The Pillars of the Earth (119 page)

Waleran said: “The worst mistake I ever made was to help Philip become prior.”

“They’re going to have to learn that they just can’t do this,” William said.

Waleran looked at him thoughtfully. “What do you want to do?”

“I’m going to sack the town again.” And when I do, I’ll kill Aliena and her lover, he thought; and he looked into the fire, so that his mother should not meet his eyes and read his thoughts.

“I’m not sure you can,” Waleran said.

“I’ve done it before—why shouldn’t I do it again?”

“Last time you had a good reason: the fleece fair.”

“This time it’s the market. They’ve never had King Stephen’s permission for that either.”

“It’s not quite the same. Philip was pushing his luck by holding a fleece fair, and you attacked it immediately. The Sunday market has been going on at Kingsbridge for six years now, and anyway, it’s twenty miles from Shiring so it ought to be licensed.”

William suppressed his anger. He wanted to tell Waleran to stop being such a feeble old woman; but that would never do.

While he was swallowing his protest a steward came into the room and stood silently by the door. Waleran said: “What is it?”

“There’s a man here who insists on seeing you, my lord bishop. Name of Jack Jackson. A builder, from Kingsbridge. Shall I send him away?”

William’s heart raced. It was Aliena’s lover. How had the man happened to come here just when William was plotting his death? Perhaps he had supernatural powers. William was possessed by dread.

“From Kingsbridge?” Waleran said with interest.

Regan said: “He’s the new master builder there, the one who brought the Weeping Madonna from Spain.”

“Interesting,” said Waleran. “Let’s have a look at him.” He said to the steward: “Send him in.”

William stared at the door with superstitious terror. He expected a tall, fearsome man in a black cloak to stride in and point directly at him with an accusing finger. But when Jack came through the door, William was shocked by his youth. Jack could not have been much past twenty. He had red hair and alert blue eyes which flickered over William, paused on Regan—whose frightful facial sores arrested the glance of anyone who was not used to them—and came to rest on Waleran. The builder was not much intimidated by finding himself in the presence of the two most powerful men in the county, but apart from that surprising nonchalance he did not seem very fearsome.

Like William, Waleran sensed the young builder’s insubordinate attitude, and reacted with a coldly haughty voice. “Well, lad, what’s your business with me?”

“The truth,” Jack said. “How many men have you seen hang?”

William caught his breath. It was a shocking and insolent question. He looked at the others. His mother was leaning forward, frowning intently at Jack, as if she might have seen him before and was trying to place him. Waleran was looking coldly amused.

Waleran said: “Is this a riddle? I’ve seen more men hang than I care to count, and there will be another if you don’t speak respectfully.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord bishop,” Jack said, but he still did not sound frightened. “Do you remember all of them?”

“I think so,” Waleran said, and he sounded intrigued despite himself. “I suppose there is a particular one that you’re interested in.”

“Twenty-two years ago, at Shiring, you watched the hanging of a man called Jack Shareburg.”

William heard his mother give a muffled gasp.

“He was a jongleur,” Jack continued. “Do you recall him?”

William felt the atmosphere in the room become tense all of a sudden. There
was
something unnaturally frightful about Jack Jackson; there had to be, for him to have this effect on Waleran and Mother. “I think perhaps I do remember,” Waleran said, and William heard in his voice the strain of self-control. What was going on here?

“I imagine you do,” Jack said, and now he was sounding insolent again. “The man was convicted on the testimony of three people. Two of them are now dead. You were the third.”

Waleran nodded. “He had stolen something from Kingsbridge Priory—a jeweled chalice.”

A flinty look came into Jack’s blue eyes. “He had done nothing of the kind.”

“I caught him myself, with the chalice on him.”

“You lied.”

There was a pause. When Waleran spoke again his tone was mild but his face was as hard as iron. “I may have your tongue ripped out for that,” he said.

“I just want to know why you did it,” Jack said as if he had not heard the grisly threat. “You can be candid here. William is no threat to you, and his mother seems to know all about it already.”

William looked at his mother. It was true, she did have a knowing air. William himself was now completely mystified. It seemed—he hardly dared to hope—that Jack’s visit actually had nothing to do with William and his secret plans to kill Aliena’s lover.

Regan said to Jack: “You’re accusing the bishop of perjury!”

“I shan’t repeat the charge in public,” Jack said coolly. “I’ve got no proof, and anyway I’m not interested in revenge. I would just like to understand why you hanged an innocent man.”

“Get out of here,” Waleran said icily.

Jack nodded as if he had expected no more. Although he had not got answers to his questions, there was a look of satisfaction on his face, as if his suspicions had somehow been confirmed.

William was still baffled by the whole exchange. On impulse, he said: “Wait a moment.”

Jack turned at the door and looked at him with those mocking blue eyes.

“What ...” William swallowed and got his voice under control. “What’s your interest in this? Why did you come here and ask these questions?”

“Because the man they hanged was my father,” Jack said, and he went out.

