by Ken Follett
Well, yes, he thought.
He had taken enormous satisfaction from teaching Jonathan, watching him grow, and seeing him learn how to manage priory affairs. But even if these things had not given Philip such intense pleasure, Jonathan would still have been the ablest young administrator in the priory. He was intelligent, devout, imaginative and conscientious. Brought up in the monastery, he knew no other life, and he never hankered after freedom. Philip himself had been raised in an abbey. We monastery orphans make the best monks, he thought.
He put a book into a satchel: Luke's Gospel, so wise. He had treated Jonathan like a son, but he had not committed any sins worth taking before an ecclesiastical court. The charge was absurd.
Unfortunately, the mere accusation would be damaging. It diminished his moral authority. There would be people who would remember the charge and forget the verdict. Next time Philip stood up and said: "The commandment forbids a man to covet his neighbor's wife," some of the congregation would be thinking But you had your fun when you were young.
Jonathan burst in, breathing hard. Philip frowned. The sub-prior ought not to burst into rooms panting. Philip was about to launch into a homily on the dignity of monastic officers, when Jonathan said: "Archdeacon Peter is here already!"
"All right, all right," Philip soothed. "I've just about finished, anyway." He handed Jonathan the satchel. "Take this to the dormitory, and don't rush everywhere: a monastery is a place of peace and quiet."
Jonathan accepted the satchel and the rebuke, but he said: "I don't like the look of the archdeacon."
"I'm sure he'll be a just judge, and that's all we want," Philip said.
The door opened again, and the archdeacon came in. He was a tall, rangy man of about Philip's age, with thinning gray hair and a rather superior look on his face. He seemed vaguely familiar.
Philip offered a handshake, saying: "I'm Prior Philip."
"I know you," the archdeacon said sourly. "Don't you remember me?"
The gravelly voice did it. Philip's heart sank. This was his oldest enemy. "Archdeacon Peter," he said grimly. "Peter of Wareham."
"He was a troublemaker," Philip explained to Jonathan a few minutes later, when they had left the archdeacon to make himself comfortable in the prior's house. "He would complain that we didn't work hard enough, or we ate too well, or the services were too short. He said I was indulgent. He wanted to be prior himself, I'm sure. He would have been a disaster, of course. I made him almoner, so that he had to spend half his time away. I did it just to get rid of him. It was best for the priory and best for him, but I'm sure he still hates me for it, even after thirty-five years." He sighed. "I heard, when you and I visited St-John-in-the-Forest after the great famine, that Peter had gone to Canterbury. And now he's going to sit in judgment on me."
They were in the cloisters. The weather was mild and the sun was warm. Fifty boys in three different classes were learning to read and write in the north walk, and the subdued murmur of their lessons floated across the quadrangle. Philip remembered when the school had consisted of five boys and a senile novice-master. He thought of all he had done here: the building of the cathedral; the transformation of the impoverished, rundown priory into a wealthy, busy, influential institution; the enlargement of the town of Kingsbridge. In the church, more than a hundred monks were singing mass. From where he sat he could see the astonishingly beautiful stained-glass windows in the clerestory. At his back, off the east walk, was a stone-built library containing hundreds of books on theology, astronomy, ethics, mathematics, indeed, every branch of knowledge. In the outside world the priory's lands, managed with enlightened self-interest by monastic officers, fed not just the monks but hundreds of farm workers. Was all that to be taken from him by a lie? Would the prosperous and God-fearing priory be handed over to someone else, a pawn of Bishop Waleran's such as the slimy Archdeacon Baldwin, or a self-righteous fool such as Peter of Wareham, to be run down to penury and depravity as quickly as Philip had built it up? Would the vast flocks of sheep shrink to a handful of scrawny ewes, the farms return to weed-grown inefficiency, the library become dusty with disuse, the beautiful cathedral sink into damp and disrepair? God helped me to achieve so much, he thought; I can't believe he intended it to come to nothing.
Jonathan said: "All the same, Archdeacon Peter can't possibly find you guilty."
