Pillars of the Earth, book 2 43 страница

Caris discussed the site with Mother Cecilia. It was land that belonged neither to the monks nor the nuns, so they went to see Godwyn about it.

They found him on the site of his own building project, the new palace. The shell was up and the roof was on. Caris had not visited the site for some weeks, and she was surprised at its size – it was going to be as big as her new hospital. She saw why Buonaventura had called it impressive: the dining hall was larger than the nuns’ refectory. The site was swarming with workmen, as if Godwyn was in a hurry to get it finished. Masons were laying a floor of coloured tiles in a geometric pattern, several carpenters were making doors, and a master glazier had set up a furnace to make the windows. Godwyn was spending a lot of money.

He and Philemon were showing the new building to Archdeacon Lloyd, the bishop’s deputy. Godwyn broke off as the nuns approached. Cecilia said: “Don’t let us interrupt you – but, when you’re finished, will you meet me outside the hospital? There’s something I need to show you.”

“By all means,” said Godwyn.

Caris and Cecilia walked back through the market place in front of the cathedral. Friday was bargain day at the Fleece Fair, when traders sold their remaining stocks at reduced prices so that they would not have to carry the goods home. Caris saw Mark Webber, round-faced and round-bellied now, wearing a coat of his own bright scarlet. His four children were helping at his stall. Caris was especially fond of Dora, now fifteen, who had her mother’s bustling confidence in a slimmer body.

“You’re looking prosperous,” Caris said to Mark with a smile.

“The wealth should have come to you,” he replied. “You invented the dye. I just did what you said. I almost feel as if I cheated you.”

“You’ve been rewarded for hard work,” she said. She did not mind that Mark and Madge had done so well out of her invention. Although she had always enjoyed the challenge of doing business, she had never lusted for money – perhaps because she had always taken it for granted, growing up in her father’s wealthy household. Whatever the reason, she felt no pang of regret that the Webbers were making a fortune that might have been hers. The cashless life of the priory seemed to suit her well. And she was thrilled to see the Webber children healthy and well dressed. She remembered when all six of them had to find sleeping space on the floor of a single room, most of which was taken up by a loom.

She and Cecilia went to the south end of the priory grounds. The land around the stables looked like a farmyard. There were a few small buildings: a dovecote, a henhouse and a tool shed. Chickens scratched in the dirt, and pigs rooted in the kitchen garbage. Caris itched to tidy it up.

Godwyn and Philemon joined them soon, with Lloyd tagging along. Cecilia indicated the patch of land next to the kitchens, and said: “I’m going to build a new hospital, and I want to put it there. What do you think?”

“A new hospital?” Godwyn said. “Why?”

Caris thought he looked anxious, which puzzled her.

Cecilia said: “We want a hospital for the sick and a separate guest house for healthy visitors.”

“What an extraordinary idea.”

“It’s because of the stomach illness that started with Maldwyn Cook. This is a particularly virulent example, but diseases often flare up at markets, and part of the reason they spread so fast may be that we have the sick and the well eating and sleeping and going to the latrine together.”

Godwyn took umbrage. “Oho!” he said. “So the nuns are the physicians, now, are they?”

Caris frowned. This kind of sneering was not Godwyn’s style. He used charm to get his way, especially with powerful people such as Cecilia. This fit of pique was covering something else.

“Of course not,” Cecilia said. “But we all know that some illnesses spread from one sufferer to the next – that’s obvious.”

Caris put in: “The Muslim physicians believe illness is transmitted by looking at the sick person.”

“Oh, do they? How interesting!” Godwyn spoke with ponderous sarcasm. “Those of us who have spent seven years studying medicine at the university are always glad to be lectured on illness by young nuns barely out of their novitiate.”

Caris was not intimidated. She felt no inclination to show respect to a lying hypocrite who had tried to murder her. She said: “If you don’t believe in the transmission of illness, why don’t you prove your sincerity by coming to the hospital tonight and sleeping alongside a hundred people suffering from nausea and diarrhoea?”

