Pillars of the Earth, book 2 15 страница

Gwenda said: “What about my love potion?”

“I’ll finish making it,” Mattie said. “Caris is in too much of a hurry.”

“Thank you,” Caris said, and she went out.

She marched down to the riverside, but for once Merthin was not there. She failed to find him at Elfric’s house either. She decided he must be in the mason’s loft.

In the west front of the cathedral, neatly fitted into one of the towers, was a work room for the master mason. Caris reached it by climbing a narrow spiral staircase in a buttress of the tower. It was a wide room, well lit by tall lancet windows. All along one wall were stacked the beautifully shaped wooden templates used by the original cathedral stone carvers, carefully preserved and used now for repairs.

Underfoot was the tracing floor. The floorboards were covered with a layer of plaster, and the original master mason, Jack Builder, had scratched his plans in the mortar with iron drawing instruments. The marks thus made were white at first, but they faded over time, and new drawings could be scratched on top of the old. When there were so many designs that it became hard to tell the new from the old, a fresh layer of plaster was laid on top, and the process began again.

Parchment, the thin leather on which monks copied out the books of the Bible, was much too expensive to be used for drawings. In Caris’s lifetime a new writing material had appeared, paper, but it came from the Arabs, so monks rejected it as a heathen Muslim invention. Anyway, it had to be imported from Italy and was no cheaper than parchment. And the tracing floor had another advantage: a carpenter could lay a piece of wood on the floor, on top of the drawing, and carve his template exactly to the lines drawn by the master mason.

Merthin was kneeling on the floor, carving a piece of oak in accordance with a drawing, but he was not making a template. He was carving a cog wheel with sixteen teeth. On the floor close by was another, smaller wheel, and Merthin stopped carving for a moment to put the two together and see how well they fitted. Caris had seen such cogs, or gears, in water mills, connecting the mill paddle to the grindstone.

He must have heard her footsteps on the stone staircase, but he was too absorbed in his work to glance up. She regarded him for a second, anger competing with love in her heart. He had the look of total concentration that she knew so well: his slight body bent over his work, his strong hands and dextrous fingers making fine adjustments, his face immobile, his gaze unwavering. He had the perfect grace of a young deer bending its head to drink from a stream. This was what a man looked like, she thought, when he was doing what he was born to do. He was in a state like happiness, but more profound. He was fulfilling his destiny.

She burst out: “Why did you lie to me?”

His chisel slipped. He cried out in pain and looked at his finger. “Christ,” he said, and put his finger in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Caris said. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing much. When did I lie to you?”

“You gave me the impression that Griselda seduced you one time. The truth is that the two of you have been at it for months.”

“No, we haven’t.” He sucked his bleeding finger.

“She’s three months pregnant.”

“She can’t be, it happened two weeks ago.”

“She is, you can tell by her figure.”

“Can you?”

“Mattie Wise told me. Why did you lie?”

He looked her in the eye. “But I didn’t lie,” he said. “It happened on the Sunday of Fleece Fair week. That was the first and only time.”

“Then how could she be sure she’s pregnant, after only two weeks?”

“I don’t know. How soon can women tell, anyway?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve never asked. Anyway, three months ago Griselda was still with…”

“Oh, God!” Caris said. A spark of hope flared in her breast. “She was still with her old boyfriend – Thurstan.” The spark blazed into a flame. “It must be his baby, Thurstan’s – not yours. You’re not the father!”

“Is it possible?” Merthin seemed hardly to dare to hope.

“Of course – it explains everything. If she had suddenly fallen in love with you, she’d be after you every chance she gets. But you said she hardly speaks to you.”

“I thought that was because I was reluctant to marry her.”

“She’s never liked you. She just needed a father for her baby. Thurstan ran away – probably when she told him she was pregnant – and you were right there in the house, and stupid enough to fall for her trick. Oh, thank God!”

“Thank Mattie Wise,” said Merthin.

