The Pillars Of The Earth

I

WILLIAM’S TRIUMPH WAS RUINED by Philip’s prophecy: instead of feeling satisfied and jubilant, he was terrified that he would go to hell for what he had done.

He had answered Philip bravely enough, jeering “This is hell, monk!” but that had been in the excitement of the attack. When it was over, and he had led his men away from the blazing town; when their horses and their heartbeats had slowed down; when he had time to look back over the raid, and think of how many people he had wounded and burned and killed; then he recalled Philip’s angry face, and his finger pointing straight down into the bowels of the earth, and the doom-laden words: “You’ll go to hell for this!”

By the time darkness fell he was completely depressed. His men-at-arms wanted to talk over the operation, reliving the high spots and relishing the slaughter, but they soon caught his mood and relapsed into gloomy silence. They spent that night at the manor house of one of William’s larger tenants. At supper the men grimly drank themselves senseless. The tenant, knowing how men normally felt after a battle, had brought in some whores from Shiring; but they did poor business. William lay awake all night, terrified that he might die in his sleep and go straight to hell.

The following morning, instead of returning to Earlscastle, he went to see Bishop Waleran. He was not at his palace when they arrived, but Dean Baldwin told William that he was expected that afternoon. William waited in the chapel, staring at the cross on the altar and shivering despite the summer heat.

When Waleran arrived at last, William felt like kissing his feet.

The bishop swept into the chapel in his black robes and said coldly: “What are you doing here?”

William got to his feet, trying to hide his abject terror behind a facade of self-possession. “I’ve just burned the town of Kingsbridge-”

“I know,” Waleran interrupted. “I’ve been hearing about nothing else all day. What possessed you? Are you mad?”

This reaction took William completely by surprise. He had not discussed the raid with Waleran in advance because he had been so sure Waleran would approve: Waleran hated everything to do with Kingsbridge, especially Prior Philip. William had expected him to be pleased, if not gleeful. William said: “I’ve just ruined your greatest enemy. Now I need to confess my sins.”

“I’m not surprised,” Waleran said. “They say more than a hundred people burned to death.” He shuddered. “A horrible way to die.”

“I’m ready to confess,” William said.

Waleran shook his head. “I don’t know that I can give you absolution.”

A cry of fear escaped William’s lips. “Why not?”

“You know that Bishop Henry of Winchester and I have taken the side of King Stephen again. I don’t think the king would approve of my giving absolution to a supporter of Queen Maud.”

“Damn you, Waleran, it was you who persuaded me to change sides!”

Waleran shrugged. “Change back.”

William realized that this was Waleran’s objective. He wanted William to switch his allegiance to Stephen. Waleran’s horror at the burning of Kingsbridge had been faked: he had simply been establishing a bargaining position. This realization brought enormous relief to William, for it meant that Waleran was not implacably opposed to giving him absolution. But did he want to switch again? For a moment he said nothing as he tried to think about it calmly.

“Stephen has been winning victories all summer,” Waleran went on. “Maud is begging her husband to come over from Normandy to help her, but he won’t. The tide is flowing our way.”

An awful prospect opened up before William: the Church refused to absolve him from his crimes; the sheriff accused him of murder; a victorious King Stephen backed the sheriff and the Church; and William himself was tried and hanged…

“Be like me, and follow Bishop Henry-he knows which way the wind blows,” Waleran urged. “If everything works out right, Winchester will be made an archdiocese, and Henry will be the archbishop of Winchester-on a par with the archbishop of Canterbury. And when Henry dies, who knows? I could be the next archbishop. After that… well, there are English cardinals already-one day there may be an English pope…”

William stared at Waleran, mesmerized, despite his own fear, by the naked ambition revealed on the bishop’s normally stony face. Waleran as pope? Anything was possible. But the immediate consequences of Waleran’s aspirations were more important. William could see that he was a pawn in Waleran’s game. Waleran had gained in prestige, with Bishop Henry, by his ability to deliver William and the knights of Shiring to one side or the other in the civil war. That was the price William had to pay for having the Church turn a blind eye to his crimes. “Do you mean…” His voice was hoarse. He coughed and tried again. “Do you mean that you will hear my confession if I swear allegiance to Stephen and come over to his side again?”

The glitter went from Waleran’s eyes and his face became expressionless again. “That’s exactly what I mean,” he said.

William had no choice, but in any event he could see no reason to refuse. He had switched to Maud when she appeared to be winning, and he was quite ready to switch back now that Stephen seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Anyway, he would have consented to anything to be free of that awful terror of hell. “Agreed, then,” he said without further hesitation. “Only hear my confession, quickly.”

“Very well,” said Waleran. “Let us pray.”

As they went briskly through the service, William felt the load of guilt fall from his back, and he gradually began to be pleased about his triumph. When he emerged from the chapel his men could see that his spirits had lifted, and they cheered up immediately. William told them that they would once again be fighting for King Stephen, in accordance with the will of God as expressed by Bishop Waleran, and they made that the excuse for a celebration. Waleran called for wine.

While they were waiting for dinner, William said: “Stephen ought to confirm me in my earldom now.”

“He ought to,” Waleran agreed. “But that doesn’t mean he will.”

“But I’ve come over to his side!”

“Richard of Kingsbridge never left it.”

William permitted himself a smug smile. “I think I’ve disposed of the threat from Richard.”

“Oh? How?”

“Richard has never had any land. The only way he’s been able to keep up a knightly entourage is by using his sister’s money.”

“It’s unorthodox, but it’s worked so far.”

“But now his sister no longer has any money. I set fire to her barn yesterday. She’s destitute. And so is Richard.”

Waleran nodded acknowledgment. “In that case it’s only a matter of time before he disappears from sight. And then, I should think, the earldom is yours.”

Dinner was ready. William’s men-at-arms sat below the salt and flirted with the palace laundresses. William was at the head of the table with Waleran and his archdeacons. Now that he had relaxed, William rather envied the men with the laundresses: archdeacons made dull company.

Dean Baldwin offered William a dish of peas and said: “Lord William, how will you prevent someone else from doing what Prior Philip tried to do, and starting his own fleece fair?”

William was surprised by this question. “They wouldn’t dare!”

“Another monk wouldn’t dare, perhaps; but an earl might.”

“He’d need a license.”

“He might get one, if he fought for Stephen.”

“Not in this county.”

“Baldwin is right, William,” said Bishop Waleran. “All around the borders of your earldom there are towns that could hold a fleece fair: Wilton, Devizes, Wells, Marlborough, Wallingford…”

“I burned Kingsbridge, I can burn any place,” William said irritably. He took a swallow of wine. It angered him to have his victory deprecated.

Waleran took a roll of new bread and broke it without eating any. “Kingsbridge is an easy target,” he argued. “It has no town wall, no castle, not even a big church for people to take refuge in. And it’s run by a monk who has no knights or men-at-arms. Kingsbridge is defenseless. Most towns aren’t.”

Dean Baldwin added: “And when the civil war is over, whoever wins, you won’t even be able to burn a town like Kingsbridge and get away with it. That’s breaking the king’s peace. No king could overlook it in normal times.”

William saw their point and it made him angry. “Then the whole thing might have been for nothing,” he said. He put down his knife. His stomach was cramped with tension and he could no longer eat.

Waleran said: “Of course, if Aliena is ruined, that leaves a kind of vacancy.”

William did not follow him. “What do you mean?”

“Most of the wool in the county was sold to her this year. What will happen next year?”

“I don’t know.”

Waleran continued in the same thoughtful manner. “Apart from Prior Philip, all the wool producers for miles around are either tenants of the earl or tenants of the bishop. You’re the earl, in everything but name, and I’m the bishop. If we forced all our tenants to sell their fleeces to us, we would control two thirds of the wool trade in the county. We would sell at the Shiring Fleece Fair. There wouldn’t be enough business left to justify another fair, even if someone got a license.”

It was a brilliant idea, William saw immediately. “And we’d make as much money as Aliena did,” he pointed out.

“Indeed.” Waleran took a delicate bite of the meat in front of him and chewed reflectively. “So you’ve burned Kingsbridge, ruined your worst enemy, and established a new source of income for yourself. Not a bad day’s work.”

William took a deep draft of wine, and felt a glow in his belly. He looked down the table, and his eye lit on a plump dark-haired girl who was smiling coquettishly at two of his men. Perhaps he would have her tonight. He knew how it would be. When he got her in a corner, and threw her on the floor, and lifted her skirt, he would remember Aliena’s face, and the expression of terror and despair as she saw her wool going up in flames; and then he would be able to do it. He smiled at the prospect, and took another slice off the haunch of venison.

Prior Philip was shaken to the core by the burning of Kingsbridge. The unexpectedness of William’s move, the brutality of the attack, the dreadful scenes as the crowd panicked, the awful slaughter, and his own utter impotence, all combined to leave him stunned.

Worst of all was the death of Tom Builder. A man at the height of his skill, and a master of every aspect of his craft, Tom had been expected to continue to manage the building of the cathedral until it was finished. He was also Philip’s closest friend outside the cloisters. They had talked at least once a day, and struggled together to find solutions to the endless variety of problems that confronted them in their vast project. Tom had had a rare combination of wisdom and humility that made him a joy to work with. It seemed impossible that he was gone.

Philip felt that he did not understand anything anymore, he had no real power, and he was not competent to be in charge of a cow shed, much less a town the size of Kingsbridge. He had always believed that if he did his honest best and trusted in God, everything would turn out well in the end. The burning of Kingsbridge seemed to have proved him wrong. He lost all motivation, and sat in his house at the priory all day long, watching the candle burn down on the little altar, thinking disconnected, desolate thoughts, doing nothing.

It was young Jack who saw what had to be done. He got the dead bodies taken to the crypt, put the wounded in the monks’ dormitory, and organized emergency feeding for the living in the meadow on the other side of the river. The weather was warm, and everyone slept in the open air. The day after the massacre, Jack organized the dazed townspeople into teams of laborers and got them to clear the ashes and debris from the priory close, while Cuthbert Whitehead and Milius Bursar ordered supplies of food from surrounding farms. On the second day they buried their dead in one hundred and ninety-three new graves on the north side of the priory close.

Philip simply issued the orders that Jack proposed. Jack pointed out that most of the citizens who had survived the fire had lost very little of material value-just a hovel and a few sticks of furniture, in most cases. The crops were still in the fields, the livestock were in the pastures, and people’s savings were still where they had been buried, usually beneath the hearth of their homes, untouched by the above-ground blaze that had swept the town. The merchants whose stocks had burned were the greatest sufferers: some were ruined, as Aliena was; others had some of their wealth in buried silver, and would be able to start again. Jack proposed rebuilding the town immediately.

At Jack’s suggestion, Philip gave extraordinary permission for timber to be cut freely in the priory’s forests for the purpose of rebuilding houses, but only for one week. In consequence Kingsbridge was deserted for seven days while every family selected and felled the trees they would use for their new homes. During that week, Jack asked Philip to draw a plan of the new town. The idea caught Philip’s imagination and he came out of his depression.

He worked on his plan nonstop for four days. There would be large houses all around the priory walls, for the wealthy craftsmen and shopkeepers. He recalled the grid pattern of Winchester’s streets, and planned the new Kingsbridge on the same convenient basis. Straight streets, broad enough for two carts to pass, would run down to the river, with narrower cross streets. He made the standard building plot twenty-four feet wide, which was an ample frontage for a town house. Each plot would be a hundred and twenty feet deep, to make room for a decent backyard with a privy, a vegetable garden, and a stable, cow shed or pigsty. The bridge had burned down and the new one would be built in a more convenient position, at the bottom end of the new main street. The main road through the town would now go from the bridge straight up the hill, past the cathedral and out the far side, as in Lincoln. Another wide street would run from the priory gate to a new quay at the riverside, downstream from the bridge and around the bend in the river. That way, bulk supplies could reach the priory without using the main shopping street. There would be a completely new district of small houses around the new quay: the poor would be downstream of the priory, and their dirty habits would not foul the supply of fresh water to the monastery.

Planning the rebuilding brought Philip out of his helpless trance, but every time he looked up from his drawings he was swept by rage and grief for the people who had been lost. He wondered whether William Hamleigh was in fact the devil incarnate: he caused more misery than seemed humanly possible. Philip saw the same alternation of hope and bereavement on the faces of the townspeople as they arrived back from the forest with their loads of timber. Jack and the other monks had laid out the plan of the new town on the ground with stakes and string, and as the people chose their plots, every now and again someone would say gloomily: “But what’s the point? It might be burned again next year.” If there had been some hope of justice, some expectation that the evildoers might be punished, perhaps the people would not have been so inconsolable; but although Philip had written to Stephen, Maud, Bishop Henry, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the pope, he knew that in wartime there was little chance that a man as powerful and important as William would be brought to trial.

The larger building plots in Philip’s scheme were much in demand, despite higher rents, so he altered his plan to allow for more of them. Almost nobody wanted to build in the poorer quarter, but Philip decided to leave the layout as it was, for future use. Ten days after the fire, new wooden houses were going up on most plots, and another week later most of them were finished. Once the people had built their houses, work started again on the cathedral. The builders got paid and wanted to spend their money; so the shops reopened, and the smallholders brought their eggs and onions into town; and the scullery maids and laundresses recommenced work for the shopkeepers and craftsmen; and so, day by day, material life in Kingsbridge returned to normal.

But there were so many dead that it seemed like a town of ghosts. Every family had lost at least one member: a child, a mother, a husband, a sister. The people wore no badges of mourning but the lines of their faces showed grief as starkly as bare trees show winter. One of the worst hit was six-year-old Jonathan. He moped about the priory close like a lost soul, and eventually Philip realized he was missing Tom, who had, it seemed, spent more time with the boy than anyone had noticed. Once Philip understood this, he took care to set aside an hour each day for Jonathan, to tell him stories, play counting games, and listen to his voluble chatter.

Philip wrote to the abbots of all the major Benedictine monasteries in England and France, asking them if they could recommend a master builder to replace Tom. A prior in Philip’s position would normally consult his bishop about this, for bishops traveled widely and were likely to hear of good builders, but Bishop Waleran would not help Philip. The fact that the two of them were permanently at odds made Philip’s job lonelier than it should have been.

While Philip waited for replies from the abbots, the craftsmen looked instinctively to Alfred for leadership. Alfred was Tom’s son, he was a master mason, and he had for some time been operating his own semi-autonomous team on the site. He did not have Tom’s brain, unfortunately, but he was literate and authoritative, and he slipped gradually into the gap left by the death of his father.

There seemed to be a lot more problems and queries about the building than there had been in Tom’s time, and Alfred always seemed to come up with a question when Jack was nowhere to be found. No doubt that was natural: everyone in Kingsbridge knew the stepbrothers hated one another. However, the upshot was that Philip found himself once again bothered by endless questions of detail.

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.

“I’ve always got you.”

“I can’t take care of you!” he protested.

“Why not?” A small spark of anger flared in her. “I’ve looked after you for six long years!”

“I’ve been fighting a war-all you’ve done is sell wool.”

And knife an outlaw, she thought; and throw a dishonest priest to the floor, and feed and clothe and protect you when you could do nothing but bite your knuckles and look terrified. But the spark had died and the anger had gone, and she merely said: “I was joking, of course.”

He grunted, not sure whether to be offended by that remark; then he shook his head irritably and said: “Anyway, you shouldn’t be so quick to reject Alfred.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” she said.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Alfred. Don’t you understand? Something’s wrong with me.”

He put down the saddle and pointed his finger at her. “That’s right, and I know what it is. You’re completely selfish. You think only of yourself.”

It was so monstrously unjust that she was unable to feel angry. Tears came to her eyes. “How can you say that?” she protested miserably.

“Because everything would be all right if only you would marry Alfred, but still you refuse.”

“For me to marry Alfred wouldn’t help you.”

“Yes, it would.”

“How?”

“Alfred said he would help me fight on, if I was his brother-in-law. I’d have to cut down a bit-he can’t afford all my men-at-arms-but he promised me enough for a war-horse and new weapons, and my own squire.”

“When?” Aliena said in astonishment. “When did he say this?”

“Just now. At the priory.”

Aliena felt humiliated, and Richard had the grace to look a little shamefaced. The two men had been negotiating over her like horse dealers. She got to her feet, and without another word she left the house.

She walked back up to the priory and entered the close from the south side, jumping across the ditch by the old water mill. The mill was quiet today since it was a holiday. She would not have walked that way if the mill had been working, for the pounding of the hammers as they felted the cloth always gave her a headache.

The priory close was deserted, as she had expected. The building site was quiet. This was the hour when the monks studied or rested; and everyone else was in the meadow today. She wandered across to the cemetery on the north side of the building site. The carefully tended graves, with their neat wooden crosses and bunches of fresh flowers, told the truth: the town had not yet got over the massacre. She stopped beside Tom’s stone tomb, adorned with a simple marble angel carved by Jack. Seven years ago, she thought, my father arranged a perfectly reasonable marriage for me. William Hamleigh wasn’t old, he wasn’t ugly, and he wasn’t poor. He would have been accepted with a sigh of relief by any other girl in my position. But I refused him, and look at the trouble that has followed: our castle attacked, my father jailed, my brother and me destitute-even the burning of Kingsbridge and the killing of Tom are consequences of my obstinacy.

Somehow the death of Tom seemed worse than all the other sorrows, perhaps because he had been loved by so many people, perhaps because he was the second father Jack had lost.

And now I’m refusing another perfectly reasonable proposal, she thought. What gives me the right to be so particular? My fastidiousness has caused enough trouble. I should accept Alfred, and be thankful that I don’t have to work for Mistress Kate.

She turned away from the grave and walked over to the building site. She stood in what would be the crossing and looked at the chancel. It was finished but for the roof, and the builders were getting ready for the next phase, the transepts: already the plan had been laid out on the ground on either side of her with stakes and string, and the men had started digging the foundations. The towering walls in front of her cast long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. It was a mild day, but the cathedral felt cold. Aliena looked for a long time at the rows of round arches, large at ground level, small above, and mid-sized on top. There was something deeply satisfying about the regular rhythm of arch, pier, arch, pier.

If Alfred really was willing to finance Richard, Aliena still had a chance to fulfill her vow to her father, that she would take care of Richard until he won back the earldom. In her heart she knew she had to marry Alfred. She just could not face it.

She walked along the southern side aisle, dragging her hand along the wall, feeling the rough texture of the stones, running her fingernails over the shallow grooves made by the stonemason’s toothed chisel. Here in the aisles, under the windows, the wall was decorated with blind arcading, like a row of filled-in arches. The arcading served no purpose but it added to the sense of harmony Aliena felt when she looked at the building. Everything in Tom’s cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.

In the southeast corner of the church, a low doorway led to a narrow spiral staircase. On impulse Aliena went through the doorway and climbed the stairs. When she lost sight of the doorway, and could not yet see the top of the stairs, she began to feel peculiar, for the passage looked as if it might wind upward forever. Then she saw daylight: there was a small slit window in the turret wall, put there to light the steps. Eventually she emerged onto the wide gallery over the aisle. It had no windows to the outside, but on the inside it looked into the roofless church. She sat on the sill of one of the inner arches, leaning against the pillar. The cold stone caressed her cheek. She wondered whether Jack had carved this one. It occurred to her that if she fell from here she might die. But it was not really high enough: she might just break her legs, and lie in agony until the monks came and found her.

She decided to climb to the clerestory. She returned to the turret staircase and went on up. The next stage was shorter, but still she found it frightening, and her heart was beating loudly by the time she reached the top. She stepped into the clerestory passage, a narrow tunnel in the wall. She edged along the passage until it came out onto the inner sill of a clerestory window. She held on to the pillar that divided the window. When she looked down at the seventy-five-foot drop, she started to shake.

She heard footsteps on the turret stairs. She found herself breathing hard, as if she had been running. There had been no one else in sight. Had someone crept up behind her, trying to sneak up on her? The steps came along the clerestory passage. She let go of the pillar and stood teetering on the edge. A figure appeared on the sill. It was Jack. Her heart beat so loudly she could hear it.

“What are you doing?” he said warily.

“I… I was seeing how your cathedral is coming along.”

He pointed to the capital above her head. “I did that.”

She looked up. The stone was carved with the figure of a man who appeared to be holding the weight of the arch on his back. His body was twisted as if in pain. Aliena stared at it. She had never seen anything quite like it. Without thinking, she said: “That’s how I feel.”

When she looked back at him he was beside her, holding her arm gently but firmly. “I know,” he said.

She looked at the drop. The thought of falling all that way made her sick with fear. He tugged at her arm. She allowed herself to be led into the clerestory passage.

They went all the way down the turret stairs and came out on the ground. Aliena felt weak. Jack turned to her and said in a conversational tone: “I was reading in the cloisters, and looked up and saw you in the clerestory.”

She looked at his young face, so full of concern and tenderness; and she remembered why she had run away from everyone else and sought solitude here. She yearned to kiss him, and she saw the answering longing in his eyes. Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: “I think I’m going to marry Alfred.”

He stared at her. He looked stunned. Then his face became sad, with an old, wise sadness that was beyond his years. She thought he was going to cry, but he did not. Instead there was anger in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, hesitated, then spoke at last.

In a voice like the cold north wind he Said: “You would have done better to jump off the clerestory.”

He turned from her and walked back into the monastery.

I’ve lost him forever, Aliena thought; and she felt as if her heart would break.

II

Jack was seen sneaking out of the monastery on Lammas Day. It was not a serious offense in itself, but he had been caught several times before, and the fact that this time he had gone out to speak to an unmarried woman made the whole thing more grave. His transgression was discussed in chapter the following day, and he was ordered to be kept in close confinement. That meant he was restricted to the monastic buildings, the cloisters and the crypt, and any time he went from one building to another he had to be accompanied.

He hardly noticed. He was so devastated by Aliena’s announcement that nothing else made much difference. If he had been flogged instead of just confined, he felt, he would have been equally oblivious.

There was now no question of his working on the cathedral, of course; but much of the pleasure had gone out of that since Alfred had taken charge. Now he spent the free afternoons reading. His Latin had improved by leaps and bounds and he could read anything, albeit slowly; and as he was supposed to be reading to improve his Latin, rather than for any other purpose, he was allowed to use any book that took his fancy. Small though the library was, it had several works of philosophy and mathematics, and Jack had plunged into them with enthusiasm.

Much of what he read was disappointing. There were pages of genealogies, repetitive accounts of miracles performed by long-dead saints, and endless theological speculation. The first book that really appealed to Jack told the whole history of the world from the Creation to the founding of Kingsbridge Priory, and when he finished it he felt he knew everything that had ever happened. He realized after a while that the book’s claim to tell all events was implausible, for after all, things were going on everywhere all the time, not just in Kingsbridge and England, but in Normandy, Anjou, Paris, Rome, Ethiopia, and Jerusalem, so the author must have left a lot out. Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.

Even more intriguing were the puzzles. One philosopher asked why a weak man can move a heavy stone with a lever. This had never seemed strange to Jack before, but now the question tormented him. He had spent several weeks at the quarry at one time, and he recalled that when a stone could not be moved with a crowbar a foot long, the solution was generally to use a crowbar two feet long. Why should the same man be unable to move the stone with a short lever yet able to move it with a long one? That question led to others. The cathedral builders used a huge winding wheel to lift large stones and timbers up to the roof. The load at the end of the rope was much too heavy for a man to lift with his hands, but the same man could turn the wheel that wound the rope, and the load would rise. How was that possible?

Such speculations distracted him for a while, but his thoughts returned again and again to Aliena. He would stand in the cloisters, with a heavy book on a lectern in front of him, and recall that morning in the old mill when he had kissed her. He could remember every instant of that kiss, from the first soft touch of lips to the thrilling sensation of her tongue in his mouth. His body had pressed hers from thighs to shoulders, so that he could feel the contours of her breasts and her hips. The memory was so intense that it was like experiencing it all over again.

Why had she changed? He still believed that the kiss was real and her subsequent coldness was false. He felt he knew her. She was loving, sensual, romantic, imaginative, and warm. She was also thoughtless and imperious, and she had learned to be tough; but she was not cold, not cruel, not heartless. It was not in character for her to marry for money a man she did not love. She would be unhappy, she would regret it, she would be sick with misery; he knew it and in her heart she must know it too.

One day when he was in the writing room, a priory servant who was sweeping the floor stopped for a rest, leaned on his broom, and said: “Big celebration coming up in your family, then.”

Jack was studying a map of the world drawn on a big sheet of vellum. He looked up. The speaker was a gnarled old man too feeble now for heavy work. He probably had Jack confused with someone else. “Why’s that, Joseph?”

“Didn’t you know? Your brother’s getting married.”

“I have no brothers,” Jack said automatically, but his heart had gone cold.

“Stepbrother, then,” said Joseph.

“No, I didn’t know.” Jack had to ask the question. He gritted his teeth. “Who is he marrying?”

“That Aliena.”

So she was determined to go through with it. Jack had been harboring a secret hope that she would change her mind. He looked away so that Joseph should not see the despair on his face. “Well, well,” he said, trying to make his voice sound unemotional.

“Yes-her that used to be so high-and-mighty, until she lost everything in the fire.”

“Did-did you say when?”

“Tomorrow. They’re going to get wed in the new parish church Alfred built.”

Tomorrow!

Aliena was going to marry Alfred tomorrow. Until now Jack had never really believed it would happen. Now the reality burst on him like a thunderclap. Aliena was going to get married tomorrow. Jack’s life would end tomorrow.

He looked down at the map on the lectern in front of him. What did it matter whether the center of the world was Jerusalem or Wallingford? Would he be happier if he knew how levers worked? He had told Aliena that she should jump from the clerestory rather than marry Alfred. What he should have said was that he, Jack, might as well jump from the clerestory.

He despised the priory. Being a monk was a stupid way of life. If he could not work on the cathedral and Aliena married someone else, he had nothing to live for.

What made it worse was that he knew how thoroughly miserable she would be living with Alfred. This was not just because he hated Alfred. There were some girls who might be more or less contented married to Alfred: for example, Edith, the one who had giggled when Jack talked to her about how he loved to carve stone. Edith would not expect much of Alfred, and she would be glad to flatter him and obey him as long as he continued prosperous and loved their children. But Aliena would hate every minute. She would loathe Alfred’s physical coarseness, she would despise him for his bullying ways, she would be disgusted by his meanness, and she would find his slow-wittedness maddening. Marriage to Alfred would be hell for her.

Why could she not see that? Jack was mystified. What was going on in her mind? Surely anything would be better than marriage to a man she did not love. She had caused a sensation by refusing to marry William Hamleigh seven years ago, yet now she had passively accepted a proposal from someone equally unsuitable. What was she thinking of?

Jack had to know.

He had to talk to her, and to hell with the monastery.

He rolled up the map, replaced it in the cupboard, and went to the door. Joseph was still leaning on his broomstick. “Are you leaving?” he said to Jack. “I thought you were supposed to stay here until the circuitor comes for you.”

“The circuitor can go shit,” said Jack, and he stepped out.

As he emerged into the east walk of the cloisters, he caught the eye of Prior Philip, who was coming in from the building site to the north. Jack turned away quickly, but Philip called out: “Jack! What are you doing? You’re supposed to be confined.”

Jack had no patience for monastic discipline now. He ignored Philip and walked the other way, heading for the passage that led from the south walk down to the small houses around the new quay. But his luck was out. At that moment Brother Pierre, the circuitor, came out of the passage, followed by his two deputies. They saw Jack and stopped dead. A look of astonished indignation spread over Pierre’s moon-shaped face.

Philip called out: “Stop that novice, Brother Circuitor!”

Pierre held out a hand to stop Jack. Jack pushed him aside. Pierre reddened and grabbed at Jack’s arm. Jack wrenched his arm free and punched Pierre on the nose. Pierre gave a shout, more of outrage than pain. Then his two deputies jumped on Jack.

Jack struggled like a maniac, and almost got free, but when Pierre recovered from the blow to his nose and joined in, the three of them were able to wrestle Jack to the ground and hold him there. He continued to wriggle, furious that this monastic horseshit was now keeping him from something really important, speaking to Aliena. He kept saying: “Let me go, you stupid fools!” The two deputies sat on him. Pierre stood upright, wiping his bleeding nose on the sleeve of his habit. Philip appeared beside him.

Despite his own rage, Jack could see that Philip too was angry, angrier than Jack had ever seen him. “I will not tolerate this behavior from anyone,” he said in a voice like iron. “You’re a novice monk, and you will obey me.” He turned to Pierre. “Put him in the obedience room.”

“No!” Jack shouted. “You can’t!”

“I most certainly can,” Philip said wrathfully.

The obedience room was a small, windowless cell in the undercroft beneath the dormitory, at the south end, next to the latrines. It was mainly used to imprison lawbreakers who were waiting to be dealt with at the prior’s court, or to be transferred to the sheriffs jail at Shiring; but it did occasional service as a punishment cell for monks who committed serious disciplinary offenses, such as acts of impurity with priory servants.

It was not the solitary confinement that scared Jack-it was the fact that he would not be able to get out to see Aliena. “You don’t understand!” he yelled at Philip. “I have to speak to Aliena!”

It was the worst thing he could have said. Philip got angrier. “It was for speaking to her that you were originally punished,” he said furiously.

“But I must!”

“The only thing you must do is learn to fear God and obey your superiors.”

“You’re not my superior, you silly ass! You’re nothing to me. Let me go, damn you all!”

“Take him away,” Philip said grimly.

A little crowd had gathered by now, and several monks lifted Jack by his arms and legs. He wriggled like a fish on a hook but there were too many of them. He could not believe that this was happening. They carried him, kicking and struggling, along the passage to the door of the obedience room. Someone opened it. Brother Pierre’s voice said vengefully: “Throw him in!” They swung him back, then he was hurled through the air. He landed in a heap on the stone floor. He scrambled to his feet, numb to his bruises, and rushed at the door, but it slammed shut just as he crashed into it, and a moment later the heavy iron bar thudded down outside and the key turned in the lock.

Jack hammered on the door with all his might. “Let me out!” he yelled hysterically. “I have to stop her from marrying him! Let me out!” There was no sound from outside. He kept on calling, but his demands turned into pleas, and his voice dropped to a whine, then eventually to a whisper, and he wept tears of frustrated rage.

At last his eyes dried up and he could cry no more.

He turned from the door. The cell was not quite pitch-Mack: a little light came under the door and he could make out his surroundings vaguely. He went around the walls, feeling with his hands. He could tell by the pattern of chisel marks on the stones that the cell had been built a long time ago. The room was almost featureless. It was about six feet square, with a column in one corner and an upward-arching ceiling: clearly it had once been part of a larger room and had been walled off for use as a prison. In one wall there was a space like an opening for a slit window, but it was tightly shuttered, and would have been too small for anyone to crawl through even if it had been open. The stone floor felt damp. Jack became aware of a constant rushing noise, and realized that the water channel, which ran through the priory from the millpond to the latrines, must pass beneath the cell. That would explain why the floor was of stone instead of beaten earth.

He felt drained. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and stared at the crack of light under the door, the tantalizing reminder of where he wanted to be. How had he got into this fix? He had never believed in the monastery, never intended to dedicate his life to God-he did not really believe in God. He had become a novice as a “solution to an immediate problem, a way of staying in Kingsbridge, close to what he loved. He had thought: I can always leave if I want to. But now he did want to leave, wanted to more than he had ever imagined, and he could not: he was a prisoner. I’ll strangle Prior Philip as soon as I get out of here, he thought, even if I have to hang for it afterward.

That started him wondering when he would be released. He heard the bell ring for supper. They certainly intended to leave him here all night. They were probably discussing him right now. The worst of the monks would argue that he should be shut up for a week-he could just see Pierre and Remigius calling for firm discipline. Others, who liked him, might say one night was sufficient punishment. What would Philip say? He liked Jack, but he would be terribly angry now, especially after Jack had said You’re not my superior, you silly ass, you’re nothing to me. Philip would be tempted to let the hard-liners have their own way. The only hope was that they might want Jack thrown out of the monastery immediately, which in their view would be a harsher sentence. That way he might be able to speak to her before the wedding. But Philip would be against that, Jack was sure. Philip would see expelling Jack as an admission of defeat.

The light under the door was growing fainter. It was getting dark outside. Jack wondered how prisoners were supposed to relieve themselves. There was no pot in the cell. It would not be characteristic of the monks to overlook that particular detail: they believed in cleanliness, even for sinners. He inspected the floor again, inch by inch, and found a small hole close to one corner. The noise of water was louder there, and he guessed it led to the underground channel. This was presumably his latrine.

Shortly after he made this discovery the small shutter opened. Jack sprang to his feet. A bowl and a crust of bread were placed on the sill. Jack could not see the face of the man who put them there. “Who’s that?” he said.

“I am not permitted to converse with you,” the man said in a monotone. However, Jack recognized the voice: it was an old monk called Luke.

“Luke, have they said how long I have to stay in here?” Jack cried.

He repeated the formula: “I am not permitted to converse with you.”

“Please, Luke, tell me if you know!” Jack pleaded, not caring how pathetic he might sound.

Luke replied in a whisper. “Pierre said a week, but Philip made it two days.” The shutter slammed.

“Two days!” Jack said desperately. “But she’ll be married by then!”

There was no reply.

Jack stood still, staring at nothing. The light coming through the slit had been strong by comparison with the near-dark inside, and he could not see for a few moments, until his sight readjusted to the gloom; then his eyes filled with new tears, and he was blind again.

He lay down on the floor. There was nothing more to be done. He was locked in here until Monday, and by Monday Aliena would be Alfred’s wife, waking up in Alfred’s bed, with Alfred’s seed inside her. The thought nauseated him.

Soon it was pitch-black. He fumbled his way to the sill and drank from the bowl. It contained plain water. He took a small piece of bread and put it in his mouth, but he was not hungry and he could hardly swallow it. He drank the rest of the water and lay down again.

He did not sleep, but he went into a kind of doze, almost like a trance, in which he relived, as in a dream or a vision, the Sunday afternoons he had spent with Aliena last summer, when he had told her the story of the squire who loved the princess, and went in search of the vine that bore jewels.

The midnight bell brought him out of the doze. He was used to the monastic timetable now, and he felt wide awake at midnight, though he often needed to sleep in the afternoons, especially if there had been meat for dinner. The monks would be getting out of their beds and forming up in lines for the procession from dormitory to church. They were immediately above Jack, but he could hear nothing: the cell was soundproof. It seemed very soon afterward that the bell rang again for lauds, which took place an hour after midnight. Time was passing quickly, too quickly, for tomorrow Aliena would be married.

In the small hours, despite his misery, he fell asleep.

He came awake with a start. There was someone in the cell with him.

He was terrified.

The cell was pitch-black. The sound of water seemed louder. “Who is it?” he said in a trembling voice.

“It’s me-don’t be afraid.”

“Mother!” He almost fainted with relief. “How did you know I was in here?”

“Old Joseph came to tell me what had happened,” she replied in a normal voice.

“Quiet! The monks will hear you.”

“No, they won’t. You can sing and shout in here without being heard above. I know-I’ve done it.”

His head was so full of questions that he did not know which to ask first. “How did you get in here? Is the door open?” He moved toward her, holding his hands out in front of him. “Oh-you’re wet!”

“The water channel runs right under here. There’s a loose stone in the floor.”

“How did you know that?”

“Your father spent ten months in this cell,” she said, and in her voice there was the bitterness of years.

“My father? This cell? Ten months?”

“That’s when he taught me all those stories.”

“But why was he in here?”

“We never found out,” she said resentfully. “He was kidnapped, or arrested-he never knew which-in Normandy, and he was brought here. He didn’t speak English or Latin and he had no idea where he was. He worked in the stables for a year or so-that’s how I met him.” Her voice softened with nostalgia. “I loved him from the moment I set eyes on him. He was so gentle, and he looked so frightened and unhappy, yet he sang like a bird. Nobody had spoken to him for months. He was so pleased when I said a few words in French, I think he fell in love with me just for that.” Anger made her voice hard again. “After a while they put him in this cell. That’s when I discovered how to get in here.”

It occurred to Jack that he must have been conceived right here on the cold stone floor. The thought embarrassed him and he was glad it was too dark for him and his mother to see each other. He said: “But my father must have done something to be arrested like that.”

“He couldn’t think of anything. And in the end they invented a crime. Someone gave him a jeweled cup and told him he could go. A mile or two away he was arrested, and accused of stealing the cup. They hanged him for it.” She was crying.