There was a silence in the room. So Aliena’s lover, the master builder at Kingsbridge, was the son of a thief who had been hanged at Shiring, William thought: so what? But Mother seemed anxious, and Waleran actually looked shaken.

Eventually Waleran said bitterly: “That woman has dogged me for twenty years.” He was normally so guarded that William was shocked to see him letting his feelings show.

“She disappeared after the cathedral fell down,” Regan said. “I thought we’d seen the last of her.”

“Now her son has come to haunt us.” There was something like real fear in Waleran’s voice.

William said: “Why don’t you slap him in irons for accusing you of perjury?”

Waleran threw him a look of scorn, then said: “Your boy’s a damn fool, Regan.”

William realized the charge of perjury must be true. And if he was able to figure that out, so could Jack. “Does anyone else know?”

Regan said: “Prior James confessed his perjury, before he died, to the sub-prior, Remigius. But Remigius has always been on our side against Philip, so he’s no danger. Jack’s mother knows some of it, but not all; otherwise she would have used the information by now. But Jack has traveled around—he may have picked up something his mother didn’t know.”

William saw that this strange story from the past could be used to his advantage. As if it had just occurred to him, he said: “Then let’s kill Jack Jackson.”

Waleran just shook his head contemptuously.

Regan said: “That would serve to draw attention to him and his charges.”

William was disappointed. It had seemed almost providential. He thought about it, while the silence in the room dragged out. Then a new thought came to him, and he said: “Not necessarily.”

They both looked at him skeptically.

“Jack might be killed without drawing attention to him,” William said doggedly.

“All right, tell us how,” Waleran said.

“He could be killed in an attack on Kingsbridge,” William said, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the same look of startled respect on both their faces.

* * *

Jack walked around the building site with Prior Philip late in the afternoon. The ruins of the chancel had been cleared, and the rubble formed two huge heaps on the north side of the priory close. New scaffolding was up, and the masons were rebuilding the fallen walls. Alongside the infirmary was a large stockpile of timber.

“You’re moving along quickly,” Philip said.

“Not as fast as I’d like,” Jack replied.

They inspected the foundations of the transepts. Forty or fifty laborers were down in the deep holes, shoveling mud into buckets, while others at ground level operated the winches that lifted the buckets out of the holes. Huge rough-cut stone blocks for the foundations were stacked nearby.

Jack took Philip into his own workshop. It was much bigger than Tom’s shed had been. One side was completely open, for better light. Half the ground area was occupied by his tracing floor. He had laid planks over the earth, put a wooden border a couple of inches high around the planks, then poured plaster onto the wood until it filled the frame and threatened to overflow the border. When the plaster set, it was hard enough to walk on, but drawings could be scratched on it with a short length of iron wire sharpened to a point. This was where Jack designed the details. He used compasses, a straightedge and a set square. The scratch marks were white and clear when first made, but they faded to gray quite quickly, which meant that new drawings could be made on top of old ones without confusion. It was an idea he had picked up in France.

Most of the rest of the hut was taken up by the bench on which Jack was working in wood, making the templates that would show the masons how to carve the stones. The light was fading: he would do no more woodwork today. He began to put his tools away.

Philip picked up a template. “What’s this for?”

“The plinth at the base of a pier.”

“You prepare things well in advance.”

“I just can’t wait to start building properly.”

These days all their conversations were terse and factual.

Philip put down the template. “I must go in to compline.” He turned away.

“And I shall go and
visit
my family,” Jack said acidly.

Philip paused, turned as if he was going to speak, looked sad, and left.

Jack locked his toolbox. That had been a foolish remark. He had accepted the job on Philip’s terms and it was pointless to complain about it now. But he felt constantly angry with Philip, and he could not always keep it in.

He left the priory close in twilight and went to the little house in the poor quarter where Aliena lived with her brother, Richard. She smiled happily when Jack walked in, but they did not kiss: they never touched one another nowadays, for fear they would become aroused, and then they would either have to part frustrated or give in to their lust and risk being caught breaking their promise to Prior Philip.

Tommy was playing on the floor. He was now a year and half old, and his current obsession was putting things into other things. He had four or five kitchen bowls in front of him, and he tirelessly put the smaller ones inside the larger and tried to put the larger inside the smaller. Jack was very struck by the idea that Tommy did not know instinctively that a large bowl would not fit inside a small one; that this was something human beings had to learn. Tommy was struggling with spatial relationships just as Jack did when he tried to visualize something like the shape of a stone in a curved vault.

Tommy fascinated Jack and made him feel anxious too. Until now Jack had never worried about his ability to find work, hold down a job, and support himself. He had set out to cross France without giving a moment’s thought to the possibility that he might become destitute and starve. But now he wanted security. The need to take care of Tommy was much more compelling than the need to take care of himself. For the first time in his life he had responsibilities.

Aliena put a jug of wine and a spiced cake on the table and sat down opposite Jack. He poured a cup of wine and sipped it gratefully. Aliena put some cake in front of Tommy, but he was not hungry, and he scattered it in the rushes on the floor.

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.