She caught sight of his left hand. Blood was welling from a finger. “Oh, I made you hurt yourself!” she cried. She took his hand and examined the cut. It was small, but deep. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“But it is,” she said, not knowing whether she was talking about the cut or something else. She kissed his hand, feeling his hot blood on her lips. She put his finger in her mouth, sucking the wound clean. It was so intimate that it felt like a sexual act, and she closed her eyes, feeling ecstatic. She swallowed, tasting his blood, and shuddered with pleasure.

*

A week after the bridge collapsed, Merthin had built a ferry.

It was ready at dawn on Saturday morning, in time for the weekly Kingsbridge market. He had worked on it by lamplight all Friday night, and Caris guessed he had not had time to speak to Griselda and tell her he knew the baby was Thurstan’s. Caris and her father came down to the riverside to see the new sensation as the first traders arrived – women from the surrounding villages with baskets of eggs, peasants with cartloads of butter and cheese, and shepherds with flocks of lambs.

Caris admired Merthin’s work. The raft was large enough to carry a horse and cart without taking the beast out of the shafts, and it had a firm wooden railing to keep sheep from falling overboard. New wooden platforms at water level on both banks made it easy for carts to roll on and off. Passengers paid a penny, collected by a monk – the ferry, like the bridge, belonged to the priory.

Most ingenious was the system Merthin had devised for moving the raft from one bank to the other. A long rope ran from the south end of the raft across the river, around a post, back across the river, around a drum and back to the raft, where it was attached again at the north end. The drum was connected by wooden gears to a wheel turned by a pacing ox: Caris had seen Merthin carving the gears yesterday. A lever altered the gears so that the drum turned in either direction, depending on whether the raft was going or coming back – and there was no need to take the ox out of its traces and turn it around.

“It’s quite simple,” Merthin said when she marvelled at it – and it was, when she looked closely. The lever simply lifted one large cog wheel up out of the chain and moved into its place two smaller wheels, the effect being to reverse the direction in which the drum turned. All the same, no one in Kingsbridge had seen anything like it.

During the course of the morning, half the town came to look at Merthin’s amazing new machine. Caris was bursting with pride in him. Elfric stood by, explaining the mechanism to anyone who asked, taking the credit for Merthin’s work.

Caris wondered where Elfric got the nerve. He had destroyed Merthin’s door – an act of violence that would have scandalized the town, had it not been overtaken by the greater tragedy of the bridge collapse. He had beaten Merthin with a stick, and Merthin still had the bruise on his face. And he had colluded in a deception intended to make Merthin marry Griselda and raise another man’s child. Merthin had continued to work with him, feeling that the emergency outweighed their quarrel. But Caris did not know how Elfric could continue to hold his head up.

The ferry was brilliant – but inadequate.

Edmund pointed this out. On the far side of the river, carts and traders were queuing all along the road through the suburbs as far as the eye could see.

“It would go faster with two oxen,” Merthin said.

“Twice as fast?”

“Not quite, no. I could build another ferry.”

“There’s already a second one,” Edmund said, pointing. He was right: Ian Boatman was rowing foot passengers across. Ian could not take carts, he refused livestock and he charged two pence. Normally he had trouble scraping a living: he took a monk across to Leper Island twice a day and found little other business. But today he, too, had a queue.

Merthin said: “Well, you’re right. In the end, a ferry is not a bridge.”

“This is a catastrophe,” Edmund said. “Buonaventura’s news was bad enough. But this – this could kill the town.”

“Then you must have a new bridge.”

“It’s not me, it’s the priory. The prior is dead, and there’s no telling how long they will take to elect a new one. We’ll just have to pressure the acting prior to make a decision. I’ll go and see Carlus now. Come with me, Caris.”

They walked up the street and entered the priory. Most visitors had to go to the hospital and tell one of the servants that they wanted to speak to a monk; but Edmund was too important a personage, and too proud, to beg the favour of an audience in that way. The prior was lord of Kingsbridge, but Edmund was alderman of the guild, leader of the merchants who made the town what it was, and he treated the prior as a partner in the governance of the town. Besides, for the last thirteen years the prior had been his younger brother. So he went straight to the prior’s house on the north side of the cathedral.

