by Ken Follett
Caris returned to Kingsbridge, with Edmund and Godwyn, in a somber mood. Reining in on the suburban side of the river, she saw that Merthin had already constructed his cofferdams. In each of the channels that ran either side of Leper Island, the ends of wooden boards stuck a couple of feet above the surface in a big circle. She recalled Merthin explaining, in the guildhall, how he planned to drive stakes into the riverbed in a double ring then fill the gap between the rings with clay mortar to make a watertight seal. The water inside the coffer could then be taken out so that the builders could lay a foundation on the riverbed.
One of Merthin's workmen, Harold Mason, was on the ferry as they crossed the river, and Caris asked him if the cofferdams had been drained. "Not yet," he said. "The master wants to leave it until we're ready to start building."
Caris noticed with pleasure that Merthin was now called the master, despite his youth. "But why?" she said. "I thought we wanted everything ready for a quick start."
"He says the force of the river puts more strain on the dam when there's no water inside."
Caris wondered how Merthin knew such things. He had learned the basics from his first master, Joachim, Elfric's father. He always talked a lot to strangers who came to town, especially men who had seen tall buildings in Florence and Rome. And he had read all about the construction of the cathedral in Timothy's Book. But he seemed also to have remarkable intuition about these matters. She would never have guessed that an empty dam would be weaker than a full one.
Although they were subdued as they entered the town, they wanted to tell Merthin the good news right away and find out what, if anything, he could get done before the end of the season. Pausing only to entrust their horses to stableboys, they went in search of him. They found him in the mason's loft, high in the northwest tower of the cathedral, working by the light of several oil lamps, scratching a design for a parapet on the tracing floor.
He looked up from his drawing, saw their faces, and grinned widely. "We won?" he said.
"We won," said Edmund.
"Thanks to Gregory Longfellow," Godwyn added. "He cost a lot of money, but he was worth it."
Merthin embraced both men--his quarrel with Godwyn forgotten, at least for now. He kissed Caris tenderly. "I missed you," he murmured. "It's been eight weeks! I felt as if you were never coming back."
She made no reply. She had something momentous to say to him, but she wanted privacy.
Her father did not notice her reticence. "Well, Merthin, you can start building right away."
"Good."
Godwyn said: "You can begin carting stones from the quarry tomorrow--but I suppose it's too late to get much building done before the winter frosts."
"I've been thinking about that," Merthin said. He glanced at the windows. It was mid-afternoon, the December day already darkening to evening. "There might be a way to do it."
Edmund was immediately enthusiastic. "Well, out with it, lad! What's your idea?"
Merthin turned to the prior. "Would you grant an indulgence to volunteers who bring stones from the quarry?" An indulgence was a special act of forgiveness of sins. Like a gift of money, it could either pay for past debts or stand in credit for future liabilities.
"I could," Godwyn said. "What have you got in mind?"
Merthin turned to Edmund. "How many people in Kingsbridge own a cart?"
"Let me think," Edmund said, frowning. "Every substantial trader has one...so it must come to a couple of hundred, at least."
"Suppose we were to go around the town tonight and ask every one of them to drive to the quarry tomorrow and pick up stones."
Edmund stared at Merthin, and a grin slowly spread across his face. "Now," he said delightedly, "that's an idea!"
"We'll tell each one that everybody else is going," Merthin went on. "It will be like a holiday. Their families can go along, and they can take food and beer. If each one brings back a cartload of stone or rubble, in two days' time we'll have enough to build the piers of the bridge."
That was brilliant, Caris thought wonderingly. It was typical of him, to think of something no one else could have imagined. But would it work?
"What about the weather?" said Godwyn.
"The rain has been a curse for the peasants, but it's held off the deep cold. We've a week or two yet, I think."
Edmund was excited, stomping up and down the loft with his lopsided gait. "But if you can build the piers in the next few days..."
"By the end of next year we can finish the bulk of the work."
"Could we use the bridge the following year?"
