The Pillars of the Earth (130 page)

William said: “Be that as it may, I don’t think I want to hire a builder whose roofs fall down, no matter what excuses there might be.”

Alfred said: “I’m the only master builder in England who has worked on a new-style church, apart from Jack Jackson.”

William said: “I don’t care about Saint-Denis. I believe my poor mother’s soul will be served just as well by a traditional design.”

Bishop Waleran and Archdeacon Peter exchanged a look. After a moment, Waleran spoke to William in a lowered voice. “One day this church could be Shiring Cathedral,” he said.

Everything became clear to William. Many years ago Waleran had schemed to have the seat of the diocese moved from Kingsbridge to Shiring, but Prior Philip had outmaneuvered him. Now Waleran had revived the plan. This time, it seemed, he would go about it more deviously. Last time he had simply asked the archbishop of Canterbury to grant his request. This time he was going to start building a new church, one large and prestigious enough to be a cathedral, and at the same time develop allies such as Peter within the archbishop’s circle, before making his application. That was all very well, but William just wanted to build a church in memory of his mother, to ease her soul’s passage through the eternal fires; and he resented Waleran’s attempt to take over the scheme for his own purposes. On the other hand, it would be a tremendous boost to Shiring to have the cathedral here, and William would profit from that.

Alfred was saying: “There’s something else.”

Waleran said: “Yes?”

William looked at the two men. Alfred was bigger, stronger and younger than Waleran, and he could have knocked Waleran to the ground with one of his big hands tied behind his back; yet he was acting like the weak man in a confrontation. Years ago it would have made William angry to see a prissy white-skinned priest dominate a strong man, but he no longer got upset about such things: that was the way of the world.

Alfred lowered his voice and said: “I can bring the entire Kingsbridge work force with me.”

Suddenly his three listeners were riveted.

“Say that again,” said Waleran.

“If you hire me as master builder, I’ll bring all the craftsmen from Kingsbridge with me.”

Waleran said warily: “How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“I don’t ask you to trust me,” Alfred said. “Give me the job conditionally. If I don’t do what I promise, I’ll leave without pay.”

For different reasons all three of his listeners hated Prior Philip, and they were immediately gripped by the prospect of striking such a blow at him.

Alfred added: “Several of the masons worked on Saint-Denis.”

Waleran said: “But how can you bring them with you?”

“Does it matter? Let’s just say they prefer me to Jack.”

William thought Alfred was lying about this, and Waleran appeared to think the same, for he tilted back his head and gave Alfred a long look down his pointed nose. However, Alfred had seemed to be telling the truth earlier. Whatever the true reason might be, he seemed convinced that he could bring the Kingsbridge craftsmen with him.

William said: “If they all follow you here, work will come to a complete standstill at Kingsbridge.”

“Yes,” Alfred said. “It will.”

William looked at Waleran and Peter. “We need to talk further about this. He’d better dine with us.”

Waleran nodded agreement and said to Alfred: “Follow us to my house. It’s at the other end of the market square.”

“I know,” said Alfred. “I built it.”

For two days Prior Philip refused to discuss the strike. He was speechless with rage, and whenever he saw Jack he just turned around and walked the other way.

On the second day three cartloads of flour arrived from one of the priory’s outlying mills. The carts were escorted by men-at-arms: flour was as precious as gold nowadays. It was checked in by Brother Jonathan, who was deputy cellarer under old Cuthbert Whitehead. Jack watched Jonathan count the sacks. To Jack there was something oddly familiar about Jonathan’s face, as if he resembled someone Jack knew well. Jonathan was tall and gangling, with light brown hair—nothing like Philip, who was short and slight and black-haired; but in every way other than physically Jonathan took after the man who was his surrogate father: the boy was intense, high-principled, determined and ambitious. People liked him despite his rather rigid attitude to morality—which was very much how they felt about Philip.

While Philip was refusing to talk, a word with Jonathan would be the next best thing.