It was a timber-framed house like Edmund’s, with a hall and a parlour on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. There was no kitchen, for the prior’s meals were prepared in the monastery kitchen. Many bishops and priors lived in palaces – and the bishop of Kingsbridge had a fine place in Shiring – but the prior of Kingsbridge lived modestly. However, the chairs were comfortable, the wall was hung with tapestries of Bible scenes, and there was a big fireplace to keep the house cosy in winter.

Caris and Edmund arrived mid-morning, the time when younger monks were supposed to labour, and their elders to read. Edmund and Caris found Blind Carlus in the hall of the prior’s house, deep in conversation with Simeon, the treasurer. “We must talk about the new bridge,” Edmund said immediately.

“Very well, Edmund,” Carlus said, recognizing him by his voice. The welcome was not warm, Caris noted, and she wondered if they had come at a bad time.

Edmund was just as sensitive as she to atmosphere, but he always blustered through. Now he took a chair and said: “When do you think you’ll hold the election for the new prior?”

“You can sit down too, Caris,” said Carlus. She had no idea how he knew she was there. “No date has been set for the election,” he went on. “Earl Roland has the right to nominate a candidate, but he has not yet recovered consciousness.”

“We can’t wait,” Edmund said. Caris thought he was being too abrupt, but this was his way, so she said nothing. “We have to start work on the new bridge right away,” her father continued. “Timber’s no good, we have to build in stone. It’s going to take three years – four, if we delay.”

“A stone bridge?”

“It’s essential. I’ve been talking to Elfric and Merthin. Another wooden bridge would fall down like the old.”

“But the cost!”

“About two hundred and fifty pounds, depending on the design. That’s Elfric’s calculation.”

Brother Simeon said: “A new wooden bridge would cost fifty pounds, and Prior Anthony rejected that a week ago because of the price.”

“And look at the result! A hundred people dead, many more injured, livestock and carts lost, the prior dead and the earl at death’s door.”

Carlus said stiffly: “I hope you don’t mean to blame all that on the late Prior Anthony.”

“We can’t pretend his decision worked out well.”

“God has punished us for sin.”

Edmund sighed. Caris felt frustrated. Whenever they were in the wrong, monks would bring God into the argument. Edmund said: “It is hard for us mere men to know God’s intentions. But one thing we do know is that, without a bridge, this town will die. We’re already losing out to Shiring. Unless we build a new stone bridge as fast as we possibly can, Kingsbridge will soon become a small village.”

“That may be God’s plan for us.”

Edmund began to show his exasperation. “Is it possible that God is so displeased with you monks? For, believe me, if the Fleece Fair and the Kingsbridge market die, there will not be a priory here with twenty-five monks and forty nuns and fifty employees, and a hospital and a choir and a school. There may not be a cathedral, either. The bishop of Kingsbridge has always lived in Shiring – what if the prosperous merchants there offer to build him a splendid new cathedral in their own town, out of the profits from their ever-growing market? No Kingsbridge market, no town, no cathedral, no priory – is that what you want?”

Carlus looked dismayed. Clearly it had not occurred to him that the long-term consequences of the bridge collapse could actually affect the status of the priory.

But Simeon said: “If the priory can’t afford to build a wooden bridge, there’s certainly no prospect of a stone one.”

“But you must!”

“Will the masons work free?”

“Certainly not. They have to feed their families. But we’ve already explained how the townspeople could raise the money and lend it to the priory against the security of the bridge tolls.”

“And take away our income from the bridge!” Simeon said indignantly. “You’re back to that swindle, are you?”

Caris put in: “You’ve got no bridge tolls at all, now.”

“On the contrary, we’re collecting fares on the ferry.”

“You found the money to pay Elfric for that.”

“A lot less than a bridge – and even so it emptied our coffers.”

“The fares will never amount to much – the ferry is too slow.”

“The time may come, in the future, when the priory is able to build a new bridge. God will send the means, if he wishes it. And then we will still have the tolls.”

Edmund said: “God has already sent the means. He inspired my daughter to dream up a way of raising the money that has never been thought of before.”

Carlus said primly: “Please leave it to us to decide what God has done.”

“Very well.” Edmund stood up, and Caris did the same. “I’m very sorry you’re taking this attitude. It’s a catastrophe for Kingsbridge and everyone who lives here, including the monks.”

