World Without End (58 page)

He was not sure whether he had won them over. As he finished, he spotted the tall figure of Mark Webber, and pushed through the throng to him. 'Mark, will you encourage them?' he said anxiously.

Mark was a gentle giant, much liked in the town. Even though he was poor, he had influence, especially among adolescents. 'I'll make sure the lads join in,' he said.

'Thank you.'

Next, Merthin found Ian Boatman. 'I'm going to need you all day, I hope,' he said. 'Ferrying people out to the cofferdams and back. You can work for pay or an indulgence - your choice.' Ian was excessively fond of his wife's younger sister, and would probably prefer the indulgence, either for a past sin or for one he was hoping to commit soon.

Merthin made his way through the streets to the shore where he was preparing to build the bridge. Could the cofferdams be emptied in two days? He really had no idea. He wondered how many gallons of water were in each. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? There must be a way of calculating. The Greek philosophers had probably worked out a method but, if they had, it had not been taught at the priory school. To find out, he would probably have to go to Oxford, where there were mathematicians famous all over the world, according to Godwyn.

He waited at the river's edge, wondering if anyone would come.

The first to arrive was Megg Robbins, the strapping daughter of a corn dealer, with muscles enlarged by years of lifting sacks of grain. 'I can outdo most of the men in this town,' she said, and Merthin did not doubt it.

A group of young men came next, then three novice monks.

As soon as Merthin had ten people with buckets, he got Ian to row them and him to the nearer of the two dams.

Inside the rim of the dam, he had built a ledge just above water level, strong enough for men to stand on. From the ledge four ladders reached all the way down to the riverbed. In the center of the dam, floating on the surface, was a large raft. Between the raft and the ledge there was a gap of about two feet, and the raft was held in a central position by protruding wooden spokes that reached almost to the wall and prevented movement of more than a few inches in any direction.

'You work in pairs,' he told them. 'One on the raft, one on the ledge. The one on the raft fills his bucket and passes it to the one on the ledge, who tosses the water over the edge into the river. As the empty bucket is passed back, another full one is passed forward.'

Megg Robbins said: 'What happens when the water level inside falls, and we can't reach one another?'

'Good thinking, Megg. You'd better be my forewoman in charge here. When you can no longer reach, you work in threes, with one on a ladder.'

She caught on fast. 'And then fours, with two on a ladder...'

'Yes. Though by then we'll need to rest the men and bring in fresh ones.'

'Right.'

'Get started. I'll bring over another ten - you've got plenty of room still.'

Megg turned away. 'Pick your partners, everyone!' she called.

The volunteers started to dip their buckets. He heard Megg say: 'Let's keep a rhythm going. Dip, lift, pass, chuck! One, two, three, four. How about a song to give us the swing of it?' She raised her voice in a lusty contralto. 'Oh,
there
was
once
a
come
ly
knight...
'

They knew the song, and all joined in the next line: 'His
blade
was
straight
and
true, oh!
'

Merthin watched. Everyone was soaking wet in a few minutes. He could see no apparent fall in the level of the water. It was going to be a long job.

He climbed over the side and into Ian's boat.

By the time he reached the bank there were thirty more volunteers with buckets.

He got the second cofferdam started, with Mark Webber as foreman, then doubled the numbers in both locations, then started replacing tired workers with fresh ones. Ian Boatman became exhausted and handed the oars over to his son. The water inside the dams fell inch by wearisome inch. As the level fell, the work went ever more slowly, for the buckets had to be lifted greater and greater distances to the rim.

Megg was the first to discover that a person could not hold a full bucket in one hand and an empty one in the other and still keep balance on a ladder. She devised a one-way bucket chain, with full buckets going up one ladder and empty ones down another. Mark instituted the same system in his dam.

The volunteers worked an hour and rested an hour, but Merthin did not stop. He was organizing the teams, supervising the transport of volunteers to and from the dams, replacing buckets that broke. Most of the men drank ale during their rest periods, and in consequence there were several accidents during the afternoon, with people dropping buckets and falling off ladders. Mother Cecilia came to take care of the injured, with the help of Mattie Wise and Caris.