"No...but wait. We could put a temporary wooden roadbed on top in time for the Fleece Fair."
"So we would have a usable bridge by the year after next--and miss only one Fleece Fair!"
"We'd have to finish the stone roadbed after the Fleece Fair, then it would harden in time to be used normally in the third year."
"Damn it, we've got to do it!" Edmund said excitedly.
Godwyn said cautiously: "You have yet to empty the water out of the cofferdams."
Merthin nodded. "That's hard work. In my original plan I allowed two weeks for it. But I've got an idea about that, too. However, let's get the carts organized first."
They all moved to the door, animated with enthusiasm. As Godwyn and Edmund started down the narrow spiral staircase, Caris caught Merthin by the sleeve and held him back. He thought she wanted to kiss, and he put his arms around her, but she pushed him away. "I've got some news," she said.
"More?"
"I'm pregnant."
She watched his face. He was startled at first, and his red brown eyebrows rose. Then he blinked, tilted his head to one side, and shrugged, as if to say: Nothing surprising about that. He grinned, at first ruefully, then with unmixed happiness. At the end he was beaming. "That's wonderful!" he said.
She hated him momentarily for his stupidity. "No, it's not!"
"Why not?"
"Because I don't want to spend my life as a slave to anyone, even if it is my own child."
"A slave? Is every mother a slave?"
"Yes! How could you possibly not know that I feel that way?"
He looked baffled and hurt, and a part of her wanted to back off, but she had been nursing her anger too long. "I did know, I suppose," he said. "But then you lay with me, so I thought..." He hesitated. "You must have known it might happen--would happen, sooner or later."
"Of course I knew, but I acted as if I didn't."
"Yes, I can understand that."
"Oh, stop being so understanding. You're such a weakling."
His face froze. After a long pause he said: "All right, then, I'll stop being so understanding. Just give me the information. What's your plan?"
"I don't have a plan, you fool. I just know I don't want to have a baby."
"So you don't have a plan, and I'm a fool and a weakling. Do you want anything from me?"
"No!"
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Don't be so logical!"
He sighed. "I'm going to stop trying to be what you tell me to be, because you make no sense." He went around the room putting out the lamps. "I'm glad we're having a baby, and I'd like us to be married and look after the child together--assuming this mood you're in is only temporary." He put his drawing implements in a leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. "But for now, you're so cantankerous that I'd rather not speak to you at all. And besides, I have work to do." He went to the door, then paused. "On the other hand, we could kiss and make up."
"Go away!" she yelled.
He ducked through the low door and disappeared into the stairwell.
Caris began to cry.
Merthin had no idea whether the people of Kingsbridge would rally to the cause. They all had work and worries of their own: would they see the communal effort to build the bridge as being more important? He was not sure. He knew, from his reading of Timothy's Book, that at moments of crisis Prior Philip had often prevailed by c
alling on the ordinary people to make a massive effort. But Merthin was not Philip. He had no right to lead people. He was just a carpenter.
They made a list of cart owners and divided it up by streets. Edmund rounded up ten leading citizens, and Godwyn picked ten senior monks, and they went around in pairs. Merthin was teamed with Brother Thomas.
The first door they knocked on was Lib Wheeler's. She was continuing Ben's business with hired labor. "You can have both my carts," she said. "And the men to drive them. Anything to give that damned earl a poke in the eye."
But their second call brought a refusal. "I'm not well," said Peter Dyer, who had a cart for delivering the bales of woolen cloth he dyed yellow and green and pink. "I can't travel."
He looked perfectly all right, Merthin thought; he was probably scared of a confrontation with the earl's men. There would be no fight, Merthin felt sure; but he could understand the fear. What if all the citizens felt that way?
Their third call was on Harold Mason, a young builder who was hoping for several years of work building the bridge. He agreed immediately. "Jake Chepstow will come, too," he said. "I'll make sure of that." Harold and Jake were pals.
After that, almost everybody said yes.
