Epic Historial Collection (188 page)

14

K
ingsbridge Cathedral was a place of horror. Wounded people groaned in pain and cried out for help to God, or the saints, or their mothers. Every few minutes, someone searching for a loved one would find him or her dead and would scream with the shock of sudden grief. The living and the dead were grotesquely twisted with broken bones, covered in blood, their clothing ripped and sodden. The stone floor of the church was slippery with water, blood, and riverside mud.

In the middle of the horror, a small zone of calm and efficiency was centered on the figure of Mother Cecilia. Like a small, quick bird, she went from one horizontal figure to the next. She was followed by a little flock of hooded nuns, among them her long-time assistant, Sister Juliana, now respectfully known as Old Julie. As she examined each patient, she gave orders: for washing, for ointments, for bandages, for herbal medicines. In the more serious cases she would summon Mattie Wise, Matthew Barber, or Brother Joseph. She always spoke quietly but clearly, her instructions simple and decisive. She left most patients soothed, and their relatives reassured and hopeful.

It reminded Caris, with dreadful vividness, of the day her mother died. There had been terror and confusion then, though only in her heart. In the same way, Mother Cecilia had seemed to know what to do. Mama had died despite Cecilia's help, just as many of today's wounded would die; but there had been an orderliness about the death, a sense that everything possible had been done.

Some people appealed to the Virgin and the saints when someone was sick, but that only made Caris more uncertain and frightened, for there was no way to know if the spirits would help, or even whether they had heard. Mother Cecilia was not as powerful as the saints, the ten-year-old Caris had known; but all the same her assured, practical presence had given Caris both hope and resignation in a combination that brought peace to her soul.

Now Caris became part of Cecilia's entourage, without really making a decision or even thinking about it. She followed the commands of the most assertive person in the vicinity, just as people had obeyed her directions at the riverside immediately after the collapse, when no one else seemed to know what to do. Cecilia's brisk practicality was infectious, and those around her acquired some of the same cool competence. Caris found herself holding a small bowl of vinegar, while a beautiful novice nun called Mair dipped a rag in it and washed the blood from the face of Susanna Chepstow, the timber merchant's wife.

After that it was nonstop until well after dark. Thanks to the long summer evening, all the floating bodies were retrieved from the river before nightfall—though perhaps no one would ever know how many drowned people had sunk to the bottom or drifted downstream. There was no trace of Crazy Nell, who must have been pulled under by the cart to which she was tied. Unjustly, Friar Murdo had survived, having suffered nothing worse than a twisted ankle, and had limped off to the Bell to recuperate with hot ham and strong ale.

However, the treatment of the injured continued, after nightfall, by candlelight. Some of the nuns became exhausted and had to stop; others were overwhelmed by the scale of the tragedy and fell apart, misunderstanding what they were told and becoming clumsy, so that they had to be dismissed; but Caris and a small core group carried on until there was no more to do. It must have been midnight when the last knot was tied in the last bandage, and Caris staggered across the green to her father's house.

Papa and Petranilla sat together in the dining hall, holding hands, grieving for the death of their brother, Anthony. Edmund's eyes were wet with tears, and Petranilla was crying inconsolably. Caris kissed them both, but she could think of nothing to say. If she had sat down, she would have gone to sleep in the chair; so she climbed the stairs. She got into bed next to Gwenda, who was staying with her, as always. Gwenda was deep in an exhausted sleep, and did not stir.

Caris closed her eyes, her body weary and her heart aching with sorrow.

Her father was mourning one person among the many, but she felt the weight of them all. She thought of her friends, neighbors, and acquaintances lying dead on the cold stone floor of the cathedral; and she imagined the sadness of their parents, their children, their brothers and sisters; and the sheer volume of grief overwhelmed her. She sobbed into her pillow. Without speaking, Gwenda put an arm around her and hugged her. After a few moments exhaustion overtook her, and she fell asleep.

She got up again at dawn. Leaving Gwenda still fast asleep, she returned to the cathedral and continued the work. Most of the injured were sent home. Those who still needed to be watched over—such as the still-unconscious Earl Roland—were moved into the hospital. The dead bodies were laid out in neat rows in the chancel, the eastern end of the church, to await burial.

The time flew by, with hardly a moment to rest. Then, late on Sunday afternoon, Mother Cecilia told Caris to take a break. She looked around and realized that most of the work was done. That was when she started to think of the future.

Until that moment she had felt, unconsciously, that ordinary life was over, and she was living in a new world of horror and tragedy. Now she realized that this, like everything else, would pass. The dead would be buried, the injured would heal, and somehow the town would struggle back to normal. And she remembered that, just before the bridge collapsed, there had been another tragedy, violent and devastating in its own way.

She found Merthin down by the river, with Elfric and Thomas Langley, organizing the cleanup with the help of fifty or more volunteers. Merthin's quarrel with Elfric had clearly been set aside in the emergency. Most of the loose timber had been retrieved from the water and stacked on the bank. But much of the woodwork was still joined together, and a mass of interlocked timber floated on the surface, moving slightly on the rise and fall of the water, with the innocent tranquillity of a great beast after it has killed and eaten.

The men were trying to break up the wreckage into manageable proportions. It was a dangerous job, with a constant risk that the bridge would collapse further and injure the volunteers. They had tied a rope around the central part of the bridge, now partly submerged, and a team of men stood on the bank hauling on the rope. In a boat in midstream were Merthin and giant Mark Webber with an oarsman. When the men on the bank rested, the boat was rowed in close to the wreckage, and Mark, directed by Merthin, attacked the beams with a huge forester's axe. Then the boat moved to a safe distance, Elfric gave a command, and the rope team pulled again.

