The Pillars Of The Earth

I

AFTER SEVEN YEARS Jack had finished the transepts-the two arms of the cross-shaped church-and they were everything he had hoped for. He had improved on the ideas of Saint-Denis, making everything taller and narrower-windows, arches, and the vault itself. The clustered shafts of the piers rose gracefully through the gallery and became the ribs of the vault, curving over to meet in the middle of the ceiling, and the tall pointed windows flooded the interior with light. The moldings were fine and delicate, and the carved decoration was a riot of stone foliage.

And there were cracks in the clerestory.

He stood in the high clerestory passage, staring out across the chasm of the north transept, brooding on a bright spring morning. He was shocked and baffled. By all the wisdom of the masons the structure was strong; but a crack showed a weakness. His vault was higher than any other he had ever seen, but not by that much. He had not made the mistake of Alfred, and put a stone vault on a structure that was not built to take the weight: his walls had been designed for a stone vault. Yet cracks had appeared in his clerestory in roughly the same place where Alfred’s had failed. Alfred had miscalculated but Jack was sure he had not done the same thing. Some new factor was operating in Jack’s building and he did not know what it was.

It was not dangerous, not in the short term. The cracks had been filled with mortar and they had not yet reappeared. The building was safe. But it was weak; and for Jack the weakness spoiled it. He wanted his church to last until the Day of Judgment.

He left the clerestory and went down the turret staircase to the gallery, where he had made his tracing floor, in the corner where there was a good light from one of the windows in the north porch. He began to draw the plinth of a nave pier. He drew a diamond, then a square inside the diamond, then a circle inside the square. The main shafts of the pier would spring from the four points of the diamond and rise up the column, eventually branching off north, south, east and west to become arches or ribs. Subsidiary shafts, springing from the corners of the square, would rise to become vaulting ribs, going diagonally across the nave vault on one side and the aisle vault on the other. The circle in the middle represented the core of the pier.

All Jack’s designs were based on simple geometrical shapes and some not-so-simple proportions, such as the ratio of the square root of two to the square root of three. Jack had learned how to figure square roots in Toledo, but most masons could not calculate them, and instead used simple geometric constructions. They knew that if a circle was drawn around the four corners of a square, the diameter of the circle was bigger than the side of the square in the ratio of the square root of two to one. That ratio, root-two to one, was the most ancient of the masons’ formulas, for in a simple building it was the ratio of the outside width to the inside width, and therefore gave the thickness of the wall.

Jack’s task was much complicated by the religious significance of various numbers. Prior Philip was planning to re-dedicate the church to the Virgin Mary, because the Weeping Madonna worked more miracles than the tomb of Saint Adophus; and in consequence they wanted Jack to use the numbers nine and seven, which were Mary’s numbers. He had designed the nave with nine bays and the new chancel, to be built when all else was finished, with seven. The interlocked blind arcading in the side aisles would have seven arches per bay, and the west facade would have nine lancet windows. Jack had no opinion about the theological significance of numbers but he felt instinctively that if the same numbers were used fairly consistently it was bound to add to the harmony of the finished building.

Before he could finish his drawing of the plinth he was interrupted by the master roofer, who had hit a problem and wanted Jack to solve it.

Jack followed the man up the turret staircase, past the clerestory, and into the roof space. They walked across the rounded domes that were the top side of the ribbed vault. Above them, the roofers were unrolling great sheets of lead and nailing them to the rafters, starting at the bottom and working up so that the upper sheets would overlap the lower and keep the rain out.

Jack saw the problem immediately. He had put a decorative pinnacle at the end of a valley between two sloping roofs, but he had left the design to a master mason, and the mason had not made provision for rainwater from the roof to pass through or under the pinnacle. The mason would have to alter it. He told the master roofer to pass this instruction on to the mason, then he returned to his tracing floor.

He was astonished to find Alfred waiting for him there.

He had not spoken to Alfred for ten years. He had seen him at a distance, now and again, in Shiring or Winchester. Aliena had not so much as caught sight of him for nine years, even though they were still married, according to the Church. Martha went to visit him at his house in Shiring about once a year. She always brought back the same report: he was prospering, building houses for the burgers of Shiring; he lived alone; he was the same as ever.

But Alfred did not appear prosperous now. Jack thought he looked tired and defeated. Alfred had always been big and strong, but now he had a lean look: his face was thinner, and the hand with which he pushed the hair out of his eyes was bony where it had once been beefy.

He said: “Hello, Jack.”

His expression was aggressive but his tone of voice was ingratiating-an unattractive mixture.

“Hello, Alfred,” Jack said warily. “Last time I saw you, you were wearing a silk tunic and running to fat.”

“That was three years ago-before the first of the bad harvests.”

“So it was.” Three bad harvests in a row had caused a famine. Serfs had starved, many tenant farmers were destitute, and presumably the burghers of Shiring could no longer afford splendid new stone houses. Alfred was feeling the pinch. Jack said: “What brings you to Kingsbridge after all this time?”

“I heard about your transepts and came to look.” His tone was one of grudging admiration. “Where did you learn to build like this?”

“Paris,” Jack said shortly. He did not want to discuss that period of his life with Alfred, who had been the cause of his exile.

“Well.” Alfred looked awkward, then said with elaborate indifference: “I’d be willing to work here, just to pick up some of these new tricks.”

Jack was flabbergasted. Did Alfred really have the nerve to ask him for a job? Playing for time, he said: “What about your gang?”

“I’m on my own now,” Alfred said, still trying to be casual. “There wasn’t enough work for a gang.”

“We’re not hiring, anyway,” Jack said, equally casually. “We’ve got a full complement.”

“But you can always use a good mason, can’t you?”

Jack heard a faint pleading note and realized that Alfred was desperate. He decided to be honest. “After the life we’ve had, Alfred, I’m the last person you should come to for help.”

“You are the last,” Alfred said candidly. “I’ve tried everywhere. Nobody’s hiring. It’s the famine.”

Jack thought of all the times Alfred had mistreated him, tormented him, and beaten him. Alfred had driven him into the monastery and then had driven him away, from his home and family. He had no reason to help Alfred: indeed, he had cause to gloat over Alfred’s misfortune. He said: “I wouldn’t take you on even if I was needing men.”

“I thought you might,” Alfred said with bullheaded persistence. “After all, my father taught you everything you know. It’s because of him that you’re a master builder. Won’t you help me for his sake?”

For Tom. Suddenly Jack felt a twinge of conscience. In his own way, Tom had tried to be a good stepfather. He had not been gentle or understanding, but he had treated his own children much the same as Jack, and he had been patient and generous in passing on his knowledge and skills. He had also made Jack’s mother happy, most of the time. And after all, Jack thought, here I am, a successful and prosperous master builder, well on the way to achieving my ambition of building the most beautiful cathedral in the world, and there’s Alfred, poor and hungry and out of work. Isn’t that revenge enough?

No, it’s not, he thought.

Then he relented.

“All right,” he said. “For Tom’s sake, you’re hired.”

“Thank you,” Alfred said. His expression was unreadable. “Shall I start right away?”

Jack nodded. “We’re laying foundations in the nave. Just join in.”

Alfred held out his hand. Jack hesitated momentarily, then shook it. Alfred’s grip was as strong as ever.

Alfred disappeared. Jack stood staring down at his drawing of a nave plinth. It was life-size, so that when it was finished a master carpenter could make a wooden template directly from the drawing. The template would then be used by the masons to mark the stones for carving.

Had he made the right decision? He recalled that Alfred’s vault had collapsed. However, he would not use Alfred on difficult work such as vaulting or arches: straightforward walls and floors were his métier.

While Jack was still pondering, the noon bell rang for dinner. He put down his sharpened-wire drawing instrument and went down the turret staircase to ground level.”

The married masons went home to dinner and the single ones ate in the lodge. On some building sites dinner was provided, as a way of preventing afternoon lateness, absenteeism and drunkenness; but monks’ fare was often Spartan and most building workers preferred to provide their own. Jack was living in Tom Builder’s old house with Martha, his stepsister, who acted as his housekeeper. Martha also minded Tommy and Jack’s second child, a girl whom they had named Sally, while Aliena was busy. Martha usually made dinner for Jack and the children, and Aliena sometimes joined them.

He left the priory close and walked briskly home. On the way a thought struck him. Would Alfred expect to move back into the house with Martha? She was his natural sister, after all. Jack had not thought of that when he gave Alfred the job.

It was a foolish fear, he decided a moment later. The days when Alfred could bully him were long past. He was the master builder of Kingsbridge, and if he said Alfred could not move into the house, then Alfred would not move into the house.

He half expected to find Alfred at the kitchen table, and was relieved to find he was not. Aliena was watching the children eat, while Martha stirred a pot on the fire. The smell of lamb stew was mouth-watering.

He kissed Aliena’s forehead briefly. She was thirty-three years old now, but she looked as she had ten years ago: her hair was still a rich dark-brown mass of curls, and she had the same generous mouth and fine, dark eyes. Only when she was naked did she show the physical effects of time and childbirth: her marvelous deep breasts were lower, her hips were broader, and her belly had never reverted to its original taut flatness.

Jack looked affectionately at the two offspring of Aliena’s body: nine-year-old Tommy, a healthy red-haired boy, big for his age, shoveling lamb stew into his mouth as if he had not eaten for a week; and Sally, age seven, with dark curls like her mother’s, smiling happily and showing a gap between her front teeth just like the one Martha had had when Jack first saw her seventeen years ago. Tommy went to the school in the priory every morning to learn to read and write, but the monks would not take girls, so Aliena was teaching Sally.

Jack sat down, and Martha took the pot off the fire and set it on the table. Martha was a strange girl. She was past twenty years old, but she showed no interest in getting married. She had always been attached to Jack, and now she seemed perfectly content to be his housekeeper.

Jack presided over the oddest household in the county, without a doubt. He and Aliena were two of the leading citizens of the town: he the master builder at the cathedral and she the largest manufacturer of cloth outside Winchester. Everyone treated them as man and wife, yet they were forbidden to spend nights together, and they lived in separate houses, Aliena with her brother and Jack with his stepsister. Every Sunday afternoon, and on every holiday, they would disappear, and everyone knew what they were doing except, of course, Prior Philip. Meanwhile, Jack’s mother lived in a cave in the forest because she was supposed to be a witch.

Every now and again Jack got angry about not being allowed to marry Aliena. He would lie awake, listening to Martha snoring in the next room, and think: I’m twenty-eight years old-why am I sleeping alone? The next day he would be bad-tempered with Prior Philip, rejecting all the chapter’s suggestions and requests as impracticable or overexpensive, refusing to discuss alternatives or compromises, as if there were only one way to build a cathedral and that was Jack’s way. Then Philip would steer clear of him for a few days and let the storm blow over.

Aliena, too, was unhappy, and she took it out on Jack. She would become impatient and intolerant, criticizing everything he did, putting the children to bed as soon as he came in, saying she was not hungry when he ate. After a day or two of this mood she would burst into tears and say she was sorry, and they would be happy again, until the next time the strain became too much for her.

Jack ladled some stew into a bowl and began to eat. “Guess who came to the site this morning,” he said. “Alfred.”

Martha dropped an iron pot lid on the hearthstone with a loud clang. Jack looked at her and saw fear on her face. He turned to Aliena and saw that she had turned white.

Aliena said: “What’s he doing in Kingsbridge?”

“Looking for work. The famine has impoverished the merchants of Shiring, I guess, and they aren’t building stone houses like they used to. He’s dismissed his gang and he can’t find work.”

“I hope you threw him out on his tail,” Aliena said.

“He said I should give him a job for Tom’s sake,” Jack said nervously. He had not anticipated such a strong reaction from the two women. “After all, I owe everything to Tom.”

“Cow shit,” Aliena said, and Jack thought: she got that expression from my mother.

“Well, I hired him anyway,” he said.

“Jack!” Aliena screamed. “How could you? You can’t let him come back to Kingsbridge-that devil!”

Sally began to cry. Tommy stared wide-eyed at his mother. Jack said: “Alfred isn’t a devil. He’s hungry and penniless. I saved him, for the sake of his father’s memory.”

“You wouldn’t feel sorry for him if he’d forced you to sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed like a dog for nine months.”

“He’s done worse things to me-ask Martha.”

Martha said: “And to me.”

Jack said: “I just decided that seeing him like that was enough revenge for me.”

“Well it’s not enough for me!” Aliena stormed. “By Christ, you’re a damned fool, Jack Jackson. Sometimes I thank God I’m not married to you.”

That hurt. Jack looked away. He knew she did not mean it, but it was bad enough that she should say it, even in anger. He picked up his spoon and started to eat. It was hard to swallow.

Aliena patted Sally’s head and put a piece of carrot into her mouth. Sally stopped crying.

Jack looked at Tommy, who was still staring at Aliena with a frightened face. “Eat, Tommy,” said Jack. “It’s good.”

They finished their dinner in silence.

In the spring of the year that the transepts were finished, Prior Philip made a tour of the monastery’s property in the south. After three bad years he needed a good harvest, and he wanted to check what state the farms were in.

He took Jonathan with him. The priory orphan was now a tall, awkward, intelligent sixteen-year-old. Like Philip at that age, he did not seem to suffer a moment’s doubt about what he wanted to do with his life: he had completed his novitiate and taken his vows, and he was now Brother Jonathan. Also like Philip, he was interested in the material side of God’s service, and he worked as deputy to Cuthbert Whitehead, the aging cellarer. Philip was proud of the boy: he was devout, hardworking, and well liked.

Their escort was Richard, the brother of Aliena. Richard had at last found his niche in Kingsbridge. After they built the town wall, Philip had suggested to the parish guild that they appoint Richard as Head of the Watch, responsible for the town’s security. He organized the night watchmen and arranged for the maintenance and improvement of the town walls, and on market days and holy days he was empowered to arrest troublemakers and drunks. These tasks, which had become essential as the village had grown into a town, were all things a monk was not supposed to do; so the parish guild, which Philip had at first seen as a threat to his authority, had turned out to be useful after all. And Richard was happy. He was about thirty years old now, but the active life he led kept him looking young.

Philip wished Richard’s sister could be as settled. If ever a person had been failed by the Church it was Aliena. Jack was the man she loved and the father of her children, but the Church insisted that she was married to Alfred, even though she had never had carnal knowledge of him; and she was unable to get an annulment because of the ill will of the bishop. It was shameful, and Philip felt guilty, even though he was not responsible.

Toward the end of the trip, when they were riding home through the forest on a bright spring morning, young Jonathan said: “I wonder why God makes people starve.”

It was a question every young monk asked sooner or later, and there were lots of answers to it. Philip said: “Don’t blame this famine on God.”

“But God made the weather that caused the bad harvests.”

“The famine is not just due to bad harvests,” Philip said. “There are always bad harvests, every few years, but people don’t starve. What’s special about this crisis is that it comes after so many years of civil war.”

“Why does that make a difference?” Jonathan asked.

Richard, the soldier, answered him. “War is bad for farming,” he said. “Livestock get slaughtered to feed the armies, crops are burned to deny them to the enemy, and farms are neglected while knights go to war.”

Philip added: “And when the future is uncertain, people are not willing to invest time and energy clearing new ground, increasing herds, digging ditches and building barns.”

“We haven’t stopped doing that sort of work,” Jonathan said.

“Monasteries are different. But most ordinary farmers let their farms run down during the fighting, so that when the bad weather came they were not in good shape to ride it out. Monks take a longer view. But we have another problem. The price of wool has slumped because of the famine.”

“I don’t see the connection,” Jonathan said.

“I suppose it’s because starving people don’t buy clothes.” It was the first time in Philip’s memory that the price of wool had failed to go up annually. He had been forced to slow the pace of cathedral building, stop taking new novices, and eliminate wine and meat from the monks’ diet. “Unfortunately, it means that we’re economizing just when more and more destitute people are coming to Kingsbridge looking for work.”

Jonathan said: “And so they end up queuing at the priory gate for free horsebread and pottage.”

Philip nodded grimly. It broke his heart to see strong men reduced to begging for bread because they could find no work. “But remember, it’s caused by war, not bad weather,” he said.

With youthful passion Jonathan said: “I hope there’s a special place in hell for the earls and kings who cause such misery.”

“I hope so-Saints preserve us, what’s that?”

A strange figure had burst from the undergrowth and was running full-tilt at Philip. His clothes were ragged, his hair was wild, and his face was black with dirt. Philip thought the poor man must be running away from an enraged boar, or even an escaped bear.

Then the man ran up and threw himself on Philip.

Philip was so surprised that he fell off his horse.

His attacker fell on top of him. The man smelled like an animal, and sounded like one too: he made a constant inarticulate grunting noise. Philip wriggled and kicked. The man seemed to be trying to get hold of the leather satchel that Philip had slung over his shoulder. Philip realized the man was trying to rob him. There was nothing in the satchel but a book, The Song of Solomon. Philip struggled desperately to get free, not because he was specially attached to the book, but because the robber was so disgustingly dirty.

But Philip was tangled up in the strap of the satchel and the robber would not let go. They rolled over on the hard ground, Philip trying to get away and the robber trying to keep hold of the satchel. Philip was vaguely aware that his horse had bolted.

Suddenly the robber was jerked away by Richard. Philip rolled over and sat upright, but he did not get to his feet for a moment. He was dazed and winded. He breathed the clean air, relieved to be free of the robber’s noxious embrace. He felt his bruises. Nothing was broken. He turned his attention to the others.

Richard had the robber flat on the ground and was standing over him, with one foot between the man’s shoulder blades and the point of his sword touching the back of the man’s neck. Jonathan was holding the two remaining horses and looking bewildered.

Philip got gingerly to his feet, feeling weak. When I was Jonathan’s age, he thought, I could fall off a horse and jump right back on again.

Richard said: “If you keep an eye on this cockroach, I’ll catch your horse.” He offered Philip his sword.

“All right,” Philip said. He waved the sword away. “I shan’t need that.”

Richard hesitated, then sheathed his sword. The robber lay still. The legs sticking out from under his tunic were as thin as twigs, and the same color; and he was barefoot. Philip had never been in any serious danger: this poor man was too weak to strangle a chicken. Richard walked off after Philip’s horse.

The robber saw Richard go, and tensed. Philip knew the man was about to make a break for it. He stopped him by saying: “Would you like something to eat?”

The robber raised his head and looked at Philip as if he thought Philip was mad.

Philip went to Jonathan’s horse and opened a saddlebag. He took out a loaf, broke it, and offered half to the robber. The man grabbed it unbelievingly and immediately stuffed most of it into his mouth.

Philip sat on the ground and watched him. The man ate like an animal, trying to swallow as much as possible before the meal could be snatched from him. At first Philip had thought he was an old man, but now that he could see him better he realized that the thief was quite young, perhaps twenty-five.

Richard came back, leading Philip’s horse. He was indignant when he saw the robber sitting eating. “Why have you given him our food?” he said to Philip.

“Because he’s starving,” Philip said.

Richard did not reply, but his expression said that monks were mad.

When the robber had eaten the bread, Philip said: “What’s your name?”

The man looked wary. He hesitated. Philip somehow got the idea that the man had not spoken to another human being for a while. At last he said: “David.”

He still had his sanity, anyway, Philip thought. He said: “What happened to you, David?”

“I lost my farm after the last harvest.”

“Who was your landlord?”

“The earl of Shiring.”

William Hamleigh. Philip was not surprised.

Thousands of tenant farmers had been unable to pay their rents after three bad harvests. When Philip’s tenants defaulted he simply forgave the rent, since if he made people destitute they would just come to the priory for charity anyway. Other landlords, notably Earl William, took advantage of the crisis to evict tenants and repossess their farms. The result was a huge increase in the number of outlaws living in the forest and preying on travelers. That was why Philip had to take Richard everywhere with him as bodyguard.

“What about your family?” Philip asked the robber.

“My wife took the baby and went back to her mother. But there was no room for me.”

It was a familiar story. Philip said: “It’s a sin to lay hands on a monk, David, and it’s wrong to live by theft.”

“But how shall I live?” the man cried.

“If you’re going to stay in the forest you’d better catch birds and fish.”

“I don’t know how!”

“You’re a failure as a robber,” Philip said. “What chance of success did you have, with no weapon, up against three of us, and Richard here armed to the teeth?”

“I was desperate.”

“Well, next time you’re desperate, go to a monastery. There’s always something for a poor man to eat.” Philip got to his feet. The sour taste of hypocrisy was in his mouth. He knew the monasteries could not possibly feed all the outlaws. For most of them there really was no alternative but theft. But his role in life was to counsel virtuous living, not to make excuses for sin.

There was no more he could do for this wretched man. He took the reins of his horse from Richard and climbed into the saddle. He could tell that the bruises from his fall were going to hurt him for days. “Go thy way, and sin no more,” he said, quoting Jesus; then he kicked his horse forward.

“You’re too good, you are,” said Richard as they rode off.

Philip shook his head sadly. “The real trouble is, I’m not good enough.”

On the Sunday before Whitsun, William Hamleigh got married. It was his mother’s idea.

Mother had been nagging him for years to find a wife and father an heir, but he had always put it off. Women bored him and, in a way that he did not understand and really did not want to think about, they made him anxious. He kept telling Mother he would marry soon but he never did anything about it.

In the end she found him a bride.

Her name was Elizabeth. She was the daughter of Harold of Weymouth, a wealthy knight and a strong supporter of Stephen. As Mother explained to William, with a little effort he could have made a better match-could have married the daughter of an earl-but as he was not willing to put his mind to it, Elizabeth would do.

William had seen her at the king’s court in Winchester, and Mother had noticed him staring at her. She had a pretty face, a mass of light brown curls, a big bust and narrow hips-just William’s type.

She was fourteen years old.

When William stared at her, he had been imagining meeting her on a dark night and taking her by force in the back alleys of Winchester: marriage had not crossed his mind. However, Mother swiftly established that the father was agreeable, and the girl herself was an obedient child who would do what she was told. Having reassured William that there would be no repetition of the humiliation Aliena had inflicted on the family, Mother arranged a meeting.

William had been nervous. Last time he had done this, he had been an inexperienced youth of twenty, the son of a knight, meeting an arrogant young lady of the nobility. But now he was a battle-hardened man, thirty-seven years old, and he had been the earl of Shiring for ten years. He was foolish to be nervous about a meeting with a fourteen-year-old girl.

However, she was even more nervous. She was also desperate to please him. She talked excitably about her home and family, her horses and dogs, and her relations and friends. He sat silently, watching her face, imagining what she would look like naked.

Bishop Waleran married them in the chapel at Earlscastle, and there was a big feast that went on for the rest of the day. By custom, everyone of importance in the county had to be invited, and William would have lost face badly if he had not provided a lavish banquet. They roasted three whole oxen and dozens of sheep and pigs in the castle compound, and the guests drank the castle cellars dry of beer, cider and wine. William’s mother presided over the festivities with a look of triumph on her disfigured face. Bishop Waleran found vulgar celebrations somewhat distasteful, and he left when the bride’s uncle began to tell funny stories about newlyweds.

The bride and groom retired to their chamber at nightfall, leaving the guests to continue reveling. William had been at enough weddings to know the ideas that were passing through the minds of the younger guests, so he stationed Walter outside the room and barred the door to prevent interruption.

Elizabeth took off her tunic and her shoes and stood there in her linen shirt. “I don’t know what to do,” she said simply. “You’ll have to show me.”

This was not quite how William had imagined it. He went over to her. She lifted her face, and he kissed her soft lips. Somehow the kiss failed to generate any heat. He said: “Take off your shirt and lie on the bed.”

She pulled the undershirt over her head. She was quite plump. Her large breasts had tiny indented nipples. A light brown fuzz of hair covered the triangle between her legs. Obediently she walked to the bed and lay down on her back.

William kicked off his boots. He sat on the bed beside her and squeezed her breasts. Her skin was soft. This sweet, obliging, smiling girl was nothing like the image that had made his throat go dry, of a woman in the grip of passion, moaning and sweating beneath him, and he felt cheated.

He put his hand between her thighs and she parted her legs immediately. He pushed his finger inside her. She gasped, hurt; then quickly said: “It’s all right, I don’t mind.”

He wondered briefly whether he was going about this in completely the wrong way. He had a momentary vision of a different scene in which the two of them lay side by side, touching and talking and getting to know one another gradually. However, desire had at last stirred inside him when she gasped in pain, and he brushed his doubts aside and fingered her more roughly. He watched her face as she struggled to bear the pain silently.

He got on the bed and knelt between her legs. He was not fully aroused. He rubbed himself to make his organ stiffer, but it had little effect. It was her damned smile that was making him impotent, he was sure. He pushed two fingers inside her, and she gave a little cry of pain. That was better. Then the silly bitch started smiling again. He realized he would have to wipe the smile off her face. He slapped her hard. She cried out, and her lip bled. This was more like it.

He hit her again.

She started to cry.

After that it was all right.

The following Sunday happened to be Whitsunday, when a huge crowd would attend the cathedral. Bishop Waleran would take the service. There would be even more people than usual, because everyone was keen to look at the new transepts, which had recently been finished. Rumor said they were amazing. William would show his bride to the ordinary folk of the county at that service. He had not been to Kingsbridge since they built the wall, but Philip could not stop him from going to church.

Two days before Whitsunday, his mother died.

She was about sixty years old. It was quite sudden. She felt breathless after dinner on Friday and went to bed early. Her maid woke William a little before dawn to tell him that his mother was in distress. He got up from his bed and went stumbling into her room, rubbing his face. He found her gasping horribly for breath, unable to speak, a look of terror in her eyes.

William was frightened by her great shuddering gasps and her staring eyes. She kept looking at him, as if she expected him to do something. He was so scared he decided to leave the room, and he turned away; then he saw the maid standing at the door, and he felt ashamed of his fear. He forced himself to look at Mother again. Her face seemed to change shape continually in the inconstant light of the one candle. Her hoarse, ragged breathing got louder and louder until it seemed to fill his head. He could not understand why it had not woken the whole castle. He put his hands over his ears to shut out the noise but he could still hear it. It was as if she was shouting at him, the way she had when he was a boy, a mad furious scolding tirade, and her face looked angry too, the mouth wide, the eyes staring, the hair disarrayed. The conviction that she was demanding something grew, and he felt himself becoming younger and smaller, until he was possessed by a blind terror he had not felt since childhood, a terror that came from knowing that the only person he loved was a raging monster. It had always been like this: she would tell him to come to her, or go away, or get on his pony, or get off; and he would be slow to respond, so she would yell; and then he would be so frightened that he could not understand what she was asking him to do; and there would be a hysterical deadlock, with her screaming louder and louder and him becoming blind, deaf and dumb with terror.

But this time it was different.

This time, she died.

First her eyes closed. William began to feel calmer then. Gradually her breathing became shallower. Her face went grayish despite the boils. Even the candle seemed to burn more weakly, and the moving shadows no longer frightened William. At last her breathing just stopped.

“There,” William said, “she’s all right, now, isn’t she?”

The maid burst into tears.

He sat beside the bed looking at her still face. The maid fetched the priest, who said angrily: “Why didn’t you call me earlier?” William hardly heard him. He stayed with her until sunrise; then the women servants asked him to leave so they could “lay her out.” William went down to the hall where the inhabitants of the castle-knights, men-at-arms, clergymen and servants-were eating a subdued breakfast. He sat at the table beside his young wife and drank some wine. One or two of the knights and the household steward spoke to him, but he did not reply. Eventually Walter came in and sat beside him. Walter had been with him for many years and he knew when to be silent.

After a while William said: “Are the horses ready?”

Walter looked surprised. “For what?”

“For the journey to Kingsbridge. It takes two days-we have to leave this morning.”

“I didn’t think we would go-under the circumstances…”

For some reason this made William angry. “Did I say we wouldn’t go?”

“No, lord.”

“Then we’re going!”

“Yes, lord.” Walter stood up. “I’ll see to it at once.”

They set off at midmorning, William and Elizabeth and the usual entourage of knights and grooms. William felt as if he was in a dream. The landscape seemed to move past him, instead of the other way around. Elizabeth rode beside him, bruised and silent. When they stopped Walter took care of everything. At each meal William ate a little bread and drank several cups of wine. In the night he dozed fitfully.

They could see the cathedral from a distance, across the green fields, as they approached Kingsbridge. The old cathedral had been a squat, broad-shouldered building with small windows like beady eyes under round-arched eyebrows. The new church looked radically different, even though it was not finished yet. It was tall and slender, and the windows seemed impossibly big. As they came closer, William saw that it dwarfed the priory buildings around it in a way that the old cathedral never had.

The road was busy with riders and pedestrians all heading for Kingsbridge: the Whitsunday service was popular, for it took place in early summer when the weather was good and the roads were dry. This year more people than usual had come, attracted by the novelty of the new building.

William and his party cantered the last mile, scattering unwary pedestrians, and clattered onto the wooden drawbridge that crossed the river. Kingsbridge was now one of the most heavily fortified towns in England. It had a stout stone wall with a castellated parapet, and here, where previously the bridge had led straight into the main street, the way was barred by a stone-built barbican with enormously heavy ironbound doors that now stood open but were undoubtedly shut tight at night. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to burn this town again, William thought vaguely.

People stared as he rode up the main street toward the priory. People always stared at William, of course: he was the earl. Today they were also interested in the young bride who rode at his left. On his right was Walter, as always.

They rode into the priory close and dismounted at the stables. William left his horse to Walter and turned to look at the church. The eastern end, the top of the cross, was at the far side of the close and hidden from view. The western end, the tail of the cross, was not yet built, but its shape was marked out on the ground with stakes and string, and some of the foundations had already been laid. Between the two was the new part, the arms of the cross, consisting of the north and south transepts, with the space between them which was called the crossing. The windows were as big as they had seemed. William had never seen a building like this in his life.

