Pillars of the Earth, book 2 12 страница

You’d better hope you never meet me again, Ralph thought.

He tried to think of some insult to shout, but he was distracted by the sound of a crowd.

As he and Stephen rode down the main street, their horses stepping adroitly through the mud, they saw ahead of them a mob of people. Half way down the hill, they were forced to stop.

The street was jammed by hundreds of men, women and children shouting, laughing and jostling for space. They all had their backs to Ralph. He looked over their heads.

At the front of this unruly procession was a cart drawn by an ox. Tied to the back of the cart was a half-naked woman. Ralph had seen this kind of thing before: to be whipped through the town was a common punishment. The woman wore only a skirt of rough wool secured at the waist by a cord. Her face, when he could see it, was begrimed, and her hair was filthy, so that at first he thought she was old. Then he saw her breasts and realized she was only in her twenties.

Her hands were bound together and attached by the same rope to the back end of the cart. She stumbled along behind it, sometimes falling and being dragged writhing through the mud until she managed to get back on her feet. The town constable followed, vigorously lashing her bare back with a bull whip, a strip of leather at the end of a stick.

The crowd, led by a knot of young men, were taunting the woman, shouting insults, laughing, and throwing mud and rubbish. She delighted them by responding, screaming imprecations and spitting at anyone who got near her.

Ralph and Stephen urged their horses into the crowd. Ralph raised his voice. “Clear the way!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Make way for the earl!”

Stephen did the same.

No one took any notice.

*

To the south of the priory, the ground sloped steeply down to the river. The bank on that side was rocky, unsuitable for loading barges and rafts, so all the wharves were on the more accessible south side, in the suburb of Newtown. The quiet north side bloomed at this time of year with shrubbery and wild flowers. Merthin and Caris sat on a low bluff overlooking the water.

The river was swollen with rain. It moved faster than it used to, Merthin noticed, and he could see why: the channel was narrower than formerly. That was because of the development of the riverside. When he was a child, most of the south bank had been a wide, muddy beach with a swampy field beyond. The river then had flowed at a stately pace, and as a boy he had floated on his back from one side to the other. But the new wharves, protected from flooding by stone walls, squeezed the same quantity of water into a smaller funnel, through which it hurried as if eager to get past the bridge. Beyond the bridge, the river widened and slowed around Leper Island.

“I’ve done something terrible,” Merthin said to Caris.

Unfortunately, she looked particularly lovely today. She wore a dark red linen dress, and her skin seemed to glow with vitality. She had been angry at the trial of Crazy Nell, but now she just seemed worried, and that gave her a vulnerable look that tugged at Merthin’s heart. She must have noticed how he had been unable to meet her eye all week. But what he had to tell her was probably worse than anything she had imagined.

He had spoken to no one about this since the row with Griselda, Elfric and Alice. No one even knew that his door had been destroyed. He was longing to unburden himself, but he had held back. He did not want to talk to his parents: his mother would be judgemental and his father would just tell him to be a man. He might have talked to Ralph, but there had been a coolness between them since the fight with Wulfric: Merthin thought Ralph had behaved like a bully, and Ralph knew it.

He dreaded telling Caris the truth. For a moment he asked himself why. It was not that he was afraid of what she would do. She might be scornful – she was good at that – but she could not say anything worse than the things he said to himself constantly.

What he truly feared, he realized, was hurting her. He could bear her anger: it was her pain he could not face.

She said: “Do you still love me?”

He was not expecting the question, but he answered without hesitation. “Yes.”

“And I love you. Anything else is just a problem we can solve together.”

He wished she were right. He wished it so badly that tears came to his eyes. He looked away so that she would not see. A mob of people was moving on to the bridge, following a slow-moving cart, and he realized this must be Crazy Nell being whipped through the town on her way to Gallows Cross in Newtown. The bridge was already crowded with departing stallholders and their carts, and the traffic was almost at a standstill.

“What’s the matter?” Caris said. “Are you crying?”

“I lay with Griselda,” Merthin said abruptly.

