The Pillars of the Earth (106 page)

The flow of water slowed, but Alfred’s bed was soaked. He was going to be furious, she thought fearfully; and then she remembered that he was going to be furious anyway, for he would know that the baby was not his child, and she thought: Oh, God, what am I going to do?

The back pain came again, and she realized that this must be what they called labor pains. She forgot about Alfred. She was about to give birth. She was too frightened to go through with it alone. She wanted someone to help her. She decided to go to the church.

She swung her legs off the bed. Another spasm took her, and she paused, her face screwed up in pain, until it went away. Then she got off the bed and left the house.

Her mind was in a whirl as she staggered along the muddy street. When she was at the priory gate the pain came again, and she had to lean against the wall and grit her teeth until it passed. Then she went into the priory close.

Most of the population of the town was crowded into the high tunnel of the chancel and the lower tunnels of the two side aisles. The altar was at the far end. The new church was peculiar in appearance: the rounded stone ceiling would eventually have a triangular wooden roof over it, but now it looked unprotected, like a bald man without a hat. The congregation stood with their backs to Aliena.

As she lurched toward the cathedral, the bishop, Waleran Bigod, got up to speak. She saw, as if in a nightmare, that William Hamleigh was standing beside him. Bishop Waleran’s words penetrated her distress. “... with great pride and pleasure that I have to tell you that the Lord King, Stephen, has confirmed Lord William as the earl of Shiring.”

Despite her pain and fear Aliena was horrified to hear this. For six years, ever since the awful day when they had seen their father in the Winchester jailhouse, she had dedicated her life to winning back the family property. She and Richard had survived robbers and rapists, conflagration and civil war. Several times the prize had seemed to be within their grasp. But now they had lost it.

The congregation murmured angrily. They had all suffered at William’s hands and they still lived in fear of him. They were not happy to see him honored by the king who was supposed to protect them. Aliena looked around for Richard, to see how he was taking this terminal blow; but she could not locate him.

Prior Philip stood up with a face like thunder and started the hymn. The congregation began halfheartedly to sing. Aliena leaned against a column as another contraction seized her. She was at the back of the crowd and nobody noticed her. Somehow the bad news had calmed her. I’m only having a baby, she thought; it happens every day. I just need to find Martha or Richard, and they will take care of everything.

When the pain passed she pushed her way into the congregation, looking for Martha. There was a group of women in the low tunnel of the north aisle, and she made for them. People looked curiously at her, but their attention was distracted by something else: a strange noise like rumbling. At first it was hardly distinguishable from the singing, but the singing quickly died away as the rumbling got louder.

Aliena reached the group of women. They were looking around anxiously for the source of the noise. Aliena touched one of them on the shoulder and said: “Have you seen Martha, my sister-in-law?”

The woman looked at her, and Aliena recognized the tanner’s wife, Hilda. “Martha’s on the other side, I think,” Hilda said; then the rumbling became deafening and she looked away.

Aliena followed her gaze. In the middle of the church everyone was looking up, toward the top of the walls. The people in the side aisles craned their necks to peer through the arches of the arcade. Someone screamed. Aliena saw a crack appear in the far wall, running between two neighboring windows in the clerestory. As she looked, several huge pieces of masonry dropped from above into the crowd in the middle of the church. There was a cacophony of screaming and shouting, and everyone turned to flee.

The ground beneath her feet shook. Even as she tried to push her way out of the church she was aware that the high walls were spreading apart at the top, and the round barrel of the vault was cracking up. Hilda the tanner’s wife fell in front of her, and Aliena tripped over the prone figure and went down herself. A shower of small stones spattered her as she tried to get up. Then the low roof of the aisle cracked and fell in, something hit her head, and everything went black.