“It’s fantastic,” Elizabeth said, breaking her submissive silence.

William wished he had left her behind.

Somewhat awestruck, he walked slowly up the nave, between the lines of stakes and string, with Elizabeth following. The first bay of the nave had been partly built, and looked as if it was supporting the huge pointed arch which formed the western entrance to the crossing. William passed under that incredible arch and found himself in the crowded crossing.

The new building looked unreal: it was too tall, too slender, too graceful and fragile to stand up. It seemed to have no walls, nothing to hold up the roof but a row of willowy piers reaching eloquently upward. Like everyone around him, William craned his neck to look up, and saw that the piers continued into the curved ceiling to meet at the crown of the vault, like the overarching branches of a stand of mature elms in the forest.

The service began. The altar had been set up at the near end of the chancel, with the monks behind it, so that the crossing and both transepts were free for the congregation, but even so the crowd overflowed into the unbuilt nave. William pushed his way to the front, as was his prerogative, and stood near the altar, with the other nobles of the county, who nodded to him and whispered among themselves.

The painted timber ceiling of the old chancel was awkwardly juxtaposed with the tall eastern arch of the crossing, and it was clear that the builder intended eventually to demolish the chancel and rebuild it to match the new work.

A moment after that thought had crossed William’s mind his eye fell on the builder in question, Jack Jackson. He was a handsome devil, with his mane of red hair, and he wore a dark red tunic, embroidered at the hem and neckline, just like a nobleman. He looked rather pleased with himself, no doubt because he had built the transepts so fast and everyone was so astonished by his design. He was holding the hand of a boy of about nine years who looked just like him. William realized with a shock that that must be Aliena’s child, and he felt a sharp pang of envy. A moment later he caught sight of Aliena herself. She was standing a little behind Jack and to one side, with a faint smile of pride on her face. William’s heart leaped: she was as lovely as ever. Elizabeth was a poor substitute, a pallid imitation of the real, red-blooded Aliena. In her arms Aliena held a little girl about seven years old, and William recalled that she had had a second child by Jack even though they were not married.

William looked more closely at Aliena. She was not quite as lovely as ever, after all: there were lines of strain around her eyes, and behind the proud smile was a hint of sadness. After all these years she still could not marry Jack, of course, William thought with satisfaction: Bishop Waleran had kept his promise and had repeatedly blocked the annulment. That thought often gave William consolation.

It was Waleran, William now realized, who was standing at the altar, lifting the Host above his head so that the entire congregation could see it. Hundreds of people went down on their knees. The bread became Christ at that moment, a transformation that struck awe into William even though he had no idea what was involved.

He concentrated on the service for a while, watching the mystical actions of the priests, listening to the meaningless Latin phrases and muttering familiar fragments of the responses. The dazed feeling that had been with him for the last day or so persisted, and the magical new church, with sunlight playing on its impossible columns, served to intensify the sense that he was in a dream.

The service was coming to an end. Bishop Waleran turned to address the congregation, “We will now pray for the soul of Countess Regan Hamleigh, the mother of Earl William of Shiring, who died on Friday night.”

There was a buzz of comment as people heard the news, but William was staring at the bishop in horror. He had realized at last what she had been trying to say while she died. She had been asking for the priest-but William had not sent for him. He had watched her weaken, he had seen her eyes close, he had heard her breathing stop, and he had let her die unshriven. How could he have done something like that? Ever since Friday night her soul had been in Hell, suffering the torments that she had described to him so graphically many times, with no prayers to relieve her! His heart was so laden with guilt that he seemed to feel it slow its pace and for a moment he felt that he, too, would die. How could he have let her languish in that dread place, her soul disfigured by sins as her face was with boils, while she longed for the peace of Heaven? “What am I going to do?” he said aloud, and the people around him looked at him in surprise.

When the prayer ended and the monks filed out in procession, William remained on his knees in front of the altar. The rest of the congregation drifted out into the sunshine, ignoring him; all except Walter, who stayed nearby, watching and waiting. William was praying with all his might, keeping a picture of his mother in his head while he repeated the Paternoster and all the other bits of prayers and services he could remember. After a while he realized there were other things he could do. He could light candles; he could pay priests and monks to say masses for her regularly; he could even have a special chapel built for the benefit of her soul. But everything he thought of seemed insufficient. It was as if he could see her, shaking her head, looking hurt and disappointed in him, saying: “How long will you let your mother suffer?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Bishop Waleran stood in front of him, still wearing the gorgeous red robe he used for Whitsun. His black eyes looked deep into William’s, and William felt as if he had no secrets from that penetrating gaze. Waleran said: “Why do you weep?”

William realized his face was wet with tears. He said: “Where is she?”

“She has gone to be purified by fire.”

“Is she in pain?”

“Terrible pain. But we can speed the souls of our loved ones as they pass through that dread place.”

“I’ll do anything!” William sobbed. “Just tell me what!”

Waleran’s eyes glittered with greed. “Build a church,” he said. “Just like this one. But in Shiring.”

A cold fury possessed Aliena whenever she traveled around the estates that had been part of her father’s earldom. All the blocked ditches and broken fences and empty, tumbledown cow sheds angered her; the meadows running to seed made her sad; and the deserted villages broke her heart. It was not just the bad harvests. The earldom could have fed its people, even this year, if it had been properly run. But William Hamleigh had no notion of husbanding his land. For him, the earldom was a private treasure chest, not an estate that fed thousands of people. When his serfs had no food, they starved. When his tenants could not pay their rents, he threw them out. Since William became earl the acreage under cultivation had shrunk, because the lands of some dispossessed tenants had returned to their natural state. And he did not have the brains to see that this was not even in his own interest in the long term.

The worst of it was, Aliena felt partly responsible. It was her father’s estate, and she and Richard had failed to win it back for the family. They had given up, when William became earl and Aliena lost all her money; but the failure still rankled, and she had not forgotten her vow to her father.

On the road from Winchester to Shiring, with a wagon-load of yarn and a brawny carter with a sword at his belt, she remembered riding along the very same road with her father. He had constantly brought new land into cultivation, by clearing areas of forest, draining marshland, or plowing hillsides. In bad years he always put aside enough seed to supply the needs of those who were too improvident, or just too hungry, to save their own. He never forced tenants to sell their beasts or their plows to pay rent, for he knew that if they did that, they would be unable to farm the following year. He had treated the land well, maintaining its capacity to produce, the way a good farmer would take care of a dairy cow.

Whenever she thought of those old days, with her clever, proud, rigid father beside her, she felt the pain of loss like a wound. Life had started to go wrong when he had been taken away. Everything she had done since then seemed, in retrospect, to have been hollow: living at the castle with Matthew, in a dreamworld; going to Winchester in the vain hope of seeing the king; even struggling to support Richard while he fought in the civil war. She had achieved what other people saw as success: she had become a prosperous wool merchant. But that had brought her only a semblance of happiness. She had found a way of life and a place in society that gave her security and stability, but in her heart she had still been hurt and lost-until Jack came into her life.

Her inability to marry Jack had blighted everything since. She had come to hate Prior Philip, whom she had once looked up to as her savior and mentor. She had not had a happy, amiable conversation with Philip for years. Of course, it was not his fault that they could not get an annulment; but it was he who had insisted they live apart, and Aliena could not help resenting him for that.

She loved her children, but she worried about them, being brought up in such an unnatural household, with a father who went away at bedtime. So far, happily, they showed no ill effects: Tommy was a strapping, good-looking boy who liked football, races and playing soldiers; and Sally was a sweet, thoughtful girl who told stories to her dolls and loved to watch Jack at his tracing floor. Their constant needs and their simple love were the one solidly normal element in Aliena’s eccentric life.

She still had her work, of course. She had been a merchant of some kind for most of her adult life. At present she had dozens of men and women in scattered villages spinning and weaving for her in their homes. A few years ago there had been hundreds, but she was feeling the effects of the famine like everyone else, and there was no point in making more cloth than she could sell. Even if she were married to Jack she would still want to have her own independent work.

Prior Philip kept saying the annulment could be granted any day, but Aliena and Jack had now been living this infuriating life for seven long years, eating together and bringing up their children and sleeping apart.

She felt Jack’s unhappiness more painfully than her own. She adored him. Nobody knew how much she loved him, except perhaps his mother, Ellen, who saw everything. She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly. She would have spent her entire life numb to the joys and pains of love, if he had not walked into her secret glade, and shared his story-poems with her, and kissed her so lightly, and then slowly, gently, awakened the love that lay dormant in her heart. He had been so patient, so tolerant, despite his youth. For that she would always love him.

As she passed through the forest she wondered whether she would run into Jack’s mother, Ellen. They saw her occasionally, at a fair in one of the towns; and about once a year she would sneak into Kingsbridge at dusk and spend the night with her grandchildren. Aliena felt an affinity for Ellen: they were both oddities, women who did not fit into the mold. However, she emerged from the forest without seeing Ellen.

As she traveled through farmland she checked the crops ripening in the fields. It would be a fair harvest, she estimated. They had not had a good summer, for there had been some rain and it had been cold. But they had not had the floods and crop diseases which had blighted the last three harvests. Aliena was thankful. There were thousands of people living right on the edge of starvation, and another bad winter would kill most of them.

She stopped to water her oxen at the pond in the middle of a village called Monksfield, which was part of the earl’s estate. It was a fairly large place, surrounded by some of the best land in the county, and it had its own priest and a stone church. However, only about half the fields round about had been sown this year. Those that had been were now covered with yellow wheat, and the rest were sprouting weeds.

Two other travelers had stopped at the pond in the middle of the village to water their horses. Aliena looked at them warily. Sometimes it was good to team up with other people, for mutual protection; but it could be risky, too, for a woman. Aliena found that a man such as her carter was perfectly willing to do what she told him when they were alone, but if other men were present he was liable to become insubordinate.

However, one of the two travelers at Monksfield pond was a woman. Aliena looked more closely and revised woman to girl. Aliena recognized her. She had last seen this girl in Kingsbridge Cathedral on Whitsunday. It was Countess Elizabeth, the wife of William Hamleigh.

She looked miserable and cowed. With her was a surly man-at-arms, obviously her bodyguard. That could have been my fate, Aliena thought, if I had married William. Thank God I rebelled.

The man-at-arms nodded curtly to the carter and ignored Aliena. She decided not to suggest teaming up.

While they were resting, the skies turned black and a sharp wind whipped up. “Summer storm,” said Aliena’s carter succinctly.

Aliena looked anxiously at the sky. She did not mind getting wet, but the storm would slow their progress, and they might find themselves out in the open at nightfall. A few drops of rain fell. They would have to take shelter, she decided reluctantly.

The young countess said to her guard: “We’d better stay here for a bit.”

“Can’t do that,” the guard said brusquely. “Master’s orders.”

Aliena was outraged to hear the man speak to the girl that way. “Don’t be such a fool!” she said. “You’re supposed to look after your mistress!”

The guard looked at her in surprise. “What’s it to you?” he said rudely.

“There’s going to be a cloudburst, idiot,” Aliena said in her most aristocratic voice. “You can’t ask a lady to travel in such weather. Your master will flog you for your stupidity.” Aliena turned to Countess Elizabeth. The girl was looking eagerly at Aliena, visibly pleased to see someone standing up to the bullying bodyguard. It started to rain in earnest. Aliena made a snap decision. “Come with me,” she said to Elizabeth.

Before the guard could do anything she had taken the girl by the hand and walked away. Countess Elizabeth went willingly, grinning like a child let out of school. Aliena had an inkling that the guard might come after them and snatch her away, but at that moment there was a lightning flash and the shower became a storm. Aliena broke into a run, pulling Elizabeth with her, and they raced through the graveyard to a wooden house that stood beside the church.

The door stood open. They ran inside. Aliena had assumed this was the priest’s house, and she was right. A grumpy-looking man in a black tunic, wearing a small cross on a chain around his neck, stood up as they entered. Aliena knew that the duty of hospitality was a burden to many parish priests, especially at present. Anticipating resistance, she said firmly: “My companions and I need shelter.”

“You’re welcome,” the priest said through gritted teeth.

It was a two-room house with a lean-to shed at the side for animals. It was not very clean, even though the animals were kept outside. There was a wine barrel on the table. A small dog yapped at them aggressively as they sat down.

Elizabeth pressed Aliena’s arm. “Thank you very much,” she said. There were tears of gratitude in her eyes. “Ranulf would have made me go on-he never listens to me.”

“It was nothing,” Aliena said. “These big strong men are all cowards at heart.” She studied Elizabeth, and realized with a sense of horror that the poor girl looked rather like her. It would be bad enough to be William’s wife; but to be his second choice must be hell on earth.

Elizabeth said: “I’m Elizabeth of Shiring. Who are you?”

“My name is Aliena. I’m from Kingsbridge.” Aliena held her breath, wondering whether Elizabeth would recognize the name and realize that Aliena was the woman who had rejected William Hamleigh.

But Elizabeth was too young to remember that scandal, and all she said was: “What an unusual name.”

A slovenly woman with a plain face and meaty bare arms came in from the back room, looking defiant, and offered them a cup of wine. Aliena guessed she was the priest’s wife. He would probably call her his housekeeper, since clerical marriage was banned, in theory. Priests’ wives caused no end of trouble. To force the man to put her away was cruel, and generally brought shame on the Church. And although most people would say in general that priests ought to be chaste, they usually took a permissive line in particular cases, because they knew the woman. So the Church still turned a blind eye to liaisons such as this. Aliena thought: Be grateful, woman-at least you’re living with your man.

The man-at-arms and the carter came in with their hair wet. The guard, Ranulf, stood in front of Elizabeth and said: “We can’t stop here.”

To Aliena’s surprise, Elizabeth crumbled immediately. “All right,” she said, and stood up.

“Sit down,” Aliena said, pulling her back. She stood in front of the guard and wagged her finger in his face. “If I hear another word from you I’ll call the villagers to come to the rescue of the countess of Shiring. They know how to treat their mistress even if you don’t.”

She saw Ranulf weighing the odds. If it came to the crunch, he could deal with Elizabeth and Aliena, and the carter and the priest too; but he would be in trouble if any of the villagers joined in.

Eventually he said: “Perhaps the countess would prefer to move on.” He looked at Elizabeth aggressively.

The girl looked terrified.

Aliena said: “Well, your ladyship-Ranulf humbly begs to know your will.”

Elizabeth looked at her.

“Just tell him what you want,” Aliena said encouragingly. “His duty is to do your bidding.”

Aliena’s attitude gave Elizabeth courage. She took a deep breath and said: “We’ll rest here. Go and see to the horses, Ranulf.”

He grunted acquiescence and went out.

Elizabeth watched him go with an expression of amazement.

The carter said: “It’s going to piss down.”

The priest frowned at his vulgarity. “I’m sure it will just be the usual rain,” he said in a prissy voice. Aliena could not help laughing, and Elizabeth joined in. Aliena had the feeling the girl did not laugh often.

The sound of the rain became a loud drumming. Aliena looked through the open door. The church was only a few yards away but already the rain had obscured it. This was going to be a real squall.

Aliena said to her carter: “Did you put the cart under cover?”

The man nodded. “With the beasts.”

“Good. I don’t want my yarn felted.”

Ranulf came back in, soaking wet.

There was a flash of lightning followed by a long rumble of thunder. “This will do the crops no good,” the priest said lugubriously.

He was right, Aliena thought. What they needed was three weeks of hot sunshine.

There was another flash and a longer crash of thunder, and a gust of wind shook the wooden house. Cold water dropped on Aliena’s head, and she looked up to see a drip coming from the thatched roof. She shifted her seat to get out of its way. The rain was blowing in at the door, too, but nobody seemed to want to close it: Aliena preferred to look at the storm, and it seemed the others felt the same.

She looked at Elizabeth. The girl was white-faced. Aliena put an arm around her. She was shivering, although it was not cold. Aliena hugged her.

“I’m frightened,” Elizabeth whispered.

“It’s only a storm,” Aliena said.

It became very dark outside. Aliena thought it must be getting near suppertime; then she realized she had not had dinner yet: it was only noon. She got up and went to the door. The sky was iron gray. She had never known such peculiar weather in summer. The wind was gusting strongly. A lightning flash illuminated numerous loose objects blowing past the doorway: a blanket, a small bush, a wooden bowl, an empty barrel.

She turned back inside, frowning, and sat down. She was getting mildly worried. The house shook again. The central pole that held up the ridge of the roof was vibrating. This was one of the better-built houses in the village, she reflected: if this was unsteady, some of the poorer places must be in danger of collapse. She looked at the priest. “If it gets any worse we may have to round up the villagers and all take shelter in the church,” she said.

“I’m not going out in that,” the priest said with a short laugh.

Aliena stared at him incredulously. “They’re your flock,” she said. “You’re their shepherd.”

The priest looked back at her insolently. “I answer to the bishop of Kingsbridge, not you, and I’m not going to play the fool just because you tell me to.”

Aliena said: “At least bring the plow team into shelter.” The most precious possession of a village such as this was the team of eight oxen that pulled the plow. Without those beasts the peasants could not cultivate their land. No individual peasant could afford to own a plow team-it was communal property. The priest would surely value the team, for his prosperity depended on it too.

The priest said: “We’ve no plow team.”

Aliena was mystified. “Why?”

“We had to sell four of them to pay rent; then we killed the others for meat in the winter.”

That explained the half-sown fields, Aliena thought. They had only been able to cultivate the lighter soils, using horses or manpower to pull the plow. The story angered her. It was foolish as well as hardhearted of William to make these people sell their plow team, for that meant they would have trouble paying their rent this year too, even though the weather had been fair. It made her want to take William by the neck and strangle him.

Another powerful gust shook the wood-framed house. Suddenly one side of the roof seemed to shift; then it lifted several inches, becoming detached from the wall, and through the gap Aliena saw black sky and forked lightning. She leaped to her feet as the gust subsided and the thatched roof crashed back down on its supports. This was now becoming dangerous. She stood up and yelled at the priest over the noise of the weather: “At least go and open the church door!”

He looked resentful but he complied. He took a key from a chest, put on a cloak, and went outside and disappeared into the rain. Aliena began to organize the others. “Carter, take my wagon and oxen into the church. Ranulf, you get the horses. Elizabeth, come with me.”

They put on their cloaks and went out. It was hard to walk in a straight line because of the wind, and they held hands for stability. They fought their way across the graveyard. The rain had turned to hail, and big pebbles of ice bounced off the tombstones. In a corner of the cemetery Aliena saw an apple tree as bare as in wintertime: its leaves and fruit had been ripped off the branches by the gale. There won’t be many apples in the county this autumn, she thought.

A moment later they reached the church and went inside. The sudden hush was like going deaf. The wind still howled and the rain drummed on the roof, and thunder crashed every few moments, but it was all at one remove. Some of the villagers were here already, their cloaks sodden. They had brought their valuables with them, their chickens in sacks, their pigs trussed, their cows on leads. It was dark in the church, but the scene was illuminated fitfully by lightning. After a few moments the carter drove Aliena’s wagon inside, and Ranulf followed with the horses.

Aliena said to the priest: “Let’s get the beasts to the west end and the people to the east, before the church starts to look like a stable.” Everyone now seemed to have accepted that Aliena was in charge, and he concurred with a nod. The two of them moved off, the priest talking to the men and Aliena to the women. Gradually the people separated from the animals. The women took the children to the little chancel and the men tied the animals to the columns of the nave. The horses were frightened, rolling their eyes and prancing. The cows all lay down. The villagers got into family groups and began to pass food and drink around. They had come prepared for a long stay.

The storm was so violent that Aliena thought it must pass soon, but instead it got worse. She went to a window. The windows were not made of glass, of course, but of fine translucent linen, which now hung in shreds from the window frames. Aliena pulled herself up to the windowsill to look out, but all she could see was rain.

The wind grew stronger, shrieking around the walls of the church, and she began to wonder whether even this was safe. She made a discreet tour of the building. She had spent enough time with Jack to know the difference between good masonry and bad, and she was relieved to see that the stonework here was neat and careful. There were no cracks. The building was made of cut stone blocks, not rubble, and it seemed as solid as a mountain.

The priest’s housekeeper lit a candle, and that was when Aliena realized night was falling outside. The day had been so dark that the difference was small. The children tired of running up and down the aisles, and curled up in their cloaks to go to sleep. The chickens put their heads under their wings. Elizabeth and Aliena sat side by side on the floor with their backs to the wall.

Aliena was consumed with curiosity about this poor girl who had taken on the role of William’s wife, the role Aliena herself had refused seventeen years ago. Unable to restrain herself, she said: “I used to know William when I was a girl. What’s he like now?”

“I loathe him,” Elizabeth said with passion.

Aliena felt deeply sorry for her.

Elizabeth said: “How did you know him?”

Aliena realized she had let herself in for this. “To tell you the truth, when I was more or less your age, I was supposed to marry him.”

“No! And how come you didn’t?”

“I refused, and my father backed me. But there was a dreadful fuss… I caused a lot of bloodshed. However, it’s all in the past.”

“You refused him!” Elizabeth was thrilled. “You’re so courageous. I wish I was like you.” Suddenly she looked downcast again. “But I can’t even stand up to the servants.”

“You could, you know,” Aliena said.

“But how? They just don’t take any notice of me, because I’m only fourteen.”

Aliena considered the question carefully, then answered comprehensively. “To begin with, you must become the carrier of your husband’s wishes. In the morning, ask him what he would like to eat today, whom he wants to see, which horse he would like to ride, anything you can think of. Then go to the kitchener, the steward of the hall, and the stableman, and give them the earl’s orders. Your husband will be grateful to you, and angry with anyone who ignores you. So people will get used to doing what you say. Then take note of who helps you eagerly and who reluctantly. Make sure that helpful people are favored-give them the jobs they like to do, and make sure the unhelpful ones get all the dirty work. Then people will start to realize that it pays to oblige the countess. They will also love you much more than William, who isn’t very lovable anyway. Eventually you will become a power in your own right. Most countesses are.”

“You make it sound easy,” Elizabeth said wistfully.

“No, it’s not easy, but if you’re patient, and don’t get discouraged too easily, you can do it.”

“I think I can,” she said determinedly. “I really think I can.”

Eventually they began to doze. Every now and again the wind would howl and wake Aliena. Looking around in the fitful candlelight she saw that most of the adults were doing the same, sitting upright, nodding off for a while, then waking up suddenly.

It must have been around midnight that she woke with a start and realized that she had slept for an hour or more this time. Almost everyone around her was fast asleep. She shifted her position, lying flat on the floor, and wrapped her cloak tightly around her. The storm was not letting up, but people’s need for sleep had overcome their anxiety. The sound of the rain blowing against the walls of the church was like waves crashing on a beach, and instead of keeping her awake it now lulled her to sleep.

Once again she woke with a start. She wondered what had disturbed her. She listened: silence. The storm had ended. A faint gray light seeped in through the windows. All the villagers were fast asleep.

Aliena got up. Her movement disturbed Elizabeth, who came awake instantly.

They both had the same thought. They went to the church door, opened it, and stepped outside.

The rain had stopped and the wind was no more than a breeze. The sun had not yet risen, but the dawn sky was pearl-gray. Aliena and Elizabeth looked around them in the clear, watery light.

The village was gone.

Other than the church there was not a single building left standing. The entire area had been flattened. A few heavy timbers had come to rest up against the side of the church, but otherwise only the hearthstones dotted around in the sea of mud showed where there had been houses. At the edges of what had been the village, there were five or six mature trees, oaks and chestnuts, still standing, although each of them appeared to have lost several boughs. There were no young trees left at all.

Stunned by the completeness of the devastation, Aliena and Elizabeth walked along what had been the street. The ground was littered with splintered wood and dead birds. They came to the first of the wheat fields. It looked as if a large herd of cattle had been penned there for the night. The ripening stalks of wheat had been flattened, broken, uprooted and washed away. The earth was churned up and waterlogged.

Aliena was horrified. “Oh, God,” she muttered. “What will the people eat?”

They struck out across the field. The damage was the same everywhere. They climbed a low hill and surveyed the surrounding countryside from the top. Every way they looked, they saw ruined crops, dead sheep, blasted trees, flooded meadows and flattened houses. The destruction was appalling, and it filled Aliena with a dreadful sense of tragedy. It looked, she thought, as if the hand of God had come down over England and struck the earth, destroying everything men had made except churches.

The devastation had shocked Elizabeth too. “It’s terrible,” she said. “I can’t believe it. There’s nothing left.”

Aliena nodded grimly. “Nothing,” she echoed. “There’ll be no harvest this year.”

“What will the people do?”

“I don’t know.” Feeling a mixture of compassion and fear, Aliena said: “It’s going to be a bloody winter.”

II

One morning four weeks after the great storm, Martha asked Jack for more money. Jack was surprised. He already gave her sixpence a week for housekeeping, and he knew that Aliena gave her the same. On that she had to feed four adults and two children, and supply two houses with firewood and rushes; but there were plenty of big families in Kingsbridge who only had sixpence a week for everything, food and clothing and rent too. He asked her why she needed more.

She looked embarrassed. “All the prices have gone up. The baker wants a penny for a four-pound loaf, and-”

“A penny! For a four-pounder?” Jack was outraged. “We should make an oven and bake our own.”

“Well, sometimes I do pan bread.”

“That’s right.” Jack realized they had had pan-baked bread two or three times during the last week or so.

Martha said: “But the price of flour has gone up too, so we don’t save much.”

“We should buy wheat and grind it ourselves.”

“It’s not allowed. We’re supposed to use the priory mill. Anyway, wheat is expensive also.”

“Of course.” Jack realized he was being silly. Bread was dear because flour was dear, and flour was dear because wheat was dear, and wheat was dear because the storm had wiped out the harvest, and there was no getting away from it. He saw that Martha looked troubled. She always got very upset if she thought he was displeased. He smiled to show her it was all right, and patted her shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he said.

“You sound so cross.”

“Not with you.” He felt guilty. Martha would rather cut off her hand than cheat him, he knew. He did not really understand why she was so devoted to him. If it was love, he thought, surely she would have got fed up by now, for she and the whole world knew that Aliena was the love of his life. He had once contemplated sending her away, to force her out of her rut: that way perhaps she would fall for a suitable man. But he knew in his heart that it would not work and would only make her desperately unhappy. So he let it be.

He reached inside his tunic for his purse, and took out three silver pennies. “You’d better have twelvepence a week, and see if you can manage on that,” he said. It seemed a lot. His pay was only twenty-four pennies a week, although he got perquisites as well, candles and robes and boots.

He swallowed the rest of a mug of beer and went out. It was unusually cold for early autumn. The weather was still strange. He walked briskly along the street and entered the priory close. It was still a little before sunrise and only a handful of craftsmen were here. He walked up the nave, looking at the foundations. They were almost complete, which was fortunate, as the mortar work would probably have to stop early this year because of the cold weather.

He looked up at the new transepts. His pleasure in his own creation was blighted by the cracks. They had reappeared on the day after the great storm. He was terribly disappointed. It had been a phenomenal tempest, of course, but his church was designed to survive a hundred such storms. He shook his head in perplexity, and climbed the turret stairs to the gallery. He wished he could talk to someone who had built a similar church, but nobody in England had, and even in France they had not yet gone this high.

On impulse, he did not go to his tracing floor, but continued up the staircase to the roof. The lead had all been laid, and he saw that the pinnacle that had been blocking the flow of rainwater now had a generous gutter running through its base. It was windy up on the roof, and he tried to keep hold of something whenever he was near the edge: he would not be the first builder to be blown off a roof to his death by a gust of wind. The wind always seemed stronger up here than it did on the ground. In fact, the wind seemed to increase disproportionately as you climbed…

He stood still, staring into space. That was the answer to his puzzle. It was not the weight of his vault that was causing the cracks-it was the height. He had built the church strong enough to bear the weight, he was sure; but he had not thought about the wind. These towering walls were constantly buffeted, and because they were so high, the wind was enough to crack them. Standing on the roof, feeling its force, he could just imagine the effect it was having on the tautly balanced structure below him. He knew the building so well that he could almost feel the strain, as if the walls were part of his body. The wind pushed sideways against the church, just as it was pushing against him; and because the church could not bend, it cracked.

He was quite sure he had found the explanation; but what was he going to do about it? He needed to strengthen the clerestory so that it could withstand the wind. But how? To build massive buttresses up against the walls would destroy the stunning effect of lightness and grace that he had achieved so successfully.

But if that was what it took to make the building stand up, he would have to do it.

He went down the stairs again. He felt no more cheerful, even though he had finally understood the problem; for it looked as if the solution would destroy his dream. Perhaps I was arrogant, he thought. I was so sure I could build the most beautiful cathedral in the world. Why did I imagine I could do better than anyone else? What made me think I was special? I should have copied another master’s design exactly, and been content.

Philip was waiting for him at the tracing floor. There was a worried frown on the prior’s brow, and the fringe of graying hair around his shaved head was untidy. He looked as if he had been up all night.

“We’ve got to reduce our expenditure,” he said without preamble. “We just haven’t got the money to carry on building at our present rate.” Jack had been afraid of this. The hurricane had destroyed the harvest throughout most of southern England: it was sure to have an effect on the priory’s finances. Talk of cutbacks always made him anxious. In his heart he was afraid that if building slowed down too much he might not live to see his cathedral completed. But he did not let his fear show. “Winter’s coming,” he said casually. “Work always slows down then anyway. And winter will be early this year.”

“Not early enough,” Philip said grimly. “I want to cut our outgoings in half, immediately.”

“In half!” It sounded impossible.

“The winter layoff begins today.”

