Sister Caris left the nuns’ cloisters and walked briskly into the hospital. There were three patients lying in beds. Old Julie was now too infirm to attend services or climb the stairs to the nuns’ dormitory. Bella Brewer, the wife of Dick Brewer’s son Danny, was recovering from a complicated birth. And Rickie Silvers, aged thirteen, had a broken arm which Matthew Barber had set. Two other people sat on a bench to one side, talking: a novice nun called Nellie, and a priory servant, Bob.
Caris’s experienced gaze swept the room. Beside each bed was a dirty dinner plate. The dinner hour was long over. “Bob!” she said. He leaped to his feet. “Take away these plates. This is a monastery, and cleanliness is a virtue. Jump to it!”
“Sorry, sister,” he said.
“Nellie, have you taken Old Julie to the latrine?”
“Not yet, sister.”
“She always needs to go after dinner. My mother was the same. Take her quick, before she has an accident.”
Nellie began to get the old nun up.
Caris was trying to develop the quality of patience, but after seven years as a nun she still had not succeeded, and she became frustrated by having to repeat instructions again and again. Bob knew he should clear away as soon as dinner was over – Caris had told him often. Nellie knew Julie’s needs. Yet they sat on a bench gossiping until Caris surprised tnem with a lightning inspection.
She picked up the bowl of water that had been used for hand washing and walked the length of the room to throw it outside. A man she did not know was relieving himself against the outside wall. She guessed he was a traveller hoping for a bed. “Next time, use the latrine behind the stable,” she snapped.
He leered at her, holding his penis in his hand. “And who are you?” he said insolently.
“I’m in charge of this hospital, and if you want to stay here tonight you’ll have to improve your manners.”
“Oh!” he said. “The bossy type, eh?” He took his time shaking the drops off.
“Put away your pathetic prick, or you won’t be allowed to spend a night in this town, let alone at the priory.” Caris threw the bowl of water at his middle. He jumped back, shocked, his hose soaked.
She went back inside and refilled the bowl at the fountain. There was an underground pipe running through the priory that brought clean water from upstream of the town and fed fountains in the cloisters, the kitchens and the hospital. A separate branch of the subterranean stream flushed the latrines. One day, Caris wanted to build a new latrine adjacent to the hospital, so that senile patients such as Julie would not have to go so far.
The stranger followed her in. “Wash your hands,” she said, handing him the bowl.
He hesitated, then took the bowl from her.
She looked at him. He was about her own age, twenty-nine. “Who are you?” she said.
“Gilbert of Hereford, a pilgrim,” he said. “I’ve come to reverence the relics of St Adolphus.”
“In that case, you’ll be welcome to stay a night here at the hospital, provided you speak respectfully to me – and to anyone else here, for that matter.”
“Yes, sister.”
Caris returned to the cloisters. It was a mild spring day, and the sun shone on the smooth old stones of the courtyard. Along the west walk, Sister Mair was teaching the girls’ school a new hymn, and Caris paused to observe. People said that Mair looked like an angel: she had clear skin, bright eyes and a mouth shaped like a bow. The school was technically one of Caris’s responsibilities – she was guest master, in charge of everyone who came into the nunnery from the outside world. She had attended this school herself, almost twenty years ago.
There were ten pupils, aged from nine to fifteen. Some were the daughters of Kingsbridge merchants, others were noblemen’s children. The hymn, on the theme that God is good, came to an end, and one ox the girls asked: “Sister Mair, if God is good, why did he let my parents die?”
It was the child’s personal version of a classic question, one asked by all intelligent youngsters sooner or later: How can bad things happen? Caris had asked it herself. She looked with interest at the questioner. She was Tilly Shiring, twelve-year-old niece of Earl Roland, a girl with an impish look that Caris liked. Tilly’s mother had bled to death after giving birth to her, and her father had broken his neck in a hunting accident not long afterwards, so she had been brought up in the earl’s household.
Mair gave a bland answer about God’s mysterious ways. Tilly clearly was not satisfied, but was unable to articulate her misgivings, and fell silent. The question would come up again, Caris felt sure.
Mair started them singing the hymn again, then stepped over to speak to Caris.
“A bright girl,” Caris said.
“The best in the class. In a year or two she’ll be arguing with me fiercely.”
“She reminds me of someone,” Caris said, frowning. “I’m trying to remember her mother…”
Mair touched Caris’s arm lightly. Gestures of affection were prohibited between nuns, but Caris was not strict about such things. “She reminds you of yourself,” Mair said.
Caris laughed. “I was never that pretty.”
But Mair was right: even as a child, Caris had asked sceptical questions. Later, when she became a novice nun, she had started an argument at every theology class. Within a week, Mother Cecilia had been obliged to order her to be silent during lessons. Then Caris had begun breaking the nunnery rules, and responding to correction by questioning the rationale behind convent discipline. Once again she had been enjoined to silence.
Before long, Mother Cecilia had offered her a deal. Caris could spend most of her time in the hospital – a part of the nuns’ work she did believe in – and skip services whenever necessary. In exchange, Caris had to stop flouting discipline and keep her theological ideas to herself. Caris had agreed, reluctantly and sulkily, but Cecilia was wise, and the arrangement had worked. It was still working, for Caris now spent most of her time supervising the hospital. She missed more than half the services, and rarely said or did anything openly subversive.
Mair smiled. “You’re pretty now,” she said. “Especially when you laugh.”
Caris found herself momentarily spellbound by Mair’s blue eyes. Then she heard a child scream.
She turned away. The scream had come, not from the group in the cloisters, but from the hospital. She hurried through the little lobby. Christopher Blacksmith was carrying a girl of about eight into the hospital. The child, whom Caris recognized as his daughter Minnie, was screaming in pain.
“Lay her on a mattress,” Caris said.
Christopher put the child down.
“What happened?”
Christopher was a strong man in a panic, and he spoke in a strangely high-pitched voice. “She stumbled in my workshop and fell with her arm against a bar of red-hot iron. Do something for her, quickly, sister, she’s in such agony!”
Caris touched the child’s cheek. “There, there, Minnie, we’ll ease the pain very soon.” Poppy seed extract was too strong, she thought: it might kill such a small child. She needed a milder potion. “Nellie, go to my pharmacy and fetch the jar marked ‘Hemp essence’. Walk quickly, but don’t run – if you should stumble and break the vial, it will take hours to make up a new batch.” Nellie hurried away.
Caris studied Minnie’s arm. She had a nasty burn but, fortunately, it was restricted to the arm, nothing like as dangerous as the all-over burns people got in house fires. There were large angry blisters over most of the girl’s forearm, and in the middle the skin was burned away to reveal charred flesh underneath.
She looked up for help and saw Mair. “Go to the kitchen and get me half a pint of wine and the same quantity of olive oil, in two separate jugs, please. Both need to be warm but not hot.” Mair left.
Caris spoke to the child. “Minnie, you must try to stop screaming. I know it hurts, but you need to listen to me. I’m getting you some medicine. It will ease the pain.” The screaming abated somewhat, and began to turn into sobbing.
Nellie arrived with the hemp essence. Caris poured some on to a spoon, then thrust the spoon into Minnie’s open mouth and held her nose. The child swallowed. She screamed again, but after a minute she began to calm down.
“Give me a clean towel,” Caris said to Nellie. They used a lot of towels in the hospital, and the cupboard behind the altar was always full of clean ones, by Caris’s edict.
Mair came back from the kitchen with the oil and wine. Caris put a towel on the floor beside Minnie’s mattress, and moved the burned arm over the towel. “How do you feel?” she asked.
“It hurts,” Minnie wailed.
Caris nodded in satisfaction. Those were the first coherent words the patient had uttered. The worst was over.
Minnie began to look sleepy as the hemp took effect. Caris said: “I’m going to put something on your arm to make it better. Try to keep still, will you?”
Minnie nodded.
Caris poured a little of the warm wine on to Minnie’s wrist, where the burn was least bad. The child flinched, but did not try to snatch her arm away. Encouraged, Caris slowly moved the jug up the arm, pouring the wine over the worst of the burn to cleanse it. Then she did the same with the olive oil, which would soothe the place and protect the flesh from bad influences in the air. Finally she took a fresh towel and wrapped it lightly around the arm to keep the flies off.
Minnie was moaning, but half asleep. Caris looked anxiously at her complexion. Her face was flushed pink with strain. That was good – if she had been turning pale, it would have been a sign that the dose had been too strong.
Caris was always nervous about drugs. The strength varied from batch to batch, and she had no precise way of measuring it. When weak, the medicine was ineffectual; when strong, dangerous. She was especially frightened of overdosing children, though the parents always pressured her for powerful medicine because they were so distressed by their children’s pain.
At that point Brother Joseph came in. He was old, now – somewhere in his late fifties – and all his teeth had fallen out, but he was still the priory’s best monk-physician. Christopher Blacksmith immediately leaped to his feet. “Oh, Brother Joseph, thank God you’re here,” he said. “My little girl has a terrible burn.”
“Let’s have a look,” said Joseph.
Caris stood back, hiding her irritation. Everyone believed the monks were powerful doctors, able to work near-miracles, whereas the nuns just fed the patients and cleared up. Caris had long ago stopped fighting that attitude, but it still annoyed her.
Joseph took off the towel and looked at the patient’s arm. He prodded the burnt flesh with his fingers. Minnie whimpered in her drugged sleep. “A bad burn, but not fatal,” he said. He turned to Caris. “Make up a poultice of three parts chicken fat, three parts goat dung and one part white lead, and cover the burn with it. That will bring forth the pus.”
“Yes, brother.” Caris was doubtful of the value of poultices. She had noticed that many injuries healed well without bringing forth the pus that monks thought such a healthy sign. In her experience, wounds sometimes became corrupt beneath such ointments. But the monks disagreed – except for Brother Thomas, who was convinced he had lost his arm because of the poultice prescribed by Prior Anthony almost twenty years ago. However, this was another battle Caris had given up. The monks’ techniques had the authority of Hippocrates and Galen, the ancient writers on medicine, and everyone agreed they must be right.
Joseph left. Caris made sure that Minnie was comfortable and her father was reassured. “When she wakes up, she will be thirsty. Make sure she gets plenty to drink – weak ale or watered wine.”
She was in no hurry to make the poultice. She would give God a few hours to work unaided before she began Joseph’s treatment. The likelihood that the monk-physician would come back later to check on his patient was small. She sent Nellie out to collect goat dung from the green to the west of the cathedral; then she went to her pharmacy.
It was next to the monks’ library. Unfortunately, she did not have large windows matching those in the library. The room was small and dark. However, it had a workbench, some shelves for her jars and vials, and a small fireplace for heating ingredients.
In a cupboard she kept a small notebook. Parchment was expensive, and a text block of identical sheets would be used only for holy scriptures. However, she had gathered a stack of odd-shaped offcuts and sewn them together. She kept a record of every patient with a serious complaint. She wrote down the date, the patient’s name, the symptoms and the treatment given; then later she added the results, always noting exactly how many hours or days had passed before the patient got better or worse. She often looked back over past cases to refresh her memory on how effective different treatments had been.
When she wrote down Minnie’s age, it occurred to her that her own child would have been eight this year, if she had not taken Mattie Wise’s potion. For no good reason, she thought her baby would have been a girl. She wondered how she would have reacted if her own daughter had suffered an accident. Would she have been able to deal so coolly with the emergency? Or would she have been almost hysterical with fear, like Christopher Blacksmith?
She had just finished logging the case when the bell rang for evensong, and she went to the service. Afterwards it was time for the nuns’ supper. Then they went to bed, to get some sleep before they had to rise for Matins at three o’clock in the morning.
Instead of going to bed, Caris went back to her pharmacy to make the poultice. She did not mind the goat’s dung – anyone who worked in a hospital saw worse things. But she wondered how Joseph could imagine it was a good thing to put on burned flesh.
She would not be able to apply it until morning, now. Minnie was a healthy child: her recovery would be well advanced by then.
While she was working, Mair came in.
Caris looked at her curiously. “What are you doing out of bed?”
Mair stood beside her at the work bench. “I came to help you.”
“It doesn’t take two people to make a poultice. What did Sister Natalie say?” Natalie was the sub-prioress, in charge of discipline, and no one could leave the dormitory at night without her permission.
“She’s fast asleep. Do you really think you’re not pretty?”
“Did you get out of bed to ask me that?”
“Merthin must have thought you were.”
Caris smiled. “Yes, he did.”
“Do you miss him?”
Caris finished mixing the poultice and turned away to wash her hands in a bowl. “I think about him every day,” she said. “He is now the richest architect in Florence.”
“How do you know?”
“I get news of him every Fleece Fair from Buonaventura Caroli.”
“Does Merthin get news of you?”
“What news? There’s nothing to tell. I’m a nun.”
“Do you long for him?”
Caris turned back and gave Mair a direct look. “Nuns are forbidden to long for men.”
“But not for women,” Mair said, and she leaned forward and kissed Caris on the mouth.
Caris was so surprised that for a second she froze. Mair held the kiss. The touch of a woman’s lips was soft, not like Merthin’s. Caris was shocked, though not horrified. It was seven years since anyone had kissed her, and she realized suddenly how much she missed it.
In the silence, there was a loud noise from the library next door.
Mair jerked away guiltily. “What was that?”
“It sounded like a box being dropped on the floor.”
“Who could it be?”
Caris frowned. “There shouldn’t be anyone in the library at this time of night. Monks and nuns are in bed.”
Mair looked scared. “What should we do?”
“We’d better go and look.”
They left the pharmacy. Although the library was adjacent, they had to walk through the nuns’ cloisters and into the monks’ cloisters to reach the library door. It was a dark night, but they had both lived here for years, and they could find their way blindfold. When they reached their destination they saw a flickering light in the high windows. The door, normally locked at night, was ajar.
Caris pushed it open.
For a moment, she could not make out what she was looking at. She saw a closet door standing open, a box on a table, a candle next to it and a shadowy figure. After a moment, she realized that the closet was the treasury, where charters and other valuables were kept, and the box was the chest containing the jewelled gold and silver ornaments used in the cathedral for special services. The shadowy man was taking objects out of the box and putting them in some kind of bag.
The figure looked up, and Caris recognized the face. It was Gilbert of Hereford, the pilgrim who had arrived earlier today. Except that he was no pilgrim, and he probably was not even from Hereford. He was a thief.
They stared at each other for a moment, no one moving.
Then Mair screamed.
Gilbert put out the candle.
Caris pulled the door shut, to delay him a second longer. Then she dashed along the cloisters and darted into a recess, pulling Mair with her.
They were at the foot of the stairs that led to the monks’ dorm. Mair’s scream would have awakened the men, but they might be slow to react. “Tell the monks what’s happening!” Caris yelled at Mair. “Go on, run!” Mair dashed up the stairs.
Caris heard a creak, and guessed that the library door was opening. She listened for the sound of footsteps on the flagstones of the cloisters, but Gilbert must have been a practised burglar, for he walked silently. She held her breath and listened for his. Then a commotion broke out upstairs.
The thief must have realized then that he had only a few seconds to escape, for he broke into a run, and Caris heard his tread.
She did not care greatly for the precious cathedral ornaments, believing that gold and jewels probably pleased the bishop and the prior more than they pleased God; but she had taken a dislike to Gilbert, and she hated the idea that he might get rich by robbing the priory. So she stepped out of her recess.
She could hardly see, but there was no mistaking the running steps hurtling towards her. She held her arms out to protect herself, and he cannoned into her. She was knocked off balance, but grasped his clothing, and they both fell to the ground. There was a clatter as his sack of crucifixes and chalices hit the paving stones.
The pain of the fall enraged Caris, and she let go of his clothes and reached for where she thought his face might be. She encountered skin and dragged her fingernails across it, digging deep. He roared with pain and she felt blood flow under her fingertips.
But he was stronger. He grappled with her and swung himself on top. A light appeared from the head of the monks’ stairs, and suddenly she could see Gilbert – and he could see her. Kneeling astride her, he punched her face, first with his right fist, then with his left, then with the right again. She cried out in agony.
There was more light. The monks were stumbling down the stairs. Caris heard Mair scream: “Leave her alone, you devil!” Gilbert leaped to his feet and scrabbled for his sack, but he was too late: suddenly Mair was flying at him with some kind of blunt instrument. He took a blow to the head, turned to retaliate, and fell beneath a tidal wave of monks.
Caris got to her feet. Mair came to her and they hugged.
Mair said: “What did you do?”
“Tripped him up then scratched his face. What did you hit him with?”
“The wooden cross off the dormitory wall.”
“Well,” said Caris, “so much for turning the other cheek.”
Gilbert Hereford was tried before the ecclesiastical court, found guilty and sentenced, by Prior Godwyn, to an appropriate punishment for those who robbed churches: he would be flayed alive. His skin would be cut off him, while he was fully conscious, and he would bleed to death.
On the day of the flaying, Godwyn had his weekly meeting with Mother Cecilia. Their deputies would also attend: sub-prior Philemon and sub-prioress Natalie. Waiting in the hall of the prior’s house for the nuns to arrive, Godwyn said to Philemon: “We must try to persuade them to build a new treasury. We can no longer keep our valuables in a box in the library.”
Philemon said thoughtfully: “Would it be a shared building?”
“It would have to be. We can’t afford to pay for it.”
Godwyn thought regretfully of the ambitions he had once had, as a young man, to reform the monastery’s finances and make it rich again. This had not happened, and he still did not understand why. He had been tough, forcing the townspeople to use and pay for the priory’s mills, fishponds and warrens, but they seemed to find ways around his rules – like building mills in neighbouring villages. He had imposed harsh sentences on men and women caught poaching or illegally cutting down trees in the priory’s forests. And he had resisted the blandishments of those who would tempt him to spend the priory’s money by building mills, or waste the priory’s timber by licensing charcoal burners and iron smelters. He felt sure his approach was right, but it had not yet yielded the increased income he felt he deserved.
“So you will ask Cecilia for the money,” Philemon said thoughtfully. There might be advantages in keeping our wealth in the same place as the nuns’.”
Godwyn saw which way Philemon’s devious mind was leading him. “But we wouldn’t say that to Cecilia.”
“Of course not.”
“All right, I’ll propose it.”
“While we’re waiting…”
“Yes?”
“There’s a problem you need to know about in the village of Long Ham.”
Godwyn nodded. Long Ham was one of dozens of villages that paid homage – and feudal dues – to the priory.
Philemon explained: “It has to do with the landholding of a widow, Mary-Lynn. When her husband died, she agreed to let a neighbour farm her land, a man called John Nott. Now the widow has remarried, and she wants the land back so that her new husband can farm it.”
Godwyn was puzzled. This was a typical peasant squabble, too trivial to require his intervention. “What does the bailiff say?”
“That the land should revert to the widow, since the arrangement was always intended to be temporary.”
“Then that is what must happen.”
“There is a complication. Sister Elizabeth has a half-brother and two half-sisters in Long Ham.”
“Ah.” Godwyn might have guessed there would be a reason for Philemon’s interest. Sister Elizabeth, formerly Elizabeth Clerk, was the nuns’ matricularius, in charge of their buildings. She was young and bright, and would rise farther up the hierarchy. She could be a valuable ally.
“They are the only family she’s got, apart from her mother, who works at the Bell,” Philemon went on. “Elizabeth is fond of her peasant relatives, and they in turn revere her as the holy one of the family. When they come to Kingsbridge they bring gifts to the nunnery – fruit, honey, eggs, that sort of thing.”
“And…?”
“John Nott is the half-brother of Sister Elizabeth.”
“Has Elizabeth asked you to intervene?”
“Yes. And she also asked that I should not tell Mother Cecilia of the request.”
Godwyn knew that this was just the kind of thing Philemon liked. He loved to be regarded as a powerful person who could use his influence to favour one side or the other in a dispute. Such things fed his ego, which was never satisfied. And he was drawn to anything clandestine. The fact that Elizabeth did not want her superior to know about this request delighted Philemon. It meant he knew her shameful secret. He would store the information away like miser’s gold.
“What do you want to do?” Godwyn asked.
“It’s for you to say, of course, but I suggest we let John Nott keep the land. Elizabeth would be in our debt, and that cannot fail to be useful at some point in the future.”
“That’s hard on the widow,” Godwyn said uneasily.
“I agree. But that must be balanced against the interests of the priory.”
“And God’s work is more important. Very well. Tell the bailiff.”
“The widow will receive her reward in the hereafter.”
“Indeed.” There had been a time when Godwyn had hesitated to authorize Philemon’s underhand schemes, but that was long ago. Philemon had proved too useful – as Godwyn’s mother, Petranilla, had forecast all those years ago.
There was a tap at the door, and Petranilla herself came in.
She now lived in a comfortable small house in Candle Court, just off the main street. Her brother Edmund had left her a generous bequest, enough to last her the rest of her life. She was fifty-eight years old, her tall figure was now stooped and frail, and she walked with a stick, but she still had a mind like a bear trap. As always, Godwyn was glad to see her but also apprehensive that he might have done something to displease her.
Petranilla was the head of the family now. Anthony had been killed in the bridge collapse and Edmund had died seven years ago, so she was the last survivor of her generation. She never hesitated to tell Godwyn what to do. She was the same with her niece Alice. Alice’s husband, Elfric, was the alderman, but she gave him orders too. Her authority even extended to her step-granddaughter Griselda, and she terrorized Griselda’s eight-year-old son, Little Merthin. Her judgement was as sound as ever, so they all obeyed her most of the time. If for some reason she did not take command, they would usually ask her opinion anyway. Godwyn was not sure how they would manage without her. And on the rare occasions when they did not do her bidding, they worked very hard to hide the fact. Only Caris stood up to her. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do,” she had said to Petranilla more than once. “You would have let them kill me.”
Petranilla sat down and looked around the room. “This is not good enough,” she said.
She was often abrupt, but all the same Godwyn became edgy when she spoke like this. “What do you mean?”
“You should have a better house.”
“I know.” Eight years ago, Godwyn had tried to persuade Mother Cecilia to pay for a new palace. She had promised to give him the money three years later but, when the time came, she said she had changed her mind. He felt sure it was because of what he had done to Caris. After that heresy trial, his charm had ceased to work on Cecilia, and it had become difficult to get money out of her.
Petranilla said: “You need a palace for entertaining bishops and archbishops, barons and earls.”
“We don’t get many of those, nowadays. Earl Roland and Bishop Richard have been in France for much of the last few years.” King Edward had invaded north-east France in 1339 and spent all of 1340 there; then in 1342 he had taken his army to north-west France and fought in Brittany. In 1345 English troops had done battle in the south-western wine district of Gascony. Now Edward was back in England, but assembling another army of invasion.
“Roland and Richard aren’t the only noblemen,” Petranilla said testily.
“The others never come here.”
Her voice hardened. “Perhaps that’s because you can’t accommodate them in the style they expect. You need a banqueting hall, and a private chapel, and spacious bedchambers.”
She had been awake all night thinking about this, he guessed. That was her way: she brooded over things then shot off her ideas like arrows. He wondered what had brought on this particular complaint. “It sounds very extravagant,” he said, playing for time.
“Don’t you understand?” she snapped. “The priory is not as influential as it might be, simply because you don’t ever see the powerful men of the land. When you’ve got a palace with beautiful rooms for them, they will come.”
She was probably right. Wealthy monasteries such as Durham and St Albans even complained about the number of noble and royal visitors they were obliged to entertain.
She went on: “Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death.” So that’s what brought this on, Godwyn thought: she’s been remembering grandfather’s glorious career. “You’ve been prior here for almost nine years,” she said. “I don’t want you to get stuck. The archbishops and the king should be considering you for a bishopric, a major abbey such as Durham, or a mission to the pope.”
Godwyn had always assumed that Kingsbridge would be his springboard to higher things but, he realized now, he had let his ambition wane. It seemed only a little while ago that he had won the election for prior. He felt he had only just got on top of the job. But she was right, it was more than eight years.
“Why aren’t they thinking of you for more important posts?” she asked rhetorically. “Because they don’t know you exist! You are prior of a great monastery, but you haven’t told anyone about it. Display your magnificence! Build a palace. Invite the archbishop of Canterbury to be your first guest. Dedicate the chapel to his favourite saint. Tell the king you have built a royal bedchamber in the hope that he will visit.”
“Wait a moment, one thing at a time,” Godwyn protested. “I’d love to build a palace, but I haven’t got the money.”
“Then get it,” she said.
He wanted to ask her how, but at that moment the two leaders of the nunnery came into the room. Petranilla and Cecilia greeted one another with wary courtesy, then Petranilla took her leave.
Mother Cecilia and Sister Natalie sat down. Cecilia was fifty-one now, with grey in her hair and poor eyesight. She still darted about the place like a busy bird, poking her beak into every room, chirping her instructions to nuns, novices and servants; but she had mellowed with the years, and would go a long way to avoid a conflict.
Cecilia was carrying a scroll. “The nunnery has received a legacy,” she said as she made herself comfortable. “From a pious woman of Thornbury.”
Godwyn said: “How much?”
“One hundred and fifty pounds in gold coins.”
Godwyn was startled. It was a huge sum. It was enough to build a modest palace. “The nunnery has received it – or the priory?”
“The nunnery,” she said firmly. “This scroll is our copy of her will.”
“Why did she leave you so much money?”
“Apparently we nursed her when she fell ill on her way home from London.”
Natalie spoke. She was a few years older than Cecilia, a round-faced woman with a mild disposition. “Our problem is, where are we going to keep the money?”
Godwyn looked at Philemon. Natalie had given them an opening for the topic they had planned to raise. “What do you do with your money at present?” he asked her.
“It’s in the prioress’s bedroom, which can be reached only by going through the dormitory.”
As though thinking of it for the first time, Godwyn said: “Perhaps we should spend a little of the bequest on a new treasury.”
“I think that’s necessary,” said Cecilia. “A simple stone building with no windows and a stout oak door.”
“It won’t take long to construct,” Godwyn said. “And shouldn’t cost more than five or ten pounds.”
“For safety, we think it should be part of the cathedral.”
“Ah.” That was why the nuns had to discuss the plan with Godwyn. They would not have needed to consult him about building within their own area of the priory, but the church was common to monks and nuns. He said: “It could go up against the cathedral wall, in the corner formed by the north transept and the choir, but be entered from inside the church.”
“Yes – that’s just the kind of thing I had in mind.”
“I’ll speak to Elfric today, if you like, and ask him to give us an estimate.”
“Please do.”
Godwyn was happy to have extracted from Cecilia a fraction of her windfall, but he was not satisfied. After the conversation with his mother, he yearned to get his hands on more of it. He would have liked to grab it all. But how?
The cathedral bell tolled, and the four of them stood up and went out.
The condemned man was outside the west end of the church. He was naked, and tied tightly by his hands and feet to an upright wooden rectangle like a door frame. A hundred or so townspeople stood waiting to watch the execution. The ordinary monks and nuns had not been invited: it was considered improper for them to see bloodshed.
The executioner was Will Tanner, a man of about fifty whose skin was brown from his trade. He wore a clean canvas apron. He stood by a small table on which he had laid out his knives. He was sharpening one of them on a stone, and the scrape of steel on granite made Godwyn shudder.
Godwyn said several prayers, ending with an extempore plea in English that the death of the thief would serve God by deterring others from the same sin. Then he nodded to Will Tanner.
Will stood behind the tethered thief. He took a small knife with a sharp point and inserted it into the middle of Gilbert’s neck, then drew it downwards in a long straight line to the base of the spine. Gilbert roared with pain, and blood welled out of the cut. Will made another slash across the man’s shoulders, forming the shape of the letter T.
Will then changed his knife, selecting one with a long, thin blade. He inserted it carefully at the point where the two cuts met, and pulled away a corner of skin. Gilbert cried out again. Then, holding the corner in the fingers of his left hand, Will began carefully to cut the skin of Gilbert’s back away from his body.
Gilbert began to scream.
Sister Natalie made a noise in her throat, turned away and ran back into the priory. Cecilia closed her eyes and began to pray. Godwyn felt nauseated. Someone in the crowd fell to the ground in a dead faint. Only Philemon seemed unmoved.
Will worked quickly, his sharp knife slicing through the subcutaneous fat to reveal the woven muscles below. Blood flowed copiously, and he stopped every few seconds to wipe his hands on his apron. Gilbert screamed in undiminished agony at every cut. Soon the skin of his back hung in two broad flaps.
Will knelt on the ground, his knees an inch deep in blood, and began to work on the legs.
The screaming stopped suddenly: Gilbert appeared to have passed out. Godwyn was relieved. He had intended the man to suffer agony for trying to rob a church – and he had wanted others to witness the thief’s torment – but, all the same, he had found it hard to listen to that screaming.
Will continued his work phlegmatically, apparently unconcerned whether his victim was conscious or not, until all the back skin – body, arms and legs – was detached. Then he went around to the front. He cut around the ankles and wrists, then detached the skin so that it hung from the victim’s shoulders and hips. He worked upwards from the pelvis, and Godwyn realized he was going to try to take the entire skin off in one piece. Soon there was no skin left attached except for the head.
Gilbert was still breathing.
Will made a careful series of cuts around the skull. Then he put down his knives and wiped his hands one more time. Finally he grasped Gilbert’s skin at the shoulders and gave a sudden jerk upwards. The face and scalp were ripped off the head, yet remained attached to the rest of the skin.
Will held Gilbert’s bloody hide up in the air like a hunting trophy, and the crowd cheered.
Caris was uneasy about sharing the new treasury with the monks. She pestered Beth with so many questions about the safety of their money that in the end Beth took her to inspect the place.
Godwyn and Philemon were in the cathedral at the time, as if by chance, and they saw the nuns and followed them.
They passed through a new arch in the south wall of the choir into a little lobby and halted in front of a formidable studded door. Sister Beth took out a big iron key. She was a humble, unassuming woman, like most nuns. “This is ours,” she said to Caris. “We can enter the treasury any time we like.”
“I should think so, since we paid for it,” said Caris crisply.
They entered a small square room. It contained a counting table with a stack of parchment rolls, a couple of stools and a big ironbound chest.
“The chest is too big to be taken out through the door,” Beth pointed out.
Caris said: “So how did you it get in here?”
Godwyn answered: “In pieces. It was put together by the carpenter here in the room.”
Caris gave Godwyn a cold look. This man had tried to kill her. Ever since the witchcraft trial she had looked at him with loathing and avoided speaking to him if at all possible. Now she said flatly: “The nuns will need a key to the chest.”
“Not necessary,” Godwyn said quickly. “It contains the jewelled cathedral ornaments, which are in the care of the sacrist, who is always a monk.”
Caris said: “Show me.”
She could see that he was offended by her tone, and had half a mind to refuse her, but he wanted to appear open and guileless, so he conceded. He took a key from the wallet at his belt and opened the chest. As well as the cathedral ornaments, it contained dozens of scrolls, the priory’s charters.
“Not just the ornaments, then,” Caris said, her suspicions vindicated.
“The records too.”
“Including the nuns’ charters,” she persisted.
“Yes.”
“In which case we will have a key.”
“My idea is that we copy all our charters, and keep the copies in the library. Whenever we need to read a charter, we consult the library copy, so that the precious originals can remain under lock and key.”
Beth hated conflict, and intervened nervously. “That sounds like quite a sensible idea, Sister Caris.”
Caris said grudgingly: “So long as the nuns always have access to their documents in some form.” The charters were a secondary issue. Addressing Beth, rather than Godwyn, she said: “More importantly, where do we keep the money?”
Beth said: “In hidden vaults in the floor. There are four of them – two for the monks and two for the nuns. If you look carefully you can see the loose stones.”
Caris studied the floor, and after a moment said: “I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t told me, but I can see them now. Can they be locked?”
“I suppose they could,” said Godwyn. “But then it would be obvious where they were, which would defeat the purpose of hiding them under flagstones.”
“But this way the monks and nuns have access to one another’s money.”
Philemon spoke up. He looked accusingly at Caris and said: “Why are you here? You’re the guest master – nothing to do with the treasury.”
Caris’s attitude to Philemon was simple loathing. She felt he was not fully human. He seemed to have no sense of right and wrong, no principles or scruples. Whereas she despised Godwyn as a wicked man who knew when he was doing evil, she felt that Philemon was more like a vicious animal, a mad dog or a wild boar. “I have an eye for detail,” she told him.
“You’re very mistrustful,” he said resentfully.
Caris gave a humourless laugh. “Coming from you, Philemon, that’s ironic.”
He pretended to be hurt. “I don’t know what you can mean.”
Beth spoke again, trying to keep the peace. “I just wanted Caris to come and look because she asks questions I don’t think of.”
Caris said: “For example, how can we be sure that the monks don’t take the nuns’ money?”
“I’ll show you,” said Beth. Hanging on a hook on the wall was a stout length of oak. Using it as a lever, she prised up a flagstone. Underneath was a hollow space containing an ironbound chest. “We’ve had a locked casket made to fit each of these vaults,” she said. She reached inside and lifted out the chest.
Caris examined it. It seemed strongly made. The lid was hinged, and the clasp was secured by a barrel padlock made of iron. “Where did we get the lock?” she asked.
“Christopher Blacksmith made it.”
That was good. Christopher was a well-established Kingsbridge citizen who would not risk his reputation by selling duplicate keys to thieves.
Caris was not able to fault the arrangements. Perhaps she had worried unnecessarily. She turned to go.
Elfric appeared, accompanied by an apprentice with a sack. “Is it all right to put up the warning?” Elfric said.
Philemon replied: “Yes, please, go ahead.”
Elfric’s assistant took from his sack something that looked like a big piece of leather.
Beth said: “What’s that?”
“Wait,” said Philemon. “You’ll see.”
The apprentice held the object up against the door.
“I’ve been waiting for it to dry out,” Philemon said. “It’s Gilbert Hereford’s skin.”
Beth gave a cry of horror.
Caris said: “That’s disgusting.”
The skin was turning yellow and the hair was falling out of the scalp, but you could still make out the face: the ears, two holes for the eyes, and a gash of a mouth that seemed to grin.
“That should scare thieves away,” Philemon said with satisfaction.
Elfric took out a hammer and began to nail the hide to the treasury door.
The two nuns left. Godwyn and Philemon waited for Elfric to finish his gruesome task, then they went back inside the treasury.
Godwyn said: “I think we’re safe.”
Philemon nodded: “Caris is a suspicious woman, but all her questions were answered satisfactorily.”
“In which case…”
Philemon closed the door and locked it. Then he lifted the stone slab over one of the nuns’ two vaults and took out the chest.
“Sister Beth keeps a small amount of cash for everyday needs somewhere in the nuns’ quarters,” he explained to Godwyn. “She comes in here only to deposit or withdraw larger sums. She always goes to the other vault, which contains mostly silver pennies. She almost never opens this chest, which contains the bequest.”
He turned the box around and looked at the hinge at the back. It was fixed to the wood by four nails. He took from his pocket a thin steel chisel and a pair of pliers for gripping. Godwyn wondered where he had got the tools, but did not ask. Sometimes it was best not to know too many details.
Philemon slipped the sharp blade of the chisel under the edge of the iron hinge and pushed. The hinge came away from the wood slightly, and he pushed the blade in a little farther. He worked delicately and patiently, careful to make sure that the damage would not be visible to a casual glance. Gradually the flat plate of the hinge became detached, the nails coming out with it. When he had made enough room for the pliers to grip the nailheads, he pulled them out. Then he was able to detach the hinge and lift the lid.
“Here’s the money from the pious woman of Thornbury,” he said.
Godwyn looked into the chest. The money was in Venetian ducats. These gold coins showed the Doge of Venice kneeling before St Mark on one side and, on the other, the Virgin Mary, surrounded by stars to indicate that she was in heaven. Ducats were intended to be interchangeable with florins from Florence, and were the same size, weight and purity of metal. They were worth three shillings, or thirty-six English silver pennies. England had its own gold coins now, an innovation of King Edward’s – nobles, half-nobles and quarter-nobles – but these had been in circulation less than two years, and had not yet displaced foreign gold coins.
Godwyn took fifty ducats, worth seven pounds and ten shillings. Philemon closed the lid of the chest. He wrapped each of the nails in a thin strip of leather, to make them a tight fit, and reattached the hinge. He put the chest back in the vault and lowered the slab over the hole.
“Of course they will notice the loss, sooner or later,” he said.
“It may not be for years,” Godwyn said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
They went out, and Godwyn locked the door.
Godwyn said: “Find Elfric, and meet me in the cemetery.”
Philemon left. Godwyn went to the eastern end of the graveyard, just beyond the existing prior’s house. It was a blowy May day, and the fresh wind made his robe flap around his legs. A loose goat was grazing among the tombstones. Godwyn watched it meditatively.
He was risking a terrible row with the nuns, he knew. He did not think they would discover their loss for a year or more, but he could not be sure. When they did find out, there would be hell to pay. But what, exactly, could they do? He was not like Gilbert Hereford, stealing money for himself. He had taken the bequest of a pious woman to use for holy purposes.
He thrust his worries aside. His mother was right: he needed to glorify his role as prior of Kingsbridge if he was going to make further progress.
When Philemon returned with Elfric, Godwyn said: “I want to build the prior’s palace here, well to the east of the present building.”
Elfric nodded. “A very good location, if I may say so, lord prior – close to the chapter house and the east end of the cathedral, but separated from the market place by the graveyard, so you’ll have privacy and quiet.”
“I want a big dining hall downstairs for banquets,” Godwyn went on. “About a hundred feet long. It must be a really prestigious, impressive room, for entertaining the nobility, perhaps even royalty.”
“Very good.”
“And a chapel at the east end of the ground floor.”
“But you’ll be just a few steps from the cathedral.”
“Noble guests don’t always want to expose themselves to the people. They must be able to worship in private if they wish.”
“And upstairs?”
“The prior’s own chamber, of course, with room for an altar and a writing desk. And three large chambers for guests.”
“Splendid.”
“How much will it cost?”
“More than a hundred pounds – perhaps two hundred. I’ll make a drawing then give you a more accurate estimate.”
“Don’t let it go above a hundred and fifty pounds. That’s all I can afford.”
If Elfric wondered where Godwyn had suddenly acquired a hundred and fifty pounds, he did not ask. “I’d better start stockpiling the stone as soon as possible,” he said. “Can you give me some money to begin with?”
“How much would you like – five pounds?”
“Ten would be better.”
“I’ll give you seven pounds ten shillings, in ducats,” Godwyn said, and handed over the fifty gold coins he had taken from the nuns’ reserves.
Three days later, as the monks and nuns were filing out of the cathedral after the dinnertime service of Nones, Sister Elizabeth spoke to Godwyn.
Nuns and monks were not supposed to talk to one another casually, so she had to contrive a pretext. As it happened, there was a dog in the nave, and it had barked during the service. Dogs were always getting into the church and making a minor nuisance of themselves, but they were generally ignored. However, on this occasion Elizabeth left the procession to shoo the dog out. She was obliged to cross the line of monks, and timed her move so that she walked in front of Godwyn. She smiled apologetically at him and said: “I beg your pardon, Father Prior.” Then she lowered her voice and said: “Meet me in the library, as if by accident.” She chased the dog out of the west door.
Intrigued, Godwyn made his way to the library and sat down to read the Rule of St Benedict. Shortly afterwards, Elizabeth appeared and took out the Gospel of St Matthew. The nuns had built their own library, after Godwyn took over as prior, in order to improve the separation between males and females; but when they removed all their books from the monks’ library, the place had been denuded, and Godwyn had reversed his decision. The nuns’ library building was now used as a schoolroom in cold weather.
Elizabeth sat with her back to Godwyn, so that anyone coming in would not get the impression that they were conspiring, but she was close enough for him to hear her clearly. “Something I felt I should tell you,” she said. “Sister Caris doesn’t like the nuns’ money being kept in the new treasury.”
“I knew that already,” Godwyn said.
“She has persuaded Sister Beth to count the money, to make sure its all still there. I thought you might like to know that, just in case you have… borrowed from them.”
Godwyn’s heart missed a beat. An audit would find the reserves short by fifty ducats. And he was going to need the rest to build his palace. He had not been expecting this so soon. He cursed Caris. How had she guessed what he had done so secretly?
“When?” he said, and there was a catch in his voice.
“Today. I don’t know at what hour – it could be any time. But Caris was most emphatic that you should have no advance warning.”
He was going to have to put the ducats back, and fast. “Thank you very much,” he said. “I appreciate your telling me this.”
“It’s because you showed favour to my family in Long Ham,” she said; and she got up and went out.
Godwyn hurried after her. What luck that Elizabeth felt indebted to him! Philemon’s instinct for intrigue was invaluable. As that thought crossed his mind, he saw Philemon in the cloisters. “Get those tools and meet me in the treasury!” he whispered. Then he left the priory.
He hurried across the green and into the main street. Elfric’s wife, Alice, had inherited the house of Edmund Wooler, one of the largest homes in town, along with all the money Caris had made dyeing cloth. Elfric now lived in great luxury.
Godwyn knocked on the door and entered the hall. Alice was sitting at the table amid the remains of dinner. With her was her stepdaughter Griselda, and Griselda’s son, Little Merthin. No one now believed that Merthin Fitzgerald was the little boy’s father – he looked just like Griselda’s runaway boyfriend Thurstan. Griselda had married one of her father’s employees, Harold Mason. Polite people called the eight-year-old Merthin Haroldson, and the others called him Merthin Bastard.
Alice leaped up from her seat when she saw Godwyn. “Well, Cousin Prior, what a pleasure to have you in our house! Will you take a little wine?”
Godwyn ignored her polite hospitality. “Where’s Elfric?”
“He’s upstairs, taking a short nap before he goes back to work. Sit in the parlour, and I’ll fetch him.”
“Right away, if you please.” Godwyn stepped into the next room. There were two comfortable-looking chairs, but he paced up and down.
Elfric came in rubbing his eyes. “Sorry about this,” he said. “I was just-”
“Those fifty ducats I gave you three days ago,” Godwyn said. “I need them back.”
Elfric was startled. “But the money was for stone.”
“I know what it was for! I have to have it right now.”
“I’ve spent some of it, paying carters to bring the stones from the quarry.”
“How much?”
“About half.”
“Well, you can make that up out of your own funds, can’t you?”
“Don’t you want a palace any more?”
“Of course I do, but I must have that money. Don’t ask why, just give it to me.”
“What am I to do with the stones I’ve bought?”
“Just keep them. You’ll get the money again, I just need it for a few days. Hurry!”
“All right. Wait here. If you will.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Elfric went out. Godwyn wondered where he kept his money. In the hearth, under the firestone was the usual place. Being a builder, Elfric might have a more cunning hidey-hole. Wherever it was, he was back in a few moments.
He counted fifty gold coins into Godwyn’s hand.
Godwyn said: “I gave you ducats – some of these are florins.” The florin was the same size, but stamped with different images: John the Baptist on one side and a flower on the other.
“I don’t have the same coins! I told you I’ve spent some of them. They’re all worth the same, aren’t they?”
They were. Would the nuns notice the difference?
Godwyn thrust the money into the wallet at his belt and left without another word.
He hurried back to the cathedral and found Philemon in the treasury. “The nuns are going to carry out an audit,” he explained breathlessly. “I’ve got the money back from Elfric. Open that chest, quickly.”
Philemon opened the vault in the floor, took out the chest and removed the nails. He lifted the lid.
Godwyn sifted through the coins. They were all ducats.
It could not be helped. He dug down into the money and pushed his florins to the bottom. “Close it up and put it back,” he said.
Philemon did so.
