The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

  She herself could pay it easily. Looking around the table, she realized she was probably the richest person there. She was in a small minority of women: the only others were a brewster with a reputation for good strong ale, a tailor who employed two seamstresses and some apprentices, and the widow of a shoemaker, who managed the business her husband had left. Aliena was the youngest woman there, and younger than any of the men except Alfred, who was a year or two younger than she.

  Aliena missed Jack. She had not yet heard the second installment of the story of the young squire. Today was a holiday, and she would have liked to meet him in the glade. Perhaps she still could, later on.

  The talk around the table was of the civil war. Stephen's wife, Queen Matilda, had put up more of a fight than anyone expected: she had recently taken the city of Winchester and captured Robert of Gloucester. Robert was the brother of the Empress Maud and the commander in chief of her military forces. Some people said Maud was only a figurehead, and Robert was the true leader of the rebellion. In any event, the capture of Robert was almost as bad for Maud as the capture of Stephen had been for the loyalists, and everyone had an opinion on what direction the war would take next.

  The drink at this feast was stronger than that provided by Prior Philip, and as the meal progressed, the revelers became quite raucous. The parish priest failed to act as a restraining influence, probably because he was drinking as much as anyone else. Alfred, who was sitting next to Aliena, seemed preoccupied, but even he became flushed. Aliena herself was not fond of strong drink, and she took a cup of apple cider with her dinner.

  When most of the food was finished, someone proposed a toast to Alfred and Aliena. Alfred beamed with pleasure as he acknowledged it. After that the singing began, and Aliena started to wonder how soon she could slip away.

  Alfred said to her: "We did well, together."

  Aliena smiled. "Let's see how many of them are still paying sixpence a week this time next year."

  Alfred did not want to hear about misgivings or qualifications today. "We did well," he repeated. "We're a good team." He raised his cup to her and drank. "Don't you think we're a good team?"

  "We certainly are," she said, to humor him.

  "I've enjoyed it," he went on. "Doing this with you--the guild, I mean."

  "I've enjoyed it, too," she said politely.

  "Have you? That makes me very happy."

  She looked at him more carefully. Why was he laboring the point? His speech was clear and precise, and he showed no signs of real drunkenness. "It's been fine," she said neutrally.

  He put a hand on her shoulder. She hated to be touched, but she had trained herself not to flinch, because men became so offended. "Tell me something," he said, lowering his voice to an intimate level. "What are you looking for in a husband?"

  Surely he's not going to ask me to marry him, she thought dismally. She gave her standard answer. "I don't need a husband--my brother is trouble enough."

  "But you need love," he said.

  She groaned inwardly.

  She was about to reply when he held up a hand to stop her--a masculine habit she found particularly maddening. "Don't tell me you don't need love," he said. "Everybody needs love."

  She gazed at him steadily. She knew there was something peculiar about her: most women were keen to get married; and if they were still single, as she was, at the age of twenty-two, they were more than keen, they were desperate. What's wrong with me? she thought. Alfred was young, fit and prosperous: half the girls in Kingsbridge would like to marry him. For a moment she toyed with the idea of saying yes. But the thought of actually living with Alfred, eating supper with him every night and going to church with him and giving birth to his children, was appalling. She would rather be lonely. She shook her head. "Forget it, Alfred," she said firmly. "I don't need a husband, for love or anything else."

  He was not to be discouraged. "I love you, Aliena," he said. "Working with you, I've been truly happy. I need you. Will you be my wife?"

  He had said it now. She was sorry, for it meant she had to reject him formally. She had learned that there was no point in trying to do this gently, either: they took a kindly refusal as a sign of indecision, and pressed her all the more. "No, I won't," she said. "I don't love you and I haven't much enjoyed working with you, and I wouldn't marry you if you were the only man on earth."

  He was hurt. He must have thought his chances were strong. Aliena was sure she had done nothing to encourage him. She had treated him as an equal partner, listened to him when he spoke, talked to him frankly and directly, fulfilled her responsibilities and expected him to fulfill his. But some men took that for encouragement. "How can you say that?" he spluttered.

