The Pillars of the Earth (98 page)

But as the weeks went by Alfred gained in confidence, until one day he came to Philip and said: “Wouldn’t you rather have the cathedral vaulted?”

Tom’s design called for a wooden ceiling over the center of the church, and vaulted stone ceilings over the narrower side aisles. “Yes, I would,” Philip said. “But we decided on a wooden ceiling to save money.”

Alfred nodded. “The trouble is, a wooden ceiling can burn. A stone vault is fireproof.”

Philip studied him for a moment, wondering whether he had underestimated Alfred. Philip would not have expected Alfred to propose a variation on his father’s design: that was more the kind of thing Jack would do. But the idea of a fireproof church was very striking, especially since the whole town had burned down.

Thinking along the same lines, Alfred said: “The only building left standing in the town after the fire was the new parish church.”

And the new parish church—built by Alfred—had a stone vault, Philip thought. But a snag occurred to him. “Would the existing walls take the extra weight of a stone roof?”

“We’d have to reinforce the buttresses. They’d stick out a bit more, that’s all.”

He had really thought this out, Philip realized. “What about the cost?”

“It will cost more in the long run, of course, and the whole church will take three or four extra years to complete. But it won’t make any difference to your annual outlay.”

Philip liked the idea more and more. “But will it mean we have to wait another year before we can use the chancel for services?”

“No. Stone or wood, we can’t start on the ceiling until next spring, because the clerestory must harden before we put any weight on it. The wood ceiling is quicker to build, by a few months; but either way, the chancel will be roofed by the end of next year.”

Philip considered. It was a matter of balancing the advantage of a fireproof roof against the disadvantage of another four years of building—and another four years of cost. The extra cost seemed a long way in the future, and the gain in safety was immediate. “I think I’ll discuss it with the brothers in chapter,” he said. “But it sounds like a good idea to me.”

Alfred thanked him and went out, and after he had gone Philip sat staring at the door, wondering whether he really needed to search for a new master builder after all.

Kingsbridge made a brave show on Lammas Day. In the morning, every household in the town made a loaf—the harvest was just in, so flour was cheap and plentiful. Those who did not have an oven of their own baked their loaf at a neighbor’s house, or in the vast ovens belonging to the priory and the town’s two bakers, Peggy Baxter and Jack-atte-Noven. By midday the air was full of the smell of new bread, making everyone hungry. The loaves were displayed on tables set up in the meadow across the river, and everyone walked around admiring them. No two were alike. Many had fruit or spices inside: there was plum bread, raisin bread, ginger bread, sugar bread, onion bread, garlic bread, and many more. Others were colored green with parsley, yellow with egg yolk, red with sandalwood or purple with turnsole. There were lots of odd shapes: triangles, cones, balls, stars, ovals, pyramids, flutes, rolls, and even figures of eight. Others were even more ambitious: there were loaves in the shapes of rabbits, bears, monkeys and dragons. There were houses and castles of bread. But the most magnificent, by general agreement, was the loaf made by Ellen and Martha, which was a representation of the cathedral as it would look when finished, based on the design by her late husband, Tom.

Ellen’s grief had been terrible to see. She had wailed like a soul in torment, night after night, and no one had been able to comfort her. Even now, two months later, she was haggard and hollow-eyed; but she and Martha seemed able to help one another, and making the bread cathedral had given them some kind of consolation.

Aliena spent a long time staring at Ellen’s construction. She wished there was something she could do to find comfort. She had no enthusiasm for anything. When the tasting began, she went from table to table listlessly, not eating. She had not even wanted to build a house for herself, until Prior Philip told her to snap out of it, and Alfred brought her the wood and assigned some of his men to help her. She was still eating at the monastery every day, when she remembered to eat at all. She had no energy. If it occurred to her to do something for herself—make a kitchen bench from leftover timber, or finish the walls of her house by filling in the chinks with mud from the river, or make a snare to catch birds so that she could feed herself—she would remember how hard she had worked to build up her trade as a wool merchant, and how quickly it had all gone to ruin, and she would lose her enthusiasm. So she went on from day to day, getting up late, going to the monastery for dinner if she felt hungry, spending the day watching the river flow by, and going to sleep in the straw on the floor of her new house when darkness fell.