"I think he will," Philip said heavily.
"In all conscience, how can he?"
"I think he's been nursing a grievance against me all his life, and this is his chance to prove that I was the sinner and he was the righteous man all along. Somehow Waleran found out about that and made sure Peter was appointed to judge this case."
"But there's no proof!"
"He doesn't need proof. He'll hear the accusation, and the defense; then he'll pray for guidance, and he'll announce his verdict."
"God may guide him aright."
"Peter won't listen to God. He's never been a listener."
"What will happen?"
"I'll be deposed," Philip said grimly. "They may let me continue here as an ordinary monk, to do penance for my sin, but it's not likely. More probably they will expel me from the order, to prevent my having any further influence here."
"What would happen then?"
"There would have to be an election, of course. Unfortunately, royal politics enter into the picture now. King Henry is in dispute with the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, and Archbishop Thomas is in exile in France. Half his archdeacons are with him. The other half, the ones who stayed behind, have sided with the king against their archbishop. Peter obviously belongs to that crowd. Bishop Waleran has also taken the king's side. Waleran will recommend his choice of prior, backed by the Canterbury archdeacons and the king. It will be hard for the monks here to oppose him."
"Who do you think it might be?"
"Waleran has someone in mind, rest assured. It could be Archdeacon Baldwin. It might even be Peter of Wareham."
"We must do something to prevent this!" Jonathan said.
Philip nodded. "But everything is against us. There's nothing we can do to alter the political situation. The only possibility"
"What?" Jonathan said impatiently.
The case seemed so hopeless that Philip felt there was no point in toying with desperate ideas: it would excite Jonathan's optimism only to disappoint him. "Nothing," Philip said.
"What were you going to say?"
Philip was still working it out. "If there was a way to prove my innocence beyond doubt, it would be impossible for Peter to find me guilty."
"But what would count as proof?"
"Exactly. You can't prove a negative. We would have to find your real father."
Jonathan was instantly enthusiastic. "Yes! That's it! That's what we'll do!"
"Slow down," Philip said. "I tried at the time. It's not likely to be any easier so many years later."
Jonathan was not to be discouraged. "Were there no clues at all to where I might have come from?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid." Philip was now worried that he had raised hopes in Jonathan which could not be fulfilled. Although the boy had no memories of his parents, the fact that they had abandoned him had always troubled him. Now he thought he might solve the mystery and find some explanation which proved they had loved him really. Philip felt sure this could only lead to frustration.
"Did you question people living nearby?" Jonathan said.
"There was nobody living nearby. That cell is deep in the forest. Your parents probably came from miles away, Winchester perhaps. I've been over all this ground already."
Jonathan persisted. "You didn't see any travelers in the forest around that time?"
"No." Philip frowned. Was that true? A stray thought tugged at his memory. The day the baby was found, Philip had left the priory to go to the bishop's palace, and on his way he had spoken to some people. Suddenly it came back to him. "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, Tom Builder and his family were passing through."
Jonathan was astonished. "You never told me that!"
"It never seemed important. It still doesn't. I met them a day or two later. I questioned them, and they said they hadn't seen anyone who might have been the mother or father of an abandoned baby."
Jonathan was crestfallen. Philip was afraid this whole line of inquiry was going to prove doubly disappointing to him: he would not find out about his parents and he would fail to prove Philip's innocence. But there was no stopping him now. "What were they doing in the forest, anyway?" he persisted.
"Tom was on his way to the bishop's palace. He was looking for work. That's how they ended up here."
"I want to question them again."
"Well, Tom and Alfred are dead. Ellen is living in the forest, and only God knows when she will reappear. But you could talk to Jack or Martha."
"It's worth a try."
Perhaps Jonathan was right. He had the energy of youth. Philip had been pessimistic and discouraging. "Go ahead," he said to Jonathan. "I'm getting old and tired; otherwise I would have thought of it myself. Talk to Jack. It's a slender thread to hang on to. But it's our only hope."