  She sighed. He was wounded, and she felt sorry for him; but in a moment he would be indignant, and act as if she had made an unfair accusation against him; then finally he would convince himself that she had gratuitously insulted him, and he would become offensive. Not all rejected suitors behaved like that, but a certain type did, and Alfred was that type. She was going to have to leave.

  She stood up. "I respect your proposal, and I thank you for the honor you do me," she said. "Please respect my refusal, and don't ask me again."

  "I suppose you're running off to see my snotnosed little stepbrother," he said nastily. "I can't imagine he gives you much of a ride."

  Aliena flushed with embarrassment. So people were beginning to notice her friendship with Jack. Trust Alfred to put a smutty interpretion on it. Well she was running off to see Jack, and she was not going to let Alfred stop her. She bent down and thrust her face into his. He was startled. Quietly and deliberately she said: "Go. To. Hell." Then she turned and went out.

  Prior Philip held court in the crypt once a month. In the old days it had been once a year, and even then the business rarely took all day. But when the population trebled, law-breaking had increased tenfold.

  The nature of crime had changed, too. Formerly, most offenses had to do with land, crops or livestock. A greedy peasant would try surreptitiously to move the boundary of a field so as to extend his land at the expense of a neighbor; a laborer would steal a sack of corn from the widow he worked for; a poor woman with too many children would milk a cow that was not hers. Nowadays most of the cases involved money, Philip thought, as he sat through his court on the first day of December. Apprentices stole money from their masters, a husband took his wife's mother's savings, merchants passed dud coinage, and wealthy women underpaid simpleminded servants who could hardly count their weekly wages. There had been no such crimes in Kingsbridge five years ago, because then nobody had much cash.

  Philip dealt with nearly all offenses by a fine. He could also have people flogged, or put in the stocks, or imprisoned in the cell beneath the monks' dormitory, but these punishments were rarer, and reserved mainly for crimes of violence. He had the right to hang thieves, and the priory owned a stout wooden gallows; but he had never used it, not yet, and he cherished a secret hope that he never would. The most serious crimes--murder, killing the king's deer, and highway robbery--were dealt with by the king's court at Shiring, presided over by the sheriff, and Sheriff Eustace did more than enough hanging.

  Today Philip had seven cases of unauthorized grain grinding. He left them until the end and dealt with them all together. The priory had just built a new water mill to run alongside the old one--Kingsbridge needed two mills now. But the new building had to be paid for, which meant that everyone had to bring their grain to be ground at the priory. Strictly speaking, that had always been the law, as it was in every manor in the country: peasants were not allowed to grind grain at home; they had to pay the lord to do it for them. In recent years, as the town grew and the old mill began to break down frequently, Philip had overlooked a growing amount of illicit grinding; but now he had to clamp down.

  He had the names of the offenders scratched on a slate, and he read them out, one by one, beginning with the wealthiest. "Richard Longacre, you had a large grind
stone turned by two men, Brother Franciscus says." Franciscus was the priory's miller.

  A prosperous-looking yeoman stepped forward. "Yes, my lord prior, but I've broken it now."

  "Pay sixty pence. Enid Brewster, you had a handmill in your brewery. Eric Enidson was seen using it, and he is charged too."

  "Yes, lord," said Enid, a red-faced woman with powerful shoulders.

  "And where is the handmill now?" Philip asked her.

  "I threw it in the river, Lord."

  Philip did not believe her, but there was not much he could do about it. "Fined twenty-four pence, and twelve for your son. Walter Tanner?"

  Philip went on down the list, fining people according to the scale of their illegitimate operations, until he came to the last and poorest. "Widow Goda?"

  A pinch-faced old woman in faded black clothes stepped forward.

  "Brother Franciscus saw you grinding grain with a stone."

  "I didn't have a penny for the mill, lord," she said resentfully.

  "You had a penny to buy grain, though," Philip said.

  "You shall be punished like everyone else."