Philip had begun the service feeling proud and grateful. It had been a close thing, but the vault was finished in time. In fact, only three of the four bays of the chancel had been vaulted, for the fourth could not be done until the crossing was built and the ragged-ended chancel walls were joined to the transepts. However, three bays were enough. All the builders’ equipment had been ruthlessly cleared out: the tools, the piles of stone and timber, the scaffolding poles and hurdles, the heaps of rubble and the rubbish. The chancel had been swept clean. The monks had whitewashed the stonework and painted straight red lines on the mortar, making the pointing look neater than it really was, in accordance with custom. The altar and the bishop’s throne had been moved up from the crypt. However, the bones of the saint, in their stone casket, were still down there: moving them was a solemn ceremony, called translation, which was to be the climax of today’s service. As the service had begun, with the bishop on his throne, the monks in new robes lined up behind the altar, and the people of the town massed in the body of the church and crowded into the aisles, Philip had felt fulfilled, and he had thanked God for bringing him successfully to the end of the first, crucial stage in the rebuilding of the cathedral.

When Waleran had made his announcement about William, Philip had been furious. It was so obviously timed to mar the triumph of the occasion and remind the townspeople that they were still at the mercy of their savage overlord. Philip had been casting about wildly for some adequate response when the rumbling started.

It was like a nightmare that Philip sometimes had, in which he was walking on the scaffolding, very high up, perfectly confident of his safety, when he noticed a loose knot in the ropes binding the scaffolding poles together—nothing very serious—but when he bent to tighten the knot, the hurdle beneath him tilted a little, not much at first but enough to make him stumble, and then, in a flash, he was falling through the vast space of the chancel of the cathedral, falling sickeningly fast, and he knew he was about to die.

The rumbling was at first mystifying. For a moment or two he thought it was thunder; then it grew too loud, and the people stopped singing. Still Philip thought it was only some strange phenomenon, shortly to be explained, whose worst effect would be to interrupt the service. Then he looked up.

In the third bay, where the falsework had come down only this morning, cracks were appearing in the masonry, high on the walls, at the clerestory level. They appeared suddenly and flashed across the wall from one clerestory window to the next like striking snakes. Philip’s first reaction was disappointment: he had been happy that the chancel was finished, but now he would have to undertake repairs, and all the people who had been so impressed with the builders’ work would say: “More haste, less speed.” Then the tops of the walls seemed to lean outward, and he realized with an awful sense of horror that this was not merely going to interrupt the service, this was going to be a catastrophe.

Cracks appeared in the curved vault. A big stone became detached from the web of masonry and tumbled slowly through the air. People started screaming and trying to get out of its way. Before Philip could see whether anyone was badly hurt, more stones began to fall. The congregation panicked, pushing and shoving and trampling on one another as they tried to dodge the falling stones. Philip had the wild thought that this was another attack of some kind by William Hamleigh; then he saw William, at the front of the congregation, battering people around him in a terrified bid to escape, and realized that William would not have done this to himself.

Most people were trying to move away from the altar, to get out of the cathedral through the open west end. But it was the westernmost part of the building, the open end, that was collapsing. The problem was in the third bay. In the second bay, where Philip was, the vault seemed to be holding; and behind him, in the first bay where the monks were lined up, it looked solid. At that end the opposite walls were held together by the east facade.

He saw little Jonathan, with Johnny Eightpence, both huddled at the far end of the north aisle. They were safer there than anywhere, Philip decided; and then he realized that he should try to get the rest of his flock to safety. “Come this way!” he shouted. “Everybody! Move this way!” Whether they heard him or not, they took no notice.

In the third bay, the tops of the walls crumbled, falling outward, and the entire vault collapsed, large and small stones falling through the air like a lethal hailstorm to land on the hysterical congregation. Philip darted forward and grabbed a citizen. “Go back!” he yelled, and shoved the man toward the east end. The startled man saw the monks huddled against the far wall and dashed to join them. Philip did the same to two women. The people with them realized what he was doing and moved east without being pushed. Other people began to get the idea, and a general move east began among those who had been at the front of the congregation. Looking up for an instant, Philip was appalled to see that the second bay was going to go: the same cracks were snaking across the clerestory and frosting the vault directly over his head. He continued to herd people to the safety of the east end, knowing that every person he moved might be a life saved. A rain of crumbled mortar fell on his shaved head, and then the stones started to come down. The people were scattering. Some had taken refuge in the shelter of the side aisles; some were crowded up against the east wall, among them Bishop Waleran; others were still trying to crowd out of the west end, crawling over the fallen rubble and bodies in the third bay. A stone hit Philip’s shoulder. It was a glancing blow but it hurt. He put his hands over his head and looked around wildly. He was alone in the middle of the second bay: everyone else was around the edges of the danger zone. He had done all he could. He ran to the east end.