The design of the window had been drawn, full size, and painted, on a huge wooden table which had been washed with ale to prevent the colors from running. The drawing showed the Tree of Jesse, a genealogy of Christ in picture form. Sally picked up a small piece of thick ruby-colored glass and placed it on the design over the body of one of the kings of Israel--Jack was not sure which king: he had never been able to remember the convoluted symbolism of theological pictures. Sally dipped a fine brush in a bowl of chalk ground up in water, and painted the shape of the body onto the glass: shoulders, arms, and the skirt of the robe.
In the fire on the ground beside her table was an iron rod with a wooden handle. She took the rod out of the fire and then, quickly but carefully, she ran the red-hot end of the rod around the outline she had painted. The grass cracked neatly along the line. Her apprentice picked up the piece of glass and began to smooth its edges with a grozing iron.
Jack loved to watch his daughter work. She was quick and precise, her movements economical. As a little girl she had been fascinated by the work of the glaziers Jack had brought over from Paris, and she always said that was what she wanted to do when she grew up. She had stuck by that choice. When people came to Kingsbridge Cathedral for the first time, they were more struck by Sally's glass than her father's architecture, Jack thought ruefully.
The apprentice handed the smoothed glass to her, and she began to paint the folds of the robe onto the surface, using a paint made of iron ore, urine, and gum arabic for adhesion. The flat glass suddenly began to look like soft, carelessly draped cloth. She was very skillful. She finished it quickly, then put the painted glass alongside several others in an iron pan, the bottom of which was covered with lime. When the pan was full it would go into an oven. The heat would fuse the paint to the glass.
She looked up at Jack, gave him a brief, dazzling smile, then picked up another piece of glass.
He moved away. He could watch her all day, but he had work to do. He was, as Aliena would say, daft about his daughter. When he looked at her it was often with a kind of amazement that he was responsible for the existence of this clever, independent, mature young woman. He was thrilled that she was such a good craftswoman.
Ironically, he had always pressured Tommy to be a builder. He had actually forced the boy to work on the site for a couple of years. But Tommy was interested in farming, horsemanship, hunting and swordplay, all the things that left Jack cold. In the end Jack had conceded defeat. Tommy had served as a squire to one of the local lords and had eventually been knighted. Aliena had granted him a small estate of five villages. And Sally had turned out to be the talented one. Tommy was married now, to a younger daughter of the earl of Bedford, and they had three children. Jack was a grandfather. But Sally was still single at the age of twenty-five. There was a lot of her grandmother Ellen in her. She was aggressively self-reliant.
Jack walked around to the west end of the cathedral and looked up at the twin towers. They were almost complete, and a huge bronze bell was on its way here from the foundry in London. There was not much for Jack to do nowadays. Where he had once controlled an army of muscular stone-cutters and carpenters, laying rows of square stones and building scaffolding, he now had a handful of carvers and painters doing precise and painstaking work on a small scale, making statues for niches, building ornamental pinnacles, and gilding the wings of stone angels. There was not much to design, apart from the occasional new building for the priory--a library, a chapter house, more accommodation for pilgrims, new laundry and dairy buildings. In between petty jobs Jack was doing some stone carving himself, for the first time in many years. He was impatient to pull down Tom Builder's old chancel and put up a new east end to his own design, but Prior Philip wanted to enjoy the finished church for a year before beginning another building campaign. Philip was feeling his age. Jack was afraid the old boy might not live to see the chancel rebuilt.
However, the work would be continued after Philip's death, Jack thought as he saw the enormously tall figure of Brother Jonathan striding toward him from the direction of the kitchen courtyard. Jonathan would make a good prior, perhaps even as good as Philip himself. Jack was glad the succession was assured: it enabled him to plan for the future.
"I'm worried about this ecclesiastical court, Jack," said Jonathan without preamble.
Jack said: "I thought that was all a big fuss about nothing."
"So did I--but the archdeacon turns out to be an old enemy of Prior Philip's."