  "Would you have me starve?" she said defiantly.

  Philip sighed. He wished Brother Franciscus had pretended not to notice Goda breaking the law. "When was the last time someone starved to death in Kingsbridge?" he said. He looked around at the assembled citizens. "Anybody remember the last time someone starved to death in our town?" He paused for a moment, as if waiting for a reply, then said: "I think you'll find it was before my time."

  Goda said: "Dick Shorthouse died last winter."

  Philip remembered the man, a beggar who slept in pigsties and stables. "Dick fell down drunk in the street at midnight and froze to death when it snowed," he said. "He didn't starve, and if he'd been sober enough to walk to the priory, he wouldn't have been cold either. If you're hungry, don't try to cheat me--come to me for charity. And if you're too proud to do that, and you would rather break the law instead, you must take your punishment like everyone else. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes, Lord," the old woman said sulkily.

  "Fined a farthing," Philip said. "Court is over."

  He stood up and went out, climbing the stairs that led up to ground level from the crypt.

  Work on the new cathedral had slowed dramatically, as it always did a month or so before Christmas. The exposed edges and tops of the unfinished stonework were covered with straw and dung--the litter from the priory stables--to keep the frost off the new masonry. The masons could not build in the winter, because of the frost, they said. Philip had asked why they could not uncover the walls every morning and cover them again at night: it was not often frosty in the daytime. Tom said that walls built in winter fell down. Philip believed that, but he did not think it was because of the frost. He thought the real reason might be that the mortar took several months to set properly. The winter break allowed it to get really hard before the new year's masonry was built on top. That would also explain the masons' superstition that it was bad luck to build more than twenty feet high in a single year: more than that, and the lower courses might become deformed by the weight on them before the mortar could harden.

  Philip was surprised to see all the masons out in the open, in what would be the chancel of the church. He went to see what they were doing.

  They had made a semicircular wooden arch and stood it upright, propped up with poles on both sides. Philip knew that the wooden arch was a piece of what they called falsework: its purpose was to support the stone arch while it was being built. Now, however, the masons were assembling the stone arch at ground level, without mortar, to make sure the stones fit together perfectly. Apprentices and laborers were lifting the stones onto the falsework while the masons looked on critically.

  Philip caught Tom's eye and said: "What's this for?"

  "It's an arch for the tribune gallery."

  Philip looked up reflexively. The arcade had been finished last year and the gallery above it would be completed next year. Then only the top level, the clerestory, would remain to be built before the roof went on. Now that the walls had been covered up for the winter, the masons were cutting the stones ready for next year's work. If this arch was right, the stones for all the others would be cut to the same patterns.

  The apprentices, among whom was Tom's stepson, Jack, built the arch up from either side, with the wedge-shaped stones called voussoirs. Although the arch would eventually be built high up in the church, it would have elaborate decorative moldings; so each stone bore, on the surface that would be visible, a line of large dogtooth carving, another line of small medallions, and a bottom line of simple roll molding. When the stones were put together, the carvings lined up exactly, forming three continuous arcs, one of dogtooth, one of medallions and one of roll molding. This gave the impression that the arch was constructed of several semicircular hoops of stone one on top of another, whereas, in fact, it was made of wedges placed side by side. However, the stones had to fit together precisely, otherwise the carvings would not line up and the illusion would be spoiled.

  Philip watched while Jack lowered the central keystone into place. Now the arch was complete. Four masons picked up sledgehammers and knocked out the wedges that supported the wooden falsework a few inches above the ground. Dramatically, the wooden support fell. Although there was no mortar between the stones, the arch remained standing. Tom Builder gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  Someone pulled at Philip's sleeve. He turned to see a young monk. "You've got a visitor, Father. He's waiting in your house."

  "Thank you, my son." Philip left the builders. If the monks had put the visitor in the prior's house to wait, that meant it was someone important. He crossed the close and went into his house.

  The visitor was his brother, Francis. Philip embraced him warmly. Francis looked careworn. "Have you been offered something to eat?" Philip said. "You seem weary."

