, and Tom Builder, and Malachi the Jew, and the other wealthy and powerful people of Kingsbridge; and Jack never had a reason to address her. He just looked at her, praying in church or riding her palfrey across the bridge, or sitting in the sun outside her house; wearing costly furs in winter and the finest linen in summer, her wild hair framing her beautiful face. Before he went to sleep he would think about what it would be like to take those clothes off her, and see her naked, and kiss her soft mouth gently.

In the last few weeks he had become dissatisfied and depressed with this hopeless daydreaming. Seeing her from a distance and overhearing her conversations with other people and imagining making love to her were no longer enough. He needed the real thing.

There were several girls his own age who might have given him the real thing. Among the apprentices there was much talk about which of the young women in Kingsbridge were randy and exactly what each of them would let a young man do. Most of them were determined to remain virgins until they were married, according to the teachings of the Church, but there were certain things you could do and still remain a virgin, or so the apprentices said. The girls all thought Jack was a little strange—they were probably right, he felt—but one or two of them found his strangeness appealing. One Sunday after church he had struck up a conversation with Edith, the sister of a fellow apprentice; but when he had talked about how he loved to carve stone, she had started to giggle. The following Sunday he had gone walking in the fields with Ann, the blond daughter of the tailor. He had not said much to her, but he had kissed her, and then suggested they lie down in a field of green barley. He had kissed her again and touched her breasts, and she had kissed him back, enthusiastically; but after a while she had pulled away from him and said: “Who is she?” Jack had been thinking about Aliena at that very moment and he was thunderstruck. He had tried to brush it aside, and kiss her again, but she turned her face away, and said: “Whoever she is, she's a lucky girl.” They had walked back to Kingsbridge together, and when they separated Ann had said: “Don't waste time trying to forget her. It's a lost cause. She's the one you want, so you'd better try and get her.” She had smiled at him fondly and added: “You've got a nice face. It might not be as difficult as you think.”

Her kindness made him feel bad, the more so because she was one of the girls the apprentices said were randy, and he had told everyone that he was going to try to feel her up. Now such talk seemed so juvenile that it made him squirm. But if he had told her the name of the woman who was on his mind, Ann might not have been so encouraging. Jack and Aliena were about the most unlikely match conceivable. Aliena was twenty-two years old and he was seventeen; she was the daughter of an earl and he was a bastard; she was a wealthy wool merchant and he was a penniless apprentice. Worse still, she was famous for the number of suitors she had rejected. Every presentable young lord in the county, and every prosperous merchant's eldest son, had come to Kingsbridge to pay court to her, and all had gone away disappointed. What chance was there for Jack, who had nothing to offer, unless it was “a nice face”?

He and Aliena had one thing in common: they liked the forest. They were peculiar in this: most people preferred the safety of the fields and villages, and stayed away from the forest. But Aliena often walked in the woodlands near Kingsbridge, and there was a particular secluded spot where she liked to stop and sit down. He had seen her there once or twice. She had not seen him: he walked silently, as he had learned to in childhood, when he had had to find his dinner in the forest.

He was heading for her clearing without any idea of what he would do if he found her there. He knew what he would like to do: lie down beside her and stroke her body. He could talk to her, but what would he say? It was easy to talk to girls of his own age. He had teased Edith, saying: “I don't believe
any
of the terrible things your brother says about you,” and of course she had wanted to know what the terrible things were. With Ann he had been direct: “Would you like to walk in the fields with me this afternoon?” But when he tried to come up with an opening line for Aliena his mind went blank. He could not help thinking of her as belonging to the older generation. She was so grave and responsible. She had not always been like that, he knew: at seventeen she had been quite playful. She had suffered terrible troubles since then, but the playful girl must still be there somewhere inside the solemn woman. For Jack that made her even more fascinating.

He was getting near her spot. The forest was quiet in the heat of the day. He moved silently through the undergrowth. He wanted to see her before she saw him. He was still not sure he had the nerve to approach her. Most of all he was afraid of putting her off. He had spoken to her on the very first day he returned to Kingsbridge, the Whitsunday that all the volunteers had come to work on the cathedral, and he had said the wrong thing then, with the result that he had hardly talked to her for four years. He did not want to make a similar blunder now.

A few moments later he peeped around the trunk of a beech tree and saw her.

She had picked an extraordinarily pretty place. There was a little waterfall trickling into a deep pool surrounded by mossy stones. The sun shone on the banks of the pool, but a yard or two back there was shade beneath the beech trees. Aliena sat in the dappled sunlight reading a book.

Jack was astonished. A woman? Reading a book? In the open air? The only people who read books were monks, and not many of them read anything except the services. It was an unusual book, too—much smaller than the tomes in the priory library, as if it had been made especially for a woman, or for someone who wanted to carry it around. He was so surprised that he forgot to be shy. He pushed his way through the bushes and came out into her clearing, saying: “What are you reading?”

She jumped, and looked up at him with terror in her eyes. He realized he had frightened her. He felt very clumsy, and was afraid he had once again started off on the wrong foot. Her right hand flew to her left sleeve. He recalled that she had once carried a knife in her sleeve—perhaps she did still. A moment later she recognized him, and her fear went as quickly as it had come. She looked relieved, and then—to his chagrin—faintly irritated. He felt unwelcome, and he would have liked to turn right around and disappear back into the forest. But that would have made it difficult to speak to her another time, so he stayed, and faced her rather unfriendly look, and said: “Sorry I frightened you.”