"Hell. But even so, surely he can't find him guilty."
"He can do anything he wants."
Jack shook his head in disgust. He sometimes wondered how men such as Jonathan could continue to believe in the Church when it was so shamelessly corrupt. "What are you going to do?"
"The only way we can prove his innocence is to find out who my parents were."
"It's a bit late for that!"
"It's our only hope."
Jack was somewhat shaken. They were quite desperate. "Where are you going to start?"
"With you. You were in the area of St-John-in-the-Forest at the time I was born."
"Was I?" Jack did not see what Jonathan was getting at. "I lived there until I was eleven, and I must be about eleven years older than you...."
"Father Philip says he met you, with your mother and Tom Builder and Tom's children, the day after I was found."
"I remember that. We ate all Philip's food. We were starving."
"Think hard. Did you see anyone with a baby, or a young woman who might have been pregnant, anywhere near that area?"
"Wait a minute." Jack was puzzled. "Are you telling me that you were found near St-John-in-the-Forest?"
"Yes--didn't you know that?"
Jack could hardly believe his ears. "No, I didn't know that," he said slowly. His mind was reeling with the implications of the revelation. "When we arrived in Kingsbridge, you were already here, and I naturally assumed you had been found in the forest near here." He suddenly felt the need to sit down. There was a pile of building rubble nearby, and he lowered himself onto it.
Jonathan said impatiently: "Well, anyway, did you see anyone in the forest?"
"Oh, yes," Jack said. "I don't know how to tell you this, Jonathan."
Jonathan paled. "You know something about this, don't you? What did you see?"
"I saw you, Jonathan; that's what I saw."
Jonathan's mouth dropped open. "What... How?"
"It was dawn. I was on a duck-hunting expedition. I heard a cry. I found a newborn baby, wrapped in a cut-up old cloak, lying beside the embers of a dying fire."
Jonathan stared at him. "Anything else?"
Jack nodded slowly. "The baby was lying on a new grave."
Jonathan swallowed. "My mother?"
Jack nodded.
Jonathan began to weep, but he kept askin
g questions. "What did you do?"
"I fetched my mother. But while we were returning to the spot, we saw a priest, riding a palfrey, carrying the baby."
"Francis," Jonathan said in a choked voice.
"What?"
He swallowed hard. "I was found by Father Philip's brother, Francis, the priest."
"What was he doing there?"
"He was on his way to see Philip at St-John-in-the-Forest. That's where he took me."
"My God." Jack stared at the tall monk with tears streaming down his cheeks. You haven't heard it all yet, Jonathan, he thought.
Jonathan said: "Did you see anyone who might have been my father?"
"Yes," Jack said solemnly. "I know who he was."
"Tell me!" Jonathan whispered.
"Tom Builder."
"Tom Builder?" Jonathan sat down heavily on the ground. "Tom Builder was my father?"
"Yes." Jack shook his head in wonderment. "Now I know who you remind me of. You and he are the tallest people I ever met."
"He was always good to me when I was a child," Jonathan said in a dazed tone. "He used to play with me. He was fond of me. I saw as much of him as I did of Prior Philip." His tears flowed freely. "That was my father. My father." He looked up at Jack. "Why did he abandon me?"
"They thought you were going to die anyway. They had no milk to give you. They were starving themselves, I know. They were miles from anywhere. They didn't know the priory was nearby. They had no food except turnips, and turnips would have killed you."
"They did love me, after all."
Jack saw the scene as if it were yesterday: the dying fire, the freshly turned earth of the new grave, and the tiny pink baby kicking its arms and legs inside the old gray cloak. That little scrap of humanity had grown into the tall man who sat weeping on the ground in front of him. "Oh, yes, they loved you."
"How come nobody ever spoke of it?"
"Tom was ashamed, of course," Jack said. "My mother must have known that, and we children sensed it, I suppose. Anyway, it was an unmentionable topic. And we never connected that baby with you, of course."
"Tom must have made the connection," Jonathan said.