Too soon, the light began to fail, and they had to stop. But both coffers were more than half-empty. Merthin asked everyone to come back in the morning, then went home. After a few spoonfuls of his mother's soup he fell asleep at the table, waking only long enough to wrap a blanket around himself and lie down in the straw. When he woke the next morning, his first thought was to wonder whether any of the volunteers would show up for the second day.

He hurried down to the river at first light with an anxious heart. Both Mark Webber and Megg Robbins were there already, Mark eating his way through a doorstep of bread and Megg lacing a pair of high boots in the hope of keeping her feet dry. No one else showed up for the next half hour, and Merthin began to wonder what he would do with no volunteers. Then some of the young men arrived, carrying their breakfast with them, followed by the novice monks, then a whole crowd.

Ian Boatman turned up, and Merthin got him to row Megg out with some volunteers, and they began again.

The work was harder today. Everyone was aching from yesterday's efforts. Every bucket had to be lifted ten feet or more. But the end was in sight. The levels continued to drop, and the volunteers began to glimpse the riverbed.

In the middle of the afternoon, the first of the carts arrived back from the quarry. Merthin directed the owner to unload his stone in the pasture and ferry his cart back across the river to the town. A short while later, in Megg's coffer, the raft bumped the riverbed.

There was more to be done. When the last of the water was lifted out, the raft itself had to be dismantled and raised, plank by plank, up the ladders and out. Then dozens of fish were revealed, flapping in muddy pools on the bottom, and they had to be netted and shared out among the volunteers. But, when that was finished, Merthin stood on the ledge, weary but jubilant, and looked down a twenty-foot hole at the flat mud of the riverbed.

Tomorrow he would drop several tons of rubble into each hole, and drench the rubble with mortar, forming a massive, immovable foundation.

Then he would start building the bridge.

Wulfric was in a depression.

He ate almost nothing and forgot to wash himself. He got up automatically at daybreak and lay down again when it got dark, but he did not work, and he did not make love to Gwenda in the night. When she asked him what was the matter, he would say: 'I don't know, really.' He answered all questions with such uninformative replies, or just with grunts.

There was little to do in the fields anyway. This was the season when villagers sat by their fires, sewing leather shoes and carving oak shovels, eating salt pork and soft apples and cabbage preserved in vinegar. Gwenda was not worried about how they were going to feed themselves: Wulfric still had money from the sale of his crops. But she was desperately anxious about him.

Wulfric had always lived for his work. Some villagers grumbled constantly and were happy only on rest days, but he was not like that. The fields, the crops, the beasts, and the weather were what he cared about. On Sundays he had always been restless until he found some occupation that was not forbidden, and on holidays he had done all he could to circumvent the rules.

She knew she had to get him to return to his normal state of mind. Otherwise he might fall sick with some physical illness. And his money would not last forever. Sooner or later they must both work.

However, she did not give him her news until two full moons had passed, and she was sure.

Then, one morning in December, she said: 'I have something to tell you.'

He grunted. He was sitting at the kitchen table, whittling a stick, and he did not look up from this idle occupation.

She reached across the table and held his wrists, stopping the whittling. 'Wulfric, would you please look at me?'

He did so with a surly expression on his face, resentful at being ordered but too lethargic to defy her.

'It's important,' she said.

He looked at her in silence.

'I'm going to have a baby,' she said.

His expression did not change, but he dropped the knife and stick.

She looked back at him for a long moment. 'Do you understand me?' she said.

He nodded. 'A baby,' he said.

'Yes. We will have a child.'

'When?'

She smiled. It was the first question he had asked for two months. 'Next summer, before the harvest.'

'The child must be cared for,' he said. 'You, too.'

'Yes.'

'I must work.' He looked depressed again.

She held her breath. What was coming?

He sighed, then set his jaw. 'I'll go and see Perkin,' he said. 'He'll need help with his winter plowing.'