This was worse than Jack had anticipated. The summer workers normally left around the beginning of December. They spent the winter months building wooden houses or making plows and carts, either for their families or to earn money. This year their families would not be pleased to see them. Jack said: “Do you know you’re sending them to homes where people are already starving?”

Philip just stared back at him angrily.

“Of course you know it,” Jack said. “Sorry I asked.”

Philip said forcefully: “If I don’t do this now, then one Saturday in midwinter the entire work force will stand in line for their pay and I will show them an empty chest.”

Jack shrugged helplessly. “There’s no arguing with that.”

“It’s not all,” Philip warned. “From now on there’s to be no hiring, even to replace people who leave.”

“We haven’t been hiring for months.”

“You hired Alfred.”

“That was different.” Jack was embarrassed. “Anyway, no hiring.”

“And no upgrading.”

Jack nodded. Every now and again an apprentice or a laborer asked to be upgraded to mason or stonecutter. If the other craftsmen judged that his skills were adequate, the request would be granted, and the priory would have to pay him higher wages. Jack said: “Upgrading is the prerogative of the masons’ lodge.”

“I’m not trying to alter that,” Philip said. “I’m asking the masons to postpone all promotions until the famine is over.”

“I’ll put it to them,” Jack said noncommittally. He had a feeling there could be trouble over that.

Philip pressed on. “From now on there’ll be no work on saint’s days.”

There were too many saint’s days. In principle, they were holidays, but whether workers were paid for the holiday was a matter for negotiation. At Kingsbridge the rule was that when two or more saint’s days fell in the same week, the first was a paid holiday and the second was an unpaid optional day off. Most people chose to work the second. Now, however, they would not have that option. The second saint’s day would be an obligatory unpaid holiday.

Jack was feeling uncomfortable about the prospect of explaining these changes to the lodge. He said: “All this would go down a lot better if I could present it to them as a matter for discussion, rather than as something already settled.”

Philip shook his head. “Then they’d think it was open to negotiation, and some of the proposals might be softened. They’d suggest working half the saint’s days, and allowing a limited number of upgrades.”

He was right, of course. “But isn’t that reasonable?” Jack said.

“Of course it’s reasonable,” Philip said irritably. “It’s just that there’s no room for adjustment. I’m already worried that these measures won’t be sufficient-I can’t make any concessions.”

“All right,” Jack said. Philip was clearly in no mood to compromise right now. “Is there anything else?” he said warily.

“Yes. Stop buying supplies. Run down your stocks of stone, iron and timber.”

“We get the timber free!” Jack protested.

“But we have to pay for it to be carted here.”

“True. All right.” Jack went to the window and looked down at the stones and tree trunks stacked in the priory close. It was a reflex action: he already knew how much he had in stock. “That’s not a problem,” he said after a moment. “With the reduced work force, we’ve got enough materials to last us until next summer.”

Philip sighed wearily. “There’s no guarantee we’ll be taking on summer workers next year,” he said. “It depends on the price of wool. You’d better warn them.”

Jack nodded. “It’s as bad as that, is it?”

“It’s worse than I’ve ever known it,” Philip said. “What this country needs is three years of good weather. And a new king.”

“Amen to that,” said Jack.

Philip returned to his house. Jack spent the morning wondering how to handle the changes. There were two ways to build a nave: bay by bay, beginning at the crossing and working west; or course by course, laying the base of the entire nave first and then working up. The second way was faster but required more masons. It was the method Jack had intended to use. Now he reconsidered. Building bay by bay was more suited to a reduced work force. It had another advantage, too: any modifications he introduced into his design to take account of wind resistance could be tested in one or two bays before being used throughout the building.

He also brooded over the long-term effect of the financial crisis. Work might slow down more and more, over the years. Gloomily he saw himself growing old and gray and feeble without achieving his life’s ambition, and eventually being buried in the priory graveyard in the shadow of a still unfinished cathedral.

When the noon bell rang he went to the masons’ lodge. The men were sitting down to their ale and cheese, and he noticed for the first time that many of them had no bread. He asked the masons who normally went home to dinner if they would stay for a moment. “The priory is running short of money,” he said.

“I’ve never known a monastery that didn’t, sooner or later,” said one of the older men.

Jack looked at him. He was called Edward Twonose because he had a wart on his face almost as big as his nose. He was a good stone carver, with a sharp eye for exact curves, and Jack always used him for shafts and drums. Jack said: “You’d have to admit that this place manages its money better than most. But Prior Philip can’t avert storms and bad harvests, and now he needs to reduce his expenditure. I’ll tell you about it before you have your dinners. First of all, we’re not taking in any more supplies of stone or timber.”

The craftsmen from the other lodges were drifting in to listen. One of the old carpenters, Peter, said: “The wood we’ve got won’t last the winter.”

“Yes, it will,” Jack said. “We’ll be building more slowly, because we’ll have fewer craftsmen. The winter layoff starts today.”

He knew immediately that he had handled the announcement wrongly. There were protests from all sides, several men speaking at once. I should have broken it to them gently, he thought. But he had no experience of this kind of thing. He had been master for seven years, but in that time there had been no financial crises.

The voice that emerged from the hubbub was that of Pierre Paris, one of the masons who had come from Saint-Denis. After six years in Kingsbridge his English was still imperfect, and his anger made his accent thicker, but he was not discouraged. “You cannot dismiss men on a Tuesday,” he said.

“That’s right,” said Jack Blacksmith. “You have to give them until the end of the week, at least.”

Jack’s stepbrother Alfred chimed in. “I remember when my father was building a house for the earl of Shiring, and Will Hamleigh came and dismissed the whole crew. My father told him he had to give everyone a week’s wages, and held his horse’s head until he handed over the money.”

Thank you for nothing, Alfred, thought Jack. He said doggedly: “You might as well hear the rest. From now on, there’s no work on saint’s days, and no promotions.”

That made them angrier. “Unacceptable,” someone said, and several of the others repeated it: “Unacceptable, unacceptable.”

Jack found that infuriating. “What are you talking about? If the priory hasn’t got the money, you’re not going to get paid. What’s the point of chanting ‘Unacceptable, unacceptable,’ like a class of schoolboys learning Latin?”

Edward Twonose spoke up again. “We’re not a class of schoolboys, we’re a lodge of masons,” he said. “The lodge has the right of promotion, and nobody can take it away.”

“And if there’s no money for the extra pay?” Jack said hotly.

One of the younger masons said: “I don’t believe that.”

It was Dan Bristol, one of the summer workers. He was not a skillful cutter but he could lay stones very accurately and fast. Jack said to him: “How can you say you don’t believe it? What do you know about the priory’s finances?”

“I know what I see,” Dan said. “Are the monks starving? No. Are there candles in the church? Yes. Is there wine in the stores? Yes. Does the prior go barefoot? No. There’s money. He just doesn’t want to give it to us.”

Several people agreed loudly. In fact, he was wrong about at least one item, and that was the wine; but no one would believe Jack now-he had become the representative of the priory. That was not fair: he was not responsible for Philip’s decisions. He said: “Look, I’m only telling you what the prior said to me. I don’t guarantee that it’s true. But if he tells us there’s not enough money, and we don’t believe him, what can we do?”

“We can all stop work,” said Dan. “Immediately.”

“That’s right,” said another voice.

This was getting out of control, Jack realized with a sense of panic. “Wait a moment,” he said. Desperately he searched for something to say that would bring down the temperature. “Let’s go back to work now, and this afternoon I’ll try to persuade Prior Philip to moderate his plans.”

“I don’t think we should work,” Dan said.

Jack could not believe this was happening. He had anticipated many threats to the building of his dream church, but he had not foreseen that the craftsmen would sabotage it. “Why shouldn’t we work?” he said incredulously. “What’s the point?”

Dan said: “As things stand, half of us aren’t even sure we’re going to get paid for the rest of the week.”

“Which is against all custom and practice,” said Pierre Paris. The phrase custom and practice was much used in court.

Jack said desperately: “At least work while I’m trying to talk Philip around.”

Edward Twonose said: “If we work, can you guarantee that everyone will be paid for the whole week?”

Jack knew he could offer no such guarantee, with Philip in his present mood. It crossed his mind to say yes anyway, and pay the money himself, if necessary; but he realized immediately that his entire savings would not be enough to cover a week’s wages here. So he said: “I’ll do my level best to persuade him, and I think he’ll agree.”

“Not good enough for me,” said Dan.

“Nor me,” said Pierre.

Dan said: “No guarantee, no work.”

To Jack’s dismay, there was general agreement.

He saw that if he continued to oppose them he would lose what little authority he had left. “The lodge must act as one man,” he said, quoting a much-used form of words. “Are we all in favor of a stoppage?”

There was a chorus of assent.

“So be it,” said Jack dismally. “I’ll tell the prior.”

Bishop Waleran rode into Shiring followed by a small army of attendants. Earl William was waiting for him in the porch of the church on the market square. William frowned in puzzlement: he had been expecting a site meeting, not a state visit. What was the devious bishop up to now?

With Waleran was a stranger on a chestnut gelding. The man was tall and rangy, with heavy black eyebrows and a large curved nose. He wore a scornful expression that seemed permanent. He rode beside Waleran, as if they were equals, but he was not wearing the clothes of a bishop.

When they dismounted, Waleran introduced the stranger. “Earl William, this is Peter of Wareham, who is an archdeacon in the service of the archbishop of Canterbury.”

No explanation of what Peter is doing here, William thought. Waleran is definitely up to something.

The archdeacon bowed and said: “Your bishop has told me of your generosity to Holy Mother Church, Lord William.”

Before William could reply, Waleran pointed to the parish church. “This building will be pulled down to make room for the new church, Archdeacon,” he said.

“Have you appointed a master mason yet?” Peter asked.

William wondered why an archdeacon from Canterbury was so interested in the parish church of Shiring. But perhaps he was just being polite.

“No, I haven’t found a master yet,” Waleran said. “There are plenty of builders looking for work, but I can’t get anyone from Paris. It seems the whole world wants to build churches like Saint-Denis, and the masons who know the style are in heavy demand.”

“It could be important,” said Peter.

“There’s a builder who may be able to help waiting to see us later.”

Once again William was a little puzzled. Why did Peter think it was important to build in the style of Saint-Denis?

Waleran said: “The new church will be much bigger, of course. It will protrude a good deal farther into the square here.”

William did not like the proprietorial air Waleran was assuming. Now he interjected: “I can’t have the church encroaching on the market square.”

Waleran looked irritated, as if William had spoken out of turn. “Whyever not?” he said.

“Every inch of the square makes money on market days.”

Waleran looked as if he was disposed to argue, but Peter said with a smile: “We mustn’t block the silver fountain!”

“That’s right,” William said. He was paying for this church. Happily, the fourth bad harvest had made little difference to his income. Smaller peasants paid rent in kind, and many of them had given William his sack of grain and brace of geese even though they were living on acorn soup. Furthermore, that sack of grain was worth ten times what it had fetched five years ago, and the increase in the price more than compensated for the tenants who had defaulted and the serfs who had starved to death. He still had the resources to finance the new building.

They walked around to the back of the church. Here was an area of housing that generated minimal income. William said: “We can build out at this end, and knock down all these houses.”

“But most of them are clerical residences,” Waleran objected.

“We’ll find other houses for the clergymen.”

Waleran looked dissatisfied, but said no more on that subject.

On the north side of the church a broad-shouldered man of about thirty years bowed to them. By his dress William judged him to be a craftsman. Archdeacon Baldwin, the bishop’s close colleague, said: “This is the man I told you about, my lord bishop. His name is Alfred of Kingsbridge.”

At first glance the man was not very prepossessing: he was rather ox-like, big and strong and dumb. But on closer examination there was a cunning look about his face, rather like a fox or a sly dog.

Archdeacon Baldwin said: “Alfred is the son of Tom Builder, the first master at Kingsbridge; and was himself master for a while, until he was usurped by his stepbrother.”

The son of Tom Builder. This was the man who had married Aliena, William realized. But he had never consummated the marriage. William looked at him with keen interest. He would never have guessed this man to be impotent. He appeared healthy and normal. But Aliena could have a strange effect on a man.

Archdeacon Peter was saying: “Have you worked in Paris, and learned the style of Saint-Denis?”

“No-”

“But we must have a church built in the new style.”

“At present I’m working at Kingsbridge, where my brother is master. He brought the new style back from Paris and I’ve learned it from him.”

William wondered how Bishop Waleran had managed to suborn Alfred without arousing suspicion; then he remembered that the Kingsbridge sub-prior, Remigius, was a tool of Waleran. Remigius must have made the initial approach.

He remembered something else about Kingsbridge. He said to Alfred: “But your roof fell down.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Alfred said. “Prior Philip insisted on a change of design.”

“I know Philip,” said Peter, and there was venom in his voice. “A stubborn, arrogant man.”

“How do you know him?” William asked.

“Many years ago I was a monk at the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest when Philip was in charge there,” Peter said bitterly. “I criticized his slack regime, and he made me almoner to get me out of the way.” Peter’s resentment still burned hot, it was clear. No doubt that was a factor in whatever Waleran was scheming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waleran said: “Yes?”

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

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

Suddenly his three listeners were riveted.

“Say that again,” said Waleran.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” Alfred said. “It will.”

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

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

“I know,” said Alfred. “I built it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack nodded. “He takes it personally.”

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

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

“What else could he do?” Jonathan retorted.

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

That pricked Jonathan’s curiosity. “How?”

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

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

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

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

On the following day he felt ready to confront Philip.

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

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

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

“On your terms.”

Philip just looked at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip nodded. “All right. What concessions?”

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

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

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

Philip looked interested.

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

“Will they accept that?” Philip said skeptically.

“It’s worth a try.”

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

“Cross that bridge when you get to it.”

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

Jack shrugged. “If necessary.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Those things are trimmings.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack shook it, and felt good.

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

“Yes, please.”

“I’ll do that now.” He turned to go.

Philip said: “Jack.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

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

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

Next morning he started the meeting before Prior Philip came to the lodge. He wanted to lay the groundwork. Once again he had prepared what he had to say very carefully, to be sure he did not damage his case by tactlessness. Once again he tried to handle things as Philip might have.

All he craftsmen were there early. Their livelihoods were at stake. One or two of the younger ones looked red-eyed: Jack guessed the alehouse had stayed open late last night, and some of them had forgotten their poverty for a while. The youngsters and the summer workers were most likely to prove difficult. The older craftsmen took a more long-term view. The small minority of women craftsmen were always cautious and conservative, and would back any kind of settlement.

“Prior Philip is going to ask us to go back to work, and offer us some kind of compromise,” Jack began. “Before he comes, we ought to discuss what we might be prepared to accept, what we will definitely reject, and where we might be willing to negotiate. We must show Philip a united front. I hope you all agree.”

There were a few nods.

He made himself sound slightly angry, and said: “In my view we should absolutely refuse to accept instant dismissal.” He banged his fist on the workbench to emphasize his inflexibility on this point. Several people voiced their agreement loudly. Jack knew this was one demand Philip was certainly not going to make. He wanted the hotheads to get themselves worked up to defend ancient custom and practice on this point, so that when Philip conceded it, the wind would be taken out of their sails.

“Also, we must guard the lodge’s right to make promotions, for only craftsmen can judge whether a man is skilled or not.” Once again he was being disingenuous. He was focusing their attention on the nonfinancial aspect of promotions, in the hope that when they won that point they would be ready to compromise on payments.

“As for working on saint’s days, I’m in two minds. Holidays are normally a matter for negotiation-there’s no standard custom and practice, as far as I know.” He turned to Edward Twonose and said: “What’s your view on that, Edward?”

“Practice varies from site to site,” Edward said. He was pleased to be consulted. Jack nodded, encouraging him to go on. Edward began to recall variant methods of dealing with saint’s days. The meeting was going just the way Jack wanted. An extended discussion of a point that was not very controversial would bore the men and sap their energy for confrontation.

However, Edward’s monologue was interrupted by a voice from the back which said: “This is all irrelevant.”

Jack looked over and saw that the speaker was Dan Bristol, a summer worker. Jack said: “One at a time, please. Let Edward have his say.”

Dan was not so easily deflected. “Never mind about all that,” he said. “What we want is a raise.”

“A raise?” Jack was irritated by this ludicrous remark.

To his surprise, however, Dan was supported. Pierre said: “That’s right, a raise. Look-a four-pound loaf costs a penny. A hen, which used to be eightpence, is now twenty-four! None of us here has had strong beer for weeks, I bet. Everything is going up, but most of us are still getting the wage we were hired at, which is a twelvepence a week. We’ve got families to feed on that.”

Jack’s heart was sinking. He had had everything moving along nicely, but this interruption had ruined his strategy. He restrained himself from opposing Dan and Pierre, however, for he knew he would have more influence if he appeared open-minded. “I agree with you both,” he said, to their evident surprise. “The question is, what chance have we got of persuading Philip to give us a raise at a time when the priory is running out of money?”

Nobody responded to that. Instead, Dan said: “We need twenty-four pence a week to stay alive, and even then we’ll be worse off than we used to be.”

Jack felt dismayed and bewildered: why was the meeting slipping out of his hands? Pierre said: “Twenty-four pence a week,” and several others nodded their heads.

It occurred to Jack that he might not be the only person who had come to the meeting with a prepared strategy. Giving Dan a hard look, he said: “Have you discussed this previously?”

“Yes, last night, in the alehouse,” Dan said defiantly. “Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Certainly not. But for the benefit of those of us who were not privileged to attend that meeting, would you like to summarize its conclusions?”

“All right.” The men who had not been at the alehouse were looking resentful, but Dan was unrepentant. Just as he opened his mouth, Prior Philip walked in. Jack threw a quick, searching look at Philip. The prior looked happy. He caught Jack’s eye and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Jack felt jubilant: the monks had accepted the compromise. He opened his mouth to prevent Dan from speaking, but he was an instant too late. “We want twenty-four pence a week for craftsmen,” Dan said loudly. “Twelvepence for laborers and forty-eight pence for master craftsmen.”

Jack looked again at Philip. The pleased look had gone, and his face had once again set in the hard, angry lines of confrontation. “Just a moment,” Jack said. “This is not the view of the lodge. It’s a foolish demand cooked up by a drunken faction in the alehouse.”

“No, it’s not,” said a new voice. It was Alfred. “I think you’ll find most of the craftsmen support the demand for double pay.”

Jack stared at him in fury. “A few months ago you begged me to give you a job,” he said. “Now you’re demanding double pay. I should have let you starve!”

Prior Philip said: “And that’s what will happen to all of you if you don’t see sense!”

Jack had wanted desperately to avoid such challenging remarks, but now he saw no alternative: his own strategy had collapsed.

Dan said: “We won’t go back to work for less than twenty-four pence, and that’s that.”

Prior Philip said angrily: “It’s out of the question. It’s a foolish dream. I’m not even going to discuss it.”

“We aren’t going to discuss anything else,” said Dan. “We won’t work for less, under any circumstances.”

Jack said: “This is stupid! How can you sit there and say you won’t work for less? You won’t work at all, you fool. You’ve got nowhere else to go!”

“Haven’t we?” said Dan.

The lodge went quiet.

Oh, God, Jack thought in despair; this is it-they’ve got an alternative.

“We have got somewhere else to go,” Dan said. He stood up. “And as for me, I’m going there now.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack said.

Dan looked triumphant. “I’ve been offered work on a new site, in Shiring. Building the new church. At twenty-four pence a week for craftsmen.”

Jack looked around. “Has anyone else been offered the same?”

The whole lodge looked shamefaced.

Dan said: “We all have.”

Jack was devastated. This whole thing had been organized. He had been betrayed. He felt foolish as well as wronged. He had completely misread the situation. Hurt turned to anger, and he cast about for someone to blame. “Which of you?” he yelled. “Which of you is the traitor?” He looked around at all of them. Few were able to meet his eye. Their shame gave him no consolation. He felt like a spurned lover. “Who brought you this offer from Shiring?” he shouted. “Who is to be the master builder at Shiring?” His eye raked the assembled company and came to rest on Alfred. Of course. He felt sick with disgust. “Alfred?” he said scornfully. “You’re leaving me to work for Alfred?”

There was silence. Finally Dan said: “Yes, we are.”

Jack saw that he had been defeated. “So be it,” he said bitterly. “You know me, and you know my brother; and you’ve chosen Alfred. You know Prior Philip, and you know Earl William; and you’ve chosen William. All I have left to say to you is that you deserve everything you’re going to get.”

I

“TELL ME A STORY,” Aliena said. You never tell me stories anymore. Remember how you used to?”

“I remember,” Jack said.

They were in their secret glade in the forest. It was late autumn, so instead of sitting in the shade by the stream they had built a fire in the shelter of a rocky outcrop. It was a gray, cold, dark afternoon, but lovemaking had warmed them and the fire crackled cheerfully. They were both naked under their cloaks.

Jack opened Aliena’s cloak and touched her breast. She thought her breasts were too big, and she was sad that they were not as high and firm as they had been before she had the children, but he seemed to love them just as much, which was a great relief. He said: “A story about a princess who lived at the top of a high castle.” He touched her nipple gently. “And a prince, who lived at the top of another high castle.” He touched her other breast. “Every day they gazed at one another from the windows of their prisons, and yearned to cross the valley between.” His hand rested in the cleft between her breasts, then suddenly moved down. “But every Sunday afternoon they met in the forest!” She squealed, startled, then laughed at herself.

These Sunday afternoons were the golden moments in a life that was rapidly falling apart.

The bad harvest and the slump in the wool price had brought economic devastation. Merchants were ruined, townspeople were unemployed and peasants were starving. Jack was still earning a wage, fortunately: with a handful of craftsmen he was slowly erecting the first bay of the nave. But Aliena had almost completely closed down her cloth manufacturing enterprise. And things were worse here than in the rest of southern England because of the way William was responding to the famine.

For Aliena this was the most painful aspect of the situation. William was greedy for cash to build his new church in Shiring, the church dedicated to the memory of his vicious, half-mad mother. He had evicted so many of his tenants for rent arrears that some of the best land in the county was now uncultivated, which made the shortage of grain worse. However, he had been stockpiling grain to drive the price up even farther. He had few employees and nobody to feed, so he actually profited from the famine in the short term. But in the long run he was doing irreparable damage to the estate and its ability to feed its people. Aliena remembered the earldom under her father’s rule, a rich county of fertile fields and prosperous towns, and it broke her heart.

For a few years she had almost forgotten about the vows she and her brother had made to their dying father. Since William Hamleigh had been made earl, and she had started a family, the idea of Richard winning back the earldom had come to seem a remote fantasy. Richard himself had settled down as Head of the Watch. He had even married a local girl, the daughter of a carpenter; although sadly the poor girl had turned out to have bad health, and had died last year without giving him any children.

Since the famine had started, Aliena had begun to think again about the earldom. She knew that if Richard was earl, with her help he could do a lot to alleviate the suffering caused by the famine. But it was all a dream: William was well favored by King Stephen, who had gained the upper hand in the civil war, and there was no prospect of a change.

However, all these sorry wishes faded away in the secret glade, when Aliena and Jack lay down on the turf to make love. Right from the start they had been greedy for one another’s bodies-Aliena would never forget how shocked She had been at her own lust, in the beginning-and even now, when she was thirty-three years old, and childbirth had broadened her rear and made her formerly flat belly sag, still Jack was so consumed with desire for her that they would make love three or four times over every Sunday.

Now his joke about the forest began to turn into a delicious caress, and Aliena pulled his face to hers to kiss him; then she heard a voice.

They both froze. Their glade was some distance from the road, and concealed in a thicket: they were never interrupted except by the occasional unwary deer or bold fox. They held their breaths and listened. The voice came again, and was followed by a different one. As they strained their hearing they picked up an undertone of rustling, as if a large group of men was moving through the forest.

Jack found his boots, which were lying on the ground. Moving silently, he stepped smartly to the stream a few paces away, filled a boot with water, and emptied it on the fire. The flames went out with a hiss and a wisp of smoke. Jack moved noiselessly into the undergrowth, crouching low, and disappeared.

Aliena put on her undershirt, tunic and boots, then wrapped her cloak around her again.

Jack returned as silently as he had left. “Outlaws,” he said.

“How many?” she whispered.

“A lot. I couldn’t see them all.”

“Where are they going?”

“Kingsbridge.” He held up a hand. “Listen.”

Aliena cocked her head. In the far distance she could hear the bell of Kingsbridge Priory tolling fast and incessantly, warning of danger. Her heart missed a beat. “Oh, Jack-the children!”

“We can get back ahead of the outlaws if we cross Muddy Bottom and wade the river by the chestnut wood.”

“Let’s go quickly, then!”

Jack put a restraining hand on her arm and listened for a moment. He could always hear things she could not, in the forest. It came of having been brought up in the wild. She waited. At last he said: “I think they’ve all gone by.”

They left the glade. After a few moments they came to the road. There was no one in sight. They crossed the road and cut through the woods, following a barely perceptible track. Aliena had left Tommy and Sally with Martha, playing nine-men’s morris in front of a cheerful fire. She was not quite sure what the danger was but she was terrified that something might happen before she reached her children. They ran when they could, but to Aliena’s frustration the ground was too rough for most of the way, and the best she could do was jog-trot, while Jack walked with a long-legged stride. This route was harder going than the road, which was why they did not normally use it, but it was much quicker.

They slithered down the steep slope that led to Muddy Bottom. Unwary strangers were occasionally killed in this bog, but there was no danger to those who knew their way across. Nevertheless the waterlogged mud seemed to grasp Aliena’s feet, slowing her down, keeping her from Tommy and Sally. At the far side of Muddy Bottom was a ford across the river. The cold water came up to Aliena’s knees and washed the mud from her feet.

From there the route was straightforward. The alarm bell sounded louder as they approached the town. Whatever danger the town faced from the outlaws, at least they had somehow been forewarned, Aliena thought, trying to keep her spirits up. As she and Jack emerged from the forest into the meadow across the river from Kingsbridge, twenty or thirty youngsters who had been playing football in a nearby village arrived at the same time, shouting raucously and perspiring despite the cold.

They hurried across the bridge. The gate was already closed, but the people on the battlements had seen and recognized them, and as they approached, a small sally port was opened. Jack pulled rank and made the boys let him and Aliena in first. They ducked their heads and went through the small doorway. Aliena was deeply relieved to have got back to the town before the outlaws.

Panting with their exertions, they hurried up the main street. The townspeople were taking to the walls with spears, bows, and piles of stones to throw. The children were being rounded up and taken to the priory. Martha would have gone there already with Tommy and Sally, Aliena decided. She and Jack went straight to the priory close.

In the kitchen courtyard Aliena saw-to her astonishment-Jack’s mother, Ellen, as lean and brown as ever, but with gray in her long hair and wrinkles around her forty-four-year-old eyes. She was talking animatedly to Richard. Prior Philip was some distance away, directing children into the chapter house. He did not seem to have seen Ellen.

Standing nearby was Martha with Tommy and Sally. Aliena gasped with relief and hugged the two children.

Jack said: “Mother! Why are you here?”

“I came to warn you that a gang of outlaws is on the way. They’re going to raid the town.”

“We saw them in the forest,” Jack said.

Richard’s ears pricked up. “You saw them? How many men?”

“I can’t be sure, but it sounded like a lot, at least a hundred, maybe more.”

“What sort of weapons?”

“Clubs. Knives. A hatchet or two. Mostly clubs.”

“What direction?”

“North of here.”

“Thanks! I’m going to take a look from the walls.”

Aliena said: “Martha, take the children into the chapter house.” She followed Richard, as did Jack and Ellen.

As they hurried through the streets, people kept saying to Richard: “What is it?”

“Outlaws,” he would say succinctly, without breaking his stride.

Richard was at his best like this, Aliena thought. Ask him to go out and earn his daily bread and he was helpless; but in a military emergency he was cool, level-headed and competent.

They reached the north wall of the city and climbed the ladder to the parapet. There were heaps of stones, for throwing down on attackers, placed at regular intervals. Townsmen with bows and arrows were already taking up positions on the battlements. Some time ago, Richard had persuaded the town guild to hold emergency drills once a year. There had been a lot of resistance to the idea at first, but it had become a ritual, like the midsummer play, and everyone enjoyed it. Now its real benefits were showing as the townspeople reacted quickly and confidently to the sound of the alarm.

Aliena looked fearfully across the fields to the forest. She could see nothing.

Richard said: “You must have got here well ahead of them.”

Aliena said: “Why are they coming here?”

Ellen said: “The priory storehouses. This is the only place for miles around where there’s any food.”

“Of course.” The outlaws were hungry people, dispossessed of their land by William, with no way to live but theft. In the undefended villages there was little or nothing to steal: the peasants were not much better off than the outlaws. Only in the barns of landowners was there food in quantity.

As she was thinking this, she saw them.

They emerged from the edge of the forest like rats from a burning hayrick. They swarmed across the field toward the town, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred of them, a small army. They had probably hoped to catch the town unawares and get in through the gates, but when they heard the bell ringing the alarm they realized they had been forestalled. Nevertheless they came on, with the desperation of the starving. One or two bowmen loosed off premature arrows, and Richard yelled: “Wait! Don’t waste your shafts!”

Last time Kingsbridge was attacked, Tommy had been eighteen months old and Aliena was pregnant with Sally. She had taken refuge in the priory then, with the elderly and the children. This time she would stay on the battlements and help to fight off the danger. Most of the other women felt the same way: there were almost as many women as men on the walls.

All the same, Aliena felt torn as the outlaws came closer. She was near the priory, but it was possible that the attackers could break through at some other point and reach the priory before she could get there. Or she might be injured in the fighting and unable to help the children. Jack was here, and so was Ellen: if they should be killed, only Martha would be left to take care of Tommy and Sally. Aliena hesitated, undecided.