Godwyn felt a moment of relief. His crime was partly concealed. At least now it would not be glaringly obvious.
“I want to be here when she counts it,” he said to Philemon. “I’m worried about whether she’ll notice that she’s now got some florins mixed in with her ducats.”
“Do you know when they intend to come?”
“No.”
“I’ll put a novice to sweeping the choir. When Beth shows up, he can come and fetch us.” Philemon had a little coterie of admiring novice monks eager to do his bidding.
However, the novice was not needed. As they were about to leave the treasury, Sister Beth and Sister Caris arrived.
Godwyn pretended to be in the middle of a conversation about accounts. “We’ll have to look in an earlier account roll, brother,” he said to Philemon. “Oh, good day, sisters.”
Caris opened both nuns’ vaults and took out the two chests.
“Something I can help you with?” Godwyn said.
Caris ignored him.
Beth said: “We’re just checking something, thank you, Father Prior. We won’t be long.”
“Go ahead, go ahead,” he said benevolently, though his heart was hammering in his chest.
Caris said irritably: “There’s no need to apologize for our being here, Sister Beth. It’s our treasury and our money.”
Godwyn opened an account roll at random, and he and Philemon pretended to study it. Beth and Caris counted the silver in the first chest: farthings, halfpennies, pennies and a few Luxembourgs, forged pennies crudely made of adulterated silver and used as small change. There were a few assorted gold coins, too: florins, ducats and similar coins – the genovino from Genoa and the reale from Naples – plus some larger French moutons and new English nobles. Beth checked the totals against a small notebook. When they had finished she said: “Exactly right.”
They replaced all the coins in the chest, locked it and put it back in its underfloor vault.
They began counting the gold coins in the other chest, putting them in piles of ten. When they got towards the bottom of the chest, Beth frowned and made a puzzled sound.
“What is it?” Caris said.
Godwyn felt a guilty dread.
Beth said: “This chest contains only the bequest from the pious woman of Thornbury. I kept it separate.”
“And…?”
“Her husband traded with Venice. I was sure the entire amount was in ducats. But there are some florins here too.”
Godwyn and Philemon froze, listening.
“That’s odd,” Caris said.
“Perhaps I made a mistake.”
“It’s a bit suspicious.”
“Not really,” Beth said. “Thieves don’t put money into your treasury, do they?”
“You’re right, they don’t,” Caris said reluctantly.
They finished counting. They had one hundred stacks of ten coins, worth a hundred and fifty pounds. “That’s the exact figure in my book,” Beth said.
“So every pound and penny is correct,” Caris said.
Beth said: “I told you so.”
Caris spent many hours thinking about Sister Mair.
She had been startled by the kiss, but more surprised at her own reaction to it. She had found it exciting. Until now, she had not felt attracted to Mair or any other woman. In fact there was only one person who had ever made her yearn to be touched and kissed and penetrated, and that was Merthin. In the nunnery she had learned to live without physical contact. The only hand that touched her sexually was her own, in the darkness of the dormitory, when she remembered the days of her courtship, and buried her face in the pillow so that the other nuns would not hear her panting.
She did not feel for Mair the same happy lust that Merthin inspired in her. But Merthin was a thousand miles away and seven years in the past. And she was fond of Mair. It was something to do with her angelic face, something about her blue eyes, some response to her gentleness in the hospital and the school.
Mair always spoke sweetly to Caris and, when no one was looking, touched her arm, or her shoulder, and once her cheek. Caris did not rebuff her, but she held back from responding. It was not that she thought it would be a sin. She felt sure God was much too wise to make a rule against women harmlessly pleasuring themselves or each other. But she was afraid of disappointing Mair. Instinct told her that Mair’s feelings were strong and definite, whereas her own were uncertain. She’s in love with me, Caris thought, but I’m not in love with her. If I kiss her again, she may hope that the two of us will be soul mates for life, and I can’t promise her that.
So she did nothing, until Fleece Fair week.
The Kingsbridge fair had recovered from the slump of 1338. The trade in raw wool was still suffering from interference by the king, and the Italians came only every second year, but the new business of weaving and dyeing compensated. The town was still not as prosperous as it might have been, for Prior Godwyn’s prohibition of private mills had driven the industry out of the city and into the surrounding villages; but most of the cloth was sold in the market, indeed it had become known as Kingsbridge Scarlet. Merthin’s bridge had been finished by Elfric, and people poured across the wide double span with their packhorses and wagons.
So, on the Saturday night before the official opening of the fair, the hospital was full to bursting with visitors.
And one of them was ill.
His name was Maldwyn Cook, and his trade was to make salty little savouries with flour and scraps of meat or fish, cook them quickly in butter over a fire, and sell them six for a farthing. Soon after he arrived, he was afflicted with a sudden, savage belly ache, followed by vomiting and diarrhoea. There was nothing Caris could do for him other than give him a bed near the door.
She had long wanted to give the hospital its own latrine, so that she could supervise its cleanliness. But that was only one of the improvements she hoped for. She needed a new pharmacy, adjacent to the hospital, a spacious, well-lit room where she could prepare medicines and make her notes. And she was trying to figure out a way to give patients more privacy. At present everyone in the room could see a woman giving birth, a man having a fit, a child vomiting. People in distress should have small rooms of their own, she felt, like the side chapels in a large church. But she was not sure how to achieve this: the hospital was not big enough. She had had several discussions with Jeremiah Builder – who had been Merthin’s apprentice Jimmie, many years ago – but he had not come up with a satisfactory solution.
Next morning, three more people had the same symptoms as Maldwyn Cook.
Caris fed the visitors breakfast and tipped them out into the market. Only the sick were allowed to stay behind. The floor of the hospital was filthier than usual, and she had it swept and swabbed. Then she went to the service in the cathedral.
Bishop Richard was not present. He was with the king, preparing to invade France again – he had always regarded his bishopric mainly as a means of supporting his aristocratic lifestyle. In his absence the diocese was run by Archdeacon Lloyd, who collected the bishop’s tithes and rents, baptized children and conducted services with dogged but unimaginative efficiency – a trait he illustrated by giving a tedious sermon on why God was more important than Money, an odd note on which to open one of England’s great commercial fairs.
Nevertheless, everyone was in high spirits, as was usual on the first day. The Fleece Fair was the high point of the year for the townspeople and the peasants of the surrounding villages. People made money at the fair and lost it gambling in the inns. Strapping village girls allowed themselves to be seduced by slick city boys. Prosperous peasants paid the town’s prostitutes for services they dared not ask their wives to perform. There was usually a murder, often several.
Caris spotted the heavy-set, richly dressed figure of Buonaventura Caroli in the congregation, and her heart faltered. He might have news of Merthin. She went through the service distractedly, mumbling the psalms. On the way out she managed to catch Buonaventura’s eye. He smiled at her. She tried to indicate, with an inclination of her head, that she wanted him to meet her afterwards. She was not sure whether he got the message.
However, she went to the hospital – the only place in the priory where a nun could meet a man from outside – and Buonaventura came in not long afterwards. He wore a costly blue coat and pointed shoes. He said: “Last time I saw you, you had just been consecrated a nun by Bishop Richard.”
“I’m guest master now,” she said.
“Congratulations! I never expected you to take so well to convent life.” Buonaventura had known her since she was a little girl.
“Nor did I,” she laughed.
“The priory seems to be doing well.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I see that Godwyn is building a new palace.”
“Yes.”
“He must be prospering.”
“I suppose he is. How about you? Is trade good?”
“We have some problems. The war between England and France has disrupted transport, and your King Edward’s taxes make English wool more expensive than the Spanish. But it’s also better quality.”
They always complained about taxes. Caris came to the subject that really interested her. “Any news of Merthin?”
“As a matter of fact, there is,” Buonaventura said; and although his manner was as urbane as ever, she detected a hesitation. “Merthin is married.”
Caris felt as if she had been punched. She had never expected this, never even thought of it. How could Merthin do this? He was… they were…
There was no reason at all why he should not get married, of course. She had rejected him more than once, and on the last occasion she had made her rejection final by entering the nunnery. It was only remarkable that he had waited so long. She had no right to feel hurt.
She forced a smile. “How splendid!” she said. “Please send him my congratulations. Who is the girl?”
Buonaventura pretended not to notice her distress. “Her name is Silvia,” he said, as casually as if he were passing on harmless gossip. “She’s the younger daughter of one of the city’s most prominent citizens, Alessandro Christi, a trader in oriental spices who owns several ships.”
“How old?”
He grinned. “Alessandro? He must be about my age…”
“Don’t tease me!” She was grateful to Buonaventura for lightening the tone. “How old is Silvia?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Six years younger than me.”
“A beautiful girl…”
She sensed the unspoken qualification. “But…?”
He tilted his head to one side apologetically. “She has the reputation of being sharp-tongued. Of course, people say all sorts of things… but perhaps that is why she remained single so long – girls in Florence generally marry before the age of eighteen.”
“I’m sure it’s true,” Caris said. “The only girls Merthin liked in Kingsbridge were me and Elizabeth Clerk, and we’re both shrews.”
Buonaventura laughed. “Not so, not so.”
“When was the wedding?”
“Two years ago. Not long after I last saw you.”
Caris realized that Merthin had remained single until she had been consecrated as a nun. He would have heard, via Buonaventura, that she had taken the final step. She thought of him waiting and hoping, for more than four years, in a foreign country; and her brittle façade of good cheer began to crack.
Buonaventura said: “And they have a child, a little baby girl called Lolla.”
That was too much. All the grief Caris had felt seven years ago – the pain she thought had gone for ever – came back in a rush. She had not truly lost him back then in 1339, she realized. He had remained loyal to her memory for years. But she had lost him now, finally, eternally.
She was shaken as if by a fit, and she knew she could not hold out much longer. Trembling, she said: “It’s such a pleasure to see you, and catch up with the news, but I must get back to my work.”
His face showed concern. “I hope I haven’t upset you too much. I thought you would prefer to know.”
“Don’t be kind to me – I can’t stand it.” She turned from him and hurried away.
She bent her head to hide her face as she walked from the hospital into the cloisters. Searching for somewhere to be alone, she ran up the stairs to the dormitory. There was no one there in the daytime. She began to sob as she walked the length of the bare room. At the far end was Mother Cecilia’s bedroom. No one was allowed in there without an invitation, but Caris went in anyway, slamming the door behind her. She fell on Cecilia’s bed, not caring that her nun’s cap had fallen off. She buried her face in the straw mattress, and wept.
After a while she felt a hand on her head, stroking her short-cropped hair. She had not heard the person enter the room. She did not care who it was. All the same she was slowly, gradually soothed. Her sobs became less wrenching, her tears dried, and the storm of her emotions began to die down. She rolled over and looked up at her comforter. It was Mair.
Caris said: “Merthin is married – he has a baby girl.” She began to cry again.
Mair lay down on the bed and cradled Caris’s head in her arms. Caris pressed her face into Mair’s soft breasts, letting the woollen robe soak up the tears. “There, there,” said Mair.
After a while, Caris calmed down. She was too drained to feel any more sorrow. She thought of Merthin holding a dark-haired little Italian baby, and saw how happy he would be. She was glad that he was happy, and she drifted into an exhausted sleep.
The illness that had started with Maldwyn Cook spread like a summer fire through the crowds at the Fleece Fair. On Monday it leaped from the hospital to the taverns, then on Tuesday from the visitors to the townspeople. Caris noted its characteristics in her book: it began with stomach pains, led quickly to vomiting and diarrhoea, and lasted between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. It left adults not much the worse, but killed old people and small babies.
On Wednesday, it struck the nuns and the children in the girls’ school. Both Mair and Tilly were affected. Caris sought out Buonaventura, at the Bell, and worriedly asked him whether Italian doctors had any treatment for such diseases. “There’s no cure,” he said. “None that works, anyway, though doctors nearly always prescribe something just to get more money out of people. But some Arab physicians believe you can retard the spread of such illnesses.”
“Oh, really?” Caris was interested. Traders said that Muslim doctors were superior to their Christian counterparts, although the priest-physicians denied this hotly. “How?”
“They believe the disease is acquired when a sick person looks at you. Sight functions by beams that issue from the eyes and touch the things we see – rather like extending a finger to feel whether something is warm, or dry, or hard. But the beams may also project sickness. Therefore you can avoid the disease by never being in the same room as a sufferer.”
Caris did not think illness could be transmitted by looks. If that were true then, after an important service in the cathedral, everyone in the congregation would acquire any illness the bishop had. Whenever the king was ill, he would infect all the hundreds of people who saw him. And surely someone would have noticed that.
However, the notion that you should not share a room with someone who was ill did seem convincing. Here in the hospital, Maldwyn’s illness seemed to spread from a sufferer to those nearby: the sick man’s wife and family were the first to catch it, followed by people in neighbouring beds.
She had also observed that certain kinds of illness – stomach upsets, coughs and colds, and poxes of all sorts – seemed to flare up during fairs and markets; so it seemed obvious that they were passed from one person to another by some means.
On Wednesday night at supper, half the guests in the hospital were suffering from the illness; then by Thursday morning every one of them had it. Several priory servants also succumbed, so Caris was short of people to clean up.
Surveying the chaos at breakfast time, Mother Cecilia suggested closing the hospital.
Caris was ready to consider anything. She felt dismayed at her own powerlessness to combat the disease, and devastated by the filth of her hospital. “But where would the people sleep?” she said.
“Send them to the taverns.”
“The taverns have the same problem. We could put them in the cathedral.”
Cecilia shook her head. “Godwyn won’t have peasants puking in the nave while services go on in the choir.”
“Wherever they sleep, we ought to separate the sick from the well. That’s the way to retard the spread of the illness, according to Buonaventura.”
“It makes sense.”
Caris was struck by a new idea, something that suddenly seemed very obvious, though she had not thought of it before. “Perhaps we shouldn’t just improve the hospital,” she said. “Maybe we should build a new one, just for sick people, and keep the old one for pilgrims and other healthy visitors.”
Cecilia looked thoughtful. “It would be costly.”
“We’ve got a hundred and fifty pounds.” Caris’s imagination began to work. “It could incorporate a new pharmacy. We could have private rooms for people who are chronically ill.”
“Find out what it would cost. You could ask Elfric.”
Caris hated Elfric. She had disliked him even before he had given evidence against her. She did not want him to build her new hospital. “Elfric is busy building Godwyn’s new palace,” she said. “I’d rather consult Jeremiah.”
“By all means.”
Caris felt a rush of affection for Cecilia. Although she was a martinet, tough on discipline, she gave her deputies room to make their own decisions. She had always understood the conflicting passions that drove Caris. Instead of trying to suppress those passions, Cecilia had found ways to make use of them. She had given Caris work that engaged her, and provided outlets for her rebellious energy. Here I am, Caris thought, plainly incapable of dealing with the crisis in front of me, and my superior is calmly telling me to forge ahead with a new long-term Project. “Thank you, Mother Cecilia,” she said.
Later that day she walked around the priory grounds with Jeremiah and explained her aspirations. He was as superstitious as ever, seeing the work of saints and devils in the most trivial of everyday incidents. Nevertheless, he was an imaginative builder, open to new ideas: he had learned from Merthin. They quickly settled on the best location for the new hospital, immediately to the south of the existing kitchen block. It would be apart from the rest of the buildings, so that sick people would have less contact with the healthy, but food would not have to be carried far, and the new building could still be accessed conveniently from the nuns’ cloisters. With the pharmacy, the new latrines and an upper floor with private rooms, Jeremiah thought it would cost about a hundred pounds – most of the legacy.
Caris discussed the site with Mother Cecilia. It was land that belonged neither to the monks nor the nuns, so they went to see Godwyn about it.
They found him on the site of his own building project, the new palace. The shell was up and the roof was on. Caris had not visited the site for some weeks, and she was surprised at its size – it was going to be as big as her new hospital. She saw why Buonaventura had called it impressive: the dining hall was larger than the nuns’ refectory. The site was swarming with workmen, as if Godwyn was in a hurry to get it finished. Masons were laying a floor of coloured tiles in a geometric pattern, several carpenters were making doors, and a master glazier had set up a furnace to make the windows. Godwyn was spending a lot of money.
He and Philemon were showing the new building to Archdeacon Lloyd, the bishop’s deputy. Godwyn broke off as the nuns approached. Cecilia said: “Don’t let us interrupt you – but, when you’re finished, will you meet me outside the hospital? There’s something I need to show you.”
“By all means,” said Godwyn.
Caris and Cecilia walked back through the market place in front of the cathedral. Friday was bargain day at the Fleece Fair, when traders sold their remaining stocks at reduced prices so that they would not have to carry the goods home. Caris saw Mark Webber, round-faced and round-bellied now, wearing a coat of his own bright scarlet. His four children were helping at his stall. Caris was especially fond of Dora, now fifteen, who had her mother’s bustling confidence in a slimmer body.
“You’re looking prosperous,” Caris said to Mark with a smile.
“The wealth should have come to you,” he replied. “You invented the dye. I just did what you said. I almost feel as if I cheated you.”
“You’ve been rewarded for hard work,” she said. She did not mind that Mark and Madge had done so well out of her invention. Although she had always enjoyed the challenge of doing business, she had never lusted for money – perhaps because she had always taken it for granted, growing up in her father’s wealthy household. Whatever the reason, she felt no pang of regret that the Webbers were making a fortune that might have been hers. The cashless life of the priory seemed to suit her well. And she was thrilled to see the Webber children healthy and well dressed. She remembered when all six of them had to find sleeping space on the floor of a single room, most of which was taken up by a loom.
She and Cecilia went to the south end of the priory grounds. The land around the stables looked like a farmyard. There were a few small buildings: a dovecote, a henhouse and a tool shed. Chickens scratched in the dirt, and pigs rooted in the kitchen garbage. Caris itched to tidy it up.
Godwyn and Philemon joined them soon, with Lloyd tagging along. Cecilia indicated the patch of land next to the kitchens, and said: “I’m going to build a new hospital, and I want to put it there. What do you think?”
“A new hospital?” Godwyn said. “Why?”
Caris thought he looked anxious, which puzzled her.
Cecilia said: “We want a hospital for the sick and a separate guest house for healthy visitors.”
“What an extraordinary idea.”
“It’s because of the stomach illness that started with Maldwyn Cook. This is a particularly virulent example, but diseases often flare up at markets, and part of the reason they spread so fast may be that we have the sick and the well eating and sleeping and going to the latrine together.”
Godwyn took umbrage. “Oho!” he said. “So the nuns are the physicians, now, are they?”
Caris frowned. This kind of sneering was not Godwyn’s style. He used charm to get his way, especially with powerful people such as Cecilia. This fit of pique was covering something else.
“Of course not,” Cecilia said. “But we all know that some illnesses spread from one sufferer to the next – that’s obvious.”
Caris put in: “The Muslim physicians believe illness is transmitted by looking at the sick person.”
“Oh, do they? How interesting!” Godwyn spoke with ponderous sarcasm. “Those of us who have spent seven years studying medicine at the university are always glad to be lectured on illness by young nuns barely out of their novitiate.”
Caris was not intimidated. She felt no inclination to show respect to a lying hypocrite who had tried to murder her. She said: “If you don’t believe in the transmission of illness, why don’t you prove your sincerity by coming to the hospital tonight and sleeping alongside a hundred people suffering from nausea and diarrhoea?”
Cecilia said: “Sister Caris! That will be enough.” She turned to Godwyn. “Forgive her, Father Prior. It wasn’t my intention to engage you in a discussion about disease with a mere nun. I just want to make sure you don’t object to my choice of site.”
“You can’t build it now, anyway,” Godwyn said. “Elfric is too busy with the palace.”
Caris said: “We don’t want Elfric – we’re using Jeremiah.”
Cecilia turned on her. “Caris, be quiet! Remember your place. Don’t interrupt my conversation with the lord prior again.”
Caris realized she was not helping Cecilia, and – against her inclination – she lowered her head and said: “I’m sorry, Mother Prioress.”
Cecilia said to Godwyn: “The question is not when we build, it’s where.”
“I’m afraid I don’t approve of this,” he said stiffly.
“Where would you prefer the new building to be sited?”
“I don’t think you need a new hospital at all.”
“Forgive me, but I am in charge of the nunnery,” Cecilia said with asperity. “You can’t tell me how I should spend our money. However, we normally consult one another before putting up new buildings – although it has to be said that you forgot this little courtesy when planning your palace. Nevertheless, I am consulting you – merely on the question of the location of the building.” She looked at Lloyd. “I’m sure the archdeacon will agree with me on this.”
“There must be agreement,” Lloyd said noncommittally.
Caris frowned, baffled. Why did Godwyn care? He was building his palace on the north side of the cathedral. It made no difference to him if the nuns put up a new building down here in the south, where most monks hardly ever came. What was he worried about?
Godwyn said: “I’m telling you that I do not approve of the location nor of the building, so that is the end of the matter!”
Caris suddenly saw, in a flash of inspiration, the reason for Godwyn’s behaviour. She was so shocked that she blurted it out. “You stole our money!”
Cecilia said: “Caris! I told you-”
“He’s stolen the legacy of the woman of Thornbury!” Caris said, overriding Cecilia in her outrage. “That’s where he got the money for his palace, of course. And now he’s trying to stop us building because he knows we’ll go to the treasury and find that our money has vanished!” She felt so indignant she might burst.
Godwyn said: “Don’t be preposterous.”
As a response, it was so muted that Caris knew she must have touched a nerve. Confirmation made her even angrier. “Prove it!” she yelled. She forced herself to speak more calmly. “We’ll go to the treasury now and check the vaults. You wouldn’t object to that, would you, Father Prior?”
Philemon chipped in: “It would be a completely undignified proceeding, and there is no question of the prior submitting himself to it.”
Caris ignored him. “There should be one hundred and fifty pounds in gold in the nuns’ reserves.”
“Out of the question,” said Godwyn.
Caris said: “Well, clearly the nuns will have to check the vaults anyway, now that the accusation has been made.” She looked at Cecilia, who nodded in agreement. “So, if the prior prefers not to be present, no doubt the archdeacon will be happy to attend as a witness.”
Lloyd looked as if he would have preferred not to get involved in this dispute, but it was hard for him to refuse to play the role of umpire, so he muttered: “If I can help both sides, of course…”
Caris’s mind was racing on. “How did you open the chest?” she said. “Christopher Blacksmith made the lock, and he’s too honest to give you a duplicate key and help you steal from us. You must have broken the box open, then repaired it somehow. What did you do, take off the binge?” She saw Godwyn glance involuntarily at his sub-prior. “Ah,” Caris said triumphantly, “so Philemon took the hinge off. But the prior took the money, and gave it to Elfric.”
Cecilia said: “Enough speculation. Let’s settle the matter. We’ll all go to the treasury and open the box, and that will be an end to it.”
Godwyn said: “It wasn’t stealing.”
Everyone stared at him. There was a shocked silence.
Cecilia said: “You’re admitting it!”
“It wasn’t stealing,” Godwyn repeated. “The money is being used for the benefit of the priory and the glory of God.”
Caris said: “It makes no difference. It wasn’t your money!”
“It’s God’s money,” Godwyn said stubbornly.
Cecilia said: “It was left to the nunnery. You know that. You saw the will.”
“I know nothing of any will.”
“Of course you do. I gave it to you, to make a copy…” Cecilia tailed off.
Godwyn said again: “I know nothing of any will.”
Caris said: “He’s destroyed it. He said he would make a copy, and put the original in the chest, in the treasury… but he destroyed it.”
Cecilia was staring open-mouthed at Godwyn. “I should have known,” she said. “After what you tried to do to Caris – I should never have trusted you again. But I thought your soul might yet have been saved. I was so wrong.”
Caris said: “It’s a good thing we made our own copy of the will, before handing it over.” She was inventing this in desperation.
Godwyn said: “A forgery, obviously.”
Caris said: “If the money was yours in the first place, you will have had no need to break open the casket to get it. So let’s go and look. That will settle it one way or another.”
Philemon said: “The fact that the hinge has been tampered with proves nothing.”
“So I was right!” said Caris. “But how do you know about the hinge? Sister Beth has not opened the vault since the audit, and the box was fine then. You must have removed it from the vault yourself, if you know that it has been interfered with.”
Philemon looked bewildered, and had no answer.
Cecilia turned to Lloyd. “Archdeacon, you are the bishop’s representative. I think it’s your duty to order the prior to return this money to the nuns.”
Lloyd looked worried. He said to Godwyn: “Have you got any of the money left?”
Caris said furiously: “When you’ve caught a thief, you don’t ask him whether he can afford to relinquish his ill-gotten gains!”
Godwyn said: “More than half has already been spent on the palace.”
“Building must stop immediately,” Caris said. “The men must be dismissed today, the building torn down and the materials sold. You have to return every penny. What you can’t pay in cash, after the palace has been demolished, you must make up in land or other assets.”
“I refuse,” Godwyn said.
Cecilia addressed Lloyd again. “Archdeacon, please do your duty. You cannot allow one of the bishop’s subordinates to steal from another, no matter that they both do God’s work.”
Lloyd said: “I can’t adjudicate a dispute such as this myself. It’s too serious.”
Caris was speechless with fury and dismay at Lloyd’s weakness.
Cecilia protested: “But you must!”
He looked trapped, but he shook his head stubbornly. “Accusations of theft, destruction of a will, a charge of forgery… This must go to the bishop himself!”
Cecilia said: “But Bishop Richard is on his way to France – and no one knows when he will be back. Meanwhile, Godwyn is spending the stolen money!”
“I can’t help that, I’m afraid,” Lloyd said. “You must appeal to Richard.”
“Very well, then,” said Caris. Something in her tone made them all look at her. “In that case there’s only one thing to do. We’ll go and find our bishop.”
In July of 1346, King Edward III assembled the largest invasion fleet England had ever seen, almost a thousand ships, at Portsmouth. Contrary winds delayed the armada, but they finally set sail on 11 July, their destination a secret.
Caris and Mair arrived in Portsmouth two days later, just missing Bishop Richard, who had sailed with the king.
They decided to follow the army to France.
It had not been easy to get approval even for the trip to Portsmouth. Mother Cecilia had invited the nuns in chapter to discuss the proposal, and some had felt that Caris would be in moral and physical danger. But nuns did leave their convents, not just on pilgrimages, but on business errands to London, Canterbury and Rome. And the Kingsbridge sisters wanted their stolen money back.
However, Caris was not sure that she would have got permission to cross the Channel. Fortunately she was not able to ask.
She and Mair could not have followed the army immediately, even if they had known the king’s destination, because every seaworthy vessel on the south coast of England had been commandeered for the invasion. So they fretted with impatience at a nunnery just outside Portsmouth and waited for news.
Caris learned later that King Edward and his army disembarked on a broad beach at St-Vaast-la-Hogue, on the north coast of France near Barfleur. However, the fleet did not return immediately. Instead, the ships followed the coast eastward for two weeks, tracking the invading army as far as Caen. There they loaded their holds with booty: jewellery, expensive cloth, and gold and silver plate looted by Edward’s army from the prosperous burgesses of Normandy. Then they returned.
One of the first back was the Grace, which was a cog – a broad-built cargo ship with rounded prow and stern. Her captain, a leather-faced salt called Rollo, was full of praise for the king. He had been paid at scarcity rates for his ship and his men, and he had gained a good share of the plunder himself. “Biggest army I’ve ever seen,” Rollo said with relish. He thought there were at least fifteen thousand men, about half of them archers, and probably five thousand horses. “You’ll have your work cut out to catch up with them,” he said. “I’ll take you to Caen, the last place I know them to have been, and you can pick up their trail there. Whatever direction they’ve taken, they’ll be about a week ahead of you.”
Caris and Mair negotiated a price with Rollo then went aboard the Grace with two sturdy ponies, Blackie and Stamp. They could not travel any faster than the army’s horses, but the army had to stop and fight every so often, Caris reasoned, and that should enable her to catch up.
When they reached the French side and sailed into the estuary of the Orne, early on a sunny August morning, Caris sniffed the breeze and noticed the unpleasant smell of old ashes. Studying the landscape on either side of the river, she saw that the farmland was black. It looked as if the crops had been burned in the fields. “Standard practice,” Rollo said. “What the army can’t take must be destroyed, otherwise it could benefit the enemy.” As they neared the port of Caen they passed the hulks of several burned-out ships, presumably fired for the same reason.
“No one knows the king’s plan,” Rollo told them. “He may go south and advance on Paris, or swing north-east to Calais and hope to meet up there with his Flemish allies. But you’ll be able to follow his trail. Just keep the blackened fields on either side of you.”
Before they disembarked, Rollo gave them a ham. “Thank you, but we’ve got some smoked fish and hard cheese in our saddlebags,” Caris said to him. “And we have money – we can buy anything else we need.”
“Money may not be much use to you,” the captain replied. “There may be nothing to buy. An army is like a plague of locusts, it strips the country bare. Take the ham.”
“You’re very kind. Goodbye.”
“Pray for me, if you would, sister. I’ve committed some heavy sins in my time.”
Caen was a city of several thousand houses. Like Kingsbridge, its two halves, Old Town and New Town, were divided by a river, the Odon, which was spanned by St Peter’s Bridge. On the river bank near the bridge, a few fishermen were selling their catch. Caris asked the price of an eel. She found the answer difficult to understand: the fisherman spoke a dialect of French she had never heard. When at last she was able to make out what he was saying, the price took her breath away. Food was so scarce, she realized, that it was more precious than jewels. She was grateful for Rollo’s generosity.
They had decided that if they were questioned they would say they were Irish nuns travelling to Rome. Now, however, as she and Mair rode away from the river, Caris wondered nervously whether local people would know from her accent that she was English.
There were not many local people to be seen. Broken-down doors and smashed shutters revealed empty houses. There was a ghostly hush – no vendors crying their wares, no children quarrelling, no church bells. The only work being done was burial. The battle had taken place more than a week ago, but small groups of grim-faced men were still bringing corpses out of buildings and loading them on to carts. It looked as if the English army had simply massacred men, women and children. They passed a church where a huge pit had been dug in the churchyard, and saw the bodies being tipped into a mass grave, without coffins or even shrouds, while a priest intoned a continuous burial service. The stench was unspeakable.
A well-dressed man bowed to them and asked if they needed assistance. His proprietorial manner suggested that he was a leading citizen concerned to make sure no harm came to religious visitors. Caris declined his offer of help, noting that his Norman French was no different from that of a nobleman in England. Perhaps, she thought, the lower orders all had their different local dialects, while the ruling class spoke with an international accent.
The two nuns took the road east out of town, glad to leave the haunted streets behind. The countryside was deserted, too. The bitter taste of ash was always on Caris’s tongue. Many of the fields and orchards on either side of the road had been fired. Every few miles they rode through a heap of charred ruins that had been a village. The peasants had either fled before the army or died in the conflagration, for there was little life: just the birds, the occasional pig or chicken overlooked by the army’s foragers, and sometimes a dog, nosing through the debris in a bewildered way, trying to pick up the scent of its master in a pile of cold embers.
Their immediate destination was a nunnery half a day’s ride from Caen. Whenever possible, they would spend the night at a religious house – nunnery, monastery or hospital – as they had on the way from Kingsbridge to Portsmouth. They knew the names and locations of fifty-one such institutions between Caen and Paris. If they could find them, as they hurried in the scorched footprints of King Edward, their accommodation and food would be free and they would be safe from thieves – and, Mother Cecilia would add, from fleshly temptations such as strong drink and male company.
Cecilia’s instincts were sharp, but she had not sensed that a different kind of temptation was in the air between Caris and Mair. Because of that, Caris had at first refused Mair’s request to come with her. She was focused on moving fast, and she did not want to complicate her mission by entering into a passionate entanglement – or by refusing so to do. On the other hand, she needed someone courageous and resourceful as her companion. Now she was glad of her choice: of all the nuns, Mair was the only one with the guts to go chasing the English army through France.
She had planned to have a frank talk before they left, saying that there should be no physical affection between them while they were away. Apart from anything else, they could get into terrible trouble if they were seen. But somehow she had never got around to the frank talk. So here they were in France with the issue still hanging unmentioned, like an invisible third traveller riding between them on a silent horse.
They stopped at midday by a stream on the edge of a wood, where there was an unburned meadow for the ponies to graze. Caris cut slices from Rollo’s ham, and Mair took from their baggage a loaf of stale bread from Portsmouth. They drank the water from the stream, though it had the taste of cinders.
Caris suppressed her eagerness to get going, and forced herself to let the horses rest for the hottest hour of the day. Then, as they were getting ready to leave, she was startled to see someone watching her. She froze, with the ham in one hand and her knife in the other.
Mair said: “What is it?” Then she followed Caris’s gaze, and understood.
Two men stood a few yards away, in the shade of the trees, staring at them. They looked quite young, but it was hard to be sure, for their faces were sooty and their clothing was filthy.
After a moment, Caris spoke to them in Norman French. “God bless you, my children.”
They made no reply. Caris guessed they were unsure what to do. But what possibilities were they considering? Robbery? Rape? They had a predatory look.
She was scared, but she made herself think calmly. Whatever else they might want, they must be starving, she calculated. She said to Mair: “Quickly, give me two trenchers of that bread.”
Mair cut two thick slices off the big loaf. Caris cut corresponding slabs from the ham. She put the ham on the bread, then said to Mair: “Give them one each.”
Mair looked terrified, but she walked across the grass with an unhesitating step and offered the food to the men.
They both snatched it and began to wolf it down. Caris thanked her stars that she had guessed right.
She quickly put the ham in her saddlebag and the knife in her belt, then climbed on to Blackie. Mair followed suit, stowing the bread and mounting Stamp. Caris felt safer on horseback.
The taller of the two men came towards them, moving quickly. Caris was tempted to kick her pony and take off, but she did not quite have time; and then the man’s hand was holding her bridle. He spoke through a mouthful of food. “Thank you,” he said with the heavy local accent.
Caris said: “Thank God, not me. He sent me to help you. He is watching over you. He sees everything.”
“You have more meat in your bag.”
“God will tell me who to give it to.”
There was a pause, while the man thought that over, then he said: “Give me your blessing.”
Caris was reluctant to extend her right arm in the traditional gesture of blessing – it would take her hand too far away from the knife at her belt. It was only a short-bladed food knife of the kind carried by every man and woman, but it was enough to slash the back of the hand that held her bridle and cause the man to let go.
Then she was inspired. “Very well,” she said. “Kneel down.”
The man hesitated.
“You must kneel to receive my blessing,” she said in a slightly raised voice.
Slowly, the man knelt, still holding his food in his hand.
Caris turned her gaze on his companion. After a moment, the second man did the same.
Caris blessed them both, then kicked Blackie and quickly trotted away. After a moment she looked back. Mair was close behind her. The two starving men stood staring at them.
Caris mulled over the incident anxiously as they rode through the afternoon. The sun shone cheerfully, as on a fine day in hell. In some places, smoke was rising fitfully from a patch of woodland or a smouldering barn. But the countryside was not totally deserted, she realized gradually. She saw a pregnant woman harvesting beans in a field that had escaped the English torches; the scared faces of two children looking out from the blackened stones of a manor house; and several small groups of men, usually flitting through the fringes of woodland, moving with the alert purposefulness of scavengers. The men worried her. They looked hungry, and hungry men were dangerous. She wondered whether she should stop fretting about speed and worry instead about safety.
Finding their way to the religious houses where they planned to stop was also going to be more difficult than Caris had thought. She had not anticipated that the English army would leave such devastation in its wake. She had assumed there would be peasants around to direct her. It could be hard enough in normal times to get such information from people who had never travelled farther than the nearest market town. Now her interlocutors would also be elusive, terrified or predatory.
She knew by the sun that she was heading east, and she thought, judging by the deep cartwheel ruts in the baked mud, that she was on the main road. Tonight’s destination was a village named, after the nunnery at its centre, Hopital-des-Soeurs. As the shadow in front of her grew longer, she looked about with increasing urgency for someone whom she could ask for directions.
Children fled from their approach in fear. Caris was not yet desperate enough to risk getting close to the hungry-looking men. She hoped to come across a woman. There were no young women anywhere, and Caris had a bleak suspicion about the fate they might have met at the hands of the marauding English. Occasionally she saw, in the far distance, a few lonely figures harvesting a field that had escaped burning; but she was reluctant to go too far from the road.
At last they found a wrinkled old woman sitting under an apple tree next to a substantial stone house. She was eating small apples wrenched from the tree long before they were ripe. She looked terrified. Caris dismounted, to seem less intimidating. The old woman tried to hide her poor meal in the folds of her dress, but she seemed not to have the strength to run away.
Caris addressed her politely. “Good evening, mother. Will this road take us to Hopital-des-Soeurs, may I ask?”
The woman seemed to pull herself together, and answered intelligently. Pointing in the direction in which they were heading, she said: “Through the woods and over the hill.”
Caris saw that she had no teeth. It must have been almost impossible to eat unripe apples with your gums, she thought with pity. “How far?” she asked.
“A long way.”
All distances were long at her age. “Can we get there by nightfall?”
“On a horse, yes.”
“Thank you, mother.”
“I had a daughter,” said the old woman. “And two grandsons. Fourteen years and sixteen. Fine boys.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“The English,” said the old woman. “May they all burn in hell.”
Evidently it did not occur to her that Caris and Mair might be English. That answered Caris’s question: local people could not tell the nationality of strangers. “What were the boys’ names, mother?”
“Giles and Jean.”
“I will pray for the souls of Giles and Jean.”
“Have you any bread?”
Caris looked around, to make sure there was no one else lurking nearby, ready to pounce, but they were alone. She nodded to Mair, who took from her saddlebag the remains of the loaf and offered it to the old woman.
The woman snatched it from her and began to gnaw it with her gums.
Caris and Mair rode away.
Mair said: “If we keep giving our food away, we’re going to starve.”
“I know,” said Caris. “But how can you refuse?”
“We can’t fulfil our mission if we’re dead.”
“But we are nuns, after all,” Caris said with asperity. “We must help the needy, and leave it to God to decide when it’s time for us to die.”
Mair was startled. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”
“My father hated people who preached about morality. We’re all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn’t count. It’s when you want so badly to do something wrong – when you’re about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbour’s wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble – that’s when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test. Not that he knew anything about swords.”
Mair was silent for a while. She might have been mulling over what Caris had said, or she might simply have given up the argument: Caris was not sure.
Talk of Edmund always made Caris realize how much she missed him. After her mother died he had become the cornerstone of her life. He had always been there, standing at her shoulder, as it were, ready when she needed sympathy and understanding, or shrewd advice, or just information: he had known so much about the world. Now, when she turned in that direction, there was just an empty space.
They passed through a patch of woodland then breasted a rise, as the old woman had forecast. Looking down on a shallow valley they saw another burned village, the same as all the rest but for a cluster of stone buildings that looked like a small convent. “This must be Hôpital-des-Soeurs,” said Caris. “Thank God.”
She realized, as she approached, how used to nunnery life she had become. As they rode down the hill she found herself looking forward to the ritual washing of hands, a meal taken in silence, bed time at nightfall, even the sleepy peacefulness of Matins at three o’clock in the morning. After what she had seen today, the security of those grey stone walls was alluring, and she kicked the tired Blackie into a trot.
There was no one moving about the place, but that was not really surprising: it was a small house in a village, and you would not expect the kind of hustle and bustle seen at a major priory such as Kingsbridge. Still, at this time of day there should have been a column of smoke from a kitchen fire as the evening meal was prepared. However, as she came closer she saw further ominous signs, and a sense of dismay slowly engulfed her. The nearest building, which looked like a church, appeared to have no roof. The windows were empty sockets, lacking shutters or glass. Some of the stone walls were blackened, as if by smoke.
The place was silent: no bells, no cries of ostlers or kitchen hands. It was deserted, Caris realized despondently as she reined in. And it had been fired, like every other building in the village. Most of the stone walls were still standing, but the timber roofs had fallen in, doors and other woodwork had burned, and glass windows had shattered in the heat.
Mair said unbelievingly: “They set fire to a nunnery?”
Caris was equally shocked. She had believed that invading armies invariably left ecclesiastical buildings intact. It was an iron rule, people said. A commander would not hesitate to put to death a soldier who violated a holy place. She had accepted that without question. “So much for chivalry,” she said.
They dismounted and walked, stepping cautiously around charred beams and scorched rubble, to the domestic quarters. As they approached the kitchen door, Mair gave a shriek and said: “Oh, God, what’s that?”
Caris knew the answer. “It’s a dead nun.” The corpse on the ground was naked, but had the cropped hair of a nun. The body had somehow survived the fire. The woman was about a week dead. The birds had already eaten her eyes, and parts of her face had been nibbled by some scavenging animal.
Also, her breasts had been cut off with a knife.
Mair said in amazement: “Did the English do this?”
“Well, it wasn’t the French.”
“Our soldiers have foreigners fighting alongside them, don’t they? Welshmen and Germans and so on. Perhaps it was them.”
“They’re all under the orders of our king,” Caris said with grim disapprobation. “He brought them here. What they do is his responsibility.”
They stared at the hideous sight. As they looked, a mouse came out of the corpse’s mouth. Mair screamed and turned away.
Caris hugged her. “Calm down,” she said firmly, but she stroked Mair’s back to comfort her. “Come on,” she said after a moment. “Let’s get away from here.”
They returned to their horses. Caris resisted an impulse to bury the dead nun: if they delayed, they would still be here at nightfall. But where were they to go? They had planned to spend the night here. “We’ll go back to the old woman with the apple tree,” she said. “Her house is the only intact building we’ve seen since we left Caen.” She glanced anxiously at the setting sun. “If we push the horses, we can be there before it’s full dark.”
They urged their tired ponies forward and headed back along the road. Directly ahead of them the sun sank all too quickly below the horizon. The last of the light was fading when they arrived back at the house by the apple tree.
The old woman was happy to see them, expecting them to share their food, which they did, eating in the dark. Her name was Jeanne. There was no fire, but the weather was mild, and the three women rolled up side by side in their blankets. Not fully trusting their hostess, Caris and Mair lay down clutching the saddlebags that contained their food.
Caris lay awake for a while. She was pleased to be on the move after such a long delay in Portsmouth, and they had made good progress in the last two days. If she could find Bishop Richard, she felt sure he would force Godwyn to repay the nuns’ money. He was no paragon of integrity, but he was open-minded, and in his lackadaisical way he dispensed justice even-handedly. Godwyn had not had things all his own way even in the witchcraft trial. She felt sure she could persuade Richard to give her a letter ordering Godwyn to sell priory assets in order to give back the stolen cash.
But she was worried about her safety and Mair’s. Her assumption that soldiers would leave nuns alone had been quite wrong: what they had seen at Hopital-des-Soeurs had made that clear. She and Mair needed a disguise.
When she woke up at first light, she said to Jeanne: “Your grandsons – do you still have their clothes?”
The old woman opened a wooden chest. “Take what you want,” she said. “I have no one to give them to.” She picked up a bucket and went off to fetch water.
Caris began to sort through the garments in the chest. Jeanne had not asked for payment. Clothes had little monetary value after so many people had died, she guessed.
Mair said: “What are you up to?”
“Nuns aren’t safe,” Caris said. “We’re going to become pages in the service of a minor lord – Pierre, Sieur of Longchamp in Brittany. Pierre is a common name and there must be lots of places called Longchamp. Our master has been captured by the English, and our mistress has sent us to find him and negotiate his ransom.”
“All right,” Mair said eagerly.
“Giles and Jean were fourteen and sixteen, so with luck their clothes will fit us.”
