by Ken Follett
Buonaventura found it hard to refuse. "All right, but to what end?"
"I want the chance to improve the fair, and especially that bridge," Edmund replied. "If we could offer better facilities here at Kingsbridge than they have at Shiring, and attract more sellers, you would continue to visit us, wouldn't you?"
"Of course."
"Then that's what we'll have to do." He stood up. "I'll go and see my brother now. Caris, come with me. We'll show him the queue at the bridge. No, wait, Caris, go and fetch your clever young builder, Merthin. We might need his expertise."
"He'll be working."
Petranilla said: "Just tell his master that the alderman of the parish guild wants the boy." Petranilla was proud that her brother was alderman, and mentioned it at every opportunity.
But she was right. Elfric would have to release Merthin. "I'll go and find him," Caris said.
She put on a cape with a hood and went out. It was still raining, though not as heavily as yesterday. Elfric, like most of the leading citizens, lived on the main street that ran from the bridge up to the priory gates. The broad street was crowded with carts and people heading for the fair, splashing through puddles and streamlets of rain.
She was eager to see Merthin, as always. She had liked him ever since All Hallows Day ten years ago, when he had appeared at archery practice with his homemade bow. He was clever and funny. Like her, he knew that the world was a bigger and more fascinating place than most Kingsbridge citizens could conceive. But six months ago they had discovered something that was even more fun than being friends.
Caris had kissed boys before Merthin, though not often: she had never really seen the point. With him it was different, exciting and sexy. He had an impish streak that made everything he did seem mildly wicked. She liked it when he touched her body, too. She wanted to do more--but she tried not to think about that. "More" meant marriage, and a wife had to be subordinate to her husband, who was her master--and Caris hated that idea. Fortunately she was not forced to think about it yet, for Merthin could not marry until his apprenticeship was over, and that was half a year away.
She reached Elfric's house and stepped inside. Her sister, Alice, was in the front room, at the table, with her stepdaughter, Griselda. They were eating bread with honey. Alice had changed in the three years since she had married Elfric. Her nature had always been harsh, like Petranilla's, and under the influence of her husband she had become more suspicious, resentful, and ungenerous.
But she was pleasant enough today. "Sit down, sister," she said. "The bread is fresh this morning."
"I can't, I'm looking for Merthin."
Alice looked disapproving. "So early?"
"Father wants him." Caris went through the kitchen to the back door and looked into the yard. Rain fell on a dismal landscape of builder's junk. One of Elfric's laborers was putting wet stones into a barrow. There was no sign of Merthin. She went back inside.
Alice said: "He's probably at the cathedral. He's been making a door."
Caris recalled that Merthin had mentioned this. The door in the north porch had rotted, and Merthin was working on a replacement.
Griselda added: "He's been carving virgins." She grinned, then put more bread-and-honey into her mouth.
Caris knew this, too. The old door was decorated with carvings illustrating the story Jesus told on the Mount of Olives, about the wise and foolish virgins, and Merthin had to copy it. But there was something unpleasant about Griselda's grin, Caris thought; almost as if she were laughing at Caris for being a virgin herself.
"I'll try the cathedral," Caris said, and with a perfunctory wave she left.
She climbed the main street and entered the cathedral close. As she threaded her way through the market stalls, it seemed to her that a dismal air hung over the fair. Was she imagining it, because of what Buonaventura had said? She thought not. When she recalled the fleece fairs of her childhood, it seemed to her that they had been busier and more crowded. In those days, the priory precincts had not been large enough to contain the fair, and the streets all around had been obstructed by unlicensed stalls--often just a small table covered with trinkets--plus hawkers with trays, jugglers, fortune-tellers, musicians, and itinerant friars calling sinners to redemption. Now it seemed to her there might have been room for a few more stalls within the precincts. "Buonaventura must be right," she said to herself. "The fair is shrinking." A trader gave her a strange look, and she realized she had spoken her thoughts out loud. It was a bad habit: people thought she was talking to spirits. She had taught herself not to do it, but she sometimes forgot, especially when she was anxious.
