World Without End (103 page)

Mark required little prompting. He was itching to put an end to Elfric's rule. Elfric was so close to Godwyn that there was not much point in having a parish guild at all. The town was in effect run by the priory - narrow, conservative, mistrustful of new ideas, careless of the interests of the townspeople.

So the two candidates began drumming up support. Elfric had his followers, mainly people he either employed or bought materials from. However, he had lost face badly in the argument over the bridge, and those who took his side were downcast. Mark's supporters, by contrast, were ebullient.

Merthin visited the cathedral every day and examined the foundations of the mighty column as they were exposed by Jeremiah's digging. The foundations were made of the same stone as the rest of the church, laid in mortared courses, but less carefully trimmed, as they would not be visible. Each course was a little wider than the one above, in a pyramid shape. As the excavation went deeper, he examined every layer for weakness, and found none. But he felt confident that eventually he would.

Merthin told no one what was in his mind. If his suspicions were correct, and the thirteenth-century tower was simply too heavy for the twelfth-century foundations, the solution would be drastic: the tower would have to be demolished - and a new one built. And the new tower could be the tallest in England...

One day in the middle of October, Caris appeared at the digging. It was early in the morning, and a winter sun was shining through the great east window. She stood on the edge of the hole with her hood around her head like a halo. Merthin's heart beat faster. Perhaps she had an answer for him. He climbed up the ladder eagerly.

She was as beautiful as ever, though in the strong sunlight he could see the little differences that nine years had made to her face. Her skin was not quite as smooth, and there were now the tiniest of creases at the corners of her lips. But her green eyes still shone with that alert intelligence that he loved so much.

They walked together down the south aisle of the nave and stopped near the pillar that always reminded him of how he had once felt her up here. 'I'm happy to see you,' he said. 'You've been hiding away.'

'I'm a nun, I'm supposed to hide away.'

'But you're thinking about renouncing your vows.'

'I haven't made a decision.'

He was crestfallen. 'How much time do you need?'

'I don't know.'

He looked away. He did not want to show her how badly he was hurt by her hesitation. He said nothing. He could have told her she was being unreasonable, but what was the point?

'You'll be going to visit your parents in Tench at some point, I suppose,' she said.

He nodded. 'Quite soon - they will want to see Lolla.' He was eager to see them, too, and had delayed only because he had become so deeply involved in his work on the bridge and the tower.

'In that case, I wish you would talk to your brother about Wulfric in Wigleigh.'

Merthin wanted to talk about himself and Caris, not Wulfric and Gwenda. His response was cool. 'What do you want me to say to Ralph?'

'Wulfric is laboring for no money - just food - because Ralph won't give him even a small acreage to farm.'

Merthin shrugged. 'Wulfric broke Ralph's nose.' He felt the conversation begin to descend into a quarrel, and he asked himself why he was angry. Caris had not spoken to him for weeks, but she had broken her silence for the sake of Gwenda. He resented Gwenda's place in her heart, he realized. That was an unworthy emotion, he told himself; but he could not shake it.

Caris flushed with annoyance. 'That was twelve years ago! Isn't it time Ralph stopped punishing him?'

Merthin had forgotten the abrasive disagreements he and Caris used to have, but now he recognized this friction as familiar. He spoke dismissively. 'Of course he should stop - in my opinion. But Ralph's opinion is the one that counts.'

'Then see if you can change his mind,' she said.

He resented her imperious attitude. 'I'm yours to command,' he said facetiously.

'Why the irony?'

'Because I'm
not
yours to command, of course, but you seem to think I am. And I feel a bit foolish for going along with you.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' she said. 'You're offended that I've asked you?'

For some reason, he felt sure she had made up her mind to reject him, and stay in the nunnery. He tried to control his emotions. 'If we were a couple, you could ask me anything. But while you're keeping open the option of rejecting me, it seems a bit presumptuous of you.' He knew he was sounding pompous, but he could not stop. If he revealed his true feelings he would burst into tears.

She was too wrapped up in her indignation to notice his distress. 'But it's not even for myself!' she protested.

