Epic Historial Collection (123 page)

Aliena said: “Jack, I need more money.”

Jack was surprised. “I give you twelve pennies a week. I only make twenty-four.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “You live alone—you don't need as much.”

Jack thought this was rather unreasonable. “But a laborer only gets sixpence a week—and some of them have five or six children!”

Aliena looked cross. “Jack, I don't know how laborers' wives keep house—I never learned. And I don't spend anything on myself. But you have dinner here every day. And there's Richard—”

“Well, what about Richard?” Jack said angrily. “Why doesn't he support himself?”

“He never has done.”

Jack felt that Aliena and Tommy were enough of a burden for him. “I don't know that Richard is my responsibility!”

“Well, he's mine,” she said quietly. “When you took me on you took him too.”

“I don't remember agreeing to that!” he said angrily.

“Don't be cross.”

It was too late: Jack was already cross. “Richard is twenty-three years old—two years older than I am. How come I'm keeping him? Why should I eat dry bread for breakfast and pay for Richard's bacon?”

“Anyway, I'm pregnant again.”

“What?”

“I'm having another baby.”

Jack's anger evaporated. He seized her hand. “That's wonderful!”

“Are you glad?” she said. “I was afraid you'd be angry.”

“Angry! I'm thrilled! I never knew Tommy when he was tiny—now I'll find out what I missed.”

“But what about the extra responsibility, and the money?”

“Oh, to hell with the money. I'm just bad-tempered because we have to live apart. We've got plenty of money. But another baby! I hope it's a girl.” He thought of something, and frowned. “But when…?”

“It must have been just before Prior Philip made us live apart.”

“Maybe on Halloween.” He grinned. “Do you remember that night? You rode me like a horse—”

“I remember,” she said with a blush.

He gazed at her fondly. “I'd like to do you now.”

She smiled. “Me too.”

They held hands across the table.

Richard came in.

He threw the door open and walked inside, hot and dusty, leading a sweating horse. “I've got bad news,” he said, panting.

Aliena picked Tommy up off the floor to get him out of the way of the hooves. Jack said: “What's happened?”

“We must all get out of Kingsbridge tomorrow,” he said.

“But why?”

“William Hamleigh is going to burn the town again on Sunday.”

“No!” Aliena cried.

Jack went cold. He saw again the scene three years ago, when William's horsemen had invaded the fleece fair, with their blazing torches and brutal clubs. He recalled the panic, the screaming, and the smell of burning flesh. He saw again the corpse of his step-father, with his forehead smashed. He felt sick at heart.

“How do you know?” he asked Richard.

“I was in Shiring, and I saw some of William's men buying weapons at the armorer's shop.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“There's more. I followed them into an alehouse and listened to their talk. One of them asked what defenses Kingsbridge had, and another said none.”

Aliena said: “Oh, God, it's true.” She looked at Tommy, and her hand went to her stomach, where the new baby was growing. She looked up, and Jack met her eye. They were both thinking the same.

Richard went on: “Later I got talking to some of the younger ones, who don't know me. I told them about the battle of Lincoln, and so on, and said I was looking for a fight. They told me to go to Earlscastle, but it would have to be today, for they were to leave tomorrow, and the fight would be on Sunday.”

“Sunday,” Jack whispered fearfully.

“I rode out to Earlscastle, to double-check.”

Aliena said: “Richard, that was dangerous.”

“All the signs are there: messengers coming and going, weapons being sharpened, horses exercised, tack cleaned…. There's no doubt of it.” In a voice full of hatred, Richard finished: “No amount of evildoing will satisfy that devil William—he always wants more.” His hand went to his right ear, and he touched the angry scar there with an unconscious nervous gesture.

Jack studied Richard for a moment. He was an idler and a wastrel, but in one area his judgment was trustworthy: the military. If he said William was planning a raid he was probably right. “This is a catastrophe,” Jack said, half to himself. Kingsbridge was just beginning to recover from the slump. Three years ago the fleece fair had burned, two years ago the cathedral had fallen on the congregation, and now this. People would say the bad luck of Kingsbridge had come back. Even if they managed to avoid bloodshed by fleeing, Kingsbridge would be ruined. No one would want to live here, come to the market or work here. It could even stop the building of the cathedral.

Aliena said: “We must tell Prior Philip—right away.”

Jack nodded. “The monks will be at supper. Let's go.”

Aliena picked up Tommy and they all hurried up the hill toward the monastery in the dusk.

Richard said: “When the cathedral is finished, they can hold the market inside it. That will protect it from raids.”

Jack said: “But meanwhile we need the income from the market to pay for the cathedral.”

Richard, Aliena and Tommy waited outside while Jack went into the monks' refectory. A young monk was reading aloud in Latin while the others ate in silence. Jack recognized an apocalyptic passage from the Book of Revelation. He stood in the doorway and caught Philip's eye. Philip was surprised to see him, but got up from the table and came out straightaway.

“Bad news,” Jack said grimly. “I'll let Richard tell you.”

They talked in the cavernous gloom of the repaired chancel. Richard gave Philip the details in a few sentences. When he had finished, Philip said: “But we aren't holding a fleece fair—just a little market!”

Aliena said: “At least we've got the chance to evacuate the town tomorrow. Nobody need get hurt. And we can rebuild our houses, as we did last time.”