“I must be guided by God, not you.”

Edmund and Caris turned to leave.

“One more thing, if I may,” said Carlus.

Edmund turned at the door. “Of course.”

“It’s not acceptable for lay people to enter priory buildings at will. Next time you wish to see me, please come to the hospital, and send a novice or a priory servant to seek me out, in the usual way.”

“I’m alderman of the parish guild!” Edmund protested. “I’ve always had direct access to the prior.”

“No doubt the fact that Prior Anthony was your brother made him reluctant to impose the usual rules. But those days are over.”

Caris looked at her father’s face. He was repressing fury. “Very well,” he said tightly.

“God bless you.”

Edmund went out, and Caris followed.

They walked across the muddy green together, passing a pitifully small cluster of market stalls. Caris felt the weight of her father’s obligations. Most people just worried about feeding their families. Edmund worried about the entire town. She glanced at him and saw that his expression was twisted into an anxious frown. Unlike Carlus, Edmund would not throw his hands in the air and say that God’s will would be done. He was racking his brains for a solution to the problem. She felt a surge of compassion for him, straining to do the right thing with no help from the powerful priory. He never complained of the responsibility, he just took it on. It made her want to weep.

They left the precincts and crossed the main street. As they came to their front door, Caris said: “What are we going to do?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said her father. “We’ve got to make sure Carlus doesn’t get elected prior.”

Godwyn wanted to be prior of Kingsbridge. He longed for it with all his heart. He itched to reform the priory’s finances, tightening up the management of its lands and other assets, so that the monks no longer had to go to Mother Cecilia for money. He yearned for the stricter separation of monks from nuns, and both from townspeople, so that they might all breathe the pure air of sanctity. But as well as these irreproachable motives, there was something else. He lusted for the authority and distinction of the title. At night, in his imagination, he was already prior.

“Clean up that mess in the cloister!” he would say to a monk.

“Yes, Father Prior, right away.”

Godwyn loved the sound of Father Prior.

“Good day, Bishop Richard,” he would say, not obsequiously, but with friendly courtesy.

And Bishop Richard would reply, as one distinguished clergyman to another: “And a good day to you, too, Prior Godwyn.”

“I trust everything is to your satisfaction, archbishop?” he might say, more deferentially this time, but still as a junior colleague of the great man, rather than as an underling.

“Oh, yes, Godwyn, you’ve done extraordinarily well here.”

“Your reverence is very kind.”

And perhaps, one day, strolling in the cloister side by side with a richly dressed potentate: “Your majesty does us great honour to visit our humble priory.”

“Thank you, Father Godwyn, but I come to ask your advice.”

He wanted this position – but he was not sure how to get it. He pondered the question all week, as he supervised a hundred burials, and planned the big Sunday service that would be both Anthony’s funeral and a remembrance for the souls of all the Kingsbridge dead.

Meanwhile, he spoke to no one of his hopes. It was only ten days ago that he had learned the price of being guileless. He had gone to the chapter with Timothy’s Book and a strong argument for reform – and the old guard had turned on him with perfect coordination, as if they had rehearsed it, and squashed him like a frog under a cartwheel.

He would not let that happen again.

On Sunday morning, as the monks were filing into the refectory for breakfast, a novice whispered to Godwyn that his mother would like to see him in the north porch of the cathedral. He slipped away discreetly.

He felt apprehensive as he passed quietly through the cloisters and the church. He could guess what had happened. Something had occurred yesterday to trouble Petranilla. She had lain awake half the night worrying about it. This morning she had woken up at dawn with a plan of action – and he was part of it. She would be at her most impatient and domineering. Her plan would probably be good – but even if it was not she would insist he carried it out.

She stood in the gloom of the porch in a wet cloak – it was raining again. “My brother Edmund came to see Blind Carlus yesterday,” she said. “He tells me Carlus is acting as ii he is already prior, and the election is a mere formality.”

There was an accusing note in her voice as if this was Godwyn’s fault, and he answered defensively. “The old guard swung behind Carlus before Uncle Anthony’s body was cold. They won’t hear talk of rival candidates.”

