Epic Historial Collection (93 page)

The door of the mill banged open. Aliena pulled away from Jack. Suddenly she felt shocked, as if she had been fast asleep and someone had slapped her to wake her up. She was horrified by what they had been doing—kissing and rubbing one another like a whore and a drunk in an alehouse! She stepped back and turned around, mortified with embarrassment. The intruder was Alfred, of all people. That made her feel worse. Alfred had proposed marriage to her, three months ago, and she had refused him haughtily. Now he had seen her acting like a bitch in heat. It seemed somehow hypocritical. She flushed with shame. Alfred was staring at her, his expression a mixture of lust and contempt that reminded her vividly of William Hamleigh. She was disgusted with herself for giving Alfred a reason to look down on her, and furious at Jack for his part in it.

She turned away from Alfred and looked at Jack. When his eyes met hers he registered shock. She realized that her anger was showing in her face but she could not help it. Jack's expression of dazed happiness turned into confusion and hurt. Normally that would have melted her, but now she was too upset. She hated him for what he had made her do. Quick as a flash, she slapped his face. He did not move, but there was agony in his look. His cheek reddened where she had hit him. She could not bear to see the pain in his eyes. She tore her gaze away.

She could not stay there. She ran to the door with the incessant thud of the hammers pounding in her ears. Alfred stepped aside quickly, looking almost frightened. She dashed past him and went through the door. Tom Builder was just outside, with a small crowd of building workers. Everyone was heading for the mill to find out what was going on. Aliena hurried past them without speaking. One or two of them glanced curiously at her, making her burn with shame; but they were more interested in the hammering sound coming from the mill. The coldly logical part of Aliena's mind recalled that Jack had solved the problem of felting her cloth; but the thought that he had been up all night doing something for her only made her feel worse. She ran past the stable, through the priory gate, and along the street, her boots slipping and sliding in the mud, until she reached her house.

When she got inside she found Richard there. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a loaf of bread and a bowl of ale. “King Stephen is on the march,” he said. “The war has started again. I need a new horse.”

IV

For the next three months Aliena hardly spoke two words in a row to Jack.

He was heartbroken. She had kissed him as if she loved him, there was no mistaking that. When she left the mill he felt sure they would kiss like that again, soon. He walked around in an erotic haze, thinking: Aliena loves me! Aliena loves me! She had stroked his back and put her tongue into his mouth and pressed her breasts against him. When she avoided him he thought at first that she was just embarrassed. She could not possibly pretend not to love him, after that kiss. He waited for her to get over her shyness. With the help of the priory carpenter he made a stronger, more permanent fulling mechanism for the old mill, and Aliena got her cloth felted. She thanked him sincerely, but her voice was cold and her eyes evaded his.

When it had gone on not just for a few days, but for several weeks, he was forced to admit that there was something seriously wrong. A tidal wave of disillusionment engulfed him, and he felt as if he would drown in regret. He was baffled. He wished miserably that he was older, and had more experience with women, so that he could tell whether she was normal or peculiar, whether this was temporary or permanent, and whether he should ignore it or confront her. Being uncertain, and also being terrified of saying the wrong thing and making matters worse, he did nothing; and then the constant feeling of rejection began to get to him, and he felt worthless, stupid, and impotent. He thought how foolish he was, to have imagined that the most desirable and unattainable woman in the county might fall for him, a mere boy. He had amused her for a while, with his stories and his jokes, but as soon as he had kissed her like a man, she had run away. What a fool he was to have hoped for anything else!

After a week or two of telling himself how stupid he was he began to get angry. He was irritable at work, and people started to treat him warily. He was mean to his stepsister, Martha, who was almost as hurt by him as he was by Aliena. On Sunday afternoons he wasted his wages gambling on cockfights. All his passion came out in his work. He was carving corbels, the jutting-out stones that appeared to support arches or shafts that did not reach all the way to the ground. Corbels were often decorated with leaves, but a traditional alternative was to carve a man who appeared to be holding up the arch with his hands or supporting it on his back. Jack altered the customary pattern just a little, but the effect was to show a disturbingly twisted human figure with an expression of pain, condemned, as it were, to an eternity of agony as he held up the vast weight of stone. Jack knew it was brilliant: nobody else could carve a figure that looked as if it were in pain. When Tom saw it he shook his head, unsure whether to marvel at its expressiveness or disapprove of its unorthodoxy. Philip was very taken with it. Jack did not care what they thought: he felt that anyone who disliked it was blind.