Jack watched while Jonathan paid the men-at-arms and the carters. He was quietly efficient, and when the carters asked for more than they were entitled to, as they always did, he refused them calmly but firmly. It occurred to Jack that a monastic education was a good preparation for leadership.

Leadership. Jack’s shortcomings in that area had been revealed rather starkly. He had let a problem become a crisis by maladroit handling of his men. Every time he thought of that meeting he cursed his ineptitude. He was determined to find a way to put matters right.

As the carters left, grumbling, Jack walked casually by and said to Jonathan: “Philip is terribly angry about the strike.”

For a moment Jonathan looked as if he was about to say something unpleasant—he was clearly fairly angry himself—but finally his face relaxed and he said: “He seems angry, but underneath he’s wounded.”

Jack nodded. “He takes it personally.”

“Yes. He feels the craftsmen have turned on him in his hour of need.”

“I suppose they have, in a way,” Jack said. “But Philip made a major error of judgment in trying to alter working practices by fiat.”

“What else could he do?” Jonathan retorted.

“He could have discussed the crisis with them first. They might even have been able to suggest some economies themselves. But I’m in no position to blame Philip, because I made the same mistake myself.”

That pricked Jonathan’s curiosity. “How?”

“I reported the schedule of cuts to the men as bluntly and tactlessly as Philip announced it to me.”

Jonathan wanted to be outraged, like Philip, and blame the strike on the perfidy of the men; but he was reluctantly seeing the other side of the coin. Jack decided to say no more. He had planted a seed.

He left Jonathan and returned to his tracing floor. The trouble, he reflected as he picked up his drawing implements, was that the town’s peacemaker was Philip. Normally, he was the judge of wrongdoers and the arbiter in disputes. It was disconcerting to find Philip a party in a quarrel, angry and bitter and unrelenting. Someone else was going to have to make peace this time. And the only person Jack could think of to do it was himself. As master builder he was the go-between who could talk to both parties, and his motivation was indisputable—he wanted to continue building.

He spent the rest of the day thinking about how to handle this task, and the question he asked himself again and again was: What would Philip do?

On the following day he felt ready to confront Philip.

It was a cold, wet day. Jack lurked around the deserted building site in the early afternoon, with the hood of his cloak pulled over his head to keep him dry, pretending to study the cracks in the clerestory (a problem that was still unsolved), and waited until he saw Philip hurry across to his own house from the cloisters. When Philip was inside, Jack followed.

Philip’s door was always open. Jack tapped on it and went in. Philip was on his knees in front of the small altar in the corner. You’d think he’d get enough praying done, in church most of the day and half the night, without doing it at home too, Jack thought. There was no fire: Philip was economizing. Jack waited silently until Philip rose and turned around. Then Jack said: “This has got to come to an end.”

Philip’s normally amiable face was set in hard lines. “I see no difficulty about that,” he said coldly. “They can come back to work as soon as they like.”

“On your terms.”

Philip just looked at him.

Jack said: “They won’t come back on your terms, and they won’t wait forever for you to see reason.” He added hastily: “Or what they think is reason.”

“Won’t wait forever?” Philip said. “Where will they go when they get tired of waiting? They won’t find work elsewhere. Do they think this is the only place that is suffering from the famine? It’s all over England. Every building site is having to cut back.”

“So you’re going to wait for them to come crawling back to you, begging forgiveness,” Jack said.

Philip looked away. “I won’t make anyone crawl,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever given you reason to expect such behavior from me.”

“No, and that’s why I’ve come to see you,” Jack said. “I know you don’t really want to humiliate these men—it’s not in your nature. And besides, if they returned feeling beaten and resentful, they’d work badly for years to come. So from my point of view as well as yours, we must let them save face. And that means making concessions.”

Jack held his breath. That had been his big speech, and this was his make-or-break moment. If Philip remained unmoved now, the future looked bleak.

Philip looked hard at Jack for a long moment. Jack could see reason struggling with emotion in the prior’s face. Then at last his expression softened and he said: “We’d better sit down.”