Caris’s mouth dropped open. “Griselda?” she said unbelievingly.

“I’m so ashamed.”

“I thought it must be Elizabeth Clerk.”

“She’s too proud to offer herself.”

Caris’s reaction to that surprised him. “Oh, so you would have done it with her, too, if she’d suggested it?”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Griselda! Dear St Mary, I thought I was worth more than that.”

“You are.”

“Lupa,” she said, using the Latin word for a whore.

“I don’t even like her. I hated it.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better? Are you saying you wouldn’t be so sorry if you’d enjoyed it?”

“No!” Merthin was dismayed. Caris seemed determined to misinterpret everything he said.

“Whatever got into you?”

“She was crying.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! Do you do that to every girl you see crying?”

“Of course not! I was just trying to explain to you how it happened even though I really didn’t want it to.”

Her scorn got worse with everything he said. “Don’t talk rubbish,” she said. “If you hadn’t wanted it to happen, it wouldn’t have.”

“Listen to me, please,” he said frustratedly. “She asked me, and I said no. Then she cried, and I put my arm around her to comfort her, then-”

“Oh, spare me the sickening details – I don’t want to know.”

He began to feel resentful. He knew he had done wrong, and he expected her to be angry, but her contempt stung. “All right,” he said, and he shut up.

But silence was not what she wanted. She stared at him in dissatisfaction, then said: “What else?”

He shrugged. “What’s the point in my speaking? You just pour scorn on everything I say.”

“I don’t want to listen to pathetic excuses. But there’s something you haven’t told me – I can feel it.”

He sighed. “She’s pregnant.”

Caris’s reaction surprised him again. All the anger left her. Her face, until now taut with indignation, seemed to collapse. Only sadness remained. “A baby,” she said. “Griselda is going to have your baby.”

“It may not happen,” he said. “Sometimes…”

Caris shook her head. “Griselda is a healthy girl, well fed. There’s no reason she should miscarry.”

“Not that I’d wish it,” he said, though he was not quite sure that was true.

“But what will you do?” she said. “It will be your child. You will love it, even if you hate its mother.”

“I’ve got to marry her.”

Caris gasped. “Marry! But that would be for ever.”

“I’ve fathered a child, so I should take care of it.”

“But to spend your whole life with Griselda!”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to,” she said decisively. “Think. Elizabeth Clerk’s father didn’t marry her mother.”

“He was a bishop.”

“There’s Maud Roberts, in Slaughterhouse Ditch – she has three children, and everyone knows the father is Edward Butcher.”

“He’s already married, and has four other children with his wife.”

“I’m saying they don’t always force people to marry. You could just carry on as you are.”

“No, I couldn’t. Elfric would throw me out.”

She looked thoughtful. “So, you’ve already talked to Elfric?”

“Talked?” Merthin touched his bruised cheek. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

“And his wife – my sister?”

“She screamed at me.”

“So she knows.”

“Yes. She said I have to marry Griselda. She never wanted me to be with you, anyway. I don’t know why.”

Caris muttered: “She wanted you for herself.”

That was news to Merthin. It seemed unlikely that the haughty Alice would be attracted to a lowly apprentice. “I never saw any sign of that.”

Only because you never looked at her. “That’s what made her so cross. She married Elfric in frustration. You broke my sister’s heart – and now you’re breaking mine.”

Merthin looked away. He barely recognized this picture of himself as a heartbreaker. How had things gone so wrong? Caris went quiet. Merthin stared moodily along the river to the bridge.

The crowd had come to a standstill, he saw. A heavy cart loaded with woolsacks was stuck at the southern end, probably with a broken wheel. The can pulling Nell had stopped, unable to pass. The crowd were swarming around both carts, and some people had climbed on to the woolsacks for a better view. Earl Roland was also trying to leave. He was at the town end of the bridge, on horseback, with his entourage; but even they were having trouble getting the citizens to give way. Merthin spotted his brother Ralph on his horse, chestnut-coloured with a black mane and tail. Prior Anthony, who had evidently come to see the earl off, stood wringing his hands with anxiety while Roland’s men forced their horses into the mob, trying in vain to clear a passage.