Caris picked out a tunic, leggings and a cape with a hood, all in the dull brown of undyed wool. Mair found a similar outfit in green, with short sleeves and an undershirt. Women did not usually wear underdrawers, but men did, and fortunately Jeanne had lovingly washed the linen garments of her dead family. Caris and Mair could keep their own shoes: the practical footwear of nuns was no different from what men wore.
“Shall we put them on?” said Mair.
They pulled off their nuns’ robes. Caris had never seen Mair undressed, and she could not resist a peek. Her companion’s naked body took her breath away. Mair’s skin seemed to glow like a pink pearl. Her breasts were generous, with pale girlish nipples, and she had a luxuriant bush of fair pubic hair. Caris was suddenly conscious that her own body was not as beautiful. She looked away, and quickly began to put on the clothes she had chosen.
She pulled the tunic over her head. It was just like a woman’s dress except that it stopped at the knee instead of the ankles. She pulled up the linen underdrawers and the leggings, then put her shoes and belt back on.
Mair said: “How do I look?”
Caris studied her. Mair had put a boy’s cap over her short blonde hair, and tilted it at an angle. She was grinning. “You look so happy!” Caris said in surprise.
“I’ve always liked boys’ clothes.” Mair swaggered up and down the small room. “This is how they walk,” she said. “Always taking more space than they need.” It was such an accurate imitation that Caris burst out laughing.
Caris was struck by a thought. “Are we going to have to pee standing up?”
“I can do it, but not in undershorts – too inaccurate.”
Caris giggled. “We can’t leave off the drawers – a sudden flurry of wind could expose our… pretences.”
Mair laughed. Then she began to stare at Caris in a way that was strange but not entirely unfamiliar, looking her up and down, meeting her eyes and holding her gaze.
“What are you doing?” said Caris.
“This is how men look at women, as if they own us. But be careful – if you do it to a man, he becomes aggressive.”
“This could be more difficult than I thought.”
“You’re too beautiful,” Mair said. “You need a dirty face.” She went to the fireplace and blackened her hand with soot. Then she smeared it on Caris’s face. Her touch was like a caress. My face isn’t beautiful, Caris thought; no one ever judged it so – except Merthin, of course…
“Too much,” Mair said after a minute, and wiped some off with her other hand. “That’s better.” She smeared Caris’s hand and said: “Now do me.”
Caris spread a faint smudge on Mair’s jawline and throat, making it look as if she might have a light beard. It felt very intimate, to be looking so hard at her face, and touching her skin so softly. She dirtied Mair’s forehead and cheeks. Mair looked like a pretty boy – but she did not look like a woman.
They studied one another. A smile played on the red bow of Mair’s lips. Caris felt a sense of anticipation, as if something momentous was about to happen. Then a voice said: “Where are the nuns?”
They both turned round guiltily. Jeanne stood in the doorway, holding a heavy bucket of fresh water, looking frightened. “What have you done to the nuns?” she said.
Caris and Mair burst out laughing, and then Jeanne recognized them. “How you have changed yourselves!” she exclaimed.
They drank some of the water, and Caris shared out the rest of the smoked fish for breakfast. It was a good sign, she thought as they ate, that Jeanne had not recognized them. If they were careful, perhaps they could get away with this.
They took their leave of Jeanne and rode off. As they breasted the rise before Hopital-des-Soeurs, the sun came up directly ahead of them, casting a red light on the nunnery, making the ruins look as if they were still burning. Caris and Mair trotted quickly through the village, trying not to think about the mutilated corpse of the nun lying there in the debris, and rode on into the sunrise.
By Tuesday 22 August the English army was on the run.
Ralph Fitzgerald was not sure how it had happened. They had stormed across Normandy from west to east, looting and burning, and no one had been able to withstand them. Ralph had been in his element. On the march, a soldier could take anything he saw – food, jewellery, women – and kill any man who stood in his way. It was how life ought to be lived.
The king was a man after Ralph’s own heart. Edward III loved to fight. When he was not at war he spent most of his time organizing elaborate tournaments, costly mock battles with armies of knights in specially designed uniforms. On the campaign, he was always ready to lead a sortie or raiding party, hazarding his life, never pausing to balance risks against benefits like a Kingsbridge merchant. The older knights and earls commented on his brutality, and had protested about incidents such as the systematic rape of the women of Caen, but Edward did not care. When he had heard that some of the Caen citizens had thrown stones at soldiers who were ransacking their homes, he had ordered that everyone in the town should be killed, and only relented after vigorous protests by Sir Godfrey de Harcourt and others.
Things had started to go wrong when they came to the river Seine. At Rouen they had found the bridge destroyed, and the town – on the far side of the water – heavily fortified. King Philippe VI of France was there in person, with a mighty army.
The English marched upstream, looking for a place to cross, but they found that Philippe had been there before them, and one bridge after another was either strongly defended or in ruins. They went as far as Poissy, only twenty miles from Paris, and Ralph thought they would surely attack the capital – but older men shook their heads sagely and said it was impossible. Paris was a city of fifty thousand men, and they must by now have heard the news from Caen, so they would be prepared to fight to the death, knowing they could expect no mercy.
If the king did not intend to attack Paris, Ralph asked, what was his plan? No one knew, and Ralph suspected that Edward had no plan other than to wreak havoc.
The town of Poissy had been evacuated, and the English engineers were able to rebuild its bridge – fighting off a French attack at the same time – so at last the army crossed the river.
By then it was clear that Philippe had assembled an army larger by far than the English, and Edward decided on a dash to the north, with the aim of joining up with an Anglo-Flemish force invading from the north-east.
Philippe gave chase.
Today the English were encamped south of another great river, the Somme, and the French were playing the same trick as they had at the Seine. Sorties and reconnaissance parties reported that every bridge had been destroyed, every riverside town heavily fortified. Even more ominously, an English detachment had seen, on the far bank, the flag of Philippe’s most famous and frightening ally, John, the blind king of Bohemia.
Edward had started out with fifteen thousand men in total. In six weeks of campaigning many of those had fallen, and others had deserted, to find their way home with their saddlebags full of gold. He had about ten thousand left, Ralph calculated. Reports of spies suggested that in Amiens, a few miles upstream, Philippe now had sixty thousand foot soldiers and twelve thousand mounted knights, an overwhelming advantage in numbers. Ralph was more worried than he had been since he first set foot in Normandy. The English were in trouble.
Next day they marched downstream to Abbeville, location of the last bridge before the Somme widened into an estuary; but the burgesses of the town had spent money, over the years, strengthening the walls, and the English could see it was impregnable. So cocksure were the citizens that they sent out a large force of knights to attack the vanguard of the English army, and there was a fierce skirmish before the locals withdrew back inside their walled town.
When Philippe’s army left Amiens, and started advancing from the south, Edward found himself trapped in the point of a triangle: on his right the estuary, on his left the sea, and behind him the French army, baying for the blood of the barbaric invaders.
That afternoon, Earl Roland came to see Ralph.
Ralph had been fighting in Roland’s retinue for seven years. The earl no longer regarded him as an untried boy. Roland still gave the impression that he did not much like Ralph, but he certainly respected him, and would always use him to shore up a weak point in the line, lead a sally or organize a raid. Ralph had lost three fingers from his left hand, and had walked with a limp when tired ever since a Frenchman’s pikestaff had cracked his shinbone outside Nantes in 1342. Nevertheless, the king had not yet knighted Ralph, an omission which caused Ralph bitter resentment. Por all the loot he had garnered – most of it held for safekeeping by a London goldsmith – Ralph was unfulfilled. He knew that his father would be equally dissatisfied. Like Gerald, Ralph fought for honour, not money; but in all this time he had not climbed a single step up the staircase of nobility.
When Roland appeared, Ralph was sitting in a field of ripening wheat that had been trampled to shreds by the army. He was with Alan Fernhill and half a dozen comrades, eating a gloomy dinner, pea soup with onions: food was running out, and there was no meat left. Ralph felt as they did, tired from constant marching, dispirited by repeated encounters with broken bridges and well-defended towns, and scared of what would happen when the French army caught up with them.
Roland was now an old man, his hair and beard grey, but he still walked erect and spoke with authority. He had learned to keep his expression stonily impassive, so that people hardly noticed that the right side of his face was paralysed. He said: “The estuary of the Somme is tidal. At low tide, the water may be shallow in places. But the bottom is thick mud, making it impassable.”
“So we can’t cross,” said Ralph. But he knew Roland had not come just to give him bad news, and his spirits lifted optimistically.
“There may be a ford – a point where the bottom is firmer,” Roland went on. “If there is, the French will know.”
“You want me to find out.”
“As quick as you like. There are some prisoners in the next field.”
Ralph shook his head. “Soldiers might have come from anywhere in France, or even other countries. It’s the local people who will have the information.”
“I don’t care who you interrogate. Just come to the king’s tent with the answer by nightfall.” Roland walked away.
Ralph drained his bowl and leaped to his feet, glad to have something aggressive to do. “Saddle up, lads,” he said.
He still had Griff. Miraculously, his favourite horse had survived seven years of war. Griff was somewhat smaller than a warhorse, but had more spirit than the oversized destriers most knights preferred. He was now experienced in battle, and his iron-shod hooves gave Ralph an extra weapon in the melee. Ralph was more fond of him than of most of his human comrades. In fact the only living creature to whom he felt closer was his brother, Merthin, whom he had not seen for seven years – and might never see again, for Merthin had gone to Florence.
They headed north-east, towards the estuary. Every peasant living within half a day’s walk would know of the ford if there was one, Ralph calculated. They would use it constantly, crossing the river to buy and sell livestock, to attend the weddings and funerals of relatives, to go to markets and fairs and religious festivals. They would be reluctant to give information to the invading English, of course – but he knew how to solve that problem.
They rode away from the army into territory that had not yet suffered from the arrival of thousands of men, where there were sheep in the pastures and crops ripening in the fields. They came to a village from which the estuary could be seen in the far distance. They kicked their horses into a canter along the grassy track that led into the village. The one-room and two-room hovels of the serfs reminded Ralph of Wigleigh. As he expected, the peasants fled in all directions, the women carrying babies and children, most of the men holding an axe or a sickle.
Ralph and his companions had played out this drama twenty or thirty times in the past few weeks. They were specialists in gathering intelligence. Usually, the army’s leaders wanted to know where local people had hidden their stocks. When they heard the English were coming, the sly peasants drove their cattle and sheep into woods, stashed sacks of flour in holes in the ground, and hid bales of hay in the bell tower of the church. They knew they would probably starve to death if they revealed where their food was, but they always told sooner or later. On other occasions the army needed directions, perhaps to an important town, a strategic bridge, a fortified abbey. The peasants would usually answer such inquiries unhesitatingly, but it was necessary to make sure they were not lying, for the shrewder among them might try to deceive the invading army, knowing the soldiers were not able to return to Punish them.
As Ralph and his men chased the fleeing peasants across gardens and fields, they ignored the men and concentrated on the women and children. Ralph knew that if he captured them, their husbands and fathers would come back.
He caught up with a girl of about thirteen. He rode alongside her for a few seconds, watching her terrified expression. She was dark-haired and dark-skinned, with plain, homely features, young but with a rounded woman’s body – the type he liked. She reminded him of Gwenda. In slightly different circumstances he would have enjoyed her sexually, as he had several similar girls in the last few weeks.
But today he had other priorities. He turned Griff to cut her off. She tried to dodge him, tripped over her own feet and fell flat in a vegetable patch. Ralph leaped off his horse and grabbed her as she got up. She screamed and scratched his face, so he punched her in the stomach to quiet her, then he grabbed her long hair. Walking his horse, he began to drag her back to the village. She stumbled and fell, but he just kept going, dragging her along by the hair; and she struggled to her feet, crying in pain. After that, she did not fall again.
They gathered in the little wooden church. The eight English soldiers had captured four women, four children and two babies in arms. They made them sit on the floor in front of the altar. A few moments later a man ran in, babbling in the local French, begging and pleading. Four others followed.
Ralph was pleased.
He stood at the altar, which was only a wooden table painted white. “Quiet!” he shouted. He waved his sword. They fell silent. He pointed at a young man. “You,” he said. “What are you?”
“A leather worker, lord. Please don’t harm my wife and child, they’ve done you no wrong.”
He pointed to another man. “You?”
The girl he had captured gasped, and Ralph concluded that they were related; father and daughter, he guessed.
“Just a poor cowherd, lord.”
“A cowherd?” That was good. “And how often do you take cattle across the river?”
“Once or twice a year, lord, when I go to market.”
“And where is the ford?”
He hesitated. “Ford? There is no ford. We have to cross the bridge at Abbeville.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, lord.”
He looked around. “All of you – is this the truth?”
They nodded.
Ralph considered. They were scared – terrified – but they could still be lying. “If I fetch the priest, and he brings a Bible, will you all swear on your immortal souls that there is no ford across the estuary?”
“Yes, lord.”
But that would take too long. Ralph looked at the girl he had captured. “Come here.”
She took a step back.
The cowherd fell to his knees. “Please, lord, don’t harm an innocent child, she is only thirteen-”
Alan Fernhill picked up the girl as if she were a sack of onions and threw her to Ralph, who caught her and held her. “You’re lying to me, all of you. There is a ford, I’m sure there is. I just need to know exactly where it is.”
“All right,” said the cowherd. “I’ll tell you, but leave the child alone.”
“Where is the ford?”
“It’s a mile downstream from Abbeville.”
“What’s the name of the village?”
The cowherd was thrown by the question for a moment, then he said: “There is no village, but you can see an inn on the far side.”
He was lying. He had never travelled, so he did not realize that there was always a village by a ford.
Ralph took the girl’s hand and placed it on the altar. He drew his knife. With a swift movement, he cut off one of her fingers. His heavy blade easily split her small bones. The girl screamed in agony, and her blood spurted red over the white paint of the altar. All the peasants cried out with horror. The cowherd took an angry step forward, but was stopped by the point of Alan Fernhill’s sword.
Ralph kept hold of the girl with one hand, and held up the severed finger on the point of his knife.
“You are the devil himself,” the cowherd said, shaking with shock.
“No, I’m not.” Ralph had heard that accusation before, but it still stung him. “I’m saving the lives of thousands of men,” he said. “And if I have to. I’ll cut off the rest of her fingers, one by one.”
“No, no!”
“Then tell me where the ford really is.” He brandished the knife.
The cowherd shouted: “The Blanchetaque, it’s called the Blanchetaque, please leave her alone!”
“The Blanchetaque?” said Ralph. He was pretending scepticism, but in fact this was promising. It was an unfamiliar word, but it sounded as if it might mean a white platform, and it was not the kind of thing that a terrified man would invent on the spur of the moment.
“Yes, lord, they call it that because of the white stones on the river bottom that enable you to cross the mud.” He was panic-stricken, tears streaming down his face, so he was almost certainly telling the truth, Ralph thought with satisfaction. The cowherd babbled on: “People say the stones were put there in olden times, by the Romans, please leave my little girl alone.”
“Where is it?”
“Ten miles downstream from Abbeville.”
“Not a mile?”
“I’m telling the truth this time, lord, as I hope to be saved!”
“And the name of the village?”
“Saigneville.”
“Is the ford always passable, or only at low tide?”
“Only at low tide, lord, especially with livestock or a cart.”
“But you know the tides.”
“Yes.”
“Now, I have only one more question for you, but it is a very important one. If I even suspect you may be lying to me, I will cut off her whole hand.” The girl screamed. Ralph said: “You know I mean it, don’t you?”
“Yes, lord, I’ll tell you anything!”
“When is low tide tomorrow?”
A look of panic came over the cowherd. “Ah – ah – let me work it out!” The man was so wrought up he could barely think.
The leather worker said: “I’ll tell you. My brother crossed yesterday, so I know. Low tide tomorrow will be in the middle of the morning, two hours before noon.”
“Yes!” said the cowherd. “That’s right! I was just trying to calculate. Mid-morning, or a little after. Then again in the evening.”
Ralph kept hold of the girl’s bleeding hand. “How sure are you?”
“Oh, lord, as sure as I am of my own name, I swear!”
The man probably did not know his own name right now, he was so distracted with terror. Ralph looked at the leather worker. There was no sign of deceit on his face, no defiance or eagerness to please in his expression: he just looked a bit ashamed of himself, as if he had been forced, against his will, to do something wrong. This is the truth, Ralph thought exultantly; I’ve done it.
He said: “The Blanchetaque. Ten miles downstream from Abbeville, at the village of Saigneville. White stones on the river bottom. Low tide at mid-morning tomorrow.”
“Yes, lord.”
Ralph let go of the girl’s wrist, and she ran sobbing to her father, who put his arms around her. Ralph looked down at the pool of blood on the white altar table. There was a lot of it, for a slip of a girl. “All right, men,” he said. “We’re finished here.”
The trumpets woke Ralph at first light. There was no time to light a fire or eat breakfast: the army struck camp immediately. Ten thousand men had to travel six miles by mid-morning, most of them on foot.
The prince of Wales’s division led the march off, followed by the king’s division, then the baggage train, then the rearguard. Scouts were sent out to check how far away the French army was. Ralph was in the vanguard, with the sixteen-year-old prince, who had the same name as his father, Edward.
They hoped to surprise the French by crossing the Somme at the ford. Last night the king had said: “Well done, Ralph Fitzgerald.” Ralph had long ago learned that such words meant nothing. He had performed numerous useful or brave tasks for King Edward, Earl Roland and other nobles, but he still had not been knighted. On this occasion he felt little resentment. His life was in as much danger today as it had ever been, and he was so glad to have found an escape route for himself that he hardly cared whether anyone gave him credit for saving the entire army.
As they marched, dozens of marshals and under-marshals patrolled constantly, heading the army in the right direction, keeping the formation together, maintaining the separation of divisions and rounding up stragglers. The marshals were all noblemen, for they had to have the authority to give orders. King Edward was fanatical about orderly marching.
They headed north. The land rose in a gentle slope to a ridge from which they could see the distant glint of the estuary. From there they descended through cornfields. As they passed through villages the marshals ensured there was no looting, because they did not want to carry extra baggage across the river. They also refrained from setting fire to the crops, for fear the smoke might betray their exact position to the enemy.
The sun was about to rise when the leaders reached Saigneville. The village stood on a bluff thirty feet above the river. From the lip of the bank, Ralph looked over a formidable obstacle: a mile and a half of water and marshland. He could see the whitish stones on the bottom marking the ford. On the other side of the estuary was a green hill. As the sun appeared on his right, he saw on the far slope a glint of metal and a flash of colour, and his heart filled with dismay.
The strengthening light confirmed his suspicion: the enemy was waiting for them. The French knew where the ford was, of course, and a wise commander had provided for the possibility that the English might discover its location. So much for surprise.
Ralph looked at the water. It was flowing west, showing that the tide was going out; but it was still too deep for a man to wade. They would have to wait.
The English army continued to build up at the shore, hundreds more men arriving every minute. If the king had tried now to turn the army round and go back, the confusion would have been nightmarish.
A scout returned, and Ralph listened as the news was related to the prince of Wales. King Philippe’s army had left Abbeville and was approaching on this bank of the river.
The scout was sent to determine how fast the French army was moving.
There was no turning back, Ralph realized with fear in his heart: the English had to cross the water.
He studied the far side, trying to figure out how many French were on the north bank. More than a thousand, he thought. But the greater danger was the army of tens of thousands coming up from Abbeville. Ralph had learned, in many encounters with the French, that they were extraordinarily brave – foolhardy, sometimes – but they were also undisciplined. They marched in disarray, they disobeyed orders, and they sometimes attacked, to prove their valour, when they would have been wiser to wait. But if they could overcome their disorderly habits and get here in the next few hours, they would catch King Edward’s army in midstream. With the enemy on both banks, the English could be wiped out.
After the devastation they had wrought in the last six weeks, they could expect no mercy.
Ralph thought about armour. He had a fine suit of plate armour that he had taken from a French corpse at Cambrai seven years ago, but it was on a wagon in the baggage train. Furthermore, he was not sure he could wade through a mile and a half of water and mud so encumbered. He was wearing a steel cap and a short cape of chain-mail, which was all he could manage on the march. It would have to do. The others had similar light protection. Most of the infantry carried their helmets hanging from their belts, and they would put them on before coming within range of the enemy, but no one marched in full armour.
The sun rose high in the east. The water level fell until it was just knee deep. The noblemen came from the king’s entourage with orders to begin the crossing. Earl Roland’s son, William of Caster, brought the instructions to Ralph’s group. “The archers go first, and begin firing as soon as they are near enough to the other side,” William told them. Ralph looked at him stonily. He had not forgotten that William had tried to have him hanged for doing what half the English army had done in the last six weeks. “Then, when you get to the beach, the archers scatter left and right to let the knights and men-at-arms through.” It sounded simple, Ralph thought; orders always did. But it was going to be bloody. The enemy would be perfectly positioned, on the slope above the river, to pick off the English soldiers struggling unprotected through the water.
The men of Hugh Despenser led the advance, carrying his distinctive black-on-white banner. His archers waded in, holding their bows above the water line, and the knights and men-at-arms splashed along behind. Roland’s men followed, and soon Ralph and Alan were riding through the water.
A mile and a half was not far to walk but, Ralph now realized, it was a long way to wade, even for a horse. The depth varied: in some places they walked on swampy ground above the surface, in others the water came up to the waists of the infantry. Men and animals tired quickly. The August sun beat down on their heads while their wet feet grew numb with cold. And all the time, as they looked ahead, they could see, more and more clearly, the enemy waiting for them on the north bank.
Ralph studied the opposing force with growing trepidation. The front line, along the shore, consisted of crossbowmen. He knew that these were not Frenchmen but Italian mercenaries, always called Genoese but in fact coming from various parts of Italy. The crossbow had a slower rate of fire than the longbow, but the Genoese were going to have plenty of time to reload while their targets lumbered through the shallows. Behind the archers, on the green rise, stood foot soldiers and mounted knights ready to charge.
Looking back, Ralph saw thousands of English crossing the river behind him. Once again, turning back was not an option; in fact, those behind were pressing forward, crowding the leaders.
Now he could see the enemy ranks clearly. Ranged along the shore were the heavy wooden shields, called pavises, used by the crossbowmen. As soon as the English came within range, the Genoese began to shoot.
At a distance of three hundred yards, their aim was inaccurate, and the bolts fell with diminished force. All the same, a handful of horses and men were hit. The injured fell and drifted downstream to drown. Wounded horses thrashed in the water, turning it bloody. Ralph’s heart beat faster.
As the English came closer to the shore, the accuracy of the Genoese improved, and the bolts landed with greater power. The crossbow was slow, but it fired a steel-tipped iron bolt with terrible force. All around Ralph, men and horses fell. Some of those hit died instantly. There was nothing he could do to protect himself, he realized with an apprehension of doom: either he would be lucky, or he would die. The air filled with the awful noise of battle: the swish of deadly arrows, the curses of wounded men, the screams of horses in agony.
The archers at the front of the English column shot back. Their six-foot longbows dragged their ends in the water, so they had to hold them at an unfamiliar angle, and the river bottom beneath their feet was slippery, but they did their best.
Crossbow bolts could penetrate armour plate at close range, but none of the English was wearing any serious armour anyway. Apart from their helmets, they had little protection from the deadly hail.
Ralph would have turned and run if he could. However, behind him ten thousand men and half as many horses were pressing forward, and would have trampled him and drowned him if he had tried to go back. He had no alternative but to lower his head to Griff’s neck and urge him on.
The survivors among the leading English archers at last reached shallow water and began to deploy their longbows more effectively. They shot in a trajectory, over the top of the pavises. Once they got started, English bowmen could shoot twelve arrows a minute. The shafts were made of wood – usually ash – but they had steel tips, and when they fell like rain they were terrifying. Suddenly the shooting from the enemy side lessened. Some of the shields fell. The Genoese were driven back, and the English began to reach the foreshore.
As soon as the archers got their feet on solid ground they dispersed left and right, leaving the shore clear for the knights, who charged out of the shallows at the enemy lines. Ralph, still wading across the river, had seen enough battles to know what the French tactics should be at this point: they needed to hold their line and let the crossbowmen continue to slaughter the English on the beach and in the water. But the chivalric code would not permit the French nobility to hide behind low-born archers, and they broke the line to ride forth and engage with the English knights – thereby throwing away much of the benefit of their position. Ralph felt a glimmer of hope.
The Genoese fell back, and the beach was a melee. Ralph’s heart pounded with fear and excitement. The French still had the advantage of charging downhill, and they were fully armoured: they slaughtered Hugh Despenser’s men wholesale. The vanguard of the charge splashed into the shallows, cutting down the men still in the water.
Earl Roland’s archers reached the edge just ahead of Ralph and Alan. Those who survived gained the shore and divided. Ralph felt that the English were doomed, and he was sure to die, but there was nowhere to go except forward, and suddenly he was charging, head down by Griff’s neck, sword in the air, straight at the French line. He ducked a scything sword and reached dry ground. He struck uselessly at a steel helmet, then Griff cannoned into another horse. The French horse was larger but younger, and it stumbled, throwing its rider to the mud. Ralph whirled Griff around, went back and prepared to charge again.
His sword was of limited use against plate armour, but he was a big man on a spirited horse, and his best hope was to knock enemy soldiers off their mounts. He charged again. At this point in a battle he felt no rear. Instead, he was possessed by an exhilarating rage that drove him to kill as many of the enemy as he could. When battle was joined, time stood still, and he fought from moment to moment. Later, when the action came to an end, if he was still alive, he would be astonished to see that the sun was setting and a whole day had gone by. Now he rode at the enemy again and again, dodging their swords, thrusting where he saw an opportunity; never slowing his pace, for that was fatal.
At some point – it might have been after a few minutes or a few hours – he realized, with incredulity, that the English were no longer being slaughtered. In fact, they seemed to be winning ground and gaining hope. He detached himself from the melee and paused, panting, to take stock.
The beach was carpeted with corpses, but there were as many French as English, and Ralph realized the folly of the French charge. As soon as the knights on both sides engaged, the Genoese crossbowmen had stopped firing, for fear of hitting their own side, so the enemy had no longer been able to pick off the English in the water like ducks on a pond. Ever since then the English had streamed out of the estuary in their hordes, all following the same orders, archers spreading left and right, knights and infantrymen pushing relentlessly forward, so that the French were inundated by sheer weight of numbers. Glancing back at the water, Ralph saw that the tide was now rising again, so those English still in the river were desperate to get out, regardless of the fate that might await them on the beach.
As he was catching his breath, the French lost their nerve. Forced off the beach, chased up the hill, overwhelmed by the army stampeding out of the rising water, they began to retreat. The English pressed forward, hardly able to believe their luck; and, as so often happened, it took remarkably little time for retreat to turn into flight, with every man for himself.
Ralph looked back over the estuary. The baggage train was in midstream, horses and oxen pulling the heavy carts across the ford, lashed by drivers frantic to beat the tide. There was scrappy fighting on the far bank, now. The vanguard of King Philippe’s army must have arrived and engaged a few stragglers, and Ralph thought he recognized, in the sunlight, the colours of the Bohemian light cavalry. But they were too late.
He slumped in his saddle, suddenly weak with relief. The battle was over. Incredibly, against all expectations, the English had slipped out of the French trap.
For today, they were safe.
Caris and Mair arrived in the vicinity of Abbeville on 25 August, and were dismayed to find the French army already there. Tens of thousands of foot soldiers and archers were camped in the fields around the town. On the road they heard, not just regional French accents, but the tongues of places farther afield: Flanders, Bohemia, Italy, Savoy, Majorca.
The French and their allies were chasing King Edward of England and his army – as were Caris and Mair. Caris wondered how she and Mair could ever get ahead in the race.
When they passed through the gates and entered the town, late in the afternoon, the streets were crowded with French noblemen. Caris had never seen such a display of costly clothing, fine weapons, magnificent horses and new shoes, not even in London. It seemed as if the entire aristocracy of France was here. The innkeepers, bakers, street entertainers and prostitutes of the town were working non-stop to fulfil the needs of their guests. Every tavern was full of counts and every house had knights sleeping on the floor.
The abbey of St Peter was on the list of religious houses where Caris and Mair had planned to take shelter. But even if they had still been dressed as nuns they would have had trouble getting into the guest quarters: the king of France was staying there, and his entourage took up all the available space. The two Kingsbridge nuns, disguised now as Christophe de Longchamp and Michel de Longchamp, were directed to the grand abbey church, where several hundred of the king’s squires, grooms and other attendants were bedding down at night on the cold stone floor of the nave. However, the marshal in charge told them there was no room, and they would have to sleep in the fields like everyone else of low station.
The north transept was a hospital for the wounded. On the way out, Caris paused to watch a surgeon sewing up a deep cut on the cheek of a groaning man-at-arms. The surgeon was quick and skilful, and when he had finished Caris said admiringly: “You did that very well.”
“Thank you,” he said. Glancing at her he added: “But how would you know, laddie?”
She knew because she had watched Matthew Barber at work many times, but she had to make up a story quickly, so she said: “Back in Longchamp, my father is surgeon to the sieur.”
“And are you with your sieur now?”
“He has been captured by the English, and my lady has sent me and my brother to negotiate his ransom.”
“Hmm. You might have done better to go straight to London. If he isn’t there now, he soon will be. However, now that you’re here, you can earn a bed for the night by helping me.”
“Gladly.”
“Have you seen your father wash wounds with warm wine?”
Caris could wash wounds in her sleep. In a few moments she and Mair were doing what they knew best, taking care of sick people. Most of the men had been hurt the previous day, in a battle at a ford over the river Somme. Injured noblemen had been attended to first, and now the surgeon was getting around to the common soldiers. They worked non-stop for several hours. The long summer evening turned to twilight and candles were brought. At last all the bones had been set, the crushed extremities amputated and the wounds sewn up; and the surgeon, Martin Chirurgien, took them to the refectory for supper.
They were treated as part of the king’s entourage, and fed stewed mutton with onions. They had not tasted meat for a week. They even had good red wine. Mair drank with relish. Caris was glad they had the opportunity to build up their strength, but she was still anxious about catching up with the English.
A knight at their table said: “Do you realize that in the abbot’s dining room, next door, four kings and two archbishops are eating supper?” He counted on his fingers as he named them: “The kings of France, Bohemia, Rome and Majorca, and the archbishops of Rouen and Sens.”
Caris decided she had to see. She went out of the room by the door that seemed to lead to the kitchen. She saw servants carrying laden platters into another room, and peeped through the door.
The men around the table were undoubtedly high-ranking – the board was loaded with roasted fowls, huge joints of beef and mutton, rich puddings and pyramids of sugared fruits. The man at the head was presumably King Philippe, fifty-three years old with a scatter of grey hairs in his blond beard. Beside him, a younger man who resembled him was holding forth. “The English are not noblemen,” he said, red-faced with fury. “They are like thieves, who steal in the night and then run away.”
Martin appeared at Caris’s shoulder and murmured in her ear: “That’s my master – Charles, count of Alençon, the king’s brother.”
A new voice said: “I disagree.” Caris saw immediately that the speaker was blind, and concluded that he must be King Jean of Bohemia. “The English cannot run much longer. They are low on food, and they’re tired.”
Charles said: “Edward wants to join forces with the Anglo-Flemish army that has invaded north-east France from Flanders.”
Jean shook his head. “We learned today that that army has gone into retreat. I think Edward has to stand and fight. And, from his point of view, the sooner the better, for his men are only going to become more dispirited as the days go by.”
Charles said excitedly: “Then we may catch them tomorrow. After what they have done to Normandy, every one of them should die – knights, noblemen, even Edward himself!”
King Philippe put a hand on Charles’s arm, silencing him. “Our brother’s anger is understandable,” he said. “The crimes of the English are disgusting. But remember: when we encounter the enemy, the most important thing is to put aside any differences there may be between us – forget our quarrels and grudges – and trust one another, at least for the course of the battle. We outnumber the English, and we should vanquish them easily – but we must fight together, as one army. Let us drink to unity.”
That was an interesting toast, Caris decided as she discreetly withdrew. Clearly the king could not take it for granted that his allies would act as a team. But what worried her about the conversation was the likelihood that there would be a battle soon, perhaps tomorrow. She and Mair would have to take care not to get mixed up in it.
As they returned to the refectory, Martin said quietly: “Like the king, you have an unruly brother.”
Caris saw that Mair was getting drunk. She was overplaying her boyish role, sitting with her legs splayed and her elbows on the table. “By the saints, that was a good stew, but it’s making me fart like the devil,” said the sweet-faced nun in men’s clothing. “Sorry about the stink, lads.” She refilled her wine cup and drank deeply.
The men laughed at her indulgently, amused by the sight of a boy getting drunk for the first time, doubtless remembering embarrassing incidents in their own pasts.
Caris took her arm. “Time you were in bed, baby brother,” she said. “Off we go.”
Mair went willingly enough. “My big brother acts like an old woman,” she said to the company. “But he loves me – don’t you, Christophe?”
“Yes, Michel, I love you,” Caris said, and the men laughed again.
Mair held on tightly to her. Caris walked her back to the church and found the spot in the nave where they had left their blankets. She made Mair lie down, and covered her with her blanket.
“Kiss me goodnight, Christophe,” said Mair.
Caris kissed her lips, then said: “You’re drunk. Go to sleep. We have to start early in the morning.”
Caris lay awake for some time, worrying. She felt she had had terribly bad luck. She and Mair had almost caught up with the English army and Bishop Richard – but at exactly the same moment the French had also caught up with them. She should keep well away from the battlefield. On the other hand, if she and Mair got stuck in the rear of the French army they might never catch the English.
On balance she thought she had better set off first thing in the morning, and try to get ahead of the French. An army this big could not move fast – it would take hours just to form up into marching order. If she and Mair were nimble they should be able to stay ahead. It was risky – but they had done nothing but take risks since leaving Portsmouth.
She drifted off to sleep, and woke when the bell rang for Matins soon after three o’clock in the morning. She roused Mair, and was unsympathetic when she complained of a headache. While the monks sang psalms in the church, Caris and Mair went to the stables and found their horses. The sky was clear, and they could see by starlight.
The town’s bakers had been working all night, so they were able to buy loaves for their journey. But the city gates were still closed: they had to wait impatiently until dawn, shivering in the cool air, eating the new bread.
At about half past four they at last left Abbeville and headed northwest along the right bank of the Somme, the direction the English army was said to be taking.
They were only a quarter of a mile away when the trumpets sounded a reveille on the walls of the town. Like Caris, King Philippe had decided on an early start. In the fields, the soldiers and men-at-arms began to stir. The marshals must have got their orders last night, for they seemed to know what to do, and before long some of the army joined Caris and Mair on the road.
Caris still hoped to reach the Enghsh ahead of these troops. The French would obviously have to stop and regroup before joining battle. That ought to give Caris and Mair time to reach their countrymen and find some safe place beyond the battlefield. She did not want to get caught between the two sides. She was beginning to think she had been foolhardy to set out on this mission. Knowing nothing of war, she had not been able to imagine the difficulties and dangers. But it was too late now for regrets. And they had got this far without coming to harm.
The soldiers on the road were not French but Italian. They carried steel crossbows and sheaves of iron arrows. They were friendly, and Caris chatted to them in a mixture of Norman French, Latin, and the Italian she had picked up from Buonaventura Caroli. They told her that in battle they always formed the front line, and fired from behind their heavy wooden pavises, which at the moment were in wagons somewhere behind them. They grumbled about their hasty breakfast, disparaged French knights as impulsive and quarrelsome, and spoke with admiration of their leader, Ottone Doria, who could be seen a few yards ahead.
The sun climbed in the sky and everyone got hot. Because the crossbowmen knew they might do battle today, they were wearing heavy quilted coats and carrying iron helmets and knee guards as well as their bows and arrows. Towards noon, Mair declared that she would faint unless they stopped for a break. Caris, too, felt exhausted – they had been riding since dawn – and she knew their horses also needed rest. So, against her inclination, she was forced to stop while thousands of crossbowmen overtook them.
Caris and Mair watered their ponies in the Somme and ate some more bread. When they set off again, they found themselves marching with French knights and men-at-arms. Caris recognized Philippe’s choleric brother Charles at the head of the group. She was in the thick of the French army, but there was nothing to do but keep moving and hope for a chance to get ahead.
Soon after midday an order came down the line. The English were not west of here, as previously believed, but north; and the French king had ordered that his army should swing in that direction – not in a column, but all at the same time. The men around Caris and Mair, led by Count Charles, turned off the riverside road down a narrow path through the fields. Caris followed with a sinking heart.
A familiar voice hailed her, and Martin Chirurgien came alongside. “This is chaos,” he said grimly. “The marching order has completely broken down.”
A small group of men on fast horses appeared across the fields and hailed Count Charles. “Scouts,” said Martin, and he went forward to hear what they had to say. Caris and Mair’s ponies went too, with the natural instinct of horses to stick together.
“The English have halted,” they heard. “They’ve taken up a defensive position on a ridge near the town of Crécy.”
Martin said: “That’s Henri le Moine, an old comrade of the king of Bohemia.”
Charles was pleased by the news. “Then we shall have battle today!” he said, and the knights around him gave a ragged cheer.
Henri raised a hand in caution. “We’re suggesting that all units stop and regroup,” he said.
“Stop now?” Charles roared. “When the English are at last willing to stand and fight? Let’s get at them!”
“Our men and horses need rest,” Henri said quietly. “The king is far in the rear. Give him a chance to catch up and look at the battlefield. He can make his dispositions today for an attack tomorrow, when the men will be fresh.”
“To hell with dispositions. There are only a few thousand English. We’ll just overrun them.”
Henri made a helpless gesture. “It is not for me to command you, my lord. But I will ask your brother the king for his orders.”
“Ask him! Ask him!” said Charles, and he rode on.
Martin said to Caris: “I don’t know why my master is so intemperate.”
Caris said thoughtfully: “I suppose he has to prove that he’s brave enough to rule, even though by an accident of birth he’s not the king.”
Martin shot her a sharp look. “You’re very wise, for a mere boy.”
Caris avoided his eye, and vowed to remember her false identity. There was no hostility in Martin’s voice, but he was suspicious. As a surgeon, he would be familiar with the subtle differences in bone structure between men and women, and he might have noticed that Christophe and Michel de Longchamp were abnormal. Fortunately, he did not press the matter.
The sky began to cloud over, but the air was still warm and humid. Woodland appeared on the left, and Martin told Caris this was the Forest of Crécy. They could not be far from the English – but now Caris wondered how she was going to detach herself from the French and join the English without being killed by one side or the other.
The effect of the forest was to crowd the left flank of the marching army, so that the road on which Caris was riding became jam-packed with troops, the different divisions getting hopelessly mixed up.
Couriers came down the line with new orders from the king: the army was instructed to halt and make camp. Caris’s hopes rose: now she would have a chance to get ahead of the French army. There was an altercation between Charles and a courier, and Martin went to Charles’s side to listen. He came back looking incredulous. “Count Charles is refusing to obey the orders!” he said.
“Why?” Caris asked in dismay.
“He thinks his brother is over-cautious. He, Charles, will not be so lily-livered as to halt before such a weak enemy.”
“I thought everyone had to obey the king in battle.”
“They should. But nothing is more important to French noblemen than their code of chivalry. They would die rather than do something cowardly.”
The army marched on in defiance of its orders. “I’m glad you two are here,” Martin said. “I’m going to need your help again. Win or lose, there will be a lot of wounded men by sundown.”
Caris realized she could not escape. But somehow she no longer wanted to get away. In fact she felt a strange eagerness. If these men were mad enough to maim one another with swords and arrows, she could at least come to the aid of the wounded.
Soon the crossbowmen’s leader, Ottone Doria, came riding back through the crowd – not without difficulty, given the crush – to speak to Charles of Alençon. “Halt your men!” he shouted at the count.
Charles took offence. “How dare you give orders to me?”
“The orders come from the king! We are to halt – but my men can’t stop, because of yours pushing from behind!”
“Then let them march on.”
“We are within sight of the enemy. If we go any farther we’ll have to do battle.”
“So be it.”
“But the men have been marching all day. They’re hungry and thirsty and tired. And my crossbowmen don’t have their pavises.”
“Are they too cowardly to fight without shields?”
“Are you calling my men cowards?”
“If they won’t fight, yes.”
Ottone was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke in a low voice, and Caris could only just hear his words. “You’re a fool, Alençon. And you’ll be in hell by nightfall.” Then he turned his horse and rode away.
Caris felt water on her face, and looked up at the sky. It was beginning to rain.
The shower was heavy but brief and, when it cleared, Ralph looked down over the valley and saw, with a thrill of fear, that the enemy had arrived.
The English occupied a ridge that ran from south-west to north-east. At their backs, to the north-west, was a wood. In front and on both sides the hill sloped down. Their right flank looked over the town of Crécy-en-Ponthieu, which nestled in the valley of the river Maye.
The French were approaching from the south.
Ralph was on the right flank, with Earl Roland’s men, commanded by the young prince of Wales. They were drawn up in the harrow formation that had proved so effective against the Scots. To the left and right, triangular formations of archers stood, like the two teeth of a harrow. Between the teeth, set well back, were dismounted knights and men-at-arms. This was a radical innovation, and one which many knights still resisted: they liked their horses and felt vulnerable on foot. But the king was implacable: everyone on foot. In the ground in front of the knights, the men had dug pitfalls – holes in the ground a foot deep and a foot square – to trip the French horses.
On Ralph’s right, at the end of the ridge, was a novelty: three new machines called bombards, or cannons, that used explosive powder to shoot round stones. They had been dragged all the way across Normandy but so far had never been fired, and no one was sure whether they would work. Today King Edward needed to use every means at his disposal, for the enemy’s superiority was somewhere between four-to-one and seven-to-one.
On the English left flank, the earl of Northampton’s men were drawn up in the same harrow formation. Behind the front lines, a third battalion led by the king stood in reserve. Behind the king were two fall-back positions. The baggage wagons formed the first, drawn up in a circle, with non-combatants – cooks, engineers and ostlers – inside the circle with the horses. The second was the wood itself where, in the event of a rout, the remnants of the English army could flee, and the mounted French knights would find it difficult to follow.
They had been here since early morning, with nothing to eat but pea soup with onions. Ralph was wearing his armour and had been sweltering in the heat, so the rainstorm had been welcome. It had also muddied the slope up which the French would have to charge, making their approach treacherously slippery.
Ralph could guess what the French tactics would be. The Genoese crossbowmen would shoot from behind their shields, to soften up the English line. Then, when they had done enough damage, they would step aside, and the French knights would charge on their warhorses.
There was nothing so terrifying as that charge. Called the furor fransiscus, it was the ultimate weapon of the French nobility. Their code made them disregard their own safety. Those huge horses, with riders so completely armoured that they looked like iron men, simply rolled over archers, shields, swords and men-at-arms.
Of course, it did not always work. The charge could be repulsed, especially where the terrain favoured the defenders, as it did here. However, the French were not easily discouraged: they would charge again. And they had such enormous superiority in numbers that Ralph could not see how the English could hold them off indefinitely.
He was scared, but all the same he did not regret being with the army. For seven years he had lived the life of action he had always wanted, in which strong men were kings and the weak counted for nothing. He was twenty-nine, and men of action rarely lived to be old. He had committed foul sins, but had been absolved of them all, most recently this morning, by the bishop of Shiring, who was now standing next to his father the earl, armed with a vicious-looking mace – priests were not supposed to shed blood, a rule they acknowledged cursorily by using blunt weapons on the battlefield.