The outlaws were almost at the walls. A shower of arrows fell on them, and this time Richard did not tell the archers to wait. The outlaws were decimated. They had no armor to protect them. There was also no organization. No one had planned the attack. They were like stampeding animals, rushing headlong at a blank wall. When they got there they did not know what to do. The townspeople bombarded them with stones from the battlements. Several outlaws attacked the north gate with clubs. Aliena knew the thickness of that ironbound oak door: it would take all night to break through. Meanwhile, Alf Butcher and Arthur Saddler were maneuvering a cauldron of boiling water from someone’s kitchen up onto the wall over the gate.

Directly below Aliena, a group of outlaws started to form a human pyramid. Jack and Richard immediately started to throw stones at them. Thinking of her children, Aliena did the same, and Ellen joined in too. The desperate outlaws withstood the hail of rocks for a while, then someone was hit on the head, the pyramid collapsed, and they gave up.

There were screams of pain from the north gate a moment later, as the boiling water poured on the heads of the men attacking the door.

Then some of the outlaws realized that their dead and wounded comrades were easy prey, and they started to strip the bodies. Fights broke out with those who were not so badly wounded, and rival looters quarreled over the possessions of the dead. It was a shambles, Aliena thought; a disgusting, degrading shambles. The townspeople stopped throwing stones as the attack petered out and the attackers fought among themselves like dogs over a bone.

Aliena turned to Richard. “They’re too disorganized to be a real threat,” she said.

He nodded. “With a little help they could be quite dangerous, because they’re desperate. But as it is they’ve no leadership.”

Aliena was struck by a thought. “An army waiting for a leader,” she said. Richard did not react, but she was excited by the idea. Richard was a good leader who had no army. The outlaws were an army without a leader. And the earldom was falling apart…

Some of the townspeople continued to throw stones and shoot arrows at the outlaws, and more of the scavengers fell. This was the final discouragement, and they began to retreat, like a pack of dogs with their tails between their legs, looking back over their shoulders regretfully. Then someone opened the north gate, and a crowd of young men charged out, brandishing swords and axes, and went after the stragglers. The outlaws fled, but some were caught and butchered.

Ellen turned away in disgust and said to Richard: “You should have stopped those boys from giving chase.”

“Young men need to see some blood, after a set-to such as this,” he said. “Besides, the more we kill this time, the fewer we’ll have to fight next time.”

It was a soldier’s philosophy, Aliena thought. In the time when she had felt her life threatened every day she would probably have been like the young men, and chased after outlaws to slaughter them. Now she wanted to wipe out the causes of outlawry, not the outlaws themselves. Besides, she had thought of a way to use those outlaws.

Richard told someone to sound the all-clear on the priory bell and gave instructions for a double watch for the night, with patrolling guards as well as sentries. Aliena went to the priory and collected Martha and the children. They all met again at Jack’s house.

It pleased Aliena that they were all together: she and Jack and their children, and Jack’s mother, and Aliena’s brother, and Martha. It was quite like an ordinary family, and Aliena could almost forget that her father had died in a dungeon, and she was legally married to Jack’s stepbrother, and Ellen was an outlaw, and-

She shook her head. It was no use pretending this was a normal family.

Jack drew a jug of ale from the barrel and poured it into large cups. Everyone felt tense and excited after the danger. Ellen built up the fire and Martha sliced turnips into a pot, beginning to make a broth for supper. Once upon a time they would have put half a pig on the fire on a day such as this.

Richard drank his ale in one long swallow, wiped his mouth, and said: “We’re going to see more of this kind of thing before the winter’s out.”

Jack said: “They should attack Earl William’s storehouses, not Prior Philip’s. It’s William who has made most of these people destitute.”

“They won’t have any more success against William than they did against us, unless they improve their tactics. They’re like a pack of dogs.”

Aliena said: “They need a leader.”

Jack said: “Pray they never get one! They would really be dangerous then.”

Aliena said: “A leader might direct them to attack William’s property instead of ours.”

“I don’t follow you,” Jack said. “Would a leader do that?”

“He would if he was Richard.”

They all went quiet.

The idea had grown in Aliena’s mind, and she was now convinced it could work. They could fulfill their vows, Richard could destroy William and become the earl, and the county could be restored to peace and prosperity… The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. She said: “There were more than a hundred men in that rabble today.” She turned to Ellen. “How many more are there in the forest?”

“Countless,” Ellen said. “Hundreds. Thousands.”

Aliena leaned across the kitchen table and locked eyes with Richard. “Be their leader,” she said forcefully. “Organize them. Teach them how to fight. Devise plans of attack. Then send them into action-against William.”

As she spoke, she realized that she was telling him to put his life in danger, and she was filled with trepidation. Instead of winning back the earldom he could be killed.

But he had no such qualms. “By God, Allie, you could be right,” he said. “I could have an army of my own, and lead it against William.”

Aliena saw in his face the flush of a hatred long nurtured, and she noticed again the scar on his left ear, where the lobe had been sliced off. She pushed down the vile memory that threatened to surface.

Richard was warming to his theme. “I could raid William’s herds,” he said with relish. “Steal his sheep, poach his deer, break open his barns, rob his mills. My God, I could make that vermin suffer, if I had an army.”

He had always been a soldier, Aliena thought; it was his fate. Despite her fear for his safety, she was thrilled by the prospect that he might have another chance to fulfill his destiny.

He thought of a snag. “But how can I find the outlaws?” he said. “They always hide”

“I can answer that,” said Ellen. “Branching off the Winchester road is an overgrown track that leads to a disused quarry. That’s their hideout. It used to be known as Sally’s Quarry.”

Seven-year-old Sally said: “But I haven’t got a quarry!”

Everyone laughed.

Then they went quiet again.

Richard looked exuberant and determined. “Very well,” he said tightly. “Sally’s Quarry.”

“We’d been working hard all morning, uprooting a massive tree stump up the hill,” said Philip. “When we came back, my brother, Francis, was standing right there, in the goat pen, holding you in his arms. You were a day old.”

Jonathan looked grave. This was a solemn moment for him.

Philip surveyed the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest. There was not much forest in sight now: over the years the monks had cleared many acres, and the monastery was surrounded by fields. There were more stone buildings-a chapter house, a refectory and a dormitory-plus a host of smaller wooden barns and dairies. It hardly looked like the place he had left seventeen years ago. The people were different, too. Several of those young monks now occupied positions of responsibility at Kingsbridge. William Beauvis, who had caused trouble by flicking hot candle wax at the novice-master’s bald head all those years ago, was now prior here. Some had gone: that troublemaker Peter of Wareham was in Canterbury, working for an ambitious young archdeacon called Thomas Becket.

“I wonder what they were like,” said Jonathan. “I mean my parents.”

Philip felt a twinge of pain for him. Philip himself had lost his parents, but not until he was six years old, and he could remember them both quite well: his mother calm and loving, his father tall and black-bearded and-to Philip, anyway-brave and strong. Jonathan did not even have that. All he knew about his parents was that they had not wanted him.

“We can guess a lot about them,” Philip said.

“Really?” Jonathan said eagerly. “What?”

“They were poor,” Philip said. “Wealthy people have no reason to abandon their children. They were friendless: friends know when you’re expecting a baby, and ask questions if a child disappears. They were desperate. Only desperate people can bear to lose a child.”

Jonathan’s face was taut with unshed tears. Philip wanted to weep for him, this boy who-everyone said-was so much like Philip himself. Philip wished he could give him some consolation, tell him something warm and heartening about his parents; but how could he pretend that they had loved the boy, when they had left him to die?

Jonathan said: “But why does God do such things?”

Philip saw his opportunity. “Once you start asking that question, you can end up in confusion. But in this case I think the answer is clear. God wanted you for himself.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Have I never told you that before? I’ve always believed it. I said so to the monks here, on the day you were found. I told them that God had sent you here for a purpose of his own, and it was our duty to raise you in God’s service so that you would be fit to perform the task he has assigned you.”

“I wonder if my mother knows that.”

“If she’s with the angels, she does.”

“What do you think my task might be?”

“God needs monks to be writers, illuminators, musicians, and farmers. He needs men to take on the demanding jobs, such as cellarer, prior and bishop. He needs men who can trade in wool, heal the sick, educate the schoolboys and build churches.”

“It’s hard to imagine that he has a role cut out for me.”

“I can’t think he would have gone to this much trouble with you if he didn’t,” Philip said with a smile. “However, it might not be a grand or prominent role in worldly terms. He might want you to become one of the quiet monks, a humble man who devotes his life to prayer and contemplation.”

Jonathan’s face fell. “I suppose he might.”

Philip laughed. “But I don’t think so. God wouldn’t make a knife out of wood, or a lady’s chemise of shoe leather. You aren’t the right material for a life of quietude, and God knows it. My guess is that he wants you to fight for him, not sing to him.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“But right now I think he wants you to go and see Brother Leo and find out how many cheeses he has for the cellar at Kingsbridge.”

“Right.”

“I’m going to talk to my brother in the chapter house. And remember-if any of the monks speak to you about Francis, say as little as you can.”

“I shall say nothing.”

“Off you go.”

Jonathan walked quickly across the yard. His solemn mood had left him already, and his natural exuberance had returned before he reached the dairy. Philip watched him until he disappeared into the building. I was just like that, except perhaps not so clever, he thought.

He went the opposite way, to the chapter house. Francis had sent a message asking Philip to meet him here discreetly. As far as the Kingsbridge monks were concerned, Philip was making a routine visit to a cell. The meeting could not be kept from the monks here, of course, but they were so isolated they had nobody to tell. Only the prior of the cell ever came to Kingsbridge, and Philip had sworn him to secrecy.

He and Francis had arrived this morning, and although they could not plausibly claim that the meeting was an accident, they were maintaining a pretense that they had organized it only for the pleasure of seeing one another. They had both attended high mass, then taken dinner with the monks. Now was their first chance to talk alone.

Francis was waiting in the chapter house, sitting on a stone bench against the wall. Philip almost never saw his own reflection-there were no looking-glasses in a monastery-so he measured his own aging by the changes in his brother, who was only two years younger. Francis at forty-two had a few threads of silver in his black hair, and a crop of stress lines around his bright blue eyes. He was much heavier around the neck and waist than last time Philip had seen him. I’ve probably got more gray hair and less surplus fat, Philip thought; but I wonder which of us has more worry lines?

He sat down beside Francis and looked across the empty octagonal room. Francis said: “How are things?”

“The savages are in control again,” Philip said. “The priory is running out of money, we’ve almost stopped building the cathedral, Kingsbridge is on the decline, half the county is starving and it’s not safe to travel.”

Francis nodded. “It’s the same story all over England.”

“Perhaps the savages will always be in control,” Philip said gloomily. “Perhaps greed will always outweigh wisdom in the councils of the mighty; perhaps fear will always overcome compassion in the mind of a man with a sword in his hand.”

“You’re not usually so pessimistic.”

“We were attacked by outlaws a few weeks ago. It was a pitiable effort: no sooner had the townsmen killed a few than the outlaws started fighting among themselves. But when they retreated, the young men of our town chased after the poor wretches and slaughtered all they could catch. It was sickening.”

Francis shook his head. “It’s hard to understand.”

“I think I do understand it. They’d been frightened, and could only exorcise their fear by shedding the blood of the people who had scared them. I saw that in the eyes of the men who killed our mother and father. They killed because they were scared. But what can take away their fear?”

Francis sighed. “Peace, justice, prosperity… Hard things to achieve.”

Philip nodded. “Well. What are you up to?”

“I’m working for the son of the Empress Maud. His name is Henry.”

Philip had heard talk of this Henry. “What’s he like?”

“He’s a very clever and determined young man. His father is dead, so he’s count of Anjou. He’s also duke of Normandy, because he’s the eldest grandson of old Henry, who used to be king of England and duke of Normandy. And he’s married Eleanor of Aquitaine, so now he’s duke of Aquitaine as well.”

“He rules over more territory than the king of France.”

“Exactly.”

“But what’s he like?”

“Educated, hardworking, fast-moving, restless, strong-willed. He has a fearsome temper.”

“I sometimes wish I had a fearsome temper,” Philip said. “It keeps people on their toes. But everyone knows I’m always reasonable, so I’m never obeyed with quite the same alacrity as a prior who might explode at any minute.”

Francis laughed. “Stay just the way you are,” he said. He became serious again. “Henry has made me realize the importance of the king’s personality. Look at Stephen: his judgment is poor; he’s determined in short bursts, then he gives up; he’s courageous to the point of foolishness and he pardons his enemies all the time. People who betray him risk very little: they know they can count on his mercy. Consequently, he’s struggled unsuccessfully for eighteen years to rule a land that was a united kingdom when he took it over. Henry already has more control over his collection of previously independent duchies and counties than Stephen has ever had here.”

Philip was struck by an idea. “Why did Henry send you to England?” he said.

“To survey the kingdom.”

“What have you found?”

“That it is lawless and starving, battered by storms and ravaged by war.”

Philip nodded thoughtfully. Young Henry was duke of Normandy because he was the eldest son of Maud, who was the only legitimate child of old King Henry, who had been duke of Normandy and king of England.

By that line of descent young Henry could also claim to be king of England.

His mother had made the same claim, and had been opposed because she was a woman and because her husband was an Angevin. But young Henry was not only male but had the additional merit of being both Norman (on his mother’s side) and Angevin (on his father’s).

Philip said: “Is Henry going to try for the crown of England?”

“It depends on my report,” said Francis.

“And what will you tell him?”

“That there will never be a better time than now.”

“Praise God,” said Philip.

II

On his way to Bishop Waleran’s castle, Earl William stopped at Cowford Mill, which he owned. The miller, a dour middle-aged man called Wulfric, had the right to grind all the grain grown in eleven nearby villages. As his fee he kept two sacks in every twenty: one for himself and one for William.

William went there to collect his dues. He did not normally do this personally, but these were not normal times. Nowadays he had to provide an armed escort for every cart carrying flour or anything else edible. In order to use his people in the most economical way he was in the habit of taking a wagon or two with him, whenever he moved around with his entourage of knights, and collecting whatever he could.

The surge in outlaw crime was an unfortunate side effect of his firm policy on bad tenants. Landless people often turned to theft. Generally, they were no more efficient as thieves than they had been as farmers, and William had expected most of them to die off during the winter. At first his expectations had been borne out: the outlaws either went for lone travelers who had little to be stolen, or they carried out ill-organized raids on well-defended targets. Lately, however, the outlaws’ tactics had improved. Now they always attacked with at least double the numbers of the defending force. They came when barns were full, a sign that they were reconnoitering carefully. Their attacks were sudden and swift, and they had the courage of desperation. However, they did not stay to fight, but each man fled as soon as he had got his hands on a sheep, a ham, a cheese, a sack of flour or a bag of silver. There was no point in pursuing them, for they melted into the forest, dividing up and running all ways. Someone was commanding them, and he was doing it just the way William would have.

The outlaws’ success humiliated William. It made him look like a buffoon who could not police his own earldom. To make matters worse, the outlaws rarely stole from anyone else. It looked as if they were deliberately defying him. William hated nothing more than the feeling that people were laughing at him behind their hands. He had spent his life forcing people to respect him and his family, and this band of outlaws was undoing all his work.

Especially galling for William was what people were saying behind his back: that it served him right, he had treated his tenants harshly and now they were taking their revenge, he had brought this on himself. Such talk made him apoplectic with rage.

The villagers of Cowford looked startled and fearful as William and his knights rode in. William scowled at the thin, apprehensive faces that looked out from the doorways and quickly disappeared again. These people had sent their priest to plead for them to be allowed to grind their own grain this year, saying that they could not afford to give the miller a tenth. William had been tempted to pull out the priest’s tongue for insolence.

The weather was cold, and there was ice around the rim of the millpond. The waterwheel was still and the grindstone silent. A woman came out of the house beside the mill. William felt a spasm of desire when he looked at her. She was about twenty years old, with a pretty face and a cloud of dark curls. Despite the famine she had big breasts and strong thighs. She had a saucy look when she first appeared, but the sight of William’s knights wiped it off her face, and she ducked back inside.

“She didn’t fancy us,” Walter said. “She must have seen Gervase.” It was an old joke, but they laughed anyway.

They tied up their horses. It was not exactly the same group that William had gathered around him when the civil war began. Walter was still with him, of course, and Ugly Gervase, and Hugh Axe; but Gilbert had died in the unexpectedly bloody battle with the quarrymen, and had been replaced by Guillaume; and Miles had lost an arm in a sword fight over dice at an alehouse in Norwich, and Louis had joined the group. They were not boys anymore, but they talked and acted just the same, laughing and drinking, gambling and whoring. William had lost count of the alehouses they had wrecked, the Jews they had tormented and the virgins they had deflowered.

The miller came out. No doubt his sour expression was due to the perennial unpopularity of millers. His grouchy look was overlaid by anxiety. That was all right: William liked people to be anxious when he turned up.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Wulfric,” William said, leering. “You’ve been hiding her from me.”

“That’s Maggie, my wife,” he said.

“Cow shit. Your wife’s a raddled old crone, I remember her.”

“My May died last year, lord. I’ve married again.”

“You dirty old dog!” William said, grinning. “This one must be thirty years younger than you!”

“Twenty-five-”

“Enough of that. Where’s my flour? One sack in twenty!”

“All here, lord. If you please to come in.”

The way into the mill was through the house. William and the knights followed Wulfric into the single room. The miller’s new young wife was kneeling in front of the fire, putting logs on. As she bent down, her tunic stretched tight across her rear. She had meaty haunches, William observed. A miller’s wife was one of the last to go hungry in a famine, of course.

William stopped, looking at her bottom. The knights grinned and the miller fidgeted. The girl looked around, realized they were staring at her, and stood up, covered in confusion.

William winked at her and said: “Bring us some ale, Maggie-we’re thirsty men.”

They went through a doorway to the mill. The flour was in sacks piled around the outside of the circular threshing floor. There was not much of it. Normally the stacks were higher than a man. “Is this all?” William said.

“It was such a poor harvest, lord,” Wulfric said nervously.

“Where’s mine?”

“Here, lord.” He pointed to a pile of eight or nine sacks.

“What?” William felt his face flush. “That’s mine? I’ve got two wagons outside, and you offer me that?”

Wulfric’s face became even more doleful. “I’m sorry, lord.”

William counted them. “It’s only nine sacks!”

“That’s all there is,” Wulfric said. He was almost in tears. “You see mine next to yours, and it’s the same-”

“You lying dog,” William said angrily. “You’ve sold it-”

“No, lord,” Wulfric insisted. “That’s all there ever was.”

Maggie came to the doorway with six pottery tumblers of ale on a tray. She offered the tray to each of the knights. They took a mug each and drank thirstily. William ignored her. He was too wound up to drink. She stood waiting with the one remaining tumbler on the tray.

“What’s all this?” William said to Wulfric, pointing to the rest of the sacks, another twenty-five or thirty piled around the walls.

“Awaiting collection, lord-you see the owner’s mark on the sacks…”

It was true: each sack was marked with a letter or symbol. That might be a trick, of course, but there was no way William could establish the truth. He found it maddening. But it was not his way to accept this kind of situation. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’ve been robbing me.”

Wulfric was respectfully insistent, even though his voice was shaking. “I’m honest, lord.”

“There’s never been an honest miller yet.”

“Lord-” Wulfric swallowed hard. “Lord, I’ve never cheated you by so much as a grain of wheat-”

“I’ll bet you’ve been robbing me blind.”

Sweat ran down Wulfric’s face despite the cold weather. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “I’m ready to swear by Jesus and the saints-”

“Shut your mouth.”

Wulfric was silent.

William was letting himself get madder and madder but he still had not decided what to do. He wanted to give Wulfric a bad scare, perhaps let Walter beat him up with the chain-mail gloves, possibly take some or all of Wulfric’s own flour… Then his eye fell on Maggie, holding the tray with one cup of ale on it, her pretty face rigid with fear, her big young breasts swelling under the floury tunic; and he thought of the perfect punishment for Wulfric. “Grab the wife,” he said to Walter out of the corner of his mouth. To Wulfric he said: “I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

Maggie saw Walter moving toward her but she was too late to escape. As she turned away, Walter grabbed her arm and pulled. The tray fell with a crash and beer spilled on the floor as Maggie was jerked back. Walter twisted her arm behind her back and held her. She was shaking with fear.

Wulfric said: “No, leave her, please!” in a panicky voice.

William gave a satisfied nod. Wulfric was going to see his young wife raped by several men and he would be powerless to save her. Another time he would make sure to have enough grain to satisfy his lord.

William said: “Your wife’s getting plump on bread made from stolen flour, Wulfric, while the rest of us are tightening our belts. Let’s see just how fat she is, shall we?” He nodded to Walter.

Walter grasped the neck of Maggie’s tunic and pulled sharply down. The garment ripped and fell away. Underneath she wore a linen shirt that reached her knees. Her ample breasts rose and fell as she panted with fear. William stood in front of her. Walter twisted her arm harder, so that she arched her back in pain, and her breasts stuck out even more. William looked at Wulfric, then put his hands on her breasts and kneaded them. They were soft and heavy in his hands.

Wulfric took a step forward and said: “You devil-”

“Hold him,” William snapped, and Louis grabbed the miller by both arms and held him still.

William ripped off the girl’s undershirt.

His throat went dry as he stared at her voluptuous white body.

Wulfric said: “No, please-”

William felt his desire rising. “Hold her down,” he said.

Maggie began to scream.

William unbuckled his sword belt and dropped it on the floor as the knights took Maggie by the arms and legs. She had no hope of resisting four strong men, but all the same she kept writhing and screaming. William liked that. Her breasts jiggled as she moved, and her thighs opened and closed, alternately hiding and revealing her sex. The four knights pinned her down on the threshing floor.

William knelt between her legs and lifted the skirt of his tunic. He looked up at her husband. Wulfric was distraught. He was staring in horror and mumbling pleas for mercy which could not be heard over the screaming. William savored the moment: the terrified woman, the knights holding her down, the husband looking on.

Then Wulfric’s eyes flickered away.

William sensed danger. Everyone in the room was staring at him and the girl. The only thing that could conceivably divert Wulfric’s attention was the possibility of rescue. William turned his head and looked toward the doorway.

At that moment something heavy and hard hit him on the head.

He roared with pain and collapsed on top of the girl. His face banged against hers. Suddenly he could hear men shouting, lots of them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Walter fall as if he, too, had been clubbed. The knights released their hold on Maggie. William looked at her face and read shock and relief there. She started to wriggle out from under him. He let her go and rolled away fast.

The first thing he saw above him was a wild-looking man with a woodsman’s ax, and he thought: For God’s sake, who is it? The father of the girl? He saw Guillaume rise and turn, and in the next instant the ax came down hard on Guillaume’s unprotected neck, its sharp blade cutting deep into his flesh. Guillaume fell on William, dead. His blood spurted all over William’s tunic.

William pushed the corpse off him. When he was able to look up again he saw that the mill had been invaded by a crowd of ragged, wild-haired, unwashed men armed with clubs and axes. There were a lot of them. He realized he was in trouble. Had the villagers come to the rescue of Maggie? How dare they! There would be some hangings in this village before the end of the day. Enraged, he scrambled to his feet and reached for his sword.

He did not have it. He had dropped his belt in order to rape the girl.

Hugh Axe, Ugly Gervase and Louis were fighting fiercely against what looked like a huge mob of beggars. There were several dead peasants on the ground, but nevertheless the three knights were slowly being driven back across the threshing floor. William saw the naked Maggie, still screaming, forcing her way frantically through the melee toward the door, and even in his confusion and fear he felt a spasm of regretful desire for that round white backside. Then he saw that Wulfric was fighting hand to hand with some of the attackers. Why was the miller fighting the men who had rescued his wife? What the devil was going on?

Bewildered, William looked around for his sword belt. It was lying on the floor almost at his feet. He picked it up and drew the sword, then took three steps back to stay clear of the fighting a moment longer. Looking past the fracas, he saw that most of the attackers were not fighting at all-they were picking up sacks of flour and running out with them. William began to understand. This was not a rescue operation by outraged villagers. This was a raiding party from outside. They were not interested in Maggie, and they had not known that William and his knights were inside the mill. All they wanted to do was rob the mill and steal William’s flour.

It was obvious who the raiders must be: outlaws.

He felt a surge of heat. This was his chance to strike back at the rabid pack who had been terrorizing the county and emptying his barns.

His knights were overwhelmingly outnumbered. There were at least twenty attackers. William was astonished at the courage of the outlaws. Peasants would normally scatter like chickens before a band of knights, whether they outnumbered the knights by two to one or ten to one. But these people fought hard, and were not discouraged when one of their number fell. They seemed ready to die if necessary. Perhaps that was because they were going to die anyway, of starvation, unless they could steal this flour.

Louis was fighting two men at the same time when a third came up behind him and clubbed him with an ironheaded carpenter’s hammer. Louis fell down and stayed down. The man dropped the hammer and picked up Louis’s sword. Now there were two knights against twenty outlaws. But Walter was recovering from the blow to his head, and he now drew his sword and entered the melee. William raised his weapon and joined in.

The four of them made a formidable fighting team. The outlaws were driven back, desperately parrying the flashing swords with their clubs and axes. William began to think their morale might crack and they might flee in disorder. Then one of them shouted: “The rightful earl!”

It was some kind of rallying cry. Others took it up, and the outlaws fought more fiercely. The repeated cry, “The rightful earl-the rightful earl!,” struck a chill into William’s heart even as he was fighting for his life. It meant that whoever was commanding this army of outlaws had set his sights on William’s title. William fought harder, as if this skirmish might determine the future of the earldom.

Only half the outlaws were actually fighting the knights, William realized. The rest were moving the flour. The combat settled into a steady exchange of thrust and parry, swipe and dodge. Like soldiers who know that the retreat must be sounded soon, the outlaws had begun to fight in a cautious, defensive style.

Behind the fighting outlaws, the others were carrying the last of the flour sacks out of the mill. The outlaws began to retreat, backing through the doorway that led from the threshing floor into the house. William realized that whatever happened now, the outlaws had got away with most of the flour. In no time at all the whole county would know that they had stolen it from under his nose. He was going to be a laughingstock. The thought enraged him so much that he pressed a fierce attack on his opponent and stabbed the man through the heart with a classic thrust.

Then an outlaw caught Hugh with a lucky jab and stabbed his right shoulder, putting him out of action. Now there were two outlaws in the doorway holding off the three surviving knights. That in itself was humiliating enough; but then, with monumental arrogance, one of the outlaws waved the other away. The man disappeared, and the last outlaw stepped back a pace, into the single room of the miller’s house.

Only one of the knights could stand in the doorway and fight the outlaw. William pushed forward, shouldering Walter and Gervase aside: he wanted this man for himself. As their swords clashed, William realized immediately that this man was no dispossessed peasant: he was a hardened fighting man like William himself. For the first time he looked into the outlaw’s face; and the shock was so great he almost dropped his sword.

His opponent was Richard of Kingsbridge.

Richard’s face blazed with hatred. William could see the scar on his mutilated ear. The force of Richard’s rancor frightened William more than his flashing sword. William had thought he had crushed Richard finally, but now Richard was back, at the head of a ragamuffin army that had made a fool of William.

Richard came at William hard, taking advantage of his momentary shock. William sidestepped a thrust, raised his sword, parried a slash and stepped back. Richard pressed forward, but now William was partly shielded by the doorway, which restricted Richard’s attack to stabbing strokes. Nevertheless Richard drove William farther back, until William was on the threshing floor of the mill and Richard was in the doorway. Now, however, Walter and Gervase went at Richard. Under pressure from the three of them he retreated again. As soon as he backed through the doorway, Walter and Gervase were squeezed out, and it was William against Richard.

William realized that Richard was in a nasty position. As soon as he gained ground he found himself fighting three men. When William tired he could give place to Walter. It was almost impossible for Richard to hold all three of them off indefinitely. He was fighting a losing battle. Perhaps today would not end in humiliation for William after all. Perhaps he would kill his oldest enemy.

Richard must have been thinking along the same lines and presumably he had come to the same conclusion. However, there was no apparent loss of energy or determination. He looked at William with a savage grin that William found unnerving, and leaped forward with a long thrust. William dodged it and stumbled. Walter lunged forward to defend William from the coup de grâce-but instead of coming on, Richard turned on his heel and fled.

William stood up and Walter bumped into him, while Gervase tried to squeeze past them. It took a moment for the three to disentangle themselves, but in that moment Richard crossed the little room, slipped out and banged the door shut. William went after him and threw the door open. The outlaws were making their escape-and, in a final humiliating stroke, they were riding off on the horses of William’s knights. As William burst out of the house he saw his own mount, a superb war-horse that had cost him a king’s ransom, with Richard in the saddle. The horse had obviously been untied and held ready. William was struck by the mortifying thought that this was the second time Richard had stolen his war-horse. Richard kicked its sides, and it reared up-it was not kind to strangers-but Richard was a good horseman and he stayed on. He sawed on the reins and got the horse’s head down. In that moment William darted forward and lunged at Richard with his sword; but the horse was bucking, and William missed, sticking the point of his blade into the wood of the saddle. Then the horse took off, bolting down the village street after the other fleeing outlaws.

William watched them go with murder in his heart.

The rightful earl, he thought. The rightful earl.

He turned around. Walter and Gervase stood behind him. Hugh and Louis were wounded, he did not know how badly, and Guillaume was dead, his blood all over the front of William’s tunic. William was completely humiliated. He could hardly hold up his head.

Fortunately the village was deserted: the peasants had fled, not waiting to see William’s wrath. The miller and his wife had also vanished, of course. The outlaws had taken all the knights’ horses, leaving only the two carts and their oxen.