“Hm. And the youngsters?”

“They want me to run, of course. They liked the way I stood up to Prior Anthony over Timothy’s Book – even though I was overruled. But I’ve said nothing.”

“Any other candidates?”

“Thomas Langley is the outsider. Some disapprove of him because he used to be a knight, and has killed people, by his own admission. But he’s capable, does his job with quiet efficiency, never bullies the novices…”

His mother looked thoughtful. “What’s his story? Why did he become a monk?”

Godwyn’s apprehension began to ease. It seemed she was not going to berate him for inaction. “Thomas just says he always hankered for the sanctified life and, when he came here to get a sword wound attended to, he resolved never to leave.”

“I remember that. It was ten years ago. But I never did hear how he got the wound.”

“Nor I. He doesn’t like to talk about his violent past.”

“Who paid for his admission to the priory?”

“Oddly enough, I don’t know.” Godwyn often marvelled at his mother’s ability to ask the revealing question. She might be tyrannical, but he had to admire her. “It might have been Bishop Richard – I recall him promising the usual gift. But he wouldn’t have had the resources personally – he wasn’t a bishop, then, just a priest. Perhaps he was speaking for Earl Roland.”

“Find out.”

Godwyn hesitated. He would have to look through all the charters in the priory’s library. The librarian, Brother Augustine, would not presume to question the sacrist, but someone else might. Then Godwyn would have the awkwardness of inventing a plausible story to explain what he was doing. If the gift had been cash, rather than land or other property – unusual, but possible – he would have to go through the account rolls…

“What’s the matter?” his mother said sharply.

“Nothing. You’re right.” He reminded himself that her domineering attitude was a sign of her love for him, perhaps the only way she knew how to express it. “There must be a record. Come to think of it…”

“What?”

“A gift like that is usually trumpeted. The prior announces it in church, and calls down blessings on the head of the donor, then preaches a sermon on how people who give lands to the priory are rewarded in heaven. But I don’t remember anything like that happening at the time Thomas came to us.”

“All the more reason to seek out the charter. I think Thomas is a man with a secret. And a secret is always a weakness.”

“I’ll look into it. What do you think I should say to people who want me to stand for election?”

Petranilla smiled slyly. “I think you should tell them you’re not going to be a candidate.”

*

Breakfast was over by the time Godwyn left his mother.

Latecomers were not allowed to eat, by a longstanding rule. But the kitchener, Brother Reynard, could always find a morsel for someone he liked. Godwyn went to the kitchen and got a slice of cheese and a heel of bread. He ate it standing up, while around him the priory servants brought the breakfast bowls back from the refectory and scrubbed out the iron pot in which the porridge had been cooked.

As he ate he mulled over his mother’s advice. The more he thought about it, the cleverer it seemed. Once he had announced he would not stand for election, everything else he said would carry the authority of a disinterested commentator. He could manipulate the election without being suspected of selfish motives. Then he could make his move at the last moment. He felt a warm glow of loving gratitude for the shrewdness of his mother’s restless brain, and the loyalty of her indomitable heart.

Brother Theodoric found him there. Theodoric’s fair complexion was flushed with indignation. “Brother Simeon spoke to us at breakfast about Carlus becoming prior,” he said. “It was all about continuing the wise traditions of Anthony. He’s not going to change anything!”

That was sly, Godwyn thought. Simeon had taken advantage of Godwyn’s absence to say, with authority, things that Godwyn would have challenged if he had been present. He said sympathetically: “That’s disgraceful.”

“I asked whether the other candidates would be permitted to address the monks at breakfast in the same way.”

Godwyn grinned. “Good for you!”

“Simeon said there was no need for other candidates. ‘We’re not holding an archery contest,’ he said. In his view, the decision has already been made: Prior Anthony chose Carlus as his successor by making him sub-prior.”

“That’s complete rubbish.”

“Exactly. The monks are furious.”

This was very good, Godwyn thought. Carlus had offended even his supporters by trying to take away their right to vote. He was undermining his own candidacy.

Theodoric went on: “I think we should press Carlus to withdraw himself from the contest.”