The crossbowmen in their white coats reached the foot of the slope. The English archers, who had been sitting down, their arrows stuck point-first into the ground in front of them, now began to stand up and string their bows. Ralph guessed that most of them felt what he did, a mixture of relief that the long wait was over and fear at the thought of the odds against them.
Ralph thought there was plenty of time. He could see that the Genoese did not have the heavy wooden pavises that were an essential element of their tactics. The battle would not start until the shields were brought, he felt sure.
Behind the crossbowmen, thousands of knights were pouring into the valley from the south, spreading left and right behind the crossbowmen. The sun came out again, lighting up the bright colours of their banners and the horses’ coats. Ralph recognized the coat-of-arms of Charles, count of Alençon, King Philippe’s brother.
The crossbowmen stopped at the foot of the slope. There were thousands of them. As if at a signal, they all gave a terrific shout. Some jumped up in the air. Trumpets sounded.
It was their war cry, meant to terrify the enemy, and it might have worked on some foes, but the English army consisted of experienced fighting men who were at the end of a six-week campaign, and it took more than shouting to scare them. They looked on impassively.
Then, to Ralph’s utter astonishment, the Genoese lifted their crossbows and shot.
What were they doing? They had no shields!
The sound was sudden and terrifying, five thousand iron bolts flying through the air. But the crossbowmen were out of range. Perhaps they had failed to take account of the fact that they were shooting uphill; and the afternoon sun behind the English lines must have been shining in their eyes. Whatever the reason, their bolts fell uselessly short.
There was a flash of flame and a crash like thunder from the middle of the English front line. Amazed, Ralph saw smoke rising from where the new bombards were. Their sound was impressive, but when he returned his gaze to the enemy ranks he saw little actual damage. However, many of the crossbowmen were shocked enough to pause in their reloading.
At that moment, the prince of Wales shouted the order for his archers to shoot.
Two thousand longbows were raised. Knowing they were too distant to shoot in a straight line parallel with the ground, the archers aimed into the sky, intuitively plotting a shallow trajectory for their arrows. All the bows bent simultaneously, like blades of wheat in a field blown by a sudden summer breeze; then the arrows were released with a collective sound like a church bell tolling. The shafts, flying faster than the swiftest bird, rose into the air then turned downwards and fell on the crossbowmen like a hailstorm.
The enemy ranks were densely packed, and the padded Genoese coats gave little protection. Without their shields, the crossbowmen were horribly vulnerable. Hundreds of them fell dead or wounded.
But that was only the beginning.
While the surviving crossbowmen were rewinding their weapons, the English fired again and again. It took an archer only four or five seconds to pull an arrow from the ground, notch it, draw the bow, take aim, shoot and reach for another. Experienced, practised men could do it faster. In the space of a minute, twenty thousand arrows fell on the unprotected crossbowmen.
It was a massacre, and the consequence was inevitable: they turned and ran.
In moments the Genoese were out of range, and the English held their fire, laughing at their unexpected triumph and jeering at the enemy. But then the crossbowmen encountered another hazard. The French knights were moving forward. A dense herd of fleeing crossbowmen came head to head with massed horsemen itching to charge. For a moment there was chaos.
Ralph was amazed to see the enemy begin to fight among themselves. The knights drew their swords and started to hack the bowmen, who discharged their bolts at the knights then fought on with knives. The French noblemen should have been trying to stop the carnage but, as far as Ralph could see, those in the most expensive armour and riding the largest horses were at the forefront of the fight, attacking their own side with ever-greater fury.
The knights drove the crossbowmen back up the slope until they were again within longbow range. Once again the prince of Wales gave the order for the English archers to shoot. Now the hail of arrows fell among knights as well as bowmen. In seven years of warfare Ralph had seen nothing like this. Hundreds of the enemy lay dead and wounded, and not a single English soldier had been so much as scratched.
At last the French knights retreated, and the remaining crossbowmen scattered. They left the slope below the English position littered with bodies. Welsh and Cornish knifemen ran forward from the English ranks on to the battlefield and began finishing off the French wounded, retrieving undamaged arrows for the longbowmen to reuse, and no doubt robbing the corpses while they were at it. At the same time, boy runners got fresh stocks of arrows from the supply train and brought them to the English front line.
There was a pause, but it did not last long.
The French knights regrouped, reinforced by new arrivals who were appearing in their hundreds and thousands. Peering into their ranks, Ralph could see that the colours of Alençon had been joined by those of Flanders and Normandy. The standard of the count of Alençon moved to the front, then the trumpets sounded, and the horsemen began to move.
Ralph put his faceplate down and drew his sword. He thought of his mother. He knew she prayed for him every time she went to church, and he felt a moment of warm gratitude to her. Then he watched the enemy.
The huge horses were slow to start, encumbered as they were by riders in full plate armour. The setting sun glinted off the French visors, and the flags snapped in the evening breeze. Gradually the pounding of the hooves grew louder and the pace of the charge picked up. The knights yelled encouragement to their mounts and to one another, waving their swords and spears. They came like a wave on to a beach, seeming to get bigger and faster as they got nearer. Ralph’s mouth was dry and his heart beat like a big drum.
They came within bowshot, and again the prince gave the order to shoot. Once more, the arrows rose into the air and fell like deadly rain.
The charging knights were fully armoured, and it was a lucky shot indeed that found the weak spot in the joints between plates. But their mounts had only faceplates and chain-mail neck cowls. So it was the horses that were vulnerable. When the arrows pierced their shoulders and their haunches, some stopped dead, some fell, and some turned and tried to flee. The screams of beasts in pain filled the air. Collisions between horses caused more knights to fall to the ground, joining the bodies of Genoese crossbowmen. Those behind were going too fast to take evasive action, so they just rode over the fallen.
But there were thousands of knights, and they kept coming.
The range shortened for the archers, and their trajectory flattened. When the charge was a hundred yards away, they switched to a different type of arrow, with a flattened steel tip for punching through armour instead of a point. Now they could kill the riders, although a shot that hit a horse was almost as good.
The ground was already wet with rain, and now the charge encountered the pitfalls dug earlier by the English. The horses’ momentum was such that few of them could step into a hole a foot deep without stumbling, and many fell, pitching their riders on to the ground in the path of other horses.
The oncoming knights shied away from the archers so, as the English had planned, the charge was funnelled into a narrow killing field, fired upon from left and right.
This was the key to the English tactics. At this point, the wisdom of forcing the English knights to dismount became clear. If they had been on horseback they could not have resisted the urge to charge – and then the archers would have had to cease shooting, for fear of killing their own side. But, because the knights and men-at-arms remained in their lines, the enemy could be slaughtered wholesale, with no casualties on the English side.
But it was not enough. The French were too numerous and too brave. Still they came on, and at last they reached the line of dismounted knights and men-at-arms in the fork between the two masses of archers, and the real fighting began.
The horses trampled over the front ranks of English, but their charge had been slowed by the muddy uphill slope, and they were brought up short by the densely packed English line. Ralph was suddenly in the thick of it, avoiding deadly downward blows from mounted knights, swinging his sword at the legs of their horses, aiming to cripple the beasts by the easiest and most reliable method, cutting their hamstrings. The fighting was fierce: the English had nowhere to go, and the French knew that if they retreated they would have to ride back through the same lethal hail of arrows.
Men fell all around Ralph, hacked down by swords and battleaxes, then trampled by the mighty iron-shod hooves of the warhorses. He saw Earl Roland go down to a French sword. Roland’s son, Bishop Richard, swung his mace to protect his fallen father, but a warhorse shouldered Richard aside, and the earl was trampled.
The English were forced back, and Ralph realized that the French had a target: the prince of Wales.
Ralph had no affection for the privileged sixteen-year-old heir to the throne, but he knew it would be a crushing blow to English morale if the prince were captured or killed. Ralph moved back and to his left, joining several others who thickened the shield of fighting men around the prince. But the French intensified their efforts, and they were on horseback.
Then Ralph found himself fighting shoulder to shoulder with the prince, recognizing him by his quartered surcoat, with fleurs-de-lis on a blue background and heraldic lions on red. A moment later, a French horseman swung at the prince with an axe, and the prince fell to the ground.
It was a bad moment.
Ralph sprang forward and lunged at the attacker, sliding his long sword into the man’s armpit, where the armour was jointed. He had the satisfaction of feeling the point penetrate flesh, and saw blood spurt from the wound.
Someone else straddled the fallen prince and swung a big sword two-handed at men and horses alike. Ralph saw that it was the prince’s standard-bearer, Richard FitzSimon, who had dropped the flag over his supine master. For a few moments Richard and Ralph fought savagely to defend the king’s son, not knowing if he was alive or dead.
Then reinforcements arrived. The earl of Arundel appeared with a large force of men-at-arms, all fresh to the fight. The newcomers joined the battle with vigour, and they turned the tables. The French began to fall back.
The prince of Wales got to his knees. Ralph put up his visor and helped the prince to his feet. The boy seemed to be hurt, but not seriously, and Ralph turned away and fought on.
A moment later the French broke. Despite the lunacy of their tactics, their courage had almost enabled them to sever the English line – but not quite. Now they fled, many more falling as they ran the gauntlet of archers, stumbling down the bloody slope back to their own lines; and a cheer went up from the English, weary but jubilant.
Once again the Welsh invaded the battlefield, cutting the throats of the wounded and collecting thousands of arrows. The archers, too, picked up spent shafts to replenish their stocks. From the rear, cooks appeared with jugs of beer and wine, and surgeons rushed to attend injured noblemen.
Ralph saw William of Caster bend over Earl Roland. Roland was breathing, but his eyes were closed and he looked near to death.
Ralph wiped his bloody sword on the ground and put his visor up to drink a tankard of ale. The prince of Wales approached him and said: “What’s your name?”
“Ralph Fitzgerald of Wigleigh, my lord.”
“You fought bravely. You shall be Sir Ralph tomorrow, if the king listens to me.”
Ralph glowed with pleasure. “Thank you, lord.”
The prince nodded graciously and moved away.
Caris watched the early stages of the battle from the far side of the valley. She saw the Genoese crossbowmen try to flee, only to be cut down by knights of their own side. Then she saw the first great charge, with the colours of Charles of Alençon leading thousands of knights and men-at-arms.
She had never seen battle, and she was utterly sickened. Hundreds of knights fell to the English arrows, to be trampled by the hooves of the great warhorses. She was too far away to be able to follow the hand-to-hand fighting, but she saw the swords flash and the men fall, and she wanted to weep. As a nun, she had seen severe injuries – men who had fallen from high scaffolding, hurt themselves with sharp tools, suffered hunting accidents – and she always felt the pain and the waste of a lost hand, a crushed leg, a damaged brain. To see men inflicting such wounds on one another intentionally revolted her.
For a long time it seemed the fight could go either way. If she had been at home, hearing news of the war from afar, she might have hoped for an English victory, but after what she had seen in the last two weeks she felt a sort of disgusted neutrality. She could not identify with the English who had murdered peasants and burned their crops, and it made no difference to her that they had committed these atrocities in Normandy. Of course, they would say the French deserved what they got because they had burned Portsmouth, but that was a stupid way to think – so stupid that it led to scenes of horror such as this.
The French retreated, and she assumed they would regroup and reorganize, and wait for the king to arrive to develop a new battle plan. They still had overwhelming superiority in numbers, she could see: there were tens of thousands of troops in the valley, with more still arriving.
But the French did not regroup. Instead, every new battalion that arrived went straight into the attack, throwing themselves suicidally up the hill at the English position. The second and subsequent charges fared worse than the first. Some were cut down by archers even before they reached the English lines; the rest were beaten off by foot soldiers. The slope below the ridge became shiny with the gushing blood of hundreds of men and horses.
After the first charge, Caris looked only occasionally at the battle. She was too busy tending those French wounded who were lucky enough to be able to leave the field. Martin Chirurgien had realized that she was as good a surgeon as he. Giving her free access to his instruments, he left her and Mair to work independently. They washed, sewed and bandaged hour after hour.
News of prominent casualties came back to them from the front line. Charles of Alençon was the first high-ranking fatality. Caris could not help feeling that he deserved his fate. She had witnessed his foolish enthusiasm and careless indiscipline. Hours later, King Jean of Bohemia was reported dead, and she wondered what madness drove a blind man to battle.
“In God’s name, why don’t they stop?” she said to Martin when he brought her a cup of ale to refresh her.
“Fear,” he replied. “They’re scared of disgrace. To leave the field without striking a blow would be shameful. They would prefer to die.”
“A lot of them have had that wish granted,” said Caris grimly, and she emptied her tankard and went back to work. Her knowledge and understanding of the human body was growing by leaps and bounds, she reflected. She saw inside every part of a living man: the brains beneath shattered skulls, the pipework of the throat, the muscles of the arms sliced open, the heart and lungs within smashed ribcages, the slimy tangle of the intestines, the articulation of the bones at hip and knee and ankle. She discovered more in an hour on the battlefield than in a year at the priory hospital. This was how Matthew Barber had learned so much, she realized. No wonder he was confident.
The carnage continued until night fell. The English lit torches, afraid of a sneak attack under cover of darkness. But Caris could have told them they were safe. The French were routed. She could hear the calls of French soldiers searching the battlefield for fallen kinsmen and comrades. The king, who had arrived in time to join one of the last hopeless charges, left the field. After that the exit became general.
A fog came up from the river, filling the valley and obscuring the distant flares. Once again, Caris and Mair worked by firelight long into the night, patching up the wounded. All those who could walk or hobble left as soon as they could, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the English, hoping to avoid tomorrow’s inevitable bloodthirsty mopping-up operation. When Caris and Mair had done all they could for the victims, they slipped away.
This was their chance.
They located their ponies and led them forward by the light of a burning torch. They reached the bottom of the valley and found themselves in no-man’s-land. Hidden by fog and darkness, they slipped out of their boys’ clothing. For a moment they were terribly vulnerable, two naked women in the middle of a battlefield. But no one could see them, and a second later they were pulling their nuns’ robes over their heads. They packed up their male garments in case they should need them again: it was a long way home.
Caris decided to abandon the torch, in case an English archer should take it into his head to shoot at the light and ask questions afterwards. Holding hands so that they would not get separated they went forward, still leading the horses. They could see nothing: the fog obscured whatever light might have come from moon or stars. They headed uphill towards the English lines. There was a smell like a butcher’s shop. So many bodies of horses and men covered the ground that they could not walk around them. They had to grit their teeth and step on the corpses. Soon their shoes were covered with a mixture of mud and blood.
The bodies on the ground thinned out, and soon there were none. Caris began to feel a deep sense of relief as she approached the English army. She and Mair had travelled hundreds of miles, lived rough for two weeks, and risked their lives for this moment. She had almost forgotten the outrageous theft by Prior Godwyn of one hundred and fifty pounds from the nuns’ treasury – the reason for her journey. Somehow it seemed less important after all this bloodshed. Still, she would appeal to Bishop Richard and win justice for the nunnery.
The walk seemed farther than Caris had imagined when she had looked across the valley in daylight. She wondered nervously if she had become disoriented. She might have turned in the wrong direction and just walked straight past the English. Perhaps the army was now behind her. She strained to hear some noise – ten thousand men could not be silent, even if most of them had fallen into exhausted sleep – but the fog muffled sound.
She clung to the conviction that, as King Edward had positioned his forces on the highest land, she must be approaching him as long as she was walking uphill. But the blindness was unnerving. If there had been a precipice, she would have stepped right over it.
The light of dawn was turning the fog to the colour of pearl when at last she heard a voice. She stopped. It was a man speaking in a low murmur. Mair squeezed her hand nervously. Another man spoke. She could not make out the language. She feared that she might have walked full circle and arrived back on the French side.
She turned towards the voice, still holding Mair’s hand. The red glow of flames became visible through the grey mist, and she headed for it gratefully. As she came nearer, she heard the talk more clearly, and realized with immense relief that the men were speaking English. A moment later she made out a group of men around a fire. Several lay asleep, rolled in blankets, but three sat upright, legs crossed, looking into the flames, talking. A moment later Caris saw a man standing, peering into the fog, presumably on sentry duty, though the fact that he had not noticed her approach proved his job was impossible.
To get their attention, Caris said in a low voice: “God bless you, men of England.”
She startled them. One gave a shout of fear. The sentry said belatedly: “Who goes there?”
“Two nuns from Kingsbridge Priory,” Caris said. The men stared at her in superstitious dread, and she realized they thought she might be an apparition. “Don’t worry, we’re flesh and blood, and so are these ponies.”
“Did you say Kingsbridge?” said one of them in surprise. “I know you,” he said, standing up. “I’ve seen you before.”
Caris recognized him. “Lord William of Caster,” she said.
“I am the earl of Shiring, now,” he said. “My father died of his wounds an hour ago.”
“May his soul rest in peace. We have come here to see your brother, Bishop Richard, who is our abbot.”
“You’re too late,” William said. “My brother, too, is dead.”
Later in the morning, when the fog had lifted and the battlefield looked like a sunlit slaughterhouse, Earl William took Caris and Mair to see King Edward.
Everyone was astonished at the tale of the two nuns who had followed the English army all through Normandy, and soldiers who had faced death only yesterday were fascinated by their adventures. William told Caris that the king would want to hear the story from her own lips.
Edward III had been king for nineteen years, but he was still only thirty-three years old. Tall and broad-shouldered, he was imposing rather than handsome, with a face that might have been moulded for power: a big nose, high cheekbones and luxuriant long hair just beginning to recede from his high forehead. Caris saw why people called him a lion.
He sat on a stool in front of his tent, fashionably dressed in two-coloured hose and a cape with a scalloped border. He wore no armour or weapons: the French had vanished, and in fact a force of vengeful troops had been sent out to hunt down and kill any stragglers. A handful of barons stood around.
As Caris told how she and Mair had sought food and shelter in the devastated landscape of Normandy, she wondered if the king felt criticized by her tale of hardship. However, he seemed not to think the sufferings of the people reflected on him. He was as delighted with her exploits as if he were hearing of someone who had been brave during a shipwreck.
She ended by telling him of her disappointment on finding, after all her travails, that Bishop Richard, from whom she hoped for justice, was dead. “I beg your majesty to order the prior of Kingsbridge to restore to the nuns the money he stole.”
Edward smiled ruefully. “You’re a brave woman, but you know nothing of politics,” he said with condescension. “The king can’t get involved in an ecclesiastical quarrel such as this. We would have all our bishops banging on our door in protest.”
That might be so, Caris reflected, but it did not prevent the king interfering with the church when it suited his own purposes. However, she said nothing.
Edward went on: “And it would do your cause harm. The church would be so outraged that every cleric in the land would oppose our ruling, regardless of its merits.”
There might be something in that, she judged. But he was not as powerless as he pretended. “I know you will remember the wronged nuns of Kingsbridge,” she said. “When you appoint the new bishop of Kingsbridge, please tell him our story.”
“Of course,” said the king, but Caris had the feeling he would forget.
The interview seemed to be over, but then William said: “Your majesty, now that you have graciously confirmed my elevation to my father’s earldom, there is the question of who is to be lord of Caster.”
“Ah, yes. Our son the prince of Wales suggests Sir Ralph Fitzgerald, who was knighted yesterday for saving his life.”
Caris murmured: “Oh, no!”
The king did not hear her, but William did, and he obviously felt the same way. He was not quite able to hide his indignation as he said: “Ralph was an outlaw, guilty of numerous thefts, murders and rapes, until he obtained a royal pardon by joining your majesty’s army.”
The king was not as moved by this as Caris expected. He said: “All the same, Ralph has fought with us for seven years now. He has earned a second chance.”
“Indeed he has,” William said diplomatically. “But, given the trouble we’ve had with him in the past, I’d like to see him settle down peacefully for a year of two before he’s ennobled.”
“Well, you will be his overlord, so you’ll have to deal with him,” Edward granted. “We won’t impose him on you against your will. However, the prince is keen that he should have some further reward.” The king thought for a few moments, then said: “Don’t you have a cousin who is eligible for marriage?”
“Yes, Matilda,” said William. “We call her Tilly.”
Caris knew Tilly. She was at the nunnery school.
“That’s right,” said Edward. “She was your father Roland’s ward. Her father had three villages near Shiring.”
“Your majesty has a good memory for detail.”
“Marry Lady Matilda to Ralph and give him her father’s villages,” said the king.
Caris was appalled. “But she’s only twelve!” she burst out.
William said to her: “Hush!”
King Edward turned a cold gaze on her. “The children of the nobility must grow up fast, sister. Queen Philippa was fourteen when I married her.”
Caris knew she should shut up, but she could not. Tilly was only four years older than the daughter she might have had, if she had given birth to Merthin’s baby. “There’s a big difference between twelve and fourteen,” she said desperately.
The young king became even more frosty. “In the royal presence, people give their opinions only when asked. And the king almost never asks for the opinions of women.”
Caris realized she had taken the wrong tack. Her objection to the marriage was not based on Tilly’s age so much as Ralph’s character. “I know Tilly,” she said. “You can’t marry her to that brute Ralph.”
Mair said in a scared whisper: “Caris! Remember who you’re speaking to!”
Edward looked at William. “Take her away, Shiring, before she says something that cannot be overlooked.”
William took Caris’s arm and firmly marched her out of the royal presence. Mair followed. Behind them, Caris heard the king say: “I can see how she survived in Normandy – the locals must have been terrified of her.” The noblemen around him laughed.
“You must be mad!” William hissed.
“Must I?” Caris said. They were out of earshot of the king now, and she raised her voice. “In the last six weeks the king has caused the deaths of thousands of men, women and children, and burned their crops and their homes. And I have tried to save a twelve-year-old girl from being married to a murderer. Tell me again, Lord William, which of us is mad?”
In the year 1347 the peasants of Wigleigh suffered a poor harvest. The villagers did what they always did in such times: they ate less food, postponed the purchase of hats and belts, and slept closer together for warmth. Old Widow Huberts died earlier than expected; Janey Jones succumbed to a cough that she might have survived in a good year; and Joanna David’s new baby, who might otherwise have had a chance, failed to make it to his first birthday.
Gwenda kept an anxious eye on her two little boys. Sam, the eight-year-old, was big for his age, and strong: he had Wulfric’s physique, people said, though Gwenda knew that in truth he was like his real father, Ralph Fitzgerald. Even so, Sam was visibly thinner by December. David, named after Wulfric’s brother who had died when the bridge collapsed, was six. He resembled Gwenda, being small and dark. The poor diet had weakened him, and all through the autumn he suffered minor ailments: a cold, then a skin rash, then a cough.
All the same, she took the boys with her when she went with Wulfric to finish sowing the winter wheat on Perkin’s land. A bitterly cold wind swept across the open fields. She dropped seeds into the furrows, and Sam and David chased off the daring birds who tried to snatch the corn before Wulfric turned the earth over. As they ran, and jumped, and shouted, Gwenda marvelled that these two fully functioning miniature human beings had come from inside her body. They turned the chasing of the birds into some kind of competitive game, and she delighted in the miracle of their imagination. Once part of her, they were now able to have thoughts she did not know about.
Mud clung to their feet as they tramped up and down. A fast-running stream bordered the big field, and on the far bank stood the fulling mill Merthin had built nine years ago. The distant rumble of its pounding wooden hammers accompanied their work. The mill was run by two eccentric brothers, Jack and Eli – both unmarried men with no land – and an apprentice boy who was their nephew. They were the only villagers who had not suffered on account of the bad harvest: Mark Webber paid them the same wages all winter long.
It was a short midwinter day. Gwenda and her family finished sowing just as the grey sky began to darken, and the twilight gathered mistily in the distant woods. They were all tired.
There was half a sack of seed left over, so they took it to Perkin’s house. As they approached the place, they saw Perkin himself coming from the opposite direction. He was walking beside a cart on which his daughter, Annet, was riding. They had been to Kingsbridge to sell the last of the year’s apples and pears from Perkin’s trees.
Annet still retained her girlish figure, although she was now twenty-eight, and had had a child. She called attention to her youthfulness with a dress that was a little too short and a hair style that was charmingly disarrayed. She looked silly, Gwenda thought. Her opinion was shared by every woman in the village and none of the men.
Gwenda was shocked to see that Perkin’s cart was full of fruit. “What happened?” she said.
Perkin’s face was grim. “Kingsbridge folk are having a hard winter just like us,” he said. “They’ve no money to buy apples. We shall have to make cider with this lot.”
That was bad news. Gwenda had never known Perkin to come home from the market with so much unsold produce.
Annet seemed unworried. She held out a hand to Wulfric, who helped her down from the cart. As she stepped to the ground she stumbled, and fell against him with her hand on his chest. “Oops!” she said, and smiled at him as she recovered her balance. Wulfric flushed with pleasure.
You blind idiot, Gwenda thought.
They went inside. Perkin sat at the table, and his wife, Peg, brought him a bowl of pottage. He cut a thick slice from the loaf on the board. Peg served her own family next. Annet, her husband Billy Howard, Annet’s brother, Rob, and Rob’s wife. She gave a little to Annet’s four-year-old daughter, Amabel, and to Rob’s two small boys. Then she invited Wulfric and his family to sit down.
Gwenda spooned up the broth hungrily. It was thicker than the pottage she made: Peg was putting stale bread in, whereas in Gwenda’s house the bread never lasted long enough to go stale. Perkin’s family got cups of ale, but Gwenda and Wulfric were not offered any: hospitality went only so far in hard times.
Perkin was jocular with his customers, but otherwise a sourpuss, and the atmosphere in his house was always more or less dismal. He talked in a disheartened way about the Kingsbridge market. Most of the traders had had a bad day. The only ones doing any business were those who sold essentials such as corn, meat and salt. No one was buying the now-famous Kingsbridge Scarlet cloth.
Peg lit a lamp. Gwenda wanted to go home but she and Wulfric were waiting for their wages. The boys began to misbehave, running around the room and bumping into adults. “It’s getting near their bed time,” said Gwenda, though it was not really.
At last Wulfric said: “If you’ll give us our wages, Perkin, we’ll leave.”
“I haven’t got any money,” Perkin said.
Gwenda stared at him. He had never said anything like this in the nine years she and Wulfric had been working for him.
Wulfric said: “We must have our wages. We’ve got to eat.”
“You’ve had some pottage, haven’t you?” Perkin said.
Gwenda was outraged. “We work for money, not pottage!”
“Well, I haven’t got any money,” Perkin repeated. “I went to market to sell my apples, but no one bought them, so I’ve got more apples than we can eat, and no money.”
Gwenda was so shocked that she did not know what to say. It had never occurred to her that Perkin might not pay them. She felt a stab of fear as she realized there was nothing she could do about it.
Wulfric said slowly: “Well, what’s to be done about it? Shall we go to the Long Field and take the seeds back out of the ground?”
“I’ll have to owe you this week’s wages,” Perkin said. “I’ll pay you when things get better.”
“And next week?”
“I won’t have any money next week, either – where do you think it’s to come from?”
Gwenda said: “We’ll go to Mark Webber. Perhaps he can employ us at the fulling mill.”
Perkin shook his head. “I spoke to him yesterday, in Kingsbridge, and asked if he could hire you. He said no. He’s not selling enough cloth. He’ll continue to employ Jack and Eli and the boy, and stockpile the cloth until trade picks up, but he can’t take on any extra hands.”
Wulfric was bewildered. “How are we to live? How will you get your spring ploughing done?”
“You can work for food,” Perkin offered.
Wulfric looked at Gwenda. She choked back a scornful retort. She and her family were in deep trouble, and this was not the moment to antagonize anyone. She thought fast. They did not have much choice: eat, or starve. “We’ll work for food, and you’ll owe us the money,” she said.
Perkin shook his head. “What you’re suggesting may be fair-”
“It is fair!”
“All right, it is fair, but just the same I can’t do it. I don’t know when I’ll have the money. Why, I could owe you a pound come Whitsun! You can work for food, or not at all.”
“You’ll have to feed all four of us.”
“Yes.”
“But only Wulfric will work.”
“I don’t know-”
“A family wants more than food. Children need clothes. A man must have boots. If you can’t pay me, I will have to find some other way of providing such things.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. The truth was, she had no idea. She fought down panic. “I may have to ask my father how he manages.”
Peg put in: “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you – Joby will tell you to steal.”
Gwenda was stung. What right did Peg have to take a supercilious attitude? Joby had never employed people then told them at the end of the week that he could not pay them. But she bit her tongue, and said mildly: “He fed me through eighteen winters, even if he did sell me to outlaws at the end.”
Peg tossed her head and abruptly began to pick up the bowls from the table.
Wulfric said: “We should go.”
Gwenda did not move. Whatever advantages she could gain had to be won now. When she left this house, Perkin would consider that a bargain had been struck, and could not be renegotiated. She thought hard. Remembering how Peggy had given ale only to her own family, she said: “You won’t fob us off with stale fish and watery beer. You’ll feed us exactly the same as yourself and your family – meat, bread, ale, whatever it may be.”
Peg made a deprecating noise. She had been planning to do just what Gwenda feared, it seemed.
Gwenda added: “That is, if you want Wulfric to do the same work as you and Rob.” They all knew perfectly well that Wulfric did more work than Rob and twice as much as Perkin.
“All right,” Perkin said.
“And this is strictly an emergency arrangement. As soon as you get money, you have to start paying us again at the old rate – a penny a day each.”
“Yes.”
There was a short silence. Wulfric said: “Is that it?”
“I think so,” Gwenda said. “You and Perkin should shake hands on the bargain.”
They shook hands.
Taking their children, Gwenda and Wulfric left. It was now full dark. Clouds hid the stars, and they had to make their way by the glimmer of light shining through cracks in shutters and around doors. Fortunately they had walked from Perkin’s house to their own a thousand times before.
Wulfric lit a lamp and built up the fire while Gwenda put the boys to bed. Although there were bedrooms upstairs – they were still living in the large house that had been occupied by Wulfric’s parents – nevertheless they all slept in the kitchen, for warmth.
Gwenda felt depressed as she wrapped the boys in blankets and settled them near the fire. She had grown up determined not to live the way her mother did, in constant worry and want. She had aspired to independence: a patch of land, a hard-working husband, a reasonable lord. Wulfric yearned to get back the land his father had farmed. In all those aspirations they had failed. She was a pauper, and her husband a landless labourer whose employer could not even pay him a penny a day. She had ended up exactly like her mother, she thought; and she felt too bitter for tears.
Wulfric took a pottery bottle from a shelf and poured ale into a wooden cup. “Enjoy it,” Gwenda said sourly. “You won’t be able to buy your own ale for a while.”
Wulfric said conversationally: “It’s amazing that Perkin has no money. He’s the richest man in the village, apart from Nathan Reeve.”
“Perkin has money,” Gwenda said. “There’s a jar of silver pennies under his fireplace. I’ve seen it.”
“Then why won’t he pay us?”
“He doesn’t want to dip into his savings.”
Wulfric was taken aback. “But he could pay us, if he wanted to?”
“Of course.”
“Then why am I going to work for food?”
Gwenda let out an impatient grunt. Wulfric was so slow on the uptake. “Because the alternative was no work at all.”
Wulfric was feeling that they had been hoodwinked. “We should have insisted on payment.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know about the jar of pennies under the fireplace.”
“For God’s sake, do you think a man as rich as Perkin can be impoverished by failing to sell one cartload of apples? He’s been the largest landholder in Wigleigh ever since he got hold of your father’s acres ten years ago. Of course he has savings!”
“Yes, I see that.”
She stared into the fire while he finished the ale, then they went to bed. He put his arms around her, and she rested her head on his chest, but she did not want to make love. She was too angry. She told herself she should not take it out on her husband: Perkin had let them down, not Wulfric. But she was angry with Wulfric – furious. As she sensed him drifting off to sleep, she realized that her anger was not about their wages. That was the kind of misfortune that afflicted everyone from time to time, like bad weather and barley mould.
What, then?
She recalled the way Annet had fallen against Wulfric as she stepped down from the cart. When she remembered Annet’s coquettish smile, and Wulfric’s flush of pleasure, she wanted to slap his face. I’m angry with you, she thought, because that worthless, empty-headed flirt can still make you look such a damn fool.
On the Sunday before Christmas, a manor court was held in the church after the service. It was cold, and the villagers huddled together, wrapped in cloaks and blankets. Nathan Reeve was in charge. The lord of the manor, Ralph Fitzgerald, had not been seen in Wigleigh for years. So much the better, Gwenda thought. Besides, he was Sir Ralph now, with three other villages in his fiefdom, so he would not take much interest in ox teams and cow pasture.
Alfred Shorthouse had died during the week. He was a childless widower with ten acres. “He has no natural heirs,” said Nate Reeve. “Perkin is willing to take over his land.”
Gwenda was surprised. How could Perkin think of taking on more land? She was too startled to respond immediately, and Aaron Appletree, the bagpipe player, spoke first. “Alfred has been in poor health since the summer,” he said. “He’s done no autumn ploughing and sown no winter wheat. All the work is to be done. Perkin will have his hands full.”
Nate said aggressively: “Are you asking for the land yourself?”
Aaron shook his head. “In a few more years, when my boys are big enough to help, I’ll jump at such a chance,” he said. “I couldn’t handle it now.”
“I can manage it,” Perkin said.
Gwenda frowned. Nate obviously wanted Perkin to have the land. No doubt a bribe had been promised. She had known all along that Perkin had money. But she had little interest in exposing Perkin’s duplicity. She was thinking of how she could exploit this situation to her advantage, and get her family out of poverty.
Nate said: “You could take on another labourer, Perkin.”
“Wait a minute,” Gwenda said. “Perkin can’t pay the labourers he’s got now. How can he take on more land?”
Perkin was taken aback, but he could hardly deny what Gwenda was saying, so he remained silent.
Nate said: “Well, who else can cope with it?”
Gwenda said quickly. “We’ll take it.”
Nate looked surprised.
She added quickly: “Wulfric is working for food. I have no work. We need land.”
She noticed several nodding heads. No one in the village liked what Perkin had done. They all feared that one day they might end up in the same situation.
Nate saw the danger of his plan going awry. “You can’t afford the entry fee,” he said.
“We’ll pay it a little at a time.”
Nate shook his head. “I want a tenant who can pay right away.” He looked around the assembled villagers. However, no one volunteered. “David Johns?”
David was a middle-aged man whose sons had land of their own. “I would have said yes a year ago,” he said. “But the rain at harvest time knocked me back.”
The offer of an extra ten acres would normally have had the more ambitious villagers fighting among themselves, but it was a bad year. Gwenda and Wulfric were different. For one thing, Wulfric had never ceased to long for land of his own. Alfred’s acres were not Wulfric’s birthright, but they were better than nothing. Anyway, Gwenda and Wulfric were desperate.
Aaron Appletree said: “Give it to Wulfric, Nate. He’s a hard worker, he’ll get the ploughing done in time. And he and his wife deserve some good luck – they’ve had more than their fair share of bad.”
Nate looked bad-tempered, but there was a loud rumble of assent from the peasants. Wulfric and Gwenda were well respected despite their poverty.
This was a rare combination of circumstances that could get Gwenda and her family started on the road to a better life, and she felt growing excitement as it began to seem possible.
But Nate was still looking dubious. “Sir Ralph hates Wulfric,” he said.
Wulfric’s hand went to his cheek, and he touched the scar made by Ralph’s sword.
“I know,” said Gwenda. “But Ralph’s not here.”
When Earl Roland died the day after the battle of Crécy, several people moved a step up the ladder. His elder son, William, became the earl, overlord of the county of Shiring, answerable to the king. A cousin of William’s, Sir Edward Courthose, became lord of Caster, took over the rule of the forty villages of that fiefdom as a sub-tenant of the earl, and moved into William and Philippa’s old house in Casterham. And Sir Ralph Fitzgerald became lord of Tench.
For the next eighteen months, none of them went home. They were all too busy travelling with the king and killing French people. Then, in 1347, the war reached a stalemate. The English captured and held the valuable port city of Calais, but otherwise there was little to show for a decade of war – except, of course, a great deal of booty.
In January 1348 Ralph took possession of his new property. Tench was a large village with a hundred peasant families, and the manor included two smaller villages nearby. He also retained Wigleigh, which was half a day’s ride away.
Ralph felt a thrill of pride as he rode through Tench. He had looked forward to this moment. The serfs bowed and their children stared. He was lord of every person and owner of every object in the place.
The house was set in a compound. Riding in, followed by a cart loaded with French loot, Ralph saw immediately that the defensive walls had long ago fallen into disrepair. He wondered whether he should restore them. The burgers of Normandy had neglected their defences, by and large, and that had made it relatively easy for Edward III to overrun them. On the other hand, the likelihood of an invasion of southern England was now very small. Early in the war, most of the French fleet had been wiped out at the port of Sluys, and thereafter the English had controlled the sea channel that separated the two countries. Apart from minor raids by freelance pirates, every battle since Sluys had been fought on French soil. On balance it hardly seemed worthwhile to rebuild the compound walls.
Several grooms appeared and took the horses. Ralph left Alan Fernhill to supervise the unloading, and walked towards his new house. He was limping: his injured leg always hurt after a long ride. Tench Hall was a stone-built manor house. It was impressive, he noted with satisfaction, though it needed repairs – not surprisingly, for it had remained unoccupied since Lady Matilda’s father died. However, it was modern in design. In old-fashioned houses, the lord’s private chamber was an afterthought stuck on to the end of the all-important great hall, but Ralph could see, from the outside, that here the domestic apartments took up half the building.
He entered the hall, and was annoyed to find Earl William there.
At the far end of the room was a large chair made of dark wood, elaborately carved with powerful symbols: angels and lions on the back and arms, snakes and monsters on the legs. It was obviously the chair of the lord of the manor. But William was sitting in it.
Much of Ralph’s pleasure evaporated. He could not enjoy his mastery of the new manor under the scrutiny of his own overlord. It would be like going to bed with a woman while her husband listened outside the door.
He masked his displeasure and formally greeted Earl William. The earl introduced the man standing next to him. “This is Daniel, who has been bailiff here for twenty years, and has taken good care of the place, on my father’s behalf, during Tilly’s minority.”
Ralph acknowledged the bailiff stiffly. William’s message was clear: he wanted Ralph to let Daniel continue in the job. But Daniel had been Earl Roland’s man and now he would be Earl William’s. Ralph had no intention of letting his domain be managed by the earl’s man. His bailiff would be loyal to him alone.
William waited expectantly for Ralph to say something about Daniel. However, Ralph was not going to have that discussion. Ten years ago he would have jumped feet first into an argument, but he had learned a lot in the time he had spent with the king. He was not obliged to get his earl’s approval for his choice of bailiff, so he would not seek it. He would say nothing until William had gone, then he would tell Daniel he was being assigned to other duties.
Both William and Ralph remained stubbornly silent for a few moments, then the deadlock was broken. A large door opened at the domestic end of the hall and the tall, elegant figure of Lady Philippa came in. It was many years since Ralph had seen her, but his youthful passion returned with a shock that felt like a punch, leaving him breathless. She was older – she had to be forty, he guessed – but she was in her prime. Perhaps she was a little heavier than he remembered, her hips more rounded, her breasts fuller, but that only added to her allure. She still walked like a queen. As always, the sight of her made him ask resentfully why he could not have a wife like that.
In the past she had barely deigned to notice his presence, but today she smiled and shook his hand and said: “Are you getting to know Daniel?”
She, too, wanted him to continue to employ the earl’s retainer – that was why she was being courteous. All the more reason to get rid of the man, he thought with secret relish. “I’ve just arrived,” he said noncommittally.
Philippa explained their presence. “We wanted to be here when you met young Tilly – she’s part of our family.”
Ralph had commanded the nuns of Kingsbridge Priory to bring his fiancee here to meet him today. Interfering busybodies, the nuns had obviously told Earl William what was happening. “Lady Matilda was the ward of Earl Roland, rest his soul,” Ralph said, emphasizing that the wardship had ended with Roland’s death.
“Yes – and I would have expected the king to transfer her wardship to my husband, as Roland’s heir.” Clearly Philippa would have preferred that.
“But he did not,” Ralph said. “He gave her to me to wed.” Although no ceremony had yet taken place, the girl had immediately become Ralph’s responsibility. Strictly speaking, William and Philippa had no business to invite themselves here today, as if playing the role of Tilly’s parents. But William was Ralph’s overlord, so he could visit whenever he pleased.
Ralph did not want to quarrel with William. It was too easy for William to make Ralph’s life difficult. On the other hand, the new earl was overreaching his authority here – probably under pressure from his wife. But Ralph was not going to be bullied. The last seven years had given him the confidence to defend such independence as he was entitled to.
Anyway, he was enjoying crossing swords with Philippa. It gave him an excuse to stare at her. He rested his gaze on the assertive line of her jaw and the fullness of her lips. Despite her hauteur, she was forced to engage with him. This was the longest conversation he had ever had with her.
“Tilly is very young,” said Philippa.
“She will be fourteen this year,” Ralph said. “That’s the age our queen was when she married our king – as the king himself pointed out, to me and to Earl William, after the battle of Crécy.”
“The aftermath of a battle is not necessarily the best moment to decide the fate of a young girl,” Philippa said in a lowered voice.
Ralph was not going to let that pass. “Speaking for myself, I feel obliged to comply with the decisions of his majesty.”
“As do we all,” she muttered.
Ralph felt he had vanquished her. It was a sexual feeling, almost as if he had lain with her. Satisfied, he turned to Daniel. “My wife-to-be should arrive in time for dinner,” he said. “Make sure we have a feast.”
Philippa said: “I have already seen to that.”
Ralph slowly turned his head until his eyes were on her again. She had overstepped the bounds of courtesy by going into his kitchen and giving orders.
She knew it, and reddened. “I didn’t know what time you would get here,” she said.
Ralph said nothing. She would not apologize, but he was content in having forced her to explain herself – a climbdown for a woman as proud as she.
For a short while there had been the noise of horses outside, and now Ralph’s parents came in. He had not seen them for some years, and he hurried to embrace them.
They were both in their fifties, but his mother had aged faster, it seemed to him. Her hair was white and her face was lined. She had the slight stoop of elderly women. His father seemed more vigorous. It was partly the excitement of the moment: he was flushed with pride, and shook Ralph’s hand as if pumping water from a well. But there was no grey in his red beard, and his slim figure still appeared spry. They were both wearing new clothes – Ralph had sent the money. Sir Gerald had a heavy wool surcoat and Lady Maud a fur cloak.
Ralph snapped his fingers at Daniel. “Bring wine,” he said. For an instant, the bailiff looked as though he might protest at being treated like a maidservant; then he swallowed his pride and hurried off to the kitchen.
Ralph said: “Earl William, Lady Philippa, may I present my father, Sir Gerald, and my mother, Lady Maud.”
He was afraid that William and Philippa would look down their noses at his parents, but they acknowledged them courteously enough.
Gerald said to William: “I was a comrade-in-arms of your father, may he rest in peace. In fact, Earl William, I knew you as a boy, though you won’t remember me.”
Ralph wished his father would not call attention to his glorious past. It only emphasized how far he had fallen.
But William seemed not to notice. “Well, d’you know, I think I do remember,” he said. He was probably just being kind, but Gerald was pleased. “Of course,” William added, “I recall you as a giant at least seven feet tall.”
Gerald, who was short in stature, laughed delightedly.
Maud looked around and said: “My, this is a fine house, Ralph.”
“I wanted to decorate it with all theeasures I’ve brought back from France,” he said. “But I’ve only just got here.”