There he turned again and looked up. The clerestory of the second bay was collapsing now, and the vault was falling into the chancel, in exact replication of what had happened in the third bay; but there were fewer victims, because the people had had a chance to get out of the way, and because the roofs of the side aisles appeared to be holding there, whereas in the third bay they had given way. Everyone in the crowd at the east end moved back, pressing up against the wall, and all faces were turned up, watching the vault, to see whether the collapse would spread to the first bay. The crash of falling masonry seemed to become less loud, but a fog of dust and small stones filled the air and for a few moments no one could see anything. Philip held his breath. The dust cleared and he could see the vault again. It had collapsed right up to the edge of the first bay; but now it seemed to be holding.

The dust settled. Everything went quiet. Philip stared aghast at the ruins of his church. Only the first bay remained intact. The walls of the second bay were standing up to the level of the gallery, but in the third and fourth bays only the side aisles were left, and they were badly damaged. The floor of the church was a pile of rubble littered with the still or feebly moving bodies of the dead and injured. Seven years of work and hundreds of pounds in money had been destroyed, and dozens of people had been killed, maybe hundreds, all in a few terrible moments. Philip’s heart ached for the wasted work and the lost people, and for the widows and orphans left behind; and his eyes filled with bitter tears.

A harsh voice spoke in his ear. “This is what comes of your damned arrogance, Philip!”

He turned around to see Bishop Waleran, his black clothes coated with dust, glaring at him triumphantly. Philip felt as if he had been stabbed. To see a tragedy such as this was heartbreaking, but to be
blamed
for it was unbearable. He wanted to say
I only tried to do my best!
but the words would not come: his throat seemed constricted and he could not speak.

His eye lit on Johnny Eightpence and little Jonathan, emerging from the shelter of the aisle, and he suddenly remembered his responsibilities. There would be plenty of time later to agonize over who was to blame. Right now there were scores of people injured and many more trapped in the rubble. He had to organize the rescue operation. He glared at Bishop Waleran and said fiercely: “Get out of my way.” The startled bishop stepped aside, and Philip leaped up on the altar.

“Listen to me!” he called out at the top of his voice. “We have to take care of the wounded, rescue people who are trapped, and then bury the dead and pray for their souls. I’m going to appoint three leaders to organize this.” He looked at the faces all around him, checking to see who was still alive and well. He spotted Alfred. “Alfred Builder is in charge of moving rubble and rescuing trapped people, and I want all the masons and wrights to work with him.” Looking at the monks, he was relieved to see his trusted confidant, Milius, unhurt. “Milius Bursar is responsible for moving the dead and injured out of the church, and he will need strong young helpers. Randolph Infirmarer will take care of the wounded once they’re out of this mess, and the older ones can help him, especially the older women. Right—let’s begin.” He jumped down from the altar. There was a hubbub of speech as people started to give orders and ask questions.

Philip went over to Alfred, who was looking shaken and scared. If anyone was to blame for this it was he, as master builder, but this was no time for recriminations. Philip said: “Divide your people into teams and give them separate areas to work.”

Alfred looked blank for a moment; then his face cleared. “Yes. Right. We’ll start at the west end and clear rubble out into the open space.”

“Good.” Philip left him and pushed through the crowd to Milius. He heard Milius say: “Carry the wounded well clear of the church and put them on the grass. Take the dead bodies out to the north side.” He moved away, content as always to trust Milius to do the right thing. He saw Randolph Infirmarer clambering over the rubble and hurried after him. They both picked their way across the piles of ruined stonework. Outside the church at the west end was a crowd of people who had managed to get out before the worst of the collapse and so escaped injury. “Use those people,” Philip said to Randolph. “Send someone to the infirmary to fetch your equipment and supplies. Have a few of them go to the kitchen for hot water. Ask the cellarer for strong wine for those who need reviving. Make sure you lay the dead and injured out in neat lines with spaces between them, so that your helpers don’t fall over the bodies.”