“Who did all this?”

“The sheriff of Shiring, the prior of Kingsbridge… it doesn’t matter who.”

“What about my father’s family? He must have had parents, brothers and sisters…”

“Yes, he had a big family, back in France.”

“Why didn’t he escape, and go back there?”

“He tried, once; and they caught him and brought him back. That was when they put him in the cell. He could have tried again, of course, once we had found out how to get out of here. But he didn’t know the way home, he couldn’t speak a word of English, and he was penniless. His chances were slim. He should have done it anyway, we know now; but at the time we never thought they’d hang him.”

Jack put his arms around her, to comfort her. She was soaking wet and shivering. She needed to get out of here and get dry. He realized, with a shock, that if she could get out, so could he. For a few moments he had almost forgotten about Aliena, as his mother talked about his father; but now he realized that his wish had been granted-he could speak to Aliena before her wedding. “Show me the way out,” he said abruptly.

She sniffed and swallowed her tears. “Hold my arm and I’ll lead you.”

They moved across the cell and then he felt her go down. “Just lower yourself into the channel,” she said. “Take a deep breath and put your head under. Then crawl against the flow. Don’t go with the flow, or you’ll end up in the monks’ latrine. You’ll get short of breath when you’re almost there, but just keep calm and crawl on, and you’ll make it.” She went lower still, and he lost contact.

He found the hole and eased himself down. His feet touched the water almost immediately. When he stood on the bottom of the channel his shoulders were still in the cell. Before lowering himself farther, he found the stone and replaced it in position, thinking mischievously that the monks would be mystified when they found the cell empty.

The water was cold. He took a deep breath, went down on his hands and knees, and crawled against the flow. He went as fast as he could. As he crawled, he pictured the buildings above him. He was going beneath the passageway, then the refectory, the kitchen and the bakehouse. It was not far, but it seemed to take forever. He tried to surface but banged his head on the roof of the tunnel. He felt panicky, and remembered what his mother had said. He was almost there. A few moments later he saw light ahead of him. Dawn must have broken while they were talking in the cell. He crawled until the light was above him, then he stood upright and gasped the fresh air gratefully. When he had got his breath back he climbed out of the ditch.

His mother had changed her clothes. She was wearing a clean, dry dress, and wringing out the wet one. She had brought dry clothes for him too. There in a neat pile on the bank were the garments he had not worn for half a year: a linen shirt, a green wool tunic, gray hose and leather boots. Mother turned her back and Jack threw off the heavy monastic robe, stepped out of the sandals, and quickly dressed in his own clothes.

He threw the monk’s habit into the ditch. He was never going to wear it again.

“What will you do now?” Mother asked.

“Go to Aliena.”

“Right away? It’s early.”

“I can’t wait.”

She nodded. “Be gentle. She’s bruised.”

Jack stooped to kiss her, then impulsively threw his arms around her and hugged her. “You got me out of a prison,” he said, and he laughed. “What a mother!”

She smiled, but her eyes were moist.

He gave her a farewell squeeze and walked away.

Even though it was now full light, there was nobody about because it was Sunday, and people did not have to work, so they took the opportunity to sleep past sunrise. Jack was not sure whether he should be afraid of being seen. Did Prior Philip have the right to come after a runaway novice and force him to return? Even if he had that right, would he want to? Jack did not know. However, Philip was the law in Kingsbridge, and Jack had defied him, so there was bound to be trouble of some kind. However, Jack was looking no farther ahead than the next few moments.

He reached Aliena’s little house. It occurred to him that. Richard might be there. He hoped not. However, there was nothing he could do about it. He went up to the door and tapped on it gently.

He cocked his head and listened. Nothing moved inside. He tapped again, harder, and this time he was rewarded by the sound of rustling straw as someone moved. “Aliena!” he said in a loud whisper.

He heard her come to the door. A frightened voice said: “Yes?”

“Open the door!”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Jack.”

“Jack!”

There was a pause. Jack waited.

Aliena closed her eyes in despair and slumped forward, leaning against the door with her cheek on the rough woodwork. Not Jack, she thought; not today, not now.

His voice came again, a low, urgent whisper. “Aliena, please, open the door, quickly! If they catch me they’ll put me back in the cell!”

She had heard that he had been locked up-it was all over town. Obviously he had escaped. And he had come straight to her. Her heart quickened. She could not turn him away.

She lifted the bar and opened the door.

His red hair was plastered wetly to his head, as if he had bathed. He was wearing ordinary clothes, not his monk’s habit. He smiled at her, as if seeing her was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then he frowned, and said: “You’ve been crying.”

“Why have you come here?” she said.

“I had to see you.”

“I’m getting married today.”

“I know. Can I come in?”

It would be wrong to let him in, she knew; but then it occurred to her that tomorrow she would be Alfred’s wife, so this might be the last time she would ever talk to Jack alone. She thought: I don’t care if it is wrong. She opened the door wider. Jack stepped in, and she closed it again and replaced the bar.

They stood facing one another. Now she felt embarrassed. He stared at her with desperate longing, as a man dying of thirst might gaze at a waterfall. “Don’t look at me like that,” she said, and she turned away.

“Don’t marry him,” Jack said.

“I must.”

“You’ll be miserable.”

“I’m miserable now.”

“Look at me, please?”

She turned to face him and raised her eyes.

“Please tell me why you’re doing this,” he said.

“Why should I?”

“Because of the way you kissed me in the old mill.”

She dropped her gaze and felt herself blush hotly. She had let herself down that day and had been ashamed of herself ever since. Now he was using it against her. She said nothing. She had no defense.

He said: “After that, you turned cold.”

She kept her gaze lowered.

“We were such friends,” he went on remorselessly. “All that summer, in your glade, by the waterfall… my stories… we were so happy. I kissed you there, once. Do you remember?”

She did remember, of course, although she had been pretending to herself that it never happened. Now the memory melted her heart, and she looked at him with tearful eyes.

“Then I made the mill do your felting,” he said. “I was so pleased that I could help you in your business. You were thrilled when you saw it. Then we kissed again, but that wasn’t a little kiss, like the first one. This time it was… passionate.” Oh, God, yes, it was, she thought, and she blushed again, and began to breathe fast; and wished he would stop, but he would not. “We held each other very tight. We kissed for a long time. You opened your mouth-”

“Stop!” she cried.

“Why?” he said brutally. “What’s wrong with it? Why did you turn cold?”

“Because I’m frightened!” she said without thinking, and she burst into tears. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. A moment later she felt his hands on her heaving shoulders. She did nothing, and after a while he gently enfolded her in his arms. She took her hands from her face and cried on his green tunic.

After a while she put her arms around his waist.

He laid his cheek on her hair-her ugly, short, shapeless hair, not yet grown back after the fire-and stroked her back as if she were a baby. She wanted to stay like that forever. But he pulled away from her so that he could look at her, and he said: “Why does it make you frightened?”

She knew, but she could not tell him. She shook her head and took a step back; but he held her wrists, keeping her near.

“Listen, Aliena,” he said. “I want you to know how terrible this has been for me. You seemed to love me, then you seemed to hate me, and now you’re going to marry my stepbrother. I don’t understand. I don’t know anything about these things, I’ve never been in love before. It’s all so hurtful. I can’t find words for how bad it is. Don’t you think you should at least try to explain to me why I have to go through this?”

She felt full of remorse. To think that she had hurt him so badly when she loved him so much. She was ashamed of the way she had treated him. He had done nothing but kind things to her and she had ruined his life. He was entitled to an explanation. She steeled herself. “Jack, something happened to me a long time ago, something truly awful, something I’ve made myself forget for years. I wanted never to think of it again, but when you kissed me like that it all came back to me, and I couldn’t stand it.”

“What was it? What was the thing that happened?”

“After my father was imprisoned, we lived in the castle, Richard and I and a servant called Matthew; and one night William Hamleigh came and threw us out.”

He narrowed his eyes. “And?”

“They killed poor Matthew.”

He knew she was not telling him the whole truth. “Why?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did they kill your servant?”

“Because he was trying to stop them.” Tears were streaming down her face now, and her throat felt constricted every time she tried to speak, as if the words were choking her. She shook her head helplessly, and tried to turn away, but Jack would not let her go.

In a voice as gentle as a kiss he said: “Stop them from doing what?”

Suddenly she knew she could tell him, and it all came out in a rush. “They forced me,” she said. “The groom held me down, and William got on top of me, but still I wouldn’t let him, and then they cut off a piece of Richard’s ear, and they said they would cut him more.” She was sobbing with relief now, grateful beyond expression that at last she could say it. She looked into Jack’s eyes and said: “So I opened my legs, and William did it to me, while the groom forced Richard to watch.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jack whispered. “I heard rumors, but I never thought… Dear Aliena, how could they?”

She had to tell him everything. “Then, when William had done it to me, the groom did it too.”

Jack closed his eyes. His face was white and taut.

Aliena said: “And then, you see, when you and I kissed, I wanted you to do it, and that made me think of William and his groom; and I felt so horrible, and frightened, and I ran away. That’s why I was so mean to you, and made you miserable. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you,” he whispered. He drew her to him, and she let him put his arms around her again. It was so comforting.

She felt him shudder. Anxiously she said: “Do I disgust you?”

He looked at her. “I adore you,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her mouth.

She froze. This was not what she wanted. He pulled away a little, then kissed her again. The touch of his lips on hers was very soft. Feeling grateful, and friendly toward him, she pursed her lips, just a little, then relaxed them again, in a faint echo of his kiss. Encouraged, he moved his lips against hers again. She could feel his breath warm on her face. He opened his mouth a fraction. She pulled away quickly.

He looked hurt. “Is it that bad?”

In truth, she was no longer as frightened as she had been. She had told him the horrible truth about herself and he had not recoiled in disgust; in fact, he was as tender and kind as ever. She tilted her head and he kissed her again. This was not scary. There was nothing threatening, nothing violently uncontrollable, no force or hatred or dominance; just the reverse. This kiss was a shared pleasure.

His lips parted and she felt the tip of his tongue. She went taut. He teased her lips apart. She relaxed again. He sucked gently at her lower lip. She felt a little dizzy.

He said: “Would you do what you did last time?”

“What did I do?”

“I’ll show you. Open your mouth, just a little.”

She did as he said, and she felt his tongue again, touching her lips, passing between her parted teeth, and probing into her mouth until he found her own tongue. She pulled away.

“There,” he said. “That’s what you did.”

“Did I?” She was shocked.

“Yes.” He smiled, then suddenly he looked solemn. “If you would only do it again, that would make up for all the sorrow of the last nine months.”

She tilted her face again and closed her eyes. After a moment she felt his mouth on hers. She opened her lips, hesitated, then nervously pushed her tongue into his mouth. As she did so she remembered how she had felt the last time she did it, in the old mill, and that ecstatic sensation came back. She was filled with the need to hold him, to touch his skin and his hair, to feel his muscles and his bones, to be inside him and have him inside her. Her tongue met his, and instead of feeling embarrassed and faintly repelled, she was thrilled to be doing something so intimate as touching his tongue with her own.

They were both breathing hard now. Jack held her head in his hands. She stroked his arms, his back, and then his hips, feeling the taut, bunched muscles. Her heart pounded in her chest. At last she broke the kiss, breathless.

She looked at him. He was flushed and panting, and his face shone with desire. After a moment he bent forward again, but instead of kissing her mouth, he lifted her chin and kissed the delicate skin of her throat. She heard herself moan with pleasure. He moved his head lower, and brushed his lips over the swell of her breast. Her nipples were swollen under the coarse fabric of the linen nightshirt, and they felt unbearably tender. His lips closed over one nipple. She felt the heat of his breath on her skin. “Gently,” she whispered fearfully. He kissed her nipple through the linen, and although he was as gentle as could be, she felt a sensation of pleasure as sharp as if he had bitten her, and she gasped.

Then he went down on his knees in front of her.

He pressed his face into her lap. Until this moment all the sensation had been in her breasts, but now, suddenly, she felt the tingling move to her groin. He found the hem of her nightshirt and lifted it to her waist. She watched him, afraid of his reaction: she had always felt ashamed of being so hairy down there. But he was not repelled; in fact he leaned forward and kissed her gently, right there, as if it was the nicest thing in the world.

She sank down on her knees in front of him. Her breath came in gasps now, as if she had run a mile. She wanted him badly. Her throat was dry with desire. She put her hands on his knees, then slid one hand under his tunic. She had never touched a man’s cock. It was hot and dry and hard as a board. Jack closed his eyes and groaned deep in his throat as she explored its length with her fingertips. She lifted his tunic, bent down, and kissed it, just as he had kissed her, a gentle brush of the lips. Its end was swollen tight as a drum and wet with some kind of moisture.

She was suddenly possessed by a desire to show him her breasts. She came upright again. He opened his eyes. Watching him, she quickly pulled her nightshirt over her head and discarded it. Now she was completely naked. She felt sharply self-conscious, but it was a good feeling, delightfully indecent. Jack stared, mesmerized, at her breasts. “They’re so beautiful,” he said.

“Do you really think so?” she said. “I always thought they were too big.”

“Too big!” he said as if the suggestion were outrageous. He reached out and touched her left breast with his right hand. He stroked her skin gently with his fingertips. She looked down, watching what he was doing. After a while she wanted him to be firmer. She took both his hands in hers and pressed them to her breasts. “Do it harder,” she said hoarsely. “I want to feel you more.”

Her words inflamed him. He squeezed her breasts, then took her nipples in his fingers and pinched them, just hard enough to hurt a little. The sensation drove her wild. All thought went out of her mind and she was completely possessed by the feel of his body and her own. “Take off your clothes,” she said. “I want to look at you.”

He pulled off his tunic and his undershirt, his boots and his hose, and knelt in front of her again. His red hair was drying into undisciplined curls. His body was thin and white, with bony shoulders and hips. He looked wiry and agile, young and fresh. His cock stuck up like a tree out of the auburn hair of his groin. Suddenly she wanted to kiss his chest. She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his flat male nipples. They puckered, just as hers had. She sucked at them gently, wanting him to have the same pleasure he had given her. He stroked her hair.

She wanted him inside her, quickly.

She could see that he was not sure what to do next. “Jack,” she said. “Are you a virgin?”

He nodded, looking a little foolish.

“I’m glad,” she said fervently. “I’m so glad.”

She took his hand and put it between her legs. She was swollen and sensitive there, and his touch was like a shock. “Feel me,” she said. He moved his fingers, exploring. “Feel inside,” she said. Hesitantly, he pushed a finger inside her. She was slippery with desire. “There,” she said with a sigh of satisfaction. “That’s where it has to go.” She detached his hand and lay back in the straw.

He lay over her, supporting himself on one elbow, and kissed her mouth. She felt him enter her a little way, then stop. “What is it?” she said.

“It feels too small,” he said. “I’m afraid of hurting you.”

“Push harder,” she said. “I want you so much I don’t care if it hurts.”

She felt him push. It did hurt, more than she had expected, but only for a moment, and then she felt wonderfully filled. She looked at him. He withdrew a little and pushed again, and she pushed back. She smiled at him. “I never knew it was so nice,” she said wonderingly. He closed his eyes, as if the happiness was too much to bear.

He began to move rhythmically. The constant strokes set up a pulse of pleasure somewhere in her groin. She heard herself give little gasps of excitement every time their bodies came together. He lowered himself so that his chest was touching her nipples and she could feel his hot breath. She dug her fingers into his hard back. Her regular gasps turned into cries. Suddenly she needed to kiss him. She buried her hands in his curls and pulled his head to hers. She kissed his lips hard, then thrust her tongue into his mouth and moved faster and faster. Having his cock in her cunt and her tongue in his mouth drove her out of her mind with pleasure. She felt a great spasm of joy shake her, so violent that it was like falling off a horse and hitting the ground. It made her cry out loud. She opened her eyes and looked into his eyes and said his name, and then another wave took her, and another; and then she felt his body convulse, and he cried out too, and she felt a hot jet spurt inside her, and that inflamed her even more, so that she shook with pleasure again and again, so many times that she lost count, until at last the feeling began to fade, and gradually she went limp and still.

She was too exhausted to speak or move, but she could feel Jack’s weight slumped on top of her, his bony hips on hers, his flat chest squashing her soft breasts, his mouth close to her ear, his fingers entwined in her hair. A part of her mind thought vaguely: That’s what it’s supposed to be like, between men and women; that’s why everyone makes so much fuss about it; that’s why husbands and wives love one another so much.

Jack’s breathing became light and regular, and his body relaxed until it was completely limp. He was asleep.

She turned her head and kissed his face. He was not too heavy. She wanted him to stay there, asleep on top of her, forever.

That thought made her remember.

Today was her wedding day.

Dear God, she thought, what have I done?

She began to cry.

After a moment, Jack woke up.

He kissed the tears on her cheeks with unbearable tenderness.

She said: “Oh, Jack, I want to marry you.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said in a voice of profound satisfaction.

He had misunderstood her, and that made it even worse. “But we can’t,” she said, and her tears flowed faster.

“But after this-”

“I know-”

“After this, you must marry me!”

“We can’t marry,” she said. “I’ve lost all my money, and you’ve got nothing.”

He raised himself on his elbows. “I’ve got my hands,” he said fiercely. “I’m the best stone carver for miles around.”

“You were dismissed-”

“It makes no difference. I could get work on any building site in the world.”

She shook her head miserably. “It’s not enough. I have to think about Richard.”

“Why?” he said indignantly. “What has all this got to do with Richard? He can take care of himself.”

Suddenly Jack looked boyish, and Aliena felt the difference in their ages: he was five years younger than she, and he still thought he had a right to be happy. She said: “I swore an oath to my father, when he was dying, that I would look after Richard until he becomes earl of Shiring.”

“But that could be never!”

“But an oath is an oath.”

Jack looked nonplussed. He rolled off her. His soft penis slipped out of her and she experienced a sense of loss like a pain. I will never feel him inside me again, she thought sorrowfully.

He said: “You can’t mean this. An oath is just words! It’s nothing by comparison with this. This is real, this is you and me.” He looked at her breasts, then he reached out and stroked the curly hair between her legs. It was so poignant that she felt his touch like a whiplash. He saw her wince, and stopped.

For a moment she was on the edge of saying Yes, all right, let’s run away together now, and perhaps if he had carried on stroking her like that she would have; but reason returned, and she said: “I’m going to marry Alfred.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s the only way.”

He stared at her. “I just don’t believe you,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“I can’t give you up. I can’t, I can’t.” His voice cracked, and he stifled a sob.

She tried reason, arguing with herself as much as with him. “What’s the point of breaking my vow to my father, in order to make a marriage vow to you? If I break the first vow, the second is worthless.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want your vows. I just want us to be together all the time and make love whenever we feel like it.”

It was an eighteen-year-old view of marriage, she thought, but she did not say so. She would have accepted it gladly if she had been free. “I can’t do what I want,” she said sadly. “It’s not my destiny.”

“What you’re doing is wrong,” he said. “I mean evil. To give up happiness like this is like throwing jewels into the ocean. It’s far worse than any sin.”

She was unexpectedly struck by the thought that her mother would have agreed with that. She was not sure how she knew. She dismissed the idea. “I could never be happy, even with you, if I had to live with the knowledge that I had broken my promise to my father.”

“You care more for your father and your brother than you do for me,” he said, sounding faintly petulant for the first time.

“No…”

“What, then?”

He was just being argumentative, but she considered the question seriously. “I suppose it means that my oath to my father is more important to me than my love for you.”

“Is it?” he said incredulously. “Is it really?”

“Yes, it is,” she said with a heavy heart, and her words sounded to her like a funeral bell.

“Then there’s nothing more to be said.”

“Only… that I’m sorry.”

He got to his feet. He turned his back to her and picked up his undershirt. She looked at his long, slender body. There was a lot of curly red-gold hair on his legs. He put on his shirt and tunic quickly, then pulled up his socks and stepped into his boots. It all happened much too quickly.

“You’re going to be fearfully unhappy,” he said.

He was trying to be nasty to her, but the attempt was a failure, for she could hear compassion in his voice.

“Yes, I am,” she said. “Would you at least… at least say you respect me for my decision?”

“No,” he said without hesitation. “I don’t. I despise you for it.”

She sat there naked, looking at him, and she began to weep.

“I might as well go,” he said, and his voice cracked on the last word.

“Yes, go,” she sobbed.

He went to the door.

“Jack!”

He turned at the door.

She said: “Wish me luck, Jack?”

He lifted the bar. “Good-” He stopped, unable to speak. He looked down at the floor, then up at her again. This time his voice came out in a whisper. “Good luck,” he said.

Then he went out.

The house that had been Tom’s house was now Ellen’s, but it was also Alfred’s home, so this morning it was full of people preparing a wedding feast, organized by Martha, Alfred’s thirteen-year-old sister, with Jack’s mother looking on disconsolately. Alfred was there with a towel in his hand, about to go down to the river-women bathed once a month, and men at Easter and Michaelmas, but it was traditional to bathe on your wedding morning. The place went quiet when Jack walked in.

Alfred said: “What do you want?”

“I want you to call off the wedding,” Jack replied.

“Piss off,” Alfred said.

Jack realized he had started badly. He should try not to make a confrontation out of this. What he was proposing was in Alfred’s interest, too, if only he could be made to see it. “Alfred, she doesn’t love you,” he said as gently as he could.

“You don’t know anything about it, laddie.”

“I do,” Jack persisted. “She doesn’t love you. She’s marrying you for Richard’s sake. He’s the only one who will be made happy by this marriage.”

“Go back to the monastery,” Alfred said contemptuously. “Where’s your habit, anyway?”

Jack took a deep breath. There was nothing else for it but to tell him the real truth. “Alfred. She loves me.”

He expected Alfred to be enraged, but instead the shadow of a sly grin appeared on Alfred’s face. Jack was nonplussed. What did it mean? Gradually the explanation dawned on him. “You know that already,” he said unbelievingly. “You know she loves me, and you don’t care! You want her anyway, whether she loves you or not. You just want to have her.”

Alfred’s furtive smile became more visible and more malicious, and Jack knew that everything he was saying was true; but there was something else, something more to be read in Alfred’s face. An incredible suspicion arose in Jack’s mind.

“Why do you want her?” he said. “Is it… Could it be that you only want to marry her to take her away from me?” His voice rose in anger. “That you’re marrying her out of spite?” A look of cunning triumph spread across Alfred’s stupid face, and Jack knew that he was right again. He was devastated. The idea that Alfred was doing all this not out of an understandable lust for Aliena but out of pure malice was too much to bear. “Damn you, you’d better treat her right!” he yelled.

Alfred laughed.

The ultimate malignity of Alfred’s purpose struck Jack like a blow. Alfred was not going to treat her well. That would be his final revenge on Jack. Alfred was going to marry Aliena and make her miserable. “You filth,” Jack said bitterly. “You slime. You shit. You ugly, stupid, evil, loathsome slug.”

His contempt finally got to Alfred, who dropped his towel and came at Jack with his hand balled into a fist. Jack was ready for him, and stepped forward to hit him first. Then Jack’s mother was between them, and despite being smaller than either of them she stopped them with a word.

“Alfred. Go and bathe.”

Alfred calmed down quickly. He realized he had won the day without needing to fight Jack, and his thoughts revealed themselves in a smug look. He left the house.

Mother said: “What are you going to do, Jack?”

Jack found that he was shaking with rage. He breathed in and out several times before he could speak. He could not stop the wedding, he realized. But he could not watch it either. “I have to leave Kingsbridge.”

He saw sorrow cross her face, but she nodded. “I was afraid you’d say that. But I think you’re right.”

A bell began to ring in the priory. Jack said: “Any moment now they’ll discover that I’ve escaped.”

She lowered her voice. “Go quickly, but hide down by the river, within sight of the bridge. I’ll bring you some things.”

“All right.” He turned away.

Martha stood between him and the door with tears pouring down her face. He hugged her. She squeezed him hard. Her girlish body was flat and bony, like a boy’s. “Come back one day,” she said fiercely.

He kissed her once, quickly, and went out.

There were plenty of people about now, fetching water and enjoying the mild autumn morning. Most people knew he had become a novice monk-the town was still small enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business-and his layman’s clothing drew surprised looks, although nobody actually questioned him. He went quickly down the hill, crossed the bridge, and walked along the bank of the river until he came to a clump of reeds. He crouched down beside the reeds and watched the bridge, waiting for his mother.

He had no idea where he was going to go. Perhaps he would walk in a straight line until he came to a town where they were building a cathedral, and stop there. He had meant what he said to Aliena about finding work: he knew he was good enough to be employed anywhere. Even if the site had a full complement, he would only have to show the master builder how he could carve, and he would get taken on. But there seemed no point to it anymore. He would never love another woman after Aliena, and he felt much the same about Kingsbridge Cathedral. He wanted to build here, not just anywhere.

Perhaps he would just walk into the forest and lie down and die. That seemed to him a nice idea. It was mild weather, the trees were green-and-gold; he could make a peaceful end. His only regret would be that he had not found out more about his father before he died.

He was picturing himself lying on a bed of autumn leaves and passing gently into death, when he saw Mother cross the bridge. She was leading a horse.

He got to his feet and ran to her. The horse was the chestnut mare she always rode. “I want you to take my mare,” she said.

He took her hand and squeezed it by way of thanks.

Tears came to her eyes. “I never did look after you very well,” she said. “First I brought you up wild, in the forest. Then I let you nearly starve with Tom. Then I made you live with Alfred.”

“You looked after me fine, Mother,” he said. “I made love to Aliena this morning. Now I can die happy.”

“You foolish boy,” she said. “You’re just like me. If you can’t have the lover you want, you won’t have anyone else.”

“Is that how you are?” he said.

She nodded. “After your father died, I lived alone rather than take second best. I never wanted another man until I saw Tom. That was eleven years later.” She detached her hand from his. “I’m telling you this for a reason. It may take eleven years, but you will love someone else one day; I promise you.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“I know.” She looked nervously back over her shoulder at the town. “You’d better go.”

He walked over to the horse. It was loaded with two bulging saddlebags. “What’s in the bags?” he asked.

“Some food and money, and a full wineskin, in this one,” she replied. “The other contains Tom’s tools.”

Jack was moved. Mother had insisted on keeping Tom’s tools after he died, as a memento. Now she was passing them on to him. He hugged her. “Thank you,” he said.

“Where will you go?” she asked him.

He thought again of his father. “Where do jongleurs tell their tales?” he asked.

“On the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela.”

“Do you think the jongleurs might remember Jack Shareburg?”

“They might. Tell them he looked like you.”

“Where’s Compostela?”

“In Spain.”

“Then I’m going to Spain.”

“It’s a long way, Jack.”

“I’ve got time.”

She put her arms around him and hugged him tight. He wondered how many times she had done that in the last eighteen years, comforting him over a grazed knee, a lost toy, a boyish disappointment-and now a grief that was all too grown-up. He thought of the things she had done, from raising him in the forest to getting him out of the punishment cell. She had always been willing to fight like a cat for her son. It hurt to leave her.

She let him go, and he swung up onto the horse.

He looked back at Kingsbridge. It had been a sleepy village with an old, tumbledown cathedral when he first came here. He had set fire to that old cathedral, although not a soul knew it but him. Now Kingsbridge was a busy, self-important little town. Well, there were other towns. It was a wrench to go, but he was on the edge of the unknown, about to embark on an adventure, and that eased the pain of leaving everything he loved.

Mother said: “Come back, one day, please, Jack.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“If you run out of money before you find work, sell the horse, not the tools,” she said.

“I love you, Mother,” he said.

Her eyes overflowed. “Take care of yourself, my son.”

He kicked the horse, and it walked away. He turned and waved. She waved back. Then he kicked it into a trot, and after that he did not look back.

Richard came home just in time for the wedding.

King Stephen had generously given him two days’ leave, he explained. The king’s army was at Oxford, laying siege to the castle, where they had Maud trapped, so there was nothing much for the knights to do. “I couldn’t miss my sister’s wedding day,” Richard said, and Aliena sourly thought: You just want to make dead sure the deed is done, so that you get what Alfred has promised you.

Still, she was glad he was there to walk her to the church and give her away. Otherwise she would have had nobody.

She put on a new linen undershirt and a white dress in the latest style. There was not much she could do with her mutilated hair, but she twisted the longest parts into plaits and bound them in fashionable white silk sheaths. A neighbor loaned her a looking-glass. She was pale, and her eyes showed that she had spent a sleepless night. Well, there was nothing she could do about that. Richard watched her. He wore a faintly sheepish look, as if he felt guilty, and he fidgeted restlessly. Perhaps he was afraid she would call the whole thing off at the last minute.

There were moments when she was sorely tempted to do just that. She imagined herself and Jack walking away from Kingsbridge hand in hand, to start a new life somewhere else, a simple life of straightforward honest work, free from the chains of old vows and dead parents. But it was a foolish dream. She could never be happy if she abandoned her brother.

When she reached that conclusion, she imagined going down to the river and throwing herself in, and she saw her limp body, in a waterlogged wedding dress, drifting downstream, face up, with her hair floating around her head; and then she realized that marriage to Alfred was better than that, and she came back to where she started, regarding the marriage as the best available solution to most of her troubles.

How Jack would pour scorn on that kind of thinking.

The church bell tolled.

Aliena stood up.

She had never visualized her wedding day this way. When she had thought about it, as a girl, she had imagined herself on her father’s arm, walking from the castle keep across the drawbridge to the chapel in the lower courtyard, with Papa’s knights and men-at-arms, servants and tenants packed into the castle precincts to cheer and wish her well. The young man waiting in the chapel had always been rather indistinct in this daydream, but she knew that he adored her and made her laugh and she thought he was wonderful. Well. Nothing in her life had turned out the way she expected. Richard held the door of the little one-room house and she went out into the street.

To her surprise, some of the neighbors were waiting outside their doors to see her go by. Several people called out “God bless you” and “Good luck!” as she emerged. She felt terribly grateful to them. She was showered with corn as she walked up the street. Corn was for fertility. She would have babies, and they would love her.

The parish church was on the far side of town, in the wealthy quarter, where she would be living from tonight. They walked past the monastery. The monks would be holding their service in the crypt right now, but Prior Philip had promised to put in an appearance at the wedding feast and bless the happy couple. Aliena hoped he would make it. He had been an important force in her life, ever since the day, six years ago, when he had bought her wool at Winchester.

They arrived at the new church, built by Alfred with help from Tom. There was a crowd outside. The wedding would take place in the porch, in English; then there would be a Latin mass afterward inside the church. Everyone who worked for Alfred was there, and so were most of the people who had done weaving for Aliena in the old days. They all cheered when Aliena arrived.

Alfred was waiting with his sister, Martha, and one of his masons, Dan. Alfred was wearing a new scarlet tunic and clean boots. He had long, gleaming dark hair like Ellen’s. Aliena realized that Ellen was not here. She was disappointed. She was about to ask Martha where her stepmother was, when the priest came out and the service began.

Aliena reflected that her life had been set on a new course six years ago when she had made a vow to her father, and now a fresh era was beginning with another vow to a man. She rarely did anything for herself. She had made a shocking exception this morning, with Jack. When she recalled what she had done she could hardly believe it. It seemed like a dream, or one of Jack’s fanciful tales, something that had no connection with real life. She would never tell a soul. It would be a lovely secret she would hug to herself, and remember once in a while, like a miser counting a hidden hoard in the dead of night.

They were coming to the vows. On the priest’s cue, Aliena said: “Alfred the son of Tom Builder, I take you as my husband, and swear to be faithful always.” When she had said that she wanted to cry.

Alfred made his vow next. There was a ripple of noise on the outskirts of the crowd as he spoke, and one or two people looked behind. Aliena caught Martha’s eye, and Martha whispered: “It’s Ellen.”

The priest frowned crossly and said: “Alfred and Aliena are now married in the eyes of God, and may the blessing-”

He never finished the sentence. A loud voice rang out from behind Aliena: “I curse this wedding!”

It was Ellen.

A gasp of horror went up from the congregation.

The priest tried to continue. “And may the blessing-” Then he stopped, paled, and made the sign of the cross.

Aliena turned around. Ellen was standing behind her. The crowd had shrunk back from her. She was holding a live cockerel in one hand and a long knife in the other. There was blood on the knife, and blood spurting from the severed neck of the bird. “I curse this marriage with sorrow,” she said, and her words chilled Aliena’s heart. “I curse this marriage with barrenness,” she said. “I curse it with bitterness, and hatred, and bereavement, and regret. I curse it with impotence.” As she said the word impotence she threw the bloody cockerel up into the air. Several people screamed and cowered back. Aliena stood rooted to the spot. The cock flew through the air, spraying blood, and landed on Alfred. He jumped back, terrified. The grisly object flopped on the ground, still bleeding.

When everyone looked up, Ellen was gone.

Martha had put clean linen sheets and a new wool blanket on the bed, the great feather bed that had belonged to Ellen and Tom and was now to be Alfred’s and Aliena’s. Ellen had not been seen since the wedding. The feast had been a subdued affair, like a picnic on a cold day, with everyone grimly going through the motions of eating and drinking because there was nothing else to do. The guests had all left at sundown, without any of the usual coarse jokes about the newlyweds’ first night. Martha was now in her own little bed in the other room. Richard had returned to Aliena’s little house, which would now be his.

Alfred was talking of building a stone house for them next summer. He had been boasting about it to Richard during the feast. “It will have a bedchamber, and a hall, and an undercroft,” he had said. “When John Silversmith’s wife sees it she’ll want one just like it. Pretty soon all the prosperous men in town will want a stone house.”

“Have you done a design?” Richard had asked, and Aliena had heard a hint of skepticism, although nobody else seemed to notice.

“I’ve got some old drawings of my father’s, done in ink on vellum. One of them is the house we were building for Aliena and William Hamleigh, all those years ago. I’ll base it on that.”

Aliena had turned away from them in disgust. How could anyone be so crass as to mention that on her wedding day? Alfred had been full of bluster all afternoon, pouring wine and telling jokes and exchanging sly winks with his workmates. He seemed happy.

Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed taking off his boots. Aliena took the ribbons out of her hair. She did not know what to think about Ellen’s curse. It had shocked her, and she had no idea what was going on in Ellen’s mind, but somehow she was not frightened by it the way most people were.

This could not be said of Alfred. When the slaughtered cock landed on him he had practically gibbered. Richard had shaken him out of it, literally, holding him by the front of his tunic and jerking him back and forth. He had recovered his wits quickly enough, however, and since then the only sign of his fright had been the relentlessness of his backslapping, beer-swilling good cheer.

Aliena felt oddly calm. She did not relish what she was about to do, but at least she was not being forced to it, and while it might be a little distasteful, it would not be humiliating. There was only one man, and no one else would be watching.

She took off her dress.

Alfred said: “By Christ, that’s a long knife.”

She undid the strap that held the knife to her left forearm, then got into bed in her undershirt.

Alfred finally got his boots off. He pulled off his hose and stood up. He threw a lewd look at her. “Take off your underclothes,” he said. “I’m entitled to see my wife’s tits.”

Aliena hesitated. She was reluctant to be naked, somehow, but it would be foolish to deny him the first thing he asked. Obediently, she sat up and pulled her undershirt off over her head, fiercely suppressing the memory of how differently she had felt when she did the same thing, this morning, for Jack.

“What a pair of beauties,” Alfred said. He came and stood beside the bed and took hold of her right breast. His huge hands were rough-skinned, with dirt under the fingernails. He squeezed too hard, and she winced. He laughed and released her. Stepping back, he took off his tunic and hung it on a hook. Then he returned to the bed and pulled the sheet off her.

Aliena swallowed hard. She felt vulnerable like this, naked under his gaze. He said: “By God, that’s a hairy one.” He reached down and felt between her legs. She stiffened, and then made herself relax and part her thighs. “Good girl,” he said, and thrust a finger inside her. It hurt: she was dry. She could not understand it-this morning, with Jack, she had been wet and slippery. Alfred grunted and forced his finger in farther.

She felt like crying. She had known she would not much enjoy it, but she had not expected him to be so unfeeling. He had not even kissed her yet. He doesn’t love me, she thought; he doesn’t even like me. I’m a fine young horse that he’s about to ride. In fact he would treat a horse better than this-he would pat it and stroke it so that it could get used to him, and he’d talk softly to calm it down. She fought back the tears. I chose this, she thought; nobody made me marry him, so I’ll just put up with it now.