A kitchen girl brought a jug of wine and goblets on a tray, and they all took some refreshment. The wine was good Bordeaux, Ralph noticed, clear and sweet. Due credit to Daniel for keeping the house well supplied, he thought at first; then he reflected that for many years no one had been here to drink it – except, of course, Daniel.
He said to his mother: “Any news of my brother Merthin?”
“He’s doing very well,” she said proudly. “Married with a daughter, and rich. He’s building a palace for the family of Buonaventura Caroli.”
“But they haven’t made him a conte yet, I suppose?” Ralph pretended to be joking, but he was pointing out that Merthin, for all his success, had not gained a noble title; and that it was he, Ralph, who had fulfilled their father’s hopes by taking the family back into the nobility.
“Not yet,” said his father gaily, as if it were a real possibility that Merthin might become an Italian count; which annoyed Ralph, but only momentarily.
His mother said: “Could we see our rooms?”
Ralph hesitated. What did she mean by ‘our rooms’? The dreadful thought crossed his mind that his parents might think they were going to live here. He could not have that: they would be a constant reminder of the family’s years of shame. Besides, they would cramp his style. On the other hand, he now realized, it was also shameful for a nobleman to let his parents live in a one-room house as pensioners of a priory.
He would have to think more about that. For now he said: “I haven’t had a chance to look at the private quarters myself yet. I hope I can make you comfortable for a few nights.”
“A few nights?” his mother said quickly. “Are you going to send us back to our hovel in Kingsbridge?”
Ralph was mortified that she should mention that in front of William and Philippa. “I don’t think there’s room for you to live here.”
“How do you know, if you haven’t yet looked at the chambers?”
Daniel interrupted. “There’s a villager here from Wigleigh, Sir Ralph – name of Perkin. Wants to pay his respects and discuss an urgent matter.”
Ralph would normally have told the man off for butting into a conversation, but on this occasion he was grateful for the diversion. “Have a look at the rooms, Mother,” he said. “I’ll deal with this peasant.”
William and Philippa went off with his parents to inspect the domestic quarters, and Daniel brought Perkin to the table. Perkin was as obsequious as ever. “So happy to see your lordship safe and whole after the French wars,” he said.
Ralph looked at his left hand, with three fingers missing. “Well, almost whole,” he said.
“All the people of Wigleigh are sorry for your wounds, lord, but the rewards! A knighthood, and three more villages, and Lady Matilda to wed!”
“Thank you for your felicitations, but what was the urgent matter you needed to discuss?”
“Lord, it doesn’t take long to tell. Alfred Shorthouse died without a natural heir to his ten acres, and I offered to take on the land, even though times have been very hard, after this year’s thunderstorms in August-”
“Never mind the weather.”
“Of course. In brief, Nathan Reeve made a decision that I feel you would not approve.”
Ralph felt impatient. He really did not care which peasant farmed Alfred’s ten acres. “Whatever Nathan decided-”
“He gave the land to Wulfric.”
“Ah.”
“Some of the villagers said Wulfric deserved it, as he had no land; but he can’t pay the entry fee, and anyway-”
“You don’t need to convince me,” Ralph said. “I will not allow that troublemaker to hold land in my territory.”
“Thank you, lord. Shall I tell Nathan Reeve that you wish me to have the ten acres?”
“Yes,” Ralph said. He saw the earl and countess emerge from the private quarters, with his parents in tow. “I’ll be there to confirm it in person within the next two weeks.” He dismissed Perkin with a wave.
At that moment, Lady Matilda arrived.
She entered the hall with a nun on either side of her. One was Merthin’s old girlfriend, Caris, who had tried to tell the king that Tilly was too young to marry. On the other side was the nun who had travelled to Crécy with Caris, an angel-faced woman whose name Ralph did not know. Behind them, presumably acting as their bodyguard, was the one-armed monk who had captured Ralph so cleverly nine years ago, Brother Thomas.
And in the centre was Tilly. Ralph saw immediately why the nuns wanted to protect her from marriage. Her face had a look of childish innocence. She had freckles on her nose and a gap between her two front teeth. She stared about her with frightened eyes. Caris had heightened the childish look by dressing her in a plain white nun’s robe and a simple cap, but the clothing failed to hide the womanly curves of the body underneath. Caris had obviously wanted to make Tilly seem too young for wedlock. The effect on Ralph was the opposite of what was intended.
One of the things Ralph had learned in the king’s service was that, in many situations, a man could take charge simply by speaking first. He said loudly: “Come here, Tilly.”
The girl stepped forward and came to him. Her escort hesitated, then stayed where they were.
“I am your husband,” Ralph said to her. “My name is Sir Ralph Fitzgerald, lord of Tench.”
She looked terrified. “I’m happy to meet you, sir.”
“This is your home now, as it was when you were a child and your father was lord here. You are now the lady of Tench, as your mother once was. Are you happy to be back in your family home?”
“Yes, lord.” She looked anything but happy.
“I’m sure the nuns have told you that you must be an obedient wife, and do all you can to please your husband, who is your lord and master.”
“Yes, lord.”
“And here are my mother and father, who are your parents, too, now.”
She made a little curtsey to Gerald and Maud.
Ralph said: “Come here.” He held out his hands.
Automatically, Tilly reached out, then she saw his maimed left hand. She made a disgusted sound and flinched back.
An angry curse came to Ralph’s lips, but he suppressed it. With some difficulty he forced himself to speak in a light tone of voice. “Don’t be afraid of my wounded hand,” he said. “You should be proud of it. I lost those fingers in the service of the king.” He kept both arms stretched out expectantly.
With an effort, she took his hands.
“Now you can kiss me, Tilly.”
He was seated, and she was standing in front of him. She leaned forward and offered her cheek. He put his wounded hand at the back of her head and turned her face, then he kissed her lips. He sensed her uncertainty and guessed that she had not been kissed by a man before. He let his mouth linger on hers, partly because it was so sweet, and partly to enrage those watching. Then, with slow deliberation, he pressed his good hand against her chest, and felt her breasts. They were full and round. She was no child.
He released her and sighed with satisfaction. “We must get married soon,” he said. He turned to Caris, who was visibly suppressing anger. “In Kingsbridge Cathedral, four weeks from Sunday,” he said. He looked at Philippa but addressed William. “As we’re getting married by the express wish of His Majesty King Edward, I would be honoured if you would attend, Earl William.”
William nodded curtly.
Caris spoke for the first time. “Sir Ralph, the prior of Kingsbridge sends you greetings, and says he will be honoured to perform the ceremony, unless of course the new bishop wishes to do so.”
Ralph nodded graciously.
She then added: “But those of us who have had charge of this child believe she is still too young to live with her husband conjugally.”
Philippa said: “I concur.”
Ralph’s father spoke. “You know, son, I waited years to marry your mother.”
Ralph did not want to hear that story all over again. “Unlike you, Father, I have been ordered by the king to marry Lady Matilda.”
His mother said: “Perhaps you should wait, son.”
“I have waited more than a year! She was twelve when the king gave her to me.”
Caris said: “Marry the child, yes, with all due ceremony – but then let her return to the nunnery for a year. Let her grow folly into her womanhood. Then bring her to your home.”
Ralph snorted scornfully. “I could be dead in a year, especially if the king decides to go back to France. Meanwhile, the Fitzgeralds need an heir.”
“She is a child-”
Ralph interrupted, raising his voice. “She is no child – look at her! That stupid nun’s habit can’t disguise her breasts.”
“Puppy fat-”
“Does she have a woman’s hair?” Ralph demanded.
Tilly gasped at his crude frankness, and her cheeks reddened with shame.
Caris hesitated.
Ralph said: “Perhaps my mother should examine her on my behalf and tell me.”
Caris shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. Tilly has hair where a woman has it and a child does not.”
“I knew as much. I have seen-” Ralph stopped, realizing that he did not want everyone here to know in what circumstances he had seen the naked bodies of girls of Tilly’s age. “I guessed, from her figure,” he amended, avoiding his mother’s eye.
A rarely heard pleading tone entered Caris’s voice. “But, Ralph, in her mind she is still a child.”
I don’t care about her mind, Ralph thought, but he did not say so. “She has four weeks to learn what she does not know,” he said. He gave Caris a knowing look. “I’m sure you can teach her everything.”
Caris flushed. Nuns were not supposed to know about marital intimacy, of course, but she had been his brother’s girlfriend.
His mother said: “Perhaps a compromise-”
“You just don’t understand, Mother, do you?” he said, rudely interrupting her. “No one is really concerned about her age. If I were going to marry the daughter of a Kingsbridge butcher they wouldn’t care if she was nine. It’s because Tilly is noble-born, don’t you see that? They think they’re superior to us!” He knew he was shouting, and he could see the amazed expressions of everyone around him, but he did not care. “They don’t want a cousin of the earl of Shiring to marry the son of an impoverished knight. They want to put off the marriage in the hope that I’ll be killed in battle before it’s consummated.” He wiped his mouth. “But this son of an impoverished knight fought at the battle of Crécy, and saved the life of the prince of Wales. That’s what matters to the king.” He looked at each of them in turn: haughty William, scornful Philippa, furious Caris and his astonished parents. “So you might as well accept the facts. Ralph Fitzgerald is a knight and a lord, and a comrade-in-arms of the king. And he’s going to marry Lady Matilda, the cousin of the earl – whether you like it or not!”
There was a shocked silence for several moments.
At last Ralph turned to Daniel. “You can serve dinner now,” he said.
In the spring of 1348, Merthin woke up as if from a nightmare he could not quite remember. He felt frightened and weak. He opened his eyes to a room lit by bars of bright sunshine coming through half-open shutters. He saw a high ceiling, white walls, red tiles. The air was mild. Reality returned slowly. He was in his bedroom, in his house, in Florence. He had been ill.
The illness came back to him first. It had begun with a skin rash, purplish-black blotches on his chest, then his arms, then everywhere. Soon afterwards he developed a painful lump or bubo in his armpit. He had a fever, sweating in his bed, tangling the sheets as he writhed. He had vomited and coughed blood. He had thought he would die. Worst of all was a terrible, unquenchable thirst that had made him want to throw himself into the river Arno with his mouth open.
He was not the only sufferer. Thousands of Italians had fallen ill with this plague, tens of thousands. Half the workmen on his building sites had disappeared, as had most of his household servants. Almost everyone who caught it died within five days. They called it la moria grande, the big death.
But he was alive.
He had a nagging feeling that while ill he had reached a momentous decision, but he could not remember it. He concentrated for a moment. The harder he thought, the more elusive the memory became, until it vanished.
He sat up in bed. His limbs felt feeble and his head spun for a moment. He was wearing a clean linen nightshirt, and he wondered who had put it on him. After a pause, he stood.
He had a four-storey house with a courtyard. He had designed and built it himself, with a flat façade instead of the traditional overhanging floors, and architectural features such as round window arches and classical columns. The neighbours had called it a palagetto, a mini-palace. That was seven years ago. Several prosperous Florentine merchants had asked him to build palagetti for them, and that had got his career here started.
Florence was a republic, with no ruling prince or duke, dominated by an elite of squabbling merchant families. The city was populated by thousands of weavers, but it was the merchants who made fortunes. They spent their money building grand houses, which made the city a perfect place for a talented young architect to prosper.
He went to the bedroom door and called his wife. “Silvia! Where are you?” It came naturally to him to speak the Tuscan dialect now, after nine years.
Then he remembered. Silvia had been ill, too. So had their daughter, who was three years old. Her name was Laura, but they had adopted her childish pronunciation, Lolla. His heart was gripped by a terrible fear. Was Silvia alive? Was Lolla?
The house was quiet. So was the city, he realized suddenly. The angle of the sunlight slanting into the rooms told him it was mid-morning. He should have been hearing the cries of street hawkers, the clop of horses and the rumble of wooden cartwheels, the background murmur of a thousand conversations – but there was nothing.
He went up the stairs. In his weakness, the effort made him breathless. He pushed open the door to the nursery. The room looked empty. He broke out in a sweat of fear. There was Lolla’s cot, a small chest for her clothes, a box of toys, a miniature table with two tiny chairs. Then he heard a noise. There in the corner was Lolla, sitting on the floor in a clean dress, playing with a small wooden horse with articulated legs. Merthin gave a strangled cry of relief. She heard him and looked up. “Papa,” she observed in a matter-of-fact tone.
Merthin picked her up and hugged her. “You’re alive,” he said in English.
There was a sound from the next room, and Maria walked in. A grey-haired woman in her fifties, she was Lolla’s nurse. “Master!” she said. “You got up – are you better?”
“Where is your mistress?” he said.
Maria’s face fell. “I’m so sorry, master,” she said. “The mistress died.”
Lolla said: “Mama’s gone.”
Merthin felt the shock like a blow. Stunned, he handed Lolla to Maria. Moving slowly and carefully, he turned away and walked out of the room, then down the stairs to the piano nobile, the principal floor. He stared at the long table, the empty chairs, the rugs on the floor and the pictures on the walls. It looked like someone else’s home.
He stood in front of a painting of the Virgin Mary with her mother. Italian painters were superior to the English or any others, and this artist had given Saint Anne the face of Silvia. She was a proud beauty, with flawless olive skin and noble features, but the painter had seen the sexual passion smouldering in those aloof brown eyes.
It was hard to comprehend that Silvia no longer existed. He thought of her slim body, and remembered how he had marvelled, again and again, at her perfect breasts. That body, with which he had been so completely intimate, now lay in the ground somewhere. When he imagined that, tears came to his eyes at last, and he sobbed with grief.
Where was her grave? he wondered in his misery. He remembered that funerals had ceased in Florence: people were terrified to leave their houses. They simply dragged the bodies outside and laid them on the street. The city’s thieves, beggars and drunks had acquired a new profession: they were called corpse carriers or becchini, and they charged exorbitant fees to take the bodies away and put them in mass graves. Merthin might never know where Silvia lay.
They had been married four years. Looking at her picture, garbed in Saint Anne’s conventional red dress, Merthin suffered an access of painful honesty, and asked himself whether he had really loved her. He was very fond of her, but it was not an all-consuming passion. She had an independent spirit and a sharp tongue, and he was the only man in Florence with the nerve to woo her, despite her father’s wealth. In return, she had given him complete devotion. But she had accurately gauged the quality of his love. “What are you thinking about?” she used to say sometimes, and he would give a guilty start, because he had been remembering Kingsbridge. Soon she changed it to: “Who are you thinking about?” He never spoke Caris’s name, but Silvia said: “It must be a woman, I can tell by the look on your face.” Eventually she began to talk about ‘your English girl’. She would say: “You’re remembering your English girl,” and she was always right. But she seemed to accept it. Merthin was faithful to her. And he adored Lolla.
After a while, Maria brought him soup and bread. “What day is it?” he asked her.
“Tuesday.”
“How long was I in bed?”
“Two weeks. You were so ill.”
He wondered why he had survived. Some people never succumbed to the disease, as if they had natural protection; but those who caught it nearly always died. However, the tiny minority who recovered were doubly fortunate, for no one had ever caught the illness a second time.
When he had eaten, he felt stronger. He had to rebuild his life, he realized. He suspected that he had already made this decision once, when he was ill, but again he was tantalized by the thread of a memory slipping from his grasp.
His first task was to find out how much of his family was left.
He took his dishes to the kitchen, where Maria was feeding Lolla bread dipped in goat’s milk. He asked her: “What about Silvia’s parents? Are they alive?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t heard. I go out only to buy food.”
“I’d better find out.”
He got dressed and went downstairs. The ground floor of the house was a workshop, with the yard at the rear used for storing wood and stone. No one was at work, either inside or out.
He left the house. The buildings around him were mostly stone-built, some of them very grand: Kingsbridge had no houses to compare with these. The richest man in Kingsbridge, Edmund Wooler, had lived in a timber house. Here in Florence, only the poor lived in such places.
The street was deserted. He had never seen it this way, not even in the middle of the night. The effect was eerie. He wondered how many people had died: a third of the population? Half? Were their ghosts still lingering in alleyways and shadowed corners, enviously watching the lucky survivors?
The Christi house was on the next street. Merthin’s father-in-law, Alessandro Christi, had been his first and best friend in Florence. A schoolmate of Buonaventura Caroli, Alessandro had given Merthin his first commission, a simple warehouse building. He was, of course, Lolla’s grandpa.
The door of Alessandro’s palagetto was locked. That was unusual in itself. Merthin banged on the woodwork and waited. Eventually it was opened by Elizabetta, a small, plump woman who was Alessandro’s laundress. She stared at him in shock. “You’re alive!” she said.
“Hello, Betta,” he said. “I’m glad to see that you’re alive, too.”
She turned and called back into the house: “It’s the English lord!”
He had told them he was not a lord, but the servants did not believe him. He stepped inside. “Alessandro?” he said.
She shook her head and began to cry.
“And your mistress?”
“Both dead.”
The stairs led from the entrance hall to the main floor. Merthin walked up slowly, surprised by how weak he still felt. In the main room he sat down to catch his breath. Alessandro had been wealthy, and the room was a showplace of rugs and hangings, paintings and jewelled ornaments and books.
“Who else is here?” he asked Elizabetta.
“Just Lena and her children.” Lena was an Asiatic slave, unusual but by no means unique in prosperous Florentine households. She had two small children by Alessandro, a boy and a girl, and he had treated them just like his legitimate offspring; in fact Silvia had said acidly that he doted on them more than he ever had on her and her brother. The arrangement was considered eccentric rather than scandalous by the sophisticated Florentines.
Merthin said: “What about Signor Gianni?” Gianni was Silvia’s brother.
“Dead. And his wife. The baby is here with me.”
“Dear God.”
Betta said tentatively: “And your family, lord?”
“My wife is dead.”
“I am so sorry.”
“But Lolla is alive.”
“Thank God!”
“Maria is taking care of her.”
“Maria is a good woman. Would you like some refreshment?”
Merthin nodded, and she went away.
Lena’s children came to stare at him: a dark-eyed boy of seven who looked like Alessandro, and a pretty four-year-old with her mother’s Asiatic eyes. Then Lena herself came in, a beautiful woman in her twenties with golden skin and high cheekbones. She brought him a silver goblet of dark red Tuscan wine and a tray of almonds and olives.
She said: “Will you come to live here, lord?”
Merthin was surprised. “I don’t think so – why?”
“The house is yours, now.” She waved a hand to indicate the Christi family’s wealth. “Everything is yours.”
Merthin realized she was right. He was Alessandro Christi’s only surviving adult relative. That made him the heir – and the guardian of three children in addition to Lolla.
“Everything,” Lena repeated, giving him a direct look.
Merthin met her candid gaze, and realized that she was offering herself.
He considered the prospect. The house was beautiful. It was home to Lena’s children, and a familiar place to Lolla, and even to Gianni’s baby: all the children would be happy here. He bad inherited enough money to live on for the rest of his life. Lena was a woman of intelligence and experience, and he could readily imagine the pleasures of becoming intimate with her.
She read his mind. She took his hand and pressed it to her bosom. Her breasts felt soft and warm through the light wool dress.
But this was not what he wanted. He drew Lena’s hand to him and kissed it. “I will provide for you and your children,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
“Thank you, lord,” she said, but she looked disappointed, and something in her eyes told Merthin that her offer had not been merely practical. She had genuinely hoped he might be more to her than just her new owner. But that was part of the problem. He could not imagine sex with someone he owned. The idea was distasteful to the point of revulsion.
He sipped his wine and felt stronger. If he was not drawn to an easy life of luxury and sensual gratification, what did he want? His family was almost gone: only Lolla was left. But he still had his work. Around the city were three sites where designs of his were under construction. He was not going to give up the job he loved. He had not survived the great death to become an idler. He recalled his youthful ambition to build the tallest building in England. He would pick up where he had left off. He would recover from the loss of Silvia by throwing himself into his building projects.
He got up to leave. Lena flung her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying you will take care of my children.”
He patted her back. “They are Alessandro’s grandchildren,” he said. In Florence, the children of slaves were not themselves enslaved. “When they grow up they will be rich.” He detached her arms gently and went down the stairs.
All the houses were locked and shuttered. On some doorsteps he saw a shrouded form that he presumed was a dead body. There were a few people on the streets, but mostly the poorer sort. The desolation was unnerving. Florence was the greatest city in the Christian world, a noisy commercial metropolis producing thousands of yards of fine woollen cloth every day, a market where vast sums of money were paid over on no more security than a letter from Antwerp or the verbal promise of a prince. Walking through these silent, empty streets was like seeing an injured horse that has fallen and cannot get up: immense strength was suddenly brought to nothing. He saw no one from his circle of acquaintance. His friends were keeping indoors, he presumed – those that were still alive.
He went first to a square nearby, in the old Roman city, where he was building a fountain for the municipality. He had devised an elaborate system to recycle almost all the water during Florence’s long, dry summers.
But, when he reached the square, he could see immediately that no one was working on the site. The underground pipes had been put in and covered over before he fell ill, and the first course of masonry for the stepped plinth around the pool had been laid. However, the dusty, neglected look of the stones told him that no work had been done for days. Worse, a small pyramid of mortar on a wooden board had hardened into a solid mass that gave off a puff of dust when he kicked it. There were even some tools lying on the ground. It was a miracle they had not been stolen.
The fountain was going to be stunning. In Merthin’s workshop, the best stone carver in the city was sculpting the centrepiece – or had been. Merthin was disappointed that work had stopped. Surely not all the builders had died? Perhaps they were waiting to see whether Merthin would recover.
This was the smallest of his three projects, albeit a prestigious one. He left the square and headed north to inspect another one. But as he walked he worried. He had not yet met anyone knowledgeable enough to give him a wider perspective. What was left of the city government? Was the plague easing off or getting worse? What about the rest of Italy?
One thing at a time, he told himself.
He was building a home for Giulielmo Caroli, the older brother of Buonaventura. It was to be a real palazzo, a high double-fronted house designed around a grand staircase wider than some of the city’s streets. The ground floor wall was already up. The façade was battered, or inclined, at ground level, the slight protrusion giving an impression of fortification; but above were elegant pointed-arch two-light windows with a trefoil. The design said that the people inside were both powerful and refined, which was what the Caroli family wanted.
The scaffolding had been erected for the second floor, but no one was working. There should have been five masons laying stones. The only person on site was an elderly man who acted as caretaker and lived in a wooden hut at the back. Merthin found him cooking a chicken over a fire. The fool had used costly marble slabs for his hearth. “Where is everyone?” Merthin said abruptly.
The caretaker leaped to his feet. “Signor Caroli died, and his son Agostino wouldn’t pay the men, so they left, those that weren’t already dead themselves.”
That was a blow. The Caroli family was one of the richest in Florence. If they felt they could no longer afford to build, the crisis was severe indeed.
“So Agostino is alive?”
“Yes, master, I saw him this morning.”
Merthin knew young Agostino. He was not as clever as his father or his uncle Buonaventura, so he compensated by being extremely cautious and conservative. He would not recommence building until he was sure the family finances had recovered from the effects of the plague.
However, Merthin felt confident his third and largest project would continue. He was building a church for an order of friars much favoured by the city’s merchants. The site was south of the river, so he crossed the new bridge.
This bridge had been finished only two years ago. In fact Merthin had done some work on it, under the leading designer, the painter Taddeo Gaddi. The bridge had to withstand fast-flowing water when the winter snows melted, and Merthin had helped with the design of the piers. Now, as he crossed, he was dismayed to see that all the little goldsmiths’ shops on the bridge were closed – another bad sign.
The church of Sant’ Anna dei Frari was his most ambitious project to date. It was a big church, more like a cathedral – the friars were rich – though nothing like the cathedral at Kingsbridge. Italy had Gothic cathedrals, Milan being one of the greatest, but modern-minded Italians did not like the architecture of France and England: they regarded huge windows and flying buttresses as a foreign fetish. The obsession with light, which made sense in the gloomy north-west of Europe, seemed perverse in sunny Italy, where people sought shade and coolness. Italians identified with the classical architecture of ancient Rome, the ruins of which were all around them. They liked gable ends and round arches, and they rejected ornate exterior sculpture in favour of decorative patterns of different-coloured stone and marble.
But Merthin was going to surprise even the Florentines with this church. The plan was a series of squares, each topped by a dome – five in a row, and two either side of the crossing. He had heard about domes back in England, but had never seen one until he visited Siena cathedral. There were none in Florence. The clerestory would be a row of round windows, or oculi. Instead of narrow pillars that reached yearningly for heaven, this church would have circles, complete in themselves, with the air of earthbound self-sufficiency that characterized the commercial people of Florence.
He was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that there were no masons on the scaffolding, no labourers moving the great stones, no mortar-making women stirring with their giant paddles. This site was as quiet as the other two. However, in this case he felt confident he could get the project restarted. A religious order had a life of its own, independent of individuals. He walked around the site and entered the friary.
The place was silent. Monasteries were supposed to be so, of course, but there was a quality to this silence that unnerved him. He passed from the vestibule into the waiting room. There was usually a brother on duty here, studying the scriptures in between attending to visitors, but today the room was empty. With grim apprehension, Merthin went through another door and found himself in the cloisters. The quadrangle was deserted. “Hello!” he called out. “Is anyone there?” His voice echoed around the stone arcades.
He searched the place. All the friars were gone. In the kitchen he found three men sitting at the table, eating ham and drinking wine. They wore the costly clothes of merchants, but they had matted hair, untrimmed beards and dirty hands: they were paupers wearing dead men’s garments. When he walked in they looked guilty but defiant. He said: “Where are the holy brothers?”
“All dead,” said one of the men.
“All?”
“Every one. They took care of the sick, you see, and so they caught the disease.”
The man was drunk, Merthin could see. However, he seemed to be telling the truth. These three were too comfortable, sitting in the monastery, eating the friars’ food and drinking their wine. They clearly knew there was no one left to object.
Merthin returned to the site of the new church. The walls of the choir and transepts were up, and the oculi in the clerestory were visible. He sat in the middle of the crossing, amid stacks of stones, looking at his work. For how long would the project be stalled? If all the friars were dead, who would get their money? As far as he knew, they were not part of a larger order. The bishop might claim the inheritance, and so might the pope. There was a legal tangle here that could take years to resolve.
This morning he had resolved to throw himself into his work as a way of healing the wound of Silvia’s death. Now it was clear that, at least for the present, he had no work. Ever since he began to repair the roof of St Mark’s church in Kingsbridge, ten years ago, he had had at least one building project on the go. Without one, he was lost. It made him feel panicky.
He had woken up to find his whole life in ruins. The fact that he was suddenly very rich only heightened the sense of nightmare. Lolla was the only part of his life he had left.
He did not even know where to go next. He would go home, eventually, but he could not spend all day playing with his three-year-old and talking to Maria. So he stayed where he was, sitting on a carved stone disc intended for a column, looking along what would be the nave.
As the sun rolled down the curve of the afternoon, he began to remember his illness. He had felt sure he would die. So few survived that he did not expect to be among the lucky ones. In his more lucid moments, he had reviewed his life as if it were over. He had come to some grand realization, he knew, but since recovering he had been unable to recall what it was. Now, in the tranquillity of the unfinished church, he recalled concluding that he had made one huge mistake in his life. What was it? He had quarrelled with Elfric, he had had sex with Griselda, he had rejected Elizabeth Clerk… All these decisions had caused trouble, but none counted as the mistake of a lifetime.
Lying on the bed, sweating, coughing, tormented by thirst, he had almost wanted to die; but not quite. Something had kept him alive – and now it came back to him.
He had wanted to see Caris again.
That was his reason for living. In his delirium he had seen her face, and had wept with grief that he might die here, thousands of miles away from her. The mistake of his life had been to leave her.
As he at last retrieved that elusive memory, and realized the blinding truth of the revelation, he was filled with an odd kind of happiness.
It did not make sense, he reflected. She had joined the nunnery. She had refused to see him and explain herself. But his soul was not rational, and it was telling him that he should be where she was.
He wondered what she was doing now, while he sat in a half-built church in a city nearly destroyed by a plague. The last he had heard was that she had been consecrated by the bishop. That decision was irrevocable – or so they said: Caris had never accepted what other people told her were the rules. On the other hand, once she had made her own decision it was generally impossible to change her mind. There was no doubt she was strongly committed to her new life.
It made no difference. He wanted to see her again. Not to do so would be the second-biggest mistake of his life.
And now he was free. His ties with Florence were all broken. His wife was dead, and so were all his relations by marriage except for three children. The only family he had here was his daughter, Lolla, and he would take her with him. She was so young he felt she would hardly notice that they had left.
It was a momentous move, he told himself. He would first have to prove Alessandro’s will, and make arrangements for the children – Agostino Caroli would help him with that. Then he would have to turn his wealth into gold and arrange for it to be transferred to England. The Caroli family could do that, too, if their international network was still intact. Most daunting, he would have to undertake the thousand-mile journey from Florence across Europe to Kingsbridge. And all that without having any idea how Caris would receive him when at last he arrived.
It was a decision that required long and careful thought, obviously.
He made up his mind in a few moments.
He was going home.
Merthin left Italy in company with a dozen merchants from Florence and Lucca. They took a ship from Genoa to the ancient French port of Marseilles. From there they travelled overland to Avignon, home of the pope for the last forty years or more, and the most lavish court in Europe – as well as the smelliest city Merthin had ever known. There they joined a large group of clergymen and returning pilgrims heading north.
Everyone travelled in groups, the larger the better. The merchants were carrying money and expensive trading goods, and they had men-at-arms to protect them from outlaws. They were happy to have company: priestly robes and pilgrim badges might deter robbers, and even ordinary travellers such as Merthin helped just by swelling the numbers.
Merthin had entrusted most of his fortune to the Caroli family in Florence. Their relatives in England would give him cash. The Carolis carried on this kind of international transaction all the time, and indeed Merthin had used their services nine years ago to transfer a smaller fortune from Kingsbridge to Florence. All the same, he knew that the system was not completely infallible – such families sometimes went bankrupt, especially if they got involved in lending money to untrustworthy types such as kings and princes. That was why he had a large sum in gold florins sewn into his undershirt.
Lolla enjoyed the journey. As the only child in the caravan, she was much fussed over. During the long days on horseback, she sat on the saddle in front of Merthin, his arms holding her safe while his hands held the reins. He sang songs, repeated rhymes, told stories and talked to her about the things they saw – trees, mills, bridges, churches. She probably did not understand half of what he said, but the sound of his voice kept her happy.
He had never before spent this much time with his daughter. They were together all day, every day, week after week. He hoped the intimacy would make up, in part, for the loss of her mother. It certainly worked the other way around: he would have been terribly lonely without her. She no longer spoke about Mama, but every now and then she would put her arms around his neck and cling to him with desperation, as if frightened to let him go.
He felt regret only when he stood in front of the great cathedral at Chartres, sixty miles outside Paris. There were two towers at its west end. The north tower was unfinished, but the south tower was three hundred and fifty feet high. It reminded him that he had once yearned to design such buildings. He was unlikely to achieve that ambition in Kingsbridge.
He lingered in Paris for two weeks. The plague had not reached here, and it was an immense relief to see the normal life of a great city, with people buying and selling and walking around, instead of empty streets with corpses on the doorsteps. His spirits lifted, and it was only then that he realized how stricken he had been by the horror he had left behind in Florence. He looked at Paris’s cathedrals and palaces, making sketches of details that interested him. He had a small notebook made of paper, a new writing material popular in Italy.
Leaving Paris, he teamed up with a noble family returning to Cherbourg. Hearing Lolla talk, the people assumed Merthin was Italian, and he did not disabuse them, for the English were hated passionately in northern France. With the family and their entourage, Merthin crossed Normandy at a leisurely pace, with Lolla on the saddle in front of him and their pack horse following on a leading rein, looking at those churches and abbeys that had survived the devastation of King Edward’s invasion almost two years ago.
He could have moved faster, but he told himself he was making the most of an opportunity that might not come again, the chance to see a rich variety of architecture. However, when he was honest with himself he had to admit that he was afraid of what he might find when he reached Kingsbridge.
He was going home to Caris, but she would not be the same Caris he had left behind nine years ago. She might have changed, physically and mentally. Some nuns became grossly fat, their only pleasure in life being food. More likely, Caris might have become ethereally thin, starving herself in an ecstasy of self-denial. By now she could be obsessed with religion, praying all day and flagellating herself for imaginary sins. Or she might be dead.
Those were his wildest nightmares. In his heart he knew she would not be enormously fat or a religious fanatic. And if she were dead he would have heard, as he had heard of the death of her father, Edmund. She was going to be the same Caris, small and neat, quick-witted, organized and determined. But he was seriously concerned about how she would receive him. How did she feel about him after nine years? Did she think of him with indifference, as a part of her past too remote to care about, the way he thought of, say, Griselda? Or did she still long for him, somewhere deep in her soul? He had no idea, and that was the true cause of his anxiety.
They sailed to Portsmouth and travelled with a party of traders. They left the group at Mudeford Crossing, the traders going on to Shiring while Merthin and Lolla forded the shallow river on horseback and took the Kingsbridge road. It was a pity, Merthin thought, that there was no visible sign of the way to Kingsbridge. He wondered how many traders continued on to Shiring simply because they did not realize that Kingsbridge was nearer.
It was a warm summer day, and the sun was shining when they came within sight of their destination. The first thing he saw was the top of the cathedral tower, visible over the trees. At least it had not fallen down, Merthin thought: Elfric’s repairs had held for eleven years. It was a pity the tower could not be seen from Mudeford Crossing – what a difference that would make to the numbers visiting the town.
As they came closer, he began to suffer a strange mixture of excitement and fear that made him feel nauseous. For a few moments he was afraid he would have to dismount and throw up. He tried to make himself calm. What could happen? Even if Caris proved to have become indifferent to him, he would not die.
He saw several new buildings on the outskirts of the suburb of Newtown. The splendid new home he had built for Dick Brewer was no longer on the edge of Kingsbridge, for the town had grown past it.
He momentarily forgot his apprehension when he saw his bridge. It rose in an elegant curve from the river bank and landed gracefully on the midstream island. On the far side of the island, the bridge sprang again to span the second channel. Its white stone gleamed in the sun. People and carts were crossing in both directions. The sight made his heart swell with pride. It was everything he had hoped it would be: beautiful, useful and strong. I did that, he thought, and it’s good.
But he suffered a shock when he got closer. The masonry of the nearer span was damaged around the central pier. He could see cracks in the stonework, repaired with iron braces in a clumsy fashion that bore the hallmark of Elfric. He was appalled. Brown dribbles of rust dripped from the nails that fixed the ugly braces in the stonework. The sight took him back eleven years, to Elfric’s repairs to the old wooden bridge. Everyone can make mistakes, he thought, but people who don’t learn from their mistakes just make the same ones again. “Bloody fools,” he said aloud.
“Bloody fools,” Lolla repeated. She was learning English.
He rode on to the bridge. The roadbed had been finished properly, he was happy to see, and he was pleased with the design of the parapet, a sturdy barrier with a carved capstone that recalled the mouldings in the cathedral.
Leper Island was still overrun with rabbits. Merthin continued to hold a lease on the island. In his absence, Mark Webber had been collecting rents from tenants, paying the nominal rent due to the priory every year, subtracting an agreed collection fee and sending the balance annually to Merthin in Florence via the Caroli family. After all the deductions it was a small sum, but it grew a little every year.
Merthin’s house on the island had an occupied look, the shutters open, the doorstep swept. He had arranged for Jimmie to live there. The boy must now be a man, he thought.
At the near end of the second span, an old man Merthin did not recognize sat in the sun collecting the tolls. Merthin paid him a penny. The man gave him a hard stare, as if trying to recall where he had seen him before, but he said nothing.
The town was both familiar and strange. Because it was almost the same, the changes struck Merthin as miraculous, as if they had happened overnight: a row of hovels knocked down and replaced by fine houses; a busy inn where once there had been a big gloomy house occupied by a wealthy widow; a well dried up and paved over; a grey house painted white.
He went to the Bell inn on the main street next to the priory gates. It was unchanged: a tavern in such a good location would probably last hundreds of years. He left his horses and baggage with an ostler and went inside, holding hands with Lolla.
The Bell was like taverns everywhere: a big front room furnished with rough tables and benches, and a back area where the barrels of beer and wine were racked and food was cooked. Because it was popular and profitable, the straw on the floor was changed frequently and the walls were freshly whitewashed, and in winter a huge fire blazed. Now, in the heat of summer, all the windows were open, and a mild breeze blew through the front room.
After a moment, Bessie Bell came out from the back. Nine years ago she had been a curvy girl; now she was a voluptuous woman. She looked at him without recognition, but he saw her appraise his clothes and judge him an affluent customer. “Good day to you, traveller,” she said. “What can we do to make you and your child comfortable?”
Merthin grinned. “I’d like to take your private room, please, Bessie.”
She knew him as soon as he spoke. “My soul!” she cried. “It’s Merthin Bridger!” He put out his hand to shake, but she threw her arms around him and hugged him. She had always had a soft spot for him. She released him and studied his face. “Such a beard you’ve grown! I would have recognized you sooner otherwise. Is this your little girl?”
“Her name is Lolla.”
“Well, aren’t you a pretty thing! Your mother must be beautiful.”
Merthin said: “My wife died.”
“How sad. But Lolla is young enough to forget. My husband died, too.”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I met him after you left. Richard Brown, from Gloucester. I lost him a year ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“My father’s gone to Canterbury, on a pilgrimage, so I’m running this tavern all on my own, at the moment.”
“I always liked your father.”
“He was fond of you, too. He always takes to men with a bit of spirit. He was never very keen on my Richard.”
“Ah.” Merthin felt the conversation had become too intimate, too fast. “What news of my parents?”
“They’re not here in Kingsbridge. They’re staying at your brother’s new home in Tench.”
Merthin had heard, through Buonaventura, that Ralph had become lord of Tench. “My father must be very pleased.”
“Proud as a peacock.” She smiled, then looked concerned. “You must be hungry and tired. I’ll tell the boys to take your bags upstairs, then I’ll bring you a tankard of ale and some pottage.” She turned to go into the back room.
“That’s kind, but…”
Bessie paused at the door.
“If you would give Lolla some soup, I’d be grateful. There’s something I have to do.”
Bessie nodded. “Of course.” She bent down to Lolla. “Do you want to come with Auntie Bessie? I expect you could eat a piece of bread. Do you like new bread?”
Merthin translated the question into Italian, and Lolla nodded happily.
Bessie looked at Merthin. “Going to see Sister Caris, are you?”
Absurdly, he felt guilty. “Yes,” he said. “She’s still here, then?”
“Oh, yes. She’s guest master at the nunnery now. I’ll be surprised if she isn’t prioress one day.” She took Lolla’s hand and led her into the back room. “Good luck,” she called over her shoulder.
Merthin went out. Bessie could be a little suffocating, but her affection was sincere, and it warmed his heart to be welcomed back with such enthusiasm. He entered the priory grounds. He paused to look at the soaring west front of the cathedral, almost two hundred years old now and as awe-inspiring as ever.
He noticed a new stone building to the north of the church, beyond the graveyard. It was a medium-sized palace, with an imposing entrance and an upper storey. It had been built close to where the old timber prior’s house used to be, so presumably it had replaced that modest building as the residence of Godwyn. He wondered where Godwyn had found the money.
He went closer. The palace was very grand, but Merthin did not like the design. None of the levels related in any way to the cathedral that loomed over it. The details were careless. The top of the ostentatious doorcase blocked part of an upper-storey window. Worst of all, the palace was built on a different axis from that of the church, so that it stood at an awkward angle.
It was Elfric’s work, no doubt of that.
A plump cat sat on the doorstep in the sun. It was black with a white tip to its tail. It glared malevolently at Merthin.
He turned away and walked slowly to the hospital. The cathedral green was quiet and deserted: there was no market today. The excitement and apprehension rose again in his stomach. He might see Caris at any moment. He reached the entrance and went in. The long room looked brighter and smelled fresher than he remembered: everything had a scrubbed look. There were a few people lying on mattresses on the floor, most of them elderly. At the altar a young novice was saying prayers aloud. He waited for her to finish. He was so anxious that he was sure he felt more ill than the patients on the beds. He had come a thousand miles for this moment. Was it a wasted journey?
At last the nun said “Amen” for the last time and turned around. He did not know her. She approached him and said politely: “May God bless you, stranger.”
Merthin took a deep breath. “I’ve come to see Sister Caris,” he said.
The nuns’ chapter meetings now took place in the refectory. In the past they had shared with the monks the elegant octagonal chapter house at the north-east corner of the cathedral. Sadly, mistrust between monks and nuns was now so great that the nuns did not want to risk the monks’ eavesdropping on their deliberations. So they met in the long bare room where they took their meals.
The nunnery officials sat behind a table, Mother Cecilia in the middle. There was no sub-prioress: Natalie had died a few weeks ago, at the age of fifty-seven, and Cecilia had not yet replaced her. On Cecilia’s right was the treasurer, Beth, and her matricularius, Elizabeth, formerly Elizabeth Clerk. On Cecilia’s left were the cellarer, Margaret, in charge of all supplies, and her subordinate Caris, the guest master. Thirty nuns sat on rows of benches facing the senior officials.
After the prayer and the reading, Mother Cecilia made her announcements. “We have received a letter from our lord bishop in response to our complaint about Prior Godwyn stealing our money,” she said. There was a murmur of anticipation from the nuns.
The reply had been a long time coming. King Edward had taken almost a year to replace Bishop Richard. Earl William had lobbied hard for Jerome, his father’s able administrator, but in the end Edward had chosen Henri of Mons, a relative of his wife’s from Hainault in northern France. Bishop Henri had come to England for the ceremony, then travelled to Rome to be confirmed by the pope, then returned and settled in to his palace at Shiring, before replying to Cecilia’s formal letter of complaint.
Cecilia went on: “The bishop declines to take any action over the theft, saying that the events took place during the time of Bishop Richard, and the past is past.”
The nuns gasped. They had accepted the delay patiently, feeling confident they would get justice in the end. This was a shocking rejection.
Caris had seen the letter earlier. She was not as astonished as the rest of the nuns. It was not so remarkable that the new bishop did not wish to begin his period of office by quarrelling with the prior of Kingsbridge. The letter told her that Henri would be a pragmatic ruler, not a man of principle. He was no different, in that respect, from the majority of men who were successful in church politics.
However, she was no less disappointed for being unsurprised. The decision meant that she had to abandon, for the foreseeable future, her dream of building a new hospital where sick people could be isolated from healthy guests. She told herself she should not grieve: the priory had existed for hundreds of years without such a luxury, so it could wait another decade or more. On the other hand, it angered her to see the rapid spread of diseases like the vomiting sickness that Maldwyn Cook had brought to the Fleece Fair the year before last. No one understood exactly how these things were transmitted – by looking at a sick person, by touching him or just by being in the same room – but there could be no doubt that many illnesses did hop from one victim to the next, and proximity was a factor. However, she had to forget all that for now.
A rumble of resentful muttering came from the nuns on the benches. Mair’s voice rose above the others, saying: “The monks will be cock-a-hoop.”
She was right, Caris thought. Godwyn and Philemon had got away with daylight robbery. They had always argued that it was not theft for the monks to use the nuns’ money, since it was all for the glory of God in the end; and they would now consider that the bishop had vindicated them. It was a bitter defeat, especially for Caris and Mair.
But Mother Cecilia was not going to waste time on regrets. “This is not the fault of any of us, except perhaps me,” she said. “We have simply been too trusting.”