One Monday in Lent, when everyone was short-tempered because they had not eaten meat for three weeks, Alfred came to work with a triumphant look on his face. He had been to Shiring the day before. Jack did not know what he had done there but he was clearly pleased about it.

During the midmorning break, when Enid Brewster tapped a barrel of ale in the middle of the chancel and sold it to the builders, Alfred held out a penny and called: “Hey, Jack Tomson, fetch me some ale.”

This is going to be about my father, Jack thought. He ignored Alfred.

One of the carpenters, an older man called Peter, said: “You'd better do what you're told, prentice boy.” An apprentice was always supposed to obey a master craftsman.

“I'm not Tom's son,” Jack said. “Tom is my stepfather, and Alfred knows it.”

“Do what he says, all the same,” Peter said in a reasonable tone.

Reluctantly, Jack took Alfred's money and joined the line. “My father's name was Jack Shareburg,” he said in a loud voice. “You can all call me Jack Jackson, if you want to make a difference between me and Jack Blacksmith.”

Alfred said: “Jack Bastard is more like it.”

Jack said to the world at large: “Have you ever wondered why Alfred never laces up his boots?” They all looked at Alfred's feet. Sure enough, his heavy, muddy boots, which were designed to be tied at the top with cords, were loosely open. “It's so that he can get at his toes quickly—in case he needs to count above ten.” The craftsmen smiled and the apprentices chortled. Jack handed Alfred's penny to Enid and got a jug of ale. He took it to Alfred and handed it to him with a small satirical bow. Alfred was annoyed, but not very; he still had something up his sleeve. Jack moved away and drank his ale with the apprentices, hoping Alfred would lay off.

It was not to be. A few moments later Alfred followed him, and said: “If Jack Shareburg was my father I wouldn't be so quick to claim him. Don't you realize what he was?”

“He was a jongleur,” Jack said. He made himself sound confident, but he was afraid of what Alfred was going to say. “I don't suppose you know what a jongleur is.”

“He was a thief,” said Alfred.

“Oh, shut up, shithead.” Jack turned away and sipped his beer, but he could hardly swallow. Alfred had a reason for saying this.

“Don't you know how he died?” Alfred persisted.

This is it, Jack thought; this is what he learned yesterday in Shiring; this is why he's wearing that stupid grin. He turned around reluctantly and faced Alfred. “No, I don't know how my father died, Alfred, but I think you're going to tell me.”

“He was hanged by the neck, like the lousy thief he was.”

Jack gave an involuntary cry of anguish. He knew intuitively that this was true. Alfred was so completely sure of himself that he could not be making it up. And Jack saw in a flash that this explained his mother's reticence. For years he had secretly dreaded something like this. All the time he had pretended there was nothing wrong, he was not a bastard, he had a real father with a real name. In fact he had always feared that there was a disgrace about his father, that the taunts were valid, that he really did have something to be ashamed of. He was already low: Aliena's rejection had left him feeling worthless and small. Now the truth about his father hit him like a blow.

Alfred stood there smiling, inordinately pleased with himself: the effect of his revelation had delighted him. His expression maddened Jack. It was bad enough, for Jack, that his father had been hanged. That Alfred was happy about it was too much to bear. Without thinking, Jack threw his beer in Alfred's grinning face.

The other apprentices, who had been watching the two stepbrothers and enjoying the altercation, hastily moved a step or two back. Alfred dashed the beer from his eyes, roared with anger, and lashed out with one huge fist, a surprisingly quick movement for such a big man. The blow connected with Jack's cheek, so hard that instead of hurting, it just went numb. Before he had time to react, Alfred's other fist sank into his middle. This punch hurt terribly. Jack felt as if he would never breathe again. He crumpled and fell to the ground. As he landed, Alfred kicked him in the head with one heavy boot, and for a moment he saw nothing but white light.