Despite her lassitude, she knew that this Lammas Day festival was no more than a pretense. The town had been rebuilt, and people were going about their business as before, but the massacre threw a long shadow, and she could sense, beneath the facade of well-being, a deep undercurrent of fear. Most people were better than Aliena at acting as if all was well, but in truth they all felt as she did, that this could not last, and whatever they built now would be destroyed again.

While she stood looking vacantly at the piles of bread, her brother, Richard, arrived. He came across the bridge from the deserted town, leading his horse. He had been away, fighting for Stephen, since before the massacre, and he was astonished by what he found. “What the devil happened here?” he said to her. “I can’t find our house—the whole town has changed!”

“William Hamleigh came on the day of the fleece fair, with a troop of men-at-arms, and burned the town,” Aliena said.

Richard paled with shock, and the scar on his right ear showed livid. “William!” he breathed. “That devil.”

“We’ve got a new house, though,” Aliena said expressionlessly. “Alfred’s men built it for me. But it’s much smaller, and it’s down by the new quay.”

“What happened to you?” he said, staring at her. “You’re practically bald, and you’ve got no eyebrows.”

“My hair caught fire.”

“He didn’t ...”

Aliena shook her head. “Not this time.”

One of the girls brought Richard some salt bread to taste. He took some but did not eat it. He looked stunned.

“I’m glad you’re safe, anyway,” Aliena said.

He nodded. “Stephen is marching on Oxford, where Maud is holed up. The war could be over soon. But I need a new sword—I came to get some money.” He ate some bread. The color came back to his face. “By God, this tastes good. You can cook me some meat later.”

Suddenly she was afraid of him. She knew he was going to be furious with her and she had no strength to stand up to him. “I haven’t any meat,” she said.

“Well, get some from the butcher, then!”

“Don’t be angry, Richard,” she said. She began to tremble.

“I’m not angry,” he said irritably. “What’s the matter with you?”

“All my wool was burned in the fire,” she said, and stared at him in fear, waiting for him to explode.

He frowned, looked at her, swallowed, and threw away the crust of his bread. “All of it?”

“All of it.”

“But you must have some money still.”

“None.”

“Why not? You always had a great chest full of pennies buried under the floor—”

“Not in May. I had spent it all on wool—every penny. And I borrowed forty pounds from poor Malachi, which I can’t repay. I certainly can’t buy you a new sword. I can’t even buy a piece of meat for your supper. We’re completely penniless.”

“Then how am I supposed to carry on?” he shouted angrily. His horse pricked up its ears and fidgeted uneasily.

“I don’t know!” Aliena said tearfully. “Don’t shout, you’re frightening the horse.” She began to cry.

“William Hamleigh did this,” Richard said through his teeth. “One of these days I’m going to butcher him like a fat pig, I swear by all the saints.”

Alfred came up to them, his bushy beard full of crumbs of bread, with a corner of a plum loaf in his hand. “Try this,” he said to Richard.

“I’m not hungry,” Richard said ungraciously.

Alfred looked at Aliena and said: “What’s the matter?”

Richard answered the question. “She’s just told me we’re penniless.”

Alfred nodded. “Everyone lost something, but Aliena lost everything.”

“You realize what this means to me,” Richard said, speaking to Alfred but looking accusingly at Aliena. “I’m finished. If I can’t replace weapons, and can’t pay my men, and can’t buy horses, then I can’t fight for King Stephen. My career as a knight is over—and I’ll never be the earl of Shiring.”

Alfred said: “Aliena might marry a wealthy man.”

Richard laughed scornfully. “She’s turned them all down.”

“One of them might ask her again.”

“Yes.” Richard’s face twisted in a cruel smile. “We could send letters to all her rejected suitors, telling them she has lost all her money and is now willing to reconsider—”

“Enough,” Alfred said, putting a hand on Richard’s arm. Richard shut up. Alfred turned to Aliena. “Do you remember what I said to you, a year ago, at the first dinner of the parish guild?”