You trusted Godwyn, but I did not, Caris thought, but she kept her mouth clamped shut. She waited to hear what Cecilia would say next. She knew that the prioress was going to make changes among the nunnery officials, but no one knew what had been decided.
“However, we must be more careful in the future. We will build a treasury of our own, to which the monks will not have access; indeed, I hope they will not even know where it is. Sister Beth will retire as treasurer, with our thanks for long and faithful service, and Sister Elizabeth will take her place. I have complete faith in Elizabeth.”
Caris tried to control her face so that her disgust would not be seen. Elizabeth had testified that Caris was a witch. It was nine years ago, and Cecilia had forgiven Elizabeth, but Caris never would. However, that was not the only reason for Caris’s antipathy. Elizabeth was sour and twisted, and her resentments interfered with her judgement. Such people could never be trusted, in Caris’s opinion: they were always liable to make decisions based on their prejudices.
Cecilia went on: “Sister Margaret has asked permission to step down from her duties, and Sister Caris will take her place as cellarer.”
Caris was disappointed. She had hoped to be made sub-prioress, Cecilia’s deputy. She tried to smile as if pleased, but she found it difficult. Cecilia was obviously not going to appoint a sub-prioress. She would have two rival subordinates, Caris and Elizabeth, and let them fight it out. Caris caught Elizabeth’s eye, and saw barely suppressed hatred in her look.
Cecilia went on: “Under Caris’s supervision, Sister Mair will become guest master.”
Mair beamed with pleasure. She was glad to be promoted and even happier that she would be working under Caris. Caris, too, liked the decision. Mair shared her obsession with cleanliness and her mistrust of priests’ remedies such as bleeding.
Caris had not got what she wanted, but she tried to look happy as Cecilia announced a handful of lesser appointments. When the meeting closed, she went to Cecilia and thanked her.
“Don’t imagine it was an easy decision,” the prioress said. “Elizabeth has brains and determination, and she’s steady where you’re volatile. But you’re imaginative, and you get the best out of people. I need you both.”
Caris could not argue with Cecilia’s analysis of her. She really knows me, Caris thought ruefully; better than anyone else in the world, now that my father is dead and Merthin has gone. She felt a surge of affection. Cecilia was like a mother bird, always moving, always busy, taking care of her fledglings. “I’ll do everything I can to live up to your expectations,” Caris vowed.
She left the room. She needed to check on Old Julie. No matter what she said to the younger nuns, no one looked after Julie the way she did. It was as if they believed that a helpless old person did not need to be kept comfortable. Only Caris made sure Julie was given a blanket in cool weather, and got something to drink when she was thirsty, and was helped to the latrine at those times of day when habitually she needed to go. Caris decided to take her a hot drink, an infusion of herbs that seemed to cheer the old nun up. She went to her pharmacy and put a small pan of water on the fire to boil.
Mair came in and closed the door. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she said. “We’ll still be working together!” She threw her arms around Caris and kissed her lips.
Caris hugged her, then detached herself from the embrace. “Don’t kiss me like that,” she said.
“It’s because I love you.”
“And I love you, too, but not in the same way.”
It was true. Caris was very fond of Mair. They had become highly intimate in France, when they had risked their lives together. Caris had even found herself attracted by Mair’s beauty. One night in a tavern in Calais, when the two of them had had a room with a door that could be locked, Caris had at last succumbed to Mair’s advances. Mair had fondled and kissed Caris in all her most private places, and Caris had done the same to Mair. Mair had said it was the happiest day of her life. Unfortunately, Caris had not felt the same. For her the experience was pleasant but not thrilling, and she had not wanted to repeat it.
“That’s all right,” Mair said. “As long as you love me, even just a little bit, I’m happy. You won’t ever stop, will you?”
Caris poured boiling water on the herbs. “When you’re as old as Julie, I promise I’ll bring you an infusion to keep you healthy.”
Tears came to Mair’s eyes. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Caris had not meant it to be a vow of eternal love. “Don’t be sentimental,” she said gently. She strained the infusion into a wooden cup. “Let’s go and check on Julie.”
They crossed the cloisters and entered the hospital. A man with a bushy red beard was standing near the altar. “God bless you, stranger,” she said. The man seemed familiar. He did not reply to her greeting, but looked hard at her with intense golden-brown eyes. Then she recognized him. She dropped the cup. “Oh, God!” she said. “You!”
The few moments before she saw him were exquisite, and Merthin knew he would treasure them all his life, whatever else happened. He stared hungrily at the face he had not seen for nine years, and remembered, with a shock that was like plunging into a cold river on a hot day, how dear that face had been to him. She had hardly changed at all: his fears had been groundless. She did not even look older. She was now thirty, he calculated, but she was as slim and perky as she had been at twenty. She walked quickly into the hospital with an air of brisk authority, carrying a wooden cup full of some medicine; then she looked at him, paused, and dropped the cup.
He grinned at her, feeling happy.
“You’re here!” she said. “I thought you were in Florence!”
“I’m very pleased to be back,” he replied.
She looked at the liquid on the floor. The nun with her said: “Don’t worry about this, I’ll clear up. Go and talk to him.” The second nun was pretty, and had tears in her eyes, Merthin noticed, but he was too excited to pay much attention.
Caris said: “When did you come back?”
“I arrived an hour ago. You look well.”
“And you look… such a man.”
Merthin laughed.
She said: “What made you decide to return?”
“It’s a long story,” he replied. “But I’d love to tell it to you.”
“We’ll step outside.” She touched his arm lightly and led him out of the building. Nuns were not supposed to touch people, nor to have private conversations with men, but for her such rules had always been optional. He was glad she had not acquired a respect for authority in the last nine years.
Merthin pointed to the bench by the vegetable garden. “I sat on that seat with Mark and Madge Webber, the day you entered the convent, nine years ago. Madge told me you had refused to see me.”
She nodded. “It was the most unhappy day of my life – but I knew that seeing you would make it even worse.”
“I felt the same way, except that I wanted to see you, no matter how miserable it made me.”
She gave him a direct look, her gold-flecked green eyes as candid as ever. “That sounds a bit like a reproach.”
“Perhaps it is. I was very angry with you. Whatever you decided to do, I felt you owed me an explanation.” He had not intended the conversation to go this way, but he found he could not help himself.
She was unapologetic. “It’s really quite simple. I could hardly bear to leave you. If I had been forced to speak to you, I think I would have killed myself.”
He was taken aback. For nine years he had thought she had been selfish on that day of parting. Now it looked as if he had been the selfish one, in making such demands on her. She had always had this ability to make him revise his attitudes, he recalled. It was an uncomfortable process, but she was often right.
They did not sit on the bench, but turned away and walked across the cathedral green. The sky had clouded over, and the sun had gone. “There is a terrible plague in Italy,” he said. “They call it la moria grande.”
“I’ve heard about it,” she said. “Isn’t it in southern France, too? It sounds dreadful.”
“I caught the disease. I recovered, which is unusual. My wife, Silvia, died.”
She looked shocked. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “You must feel terribly sad.”
“All her family died, and so did all my clients. It seemed like a good moment to come home. And you?”
“I’ve just been made cellarer,” she said with evident pride.
To Merthin that seemed somewhat trivial, especially after the slaughter he had seen. However, such things were important in the life of the nunnery. He looked up at the great church. “Florence has a magnificent cathedral,” he said. “Lots of patterns in coloured stone. But I prefer this: carved shapes, all the same shade.” As he studied the tower, grey stone against grey sky, it started to rain.
They went inside the church for shelter. A dozen or so people were scattered around the nave: visitors to the town looking at the architecture, devout locals praying, a couple of novice monks sweeping. “I remember feeling you up behind that pillar,” Merthin said with a grin.
“I remember it, too,” she said, but she did not meet his eye.
“I still feel the same about you as I did on that day. That’s the real reason I came home.”
She turned and looked at him with anger in her eyes. “But you got married.”
“And you became a nun.”
“But how could you marry her – Silvia – if you loved me?”
“I thought I could forget you. But I never did. Then, when I thought I was dying, I realized I would never get over you.”
Her anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and tears came to her eyes. “I know,” she said, looking away.
“You feel the same.”
“I never changed.”
“Did you try?”
She met his eye. “There’s a nun…”
“The pretty one who was with you in the hospital?”
“How did you guess?”
“She cried when she saw me. I wondered why.”
Caris looked guilty, and Merthin guessed she was feeling the way he had felt when Silvia used to say: “You’re thinking about your English girl.”
“Mair is dear to me,” Caris said. “And she loves me. But…”
“But you didn’t forget me.”
“No.”
Merthin felt triumphant, but he tried not to let it show. “In that case,” he said, “you should renounce your vows, leave the nunnery, and marry me.”
“Leave the nunnery?”
“You’ll need first to get a pardon for the witchcraft conviction, I realize that, but I’m sure it can be done – we’ll bribe the bishop and the archbishop and even the pope if necessary. I can afford it.”
She was not sure it would be as easy as he thought. But that was not her main problem. “It’s not that I’m not tempted,” she said. “But I promised Cecilia I would vindicate her faith in me… I have to help Mair take over as guest master… we need to build a new treasury… and I’m the only one who takes care of Old Julie properly…”
He was bewildered. “Is all that so important?”
“Of course it is!” she said angrily.
“I thought the nunnery was just old women saying prayers.”
“And healing the sick, and feeding the poor, and managing thousands of acres of land. It’s at least as important as building bridges and churches.”
He had not anticipated this. She had always been sceptical of religious observance. She had gone into the nunnery under duress, when it was the only way to save her own life. But now she seemed to have grown to love her punishment. “You’re like a prisoner who is reluctant to leave the dungeon, even when the door is opened wide,” he said.
“The door isn’t open wide. I would have to renounce my vows. Mother Cecilia-”
“We’ll have to work on all these problems. Let’s begin right away.”
She looked miserable. “I’m not sure.”
She was torn, he could see. It amazed him. “Is this you?” he said incredulously. “You used to hate the hypocrisy and falsehood that you saw in the priory. Lazy, greedy, dishonest, tyrannical-”
“That’s still true of Godwyn and Philemon.”
“Then leave.”
“And do what?”
“Marry me, of course.”
“Is that all?”
Once again he was bewildered. “It’s all I want.”
“No, it’s not. You want to design palaces and castles. You want to build the tallest building in England.”
“If you need someone to take care of…”
“What?”
“I’ve got a little girl. Her name is Lolla. She’s three.”
That seemed to settle Caris’s mind. She sighed. “I’m a senior official in a convent of thirty-five nuns, ten novices and twenty-five employees, with a school and a hospital and a pharmacy – and you’re asking me to throw all that up to nursemaid one little girl I’ve never met.”
He gave up arguing. “All I know is that I love you and I want to be with you.”
She laughed humourlessly. “If you had said that and nothing else, you might have talked me into it.”
“I’m confused,” he said. “Are you refusing me, or not?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Merthin lay awake much of the night. He was accustomed to bedding down in taverns, and the sounds Lolla made in her sleep only soothed him; but tonight he could not stop thinking about Caris. He was shocked by her reaction to his return. He realized, now, that he had never thought logically about how she would feel when he reappeared. He had indulged in unrealistic nightmares about how she might have changed, and in his heart he had hoped for a joyous reconciliation. Of course she had not forgotten him; but he could have figured out that she would not have spent nine years moping for him: she was not the type.
All the same, he would never have guessed that she would be so committed to her work as a nun. She had always been more or less hostile to the church. Given how dangerous it was to criticize religion in any way, she might well have concealed the true depth of her scepticism even from him. So it was a terrible shock to find her reluctant to leave the nunnery. He had anticipated fear of Bishop Richard’s death sentence, or anxiety about being permitted to renounce her vows, but he had not suspected she might have found life in the priory so fulfilling that she hesitated to leave it to become his wife.
He felt angry with her. He wished he had said: “I’ve travelled a thousand miles to ask you to marry me – how can you say you’re not sure?” He thought of a lot of biting remarks he might have made. Perhaps it was a good thing they had not occurred to him then. Their conversation had ended with her asking him to give her time to get over the shock of his sudden return and think about what she wanted to do. He had consented – he had no alternative – but it had left him hanging in agony like a man crucified.
Eventually he drifted into a troubled sleep.
Lolla woke him early, as usual, and they went down to the parlour tor porridge. He repressed the impulse to go straight to the hospital and speak to Caris again. She had asked for time, and it would do his cause no good to pester her. It occurred to him that there might be more shocks in store for him, and that he had better try to catch up with what had been happening in Kingsbridge. So after breakfast he went to see Mark Webber.
The Webber family lived on the main street in a large house they had bought soon after Caris got them started in the cloth business. Merthin remembered the days when they and their four children had lived in one room that was not much bigger than the loom on which Mark worked. Their new house had a large stone-built ground floor used as a storeroom and shop. The living quarters were in the timber-built upper storey. Merthin found Madge in the shop, checking a cartload of scarlet cloth that had just arrived from one of their out-of-town mills. She was almost forty now, with strands of grey in her dark hair. A short woman, she had become quite plump, with a prominent bosom and a vast behind. She made Merthin think of a pigeon, but an aggressive one, because of her jutting chin and assertive manner.
With her were two youngsters, a beautiful girl of about seventeen and a strapping boy a couple of years older. Merthin recalled her two older children – Dora, a thin girl in a ragged dress, and John, a shy boy – and realized that these were the same, grown up. Now John was effortlessly lifting the heavy bales of cloth while Dora counted them by notching a stick. It made Merthin feel old. I’m only thirty-two, he thought; but that seemed old when he looked at John.
Madge gave a cry of surprise and pleasure when she saw him. She hugged him and kissed his bearded cheeks, then made a fuss of Lolla. “I thought she could come and play with your children,” Merthin said ruefully. “Of course they’re much too old.”
“Dennis and Noah are at the priory school,” she said. “They’re thirteen and eleven. But Dora will entertain Lolla – she loves children.”
The young woman picked Lolla up. “The cat next door has kittens,” she said. “Do you want to see them?”
Lolla replied with a stream of Italian, which Dora took for assent, and they went off.
Madge left John to finish unloading the cart and took Merthin upstairs. “Mark has gone to Melcombe,” she said. “We export some of our cloth to Brittany and Gascony. He should be back today or tomorrow.”
Merthin sat in her parlour and accepted a cup of ale. “Kingsbridge seems to be prospering,” he said.
“The trade in fleeces has declined,” she said. “It’s because of war taxes. Everything has to be sold through a handful of large traders so that the king can collect his share. There are still a few dealers here in Kingsbridge – Petranilla carries on the business Edmund left – but it’s nothing like it used to be. Luckily, the trade in finished cloth has grown to replace it, in this town at least.”
“Is Godwyn still prior?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Is he still making difficulties?”
“He’s so conservative. He objects to any change and vetoes all progress. For example, Mark proposed opening the market on Saturday as well as Sunday, as an experiment.”
“What possible objection could Godwyn have to that?”
“He said it would enable people to come to market without going to church, which would be a bad thing.”
“Some of them might have gone to church on Saturday too.”
“Godwyn’s cup is always half empty, never half full.”
“Surely the parish guild opposes him?”
“Not very often. Elfric is alderman now. He and Alice got almost everything Edmund left.”
“The alderman doesn’t have to be the richest man in town.”
“But he usually is. Remember, Elfric employs lots of craftsmen – carpenters, stonemasons, mortar makers, scaffolders – and buys from everyone who trades in building materials. The town is full of people who are more or less bound to support him.”
“And Elfric has always been close to Godwyn.”
“Exactly. He gets all the priory’s building work – which means every public project.”
“And he’s such a shoddy builder!”
“Strange, isn’t it?” Madge said in a musing tone. “You’d think Godwyn would want the best man for the job. But he doesn’t. For him, it’s all about who will be compliant, who will obey his wishes unquestioningly.”
Merthin felt a bit depressed. Nothing had changed: his enemies were still in power. It might prove difficult for him to resume his old life. “No good news for me there, then.” He stood up. “I’d better take a look at my island.”
“I’m sure Mark will seek you out as soon as he returns from Melcombe.”
Merthin went next door for Lolla, but she was having such a good time that he left her with Dora, and strolled through the town to the riverside. He took another look at the cracks in his bridge, but he did not need to study them long: the cause was obvious. He made a tour of Leper Island. Little had changed: there were a few wharves and storehouses at the west end and just one house, the one he had lent to Jimmie, at the east end, beside the road that led from one span of the bridge to the other.
When he first took possession of the island, he had had ambitious plans for developing it. Nothing had happened, of course, during his exile. Now he thought he could do something. He paced the ground, making rough measurements and visualizing buildings and even streets, until it was time for the midday meal.
He picked Lolla up and returned to the Bell. Bessie served a tasty pork stew thickened with barley. The tavern was quiet, and Bessie joined them for dinner, bringing a jug of her best red wine. When they had eaten, she poured him another cup, and he told her about his ideas. “The road across the island, from one bridge to the other, is an ideal place to put shops,” he said.
“And taverns,” she pointed out. “This place and the Holly Bush are the busiest inns in town simply because they are close to the cathedral. Any place where people are continually passing by is a good location for a tavern.”
“If I built a tavern on Leper Island, you could run it.”
She gave him a direct look. “We could run it together.”
He smiled at her. He was full of her good food and wine, and any man would have loved to tumble into bed with her and enjoy her soft, round body; but it was not to be. “I was very fond of my wife, Silvia,” he said. “But, all the time we were married, I kept thinking about Caris. And Silvia knew it.”
Betty looked away. “That’s sad.”
“I know. And I’ll never do it to another woman. I won’t get married again, unless it’s to Caris. I’m not a good man, but I’m not that bad.”
“Caris may never marry you.”
“I know.”
She stood up, picking up their bowls. “You are a good man,” she said. “Too good.” She returned to the kitchen.
Merthin put Lolla to bed for a nap, then sat on a bench in front of the tavern, looking down the hillside at Leper Island, sketching on a big slate, enjoying the September sunshine. He did not get much work done because every other person who walked past wanted to welcome him home and ask what he had been doing for the last nine years.
Late in the afternoon he saw the massive figure of Mark Webber coming up the hill driving a cart bearing a barrel. Mark had always been a giant but now, Merthin observed, he was a plump giant.
Merthin shook his enormous hand. “I’ve been to Melcombe,” Mark said. “I go every few weeks.”
“What’s in the barrel?”
“Wine from Bordeaux, straight off the ship – which also brought news. You know that Princess Joan was on her way to Spain?”
“Yes.” Every well-informed person in Europe knew that the fifteen-year-old daughter of King Edward was to marry Prince Pedro, heir to the throne of Castile. The marriage would forge an alliance between England and the largest of the Iberian kingdoms, ensuring that Edward could concentrate on his interminable war against France without worrying about interference from the south.
“Well,” said Mark, “Joan died of the plague in Bordeaux.”
Merthin was doubly shocked: partly because Edward’s position in France had suddenly become shaky, but mainly because the plague had spread so far. “They have the plague in Bordeaux?”
“Bodies piled in the streets, the French sailors told me.”
Merthin was unnerved. He had thought he had left la moria grande behind him. Surely it would not come as far as England? He did not fear it personally: no one had ever caught it twice, so he was safe, and Lolla was among those who for some reason did not succumb to it. But he was afraid for everyone else – especially Caris.
Mark had other things on his mind. “You’ve returned at just the right time. Some of the younger merchants are getting fed up with Elfric as alderman. A lot of the time he’s just a dogsbody for Godwyn. I’m planning to challenge him. You could be influential. There’s a meeting of the parish guild tonight – come along and we’ll get you admitted right away.”
“Won’t it matter that I never finished my apprenticeship?”
“After what you’ve built, here and abroad? Hardly.”
“All right” Merthin needed to be a guild member if he was going to develop the island. People always found reasons to object to new buildings, and he might need support himself. But he was not as confident of his acceptance as Mark.
Mark took his barrel home and Merthin went inside to give Lolla her supper. At sundown Mark returned to the Bell, and Merthin walked with him up the main street as the warm afternoon turned into a chilly evening.
The guild hall had seemed like a fine building to Merthin years ago, when he had stood here and presented his bridge design to the parish guild. But it appeared awkward and shabby now that he had seen the grand public buildings of Italy. He wondered what men such as Buonaventura Caroli and Loro Fiorentino must think of its rough stone undercroft, with the prison and the kitchen, and its main hall with a row of pillars running awkwardly down the middle to support the roof.
Mark introduced him to a handful of men who had arrived in Kingsbridge, or had come to prominence, in Merthin’s absence. However, most of the faces were familiar, albeit a little older. Merthin greeted those few he had not already encountered in the last two days. Among these was Elfric, ostentatiously dressed in a brocade surcoat made with silver thread. He showed no surprise – someone had obviously told him Merthin was back – but glared with undisguised hostility.
Also present were Prior Godwyn and his sub-prior, Brother Philemon. Godwyn at forty-two was looking more like his uncle Anthony, Merthin observed, with downsloping lines of querulous discontent around his mouth. He put on a pretence of affability that might have fooled someone who did not know him. Philemon, too, had changed. He was no longer lean and awkward. He had filled out like a prosperous merchant, and carried himself with an air of arrogant self-assurance – although Merthin fancied he could still see, underneath the façade, the anxiety and self-hatred of the fawning toady. Philemon shook his hand as if touching a snake. It was depressing to realize that old hatreds were so long-lived.
A handsome, dark-haired young man crossed himself when he saw Merthin, then revealed that he was Merthin’s former protege, Jimmie, now known as Jeremiah Builder. Merthin was delighted to find that he was doing well enough to belong to the parish guild. However, it seemed he was still as superstitious as ever.
Mark mentioned the news about Princess Joan to everyone he spoke to. Merthin answered one or two anxious questions about the plague, but the Kingsbridge merchants were more concerned that the collapse of the alliance with Castile would prolong the French war, which was bad for business.
Elfric sat on the big chair in front of the giant woolsack scales and opened the meeting. Mark immediately proposed that Merthin should be admitted as a member.
Not surprisingly, Elfric objected. “He was never a member of the guild because he did not finish his apprenticeship.”
“Because he wouldn’t marry your daughter, you mean,” said one of the men, and they all laughed. Merthin took a few moments to identify the speaker: it was Bill Watkin, the house builder, the black hair around his bald dome now turning grey.
“Because he is not a craftsman of the required standard,” Elfric persisted stubbornly.
“How can you say that?” Mark protested. “He has built houses, churches, palaces-”
“And our bridge, which is cracking after only eight years.”
“You built that, Elfric.”
“I followed Merthin’s design exactly. Clearly the arches are not strong enough to bear the weight of the roadbed and the traffic upon it. The iron braces I have installed have not been sufficient to prevent the cracks widening. Therefore I propose to reinforce the arches either side of the central pier, on both bridges, with a second course of masonry, doubling their thickness. I thought this subject might come up tonight, so I have prepared estimates of the cost.”
Elfric must have started to plan this attack the moment he heard that Merthin was back in town. He had always seen Merthin as an enemy: nothing had changed. However, he had failed to understand the problem with the bridge, and that gave Merthin his chance.
He spoke to Jeremiah in a low voice. “Would you do something for me?”
“After all you did for me? Anything!”
“Run to the priory now and ask to speak to Sister Caris urgently. Tell her to find the original drawing I made for the bridge. It should be in the priory library. Bring it here right away.”
Jeremiah slipped out of the room.
Elfric went on: “I must tell guildsmen that I have already spoken to Prior Godwyn, who says the priory cannot afford to pay for this repair. We will have to finance it, as we financed the original cost of building the bridge, and be repaid out of penny tolls.”
They all groaned. There followed a long and bad-tempered discussion about how much money each member of the guild should put up. Merthin felt animosity building up towards him in the room. This was undoubtedly what Elfric had intended. Merthin kept looking at the door, willing Jeremiah to reappear.
Bill Watkin said: “Maybe Merthin should pay for the repairs, if it’s his design that’s at fault.”
Merthin could not stay out of the discussion any longer. He threw caution to the winds. “I agree,” he said.
There was a startled silence.
“If my design has caused the cracks, I’ll repair the bridge at my own expense,” he went on recklessly. Bridges were costly: if he was wrong about the problem, it could cost half his fortune.
Bill said: “Handsomely said, I’m sure.”
Merthin said: “But I have something to say, first, if guildsmen will permit.” He looked at Elfric.
Elfric hesitated, obviously trying to think of a reason for refusing; but Bill said: “Let him speak,” and there was a chorus of assent.
Elfric nodded reluctantly.
“Thank you,” said Merthin. “When an arch is weak, it cracks in a characteristic pattern. The stones at the top of the arch are pressed downwards, so that their lower edges splay apart, and a crack appears at the crown of the arch on the intrados – the underside.”
“That’s true,” said Bill Watkin. “I’ve seen that sort of crack many a time. It’s not usually fatal.”
Merthin went on: “This is not the type of cracking you’re seeing on the bridge. Contrary to what Elfric said, those arches are strong enough: the thickness of the arch is one twentieth of its diameter at the base, which is the standard proportion, in every country.”
The builders in the room nodded. They all knew that ratio.
“The crown is intact. However, there are horizontal cracks at the springing of the arch either side of the central pier.”
Bill spoke again. “You sometimes see that in a quadripartite vault.”
“Which this bridge is not,” Merthin pointed out. “The vaults are simple.”
“What’s causing it, then?”
“Elfric did not follow my original design.”
Elfric said: “I did!”
“I specified a pile of large, loose stones at both ends of the piers.”
“A pile of stones?” Elfric said mockingly. “And you say that’s what was going to keep your bridge upright?”
“Yes, I do,” Merthin said. He could tell that even the builders in the room agreed with Elfric’s scepticism. But they did not know about bridges, which were different from any other kind of building because they stood in water. “The piles of stones were an essential part of the design.”
“They were never in the drawings.”
“Would you like to show us my drawings, Elfric, to prove your point?”
“The tracing floor is long gone.”
“I did a drawing on parchment. It should be in the priory library.”
Elfric looked at Godwyn. At that moment the complicity between the two men was blatant, and Merthin hoped the rest of the guild could see it. Godwyn said: “Parchment is costly. That drawing was scraped and reused long ago.”
Merthin nodded as if he believed Godwyn. There was still no sign of Jeremiah. Merthin might have to win the argument without the help of the original plans. “The stones would have prevented the problem that is now causing the cracks,” he said.
Philemon put in: “You would say that, wouldn’t you? But why should we believe you? It’s just your word against Elfric’s.”
Merthin realized he would have to stick his neck out. All or nothing, he thought. “I will tell you what the problem is, and prove it to you, in daylight, if you will meet me at the riverside tomorrow at dawn.”
Elfric’s face showed that he wanted to refuse this challenge, but Bill Watkin said: “Fair enough! We’ll be there.”
“Bill, can you bring two sensible boys who are good swimmers and divers?”
“Easy.”
Elfric had lost control of the meeting, and Godwyn intervened, revealing himself as the puppetmaster. “What kind of a mockery are you planning?” he said angrily.
But it was too late. The others were curious now. “Let him make his point,” said Bill. “If it’s a mockery, we’ll all know soon enough.”
Just then, Jeremiah came in. Merthin was pleased to see that he was carrying a wooden frame with a large sheet of parchment stretched across it. Elfric stared at Jeremiah, shocked.
Godwyn looked pale and said: “Who gave you that?”
“A revealing question,” Merthin commented. “The lord prior doesn’t ask what the drawing shows, nor where it came from – he seems to know all that already. He just wonders who handed it over.”
Bill said: “Never mind all that. Show us the drawing, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah stood in front of the scales and turned the frame round so that everyone could see the drawing. There at the ends of the piers were the piles of stones Merthin had spoken of.
Merthin stood up. “In the morning, I’ll explain how they work.”
Summer was turning into autumn, and it was chilly on the river bank at dawn. News had somehow got around that a drama would take place and, as well as the members of the parish guild, there were two or three hundred people waiting to see the clash between Merthin and Elfric. Even Caris was there. This was no longer merely an argument about an engineering problem, Merthin realized. He was the youngster challenging the authority of the old bull, and the herd understood that.
Bill Watkin produced two lads of twelve or thirteen, stripped to their undershorts and shivering. It turned out they were Mark Webber’s younger sons, Dennis and Noah. Dennis, the thirteen-year-old, was short and chunky, like his mother. He had red-brown hair the colour of leaves in autumn. Noah, the younger by two years, was taller, and would probably grow up to be as big as Mark. Merthin identified with the short redhead. He wondered whether Dennis was embarrassed, as Merthin himself had been at that age, to have a younger brother who was bigger and stronger.
Merthin thought Elfric might object to Mark’s sons being the divers, on the grounds that they might have been briefed in advance by their father and told what to say. However, Elfric said nothing. Mark was too transparently honest for anyone to suspect him of such duplicity, and perhaps Elfric realized that – or, more likely, Godwyn realized it.
Merthin told the boys what to do. “Swim out to the central pier, then dive. You’ll find the pier is smooth for a long way down. Then there’s the foundation, a great lump of stones held together with mortar. When you reach the river bed, feel underneath the foundation. You probably won’t be able to see anything – the water will be too muddy. But hold your breath for as long as you can and investigate thoroughly all around the base. Then come up to the surface and tell us exactly what you find.”
They both jumped into the water and swam out. Merthin spoke to the assembled townspeople. “The bed of this river is not rock but mud. The current swirls around the piers of a bridge and scours the mud out from underneath the pillars, leaving a depression filled only with water. This happened to the old wooden bridge. The oak piers were not resting on the river bed at all, but hanging from the superstructure. That’s why the bridge collapsed. To prevent the same thing happening to the new bridge, I specified piles of large rough stones around the feet of the piers. Such piles break up the current so that its action is haphazard and weak. However, the piles were not installed and so the piers have been undermined. They are no longer supporting the bridge, but hanging from it – and that’s why there are cracks where the pier joins the arch.”
Elfric snorted sceptically, but the other builders looked intrigued. The two boys reached midstream, touched the central pier, took deep breaths and disappeared.
Merthin said: “When they come back, they will tell us that the pier is not resting on the river bed, but hanging over a depression, filled with water, large enough for a man to climb into.”
He hoped he was right.
Both boys stayed under water for a surprisingly long time. Merthin found himself feeling breathless, as it were in sympathy with them. At last a wet head of red hair broke the surface, then a brown one. The two boys conversed briefly, nodding, as if establishing that they had both observed the same thing. Then they struck out for the shore.
Merthin was not completely sure of his diagnosis, but he could think of no other explanation for the cracks. And he had felt the need to appear supremely confident. If he now turned out to be wrong, he would look all the more foolish.
The boys reached the bank and waded out of the water, panting. Madge gave them blankets which they pulled around their shaking shoulders. Merthin allowed them a few moments to catch their breath, then said: “Well? What did you find?”
“Nothing,” said Dennis, the elder.
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“There’s nothing there, at the bottom of the pillar.”
Elfric looked triumphant. “Just the mud of the river bed, you mean.”
“No!” said Dennis. “No mud – just water.”
Noah put in: “There’s a hole you could climb into – easily! That big pillar is just hanging in the water, with nothing under it.”
Merthin tried not to look relieved.
Elfric blustered: “There’s still no authority for saying a pile of loose stones would have solved the problem.” But no one was listening to him. In the eyes of the crowd, Merthin had proved his point. They gathered around him, commenting and questioning. After a few moments, Elfric walked away alone.
Merthin felt a momentary pang of compassion. Then he recalled how, when he was an apprentice, Elfric had hit him across the face with a length of timber; and his pity evaporated into the cold morning air.
The following morning, a monk came to see Merthin at the Bell. When he pulled back his hood, Menhin did not at first recognize him. Then he saw that the monk’s left arm was cut off at the elbow, and he realized it was Brother Thomas, now in his forties, with a grey beard and deep-set lines around his eyes and mouth. Was his secret still dangerous after all these years, Merthin wondered? Would Thomas’s life be in danger, even now, if the truth came out?
But Thomas had not come to talk about that. “You were right about the bridge,” he said.
Merthin nodded. There was a sour satisfaction in it. He had been right, but Prior Godwyn had fired him, and in consequence his bridge would never be perfect. “I wanted to explain the importance of the rough stones, back then,” he said. “But I knew Elfric and Godwyn would never listen to me. So I told Edmund Wooler, then he died.”
“You should have told me.”
“I wish I had.”
“Come with me to the church,” Thomas said. “Since you can read so much from a few cracks, I’d like to show you something, if I may.”
He led Merthin to the south transept. Here and in the south aisle of the choir Elfric had rebuilt the arches, following the partial collapse eleven years ago. Merthin saw immediately what Thomas was worrying about: the cracks had reappeared.
“You said they would come back,” Thomas said.
“Unless you discovered the root cause of the problem, yes.”
“You were right. Elfric was wrong twice.”
Merthin felt a spark of excitement. If the tower needed rebuilding… “You understand that, but does Godwyn?”
Thomas did not answer the question. “What do you think the root cause might be?”
Menhin concentrated on the immediate problem. He had thought about this, on and off, for years. “This is not the original tower, is it?” he said. “According to Timothy’s Book, it has been rebuilt, and made higher.”
“About a hundred years ago, yes – when the raw wool business was booming. Do you think they made it too high?”
“It depends on the foundations.” The site of the cathedral sloped gently to the south, towards the river, and that might be a factor. He walked through the crossing, under the tower, to the north transept. He stood at the foot of the massive pillar at the north-east corner of the crossing and looked up at the arch that stretched over his head, across the north aisle of the choir, to the wall.
“It’s the south aisle I’m worried about,” Thomas said, slightly peevishly. “There are no problems here.”
Merthin pointed up. “There’s a crack on the underside of the arch – the intrados – at the crown,” he said. “You get that in a bridge, when the piers are inadequately grounded and start to splay apart.”
“What are you saying – that the tower is moving away from the north transept?”
Merthin went back through the crossing and looked at the matching arch on the south side. “This one is cracked, too, but on the upper side, the extrados, do you see? The wall above it is cracked, too.”
“They aren’t very big cracks.”
“But they tell us what is happening. On the north side, the arch is being stretched; on the south side, it’s being pinched. That means the tower is moving south.”
Thomas looked up warily. “It seems straight.”
“You can’t see it with the eye. But if you climb up into the tower, and drop a plumb line from the top of one of the columns of the crossing, just below the springing of the arch, you will see that by the time the line touches the floor it will be adrift of the column to the south by several inches. And, as the tower leans, it’s separating from the wall of the choir, which is where the damage shows worst.”
“What can be done?”
Merthin wanted to say: You have to commission me to build a new tower. But that would have been premature. “A lot more investigation, before any building,” he said, suppressing his excitement. “We have established that the cracks have appeared because the tower is moving – but why is it moving?”
“And how will we learn that?”
“Dig a hole,” Merthin said.
In the end Jeremiah dug the hole. Thomas did not want to employ Merthin directly. It was difficult enough as it was, he said, to get the money for the investigation out of Godwyn, who seemed never to have any money to spare. But he could not give the job to Elfric, who would have said there was nothing to investigate. So the compromise was Merthin’s old apprentice.
Jeremiah had learned from his master and liked to work fast. On the first day, he lifted the paving stones in the south transept. Next day, his men started excavating the earth around the huge south-east pier of the crossing.
As the hole got deeper, Jeremiah built a timber hoist for lifting out loads of earth. By the second week he had to build wooden ladders down the sides of the hole so that the labourers could get to the bottom.
Meanwhile, the parish guild gave Merthin the contract for the repair of the bridge. Elfric was against the decision, of course, but he was in no position to claim that he was the best man for the job, and he hardly bothered to argue.
Merthin went to work with speed and energy. He built cofferdams around the two problem piers, drained the dams and began to fill the holes under the piers with rubble and mortar. Next he would surround the piers with the piles of large rough stones he had envisaged from the start. Finally, he would remove Elfric’s ugly iron braces and fill the cracks with mortar. Provided the repaired foundations were sound, the cracks would not reopen.
But the job he really wanted was the rebuilding of the tower.
It would not be easy. He would have to get his design accepted by the priory and the parish guild, currently run by his two worst enemies, Godwyn and Elfric. And Godwyn would have to find the money.
As a first step, Merthin encouraged Mark to put himself forward for election as alderman, to replace Elfric. The alderman was elected once a year, on All Hallows’ Day, the first of November. In practice, most aldermen were re-elected unopposed until they retired or died. However, there was no doubt that a contest was permitted. Indeed, Elfric himself had put his name forward while Edmund Wooler was still in office.
Mark required little prompting. He was itching to put an end to Elfric’s rule. Elfric was so close to Godwyn that there was not much point in having a parish guild at all. The town was in effect run by the priory – narrow, conservative, mistrustful of new ideas, careless of the interests of the townspeople.
So the two candidates began drumming up support. Elfric had his followers, mainly people he either employed or bought materials from. However, he had lost face badly in the argument over the bridge, and those who took his side were downcast. Mark’s supporters, by contrast, were ebullient.
Merthin visited the cathedral every day and examined the foundations of the mighty column as they were exposed by Jeremiah’s digging. The foundations were made of the same stone as the rest of the church, laid in mortared courses, but less carefully trimmed, as they would not be visible. Each course was a little wider than the one above, in a pyramid shape. As the excavation went deeper, he examined every layer for weakness, and found none. But he felt confident that eventually he would.
Merthin told no one what was in his mind. If his suspicions were correct, and the thirteenth-century tower was simply too heavy for the twelfth-century foundations, the solution would be drastic: the tower would have to be demolished – and a new one built. And the new tower could be the tallest in England…
One day in the middle of October, Caris appeared at the digging. It was early in the morning, and a winter sun was shining through the great east window. She stood on the edge of the hole with her hood around her head like a halo. Merthin’s heart beat faster. Perhaps she had an answer for him. He climbed up the ladder eagerly.
She was as beautiful as ever, though in the strong sunlight he could see the little differences that nine years had made to her face. Her skin was not quite as smooth, and there were now the tiniest of creases at the corners of her lips. But her green eyes still shone with that alert intelligence that he loved so much.
They walked together down the south aisle of the nave and stopped near the pillar that always reminded him of how he had once felt her up here. “I’m happy to see you,” he said. “You’ve been hiding away.”
“I’m a nun, I’m supposed to hide away.”
“But you’re thinking about renouncing your vows.”
“I haven’t made a decision.”
He was crestfallen. “How much time do you need?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked away. He did not want to show her how badly he was hurt by her hesitation. He said nothing. He could have told her she was being unreasonable, but what was the point?
“You’ll be going to visit your parents in Tench at some point, I suppose,” she said.
He nodded. “Quite soon – they will want to see Lolla.” He was eager to see them, too, and had delayed only because he had become so deeply involved in his work on the bridge and the tower.
“In that case, I wish you would talk to your brother about Wulfric in Wigleigh.”
Merthin wanted to talk about himself and Caris, not Wulfric and Gwenda. His response was cool. “What do you want me to say to Ralph?”
“Wulfric is labouring for no money – just food – because Ralph won’t give him even a small acreage to farm.”
Merthin shrugged. “Wulfric broke Ralph’s nose.” He felt the conversation begin to descend into a quarrel, and he asked himself why he was angry. Caris had not spoken to him for weeks, but she had broken her silence for the sake of Gwenda. He resented Gwenda’s place in her heart, he realized. That was an unworthy emotion, he told himself; but he could not shake it.
Caris flushed with annoyance. “That was twelve years ago! Isn’t it time Ralph stopped punishing him?”
Merthin had forgotten the abrasive disagreements he and Caris used to have, but now he recognized this friction as familiar. He spoke dismissively. “Of course he should stop – in my opinion. But Ralph’s opinion is the one that counts.”
“Then see if you can change his mind,” she said.
He resented her imperious attitude. “I’m yours to command,” he said facetiously.
“Why the irony?”
“Because I’m not yours to command, of course, but you seem to think I am. And I feel a bit foolish for going along with you.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “You’re offended that I’ve asked you?”
For some reason, he felt sure she had made up her mind to reject him and stay in the nunnery. He tried to control his emotions. “If we were a couple, you could ask me anything. But while you’re keeping open the option of rejecting me, it seems a bit presumptuous of you.” He knew he was sounding pompous, but he could not stop. If he revealed his true feelings he would burst into tears.
She was too wrapped up in her indignation to notice his distress. “But it’s not even for myself!” she protested.
“I realize it’s your generosity of spirit that makes you do it, but I still feel you’re using me.”
“All right, then, don’t do it.”
“Of course I’ll do it.” Suddenly he could no longer contain himself. He turned and walked away from her. He was shaking with some passion he could not identify. As he strode up the aisle of the great church, he struggled to get himself under control. He reached the excavation. This was stupid, he thought. He turned and looked back, but Caris had vanished.
He stood at the lip of the hole, looking down, waiting for the storm inside him to subside.
After a while he realized that the excavation had reached a crucial stage. Thirty feet below him, the men had dug down past the masonry foundations and were beginning to reveal what was beneath. There was nothing more he could do about Caris right now. It would be best to concentrate on his work. He took a deep breath, swallowed and went down the ladder.
This was the moment of truth. His distress over Caris began to ease as he watched the men dig farther down. Shovelful after shovelful of heavy mud was dug up and taken away. Merthin studied the stratum of earth that was revealed below the foundations. It looked like a mixture of sand and small stones. As the men removed the mud, the sandy stuff dribbled into the hole they were making.
Merthin ordered them to stop.
He knelt down and picked up a handful of the sandy material. It was nothing like the soil all around. It was not natural to the site, therefore it must be something that had been put there by builders. The excitement of discovery rose inside him, overmastering his grief about Caris. “Jeremiah!” he called. “See if you can find Brother Thomas – quick as you like.”
He told the men to carry on digging, but to make a narrower hole: at this point the excavation itself could be dangerous to the structure. After a while Jeremiah returned with Thomas, and the three of them watched as the men took the hole farther down. Eventually the sandy layer came to an end, and the next stratum was revealed to be the natural muddy earth.
“I wonder what that sandy stuff is,” Thomas said.
“I think I know,” Merthin said. He tried not to look triumphant. He had predicted, years ago, that Elfric’s repairs would not work unless the root of the problem was discovered, and he had been right – but it was never wise to say: I told you so.
Thomas and Jeremiah looked at him in anticipation.
He explained. “When you’ve dug a foundation hole, you cover the bottom with a mixture of rubble and monar. Then you lay the masonry on top of that. It’s a perfectly good system, as long as the foundations are proportional to the building above.”
Thomas said impatiently: “We both know this.”
“What happened here was that a much higher tower was erected on foundations that were not designed for it. The extra weight, acting over a hundred years, has crushed that layer of rubble and mortar to sand. The sand has no cohesion, and under pressure it has spread outwards into the surrounding soil, allowing the masonry above it to sink down. The effect is worse on the south side simply because the site naturally slopes that way.” He felt a profound satisfaction at having figured this out.
The other two looked thoughtful. Thomas said: “I suppose we will have to reinforce the foundations.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Before we can put any reinforcement under the stonework, we’d have to remove the sandy stuff, and that would leave the foundations unsupported. The tower would fall down.”
Thomas was perplexed. “So what can we do?”
They both looked at Merthin. He said: “Build a temporary roof over the crossing, erect scaffolding and take down the tower, stone by stone. Then reinforce the foundations.”
“Then we’d have to build a new tower.”
That was what Merthin wanted, but he did not say so. Thomas might suspect that his judgement had been coloured by his aspiration. “I’m afraid so,” he said with feigned regret.
“Prior Godwyn won’t like that.”
“I know,” Merthin said. “But I don’t think he’s got any choice.”