Cecilia said: “Sister Caris! That will be enough.” She turned to Godwyn. “Forgive her, Father Prior. It wasn’t my intention to engage you in a discussion about disease with a mere nun. I just want to make sure you don’t object to my choice of site.”

“You can’t build it now, anyway,” Godwyn said. “Elfric is too busy with the palace.”

Caris said: “We don’t want Elfric – we’re using Jeremiah.”

Cecilia turned on her. “Caris, be quiet! Remember your place. Don’t interrupt my conversation with the lord prior again.”

Caris realized she was not helping Cecilia, and – against her inclination – she lowered her head and said: “I’m sorry, Mother Prioress.”

Cecilia said to Godwyn: “The question is not when we build, it’s where.”

“I’m afraid I don’t approve of this,” he said stiffly.

“Where would you prefer the new building to be sited?”

“I don’t think you need a new hospital at all.”

“Forgive me, but I am in charge of the nunnery,” Cecilia said with asperity. “You can’t tell me how I should spend our money. However, we normally consult one another before putting up new buildings – although it has to be said that you forgot this little courtesy when planning your palace. Nevertheless, I am consulting you – merely on the question of the location of the building.” She looked at Lloyd. “I’m sure the archdeacon will agree with me on this.”

“There must be agreement,” Lloyd said noncommittally.

Caris frowned, baffled. Why did Godwyn care? He was building his palace on the north side of the cathedral. It made no difference to him if the nuns put up a new building down here in the south, where most monks hardly ever came. What was he worried about?

Godwyn said: “I’m telling you that I do not approve of the location nor of the building, so that is the end of the matter!”

Caris suddenly saw, in a flash of inspiration, the reason for Godwyn’s behaviour. She was so shocked that she blurted it out. “You stole our money!”

Cecilia said: “Caris! I told you-”

“He’s stolen the legacy of the woman of Thornbury!” Caris said, overriding Cecilia in her outrage. “That’s where he got the money for his palace, of course. And now he’s trying to stop us building because he knows we’ll go to the treasury and find that our money has vanished!” She felt so indignant she might burst.

Godwyn said: “Don’t be preposterous.”

As a response, it was so muted that Caris knew she must have touched a nerve. Confirmation made her even angrier. “Prove it!” she yelled. She forced herself to speak more calmly. “We’ll go to the treasury now and check the vaults. You wouldn’t object to that, would you, Father Prior?”

Philemon chipped in: “It would be a completely undignified proceeding, and there is no question of the prior submitting himself to it.”

Caris ignored him. “There should be one hundred and fifty pounds in gold in the nuns’ reserves.”

“Out of the question,” said Godwyn.

Caris said: “Well, clearly the nuns will have to check the vaults anyway, now that the accusation has been made.” She looked at Cecilia, who nodded in agreement. “So, if the prior prefers not to be present, no doubt the archdeacon will be happy to attend as a witness.”

Lloyd looked as if he would have preferred not to get involved in this dispute, but it was hard for him to refuse to play the role of umpire, so he muttered: “If I can help both sides, of course…”

Caris’s mind was racing on. “How did you open the chest?” she said. “Christopher Blacksmith made the lock, and he’s too honest to give you a duplicate key and help you steal from us. You must have broken the box open, then repaired it somehow. What did you do, take off the binge?” She saw Godwyn glance involuntarily at his sub-prior. “Ah,” Caris said triumphantly, “so Philemon took the hinge off. But the prior took the money, and gave it to Elfric.”

Cecilia said: “Enough speculation. Let’s settle the matter. We’ll all go to the treasury and open the box, and that will be an end to it.”

Godwyn said: “It wasn’t stealing.”

Everyone stared at him. There was a shocked silence.

Cecilia said: “You’re admitting it!”

“It wasn’t stealing,” Godwyn repeated. “The money is being used for the benefit of the priory and the glory of God.”

Caris said: “It makes no difference. It wasn’t your money!”

“It’s God’s money,” Godwyn said stubbornly.

Cecilia said: “It was left to the nunnery. You know that. You saw the will.”

“I know nothing of any will.”

“Of course you do. I gave it to you, to make a copy…” Cecilia tailed off.

Godwyn said again: “I know nothing of any will.”

