Epic Historial Collection (95 page)

He made his way home, seeing through a blur. Mother and Martha were sitting at the kitchen table. Mother was teaching Martha to write with a sharp stone and a slate. They were surprised to see him. Martha said: “It can't be dinnertime already.”

Mother read Jack's face. “What is it?” she said anxiously.

“I had a fight with Alfred and got expelled from the site,” he said grimly.

“Wasn't Alfred expelled?” said Martha.

Jack shook his head.

“That's not fair!” Martha said.

Mother said wearily: “What did you fight about this time?”

Jack said: “Was my father hanged at Shiring for thieving?”

Martha gasped.

Mother looked sad. “He wasn't a thief,” she said. “But yes, he was hanged at Shiring.”

Jack was fed up with enigmatic statements about his father. He said brutally: “Why will you never tell me the truth?”

“Because it makes me so sad!” Mother burst out, and to Jack's horror she began to cry.

He had never seen her cry. She was always so strong. He was close to breaking down himself. He swallowed hard and persisted. “If he wasn't a thief, why was he hanged?”

“I don't know!” Mother cried. “I never knew. He never knew either. They said he stole a jeweled cup.”

“From whom?”

“From here—from Kingsbridge Priory.”

“Kingsbridge! Did Prior Philip accuse him?”

“No, no, it was long before the time of Philip.” She looked at Jack through her tears. “Don't start asking me who accused him and why. Don't get caught in that trap. You could spend the rest of your life trying to put right a wrong done before you were born. I didn't raise you so that you could take revenge. Don't make that your life.”

Jack vowed he would learn more sometime, despite what she said; but right now he wanted her to stop crying. He sat beside her on the bench and put his arm around her. “Well, it looks as if the cathedral won't be my life, now.”

Martha said: “What will you do, Jack?”

“I don't know. I can't live in Kingsbridge, can I?”

Martha was distraught. “But why not?”

“Alfred tried to kill me and Tom expelled me from the site. I'm not going to live with them. Anyway, I'm a man. I should leave my mother.”

“But what will you do?”

Jack shrugged. “The only thing I know about is building.”

“You could work on another church.”

“I might come to love another cathedral as much as I love this one, I suppose,” he said despondently. He was thinking: But I'll never love another woman the way I love Aliena.

Mother said: “How could Tom do this to you?”

Jack sighed. “I don't think he really wanted to. Prior Philip said he wouldn't have me and Alfred both working on the site.”

“So that damned monk is at the bottom of this!” Mother said angrily. “I swear—”

“He was very upset about the damage we did.”

“I wonder if he could be made to see reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“God is supposed to be merciful—perhaps monks should be too.”

“You think I should plead with Philip?” Jack asked, somewhat surprised at the direction of Mother's thinking.

“I was thinking I might talk to him,” she said.

“You!” That was even more uncharacteristic. Jack was quite shocked. For Mother to be willing to ask Philip for mercy, she must be badly upset.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

Tom had seemed to think Philip would not be merciful, Jack recalled. But then, Tom's overriding concern had been that the lodge should take decisive action. Having promised Philip that they would be firm, Tom could not then plead for mercy. Mother was not in the same position. Jack began to feel a little more hopeful. Perhaps he would not have to leave after all. Perhaps he could stay in Kingsbridge, close to the cathedral and to Aliena. He no longer hoped that she would love him, but nevertheless he hated the thought of going away and never seeing her again.

“All right,” he said. “Let's go and plead with Prior Philip. We've got nothing to lose but our pride.”

Mother put on her cloak and they went out together, leaving Martha sitting alone at the table, looking anxious.

Jack and his mother did not often walk side by side, and now he was struck by how short she was: he towered over her. He felt suddenly fond of her. She was always ready to fight like a cat for his sake. He put his arm around her and hugged her. She smiled at him as if she knew what he was thinking.

They entered the priory close and went to the prior's house. Mother banged on the door and walked in. Tom was there with Prior Philip. Jack knew immediately, by their faces, that Tom had
not
told Philip about Jack setting fire to the old cathedral. That was a relief. Now he probably never would. That secret was safe.

Tom looked anxious, if not a little scared, when he saw Mother. Jack recalled that he had said
I did my best for you, I hope your mother will see that
. Tom was remembering the last time Jack and Alfred had a fight: Mother had left Tom in consequence. Tom was afraid she would leave now.

Philip was no longer looking angry, Jack thought. Perhaps the lodge's decision had mollified him. He might even be feeling a trifle guilty about his harshness.

Mother said: “I've come here to ask you to be merciful, Prior Philip.”

Tom immediately looked relieved.

Philip said: “I'm listening.”

Mother said: “You're proposing to send my son away from everything he loves—his home, his family and his work.”

And the woman he adores, Jack thought.

Philip said: “Am I? I thought he had simply been dismissed from his work.”

“He's never learned any kind of work but building, and there's no other building work in Kingsbridge for him. And the challenge of that vast church has got into his blood. He'll go wherever someone is building a cathedral. He'll go to Jerusalem if there's stone there to be carved into angels and devils.” How does she know all this? Jack wondered. He had hardly thought it himself—but it was true. She added: “I might never see him again.” Her voice shook a little at the end, and he thought wonderingly how much she must love him. She would never plead like this for herself, he knew.

Philip looked sympathetic, but it was Tom who replied. “We can't have Jack and Alfred working on the same site,” he said doggedly. “They'll fight again. You know that.”

“Alfred could go,” Mother said.