Aliena’s heart sank. She could hardly believe that Alfred was going to start that again. She had no strength to deal with this. “I remember,” she said. “And I hope you remember my reply.”

“I still love you,” Alfred said.

Richard looked startled.

Alfred went on: “I still want to marry you. Aliena, will you be my wife?”

“No!” Aliena said. She wanted to say more, to add something that would make it final and irreversible, but she felt too tired. She looked from Alfred to Richard and back again, and suddenly she could not take any more. She turned away from them and walked quickly out of the meadow and crossed the bridge to the town.

She was wearily angry with Alfred for repeating his proposal in front of Richard. She would have preferred her brother not to know about it. It was three months since the fire—why had Alfred left it until now? It was as if he had been waiting for Richard, and had made his move the moment Richard arrived.

She walked through the deserted new streets. Everyone was at the priory tasting the bread. Aliena’s house was in the new poor quarter, down by the quay. The rents were low there but even so she had no idea how she would pay.

Richard caught her up on horseback, then dismounted and walked beside her. “The whole town smells of new wood,” he said conversationally. “And everything is so clean!”

Aliena had got used to the new appearance of the town but he was seeing it for the first time. It
was
unnaturally clean. The fire had swept away the damp, rotten wood of the older buildings, the thatched roofs thick with grime from years of cooking fires, the foul ancient stables and the fetid old dunghills. There was a smell of newness: new wood, new thatch, new rushes on the floors, even new whitewash on the walls of the wealthier dwellings. The fire seemed to have enriched the soil, so that wild flowers grew in odd corners. Someone had remarked how few people had fallen ill since the fire, and this was thought to confirm a theory, held by many philosophers, that disease was spread by evil-smelling vapors.

Her mind was wandering. Richard had said something. “What?” she said.

“I said, I didn’t know Alfred proposed marriage to you last year.”

“You had more important things on your mind. That was about the time Robert of Gloucester was taken captive.”

“Alfred was kind, to build you a house.”

“Yes, he was. And here it is.” She looked at him while he looked at the house. He was crestfallen. She felt sorry for him: he had come from an earl’s castle, and even the large town house they had had before the fire had been a comedown for him. Now he had to get used to the kind of dwelling occupied by laborers and widows.

She took his horse’s bridle. “Come. There’s room for the horse at the back.” She led the huge beast through the one-room house and out through the back door. There were rough low fences separating the yards. She tied the horse to a fence post and began to take off the heavy wooden saddle. From nowhere, grass and weeds had seeded the burned earth. Most people had dug a privy, planted vegetables and built a pigsty or a hen house in their yard, but Aliena’s was still untouched.

Richard lingered in the house, but there was not much to look at, and after a moment he followed Aliena into the yard, “The house is a bit bare—no furniture, no pots, no bowls ...”

“I haven’t any money,” Aliena said apathetically.

“You haven’t done anything to the garden, either,” he said, looking around distastefully.

“I haven’t got the energy,” she said crossly, and she handed him the big saddle and went into the house.

She sat on the floor with her back to the wall. It was cool in here. She could hear Richard dealing with his horse in the yard. After she had been sitting still for a few moments she saw a rat poke its snout up out of the straw. Thousands of rats and mice must have perished in the fire, but now they were beginning to be seen again. She looked around for something to kill it with, but there was nothing to hand, and anyway the creature disappeared again.

What am I going to do? she thought. I can’t live like this for the rest of my life. But the mere idea of beginning a new enterprise exhausted her. She had rescued herself and her brother from penury once, but the effort had used up all her reserves, and she could not do it again. She would have to find some passive way of life, controlled by someone else, so that she could live without making decisions or taking initiatives. She thought of Mistress Kate, in Winchester, who had kissed her lips, and squeezed her breast, and said: “My dear girl, you need never want for money, or anything else. If you work for me we’ll both be rich.” No, she thought, not that; not ever.

Richard came in carrying his saddlebags. “If you can’t look after yourself, you’d better find someone else to look after you,” he said.