William looked at Walter. “Did you see who that was, that last one?”

“Yes.”

Walter was in the habit of using as few words as possible when his master was in a rage.

William said: “It was Richard of Kingsbridge.”

Walter nodded.

“And they called him the rightful earl,” William finished.

Walter said nothing.

William went back through the house and into the mill.

Hugh was sitting up, his left hand pressed to his right shoulder. He looked pale.

William said: “How does it feel?”

“This is nothing,” Hugh said. “Who were those people?”

“Outlaws,” William said shortly. He looked around. There were seven or eight outlaws lying dead or wounded on the floor. He spotted Louis flat on his back with his eyes open. At first he thought the man was dead; then Louis blinked.

William said: “Louis.”

Louis raised his head, but he looked confused. He had not yet recovered.

William said: “Hugh, help Louis into one of the carts. Walter, put Guillaume’s body into the other.” He left them to it and went outside.

None of the villagers would have horses, but the miller did, a dappled cob grazing the sparse grass on the riverbank. William found the miller’s saddle and put it on the cob.

A little while later he rode away from Cowford with Walter and Gervase driving the ox carts.

His fury did not abate on the journey to Bishop Waleran’s castle. In fact, as he brooded over what he had learned he got angrier. It was bad enough that the outlaws had been able to defy him; it was worse that they were led by his old enemy Richard; and it was intolerable that they should call Richard the rightful earl. If they were not put down decisively, very soon Richard would use them to launch a direct attack on William. It would be totally illegal for Richard to take over the earldom that way, of course; but William had a feeling that complaints of illegal attack, coming from him, might not get a sympathetic hearing. The fact that William had been ambushed, overcome by outlaws, and robbed, and that the whole county would shortly be laughing at his humiliation, was not the worst of his problems. Suddenly his hold over his earldom was seriously threatened.

He had to kill Richard, of course. The question was how to find him. He brooded over the problem all the way to the castle; and by the time he arrived he had figured out that Bishop Waleran probably held the key.

They rode into Waleran’s castle like a comic procession at a fair, the earl on a dappled cob and his knights driving ox carts. William roared peremptory orders at the bishop’s men, sending one to fetch an infirmarer for Hugh and Louis and another to get a priest to pray for the soul of Guillaume. Gervase and Walter went to the kitchen for beer, and William entered the keep and was admitted to Waleran’s private quarters. William hated to have to ask Waleran for anything, but he needed Waleran’s help in locating Richard.

The bishop was reading an accounts roll, an endless list of numbers. He looked up and saw the rage on William’s face. “What happened?” he said, in a tone of mild amusement that always infuriated William.

William gritted his teeth. “I’ve discovered who is organizing and leading these damned outlaws.”

Waleran raised an eyebrow.

“It’s Richard of Kingsbridge.”

“Ah.” Waleran nodded understanding. “Of course. It makes sense.”

“It makes danger,” William said angrily. He hated it when Waleran was cool and reflective about things. “They call him ‘the rightful earl.’ ” He pointed a finger at Waleran. “You certainly don’t want that family back in charge of this earldom-they hate you, and they’re friends with Prior Philip, your old enemy.”

“All right, calm down,” Waleran said condescendingly. “You’re quite right, I can’t have Richard of Kingsbridge taking over the earldom.”

William sat down. His body was beginning to ache. These days he felt the aftereffects of a fight in a way he never used to. He had strained muscles, sore hands, and bruises where he had been struck or had fallen. I’m only thirty-seven, he thought; is this when old age begins? He said: “I have to kill Richard. Once he’s gone, the outlaws will degenerate into a helpless rabble.”

“I agree.”

“Killing him will be easy. The problem is finding him. But you can help me with that.”

Waleran rubbed his sharp nose with his thumb. “I don’t see how.”

“Listen. If they’re organized, they must be somewhere.”

“I don’t know what you mean. They’re in the forest.”

“You can’t find outlaws in the forest, normally, because they’re scattered all over the place. Most of them don’t spend two nights running in the same spot. They make a fire anywhere, and sleep in trees. But if you want to organize such people, you have to gather them all together in one place. You have to have a permanent hideout.”

“So we have to discover the location of Richard’s hideout.”

“Exactly.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

“That’s where you come in.”

Waleran looked skeptical.

William said: “I bet half the people in Kingsbridge know where it is.”

“But they won’t tell us. Everyone in Kingsbridge hates you and me.”

“Not everyone,” said William. “Not quite.”

Sally thought Christmas was wonderful.

The special Christmas food was mostly sweet: gingerbread dolls; frumenty, made with wheat and eggs and honey; perry, the sweet pear wine that made her giggly; and Christmas umbles, tripes boiled for hours, then baked in a sweet pie. There was less of it this year, because of the famine, but Sally enjoyed it just as much.

She liked decorating the house with holly and hanging up the kissing-bush, although the kissing made her giggle even more than the pear wine. The first man across the threshold brought luck, as long as he was black-haired: Sally’s father had to stay indoors all Christmas morning, for his red hair would bring people bad luck. She loved the Nativity play in the church. She liked to see the monks dressed up as Eastern kings and angels and shepherds, and she laughed fit to bust when all the false idols fell down as the Holy Family arrived in Egypt.

But best of all was the boy bishop. On the third day of Christmas, the monks dressed the youngest novice in bishop’s robes, and everyone had to obey him.

Most of the townspeople waited in the priory close for the boy bishop to come out. Inevitably he would order the older and more dignified citizens to do menial tasks such as fetching firewood and mucking out pigsties. He also put on exaggerated airs and graces and insulted those in authority. Last year he had made the sacrist pluck a chicken: the result was hilarious, for the sacrist had no idea what to do and there were feathers everywhere.

He emerged in great solemnity, a boy of about twelve years with a mischievous grin, dressed in a purple silk robe and carrying a wooden crozier, and riding on the shoulders of two monks, with the rest of the monastery following. Everyone clapped and cheered. The first thing he did was to point to Prior Philip and say: “You, lad! Get over to the stable and groom the donkey!”

Everyone roared with laughter. The old donkey was notoriously bad-tempered and was never brushed. Prior Philip said: “Yes, my lord bishop,” with a good-natured grin, and went off to do his task.

“Forward!” the boy bishop commanded. The procession moved out of the priory close, with the townspeople following. Some people hid away and locked their doors, for fear that they would be picked on to perform some unpleasant task; but then they missed the fun. All Sally’s family had come: her mother and father, her brother, Tommy, Aunt Martha, and even Uncle Richard, who had returned home unexpectedly last night.

The boy bishop led them first to the alehouse, as was traditional. There he demanded free beer for himself and all the novices. The brewer handed it over with good grace.

Sally found herself sitting on a bench next to Brother Remigius, one of the older monks. He was a tall, unfriendly man and she had never spoken to him before, but now he smiled at her and said: “It’s nice that your Uncle Richard came home at Christmas.”

Sally said: “He gave me a wooden pussycat that he carved himself with his knife.”

“That’s nice. Will he stay long, do you think?”

Sally frowned. “I don’t know.”

“I expect he has to go back soon.”

“Yes. He lives in the forest now.”

“Do you know where?”

“Yes. It’s called Sally’s Quarry. That’s my name!” She laughed.

“So it is,” said Brother Remigius. “How interesting.”

When they had drunk, the boy bishop said: “And now-Andrew Sacrist and Brother Remigius will do the Widow Poll’s washing.”

Sally squealed with laughter and clapped her hands. Widow Poll was a rotund, red-faced woman who took in laundry. The fastidious monks would hate the job of washing the smelly undershirts and stockings that people changed every six months.

The crowd left the alehouse and carried the boy bishop in procession to Poll’s one-room house down by the quay. Poll had a laughing fit and turned even redder when they told her who was going to do her laundry.

Andrew and Remigius carried a heavy basket of dirty clothing from the house to the riverbank. Andrew opened the basket and Remigius, with an expression of utter distaste on his face, pulled out the first garment. A young woman called out saucily: “Careful with that one, Brother Remigius, it’s my chemise!” Remigius flushed and everyone laughed. The two middle-aged monks put a brave face on it and began to wash the clothes in the river water, with the townspeople calling advice and encouragement. Andrew was thoroughly fed up, Sally could see, but Remigius had a strangely contented look on his face.

A huge iron ball hung by a chain from a wooden scaffold, like a hangman’s noose dangling from a gallows. There was also a rope tied to the ball. This rope ran over a pulley on the upright post of the scaffold and hung down to the ground, where two laborers held it. When the laborers hauled on the rope, the ball was pulled up and back until it touched the pulley, and the chain lay horizontally along the arm of the scaffold.

Most of the population of Shiring was watching.

The men let go of the rope. The iron ball dropped and swung, smashing into the wall of the church. There was a terrific thud, the wall shuddered, and William felt the impact in the ground beneath his feet. He thought how he would like to have Richard clamped to the wall in just the place where the ball would hit. He would be squashed like a fly.

The laborers hauled on the rope again. William realized he was holding his breath as the iron ball stopped at the top of its travel. The men let go; the ball swung; and this time it tore a hole in the stone wall. The crowd applauded.

It was an ingenious mechanism.

William was happy to see work progressing on the site where he would build the new church, but he had more urgent matters on his mind today. He looked around for Bishop Waleran, and spotted him standing with Alfred Builder. William approached them and drew the bishop aside. “Is the man here yet?”

“He may be,” said Waleran. “Come to my house.”

They crossed the market square. Waleran said: “Have you brought your troops?”

“Of course. Two hundred of them. They’re waiting in the woods just outside town.”

They went into the house. William smelled boiled ham and his mouth watered, despite his urgent haste. Most people were being sparing with food at the moment, but with Waleran it seemed to be a matter of principle not to let the famine change his way of life. The bishop never ate much, but he liked everyone to know that he was far too rich and powerful to be affected by mere harvests.

Waleran’s place was a typical narrow-fronted town house, with a hall at the front and a kitchen behind, and a yard at the back with a cesspit, a beehive and a pigsty. William was relieved to see a monk waiting in the hall.

Waleran said: “Good day, Brother Remigius.”

Remigius said: “Good day, my lord bishop. Good day, Lord William.”

William looked eagerly at the monk. He was a nervous man with an arrogant face and prominent blue eyes. His face was vaguely familiar, as one among many tonsured heads at services in Kingsbridge. William had been hearing about him for years, as Waleran’s spy in Prior Philip’s camp, but this was the first time he had spoken to the man. “Have you got some information for me?” he said.

“Possibly,” Remigius replied.

Waleran threw off his fur-trimmed cloak and went to the fire to warm his hands. A servant brought hot elderberry wine in silver goblets. William took some and drank it, waiting impatiently for the servant to leave.

Waleran sipped his wine and gave Remigius a hard look. As the servant went out Waleran said to the monk: “What excuse did you give for leaving the priory?”

“None,” Remigius replied.

Waleran raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not going back,” Remigius said defiantly.

“How so?”

Remigius took a deep breath. “You’re building a cathedral here.”

“It’s just a church.”

“It’s going to be very big. You’re planning to make this the cathedral church, eventually.”

Waleran hesitated, then said: “Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you’re right.”

“The cathedral will have to be run by a chapter, either of monks or of canons.”

“So?”

“I want to be prior.”

That made sense, William thought.

Waleran said tartly: “And you’re so confident of getting the job that you’ve left Kingsbridge without Philip’s permission and with no excuse.”

Remigius looked uncomfortable. William sympathized with him: Waleran in a scornful mood was enough to make anyone fidget. “I hope I’m not overconfident,” Remigius said.

“Presumably you can lead us to Richard.”

“Yes.”

William interrupted excitedly: “Good man! Where is he?”

Remigius remained silent and looked at Waleran.

William said: “Come on, Waleran, give him the job, for God’s sake!”

Still Waleran hesitated. William knew he hated to feel coerced. At last Waleran said: “All right. You shall be prior.”

William said: “Now, where’s Richard?”

Remigius continued to look at Waleran. “From today?”

“From today.”

Remigius now turned to William. “A monastery isn’t just a church and a dormitory. It needs lands, farms, churches paying tithes,”

“Tell me where Richard is, and I’ll give you five villages with their parish churches, just to start you off,” William said.

“The foundation will need a proper charter.”

Waleran said: “You shall have it, never fear.”

William said: “Come on, man, I’ve got an army waiting outside town. Where’s Richard’s hideout?”

“It’s a place called Sally’s Quarry, just off the Winchester road.”

“I know it!” William had to restrain himself from giving a whoop of triumph. “It’s a disused quarry. Nobody goes there anymore.”

“I remember,” said Waleran. “It hasn’t been worked for years. It’s a good hideout-you wouldn’t know it was there unless you actually walked into it.”

“But it’s also a trap,” William said with savage glee. “The worked-out walls are sheer on three sides. Nobody will escape. I won’t be taking any prisoners, either.” His excitement rose as he pictured the scene. “I’ll slaughter them all. It will be like killing chickens in a hen house.”

The two men of God were looking at him oddly. “Feeling a little squeamish, Brother Remigius?” William said scornfully. “Does the thought of a massacre turn the stomach of my lord bishop?” He was right both times, he could tell by their faces. They were great schemers, these religious men, but when it came to bloodshed they still had to rely on men of action. “I know you’ll be praying for me,” he said sarcastically; and he left.

His horse was tied up outside, a black stallion that had replaced-but did not equal-the war-horse Richard had stolen. He mounted and rode out of town. He suppressed his excitement and tried to think coolly about tactics.

He wondered how many outlaws would be at Sally’s Quarry. They had mounted raids with more than a hundred men at a time. There would be at least two hundred of them, perhaps as many as five hundred. William’s force could be outnumbered, so he would need to make the most of his advantages. One was surprise. Another was weaponry: most of the outlaws had clubs, hammers or at best axes, and none had armor. But the most important advantage was that William’s men were on horseback. The outlaws had few horses and it was not likely that many of them would be saddled ready just at the moment William attacked. To give himself a further edge he decided to send a few bowmen up the sides of the hill to shoot down into the quarry for a few moments before the main assault.

The most important thing was to prevent any of the outlaws from escaping, at least until he was sure that Richard was captured or dead. He decided to assign a handful of trustworthy men to hang back behind the main assault and sweep up any wily ones who tried to slip out.

Walter was waiting with the knights and men-at-arms where William had left them a couple of hours earlier. They were eager and morale was high: they anticipated an easy victory. A short while later they were trotting along the Winchester road.

Walter rode alongside William, not speaking. One of Walter’s greatest assets was his ability to remain silent. William found that most people talked to him constantly, even when there was nothing to say, probably out of nervousness. Walter respected William, but was not nervous of him: they had been together too long.

William felt a familiar mixture of eager anticipation and mortal fear. This was the one thing in the world he did well, and every time he did it he risked his life. But this raid was special. Today he had a chance to destroy the man who had been a thorn in his flesh for fifteen years.

Toward noon they stopped in a village large enough to have an alehouse. William bought the men bread and beer and they watered the horses. Before moving on he briefed the men.

A few miles farther on they turned off the Winchester road. The path they took was barely visible, and William would not have noticed it had he not been looking for it. Once on it, he could follow it by observing the vegetation: there was a strip four or five yards wide with no mature trees.

He sent the archers on ahead and, to give them a start, he slowed the rest of the men for a few moments. It was a clear January day, and the leafless trees hardly dimmed the cold sunlight. William had not been to the quarry for many years and he was now not sure how far away it might be. However, once they were a mile or so from the road he began to see signs that the track was in use: trampled vegetation, broken saplings and churned mud. He was glad to have confirmation of Remigius’s report.

He felt as taut as a bowstring. The signs became much more obvious: heavily trampled grass, horse droppings, human refuse. This far into the forest the outlaws had made no attempt to conceal their presence. There was no longer any doubt. The outlaws were here. The battle was about to begin.

The hideout must be very close. William strained his hearing. At any moment his bowmen would begin the attack, and there would be shouts and curses, screams of agony, and the neighing of terrified horses.

The track led into a wide clearing, and William saw, a couple of hundred yards ahead, the entrance to Sally’s Quarry. There was no noise. Something was wrong. His bowmen were not shooting. William felt a shiver of apprehension. What had happened? Could his bowmen have been ambushed and silently dispatched by sentries? Not all of them, surely.

But there was no time to ponder: he was almost on top of the outlaws. He spurred his horse into a gallop. His men followed suit, and they thundered toward the hideout. William’s fear evaporated in the exhilaration of the charge.

The way into the quarry was like a small twisted ravine, and William could not see inside as he approached. Glancing up, he saw some of his archers standing on top of the bluff, looking in. Why were they not shooting? He had a premonition of disaster, and he would have stopped and turned around, except that the charging horses could not now be stopped. With his sword in his right hand, holding the reins with his left, his shield hanging from his neck, he galloped into the disused quarry.

There was nobody there.

The anticlimax hit him like a blow. He was almost ready to burst into tears. All the signs had been there: he had felt so sure. Now frustration gripped his guts like a pain.

As the horses slowed, he saw that this had been the outlaws’ hideout not long ago. There were makeshift shelters of branches and reeds, the remains of cooking fires, and a dunghill. A corner of the area had been fenced with a few sticks and used to corral the horses. Here and there William saw the litter of human occupation: chicken bones, empty sacks, a worn-out shoe, a broken pot. One of the fires appeared to be smoking. He had a sudden surge of hope: perhaps they had only just left, and could still be caught! Then he saw a single figure squatting on the ground by the fire. He approached it. The figure stood up. It was a woman.

“Well, well, William Hamleigh,” she said. “Too late, as usual.”

“Insolent cow, I’ll tear out your tongue for that,” he said.

“You won’t touch me,” she replied calmly. “I’ve cursed better men than you.” She put her hand to her face in a three-fingered gesture, like a witch. The knights shrank back, and William crossed himself protectively. The woman looked at him fearlessly with a pair of startling golden eyes. “Don’t you know me, William?” she said. “You once tried to buy me for a pound.” She laughed. “Lucky for you that you didn’t succeed.”

William remembered those eyes. This was the widow of Tom Builder, the mother of Jack Jackson, the witch who lived in the forest. He was indeed glad he had not succeeded in buying her. He wanted to get away from her as fast as he could, but he had to question her first. “All right, witch,” he said. “Was Richard of Kingsbridge here?”

“Until two days ago.”

“And where did he go, can you tell me that?”

“Oh, yes, I can,” she said. “He and his outlaws have gone to fight for Henry.”

“Henry?” William said. He had a dreadful feeling that he knew which Henry she meant. “The son of Maud?”

“That’s right,” she said.

William went cold. The energetic young duke of Normandy might succeed where his mother had failed-and if Stephen was defeated now, William might fall with him. “What’s happened?” he said urgently. “What has Henry done?”

“He’s crossed the water with thirty-six ships and landed at Wareham,” the witch replied. “He’s brought an army of three thousand men, they say. We’ve been invaded.”

III

Winchester was crowded, tense and dangerous. Both armies were here: King Stephen’s royal forces were garrisoned in the castle, and Duke Henry’s rebels-including Richard and his outlaws-were camped outside the city walls, on Saint Giles’s Hill where the annual fair was held. The soldiers of both sides were banned from the town itself, but many of them defied the ban, and spent their evenings in the alehouses, cockpits and brothels, where they got drunk and abused women and fought and killed one another over games of dice and nine-men’s morris.

All the fight had gone out of Stephen in the summer when his elder son died. Now Stephen was in the royal castle and Duke Henry was staying at the bishop’s palace, and peace talks were being conducted by their representatives, Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury speaking for the king, and the old power-broker Bishop Henry of Winchester for Duke Henry. Every morning, Archbishop Theobald and Bishop Henry would confer at the bishop’s palace. At noon Duke Henry would walk through the streets of Winchester, with his lieutenants-including Richard-in train, and go to the castle for dinner.

The first time Aliena saw Duke Henry she could not believe that this was the man who ruled an empire the size of England. He was only about twenty years old, with the tanned, freckled complexion of a peasant. He was dressed in a plain dark tunic with no embroidery, and his reddish hair was cut short. He looked like the hardworking son of a prosperous yeoman. However, after a while she realized that he had some kind of aura of power. He was stocky and muscular, with broad shoulders and a large head; but the impression of crude physical strength was modified by keen, watchful gray eyes; and the people around him never got too close to him, but treated him with wary familiarity, as if they were afraid he might lash out at any moment.

Aliena thought the dinners at the castle must have been unpleasantly tense, with the leaders of opposing armies around the same table. She wondered how Richard could bear to sit down with Earl William. She would have taken the carving knife to William instead of to the venison. She herself saw William only from a distance, and briefly. He looked anxious and bad-tempered, which was a good sign.

While the earls and bishops and abbots met in the keep, the lesser nobility gathered in the castle courtyard: the knights and sheriffs, minor barons, justiciars and castellans; people who could not stay away from the capital city while their future and the future of the kingdom were being decided. Aliena met Prior Philip there most mornings. Every day there were a dozen different rumors. One day all the earls who supported Stephen were to be degraded (which would mean the end of William); next day, all of them were to retain their positions, which would dash Richard’s hopes. All Stephen’s castles were to be pulled down, then all the rebels’ castles, then everyone’s castles, then none. One rumor said that every one of Henry’s supporters would get a knighthood and a hundred acres. Richard did not want that, he wanted the earldom.

Richard had no idea which rumors were true, if any. Although he was one of Henry’s trusted battlefield lieutenants, he was not consulted about the details of political negotiations. Philip, however, seemed to know what was going on. He would not say where he was getting his information, but Aliena recalled that he had a brother, who had visited Kingsbridge now and again, and who had worked for Robert of Gloucester and the Empress Maud: now perhaps he worked for Duke Henry.

Philip reported that the negotiators were close to agreement. The deal was that Stephen would continue as king until he died, but Henry would be his successor. This made Aliena anxious. Stephen could live for another ten years. What would happen in the interim? Stephen’s earls would surely not be deposed while he continued to rule. So how would Henry’s supporters-such as Richard-gain their rewards? Would they be expected to wait?

Philip learned the answer late one afternoon, when they had all been in Winchester a week. He sent a novice messenger to bring Aliena and Richard to him. As they walked through the busy streets to the cathedral close, Richard was full of savage eagerness, but Aliena was possessed by trepidation.

Philip was waiting for them in the graveyard, and they talked among the tombstones as the sun went down. “They’ve reached agreement,” Philip said without preamble. “But it’s a bit of a muddle.”

Aliena could not bear the tension. “Will Richard be earl?” she said urgently.

Philip rocked his hand from side to side in the gesture that meant maybe yes, maybe no. “It’s complicated. They’ve made a compromise. Lands that have been taken away by usurpers shall be restored to the people who owned them in the time of old King Henry.”

“That’s all I need!” Richard said immediately. “My father was earl in King Henry’s time.”

“Shut up, Richard,” Aliena snapped. She turned to Philip. “So what’s the complication?”

Philip said: “There’s nothing in the agreement that says Stephen has to enforce it. There probably won’t be any changes until he dies and Henry becomes king.”

Richard was crestfallen. “But that cancels it out!”

“Not quite,” Philip said. “It means that you are the rightful earl.”

“But I have to live as an outlaw until Stephen dies-while that animal William occupies my castle,” Richard said angrily.

“Not so loud,” Philip protested as a priest walked by. “All this is still secret.”

Aliena was seething. “I don’t accept this,” she said. “I’m not prepared to wait for Stephen to die. I’ve been waiting seventeen years and I’ve had enough.”

Philip said: “But what can you do?”

Aliena addressed Richard. “Most of the country acclaims you as the rightful earl. Stephen and Henry have now acknowledged that you are the rightful earl. You should seize the castle and rule as the rightful earl.”

“I can’t seize the castle. William is sure to have left it guarded.”

“You’ve got an army, haven’t you?” she said, becoming carried away by the force of her own anger and frustration. “You’ve got the right to the castle and you’ve got the power to take it.”

Richard shook his head. “In fifteen years of civil war, do you know how many times I’ve seen a castle taken by frontal attack? None.” As always, he seemed to gain authority and maturity as soon as he began to talk about military matters. “It almost never happens. A town, sometimes, but not a castle. They may surrender after a siege, or be relieved by reinforcements; and I’ve seen them taken through cowardice or trickery or treachery; but not by main force.”

Aliena was still not ready to accept this. It seemed to her a counsel of despair. She could not resign herself to more years of waiting and hoping. She said: “So what would happen if you took your army to William’s castle?”

“They would raise the drawbridge and close the gates before we could get inside. We would camp outside. Then William would come to the rescue with his army and attack our camp. But even if we beat him off, we still wouldn’t have the castle. Castles are hard to attack and easy to defend-that’s the point of them.”

As he spoke, the seed of an idea was germinating in Aliena’s agitated mind. “Cowardice, trickery or treachery,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ve seen castles taken by cowardice, trickery or treachery.”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Which did William use, when he took the castle from us, all those years ago?”

Philip interrupted: “Times were different. The country had had peace, under the old King Henry, for thirty-five years. William took your father by surprise.”

Richard said: “He used trickery. He got inside the castle surreptitiously, with a few men, before the alarm was raised. But Prior Philip is right: you couldn’t get away with that nowadays. People are much more wary.”

“I could get in,” Aliena said confidently, although as she spoke the words her heart raced with fear.

“Of course you could-you’re a woman,” Richard said. “But you couldn’t do anything once you were inside. That’s how come they’d let you in. You’re harmless.”

“Don’t be so damned arrogant,” she flared. “I’ve killed to protect you, and that’s more than you’ve ever done for me, you ungrateful pig, so don’t you dare call me harmless.”

“All right, you’re not harmless,” he said angrily. “What would you do, once inside the castle?”

Aliena’s anger evaporated. What would I do? she thought fearfully. To hell with it, I’ve got at least as much courage and resourcefulness as that pig William. “What did William do?”

“Kept the drawbridge down and the gate open long enough for the main attacking force to get inside.”

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Aliena said with her heart in her mouth.

“But how?” Richard said skeptically.

Aliena remembered giving comfort to a fourteen-year-old girl who was frightened of a storm. “The countess owes me a favor,” she said. “And she hates her husband.”

They rode through the night, Aliena and Richard and fifty of his best men, and reached the vicinity of Earlscastle at dawn. They halted in the forest across the fields from the castle. Aliena dismounted, took off her cloak of Flanders wool and her soft leather boots, and put on a coarse peasant blanket and a pair of clogs. One of the men handed her a basket of fresh eggs packed in straw, which she slung over her arm.

Richard looked her up and down and said: “Perfect. A peasant girl bringing produce for the castle kitchen.”

Aliena swallowed hard. Yesterday she had been full of fire and boldness, but now that she was about to carry out her plan she was scared.

Richard kissed her cheek. He said: “When I hear the bell, I’ll say the Paternoster slowly once, then the advance party will start out. All you have to do is lull the guards into a false sense of security, so that ten of my men can get across the fields and into the castle without causing alarm.”

Aliena nodded. “Just make sure the main group doesn’t break cover until the advance party-is across the drawbridge.”

He smiled. “I’ll be leading the main group. Don’t worry. Good luck.”

“You too.”

She walked away.

She emerged from the woodland and set out across the open fields toward the castle she had left on that awful day sixteen years ago. Seeing the place again, she had a vivid, terrifying memory of that other morning, the air damp after the storm, and the two horses charging out of the gate across the rain-sodden fields; Richard on the war-horse and she on the smaller mount, both mortally afraid. She had been denying what had happened, deliberately forgetting, chanting to herself in time with the horse’s hoofbeats: “I can’t remember I can’t remember I can’t I can’t I can’t.” It had worked: for a long time afterward she had been unable to recall the rape, remembering that something terrible had happened but never recollecting the details. Not until she fell in love with Jack had it come back to her; and then the memory had so terrified her that she had been unable to respond to his love. Thank God he had been so patient. That was how she knew his love was strong; because he had put up with so much and still loved her.

As she came closer to the castle she conjured up some good memories, to calm her nerves. She had lived here as a child, with her father and Richard. They had been wealthy and secure. She had played on the castle ramparts with Richard, hung around in the kitchen and scrounged bits of sweet pastry, and sat beside her father at dinner in the great hall. I didn’t know I was happy, she thought. I had no idea how fortunate I was to have nothing to be afraid of.

Those good times will begin again today, she said to herself, if only I can do this right.

She had confidently said The countess owes me a favor, and she hates her husband, but as they rode through the night she had thought of all the things that could go wrong. First, she might not get into the castle at all: something might have happened to put the garrison on the alert, the guards might be suspicious, or she might just be unlucky enough to come across an obstructive sentry. Second, when she was inside she might not be able to persuade Elizabeth to betray her husband. It was a year and a half since Aliena had met Elizabeth in the storm: women could get used to the most vicious men, in time, and Elizabeth might be reconciled to her fate by now. Third, even if Elizabeth was willing, she might not have the authority or the nerve to do what Aliena wanted. She had been a frightened little girl last time they met, and it could be that the castle guard would refuse to obey her.

Aliena felt unnaturally alert as she crossed the drawbridge: she could see and hear everything with abnormal clarity. The garrison was just waking up. A few bleary-eyed guards were lounging on the ramparts, yawning and coughing, and an old dog sat in the gateway scratching itself. She pulled her hood forward to hide her face, in case anyone should recognize her, and passed under the arch.

There was a slovenly sentry on duty at the gatehouse, sitting on a bench eating a huge hunk of bread. His clothing was disarrayed and his sword belt was hanging from a hook at the back of the room. With her heart in her mouth, and a smile that belied her fear, Aliena showed him her basket of eggs.

He waved her in with an impatient gesture.

She had passed the first obstacle.

Discipline was slack. It was understandable: this was a token force, left behind while the best men went to war. All the excitement was elsewhere.