Merthin’s intuition rang an alarm. Something was badly wrong, he felt sure, though at first he did not know what. He looked more closely at the bridge. He had noticed, on Monday, that the massive oak beams stretching from one piling to another across the length of the bridge were showing cracks on the upstream side; and that the beams had been strengthened with iron braces nailed across the cracks. Merthin had not been involved in this job, which was why he had not previously looked hard at the work. On Monday he had wondered why the beams were cracking. The weakness was not half way between the uprights, as he would have expected if the timbers had simply deteriorated over time. Rather, the cracks were near the central pier, where the strain should have been less.

He had not thought about it since Monday – there was too much else on his mind – but now an explanation occurred to him. It was almost as if that central pier was not supporting the beams, but dragging them down. That would mean that something had undermined the foundation beneath the pier – and, as soon as that thought occurred to him, he realized how it could have happened. It must be the faster flow of the river, scouring the river bed from under the pier.

He remembered walking barefoot on a sandy beach, as a child, and noticing that when he stood at the sea’s edge, letting the water wash over his feet, the outgoing waves would suck the sand from under his toes. That kind of phenomenon had always fascinated him.

If he was right the central pier, with nothing underneath to support it, was now hanging from the bridge – hence the cracks. Elfric’s iron braces had not helped; in fact, they might have worsened the problem, by making it impossible for the bridge to settle slowly into a new, stable position.

Merthin guessed that the other pier of the pair – on the farther, downstream side of the bridge – was still grounded. The current surely spent most of its force on the upstream pier, and attacked the second of the pair with reduced violence. Only one pier was affected; and it seemed that the rest of the structure was knitted together strongly enough for the entire bridge to stay upright – as long as it was not subjected to extraordinary strain.

But the cracks seemed wider today than on Monday. And it was not difficult to guess why. Hundreds of people were on the bridge, a much greater load than it normally took; and there was a heavily laden wool cart, with twenty or thirty people sitting on the sacks of wool to add to the burden.

Fear gripped Merthin’s heart. He did not think the bridge could withstand that level of strain for long.

He was vaguely aware that Caris was speaking, but her meaning did not penetrate his thoughts until she raised her voice and said: “You’re not even listening!”

“There’s going to be a terrible accident,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“We have to get everyone off the bridge.”

“Are you mad? They’re all tormenting Crazy Nell. Even Earl Roland can’t get them to move. They’re not going to listen to you.”

“I think it could collapse.”

“Oh, look!” said Caris, pointing. “Can you see someone running along the road from the forest, approaching the south end of the bridge?”

Merthin wondered what that had to do with anything, but he followed her pointing finger. Sure enough, he saw the figure of a young woman running, her hair flying.

Caris said: “It looks like Gwenda.”

Behind her, in hot pursuit, was a man in a yellow tunic.

*

Gwenda was more tired than she had ever been in her life.

She knew that the fastest way to cover a long distance was to run twenty paces then walk twenty paces. She had started to do that half a day ago, when she spotted Sim Chapman a mile behind her. For a while she lost sight of him, but when once again the road provided her with a long rearward view, she saw that he, too, was walking and running alternately. As mile succeeded mile and hour followed hour he gained on her. By mid-morning she had known that at this rate he would catch her before she reached Kingsbridge.

In desperation, she had taken to the forest. But she could not stray far from the road for fear of losing her way. Eventually she heard running steps and heavy breathing, and peered through the undergrowth to see Sim go by on the road. She realized that as soon as he came to a long clear stretch he would guess what she had done. Sure enough, some time later she saw him come back.

She had pressed on through the forest, stopping every few minutes to stand in silence and listen. For a long time she had evaded him, and she knew he would have to search the woods on both sides of the road to make sure she was not in hiding. But her progress was also slow, for she had to fight her way through the summer undergrowth, and keep checking that she had not strayed too far from the road.