They did not need to be told how important the bridge was--everyone who had a cart was a trader, obviously--and they had the additional incentive of a pardon for their sins. But the most important factor seemed to be the promise of an unexpected holiday. Most people said: "Is so-and-so going?" When they heard that their friends and neighbors had volunteered, they did not want to be left out.
When they had made all their calls, Merthin left Thomas and went down to the ferry. They had to take the carts across overnight, to be ready to leave at sunrise. The ferry carried only one cart at a time--two hundred carts would take several hours. That was why they needed a bridge, of course.
An ox was revolving the great wheel, and carts were already crossing the river. On the other side, the owners turned their beasts out to graze in the pasture, then came back on the ferry and went to bed. Edmund had got John Constable and half a dozen of his deputies to spend the night in Newtown, guarding carts and beasts.
The ferry was still working when Merthin went to bed an hour or so after midnight. He lay thinking about Caris for a while. Her quirkiness and unpredictability were part of what he loved, but sometimes she was impossible. She was the cleverest individual in Kingsbridge, but also hopelessly irrational at times.
Most of all, though, he hated to be called weak. He was not sure he would ever forgive Caris for that jibe. Earl Roland had humiliated him, ten years ago, by saying he could not be a squire, and was fit only to be apprenticed to a carpenter. But he was not weak. He had defied Elfric's tyranny, he had routed Prior Godwyn over the bridge design, and he was about to save the entire town. I might be small, he thought, but by God I'm strong.
Still he did not know what to do about Caris, and he fell asleep worrying.
Edmund woke him at first light. By then almost every cart in Kingsbridge was on the far side of the river, in a straggly line that led through the suburb of Newtown and half a mile into the forest. It took a couple more hours to ferry the people over. The excitement of organizing what was effectively a pilgrimage diverted Merthin's mind from the problem of Caris and her pregnancy. Soon the pasture on the far side was a scene of good-natured chaos, as dozens of people caught their horses and oxen, led them to their carts, and backed them into the traces. Dick Brewer brought over a huge barrel of ale and gave it away--"to encourage the expedition," he said--with mixed results: some people were so encouraged they had to lie down.
A crowd of spectators gathered on the city side of the river, watching. As the line of carts at last began to move off, a great cheer went up.
But stones were only half the problem.
Merthin turned his attention to the next challenge. If he were to begin laying stones as soon as they arrived from the quarry, he had to empty the cofferdams in two days instead of two weeks. As the cheering died down, he raised his voice and addressed the crowd. This was the moment to catch their interest, when the excitement was fading and they were beginning to wonder what to do next.
"I need the strongest men left in town!" he shouted. They went quiet, intrigued. "Are there any strong men in Kingsbridge?" This was partly a come-on: the work would be heavy, but asking only for strong people also threw down a challenge that the young men would find hard to resist. "Before the carts get back from the quarry tomorrow night, we have to empty the water out of the cofferdams. It will be the hardest work you've ever done--so no weaklings, please." As he said this, he looked at Caris in the crowd and caught her eye, and he saw her flinch: she remembered using that word, and she knew she had insulted him. "Any woman who thinks she is the equal of the men can join in," he went on. "I need you to find a bucket and meet me on the shore opposite Leper Island as soon as possible. Remember--only the strongest!"
He was not sure whether he had won them over. As he finished, he spotted the tall figure of Mark Webber, and pushed through the throng to him. "Mark, will you encourage them?" he said anxiously.
Mark was a gentle giant, much liked in the town. Even though he was poor, he had influence, especially among adolescents. "I'll make sure the lads join in," he said.
"Thank you."
Next, Merthin found Ian Boatman. "I'm going to need you all day, I hope," he said. "Ferrying people out to the cofferdams and back. You can work for pay or an indulgence--your choice." Ian was excessively fond of his wife's younger sister, and would probably prefer the indulgence, either for a past sin or for one he was hoping to commit soon.