Caris said: “He’s destroyed it. He said he would make a copy, and put the original in the chest, in the treasury… but he destroyed it.”

Cecilia was staring open-mouthed at Godwyn. “I should have known,” she said. “After what you tried to do to Caris – I should never have trusted you again. But I thought your soul might yet have been saved. I was so wrong.”

Caris said: “It’s a good thing we made our own copy of the will, before handing it over.” She was inventing this in desperation.

Godwyn said: “A forgery, obviously.”

Caris said: “If the money was yours in the first place, you will have had no need to break open the casket to get it. So let’s go and look. That will settle it one way or another.”

Philemon said: “The fact that the hinge has been tampered with proves nothing.”

“So I was right!” said Caris. “But how do you know about the hinge? Sister Beth has not opened the vault since the audit, and the box was fine then. You must have removed it from the vault yourself, if you know that it has been interfered with.”

Philemon looked bewildered, and had no answer.

Cecilia turned to Lloyd. “Archdeacon, you are the bishop’s representative. I think it’s your duty to order the prior to return this money to the nuns.”

Lloyd looked worried. He said to Godwyn: “Have you got any of the money left?”

Caris said furiously: “When you’ve caught a thief, you don’t ask him whether he can afford to relinquish his ill-gotten gains!”

Godwyn said: “More than half has already been spent on the palace.”

“Building must stop immediately,” Caris said. “The men must be dismissed today, the building torn down and the materials sold. You have to return every penny. What you can’t pay in cash, after the palace has been demolished, you must make up in land or other assets.”

“I refuse,” Godwyn said.

Cecilia addressed Lloyd again. “Archdeacon, please do your duty. You cannot allow one of the bishop’s subordinates to steal from another, no matter that they both do God’s work.”

Lloyd said: “I can’t adjudicate a dispute such as this myself. It’s too serious.”

Caris was speechless with fury and dismay at Lloyd’s weakness.

Cecilia protested: “But you must!”

He looked trapped, but he shook his head stubbornly. “Accusations of theft, destruction of a will, a charge of forgery… This must go to the bishop himself!”

Cecilia said: “But Bishop Richard is on his way to France – and no one knows when he will be back. Meanwhile, Godwyn is spending the stolen money!”

“I can’t help that, I’m afraid,” Lloyd said. “You must appeal to Richard.”

“Very well, then,” said Caris. Something in her tone made them all look at her. “In that case there’s only one thing to do. We’ll go and find our bishop.”

In July of 1346, King Edward III assembled the largest invasion fleet England had ever seen, almost a thousand ships, at Portsmouth. Contrary winds delayed the armada, but they finally set sail on 11 July, their destination a secret.

Caris and Mair arrived in Portsmouth two days later, just missing Bishop Richard, who had sailed with the king.

They decided to follow the army to France.

It had not been easy to get approval even for the trip to Portsmouth. Mother Cecilia had invited the nuns in chapter to discuss the proposal, and some had felt that Caris would be in moral and physical danger. But nuns did leave their convents, not just on pilgrimages, but on business errands to London, Canterbury and Rome. And the Kingsbridge sisters wanted their stolen money back.

However, Caris was not sure that she would have got permission to cross the Channel. Fortunately she was not able to ask.

She and Mair could not have followed the army immediately, even if they had known the king’s destination, because every seaworthy vessel on the south coast of England had been commandeered for the invasion. So they fretted with impatience at a nunnery just outside Portsmouth and waited for news.

Caris learned later that King Edward and his army disembarked on a broad beach at St-Vaast-la-Hogue, on the north coast of France near Barfleur. However, the fleet did not return immediately. Instead, the ships followed the coast eastward for two weeks, tracking the invading army as far as Caen. There they loaded their holds with booty: jewellery, expensive cloth, and gold and silver plate looted by Edward’s army from the prosperous burgesses of Normandy. Then they returned.