Until today.

So far, so good. Aliena crossed the lower courtyard with her nerves on edge. It was very odd to be a stranger walking into the place that had been her home, to be an infiltrator where once she had had the right to go anywhere she pleased. She looked around, careful not to be too blatantly curious. Most of the wooden buildings had changed: the stables were bigger, the kitchen had been moved and there was a new stone-built armory. The place seemed dirtier than it used to be. But the chapel was still there, the chapel where she and Richard had sat out that awful storm, shocked and numb and freezing cold. A handful of castle servants were beginning their morning chores. One or two men-at-arms moved about the compound. They looked menacing, but perhaps that was because she was aware that they would have killed her if they had known what she was going to do.

If her plan worked, by tonight she would once again be mistress of this castle. The thought was thrilling but unreal, like a marvelous, impossible dream.

She went into the kitchen. A boy was stoking the fire and a young girl was slicing carrots. Aliena smiled brightly at them and said: “Twenty-four fresh eggs.” She put her basket on the table.

The boy said: “Cook’s not up yet. You’ll have to wait for your money.”

“Can I get a bite of bread for my breakfast?”

“In the great hall.”

“Thank you.” She left her basket and went out again.

She crossed the second drawbridge to the upper compound. She smiled at the guard in the second gateway. He had uncombed hair and bloodshot eyes. He looked her up and down and said: “And where are you going?” His voice was playfully challenging.

“To get some breakfast,” she said without stopping.

He leered. “I’ve got something for you to eat,” he called after her.

“I might bite it off, though,” she said over her shoulder.

They did not suspect her for a moment. It did not occur to them that a woman could be dangerous. How foolish they were. Women could do most of the things men did. Who was left in charge when the men were fighting wars, or going on crusades? There were women carpenters, dyers, tanners, bakers and brewers. Aliena herself was one of the most important merchants in the county. The duties of an abbess, running a nunnery, were exactly the same as those of an abbot. Why, it had been a woman, the Empress Maud, who caused the civil war that had gone on for fifteen years! Yet these wooden-headed men-at-arms did not expect a woman to be an enemy agent because it was not the normal thing.

She ran up the steps of the keep and entered the hall. There was no steward at the door. That was presumably because the master was away. In future I will make sure there is always a steward at the door, Aliena thought, whether the master is at home or not.

Fifteen or twenty people were eating breakfast around a small table. One or two of them glanced up at her, but nobody took any notice. The hall was quite clean, she observed, and there were one or two feminine touches: freshly whitewashed walls, and sweet-smelling herbs mixed with the rushes on the floor. Elizabeth had made her mark in a small way. That was a hopeful sign.

Without speaking to the people around the table, Aliena walked across the hall to the staircase in the corner, trying to look as if she had every right to be there, but expecting at any moment to be stopped. She got to the foot of the stairs without attracting attention. Then, as she ran up toward the private apartments on the top floor, she heard someone say: “You can’t go up there-hey, you!” She ignored the voice. She heard someone come after her.

She reached the top, panting. Would Elizabeth sleep in the main bedroom, the one Aliena’s father had occupied? Or would she have a bed of her own in the room that had been Aliena’s? She hesitated for an instant, her heart pounding. She guessed that by now William had tired of having Elizabeth sleep with him every night, and probably allowed her a room of her own. Aliena knocked at the smaller room and opened the door.

She had been right. Elizabeth was sitting by the fire, wearing a nightshirt, brushing her hair. She looked up, frowned, and then recognized Aliena. “It’s you!” she said. “What a surprise!” She seemed pleased.

Aliena heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her. “May I come in?” she said.

“Of course-and welcome!”

Aliena stepped inside and closed the door quickly. She crossed the room to where Elizabeth sat. A man burst in, saying, “Hey, you, who do you think you are?” and came after Aliena as if to seize her.

“Stay where you are!” she said in her most commanding voice. He hesitated. She said: “I come to see the countess, with a message from Earl William, and you would have learned that earlier if you had been guarding the door instead of stuffing your face with horsebread.”

He looked guilty.

Elizabeth said: “It’s all right, Edgar, I know this lady.”

“Very well, countess,” he said. He went out and closed the door.

I made it, Aliena thought. I got in.

She looked around while her heartbeat returned to normal. The room was not very different from when it had been hers. There were dried petals in a bowl, a pretty tapestry on the wall, some books, and a trunk for clothes. The bed was in the same place-in fact it was the same bed-and on the pillow was a rag doll just like the one Aliena had had. It made her feel old.

“This used to be my room,” she said.

“I know,” said Elizabeth.

Aliena was surprised. She had not told Elizabeth about her past.

“I’ve found out all about you since that terrible storm,” Elizabeth explained. She added: “I admire you so much.” She had the gleam of hero-worship in her eyes.

That was a good sign.

“And William?” Aliena said. “Are you any happier, living with him?”

Elizabeth looked away. “Well,” she said, “I have my own room now, and he’s been away a lot. In fact everything’s much better.” Then she began to cry.

Aliena sat on the bed and put her arms around the girl. Elizabeth cried with deep, wrenching sobs, and tears flooded down her cheeks. In between sobs she gasped: “I-hate-him! I-wish-I-could-die!”

Her anguish was so pitiful, and she was so young, that Aliena was close to tears herself. She was painfully aware that Elizabeth’s fate could easily have been her own. She patted Elizabeth’s back as she would have done with Sally.

Eventually Elizabeth became calmer. She wiped her wet face with the sleeve of her nightshirt. “I’m so afraid of having a baby,” she said miserably. “I’m terrified because I know how he would mistreat the child.”

“I understand,” Aliena said. She had once been terrified by the thought that she might be pregnant with William’s child.

Elizabeth looked at her wide-eyed. “Is it true what they say, about… what he did to you?”

“Yes, it’s true. I was your age when it happened.”

For a moment they looked into one another’s eyes, brought close by a shared loathing. Suddenly Elizabeth did not look like a child anymore.

Aliena said: “You could get free of him, if you want. Today.”

Elizabeth stared at her. “Is it true?” she said with pitiable eagerness. “Is it true?”

Aliena nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

“I could go home?” Elizabeth said, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “I could go home to Weymouth, to my mother? Today?”

“Yes. But you’ll have to be brave.”

“I’ll do anything,” she said. “Anything! Just tell me.”

Aliena remembered explaining how she could acquire authority with her husband’s employees, and she wondered whether Elizabeth had been able to put the principles into practice. “Do the servants still push you around?” she asked candidly.

“They try.”

“But you don’t let them.”

She looked embarrassed. “Well, sometimes I do. But I’m sixteen now, and I’ve been countess for nearly two years… and I’ve been trying to follow your advice, and it really works!”

“Let me explain,” Aliena began. “King Stephen has made a pact with Duke Henry. All lands are to be returned to the people who held them in the time of the old King Henry. That means my brother Richard will become earl of Shiring-sometime. But he wants it now.”

Elizabeth was wide-eyed. “Is Richard going to make war on William?”

“Richard is very close right now, with a small company of men. If he can take over the castle today, he will be recognized as earl, and William will be finished.”

“I can’t believe it,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t believe it’s really true.” Her sudden optimism was even more heartrending than her abject misery had been.

“All you have to do is let Richard in peacefully,” Aliena said. “Then, when it’s all over, we’ll take you home.”

Elizabeth looked fearful again. “I’m not sure the men will do what I say.”

That was Aliena’s worry. “Who is the captain of the guard?”

“Michael Armstrong. I don’t like him.”

“Send for him.”

“Right.” Elizabeth wiped her nose, stood up, and went to the door. “Madge!” she called out in a piercing voice. Aliena heard a distant reply. “Go and fetch Michael. Tell him to come here right away-I want to see him urgently. Hurry, please.”

She came back in and began to dress quickly, throwing a tunic over her nightdress and lacing up her boots. Aliena briefed her rapidly. “Tell Michael to ring the big bell to summon everyone to the courtyard. Say you’ve received a message from Earl William and you want to speak to the entire garrison, men-at-arms and servants and everyone. You want three or four men to stand guard while everyone else gathers in the lower courtyard. Also tell him you’re expecting a group of ten or twelve horsemen to arrive at any moment with a further message, and they must be brought to you as soon as they arrive.”

“I hope I can remember it all,” Elizabeth said nervously.

“Don’t worry-if you forget, I’ll prompt you.”

“That makes me feel better.”

“What’s Michael Armstrong like?”

“Smelly and surly and built like an ox.”

“Intelligent?”

“No.”

“So much the better.”

A moment later the man came in. He had a grumpy expression, a short neck and massive shoulders, and he brought with him the odor of the pigsty. He looked inquiringly at Elizabeth, giving the impression that he resented being disturbed.

“I’ve received a message from the earl,” Elizabeth began.

Michael held out his hand.

Aliena was horrified to realize that she had not taken the precaution of providing Elizabeth with a letter. The whole deception could collapse right at the outset because of a silly mistake. Elizabeth threw her a despairing look. Aliena cast about frantically for something to say. Finally she was inspired. “Can you read, Michael?”

He looked resentful. “The priest will read it to me.”

“Your lady can read.”

Elizabeth looked scared, but she said: “I shall give the message to the whole garrison myself, Michael. Ring the bell and get everyone assembled in the courtyard. But make sure to leave three or four men on guard on the ramparts.”

As Aliena had feared, Michael did not like Elizabeth taking command like this. He looked rebellious. “Why not let me address them?”

Aliena realized anxiously that she might not be able to persuade this man: he could be too stupid to listen to reason. She said: “I have brought the countess momentous news from Winchester. She wants to tell her people herself.”

“Well, what is the news?” he said.

Aliena said nothing and looked at Elizabeth. Once again Elizabeth looked scared. However, Aliena had not told her what was supposed to be in the fictitious message, so Elizabeth could not possibly accede to Michael’s request. In the end she simply went on as if Michael had not spoken. “Tell the guards to look out for a group of ten or twelve horsemen. Their leader will have fresh news from Earl William, and he must be brought to me immediately. Now ring the bell.”

Michael was clearly disposed to argue. He stood still, frowning, while Aliena held her breath. “More messengers,” he said, as if it were something very difficult to understand. “This lady with one message, and twelve horsemen with another.”

“Yes-now would you please go and ring the bell?” Elizabeth said. Aliena could hear the quaver in her voice.

Michael looked defeated. He could not understand what was happening, but he saw nothing to object to either. Finally he said a grudging “Very well, lady,” and went out.

Aliena breathed again.

Elizabeth said: “What’s going to happen?”

“When they’re gathered in the courtyard, you’ll tell them about the peace between King Stephen and Duke Henry,” Aliena said. “That will distract everyone. While you’re speaking, Richard will send out an advance party of ten men. However, the guards will think they are the messengers we are expecting from Earl William, so they won’t immediately panic and raise the drawbridge. You have to try to keep everyone interested in what you’re saying while the advance party approaches the castle. All right?”

Elizabeth looked nervous. She said: “And then what?”

“When I give you the word, say you have surrendered the castle to the rightful earl, Richard. Then Richard’s army will break cover and charge the castle. At that point Michael will realize what’s happening. But his men will be in doubt about their loyalty-because you have told them to surrender, and called Richard the rightful earl-and the advance party will be inside to prevent anyone from closing the gates.” The bell began to ring. Aliena’s stomach knotted in fear. “We’ve run out of time. How do you feel?”

“Scared.”

“Me too. Let’s go.”

They went down the stairs. The bell on the gatehouse tower was ringing as it had when Aliena was a carefree girl. Same bell, same sound, different Aliena, she thought. She knew it could be heard all across the fields, as far away as the edge of the forest. Richard would by now be saying the Paternoster slowly under his breath, to measure the time he had to wait before sending his advance party.

Aliena and Elizabeth walked from the keep across the internal drawbridge to the lower courtyard. Elizabeth was pale with fear, but her mouth was set in a determined line. Aliena smiled at her to give her courage, then pulled up her hood again. So far she had not seen anyone familiar, but she was a well-known face all over the county, and someone was sure to recognize her sooner or later. If Michael Armstrong were to find out who she was he might smell a rat, dimwitted though he undoubtedly was. Several people gave her curious glances, but no one spoke to her.

She and Elizabeth went to the middle of the lower courtyard. Because the ground sloped somewhat, Aliena could see over the heads of the crowd and through the main gate to the fields outside. The advance party should be breaking cover about now, but she could see no sign of them. Oh, God, I hope there’s no snag, she thought fearfully.

Elizabeth would need something to stand on while she addressed the people. Aliena told a manservant to fetch a mounting block from the stable. While they were waiting, an elderly woman looked at Aliena and said: “Why, it’s the Lady Aliena! How nice to see you!”

Aliena’s heart sank. She recognized the woman as a cook who had worked at the castle before the coming of the Hamleighs. She forced a smile and said: “Hello, Tilly, how are you?”

Tilly nudged her neighbor. “Hey, it’s the Lady Aliena come back after all these years. Are you going to be mistress again, lady?”

Aliena did not want that thought to occur to Michael Armstrong. She looked around anxiously. Happily, Michael was not within earshot. However, one of his men-at-arms had heard the exchange and was staring at Aliena with a furrowed brow. Aliena looked back at him with a simulated expression of unconcern. The man only had one eye-which no doubt was why he had been left behind here instead of going off to war with William-and it suddenly seemed funny to Aliena to be stared at by a man with one eye, and she had to choke back a laugh. She realized she was slightly hysterical.

The manservant came back with the mounting block. The bell ceased to toll. Aliena made herself calm as Elizabeth stood on the block and the crowd went quiet.

Elizabeth said: “King Stephen and Duke Henry have made peace.”

She paused, and a cheer went up. Aliena was looking through the gateway. Now, Richard, she thought; now is the time, don’t leave it too late!

Elizabeth smiled and let the people cheer for a while, then she went on: “Stephen is to remain king until he dies, then Henry will succeed him.”

Aliena scrutinized the guards on the towers and over the gatehouse. They looked relaxed. Where was Richard?

Elizabeth said: “The peace treaty will bring many changes in our lives.”

Aliena saw the guards stiffen. One of them raised his hand to shade his eyes and peered out over the fields, while another turned and looked down into the courtyard as if hoping to catch the eye of the captain. But Michael Armstrong was listening intently to Elizabeth.

“The present and future kings have agreed that all lands shall be returned to those who possessed them in the time of the old King Henry.”

That caused a buzz of comment in the crowd, as people speculated whether this change would affect the earldom of Shiring. Aliena noticed Michael Armstrong looking thoughtful. Through the gateway she at last saw the horses of Richard’s advance party. Hurry, she thought, hurry! But they were coming at a steady trot, so as not to alarm the guards.

Elizabeth was saying: “We must all give thanks to God for this peace treaty. We should pray that King Stephen will rule wisely in his declining years, and that the young duke will keep his peace until God takes Stephen away…” She was doing magnificently, but she was beginning to look troubled, as if she might be about to run out of things to say.

All the guards were looking outward, examining the approaching party. They had been told to expect such a group, and instructed to bring the leader to the countess immediately, so no action was required of them, but they were curious.

The one-eyed man turned around and looked through the gate, then turned back and stared at Aliena again, and she guessed he was frowning over the significance of her presence here and the approach of a troop of horsemen.

One of the guards on the battlements appeared to make a decision, and disappeared down a staircase.

The crowd was getting a little restless. Elizabeth was meandering magnificently, but they were impatient for hard news. She said: “This war started within a year of my birth, and like many young people up and down the kingdom I am looking forward to finding out what peace is like.”

The guard from the battlements emerged from the base of a tower, walked briskly across the compound, and spoke to Michael Armstrong.

Through the gateway, Aliena could see that the horsemen were still a couple of hundred yards away. It was not close enough. She could have screamed in frustration. She would not be able to contain this situation much longer.

Michael Armstrong turned and looked through the gate, frowning. Then the one-eyed man pulled Michael’s sleeve and said something, pointing at Aliena.

Aliena was afraid Michael would close the gates and raise the drawbridge before Richard could get in, but she did not know what she could do to prevent him. She wondered whether she had the nerve to throw herself at him before he could give the order. She still wore her dagger strapped to her left arm: she could even kill him. He turned away decisively. Aliena reached up and touched Elizabeth’s elbow. “Stop Michael!” she hissed.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She looked petrified by fear. Then her expression changed. She took a deep breath, tilted her head up, and spoke in a voice ringing with authority. “Michael Armstrong!”

Michael turned back.

This was the point of no return, Aliena realized. Richard was not quite close enough but she had run out of time. She said to Elizabeth: “Now! Tell them now!”

Elizabeth said: “I have surrendered this castle to the rightful earl of Shiring, Richard of Kingsbridge.”

Michael stared unbelievingly at Elizabeth. “You can’t do that!” he shouted.

Elizabeth said: “I command you all to lay down your weapons. There is to be no bloodshed.”

Michael turned around and yelled: “Raise the drawbridge! Shut the gates!”

The men-at-arms rushed to do his bidding, but he had hesitated a moment too long. As the men reached the massive ironbound doors that would close the entrance arch, Richard’s advance party clattered over the drawbridge and entered the compound. Most of Michael’s men were not wearing armor and some of them did not even have their swords, and they scattered in front of the horsemen.

Elizabeth shouted: “Everyone keep calm. These messengers will confirm my orders.”

There was a shout from the battlements: one of the guards cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled down: “Michael! Attack! We’re being attacked! Scores of them!”

“Treachery!” Michael roared, and drew his sword. But two of Richard’s men were on him instantly, their blades flashing. Blood gushed and he went down. Aliena looked away.

Some of Richard’s men had taken possession of the gatehouse and the winding room. Two of them made it to the battlements, and Michael’s guards surrendered to them.

Through the gateway Aliena saw the main force galloping across the fields toward the castle, and her spirits rose like the sun.

Elizabeth shouted at the top of her voice: “This is a peaceful surrender. No one is going to be hurt, I promise you. Just stay where you are.”

Everyone stood stock-still, listening to the thunder as Richard’s army pounded closer. Michael’s men-at-arms looked confused and uncertain, but none of them did anything: their leader had fallen, and their countess had told them to surrender. The castle servants were paralyzed by the rapidity of events.

Then Richard came through the gateway on his war-horse.

It was a great moment, and Aliena’s heart swelled with pride. Richard was handsome, smiling, and triumphant. Aliena shouted: “The rightful earl!” The men entering the castle behind Richard took up the cry, and it was repeated by some of the crowd in the courtyard-most of them had no love for William. Richard rode around the compound at a slow walk, waving and acknowledging the cheers.

Aliena thought about all she had gone through for the sake of this moment. She was thirty-four years old and she had spent half of those years fighting for this. The whole of my adult life, she thought; that’s what I gave. She remembered stuffing wool into sacks until her hands were red and swollen and bleeding. She recalled the faces she had seen on the road, greedy and cruel and lascivious faces of men who would have killed her if she had given the least sign of weakness. She thought of how she had hardened her heart against dear Jack, and married Alfred instead; and she thought of the months during which she had slept on the floor at the foot of his bed like a dog; and all because he had promised to pay for weapons and armor so that Richard could fight to win back this castle. “There it is, Father,” she said aloud. Nobody heard her: they were cheering too loud. “This is what you wanted,” she said to her dead father, and there was bitterness as well as triumph in her heart. “I promised you this, and I kept my promise. I took care of Richard, and he fought all these years, and now we’re home again at last, and Richard is the earl. Now…” Her voice rose to a shout, but everyone was shouting, and no one noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Now, Father, I’ve done with you, so go to your grave, and let me live in peace!”

I

REMIGIUS WAS ARROGANT, even in penury. He entered the wooden manor house at Hamleigh village with his head held high, and looked down his long nose at the huge, roughhewn wooden crucks supporting the roof, the wattle-and-daub walls, and the chimneyless open fire in the middle of the beaten-earth floor.

William watched him walk in. I may be down on my luck, but I’m not as far down as you, he thought, noting the monk’s much-repaired sandals, the grubby robe, the unshaven chin and the unkempt hair. Remigius had never been a fat man but now he was thinner than ever. The haughty expression fixed on his face failed to conceal the lines of exhaustion or the purplish folds of defeat under his eyes. Remigius was not yet bowed, but he was very badly beaten.

“Bless you, my son,” he said to William.

William was not having any of that. “What do you want, Remigius?” he said, deliberately insulting the monk by not calling him “Father” or “Brother.”

Remigius flinched as if he had been struck. William guessed he had received a few taunts of that kind since he came down in the world. Remigius said: “The lands you gave to me as dean of the chapter at Shiring have been repossessed by Earl Richard.”

“I’m not surprised,” William replied. “Everything is to be returned to those who possessed it in the time of the old King Henry.”

“But that leaves me with no means of support.”

“You and a lot of other people,” William said carelessly. “You’ll have to go back to Kingsbridge.”

Remigius’s face paled with anger. “I can’t do that,” he said in a low voice.

“Why not?” said William, tormenting him.

“You know why not.”

“Would Philip say you shouldn’t prise secrets out of little girls? Does he think you betrayed him, by telling me where the outlaws’ hideout was? Would he be angry with you for becoming the dean of a church that was to take the place of his own cathedral? Well, then I suppose you can’t go back.”

“Give me something,” Remigius pleaded. “One village. A farm. A little church!”

“There are no rewards for losing, monk,” William said harshly. He was enjoying this. “In the world outside the monastery, nobody looks after you. The ducks swallow the worms, and the foxes kill the ducks, and the men shoot the foxes, and the devil hunts the men.”

Remigius’s voice sank to a whisper. “What am I to do?”

William smiled and said: “Beg.”

Remigius turned on his heel and left the house.

Still proud, William thought, but not for long. You’ll beg.

It pleased him to see someone who had fallen harder than he himself. He would never forget the excruciating agony of standing outside the gate of his own castle and being refused admittance. He had been suspicious when he heard that Richard and some of his men had left Winchester; then when the peace pact was announced his unease had turned to alarm, and he had taken his knights and men and ridden hard to Earlscastle. There was a skeleton force guarding the castle, so he expected to find Richard camped in the fields, laying siege. When all appeared peaceful he had been relieved, and berated himself for overreacting to Richard’s sudden disappearance.

When he got closer he saw that the drawbridge was up. He had reined in at the edge of the moat and shouted: “Open up for the earl!”

That was when Richard had appeared on the battlements and said: “The earl is inside.”

It was like the ground falling away from under William’s feet. He had always been afraid of Richard, always aware of him as a dangerous rival, but he had not felt himself especially vulnerable at this moment in time. He had thought the real danger would come when Stephen died and Henry came to the throne, which might be ten years away. Now, as he sat in a mean manor house brooding over his mistakes, he realized bitterly that Richard had in fact been very clever. He had slipped through a narrow gap. He could not be accused of breaching the king’s peace, as the war was still on. His claim to the earldom had been legitimized by the terms of the peace treaty. And Stephen, aging and tired and defeated, had no energy left for further battles.

Richard had magnanimously released those of William’s men-at-arms who wanted to continue in William’s service. Waldo One-eye had told William how the castle had been taken. The treachery of Elizabeth was maddening, but for William it was the part played by Aliena that was most humiliating. The helpless little girl he had raped and tormented and thrown out of her home all those years ago had come back and taken her revenge. Every time he thought of that his stomach burned with bitterness as if he had drunk vinegar.

His first inclination had been to fight Richard. William could have kept his army, lived off the country side, and extorted taxes and supplies from the peasants, fighting a running battle with his rival. But Richard held the castle, and he had time on his side, for William’s supporter Stephen was old and beaten, and Richard was backed by the young Duke Henry, who would eventually become the second King Henry.

So William had decided to cut his losses. He had retired to the village of Hamleigh and moved back into the manor house where he had been brought up. Hamleigh, and the villages surrounding it, had been granted to his father thirty years ago. It was a holding that had never been part of the earldom, so Richard had no claim to it.

William hoped that if he kept his head down Richard would be satisfied with the revenge he had already taken, and would leave him alone. So far it had worked. However, William hated the village of Hamleigh. He hated the small neat houses, the excitable ducks on the pond, the pale gray stone church, the apple-cheeked children, the broad-hipped women and the strong, resentful men. He hated it for being humble, plain and poor, and he hated it because it symbolized his family’s fall from power. He watched the plodding peasants begin the spring plowing, and estimated what his share of their crop would be that summer, and he found it meager. He went hunting in his few acres of forest and failed to start a single deer, and the forester said to him: “The boar is all you can hunt now, lord-the outlaws had the deer in the famine.” He held court in the great hall of the manor house, with the wind whistling through the holes in its wattle-and-daub walls; and he gave harsh judgments and imposed large fines and ruled according to his whim; but it brought him little satisfaction.

He had abandoned the building of the grand new church at Shiring, of course. He could not afford to build a stone house for himself, let alone a church. The builders had stopped work when he had stopped paying them, and what had happened to them he did not know: perhaps they had all gone back to Kingsbridge to work for Prior Philip.

But now he was having nightmares.

They were all the same. He saw his mother in the place of the dead. She was bleeding from her ears and eyes, and when she opened her mouth to speak, more blood came out. The sight filled him with mortal terror. In broad daylight he could not say what it was about the dream that he feared, for she did not threaten him in any way. But at night, when she came to him, the fear possessed him totally, an irrational, hysterical, blind panic. Once as a boy he had waded into a pond that suddenly got deeper, and he had found himself below the surface and unable to breathe; and the overpowering need for air that had possessed him then was one of the indelible memories of his childhood; but this was ten times as bad. Trying to get away from his mother’s bloody face was like trying to sprint in quicksand. He would come awake as if he had been thrown across the room, violently shocked, sweating and moaning, his body taut with agony from the racked-up tension. Walter would be at his bedside with a candle-William slept in the hall, separated from the men by a screen, for there was no bedroom here. “You cried out, lord,” Walter would murmur. William would breathe hard, staring at the real bed and the real wall and the real Walter, while the power of the nightmare slowly faded to the point where he was no longer afraid; and then he would say: “It was nothing, a dream, go away.” But he would be frightened to go back to sleep. And the next day the men would look at him as if he were bewitched.

A few days after his conversation with Remigius, he was sitting in the same hard chair, by the same smoky fire, when Bishop Waleran walked in.

William was startled. He had heard horses, but he had assumed it was Walter, coming back from the mill. He did not know what to do when he saw the bishop. Waleran had always been arrogant and superior, and time and time again he had made William feel foolish, clumsy and coarse. It was humiliating that Waleran should see the humble surroundings in which he now lived.

William did not get up to greet his visitor. “What do you want?” he said curtly. He had no reason to be polite: he wanted Waleran to get out as soon as possible.

The bishop ignored his rudeness. “The sheriff is dead,” he said.

At first William did not see what he was getting at. “What’s that to me?”

“There will be a new sheriff.”

William was about to say So what? but he stopped himself. Waleran was concerned about who would be the new sheriff. And he had come to talk to William about it. That could only mean one thing, couldn’t it? Hope rose in his breast, but he suppressed it fiercely: where Waleran was involved, high hopes often ended in frustration and disappointment. He said: “Who have you got in mind?”

“You.”

It was the answer William had not dared to hope for. He wished he could believe in it. A clever and ruthless sheriff could be almost as important and influential as an earl or a bishop. This could be his way back to wealth and power. He forced himself to consider the snags. “Why would King Stephen appoint me?”

“You supported him against Duke Henry, and as a result you lost your earldom. I imagine he would like to recompense you.”

“Nobody ever does anything out of gratitude,” William said, repeating a saying of his mother’s.

Waleran said: “Stephen can’t be happy that the earl of Shiring is a man who fought against him. He might want his sheriff to be a countervailing force against Richard.”

Now that made more sense. William felt excited against his will. He began to believe that he might actually get out of this hole in the ground called Hamleigh village. He would have a respectable force of knights and men-at-arms again, instead of the pitiful handful he now supported. He would preside over the county court at Shiring, and frustrate Richard’s will. “The sheriff lives at Shiring Castle,” he said longingly.

“You’d be rich again,” Waleran added.

“Yes.” Properly exploited, the sheriffs post could be hugely profitable. William would make almost as much money as he had when he was earl. But he wondered why Waleran had mentioned it.

A moment later Waleran answered the question. “You would be able to finance the new church, after all.”

So that was it. Waleran never did anything without an ulterior motive. He wanted William to be sheriff so that William could build him a church. But William was willing to go along with the plan. If he could finish the church in memory of his mother, perhaps the nightmares would stop. “Do you really think it can be done?” he said eagerly.

Waleran nodded. “It will cost money, of course, but I think it can be done.”

“Money?” William said with sudden anxiety. “How much?”

“It’s hard to say. In somewhere like Lincoln or Bristol, the shrievalty would cost you five or six hundred pounds; but the sheriffs of those towns are richer than cardinals. For a little place such as Shiring, if you’re the candidate the king wants-which I can take care of-you can probably get it for a hundred pounds.”

“A hundred pounds!” William’s hopes collapsed. He had been afraid of disappointment, right from the start. “If I had a hundred pounds I wouldn’t be living like this!” he said bitterly.

“You can get it,” Waleran said lightly.

“Who from?” William was struck by a thought. “Will you give it to me?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Waleran said with infuriating condescension. “That’s what Jews are for.”

William realized, with a familiar mixture of hope and resentment, that once again the bishop was right.

It was two years since the first cracks had appeared, and Jack had not found a solution to the problem. Worse still, identical cracks had appeared in the first bay of the nave. There was something crucially wrong with his design. The structure was strong enough to support the weight of the vault, but not to resist the winds that blew so hard against the high walls.

He stood on the scaffolding far above the ground, staring close-range at the new cracks, brooding. He needed to think of a way of bracing the upper part of the wall so that it would not move with the wind.