Jack suppressed a sigh of relief as he took a seat. He had planned what he was going to say next: he was not going to repeat the spontaneous tactlessness he had shown with the builders. “There’s no need to modify your freeze on purchase of supplies,” he began. “Similarly, the moratorium on new hiring can stand—no one objects to that. I also think they can be persuaded to accept that there will be no work on saint’s days, if they gain concessions in other areas.” He paused to let that sink in. So far he was giving everything and asking for nothing.

Philip nodded. “All right. What concessions?”

Jack took a deep breath. “They were highly offended by the proposal to ban promotions. They think you’re trying to usurp the ancient prerogative of the lodge.”

“I explained to you that that was not my intention,” Philip said in an exasperated tone.

“I know, I know,” Jack said hastily. “Of course you did. And I believed you, but they didn’t.” An injured look came over Philip’s face. How could anyone disbelieve him? Hastily, Jack said: “But that’s in the past. I’m going to propose a compromise that won’t cost you anything.”

Philip looked interested.

Jack went on: “Let them continue to approve applications for promotion, but postpone the associated pay raise for a year.” And he thought: Find something to object to in that, if you can.

“Will they accept that?” Philip said skeptically.

“It’s worth a try.”

“What if I still can’t afford the pay raises a year from now?”

“Cross that bridge when you get to it.”

“You mean, renegotiate in a year’s time.”

Jack shrugged. “If necessary.”

“I see,” Philip said noncommittally. “Anything else?”

“The biggest stumbling block is the instant dismissal of the summer-workers.” Jack was being completely candid now. This issue could not be honeyed. “Instant dismissal has never been allowed on any building site in Christendom. The end of the week is the earliest.” To help Philip feel less foolish, Jack added: “I ought to have warned you of that.”

“So all I have to do is employ them for two more days?”

“I don’t think that will be enough, now,” Jack said. “If we’d handled it differently from the start we might have got away with that, but now they’ll want more of a compromise.”

“No doubt you’ve got something specific in mind.”

Jack had, and it was the only real concession he had to ask for. “It’s now the beginning of October. We normally dismiss the summer workers at the beginning of December. Let’s meet the men halfway, and do it at the beginning of November.”

“That only gives me half of what I need.”

“It gives you more than half. You still benefit from the rundown of stocks, the postponement of pay raises for promotion, and the saint’s days.”

“Those things are trimmings.”

Jack sat back, feeling gloomy. He had done his best. He had no more arguments to put to Philip, no more resources of persuasion to deploy, nothing left to say. He had shot his arrow. And Philip was still resistant. Jack was ready to concede defeat. He looked at Philip’s stony face and waited.

Philip looked over at the altar in the corner for a long, silent moment. Finally he looked back to Jack and said: “I’ll have to put this to the chapter.”

Jack went limp with relief. It was not a victory, but it was close. Philip would not ask the monks to consider anything he did not himself approve, and more often than not they did what Philip wanted. “I hope they accept,” Jack said weakly.

Philip stood up and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. He smiled for the first time. “If I put the case as persuasively as you, they will,” he said.

Jack was surprised by this sudden change of mood. He said: “The sooner this is over, the less long-term effect it will have.”

“I know. It’s made me very angry, but I don’t want to quarrel with you.” Unexpectedly, he put out his hand.

Jack shook it, and felt good.

Jack said: “Shall I tell the builders to come to the lodge in the morning to hear the chapter’s verdict?”

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll do that now.” He turned to go.

Philip said: “Jack.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

Jack nodded acknowledgment and went out. He walked through the rain without raising his hood. He felt happy.

That afternoon he went to the homes of all the craftsmen and told them there would be a meeting in the morning. Those who were not at home—the unmarried men and the summer workers, mostly—he found in the alehouse. However, they were sober, for the price of ale had gone up along with everything else, and no one could afford to get drunk. The only craftsman he could not find was Alfred, who had not been seen for a couple of days. Eventually he turned up at dusk. He came to the alehouse with an oddly triumphant look on his bovine face. He did not say where he had been, and Jack did not ask him. Jack left him drinking with the other men, and went to have supper with Aliena and the children.