One of the first back was the Grace, which was a cog – a broad-built cargo ship with rounded prow and stern. Her captain, a leather-faced salt called Rollo, was full of praise for the king. He had been paid at scarcity rates for his ship and his men, and he had gained a good share of the plunder himself. “Biggest army I’ve ever seen,” Rollo said with relish. He thought there were at least fifteen thousand men, about half of them archers, and probably five thousand horses. “You’ll have your work cut out to catch up with them,” he said. “I’ll take you to Caen, the last place I know them to have been, and you can pick up their trail there. Whatever direction they’ve taken, they’ll be about a week ahead of you.”

Caris and Mair negotiated a price with Rollo then went aboard the Grace with two sturdy ponies, Blackie and Stamp. They could not travel any faster than the army’s horses, but the army had to stop and fight every so often, Caris reasoned, and that should enable her to catch up.

When they reached the French side and sailed into the estuary of the Orne, early on a sunny August morning, Caris sniffed the breeze and noticed the unpleasant smell of old ashes. Studying the landscape on either side of the river, she saw that the farmland was black. It looked as if the crops had been burned in the fields. “Standard practice,” Rollo said. “What the army can’t take must be destroyed, otherwise it could benefit the enemy.” As they neared the port of Caen they passed the hulks of several burned-out ships, presumably fired for the same reason.

“No one knows the king’s plan,” Rollo told them. “He may go south and advance on Paris, or swing north-east to Calais and hope to meet up there with his Flemish allies. But you’ll be able to follow his trail. Just keep the blackened fields on either side of you.”

Before they disembarked, Rollo gave them a ham. “Thank you, but we’ve got some smoked fish and hard cheese in our saddlebags,” Caris said to him. “And we have money – we can buy anything else we need.”

“Money may not be much use to you,” the captain replied. “There may be nothing to buy. An army is like a plague of locusts, it strips the country bare. Take the ham.”

“You’re very kind. Goodbye.”

“Pray for me, if you would, sister. I’ve committed some heavy sins in my time.”

Caen was a city of several thousand houses. Like Kingsbridge, its two halves, Old Town and New Town, were divided by a river, the Odon, which was spanned by St Peter’s Bridge. On the river bank near the bridge, a few fishermen were selling their catch. Caris asked the price of an eel. She found the answer difficult to understand: the fisherman spoke a dialect of French she had never heard. When at last she was able to make out what he was saying, the price took her breath away. Food was so scarce, she realized, that it was more precious than jewels. She was grateful for Rollo’s generosity.

They had decided that if they were questioned they would say they were Irish nuns travelling to Rome. Now, however, as she and Mair rode away from the river, Caris wondered nervously whether local people would know from her accent that she was English.

There were not many local people to be seen. Broken-down doors and smashed shutters revealed empty houses. There was a ghostly hush – no vendors crying their wares, no children quarrelling, no church bells. The only work being done was burial. The battle had taken place more than a week ago, but small groups of grim-faced men were still bringing corpses out of buildings and loading them on to carts. It looked as if the English army had simply massacred men, women and children. They passed a church where a huge pit had been dug in the churchyard, and saw the bodies being tipped into a mass grave, without coffins or even shrouds, while a priest intoned a continuous burial service. The stench was unspeakable.

A well-dressed man bowed to them and asked if they needed assistance. His proprietorial manner suggested that he was a leading citizen concerned to make sure no harm came to religious visitors. Caris declined his offer of help, noting that his Norman French was no different from that of a nobleman in England. Perhaps, she thought, the lower orders all had their different local dialects, while the ruling class spoke with an international accent.

The two nuns took the road east out of town, glad to leave the haunted streets behind. The countryside was deserted, too. The bitter taste of ash was always on Caris’s tongue. Many of the fields and orchards on either side of the road had been fired. Every few miles they rode through a heap of charred ruins that had been a village. The peasants had either fled before the army or died in the conflagration, for there was little life: just the birds, the occasional pig or chicken overlooked by the army’s foragers, and sometimes a dog, nosing through the debris in a bewildered way, trying to pick up the scent of its master in a pile of cold embers.