“Dry as a sawpit,” Alfred muttered.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He removed his hand, spat on it twice, and rubbed the spittle between her legs. It seemed a dreadfully contemptuous act. She bit her lip and looked away.

He spread her thighs. She closed her eyes, then opened them and forced herself to look at him, thinking: Get used to this, you’re going to be doing it for the rest of your life. He got on the bed and knelt between her legs. The shadow of a frown crossed his face. He put one hand between her thighs, opening her up, and the other hand went beneath his undershirt. She could see the hand moving under the linen. His frown deepened. “Christ Jesus,” he muttered. “You’re so lifeless, it puts me off, it’s like feeling up a corpse.”

It seemed so unfair of him to blame her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!” she said tearfully.

“Some girls enjoy it,” he said.

Enjoy it! she thought. Impossible! Then she remembered how, that very morning, she had groaned and cried with delight. But it was as if there was no connection between what she had done then and what she was doing now.

That was foolish. She sat upright. Alfred was rubbing himself beneath his shirt. “Let me,” she said, and she slipped her hand between his legs. It felt limp and lifeless. She was not sure what to do with it. She squeezed it gently, then stroked it with her fingertips. She searched his face for a reaction. He just seemed angry. She carried on, but it made no difference.

“Do it harder,” he said.

She began to rub it vigorously. It stayed soft, but he moved his hips, as if he was enjoying it. Encouraged, she rubbed harder. Suddenly he gave a cry of pain and pulled away. She had rubbed too hard. “Stupid cow!” he said, and he slapped her face, backhanded, with a swipe that knocked her sideways.

She lay on the bed, whimpering in pain and fear.

“You’re no good, you’re cursed!” he said furiously.

“I did my best!”

“You’re a dead cunt,” he spat. He took her by the arms, lifted her upright, and pushed her off the bed. She fell into the straw on the floor. “That witch Ellen meant this to happen,” he said. “She’s always hated me.”

Aliena rolled over and knelt upright on the floor, staring at him. He did not look as if he would hit her again. He was no longer enraged, just bitter. “You can stay there,” he said. “You’re no good to me as a wife, so you can keep out of my bed. You can be a dog, and sleep on the floor.” He paused. “I can’t stand you looking at me!” he said with a note of panic in his voice. He looked around for the candle, spotted it, and put it out with a blow, knocking it to the ground.

Aliena stayed motionless in the darkness. She heard Alfred moving on the feather bed, lying down and pulling up the blanket and shifting the pillows. She was almost afraid to breathe. He was restless for a long time, tossing and turning in the bed, but he did not get up again, nor did he speak to her. Eventually he was still, and his breathing became even. When she was sure he was asleep, she crawled across the room, trying not to make the straw rustle, and found her way into the corner. She curled up and lay there, wide awake. Eventually she began to cry. She tried not to, for fear of waking him, but she could not hold the tears in, so she sobbed quietly. If the noise woke him, he gave no sign of it. She stayed like that, lying on the straw in the corner, crying softly, until eventually she cried herself to sleep.

I

ALIENA WAS SICK all that winter.

She slept badly every night, wrapped in her cloak on the floor at the foot of Alfred’s bed, and during the day she was possessed by a hopeless lassitude. She often felt nauseated, so she ate very little, but despite that she seemed to put on weight: she was sure her breasts and hips were larger, and her waist thickened.

She was supposed to be running Alfred’s house, although Martha actually did most of the work. The three of them lived together in a sorry ménage. Martha had never liked her brother, and Aliena now loathed him with a passion, so it was not surprising that he spent as much time as possible away from the house, at work during the day and in the alehouse every evening. Martha and Aliena bought food and cooked it unenthusiastically, and made clothes in the evenings. Aliena looked forward to the spring, when it would once again be warm enough for her to visit her secret glade on Sunday afternoons. There she could lie in peace and daydream of Jack.

Meanwhile, her consolation was Richard. He had a spirited black courser, a new sword, and a squire with a pony, and he was once again fighting for King Stephen, albeit with a reduced entourage. The war dragged on into the new year: Maud had escaped from Oxford Castle and slipped through Stephen’s hands once again, and her brother Robert of Gloucester had retaken Wareham, so the old seesaw continued, with each side gaining a little and then losing it. But Aliena was fulfilling her vow, and she could take satisfaction in that, if in nothing else.

In the first week of the year Martha began to bleed for the first time. Aliena made her a hot drink with herbs and honey to ease the cramps, and answered her questions about the woman’s curse, and went to find the box of rags that she kept for her own periods. However, the box was not in the house, and she eventually realized she had not brought it here from her old house when she got married.

But that had been three months ago.

Which meant she had not bled for three months.

Not since her wedding day.

Not since she had made love with Jack.

She left Martha sitting by the kitchen fire, sipping her honey drink and toasting her toes, and went across town to her old house. Richard was not there but she had a key. She found the box without any trouble, but she did not go back right away. Instead she sat by the cold fireplace, wrapped in her cloak, deep in thought.

She had married Alfred at Michaelmas. It was now past Christmas. That was a quarter of a year. There had been three new moons. She should have bled three times. Yet her box of rags had been on the high shelf, alongside the small grindstone Richard used for sharpening kitchen knives. Now she held it in her lap. She ran a finger over the rough wood. Her finger came up dirty. The box was covered with dust.

The worst of it was, she had never made love with Alfred.

After that awful first night, he had tried again three times: once the following night, then a week later, and again a month after that when he had come home particularly drunk. But he was always completely incapable. At first Aliena had encouraged him, out of a sense of duty; but each failure made him angrier than the last, and she became tightened. It seemed safer to stay out of his way, and wear unappealing clothes, and make sure he never saw her undressing, and let him forget about it. Now she wondered if she should have tried more. But in truth she knew it would have made no difference. It was hopeless. She was not sure why-perhaps it was Ellen’s curse, perhaps Alfred was just impotent, or perhaps it was because of the memory of Jack-but she felt certain Alfred never would make love to her now.

So he was bound to know that the baby was not his.

She stared miserably at the old, cold ashes in Richard’s fireplace, wondering why she always had such bad luck. Here she was trying to make the best of a bad marriage and she had the misfortune to be pregnant by another man, after one single act of intercourse.

There was no point in self-pity. She had to decide what to do.

She rested her hand on her stomach. Now she knew why she had been putting on weight, why she kept feeling nauseated, why she was always so tired. There was a little person in there. She smiled to herself. How nice it would be to have a baby.

She shook her head. It would not be nice at all. Alfred would be as mad as a bull. There was no knowing what he would do-kill her, throw her out, kill the baby… She had a sudden, terrible foreboding that he would try to do harm to the unborn baby by kicking her in the stomach. She wiped her brow: she had broken out in a cold sweat.

I won’t tell him, she thought.

Could she keep her pregnancy secret? Perhaps. She had already taken to wearing shapeless, baggy clothes. She might not get very big-some women didn’t. Alfred was the least observant of men. No doubt the wiser women in the town would guess, but she could probably rely on them to keep it to themselves, or at any rate not to talk to the menfolk about it. Yes, she decided, it might just be possible to keep it from him until after the baby was born.

Then what? Well, at least the little mite would have been brought safely into the world. Alfred would not be able to kill it by kicking Aliena. But he would still know that it was not his. He was sure to hate the poor thing: it would be a permanent slur on his manhood. There would be hell to pay.

Aliena could not think that far ahead. She had decided on the safest course for the next six months. She would try in the meantime to figure out what to do after the baby was born.

I wonder whether it’s a boy or a girl, she thought.

She stood up with her box of clean rags for Martha’s first monthly period. I pity you, Martha, she thought wearily; you’ve got all this in front of you.

Philip spent that winter brooding over his troubles.

He had been horrified by Ellen’s heathen curse, uttered in the porch of a church during a service. There was no doubt in his mind now that she was a witch. He only regretted his foolishness in ever forgiving her for her insult to the Rule of Saint Benedict, all those years ago. He should have known that a woman who could do that would never really repent. However, one happy consequence of the whole horrifying business was that Ellen had once again left Kingsbridge and had not been seen since. Philip hoped fervently that she would never return.

Aliena was visibly unhappy as Alfred’s wife, although Philip did not believe that the curse was the cause of that. Philip knew almost nothing about married life but he could guess that a bright, knowledgeable, lively person such as Aliena would be unhappy living with someone as slow-thinking and narrow-minded as Alfred, whether they were man and wife or anything else.

Aliena should have married Jack, of course. Philip could see that now, and he felt guilty that he had been so committed to his own plans for Jack that he had failed to realize what the boy really needed. Jack was never meant for the cloistered life and Philip had done wrong in pressuring him into it. Now Jack’s brilliance and energy had been lost to Kingsbridge.

It seemed that everything had gone wrong since the disaster of the fleece fair. The priory was more in debt than ever. Philip had dismissed half the building work force because he no longer had the money to pay them. In consequence, the population of the town had shrunk, which meant that the Sunday market became smaller and Philip’s income from rents fell. Kingsbridge was in a downward spiral.

The heart of the problem was the townspeople’s morale. Although they had rebuilt their houses and restarted their small businesses, they had no confidence in the future. Whatever they planned, whatever they might build, could be wiped out in a day by William Hamleigh, if he should choose to attack again. This undercurrent of insecurity ran in everyone’s thinking and paralyzed all enterprise.

Eventually Philip realized he had to do something to stop the slide. He needed to make a dramatic gesture to tell the world in general, and the townspeople in particular, that Kingsbridge was fighting back. He spent many hours of prayer and meditation trying to decide just what that gesture should be.

What he really needed was a miracle. If the bones of Saint Adolphus would cure a princess of the plague, or cause a brackish well to give sweet water, people would flood into Kingsbridge on pilgrimage. But the saint had performed no miracles for years. Philip sometimes wondered whether his steady, practical methods of ruling the priory displeased the saint, for miracles seemed to happen more frequently in places where the rule was less sensible and the atmosphere was charged with religious fervor, if not out-and-out hysteria. But Philip had been taught in a more down-to-earth school. Father Peter, the abbot of his first monastery, used to say: “Pray for miracles, but plant cabbages.”

The symbol of Kingsbridge’s life and vigor was the cathedral. If only it could be finished by a miracle! One time he prayed for such a miracle all night, but in the morning the chancel was still unroofed and open to the weather, and its high walls were ragged-ended where they would meet the transept walls.

Philip had not yet hired a new master builder. He had been shocked to learn how much they demanded in wages: he had never realized how cheap Tom was. Anyway, Alfred was running the reduced work force without much difficulty. Alfred had become rather morose since his marriage, like a man who defeats many rivals to become king and then finds that kingship is a wearisome burden. However, he was authoritative and decisive, and the other men respected him.

But Tom had left a gap that could not be filled. Philip missed him personally, not just as master builder. Tom had been interested in why churches had to be built one way rather than another, and Philip had enjoyed sharing speculations with him about what made some buildings stand up while others fell down. Tom had not been an exceptionally devout man, but he had occasionally asked Philip questions about theology which showed that he applied as much intelligence to his religion as he did to his building. Tom’s brain had more or less matched Philip’s own. Philip had been able to converse with him without talking down. There were too few such people in Philip’s life. Jack had been one, despite his youth; Aliena another, but she had disappeared into her sorry marriage. Cuthbert Whitehead was getting old, now, and Milius Bursar was almost always away from the priory, touring the sheep farms, counting acres and ewes and woolsacks. In time, a lively and busy priory in a prosperous cathedral city would draw scholars the way a conquering army attracted fighting men. Philip looked forward to that time. But it would never come unless he could find a way to re-energize Kingsbridge.

“It’s been a mild winter,” Alfred said one morning soon after Christmas. “We can begin earlier than usual.”

That started Philip thinking. The vault would be built that summer. When it was finished, the chancel would be usable, and Kingsbridge would no longer be a cathedral town without a cathedral. The chancel was the most important part of a church: the high altar and the holy relics were kept at the far east end, called the presbytery, and most of the services took place in the quire, where the monks sat. Only on Sundays and holy days was the rest of a church used. Once the chancel had been dedicated, what had been a building site would become a church, albeit an incomplete one.

It was a pity they would have to wait almost a year before that happened. Alfred had promised to finish the vault by the end of this year’s building season, and the season generally finished in November, depending on the weather. But when Alfred said he would be able to start early, Philip began to wonder whether he might finish early too. Everyone would be stunned if the church could be opened this summer. It was the kind of gesture he had been searching for: something that would surprise the whole county, and give out the message that Kingsbridge could not be put down for long.

“Can you finish by Whitsun?” Philip said impulsively.

Alfred sucked his breath in through his teeth and looked doubtful. “Vaulting is the most skilled work of all,” he said. “It mustn’t be hurried, and you can’t let apprentices do it.”

His father would have answered yes or no, Philip thought irritably. He said: “Suppose I could give you extra laborers-monks. How much would that help?”

“A little. It’s more masons we need, really.”

“I might be able to give you one or two more,” Philip said rashly. A mild winter meant early shearing, so he could hope to begin selling wool sooner than usual.

“I don’t know.” Alfred was still looking pessimistic.

“Suppose I offered the masons a bonus?” Philip said. “An extra week’s wages if the vault is ready for Whitsunday.”

“I’ve never heard of that before,” Alfred said. He looked as if an improper suggestion had been made.

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Philip said testily. Alfred’s caution was getting on his nerves. “What do you say?”

“I can’t say yes or no to that,” Alfred said stolidly. “I’ll put it to the men.”

“Today?” Philip said impatiently.

“Today.”

Philip had to be satisfied with that.

William Hamleigh and his knights arrived at Bishop Waleran’s palace just behind an ox cart loaded high with sacks of wool. The new season’s shearing had begun. Like William, Waleran was buying wool from farmers at last year’s prices and expecting to sell it again for considerably more. Neither of them had had much trouble forcing their tenants to sell to them: a few peasants who defied the rule were evicted and their farmhouses were burned, and after that there were no more rebels.

As William went through the gate he glanced up the hill. The stunted ramparts of the castle the bishop had never built had stood on that hill for seven years, a permanent reminder of how Waleran had been outwitted by Prior Philip. As soon as Waleran began to reap the rewards of the wool business, he would probably recommence building. In the days of old King Henry, a bishop had not needed any more defenses than the flimsy fence of wooden stakes behind a little ditch that surrounded this palace. Now, after five years of civil war, men who were not even earls or bishops were building formidable castles.

Things were going well for Waleran, William thought sourly as he dismounted at the stable. Waleran had remained loyal to Bishop Henry of Winchester through all Henry’s switches of allegiance, and as a result had become one of Henry’s closest allies. Over the years Waleran had been enriched by a steady stream of properties and privileges, and had visited Rome twice.

William had not been so lucky-hence his sourness. Despite having gone along with each of Waleran’s changes of allegiance, and despite having supplied large armies to both sides in the civil war, he still had not been confirmed as earl of Shiring. He had been brooding on this during a lull in the fighting, and had become so angry about it that he had made up his mind to have a confrontation with Waleran.

He went up the steps to the hall entrance, with Walter and the other knights following. The steward on guard inside the door was armed, another sign of the times. Bishop Waleran sat in a big chair in the middle of the room, as always, with his bony arms and legs at all angles as if he had been untidily dropped there. Baldwin, now an archdeacon, was standing beside him, his stance suggesting he might be waiting for instructions. Waleran was staring into the fire, deep in thought, but he looked up sharply when William approached.

William felt the familiar loathing as he greeted Waleran and sat down. Waleran’s soft thin hands, his lank black hair, his dead-white skin and his pale malignant eyes made William’s skin crawl. He was everything William hated: devious, physically weak, arrogant and clever.

William could tell that Waleran felt much the same about him. Waleran could never quite conceal the distaste he felt when William walked in. He sat upright and folded his arms, his lip curled a little, and he frowned faintly, altogether as if he was suffering from a twinge of indigestion.

They talked of the war for a while. It was a stiff, awkward conversation, and William was relieved when it was broken by a messenger with a letter written on a roll of parchment and sealed with wax. Waleran sent the messenger off to the kitchen to get something to eat. He did not open the letter.

William took the opportunity to change the subject. “I didn’t come here to exchange news of battles. I came to tell you that I’ve run out of patience.”

Waleran raised his eyebrows and said nothing. Silence was his response to unpleasant topics.

William plowed on: “It’s almost three years since my father died, but King Stephen still hasn’t confirmed me as earl. This is outrageous.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Waleran said languidly. He toyed with his letter, examining the seal and playing with the ribbon.

“That’s good,” William said, “because you’re going to have to do something about it.”

“My dear William, I can’t make you earl.”

William had known that Waleran would take this attitude, and he was determined not to accept it. “You have the ear of the king’s brother.”

“But what am I to say to him? That William Hamleigh has served the king well? If it is true, the king knows it, and if not, he knows that also.”

William was no match for Waleran in logic so he simply ignored the arguments. “You owe it to me, Waleran Bigod.”

Waleran looked faintly angered. He pointed at William with the letter. “I owe you nothing. You have always served your own ends even when you did what I wanted. There are no debts of gratitude between us.”

“I tell you, I won’t wait any longer.”

“What will you do?” Waleran said with the hint of a sneer.

“Well, first I’ll see Bishop Henry myself.”

“And?”

“I’ll tell him that you have been deaf to my pleas, and in consequence I’m changing my allegiance to the Empress Maud.” William was gratified to see Waleran’s expression change: he went a shade paler and looked just a little bit surprised.

“Change again?” Waleran said skeptically.

“Just one more time than you,” William responded stoutly.

Waleran’s supercilious indifference was shaken, but not much. Waleran’s career had benefited greatly from his ability to deliver William and his knights to whichever side Bishop Henry favored at the moment: it would be a blow to him if William suddenly turned independent-but not a fatal blow. William studied Waleran’s face as he mulled over this threat. William could read the other man’s mind: he was thinking that he wanted to keep William loyal, but wondering how much he should put into the effort.

To gain time Waleran broke the seal on his letter and unrolled it. As he read, a faint flush of anger appeared on his fish-white cheeks. “Damn the man,” he hissed.

“What is it?” William asked.

Waleran held it out.

William took it from him and peered at the letters. “To-the-most-holy-gracious-bishop)-”

Waleran snatched it back, impatient of William’s slow reading. “It’s from Prior Philip,” he said. “He informs me that the chancel of the new cathedral will be finished by Whitsunday, and he has the nerve to beg me to officiate at the service.”

William was surprised. “How has he managed it? I thought he had sacked half his builders!”

Waleran shook his head. “No matter what happens he seems to bounce back.” He gave William a speculative look. “He hates you, of course. Thinks you’re the devil incarnate.”

William wondered what was going on now in Waleran’s devious mind. “So what?” he said.

“It would be quite a blow to Philip if you were confirmed as earl on Whitsunday.”

“You wouldn’t do it for me, but you’d do it to spite Philip,” William said grouchily, but in reality he was feeling hopeful.

“I can’t do it at all,” Waleran said. “But I will speak to Bishop Henry.” He looked up at William expectantly.

William hesitated. At last, reluctantly, he muttered: “Thank you.”

Spring was cold and dismal that year, and on the morning of Whitsunday it was raining. Aliena had woken up in the night with a backache, and it was still troubling her with a stabbing pain every now and again. She sat in the cold kitchen, plaiting Martha’s hair before going to church, while Alfred ate a large breakfast of white bread, soft cheese and strong beer. A particularly sharp twinge in her back made her stop and stand upright for a moment, wincing. Martha noticed and said: “What’s the matter?”

“Backache,” Aliena said shortly. She did not want to discuss it, for the cause was surely sleeping on the floor in the drafty back room, and nobody knew about that, not even Martha.

Martha stood up and took a hot stone from the fire. Aliena sat down. Martha wrapped the stone in an old scorched piece of leather, and held it against Aliena’s back. It gave her immediate relief. Martha started to plait Aliena’s hair, which had grown again after being burned away and was once again an undisciplined mass of dark curls. Aliena felt soothed.

She and Martha had become quite close since Ellen left. Poor Martha: she had lost her mother and then her stepmother. Aliena felt herself to be a poor substitute for a mother. Besides, she was only ten years older than Martha. She played the role of older sister, really. Oddly enough, the person Martha missed most was her stepbrother, Jack.

But then, everyone missed Jack.

Aliena wondered where he was. He might be quite close, working on a cathedral in Gloucester or Salisbury. More likely he had gone to Normandy. But he could be much farther afield: Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, or Egypt. Recalling the stories that pilgrims told about such faraway places, she visualized Jack in a sandy desert, carving stones for a Saracen fortress in the blinding sunlight. Was he thinking of her now?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a noise of hooves outside, and a moment later her brother, Richard, walked in, leading his horse. He and the horse were soaking wet and covered with mud. Aliena took some hot water from the fire for him to wash his hands and face, and Martha led the horse out to the backyard. Aliena put bread and cold beef on the kitchen table and poured him a cup of beer.

Alfred said: “What’s the news of the war?”

Richard dried his face on a rag and sat down to his breakfast. “We were defeated at Wilton,” he said.

“Was Stephen taken?”

“No, he escaped, just as Maud escaped from Oxford. Now Stephen is at Winchester and Maud is at Bristol, and they’re both licking their wounds and consolidating their hold on the areas they control.”

The news always seemed to be the same, Aliena thought. One side or both had won some small victory or suffered some small loss, but there was never any prospect of the end of the war.

Richard looked at her and said: “You’re getting fat.”

She nodded and said nothing. She was eight months pregnant, but nobody knew. It was lucky that the weather had been cold, so that she had been able to continue to wear layers of loose winter clothing which concealed her shape. In a few weeks’ time the baby would be born, and the truth would come out. She still had no idea what she was going to do then.

The bell rang to summon the townspeople to mass. Alfred pulled on his boots and looked expectantly at Aliena.

“I don’t think I can go,” she said. “I feel terrible.”

He shrugged indifferently and turned to her brother. “You should come, Richard. Everyone will be there today-it’s the first service in the new church.”

Richard was surprised. “You’ve got the ceiling up already? I thought that was going to take the rest of the year.”

“We rushed it. Prior Philip offered the men an extra week’s wages if they could finish by today. It’s amazing how much faster they worked. Even so, we only just made it-we took the falsework down this morning.”

“I must see this,” Richard said. He stuffed the last of the bread and beef into his mouth and stood up.

Martha said to Aliena: “Do you want me to stay with you?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine. You go. I’ll just lie down.”

The three of them put on their cloaks and went out. Aliena went into the back room, taking with her the hot stone in its leather wrapping. She lay down on Alfred’s bed with the stone under her back. She had become terribly lethargic since her marriage. Previously, she had run a household and been the busiest wool merchant in the county; now, she had trouble keeping house for Alfred even though she had nothing else to do.

She lay there feeling sorry for herself for a while, wishing she could fall asleep. Suddenly she felt a trickle of warm water on her inner thigh. She was shocked. It was almost as if she was urinating, but she wasn’t, and a moment later the trickle turned into a flood. She sat bolt upright. She knew what it meant. Her waters had broken. The baby was coming.

She felt scared. She needed help. She called to her neighbor at the top of her voice: “Mildred! Mildred, come here!” Then she remembered that nobody was at home-they had all gone to church.

The flow of water slowed, but Alfred’s bed was soaked. He was going to be furious, she thought fearfully; and then she remembered that he was going to be furious anyway, for he would know that the baby was not his child, and she thought: Oh, God, what am I going to do?

The back pain came again, and she realized that this must be what they called labor pains. She forgot about Alfred. She was about to give birth. She was too frightened to go through with it alone. She wanted someone to help her. She decided to go to the church.

She swung her legs off the bed. Another spasm took her, and she paused, her face screwed up in pain, until it went away. Then she got off the bed and left the house.

Her mind was in a whirl as she staggered along the muddy street. When she was at the priory gate the pain came again, and she had to lean against the wall and grit her teeth until it passed. Then she went into the priory close.

Most of the population of the town was crowded into the high tunnel of the chancel and the lower tunnels of the two side aisles. The altar was at the far end. The new church was peculiar in appearance: the rounded stone ceiling would eventually have a triangular wooden roof over it, but now it looked unprotected, like a bald man without a hat. The congregation stood with their backs to Aliena.

As she lurched toward the cathedral, the bishop, Waleran Bigod, got up to speak. She saw, as if in a nightmare, that William Hamleigh was standing beside him. Bishop Waleran’s words penetrated her distress. “… with great pride and pleasure that I have to tell you that the Lord King, Stephen, has confirmed Lord William as the earl of Shiring.”

Despite her pain and fear Aliena was horrified to hear this. For six years, ever since the awful day when they had seen their father in the Winchester jailhouse, she had dedicated her life to winning back the family property. She and Richard had survived robbers and rapists, conflagration and civil war. Several times the prize had seemed to be within their grasp. But now they had lost it.

The congregation murmured angrily. They had all suffered at William’s hands and they still lived in fear of him. They were not happy to see him honored by the king who was supposed to protect them. Aliena looked around for Richard, to see how he was taking this terminal blow; but she could not locate him.

Prior Philip stood up with a face like thunder and started the hymn. The congregation began halfheartedly to sing. Aliena leaned against a column as another contraction seized her. She was at the back of the crowd and nobody noticed her. Somehow the bad news had calmed her. I’m only having a baby, she thought; it happens every day. I just need to find Martha or Richard, and they will take care of everything.

When the pain passed she pushed her way into the congregation, looking for Martha. There was a group of women in the low tunnel of the north aisle, and she made for them. People looked curiously at her, but their attention was distracted by something else: a strange noise like rumbling. At first it was hardly distinguishable from the singing, but the singing quickly died away as the rumbling got louder.

Aliena reached the group of women. They were looking around anxiously for the source of the noise. Aliena touched one of them on the shoulder and said: “Have you seen Martha, my sister-in-law?”

The woman looked at her, and Aliena recognized the tanner’s wife, Hilda. “Martha’s on the other side, I think,” Hilda said; then the rumbling became deafening and she looked away.

Aliena followed her gaze. In the middle of the church everyone was looking up, toward the top of the walls. The people in the side aisles craned their necks to peer through the arches of the arcade. Someone screamed. Aliena saw a crack appear in the far wall, running between two neighboring windows in the clerestory. As she looked, several huge pieces of masonry dropped from above into the crowd in the middle of the church. There was a cacophony of screaming and shouting, and everyone turned to flee.

The ground beneath her feet shook. Even as she tried to push her way out of the church she was aware that the high walls were spreading apart at the top, and the round barrel of the vault was cracking up. Hilda the tanner’s wife fell in front of her, and Aliena tripped over the prone figure and went down herself. A shower of small stones spattered her as she tried to get up. Then the low roof of the aisle cracked and fell in, something hit her head, and everything went black.

Philip had begun the service feeling proud and grateful. It had been a close thing, but the vault was finished in time. In fact, only three of the four bays of the chancel had been vaulted, for the fourth could not be done until the crossing was built and the ragged-ended chancel walls were joined to the transepts. However, three bays were enough. All the builders’ equipment had been ruthlessly cleared out: the tools, the piles of stone and timber, the scaffolding poles and hurdles, the heaps of rubble and the rubbish. The chancel had been swept clean. The monks had whitewashed the stonework and painted straight red lines on the mortar, making the pointing look neater than it really was, in accordance with custom. The altar and the bishop’s throne had been moved up from the crypt. However, the bones of the saint, in their stone casket, were still down there: moving them was a solemn ceremony, called translation, which was to be the climax of today’s service. As the service had begun, with the bishop on his throne, the monks in new robes lined up behind the altar, and the people of the town massed in the body of the church and crowded into the aisles, Philip had felt fulfilled, and he had thanked God for bringing him successfully to the end of the first, crucial stage in the rebuilding of the cathedral.

When Waleran had made his announcement about William, Philip had been furious. It was so obviously timed to mar the triumph of the occasion and remind the townspeople that they were still at the mercy of their savage overlord. Philip had been casting about wildly for some adequate response when the rumbling started.

It was like a nightmare that Philip sometimes had, in which he was walking on the scaffolding, very high up, perfectly confident of his safety, when he noticed a loose knot in the ropes binding the scaffolding poles together-nothing very serious-but when he bent to tighten the knot, the hurdle beneath him tilted a little, not much at first but enough to make him stumble, and then, in a flash, he was falling through the vast space of the chancel of the cathedral, falling sickeningly fast, and he knew he was about to die.

The rumbling was at first mystifying. For a moment or two he thought it was thunder; then it grew too loud, and the people stopped singing. Still Philip thought it was only some strange phenomenon, shortly to be explained, whose worst effect would be to interrupt the service. Then he looked up.

In the third bay, where the falsework had come down only this morning, cracks were appearing in the masonry, high on the walls, at the clerestory level. They appeared suddenly and flashed across the wall from one clerestory window to the next like striking snakes. Philip’s first reaction was disappointment: he had been happy that the chancel was finished, but now he would have to undertake repairs, and all the people who had been so impressed with the builders’ work would say: “More haste, less speed.” Then the tops of the walls seemed to lean outward, and he realized with an awful sense of horror that this was not merely going to interrupt the service, this was going to be a catastrophe.

Cracks appeared in the curved vault. A big stone became detached from the web of masonry and tumbled slowly through the air. People started screaming and trying to get out of its way. Before Philip could see whether anyone was badly hurt, more stones began to fall. The congregation panicked, pushing and shoving and trampling on one another as they tried to dodge the falling stones. Philip had the wild thought that this was another attack of some kind by William Hamleigh; then he saw William, at the front of the congregation, battering people around him in a terrified bid to escape, and realized that William would not have done this to himself.

Most people were trying to move away from the altar, to get out of the cathedral through the open west end. But it was the westernmost part of the building, the open end, that was collapsing. The problem was in the third bay. In the second bay, where Philip was, the vault seemed to be holding; and behind him, in the first bay where the monks were lined up, it looked solid. At that end the opposite walls were held together by the east facade.

He saw little Jonathan, with Johnny Eightpence, both huddled at the far end of the north aisle. They were safer there than anywhere, Philip decided; and then he realized that he should try to get the rest of his flock to safety. “Come this way!” he shouted. “Everybody! Move this way!” Whether they heard him or not, they took no notice.

In the third bay, the tops of the walls crumbled, falling outward, and the entire vault collapsed, large and small stones falling through the air like a lethal hailstorm to land on the hysterical congregation. Philip darted forward and grabbed a citizen. “Go back!” he yelled, and shoved the man toward the east end. The startled man saw the monks huddled against the far wall and dashed to join them. Philip did the same to two women. The people with them realized what he was doing and moved east without being pushed. Other people began to get the idea, and a general move east began among those who had been at the front of the congregation. Looking up for an instant, Philip was appalled to see that the second bay was going to go: the same cracks were snaking across the clerestory and frosting the vault directly over his head. He continued to herd people to the safety of the east end, knowing that every person he moved might be a life saved. A rain of crumbled mortar fell on his shaved head, and then the stones started to come down. The people were scattering. Some had taken refuge in the shelter of the side aisles; some were crowded up against the east wall, among them Bishop Waleran; others were still trying to crowd out of the west end, crawling over the fallen rubble and bodies in the third bay. A stone hit Philip’s shoulder. It was a glancing blow but it hurt. He put his hands over his head and looked around wildly. He was alone in the middle of the second bay: everyone else was around the edges of the danger zone. He had done all he could. He ran to the east end.

There he turned again and looked up. The clerestory of the second bay was collapsing now, and the vault was falling into the chancel, in exact replication of what had happened in the third bay; but there were fewer victims, because the people had had a chance to get out of the way, and because the roofs of the side aisles appeared to be holding there, whereas in the third bay they had given way. Everyone in the crowd at the east end moved back, pressing up against the wall, and all faces were turned up, watching the vault, to see whether the collapse would spread to the first bay. The crash of falling masonry seemed to become less loud, but a fog of dust and small stones filled the air and for a few moments no one could see anything. Philip held his breath. The dust cleared and he could see the vault again. It had collapsed right up to the edge of the first bay; but now it seemed to be holding.

The dust settled. Everything went quiet. Philip stared aghast at the ruins of his church. Only the first bay remained intact. The walls of the second bay were standing up to the level of the gallery, but in the third and fourth bays only the side aisles were left, and they were badly damaged. The floor of the church was a pile of rubble littered with the still or feebly moving bodies of the dead and injured. Seven years of work and hundreds of pounds in money had been destroyed, and dozens of people had been killed, maybe hundreds, all in a few terrible moments. Philip’s heart ached for the wasted work and the lost people, and for the widows and orphans left behind; and his eyes filled with bitter tears.

A harsh voice spoke in his ear. “This is what comes of your damned arrogance, Philip!”

He turned around to see Bishop Waleran, his black clothes coated with dust, glaring at him triumphantly. Philip felt as if he had been stabbed. To see a tragedy such as this was heartbreaking, but to be blamed for it was unbearable. He wanted to say I only tried to do my best! but the words would not come: his throat seemed constricted and he could not speak.

His eye lit on Johnny Eightpence and little Jonathan, emerging from the shelter of the aisle, and he suddenly remembered his responsibilities. There would be plenty of time later to agonize over who was to blame. Right now there were scores of people injured and many more trapped in the rubble. He had to organize the rescue operation. He glared at Bishop Waleran and said fiercely: “Get out of my way.” The startled bishop stepped aside, and Philip leaped up on the altar.

“Listen to me!” he called out at the top of his voice. “We have to take care of the wounded, rescue people who are trapped, and then bury the dead and pray for their souls. I’m going to appoint three leaders to organize this.” He looked at the faces all around him, checking to see who was still alive and well. He spotted Alfred. “Alfred Builder is in charge of moving rubble and rescuing trapped people, and I want all the masons and wrights to work with him.” Looking at the monks, he was relieved to see his trusted confidant, Milius, unhurt. “Milius Bursar is responsible for moving the dead and injured out of the church, and he will need strong young helpers. Randolph Infirmarer will take care of the wounded once they’re out of this mess, and the older ones can help him, especially the older women. Right-let’s begin.” He jumped down from the altar. There was a hubbub of speech as people started to give orders and ask questions.

Philip went over to Alfred, who was looking shaken and scared. If anyone was to blame for this it was he, as master builder, but this was no time for recriminations. Philip said: “Divide your people into teams and give them separate areas to work.”

Alfred looked blank for a moment; then his face cleared. “Yes. Right. We’ll start at the west end and clear rubble out into the open space.”

“Good.” Philip left him and pushed through the crowd to Milius. He heard Milius say: “Carry the wounded well clear of the church and put them on the grass. Take the dead bodies out to the north side.” He moved away, content as always to trust Milius to do the right thing. He saw Randolph Infirmarer clambering over the rubble and hurried after him. They both picked their way across the piles of ruined stonework. Outside the church at the west end was a crowd of people who had managed to get out before the worst of the collapse and so escaped injury. “Use those people,” Philip said to Randolph. “Send someone to the infirmary to fetch your equipment and supplies. Have a few of them go to the kitchen for hot water. Ask the cellarer for strong wine for those who need reviving. Make sure you lay the dead and injured out in neat lines with spaces between them, so that your helpers don’t fall over the bodies.”

He looked around. The survivors were going to work. Many of those who had been sheltered by the intact east end had followed Philip across the rubble and had already started to remove the bodies. One or two of the injured who had only been dazed or stunned were getting to their feet unaided. Philip saw an old woman sitting on the floor looking bewildered. He recognized her as Maud Silver, the widow of a silversmith. He helped her up and led her away from the wreckage. “What happened?” she said, not looking at him. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Nor do I, Maud,” he said.

As he returned to help someone else, Bishop Waleran’s words sounded again in his mind: This is what comes of your damned arrogance, Philip. The accusation cut him to the quick because he thought it might be true. He was always pushing for more, better, faster. He had pushed Alfred to finish the vault just as he had pushed for a fleece fair and pushed to get the earl of Shiring’s quarry. In each case the result had been tragedy: the slaughter of the quarrymen, the burning of Kingsbridge, and now this. Clearly ambition was to blame. Monks did better to live a life of resignation, accepting the tribulations and setbacks of this world as lessons in patience, taught by the Almighty.

As Philip helped to carry the groaning wounded and the unresisting dead out of the ruins of his cathedral, he resolved that in the future he would leave it to God to be ambitious and pushing: he, Philip, would passively accept whatever happened. If God wanted a cathedral, God would provide a quarry; if the town was burned, it should be taken as a sign that God did not want a fleece fair; and now that the church had fallen down, Philip would not rebuild it.