She walked around the great church to the north side.
Merthin was working in the porch, a roomy space where people often held meetings. He had the door standing upright in a stout wooden frame that held it still while he carved. Behind the new work, the old door was still in place in the archway, cracked and crumbling. Merthin stood with his back to her, so that the light fell over his shoulders onto the wood in front of him. He did not see her, and the sound of the rain drowned her footsteps, so she was able to study him for a few moments unnoticed.
He was a small man, not much taller than she. He had a large, intelligent head on a wiry body. His small hands moved deftly across the carving, shaving fine curls of wood with a sharp knife as he shaped the images. He had white skin and a lot of bushy red hair. "He's not very handsome," Alice had said, with a twist of her lip, when Caris admitted she had fallen in love with him. It was true that Merthin did not have the dashing good looks of his brother, Ralph, but Caris thought his face was quite marvelous: irregular and quirky and wise and full of laughter, just as he was.
"Hello," she said, and he jumped. She laughed. "It's not like you to be so easily spooked."
"You startled me." He hesitated, then kissed her. He seemed a little awkward, but that sometimes happened when he was concentrating on his work.
She looked at the carving. They were five virgins on each side of the door, the wise ones feasting at the wedding, and the foolish ones outside, holding their lamps upside down to show that they were empty of oil. Merthin had copied the design of the old door, but with subtle changes. The virgins stood in rows, five on one side and five on the other, like the arches in the cathedral; but, in the new door, they were not exactly alike. Merthin had given each girl a sign of individuality. One was pretty, another had curly hair, one wept, another closed one eye in a mischievous wink. He had made them real, and the scene on the old door now looked stiff and lifeless by comparison. "It's wonderful," Caris said. "But I wonder what the monks will think."
"Brother Thomas likes it," Merthin replied.
"What about Prior Anthony?"
"He hasn't seen it. But he'll accept it. He won't want to pay twice."
That was true, Caris thought. Her uncle Anthony was unadventurous, but parsimonious, too. The mention of the prior reminded her of her errand. "My father wants you to meet him and the prior at the bridge."
"Did he say why?"
"I think he's going to ask Anthony to build a new bridge."
Merthin put his tools into a leather satchel and quickly swept the floor, brushing sawdust and wood shavings out of the porch. Then he and Caris walked in the rain through the fair and down the main street to the wooden bridge. Caris told him what Buonaventura had said at the breakfast table. Merthin felt, as she did, that recent fairs had not been as bustling as those he remembered from childhood.
Despite that, there was a long queue of people and carts waiting to get into Kingsbridge. At the near end of the bridge was a small gatehouse where a monk sat taking a fee of one penny from every trader who entered the city with goods for sale. The bridge was narrow, so it was not possible for anyone to jump the queue, and in consequence people who did not need to pay--residents of the town, mainly--also had to stand in line. In addition, some of the boards that formed the surface were twisted and broken, so carts had to move slowly as they crossed. The resul
t was that the queue stretched away along the road between the suburban hovels and disappeared into the rain.
The bridge was also too short. Once, no doubt, both its ends had given on to dry land. But either the river had widened or, more likely, the passage of carts and people over decades and centuries had flattened the banks, so that now people had to wade across muddy beaches on both sides.
Caris saw that Merthin was studying its structure. She knew that look in his eyes: he was thinking about how it stayed upright. She often caught him staring at something in that way, usually in the cathedral, but sometimes in front of a house or even something natural, a thorn tree in blossom or a sparrow hawk hovering. He became very still, his gaze bright and sharp, as if he were shining a light into a murky place, trying to make out what was there. If she asked him, he told her he was trying to see the insides of things.
She followed his gaze and strained to imagine what he perceived in the old bridge. It was sixty yards from end to end, the longest bridge she had ever seen. The roadbed was supported by massive oak piers in two rows, like the pillars that marched either side of the nave of the cathedral. There were five pairs of piers. The end ones, where the water was shallow, were quite short, but the three central pairs stood fifteen feet above the waterline.