Merthin made his way through the streets to the shore where he was preparing to build the bridge. Could the cofferdams be emptied in two days? He really had no idea. He wondered how many gallons of water were in each. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? There must be a way of calculating. The Greek philosophers had probably worked out a method but, if they had, it had not been taught at the priory school. To find out, he would probably have to go to Oxford, where there were mathematicians famous all over the world, according to Godwyn.
He waited at the river's edge, wondering if anyone would come.
The first to arrive was Megg Robbins, the strapping daughter of a corn dealer, with muscles enlarged by years of lifting sacks of grain. "I can outdo most of the men in this town," she said, and Merthin did not doubt it.
A group of young men came next, then three novice monks.
As soon as Merthin had ten people with buckets, he got Ian to row them and him to the nearer of the two dams.
Inside the rim of the dam, he had built a ledge just above water level, strong enough for men to stand on. From the ledge four ladders reached all the way down to the riverbed. In the center of the dam, floating on the surface, was a large raft. Between the raft and the ledge there was a gap of about two feet, and the raft was held in a central position by protruding wooden spokes that reached almost to the wall and prevented movement of more than a few inches in any direction.
"You work in pairs," he told them. "One on the raft, one on the ledge. The one on the raft fills his bucket and passes it to the one on the ledge, who tosses the water over the edge into the river. As the empty bucket is passed back, another full one is passed forward."
Megg Robbins said: "What happens when the water level inside falls, and we can't reach one another?"
"Good thinking, Megg. You'd better be my forewoman in charge here. When you can no longer reach, you work in threes, with one on a ladder."
She caught on fast. "And then fours, with two on a ladder..."
"Yes. Though by then we'll need to rest the men and bring in fresh ones."
"Right."
"Get started. I'll bring over another ten--you've got plenty of room still."
Megg turned away. "Pick your partners, everyone!" she called.
The volunteers started to dip their buckets. He heard Megg say: "Let's keep a rhythm goi
ng. Dip, lift, pass, chuck! One, two, three, four. How about a song to give us the swing of it?" She raised her voice in a lusty contralto. "Oh, there was once a comely knight..."
They knew the song, and all joined in the next line: "His blade was straight and true, oh!"
Merthin watched. Everyone was soaking wet in a few minutes. He could see no apparent fall in the level of the water. It was going to be a long job.
He climbed over the side and into Ian's boat.
By the time he reached the bank there were thirty more volunteers with buckets.
He got the second cofferdam started, with Mark Webber as foreman, then doubled the numbers in both locations, then started replacing tired workers with fresh ones. Ian Boatman became exhausted and handed the oars over to his son. The water inside the dams fell inch by wearisome inch. As the level fell, the work went ever more slowly, for the buckets had to be lifted greater and greater distances to the rim.
Megg was the first to discover that a person could not hold a full bucket in one hand and an empty one in the other and still keep balance on a ladder. She devised a one-way bucket chain, with full buckets going up one ladder and empty ones down another. Mark instituted the same system in his dam.
The volunteers worked an hour and rested an hour, but Merthin did not stop. He was organizing the teams, supervising the transport of volunteers to and from the dams, replacing buckets that broke. Most of the men drank ale during their rest periods, and in consequence there were several accidents during the afternoon, with people dropping buckets and falling off ladders. Mother Cecilia came to take care of the injured, with the help of Mattie Wise and Caris.
Too soon, the light began to fail, and they had to stop. But both coffers were more than half-empty. Merthin asked everyone to come back in the morning, then went home. After a few spoonfuls of his mother's soup he fell asleep at the table, waking only long enough to wrap a blanket around himself and lie down in the straw. When he woke the next morning, his first thought was to wonder whether any of the volunteers would show up for the second day.
He hurried down to the river at first light with an anxious heart. Both Mark Webber and Megg Robbins were there already, Mark eating his way through a doorstep of bread and Megg lacing a pair of high boots in the hope of keeping her feet dry. No one else showed up for the next half hour, and Merthin began to wonder what he would do with no volunteers. Then some of the young men arrived, carrying their breakfast with them, followed by the novice monks, then a whole crowd.