As he reached that decision, he saw William Hamleigh.

The new earl of Shiring was sitting on the floor in the third bay, near the north aisle, ashen-faced and trembling with pain, with his foot trapped under a big stone. Philip wondered, as he helped roll the stone away, why God had chosen to let so many good people die but had spared an animal such as William.

William was making a great fuss about the pain in his foot but was otherwise all right. They helped him to his feet. He leaned on the shoulder of a big man about his own size and began to hop away. Then a baby cried.

Everyone heard it. There were no babies in sight. They all looked around, mystified. The crying came again, and Philip realized it was coming from beneath a massive pile of stones in the aisle. “Over here!” he called. He caught Alfred’s eye and beckoned him. “There’s a baby alive under all that,” he said.

They all listened to the crying. It sounded like a very small baby, not yet a month old. “You’re right,” Alfred said. “Let’s shift some of those big stones.” He and his helpers began to move rubble from a pile that completely blocked the arch of the third bay. Philip joined in. He could not think which of the townswomen had given birth in the last few weeks. Of course, a birth might not have come to his attention: although the town had got smaller in the past year, it was still big enough for him to miss such a commonplace event.

The crying stopped suddenly. Everyone stood still and listened, but it did not begin again. Grimly, they recommenced moving the stones. It was a perilous business, for removing one stone might cause others to fall. This was why Philip had put Alfred in charge. However, Alfred was not as cautious as Philip would have wished, and he seemed to be letting everyone do as they pleased, pulling stones away without any overall plan. At one point the whole pile shifted dangerously, and Philip called out: “Wait!”

They all stopped. Alfred was too shocked to organize people properly, Philip realized. He would have to do it himself. He said: “If there is someone alive under there, something must have protected them; and if we let the pile shift, they could lose their protection, and be killed by our efforts. Let’s do this carefully.” He pointed to a group of stonemasons standing together. “You three, climb the heap and take stones from the top. Instead of carrying them away yourselves, just pass each stone to one of us and we’ll take them away.”

They restarted work according to Philip’s plan. It seemed quicker as well as safer.

Now that the baby had stopped crying they were not sure exactly where they were heading, so they cleared across a broad area, most of the width of the bay. Some of the rubble was what had fallen from the vault, but the roof of the aisle had partly collapsed, so there were timber and roof slates as well as stones and mortar.

Philip worked tirelessly. He wanted that baby to survive. Even though he knew there were dozens of people dead, somehow the baby seemed more important. If it could be rescued, he felt, there was still hope for the future. As he hefted the stones, coughing and half blind from the dust, he prayed fervently that the baby would be found alive.

Eventually he could see, above the heaped rubble, the outer wall of the aisle and part of one deep-set window. There seemed to be a space behind the pile. Perhaps someone was alive in there. A mason climbed gingerly up the pile and looked down into the space. “Jesus!” he exclaimed.

For once Philip ignored the blasphemy. “Is the babe all right?” he said.

“I can’t tell,” said the mason.

Philip wanted to ask what the mason had seen, or, better still, take a look for himself, but the man recommenced clearing stones with renewed vigor, and there was nothing for it but to continue to help, in a fever of curiosity.

The level of the pile came down rapidly. There was a large stone near ground level that required three men to move it. As it was rolled aside, Philip saw the baby.

It was naked, and newborn. Its white skin was smeared with blood and building dust, but he could see that it had a head of startling carrot-colored hair. Looking more closely, Philip saw that it was a boy. It was lying on a woman’s bosom and sucking at her breast. The child was alive, he saw, and his heart leaped for joy. He looked at the woman. She was alive, too. She caught his eye and gave him a weary, happy smile.

It was Aliena.

Aliena never went back to Alfred’s house.

He told everyone that the baby was not his, and as proof pointed to the child’s red hair, exactly the same color as Jack’s; but he did not try to do any harm either to the baby or Aliena, apart from saying he would not have them in his house.

Aliena moved back into the one-room house in the poor quarter with her brother, Richard. She was relieved that Alfred’s revenge was so mild. She was glad that she would no longer have to sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed like a dog. But mainly she was thrilled and proud about her lovely baby. He had red hair and blue eyes and perfect white skin, and he reminded her vividly of Jack.

No one knew why the church had fallen down. There were plenty of theories, however. Some said Alfred was not capable of being master builder. Others blamed Philip, for rushing to get the vault finished by Whitsun. Some of the masons said the falsework had been taken down before the mortar was properly dry. One old mason said the walls had never been intended to bear the weight of a stone vault.

Seventy-nine people had been killed, including those who died of their injuries later. Everyone said it would have been more if Prior Philip had not herded so many people to the east end. The priory graveyard was already full because of the fire at the fleece fair the previous year, and most of the dead were buried at the parish church. A lot of people said the cathedral was under a curse.

Alfred took all his masons off to Shiring, where he was building stone houses for the wealthy townspeople. The other craftsmen drifted away from Kingsbridge. No one was actually dismissed, and Philip continued to pay wages, but there was nothing for the men to do but tidy up the rubble, and after a few weeks they had all gone. No volunteers came to work on Sundays, the market was reduced to a few dispirited stalls, and Malachi packed his family and his possessions onto a huge cart pulled by four oxen and left town, searching for greener pastures.

Richard rented his fine black stallion to a farmer and he and Aliena lived on the proceeds. Without Alfred’s support he could not go on as a knight, and in any case there was no point now that William had been made earl. Aliena still felt bound by her vow to her father, but just now there seemed nothing she could do to fulfill it. Richard sank into lethargy. He got up late, sat in the sun most of the day, and spent his evenings in the alehouse.

Martha still lived in the big house, alone except for an elderly woman servant. However, she spent most of her time with Aliena: she loved to help with the baby, especially as he looked so much like her adored Jack. She wanted Aliena to call him Jack, but Aliena was reluctant to name him, for reasons she herself did not quite understand.

For Aliena the summer went by in a maternal glow. But when the harvest was in, and the weather cooled a little, and the evenings became shorter, she grew discontented.

Whenever she thought about her future, Jack came into her mind. He had gone, she had no idea where, and he would probably never come back, but he was still with her, dominating her thoughts, full of life and energy, as clear and vivid to her as if she had seen him only yesterday. She considered moving to another town and pretending she was a widow; she thought of trying to persuade Richard to earn a living somehow; she contemplated doing some weaving, or taking in washing, or becoming a servant to one of the few townspeople who were still wealthy enough to hire help; and each new scheme was greeted with scornful laughter by the imaginary Jack in her head, who said: “Nothing will be any good without me.” Making love to Jack on the morning of her marriage to Alfred had been the greatest sin she had ever committed, and she had no doubt that now she was being punished for it; but still there were times when she felt it was the only good thing she had done in her entire life; and when she looked at her baby, she could not bring herself to regret it. Nevertheless she was restless. A baby was not enough. She felt incomplete, unfulfilled. Her house seemed too small, Kingsbridge seemed half dead, life was too uneventful. She became impatient with the baby and snappish with Martha.

At the end of the summer, the farmer brought the horse back: it was no longer needed, and suddenly Richard and Aliena had no income. One day in early autumn Richard went to Shiring to sell his armor. While he was away, and Aliena was eating apples for dinner to save money, Jack’s mother walked into the house.

“Ellen!” Aliena said. She was more than startled. There was consternation in her voice, for Ellen had cursed a church wedding, and Prior Philip might yet have her punished for it.

“I came to see my grandson,” Ellen said calmly.

“But how did you know…?”

“You hear things, even in the forest.” She went over to the cradle in the corner and looked at the sleeping child. Her face softened. “Well, well. There’s no doubt about whose son he is. Does he keep well?”

“Never had anything wrong with him-he’s small but tough,” Aliena said proudly. She added: “Like his grandmother.” She studied Ellen. She was leaner than when she had left, and brown-skinned, and she wore a short leather tunic that revealed her tanned calves. Her feet were bare. She looked young and fit: forest life seemed to suit her. Aliena calculated that she must be thirty-five years old. “You seem very well,” she said.

“I miss you all,” Ellen said. “I miss you, and Martha, and even your brother Richard. I miss my Jack. And I miss Tom.” She looked sad.

Aliena was still worried for her safety. “Did anyone see you coming here? The monks might still want to punish you.”

“There isn’t a monk in Kingsbridge who’s got the guts to arrest me,” she said with a grin. “But I was careful anyway-no one saw me.” There was a pause. Ellen looked hard at Aliena. Aliena became slightly uncomfortable under the penetrating stare of Ellen’s curious honey-colored eyes. At last Ellen said: “You’re wasting your life.”

“What do you mean?” Aliena said, though Ellen’s words had struck a chord instantly.

“You should go and find Jack.”

Aliena felt a pang of delicious hope. “But I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know where he is, for one thing.”

“I do.”

Aliena’s heart beat faster. She had thought nobody knew where Jack had gone. It was as if he had vanished off the face of the earth. But now she would be able to imagine him in a specific, real place. It changed everything. He might be somewhere nearby. She could show him his baby.

Ellen said: “At least, I know where he was headed.”

“Where?” Aliena said urgently.

“Santiago de Compostela.”

“Oh, God.” Her heart sank. She was desperately disappointed. Compostela was the town in Spain where the Apostle James was buried. It was a journey of several months. Jack might as well have been on the far side of the world.

Ellen said: “He was hoping to speak to the jongleurs on the road and find out something about his father.”

Aliena nodded disconsolately. That made sense. Jack had always resented knowing so little about his father. But he might well never return. On such a long journey he was almost certain to find a cathedral he wanted to work on, and then he might settle down. In going to seek his father he had probably lost his son.

“It’s so far away,” Aliena said. “I wish I could go after him.”

“Why not?” Ellen said. “Thousands of people go there on pilgrimage. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I made a vow to my father to take care of Richard until he becomes the earl,” she told Ellen. “I couldn’t leave him.”

Ellen looked skeptical. “Just how do you imagine you’re helping him at the moment?” she said. “You’re penniless and William is the new earl. Richard has lost any chance he might have had of regaining the earldom. You’re no more use to him here in Kingsbridge than you would be in Compostela. You dedicated your life to that wretched vow. But now there’s nothing more you can do. I don’t see how your father could reproach you. If you ask me, the greatest favor you could do Richard would be to abandon him for a while, and give him a chance to learn independence.”

It was true, Aliena thought, that she was no use to Richard at the moment, whether she stayed in Kingsbridge or not. Could it be possible that she was now free-free to go and find Jack? The mere idea made her heart race. “But I haven’t any money to go on pilgrimage,” she said.

“What happened to that great big horse?”

“We still have it-”

“Sell it.”

“How can I? It’s Richard’s.”

“For God’s sake, who the hell bought it?” Ellen said angrily. “Did Richard work hard for years building up a wool business? Did Richard negotiate with greedy peasants and hard-nosed Flemish buyers? Did Richard collect the wool and store it and set up a market stall and sell it? Don’t tell me it’s Richard’s horse!”

“He would be so angry-”

“Good. Let’s hope he gets angry enough to do some work for the first time in his life.”

Aliena opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Ellen was right. Richard had always relied on her for everything. While he had been fighting for his patrimony she had been obliged to support him. But now he was not fighting for anything. He had no further claim on her.

She imagined meeting Jack again. She visualized his face, smiling at her. They would kiss. She felt a stir of pleasure in her loins. She realized she was getting damp down there at the mere thought of him. She felt embarrassed.

Ellen said: “Traveling is hazardous, of course.”

Aliena smiled. “That’s one thing I’m not worried about. I’ve been traveling since I was seventeen years old. I can take care of myself.”

“Anyway, there will be hundreds of people on the road to Compostela. You can join with a large pilgrim band. You won’t have to travel alone.”

Aliena sighed. “You know, if I didn’t have Baby I think I’d do it.”

“It’s because of Baby that you must,” Ellen said. “He needs a father.”

Aliena had not looked at it that way: she had been thinking of the journey as purely selfish. Now she saw that the baby needed Jack as much as she did. In her obsession with the day-to-day care of the baby she had not thought about his future. Suddenly it seemed terribly unfair that he should grow up not knowing the brilliant, unique, adorable genius who was his father.

She realized she was talking herself into going, and she felt a thrill of apprehension.

A snag occurred to her. “I couldn’t take the baby to Compostela.”

Ellen shrugged. “He won’t know the difference between Spain and England. But you don’t have to take him.”

“What else could I do?”

“Leave him with me. I’ll feed him on goat’s milk and wild honey.”

Aliena shook her head. “I couldn’t bear to be parted from him. I love him too much.”

“If you love him,” Ellen said, “go and find his father.”

II

Aliena found a ship at Wareham. When she had crossed to France as a girl, with her father, they had gone in one of the Norman warships. These were long, narrow vessels whose sides curved up to a high, sharp point at front and back. They had rows of oars along each side and a square leather sail. The ship that was to take her to Normandy now was similar to those warships, but wider at the waist, and deeper, to take cargo. It had come from Bordeaux, and she had watched the barefoot sailors unload great casks of wine destined for the cellars of the wealthy.

Aliena knew she should leave her baby but she was heartbroken about it. Every time she looked at him she rehearsed all the arguments and decided again that she ought to go; and it made no difference: she did not want to part from him.

Ellen had come to Wareham with her. Here Aliena had joined up with two monks from Glastonbury Abbey who were going to visit their property in Normandy. Three other people would be passengers on the ship: a young squire who had spent four years with an English relative and was returning to his parents in Toulouse, and two young masons who had heard that wages were higher and girls were prettier on the other side of the water. On the morning they were to sail, they all waited in the alehouse while the crew loaded the ship with heavy ingots of Cornish tin. The masons drank several pots of ale but did not appear to get drunk. Aliena hugged the baby and cried silently.

At last the ship was ready to leave. The sturdy gray mare Aliena had bought in Shiring had never seen the sea, and refused to go up the gangplank. However, the squire and the masons collaborated enthusiastically and eventually got the horse on board.

Aliena was blinded by tears as she gave her baby to Ellen. Ellen took the baby, but she said: “You can’t do this. I was wrong to suggest it.”

Aliena cried even more. “But there’s Jack,” she sobbed. “I can’t live without Jack, I know I can’t. I must look for him.”

“Oh, yes,” Ellen said. “I’m not suggesting you abandon the trip. But you can’t leave your baby behind. Take him with you.”

Aliena was flooded with gratitude and cried all the more. “Do you really think it will be all right?”

“He’s been as happy as could be, all the way here, riding with you. The rest of the trip will only be more of the same. And he doesn’t much like goat’s milk.”

The captain of the vessel said: “Come on, ladies, the tide’s on the turn.”

Aliena took the baby back and kissed Ellen. “Thank you. I’m so happy.”

“Good luck,” Ellen said.

Aliena turned and ran up the gangplank onto the ship.

They left immediately. Aliena waved until Ellen was a dot on the quay. As they rowed out of Poole Harbour it began to rain. There was no shelter up above, so Aliena sat in the bottom, with the horses and the cargo. The partial decking on which the oarsmen sat above her head did not completely protect her from the weather, but she was able to keep the baby dry inside her cloak. The motion of the ship seemed to agree with him, and he went to sleep. When darkness fell, and the ship anchored, Aliena joined the monks in their prayers. Afterward she dozed fitfully, sitting upright with the baby in her arms.

They landed at Barfleur the next day and Aliena found lodgings in the nearest town, Cherbourg. She spent another day going around the town, speaking to innkeepers and builders, asking if they recalled a young English mason with flaming red hair. Nobody did. There were lots of redheaded Normans, so they might not have noticed him. Or he might have crossed to a different port.

Aliena had not realistically expected to find traces of Jack so soon, but nevertheless she was disheartened. On the following day she set off, heading south. She traveled with a seller of knives and his cheerful fat wife and four children. They moved quite slowly, and Aliena was happy to keep to their pace and conserve her horse’s strength, for it had to carry her a long way. Despite the protection of traveling with a family she kept her sharp, long-bladed knife strapped up her left sleeve. She did not look rich: her clothes were warm but not fancy, and her horse was sturdy rather than spirited. She was careful to keep a few coins handy in a purse, and never show anyone the heavy money belt strapped around her waist underneath her tunic. She fed the baby discreetly, not letting strange men see her breasts.

That night she was immensely cheered by a splendid stroke of luck. They stopped at a tiny village called Lessay, and there Aliena met a monk who vividly remembered a young English mason who had been fascinated by the revolutionary new rib-vaulting in the abbey church. Aliena was exultant. The monk even remembered Jack saying he had landed at Honfleur, which explained why there was no trace of him at Cherbourg. Although it was a year ago, the man talked volubly about Jack, and had obviously been charmed by him. Aliena was thrilled to be talking to someone who had seen him. It was confirmation that she was on the right trail. Eventually she left the monk and lay down to sleep on the floor of the abbey guesthouse. As she drifted off she hugged the baby tight and whispered into his tiny pink ear: “We’re going to find your Daddy.”

The baby fell ill at Tours.

The city was wealthy and dirty and crowded. Rats ran in packs around the huge grain stores beside the river Loire. It was full of pilgrims. Tours was a traditional starting point for the pilgrimage to Compostela. In addition, the feast day of Saint Martin, the first bishop of Tours, was imminent, and many had come to the abbey church to visit his tomb. Martin was famous for having cut his cloak in two and given half to a naked beggar. Because of the feast, the inns and lodging houses of Tours were packed. Aliena was obliged to take what she could, and she stayed in a ramshackle dock-side tavern run by two elderly sisters who were too old and frail to keep the place clean.

At first she did not spend much time at her lodgings. With her baby in her arms she explored the streets, asking after Jack. She soon realized the city was so constantly full of visitors that the innkeepers could not even remember their guests of the week before last, so there was no point in asking them about someone who might have been here a year ago. However, she stopped at every building site to ask if they had employed a young English mason with red hair called Jack. Nobody had.

She was disappointed. She had not heard anything of him since Lessay. If he had stuck to his plan of going to Compostela he would almost certainly have come to Tours. She began to fear that he might have changed his mind.

She went to the church of Saint Martin, as everyone did; and there she saw a team of builders engaged on extensive repair work. She sought out the master builder, a small, bad-tempered man with thinning hair, and asked if he had employed an English mason.

“I never employ the English,” he said abruptly, before she had finished her sentence. “English masons are no good.”

“This one is very good,” she said. “And he speaks good French, so you might not have known he’s English. He has red hair-”

“No, never seen him,” the master said rudely, and turned away.

Aliena went back to her lodgings somewhat depressed. To be treated nastily for no reason at all was very dispiriting.

That night she suffered a stomach upset and got no sleep at all. The next day she felt too ill to go out, and spent all day lying in bed in the tavern, with the stink of the river coming in at the window and the smells of spilled wine and cooking oil seeping up the stairs. On the following morning the baby was ill.

He woke her with his crying. It was not his usual lusty, demanding squall, but a thin, weak, sorry complaint. He had the same upset stomach Aliena had, but he was also feverish. His normally alert blue eyes were shut tight in distress, and his tiny hands were clenched into fists. His skin was flushed and blotchy.

He had never been ill before, and Aliena did not know what to do.

She gave him her breast. He sucked thirstily for a while, then cried again, then sucked again. The milk went straight through him, and seemed to give him no comfort.

There was a pleasant young chambermaid working at the tavern, and Aliena asked her to go to the abbey and buy holy water. She considered sending for a doctor, but they always wanted to bleed people, and she could not believe that it would help Baby to be bled.

The maid returned with her mother, who burned a bunch of dried herbs in an iron bowl. They gave off an acrid smoke that seemed to absorb the bad smells of the place. “The baby will be thirsty-give him the breast as often as he wants it,” she said. “Have plenty to drink yourself, so that you have enough milk. That’s all you can do.”

“Will he be all right?” Aliena said anxiously.

The woman looked sympathetic. “I don’t know, dear. When they’re so small you can’t tell. Usually they survive things like this. Sometimes they don’t. Is he your first?”

“Yes.”

“Just remember that you can always have more.”

Aliena thought: But this is Jack’s baby, and I’ve lost Jack. She kept her thoughts to herself, thanked the woman, and paid her for the herbs.

When they had gone she diluted the holy water with ordinary water, dipped a rag in it, and cooled the baby’s head.

He seemed to get worse as the day wore on. Aliena gave him her breast when he cried, sang to him when he lay awake, and cooled him with holy water when he slept. He suckled continually but fitfully. Fortunately she had plenty of milk-she always had. She herself was still ill and kept going with dry bread and watered wine. As the hours went by she came to hate the room she was in, with its bare flyblown walls, rough plank floor, ill-fitting door and mean little window. It had precisely four items of furniture: the rickety bed, a three-legged stool, a clothes pole, and a floor-standing candlestick with three prongs but only one candle.

When darkness fell the maid came and lit the candle. She looked at the baby, who was lying on the bed, waving his arms and legs and grizzling plaintively. “Poor little thing,” she said. “He doesn’t understand why he feels so bad.”

Aliena moved from the stool to the bed, but she kept the candle burning, so that she could see the baby. Through the night they both dozed fitfully. Toward dawn the baby’s breathing became shallow, and he stopped crying and moving.

Aliena began to cry silently. She had lost Jack’s trail, and her baby was going to die here, at a house full of strangers in a city far from home. There would never be another Jack and she would never have another baby. Perhaps she would die too. That might be for the best.

At daybreak she blew out the candle and fell into an exhausted sleep.

A loud noise from downstairs woke her abruptly. The sun was up and the riverside below the window was loudly busy. The baby was dead still, his face peaceful at last. Cold fear gripped her heart. She touched his chest: he was neither hot nor cold. She gasped with fright. Then he gave a deep, shuddering sigh and opened his eyes. Aliena almost fainted with relief.

She snatched him up and hugged him, and he began to cry lustily. He was well again, she realized: his temperature was normal and he was in no distress. She put him to her breast and he sucked hungrily. Instead of turning away after a few mouthfuls he carried on, and when one breast was dry he drained the other. Then he fell into a deep, contented sleep.

Aliena realized that her symptoms had gone, too, although she felt wrung out. She slept beside the baby until midday, then fed him again; then she went down to the public room of the tavern and ate a dinner of goat’s cheese and fresh bread with a little bacon.

Perhaps it was the holy water of Saint Martin that had made the baby well. That afternoon she went back to Saint Martin’s tomb to give thanks to the saint.

While she was in the great abbey church, she watched the builders at work, thinking about Jack, who might yet see his baby after all. She wondered whether he had got diverted from his intended route. Perhaps he was working in Paris, carving stones for a new cathedral there. While she was thinking about him, her eye lit on a new corbel being installed by the builders. It was carved with a figure of a man who appeared to be holding the weight of the pillar above on his back. She gasped aloud. She knew instantly, without a shadow of doubt, that the twisted, agonized figure had been carved by Jack. So he had been here!

With her heart beating excitedly, she approached the men who were doing the work. “That corbel,” she said breathlessly. “The man who carved it was English, wasn’t he?”

An old laborer with a broken nose answered her. “That’s right-Jack Fitzjack did it. Never seen anything like it in my life.”

“When was he here?” Aliena said. She held her breath while the old man scratched his graying head through a greasy cap.

“Must be nearly a year ago, now. He didn’t stay long, mind. Master didn’t like him.” He lowered his voice. “Jack was too good, if you want to know the truth. He showed the master up. So he had to go.” He laid a finger alongside his nose in a gesture of confidentiality.

Aliena said excitedly: “Did he say where he was going?”

The old man looked at the baby, “That child is his, if the hair is anything to go by.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Will Jack be pleased to see you, do you think?”

Aliena realized the laborer thought Jack might have been running away from her. She laughed. “Oh, yes!” she said. “He’ll be pleased to see me.”

He shrugged. “He said he was going to Compostela, for what it’s worth.”

“Thank you!” Aliena said happily, and to the old man’s astonishment and delight she kissed him.

The pilgrim trails across France converged at Ostabat, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. There the group of twenty or so pilgrims with whom Aliena was traveling swelled to about seventy. They were a footsore but merry bunch: some prosperous citizens, some probably on the run from justice, a few drunks, and several monks and clergymen. The men of God were there for reasons of piety but most of the others seemed bent on having a good time. Several languages were spoken, including Flemish, a German tongue, and a southern French language called Oc. Nevertheless there was no lack of communication among them, and as they crossed the Pyrenees together they sang, played games, told stories, and-in several cases-had love affairs.

After Tours, unfortunately, Aliena did not find any more people who remembered Jack. However, there were not as many jongleurs along her route through France as she had imagined. One of the Flemish pilgrims, a man who had made the journey before, said there would be more of them on the Spanish side of the mountains.

He was right. At Pamplona, Aliena was thrilled to find a jongleur who recalled speaking to a young Englishman with red hair who had been asking about his father.

As the weary pilgrims moved slowly through northern Spain toward the coast, she met several more jongleurs, and most of them remembered Jack. She realized, with mounting excitement, that all of them said he had been going to Compostela: no one had encountered him coming back.

Which meant he was still there.

As her body became more sore her spirits lifted higher. She could hardly contain her optimism during the last few days of the journey. It was midwinter, but the weather was mild and sunny. The baby, now six months old, was fit and happy. She felt sure of finding Jack at Compostela.

They arrived there on Christmas Day.

They went straight to the cathedral and attended mass. The church was packed, naturally. Aliena walked round and round the congregation, staring at faces, but Jack was not there. Of course, he was not very devout; in fact he never went to churches except to work. By the time she had found accommodation it was dark. She went to bed, but she could hardly sleep for excitement, knowing that Jack was probably within a few steps of where she lay, and tomorrow she would see him, and kiss him, and show him his baby.

She was up at first light. The baby sensed her impatience and nursed irritably, biting her nipples with his gums. She washed him hastily, then went out, carrying him in her arms.

As she walked the dusty streets she expected to see Jack around every corner. How astonished he would be when he caught sight of her! And how pleased! However, she did not see him on the streets, so she began calling at lodging houses. As soon as people started work she went to building sites and spoke to masons. She knew the words for mason and redhead in the Castilian dialect, and the inhabitants of Compostela were used to foreigners, so she succeeded in communicating; but she found no trace of Jack. She began to be worried. Surely people should know him. He was not the kind of person you could easily overlook, and he must have been living here for several months. She also kept an eye open for his characteristic carvings, but she saw none.

Around midmorning she met a blowsy, middle-aged woman tavern-keeper who spoke French and remembered Jack.

“A handsome lad-is he yours? None of the local girls made any progress with him, anyway. He was here at midsummer, but he didn’t stay long, more’s the pity. He wouldn’t say where he was going, either. I liked him. If you find him, give him a big kiss from me.”

Aliena went back to her lodgings and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The baby grizzled but for once she ignored him. She was exhausted, disappointed, and homesick. It was not fair: she had trailed him all the way to Compostela, but he had gone somewhere else!

Since he had not gone back to the Pyrenees, and as there was nothing to the west of Compostela but a strip of coastline and an ocean that reached to the end of the world, Jack must have gone farther south. She would have to set off again, on her gray mare, with her baby in her arms, into the heart of Spain.

She wondered how far from home she would have to go before her pilgrimage came to an end.

Jack spent Christmas Day with his friend Raschid Alharoun in Toledo. Raschid was a baptized Saracen who had made a fortune importing spices from the East, especially pepper. They met at midday mass in the great cathedral and then strolled back, in the warm winter sunshine, through the narrow streets and the fragrant bazaar to the wealthy quarter.

Raschid’s house was made of dazzling white stone and built around a courtyard with a fountain. The shady arcades of the courtyard reminded Jack of the cloisters at Kingsbridge Priory. In England they gave protection from wind and rain, but here their purpose was to deflect the heat of the sun.

Raschid and his guests sat on floor cushions and dined off a low table. The men were waited on by the wives and daughters, and various servant girls whose place in the household was somewhat dubious: as a Christian, Raschid could have only one wife, but Jack suspected that he had quietly overlooked the Church’s disapproval of concubines.

The women were the greatest attraction of Raschid’s hospitable house. They were all beautiful. His wife was a statuesque, graceful woman with smooth dark-brown skin, lustrous black hair, and liquid brown eyes, and his daughters were slimmer versions of the same type. There were three of them. The eldest was engaged to be married to another dinner guest, the son of a silk merchant in the city. “My Raya is the perfect daughter,” Raschid said as she went around the table with a bowl of scented water for the guests to dip their hands in. “She is attentive, obedient and beautiful. Josef is a lucky man.” The fiancé bowed his head in acknowledgment of his good fortune.

The second daughter was proud, even haughty. She appeared to resent the praise lavished on her sister. She looked down at Jack while she poured some kind of drink into his goblet from a copper jug. “What is it?” he said.

“Peppermint cordial,” she said disdainfully. She disliked waiting on him, for she was the daughter of a great man, and he was a penniless vagabond.

It was the third daughter, Aysha, whom Jack liked most. In the three months he had been here he had got to know her quite well. She was fifteen or sixteen years old, small and lively, always grinning. Although she was three or four years younger than he, she did not seem juvenile. She had a lively, questioning intelligence. She asked him endless questions about England and the different way of life there. She often made fun of Toledo society manners-the snobbery of the Arabs, the fastidiousness of the Jews, and the bad taste of the newly rich Christians-and she sometimes had Jack in fits of laughter. Although she was the youngest, she seemed the least innocent of the three: something about the way she looked at Jack, as she leaned over him to place a dish of spicy prawns on the table, unmistakably revealed a licentious streak. She caught his eye and said “Peppermint cordial” in a perfect imitation of her sister’s snooty manner, and Jack giggled. When he was with Aysha he could often forget Aliena for hours at a time.

But when he was away from this house, Aliena was on his mind as much as if he had left her only yesterday. His memories of her were painfully vivid, although he had not seen her for more than a year. He could recall any of her expressions at will: laughing, thoughtful, suspicious, anxious, pleased, astonished, and-clearest of all-passionate. He had forgotten nothing about her body, and he could still see the curve of her breast, feel the soft skin on the inside of her thigh, taste her kiss, and smell the scent of her arousal. He often longed for her.

To cure himself of his fruitless desire he sometimes imagined what Aliena must be doing. In his mind’s eye he would see her pulling Alfred’s boots off at the end of the day, sitting down to eat with him, kissing him, making love to him, and giving her breast to a baby boy who looked just like Alfred. These visions tortured him but did not stop him from longing for her.

Today, Christmas Day, Aliena would roast a swan and re-dress it with its feathers for the table, and there would be posset to drink, made of ale, eggs, milk, and nutmeg. The food in front of Jack could not have been more different. There were mouth-watering dishes of strangely spiced lamb, rice mixed with nuts, and salads dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. It had taken Jack awhile to get used to Spanish cooking. They never served the great joints of beef, legs of pork and haunches of venison without which no feast was complete in England; nor did they consume thick slabs of bread. They did not have the lush pastures for grazing vast herds of cattle or the rich soil on which to grow fields of waving wheat. They made up for the relatively small quantities of meat by imaginative ways of cooking it with all kinds of spices, and in place of the ubiquitous bread of the English they had a wide variety of vegetables and fruits.

Jack was living with a small group of English clerics in Toledo. They were part of an international community of scholars that included Jews, Muslims and Arab Christians. The Englishmen were occupied translating works of mathematics from Arabic into Latin, so they could be read by Christians. There was an atmosphere of feverish excitement among them as they discovered and explored the treasure-house of Arab learning, and they had casually welcomed Jack as a student: they admitted into their circle anyone who understood what they were doing and shared their enthusiasm for it. They were like peasants who have labored for years to scratch a crop out of poor soil and then suddenly move to a rich alluvial valley. Jack had abandoned building to study mathematics. He had not yet needed to work for money: the clerics casually gave him a bed and any meals he wanted, and they would have provided him with a new robe and sandals if he had needed them.

Raschid was one of their sponsors. As an international trader he was multilingual and cosmopolitan in his attitudes. At home he spoke Castilian, the language of Christian Spain, rather than Mozarabic. His family also all spoke French, the language of the Normans, who were important traders. Although he was a man of commerce, he had a powerful intellect and a wide-ranging curiosity. He loved to talk to scholars about their theories. He had taken a liking to Jack immediately, and Jack dined at his house several times a week.

Now, as they began to eat, Raschid asked Jack: “What have the philosophers taught us this week?”

“I’ve been reading Euclid.” Euclid’s Elements of Geometry had been one of the first books translated.

“Euclid is a funny name for an Arab,” said Ismail, Raschid’s brother.

“He was Greek,” Jack explained. “He lived before the birth of Christ. His work was lost by the Romans but preserved by the Egyptians-so it comes to us in Arabic.”

“And now Englishmen are translating it into Latin!” Raschid said. “This amuses me.”

“But what have you learned?” said Josef, the fiancé of Raya.

Jack hesitated. It was hard to explain. He tried to make it practical. “My stepfather, the builder, taught me how to perform certain operations in geometry: how to divide a line exactly in half, how to draw a right angle, and how to draw one square inside another so that the smaller is half the area of the larger.”

“What is the purpose of such skills?” Josef interrupted. There was a note of scorn in his voice. He saw Jack as something of an upstart, and was jealous of the attention Raschid paid to Jack’s conversation.

“Those operations are essential in planning buildings,” Jack replied pleasantly, pretending not to notice Josef’s tone. “Take a look at this courtyard. The area of the covered arcades around the edges is exactly the same as the open area in the middle. Most small courtyards are built like that, including the cloisters of monasteries. It’s because these proportions are most pleasing. If the middle is bigger, it looks like a marketplace, and if it’s smaller, it just looks as if there’s a hole in the roof. But to get it exactly right, the builder has to be able to draw the open part in the middle so that it’s precisely half the area of the whole thing.”

“I never knew that!” Raschid said triumphantly. He liked nothing better than to learn something new.

“Euclid explains why these techniques work,” Jack went on. “For example, the two parts of the divided line are equal because they form corresponding sides of congruent triangles.”

“Congruent?” Raschid queried.

“It means exactly alike.”

“Ah-now I see.”

However, no one else did, Jack could tell.

Josef said: “But you could perform all these geometric operations before you read Euclid-so I don’t see that you’re any better off now.”

Raschid protested: “A man is always better off for understanding something!”

Jack said: “Besides, now that I understand the principles of geometry I may be able to devise solutions to new problems that baffled my stepfather.” He felt rather frustrated by the conversation: Euclid had come to him like the blinding flash of a revelation, but he was failing to communicate the thrilling importance of these new discoveries. He changed tack somewhat. “It’s Euclid’s method that is the most interesting,” he said. “He takes five axioms-self-evident truths-and deduces everything else logically from them.”

“Give me an example of an axiom,” Raschid said.

“A line can be prolonged indefinitely.”

“No it can’t,” said Aysha, who was handing round a bowl of figs.

The guests were somewhat startled to hear a girl joining in the argument, but Raschid laughed indulgently: Aysha was his favorite. “And why not?” he said.

“It has to come to an end sometime,” she said.

Jack said: “But in your imagination, it could go on indefinitely.”

“In my imagination, water could flow uphill and dogs speak Latin,” she retorted.

Her mother came into the room and heard that rejoinder. “Aysha!” she said in a steely voice. “Out!”

All the men laughed. Aysha made a face and went out. Josef’s father said: “Whoever marries her will have his hands full!” They laughed again. Jack laughed too; then he noticed they were all looking at him, as if the joke was on him.

After dinner, Raschid showed off his collection of mechanical toys. He had a tank in which you could mix water and wine and they would come out separately; a marvelous water-driven clock, which kept track of the hours in the day with phenomenal accuracy; a jug that would refill itself but never overflow; and a small wooden statue of a woman with eyes made of some kind of crystal that absorbed water in the warmth of the day and then shed it in the cool of the evening, so that she appeared to be weeping. Jack shared Raschid’s fascination with these toys, but he was most intrigued by the weeping statue, for whereas the mechanisms of the others were simple once they had been explained, no one really understood how the statue worked.

They sat in the arcades around the courtyard in the afternoon, playing games, dozing, or talking idly. Jack wished he belonged to a big family like this one, with sisters and uncles and in-laws, and a family home they could all visit, and a position of respect in a small town. Suddenly he recalled the conversation he had had with his mother the night she rescued him from the priory punishment cell. He had asked her about his father’s relations, and she had said Yes, he had a big family, back in France. I have got a family like this one, somewhere, Jack realized. My father’s brothers and sisters are my uncles and aunts. I might have cousins of my own I wonder if I will ever find them?