Next day Merthin rode out of Kingsbridge with Lolla on the saddle in front of him. As they travelled through the forest, he obsessively ran over his fraught exchange with Caris. He knew he had been ungenerous. How foolish that was, when he was trying to win back her love. What had got into him? Caris’s request was perfectly reasonable. Why would he not wish to perform a small service for the woman he wanted to marry?
But she had not agreed to marry him. She was still reserving the right to reject him. That was the source of his anger. She was exercising the privileges of a fiancee without making the commitment.
He could see, now, that it was petty of him to object on these grounds. He had been stupid, and turned what could have been a delightful moment of intimacy into a squabble.
On the other hand, the underlying cause of his distress was all too real. How long did Caris expect him to wait for an answer? How long was he prepared to wait? He did not like to think about that.
Anyway, it would do him nothing but good if he could persuade Ralph to stop persecuting poor Wulfric.
Tench was on the far side of the county, and on the way Merthin spent a night at windy Wigleigh. He found Gwenda and Wulfric thin after a rainy summer and the second poor harvest in a row. Wulfric’s scar seemed to stand out more on a hollowed cheek. Their two small sons looked pale, and had runny noses and sores on their lips.
Merthin gave them a leg of mutton, a small barrel of wine and a gold florin that he pretended were gifts from Caris. Gwenda cooked the mutton over the fire. She was possessed by rage, and she hissed and spat like the turning meat as she talked of the injustice that had been done to them. “Perkin has almost half the land in the village!” she said. “The only reason he can manage it all is that he’s got Wulfric, who does the work of three men. Yet he must demand more, and keep us in poverty.”
“I’m sorry that Ralph still bears a grudge,” Merthin said.
“Ralph himself provoked that fight!” Gwenda said. “Even Lady Philippa said so.”
“Old quarrels,” Wulfric said philosophically.
“I’ll try to get him to see reason,” Merthin said. “In the unlikely event that he listens to me, what do you really want from him?”
“Ah,” said Wulfric, and he got a faraway look in his eyes, which was unusual for him. “What I pray for every Sunday is to get back the lands that my father farmed.”
“That will never happen,” Gwenda said quickly. “Perkin is too well entrenched. And, if he should die, he has a son and a married daughter waiting to inherit, and a couple of grandsons growing taller every day. But we’d like a piece of land of our own. For the last eleven years Wulfric has been working hard to feed other men’s children. It’s time he got some of the benefit of his strength.”
“I’ll tell my brother he has punished you long enough,” Merthin said.
Next day he and Lolla rode from Wigleigh to Tench. Merthin was even more resolved to do something for Wulfric. It was not just that he wanted to please Caris, and atone for his curmudgeonly attitude. He also felt sad and indignant that two such honest and hard-working people as Wulfric and Gwenda should be poor and thin, and their children sickly, just because of Ralph’s vindictiveness.
His parents were living in a house in the village, not in Tench Hall itself. Merthin was shocked by how much his mother had aged, though she perked up when she saw Lolla. His father looked better. “Ralph is very good to us,” Gerald said in a defensive way that made Merthin think the opposite. The house was pleasant enough, but they would have preferred to live at the hall with Ralph. Merthin guessed that Ralph did not want his mother watching everything he did.
They showed him around their home, and Gerald asked Merthin how things were in Kingsbridge. “The town is still prospering, despite the effects of the king’s French war,” Merthin replied.
“Ah – but Edward must fight for his birthright,” his father said. “He is the legitimate heir to the throne of France, after all.”
“I think that’s a dream, father,” said Merthin. “No matter how many times the king invades, the French nobility will not accept an Englishman as their king. And a king can’t rule without the support of his earls.”
“But we had to stop the French raids on our south coast ports.”
“That hasn’t been a major problem since the battle of Sluys, when we destroyed the French fleet – which was eight years ago. Anyway, burning the crops of the peasants won’t stop pirates – it might even add to their numbers.”
“The French support the Scots, who keep invading our northern counties.”
“Don’t you think the king would be better able to deal with Scottish incursions if he were in the north of England rather than the north of France?”
Gerald looked baffled. It had probably never occurred to him to question the wisdom of the war. “Well, Ralph has been knighted,” he said. “And he brought your mother a silver candlestick from Calais.”
That was about the size of it, Merthin thought. The real reason for the war was booty and glory.
They all walked to the manor house. Ralph was out hunting with Alan Fernhill. In the great hall was a huge carved wooden chair, obviously the lord’s. Merthin saw what he thought was a young servant girl, heavily pregnant, and was dismayed to be introduced to her as Ralph’s wife, Tilly. She went to the kitchen to fetch wine.
“How old is she?” Merthin said to his mother while she was gone.
“Fourteen.”
It was not unknown for girls to become pregnant at fourteen, but all the same Merthin felt that decent people behaved otherwise. Such early pregnancies usually happened in royal families, for whom there was intense political pressure to produce heirs, and among the lowest and most ignorant of peasants, who knew no better. The middle classes maintained higher standards. “She’s a bit young, isn’t she?” he said quietly.
Maud replied: “We all asked Ralph to wait, but he would not.” Clearly she too disapproved.
Tilly returned with a servant carrying a jug of wine and a bowl of apples. She might have been pretty, Merthin thought, but she looked worn out. His father addressed her with forced jollity. “Cheer up, Tilly! Your husband will be home soon – you don’t want to greet him with a long face.”
“I’m fed up with being pregnant,” she said. “I just wish the baby would come as soon as possible.”
“It won’t be long, now,” Maud said. “Three or four weeks, I’d say.”
“It seems like for ever.”
They heard horses outside. Maud said: “That sounds like Ralph.”
Waiting for the brother he had not seen for nine years, Merthin had mixed feelings, as ever. His affection for Ralph was always contaminated by his knowledge of the evil Ralph had done. The rape of Annet had been only the beginning. During his days as an outlaw Ralph had murdered innocent men, women and children. Merthin had heard, travelling through Normandy, of the atrocities perpetrated by King Edward’s army and, while he did not know specifically what Ralph had done, it would have been foolish to hope that Ralph had held himself aloof from that orgy of rape, burning, looting and slaughter. But Ralph was his brother.
Ralph, too, would have mixed feelings, Merthin was sure. He might not have forgiven Merthin for giving away the location of his outlaw hideout. And, although Merthin had made Brother Thomas promise not to kill Ralph, he had known that Ralph, once captured, was likely to be hanged. The last words Ralph had spoken to Merthin, in the jail in the basement of the guild hall at Kingsbridge, were: “You betrayed me.”
Ralph came in with Alan, both muddy from the hunt. Merthin was shocked to see that he walked with a limp. Ralph took a moment to recognize Merthin. Then he smiled broadly. “My big brother!” he said heartily. It was an old joke: Merthin was the elder, but had long been smaller.
They embraced. Merthin felt a surge of warmth, despite everything. At least we’re both alive, he thought, despite war and plague. When they had parted he had wondered whether they would ever meet again.
Ralph threw himself into the big chair. “Bring some beer, we’re thirsty!” he said to Tilly.
There were to be no recriminations, Merthin gathered.
He studied his brother. Ralph had changed since that day in 1339 when he had ridden off to war. He had lost some of the fingers of his left hand, presumably in battle. He had a dissipated look: his face was veined from drink and his skin seemed dry and flaky. “Did you have good hunting?” Merthin asked.
“We brought home a roe deer as fat as a cow,” he replied with satisfaction. “You shall have her liver for supper.”
Merthin asked him about fighting in the army of the king, and Ralph related some of the highlights of the war. Their father was enthusiastic. “An English knight is worth ten of the French!” he said. “The battle of Crécy proved that.”
Ralph’s response was surprisingly measured. “An English knight is not much different from a French knight, in my opinion,” he said. “But the French haven’t yet understood the harrow formation in which we line up, with archers either side of dismounted knights and men-at-arms. They are still charging us suicidally, and long may they continue. But they will figure it out one day, and then they will change their tactics. Meanwhile, we are almost unbeatable in defence. Unfortunately, the harrow formation is irrelevant to attack, so we have ended up winning very little.”
Merthin was struck by how his brother had grown up. Warfare had given him a depth and subtlety he had never previously possessed.
In turn, Merthin talked about Florence: the incredible size of the city, the wealth of the merchants, the churches and palaces. Ralph was particularly fascinated by the notion of slave girls.
Darkness fell and the servants brought lamps and candles, then supper. Ralph drank a lot of wine. Merthin noticed that he hardly spoke to Tilly. Perhaps it was not surprising. Ralph was a thirty-one-year-old soldier who had spent half his adult life in an army, and Tilly was a girl of fourteen who had been educated in a nunnery. What would they have to talk about?
Late in the evening, when Gerald and Maud had returned to their own house and Tilly had gone to bed, Merthin broached the subject Caris had asked him to raise. He felt more optimistic than previously. Ralph was showing signs of maturity. He had forgiven Merthin for what had happened in 1339, and his cool analysis of English and French tactics had been impressively free from tribal chauvinism.
Merthin said: “On my way here, I spent a night in Wigleigh.”
“I see that fulling mill stays busy.”
“The scarlet cloth has become a good business for Kingsbridge.”
Ralph shrugged. “Mark Webber pays the rent on time.” It was beneath the dignity of noblemen to discuss business.
“I stayed with Gwenda and Wulfric,” Merthin went on. “You know that Gwenda has been Caris’s friend since childhood.”
“I remember the day we all met Sir Thomas Langley in the forest.”
Merthin shot a quick glance at Alan Fernhill. They had all kept their childish vows, and had not told anyone about that incident. Merthin wanted the secrecy to continue, for he sensed it was still important to Thomas, though he had no idea why. But Alan showed no reaction: he had drunk a lot of wine, and had no ear for hints.
Merthin moved on quickly. “Caris asked me to speak to you about Wulfric. She thinks you’ve punished him enough for that fight. And I agree.”
“He broke my nose!”
“I was there, remember? You weren’t an innocent party.” Merthin tried to make light of it. “You did feel up his fiancee. What was her name?”
“Annet.”
“If her tits weren’t worth a broken nose, you’ve only got yourself to blame.”
Alan laughed, but E.alph was not amused. “Wulfric almost got me hanged, by stirring Lord William up after Annet pretended I’d raped her.”
“But you weren’t hanged. And you cut Wulfric’s cheek open with your sword when you escaped from the courthouse. It was a terrible wound – you could see his back teeth through it. He’ll never lose the scar.”
“Good.”
“You’ve punished Wulfric for eleven years. His wife is thin and his children are ill. Haven’t you done enough, Ralph?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not enough.”
“Why?” Merthin cried in frustration. “I don’t understand you.”
“I will continue to punish Wulfric and hold him back, and humiliate him and his women.”
Merthin was startled by Ralph’s frankness. “For heaven’s sake, to what end?”
“I wouldn’t normally answer that question. I’ve learned that it rarely does you any good to explain yourself. But you’re my big brother, and from childhood I’ve always needed your approval.”
Ralph had not really changed, Merthin realized, except insofar as he seemed to know and understand himself in a way he never had when younger.
“The reason is simple,” Ralph went on. “Wulfric is not afraid of me. He wasn’t scared that day at the Fleece Fair, and he’s still not scared of me, even after all I’ve done to him. That’s why he must continue to suffer.”
Merthin was horrified. “That’s a life sentence.”
“The day I see fear in his eyes when he looks at me, he shall have anything he likes.”
“Is that so important to you?” Merthin said incredulously. “That people fear you?”
“It’s the most important thing in the world,” said Ralph.
Merthin’s return affected the whole town. Caris observed the changes with amazement and admiration. It started with his victory over Elfric in the parish guild. People realized the town could have lost its bridge because of Elfric’s incompetence, and that jolted them out of their apathy. But everyone knew that Elfric was a tool of Godwyn, so the priory was the ultimate focus of their resentment.
And people’s attitude to the priory was changing. There was a mood of defiance. Caris felt optimistic. Mark Webber had a good chance of winning the election on the first day of November and becoming alderman. If that happened, Prior Godwyn would no longer have things all his own way, and perhaps the town could begin to grow: markets on Saturdays, new mills, independent courts that traders could have faith in.
But she spent most of her time thinking about her own position. Merthin’s return was an earthquake that shook the foundations of her life. Her first reaction had been horror at the prospect of abandoning all that she had worked for over the last nine years; her position in the convent hierarchy; maternal Cecilia and affectionate Mair and ailing Old Julie; and most of all her hospital, so much more clean and efficient and welcoming than it had been before.
But as the days became shorter and colder, and Merthin repaired his bridge and began laying out the foundations of the street of new buildings he wanted to create on Leper Island, Caris’s resolve to remain a nun weakened. Monastic restrictions that she had stopped noticing began to chafe again. The devotion of Mair, which had been a pleasant romantic diversion, now became irritating. She started to think about what kind of life she might lead as Merthin’s wife.
She thought a lot about Lolla, and about the child she might have had with Merthin. Lolla was dark-eyed and black-haired, presumably like her Italian mother. Caris’s daughter might have had the green eyes of the Wooler family. The idea of giving up everything to take care of another woman’s daughter had appalled Caris in theory, but as soon as she met the little girl she softened.
She could not talk to anyone in the priory about this, of course. Mother Cecilia would tell her she must keep her vows; Mair would beg her to stay. So she agonized alone at night.
Her quarrel with Merthin over Wulfric made her despair. After he walked away from her, she had gone back to her pharmacy and cried. Why were things so difficult? All she wanted was to do the right thing.
While Merthin was at Tench, she confided in Madge Webber.
Two days after Merthin left, Madge came into the hospital soon after dawn, when Caris and Mair were doing their rounds. “I’m worried about my Mark,” she said.
Mair said to Caris: “I went to see him yesterday. He had been to Melcombe and come back with a fever and an upset stomach. I didn’t tell you because it didn’t seem serious.”
“Now he’s coughing blood,” Madge said.
“I’ll go,” Caris said. The Webbers were old friends: she preferred to attend Mark herself. She picked up a bag containing some basic medicines and went with Madge to her house in the main street.
The living area was upstairs, over the shop. Mark’s three sons loitered anxiously in the dining hall. Madge took Caris into a bedroom that smelled bad. Caris was used to the odour of a sick room, a mixture of sweat, vomit and human waste. Mark lay on a straw mattress, perspiring. His huge belly stuck up in the air as if he were pregnant. The daughter, Dora, stood by the bed.
Caris knelt beside Mark and said: “How do you feel?”
“Rough,” Mark said in a croaky voice. “Can I have something to drink?”
Dora handed Caris a cup of wine, and Caris held it to Mark’s lips. She found it strange to see a big man helpless. Mark had always seemed invulnerable. It was unnerving, like finding an oak tree that has been there all your life suddenly felled by lightning.
She touched his forehead. He was burning up: no wonder he was thirsty. “Let him have as much to drink as he wants,” she said. “Weak beer is better than wine.”
She did not tell Madge that she was puzzled and worried by Mark’s illness. The fever and the stomach upset were routine, but his coughing blood was a dangerous sign.
She took a vial of rose water from her bag, soaked a small piece of woollen cloth and bathed his face and neck. The action soothed him immediately. The water would cool him a little, and the perfume masked the bad smells in the room. “I’ll give you some of this from my pharmacy,” she said to Madge. “The physicians prescribe it for an inflamed brain. A fever is hot and humid, and roses are cool and dry, so the monks say. Whatever the reason, it will give him some ease.”
“Thank you.”
But Caris knew of no effective treatment for bloody sputum. The monk-physicians would diagnose an excess of blood and recommend bleeding, but they prescribed that for almost everything, and Caris did not believe in it.
As she bathed Mark’s throat, she noticed a symptom Madge had not mentioned. There was a rash of purple-black spots on Mark’s neck and chest.
This was an illness she had not come across before, and she was mystified, but she did not let Madge know that. “Come back with me and I’ll give you the rose water.”
The sun was rising as they walked from the house to the hospital. “You’ve been very good to my family,” Madge said. “We were the poorest people in town, until you started the scarlet business.”
“It was your energy and industry that made it work.”
Madge nodded. She knew what she had done. “All the same, it wouldn’t have happened without you.”
On impulse, Caris decided to take Madge through the nuns’ cloisters to her pharmacy so that they could talk privately. Lay people were not normally allowed inside, but there were exceptions, and Caris was now senior enough to decide when the rules could be broken.
They were alone in the cramped little room. Caris filled a pottery bottle with rose water and asked Madge for six pence. Then she said: “I’m thinking of renouncing my vows.”
Madge nodded, unsurprised. “Everybody’s wondering what you’re going to do.”
Caris was shocked that the townspeople had guessed her thoughts. “How do they know?”
“It doesn’t take a clairvoyant. You entered the nunnery only to escape a death sentence for witchcraft. After the work you’ve done here, you should be able to get a pardon. You and Merthin were in love, and always seemed so right for one another. Now he’s come back. You must at least be thinking about marrying him.”
“I just don’t know what my life would be like as someone’s wife.”
Madge shrugged. “A bit like mine, perhaps. Mark and I run the cloth business together. I have to organize the household as well – all husbands expect that – but it’s not so difficult, especially if you have the money for servants. And the children will always be your responsibility rather than his. But I manage, and so would you.”
“You don’t make it sound very exciting.”
She smiled. “I assume you already know about the good parts: feeling loved and adored; knowing there’s one person in the world who will always be on your side; getting into bed every night with someone strong and tender who wants to fuck you… that’s happiness, for me.”
Madge’s simple words painted a vivid picture, and Caris was suddenly filled with a longing that was almost unbearable. She felt she could hardly wait to quit the cold, hard, loveless life of the priory, in which the greatest sin was to touch another human being. If Merthin had walked into the room at that moment she would have torn off his clothes and taken him there on the floor.
She saw that Madge was watching her with a little smile, reading her thoughts, and she blushed.
“It’s all right,” Madge said. “I understand.” She put six silver pennies down on the bench and picked up the bottle. “I’d better go home and look after my man.”
Caris recovered her composure. “Try to keep him comfortable, and come and fetch me immediately there’s any change.”
“Thank you, sister,” said Madge. “I don’t know what we’ll do without you.”
Merthin was thoughtful on the journey back to Kingsbridge. Even Lolla’s bright, meaningless chatter did not bring him out of his mood. Ralph had learned a lot, but he had not changed deep down. He was still a cruel man. He neglected his child-wife, barely tolerated his parents and was vengeful to the point of mania. He enjoyed being a lord, but felt little obligation to care for the peasants in his power. He saw everything around him, people included, as being there for his gratification.
However, Merthin felt optimistic about Kingsbridge. All the signs were that Mark would become alderman on All Hallows’ Day, and that could be the start of a boom.
Merthin got back on the last day of October, All Hallows’ Eve. It was a Friday this year, so there was not the influx of crowds that came when the night of evil spirits fell on a Saturday, as it had in the year that Merthin was eleven, and he met the ten-year-old Caris. All the same the people were nervous, and everyone planned to be in bed by nightfall.
On the main street he saw Mark Webber’s eldest son, John. “My father is in the hospital,” the boy said. “He has a fever.”
“This is a bad time for him to fall sick,” Merthin said.
“It’s an ill-starred day.”
“I didn’t mean because of the date. He has to be present at the parish guild meeting tomorrow. An alderman can’t be elected in his absence.”
“I don’t think he’ll be going to any meetings tomorrow.”
That was worrying. Merthin took his horses to the Bell and left Lolla in the care of Betty.
Entering the priory grounds, he ran into Godwyn with his mother. He guessed they had dined together and now Godwyn was walking her to the gate. They were deep in an anxious conversation, and Merthin guessed they were worried about the prospect of their placeman Elfric losing the post of alderman. They stopped abruptly when they saw him. Petranilla said unctuously: “I’m sorry to hear that Mark is unwell.”
Forcing himself to be civil, Merthin replied: “It’s just a fever.”
“We will pray that he gets well quickly.”
“Thank you.”
Merthin entered the hospital. He found Madge distraught. “He’s been coughing blood,” she said. “And I can’t quench his thirst.” She held a cup of ale to Mark’s lips.
Mark had a rash of purple blotches on his face and arms. He was perspiring, and his nose was bleeding.
Merthin said: “Not so good today, Mark?”
Mark did not seem to see him, but he croaked: “I’m very thirsty.” Madge gave him the cup again. She said: “No matter how much he drinks, he’s always thirsty.” She spoke with a note of panic that Merthin had never heard in her voice before.
Merthin was filled with dread. Mark made frequent trips to Melcombe, where he talked to sailors from plague-ridden Bordeaux.
Tomorrow’s meeting of the parish guild was the least of Mark’s worries now. And the least of Merthin’s, too.
Merthin’s first impulse was to cry out to everyone the news that they were in mortal danger. But he clamped his mouth shut. No one listened to a man in a panic, and besides he was not yet sure. There was a small chance Mark’s illness was not what he feared. When he was certain, he would get Caris alone and speak to her calmly and logically. But it would have to be soon.
Caris was bathing Mark’s face with a sweet-smelling fluid. She wore a stony expression that Merthin recognized: she was hiding her feelings. She obviously had some idea of how serious Mark’s illness was.
Mark was clutching something that looked like a scrap of parchment. Merthin guessed it would have a prayer written on it, or a verse of the Bible, or perhaps a magic spell. That would be Madge’s idea – Caris had no faith in writing as a remedy.
Prior Godwyn came into the hospital, trailed as usual by Philemon. “Stand away from the bed!” Philemon said immediately. “How will the man get well if he cannot see the altar?”
Merthin and the two women stood back, and Godwyn bent over the patient. He touched Mark’s forehead and neck, then felt his pulse. “Show me the urine,” he said.
The monk-physicians set great store by examination of the patient’s urine. The hospital had special glass bottles, called urinals, for the purpose. Caris handed one to Godwyn. It did not take an expert to see that there was blood in Mark’s urine.
Godwyn handed it back. “This man is suffering from overheated blood,” he said. “He must be bled, then fed sour apples and tripes.”
Merthin knew, from his experience of the plague in Florence, that Godwyn was talking rubbish, but he made no comment. In his mind there was no longer much room for doubt about what was wrong with Mark. The skin rash, the bleeding, the thirst: this was the illness he himself had suffered in Florence, the one that had killed Silvia and all her family. This was la moria grande.
The plague had come to Kingsbridge.
As darkness fell on All Hallows’ Eve, Mark Webber’s breathing became more difficult. Caris watched him weaken. She felt the angry impotence that possessed her when she was unable to help a patient. Mark passed into a state of troubled unconsciousness, sweating and gasping although his eyes were closed and he showed no awareness. At Merthin’s quiet suggestion, Caris felt in Mark’s armpits, and found large boil-like swellings there. She did not ask him the significance of this: she would question him later. The nuns prayed and sang hymns while Madge and her four children stood around, helplessly distraught.
At the end Mark convulsed, and blood jetted from his mouth in a sudden flood. Then he fell back, lay still and stopped breathing.
Dora wailed loudly. The three sons looked bewildered, and struggled to hold back unmanly tears. Madge wept bitterly. “He was the best man in the world,” she said to Caris. “Why did God have to take him?”
Caris had to fight back her own grief. Her loss was nothing compared with theirs. She did not know why God so often took the best people and left the wicked alive to do more wrong. The whole idea of a benevolent deity watching over everyone seemed unbelievable at moments such as this. The priests said sickness was a punishment for sin. Mark and Madge loved one another, cared for their children and worked hard: why should they be punished?
There were no answers to religious questions, but Caris had some urgent practical inquiries to make. She was deeply worried by Mark’s illness, and she could guess that Merthin knew something about it. She swallowed her tears.
First she sent Madge and her children home to rest, and told the nuns to prepare the body for burial. Then she said to Merthin: “I want to talk to you.”
“And I to you,” he said.
She noticed that he looked frightened. That was rare. Her fear deepened. “Come to the church,” she said. “We can talk privately there.”
A wintry wind swept across the cathedral green. It was a clear night, and they could see by starlight. In the chancel, monks were preparing for the All Hallows dawn service. Caris and Merthin stood in the northwest corner of the nave away from the monks, so that they could not be overheard. Caris shivered, and pulled her robe closer around her. She said: “Do you know what killed Mark?”
Merthin took a shaky breath. “It’s the plague,” he said. “La moria grande.”
She nodded. This was what she had feared. But all the same she challenged him. “How do you know?”
“Mark goes to Melcombe and talks to sailors from Bordeaux, where the bodies are piled in the streets.”
She nodded. “He’s just back.” But she did not want to believe Merthin. “All the same, can you be sure it’s the plague?”
‘The symptoms are the same: fever, purple-black spots, bleeding, buboes in the armpits, and most of all the thirst. I remember it, by Christ. I was one of the few to recover. Almost everyone dies within five days, often less.”
She felt as if doomsday had come. She had heard the terrible stories from Italy and southern France: entire families wiped out, unburied bodies rotting in empty palaces, orphaned toddlers wandering the streets crying, livestock dying untended in ghost villages. Was this to happen to Kingsbridge? “What did the Italian doctors do?”
“Prayed, sang hymns, took blood, prescribed their favourite nostrums and charged a fortune. Everything they tried was useless.”
They were standing close together and speaking in low tones. She could see his face by the faint light of the monks’ distant candles. He was staring at her with a strange intensity. He was deeply moved, she could tell, but it did not seem to be grief for Mark that possessed him. He was focused on her.
She asked: “What are the Italian doctors like, compared with our English physicians?”
“After the Muslims, the Italian doctors are supposed to be the most knowledgeable in the world. They even cut up dead bodies to learn more about sickness. But they never cured a single sufferer from this plague.”
Caris refused to accept such complete hopelessness. “We can’t be utterly helpless.”
“No. We can’t cure it, but some people think you can escape it.”
Caris said eagerly: “How?”
“It seems to spread from one person to another.”
She nodded. “Lots of diseases do that.”
“Usually, when one in a family gets it, they all do. Proximity is the key factor.”
“That makes sense. Some say you fall ill from looking at sick people.”
“In Florence, the nuns counselled us to stay at home as much as possible, and avoid social gatherings, markets and meetings of guilds and councils.”
“And church services?”
“No, they didn’t say that, though lots of people stayed home from church too.”
This chimed with what Caris had been thinking for years. She felt renewed hope: perhaps her methods could stave off the plague. “What about the nuns themselves, and the physicians, people who have to meet the sick and touch them?”
“Priests refused to hear confessions in whispers, so that they did not have to get too near. Nuns wore linen masks over their mouths and noses so that they would not breathe the same air. Some washed their hands in vinegar every time they touched a patient. The priest-physicians said none of this would do any good, but most of them left the city anyway.”
“And did these precautions help?”
“It’s hard to say. None of this was done until the plague was rampant. And it wasn’t systematic – just everyone trying different things.”
“All the same, we must make the effort.”
He nodded. After a pause he said: “However, there is one precaution that is sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Run away.”
This was what he had been waiting to say, she realized.
He went on: “The saying goes: ‘Leave early, go far and stay long.’ People who did that escaped the sickness.”
“We can’t go away.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t be silly. There are six or seven thousand people in Kingsbridge – they can’t all leave town. Where would they go?”
“I’m not talking about them – just you. Listen, you may not have caught the plague from Mark. Madge and the children almost certainly have, but you spent less time close to him. If you’re still all right, we could escape. We could leave today, you and me and Lolla.”
Caris was appalled by the way he assumed it had spread by now. Was she doomed already? “And… and go where?”
“To Wales, or Ireland. We need to find a remote village where they don’t see a stranger from one year to the next.”
“You’ve had the sickness. You told me people don’t get it twice.”
“Never. And some people don’t catch it at all. Lolla must be like that. If she didn’t pick it up from her mother, she’s not likely to get it from anyone else.”
“So why do you want to go to Wales?”
He just stared at her with that intense look, and she realized that the fear she had detected in him was for her. He was terrified that she would die. Tears came to her eyes. She remembered what Madge had said: “Knowing there’s one person in the world who will always be on your side.” Merthin tried to look after her, no matter what she did. She thought of poor Madge, blasted by grief at the loss of the one who was always on her side. How could she, Caris, even think of rejecting Merthin?
But she did. “I can’t leave Kingsbridge,” she said. “Of all times, not now. They rely on me if someone is sick. When the plague strikes, I’m the one they will turn to for help. If I were to flee… well, I don’t know how to explain this.”
“I think I understand,” Merthin said. “You’d be like a soldier who runs away as soon as the first arrow is shot. You’d feel a coward.”
“Yes – and a cheat, after all these years of being a nun and saying that I live to serve others.”
“I knew you would feel this way,” Merthin said. “But I had to try.” The sadness in his voice nearly broke her heart as he added: “And I suppose this means you won’t be renouncing your vows in the foreseeable future.”
“No. The hospital is where they come for help. I have to be here at the priory, to play my role. I have to be a nun.”
“All right, then.”
“Don’t be too downhearted.”
With wry sorrow he said: “And why should I not be downhearted?”
“You said that it killed half the population of Florence?”
“Something like that.”
“So at least half the people just didn’t catch it.”
“Like Lolla. No one knows why. Perhaps they have some special strength. Or maybe the disease strikes at random, like arrows fired into the enemy ranks, killing some and missing others.”
“Either way, there’s a good chance I’ll escape the illness.”
“One chance in two.”
“Like the toss of a coin.”
“Heads or tails,” he said. “Life or death.”
Hundreds of people came to Mark Webber’s funeral. He had been one of the town’s leading citizens, but it was more than that. Poor weavers arrived from the surrounding villages, some of them having walked for hours. He had been unusually well loved, Merthin reflected. The combination of his giant’s body and his gentle temperament cast a spell.
It was a wet day, and the bared heads of rich and poor men were soaked as they stood around the grave. Cold rain mingled with hot tears on the faces of the mourners. Madge stood with her arms around the shoulders of her two younger sons, Dennis and Noah. They were flanked by the eldest son, John, and the daughter, Dora, who were both much taller than their mother, and looked as if they might be the parents of the three short people in the middle.
Merthin wondered grimly whether Madge or one of her children would be the next to die.
Six strong men grunted with the effort of lowering the extra-large coffin into the grave. Madge sobbed helplessly as the monks sang the last hymn. Then the gravediggers started to shovel the sodden earth back into the hole, and the crowd began to disperse.
Brother Thomas approached Merthin, pulling up his hood to keep the rain off. “The priory has no money to rebuild the tower,” he said. “Godwyn has commissioned Elfric to demolish the old tower and just roof the crossing.”
Merthin tore his mind away from apocalyptic thoughts of the plague. “How will Godwyn pay Elfric for that?”
“The nuns are putting up the money.”
“I thought they hated Godwyn.”
“Sister Elizabeth is the treasurer. Godwyn is careful to be kind to her family, who are tenants of the priory. Most of the other nuns do hate him, it’s true – but they need a church.”
Merthin had not given up his hope of rebuilding the tower higher than before. “If I could find the money, would the priory build a new tower?”
Thomas shrugged. “Hard to say.”
That afternoon, Elfric was re-elected alderman of the parish guild. After the meeting Merthin sought out Bill Watkin, the largest builder in town after Elfric. “Once the foundations of the tower are repaired, it could be built even higher,” he said.
“No reason why not,” Bill agreed. “But what would be the point?”
“So that it could be seen from Mudeford Crossing. Many travellers – pilgrims, merchants and so on – miss the road for Kingsbridge and go on to Shiring. The town loses a lot of custom that way.”
“Godwyn will say he can’t afford it.”
“Consider this,” Merthin said. “Suppose the new tower could be financed the same way as the bridge? The town merchants could lend the money and be repaid out of bridge tolls.”
Bill scratched his monk-like fringe of grey hair. This was an unfamiliar concept. “But the tower is nothing to do with the bridge.”
“Does that matter?”
“I suppose not.”
“The bridge tolls are just a way of guaranteeing that the loan is repaid.”
Bill considered his self-interest. “Would I be commissioned to do any of the work?”
“It would be a big project – every builder in town would get a piece of it.”
“That would be useful.”
“All right. Listen, if I design a large tower, will you back me, here at the parish guild, at the next meeting?”
Bill looked dubious. “The guild members aren’t likely to approve of extravagance.”
“I don’t think it needs to be extravagant, just high. If we put a domed ceiling over the crossing, I can build that with no centering.”
“A dome? That’s a new idea.”
“I saw domes in Italy.”
“I can see how it would save money.”
“And the tower can be topped by a slender wooden spire, which will save money and look wonderful.”
“You’ve got this all worked out, haven’t you?”
“Not really. But it’s been at the back of my mind ever since I returned from Florence.”
“Well, it sounds good to me – good for business, good for the town.”
“And good for our eternal souls.”
“I’ll do my best to help you push it through.”
“Thank you.”
Merthin mulled over the design of the tower as he went about his more mundane work, repairing the bridge and building new houses on Leper Island. It helped turn his mind away from dreadful, obsessive visions of Caris ill with the plague. He thought a lot about the south tower at Chartres. It was a masterpiece, albeit a little old-fashioned, having been built about two hundred years ago.
What Merthin had liked about it, he recalled very clearly, was the transition from the square tower to the octagonal spire above. At the top of the tower, perched on each of the four corners, were pinnacles facing diagonally outwards. On the same level, at the midpoint of each side of the square, were dormer windows similar in shape to the pinnacles. These eight structures matched the eight sloping sides of the tower rising behind them, so that the eye hardly noticed the change of shape from square to octagon.
However, Chartres was unnecessarily chunky by the standards of the fourteenth century. Merthin’s tower would have slender columns and large window openings, to lighten the weight on the pillars below, and to reduce stress by allowing the wind to blow through.
He made his own tracing floor at his workshop on the island. He enjoyed himself planning the details, doubling and quadrupling the narrow lancets of the old cathedral to make the large windows of the new tower, updating the clusters of columns and the capitals.
He hesitated over the height. He had no way to calculate how high it had to be in order to be visible from Mudeford Crossing. That could be done only by trial and error. When he had finished the stone tower he would have to erect a temporary spire, then go to Mudeford on a clear day and determine whether it could be seen. The cathedral was built on elevated ground, and at Mudeford the road breasted a rise just before descending to the river crossing. His instinct told him that if he went a little higher than Chartres – say about four hundred feet – that would be sufficient.
The tower at Salisbury cathedral was four hundred and four feet high.
Merthin planned his to be four hundred and five.
While he was bent over the tracing floor, drawing the roof pinnacles, Bill Watkin appeared. “What do you think of this?” Merthin said to him. “Does it need a cross on top, to point to heaven? Or an angel, to watch over us?”
“Neither,” said Bill. “It’s not going to get built.”
Merthin stood up, holding a straight-edge in his left hand and a sharpened iron drawing-needle in his right. “What makes you say that?”
“I’ve had a visit from Brother Philemon. I thought I might as well let you know as soon as possible.”
“What did that snake have to say?”
“He pretended to be friendly. He wanted to give me a piece of advice for my own good. He said it wouldn’t be wise of me to support any plan for a tower designed by you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would annoy Prior Godwyn, who was not going to approve your plans, regardless.”
Merthin could hardly be surprised. If Mark Webber had become alderman, the balance of power in the town would have changed, and Merthin might have won the commission to build the new tower. But Mark’s death meant the odds were against him. He had clung to hope, however, and now he felt the deep ache of heavy disappointment. “I suppose he’ll commission Elfric?”
“That was the implication.”
“Will he never learn?”
“When a man is proud, that counts for more than common sense.”
“Will the parish guild pay for a stumpy little tower designed by Elfric?”
“Probably. They may not get excited about it, but they’ll find the money. They are proud of their cathedral, despite everything.”
“Elfric’s incompetence almost cost them the bridge!” Merthin said indignantly.
“They know that.”
He allowed his wounded feelings to show. “If I hadn’t diagnosed the problem with the tower, it would have collapsed – and it might have brought down the entire cathedral.”
“They know that, too. But they’re not going to fight with the prior just because he’s treated you badly.”
“Of course not,” said Merthin, as if he thought that was perfectly reasonable; but he was hiding his bitterness. He had done more for Kingsbridge than Godwyn, and he was hurt that the townspeople had not put up more of a fight for him. But he also knew that most people most of the time acted in their own immediate self-interest.
“People are ungrateful,” Bill said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” Merthin said. “That’s all right.” He looked at Bill, then looked away; and then he threw down his drawing implements and walked off.
During the pre-dawn service of Lauds, Caris was surprised to look down the nave and see a woman in the north aisle, on her knees, in front of a wall painting of Christ Risen. She had a candle by her side and, in its unsteady light, Caris made out the chunky body and jutting chin of Madge Webber.
Madge stayed there throughout the service, not paying any attention to the psalms, apparently deep in prayer. Perhaps she was asking God to forgive Mark’s sins and let him rest in peace – not that Mark had committed many sins, as far as Caris knew. More likely, Madge was asking Mark to send her good fortune from the spirit world. Madge was going to carry on the cloth business with the help of her two older children. It was the usual thing, when a trader died leaving a widow and a thriving enterprise. Still, no doubt she felt the need of her dead husband’s blessing on her efforts.
But this explanation did not quite satisfy Caris. There was something intense in Madge’s posture, something about her stillness that suggested great passion, as if she were begging heaven to grant her some terribly important boon.
When the service ended, and the monks and nuns began to file out, Caris broke away from the procession and walked through the vast gloom of the nave towards the candle’s glow.
Madge stood up at the sound of her footsteps. When she recognized Caris’s face, she spoke with a note of accusation. “Mark died of the plague, didn’t he?”
So that was it. “I think so,” said Caris.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m not sure, and I didn’t want to frighten you – not to mention the whole town – on the basis of a guess.”
“I’ve heard it’s come to Bristol.”
So the townspeople had been talking about it. “And London,” Caris said. She had heard this from a pilgrim.
“What will happen to us all?”
Sorrow stabbed Caris like a pain in the heart. “I don’t know,” she lied.
“It spreads from one to another, I hear.”
“Many illnesses do.”
The aggression went out of Madge, and her face took on a pleading look that broke Caris’s heart. In a near-whisper she asked: “Will my children die?”
“Merthin’s wife got it,” Caris said. “She died, and so did all her family, but Merthin recovered, and Lolla didn’t catch it at all.”
“So my children will be all right?”
That was not what Caris had said. “They may be. Or some may catch it and others escape.”
That did not satisfy Madge. Like most patients, she wanted certainties, not possibilities. “What can I do to protect them?”
Caris looked at the painting of Christ. “You’re doing all you can,” she said. She began to lose control. As a sob rose in her throat, she turned away to hide her feelings and walked quickly out of the cathedral.
She sat in the nuns’ cloisters for a few minutes, pulling herself together, then went to the hospital, as usual at this hour.
Mair was not there. She had probably been called to attend a sick person in the town. Caris took charge, overseeing the serving of breakfast to guests and patients, making sure the place was cleaned thoroughly, checking on those who were sick. The work eased her distress about Madge. She read a psalm to Old Julie. When all the chores were done, Mair still had not appeared, so Caris went in search of her.
She found her in the dormitory, lying face down on her bed. Caris’s heart quickened. “Mair! Are you all right?” she said.
Mair rolled over. She was pale and sweating. She coughed, but did not speak.
Caris knelt beside her and placed a hand on her forehead. “You’ve got a fever,” she said, suppressing the dread that rose in her belly like nausea. “When did it begin?”
“I was coughing yesterday,” Mair said. “But I slept all right, and got up this morning. Then, when I went in to breakfast, I suddenly felt I was going to throw up. I went to the latrine, then came here and lay down. I think I might have been sleeping… what time is it?”
“The bell is about to ring for Terce. But you’re excused.” It could just be an ordinary illness, Caris told herself. She touched Mair’s neck, then pulled the cowl of her robe down.
Mair smiled weakly. “Are you trying to look at my chest?”
“Yes.”
“You nuns are all the same.”
There was no rash, as far as Caris could see. Perhaps it was just a cold. “Any pains?”
“There’s a dreadfully tender place in my armpit.”
That did not tell Caris much. Painful swellings in the armpits or groin were a feature of other illnesses as well as the plague. “Let’s get you down to the hospital,” she said.
As Mair lifted her head, Caris saw bloodstains on the pillow.
She felt the shock like a blow. Mark Webber had coughed blood. And Mair had been the first person to attend Mark at the start of his illness – she had gone to the house the day before Caris did.
Caris hid her fear and helped Mair up. Tears came to her eyes, but she controlled herself. Mair put her arm around Caris’s waist and her head on her shoulder, as if she needed support walking. Caris put her arm around Mair’s shoulder. Together they walked down the stairs and through the nuns’ cloisters to the hospital.
Caris took Mair to a mattress near the altar. She fetched a cup of cold water from the fountain in the cloisters. Mair drank thirstily. Caris bathed her face and neck with rose water. After a while, Mair seemed to sleep.
The bell rang for Terce. Caris was normally excused this service, but today she felt the need for a few moments of quiet. She joined the file of nuns walking into the church. The old grey stones seemed cold and hard today. She chanted automatically, while in her heart a storm raged.
Mair had the plague. There was no rash, but she had the fever, she was thirsty and she had coughed blood. She would probably die.
Caris felt a terrible guilt. Mair loved her devotedly. Caris had never been able to return Mair’s love, not in the way Mair longed for. Now Mair was dying. Caris wished she could have been different. She ought to have been able to make Mair happy. She should be able to save her life. She cried as she sang the psalm, hoping that anyone who noticed her tears would assume she was moved by religious ecstasy.
At the end of the service, a novice nun was waiting anxiously for her outside the south transept door. “There’s someone asking for you urgently in the hospital,” the girl said.
Caris found Madge Webber there, her face white with fear.
Caris did not need to ask what Madge wanted. She picked up her medical bag and the two of them rushed out. They crossed the cathedral green in a biting November wind and went to the Webber house in the main street. Upstairs, Madge’s children were waiting in the living room. The two older children were sitting at the table, looking frightened; the young boys were both lying on the floor.
Caris examined them quickly. All four were feverish. The girl had a nose bleed. The three boys were coughing.
They all had a rash of purplish-black spots on their shoulders and necks.
Madge said: “It’s the same, isn’t it? This is what Mark died of. They’ve got the plague.”
Caris nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“I hope I die, too,” Madge said. “Then we can all be together in heaven.”
In the hospital, Caris instituted the precautions Merthin had told her about. She cut up strips of linen for the nuns to tie over their mouths and noses while they were dealing with people who had the plague. And she compelled everyone to wash their hands in vinegar and water every time they touched a patient. The nuns all got chapped hands.
Madge brought her four children in, then fell ill herself. Old Julie, whose bed had been next to Mark Webber’s while he was dying, also succumbed. There was little Caris could do for any of them. She bathed their faces to cool them, gave them cold clear water to drink from the fountain in the cloisters, cleaned up their bloody vomit, and waited for them to die.
She was too busy to think about her own death. She observed a kind of fearful admiration in the townspeople’s eyes when they saw her soothing the brows of infectious plague victims, but she did not feel like a selfless martyr. She saw herself as the kind of person who disliked brooding and preferred to act. Like everyone else, she was haunted by the question: Who’s next? But she firmly put it out of her mind.
Prior Godwyn came in to see the patients. He refused to wear the face mask, saying it was women’s nonsense. He made the same diagnosis as before, overheated blood, and prescribed bleeding and a diet of sour apples and ram’s tripes.