When she heard the sound of a distant crowd she knew she could not be far from the city, and she thought she was going to escape after all. She made her way to the road and cautiously looked out from a bush. The way was clear in both directions – and, a quarter of a mile to the north, she could see the tower of the cathedral.

She was almost there.

She heard a familiar bark and her dog, Skip, emerged from the bushes at the side of the road. She bent to pat him, and he wagged joyfully, licking her hands. Tears came to her eyes.

Sim was not in sight, so she risked the open road. She wearily resumed her twenty paces of running and twenty of walking, now with Skip trotting happily beside her, thinking this was a new game. Each time she switched, she looked back over her shoulder. The third time she did so, she saw Sim.

He was only a couple of hundred yards behind.

Despair washed over her like a tidal wave. She wanted to lie down and die. But she was in the suburbs, now, and the bridge was only a quarter of a mile away. She forced herself to keep going.

She tried to sprint, but her legs refused to obey orders. A staggering jog was the best she could manage. Her feet hurt. Looking down, she saw blood seeping through the holes in her tattered shoes. As she turned the corner at Gallows Cross, she saw a huge crowd on the bridge ahead of her. They were all looking at something, and no one noticed her running for her life, with Sim Chapman close behind.

She had no weapons other than her eating knife, which would just about cut through a baked hare, but would hardly disable a man. She wished with all her heart that she had had the nerve to pull Alwyn’s long dagger out of his head and bring it away with her. Now she was virtually defenceless.

She had a row of small bouses on one side of her – the suburban homes of people too poor to live in the city – and, on the other side, the pasture called Lovers’ Field, owned by the priory. Sim was so close behind her that she could hear his breathing, harsh and ragged like her own. Terror gave her a last burst of energy. Skip barked, but there was more fear than defiance in his note – he had not forgotten the stone that hit him on the nose.

The approach to the bridge was a swamp of sticky mud, churned up by boots, hooves and cartwheels. Gwenda waded through it, desperately hoping that the heavier Sim would be hampered even more than she.

At last she reached the bridge. She pushed into the crowd, which was less dense at this end. They were all looking the other way, where a heavy cart loaded with wool was blocking the passage of an ox-cart. She had to get to Caris’s house, almost in sight now on the main street. “Let me through!” she screamed, fighting her way forward. Only one person seemed to hear her. A head turned to look, and she saw the face of her brother Philemon. His mouth dropped open in alarm, and he tried to move towards her, but the crowd resisted him as it resisted her.

Gwenda tried to push past the team of oxen drawing the wool cart, but an ox tossed its massive head and knocked her sideways. She lost her footing – and, at that moment, a big hand grasped her arm in a powerful grip, and she knew she was recaptured.

“I’ve got you, you bitch,” Sim gasped. He pulled her to him and slapped her across the face as hard as he could. She had no strength left to resist him. Skip snapped ineffectually at his heels. “You won’t get away from me again,” he said.

Despair engulfed her. It had all been for nothing: seducing Alwyn, murdering him, running for miles. She was back where she had started, the captive of Sim.

Then the bridge seemed to move.

Merthin saw the bridge bend.

Over the central pier on the near side, the entire roadbed sagged like a horse with a broken back. The people tormenting Nell suddenly found the surface beneath their feet unsteady. They staggered, grabbing their neighbours for support. One fell backwards over the parapet into the river; then another, then another. The shouts and catcalls directed at Nell were quickly drowned out by yells of warning and screams of fright.

Merthin said: “Oh, no!”

Caris screamed: “What’s happening?”

All those people, he wanted to say – people we grew up with, women who have been kind to us, men we hate, children who admire us; mothers and sons, uncles and nieces; cruel masters and sworn enemies and panting lovers – they’re going to die. But he could not get any words out.

For a moment – less than a breath – Merthin hoped the structure might stabilize in the new position; but he was disappointed. The bridge sagged again. This time, the interlocked timbers began to tear free of their joints. The longitudinal planks on which the people were standing sprang from their wooden pegs; the transverse joints that supported the roadbed twisted out of their sockets; and the iron braces that Elfric had hammered across the cracks were ripped out of the wood.