He felt adrift. He could survive anywhere but he belonged nowhere. He had been a carver, a builder, a monk and a mathematician, and he did not know which was the real Jack, if any. He sometimes wondered if he should be a jongleur like his father, or an outlaw like his mother. He was nineteen years old, homeless and rootless, with no family and no purpose in life.

He played chess with Josef and won; then Raschid came up and said: “Give me your chair, Josef-I want to hear more about Euclid.”

Josef obediently gave up his chair to his prospective father-in-law, then moved away-he had already heard everything he ever wanted to know about Euclid. Raschid sat down and said to Jack: “You’re enjoying yourself?”

“Your hospitality is matchless,” Jack said smoothly. He had learned courtly manners in Toledo.

“Thank you; but I meant with Euclid.”

“Yes. I don’t think I succeeded in explaining the importance of this book. You see-”

“I think I understand,” Raschid said. “Like you, I love knowledge for its own sake.”

“Yes.”

“Even so, every man has to make a living.”

Jack did not see the relevance of that remark, so he waited for Raschid to say more. However, Raschid sat back with his eyes half closed, apparently content to enjoy a companionable silence. Jack began to wonder whether Raschid was reproaching him for not working at a trade. Eventually Jack said: “I expect I shall go back to building, one day.”

“Good.”

Jack smiled. “When I left Kingsbridge, riding my mother’s horse, with my stepfather’s tools in a satchel slung across my shoulder, I thought there was only one way to build a church: thick walls with round arches and small windows topped by a wooden ceiling or a barrel-shaped stone vault. The cathedrals I saw on my way from Kingsbridge to Southampton taught me no different. But Normandy changed my life.”

“I can imagine,” Raschid said sleepily. He was not very interested, so Jack recalled those days in silence. Within hours of landing at Honfleur he was looking at the abbey church of Jumièges. It was the highest church he had ever seen, but otherwise it had the usual round arches and wooden ceiling-except in the chapter house, where Abbot Urso had built a revolutionary stone ceiling. Instead of a smooth, continuous barrel, or a creased groin vault, this ceiling had ribs which sprang up from the tops of the columns and met at the apex of the roof. The ribs were thick and strong, and the triangular sections of ceiling between the ribs were thin and light. The monk who was keeper of the fabric explained to Jack that it was easier to build that way: the ribs were put up first, and the sections between were then simpler to make. This type of vault was also lighter. The monk was hoping to hear news from Jack of technical innovations in England, and Jack had to disappoint him. However, Jack’s evident appreciation of rib-vaulting pleased the monk, and he told Jack that there was a church at Lessay, not far away, that had rib-vaulting throughout.

Jack went to Lessay the next day, and spent all afternoon in the church, staring in wonder at the vault. What was so striking about it, he finally decided, was the way the ribs, coming down from the apex of the vault to the capitals on top of the columns, seemed to dramatize the way the weight of the roof was being carried by the strongest members. The ribs made the logic of the building visible.

Jack traveled south, to the county of Anjou, and got a job doing repair work at the abbey church in Tours. He had no trouble persuading the master builder to give him a trial. The tools he had in his possession showed that he was a mason, and after a day at work the master knew he was a good one. His boast to Aliena, that he could get work anywhere in the world, was not entirely vain.

Among the tools he had inherited was Tom’s foot rule. Only master builders owned these, and when the others discovered Jack had one, they asked him how he had become a master at such a young age. His first inclination was to explain that he was not really a master builder; but then he decided to say he was. After all, he had effectively run the Kingsbridge site while he was a monk, and he could draw plans just as well as Tom. But the master he was working for was annoyed to discover that he had hired a possible rival. One day Jack suggested a modification to the monk in charge of the building, and drew what he meant on the tracing floor. That was the beginning of his troubles. The master builder became convinced that Jack was after his job. He began to find fault with Jack’s work, and put him on the monotonous task of cutting plain blocks.

Soon Jack set off again. He went to the abbey of Cluny, the headquarters of a monastic empire that spread all across Christendom. It was the Cluniac order that had initiated and fostered the now-famous pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James at Compostela. All along the Compostela road there were churches dedicated to Saint James and Cluniac monasteries to take care of pilgrims. As Jack’s father had been a jongleur on the pilgrim road, it seemed likely he had visited Cluny.

However, he had not. There were no jongleurs at Cluny. Jack learned nothing about his father there.

Nevertheless, the journey was by no means wasted. Every arch Jack had ever seen, until the moment he entered the abbey church of Cluny, had been semicircular; and every vault had been either tunnel-shaped, like a long line of round arches all stuck together, or groined, like the crossing where two tunnels met. The arches at Cluny were not semicircular.

They rose to a point.

There were pointed arches in the main arcades; the groined vaults of the side aisles had pointed arches; and-most startling of all-above the nave there was a stone ceiling that could only be described as a pointed barrel vault. Jack had always been taught that a circle was strong because it was perfect, and a round arch was strong because it was part of a circle. He would have thought that pointed arches were weak. In fact, the monks told him, the pointed arches were considerably stronger than the old round ones. The church at Cluny seemed to prove it, for despite the great weight of stonework in its peaked vault, it was very high.

Jack did not stay long at Cluny. He continued south, following the pilgrim road, diverging whenever the whim took him. In the early summer there were jongleurs all along the route, in the larger towns or near the Cluniac monasteries. They recited their verse narratives to crowds of pilgrims in front of churches and shrines, sometimes accompanying themselves on the viol, just the way Aliena had told him. Jack approached every one and asked if he had known Jack Shareburg. They all said no.

The churches he saw on his way through southwest France and northern Spain continued to astonish him. They were all much higher than the English cathedrals. Some of them had banded barrel vaults. The bands, reaching from pier to pier across the vault of the church, made it possible to build in stages, bay by bay, instead of all at once. They also changed the look of a church. By emphasizing the divisions between bays, they revealed that the building was a series of identical units, like a sliced loaf; and this imposed order and logic on the huge interior space.

He was in Compostela at midsummer. He had not known there were places in the world that were so hot. Santiago was another breathtakingly tall church, and the nave, still under construction, also had a banded barrel vault. From there he went farther south.

The kingdoms of Spain had been under Saracen rule until recently; indeed, most of the country south of Toledo was still Muslim-dominated. The appearance of Saracen buildings fascinated Jack: their high, cool interiors, their arcades of arches, their stonework blinding white in the sun. But most interesting of all was the discovery that both rib-vaulting and pointed arches featured in Muslim architecture. Perhaps this was where the French had got their new ideas.

He could never work on another church like Kingsbridge Cathedral, he thought as he sat in the warm Spanish afternoon, listening vaguely to the laughter of the women somewhere deep in the big cool house. He still wanted to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world, but it would not be a massive, solid, fortress-like structure. He wanted to use the new techniques, the rib-vaults and the pointed arches. However, he thought he would not use them in quite the way they had been used so far. None of the churches he had seen had made the most of the possibilities. A picture of a church was forming in his mind. The details were hazy but the overall feeling was very strong: it was a spacious, airy building, with sunlight pouring through its huge windows, and an arched vault so high it seemed to reach heaven.

“Josef and Raya will need a house,” Raschid said suddenly. “If you were to build it, other work would follow.”

Jack was startled. One thing he had not thought of building was houses. “Do you think they want me to build their house?” he said.

“They might.”

There was another long silence, during which Jack contemplated life as a housebuilder for wealthy merchants in Toledo.

Eventually Raschid seemed to come awake. He sat upright and opened his eyes wide. “I like you, Jack,” he said. “You’re an honest man, and you’re worth talking to, which is more than can be said for most people I’ve met. I hope we will always be friends.”

“So do I,” said Jack, somewhat surprised by this unprompted tribute.

“I’m a Christian, so I don’t keep my women locked away, as some of my Muslim brothers do. On the other hand, I’m Arab; which means I don’t give them quite the… forgive me, the license, that other women are used to. I allow them to meet and talk with male guests at the house. I even allow friendships to develop. But at the point where friendship begins to ripen into something more-as happens so naturally among young people-then I expect the man to make a formal move. Anything else would be an insult.”

“Of course,” Jack said.

“I knew you’d understand.” Raschid stood up and put an affectionate hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’ve never been blessed with a son; but if I had, I think he would have been like you.”

On impulse, Jack said: “But darker, I hope.”

Raschid looked blank for a moment, then he roared with laughter, startling the other guests around the courtyard. “Yes!” he said merrily. “Darker!” And he went into the house, still guffawing.

The older guests began to take their leave. Jack sat by himself, thinking over what had been said to him, as the afternoon cooled. He was being offered a deal, there was no question of that. If he married Aysha, Raschid would launch him as housebuilder to the wealthy of Toledo. There was also a warning: if he did not intend to marry her, he should stay away. The people of Spain had more elaborate manners than the English, but they could make their meaning plain when necessary.

When Jack reflected on his situation he sometimes found it incredible. Is this me? he thought. Is this Jack Jackson, bastard son of a man who was hanged, brought up in the forest, apprentice mason, escaped monk? Am I really being offered the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Arab merchant, plus a guaranteed living as a builder, in this balmy city? It sounds too good to be true. I even like the girl!

The sun was going down, and the courtyard was in shadow. There were only two people left in the arcade-himself and Josef. He was just wondering whether this situation could have been contrived when Raya and Aysha appeared, proving that it had. Despite the theoretical strictness about physical contact between girls and young men, their mother knew exactly what was happening, and Raschid probably did too. They would give the sweethearts a few moments of solitude; then, before they had time to do anything serious, the mother would come out into the courtyard, pretending to be outraged, and order the girls back inside.

On the other side of the courtyard Raya and Josef immediately started kissing. Jack stood up as Aysha approached him. She was wearing a floor-length white dress of Egyptian cotton, a fabric Jack had never seen before he came to Spain. Softer than wool and finer than linen, it clung to Aysha’s limbs as she moved, and its white color seemed to glow in the twilight. It made her brown eyes look almost black. She stood close to him, grinning impishly. “What did he say to you?” she said.

Jack guessed she meant her father. “He offered to set me up as a housebuilder.”

“What a dowry!” she said scornfully. “I can’t believe it! At least he might have offered you money.”

She had no patience with traditional Saracen indirection, Jack observed wryly. He found her frankness refreshing. “I don’t think I want to build houses,” he said.

She suddenly became solemn. “Do you like me?”

“You know I do.”

She took a step forward, lifted her face, closed her eyes, stood on tiptoe and kissed him. She smelled of musk and ambergris. She opened her mouth, and her tongue darted between his lips playfully. His arms went around her almost involuntarily. He rested his hands on her waist. The cotton was very light: it was almost like touching her bare skin. She took his hand and raised it to her breast. Her body was lean and taut, and her breast was shallow, like a small, firm mound, with a tiny hard nipple at its tip. Her chest moved up and down as she became aroused. Jack was shocked to feel her hand moving between his legs. He squeezed her nipple between his fingertips. She gasped, and broke away from him, panting. He dropped his hands.

“Did I hurt you?” he whispered.

“No!” she said.

He thought of Aliena, and felt guilty; then he realized how foolish that was. Why should he feel that he was betraying a woman who had married another man?

Aysha looked at him for a moment. It was almost dark, but he could see that her face was suffused with desire. She lifted his hand and put it back on her breast. “Do it again, but harder,” she said urgently.

He found her nipple and leaned forward to kiss her, but she pulled her head back and watched his face while he caressed her. He squeezed her nipple gently, then, obediently, pinched it hard. She arched her back so that her flat breasts protruded and her nipples made small hard puckers in the fabric of her dress. Jack bent his head to her breast. His lips closed around her nipple through the cotton. Then, on impulse, he took it between his teeth and bit down. He heard her sharp intake of breath.

He felt a shudder pass through her. She lifted his head from her breast and pressed herself against him. He bent his face to hers. She kissed him frantically, as if she wanted to cover his face with her mouth, and pulled his body to hers, making small panicky sounds in the back of her throat. Jack was aroused, bewildered and even a little scared: he had never known anything like this. He thought she was about to reach a climax. Then they were interrupted.

Her mother’s voice came from the doorway. “Raya! Aysha! Come inside at once!”

Aysha looked up at him, panting. After a moment she kissed him again, hard, pressing her lips against his until she bruised him. She broke away. “I love you,” she hissed. Then she ran into the house.

Jack watched her go. Raya followed her at a more sedate pace. Their mother flashed a disapproving look at him and Josef and then went in after the girls, shutting the door decisively behind her. Jack stood staring at the closed door, wondering what to make of it all.

Josef crossed the courtyard and interrupted his reverie. “Such beautiful girls-both of them!” he said with a conspiratorial wink.

Jack nodded absently and moved toward the gate. Josef went with him. As they passed under the arch, a servant materialized out of the shadows and closed the gate behind them.

Josef said: “The trouble with being engaged is that it leaves you with an ache between the legs.” Jack made no reply. Josef said: “I might go down to Fatima’s to get it eased.” Fatima’s was the whorehouse. Despite its Saracen name, nearly all the girls were light-skinned, and the few Arab whores were very high-priced. “Do you want to come?” Josef said.

“No,” Jack replied. “I’ve got a different kind of ache. Good night.” He walked quickly away. Josef was not his favorite companion at the best of times and tonight Jack found himself in an unforgiving mood.

The night air cooled as he headed back toward the college where he had a hard bed in the dormitory. He felt he was at a turning point. He was being offered a life of ease and prosperity, and all he had to do was forget Aliena and abandon his aspiration to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world.

That night he dreamed that Aysha came to him, her naked body slippery with scented oil, and she rubbed herself against him but would not let him make love to her.

When he woke up in the morning he had made his decision.

The servants would not let Aliena into the house of Raschid Alharoun. She probably looked like a beggar, she thought as she stood outside the gate, in her dusty tunic and worn boots, with her baby in her arms. “Tell Raschid Alharoun that I am seeking his friend Jack Fitzjack from England,” she said in French, wondering if the dark-skinned servants could understand a single word. After a muttered consultation in some Saracen tongue, one of the servants, a tall man with coaly skin and hair like the fleece of a black sheep, went into the house.

Aliena fidgeted restlessly while the other servants stared at her openly. She had not learned patience, even on this interminable pilgrimage. After her disappointment at Compostela she had followed the road into the interior of Spain, to Salamanca. No one there remembered a redhaired young man interested in cathedrals and jongleurs, but a kindly monk told her that there was a community of English scholars at Toledo. It seemed a faint hope, but Toledo was not much farther down the dusty road, so she pressed on.

Another tantalizing disappointment had been waiting for her here. Yes, Jack had been here-what a stroke of luck!-but alas, he had already left. She was catching up with him: she was now only a month behind him. But, once again, nobody knew where he had gone.

In Compostela she had been able to guess that he must have gone south, because she had come from the east, and there was sea to the north and west. Here, unfortunately, there were more possibilities. He might have gone northeast, back toward France; west to Portugal; or south to Granada; and from the Spanish coast he might have taken ship for Rome, Tunis, Alexandria or Beirut.

Aliena had decided to give up the search if she did not get a strong indication of which way he had gone when he left here. She was bone-weary and a long way from home. She had very little energy or determination left, and she could not face going farther with no more than a faint hope of success. She was ready to turn around and go back to England, and try to forget about Jack forever.

Another servant came out of the white house. This one was dressed in more costly clothes and spoke French. He looked at Aliena warily but addressed her politely. “You are a friend of Mr. Jack?”

“Yes, an old friend from England. I would like to speak with Raschid Alharoun.”

The servant glanced at the baby.

Aliena said: “I’m a relative of Jack’s.” It was not untrue: she was the estranged wife of Jack’s stepbrother, and that was a relationship.

The servant opened the gate wider and said: “Please come with me.”

Aliena stepped inside gratefully. If she had been turned away here it would have been the end of the road.

She followed the servant across a pleasant courtyard, past a splashing fountain. She wondered what had drawn Jack to the home of this wealthy merchant. It seemed an unlikely friendship. Had Jack recited verse narratives in these shady arcades?

They went into the house. It was a palatial home, with high, cool rooms, floors of stone and marble, and elaborately carved furniture with rich upholstery. They went through two archways and a wooden door, and then Aliena had the feeling they might have entered the women’s quarters. The servant held up his hand for her to wait, then coughed gently.

A moment later a tall Saracen woman in a black robe glided into the room, holding a corner of her garment up in front of her mouth in a pose that was insulting in any language. She looked at Aliena and said in French: “Who are you?”

Aliena drew herself up to her full height. “I am the Lady Aliena, daughter of the late earl of Shiring,” she said as haughtily as she could. “I take it I have the pleasure of addressing the wife of Raschid the pepper seller.” She could play this game as well as anyone.

“What do you want here?”

“I came to see Raschid.”

“He doesn’t receive women.”

Aliena realized she had no hope of gaining this woman’s cooperation. However, she had nowhere else to go, so she kept trying. “He may receive a friend of Jack’s,” she persisted.

“Is Jack your husband?”

“No.” Aliena hesitated. “He’s my brother-in-law.”

The woman looked skeptical. Like most people, she probably assumed that Jack had impregnated Aliena, then abandoned her, and Aliena was pursuing him with the object of forcing him to marry her and support the child.

The woman half turned and called out something in a language Aliena did not understand. A moment later three young women came into the room. It was obvious from their looks that they were her daughters. She spoke to them in the same language, and they all stared at Aliena. There followed a rapid conversation in which the syllable Jack recurred often.

Aliena felt humiliated. She was tempted to turn on her heel and walk out; but that would mean giving up her search altogether. These awful people were her last hope. She raised her voice, interrupting their conversation, and said: “Where is Jack?” She intended to be forceful but to her dismay her voice just sounded plaintive.

The daughters fell silent.

The mother said: “We don’t know where he is.”

“When did you see him last?”

She hesitated. She did not want to answer, but she could hardly pretend not to know when she had seen him last. “He left Toledo the day after Christmas,” she said reluctantly.

Aliena forced a friendly smile. “Do you recall his saying anything about where he might be going?”

“I told you, we don’t know where he is.”

“Perhaps he said something to your husband.”

“No, he did not.”

Aliena despaired. She had an intuitive feeling that the woman did know something. However, it was clear that she was not going to reveal it. Aliena felt suddenly weak and weary. With tears in her eyes she said: “Jack is the father of my child. Don’t you think he would like to see his son?”

The youngest of the three daughters started to say something, but the mother interrupted her. There was a short, fierce exchange: mother and daughter had the same fiery temperament. But in the end the daughter shut up.

Aliena waited, but no more was said. The four of them just stared at her. They were unquestionably hostile, but they were so curious that they were in no hurry to see her go. However, there was no point in staying. She might as well get out, go back to her lodgings, and make preparations for the long journey back to Kingsbridge. She took a deep breath and made her voice cool and steady. “I thank you for your hospitality,” she said.

The mother had the grace to look slightly ashamed.

Aliena left the room.

The servant was hovering outside. He fell into step beside her and escorted her through the house. She blinked back tears. It was unbearably frustrating to know that her whole journey had failed because of the malice of one woman.

The servant led her across the courtyard. As they reached the gate, Aliena heard running footsteps. She looked back to see the youngest daughter coming after her. She stopped and waited. The servant looked uneasy.

The girl was short and slender, and very pretty, with golden skin and eyes so dark they were nearly black. She wore a white dress and made Aliena feel dusty and unwashed. She spoke broken French. “Do you love him?” she blurted.

Aliena hesitated. She realized she had no more dignity left to lose. “Yes, I love him,” she confessed.

“Does he love you?”

Aliena was about to say yes; then she realized she had not seen him for more than a year. “He used to,” she said.

“I think he loves you,” the girl said.

“What makes you say that?”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears. “I wanted him for myself. And I nearly got him.” She looked at the baby. “Red hair and blue eyes.” The tears ran down her smooth brown cheeks.

Aliena stared at her. This explained her hostile reception. The mother had wanted Jack to marry this girl. She could not have been more than sixteen, but she had a sensual look that made her seem older. Aliena wondered exactly what had happened between them. She said: “You ‘nearly’ got him?”

“Yes,” the girl said defiantly. “I knew he liked me. It broke my heart when he went away. But now I understand.” She lost her composure, and her face crumpled in grief.

Aliena could feel for a woman who had loved Jack and lost him. She touched the girl’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. But there was something more important than compassion. “Listen,” she said urgently. “Do you know where he went?”

The girl looked up and nodded, sobbing.

“Tell me!”

“Paris,” she said.

Paris!

Aliena was jubilant. She was back on the trail. Paris was a long way, but the journey would be mostly over familiar ground. And Jack was only a month ahead of her. She felt rejuvenated. I’ll find him, in the end, she thought; I know I will!

“Are you going to Paris now?” the girl said.

“Oh, yes,” Aliena said. “I’ve come this far-I won’t stop now. Thank you for telling me-thank you.”

“I want him to be happy,” she said simply.

The servant fidgeted discontentedly. He looked as if he thought he might get into trouble over this. Aliena said to the girl: “Did he say anything else? Which road he would take, or anything that might help me?”

“He wants to go to Paris because someone told him they are building beautiful churches there.”

Aliena nodded. She could have guessed that.

“And he took the weeping lady.”

Aliena did not know what she meant. “The weeping lady?”

“My father gave him the weeping lady.”

“A lady?”

The girl shook her head. “I don’t know the right words. A lady. She weeps. From the eyes.”

“You mean a picture? A painted lady?”

“I don’t understand,” the girl said. She looked over her shoulder anxiously. “I have to go.”

Whatever the weeping lady was, it did not sound very important. “Thank you for helping me,” Aliena said.

The girl bent down and kissed the baby’s forehead. Her tears fell on his plump cheeks. She looked up at Aliena. “I wish I were you,” she said. Then she turned away and ran back into the house.

Jack’s lodgings were in the rue de la Boucherie; in a suburb of Paris on the left bank of the Seine. He saddled his horse at daybreak. At the end of the street he turned right and passed through the tower gate that guarded the Petit Pont, the bridge that led to the island city in the middle of the river.

The wooden houses on either side projected over the edges of the bridge. In the gaps between the houses were stone benches where, later in the morning, famous teachers would hold open-air classes. The bridge took Jack into the Juiverie, the island’s main street. The bakeries along the street were packed with students buying their breakfast. Jack got a pastry filled with cooked eel.

He turned left opposite the synagogue, then right at the king’s palace, and crossed the Grand Pont, the bridge that led to the right bank. The small, well-built shops of the moneychangers and goldsmiths on either side were beginning to open for business. At the end of the bridge he passed through another gatehouse and entered the fish market, where business was already brisk. He pushed through the crowds and started along the muddy road that led to the town of Saint-Denis.

When he was still in Spain he had heard, from a traveling mason, about Abbot Suger and the new church he was building at Saint-Denis. As he made his way northward through France that spring, working for a few days whenever he needed money, he heard Saint-Denis mentioned often. It seemed the builders were using both of the new techniques, rib-vaulting and pointed arches, and the combination was rather striking.

He rode for more than an hour through fields and vineyards. The road was not paved but it had milestones. It passed the hill of Montmartre, with a ruined Roman temple at its summit, and went through the village of Clignancourt. Three miles after Clignancourt he reached the small walled town of Saint-Denis.

Denis had been the first bishop of Paris. He had been decapitated at Montmartre and then had walked, carrying his severed head in his hands, out into the countryside to this spot, where at last he fell. A pious woman had buried him and a monastery had been erected over his grave. The church had become the burying place for the kings of France. The current abbot, Suger, was a powerful and ambitious man who had reformed the monastery and was now modernizing the church.

Jack entered the town and reined in his horse in the middle of the marketplace to look up at the west front of the church. There was nothing revolutionary here. It was a straightforward old-fashioned facade with twin towers and three round-arched doorways. He rather liked the aggressive way the piers thrust out from the wall, but he would not have ridden five miles to see that.

He tied his horse to a rail in front of the church and went closer. The sculpture around the three portals was quite good: lively subjects, precisely chiseled. Jack went in.

Inside there was an immediate change. Before the nave proper, there was a low entryway, or narthex. As Jack looked up at the ceiling he experienced a surge of excitement. The builders had used rib-vaulting and pointed arches in combination here, and Jack saw in a flash that the two techniques went together perfectly: the grace of the pointed arch was accentuated by the ribs that followed its line.

There was more to it. In between the ribs, instead of the usual web of mortar-and-rubble, this builder had put cut stones, as in a wall. Being stronger, the layer of stones could probably be thinner, and therefore lighter, Jack realized.

As he stared up, craning his neck until it ached, he understood a further remarkable feature of this combination. Two pointed arches of different widths could be made to reach the same height, merely by adjusting the curve of the arch. This gave the bay a more regular look. It could not be done with round arches, of course: the height of a semicircular arch was always half its width, so a wide one had to be higher than a narrow one. That meant that in a rectangular bay, the narrow arches had to spring from a point higher up the wall than the springing of the wide ones, so that their tops would be at the same level and the ceiling would be even. The result was always lopsided. This problem had now vanished.

Jack lowered his head and gave his neck a rest. He felt as jubilant as if he had just been crowned king. This, he thought, was how he would build his cathedral.

He looked into the main body of the church. The nave itself was clearly quite old, although relatively long and wide: it had been built many years ago, by someone other than the current master, and it was quite conventional. But then, at the crossing, there seemed to be steps down-no doubt leading to the crypt and the royal tombs-and steps up to the chancel. It looked as if the chancel were floating a little way above the ground. The structure was obscured, from this angle, by dazzling sunlight coming through the east windows, so much that Jack supposed the walls must be unfinished, and the sun shining through the gaps.

He walked along the south aisle to the crossing. As he got nearer to the chancel he sensed that something quite remarkable was ahead of him. There was, indeed, sunlight pouring in, but the vault appeared to be complete and there were no gaps in the walls. When Jack stepped out of the aisle into the crossing he saw that the sun was streaming in through rows of tall windows, some of them made of colored glass, and all this sunshine seemed to fill the vast empty vessel of the church with warmth and light. Jack could not understand how they had got so much window area: there seemed to be more window than wall. He was awestruck. How had this been done, if not by magic?

He felt a frisson of superstitious dread as he mounted the steps that led up to the chancel. He stopped at the top of the stair and peered into the confusion of shafts of colored light and stone that was ahead of him. Slowly the realization came over him that he had seen something like this before, but in his imagination. This was the church he had dreamed of building, with its vast windows and surging vaults, a structure of light and air that seemed held up by enchantment.

A moment later he saw it differently. Everything fell into place quite suddenly, and in a lightning flash of revelation, Jack saw what Abbot Suger and his builder had done.

The principle of rib-vaulting was that a ceiling was made of a few strong ribs, with the gaps between the ribs filled in with light material. They had applied that principle to the whole building. The wall of the chancel consisted of a few strong piers joined by windows. The arcade separating the chancel from its side aisles was not a wall but a row of piers joined by pointed arches, leaving wide spaces through which the light from the windows could fall into the middle of the church. The aisle itself was divided in two by a row of thin columns.

Pointed arches and rib-vaulting had been combined here, as they had in the narthex, but it was now clear that the narthex had been a cautious trial for the new technology. By comparison with this, the narthex was musclebound, its ribs and moldings too heavy, its arches too small. Here everything was thin, light; delicate and airy. The simple roll moldings were all narrow and the colonettes were long and thin.

It would have looked too fragile to stay upright, except that the ribs showed so clearly how the weight of the building was being carried by the piers and columns. Here was a visible demonstration that a big building did not need thick walls with tiny windows and massive piers. Provided the weight was distributed precisely on a load-bearing skeleton, the rest of the building could be light stonework, glass, or empty space. Jack was spellbound. It was almost like falling in love. Euclid had been a revelation, but this was more than a revelation, for it was beautiful too. He had had visions of a church like this, and now he was actually looking at it, touching it, standing under its sky-high vault.

He walked around the curved east end in a daze, staring at the vaulting of the double aisle. The ribs arched over his head like branches in a forest of perfect stone trees. Here, as in the narthex, the filling between the ceiling ribs was cut stone jointed with mortar, instead of the easier, but heavier, rubble-and-mortar. The outer wall of the aisle had pairs of big windows with pointed tops to match the pointed arches. The revolutionary architecture was perfectly complemented by the colored windows. Jack had never seen colored glass in England, but he had come across several examples in France: however, in the small windows of an old-style church it could not achieve its full potential. Here, the effect of the morning sun pouring through the rich many-colored windows was more than beautiful, it was spellbinding.

Because the church was round-ended, the side aisles curved around to meet at the east end, forming a semicircular ambulatory or walkway. Jack walked all the way around the half circle, then turned and came back, still marveling. He returned to his starting point.

There he saw a woman.

He recognized her.

She smiled.

His heart stood still.

Aliena shaded her eyes. The sunlight coming through the windows at the east end of the church dazzled her. Like a vision, a figure walked toward her out of the blaze of colored sunshine. He looked as if his hair was on fire. He came closer. It was Jack.

Aliena felt faint.

He came to her and stood in front of her. He was thin, terribly thin, but his eyes shone with an intensity of emotion. They stared at one another in silence for a moment.

When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “Is it really you?”

“Yes,” she said. Her voice came out in a whisper. “Yes, Jack. It’s really me.”

The tension was too much, and she began to cry. He put his arms around her and hugged her, with the baby in her arms between them, and patted her back, saying “There, there,” as if she were a child. She leaned against him, breathing his familiar dusty smell, hearing his dear voice as he soothed her, letting her tears fall on his bony shoulder.

Eventually he looked at her face and said: “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” she said.

“Looking for me?” he said incredulously. “Then… how did you find me?”

She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “I followed you.”

“How?”

“I asked people if they had seen you. Masons, mostly, but some monks and lodging-house keepers.”

His eyes widened. “You mean-you’ve been to Spain?”

She nodded. “Compostela, then Salamanca, then Toledo.”

“How long have you been traveling?”

“Three fourths of a year.”

“But why?”

“Because I love you.”

He seemed overwhelmed. His eyes filled with tears. He whispered: “I love you, too.”

“Do you? Do you, still?”

“Oh, yes.”

She could tell he meant it. She tilted her face up. He leaned forward, over the baby, and kissed her softly. The touch of his mouth on hers made her feel dizzy.

The baby cried.

She broke the kiss and rocked him a little, and he quieted.

Jack said: “What’s the baby called?”

“I haven’t named him yet.”

“Why not? He must be a year old!”

“I wanted to consult you.”

“Me?” Jack frowned. “What about Alfred? It’s up to the father…” He tailed off. “Why… is he… is he mine?”

“Look at him,” she said.

Jack looked. “Red hair… It must be a year and three quarters since…”

Aliena nodded.

“Good God,” Jack said. He seemed awestruck. “My son.” He swallowed hard.

She watched his face anxiously as he tried to take in the news. Would he see this as the termination of his youth and freedom? His expression became solemn. Normally a man had nine months to get used to the idea of being a father. Jack had to do it all at once. He looked again at the baby, and at last he smiled. “Our son,” he said. “I’m so glad.”

Aliena sighed happily. Everything was all right at last.

Another thought struck Jack. “What about Alfred? Does he know…?”

“Of course. He only had to look at the child. Besides…” She felt embarrassed. “Besides, your mother cursed the marriage, and Alfred was never able to, you know, do anything.”

Jack laughed harshly. “There’s true justice,” he said.

Aliena did not like the relish with which he said it. “It was very hard for me,” she said, in a tone of mild reproof.

His face changed quickly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did Alfred do?”

“When he saw the baby, he threw me out.”

Jack looked angry. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“He’s a pig, all the same.”

“I’m glad he threw us out. It was because of that that I came looking for you. And now I’ve found you. I’m so happy I don’t know what to do.”

“You were very brave,” Jack said. “I still can’t take it in. You followed me all that way!”

“I’d do it all again,” she said fervently.

He kissed her again. A voice said in French: “If you insist on behaving lewdly in church, please remain in the nave.”

It was a young monk. Jack said: “I’m sorry, Father.” He took Aliena’s arm. They went down the steps and across the south transept. Jack said: “I was a monk for a while-I know how hard it is for them to look at happy lovers kissing.”

Happy lovers, Aliena thought. That’s what we are.

They walked the length of the church and stepped out into the busy market square. Aliena could hardly believe that she was standing in the sunshine with Jack by her side. It was almost too much happiness to bear.

“Well,” he said, “what shall we do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling.

“Let’s get a loaf of bread and a flask of wine, and ride out into the fields to eat our dinner.”

“It sounds like paradise.”

They went to the baker and the vintner, and then they got a wedge of cheese from a dairywoman in the marketplace. In no time at all they were riding out of the village into the fields. Aliena had to keep looking at Jack to make sure he really was there, riding along beside her, breathing and smiling.

He said: “How is Alfred managing the building site?”

“Oh! I haven’t told you!” Aliena had forgotten how long he had been away. “There was a terrible disaster. The roof fell in.”

“What!” Jack’s loud exclamation startled his horse, and it did a skittish little dance. He calmed it. “How did that happen?”

“Nobody knows. They had three bays vaulted in time for Whitsunday, and then it all fell down during the service. It was dreadful-seventy-nine people were killed.”

“That’s terrible.” Jack was shaken. “How did Prior Philip take it?”

“Badly. He’s given up building altogether. He seems to have lost all his energy. He does nothing nowadays.”

Jack found it hard to imagine Philip in that state-he had always seemed so full of enthusiasm and determination. “So what happened to the craftsmen?”

“They all drifted away. Alfred lives in Shiring now, and builds houses.”

“Kingsbridge must be half empty.”

“It’s turning back into a village, like it used to be.”

“I wonder what Alfred did wrong?” Jack said half to himself. “That stone vault was never in Tom’s original plans; but Alfred made the buttresses bigger to take the weight, so it should have been all right.”

He was sobered by the news, and they rode on in silence. A mile or so out of Saint-Denis they tied up the horses in the shade of an elm tree and sat down in a corner of a field of green wheat, beside a little brook, to eat their dinner. Jack took a draft of the wine and smacked his lips. “England has nothing to compare with French wine,” he said. He broke the loaf and gave Aliena some.

Aliena shyly undid the laced front of her dress and gave her nipple to the baby. She caught Jack looking at her and flushed. She cleared her throat and spoke to cover her embarrassment. “Do you know what you’d like to call him?” she said awkwardly. “Jack, perhaps?”

“I don’t know.” He looked thoughtful. “Jack was the father I never knew. It might be bad luck to give our son the same name. The nearest I ever had to a real father was Tom Builder.”

“Would you like to call him Tom?”

“I think I would.”

“Tom was such a big man. How about Tommy?”

Jack nodded. “Tommy it is.”

Oblivious of the significance of the moment, Tommy had fallen asleep, having sucked his fill. Aliena put him down on the ground with a kerchief folded under his head for a pillow. Then she looked at Jack. She felt awkward. She wanted him to make love to her, right here on the grass, but she felt sure he would be shocked if she asked him, so she just looked at him and hoped.

He said: “If I tell you something, will you promise not to think badly of me?”

“All right.”

He looked embarrassed, and said: “Ever since I saw you, I can hardly think of anything but the naked body under your dress.”

She smiled. “I don’t think badly of you,” she said. “I’m glad.”

He stared at her hungrily.

She said: “I love it when you look at me like that.”

He swallowed drily.

She held out her arms, and he came to her and embraced her.

It was almost two years since the one and only time they had made love. That morning they had both been swept away by desire and regret. Now they were just two lovers in a field. Aliena suddenly felt anxious. Would it be all right? How terrible if something went wrong, after all this time.

They lay down on the grass side by side and kissed. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth. She felt his eager hand on her body, exploring urgently. There was a quickening in her loins. He kissed her eyelids and the end of her nose, and said: “All this time, I ached for you, every day.”

She hugged him hard. “I’m so glad I found you,” she said.

They made gentle, happy love in the open air, with the sun beating down on them and the stream burbling beside them; and Tommy slept through it all, and woke up when it was over.

The wooden statue of the lady had not wept since it left Spain. Jack did not understand how it worked, so he could not be sure why it would not weep outside its own country. However, he had an idea that the. tears that came at nightfall were caused by the sudden cooling of the air, and he had noticed that sunsets were more gradual in northern territories, so he suspected that the problem had to do with the slower nightfall. He still kept the statue, however. It was rather bulky to carry around, but it was a souvenir of Toledo, and it reminded him of Raschid, and (although he did not tell Aliena this) of Aysha as well. But when a stonemason at Saint-Denis wanted a model for a statue of the Virgin, Jack brought the wooden lady to the masons’ lodge, and left it there.