  "They gave me some bread and meat, thanks. I've spent the autumn riding between Bristol, where King Stephen was imprisoned, and Rochester, where Earl Robert was held."

  "You said was. "

  Francis nodded. "I've been negotiating a swap: Stephen for Robert. It was done on All Saints' Day. King Stephen is now back in Winchester."

  Philip was surprised. "It seems to me that the Empress Maud got the worst of the bargain--she gave a king to get an earl."

  Francis shook his head. "She was helpless without Robert. Nobody likes her, nobody trusts her. Her support was collapsing. She had to have him back. Queen Matilda was clever. She wouldn't take anything less than King Stephen in exchange. She held out for that and in the end she got it."

  Philip went to the window and looked out. It had started to rain, a cold slantwise rain blowing across the building site, darkening the high walls of the cathedral and dripping off the low thatched roofs of the craftsmen's lodges. "What does it mean?" he said.

  "It means that Maud is once again just an aspirant to the throne. After all, Stephen has actually been crowned, whereas Maud never was, not quite."

  "But it was Maud who licensed my market."

  "Yes. That could be a problem."

  "Is my license invalid?"

  "No. It was properly granted by a legitimate ruler who had been approved by the Church. The fact that she wasn't crowned doesn't make any difference. But Stephen could withdraw it."

  "The market is paying for the stone," Philip said anxiously. "I can't build without it. This is bad news indeed."

  "I'm sorry."

  "What about my hundred pounds?"

  Francis shrugged. "Stephen will tell you to get it back from Maud."

  Philip felt sick. "All that money," he said. "It was God's money, and I lost it."

  "You haven't lost it yet," Francis said. "Stephen may not revoke your license. He's never shown much interest in markets one way or the other."

  "Earl William may pressure him."

  "William changed allegiance, remember? He threw his lot in with Mau
d. He won't have much influence with Stephen anymore."

  "I hope you're right," Philip said fervently. "I hope to God you're right."

  When it got too cold to sit in the glade, Aliena took to visiting Tom Builder's house in the evenings. Alfred was normally at the alehouse, so the family group consisted of Tom, Ellen, Jack and Martha. Now that Tom was doing so well, they had comfortable seats, and a roaring fire, and plenty of candles. Ellen and Aliena would work at the weaving. Tom would draw plans and diagrams, scratching his drawings with a sharp stone onto polished pieces of siate. Jack would pretend to be making a belt, or sharpening knives, or weaving a basket, although he would spend most of the time furtively staring at Aliena's face in the candle-light, watching her lips move as she talked or studying her white throat as she drank a glass of ale. They laughed a lot that winter. Jack loved to make Aliena laugh. She was so controlled and reserved, in general, that it was a joy to see her let herself go, almost like catching a glimpse of her naked. He was constantly thinking of things to say to amuse her. He would do impressions of the craftsmen on the building site, imitating the accent of a Parisian mason or the bowlegged walk of a blacksmith. Once he invented a comical account of life with the monks, giving each of them plausible sins--pride for Remigius, gluttony for Bernard Kitchener, drunkenness for the guest-master, and lust for Pierre Circuitor. Martha was often helpless with laughter and even the taciturn Tom cracked a smile.

  It was on one such evening that Aliena said: "I don't know if I'm going to be able to sell all this cloth."

  They were somewhat taken aback. Ellen said: "Then why are we weaving it?"

  "I haven't given up hope," Aliena said. "I've just got a problem. "

  Tom looked up from his slate. "I thought the priory was eager to buy it all."

  "That's not the problem. I can't find people to do the felting, and the priory doesn't want loose-woven cloth--nor does anyone else."

  Ellen said: "Felting is backbreaking work. I'm not surprised no one will do it."

  "Can't you get men to do it?" Tom suggested.

  "Not in prosperous Kingsbridge. All the men have work enough. In the big towns there are professional fullers, but most of them work for weavers, and they're prohibited from felting for their employer's rivals. Anyway, it would cost too much to cart the cloth to Winchester and back."