He rolled over blindly and struggled to his feet. But Alfred was not yet satisfied. As Jack came upright he felt himself grabbed. He began to wriggle. He was frightened now. Alfred would have no mercy. Jack would be beaten to a pulp if he could not escape. For a moment Alfred's grip was too strong and Jack could not get free, but then Alfred drew back one massive fist for a blow, and in that instant Jack slipped out of his grasp.

He darted away and Alfred lunged after him. Jack dodged around a lime barrel, pulling it over so that it fell in Alfred's path, spilling lime on the ground. Alfred jumped over the barrel but cannoned into a water butt and that, too, was upset. When the water came into contact with the lime it boiled and hissed fiercely. Some of the builders, seeing the waste of costly material, shouted protests, but Alfred was deaf to them, and Jack could think of nothing but trying to get away from Alfred. He ran, still doubled up with pain and half blind from the kick in the head.

Hard on his heels, Alfred stuck out a foot and tripped him. Jack fell headlong. I'm going to die, he thought as he rolled over; Alfred will kill me now. He fetched up under a ladder that was leaning against the scaffolding high up on the building. Alfred bore down on him. Jack felt like a cornered rabbit. The ladder saved him. As Alfred ducked behind it, Jack dodged around to the front and catapulted himself up the rungs. He went up the ladder like a rat up a gutter.

He felt the ladder shake as Alfred came up behind him. Normally he could outrun Alfred, but he was still dazed and winded. He reached the top and lurched onto the scaffolding. He stumbled and fell against the wall. The stonework had been laid that morning and the mortar was still wet. As Jack careered into it, a whole section of the wall shifted, and three or four stones slipped sideways and fell over the side. Jack thought he was going with them. He teetered at the edge, and as he looked down he saw the big stones tumbling over and over as they fell eighty feet and landed on the roofs of the lean-to lodges at the foot of the wall. He righted himself and hoped no one was in the lodges. Alfred came up over the top of the ladder and advanced toward him on the flimsy scaffolding.

Alfred was red and panting, and his eyes were full of hate. Jack had no doubt that in this state Alfred could kill. If he gets hold of me, Jack thought, he'll throw me over the side. As Alfred advanced, Jack retreated. He trod in something soft and realized it was a pile of mortar. Inspired, he stooped quickly, picked up a handful, and threw it accurately into Alfred's eyes.

Blinded, Alfred stopped advancing and shook his head, trying to get rid of the mortar. At last Jack had a chance to escape. He ran to the far end of the scaffolding platform, intending to descend, run out of the priory close, and spend the rest of the day hiding in the forest. But to his horror there was no ladder at the other end of the platform. He could not climb down the scaffolding, for it did not reach to the ground—it was built on joists stuck into putlog holes in the wall. He was trapped.

He looked back. Alfred had got his eyesight back and was coming toward him.

There was one other way down.

At the unfinished end of the wall, where the chancel would join on to the transept, each course of masonry was half a stone's length shorter than the one below, creating a steep flight of narrow steps, which was sometimes used by the more daring laborers as an alternative way up to the platform. With his heart in his mouth Jack got on top of the wall and walked along, carefully but quickly, trying not to see how far he would fall if he slipped. He reached the top of the stepped section, paused at the edge, and looked down. He felt faintly sick. He glanced back over his shoulder: Alfred was on the wall behind him. He went down.

Jack could not understand why Alfred was so unafraid: he had never been brave. It was as if hatred had dulled his sense of danger. As they ran down the dizzily steep steps, Alfred was gaining on Jack. They were still more than twelve feet off the ground when Jack realized Alfred was very nearly on him. In desperation he jumped off the side of the wall onto the thatched roof of the carpenters' lodge. He bounced off the roof onto the ground, but he landed badly, twisting his ankle, and he fell to the ground.