Godwyn wanted to say: Are you mad? He bit his tongue and tried to look as if he were mulling over what Theodoric had said. “Is that the best way to deal with it?” he asked, as if genuinely unsure.

Theodoric was surprised by the question. “What do you mean?”

“You say the brothers are all furious with Carlus and Simeon. If this goes on, they won’t vote for Carlus. But if Carlus withdraws, the old guard will come up with another candidate. They could make a better choice the second time. It might be someone popular – Brother Joseph, for example.”

Theodoric was thunderstruck. “I never thought of it that way.”

“Perhaps we should hope that Carlus remains the choice of the old guard. Everyone knows he’s against any kind of change. The reason he’s a monk is that he likes to know that every day will be the same: he’ll walk the same paths, sit in the same seats, eat and pray and sleep in the same places. Perhaps it’s because of his blindness, though I suspect he might have been like that anyway. The cause doesn’t matter. He believes that nothing here needs changing. Now, there aren’t many monks who are that contented – which makes Carlus relatively easy to beat. A candidate who represented the old guard but advocated a few minor reforms would be much more likely to win.” Godwyn realized he had forgotten to seem tentative and had started laying down the law. Backtracking quickly, he added: “I don’t know – what do you think?”

“I think you’re a genius,” said Theodoric.

I’m not a genius, Godwyn thought, but I learn fast.

He went to the hospital, where he found Philemon sweeping out the private guest rooms upstairs. Lord William was still here, watching over his father, waiting for him to wake up or die. Lady Philippa was with him. Bishop Richard had returned to his palace in Shiring, but was expected back today for the big funeral service.

Godwyn took Philemon to the library. Philemon could barely read, but he would be useful for getting out the charters.

The priory had more than a hundred charters. Most were deeds to landholdings, the majority near Kingsbridge, some scattered around far parts of England and Wales. Other charters entitled the monks to establish their priory, to build a church, to take stone from a quarry on the earl of Shiring’s land without payment, to parcel the land around the priory into house plots and rent them out, to hold courts, to have a weekly market, to charge a toll for crossing the bridge, to have an annual Fleece Fair, and to ship goods by river to Melcombe without paying taxes to the lords of any of the lands through which the river passed.

The documents were written with pen and ink on parchment, thin leather painstakingly cleaned and scraped and bleached and stretched to form a writing surface. Longer ones were rolled up and tied with a fine leather thong. They were kept in an ironbound chest. The chest was locked, but the key was in the library, in a small carved box.

Godwyn frowned with disapproval when he opened the chest. The charters were not lined up in neat stacks, but tumbled in the box in no apparent order. Some had small rips and frayed edges, and all were covered with dust. They should be kept in date sequence, he thought, each one numbered, and the numbered list fixed to the inside of the lid, so that any particular charter could be quickly located. If I become prior…

Philemon took the charters out one by one, blew off the dust, and laid them on a table for Godwyn. Most people disliked Philemon. One or two of the older monks mistrusted him, but Godwyn did not: it was hard to mistrust someone who treated you like a god. Most of the monks were just used to him – he had been around for so long. Godwyn remembered him as a boy, tall and awkward, always hanging around the priory, asking the monks which saint was best to pray to, and had they ever witnessed a miracle.

Most of the charters had originally been written out twice on a single sheet. The word ‘chirograph’ had been written in large letters between the two copies, then the sheet had been cut in half with a zigzag line through the word. Each of the parties kept half the sheet, and the match between the zigzags was taken as proof that both documents were genuine.

Some of the sheets had holes, probably where the living sheep had been bitten by an insect. Others appeared to have been nibbled, at some point in their history, presumably by mice.

They were written in Latin, of course. The more recent ones were easier to read, but the older style of handwriting was sometimes hard for Godwyn to decipher. He scanned each until he came to a date. He was looking for something written soon after All Hallows’ Day ten years ago.

He examined every sheet and found nothing.

The nearest was a deed dated some weeks later in which Earl Roland gave permission to Sir Gerald to transfer his lands to the ownership of the priory, in exchange for which the priory would forgive Gerald’s debts and support him and his wife for the rest of their lives.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04