The central part of the bridge seemed to lurch downward on the side nearest Merthin, the upstream side. The wool cart tilted, and the spectators standing and sitting on the piled woolsacks were hurled into the river. Great timbers snapped and flew through the air, killing everyone they struck. The insubstantial parapet gave way, and the cart slid slowly off the edge, its helpless oxen lowing in terror. It fell with nightmare slowness through the air and hit the water with a thunderclap. Suddenly there were dozens of people jumping or falling into the river, then scores of them. Those already in the water were struck by the falling bodies of those who came after, and by the disintegrating timbers, some small, some huge. Horses fell, with and without riders, and carts fell on top of them.

Merthin’s first thought was of his parents. Neither of them had gone to the trial of Crazy Nell, and they would not have wanted to watch her punishment: his mother thought such public spectacles beneath her dignity, and his father was not interested when there was no more at stake than the life of a mad woman. Instead, they had gone to the priory to say goodbye to Ralph.

But Ralph was now on the bridge.

Merthin could see his brother fighting to control his horse, Griff, which was rearing and kicking out with its front hooves. “Ralph!” he yelled uselessly. Then the timbers under Griff fell into the water. “No!” Merthin shouted as horse and rider disappeared from view.

Merthin’s gaze flashed to the other end, where Caris had spotted Gwenda, and he saw her struggling with a man in a yellow tunic. Then that part gave way, and both ends of the bridge were dragged into the water by the collapsing middle.

The river was now a mass of writhing people, panicking horses, splintered timbers, smashed carts and bleeding bodies. Merthin realized that Caris was no longer by his side when he saw her hurrying along the bank towards the bridge, clambering over rocks and running along the muddy strand. She looked back at him and yelled: “Hurry up! What are you waiting for? Come and help!”

*

This must be what a battlefield is like, Ralph thought: the screaming, the random violence, the people falling, the horses mad with fear. It was the last thought he had before the ground dropped away beneath him.

He suffered a moment of sheer terror. He did not understand what had happened. The bridge had been there, under his horse’s hooves, but now it was not, and he and his mount were tumbling through the air. Then he could no longer feel the familiar bulk of Griff between his thighs, and he realized they had separated. An instant later he hit the cold water.

He went under and held his breath. The panic left him. Now he felt scared, but calm. He had played in the sea as a child – a seaside village nad been among his father’s domains – and he knew he would rise to the surface, though it might seem to take a long time. He was weighed down by his thick travelling clothes, now saturated, and by his sword. If he had been wearing armour, he would have sunk to the bottom and stayed there for ever. But at last his head broke the surface and he gasped for breath.

He had swum a good deal as a boy, but that was many years ago. All the same, the technique came back to him, more or less, and he was able to keep his head above water. He began to thrash his way towards the north bank. Beside him, he recognized the chestnut coat and black mane of Griff, doing the same as he was, swimming for the nearest shore.

The horse’s gait changed, and he realized it had found its footing. Ralph let his feet drift down to the river bed and found that he, too, could stand. He waded through the shallows. The sticky mud of the bottom seemed to be trying to suck him back into midstream. Griff hauled himself on to a narrow strip of beach below the priory wall. Ralph did the same.

He turned and looked back. There were several hundred people in the water, many bleeding, many screaming, many dead. Near the edge he saw a figure wearing the red-and-black livery of the earl of Shiring, floating face down. He stepped back into the water, grabbed the man by the belt, and hauled him ashore.

He turned the heavy body over, and his heart lurched with recognition. It was his friend Stephen. The face was unmarked, but Stephen’s chest appeared to have caved in. His eyes were wide open, showing no sign of life. There was no breath. The body was too damaged even for Ralph to feel for a heartbeat. A few minutes ago I was envying him, Ralph thought. Now I’m the lucky one.

Feeling irrationally guilty, he closed Stephen’s eyes.

He thought of his parents. Only a few minutes ago he had left them in the stable yard. Even if they had followed him, they could not have reached the bridge yet. They must be safe.

