The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

  "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, strongwilled. 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. T
he 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.