He had been hired by the abbey to work on the rebuilding of the church. The new chancel, which had so devastated him, was not quite complete, and had to be finished in time for the dedication ceremony at midsummer; but the energetic abbot was already preparing to rebuild the nave in the same revolutionary style, and Jack was hired to carve stones in advance for that.

The abbey rented him a house in the village, and he moved in, along with Aliena and Tommy. During the first night they spent in the house they made love five times. Living together as man and wife seemed the most natural thing in the world. After a few days Jack felt as if they had always lived together. Nobody asked whether their union had been blessed by the church.

The master builder at Saint-Denis was the greatest mason Jack had ever met, easily. As they finished the new chancel and prepared to rebuild the nave, Jack watched the master and absorbed everything he did. The technical advances here were his, not the abbot’s. Suger was in favor of new ideas, in a general way, but he was more interested in ornament than structure. His pet project was the new tomb for the remains of Saint Denis and his two companions, Rusticus and Eleutherius. The relics were kept in the crypt, but Suger planned to bring them up into the new chancel, so the whole world could see them. The three caskets would rest in a stone tomb veneered with black-marble. The top of the tomb was a miniature church made of gilded wood; and in the nave and side aisles of the miniature were three empty coffins, one for each of the martyrs. The tomb would stand in the middle of the new chancel, attached to the back of the new high altar. Both the altar and the base of the tomb were already in place, and the miniature church was in the carpenters’ lodge, where a painstaking craftsman was carefully gilding the wood with priceless gold paint. Suger was not a man to do things by halves.

The abbot was a formidable organizer, Jack observed as preparations for the dedication ceremony accelerated. Suger invited everybody who was anybody, and most of them accepted, notably the king and queen of France, and nineteen archbishops and bishops including the archbishop of Canterbury. Such morsels of news were picked up by the craftsmen as they worked in and on the church. Jack often saw Suger himself, in his homespun habit, striding around the monastery giving instructions to a flock of monks who followed him like ducklings. He reminded Jack of Philip of Kingsbridge. Like Philip, Suger came from a poor background and had been brought up in the monastery. Like Philip, he had reorganized the finances and tightened up the management of the monastery’s property so that it produced much more income; and like Philip he was spending the extra money on building. Like Philip, he was busy, energetic and decisive.

Except that Philip was none of these things anymore, according to Aliena.

Jack found that hard to imagine. A quiescent Philip seemed as unlikely as a kindly Waleran Bigod. However, Philip had suffered a series of terrible disappointments. First there had been the burning of the town. Jack shuddered when he recalled that awful day: the smoke, the fear, the dreadful horsemen with their flaming torches, and the blind panic of the hysterical mob. Perhaps the heart had gone out of Philip then. Certainly the town had lost its nerve afterward. Jack remembered it well: the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty had pervaded the place like a faint but unmistakable odor of decay. No doubt Philip had wanted the opening ceremony for the new chancel to be a symbol of new hope. Then, when it turned into another disaster, he must have given up.

Now the builders had gone away, the market had declined, and the population was shrinking. Young people were beginning to move to Shiring, Aliena said. It was only a problem of morale, of course: the priory still had all its property, including the vast flocks of sheep which brought in hundreds of pounds every year. If it were only a question of money, Philip could surely afford to recommence building, on some scale. It would not be easy, certainly: masons would be superstitious about working on a church that had already fallen down once; and it would be difficult to whip up the enthusiasm of the local people yet again. But the main problem, judging by what Aliena said, was that Philip had lost the will. Jack wished he could do something to help bring it back.

Meanwhile, the bishops, archbishops, dukes and counts began arriving at Saint-Denis two or three days before the ceremony. All the notables were taken on a conducted tour of the building. Suger himself escorted the most distinguished visitors, and lesser dignitaries were taken around by monks or craftsmen. They were all awestruck by the lightness of the new construction and the sunny effect of the huge windows of colored glass. As just about every important church leader in France was seeing this, it struck Jack that the new style was likely to be widely imitated; indeed, masons who could say they had actually worked on Saint-Denis would be in great demand. Coming here had been a clever move, cleverer than he had imagined: it had greatly improved his chances of designing and building a cathedral himself.

King Louis arrived on the Saturday, with his wife and his mother, and they moved into the abbot’s house. That night matins were sung from dusk to dawn. By sunrise there was a crowd of peasants and Parisian citizens outside the church, waiting for what promised to be the greatest assemblage of holy and powerful men that most of them would ever see. Jack and Aliena joined the crowd as soon as Tommy had been fed. One day, Jack thought, I’ll say to Tommy: “You don’t remember it, but when you were just a year old you saw the king of France.”

They bought bread and cider for their breakfast and ate while they were waiting for the show to begin. The public was not allowed into the church, of course, and the king’s men-at-arms kept them at a distance; but all the doors were open, and people clustered in knots where they could see in. The nave was packed with the lords and ladies of the nobility. Fortunately the chancel was raised several feet, because of the large crypt under it, so Jack could still see the ceremony.

There was a flurry of activity at the far end of the nave, and suddenly all the nobles bowed. Over their lowered heads, Jack saw the king enter the church from the south. He could not see the king’s face to make out his features, but his purple tunic made a vivid splash of color as he moved into the center of the crossing and knelt before the main altar.

The bishops and archbishops came in immediately afterward. They were all dressed in dazzling white robes with gold embroidery, and each bishop carried his ceremonial crozier. The crozier was supposed to be a simple shepherd’s crook, but so many of them were ornamented with fabulous jewels that the whole procession glittered like a mountain stream in the sunlight.

They all walked slowly across the church and up the steps into the chancel, then took prearranged places around the font in which-Jack knew because he had observed the preparations-there were several gallons of holy water. There followed a lull during which prayers were said and hymns were sung. The crowd became restless, and Tommy got bored. Then the bishops moved off in procession again.

They left the church by the south door and disappeared into the cloisters, much to the disappointment of the spectators; but then they emerged from the monastic buildings and filed across the front of the church. Each bishop carried a small brush called an aspergillum and a vessel of holy water, and as they marched, singing, they dipped the brushes in the water and sprinkled the walls of the church. The crowd surged forward, people begging for a blessing and trying to touch the snow-white robes of the holy men. The king’s men-at-arms beat the people back with sticks. Jack stayed well back in the crowd. He did not want a blessing and he preferred to stay away from those sticks.

The procession made its stately way along the north side of the church, and the crowd followed, trampling over the graves in the cemetery. Some spectators had taken up positions here in anticipation, and they resisted the pressure from the newcomers. One or two fights broke out.

The bishops passed the north porch and continued around the half circle of the east end, the new part. This was where the craftsmen’s workshops had been built, and now the crowd surged around the huts, threatening to flatten the light wooden buildings. As the leaders of the procession began to disappear back into the abbey, the more hysterical members of the crowd became desperate, and pushed forward more determinedly. The king’s men responded with increased violence.

Jack began to feel anxious. “I don’t like the look of this,” he said to Aliena.

“I was about to say the same,” she replied. “Let’s get out of this crowd.”

Before they could move, a scuffle broke out between the king’s men and a group of youths at the front. The men-at-arms laid about them fiercely with their clubs, but the youths, instead of cowering away, fought back. The last of the bishops hurried into the cloisters with a distinctly perfunctory sprinkling of the last part of the chancel. When the holy men were out of sight, the crowd turned its attention on the men-at-arms. Someone threw a stone and hit one of the men square on the forehead. A cheer went up as he fell. The hand-to-hand fighting spread quickly. Men-at-arms came running from the west front of the church to defend their comrades.

It was turning into a riot.

There was no hope of the ceremony providing a distraction in the next few moments. Jack knew that the bishops and the king were now descending into the crypt to fetch the remains of Saint Denis. They would carry them all around the cloisters but would not bring them out of doors. The dignitaries were not due to show themselves again until the service was over. Abbot Suger had not anticipated the size of the crowd of spectators, nor had he made arrangements to keep them happy. Now they were dissatisfied, they were hot-the sun was high by this time-and they wanted to vent their emotions.

The king’s men were armed but the spectators were not, and at first the armed men got the better of it; then someone had the bright idea of breaking into the craftsmen’s huts for weapons. A pair of youths kicked down the door of the masons’ lodge and came out a moment later with bolster hammers in their hands. There were masons in the crowd, and some of them pushed through the throng to the lodge and tried to stop people from going in; but they were unable to stand their ground, and got shoved aside.

Jack and Aliena were trying to retreat out of the crowd, but the people behind them were pressing forward urgently, and they found themselves trapped. Jack kept Tommy hard up against his chest, protecting the baby’s back with his arms and covering the little head with his hands, at the same time struggling to stay close to Aliena. He saw a small, furtive-looking man with a black beard emerge from the masons’ lodge carrying the wooden statue of the weeping lady. I’ll never see that again, he thought with a pang of regret; but he was too busy trying to escape from the crush to worry about being robbed.

The carpenters’ lodge was broken open next. The craftsmen had given up hope of protecting their lodges, and they made no attempt to restrain the crowd. The smithy proved too strong, but the crowd burst through the flimsy wall of the roofers’ lodge and took the heavy, wickedly sharp tools used for trimming and nailing lead sheets, and Jack thought: Someone is going to be killed before this is over.

Despite all his efforts he was pushed forward, toward the north porch where the fighting was fiercest. The same thing was happening to the black-bearded thief, he noticed: the man was trying to get away with his loot, hugging the wooden statue to his chest the way Jack was hugging Tommy, but he, too, was being forced farther into the melee by the press of the crowd.

Suddenly Jack had a brainwave. He gave Tommy to Aliena, saying: “Stay close to me.” Then he grabbed the little thief and wrested the statue away from him. The man resisted for a moment, but Jack was bigger, and anyway the thief was now more worried about saving his skin than stealing the statue, and after a moment he relinquished his hold.

Jack lifted the statue above his head and started to shout: “Revere the Madonna!” At first nobody took any notice. Then one or two people looked at him. “Touch not the Holy Mother!” he shouted at the top of his voice. The people near him backed off superstitiously, making a space around him. He began to warm to his theme. “It is a sin to desecrate the image of the Virgin!” He held the statue high above his head and walked forward, toward the church. This just might work, he thought with a surge of hope. More people stopped fighting to see what was going on.

He glanced behind him. Aliena was following, unable to do anything else because of the press of the crowd. However, the riot was rapidly simmering down. The crowd moved forward with Jack, and people began to repeat his words in an awestruck murmur: “It is the Mother of God… Hail, Mary… Make way for the effigy of the Blessed Maiden…” All they wanted was a show, and now that Jack was giving them one the fighting stopped almost completely, with only two or three continuing scuffles on the fringes. Jack marched forward solemnly. He was rather startled at the ease with which he had stopped a riot. The crowd fell away before him, and he reached the north porch of the church. There he set the statue down, with great reverence, in the cool shade of the doorway. It was a little over two feet high, and seemed less impressive standing on the ground.

The mob gathered around the doorway expectantly. Jack was at a loss to know what to do. They probably wanted a sermon. He had acted like a clergyman, bearing the statue on high and calling out sonorous warnings, but that was the limit of his priestly skills. He felt fearful: what might the crowd do to him if he disappointed them now?

Suddenly they gave a collective gasp.

Jack looked behind him. Some of the nobles from the congregation had gathered in the north transept, looking out, but he could see nothing to justify the crowd’s apparent amazement.

“A miracle!” someone said, and others took up the cry: “A miracle! A miracle!”

Jack looked at the statue, and then he understood. Water was dripping from its eyes. At first he was as awestruck as the crowd, but a moment later he recalled his theory that the lady wept when there was a sudden change from warm to cold, as happened at nightfall in southern regions. The statue had just been moved from the heat of the day into the cool of the north porch. That would explain the tears. But the crowd did not know that, of course. All they saw was a statue weeping, and they marveled.

A woman at the front tossed a denier, the French silver penny, at the feet of the statue. Jack felt like laughing aloud. What was the point of giving money to a piece of wood? But the people had been so indoctrinated by the Church that their automatic response to something holy was to give money, and several others in the crowd followed the woman’s example.

Jack had never thought that Raschid’s toy might make money. Indeed, it could not make money for Jack-the people would not give if they thought the money was going into Jack’s pocket. But it would be worth a fortune to any church.

And when Jack realized that, he suddenly saw what he had to do.

It came to him in a flash, and he began speaking even before he had seen all the implications himself: the words came at the same time as the thoughts. “The Weeping Madonna belongs not to me, but to God,” he began. The crowd fell silent. This was the sermon they had been waiting for. Behind Jack, the bishops were singing in the church, but no one was interested in them now. “For hundreds of years, she languished in the land of the Saracens,” Jack went on. He had no idea what the history of the statue was, but it did not seem to matter: the priests themselves never inquired too closely into the truth of stories of miracles and holy relics. “She has traveled many miles, but her journey is not yet ended. Her destination is the cathedral church of Kingsbridge, in England.”

He caught Aliena’s eye. She was staring at him in amazement. He had to resist the temptation to wink at her to let her know he was making it up as he went along.

“It is my holy mission to take her to Kingsbridge. There, she will find her resting place. There, she will be at peace.” As he looked at Aliena the final, most brilliant inspiration came to him and he said: “I have been appointed master builder of the new church at Kingsbridge.”

Aliena’s mouth fell open. Jack looked away from her. “The Weeping Madonna has commanded that a new, more glorious church be built for her at Kingsbridge, and with her help I shall create a shrine for her as beautiful as the new chancel which has been erected here for the sacred remains of Saint Denis.”

He glanced down, and the money on the ground gave him the idea for his finishing touch. “Your pennies will be used for the new church,” he said. “The Madonna confers a blessing on every man, woman and child who offers a gift to help her build her new home.”

There was a moment of silence; then his listeners started to throw pennies on the ground around the base of the statue. Each person called out something as he or she made the offering. Some said “Alleluia” or “Praise God” and others asked for a blessing, or some more specific favor: “Make Robert well,” or “Let Anne conceive,” or “Give us a good harvest.” Jack studied their faces: they were excited, elevated, happy. They pushed forward, jostling one another in their eagerness to give their pennies to the Weeping Madonna. Jack looked down and watched, marveling, as the money piled up like a snowdrift around his feet.

The Weeping Madonna had the same effect in every town and village on the road to Cherbourg. As they walked in procession along the main street a crowd would gather; and then, after they had paused in front of the church to give time for the entire population to assemble, they would take the statue into the cool of the building, and it would weep, whereupon the people would fall over one another in their eagerness to give money for the building of Kingsbridge Cathedral.

They had almost lost it, right at the start. The bishops and archbishops examined the statue and pronounced it genuinely miraculous, and Abbot Suger wanted to keep it for Saint-Denis. He had offered Jack a pound, then ten pounds, and finally fifty pounds. When he realized Jack was not interested in money he threatened to take the statue away forcibly; but Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury prevented him. Theobald also saw the moneymaking potential of the statue and he wanted it to go to Kingsbridge, which was in his archdiocese. Suger had given in with bad grace, churlishly expressing reservations about the genuineness of the miracle.

Jack had told the craftsmen at Saint-Denis that he would hire any of them who cared to follow him to Kingsbridge. Suger was not pleased about that, either. Most of them would stay where they were, in fact, on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; but there were a few who were from England originally and might be tempted to move back; and the others would spread the word, for it was every mason’s duty to tell his brothers about new building sites. Within a few weeks, craftsmen from all over Christendom would begin drifting into Kingsbridge, the way Jack had drifted into six or seven different sites over the past two years. Aliena asked Jack what he would do if Kingsbridge Priory did not make him master builder. Jack had no idea. He had made his announcement on the spur of the moment and he had no contingency plans in case things went wrong.

Archbishop Theobald, having claimed the Weeping Madonna for England, was not willing to let Jack simply walk away with it. He had sent two priests from his entourage, Reynold and Edward, to accompany Jack and Aliena on their journey. Jack had been displeased about this at first, but he quickly got to like them. Reynold was a fresh-faced, argumentative young man with an incisive mind, and he was very interested in the mathematics Jack had learned in Toledo. Edward was a mild-mannered older man who was something of a glutton. Their principal function was to make sure none of the donations went into Jack’s purse, of course. In fact, the priests spent freely out of the donations to pay their traveling expenses, whereas Jack and Aliena paid their own, so the archbishop would have done better to trust Jack.

They went to Cherbourg on their way to Barfleur, where they would take a ship for Wareham. Jack knew something was wrong long before they reached the heart of the little seaside town. People were not staring at the Madonna.

They were staring at Jack.

The priests noticed it after a while. They were carrying the statue on a wooden trestle, as they always did when entering a town. As the crowd began to follow them, Reynold hissed at Jack: “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re more interested in you than the statue! Have you been here before?”

“Never.”

Aliena said: “It’s the older ones who look at Jack. The youngsters look at the statue.”

She was right. The children and young people were reacting to the statue with normal curiosity. It was the middle-aged who stared at him. He tried staring back, and found that they got scared. One made the Sign of the Cross at him. “What have they got against me?” he wondered aloud.

Their procession attracted followers just as rapidly as always, however, and they reached the marketplace with a large crowd in tow. They put the Madonna down in front of the church. The air smelled of salt water and fresh fish. Several townspeople went into the church. What normally happened next was that the local clergy would come out and talk to Reynold and Edward. There would be a discussion and explanations, and then the statue would be carried inside, where it would weep. The Madonna had only failed once: on a cold day, when Reynold insisted on going through with the procedure despite Jack’s warning that it might not work. Now they respected his advice.

The weather was right today, but something else was wrong. There was superstitious fear on the wind-whipped faces of the sailors and fishermen all around. The young sensed the disquiet of their elders, and the whole crowd was suspicious and vaguely hostile. No one approached the little group to ask questions about the statue. They stood at a distance, talking in low voices, waiting for something to happen.

At last the priest emerged. In other towns the priest had approached in a mood of wary curiosity, but this one came out like an exorcist, holding a cross in front of him like a shield and carrying a chalice of holy water in his other hand. Reynold said: “What does he think he’s going to do-cast out demons?” The priest walked over, chanting something in Latin, and approached Jack. He said in French: “I command, thee, evil spirit, to return to the Place of Ghosts! In the name-”

“I’m not a ghost, you damn fool!” Jack burst out. He felt unnerved.

The priest went on: “Father, Son and Holy Spirit-”

“We’re on a mission for the archbishop of Canterbury,” Reynold protested. “We’ve been blessed by him.”

Aliena said: “He’s not a ghost; I’ve known him since he was twelve years old!”

The priest began to look uncertain. “You are the ghost of a man of this town who died twenty-four years ago,” he said. Several people in the crowd voiced their agreement, and the priest recommenced his incantation.

“I’m only twenty years old,” Jack said. “Perhaps I just resemble the man who died.”

Someone stepped out from the crowd. “You don’t just resemble him,” he said. “You are him-no different from the day you died.”

The crowd murmured with superstitious dread. Jack, feeling unnerved, looked at the speaker. He was a gray-bearded man of forty or so years, wearing the clothes of a successful craftsman or small merchant. He was not the hysterical type. Jack addressed him with a voice that faltered somewhat. “My companions know me,” he said. “Two of them are priests. The woman is my wife. The baby is my son. Are they ghosts, too?”

The man looked uncertain.

A white-haired woman standing beside him spoke up. “Don’t you know me, Jack?”

Jack jumped as if he had been stung. Now he was scared. “How did you know my name?” he said.

“Because I’m your mother,” she said.

“You’re not!” Aliena said, and Jack heard a note of panic in her voice. “I know his mother, and she’s not you! What’s happening here?”

“Evil magic!” said the priest.

“Wait a minute,” said Reynold. “Jack may be related to the man who died. Did he have any children?”

“No,” said the gray-bearded man.

“Are you sure?”

“He never married.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

One or two people snickered. The priest glared at them.

The gray-bearded man said: “But he died twenty-four years ago, and this Jack says he’s only twenty.”

“How did he die?” Reynold asked.

“Drowned.”

“Did you see the body?”

There was a silence. Finally the gray-bearded man said: “No, I never saw his body.”

“Did anyone see it?” Reynold said, his voice rising as he scented victory.

Nobody spoke.

Reynold turned to Jack. “Is your father alive?”

“He died before I was born.”

“What was he?”

“A jongleur.”

A gasp went up from the crowd, and the white-haired woman said: “My Jack was a jongleur.”

“But this Jack is a stonemason,” Reynold said. “I’ve seen his work. However, he could be the son of Jack the jongleur.” He turned to Jack. “What was your father called? Jack Jongleur, I suppose?”

“No. They called him Jack Shareburg.”

The priest repeated the name, pronouncing it slightly differently. “Jacques Cherbourg?”

Jack was stunned. He had never understood his father’s name, but now it was clear. Like many traveling men, he was called by the name of the town he came from. “Yes,” Jack said wonderingly. “Of course. Jacques Cherbourg.” He had found traces of his father at last, long after he had given up looking. He had gone all the way to Spain, but what he wanted had been here, on the coast of Normandy. He had fulfilled his quest. He felt wearily satisfied, as if he had put down a heavy burden after carrying it a long way.

“Then everything is clear,” Reynold said, looking around triumphantly at the crowd. “Jacques Cherbourg did not drown, he survived. He went to England, lived there a while, made a girl pregnant, and died. The girl gave birth to a boy and named him after the father. Jack here is now twenty, and looks exactly like his father did twenty-four years ago.” Reynold looked at the priest. “No need for exorcism here, father. It’s just a family reunion.”

Aliena put her arm through Jack’s and squeezed his hand. He felt stupefied. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask and he did not know where to start. He blurted one out at random. “Why were you so sure he died?”

“Everyone on the White Ship died,” said the gray-bearded man.

“The White Ship?”

“I remember the White Ship,” said Edward. “That was a famous disaster. The heir to the throne was drowned. Then Maud became the heir, and that’s why we’ve got Stephen.”

Jack said: “But why was he on such a ship?”

The old woman who had spoken earlier answered. “He was to entertain the nobles on the voyage.” She looked at Jack. “You must be his boy, then. My grandson. I’m sorry I thought you were a ghost. You look so like him.”

“Your father was my brother,” said the gray-bearded man. “I’m your Uncle Guillaume.”

Jack realized with a glow of pleasure that this was the family he had longed for, his father’s relations. He was no longer alone in the world. He had found his roots at last.

“Well, this is my son, Tommy,” he said. “Look at his red hair.”

The white-haired woman looked fondly at the baby, then said in a shocked voice: “Oh, my soul, I’m a great-grandmother!”

Everyone laughed.

Jack said: “I wonder how my father got to England?”

I

“SO GOD SAID TO SATAN, ‘Look at my man Job. Look at him. There’s a good man, if ever I saw one.’ ” Philip paused for effect. This was not a translation, of course: this was a freestyle retelling of the story. “ Tell me if that isn’t a perfect and upright man, who fears God and does no evil.’ So Satan said: ‘Of course he worships you. You’ve given him everything. Just look at him. Seven sons and three daughters. Seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred pairs of oxen, and five hundred asses. That’s why he’s a good man.’ So God said: ‘All right. Take it all away from him, and see what happens.’ And that’s what Satan did.”

While Philip was preaching, his mind kept wandering to a mystifying letter he had received that morning from the archbishop of Canterbury. It began by congratulating him on obtaining the miraculous Weeping Madonna. Philip did not know what a weeping madonna was but he was quite sure he did not have one. The archbishop was glad to hear that Philip was recommencing the building of the new cathedral. Philip was doing no such thing. He was waiting for a sign from God before doing anything, and while he waited he was holding Sunday services in the small new parish church. Finally Archbishop Theobald commended his shrewdness in appointing a master builder who had worked on the new chancel at Saint-Denis. Philip had heard of the abbey of Saint-Denis, of course, and the famous Abbot Suger, the most powerful churchman in the kingdom of France; but he knew nothing of the new chancel there and he had not appointed a master builder from anywhere. Philip thought the letter had probably been intended for someone else and sent to him in error.

“Now, what did Job say, when he lost all his wealth, and his children died? Did he curse God? Did he worship Satan? No! He said: ‘I was born naked, and I’ll die naked. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away-blessed be the name of the Lord.’ That’s what Job said. And then God said to Satan: ‘What did I tell you?’ And Satan said: ‘All right, but he’s still got his health, hasn’t he? A man can put up with anything while he’s in good health.’ And God saw that he had to let Job suffer some more in order to prove his point, so he said: ‘Take away his health, then, and see what happens.’ So Satan made Job ill, and he had boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet.”

Sermons were becoming more common in churches. They had been rare when Philip was a boy. Abbot Peter had been against them, saying they tempted the priest to indulge himself. The old-fashioned view was that the congregation should be mere spectators, silently witnessing the mysterious holy rites, hearing the Latin words without understanding them, blindly trusting in the efficacy of the priest’s intercession. But ideas had changed. Progressive thinkers nowadays no longer saw the congregation as mute observers of a mystical ceremony. The Church was supposed to be an integral part of their everyday existence. It marked the milestones in their lives, from christening, through marriage and the birth of children, to extreme unction and burial in consecrated ground. It might be their landlord, judge, employer or customer. Increasingly, people were expected to be Christians every day, not just on Sundays. They needed more than just rituals, according to the modern view: they wanted explanations, rulings, encouragement, exhortation.

“Now, I believe that Satan had a conversation with God about Kingsbridge,” Philip said. “I believe that God said to Satan: ‘Look at my people in Kingsbridge. Aren’t they good Christians? See how they work hard all week in their fields and workshops, and then spend all day Sunday building me a new cathedral. Tell me they’re not good people, if you can!’ And Satan said: ‘They’re good because they’re doing well. You’ve given them good harvests, and fine weather, and customers for their shops, and protection from evil earls. But take all that away from them, and they’ll come over to my side.’ So God said: ‘What do you want to do?’ And Satan said: ‘Burn the town.’ So God said: ‘All right, burn it, and see what happens.’ So Satan sent William Hamleigh to set fire to our fleece fair.”

Philip took great consolation from the story of Job. Like Job, Philip had worked hard all his life to do God’s will to the best of his ability; and, like Job, he had been rewarded with bad luck, failure and ignominy. But the purpose of the sermon was to lift the spirits of the townspeople, and Philip could see that it was not working. However, the story was not yet over.

“And then God said to Satan: ‘Look now! You’ve burned that whole town to the ground, and they’re still building me a new cathedral. Now tell me they’re not good people!’ But Satan said: ‘I was too easy on them. Most of them escaped that fire. And they soon rebuilt their little wooden houses. Let me send a real disaster, then see what happens.’ And God sighed, and said: ‘What do you want to do now, then?’ And Satan said: ‘I’m going to bring the roof of that new church down on their heads.’ And he did-as we all know.”

Looking around the congregation, Philip saw very few people who had not lost a relative in that awful collapse. There was Widow Meg, who had had a good husband and three strapping sons, all of whom had died; she had not spoken a word since, and her hair was white. Others had been mutilated. Peter Pony’s right leg had been crushed, and he walked with a limp: he had been a horse catcher before, but now he worked for his brother, making saddles. There was hardly a family in town that had escaped. Sitting on the floor down at the front was a man who had lost the use of his legs. Philip frowned: who was he? He had not been injured in the roof collapse-Philip had never seen him before. Then he recalled being told that there was a cripple begging in the town and sleeping in the ruins of the cathedral. Philip had ordered that he be given a bed in the guesthouse.

His mind was wandering again. He returned to his sermon. “Now, what did Job do? His wife said to him: ‘Curse God, and die.’ But did he? He did not. Did he lose his faith? He did not. Satan was disappointed in Job. And I tell you”-Philip raised his hand dramatically, to emphasize the point-“I tell you, Satan is going to be disappointed in the people of Kingsbridge! For we continue to worship the true God, just as Job did in all his tribulations.”

He paused again, to let them digest that, but he could tell he had failed to move them. The faces that looked up at him were interested, but not inspired. In truth he was not an inspirational preacher. He was a down-to-earth man. He could not captivate a congregation by the force of his personality. People did become intensely loyal to him, it was true, but not instantly: it happened slowly, over time, as they came to understand how he lived and what he achieved. His work sometimes inspired people-or it had, in the old days-but never his words.

However, the best part of the story was to come. “What happened to Job, after Satan had done his worst? Well, God gave him more than he had in the first place-twice as much! Where he had grazed seven thousand sheep, he now had fourteen thousand. The three thousand camels he had lost were replaced by six thousand. And he fathered seven more sons and three more daughters.”

They looked indifferent. Philip plowed on. “And Kingsbridge will prosper again, one day. The widows shall marry again, and the widowers find wives; and those whose children died shall conceive again; and our streets will be full of people, and our shops stocked with bread and wine, leather and brass, buckles and shoes; and one day we will rebuild our cathedral.”

The trouble was, he was not sure he believed it himself; and so he could not say it with conviction. No wonder the congregation was unmoved.

He looked down at the heavy book in front of him, and translated the Latin into English. “And Job lived a hundred and forty years more, and saw his sons, and his grandsons, and his great-grandsons. And then he died, being old and full of days.” He closed the book.

There was a disturbance at the back of the little church. Philip looked up irritably. He was aware that his sermon had not had the effect he hoped for, but nevertheless he wanted a few moments of silence at the end of it. The church door was open, and all those at the back were looking out. Philip could see quite a crowd outside-it must contain everyone in Kingsbridge who was not in the church, he thought. What was going on?

Several possibilities went through his mind-there had been a fight, a fire, someone was dying, a large troop of horsemen was approaching-but he was completely unprepared for what actually happened. First, two priests came in carrying a statue of a woman on a board draped with an embroidered altar cloth. The solemnity of their demeanor suggested that the statue represented a saint, presumably the Virgin. Behind the priests walked two more people, and they provided the bigger surprise: one was Aliena, and the other was Jack.

Philip regarded Jack with affection mingled with exasperation. That boy, he thought: on the day he first came here the old cathedral burned down, and since then nothing connected with him has been normal. But Philip was more pleased than annoyed by Jack’s entrance. Despite all the trouble the boy caused, he made life interesting. Boy? Philip looked at him again. Jack was no longer a boy. He had been away two years but he had aged ten, and his eyes were weary and knowing. Where had he been? And how had Aliena found him?

The procession moved up the middle of the church. Philip decided to do nothing and see what happened. A buzz of excitement went around as people recognized Jack and Aliena. Then there was a new sound, rather like a murmur of awe, and someone said: “She weeps!”

Others repeated it like a litany: “She weeps! She weeps!” Philip peered at the statue. Sure enough, there was water coming from the eyes. He suddenly remembered the archbishop’s mysterious letter about the miraculous Weeping Madonna. So this was it. As to whether the weeping was a miracle, Philip would suspend judgment. He could see that the eyes appeared to be made of stone, or perhaps some kind of crystal, whereas the rest of the statue was wooden: that might have something to do with it.

The priests turned around and put the board down on the floor so that the Madonna was facing the congregation. Then Jack began to speak.

“The Weeping Madonna came to me in a far, far country,” he began. Philip resented his taking over the service but he decided not to act precipitately: he would let Jack have his say. Anyway, he was intrigued. “A baptized Saracen gave her to me,” Jack went on. The congregation murmured in surprise: Saracens were usually the barbaric black-faced enemy in such stories, and few people knew that some of them were actually Christians. “At first I wondered why she had been given to me. Nevertheless, I carried her for many miles.” Jack had the congregation spellbound. He’s a better preacher of sermons than I am, Philip thought ruefully; I can feel the tension building already. “At last I began to realize that she wanted to go home. But where was her home? Finally it came to me: she wanted to go to Kingsbridge.”

The congregation broke into a hubbub of amazement. Philip was skeptical. There was a difference between the way God worked and the way Jack worked, and this had the hallmark of Jack. But Philip remained silent.

“But then I thought: What am I taking her to? What shrine will she have at Kingsbridge? In what church will she find her rest?” He looked around at the plain whitewashed interior of the parish church, as if to say: This obviously will not do. “And it was as if she spoke aloud, and said to me: ‘You, Jack Jackson, shall make me a shrine, and build me a church.’ ”

Philip began to see what Jack was up to. The Madonna was to be the spark that reignited the people’s enthusiasm for building a new cathedral. It would do what Philip’s sermon about Job had failed to do. But still Philip had to ask himself: Is this God’s will, or just Jack’s?

“So I asked her: ‘With what? I have no money.’ And she said: ‘I will provide the money.’ Well, we set off, with the blessing of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury.” Jack glanced up at Philip as he named the archbishop. He’s telling me something, Philip thought: he’s saying that he’s got powerful backing for this.

Jack swung his gaze back to the congregation. “And along the road, from Paris, across Normandy, over the sea, and all the way to Kingsbridge, devout Christians have given money for the building of the shrine of the Weeping Madonna.” With that, Jack beckoned to someone outside.

A moment later two beturbaned Saracens marched solemnly into the church, carrying on their shoulders an iron-bound chest.

The villagers cowered back from them in fear. Even Philip was astonished. He knew, in theory, that Saracens had brown skin, but he had never seen one, and the reality was amazing. Their swirling, brightly colored robes were equally striking. They strode through the awestruck congregation and knelt before the Madonna, placing the chest reverently on the floor.

There was a breathless silence as Jack unlocked the chest with a huge key and lifted the lid. People craned their necks to look. Suddenly Jack tipped the chest over.

There was a noise like a waterfall, and a stream of silver pennies poured out of the chest, hundreds of them, thousands. People crowded around to stare: none of them had ever seen so much money.

Jack raised his voice to be heard over their exclamations. “I have brought her home, and now I give her to the building of the new cathedral.” Then he turned, looked Philip in the eye, and inclined his head in a little bow, as if to say: Over to you.

Philip hated to be manipulated like this but at the same time he was bound to acknowledge that the way it had been done was masterly. However, that did not mean he was going to give in to it. The people might acclaim the Weeping Madonna but only Philip could decide whether she would be allowed to rest in Kingsbridge Cathedral alongside the bones of Saint Adolphus. And he was not yet convinced.

Some of the villagers began questioning the Saracens. Philip stepped down from his pulpit and went closer to listen. “I come from a far, far country,” one of them was saying. Philip was surprised to hear that he spoke English just like a Dorset fisherman, but most of the villagers did not even know that Saracens had a language of their own.

“What is your country called?” someone asked.

“My country is called Africa,” the Saracen replied. There was more than one country in Africa, of course, as Philip knew-although most of the villagers did not-and Philip wondered which one this Saracen came from. How exciting it would be if it were a place mentioned in the Bible, such as Egypt or Ethiopia.

A little girl reached out a tentative finger and touched his dark-brown hand. The Saracen smiled at her. Apart from his color, Philip thought, he looked no different from anyone else. Encouraged, the girl said: “What’s it like in Africa?”

“There are great deserts, and fig trees.”

“What’s a fig?”

“It’s… it’s a fruit, that looks like a strawberry and tastes like a pear.”

Philip was suddenly struck by a horrible suspicion. He said: “Tell me, Saracen, what city were you born in?”

“Damascus,” the man said.

Philip’s suspicion was confirmed. He was angered. He touched Jack’s arm and drew him aside. In a quietly furious voice he said: “What are you playing at?”

“What do you mean?” Jack said, trying to play innocent.

“Those two aren’t Saracens. They’re fishermen from Wareham with brown dye on their faces and hands.”

Jack did not seem bothered about having his deception discovered. He grinned and said: “How did you guess?”

“I don’t think that man has ever seen a fig, and Damascus is not in Africa. What is the meaning of this dishonesty?”

“It’s a harmless deception,” Jack said, and flashed his engaging smile.

“There is no such thing as a harmless deception,” Philip said coldly.

“All right.” Jack saw that Philip was angry. He became serious. “It serves the same purpose as an illuminated drawing on a page of the Bible. It’s not the truth, it’s an illustration. My brown-dyed Dorsetshire men dramatize the true fact that the Weeping Madonna comes from a Saracen land.”

The two priests and Aliena had detached themselves from the crowd around the Madonna and joined Philip and Jack. Philip ignored them and said to Jack: “You aren’t frightened of a drawing of a snake. An illustration isn’t a lie. Your Saracens aren’t illustrations, they’re impostors.”

“We collected much more money after we got the Saracens,” Jack said.

Philip looked at the pennies heaped on the floor. “The townspeople probably think that’s enough to build a whole cathedral,” he said. “It looks to me like about a hundred pounds. You know that won’t even pay for a year’s work.”