“Unless William decides to hunt down the evacuees,” Richard said grimly. “I wouldn't put it past him.”

“Even if we all escape, I think it means the end of the market,” Philip said gloomily. “People will be afraid to set up stalls in Kingsbridge after this.”

Jack said: “It may mean the end of the cathedral. In the last ten years the church has burned down once and fallen down once, and a lot of masons were killed when the town burned. Another disaster would be the last, I think. People would say it's bad luck.”

Philip looked stricken. He was not yet forty years old, Jack reckoned, but his face was becoming lined, and his fringe of hair was now more gray than black. Nevertheless, there was a dangerous light in his clear blue eyes as he said: “I'm not going to accept this. I don't think it's the will of God.”

Jack wondered what on earth he was talking about. How could he “not accept” it? The chickens might as well say they refused to accept the fox, for all the difference it would make to their fate. “So what are you going to do?” Jack said skeptically. “Pray that William will fall out of bed tonight and break his neck?”

Richard was excited by the idea of resistance. “Let's fight,” he said. “Why not? There are hundreds of us. William will bring fifty men, a hundred at most—we could win by sheer weight of numbers.”

Aliena protested: “And how many of our people will be killed?”

Philip was shaking his head. “Monks don't fight,” he said regretfully. “And I can't ask townspeople to give their lives when I'm not prepared to risk my own.”

Jack said: “Don't count on my masons fighting, either. It's not part of their job.”

Philip looked at Richard, who was the nearest they had to a military expert. “Is there any way we can defend the town without a pitched battle?”

“Not without town walls,” Richard said. “We've got nothing to put in front of the enemy but bodies.”

“Town walls,” Jack said thoughtfully.

Richard said: “We could challenge William to settle the issue by single combat—a fight between champions. But I don't suppose he would agree to it.”

“Town walls would do it?” Jack said.

Richard said impatiently: “They might save us another time, but not now. We can't build town walls overnight.”

“Can't we?”

“Of course not, don't be—”

“Shut up, Richard,” Philip said forcefully. He looked expectantly at Jack. “What's on your mind?”

“A wall is not that hard to build,” Jack said.

“Go on.”

Jack's mind was spinning. The others were listening with bated breath. He said: “There are no arches, no vaults, no windows, no roof…. A wall
can
be built overnight, if you've got the men and materials.”

“What would we build it of?” Philip said.

“Look around you,” Jack said. “Here are ready-cut stone blocks intended for the foundations. There is a stack of timber bigger than a house. In the graveyard is a heap of rubble from the collapse. Down at the riverside there's another huge stack of stone from the quarry. There's no shortage of materials.”

“And the town is full of builders,” Philip said.

Jack nodded. “The monks can do the organizing. The builders can do the skilled work. And for laborers we'll have the entire population of the town.” He was thinking rapidly. “The wall would have to run all along the nearside bank of the river. We'd dismantle the bridge. Then we'd have to take the wall up the hill alongside the poor quarter to join up with the east wall of the priory…out to the north…and down the hill to the riverbank again. I don't know whether there's enough stone for that….”

Richard said: “It doesn't have to be stone to be effective. A simple ditch, with an earth rampart made of the mud dug out of the ditch, will serve the purpose, especially in a place where the enemy is attacking uphill.”

“Surely stone is better,” Jack said.

“Better, but not essential. The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he's in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position.”

“Bombard him?” Aliena said. “With what?”

“Stones, boiling oil, arrows—there's a bow in most households in the town—”

Aliena shuddered and said: “So we still end up fighting, after all.”

“But not hand to hand, not quite.”

Jack felt torn. The safest course, in all probability, was for everyone to take refuge in the forest, in the hope that William would be satisfied with burning the houses. But even then there was a risk that he and his men would hunt the townspeople down. Would the danger be greater if they all stayed here, behind a town wall? If something went wrong, and William and his men found a way to breach the wall, the carnage would be appalling. Jack looked at Aliena and Tommy, and thought of the new child growing inside Aliena. “Is there a middle course?” he said. “We could evacuate the women and children, and the men could stay and defend the walls.”

“No, thank you,” Aliena said firmly. “That's the worst of both worlds. We would have no town walls and no menfolk to fight for us either.”

She was right, Jack realized. Town walls were no good without people to defend them, and the women and children could not be left unguarded in the forest: William might leave the town alone and kill the women.

Philip said: “Jack, you're the builder. Can we put up a town wall in one day?”

“I've never built a town wall,” Jack said. “There's no question of drawing plans, of course. We'd have to assign a craftsman to each section and let him use his judgment. The mortar will hardly be set by Sunday morning. It will be the worst-built wall in England. But yes, we can do it.”

Philip turned to Richard. “You've seen battles. If we build a wall, can we hold William off?”

“Certainly,” Richard said. “He will come prepared for a lightning raid, not a siege. If he finds a fortified town here there will be nothing he can do.”

Finally Philip looked at Aliena. “You're one of the vulnerable people, with a child to protect. What do you think? Should we run to the forest, and hope William doesn't come after us, or stay here and build a wall to keep him out?”

Jack held his breath.

“It's not just a question of safety,” Aliena said after a pause. “Philip, you've dedicated your life to this priory. Jack, the cathedral is your dream. If we run away, you'll lose everything you've lived for. And as for me…Well, I have a special reason for wanting to see William Hamleigh's power curbed. I say we stay.”