Each pier consisted of four oak beams in a cluster, held together by plank braces. Legend said that the king had given Kingsbridge Priory the twenty-four best oak trees in England to build the three central pairs of piers. The tops were linked by beams in two parallel lines. Shorter beams crossed from one line to the other, forming the roadbed; and longitudinal planks had been laid on top to form the road surface. On each side was a wooden railing that served as a flimsy parapet. Every couple of years a drunk peasant would drive a cart through the rail and kill himself and his horse in the river.
"What are you looking at?" Caris asked Merthin.
"The cracks."
"I don't see any."
"The timbers on either side of the central pier are splitting. You can see where Elfric has reinforced them with iron braces."
Now that he pointed them out, Caris could see the flat metal strips nailed across the cracks. "You look worried," she said to him.
"I don't know why the timbers cracked in the first place."
"Does it matter?"
"Of course it does."
He was not very talkative this morning. She was about to ask him why, when he said: "Here comes your father."
She looked along the street. The two brothers made an odd pair. Tall Anthony fastidiously held up the skirts of his monkish robe and stepped gingerly around the puddles, wearing an expression of distaste on his pale indoor face. Edmund, more vigorous despite being the elder, had a red face and a long, untidy gray beard, and he walked carelessly, dragging his withered leg through the mud, speaking argumentatively and gesturing extravagantly with both arms. When Caris saw her father at a distance, the way a stranger might see him, she always felt a surge of love.
The dispute was in full swing when they got to the bridge, and they continued without pause. "Look at that queue!" Edmund shouted. "Hundreds of people not trading at the fair because they haven't got there yet! And you can be sure half of them will meet a buyer or seller while waiting, and conduct their business right then and there, then go home without even entering the city!"
"That's forestalling, and it's against the law," said Anthony.
"You could go and tell them that, if you could get across the bridge, but you can't, because it's too narrow! Listen, Anthony. If the Italians pull out, the Fleece Fair will never be the same again. Your prosperity and mine are based on the fair--we must not just let it go!"
"We can't force Buonaventura to do business here."
"But we can make our fair more attractive than Shiring's. We need to announce a big, symbolic project, right now, this week, something to convince them all that the Fleece Fair isn't finished. We have to tell them we're going to tear down this old bridge and build a new one, twice as wide." Without warning, he turned to Merthin. "How long would it take, young lad?"
Merthin looked startled, but he answered. "Finding the trees would be the hard part. You need very long timbers, well seasoned. Then the piers have to be driven into the river bed--that's tricky, because you're working in running water. After that it's just carpentry. You could finish it by Christmas."
Anthony said: "There's no certainty the Caroli family will change its plans if we build a new bridge."
"They will," Edmund said forcefully. "I guarantee it."
"Anyway, I can't afford to build a bridge. I don't have the money."
"You can't afford not to build a bridge," Edmund shouted. "You'll ruin yourself as well as the town."
"It's out of the question. I don't even know where I'm going to get the money for the repairs in the south aisle."
"So what will you do?"
"Trust in God."
"Those who trust in God and sow a seed may reap a harvest. But you're not sowing the seed."
Anthony got irritated. "I know this is difficult for you to understand, Edmund, but Kingsbridge Priory is not a commercial enterprise. We're here to worship God, not to make money."
"You won't worship God for long if you've nothing to eat."
"God will provide."
Edmund's red face flushed with anger, turning an purplish color. "When you were a boy, our father's business fed you and clothed you and paid for your education. Since you've been a monk, the citizens of this town and the peasants of the surrounding countryside have kept you alive by paying you rents, tithes, charges for market stalls, bridge tolls, and a dozen other different fees. All your life you've lived like a flea on the backs of hardworking people. And now you have the nerve to tell us that God provides."
"That's perilously close to blasphemy."