'I realize it's your generosity of spirit that makes you do it, but I still feel you're using me.'

'All right, then, don't do it.'

'Of course I'll
do
it.' Suddenly he could no longer contain himself. He turned and walked away from her. He was shaking with some passion he could not identify. As he strode up the aisle of the great church, he struggled to get himself under control. He reached the excavation. This was stupid, he thought. He turned and looked back, but Caris had vanished.

He stood at the lip of the hole, looking down, waiting for the storm inside him to subside.

After a while he realized that the excavation had reached a crucial stage. Thirty feet below him, the men had dug down past the masonry foundations and were beginning to reveal what was beneath. There was nothing more he could do about Caris right now. It would be best to concentrate on his work. He took a deep breath, swallowed, and went down the ladder.

This was the moment of truth. His distress over Caris began to ease as he watched the men dig farther down. Shovelful after shovelful of heavy mud was dug up and taken away. Merthin studied the stratum of earth that was revealed below the foundations. It looked like a mixture of sand and small stones. As the men removed the mud, the sandy stuff dribbled into the hole they were making.

Merthin ordered them to stop.

He knelt down and picked up a handful of the sandy material. It was nothing like the soil all around. It was not natural to the site, therefore it must be something that had been put there by builders. The excitement of discovery rose inside him, overmastering his grief about Caris. 'Jeremiah!' he called. 'See if you can find Brother Thomas - quick as you like.'

He told the men to carry on digging, but to make a narrower hole: at this point the excavation itself could be dangerous to the structure. After a while Jeremiah returned with Thomas, and the three of them watched as the men took the hole farther down. Eventually the sandy layer came to an end, and the next stratum was revealed to be the natural muddy earth.

'I wonder what that sandy stuff is,' Thomas said.

'I think I know,' Merthin said. He tried not to look triumphant. He had predicted, years ago, that Elfric's repairs would not work unless the root of the problem was discovered, and he had been right - but it was never wise to say 'I told you so.'

Thomas and Jeremiah looked at him in anticipation.

He explained. 'When you've dug a foundation hole, you cover the bottom with a mixture of rubble and mortar. Then you lay the masonry on top of that. It's a perfectly good system, as long as the foundations are proportional to the building above.'

Thomas said impatiently: 'We both know this.'

'What happened here was that a much higher tower was erected on foundations that were not designed for it. The extra weight, acting over a hundred years, has crushed that layer of rubble-and-mortar to sand. The sand has no cohesion, and under pressure it has spread outward into the surrounding soil, allowing the masonry above it to sink down. The effect is worse on the south side simply because the site naturally slopes that way.' He felt a profound satisfaction at having figured this out.

The other two looked thoughtful. Thomas said: 'I suppose we will have to reinforce the foundations.'

Jeremiah shook his head. 'Before we can put any reinforcement under the stonework, we'd have to remove the sandy stuff, and that would leave the foundations unsupported. The tower would fall down.'

Thomas was perplexed. 'So what
can
we do?'

They both looked at Merthin. He said: 'Build a temporary roof over the crossing, erect scaffolding, and take down the tower, stone by stone. Then reinforce the foundations.'

'Then we'd have to build a new tower.'

That was what Merthin wanted, but he did not say so. Thomas might suspect that his judgment had been colored by his aspiration. 'I'm afraid so,' he said with feigned regret.

'Prior Godwyn won't like that.'

'I know,' Merthin said. 'But I don't think he's got any choice.'

Next day Merthin rode out of Kingsbridge with Lolla on the saddle in front of him. As they traveled through the forest, he obsessively ran over his fraught exchange with Caris. He knew he had been ungenerous. How foolish that was, when he was trying to win back her love. What had got into him? Caris's request was perfectly reasonable. Why would he not wish to perform a small service for the woman he wanted to marry?

But she had not agreed to marry him. She was still reserving the right to reject him. That was the source of his anger. She was exercising the privileges of a fiancée without making the commitment.

He could see now that it was petty of him to object on these grounds. He had been stupid, and turned what could have been a delightful moment of intimacy into a squabble.