He reflected on the way the lower part of the wall was strengthened. In the outer wall of the aisle were strong, thick piers which were connected to the nave wall by half-arches hidden in the aisle roof. The half-arches and the piers propped up the wall at a distance, like remote buttresses. Because the props were hidden, the nave looked light and graceful.

He needed to devise a similar system for the upper part of the wall. He could make a two-story side aisle, and simply repeat the remote buttressing; but that would block the light coming in through the clerestory-and the whole idea of the new style of building was to bring more light into the church.

Of course, it was not the aisle as such that did the work: the support came from the heavy piers in the side wall and the connecting half-arches. The aisle concealed these structural elements. If only he could build piers and half-arches to support the clerestory without incorporating them into an aisle, he could solve the problem at a stroke.

A voice called him from the ground.

He frowned. He had been on to something before he was interrupted, he felt, but now it had gone. He looked down. Prior Philip was calling him.

He went into the turret and descended the spiral staircase. Philip was waiting for him at the bottom. The prior was so angry he was steaming. “Richard has betrayed me!” he said without preamble.

Jack was surprised. “How?”

Philip did not answer the question at first. “After all I’ve done for him,” he raged. “I bought Aliena’s wool when everyone else was bent on cheating her-if it hadn’t been for me she might never have got started. Then when that fell apart I got him a job as Head of the Watch. And last November I tipped him off about the peace treaty, and that enabled him to seize Earlscastle. And now that he’s won back the earldom, and he’s ruling in splendor, he has turned his back on me.”

Jack had never seen Philip quite so livid. The prior’s shaved head was red with indignation and he was spluttering as he spoke. “In what way has Richard betrayed you?” Jack said.

Once again Philip ignored the question. “I always knew Richard was a weak character. He gave Aliena very little support, over the years-just took from her what he wanted and never considered her needs. But I didn’t think he was an out-and-out villain.”

“What exactly has he done?”

At last Philip told him. “He has refused to give us access to the quarry.”

Jack was shocked. That was an act of astonishing ingratitude. “But how does he justify himself?”

“Everything is supposed to revert to those who possessed it in the time of the first King Henry. And the quarry was granted to us by King Stephen.”

Richard’s greed was remarkable, but Jack could not get as angry as Philip. They had built half the cathedral now, mostly with stone they had had to pay for, and they would continue to get by somehow. “Well, I suppose Richard is in the right, strictly speaking,” he said argumentatively.

Philip was outraged. “How can you say such a thing?”

“It’s a bit like what you did to me,” Jack said. “After I brought you the Weeping Madonna, and produced a wonderful design for your new cathedral, and built a town wall to protect you from William, you announced that I couldn’t live with the woman who is the mother of my children. There’s ingratitude.”

Philip was shocked by this parallel. “That’s completely different!” he protested. “I don’t want you to live apart. It’s Waleran who has blocked the annulment. But God’s law says you must not commit adultery.”

“I’m sure Richard would say something similar,” Jack persisted. “It’s not Richard who has ordered the reversion of property. He is just enforcing the law.”

The noon bell rang.

“There’s a difference between God’s laws and men’s laws,” Philip said.

“But we must live by both,” Jack countered. “And now I’m going to have dinner with the mother of my children.”

He walked away and left Philip standing there looking upset. He did not really think Philip was as ungrateful as Richard, but it had relieved his feelings to pretend that he did. He decided he would ask Aliena about the quarry. It might be that Richard could be persuaded to hand it over after all. She would know.

He left the priory close and walked through the streets to the house where he lived with Martha. Aliena and the children were in the kitchen, as usual. The famine had ended with a good harvest last year, and food was no longer desperately scarce: there was wheat bread and roast mutton on the table.

Jack kissed the children. Sally gave him a soft childish kiss, but Tommy, now eleven years old and impatient to grow up, offered his cheek and looked embarrassed. Jack smiled but said nothing: he remembered when he had thought kissing was silly.

Aliena looked troubled. Jack sat on the bench beside her and said: “Philip’s in a rage because Richard won’t give him the quarry.”

“That’s terrible,” Aliena said mildly. “How ungrateful of Richard.”

“Do you think he might be persuaded to change his mind?”

“I really don’t know,” she said. She had a distracted air.

Jack said: “You don’t seem very interested in the problem.”

She looked at him challengingly. “No, I’m not.”

He knew this mood. “You’d better tell me what’s on your mind.”

She stood up. “Let’s go into the back room.”

With a regretful look at the leg of mutton, Jack left the table and followed her into the bedroom. They left the door open, as usual, to avoid suspicion if someone should come into the house. Aliena sat on the bed and folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve made an important decision,” she began.

She looked so grave that Jack wondered what on earth it could be.

“I’ve lived most of my adult life under two shadows,” she began. “One was the vow I made to my father when he was dying. The other is my relationship with you.”

Jack said: “But now you’ve fulfilled your vow to your father.”

“Yes. And I want to be free of the other burden, too. I’ve decided to leave you.”

Jack’s heart seemed to stop. He knew she did not say such things lightly: she was serious. He stared at her, speechless. He was disoriented by the announcement: he had never dreamed she could leave him. How had this dreadful thing crept up on him? He said the first thing that came into his head: “Is there someone else?”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Then why?”

“Because I can’t take it anymore,” she said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “We’ve been waiting ten years for this annulment. It’s never going to come, Jack. We’re doomed to live this way forever-unless we part.”

“But…” He cast around for something to say. Her announcement was so devastating that arguing with it seemed hopeless, like trying to walk away from a hurricane. Nevertheless he tried. “Isn’t this better than nothing, better than separation?”

“In the end, no.”

“But how will it change anything if you move away?”

“I might meet someone else, and fall in love again, and live a normal life,” she said, but she was crying.

“You’ll still be married to Alfred.”

“But nobody will know or care. I could be married by a parish priest who has never heard of Alfred Builder and who wouldn’t consider the marriage valid if he knew of it.”

“I don’t believe you’re saying this. I can’t take it in.”

“Ten years, Jack. I’ve been waiting ten years to have a normal life with you. I won’t wait any longer.”

The words fell on him like blows. She carried on talking, but he no longer understood her. All he could think about was life without her. He interrupted her: “I’ve never loved anyone else, you see.”

She winced, as if she was in pain, but she went on with what she was saying. “I need a few weeks to arrange everything. I’ll get a house in Winchester. I want the children to get used to the idea before their new life begins-”

“You’re going to take my children,” he said stupidly.

She nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. For the first time her resolve seemed to waver. “I know they’ll miss you. But they need a normal life too.”

Jack could not take any more. He turned away.

Aliena said: “Don’t walk out on me. We ought to talk some more. Jack-”

He went out without replying.

He heard her cry out after him: “Jack!”

He walked through the living room, not looking at the children, and left the house. In a daze he walked back to the cathedral, not knowing where else to go. The builders were still at lunch. He was unable to weep: this was too bad for mere tears. Without thinking, he climbed the staircase in the north transept, all the way up to the top, and stepped out onto the roof.

There was a stiff breeze up here, although at ground level it had hardly been noticeable. Jack looked down. If he fell from here he would land on the lean-to roof of the aisle alongside the transept. He would probably die, but it was not certain. He walked to the crossing and stood where the roof suddenly ended in a sheer drop. If the new-style cathedral was not structurally sound, and Aliena was leaving him, he had nothing left to live for.

Her decision was not as sudden as it seemed, of course. She had been discontented for years-they both had. But they had got accustomed to unhappiness. Winning back Earlscastle had shaken Aliena’s torpor, and reminded her that she was in charge of her own life. It had destabilized a situation that was already unsteady; rather in the way that the storm had caused cracks in the cathedral walls.

He looked at the wall of the transept and the roof of the side aisle. He could see the heavy buttresses jutting out from the wall of the side aisle, and he could visualize the half-arch, under the roof of the aisle, connecting the buttress to the foot of the clerestory. What would solve the problem, he had thought just before Philip had distracted him this morning, was a taller buttress, perhaps another twenty feet high, with a second half-arch leaping across the gap to the point on the wall where the cracks were appearing. The arch and the tall buttress would brace the top half of the church and keep the wall rigid when the wind blew.

That would probably solve the problem The trouble was, if he built a two-story aisle to hide the extended buttress and the secondary half-arch, he would lose light; and if he did not…

If I don’t, he thought, so what?

He was possessed by a feeling that nothing mattered very much, since his life was falling apart; and in that mood he could not see anything wrong with the idea of naked buttressing. Standing up here on the roof, he could easily picture what it would look like. A line of sturdy stone columns would rise up from the side wall of the aisle. From the top of each column, a half-arch would spring across empty space to the clerestory. Perhaps he would put a decorative pinnacle on top of each column, above the springing of the arch. Yes, that would look better.

It was a revolutionary idea, to build big strengthening members in a position where they would be starkly visible. But it was part of the new style to show how the building was being held up.

Anyway, his instinct said this was right.

The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He visualized the church from the west. The half-arches would look like the wings of a flight of birds, all in a line, just about to take off. They need not be massive. As long as they were well made they could be slender and elegant, light yet strong, just like a bird’s wing. Winged buttresses, he thought, for a church so light it could fly.

I wonder, he thought. I wonder if it would work.

A gust of wind suddenly unbalanced him. He teetered on the edge of the roof. For a moment he thought he was going to fall to his death. Then he regained his balance and stepped back from the edge, his heart pounding.

Slowly and carefully, he made his way back along the roof to the turret door, and went down.

II

Work had stopped completely on the church at Shiring. Prior Philip caught himself gloating a little over that. After all the times he had looked out disconsolately onto a deserted building site, he could not help feeling pleased that the same thing had now happened to his enemies. Alfred Builder had only had time to demolish the old church and lay the foundations for the new chancel before William had been deposed and the money had dried up. Philip told himself that it was sinful to be glad about the ruin of a church. However, it was obviously God’s will that the cathedral should be built in Kingsbridge, not Shiring-the bad fortune that had dogged Waleran’s project seemed a very clear sign of divine intentions.

Now that the town’s biggest church had been knocked down, the county court was held in the great hall at the castle. Philip rode up the hill with Jonathan by his side. He had made Jonathan his personal assistant, in the shake-up that had followed the defection of Remigius. Philip had been shocked by Remigius’s perfidy, but he had been glad to see the back of him. Ever since Philip had beaten Remigius in the election, Remigius had been a thorn in his flesh. The priory was a nicer place to live now that he had gone.

Milius was the new sub-prior. However, he continued to fulfill the role of treasurer, and had a staff of three under him in the treasury. Since Remigius had gone, nobody could figure out what he used to do all day.

Philip got deep satisfaction out of working with Jonathan. He enjoyed explaining to him how the monastery was run, educating him in the ways of the world, and showing him how best to deal with people. The lad was generally well liked, but he could sometimes be abrasive, and he could easily raise the hackles of unself-confident people. He had to learn that those who treated him in a hostile way did so out of weakness. He saw the hostility and reacted angrily, instead of seeing the weakness and giving reassurance.

Jonathan had a quick brain, and often surprised Philip by the rapidity with which he picked things up. Philip sometimes caught himself in the sin of pride, thinking how like himself Jonathan was.

He had brought Jonathan with him today to learn how the county court operated. Philip was going to ask the sheriff to order Richard to open the quarry to the priory. He was quite sure Richard was in the wrong legally. The new law about the restoration of property to those who had possessed it in the time of the old King Henry did not affect the priory’s rights. Its object was to allow Duke Henry to replace Stephen’s earls with his own, and thus reward people who had supported him. It was obviously not meant to apply to monasteries. Philip was confident of winning the case, but there was an unknown factor: the old sheriff had died and his replacement would be announced today. No one knew who it would be, but everyone assumed the job would go to one of the three or four leading citizens of Shiring: David Merchant the silk seller; Rees Welsh, a priest who had worked at the king’s court; Giles Lionheart, a knight with landholdings just outside the town; or Hugh the Bastard, the illegitimate son of the bishop of Salisbury. Philip hoped it would be Rees, not because the man was a countryman of his, but because he was likely to favor the church. But Philip was not overly worried: any of the four would rule in his favor, he thought.

They rode into the castle. It was not very heavily fortified. Because the earl of Shiring had a separate castle outside town, Shiring had escaped battle for several generations. The castle was more of an administrative center, with offices and quarters for the sheriff and his men, and dungeons for offenders. Philip and Jonathan stabled their horses and went into the largest building, the great hall.

The trestle tables that normally formed a T-shape had been rearranged. The top of the T remained, raised above the level of the rest of the hall by a dais; and the other tables were ranged down the sides of the hall, so that opposing plaintiffs could sit well apart and avoid the temptation to physical violence.

The hall was already full. Bishop Waleran was there, up on the dais, looking malevolent. To Philip’s surprise, William Hamleigh was sitting with him, talking to the bishop out of the corner of his mouth as they watched people coming in. What was William doing here? For nine months he had been lying low, hardly moving from his village, and Philip-together with many other people in the county-had entertained the hope that he might stay there forever. But here he was, sitting on the bench as if he were still the earl. Philip wondered what mean-minded, ruthless, greedy little scheme had brought him to the county court today.

Philip and Jonathan sat down at the side of the room and waited for the proceedings to begin. There was a busy, optimistic air to the court. Now that the war had come to an end, the elite of the country had turned their attention back to the business of creating wealth. It was a fertile land and it quickly repaid their efforts: a bumper harvest was expected this year. The price of wool was up. Philip had reemployed almost all the builders who had left at the height of the famine. Everywhere the people who had survived were the younger, stronger, healthier individuals, and now they were full of hope, and here in the great hall of Shiring Castle it showed in the tilt of their heads, the pitch of their voices, the men’s new boots and the women’s fancy headgear, and the fact that they were prosperous enough to own something worth arguing in court about.

They stood up as the sheriffs deputy walked in with Earl Richard. The two men mounted the dais and then, still standing, the deputy began to read the royal writ appointing the new sheriff. As he went through the initial verbiage, Philip looked around at the four presumed candidates. He hoped the winner had courage: he would need it, to stand up for the law in the presence of such powerful local barons as Bishop Waleran, Earl Richard and Lord William. The successful candidate presumably knew he had been appointed-there was no reason to keep it secret-but none of the four looked very animated. Normally the appointee would stand beside the deputy as the proclamation was read, but the only people up there with him were Richard, Waleran and William. The appalling thought crossed Philip’s mind that Waleran might have been made sheriff. Then he was even more horrified as he heard: “… appoint as sheriff of Shiring my servant William of Hamleigh, and I order all men to assist him…”

Philip looked at Jonathan and said: “William!”

There were sounds of surprise and disapproval from the townspeople.

Jonathan said: “How did he do it?”

“He must have paid for it.”

“Where did he get the money?”

“Borrowed it, I suppose.”

William moved to the wooden throne in the middle of the top table, smiling. He had once been a handsome young man, Philip remembered. He was still under forty, just, but he looked older. His body was too heavy, and his complexion was flushed with wine; and the lively strength and optimism that makes young faces attractive had gone, to be replaced by a look of dissipation.

As William sat down, Philip stood up.

Jonathan got up too and whispered: “Are we leaving?”

“Follow me,” Philip hissed.

The room fell silent. All eyes were on them as they walked across the courtroom. The public crowd parted for them to pass through. They reached the door and went out. A buzz of comment broke out as the door closed behind them.

Jonathan said: “We had no chance of success with William in the chair.”

“Worse than that,” Philip said. “If we had pressed our case we might have lost other rights.”

“My soul, I never thought of that.”

Philip nodded grimly. “With William as sheriff, Waleran as bishop, and the faithless Richard as earl, it is now completely impossible for Kingsbridge Priory to get justice in this county. They can do anything they like to us.”

While a stableboy saddled their mounts, Philip said: “I’m going to petition the king to make Kingsbridge a borough. That way we’d have our own court, and we’d pay our taxes directly to the king. In effect, we would be out of the jurisdiction of the sheriff.”

“You’ve always been against that, in the past,” Jonathan said.

“I’ve been against it because it makes the town as powerful as the priory. But now I think we may have to accept that as the price of independence. The alternative is William.”

“Will King Stephen give us borough status?”

“He might, at a price. But if he doesn’t, perhaps Henry will when he becomes king.”

They mounted their horses and rode dejectedly through the town.

They went out through the gate and passed the rubbish dump on the waste ground just outside. A few decrepit people were picking over the refuse, looking for anything they could eat, wear or burn for fuel. Philip glanced at them without interest, but one of them caught his eye. A familiar tall figure was stooping over a heap of rags, sorting through them. Philip reined in his horse. Jonathan pulled up beside him.

“Look,” Philip said.

Jonathan followed his gaze. After a moment he said quietly: “Remigius.”

Philip watched. Waleran and William had obviously thrown Remigius out some time ago, when funds for the new church dried up. They had no further need of him. Remigius had betrayed Philip, betrayed the priory, and betrayed Kingsbridge, all in the hope of becoming dean of Shiring; but his prize had turned to ashes.

Philip turned his horse off the road and crossed the waste ground to where Remigius stood. Jonathan followed. There was a bad smell that seemed to rise from the ground like fog. As he approached, he saw that Remigius was skeletally thin. His habit was filthy and he was barefoot. He was sixty years old, and he had been at Kingsbridge Priory all his adult life: no one had ever taught him how to live rough. Philip saw him pull a pair of leather shoes out of the trash. There were huge holes in the soles, but Remigius looked at them with the expression of a man who has found buried treasure. As he was about to try them on, he saw Philip.

He straightened up. His face evidenced the struggle between shame and defiance in his heart. After a moment he said: “Well, have you come to gloat?”

“No,” Philip said softly. His old enemy was such a pitiful sight that Philip felt nothing but compassion for him. He got off his horse and took a flask out of his saddlebag. “I’ve come to offer you a drink of wine.”

Remigius did not want to accept it but he was too starved to resist. He hesitated only for a moment, then snatched the flask. He sniffed the wine suspiciously, then put the flask to his mouth. Once he had begun drinking, he could not stop. There was only half a pint left and he drained it in a few moments. He lowered the flask and staggered a little.

Philip took it from him and put it back into his saddlebag. “You’d better have something to eat, as well,” he said. He brought out a small loaf.

Remigius took the proffered bread and began to stuff it into his mouth. He obviously had not eaten for days, and he probably had not had a decent meal for weeks. He could die soon, Philip thought sadly; if not of starvation, then of shame.

The bread went down fast. Philip said: “Do you want to come back?”

He heard a sharp intake of breath from Jonathan. Like a good many of the monks, Jonathan had hoped never to see Remigius again. He probably thought Philip was mad to offer to take him back.

A hint of the old Remigius showed for a moment, and he said: “Come back? In what position?”

Philip shook his head sorrowfully. “You’ll never hold a position of any kind in my priory, Remigius. Come back as a plain, humble monk. Ask God to forgive your sins, and live the rest of your days in prayer and contemplation, preparing your soul for heaven.”

Remigius tilted his head back, and Philip expected a scornful refusal; but it never came. Remigius opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again and looked down. Philip stood still and quiet, watching, wondering what would happen. There was a long moment of silence. Philip was holding his breath. When Remigius looked up again, his face was wet with tears. “Yes, please, Father,” he said. “I want to come home.”

Philip felt a glow of joy. “Come on, then,” he said. “Get on my horse.”

Remigius looked flabbergasted.

Jonathan said: “Father! What are you doing?”

Philip said to Remigius: “Go on, do as I say.”

Jonathan was horrified. “But, Father, how will you travel?”

“I’ll walk,” Philip said happily. “One of us must.”

“Let Remigius walk!” Jonathan said in a tone of outrage.

“Let him ride,” Philip said. “He’s pleased God today.”

“What about you? Haven’t you pleased God more than Remigius?”

“Jesus said there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people,” Philip countered. “Don’t you remember the parable of the prodigal son? When he came home, his father killed the fatted calf. The angels are rejoicing over Remigius’s tears. The least I can do is give him my horse.”

He took the bridle and led the way over the waste ground to the road. Jonathan followed. When they reached the road, Jonathan dismounted and said: “Please, Father, take my horse, then, and let me walk!”

Philip turned to him and spoke a little sternly. “Now get back on your horse, stop arguing with me, and just think about what is being done and why.”

Jonathan looked puzzled, but he mounted again, and said no more.

They turned toward Kingsbridge. It was twenty miles away. Philip began to walk. He felt wonderful. The return of Remigius more than compensated for the quarry. I lost in court, he thought, but that was only about stones. What I gained was something infinitely more valuable.

Today I won a man’s soul.

III

New ripe apples floated in the barrel, shining red and yellow while the sun glinted off the water. Sally, nine years old and excitable, leaned over the rim of the barrel with her hands clasped behind her back and tried to pick up an apple in her teeth. The apple bobbed away, her face plunged into the water, and she came away spluttering and squealing with laughter. Aliena smiled thinly and wiped her little girl’s face.

It was a warm afternoon in late summer, a saint’s day and a holiday, and most of the town had gathered in the meadow across the river for the apple bobbing. This was the kind of occasion that Aliena had always enjoyed, but the fact that it would be her last saint’s day in Kingsbridge was constantly on her mind, weighing down her spirits. She was still determined to leave Jack, but since she had made the decision she had begun to feel, in advance, the pain of loss.

Tommy was hovering near the barrel, and Jack called out: “Go on, Tommy-have a go!”

“Not just yet,” he replied.

At the age of eleven Tommy knew he was smarter than his sister and he thought he was ahead of most other people too. He watched for a while, studying the technique of those who were successful at apple bobbing. Aliena watched him watching. She loved him specially. Jack had been about this age when she had first met him, and Tommy was so like Jack as a boy. Looking at him made her nostalgic for childhood. Jack wanted Tommy to be a builder, but Tommy had not yet shown any interest in construction. However, there was plenty of time.

Eventually he stepped up to the barrel. He bent over it and put his head down slowly, mouth wide open. He pushed his chosen apple under the surface, submerging his whole face, and then came up triumphantly with the apple between his teeth.

Tommy would be successful at whatever he put his mind to. There was a little of his grandfather, Earl Bartholomew, in his makeup. He had a very strong will and a somewhat inflexible sense of right and wrong.

It was Sally who had inherited Jack’s easygoing nature and contempt for man-made rules. When Jack told the children stories, Sally always sympathized with the underdog, whereas Tommy was more likely to pronounce judgment on him. Each child had the personality of one parent and the appearance of the other: happy-go-lucky Sally had Aliena’s regular features and dark tangled curls, and determined Tommy had Jack’s carrot-colored hair, white skin and blue eyes.

Now Tommy cried: “Here comes Uncle Richard!”

Aliena spun around and followed his gaze. Sure enough, her brother the earl was riding into the meadow with a handful of knights and squires. Aliena was horrified. How did he have the nerve to show his face here after what he had done to Philip over the quarry?

He came over to the barrel, smiling at everyone and shaking hands. “Try to bob an apple, Uncle Richard,” said Tommy. “You could do it!”

Richard dipped his head into the barrel and came up with an apple in his strong white teeth and his blond beard soaking wet. He had always been better at games than at real life, Aliena thought.

She was not going to let him carry on as if he had done nothing wrong. Others might be afraid to say anything because he was the earl, but to her he was just her foolish little brother. He came over to kiss her, but she pushed him away and said: “How could you steal the quarry from the priory?”

Jack, seeing a quarrel coming, took the children’s hands and moved away.

Richard looked stung. “All property has reverted to those who possessed it-”

“Don’t give me that, Aliena interrupted. “After all Philip has done for you!”

“The quarry is part of my birthright,” he said. He took her aside and began to speak in low tones so that no one else could hear. “Besides, I need the money I get by selling the stones, Allie.”

“That’s because you go hunting and hawking all the time!”

“But what should I do?”

“You should make the land produce wealth! There’s so much to be done-repairing the damage caused by the war and the famine, bringing in new farming methods, clearing woodland and draining swamps-that’s how to increase your wealth! Not by stealing the quarry that King Stephen gave to Kingsbridge Priory.”

“I’ve never taken anything that wasn’t mine.”

“You’ve never done anything else!” Aliena flared. She was angry enough now to say things that were better left unsaid. “You’ve never worked for anything. You took my money for your stupid weapons, you took the job Philip gave you, you took the earldom when it was handed to you on a plate by me. Now you can’t even run it without taking things that don’t belong to you!” She turned away and stormed off.

Richard came after her, but someone waylaid him, bowing and asking him how he was. Aliena heard him make a polite reply, then get embroiled in a conversation. So much the better: she had said her piece and did not want to argue with him any further. She reached the bridge and looked back. Someone else was talking to him now. He waved at her, indicating that he still wanted to speak to her, but he was stuck. She saw Jack, Tommy and Sally beginning a game with a stick and a ball. She stared at them, playing together in the sunshine, and she felt she could not bear to separate them. But how else, she thought, can I lead a normal life?

She crossed the bridge and entered the town. She wanted to be alone for a while.

She had taken a house in Winchester, a big place with a shop on the ground floor, a living room upstairs, a separate bedchamber, and a large storeroom at the end of the yard for her cloth. But the closer she got to moving, the less she wanted to do it.

The streets of Kingsbridge were hot and dusty, and the air was full of the flies that bred on the innumerable dunghills. All the shops were closed and the houses were locked up. The town was deserted. Everyone was in the meadow.

She went to Jack’s house. That was where the others would come when the apple bobbing was over. The door of the house stood open. She frowned in annoyance. Who had left it like that? Too many people had keys: herself, Jack, Richard and Martha. There was nothing much to steal. Aliena certainly did not have her money there: for years now Philip had let her keep it in the priory treasury. But the place would be full of flies.

She stepped inside. It was dark and cool. Flies danced in the air in the middle of the room, bluebottles crawled over the linen and a pair of wasps disputed angrily around the stopper of the honeypot.

And Alfred was sitting at the table.

Aliena gave a small scream of fright, then recovered herself and said: “How did you get in?”

“I’ve got a key.”

He had kept it a long time, Aliena thought. She looked at him. His broad shoulders were bony and his face had a shrunken look. She said: “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

She found she was trembling, not from fear but from anger. “I don’t want to see you, now or ever again,” she spat. “You treated me like a dog, and then when Jack took pity on you and hired you, you betrayed his trust and took all his craftsmen to Shiring.”

“I need money,” he said, with a mixture of pleading and defiance in his voice.

“Then work.”

“Building has stopped at Shiring. I can’t get a job here at Kingsbridge.”

“Then go to London-go to Paris!”

He persisted with ox-like stubbornness. “I thought you would help me out.”

“There’s nothing for you here. You’d better go away.”

“Have you no pity?” he said, and now the defiance was gone and the tone was all pleading.

She leaned on the table to steady herself. “Alfred, don’t you understand that I hate you?”

“Why?” he said. He looked injured, as if it came as a surprise to him.

Dear God, he’s stupid, she thought; it’s the nearest he’s got to an excuse. “Go to the monastery if you want charity,” she said wearily. “Prior Philip’s capacity for forgiveness is superhuman. Mine isn’t.”

“But you’re my wife,” Alfred said.

That was rich. “I’m not your wife,” she hissed. “You’re not my husband. You never were. Now get out of this house.”

To her surprise he grabbed her by the hair. “You are my wife,” he said. He pulled her to him over the table, and with his free hand he grasped her breast and squeezed hard.

Aliena was taken completely by surprise. This was the last thing she had expected from a man who had slept in the same room as her for nine months without ever managing to perform the sexual act. Automatically she screamed and pulled away from him, but he had a firm grip on her hair and he jerked her back. “There’s nobody to hear you scream,” he said. “They’re all across the river.”

She was suddenly terribly afraid. They were alone, and he was very strong. After all the miles she had covered on the roads, all the years she had risked her neck traveling, she was being attacked at home by the man she had married!

He saw the fear in her eyes and said: “Scared, are you? Perhaps you’d better be nice.” Then he kissed her mouth. She bit his lip as hard as she could. He gave a roar of pain.

She did not see the punch coming. It exploded on her cheek with such force that she had the terrified thought that he must have smashed her bones. For a moment she lost her vision and her balance. She reeled away from the table and’ felt herself falling. The rushes on the floor softened the impact as she hit the ground. She shook her head to clear it and reached for the knife strapped to her left arm. Before she could draw it, both her wrists were seized, and she heard Alfred say: “I know about that little dagger. I’ve seen you undress, remember?” He released her hands, punched her face again, and grabbed the dagger himself.

Aliena tried to wriggle away. He sat on her legs and put his left hand to her throat. She thrashed her arms. Suddenly the point of the dagger was an inch from her eyeball. “Be still, or I’ll put out your eyes,” he said.

She froze. The idea of being blind terrified her. She had seen men who had been blinded as a punishment. They walked the streets begging, their empty sockets staring horribly at passersby. Small boys tormented them, pinching them and tripping them until they gave in to rage and tried in vain to catch hold of their tormentors, which made the game even better. They generally died within a year or two.

“I thought that would calm you down,” Alfred said.

Why was he doing this? He had never had any lust for her. Was it just that he was defeated and angry, and she was vulnerable? Did she stand for the world that had rejected him?

He leaned forward, straddling her, with his knees either side of her hips, keeping the knife at her eye. Once again he put his face close to hers. “Now,” he said. “Be nice.” He kissed her again.

His unshaven face scratched her skin. His breath smelled of beer and onions. She kept her mouth closed tight.

“That’s not nice,” he said. “Kiss me back.”

He kissed her again, and brought the knife point even closer. When it touched her eyelid she moved her lips. The taste of his mouth sickened her. He thrust his rough tongue between her lips. She felt as if she might throw up, and tried desperately to suppress the feeling, for fear he would kill her.

He pulled away from her again, but kept the knife at her face. “Now,” he said. “Feel this.” He took her hand and pulled it under the skirt of his tunic. She touched his organ. “Hold it,” he said. She grasped it. “Now rub it gently.”