Their immediate destination was a nunnery half a day’s ride from Caen. Whenever possible, they would spend the night at a religious house – nunnery, monastery or hospital – as they had on the way from Kingsbridge to Portsmouth. They knew the names and locations of fifty-one such institutions between Caen and Paris. If they could find them, as they hurried in the scorched footprints of King Edward, their accommodation and food would be free and they would be safe from thieves – and, Mother Cecilia would add, from fleshly temptations such as strong drink and male company.

Cecilia’s instincts were sharp, but she had not sensed that a different kind of temptation was in the air between Caris and Mair. Because of that, Caris had at first refused Mair’s request to come with her. She was focused on moving fast, and she did not want to complicate her mission by entering into a passionate entanglement – or by refusing so to do. On the other hand, she needed someone courageous and resourceful as her companion. Now she was glad of her choice: of all the nuns, Mair was the only one with the guts to go chasing the English army through France.

She had planned to have a frank talk before they left, saying that there should be no physical affection between them while they were away. Apart from anything else, they could get into terrible trouble if they were seen. But somehow she had never got around to the frank talk. So here they were in France with the issue still hanging unmentioned, like an invisible third traveller riding between them on a silent horse.

They stopped at midday by a stream on the edge of a wood, where there was an unburned meadow for the ponies to graze. Caris cut slices from Rollo’s ham, and Mair took from their baggage a loaf of stale bread from Portsmouth. They drank the water from the stream, though it had the taste of cinders.

Caris suppressed her eagerness to get going, and forced herself to let the horses rest for the hottest hour of the day. Then, as they were getting ready to leave, she was startled to see someone watching her. She froze, with the ham in one hand and her knife in the other.

Mair said: “What is it?” Then she followed Caris’s gaze, and understood.

Two men stood a few yards away, in the shade of the trees, staring at them. They looked quite young, but it was hard to be sure, for their faces were sooty and their clothing was filthy.

After a moment, Caris spoke to them in Norman French. “God bless you, my children.”

They made no reply. Caris guessed they were unsure what to do. But what possibilities were they considering? Robbery? Rape? They had a predatory look.

She was scared, but she made herself think calmly. Whatever else they might want, they must be starving, she calculated. She said to Mair: “Quickly, give me two trenchers of that bread.”

Mair cut two thick slices off the big loaf. Caris cut corresponding slabs from the ham. She put the ham on the bread, then said to Mair: “Give them one each.”

Mair looked terrified, but she walked across the grass with an unhesitating step and offered the food to the men.

They both snatched it and began to wolf it down. Caris thanked her stars that she had guessed right.

She quickly put the ham in her saddlebag and the knife in her belt, then climbed on to Blackie. Mair followed suit, stowing the bread and mounting Stamp. Caris felt safer on horseback.

The taller of the two men came towards them, moving quickly. Caris was tempted to kick her pony and take off, but she did not quite have time; and then the man’s hand was holding her bridle. He spoke through a mouthful of food. “Thank you,” he said with the heavy local accent.

Caris said: “Thank God, not me. He sent me to help you. He is watching over you. He sees everything.”

“You have more meat in your bag.”

“God will tell me who to give it to.”

There was a pause, while the man thought that over, then he said: “Give me your blessing.”

Caris was reluctant to extend her right arm in the traditional gesture of blessing – it would take her hand too far away from the knife at her belt. It was only a short-bladed food knife of the kind carried by every man and woman, but it was enough to slash the back of the hand that held her bridle and cause the man to let go.

Then she was inspired. “Very well,” she said. “Kneel down.”

The man hesitated.

“You must kneel to receive my blessing,” she said in a slightly raised voice.

Slowly, the man knelt, still holding his food in his hand.

Caris turned her gaze on his companion. After a moment, the second man did the same.

Caris blessed them both, then kicked Blackie and quickly trotted away. After a moment she looked back. Mair was close behind her. The two starving men stood staring at them.

Caris mulled over the incident anxiously as they rode through the afternoon. The sun shone cheerfully, as on a fine day in hell. In some places, smoke was rising fitfully from a patch of woodland or a smouldering barn. But the countryside was not totally deserted, she realized gradually. She saw a pregnant woman harvesting beans in a field that had escaped the English torches; the scared faces of two children looking out from the blackened stones of a manor house; and several small groups of men, usually flitting through the fringes of woodland, moving with the alert purposefulness of scavengers. The men worried her. They looked hungry, and hungry men were dangerous. She wondered whether she should stop fretting about speed and worry instead about safety.