On the other hand, the underlying cause of his distress was all too real. How long did Caris expect him to wait for an answer? How long was he prepared to wait? He did not like to think about that.

Anyway, it would do him nothing but good if he could persuade Ralph to stop persecuting poor Wulfric.

Tench was on the far side of the county, and on the way Merthin spent a night at windy Wigleigh. He found Gwenda and Wulfric thin after a rainy summer and the second poor harvest in a row. Wulfric's scar seemed to stand out more on a hollowed cheek. Their two small sons looked pale, and had runny noses and sores on their lips.

Merthin gave them a leg of mutton, a small barrel of wine, and a gold florin that he pretended were gifts from Caris. Gwenda cooked the mutton over the fire. She was possessed by rage, and she hissed and spat like the turning meat as she talked of the injustice that had been done to them. 'Perkin has almost half the land in the village!' she said. 'The only reason he can manage it all is that he's got Wulfric, who does the work of three men. Yet he must demand more, and keep us in poverty.'

'I'm sorry that Ralph still bears a grudge,' Merthin said.

'Ralph himself provoked that fight!' Gwenda said. 'Even Lady Philippa said so.'

'Old quarrels,' Wulfric said philosophically.

'I'll try to get him to see reason,' Merthin said. 'In the unlikely event that he listens to me, what do you really want from him?'

'Ah,' said Wulfric, and he got a faraway look in his eyes, which was unusual for him. 'What I pray for every Sunday is to get back the lands that my father farmed.'

'That will never happen,' Gwenda said quickly. 'Perkin is too well entrenched. And, if he should die, he has a son and a married daughter waiting to inherit, and a couple of grandsons growing taller every day. But we'd like a piece of land of our own. For the last eleven years Wulfric has been working hard to feed other men's children. It's time he got some of the benefit of his strength.'

'I'll tell my brother he has punished you long enough,' Merthin said.

Next day he and Lolla rode from Wigleigh to Tench. Merthin was even more resolved to do something for Wulfric. It was not just that he wanted to please Caris, and atone for his curmudgeonly attitude. He also felt sad and indignant that two such honest and hardworking people as Wulfric and Gwenda should be poor and thin, and their children sickly, just because of Ralph's vindictiveness.

His parents were living in a house in the village, not in Tench Hall itself. Merthin was shocked by how much his mother had aged, though she perked up when she saw Lolla. His father looked better. 'Ralph is very good to us,' Gerald said in a defensive way that made Merthin think the opposite. The house was pleasant enough, but they would have preferred to live at the hall with Ralph. Merthin guessed that Ralph did not want his mother watching everything he did.

They showed him around their home, and Gerald asked Merthin how things were in Kingsbridge. 'The town is still prospering, despite the effects of the king's French war,' Merthin replied.

'Ah - but Edward must fight for his birthright,' his father said. 'He is the legitimate heir to the throne of France, after all.'

'I think that's a dream, Father,' said Merthin. 'No matter how many times the king invades, the French nobility will not accept an Englishman as their king. And a king can't rule without the support of his earls.'

'But we had to stop the French raids on our south coast ports.'

'That hasn't been a major problem since the battle of Sluys, when we destroyed the French fleet - which was eight years ago. Anyway, burning the crops of the peasants won't stop pirates - it might even add to their numbers.'

'The French support the Scots, who keep invading our northern counties.'

'Don't you think the king would be better able to deal with Scottish incursions if he were in the north of England rather than the north of France?'

Gerald looked baffled. It had probably never occurred to him to question the wisdom of the war. 'Well, Ralph has been knighted,' he said. 'And he brought your mother a silver candlestick from Calais.'

That was about the size of it, Merthin thought. The real reason for the war was booty and glory.

They all walked to the manor house. Ralph was out hunting with Alan Fernhill. In the great hall was a huge carved wooden chair, obviously the lord's. Merthin saw what he thought was a young servant girl, heavily pregnant, and was dismayed to be introduced to her as Ralph's wife, Tilly. She went to the kitchen to fetch wine.