As Caris watched, a big section of the bridge came free. Everyone cheered, and the men dragged the tangled woodwork to the shore.

The wives of some of the volunteers arrived with loaves of bread and jugs of ale. Thomas Langley ordered a break. While the men were resting, Caris got Merthin on his own. “You can't marry Griselda,” she said without preamble.

The sudden assertion did not surprise him. “I don't know what to do,” he said. “I keep thinking about it.”

“Will you walk with me?”

“All right.”

They left the crowd at the riverside and went up the main street. After the bustle of the Fleece Fair, the town was graveyard quiet. Everyone was staying indoors, tending the sick or mourning the dead. “There can't be many families in town that don't have someone dead or injured,” she said. “There must have been a thousand people on the bridge, either trying to leave town or tormenting Crazy Nell. There are more than a hundred bodies in the church, and we've treated about four hundred wounded.”

“And five hundred lucky ones,” Merthin said.

“We could have been on the bridge, or near it. You and I might be lying on the floor of the chancel, now, cold and still. But we've been given a gift—the rest of our lives. And we mustn't waste that gift because of one mistake.”

“It's not a mistake,” he said sharply. “It's a baby—a person, with a soul.”

“You're a person with a soul, too—an exceptional one. Look at what you've been doing just now. Three people are in charge down there at the river. One is the town's most prosperous builder. Another is the matricularius at the priory. And the third is…a mere apprentice, not yet twenty-one. Yet the townsmen obey you as readily as they obey Elfric and Thomas.”

“That doesn't mean I can shirk my responsibilities.”

They turned into the priory close. The green in front of the cathedral was rutted and trampled from the fair, and there were boggy patches and wide puddles. In the three great west windows of the church Caris could see the reflection of a watery sun and ripped clouds, a picture divided, like a three-sided altarpiece. A bell began to ring for Evensong.

Caris said: “Think how often you've talked of going to see the buildings of Paris and Florence. Will you give all that up?”

“I suppose so. A man can't abandon his wife and child.”

“So you're already thinking of her as your wife.”

He rounded on her. “I'll never think of her as my wife,” he said bitterly. “You know who I love.”

For once she could not think of a clever answer. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came to her. Instead, she felt a constriction in her throat. She blinked away tears, and looked down to hide her emotions.

He grasped her arms and pulled her close to him. “You know, don't you?”

She forced herself to meet his eye. “Do I?” Her vision blurred.

He kissed her mouth. It was a new kind of kiss, different from anything she had experienced before. His lips moved gently but insistently against hers, as if he was determined to remember the moment; and she realized, with dread, that he was thinking this would be their last kiss.

She clung to him, wanting it to go on forever, but all too soon he drew away.

“I love you,” he said. “But I'm going to marry Griselda.”

 

Life and death went on. Children were born and old people died. On Sunday Emma Butchers attacked her adulterous husband, Edward, with his largest cleaver in a fit of jealous rage. On Monday one of Bess Hampton's chickens went missing, and was found boiling in a pot over Glynnie Thompson's kitchen fire, whereupon Glynnie was stripped and flogged by John Constable. On Tuesday Howell Tyler was working on the roof of St. Mark's church when a rotten beam gave way beneath him and he fell, crashing through the ceiling, to the floor below, and died immediately.

By Wednesday the wreckage of the bridge had been cleared, all but the stumps of two of the main piers, and the timber was stacked on the bank. The waterway was open, and barges and rafts were able to leave Kingsbridge for Melcombe with wool and other goods from the Fleece Fair consigned to Flanders and Italy.

When Caris and Edmund went to the riverside to check on progress, Merthin was using the salvaged timbers to build a raft to ferry people across the river. “It's better than a boat,” he explained. “Livestock can walk on and off, and carts can be driven on, too.”

Edmund nodded gloomily. “It will have to do, for the weekly market. Fortunately, we should have a new bridge by the time of the next Fleece Fair.”

“I don't think so,” Merthin said.

“But you told me it would take a year to build a new bridge!”

“A wooden bridge, yes. But if we build another wooden one it, too, will fall down.”

“Why?”

“Let me show you.” Merthin took them to a pile of timber. He pointed to a group of mighty posts. “These formed the piers—they're probably the famous twenty-four best oak trees in the land, given to the priory by the king. Notice the ends.”

Caris could see that the huge posts had originally been sharpened into points, though their outlines had been softened by years under water.

Merthin said: “A timber bridge has no foundations. The posts are simply driven into the riverbed. That's not good enough.”

“But this bridge has stood for hundreds of years!” Edmund said indignantly. He always sounded quarrelsome when he argued.

Merthin was used to him, and paid no attention to his tone of voice. “And now it has fallen down,” he said patiently. “Something has changed. Wooden piers were once firm enough, but no longer.”

“What can have changed? The river is the river.”

“Well, for one thing you built a barn and a jetty on the bank, and protected the property with a wall. Several other merchants did the same. The old mud beach where I used to play on the south shore has mostly gone. So the river can no longer spread itself into the fields. As a result, the water flows faster than it used to—especially after the kind of heavy rain we've had this year.”

“So it will have to be a stone bridge?”

“Yes.”

Edmund looked up and saw Elfric standing by, listening. “Merthin says a stone bridge will take three years.”

Elfric nodded. “Three building seasons.”

Most building was done in the warmer months, Caris knew. Merthin had explained to her that stone walls could not be constructed when there was a risk that the mortar might freeze before it had begun to set.

Elfric went on: “One season for the foundations, one for the arches, and one for the roadbed. After each stage, the mortar must be left for three or four months to set hard before the next stage can be laid on top of it.”