Finding their way to the religious houses where they planned to stop was also going to be more difficult than Caris had thought. She had not anticipated that the English army would leave such devastation in its wake. She had assumed there would be peasants around to direct her. It could be hard enough in normal times to get such information from people who had never travelled farther than the nearest market town. Now her interlocutors would also be elusive, terrified or predatory.

She knew by the sun that she was heading east, and she thought, judging by the deep cartwheel ruts in the baked mud, that she was on the main road. Tonight’s destination was a village named, after the nunnery at its centre, Hopital-des-Soeurs. As the shadow in front of her grew longer, she looked about with increasing urgency for someone whom she could ask for directions.

Children fled from their approach in fear. Caris was not yet desperate enough to risk getting close to the hungry-looking men. She hoped to come across a woman. There were no young women anywhere, and Caris had a bleak suspicion about the fate they might have met at the hands of the marauding English. Occasionally she saw, in the far distance, a few lonely figures harvesting a field that had escaped burning; but she was reluctant to go too far from the road.

At last they found a wrinkled old woman sitting under an apple tree next to a substantial stone house. She was eating small apples wrenched from the tree long before they were ripe. She looked terrified. Caris dismounted, to seem less intimidating. The old woman tried to hide her poor meal in the folds of her dress, but she seemed not to have the strength to run away.

Caris addressed her politely. “Good evening, mother. Will this road take us to Hopital-des-Soeurs, may I ask?”

The woman seemed to pull herself together, and answered intelligently. Pointing in the direction in which they were heading, she said: “Through the woods and over the hill.”

Caris saw that she had no teeth. It must have been almost impossible to eat unripe apples with your gums, she thought with pity. “How far?” she asked.

“A long way.”

All distances were long at her age. “Can we get there by nightfall?”

“On a horse, yes.”

“Thank you, mother.”

“I had a daughter,” said the old woman. “And two grandsons. Fourteen years and sixteen. Fine boys.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“The English,” said the old woman. “May they all burn in hell.”

Evidently it did not occur to her that Caris and Mair might be English. That answered Caris’s question: local people could not tell the nationality of strangers. “What were the boys’ names, mother?”

“Giles and Jean.”

“I will pray for the souls of Giles and Jean.”

“Have you any bread?”

Caris looked around, to make sure there was no one else lurking nearby, ready to pounce, but they were alone. She nodded to Mair, who took from her saddlebag the remains of the loaf and offered it to the old woman.

The woman snatched it from her and began to gnaw it with her gums.

Caris and Mair rode away.

Mair said: “If we keep giving our food away, we’re going to starve.”

“I know,” said Caris. “But how can you refuse?”

“We can’t fulfil our mission if we’re dead.”

“But we are nuns, after all,” Caris said with asperity. “We must help the needy, and leave it to God to decide when it’s time for us to die.”

Mair was startled. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”

“My father hated people who preached about morality. We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong – when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbour’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble – that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test. Not that he knew anything about swords.”

Mair was silent for a while. She might have been mulling over what Caris had said, or she might simply have given up the argument: Caris was not sure.

Talk of Edmund always made Caris realize how much she missed him. After her mother died he had become the cornerstone of her life. He had always been there, standing at her shoulder, as it were, ready when she needed sympathy and understanding, or shrewd advice, or just information: he had known so much about the world. Now, when she turned in that direction, there was just an empty space.

They passed through a patch of woodland then breasted a rise, as the old woman had forecast. Looking down on a shallow valley they saw another burned village, the same as all the rest but for a cluster of stone buildings that looked like a small convent.

She realized, as she approached, how used to nunnery life she had become. As they rode down the hill she found herself looking forward to the ritual washing of hands, a meal taken in silence, bed time at nightfall, even the sleepy peacefulness of Matins at three o’clock in the morning. After what she had seen today, the security of those grey stone walls was alluring, and she kicked the tired Blackie into a trot.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04