She obeyed him. It occurred to her that if she could pleasure him this way she might avoid being penetrated. She looked fearfully at his face. He was flushed and his eyes were hooded. She stroked him all the way down to the root, remembering that Jack was driven wild by that.

She was afraid she would never be able to enjoy this again, and tears came to her eyes.

He jerked the knife dangerously. “Not so hard!” he said.

She concentrated.

Then the door opened.

Her heart leaped with hope. A wedge of bright sunlight fell across the room and shone dazzlingly through her tears. Alfred froze. She pulled her hand away.

They both looked toward the door. Who was it? Aliena could not see. Not one of the children, please, God, she prayed; I would feel so ashamed. She heard a roar of rage. It was a man’s voice. She blinked away her tears and recognized her brother Richard.

Poor Richard: it was almost worse than if it had been Tommy. Richard, who had a scar instead of a lobe on his left ear to remind him of the terrible scene he had witnessed when he was fourteen years old. Now he was witnessing another. How would he ever bear it?

Alfred started to get to his feet, but Richard was too quick for him. Aliena saw Richard cross the little room in a blur and lash out with his booted foot, catching Alfred full on the jaw. Alfred crashed back against the table. Richard went after him, trampling on Aliena without noticing, lashing out at Alfred with his feet and fists. Aliena scrambled out of the way. Richard’s face was a mask of ungovernable fury. He did not look at Aliena. He did not care about her, she understood. He was enraged, not about what Alfred had done to Aliena today, but because of what William and Walter had done to him, Richard, eighteen years ago. He had been young and weak and helpless then, but now he was a big strong man and a seasoned fighter, and he had at last found a target for the mad rage he had nursed inside for all those years. He hit Alfred again and again, with both fists. Alfred staggered back around the table, trying feebly to defend himself with his raised arms. Richard caught him on the chin with a powerful swing, and Alfred fell backward.

He lay on the rushes, looking up, terrified. Aliena was frightened by her brother’s violence, and said: “That’s enough, Richard!” Richard ignored her and stepped forward to kick Alfred. Then Alfred suddenly realized that he still had Aliena’s knife in his hand. He dodged, came swiftly to his feet and lashed out with the knife. Taken by surprise, Richard jumped back. Alfred lunged at him again, driving him back across the room. The two men were the same height and build, Aliena saw. Richard was a fighting man but Alfred was armed: they were now unnervingly well matched. Aliena was suddenly afraid for her brother. What would happen if Alfred overcame him? She would have to fight Alfred herself, then.

She looked around for a weapon. Her eyes lit on the pile of firewood beside the hearth. She snatched up a heavy log.

Alfred lunged at Richard again. Richard dodged; then, when Alfred’s arm was at full stretch, Richard grabbed his wrist and pulled. Alfred staggered forward, off balance. Richard hit him several times, very fast, with both fists, punching his face and body. There was a savage grin on Richard’s face, the smile of a man who is taking revenge. Alfred began to whimper, and raised his arms to protect himself again.

Richard hesitated, breathing hard. Aliena thought it would end then. But suddenly Alfred struck again, with surprising speed, and this time the point of the knife grazed Richard’s cheek. Richard jumped back, stung. Alfred moved in with the knife raised high. Aliena saw that Alfred would kill Richard. She ran at Alfred, swinging the log with all her might. She missed his head but struck his right elbow. She heard the crack as wood connected with bone. The blow numbed Alfred’s hand and the knife fell from his fingers.

The way it ended was dreadfully quick.

Richard bent, swept up Aliena’s knife, and with the same motion brought it up under Alfred’s guard and stabbed him in the chest with terrific force.

The dagger sank in up to the hilt.

Aliena stared, horrified. It was a terrible blow. Alfred screamed like a stuck pig. Richard pulled the knife out, and Alfred’s blood squirted out of the hole in his chest. Alfred opened his mouth to scream again, but no sound came. His face turned white and then gray, his eyes closed, and he fell to the ground. Blood soaked into the rushes.

Aliena knelt beside him. His eyelids fluttered. He was still breathing, but his life was draining from him. She looked up at Richard, standing over them both, breathing hard. “He’s dying,” she said.

Richard nodded. He was not much moved. “I’ve seen better men die,” he said. “I’ve killed men who deserved it less.”

Aliena was shocked at his harshness, but she did not say anything. She had just remembered the first time Richard killed a man. It was after William had taken over the castle, and she and Richard had been on the road to Winchester, and two thieves had attacked them. Aliena had stabbed one of the thieves, but she had forced Richard, who was only fifteen, to deliver the coup de grâce. If he’s heartless, she thought guiltily, who made him so?

She looked at Alfred again. He opened his eyes and looked back at her. She almost felt ashamed of how little compassion she had for this dying man. She thought, as she looked into his eyes, that he had never been compassionate himself, nor forgiving, nor generous. He had nursed his resentments and hatreds all his life, and had taken his pleasure from acts of malice and revenge. Your life could have been different, Alfred, she thought. You could have been kind to your sister, and forgiven your stepbrother for being cleverer than you. You could have married for love instead of for revenge. You could have been loyal to Prior Philip. You could have been happy.

His eyes widened suddenly and he said: “God, it hurts.”

She wished he would just hurry up and die.

His eyes closed.

“That’s it,” Richard said.

Alfred stopped breathing.

Aliena stood up. “I’m a widow,” she said.

Alfred was buried in the graveyard at Kingsbridge Priory. It was his sister Martha’s wish, and she was the only surviving blood relative. She was also the only person who was sad. Alfred had never been good to her, and she had always turned to Jack, her stepbrother, for love and protection; but nevertheless she wanted him buried somewhere close so that she could visit the grave. When they lowered the coffin into the ground, only Martha cried.

Jack looked grimly relieved that Alfred was no more. Tommy, standing with Aliena, was keenly interested in everything-this was his first family funeral and the rituals of death were all new to him. Sally was white-faced and frightened, holding Martha’s hand.

Richard was there. He told Aliena, during the service, that he had come to ask God’s forgiveness for killing his brother-in-law. Not that he felt he had done wrong, he hastened to add: he just wanted to be safe.

Aliena, whose face was still bruised and swollen from Alfred’s last punch, recalled the dead man as he had been when she first met him. He had come to Earlscastle with his father, Tom Builder, and Martha and Ellen and Jack. Already Alfred had been the bully of the family, big and strong and bovine, with a sly cunning and a streak of nastiness. If Aliena had thought then that she would end up married to him she would have been tempted to throw herself off the battlements. She had not imagined she would ever see the family again after they left the castle; but both she and they had ended up living in Kingsbridge. She and Alfred had started the parish guild which was now such an important institution in the life of the town. That was when Alfred had proposed to her. She had not dreamed that he might be motivated more by rivalry with his stepbrother than by desire for her. She had refused him then, but later he had discovered how to manipulate her, and had persuaded her to marry him by promising support for her brother. Looking back on that, she felt that Alfred had deserved the frustration and humiliation of their marriage. His motives had been heartless and his reward had been lovelessness.

Aliena could not help feeling happy. There was no question of her leaving and going to live in Winchester now, of course: she and Jack would be married immediately. She was putting on a solemn face for the funeral, and even thinking some solemn thoughts, but her heart was bursting for joy.

Philip, with his apparently limitless capacity for pardoning people who had betrayed him, consented to bury Alfred.

As the five adults and two children were standing around the open grave, Ellen arrived.

Philip was cross. Ellen had cursed a Christian wedding, and she was not welcome in the priory close; but he could hardly turn her away from her stepson’s funeral. The rites were over, anyway, so Philip just walked away.

Aliena was sorry. Philip and Ellen were both good people, and it was a shame they were enemies. But they were good in different ways, and they were both intolerant of rival ethics.

Ellen was looking older, with extra lines on her face and more gray in her hair, but her golden eyes were still beautiful. She was wearing a rough-sewn leather tunic and nothing else, not even shoes. Her arms and legs were tanned and muscular. Tommy and Sally ran to kiss her. Jack followed and embraced her, hugging her hard.

Ellen lifted her cheek for Richard to kiss her, and said: “You did the right thing. Don’t feel guilty.”

She stood at the edge of the grave, looking in, and said: “I was his stepmother. I wish I had known how to make him happy.”

When she turned from the grave, Aliena hugged her.

They all walked slowly away. Aliena said to Ellen: “Will you stay a while, and have dinner?”

“Gladly.” She ruffled Tommy’s red hair. “I’d like to talk to my grandchildren. They grow so fast. When I first met Tom Builder, Jack was the age Tommy is now.” They were approaching the priory gate. “As you get older the years seem to go faster. I believe-” She broke off in midsentence and stopped walking.

“What is it?” said Aliena.

Ellen was staring at the priory gateway. The wooden gates were open. The street outside was empty but for a handful of small children on the far side, standing in a knot, staring at something out of sight.

“Richard!” Ellen said sharply. “Don’t go out!”

Everyone stopped. Aliena could see what had alarmed Ellen. The children looked as if they might be watching something or someone who was waiting just outside the gate, concealed by the wall.

Richard reacted fast. “It’s a trap!” he said, and without further ado he turned around and ran.

A moment later a helmeted head looked around the gatepost. It belonged to a large man-at-arms. The man saw Richard running toward the church, shouted in alarm, and dashed into the close. He was followed by three, four, five more men.

The funeral party scattered. The men-at-arms ignored them and went after Richard. Aliena was scared and mystified: who would dare to attack the earl of Shiring openly and in a priory? She held her breath as she watched them chase Richard across the close. He leaped over the low wall that the masons were building. His pursuers jumped over it behind him, unmindful that they were entering a church. The craftsmen froze in position, trowels and hammers raised, as first Richard, then his pursuers, charged by. One of the younger and more quick-thinking apprentices stuck out a shovel and tripped a man-at-arms, who went flying; but no one else intervened. Richard reached the door that led to the cloisters. The man closest behind him raised his sword above his head. For a terrible moment Aliena thought the door was locked and Richard could not get in. The man-at-arms struck at Richard with his sword. Richard got the door open and slipped inside, and the sword bit into the wood as the door slammed.

Aliena breathed again.

The men-at-arms gathered around the cloister door, then began to look about uncertainly. They seemed to realize, all of a sudden, where they were. The craftsmen gave them hostile stares and hefted their hammers and axes. There were close to a hundred builders and only five men-at-arms.

Jack said angrily: “Who the hell are those people?”

He was answered by a voice from behind. “They are the sheriffs men.”

Aliena turned around, aghast. She knew that voice horribly well. There at the gate, on a nervous black stallion, armed and wearing chain mail, was William Hamleigh. The sight of him sent a chill through her.

Jack said: “Get out of here, you loathsome insect.”

William flushed at the insult, but he did not move. “I’ve come to make an arrest.”

“Go ahead. Richard’s men will tear you apart.”

“He won’t have any men when he’s in jail.”

“Who do you think you are? A sheriff can’t put an earl in jail!”

“He can for murder.”

Aliena gasped. She saw immediately how William’s devious mind was working. “There was no murder!” she burst out.

“There was,” William said. “Earl Richard murdered Alfred Builder. And now I must explain to Prior Philip that he is harboring a killer.”

William kicked his horse and rode past them, across the west end of the unbuilt nave, to the kitchen courtyard which was where laymen were received. Aliena watched him with incredulity. He was so evil it was hard to believe. Poor Alfred, whom they had just buried, had done much wrong through small-mindedness and weakness of character: his badness was more tragic than anything else. But William was a real servant of the devil. Aliena thought: When will we be rid of this monster?

The men-at-arms joined William in the kitchen courtyard and one of them hammered on the kitchen door with the hilt of his sword. The builders left the site and stood in a crowd, glaring at the intruders, looking dangerous with their heavy hammers and sharp chisels. Aliena told Martha to take the children home; then she and Jack stood with the builders.

Prior Philip came to the kitchen door. He was shorter than William, and in his light summer habit he appeared very small by comparison with the beefy man on horseback in chain mail; but there was a look of righteous anger on Philip’s face that made him seem more formidable than William.

William said: “You are harboring a fugitive-”

Philip interrupted him with a roar. “Leave this place!”

William tried again. “There has been a murder-”

“Get out of my priory!” Philip yelled.

“I am the sheriff-”

“Not even the king may bring men of violence into the precincts of a monastery! Get out! Get out!”

The builders began to murmur angrily among themselves. The men-at-arms looked at them nervously. William said: “Even the prior of Kingsbridge must answer to the sheriff.”

“Not on these terms! Get your men off the premises. Leave your weapons in the stable. When you’re ready to act like a humble sinner in the house of God, you may enter the priory; and then the prior will answer your questions.”

Philip stepped back inside and slammed the door.

The builders cheered.

Aliena found herself cheering too. William had been a figure of power and dread all her life, and it lifted her heart to see him defied by Prior Philip.

But William was not yet ready to concede defeat. He got off his horse. Slowly he unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to one of his men. He said a few quiet words to the men, and they retreated across the priory close, taking his sword. William watched them until they reached the gate; then he turned back and faced the kitchen door once again.

He shouted: “Open up to the sheriff!”

After a pause the kitchen door opened, and Philip came out again. He looked down at William, now standing unarmed in the courtyard; then he looked at the men-at-arms clustered around the gateway on the far side of the close; and finally he looked back at William and said: “Well?”

“You are harboring a murderer in the priory. Release him to me.”

Philip said: “There has been no murder in Kingsbridge.”

“The earl of Shiring murdered Alfred Builder four days ago.”

“Wrong,” Philip said. “Richard killed Alfred, but it wasn’t murder. Alfred was caught in the act of attempted rape.”

Aliena shuddered.

“Rape?” William said. “Who was he attempting to rape?”

“Aliena.”

“But she is his wife!” William said triumphantly. “How can a man rape his wife?”

Aliena saw the direction of William’s argument, and fury bubbled up inside her.

Philip said: “That marriage has never been consummated, and she has applied for an annulment.”

“Which has never been granted. They were married in church. They are still married, according to the law. There was no rape. On the contrary.” William turned suddenly and pointed a finger at Aliena. “She has been wanting to get rid of her husband for years, and she finally persuaded her brother to help her get him out of the way-by stabbing him to death with her dagger!”

The cold hand of fear gripped Aliena’s heart. The tale he told was an outrageous lie, but for someone who had not actually seen what happened it fitted the facts as plausibly as the real story. Richard was in trouble.

Philip said: “The sheriff cannot arrest the earl.”

That was true, Aliena realized. She had been forgetting.

William pulled out a scroll. “I have a royal writ. I am arresting him on behalf of the king.”

Aliena was devastated. William had thought of everything. “How did William manage that?” she muttered.

“He was very quick,” Jack replied. “He must have ridden to Winchester and seen the king as soon as he heard the news.”

Philip held out his hand. “Show me the writ.”

William held it out. They were several yards apart. There was a momentary standoff, when neither of them would move; then William gave in and walked up the steps to hand the writ to Philip.

Philip read it and gave it back. “This doesn’t give you the right to attack a monastery.”

“It gives me the right to arrest Richard.”

“He has asked for sanctuary.”

“Ah.” William did not look surprised. He nodded as if he had heard confirmation of something inevitable, and took two or three steps back. When he spoke again his voice was raised so that everyone could hear clearly. “Let him know that he will be arrested the moment he leaves the priory. My deputies will be stationed in the town and outside his castle. Remember-” He looked around at the assembled crowd. “Remember that anyone who harms a sheriffs deputy harms a servant of the king.” He turned back to Philip. “Tell him that he may stay within the sanctuary as long as he likes, but if he wants to leave, he will have to face justice.”

There was silence. William walked slowly down the steps and across the kitchen courtyard. His words had sounded to Aliena like a sentence of imprisonment. The crowd parted for him. He threw a smug look at Aliena as he passed her. They all watched him walk to the gate and mount his horse. He gave an order and trotted away, leaving two of his men standing at the gate, looking in.

When Aliena turned around, Philip was standing beside her and Jack. “Go to my house,” he said quietly. “We must discuss this.” He went back into the kitchen.

Aliena had the impression that he was secretly pleased about something.

The excitement was over. The builders returned to work, talking animatedly. Ellen went to the house to be with the grandchildren. Aliena and Jack walked through the graveyard, skirting the building site, and went into Philip’s house. He was not yet there. They sat on a bench to wait. Jack sensed Aliena’s anxiety for her brother, and gave her a comforting hug.

Looking around, Aliena realized that year by year Philip’s house was slowly becoming more comfortable. It was still bare by the standards of an earl’s private quarters in a castle, say, but it was not as austere as it had once been. In front of the little altar in the corner there was now a small rug, to save the prior’s knees during the long nights of prayer; and on the wall behind the altar hung a jeweled silver crucifix that must have been a costly gift. It would do Philip no harm to be easier on himself as he got older, Aliena thought. Perhaps he would be a little easier on others too.

A few moments later Philip came in, with a flustered-looking Richard in tow. Richard began speaking immediately. “William can’t do this, it’s mad! I found Alfred trying to rape my sister-he had a knife in his hand-he almost killed me!”

“Calm down,” Philip said. “Let’s talk about this quietly, and try calmly to determine what the dangers are, if any. Why don’t we all take a seat?”

Richard sat down, but he went on talking. “Dangers? There are no dangers. A sheriff can’t imprison an earl for anything, even murder.”

“He’s going to try,” Philip said. “He’ll have men waiting outside the priory.”

Richard made a dismissive gesture. “I can get past William’s men blindfold. They’re no problem. Jack can be waiting for me outside the town wall with a horse.”

“And when you reach Earlscastle?” said Philip.

“Same thing. I can sneak past William’s men. Or have my own men come out to meet me.”

“That sounds satisfactory,” said Philip. “And what then?”

“Then nothing,” said Richard. “What can William do?”

“Well, he still has a royal writ that summons you to answer a charge of murder. He’ll try to arrest you anytime you leave the castle.”

“I’ll go everywhere escorted.”

“And when you hold court, in Shiring and other places?”

“Same thing.”

“But will anyone abide by your decisions, knowing that you yourself are a fugitive from the law?”

“They’d better,” Richard said darkly. “They should remember how William enforced his decisions when he was the earl.”

“They may not be as frightened of you as they were of William. They may think you’re not as bloodthirsty and evil. I hope they would be right.”

“Don’t count on it.”

Aliena frowned. It was not like Philip to be so pessimistic-unless he had an ulterior motive. She suspected that he was laying the groundwork for some scheme he had up his sleeve. I’d bet money, she thought, that the quarry will come into this somehow.

“My main worry is the king,” Philip was saying. “In refusing to answer the charge, you’re defying the crown. A year ago I would have said go ahead and defy it. But now that the war is over, it won’t be so easy for earls to do as they please.”

Jack said: “It looks as if you’ll have to answer the charge, Richard.”

“He can’t do that,” Aliena said. “He’s got no hope of justice.”

“She’s right,” Philip said. “The case would be heard in the royal court. The facts are already known: Alfred tried to force himself upon Aliena, Richard came in, they fought, and Richard killed Alfred. Everything depends on the interpretation. And with William, a loyal supporter of King Stephen, making the complaint, and Richard being one of Duke Henry’s greatest allies, the verdict will probably be guilty. Why did King Stephen sign the writ? Presumably because he’s decided to take revenge on Richard for fighting against him. The death of Alfred provides him with a perfect excuse.”

Aliena said: “We must appeal to Duke Henry to intervene.”

It was Richard who looked dubious now. “I wouldn’t like to rely on him. He’s in Normandy. He might write a letter of protest, but what else could he do? Conceivably he could cross the channel with an army, but then he would be in breach of the peace pact, and I don’t think he’d risk that for me.”

Aliena felt miserable and frightened. “Oh, Richard, you’re caught in a terrible web, and it’s all because you saved me.”

He gave her his most charming grin. “I’d do it again, too, Allie.”

“I know.” He meant it. For all his faults, he was brave. It seemed unfair that he should be confronted with such an intractable problem so soon after he succeeded to the earldom. As earl he was a disappointment to Aliena-a terrible disappointment-but he did not deserve this.

“Well, what a choice,” he said. “I can stay here in the priory until Duke Henry becomes king, or hang for murder. I’d become a monk if you monks didn’t eat so much fish.”

“There might be another way out,” said Philip.

Aliena looked at him eagerly. She had suspected that he was hatching a plot, and she would be grateful to him if he could resolve Richard’s dilemma.

“You could do penance for the killing,” Philip went on.

“Would it involve eating fish?” Richard said flippantly.

“I’m thinking about the Holy Land,” Philip said.

They all went quiet. Palestine was ruled by the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III, a Christian of French origin. It was constantly under attack by neighboring Muslim countries, especially Egypt to the south and Damascus to the east. To go there, a journey of six months or a year, and join the armies fighting to defend the Christian kingdom, was indeed the kind of penance a man might do to purge his soul of a killing. Aliena felt a qualm of anxiety: not everybody came back from the Holy Land. But she had been worrying about Richard in wars for years, and the Holy Land was probably no more dangerous than England. She would just have to fret. She was used to it.

“The king of Jerusalem always needs men,” Richard said. Every few years emissaries from the pope would tour the country, telling tales of battle and glory in the defense of Christendom, trying to inspire young men to go and fight in the Holy Land. “But I’ve only just come into my earldom,” he said. “And who would be in charge of my lands while I was away?”

“Aliena,” said Philip.

Aliena suddenly felt breathless. Philip was proposing that she should take the place of the earl, and rule as her father had done… The proposal stunned her for a moment, but as soon as she recovered her senses she knew it was right. When a man went to the Holy Land his domains were normally looked after by his wife. There was no reason why a sister should not fulfill the same role for an unmarried earl. And she would run the earldom the way she had always known it ought to be run, with justice and vision and imagination. She would do all the things Richard had so dismally failed to do. Her heart raced as she thought the idea through. She would try out new ideas, plowing with horses instead of oxen, and planting spring crops of oats and peas on fallow land. She would clear new lands for planting, establish new markets, and open the quarry to Philip after all this time-

He had thought of that, of course. Of all the clever schemes Philip had dreamed up over the years, this was probably the most ingenious. At one stroke he solved three problems: he got Richard off the hook, he put a competent ruler in charge of the earldom, and he got his quarry at last.

Philip said: “I’ve no doubt that King Baldwin would welcome you-especially if you went with such of your knights and men who feel inspired to join you. It would be your own small crusade.” He paused a moment to let that thought sink in. “William couldn’t touch you over there, of course,” he went on. “And you would return a hero. Nobody would dare try to hang you then.”

“The Holy Land,” Richard said, and there was a death-or-glory light in his eyes. It was the right thing for him, Aliena thought. He was no good at governing the earldom. He was a soldier, and he wanted to fight. She saw the faraway look on his face. In his mind he was there already, defending a sandy redoubt, sword in hand, a red cross on his shield, fighting off a heathen horde under the baking sun.

He was happy.

IV

The whole town came to the wedding.

Aliena was surprised. Most people treated her and Jack as more or less married already, and she had thought they would consider the wedding a mere formality. She had expected a small group of friends, mostly people of her own age and Jack’s fellow master craftsmen. But every man, woman and child in Kingsbridge turned out. She was touched by their presence. And they all looked so happy for her. She realized that they had sympathized with her predicament all these years, even though they had tactfully refrained from mentioning it to her; and now they shared her joy in finally marrying the man she had loved for so long. She walked through the streets on her brother Richard’s arm, dazzled by the smiles that followed her, drunk with happiness.

Richard was leaving for the Holy Land tomorrow. King Stephen had accepted this solution-indeed, he seemed relieved to be rid of Richard so easily. Sheriff William was furious, of course, for his aim had been to dispossess Richard of the earldom, and now he had lost all chance of doing that. Richard himself still had that faraway look in his eyes: he could hardly wait to be gone.

This was not the way her father had intended things to turn out, she thought as she entered the priory close: Richard fighting in a distant land and Aliena herself playing the role of earl. However, she no longer felt obliged to run her life according to her father’s wishes. He had been dead for seventeen years, and anyway, she knew something that he had not understood: that she would be a far better earl than Richard.

She had already taken the reins of power. The castle servants were lazy after years of slack management and she had smartened them up. She had reorganized the stores, had the great hall painted, and cleaned out the bakehouse and the brewery. The kitchen had been so filthy that she had burned it down and built a new one. She had started to pay out the weekly wages herself, as a sign that she was in charge; and she had dismissed three men-at-arms for persistent drunkenness.

She had also ordered a new castle to be built an hour’s ride from Kingsbridge. Earlscastle was too far from the cathedral. Jack had drawn a design for the new place. They would move in as soon as the keep was built. Meanwhile, they would split their time between Earlscastle and Kingsbridge.

They had already spent several nights together in Aliena’s old room at Earlscastle, far from Philip’s disapproving gaze. They had been like honeymooners, swamped by insatiable physical passion. Perhaps it was because for the first time ever they had a bedroom with a door they could lock. Privacy was an extravagance of lords: everyone else slept and made love downstairs in the communal hall. Even couples who lived in a house were always liable to be seen by their children, or relatives, or neighbors dropping by: people locked their doors when they were out, not when they were in. Aliena had never been dissatisfied with that, but now she had discovered the special thrill of knowing you could do anything you liked without the risk of being seen. She thought of some of the things she and Jack had done in the past two weeks, and she blushed.

Jack was waiting for her in the partly built nave of the cathedral, with Martha and Tommy and Sally. At weddings, the couple normally exchanged vows in the church porch, then went inside for the mass. Today the first bay of the nave would serve as porch. Aliena was glad they were getting married in the church Jack was building. It was as much a part of Jack as the clothes he wore or the way he made love. His cathedral was going to be like him: graceful, inventive, cheerful, and totally unlike anything that had gone before.

She looked lovingly at him. He was thirty years old. He was such a handsome man, with his mane of red hair and his sparkling blue eyes. He had been a very ugly boy, she remembered: she had thought him somewhat beneath her notice. But he had fallen in love with her at the very start, he said; and he still winced when he remembered how they had all laughed at him because he said he had never had a father. It was nearly twenty years ago. Twenty years…

She might never have seen Jack again had it not been for Prior Philip, who now entered the church from the cloisters and came smiling into the nave. He looked genuinely thrilled to be marrying them at last. She thought of her first meeting with him. She recalled vividly the despair she had felt when the wool merchant tried to cheat her, after all the effort and heartbreak that had gone into amassing that sack of fleeces; and her overwhelming gratitude to the young black-haired monk who had saved her and said: “I’ll buy your wool any time…” His hair was gray now.

He had saved her, then he had almost destroyed her, by forcing Jack to choose between her and the cathedral. He was a hard man on questions of right and wrong; a bit like her father. However, he had wanted to perform the marriage service.

Ellen had cursed Aliena’s first wedding, and the curse had worked. Aliena was glad. If her marriage to Alfred had not been completely insupportable she might be living with him still. It was odd to reflect on what might have been: it gave her chills, like bad dreams and dreadful imaginings. She recalled the pretty, sexy Arab girl in Toledo who had fallen in love with Jack: what if he had married her? Aliena would have arrived in Toledo, with her baby in her arms, to find Jack in the lap of domesticity, sharing his body and his mind with someone else. The thought was horrifying.

She listened to him mumbling the Paternoster. It seemed amazing, now, to think that when she came to live in Kingsbridge she had paid no more attention to him than to the grain merchant’s cat. But he had noticed her: he had loved her secretly all those years. How patient he had been! He had watched as the younger sons of the county gentry came to court her, one by one, and went away again disappointed or offended or defiant. He had seen-clever, clever boy that he was-that she could not be won by wooing; and he had approached her sidelong, as a friend rather than a lover, meeting her in the woods and telling her stories and making her love him without her noticing. She remembered that first kiss, so light and casual, except that it had burned her lips for weeks afterward. She remembered the second kiss even more vividly. Every time she heard the rumble of the fulling mill she remembered the dark, unfamiliar, unwelcome surge of lust that she had felt.

One of the abiding regrets of her life was the way she had turned cold after that. Jack had loved her totally and honestly, and she had been so frightened that she had turned away, pretending she did not care for him. It had hurt him deeply; and although he had continued to love her, and the wound had healed, it left a scar, as deep wounds do; and sometimes she saw that scar, in the way he looked at her when they quarreled and she spoke coldly to him, and his eyes seemed to say: Yes, I know you, you can be cold, you can hurt me, I must be on my guard.

Was there a wary look in his eyes now, as he vowed to be loving and faithful to her all the rest of his life? He’s got reason enough to doubt me, she thought. I married Alfred, and what greater betrayal could there be than that? But then I made up for it, by searching half of Christendom to find Jack.

Such disappointments, betrayals and reconciliations were the stuff of married life, but she and Jack had gone through them before the wedding. Now, at least, she felt confident that she knew him. Nothing was likely to surprise her. It was a funny way to do things, but it might be better than making your vows first and getting to know your spouse afterward. The priests would not agree, of course; indeed, Philip would be apoplectic if he knew what was going through her mind; but then again, priests knew less about love than anyone.

She made her vows, repeating the words after Philip, thinking to herself how beautiful was the promise With my body I worship you. Philip would never understand that.

Jack put a ring on her finger. I’ve been waiting for this all my life, she thought. They looked into one another’s eyes. Something had changed in him, she could tell. She realized that until this moment he had never really been sure of her. Now he looked deeply content.

“I love you,” he said. “I always will.”

That was his vow. The rest was religion, but now he had made his own promise; and Aliena realized that she, too, had been unsure of him until now. In a moment they would walk forward into the crossing for the mass; and after that they would accept the congratulations and good wishes of the townspeople, and take them home and give them food and ale and make merry; but this small instant was just for them. Jack’s look said You and me, together, always; and Aliena thought At last.

It felt very peaceful.