Where was Lady Philippa? Ralph cast his mind back to the scene on the bridge just before the collapse. Lord William and Philippa had been at the rear of the earl’s procession, and had not yet ridden on to the bridge.

But the earl had.

Ralph could picture the scene quite clearly. Earl Roland had been close behind him, impatiently urging his horse, Victory, forward through the gap in the crowd made by Ralph on Griff. Roland must have fallen close to Ralph.

Ralph heard again his father’s words: “Be constantly on the alert for ways to please the earl.” Perhaps this was the big chance he had been looking for, he thought excitedly. He might not have to wait for a war. He could distinguish himself today. He would save Earl Roland – or even just Victory.

The thought energized him. He scanned the river. The earl had been wearing a distinctive purple robe and a black velvet surcoat. It was hard to pick out an individual in the seething mass of bodies, alive and dead. Then he saw a black stallion with a distinctive white patch over one eye, and his heart leaped: it was Roland’s mount. Victory was thrashing around in the water, apparently unable to swim in a straight line, probably having broken one or more legs.

Floating next to the horse was a tall figure in a purple robe.

This was Ralph’s moment.

He threw off his outer clothing: it would hamper his swimming. Wearing only his underdrawers, he plunged back into the river and swam towards the earl. He had to force his way through a mass of men, women and children. Many of the living grabbed desperately at him, delaying his progress. He fought them off ruthlessly with merciless blows of his fists.

At last he reached Victory. The beast’s struggles were weakening. It was still for a moment, and started to sink; then, when its head dipped into the water, it began to struggle again. “Easy, boy, easy,” Ralph said into its ear; but he felt sure it was going to drown.

Roland was floating on his back, eyes closed, unconscious or dead. One foot was caught in a stirrup, and that seemed to be what was keeping his body from going down. He had lost his hat, and the top of his head was a bloody mess. Ralph could not see how a man could live after such an injury. All the same, he would rescue him. There would surely be some reward just for the corpse, when it was that of an earl.

He tried to pull Roland’s foot from the stirrup, but he found the strap was twisted tight around the ankle. He felt for his knife and realized it was attached to his belt, which he had left on the shore with the rest of his outer clothing. But the earl had weapons. Ralph fumbled Roland’s dagger from its sheath.

Victory’s convulsions made it difficult for Ralph to cut the strap. Each time he caught hold of the stirrup, the dying horse jerked it from his grasp before he could bring the knife to bear on the leather. He cut the back of his own hand in the struggle. Finally he braced himself against the horse’s side with both feet, for stability, and in that position he was able to slice through the stirrup strap.

Now he had to drag the unconscious earl to the bank. Ralph was not a strong swimmer, and he was already panting with exhaustion. To make matters worse, he could not breathe through his broken nose, so his mouth kept filling with river water. He paused for a moment, leaning his weight on the doomed Victory, trying to catch his breath; but the earl’s body, now unsupported, began to sink, and Ralph realized he could not rest.

He grabbed Roland’s ankle in his right hand and started to swim for the shore. He found it harder to keep his head above the surface when he had only one hand free for swimming. He did not look back at Roland: if the earl’s head went under water there was nothing Ralph could do about it. After a few seconds he was gasping for air and his limbs were aching.

He was not used to this. He was young and strong, and his whole life was spent hunting, jousting and fencing. He could ride all day then win a wrestling match the same evening. But now he seemed to be relying on disused muscles. His neck hurt from the effort of keeping his head up. He could not help breathing water in, and that made him cough and choke. He flapped his left arm madly and just managed to keep himself afloat. He heaved at the bulky body of the earl, made heavier by its water-soaked clothing. He approached the shore with agonizing slowness.

At last he was close enough to put his feet on the river bed. Gulping air, he began to wade, still dragging Roland. When the water was thigh-high he turned and picked up the earl in his arms, and carried him the last few steps to the shore.

He put the body on the ground and collapsed beside it, exhausted. With the last of his energy, he felt the chest. There was a strong heartbeat.

Earl Roland was alive.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04