Tom looked sad. “Alfred is
my
son.”

“But he's twenty years old, and he's as mean as a bear!” Although Mother's voice was assertive, her cheeks were wet with tears. “He doesn't care for this cathedral any more than I do—he'd be perfectly happy building houses for butchers and bakers in Winchester or Shiring.”

“The lodge can't expel Alfred and keep Jack,” Tom said. “Besides, the decision is already made.”

“But it's the wrong decision!”

Philip spoke. “There might be another answer.”

Everyone looked at him.

“There might be a way for Jack to stay in Kingsbridge, and even devote himself to the cathedral, without falling foul of Alfred.”

Jack wondered what was coming. This sounded too good to be true.

“I need someone to work with me,” Philip went on. “I spend too much time making detail decisions on the building. I need a kind of assistant, who would fulfill the role of clerk of works. He would deal with most of the queries himself, referring only the most important questions to me. He would also keep track of the money and the raw materials, handling payments to suppliers and carters, and wages too. Jack can read and write, and he can add numbers faster than anyone I've ever met—”

“And he understands every aspect of building,” Tom put in. “I've seen to that.”

Jack's mind was spinning. He could stay after all! He would be clerk of works. He would not be carving stone, but he would be supervising the entire design on Philip's behalf. It was an astonishing proposal. He would have to deal with Tom as an equal. But he knew he was capable of it. And Tom did too.

There was one snag. Jack voiced it. “I can't live with Alfred any longer.”

Ellen said: “It's time Alfred had a home of his own, anyway. Perhaps if he left us he'd be more serious about finding a wife.”

Tom said angrily: “You keep thinking of reasons for getting rid of Alfred. I'm not going to throw my own son out of my house!”

“You don't understand me, either of you,” Philip said. “You haven't completely comprehended my proposal. Jack would not be living with you.”

He paused. Jack guessed what was coming next, and it was the last, and biggest, shock of the day.

Philip said: “Jack would have to live here, in the priory.” He looked at them with a little frown, as if he could not see why they still had not grasped his meaning.

Jack had understood him. He recalled Mother saying, on Midsummer Eve last year,
That sly prior has a knack of getting his own way in the end
. She had been right. Philip was renewing the offer he had made then. But this time it was different. The choice Jack now faced was stark. He could leave Kingsbridge, and abandon everything he loved. Or he could stay, and lose his freedom.

“My clerk of works can't be a layman, of course,” Philip finished, in the tone of one who states the obvious. “Jack will have to become a monk.”

V

On the night before the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair, Prior Philip stayed up after the midnight services, as usual; but instead of reading and meditating in his house, he made a tour of the priory close. It was a warm summer night, with a clear sky and a moon, and he could see without the aid of a lantern.

The entire close had been taken over by the fair, with the exception of the monastic buildings and the cloisters, which were sacred. In each of the four corners a huge latrine pit had been dug, so that the rest of the close would not become completely foul, and the latrines had been screened off to safeguard the sensibilities of the monks. Literally hundreds of market stalls had been erected. The simplest were nothing more than crude wooden counters on trestles. Most were a little more elaborate: they had a signboard with the name of the stall holder and a picture of his wares, a separate table for weighing, and a locked cupboard or shed to keep the goods in. Some stalls incorporated tents, either to keep the rain off or so that business could be done in private. The most elaborate stalls were small houses, with large storage areas, several counters, and tables and chairs where the merchant could offer hospitality to his important customers. Philip had been surprised when the first of the merchants' carpenters had arrived a full week before the fair and demanded to be shown where to erect his stall, but the structure that went up had taken four days to build and two to stock.

Philip had originally planned the layout of the stalls in two wide avenues on the west side of the close, in much the same configuration as the stalls of the weekly market; but he had soon realized that that would not be enough. The two avenues of stalls now ran all along the north side of the church as well, and then turned down the east end of the close as far as Philip's house; and there were more stalls actually inside the unfinished church, in the aisles between the piers. The stall holders were not all wool merchants by any means: everything was sold at a fair, from horsebread to rubies.

Philip walked along the moonlit rows. They were all ready now, of course: no stall building would be allowed today. Most of them were also stocked with goods. The priory had already collected more than ten pounds in fees and duties. The only goods that could be brought in on the day of the fair were freshly cooked foods, bread and hot pies and baked apples. Even the barrels of beer had been brought in yesterday.

As Philip walked around, he was watched by dozens of half-open eyes, and greeted by several sleepy grunts. The stall holders would not leave their precious goods unguarded: most of them were sleeping at their stalls, and the wealthier merchants had left servants on guard.

He was not yet certain exactly how much money he would make from the fair, but it was virtually guaranteed to be a success, and he was confident of reaching his original estimate of fifty pounds. There had been moments, in the past few months, when he had feared that the fair would not take place at all. The civil war dragged on, with neither Stephen nor Maud gaining the upper hand, but his license had not been revoked. William Hamleigh had tried to sabotage the fair in various ways. He had told the sheriff to ban it, but the sheriff had asked for authority from one of the two rival monarchs, and it had not been forthcoming. William had forbidden his tenants to sell wool at Kingsbridge; but most of them were anyway in the habit of selling to merchants such as Aliena, rather than marketing the fleeces themselves, so the main effect of the ban was to create more business for her. Finally, he had announced that he was reducing the rents and duties at the Shiring Fleece Fair to the levels Philip was charging; but his announcement came too late to make much difference, for the big buyers and sellers had already made their plans.