"Don't forget that I've known you since you were born, Anthony. You always had a talent for avoiding work." Edmund's voice, so often raised in a shout, now dropped--a sign, Caris knew, that he was really furious. "When it was time to empty out the privy, you went off to bed, so that you would be rested for school the next day. Father's gift to God, you always had the best of everything, and never lifted your hand to earn it. Strengthening food, the warmest bedroom, the best clothes--I was the only boy who wore his younger brother's cast-off outfits!"
"And you never let me forget it."
Caris had been waiting for the opportunity to halt the flow, and now she took it. "There ought to be a way around this."
They both looked at her, surprised to be interrupted.
She went on: "For example, couldn't the townspeople build a bridge?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Anthony. "The town belongs to the priory. A servant doesn't furnish his master's house."
"But if your permission was sought, you would have no reason to refuse it."
Anthony did not immediately contradict that, which was encouraging; but Edmund was shaking his head. "I don't think I could persuade them to put up the money," he said. "It would be in their interests, long term, of course; but people are very reluctant to think in the long term when being asked to part with their money."
"Ha!" said Anthony. "Yet you expect me to think long term."
"You deal with eternal life, don't you?" Edmund shot back. "You of all people ought to be able to see beyond the end of next week. Besides, you get a penny toll from everyone who crosses the bridge. You'd get your money back and you'd benefit from the improvement in business."
Caris said: "But Uncle Anthony is a spiritual leader, and he feels it's not his role."
"But he owns the town!" Papa protested. "He's the only one who can do it!" Then he gave her an inquiring look, realizing that she would not have contradicted him without a reason. "What are you thinking?"
"Suppose the townspeople built a bridge, and were repaid out of the penny tolls?"
Edmund opened his mouth to express an objection, but could not think of one.
Caris looked
at Anthony.
Anthony said: "When the priory was new, its only income came from that bridge. I can't give it away."
"But think what you would gain, if the Fleece Fair and the weekly market began to return to their former size: not just the bridge tolls, but stallholders' fees, the percentage you take of all transactions at the fair, and gifts to the cathedral, too!"
Edmund added: "And the profits on your own sales: wool, grain, hides, books, statues of the saints--"
Anthony said: "You planned this, didn't you?" He pointed an accusing finger at his older brother. "You told your daughter what to say, and the lad. He would never think up a scheme like this, and she's just a woman. It has your mark on it. This is all a plot to cheat me of my bridge tolls. Well, it's failed. Praise God, I'm not that stupid!" He turned away and splashed off through the mud.
Edmund said: "I don't know how my father ever sired someone with so little sense." And he, too, stomped off.
Caris turned to Merthin. "Well," she said, "what did you think of all that?"
"I don't know." He looked away, avoiding her eye. "I'd better get back to work." He went without kissing her.
"Well!" she said when he was out of earshot. "What on earth has got into him?"
8
The earl of Shiring came to Kingsbridge on the Tuesday of Fleece Fair week. He brought with him both his sons, various other family members, and an entourage of knights and squires. The bridge was cleared by his advance men, and no one was permitted to cross for an hour before his arrival, lest he should suffer the indignity of being made to wait alongside the common people. His followers wore his red-and-black livery, and they all splashed into town with banners flying, their horses' hooves spattering the citizens with rainwater and mud. Earl Roland had prospered in the last ten years--under Queen Isabella and, later, her son Edward III--and he wanted the world to know it, as rich and powerful men generally did.
In his company was Ralph, son of Sir Gerald and brother of Merthin. At the same time as Merthin had been apprenticed to Elfric's father, Ralph had become a squire in the household of Earl Roland, and he had been happy ever since. He had been well fed and clothed, he had learned to ride and fight, and he had spent most of his time hunting and playing sports and games. In six and a half years no one had asked him to read or write a word. As he rode behind the earl through the huddled stalls of the Fleece Fair, watched by faces both envious and fearful, he pitied the merchants and tradesmen grubbing for pennies in the mud.