“The money is like the Saracens,” Jack said. “It’s symbolic. You know you’ve got the money to start building.”

That was true. There was nothing stopping Philip from building. The Madonna was just the sort of thing needed to bring Kingsbridge back to life. It would attract people to the town-pilgrims and scholars as well as the idly curious. It would put new heart into the townspeople. It would be seen as a good omen. Philip had been waiting for a sign from God, and he wanted very badly to believe that this was it. But this did not have the feel of a sign from God. It had the feel of a stunt by Jack.

The younger of the two priests said: “I’m Reynold and this is Edward-we work for the archbishop of Canterbury. He sent us to accompany the Weeping Madonna.”

Philip said: “If you have the archbishop’s blessing, why did you need a couple of fairground Saracens to legitimize the Madonna?”

Edward looked a little shamefaced. Reynold said: “It was Jack’s idea, but I confess I saw no harm in it. Surely you’re not dubious about the Madonna, Philip?”

“You can call me Father,” Philip snapped. “Working for the archbishop doesn’t give you the right to condescend to your superiors. The answer to your question is yes. I am dubious about the Madonna. I am not going to install this statue in the precincts of Kingsbridge Cathedral until I’m convinced that it is a holy artifact.”

“A wooden statue weeps,” Reynold said. “How much of a miracle do you want?”

“The weeping is unexplained. That doesn’t make it a miracle. The changing of liquid water into solid ice is also inexplicable, but it isn’t miraculous.”

“The archbishop would be most disappointed if you refused the Madonna. He had a battle to prevent Abbot Suger from commandeering her for Saint-Denis.”

Philip knew he was being threatened. Young Reynold will have to work a lot harder than this to intimidate me, he thought. He said smoothly: “I’m quite sure the archbishop would not want me to accept the Madonna without making some routine inquiries about her legitimacy.”

There was a movement at their feet. Philip looked down and saw the cripple he had noticed earlier. The unfortunate man was dragging himself across the floor, his paralyzed legs trailing behind him, trying to get close to the statue. Whichever way he turned he was blocked by the crowd. Automatically, Philip stood aside to let him through. The Saracens were preventing people from actually touching the statue, but the cripple escaped their notice. Philip saw the man’s hand reach out. Philip would normally have prevented someone from touching a holy relic, but he had not yet accepted that this statue was holy, so he did nothing. The cripple touched the hem of the wooden dress. Suddenly he let out a shout of triumph. “I feel it!” he yelled. “I feel it!”

Everyone looked at him.

“I feel the strength coming back!” he shouted.

Philip stared at the man incredulously, knowing what would happen next. The man bent one leg, then the other. There was a collective gasp from the onlookers. He reached out a hand and someone took it. With an effort, the man pulled himself upright.

The crowd made a noise like a groan of passion.

Someone called out: “Try to walk!”

Still holding the hand of his helper, the man took one tentative step, then another. The people watched in dead silence. On his third step he stumbled, and they sighed. But the man regained his balance and walked on.

They cheered.

He went down the nave with the people following him. After a few more steps he broke into a run. The cheering rose to a crescendo as he went out through the church door into the sunshine, followed by most of the congregation.

Philip looked at the two priests. Reynold was awestruck, and Edward had tears pouring down his face. Obviously they were not in on it. Philip turned to Jack and said furiously: “How dare you pull a trick like that?”

“Trick?” said Jack. “What trick?”

“That man had never been seen in this district until a few days ago. In another day or two he’ll disappear, never to be seen again, with his pockets full of your money. I know how these things are done, Jack. You’re not the first person to fake a miracle, regrettably. There was never anything wrong with his legs, was there? He’s another Wareham fisherman.”

The accusation was confirmed by Jack’s guilty look.

Aliena said: “Jack, I told you you shouldn’t try that.”

The two priests were thunderstruck. They had been completely taken in. Reynold was furious. He rounded on Jack. “You had no right!” he spluttered.

Philip felt sad as well as angry. In his heart he had hoped the Madonna would prove legitimate, for he could see just how he would use her to revitalize the priory and the town. But it was not to be. He looked around the little parish church. Only a handful of worshipers remained, still staring at the statue. He said to Jack: “You’ve gone too far this time.”

“The tears are real-there’s no trick involved there,” Jack said. “But the cripple was a mistake, I admit.”

“It was worse than a mistake,” Philip said angrily. “When people learn the truth it will shake their faith in all miracles.”

“Why do they need to learn the truth?”

“Because I’ll have to explain to them why the Madonna is not going to be installed in the cathedral. There’s no question of my accepting the statue now, of course.”

Reynold said: “I think that’s a little hasty-”

“When I want your opinion, young man, I’ll ask for it,” Philip snapped.

Reynold shut up but Jack persisted. “Are you sure you’ve got the right to deprive your people of the Madonna? Look at them.” He indicated the handful of worshipers who had remained behind. Among them was Meg Widow. She was kneeling in front of the statue with tears streaming down her face. Jack did not know, Philip realized, that Meg had lost her entire family in the collapse of Alfred’s roof. Her emotion touched Philip’s heart, and he wondered if Jack might be right after all. Why take this away from people? Because it’s dishonest, he reminded himself sternly. They believed in the statue because they saw a faked miracle. He hardened his heart.

Jack knelt down beside Meg and spoke to her. “Why are you weeping?”

“She’s dumb,” Philip told him.

Then Meg said: “The Madonna has suffered as I have. She understands.”

Philip was thunderstruck.

Jack said: “You see? The statue eases her suffering-What are you staring at?”

“She’s dumb,” Philip said again. “She hasn’t uttered a word for more than a year.”

“That’s right!” Aliena said. “Meg was struck dumb after her husband and boys died when the roof fell.”

“This woman?” Jack said. “But she just…”

Reynold looked bewildered. “You mean this is a miracle?” he said. “A real one?”

Philip looked at Jack’s face. Jack was more shocked than anyone. There was no trickery here.

Philip was profoundly moved. He had seen the hand of God move and work a miracle. He was shaking a little. “Well, Jack,” he said in an unsteady voice. “Despite all you have done to discredit the Weeping Madonna, it seems that God intends to work wonders with it anyway.”

For once Jack was lost for words.

Philip turned away from him and went to Meg. He took her hands and gently pulled her upright. “God has made you well again, Meg,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion. “Now you can start a new life.” He recalled that he had preached a sermon on the story of Job. The words came back to him: “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning…” He had told the people of Kingsbridge that the same would be true of them. I wonder, he thought, looking at the rapture on Meg’s tear-stained face, I wonder whether this could be the start of it.

There was an uproar in chapter when Jack presented his design for the new cathedral.

Philip had warned Jack to expect trouble. Philip had seen the drawings previously, of course. Jack had carried them to the prior’s house early one morning, a plan and an elevation, drawn on plaster in wooden frames. They had looked at them together in the clear early light, and Philip had said: “Jack, this will be the most beautiful church in England-but we’re going to have trouble with the monks.”

Jack knew from his time as a novice that Remigius and his cronies still routinely opposed any plan that was dear to Philip’s heart, even though it was eight years since Philip had defeated Remigius in the election. They rarely got much support from the broad mass of the brothers, but in this case Philip was uncertain: they were such a conservative lot that they could be scared by the revolutionary design. However, there was nothing for it but to show them the drawings and try to convince them. Philip certainly could not go ahead and build the cathedral without the wholehearted support of the majority of his monks.

On the following day Jack attended chapter and presented his plans. The drawings were propped up on a bench against the wall, and the monks crowded around to look at them. As they took in the details, there was a murmur of discussion which rose rapidly to a hubbub. Jack was discouraged: the tone was disapproving, bordering on outrage. The noise grew louder as they began to argue among themselves, some attacking the design and others defending it.

After a while Philip called for order and they calmed down. Milius Bursar asked a prearranged question. “Why are the arches pointed?”

“It’s a new technique they’re using in France,” Jack replied. “I’ve seen it in several churches. The pointed arch is stronger. That is what will enable me to build the church so high. It will probably be the tallest nave in England.”

They liked that idea, Jack could tell.

Someone else said: “The windows are so big.”

“Thick walls are unnecessary,” Jack said. “They’ve proved that in France. It’s the piers that hold the building up, especially with rib-vaulting. And the effect of the big windows is breathtaking. At Saint-Denis the abbot has put in colored glass with pictures on it. The church becomes a place of sunshine and air, instead of gloom and darkness.”

Several of the monks were nodding approval. Perhaps they were not as conservative as he had thought.

But Andrew Sacrist spoke next. “Two years ago you were a novice among us. You were disciplined for striking the prior, and you evaded that discipline and ran away. Now you come back wanting to tell us how to build our church.”

Before Jack could speak, one of the younger monks protested: “That’s nothing to do with it! We’re discussing the design, not Jack’s past!”

Several monks tried to speak at the same time, some of them shouting. Philip made them all shut up and asked Jack to answer the question.

Jack had been expecting something like this and he was ready. “I made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela as penance for that sin, Father Andrew, and I hope my bringing the Weeping Madonna to you may count as recompense for my wrongdoing,” he said meekly. “I’m not destined to be a monk, but I hope I can serve God in a different way-as his builder.”

They seemed to accept that.

However, Andrew had not finished. “How old are you?” he said, although he surely knew the answer.

“Twenty years.”

“That’s very young to be a master builder.”

“Everyone here knows me. I’ve lived here since I was a boy.” Since I burned down your old church, he thought guiltily. “I served my apprenticeship under the original master builder. You’ve seen my stonework. When I was a novice I worked with Prior Philip and Tom Builder as clerk of the works. I humbly ask the brothers to judge me by my work, not by my age.”

It was another prepared speech. He saw one of the monks grin at the word humbly, and realized it might have been a small error: they all knew that whatever other qualities he had he was not humble.

Andrew was quick to take advantage of his slip. “Humbly?” he said, and his face began to turn red as he feigned outrage. “It wasn’t very humble of you to announce to the masons of Paris three months ago that you had already been appointed master builder here.”

Once again there was a hubbub of indignant reactions from the monks. Jack groaned inwardly. How the devil had Andrew got hold of that little tidbit? Reynold or Edward must have been indiscreet. He tried to shrug it off. “I was hoping to attract some of those craftsmen to Kingsbridge,” he said as the noise died down. “They will be useful, no matter who is appointed master here. I don’t think my presumption did any harm.” He tried an engaging grin. “But I’m sorry I’m not humbler.” This did not go down very well.

Milius Bursar got him out of trouble by asking another prearranged question. “What do you propose to do about the existing chancel, which has partly collapsed?”

“I’ve examined it very carefully,” Jack said. “It can be repaired. If you appoint me master builder today I will have it usable again within a year. Furthermore, you can continue to use it while I’m building the transepts and the nave to the new design. Finally, when the nave is finished, I propose demolishing the chancel and building a new one to match the rest of the new church.”

Andrew said: “But how do we know the old chancel won’t fall down again?”

“The collapse was caused by Alfred’s stone vault, which was not in the original plans. The walls weren’t strong enough to hold it up. I propose to revert to Tom’s design and build a timber ceiling.”

There was a murmur of surprise. The question of why the roof had fallen in had been a matter of controversy. Andrew said: “But Alfred increased the size of the buttresses to support the extra weight.”

This had puzzled Jack, too, but he thought he had found the answer. “They still weren’t strong enough, particularly at the top. If you study the ruins you can see that the part of the structure that gave way was the clerestory. There was very little reinforcement at that level.”

They seemed satisfied with that. Jack felt that his ability to give a confident answer had enhanced his status as a master builder.

Remigius stood up. Jack had been wondering when he would make his contribution. “I should like to read a verse of the Holy Scriptures to the brethren in chapter,” he said, rather theatrically. He looked at Philip, who nodded consent.

Remigius walked to the lectern and opened the huge Bible. Jack studied the man. His thin mouth was nervously mobile, and his watery blue eyes bulged a little, giving him a permanent expression of indignation. He was a picture of resentment. Years ago he had come to believe that he was destined to be a leader of men, but in truth he was too weak a character, and now he was doomed to live out his life in disappointment, making trouble for better men. “The Book of Exodus,” he intoned as he turned the parchment pages. “Chapter Twenty. Verse Fourteen.” Jack wondered what on earth was coming. Remigius read: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” He closed the book with a bang and returned to his seat.

In a tone of mild exasperation, Philip said: “Perhaps you would tell us, Brother Remigius, why you chose to read that short verse in the middle of our discussion of building plans?”

Remigius pointed an accusing finger at Jack. “Because the man who wants to be our master builder is living in a state of sin!” he thundered.

Jack could hardly believe he was serious. He said indignantly: “It’s true that our union has not been blessed by the Church, because of special circumstances, but we’ll get married as soon as you like.”

“You can’t,” Remigius said triumphantly. “Aliena is already married.”

“But that union was never consummated.”

“Nevertheless, the couple were wed in church.”

“But if you won’t let me marry her, how can I avoid committing adultery?” Jack said angrily.

“That’s enough!” The voice was Philip’s. Jack looked at him. He seemed furious. He said: “Jack, are you living in sin with your brother’s wife?”

Jack was flabbergasted. “Didn’t you know?”

“Of course I didn’t!” Philip roared. “Do you think I could have remained silent about it if I had?”

There was a silence. It was unusual for Philip to shout. Jack saw that he was in real trouble. His offense was a technicality, of course, but monks were supposed to be strict about such things. Unfortunately, the fact that Philip had not known that he was living with Aliena made matters much worse. It had enabled Remigius to take Philip by surprise and make a fool of him. Now Philip would have to be firm, to prove that he was strict.

Jack said miserably: “But you can’t build the wrong sort of church just to punish me.”

Remigius said with relish: “You’ll have to leave the woman.”

“Piss off, Remigius,” Jack said. “She has my child-he’s a year old!”

Remigius sat back with a look of satisfaction.

Philip said: “Jack, if you speak like that in chapter you’ll have to leave.”

Jack knew he should calm down but he could not. “But it’s ludicrous!” he said. “You’re telling me to abandon my woman and our child! This isn’t morality, it’s hairsplitting.”

Philip’s anger abated somewhat, and Jack saw the more familiar light of sympathy in his clear blue eyes. He said: “Jack, you may take a pragmatic approach to God’s laws but we prefer to be rigid-that’s why we’re monks. And we cannot have you as builder while you’re living in a state of adultery.”

Jack remembered a line of Scripture. “Jesus said: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.’ ”

Philip said: “Yes, but Jesus said to the adulteress: ‘Go, and sin no more.’ ” He turned to Remigius. “I take it you would withdraw your opposition if the adultery ceased.”

“Of course!” said Remigius.

Despite his anger and misery, Jack noticed that Philip had outmaneuvered Remigius neatly. He had made the adultery the decisive question, thereby sidestepping the whole issue of the new design. But Jack was not ready to go along with that. He said: “I’m not going to leave her!”

Philip said: “It might not be for long.”

Jack paused. That had taken him by surprise. “What do you mean?”

“You could marry Aliena if her first marriage was annulled.”

“Can that be done?”

“It should be automatic, if, as you say, the marriage was never consummated.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Apply to an ecclesiastical court. Normally it would be Bishop Waleran’s court, but in this case you probably should go straight to the archbishop of Canterbury.”

“And is the archbishop bound to agree?”

“In justice, yes.”

That was not a totally unequivocal answer, Jack noted. “But we would have to live apart meanwhile?”

“If you want to be appointed master builder of Kingsbridge Cathedral-yes.”

Jack said: “You’re asking me to choose between the two things I love most in all the world.”

Philip said: “Not for long.”

His voice made Jack look up sharply: there was real compassion in it. Jack realized Philip was genuinely sorry to have to do this. That made him less angry and more sad. He said: “How long?”

“It could be as much as a year.”

“A year!”

“You don’t have to live in different towns,” Philip said. “You can still see Aliena and the child.”

“Do you know she went to Spain to look for me?” Jack said. “Can you imagine that?” But the monks had no conception of what love was about. He said bitterly: “Now I must tell her we’ve got to live apart.”

Philip stood up and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “The time will go by faster than you think, I promise you,” he said. “And you’ll be busy-building the new cathedral.”

II

The forest had grown and changed in eight years. Jack had thought he could never get lost in territory he had once known like the back of his hand, but he had been wrong. Old trails were overgrown, new ones had been trodden in the undergrowth by the deer and the boar and the wild ponies, streamlets had altered course, old trees had fallen and young ones were taller. Everything was diminished: distances seemed less and hills not so steep. Most striking of all, he felt a stranger here. When a young deer gazed at him, startled, across a glade, Jack could not guess which family the deer belonged to or where its dam was. When a flight of ducks took off, he did not instantly know what stretch of water they had risen from and why. And he was nervous, for he had no idea where the outlaws were.

He had ridden most of the way here from Kingsbridge, but he had to dismount as soon as he left the main road, for the trees grew too low over the trail to permit him to ride. Returning to the haunts of his boyhood made him feel irrationally sad. He had never appreciated, because he had never realized, how simple life had been then. His greatest passion had been for strawberries, and he had known that every summer, for a few days, there would be as many as he could eat, growing on the forest floor. Nowadays everything was problematical: his combative friendship with Prior Philip; his frustrated love for Aliena; his towering ambition to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world; his burning need to find out the truth about his father.

He wondered how much his mother had changed in the two years he had been away. He was looking forward eagerly to seeing her again. He had coped perfectly well on his own, of course, but it was very reassuring to have someone in your life who was always ready to fight for you, and he had missed that comforting feeling.

It had taken him all day to reach the part of the forest where he and she used to live. Now the short winter afternoon was darkening rapidly. Soon he would have to give up the search for their old cave, and concentrate on finding a sheltered place in which to spend the night. It would be cold. Why am I worried? he thought. I used to spend every night in the forest.

In the end she found him.

He was on the point of giving up. A narrow, almost invisible track through the vegetation, probably used only by badgers and foxes, petered out in a thicket. There was nothing to do but retrace his steps. He turned his horse around and almost walked into her.

“You’ve forgotten how to move quietly in the forest,” she said. “I could hear you crashing around a mile away.”

Jack smiled. She had not changed. “Hello, Mother,” he said. He kissed her cheek, then, in a rush of affection, he hugged her.

She touched his face. “You’re thinner than ever.”

He looked at her. She was brown and healthy, her hair still thick and dark, without any gray. Her eyes were the same golden color, and they still seemed to see right through Jack. He said: “You’re just the same.”

“Where did you go?” she said.

“All the way to Compostela, and even farther, to Toledo.”

“Aliena went after you-”

“She found me. Thanks to you.”

“I’m glad.” She closed her eyes as if sending up a prayer of thanks. “I’m so glad.”

She led him through the forest to the cave, which was less than a mile away: his memory had not been so bad after all. She had a blazing log fire and three sputtering rushlights. She gave him a mug of the cider she made with crab apples and wild honey, and they roasted some chestnuts. Jack could remember the items that a forest dweller could not make for herself, and he had brought his mother knives, cord, soap and salt. She began to skin a coney for the cooking pot. He said: “How are you, Mother?”

“Fine,” she said; then she looked at him and realized the question was serious. “I grieve for Tom Builder,” she said. “But he’s dead and I don’t care to take another husband.”

“And are you happy here, otherwise?”

“Yes and no. I’m used to living in the forest. I like being alone. I never did get used to busybody priests telling me how to behave. But I miss you, and Martha, and Aliena; and I wish I could see more of my grandson.” She smiled. “But I can never go back to live in Kingsbridge, not after cursing a Christian wedding. Prior Philip will never forgive me for that. However, it’s all worth it if I’ve brought you and Aliena together at last.” She looked up from her work with a pleased smile. “So how do you like married life?”

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “we’re not married. In the eyes of the Church, Aliena is still married to Alfred.”

“Don’t be stupid. What does the Church know about it?”

“Well, they know who they’ve married, and they wouldn’t let me build the new cathedral while I was living with another man’s wife.”

Her eyes flashed anger. “So you’ve left her?”

“Yes. Until she can get an annulment.”

Mother put the rabbit’s skin to one side. With a sharp knife in her bloody hands she began to joint the carcass, dropping the pieces into the cooking pot bubbling on the fire. “Prior Philip did that to me, once, when I was with Tom,” she said, slicing the raw meat with swift strokes. “I know why he gets so frantic about people making love. It’s because he’s not allowed to do it himself, and he resents other people’s freedom to enjoy what is forbidden to him. Of course, there’s nothing he can do about it when they’re married by the Church. But if they’re not, he gets the chance to spoil things for them, and that makes him feel better.” She cut off the rabbit’s feet and threw them into a wooden bucket full of rubbish.

Jack nodded. He had accepted the inevitable, but every time he said good night to Aliena and walked away from her door he felt angry with Philip, and he understood his mother’s persistent resentment. “It’s not forever, though,” he said.

“How does Aliena feel about it?”

Jack grimaced. “Not good. But she thinks it’s her fault, for marrying Alfred in the first place.”

“So it is. And it’s your fault for being determined to build churches.”

He was sorry that she could not share his vision. “Mother, it’s not worth building anything else. Churches are bigger and higher and more beautiful and more difficult to build, and they have more decoration and sculpture than any other kind of building.”

“And you won’t be satisfied with anything less.”

“Right.”

She shook her head in perplexity. “I’ll never know where you got the idea that you were destined for greatness.” She dropped the rest of the rabbit in the pot and began to clean the underside of its skin. She would use the fur. “You certainly didn’t inherit it from your forebears.”

That was the cue he had been waiting for. “Mother, when I was overseas I learned some more about my forebears.”

She stopped scraping and looked at him. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I found my father’s family.”

“Good God!” She dropped the rabbit skin. “How did you do that? Where are they? What are they like?”

“There’s a town in Normandy called Cherbourg. That’s where he came from.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I look so much like him, they thought I was a ghost.”

Mother sat down heavily on a stool. Jack felt guilty about having shocked her so badly, but he had not expected her to be so shaken by the news. She said: “What… what are his people like?”

“His father’s dead, but his mother’s still alive. She was kind, once she was convinced I wasn’t the ghost of my father. His older brother is a carpenter with a wife and three children. My cousins.” He smiled. “Isn’t that nice? We’ve got relations.”

The thought seemed to upset her, and she looked distressed. “Oh, Jack, I’m so sorry I didn’t give you a normal upbringing.”

“I’m not,” he said lightly. He was embarrassed when his mother showed remorse: it was so out of character for her. “But I’m glad I met my cousins. Even if I never see them again, it’s good to know they’re there.”

She nodded sadly. “I understand.”

Jack took a deep breath. “They thought my father had drowned in a shipwreck twenty-four years ago. He was aboard a vessel called the White Ship which went down just out of Barfleur. Everyone was thought to have drowned. Obviously my father survived. But somehow they never knew that, because he never went back to Cherbourg.”

“He went to Kingsbridge,” she said.

“But why?”

She sighed. “He clung to a barrel and was washed ashore near a castle,” she said. “He went to the castle to report the shipwreck. There were several powerful barons at the castle, and they showed great consternation when he turned up. They took him prisoner and brought him to England. After some weeks or months-he got rather confused-he ended up in Kingsbridge.”

“Did he say anything else about the wreck?”

“Only that the ship went down very fast, as if it had been holed.”

“It sounds as if they needed to keep him out of the way.”

She nodded. “And then, when they realized they couldn’t hold him prisoner forever, they killed him.”

Jack knelt in front of her and forced her to look at him. In a voice shaking with emotion he said: “But who were they, Mother?”

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“And you’ve never told me.”

“Because I don’t want you to spend your life trying to avenge the death of your father!”

She was still treating him like a child, withholding information that might not be good for him, he felt. He tried to be calm and adult. “I’m going to spend my life building Kingsbridge Cathedral and making babies with Aliena. But I want to know why they hanged my father. And the only people who have the answer are the men who gave false testimony against him. So I have to know who they were.”

“At the time I didn’t know their names.”

He knew she was being evasive and it made him angry. “But you know now!”

“Yes, I do,” she said tearfully, and he realized that this was as painful for her as it was for him. “And I’ll tell you, because I can see you’ll never stop asking.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

He waited in suspense.

“There were three of them: a monk, a priest and a knight.”

Jack looked at her hard. “Their names.”

“You’re going to ask them why they lied under oath?”

“Yes.”

“And you expect them to tell you?”

“Perhaps not. I’ll look into their eyes when I ask them, and that may tell me all I need to know.”

“Even that may not be possible.”

“I want to try, Mother!”

She sighed. “The monk was the prior of Kingsbridge.”

“Philip!”

“No, not Philip. This was before Philip’s time. It was his predecessor, James.”

“But he’s dead.”

“I told you it might not be possible to question them.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Who were the others?”

“The knight was Percy Hamleigh, the earl of Shiring.”

“William’s father!”

“Yes.”

“He’s dead, too!”

“Yes.”

Jack had a terrible feeling that all three would turn out to be dead men, and the secret buried with their bones. “Who was the priest?” he said urgently.

“His name was Waleran Bigod. He’s now the bishop of Kingsbridge.”

Jack gave a sigh of profound satisfaction. “And he’s still alive,” he said.

Bishop Waleran’s castle was finished at Christmas. William Hamleigh and his mother rode to it on a fine morning early in the new year. They saw it from a distance, across the valley. It was at the highest point of the opposite ridge, overlooking the surrounding countryside with a forbidding regard.

As they crossed the valley they passed the old palace. It was now used as a storehouse for fleeces. Income from wool was paying for much of the new castle.

They trotted up the gentle slope on the far side of the valley and followed the road through a gap in the earth ramparts and across a deep dry moat to a gateway in a stone wall. With ramparts, a moat and a stone wall, this was a highly secure castle, superior to William’s own and to many of the king’s.

The inner courtyard was dominated by a massive square keep three stories high which dwarfed the stone church that stood alongside it. William helped his mother dismount. They left their knights to stable the horses and mounted the steps that led to the hall.

It was midday, and in the hall Waleran’s servants were preparing the table. Some of his archdeacons, deans, employees and hangers-on were standing around waiting for dinner. William and Regan waited while a steward went up to the bishop’s private quarters to announce their arrival.

William was burning inside with a fierce, agonizing jealousy. Aliena was in love, and the whole county knew it. She had given birth to a love child, and her husband had thrown her out of his house. With her baby in her arms, she had gone off to look for the man she loved, and had found him after searching half of Christendom. The story was being told and retold all over southern England. It made William sick with hatred every time he heard it. But he had thought of a way to get revenge.

They were taken up the stairs and shown into Waleran’s chamber. They found him sitting at a table with Baldwin, who was now an archdeacon. The two clerics were counting money on a checkered cloth, building the silver pennies into piles of twelve and moving them from black squares to white. Baldwin stood up and bowed to Lady Regan, then quickly put away the cloth and the coins.

Waleran got up from the table and went to the chair by the fire. He moved quickly, like a spider, and William felt the old familiar loathing. Nevertheless he resolved to be unctuous. He had heard recently of the dreadful death of the earl of Hereford, who had quarreled with the bishop of Hereford and died in a state of excommunication. His body had been buried in unconsecrated ground. When William imagined his own body lying in undefended earth, vulnerable to all the imps and monsters that inhabited the underworld, he shook with fright. He would never quarrel with his bishop.

Waleran was as pale and thin as ever, and his black robes hung on him like laundry drying on a tree. He never seemed to change. William knew that he himself had changed. Food and wine were his principal pleasures, and each year he grew a little stouter, despite the active life he led, so that the expensive chain mail that had been made for him when he turned twenty-one had been replaced twice over in the succeeding seven years.

Waleran was just back from York. He had been away for almost half a year, and William politely asked him: “Did you have a successful trip?”

“No,” he replied. “Bishop Henry sent me there to attempt to resolve a four-year-old dispute over who is to be archbishop of York. I failed. The row goes on.”

The less said about that the better, William thought. He said: “While you’ve been away, there have been a lot of changes here. Especially at Kingsbridge.”

“At Kingsbridge?” Waleran was surprised. “I thought that problem had been solved once and for all.”

William shook his head. “They’ve got the Weeping Madonna.”

Waleran looked irritated. “What the devil are you talking about?”

William’s mother answered. “It’s a wooden statue of the Virgin that they use in processions. At certain times, water comes from its eyes. The people think it’s miraculous.”

“It is miraculous!” William said. “A statue that weeps!”

Waleran gave him a scornful look.

Regan said: “Miraculous or not, thousands of people have been to see it in the last few months. Meanwhile, Prior Philip has recommenced building. They’re repairing the chancel and putting a new timber ceiling on it, and they’ve started on the rest of the church. The foundations for the crossing have been dug, and some new stonemasons have arrived from Paris.”

“Paris?” Waleran said.

Regan said: “The church is now going to be built in the style of Saint-Denis, whatever that is.”

Waleran nodded. “Pointed arches. I heard talk of it at York.”

William did not care what style Kingsbridge Cathedral would be. He said: “The point is, young men off my farms are moving to Kingsbridge to work as laborers, the Kingsbridge market is open again every Sunday, taking business away from Shiring… It’s the same old story!” He glanced uneasily at the other two, wondering whether either of them suspected that he had an ulterior motive; but neither looked suspicious.

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.

Aliena picked Tommy up off the floor to get him out of the way of the hooves. Jack said: “What’s happened?”

“We must all get out of Kingsbridge tomorrow,” he said.

“But why?”

“William Hamleigh is going to burn the town again on Sunday.”

“No!” Aliena cried.

Jack went cold. He saw again the scene three years ago, when William’s horsemen had invaded the fleece fair, with their blazing torches and brutal clubs. He recalled the panic, the screaming, and the smell of burning flesh. He saw again the corpse of his stepfather, with his forehead smashed. He felt sick at heart.

“How do you know?” he asked Richard.

“I was in Shiring, and I saw some of William’s men buying weapons at the armorer’s shop.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

“There’s more. I followed them into an alehouse and listened to their talk. One of them asked what defenses Kingsbridge had, and another said none.”

Aliena said: “Oh, God, it’s true.” She looked at Tommy, and her hand went to her stomach, where the new baby was growing. She looked up, and Jack met her eye. They were both thinking the same.

Richard went on: “Later I got talking to some of the younger ones, who don’t know me. I told them about the battle of Lincoln, and so on, and said I was looking for a fight. They told me to go to Earlscastle, but it would have to be today, for they were to leave tomorrow, and the fight would be on Sunday.”

“Sunday,” Jack whispered fearfully.

“I rode out to Earlscastle, to double-check.”

Aliena said: “Richard, that was dangerous.”

“All the signs are there: messengers coming and going, weapons being sharpened, horses exercised, tack cleaned… There’s no doubt of it.” In a voice full of hatred, Richard finished: “No amount of evildoing will satisfy that devil William-he always wants more.” His hand went to his right ear, and he touched the angry scar there with an unconscious nervous gesture.

Jack studied Richard for a moment. He was an idler and a wastrel, but in one area his judgment was trustworthy: the military. If he said William was planning a raid he was probably right. “This is a catastrophe,” Jack said, half to himself. Kingsbridge was just beginning to recover from the slump. Three years ago the fleece fair had burned, two years ago the cathedral had fallen on the congregation, and now this. People would say the bad luck of Kingsbridge had come back. Even if they managed to avoid bloodshed by fleeing, Kingsbridge would be ruined. No one would want to live here, come to the market or work here. It could even stop the building of the cathedral.

Aliena said: “We must tell Prior Philip-right away.”

Jack nodded. “The monks will be at supper. Let’s go.”

Aliena picked up Tommy and they all hurried up the hill toward the monastery in the dusk.

Richard said: “When the cathedral is finished, they can hold the market inside it. That will protect it from raids.”

Jack said: “But meanwhile we need the income from the market to pay for the cathedral.”

Richard, Aliena and Tommy waited outside while Jack went into the monks’ refectory. A young monk was reading aloud in Latin while the others ate in silence. Jack recognized an apocalyptic passage from the Book of Revelation. He stood in the doorway and caught Philip’s eye. Philip was surprised to see him, but got up from the table and came out straightaway.

“Bad news,” Jack said grimly. “I’ll let Richard tell you.”

They talked in the cavernous gloom of the repaired chancel. Richard gave Philip the details in a few sentences. When he had finished, Philip said: “But we aren’t holding a fleece fair-just a little market!”

Aliena said: “At least we’ve got the chance to evacuate the town tomorrow. Nobody need get hurt. And we can rebuild our houses, as we did last time.”

“Unless William decides to hunt down the evacuees,” Richard said grimly. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Even if we all escape, I think it means the end of the market,” Philip said gloomily. “People will be afraid to set up stalls in Kingsbridge after this.”

Jack said: “It may mean the end of the cathedral. In the last ten years the church has burned down once and fallen down once, and a lot of masons were killed when the town burned. Another disaster would be the last, I think. People would say it’s bad luck.”

Philip looked stricken. He was not yet forty years old, Jack reckoned, but his face was becoming lined, and his fringe of hair was now more gray than black. Nevertheless, there was a dangerous light in his clear blue eyes as he said: “I’m not going to accept this. I don’t think it’s the will of God.”

Jack wondered what on earth he was talking about. How could he “not accept” it? The chickens might as well say they refused to accept the fox, for all the difference it would make to their fate. “So what are you going to do?” Jack said skeptically. “Pray that William will fall out of bed tonight and break his neck?”

Richard was excited by the idea of resistance. “Let’s fight,” he said. “Why not? There are hundreds of us. William will bring fifty men, a hundred at most-we could win by sheer weight of numbers.”

Aliena protested: “And how many of our people will be killed?”

Philip was shaking his head. “Monks don’t fight,” he said regretfully. “And I can’t ask townspeople to give their lives when I’m not prepared to risk my own.”

Jack said: “Don’t count on my masons fighting, either. It’s not part of their job.”

Philip looked at Richard, who was the nearest they had to a military expert. “Is there any way we can defend the town without a pitched battle?”

“Not without town walls,” Richard said. “We’ve got nothing to put in front of the enemy but bodies.”

“Town walls,” Jack said thoughtfully.

Richard said: “We could challenge William to settle the issue by single combat-a fight between champions. But I don’t suppose he would agree to it.”

“Town walls would do it?” Jack said.

Richard said impatiently: “They might save us another time, but not now. We can’t build town walls overnight.”

“Can’t we?”

“Of course not, don’t be-”

“Shut up, Richard,” Philip said forcefully. He looked expectantly at Jack. “What’s on your mind?”

“A wall is not that hard to build,” Jack said.

“Go on.”

Jack’s mind was spinning. The others were listening with bated breath. He said: “There are no arches, no vaults, no windows, no roof,… A wall can be built overnight, if you’ve got the men and materials.”

“What would we build it of?” Philip said.

“Look around you,” Jack said. “Here are ready-cut stone blocks intended for the foundations. There is a stack of timber bigger than a house. In the graveyard is a heap of rubble from the collapse. Down at the riverside there’s another huge stack of stone from the quarry. There’s no shortage of materials.”

“And the town is full of builders,” Philip said.

Jack nodded. “The monks can do the organizing. The builders can do the skilled work. And for laborers we’ll have the entire population of the town.” He was thinking rapidly. “The wall would have to run all along the nearside bank of the river. We’d dismantle the bridge. Then we’d have to take the wall up the hill alongside the poor quarter to join up with the east wall of the priory… out to the north… and down the hill to the riverbank again. I don’t know whether there’s enough stone for that…”

Richard said: “It doesn’t have to be stone to be effective. A simple ditch, with an earth rampart made of the mud dug out of the ditch, will serve the purpose, especially in a place where the enemy is attacking uphill.”

“Surely stone is better,” Jack said.

“Better, but not essential. The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he’s in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position.”

“Bombard him?” Aliena said. “With what?”

“Stones, boiling oil, arrows-there’s a bow in most households in the town-”

Aliena shuddered and said: “So we still end up fighting, after all.”

“But not hand to hand, not quite.”

Jack felt torn. The safest course, in all probability, was for everyone to take refuge in the forest, in the hope that William would be satisfied with burning the houses. But even then there was a risk that he and his men would hunt the townspeople down. Would the danger be greater if they all stayed here, behind a town wall? If something went wrong, and William and his men found a way to breach the wall, the carnage would be appalling. Jack looked at Aliena and Tommy, and thought of the new child growing inside Aliena. “Is there a middle course?” he said. “We could evacuate the women and children, and the men could stay and defend the walls.”

“No, thank you,” Aliena said firmly. “That’s the worst of both worlds. We would have no town walls and no menfolk to fight for us either.”