'And manuring,' she said happily. 'I'll come with you. He offered to hire us both.'

'All right.' He was still staring at her. 'A child,' he said, as if it were a marvel. 'Boy or girl, I wonder.'

She got up and walked around the table to sit on the bench next to him. 'Which would you prefer?'

'A little girl. It was all boys in my family.'

'I want a boy, a miniature version of you.'

'We might have twins.'

'One of each.'

He put his arm around her. 'We should get Father Gaspard to marry us properly.'

Gwenda sighed contentedly and leaned her head on his shoulder. 'Yes,' she said. 'Perhaps we should.'

Merthin moved out of his parents' house just before Christmas. He had built a one-room house for himself on Leper Island, which was now his land. He said he needed to guard the growing stockpile of valuable building materials he was keeping on the island - timber, stones, lime, ropes, and iron tools.

At the same time, he stopped coming to Caris's house for meals.

On the last but one day of December, she went to see Mattie Wise.

'No need to tell me why you're here,' said Mattie. 'Three months gone?'

Caris nodded and avoided her eye. She looked around the little kitchen, with its bottles and jars. Mattie was heating something in a small iron pot, and it gave off an acrid smell that made Caris want to sneeze.

'I don't want to have a baby,' Caris said.

'I wish I had a chicken for every time I've heard that said.'

'Am I wicked?'

Mattie shrugged. 'I make potions, not judgments. People know the difference between right and wrong - and if they don't, that's what priests are for.'

Caris was disappointed. She had been hoping for sympathy. More coolly, she said: 'Do you have a potion to get rid of this pregnancy?'

'I do...' Mattie looked uneasy.

'Is there a snag?'

'The way to get rid of a pregnancy is to poison yourself. Some girls drink a gallon of strong wine. I make up a dose with several toxic herbs. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it always makes you feel dreadful.'

'Is it dangerous? Could I die?'

'Yes, though it's not as risky as childbirth.'

'I'll take it.'

Mattie took her pot off the fire and put it on a stone slab to cool. Turning to her scarred old workbench, she took a small pottery bowl from a cupboard and poured into it small quantities of different powders.

Caris said: 'What's the matter? You say you don't make judgments, but you look disapproving.'

Mattie nodded. 'You're right. I do make judgments, of course; everyone does.'

'And you're judging me.'

'I'm thinking that Merthin is a good man and you love him, but you don't seem able to find happiness with him. That makes me sad.'

'You think I should be like other women, and throw myself at the feet of some man.'

'It seems to make them happy. But I chose a different way of life. And so will you, I suppose.'

'Are you happy?'

'I wasn't born to be happy. But I help people, I make a living, and I'm free.' She poured her mixture into a cup, added some wine, and stirred, dissolving the powders. 'Have you had breakfast?'

'Just some milk.'

She dripped a little honey into the cup. 'Drink this, and don't bother to eat dinner - you'll only throw it up.'

Caris took the cup, hesitated, then swallowed the draft. 'Thank you.' It had a vilely bitter taste that was only partly masked by the sweetness of the honey.

'It should be all over by tomorrow morning - one way or the other.'

Caris paid her and left. Walking home, she felt an odd mixture of elation and sadness. Her spirits were lifted by having made a decision, after all the weeks of worry; but she also felt a tug of loss, as if she were saying good-bye to someone - Merthin, perhaps. She wondered if their separation would be permanent. She could contemplate the prospect calmly, because she still felt angry with him, but she knew she would miss him terribly. He would find another lover eventually - Bessie Bell, perhaps - but Caris felt sure she would not do the same. She would never love anyone as she had loved Merthin.

When she got home, the smell of roasting pork in the house nauseated her, and she went out again. She did not want to gossip with other women in the main street or talk business with the men at the guildhall, so she drifted into the priory grounds, her heavy wool cloak wrapped around her for warmth, and sat on a tombstone in the graveyard, looking at the north wall of the cathedral, marveling at the perfection of its carved moldings and the grace of its flying buttresses.