She was right, Jack realized. Town walls were no good without people to defend them, and the women and children could not be left unguarded in the forest: William might leave the town alone and kill the women.

Philip said: “Jack, you’re the builder. Can we put up a town wall in one day?”

“I’ve never built a town wall,” Jack said. “There’s no question of drawing plans, of course. We’d have to assign a craftsman to each section and let him use his judgment. The mortar will hardly be set by Sunday morning. It will be the worst-built wall in England. But yes, we can do it.”

Philip turned to Richard. “You’ve seen battles. If we build a wall, can we hold William off?”

“Certainly,” Richard said. “He will come prepared for a lightning raid, not a siege. If he finds a fortified town here there will be nothing he can do.”

Finally Philip looked at Aliena. “You’re one of the vulnerable people, with a child to protect. What do you think?

Should we run to the forest, and hope William doesn’t come after us, or stay here and build a wall to keep him out?”

Jack held his breath.

“It’s not just a question of safety,” Aliena said after a pause. “Philip, you’ve dedicated your life to this priory. Jack, the cathedral is your dream. If we run away, you’ll lose everything you’ve lived for. And as for me… Well, I have a special reason for wanting to see William Hamleigh’s power curbed. I say we stay.”

“All right,” Philip said. “We build a wall.”

As night fell, Jack, Richard and Philip walked the boundaries of the town with lanterns, deciding where the wall should go. The town was built on a low hill, and the river wound around two sides of it. The riverbanks were too soft to hold a stone wall without good foundations, so Jack proposed a wooden fence there. Richard was quite satisfied with that. The enemy could not attack the fence except from the river, which was almost impossible.

On the other two sides, some stretches of wall would be simple earth ramparts with a ditch. Richard declared that this would be effective where the ground was sloping and the enemy was forced to attack uphill. However, where the ground was level a stone wall would be needed.

Jack then went around the village gathering his builders together, getting them out of their homes-out of their beds, in some cases-and out of the alehouse. He explained the emergency and how the town was going to deal with it; then he walked around the boundaries with them and assigned a section of wall to each man: wooden fencing to carpenters, stone wall to masons, and ramparts to apprentices and laborers. He asked each man to mark out his own section with stakes and string before going to bed, and to give some thought, as he went to sleep, to how he would build it. Soon the perimeter of the town was marked by a dotted line of twinkling lights as the craftsmen did their laying out by lanternshine. The blacksmith lit his fire and settled down to spend the rest of the night making spades. The unusual after-dark activity disturbed the bedtime rituals of most of the townspeople, and the craftsmen spent a good deal of time explaining what they were doing to drowsy inquirers. Only the monks, who had gone to bed at nightfall, slept on in blissful ignorance.

But at midnight, when the craftsmen were finishing their preparations and most of the townspeople had retired-if only to discuss the news in hushed excitement under the blankets-the monks were awakened. Their services were cut short, and they were given bread and ale in the refectory while Philip briefed them. They were to be tomorrow’s organizers. They were divided into teams, each team working for one builder. They would take orders from him and supervise the digging, lifting, fetching and carrying. Their first priority, Philip emphasized in his talk, was to make sure that the builder had a never-failing supply of the raw materials he needed: stones and mortar, timber and tools.

As Philip talked, Jack wondered what William Hamleigh was doing. Earlscastle was a day’s hard ride from Kingsbridge, but William would not try to do it in a day, for then his army would arrive exhausted. They would set out this morning at sunrise. They would not ride all together, but would separate, and cover their weapons and armor as they traveled, to avoid raising the alarm. They would rendezvous discreetly in the afternoon, somewhere just an hour or two from Kingsbridge, probably at the manor house of one of William’s larger tenants. In the evening they would drink beer and sharpen their blades and tell one another grisly stories about previous triumphs, young men mutilated, old men trampled beneath the hooves of war-horses, girls raped and women sodomized, children beheaded and babies spitted on the points of swords while their mothers screamed in anguish. Then they would attack tomorrow morning. Jack shuddered with fear. But this time we’re going to stop them, he thought. All the same he was scared.

Each team of monks located its own stretch of wall and its source of raw materials. Then, as the first hint of dawn paled the eastern horizon, they went around their assigned neighborhood, knocking on doors, waking the inhabitants while the monastery bell rang urgently.

By sunrise the operation was in full swing. The younger men and women did the laboring while the older ones supplied food and drink and the children ran errands and carried messages. Jack toured the site constantly, monitoring progress anxiously. He told a mortar maker to use less lime, so that the mortar would set faster. He saw a carpenter making a fence with scaffolding poles, and told his laborers to use cut timber from a different stockpile. He made sure that the different sections of the wall would meet in a clean join. And he joked, smiled, and encouraged people constantly.

The sun came up into a clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. The priory kitchen supplied barrels of beer, but Philip ordered it to be watered, and Jack approved, for people who were working hard would drink a lot in this weather, and he did not want them falling asleep.

Despite the awful danger there was an incongruous air of jollity. It was like a holiday, when the whole town did something together, like making bread on Lammas Day or floating candles downstream on Midsummer Eve, People seemed to forget the peril which was the reason for their activity. However, Philip did see a few people discreetly leaving town. Either they were going to take their chances in the forest, or more likely they had relations in outlying villages who would take them in. Nevertheless, nearly everyone stayed.

At noon Philip rang the bell again, and work stopped for dinner. Philip made a tour of the wall with Jack while the workers were eating. Despite all the activity they did not seem to have achieved much. The stone walls had only reached ground level, the earth ramparts were still low mounds, and there were vast gaps in the wooden fence.

At the end of their tour Philip said: “Are we going to finish in time?”

Jack had been purposely cheerful and optimistic all morning, but now he forced himself to make a realistic assessment. “At this rate, no,” he said despondently.

“What can we do to speed things up?”

“The only way to build faster is to build worse, normally.”

“Then let’s build worse-but how?”

Jack considered. “At the moment we’ve got masons building walls, carpenters building fences, laborers making earthworks, and townspeople fetching and carrying. But most carpenters can build a straightforward wall, and most laborers can put up a wooden fence. So let’s get the carpenters to help the masons with the stonework, have the laborers build the fences, and let the townspeople dig the ditch and throw up the ramparts. And as soon as the operation is running smoothly, the younger monks can forget about organization and help with the laboring.”

“All right.”

They gave the new orders as people were finishing dinner. Not only would this be the worst-built wall in England, Jack thought; it would probably be the shortest-lived. If all of it was still standing in a week’s time, it would be a miracle.

During the afternoon, people began to get tired, especially those who had been up in the night. The holiday atmosphere evaporated and the workers became grimly determined. The stone walls rose, the ditch got deeper, and the gaps in the fence began to close. They stopped work for supper, as the sun dipped toward the western skyline, then began again.

At nightfall the wall was not complete.

Philip set a watch, ordered everyone except the guards to get a few hours of sleep, and said he would ring the bell at midnight. The exhausted townspeople went to their beds.

Jack went to Aliena’s house. She and Richard were still awake.

Jack said to Aliena: “I want you to take Tommy and go and hide in the woods.”

The thought had been in the back of his mind all day. At first he had rejected the idea; but as time went on he kept returning to the dreadful memory of the day William burned the fleece fair; and in the end he decided to send her away.

“I’d rather stay,” she said firmly.

Jack said: “Aliena, I don’t know if this is going to work, and I don’t want you to be here if William Hamleigh gets past this wall.”

“But I can’t leave while you’re organizing everyone else to stay and fight,” she said reasonably.

He was long past worrying about what was reasonable. “If you go now they won’t know.”

“They’ll realize eventually.”

“By then it will be over.”

“But think about the disgrace.”

“To hell with the disgrace!” he shouted. He was mad with frustration at not being able to find the words to persuade her. “I want you to be safe!”

His angry voice woke Tommy, who started to cry. Aliena picked him up and rocked him. She said: “I’m not even sure I’d be safer in the forest.”

“William won’t be searching the forest. It’s the town he’s interested in.”

“He might be interested in me.”

“You could hide in your glade. Nobody ever goes there.”

“William might find it by accident.”

“Listen to me. You’ll be safer there than here. I know it.”

“All the same I want to stay here.”

“I don’t want you here,” he said harshly.

“Well, I’m staying anyway,” she replied with a smile, ignoring his deliberate rudeness.

Jack suppressed a curse. There was no arguing with her once she had made up her mind: she was as stubborn as a mule. He pleaded with her instead. “Aliena, I’m scared of what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

“I’m scared, too,” she said. “And I think we should be scared together.”

He knew he should give in gracefully, but he was too worried. “Damn you, then,” he said angrily, and he stormed out.

He stood outside, breathing the night air. After a few moments he cooled down. He was still terribly worried, but it was foolish to be angry with her: they might both die in the morning.

He went back inside. She was standing where he had left her, looking sad. “I love you,” he said. They embraced, and stood like that for a long while.

When he went out again the moon was up. He calmed himself with the thought that Aliena might even be right: she could be safer here than in the woods. At least this way he would know if she was in trouble, and could do his best to protect her.

He knew he would not sleep, even if he went to bed. He had a foolish fear that everyone might sleep past midnight, and nobody would wake until dawn when William’s men rode in slashing and burning. He walked restlessly around the edge of the town. It was odd: Kingsbridge had never had a perimeter until today. The stone walls were waist-high, which was not enough. The fences were high but there were still enough gaps for a hundred men to ride through in a few moments. The earth ramparts were not too high for a good horse to surmount. There was a lot to do.

He stopped at the place where the bridge used to be. It had been taken to pieces, and the parts had been stored in the priory. He looked over the moonlit water. He saw a shadowy figure approach along the line of the wooden fence, and felt a shiver of superstitious apprehension, but it was only Prior Philip, as sleepless as Jack.

For the moment Jack’s grudge against Philip had been overshadowed by the threat from William, and Jack did not feel unfriendly toward Philip. He said: “If we survive this, we should rebuild the wall, bit by bit.”

“I agree,” Philip said fervently. “We should aim to have a stone wall right around the town within a year.”

“Just here, where the bridge crosses the river, I would put a gate and a barbican, so that we could keep people out without dismantling the bridge.”

“It’s not the kind of thing we monks are good at-organizing town defenses.”

Jack nodded. They were not supposed to be involved in any kind of violence. “But if you don’t organize it, who will?”

“How about Aliena’s brother, Richard?”

Jack was startled by that idea, but a moment’s reflection led him to realize that it was brilliant. “He’d do it well, it would keep him from idleness, and I wouldn’t have to support him any longer,” he said enthusiastically. He looked at Philip with reluctant admiration. “You never stop, do you?”

Philip shrugged. “I wish all our problems could be solved so simply.”

Jack’s mind returned to the wall. “I suppose Kingsbridge will now be a fortified town forevermore.”

“Not forever, but certainly until Jesus comes again.”

“You never know,” Jack said speculatively. “There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren’t in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that-a time when towns in England don’t need walls!”

Philip shook his head. “What an imagination,” he said. “It won’t happen before Judgment Day.”

“I suppose not.”

“It must be almost midnight. Time to start again.”

“Philip. Before you go.”

“What?”

Jack took a deep breath. “There’s still time to change our plan. We could evacuate the town now.”

“Are you afraid, Jack?” Philip said, not unkindly.

“Yes. But not for myself. For my family.”

Philip nodded. “Look at it this way. If you leave now, you will probably be safe-tomorrow. But William may come another day. If we let him have his way tomorrow, we will always live in fear. You, me, Aliena, and little Tommy, too: he’ll grow up in fear of William, or someone like William.”

He was right, Jack thought. If children such as Tommy were to grow up free, their parents had to stop running away from William.

Jack sighed. “All right.”

Philip went off to ring the bell. He was a ruler who kept the peace, dispensed justice, and did not oppress the poor people under him, Jack thought. But did you really have to be celibate to do that?

The bell began to toll. Lamps were lit in the shuttered houses, and the craftsmen stumbled out, rubbing their eyes and yawning. They started work slowly, and there were some bad-tempered exchanges with laborers; but Philip had the priory bakehouse going, and soon there was hot bread and fresh butter, and everyone cheered up.

At dawn Jack made another tour with Philip, both of them anxiously scanning the dark horizon for signs of horsemen. The riverside fence was almost complete, with all the carpenters working together to fill in the last few yards. On the other two sides, the earth ramparts were now as high as a man, and the depth of the ditch on the outside gave it an extra three or four feet: a man might scramble up, with difficulty, but he would have to get off his horse. The wall was also man-height, but the last three or four courses of stone were completely weak, because the mortar had not set. However, the enemy would not learn that until they tried to scale the wall, and at that point it might even serve to distract them.

Apart from those gaps in the wooden fence, the work was done, and Philip issued fresh orders. The older citizens and the children were to go to the monastery and take refuge in the dormitory. Jack was pleased: Aliena would have to stay with Tommy, and the two of them would be well behind the front line. The craftsmen were to continue building, but some of their laborers now became military squadrons, under Richard’s leadership. Each group was responsible for defending the section of wall it had built. Those of the townsmen and women who had bows would be ready at the walls to shoot arrows down on the enemy. Those who had no weapons would throw stones, and they were to make stockpiles ready. Boiling water was another useful weapon, and cauldrons were heated ready to be poured down on attackers at strategic points. Several of the townsmen had swords, but they were the least useful of weapons: if it came to hand-to-hand combat, the enemy would have got in, and the building of the wall would have been in vain.

Jack had been awake for forty-eight hours straight. He had a headache and his eyes felt gritty. He sat on the thatched roof of a house near the river and looked out across the fields, while the carpenters rushed to finish the fence. Suddenly he realized that William’s men might shoot burning arrows over the wall in an attempt to set fire to the town without having to breach the wall. Wearily he got off the roof and trotted up the hill to the priory close. There he found that Richard had had the same thought, and had already got some of the monks to organize barrels of water and buckets at strategic locations around the outer edges of the town.

He was just leaving the priory when he heard what sounded like warning shouts.

His heart racing, he scrambled up onto the roof of the stable and looked out over the fields to the west. On the road that led to the bridge, a mile or so away, a cloud of dust betrayed the approach of a large group of horsemen.

Until this moment there had been an element of unreality about the whole thing; but now the men who wanted to burn Kingsbridge were right there, riding along the road, and suddenly the danger was hideously real.

Jack felt a sudden urge to find Aliena, but there was no time. He jumped off the roof and ran down the hill to the riverbank. A crowd of men was gathered around the last gap. As he watched, they drove stakes into the ground, filling the space, and hastily nailed the last two bracing members to the back, finishing the job. Most of the townspeople were here, apart from those who had taken refuge in the refectory. A few moments after Jack arrived, Richard came running down, shouting: “There’s nobody on the other side of town! There could be another group sneaking up behind us! Go back to your posts, quickly!” As they started to move off, he muttered to Jack: “There’s no discipline-no discipline at all!”

Jack stared out across the fields as the dust cloud got closer and the figures of the individual horsemen became visible. They were like fiends from hell, he thought, insanely intent on death and destruction. They existed because earls and kings felt the need of them. Philip may be a damned fool on matters of love and marriage, Jack thought, but at least he’s found a way to rule a community without the help of savages like these.

It was an odd moment for such reflections. Was this the kind of thing men thought about when they were about to die?

The horsemen came closer. There were more than the fifty Richard had forecast. Jack reckoned the number was nearer to a hundred. They headed for the place where the bridge had been; then they began to slow down. Jack’s spirits rose as they came to a ragged halt and reined in their horses in the meadow on the other side of the river. As they stared across the water at the brand-new town wall, somebody near Jack started to laugh. Someone else joined in, and then the laughter spread like wildfire, so that soon there were fifty, a hundred, two hundred men and women roaring with laughter at the embarrassed men-at-arms stuck on the wrong side of the river with no one to fight.

Several of the horsemen dismounted and went into a huddle. Peering through the faint morning haze, Jack thought he could see the yellow hair and red face of William Hamleigh at the center of the group, but he could not be sure.

After a while they got back on their horses, regrouped, and rode off. The people of Kingsbridge raised a mighty cheer. But Jack did not think William had given up yet. They were not going back the way they had come. Instead they were heading upstream alongside the river. Richard came to Jack’s side and said: “They’re looking for a ford. They’ll cross the river and sweep through the woods to come at us from the other side. Spread the word.”

Jack went swiftly around the wall, relaying Richard’s forecast. To the north and east, the wall was of earth or stone, but there was no river in the way. On that side the wall incorporated the east wall of the priory close, only a few steps from the refectory where Aliena and Tommy had taken refuge. Richard had stationed Oswald, the horse dealer, and Dick Richards, the son of the tanner, on the roof of the infirmary with their bows and arrows: they were the best shots in town. Jack went to the northeast corner and stood on the earth rampart, looking across the field to the woods from which William’s men would emerge.

The sun climbed in the sky. It was another hot, cloudless day. The monks came around the walls with bread and beer. Jack wondered how far upstream William would go. There was a place a mile away where a good horse could swim across, but it would look risky to a stranger, and William would probably go a couple of miles farther, when he would come to a shallow ford.

Jack wondered how Aliena was feeling. He wanted to go to the refectory and see her, but he was reluctant to leave the wall; for if he did it, others would want to, and the wall would be left undefended.

While he was resisting the temptation there was a shout, and the horsemen reappeared.

They came out of the woods to the east, so that Jack had the sun in his eyes when he looked at them: no doubt that was intentional. After a moment he realized they were not just approaching, they were charging. They must have reined in in the woods, out of sight, and spied out the ground, then planned this charge. Jack went taut with fear. They were not going to look at the wall and go away: they were going to try to breach it.

The horses galloped across the field. One or two townspeople shot arrows. Richard, standing near Jack, yelled angrily: “Too early! Too early! Wait until they’re in the ditch-then you can’t miss!” Few people heard him, and a light shower of wasted arrows fell on the green barley shoots in the field. As a military force we’re hopeless, Jack thought; only the wall can save us.

He had a stone in one hand and in the other he held a sling just like the one he had used as a boy to shoot ducks for his dinner. He wondered whether his aim was still good. He realized he was gripping his weapons as hard as he could, and he forced himself to relax his hold. Stones were effective against ducks, but they seemed appallingly feeble against the armored men on big horses who were thundering closer every second. He swallowed drily. Some of the enemy had bows and burning arrows, he saw; and a moment later he realized that the men with bows were heading for the stone walls, and the others for the earth ramparts. That meant William had decided he could not storm the stone wall: he did not realize the mortar was so new that the wall could be pulled down by hand. He had been fooled. Jack enjoyed a small moment of triumph.

Then the attackers were at the walls.

The townspeople shot wildly, and a hail of hasty arrows raked the horsemen. Despite their poor aim they could not fail to claim some victims. The horses reached the ditch. Some balked, and some charged down into the dip and up the other side. Immediately opposite Jack’s position, a huge man in battered chain mail jumped his horse across the ditch so that it landed on the lower slope of the rampart and kept coming up. Jack loaded his sling and let fly. His aim was as good as ever: the stone hit the horse full on the end of its nose. Already floundering in the loose earth, it whinnied in pain, reared up, and turned around. It cantered away, but its rider slid off and drew his sword.

Most of the horses had turned back, either of their own volition or because their riders had turned them; but several men were attacking on foot, and the others were turning again ready to make another charge. Glancing back over his shoulder, Jack saw that several thatched roofs were burning, despite the efforts of the firefighters-the younger women of the town-to put out the flames. The dreadful thought flashed through Jack’s mind that this was not going to work. Despite the heroic effort of the last thirty-six hours, these savage men would cross the wall, burn the town, and ravage the people.

The prospect of hand-to-hand fighting terrified him. He had never been taught to fight, never used a sword-not that he had one-and his only experience of fighting was when Alfred had beaten him up. He felt helpless.

The horsemen charged again and those of the attackers who had lost their mounts came up the ramparts on foot. Rocks and arrows rained on them. Jack worked his sling systematically, loading and firing, loading and firing like a machine. Several of the attackers fell under the rain of missiles. Right in front of Jack a rider took a fall and lost his helmet, revealing a head of yellow hair: it was William himself.

None of the horses made it to the top of the earth rampart, but some of the men on foot did, and, to Jack’s horror, the townsmen were forced to join combat with them, fighting off the swords and lances of the attackers with poles and axes. Some of the enemy made it over the top, and Jack saw three or four townsmen near him fall. His heart was full of horror: the townspeople were losing.

But eight or ten townsmen surrounded every attacker who got across the wall, pounding them with sticks and hacking mercilessly with axes, and although several townsmen were wounded all the attackers were killed rapidly. Then the townsmen began to drive the others back down the slope of the ramparts. The charge petered out. Those attackers still on horseback milled around uncertainly while a few loose skirmishes continued on the. ramparts. Jack rested for a moment, breathing hard, grateful for the reprieve, waiting with dread for the enemy’s next move.

William raised his sword in the air and yelled to attract the attention of his men. He waved his sword in a circle, to rally them, then pointed it at the walls. They regrouped and prepared to charge the walls once again.

Jack saw an opportunity.

He picked up a stone, loaded his sling, and took careful aim at William.

The stone flew through the air as straight as a mason’s line and hit William in the middle of the forehead, so hard that Jack heard the thud of rock on bone.

William fell to the ground.

His men hesitated uncertainly and the charge faltered.

A big dark man jumped from his horse and ran to William’s side. Jack thought he recognized William’s groom, Walter, who always rode with him. Still holding on to his reins, Walter knelt down by William’s prone body. For a moment Jack hoped William might be dead. Then William moved, and Walter helped him to his feet. William was looking dazed. Everyone on both sides of the battle was watching the two of them. For a moment the hail of stones and arrows stopped.

Still looking unsteady, William mounted Walter’s horse, assisted by Walter, who then climbed on behind him. There was a moment of hesitation as everyone wondered whether William would be able to carry on. Walter waved his sword in a circle in the rallying gesture; then, to Jack’s unspeakable relief, he pointed to the woods.

Walter kicked the horse and they charged off.

The other horsemen followed. Those who were still fighting on the ramparts gave up, backed off, and ran across the field after their leader. A few stones and arrows chased them over the barley.

The townspeople cheered.

Jack looked around him, feeling dazed. Was it all over? He could hardly believe it. The fires were going out-the women had succeeded in keeping them under control. Men were dancing on the ramparts, hugging one another. Richard came up to him and clapped him on the back. “It was the wall that did it, Jack,” he said. “Your wall.”

Townspeople and monks crowded around the two of them, all wanting to congratulate Jack and each other.

“Have they gone for good?” Jack said.

“Oh, yes,” Richard replied. “They won’t come back, now that they’ve discovered we’re determined to defend the walls. William knows that you can’t take a walled town if the people are resolved to resist you; not without a vast army and a six-month siege.”

“So it’s over,” Jack said stupidly.

Aliena came pushing through the crowd with Tommy in her arms. Jack embraced her gratefully. They were alive and they were together, and he was thankful.

He suddenly felt the effect of his two days without sleep, and he wanted to lie down. But it was not to be. Two young masons grabbed him and lifted him on to their shoulders. A cheer went up. They moved off, taking the crowd with them. Jack wanted to tell them that it was not he who had saved them, they had done it themselves; but he knew they would not listen, for they wanted a hero. As the news spread, and the whole town realized they had won, the cheering became thunderous. They’ve been living in fear of William for years, Jack thought, but today they’ve won their freedom. He was carried around the town in a triumphal procession, waving and smiling, and longing for the moment when he could lay his head down and close his eyes in blissful sleep.

III

The Shiring Fleece Fair was bigger and better than ever. The square in front of the parish church, where they held markets and executions as well as the annual fair, was crammed with stalls and people. Wool was the main commodity, but there were also displays of everything else that could be bought and sold in England: gleaming new swords, decoratively carved saddles, fat piglets, red boots, ginger cakes and straw hats. As William strolled around the square with Bishop Waleran, he calculated that the market was going to make more money for him than ever before. Yet it gave him no pleasure.

He was still sick with humiliation after his defeat at Kingsbridge. He had expected to charge in unopposed and burn the town, but in the event he had lost men and horses and had been turned back without achieving anything. Worst of all, he knew that the building of the wall had been organized by Jack Jackson, the lover of Aliena, the very man he had wanted to kill.

He had failed to kill Jack, but was still determined to take his revenge.

Waleran was also thinking about Kingsbridge, and he said: “I still don’t know how they built the wall so quickly.”

“It probably wasn’t much of a wall,” William said.

Waleran nodded. “But I’m sure Prior Philip is already busy improving it. If I were he, I’d make the wall stronger and higher, build a barbican, and appoint a night watchman. Your days of raiding Kingsbridge are over.”

William agreed, but he pretended not to. “I can still besiege the town.”

“That’s a different affair. A quick raid may be overlooked by the king. A prolonged siege, during which the townspeople can send a message to the king begging him to protect them… It can be awkward.”

“Stephen won’t move against me,” William said. “He needs me.” He was not arguing out of conviction, however. In the end he planned to concede the bishop’s point. But he wanted to make Waleran work hard for it, so that he would feel under a small obligation to William, Then William would make the request that was so heavily on his mind.

A thin, ugly woman stepped out, pushing in front of her a pretty girl of about thirteen years, presumably her daughter. The mother pulled aside the top of the girl’s flimsy dress to show her small, immature breasts. “Sixty pence,” the mother hissed. William felt a stirring in his loins, but he shook his head in refusal and brushed past.

The child-whore made him think of Aliena. She had been little more than a child when he had ravished her. That was almost a decade ago, but he could not forget her. Perhaps he would never have her for himself now; but he could still stop anyone else from having her.

Waleran was thoughtful. He hardly seemed to look where he was going, but people shrank back out of his way, as if they were afraid even to be touched by the skirts of his black robe. After a moment he said: “Did you hear that the king took Faringdon?”

“I was there.” It had been the most decisive victory of the entire long civil war. Stephen had captured hundreds of knights and a great armory, and driven Robert of Gloucester all the way back to the west country. So crucial was the victory that Ranulf of Chester, Stephen’s old enemy in the north, had laid down his arms and sworn allegiance to the king.

Waleran said: “Now that Stephen is more secure, he won’t be so tolerant of his barons waging their own private wars.”

“Perhaps,” William said. He wondered if this was the moment to agree with Waleran and make his request. He hesitated: he was embarrassed. In making the request he was going to reveal something of his soul, and he hated to do that to a man as ruthless as Bishop Waleran.

“You should leave Kingsbridge alone, at least for a while,” Waleran went on. “You’ve got the fleece fair. You still have a weekly market, albeit smaller than it once was. You have the wool business. And you’ve got all the most fertile land in the county, either directly under your control or farmed by your tenants. My situation is also better than it used to be. I’ve improved my property and rationalized my holdings. I’ve built my castle. It’s becoming less necessary to fight with Prior Philip-at the very moment when it’s becoming politically dangerous.”

All over the market square people were making and selling food, and the air was full of smells: spicy soup, new bread, sugar confections, boiled ham, frying bacon, apple pie. William felt nauseated. “Let’s go to the castle,” he said.

The two men left the market square and walked up the hill. The sheriff was going to give them dinner. At the castle gate William stopped.

“Perhaps you’re right about Kingsbridge,” he said.

“I’m glad you see it.”

“But I still want my revenge on Jack Jackson, and you can give it to me, if you will.”

Waleran raised an eloquent eyebrow. His expression said he was fascinated to listen but did not consider himself under any obligation.

William plowed on: “Aliena has applied to have her marriage annulled.”

“Yes, I know.”

“What do you think will be the outcome?”

“Apparently the marriage was never consummated.”

“Is that all there is to it?”

“Probably. According to Gratian-a learned man whom I have met myself, actually-what constitutes a marriage is the mutual consent of the two parties; but he also maintains that the act of physical union ‘completes’ or ‘perfects’ the marriage. He specifically says that if a man marries a woman but does not copulate with her, then marries a second woman with whom he does copulate, then it is the second of the two marriages that is valid, that is to say, the consummated one. The fascinating Aliena will no doubt have mentioned this in her application, if she had sound advice, which I imagine she got from Prior Philip.”

William was impatient of all this theory. “So they will get the annulment.”

“Unless someone brings up the argument against Gratian. In fact there are two: one theological and one practical. The theological argument is that Gratian’s definition denigrates the marriage of Joseph and Mary, since it was unconsummated. The practical argument is that for political reasons, or to amalgamate two properties, marriages are quite commonly arranged between two children who are physically incapable of consummation. If either bride or groom should die before puberty, the marriage would be invalidated, under Gratian’s definition, and that could have very awkward consequences.”

William could never follow these convoluted clerical wrangles, but he had a pretty good idea of how they were settled. “What you mean is, it could go either way.”

“Yes.”

“And which way it goes depends upon who is putting pressure on.”

“Yes. In this case, there’s nothing hanging on the outcome-no property, no question of allegiance, no military alliance. But if there were more at stake, and someone-an archdeacon, for example-were to put the argument against Gratian forcefully, they would probably refuse the annulment.” Waleran gave William a knowing look that made William want to squirm. “I think I can guess what you’re going to ask me next.”

“I want you to oppose the annulment.”

Waleran narrowed his eyes. “I can’t make out whether you love that wretched woman or hate her.”

“No,” William said. “Nor can I.”

Aliena sat on the grass, in the green gloom beneath the mighty beech tree. The waterfall cast droplets like tears onto the rocks at her feet. This was the glade where Jack had told her all those stories. This was where he had given her that first kiss, so casually and quickly that she had pretended that it had never happened. This was where she had fallen in love with him, and refused to admit it, even to herself. Now she wished with all her heart that she had given herself to him then, and married him and had his babies, so that now, whatever else intervened, she would be his wife.

She lay down to rest her aching back. It was the height of summer, and the air was hot and still. This pregnancy was so heavy, and she still had at least six weeks to go. She thought she might be carrying twins, except that she felt kicking in only one place, and when Martha, Jack’s stepsister, had listened with her ear right up against Aliena’s belly she had heard only one heartbeat.

Martha was looking after Tommy this Sunday afternoon, so that Aliena and Jack could meet in the woods and be alone for a while to talk about their future. The archbishop had refused the annulment, apparently because Bishop Waleran had objected. Philip said they could apply again, but they must live apart meanwhile. Philip agreed that it was unjust, but he said it must be God’s will. It seemed more like ill will to Aliena.

The bitterness of regret was a weight she carried around with her, like the pregnancy. Sometimes she was more aware of it, sometimes she almost forgot about it, but it was always there. Often it hurt, but it was a familiar pain. She regretted hurting Jack, she regretted what she had done to herself, she even regretted the sufferings of the contemptible Alfred, who now lived in Shiring and never showed his face in Kingsbridge. She had married Alfred for one reason only, to support Richard in his attempt to win the earldom. She had failed to achieve her purpose and her true love for Jack had been blighted. She was twenty-six years old, her life was ruined, and it was her own fault.

She thought nostalgically of those early days with Jack. When she first met him he had been just a little boy, albeit an unusual one. After he grew up she had continued to think of him as a boy. That was why he had got under her guard. She had turned away every suitor, but she had not thought of Jack as a suitor, and so she had let him get to know her. She wondered why she had been so resistant to love. She adored Jack and there was no pleasure in life like the joy of lying with him; yet once upon a time she had deliberately closed her eyes to such happiness.

When she looked back, her life before Jack seemed empty. She had been frantically busy, building up her wool business, but now those busy days appeared joyless, like an empty palace, or a table laden with silver plates and gold cups but no food.

She heard footsteps and sat up quickly. It was Jack. He was thin and graceful, like a scrawny cat. He sat beside her and kissed her mouth softly. He smelled of perspiration and stone dust. “It’s so hot,” he said. “Let’s bathe in the stream.”

The temptation was irresistible.

Jack pulled off his clothes. She watched, staring at him hungrily. She had not seen his naked body for months. He had a lot of red hair on his legs but none on his chest. He looked at her, waiting for her to strip. She felt shy: he had never seen her body when she was pregnant. She unlaced the neck of her linen dress slowly, then pulled it off over her head. She watched his expression anxiously, afraid he would hate her swollen body, but he showed no revulsion: on the contrary, the look that came over his face was one of fondness. I should have known better, she thought; I should have known he would love me just as much.

With a swift movement he knelt on the ground in front of her and kissed the taut skin of her distended belly. She gave an embarrassed laugh. He touched her navel. “Your belly button sticks out,” he said.

“I knew you were going to say that!”

“It used to be like a dimple-now it’s like a nipple.”

She felt shy. “Let’s bathe,” she said. She would feel less self-conscious in the water.

The pool by the waterfall was about three feet deep. Aliena slid into the water. It was deliciously cool on her hot skin, and she shivered with delight. Jack got in beside her. There was no room to swim-the pool was only a few feet across. He put his head under the waterfall and washed the stone dust out of his hair. Aliena felt good in the water: it relieved the weight of her pregnancy. She ducked her head under the surface to wash her hair.

When she came up for air, Jack kissed her.

She spluttered and laughed, breathless, rubbing the water out of her eyes. He kissed her again. She put out her arms to hold herself steady, and her hand closed on the hard rod standing upright between Jack’s loins like a flagpole. She gasped with pleasure.

“I’ve missed this,” Jack said in her ear, and his voice was hoarse with lust and some other emotion, sadness perhaps.

Aliena’s throat was dry with desire. She said: “Are we going to break our promise?”

“Now, and forevermore.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re not going to live apart. We’re leaving Kingsbridge.”

“But what will you do?”

“Go to a different town and build another cathedral.”

“But you won’t be master. It won’t be your design.”

“One day I may get another chance. I’m young.”

It was possible, but the odds were against it, Aliena knew; and Jack knew it too. The sacrifice he was making for her moved her to tears. Nobody had ever loved her like this; nobody else ever would. But she was not willing to let him give up everything. “I won’t do it,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not going to leave Kingsbridge.”

He was angry. “Why not? Anywhere else, we can live as man and wife, and nobody will care. We could even get married in a church.”

She touched his face. “I love you too much to take you away from Kingsbridge Cathedral.”

“That’s for me to decide.”

“Jack, I love you for offering. The fact that you’re ready to give up your life’s work to live with me is… it almost breaks my heart that you should love me so much. But I don’t want to be the woman who took you away from the work you loved. I’m not willing to go with you that way. It will cast a shadow over our entire lives. You may forgive me for it, but I never will.”

Jack looked sad. “I know better than to fight you once you’ve decided. But what will we do?”

“We’ll try again for the annulment. We’ll live apart.”

He looked miserable.

She finished: “And we’ll come here every Sunday and break our promise.”

He pressed up against her, and she could feel him becoming aroused again. “Every Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“You might get pregnant again.”

“We’ll take that chance. And I’m going to start manufacturing cloth, as I used to. I’ve bought Philip’s unsold wool again, and I’m going to organize the townspeople to spin and weave it. Then I’ll felt it in the fulling mill.”

“How did you pay Philip?” Jack said in surprise.

“I haven’t, yet. I’m going to pay him in bales of cloth, when it’s made.”

Jack nodded. He said bitterly: “He agreed to that because he wants you to stay here so that I’ll stay.”

Aliena nodded. “But he’ll still get cheap cloth out of it.”

“Damn Philip. He always gets what he wants.”

Aliena saw that she had won. She kissed him and said: “I love you.”

He kissed her back, running his hands all over her body, greedily feeling her secret places. Then he stopped and said: “But I want to be with you every night, not just on Sundays.”

She kissed his ear. “One day we will,” she breathed. “I promise you.”

He moved behind her, drifting in the water, and pulled her to him, so that his legs were underneath her. She parted her thighs and floated down gently into his lap. He stroked her full breasts with his hands and played with her swollen nipples. Finally he penetrated her, and she shuddered with pleasure.

They made love slowly and gently in the cool pond, with the rush of the waterfall in their ears. Jack put his arms around her bump, and his knowing hands touched her between her legs, pressing and stroking as he went in and out. They had never done this before, made love this way, so that he could caress her most sensitive places at the same time, and it was sharply different, a more intense pleasure, different the way a stabbing pain is different from a dull ache; but perhaps that was because she felt so sad. After a while she abandoned herself to the sensation. Its intensity built up so quickly that the climax took her by surprise, almost frightening her, and she was racked by spasms of pleasure so convulsive that she screamed.

He stayed inside her, hard, unsatisfied, while she caught her breath. He was still, no longer thrusting, but she realized he had not reached a climax. After a while she began to move again, encouragingly, but he did not respond. She turned her head and kissed him over her shoulder. The water on his face was warm. He was weeping.