It did not matter much what the patients ate, as they threw everything up towards the end; but Caris felt sure that taking blood from them made the illness worse. They were already bleeding too much: they coughed blood, vomited blood and pissed blood. But the monks were the trained physicians, so she had to follow their instructions. She did not have time to be angry whenever she saw a monk or nun kneeling at the bedside of a patient, holding an arm out straight, cutting into a vein with a small sharp knife, and supporting the arm while a pint or more of precious blood dripped into a bowl on the floor.
Caris sat with Mair at the end, holding her hand, not caring if anyone disapproved. To ease her torment, she gave her a tiny amount of the euphoric drug Mattie had taught her to make from poppies. Mair still coughed, but it did not hurt her so much. After a coughing fit, her breathing would be easier for a short while, and she could talk. “Thank you for that night in Calais,” she whispered. “I know you didn’t really enjoy it, but I was in heaven.”
Caris tried not to cry. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted.”
“You loved me, though, in your own way. I know that.”
She coughed again. When the fit ended, Caris wiped the blood from her lips.
“I love you,” Mair said, and closed her eyes.
Caris let the tears come, then, not caring who saw or what they thought. She watched Mair, through a watery film, as she grew paler and breathed more shallowly, until at last her breathing stopped.
Caris remained where she was, on the floor beside the mattress, holding the hand of the corpse. Mair was still beautiful, even like this, white and forever still. It occurred to Caris that one other person loved her as Mair had, and that was Merthin. How strange that she had rejected his love, too. There was something wrong with her, she thought; some malformation of the soul that prevented her from being like other women, and embracing love gladly.
Later that night, the four children of Mark Webber died; and so did Old Julie.
Caris was distraught. Was there nothing she could do? The plague was spreading fast and killing everyone. It was like living in a prison and wondering which of the inmates would be next to go to the gallows. Was Kingsbridge to be like Florence and Bordeaux, with bodies in the streets? Next Sunday there would be a market on the green outside the cathedral. Hundreds of people from every village within walking distance would come to buy and sell and mingle with the townspeople in churches and taverns. How many would go home fatally ill? When she felt like this, excruciatingly helpless up against terrible forces, she understood why people threw up their hands and said everything was controlled by the spirit world. But that had never been her way.
Whenever a member of the priory died there was always a special burial service, involving all the monks and nuns, with extra prayers for the departed soul. Both Mair and Old Julie had been well loved, Julie for her kind heart and Mair for her beauty, and many of the nuns wept. Madge’s children were included in the funeral, with the result that several hundred townspeople came. Madge herself was too ill to leave the hospital.
They all gathered in the graveyard under a slate-grey sky. Caris thought she could smell snow in the cold north wind. Brother Joseph said the graveside prayers, and six coffins were lowered into the ground.
A voice in the crowd asked the question that was on everyone’s mind. “Are we all going to die, Brother Joseph?”
Joseph was the most popular of the monk-physicians. Now close to sixty years old and with no teeth, he was intellectual but had a warm bedside manner. Now he said: “We’re all going to die, friend, but none of us knows when. That’s why we must always be prepared to meet God.”
Betty Baxter spoke up, ever the probing questioner. “What can we do about the plague?” she said. “It is the plague, isn’t it?”
“The best protection is prayer,” Joseph said. “And, in case God has decided to take you regardless, come to church and confess your sins.”
Betty was not so easily fobbed off. “Merthin says that in Florence people stayed in their homes to avoid contact with the sick. Is that a good idea?”
“I don’t think so. Did the Florentines escape the plague?”
Everyone looked at Merthin, standing with Lolla in his arms. “No, they didn’t escape,” he said. “But perhaps even more would have died if they had done otherwise.”
Joseph shook his head. “If you stay at home, you can’t go to church. Holiness is the best medicine.”
Caris could not remain silent. “The plague spreads from one person to another,” she said angrily. “If you stay away from other people, you’ve got a better chance of escaping infection.”
Prior Godwyn spoke up. “So the women are the physicians now, are they?”
Caris ignored him. “We should cancel the market,” she said. “It would save lives.”
“Cancel the market!” he said scornfully. “And how would we do that? Send messengers to every village?”
“Shut the city gates,” she replied. “Block the bridge. Keep all strangers out of the town.”
“But there are already sick people in town.”
“Close all taverns. Cancel meetings of all guilds. Prohibit guests at weddings.”
Merthin said: “In Florence they even abandoned meetings of the city council.”
Elfric spoke up. “Then how are people to do business?”
“If you do business, you’ll die,” Caris said. “And you’ll kill your wife and children, too. So choose.”
Betty Baxter said: “I don’t want to close my shop – I’d lose a lot of money. But I’ll do it to save my life.” Caris’s hopes lifted at this, but then Betty dashed them again. “What do the doctors say? They know best.” Caris groaned aloud.
Prior Godwyn said: “The plague has been sent by God to punish us for our sins. The world has become wicked. Heresy, lasciviousness and disrespect are rife. Men question authority, women flaunt their bodies, children disobey their parents. God is angry, and His rage is fearsome. Don’t try to run from His justice! It will find you, no matter where you hide.”
“What should we do?”
“If you want to live, you should go to church, confess your sins, pray and lead a better life.”
Caris knew it was useless to argue, but all the same she said: “A starving man should go to church, but he should also eat.”
Mother Cecilia said: “Sister Caris, you need say no more.”
“But we could save so many-”
“That will do.”
“This is life and death!”
Cecilia lowered her voice. “But no one is listening to you. Drop it.”
Caris knew Cecilia was right. No matter how long she argued, people would believe the priests, not her. She bit her lip and said no more.
Blind Carlus started a hymn, and the monks began to process back into the church. The nuns followed, and the crowd dispersed.
As they passed from the church into the cloisters, Mother Cecilia sneezed.
Every evening Merthin put Lolla to bed in the room at the Bell. He would sing to her, or recite poems, or tell her stories. This was the time when she talked to him, asking him the strangely unexpected questions of a three-year-old, some childish, some profound, some hilarious.
Tonight, while he was singing a lullaby, she burst into tears.
He asked her what the trouble was.
“Why did Dora die?” she wailed.
So that was it. Madge’s daughter, Dora, had taken to Lolla. They had spent time together, playing counting games and plaiting one another’s hair. “She had the plague,” Merthin said.
“My mama had the plague,” Lolla said. She switched to the Italian she had not quite forgotten. “La moria grande.”
“I had it, too, but I got better.”
“So did Libia.” Libia was the wooden doll she had carried all the way from Florence.
“Did Libia have the plague?”
“Yes. She sneezed, felt hot and had spots, but a nun made her better.”
“Tm very pleased. That means she’s safe. Nobody gets it twice.”
“You’re safe, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” That seemed like a good note on which to end. “Go to sleep, now.”
“Goodnight,” she said.
He went to the door.
“Is Bessie safe?” she said.
“Go to sleep.”
“I love Bessie.”
“That’s nice. Goodnight.” He closed the door.
Downstairs, the parlour was empty. People were nervous about going to crowded places. Despite what Godwyn said, Caris’s message had gone home.
He could smell a savoury soup. Following his nose, he went into the kitchen. Bessie was stirring a pot on the fire. “Bean soup with ham,” she said.
Merthin sat at the table with her father, Paul, a big man now in his fifties. He helped himself to bread while Paul poured him a tankard of ale. Bessie served the soup.
Bessie and Lolla were becoming fond of one another, he realized. He had employed a nanny to take care of Lolla during the day, but Bessie often watched Lolla in the evening, and Lolla preferred her.
Merthin owned a house on Leper Island, but it was a small place, especially by comparison with the palagetto he had become used to in Florence. He was happy to let Jimmie go on living there. Merthin was comfortable here at the Bell. The place was warm and clean, and there was plenty of hearty food and good drink. He paid his bill every Saturday, but in other respects he was treated like a member of the family. He was in no hurry to move into a place of his own.
On the other hand, he could not live here for ever. And, when he did move out, Lolla might be upset to leave Bessie behind. Too many of the people in her life had left it. She needed stability. Perhaps he should move out now, before she became too attached to Bessie.
When they had eaten, Paul retired to bed. Bessie gave Merthin another cup of ale, and they sat by the fire. “How many people died in Florence?” she said.
“Thousands. Tens of thousands, probably. No one could keep count.”
“I wonder who’s next in Kingsbridge.”
“I think about it all the time.”
“It might be me.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’d like to lie with a man one more time, before I die.”
Merthin smiled, but said nothing.
“I haven’t been with a man since my Richard passed away, and that’s more than a year.”
“You miss him.”
“How about you? How long is it since you had a woman?”
Merthin had not had sex since Silvia fell ill. Remembering her, he felt a stab of grief. He had been insufficiently grateful for her love. “About the same,” he said.
“Your wife?”
“Yes, rest her soul.”
“It’s a long time to go without loving.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not the type to go with just anybody. You want someone to love.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I’m the same. It’s wonderful to lie with a man, the best thing in the world, but only if you love one another truly. I’ve only ever had one man, my husband. I never went with anyone else.”
Merthin wondered if that was true. He could not be sure. Bessie seemed sincere. But it was the kind of thing a woman would say anyway.
“What about you?” she said. “How many women?”
“Three.”
“Your wife, and before that Caris, and… who else? Oh, I remember – Griselda.”
“I’m not saying who they were.”
“Don’t worry, everyone knows.”
Merthin smiled ruefully. Of course, everyone did know. Perhaps they could not be sure, but they guessed, and they usually guessed right.
“How old is Griselda’s little Merthin now – seven? Eight?”
“Ten.”
“I’ve got fat knees,” Bessie said. She pulled up the skirt of her dress to show him. “I’ve always hated my knees, but Richard used to like them.”
Merthin looked. Her knees were plump and dimpled. He could see her white thighs.
“He would kiss my knees,” she said. “He was a sweet man.” She adjusted her dress, as if straightening it, but she lifted it, and for a moment he glimpsed the dark inviting patch of hair at her groin. “He would kiss me all over, sometimes, especially after bathing. I used to like that. I liked everything. A man can do what he likes to a woman who loves him. Don’t you agree?”
This had gone far enough. Merthin stood up. “I think you’re probably right, but this kind of talk leads only one way, so I’m going to bed before I commit a sin.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Sleep well,” she said. “If you get lonely, I’ll be here by the fire.”
“I’ll remember that.”
They put Mother Cecilia on a bedstead, not a mattress, and placed it immediately in front of the altar, the holiest place in the hospital. Nuns sang and prayed around her bed all day and all night, in shifts. There was always someone to bathe her face with cool rose water, always a cup of clear fountain water at her side. None of it made any difference. She declined as fast as the others, bleeding from her nose and her vagina, her breathing becoming more and more laboured, her thirst unquenchable.
On the fourth night after she sneezed, she sent for Caris.
Caris was heavily asleep. Her days were exhausting: the hospital was overflowing. She was deep in a dream in which all the children in Kingsbridge had the plague, and as she rushed around the hospital trying to care for them all she suddenly realized that she, too, had caught it. One of the children was tugging at her sleeve, but she was ignoring it and desperately trying to figure out how she would cope with all these patients while she was so ill – and then she realized someone was shaking her shoulder with increasing urgency, saying: “Wake up, sister, please, the Mother Prioress needs you!”
She came awake. A novice knelt by her bed with a candle. “How is she?” Caris asked.
“She’s sinking, but she can still speak, and she wants you.”
Caris got out of bed and put on her sandals. It was a bitterly cold night. She was wearing her nun’s robe, and she took the blanket from her bed and pulled it around her shoulders. Then she ran down the stone stairs.
The hospital was full of dying people. The mattresses on the floor were lined up like fish bones, so that those patients who were able to sit upright could see the altar. Families clustered around the beds. There was a smell of blood. Caris took a clean length of linen from a basket by the door and tied it over her mouth and nose.
Four nuns knelt beside Cecilia’s bed, singing. Cecilia lay back with her eyes closed, and at first Caris was afraid she had arrived too late. Then the old prioress seemed to sense her presence. She turned her head and opened her eyes.
Caris sat on the edge of the bed. She dipped a rag in a bowl of rose water and wiped a smear of blood from Cecilia’s upper lip.
Cecilia’s breathing was tortured. In between gasps, she said: “Has anyone survived this terrible illness?”
“Only Madge Webber.”
“The one who didn’t want to live.”
“All her children died.”
“I’m going to die soon.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You forget yourself. We nuns have no fear of death. All our lives we long to be united with Jesus in heaven. When death comes, we welcome it.” The long speech exhausted her. She coughed convulsively.
Caris wiped blood from her chin. “Yes, Mother Prioress. But those who are left behind may weep.” Tears came to her eyes. She had lost Mair and Old Julie, and now she was about to lose Cecilia.
“Don’t cry. That’s for the others. You have to be strong.”
“I don’t see why.”
“I think God has you in mind to take my place, and become prioress.”
In that case he has made a very odd choice, Caris thought. He usually picks people whose view of Him is more orthodox. But she had long ago learned that there was no point in saying these things. “If the sisters choose me, I’ll do my best.”
“I think they’ll choose you.”
“I’m sure Sister Elizabeth will want to be considered.”
“Elizabeth is clever, but you’re loving.”
Caris bowed her head. Cecilia was probably right. Elizabeth would be too harsh. Caris was the best person to run the nunnery, even though she was sceptical of lives spent in prayer and hymn-singing. She did believe in the school and the hospital. Heaven forbid that Elizabeth should end up running the hospital.
“There’s something else.” Cecilia lowered her voice, and Caris had to lean closer. “Something Prior Anthony told me when he was dying. He had kept it secret until the last, and now I’ve done the same.”
Caris was not sure she wanted to be burdened with such a secret. However, the death bed seemed to overrule such scruples.
Cecilia said: “The old king did not die of a fall.”
Caris was shocked. It had happened more than twenty years ago, but she remembered the rumours. The killing of a king was the worst offence imaginable, a double outrage, combining murder with treason, both of them capital crimes. Even knowing about such a thing was dangerous. No wonder Anthony had kept it a secret.
Cecilia went on: “The queen and her lover, Mortimer, wanted Edward II out of the way. The heir to the throne was a little boy. Mortimer became king in all but name. In the upshot, it didn’t last as long as he might have hoped, of course – young Edward III grew up too fast.” She coughed again, more weakly.
“Mortimer was executed while I was an adolescent.”
“But even Edward didn’t want anyone to know what had really happened to his father. So the secret was kept.”
Caris was awestruck. Queen Isabella was still alive, living in lavish circumstances in Norfolk, the revered mother of the king. If people found out that she had her husband’s blood on her hands there would be a political earthquake. Caris felt guilty just knowing about it.
“So he was murdered?” she asked.
Cecilia made no reply. Caris looked harder. The prioress was still, her face immobile, her eyes staring upward. She was dead.
The day after Cecilia died, Godwyn asked Sister Elizabeth to have dinner with him.
This was a dangerous moment. Cecilia’s death unbalanced the power structure. Godwyn needed the nunnery, because the monastery on its own was not viable: he had never succeeded in improving its finances. Yet most of the nuns were now angry about the money he had taken from them, and bitterly hostile to him. If they fell under the control of a prioress bent on revenge – Caris, perhaps – it could mean the end of the monastery.
He was frightened of the plague, too. What if he caught it? What if Philemon died? Such flashes of nightmare unnerved him, but he succeeded in pushing them to the back of his mind. He was determined not to be distracted from his long-term purpose by the plague.
The election of the prioress was an immediate danger. He had visions of the monastery closing down, and himself leaving Kingsbridge in disgrace, being forced to become an ordinary monk in some other place, subordinate to a prior who would discipline and humiliate him. If that happened he thought he might kill himself.
On the other hand, this was an opportunity as well as a threat. If he handled things cleverly he might get a prioress sympathetic to him who would be content to let him take the lead. And Elizabeth was his best bet.
She would make an imperious leader, one who would stand on her dignity. But he could work with her. She was pragmatic: she had proved that, the time she had warned him that Caris was planning to audit the treasury. She would be his ally.
She walked in with her head held high. She knew she had suddenly become important, and she was enjoying it, Godwyn realized. He wondered anxiously if she would go along with the plan he was about to propose. She might need careful handling.
She looked around the grand dining hall. “You built a splendid palace,” she said, reminding him that she had helped him get the money for it.
She had never been inside the place, he realized, although it had been finished a year ago. He preferred not to have females in the monks’ part of the priory. Only Petranilla and Cecilia had been admitted here, until today. He said: “Thank you. I believe it wins us respect from the noble and powerful. Already we have entertained the archbishop of Monmouth here.”
He had used the last of the nuns’ florins to buy tapestries showing scenes from the lives of the prophets. She studied a picture of Daniel in the lions’ den. “This is very good,” she said.
“From Arras.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that your cat under the sideboard?”
Godwyn tutted. “I can’t get rid of it,” he lied. He shooed it out of the room. Monks were not supposed to have pets, but he found the cat a soothing presence.
They sat at one end of the long banqueting table. He hated having a woman here, sitting down to dinner as if she were just as good as a man; but he hid his discomfort.
He had ordered an expensive dish, pork cooked with ginger and apples. Philemon poured wine from Gascony. Elizabeth tasted the pork and said: “Delicious.”
Godwyn was not very interested in food, except as a means of impressing people, but Philemon tucked in greedily.
Godwyn got down to business. “How do you plan to win this election?”
“I believe I’m a better candidate than Sister Caris,” she said.
Godwyn sensed the suppressed emotion with which she uttered the name. Clearly she was still angry that Merthin had rejected her in favour of Caris. Now she was about to enter another contest with her old rival. She would kill to win this time, he thought.
That was good.
Philemon said to her: “Why do you think you’re better?”
“I’m older than Caris,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve been a nun longer, and a priory officer longer. And I was born and brought up in a deeply religious household.”
Philemon shook his head dismissively. “None of that will make any difference.”
She raised her eyebrows, startled by his bluntness, and Godwyn hoped Philemon would not be too brutal. We need her compliant, he wanted to whisper. Don’t get her back up.
Philemon went on remorselessly. “You’ve only got one year of experience more than Caris has. And your father, the bishop – rest his soul – will count against you. After all, bishops aren’t supposed to have children.”
She flushed. “Priors aren’t supposed to have cats.”
“We’re not discussing the prior,” he said impatiently. His manner was insolent, and Godwyn winced. Godwyn was good at masking his hostility and putting on a façade of friendly charm, but Philemon had never learned that art.
However, Elizabeth took it coolly. “So, did you ask me here to tell me I can’t win?” She turned to Godwyn. “It’s not like you to cook with costly ginger just for the pleasure of it.”
“You’re quite right,” said Godwyn. “We want you to become prioress, and we’re going to do everything we can to help you.”
Philemon said: “And we’re going to start by taking a realistic look at your prospects. Caris is liked by everyone – nuns, monks, merchants and nobility. The job she does is a great advantage to her. Most of the monks and nuns, and hundreds of townspeople, have come to the hospital with ailments and been helped by her. By contrast, they rarely see you. You’re the treasurer, thought of as cold and calculating.”
“I appreciate your frankness,” Elizabeth said. “Perhaps I should give up now.”
Godwyn could not tell whether she was being ironic.
“You can’t win,” Philemon said. “But she can lose.”
“Don’t be enigmatic, it’s tiresome,” Elizabeth snapped. “Just tell me in plain words what you’re getting at.”
I can see why she’s not popular, Godwyn thought.
Philemon pretended not to notice her tone. “Your task in the next few weeks is to destroy Caris,” he said. “You have to transform her, in the nuns’ minds, from a likeable, hard-working, compassionate sister into a monster.”
A glint of eagerness came into Elizabeth’s eye. “Is that possible?”
“With our help, yes.”
“Go on.”
“Is she still ordering nuns to wear linen masks in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“And wash their hands?”
“Yes.”
“There is no basis for these practices in Galen or any other medical authority, and certainly none in the Bible. It seems a mere superstition.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Apparently the Italian doctors believe the plague spreads through the air. You catch it by looking at sick people, or touching them, or breathing their breath. I don’t see how-”
“And where did the Italians get this idea?”
“Perhaps just by observing patients.”
“I have heard Merthin say that the Italian doctors are the best – except for the Arabs.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I’ve heard that.”
“So this whole business of wearing masks probably comes from the Muslims.”
“Possibly.”
“In other words, it is a heathen practice.”
“I suppose so.”
Philemon sat back, as if he had proved a point.
Elizabeth did not yet get it. “So we outmanoeuvre Caris by saying she has introduced a heathen superstition into the nunnery?”
“Not exactly,” said Philemon with a crafty smile. “We say she is practising witchcraft.”
She saw it then. “Of course! I had almost forgotten about that.”
“You testified against her at the trial!”
“It was a long time ago.”
“I would think you’d never forget that your enemy was once accused of such a crime,” Philemon said.
Philemon himself certainly never forgot such things, Godwyn reflected. Knowing people’s weaknesses, and exploiting them shamelessly, was his speciality. Godwyn sometimes felt guilty about the sheer depth of Philemon’s malice. But that malice was so useful to Godwyn that he always suppressed his misgivings. Who else could have dreamed up this way of poisoning the nuns’ minds against the beloved Caris?
A novice brought apples and cheese, and Philemon poured more wine. Elizabeth said: “All right, this makes sense. Have you thought about how, in detail, we should bring this up?”
“It’s important to prepare the ground,” Philemon said. “You should never make an accusation such as this formally until it’s already believed by large numbers of people.”
Philemon was very good at this, Godwyn thought admiringly.
Elizabeth said: “And how do you suggest we achieve that?”
“Actions are better than words. Refuse to wear the mask yourself. When asked, shrug and say quietly that you have heard it is a Muslim practice, and you prefer Christian means of protection. Encourage your friends to refuse the mask, as a sign of support for you. Don’t wash your hands too often, either. When you notice people following Caris’s precepts, frown disapprovingly – but say nothing.”
Godwyn nodded agreement. Philemon’s slyness sometimes approached the level of genius.
“Should we not even mention heresy?”
“Talk about it as much as you like, without connecting it directly to Caris. Say that you’ve heard of a heretic being executed in another city, or a devil worshipper who succeeded in depraving an entire nunnery, perhaps in France.”
“I wouldn’t wish to say anything that was not true,” Elizabeth said stiffly.
Philemon sometimes forgot that not everyone was as unscrupulous as he. Godwyn said hastily: “Of course not – Philemon just means that you should repeat such stories if and when you hear them, to remind the nuns of the ever-present danger.”
“Very good.” The bell rang for Nones, and Elizabeth stood up. “I mustn’t miss the service. I don’t want someone to notice my absence and guess that I’ve been here.”
“Quite right,” said Godwyn. “Anyway, we’ve agreed our plan.”
She nodded. “No masks.”
Godwyn could see that she was nursing a doubt. He said: “You don’t imagine they’re effective, do you?”
“No,” she replied. “No, of course not. How could they be?”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you for dinner.” She went out.
That had gone well, Godwyn reflected, but he was still worried. He said anxiously to Philemon: “Elizabeth on her own might not be able to convince people that Caris is still a witch.”
“I agree. We may need to help with the process.”
“Perhaps with a sermon?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll speak about the plague from the cathedral pulpit.”
Philemon looked thoughtful. “It might be dangerous to attack Caris directly. That could backfire.”
Godwyn agreed. If there were open strife between himself and Caris, the townspeople would probably support her. “I won’t mention her name.”
“Just sow the seeds of doubt, and let people come to their own conclusions.”
“I’ll blame heresy, devil worship and heathenish practices.”
Godwyn’s mother, Petranilla, came in. She was very stooped, and walked with two canes, but her large head still jutted forward assertively on her bony shoulders. “How did that go?” she said. She had urged Godwyn to attack Caris, and had approved Philemon’s plan.
“Elizabeth will do exactly as we wish,” Godwyn said, feeling pleased. He enjoyed giving her good news.
“Good. Now I want to talk to you about something else.” She turned to Philemon. “We won’t need you.”
For a moment, Philemon looked hurt, like a child unexpectedly smacked. Brutally abrasive himself, he was easily wounded. However, he recovered quickly, and pretended to be untroubled and even a bit amused by her high-handedness. “Of course, madam,” he said with exaggerated deference.
Godwyn said to him: “Take charge of Nones for me, will you?”
“Very good.”
When he had gone, Petranilla sat at the big table and said: “I know it was me who urged you to foster that young man’s talents, but I have to admit that nowadays he makes my flesh crawl.”
“He’s more useful than ever.”
“You can never really trust a ruthless man. If he will betray others, why should he not betray you?”
“I’ll remember that,” Godwyn said, though he felt he was now so bound up with Philemon that it was hard to imagine operating without him. However, he did not want to tell his mother that. Changing the subject, he said: “Would you like a cup of wine?”
She shook her head. “I’m already too liable to fall over. Sit down and listen to me.”
“Very well, Mother.” He sat beside her at the table.
“I want you to leave Kingsbridge before this plague gets much worse.”
“I can’t do that. But you could go-”
“I don’t matter! I’m going to die soon anyway.”
The thought filled Godwyn with panic. “Don’t say that!”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m sixty years old. Look at me – I can’t even stand upright. It’s time for me to go. But you’re only forty-two – and you’ve got so much ahead! You could be bishop, archbishop, even cardinal.”
As always, her limitless ambition for him made Godwyn feel dizzy. Was he really capable of becoming a cardinal? Or was it just a mother’s blindness? He did not really know.
“I don’t want you to die of the plague before you’ve achieved your destiny,” she finished.
“Mother, you’re not going to die.”
“Forget about me!” she said angrily.
“I can’t leave town. I have to make sure the nuns don’t make Caris prioress.”
“Get them to hold the election quickly. Failing that, get out anyway and leave the election in God’s hands.”
He was terrified of the plague, but he feared failure too. “I could lose everything if they elect Caris!”
Her voice softened. “Godwyn, listen to me. I have only one child, and that’s you. I can’t bear to lose you.”
Her sudden change of tone shocked him into silence.
She went on: “Please, I beg you, get out of this city and go to some place where the plague can’t reach you.”
He had never known her to plead. It was unnerving. He felt scared. Just to stop her, he said: “Let me think about it.”
“This plague,” she said. “It’s like a wolf in the forest. When you see it, you don’t think – you run.”
Godwyn gave the sermon on the Sunday before Christmas.
It was a dry day with high pale cloud roofing the cold vault of heaven. The central tower of the cathedral was covered by a bird’s nest of rope-and-branch scaffolding where Elfric was demolishing it from the top down. At the market on the green, shivering traders did desultory business with a few preoccupied customers. Beyond the market, the frozen grass of the cemetery was quilted with the brown rectangles of more than a hundred fresh graves.
But the church was full. The frost that Godwyn had noticed on the inside walls during Prime had been dispersed by the warmth of thousands of bodies by the time he entered the church to perform the Christmas service. They huddled in their heavy earth-coloured coats and cloaks, looking like cattle in a pen. They had come because of the plague, he knew. The congregation of thousands of townspeople had been augmented by hundreds more from the surrounding countryside, all in search of God’s protection against an illness that had already struck at least one family in every city street and rural village. Godwyn sympathized. Even he had been praying more fervently lately.
Normally only the people at the front solemnly followed the service. Those behind chatted to their friends and neighbours, and the youngsters amused themselves at the back. But today there was little noise from the nave. All heads were turned to the monks and nuns, watching with unusual attention as they performed the rituals. The crowd murmured the responses scrupulously, desperate to acquire what defensive holiness they could. Godwyn studied their faces, reading their expressions. What he saw there was dread. Like him, they were wondering fearfully who would be the next to sneeze, or suffer a nosebleed, or come out in a rash of purple-black spots.
Right at the front he could see Earl William with his wife Philippa, their two grown sons, Roland and Richard, and their much younger daughter, Odila, who was fourteen. William ruled the county in the same style as his father, Roland, with order and justice and a firm hand that was occasionally cruel. He looked worried: an outbreak of plague in his earldom was something he could not control, no matter how harsh he was. Philippa had her arm around the young girl, as if to protect her.
Next to them was Sir Ralph, lord of Tench. Ralph had never been any good at hiding his feelings, and now he looked terrified. His child-wife was carrying a tiny baby boy. Godwyn had recently christened the child Gerald, after its grandfather, who stood nearby with the grandmother, Maud.
Godwyn’s eye moved along the line to Ralph’s brother, Merthin. When Merthin had returned from Florence, Godwyn had hoped that Caris would renounce her vows and leave the nunnery. He thought she might be less of a nuisance as the mere wife of a citizen. But it had not happened. Merthin was holding the hand of his little Italian daughter. Next to them was Bessie from the Bell inn. Bessie’s father, Paul Bell, had succumbed to the plague already.
Not far away was the family Merthin had spurned: Elfric, with his daughter Griselda, the little boy they had named Merthin – now ten – and Harry Mason, the husband Griselda had wed after she gave up hope of the original Merthin. Next to Elfric was his second wife, Godwyn’s cousin Alice. Elfric kept looking up. He had built a temporary ceiling over the crossing while he tore down the tower, and he was either admiring his work or worrying about it.
Conspicuously absent was the bishop of Shiring, Henri of Mons. The bishop normally gave the sermon on Christmas Day. However, he had not come. So many clergy had died of the plague that the bishop was frantically busy visiting parishes and searching for replacements. There was already talk of easing the requirements for priests, and ordaining under-twenty-fives and even illegitimate men.
Godwyn stepped forward to speak. He had a delicate task. He needed to whip up fear and hatred of the most popular person in Kingsbridge. And he had to do it without mentioning her name, indeed without even letting people think he was hostile to her. They must turn on her with fury but, when they did, they had to believe it was their own idea, not his.
Not every service featured a sermon. Only at major solemnities, attended by large crowds, did he address the congregation, and then he did not always preach. Often there were announcements, messages from the archbishop or the king about national events – military victories, taxes, royal births and deaths. But today was special.
“What is sickness?” he said. The church was already quiet, but the congregation became very still. He had asked the question that was on everybody’s mind.
“Why does God send illnesses and plagues to torment and kill us?” He caught the eye of his mother, standing behind Elfric and Alice, and he was suddenly reminded of her forecast that she would die soon. For a moment he froze, paralysed with fear, unable to speak. The congregation shifted restlessly, waiting. Knowing he was losing their attention, he felt panicky, and that made his paralysis worse. Then the moment passed.
“Sickness is a punishment for sin,” he resumed. Over the years he had developed a preaching style. He was not a ranter, like Friar Murdo. He spoke in a more conversational manner, sounding like a reasonable man rather than a demagogue. He wondered how suitable that was for whipping up the kind of hatred he wanted them to feel. But Philemon said it made him sound more convincing.
“The plague is a special sickness, so we know God is inflicting a special punishment on us.” There was a low collective sound, between a murmur and a moan, from the crowd. This was what they wanted to hear. He was encouraged.
“We must ask ourselves what sins we have committed, to merit such punishment.” As he said this he noticed Madge Webber, standing alone. Last time she came to church she had had a husband and four children. He thought of making the point that she had enriched herself using dyes concocted by witchcraft, but he decided against that tactic. Madge was too well liked and respected.
“I say to you that God is punishing us for heresy. There are people in the world – in this town – even in this great cathedral today – who question the authority of God’s holy church and its ministers. They doubt that the sacrament turns bread into the true body of Christ; they deny the efficacy of masses for the dead; they claim that it is idolatry to pray before statues of the saints.” These were the usual heresies debated among student priests at Oxford. Few people in Kingsbridge cared about such arguments, and Godwyn saw disappointment and boredom on the faces in the crowd. He sensed he was losing them again, and he felt the panic rise. Desperately, he added: “There are people in this city who practise witchcraft.”
That got their attention. There was a collective gasp.
“We must be vigilant against false religion,” he said. “Remember that only God can cure sickness. Prayer, confession, communion, penance – these are the remedies sanctioned by Christianity.” He raised his voice a little. “All else is blasphemy!”
This was not clear enough, he decided. He needed to be more specific.
“For if God sends us a punishment, and we try to escape it, are we not defying His will? We may pray to Him to forgive us, and perhaps in his wisdom he will heal our sickness. But heretical cures will only make matters worse.” The audience was rapt, and he warmed up. “I warn you! Magic spells, appeals to the fairy folk, unchristian incantations, and especially heathen practices – all are witchcraft, all are forbidden by God’s holy church.”
His real audience today was the thirty-two nuns standing behind him in the choir of the church. So far only a few had registered their opposition to Caris, and their support for Elizabeth, by refusing to wear the mask against the plague. As things stood, Caris would easily win next week’s election. He needed to give the nuns the clear message that Caris’s medical ideas were heretical.
“Anyone who is guilty of such practices -” he paused for effect, leaning forward and staring at the congregation – “anyone in town -” he turned and looked behind him, at the monks and nuns in the choir. “- or even in the priory -” he turned back. “I say, anyone guilty of such practices should be shunned.”
He paused for effect.
“And may God have mercy on their souls.”
Paul Bell was buried three days before Christmas. All those who stood at his frosty graveside in the December cold were invited to the Bell to drink to his memory. His daughter, Bessie, now owned the place. She did not want to grieve alone, so she poured the tavern’s best ale generously. Lennie Fiddler played sad tunes on his five-stringed instrument, and the mourners became tearful and maudlin as they got drunker.
Merthin sat in the corner with Lolla. At yesterday’s market he had bought some sweet raisins from Corinth – an expensive luxury. He was sharing them with Lolla, teaching her numbers at the same time. He counted nine raisins for himself, but when he was counting out hers he missed every other number, saying: “One, three, five, seven, nine.”
“No!” she said. “That’s not right!” She was laughing, knowing that he was only teasing.
“But I counted nine each,” he protested.
“But you’ve got more!”
“Well, how did that happen?”
“You didn’t count them right, silly.”
“You’d better count them, then, and see if you can do better.”
Bessie sat with them. She was wearing her best dress, which was a bit tight. “Can I have some raisins?” she said.
Lolla said: “Yes, but don’t let Daddy count them.”
“Don’t worry,” Bessie said. “I know his tricks.”
“Here you are,” Merthin said to Bessie. “One, three, nine, thirteen – oh, thirteen is too many. I’d better take some away.” He took back three raisins. “Twelve, eleven, ten. There, now you’ve got ten raisins.”
Lolla thought this was hysterically funny. “But she’s only got one!” she said.
“Did I count them wrong again?”
“Yes!” She looked at Bessie. “We know his tricks.”
“You count them, then.”
The door opened, letting in a blast of icy air. Caris came in, wrapped in a heavy cloak. Merthin smiled: every time he saw her, he felt glad she was still alive.
Bessie looked at her warily, but spoke a welcome. “Hello, sister,” she said. “It’s kind of you to remember my father.”
Caris said: “I’m very sorry you have lost him. He was a good man.” She, too, was being formally polite. Merthin realized that these two women saw themselves as rivals for his affections. He did not know what he had done to deserve such devotion.
“Thank you,” Bessie said to Caris. “Will you have a cup of ale?”
“That’s very kind, but no. I need to speak to Merthin.”
Bessie looked at Lolla. “Shall we roast some nuts on the fire?”
“Yes, please!”
Bessie took Lolla away.
“They get on well together,” Caris said.
Merthin nodded. “Bessie has a warm heart, and no children of her own.”
Caris looked sad. “I have no children… but perhaps I haven’t got the warm heart.”
Merthin touched her hand. “I know better,” he said. “You have such a warm heart you have to take care of not just one or two children but dozens of people.”
“It’s kind of you to see it that way.”
“It’s true, that’s all. How are things at the hospital?”
“Unbearable. The place is full of people dying, and I can’t do anything for them except bury them.”
Merthin felt a surge of compassion. She was always so competent, so reliable, but the strain told on her, and she was willing to show it to him, if to no one else. “You look tired,” he said.
“I am, God knows.”
“I suppose you’re worrying about the election, too.”
“I came to ask for your help with that.”
Merthin hesitated. He was torn by contradictory feelings. Part of him wanted her to achieve her ambition and become prioress. But then would she ever be his wife? He had a shamefully selfish hope that she would lose the election and renounce her vows. All the same, he wanted to give her whatever help she asked for, just because he loved her. “All right,” he said.
“Godwyn’s sermon yesterday hurt me.”
“Will you never be rid of that old accusation of witchcraft? It’s so absurd!”
“People are stupid. The sermon had a big impact on the nuns.”
“As was intended, of course.”
“No doubt of it. Few of them believed Elizabeth when she said that my linen masks were heathenish. Only her close friends discarded the mask: Cressie, Elaine, Jeannie, Rosie and Simone. But when the others heard the message from the pulpit of the cathedral, it was different. The more impressionable sisters have all now discarded the mask. A few avoid making an obvious choice by never coming into the hospital. Only a handful still wear it: me and four nuns I’m close to.”
“I was afraid of this.”
“Now that Mother Cecilia, Mair and Old Julie are dead, there are only thirty-two nuns eligible to vote. Seventeen votes are all you need to win. Elizabeth originally had five sworn supporters. The sermon has given her eleven more. With her own vote, that makes seventeen. I have only five, and even if all the waverers came over to me, I would lose.”
Merthin felt angry on her behalf. It must be hurtful to be rejected like this after all she had done for the nunnery. “What can you do?”
“The bishop is my last hope. If he sets his face against Elizabeth, and announces that he will not ratify her election, some of her support may fall away, and I could have a chance.”
“How can you influence him?”
“I can’t, but you could – or, at least, the parish guild could.”
“I suppose so…”
“They have a meeting this evening. You’ll be there, I imagine.”
“Yes.”
“Think about it. Godwyn already has the town in a stranglehold. He’s close to Elizabeth – her family are tenants of the priory, and Godwyn has always been careful to favour them. If she becomes prioress, she will be as compliant as Elfric. Godwyn will have no opposition in or out of the priory. It will be the death of Kingsbridge.”
“That’s true, but whether the guildsmen will agree to intercede with the bishop…”
Suddenly she looked terribly disheartened. “Just try. If they turn you down, so be it.”
Her desperation touched him, and he wished he could be more optimistic. “I will, of course.”
“Thank you.” She stood up. “You must have conflicting feelings about this. Thank you for being a true friend.”
He smiled wryly. He wanted to be her husband, not her friend. But he would take what he could get.
She went out into the cold.
Merthin joined Bessie and Lolla at the fireside and sampled their roasted nuts, but he was preoccupied. Godwyn’s influence was malign, but all the same his power never ceased to grow. Why was that? Perhaps because he was an ambitious man with no conscience – a potent combination.
As darkness fell he put Lolla to bed and paid a neighbour’s daughter to watch her. Bessie left the barmaid, Sairy, in charge of the tavern. Wearing heavy cloaks, they walked up the main street to the guild hall for the midwinter meeting of the parish guild.
At the back of the long room there was a seasonal barrel of ale for the members. The merrymaking seemed to have a driven quality this Christmas, Merthin thought. They had been drinking hard at Paul Bell’s wake, and some of those people now followed Merthin in and filled their tankards again as eagerly as if they had not tasted ale for a week. Perhaps it took their minds off the plague.
Bessie was one of four people introduced as new members. The other three were eldest sons of leading merchants who had died. Godwyn, as overlord of the townspeople, must be enjoying a rise in his income from inheritance tax, Merthin realized.
When the routine business had been dealt with, Merthin raised the subject of the election of the new prioress.
“That’s none of our business,” Elfric said immediately.
“On the contrary, the result will affect commerce in this town for years to come, perhaps decades,” Merthin argued. “The prioress is one of the richest and most powerful people in Kingsbridge, and we ought to do what we can to get one who will do nothing to fetter trade.”
“But there’s nothing we can do – we have no vote.”
“We have influence. We could petition the bishop.”
“It’s never been done before.”
“That’s not much of an argument.”
Bill Watkin interrupted. “Who are the candidates?”
Merthin replied: “Sorry, I thought you’d know. Sister Caris and Sister -Elizabeth. I think we should support Caris.”
“Of course you do,” said Elfric. “And we all know why!”
There was a ripple of laughter. Everyone knew about the longstanding on-off love affair between Merthin and Caris.
Merthin smiled. “Go on, laugh – I don’t mind. Just remember that Caris grew up in the wool business and helped her father, so she understands the problems and challenges that merchants face – whereas her rival is the daughter of a bishop, and more likely to sympathize with the prior.”
Elfric was looking red in the face – partly because of the ale he had drunk, Merthin thought, but mainly through anger. “Why do you hate me, Merthin?” he said.
Merthin was surprised. “I thought it was the other way around.”
“You seduced my daughter, then refused to marry her. You tried to prevent my building the bridge. I thought we’d got rid of you, then you came back and humiliated me over the cracks in the bridge. You hadn’t been back more than a few days before you tried to get me ousted as alderman and replaced by your friend Mark. You even hinted that the cracks in the cathedral were my fault, although it was built before I was born. I repeat, why do you hate me?”
Merthin did not know what to say. How could Elfric not know what he had done to Merthin? But Merthin did not want to have this argument in front of the parish guild – it seemed childish. “I don’t hate you, Elfric. You were a cruel master when I was an apprentice, and you’re a slipshod builder, and you toady to Godwyn, but all the same I don’t hate you.”
One of the new members, Joseph Blacksmith, said: “Is this what you do at the parish guild – have stupid arguments?”
Merthin felt hard done by. It was not he who had introduced the personal note. But for him to say that would be seen as continuing a stupid argument. So he said nothing, and reflected that Elfric was ever sly.
“Joe’s right,” said Bill Watkin. “We didn’t come here to listen to Elfric and Merthin squabbling.”
Merthin was troubled by Bill’s willingness to put him and Elfric on the same level. Generally, the guildsmen liked him and felt mildly hostile to Elfric, since the dispute over the bridge cracks. Indeed, they would have ousted Elfric if Mark had not died. But something had changed.
Merthin said: “Can we return to the matter in hand, which is petitioning the bishop to favour Caris as prioress?”
“I’m against it,” Elfric said. “Prior Godwyn wants Elizabeth.”
A new voice spoke up. “I’m with Elfric. We don’t want to quarrel with the Father Prior.” It was Marcel Chandler, who had the contract to supply wax candles to the priory. Godwyn was his biggest customer. Merthin was not surprised.
However, the next speaker shocked him. It was Jeremiah Builder, who said: “I don’t think we should favour someone who has been accused of heresy.” He spat on the floor twice, left and right, and crossed himself.
Merthin was too surprised to reply. Jeremiah had always been fearfully superstitious, but Merthin would never have imagined it would lead him to betray his mentor.
It was left to Bessie to defend Caris. “That charge was always ludicrous,” she said.
“It was never disproved, though,” said Jeremiah.
Merthin stared at him, but Jeremiah would not meet his eye. “What’s got into you, Jimmie?” Merthin said.
“I don’t want to die of the plague,” Jeremiah said. “You heard the sermon. Anyone practising heathen remedies should be shunned. We’re talking about asking the bishop to make her prioress – that’s not shunning her!”
There was a murmur of assent, and Merthin realized that the tide of opinion had turned. The others were not as credulous as Jeremiah, but they shared his fear. The plague had spooked them all, undermining their rationality. Godwyn’s sermon had been more effective than Merthin had imagined.
He was ready to give up – then he thought of Caris, and how weary and demoralized she had looked, and he gave it one more try. “I’ve lived through this once, in Florence,” he said. “I warn you now, priests and monks won’t save anyone from the plague. You’ll have handed the town to Godwyn on a plate, and all for nothing.”
Jeremiah said: “That sounds awfully close to blasphemy.”
Merthin looked around. The others agreed with Jeremiah. They were too scared to think straight. There was nothing more he could do.
They decided to take no action on the election for prioress, and soon afterwards the meeting broke up in somewhat bad humour, the members taking burning sticks from the fire to light their way home.
Merthin decided it was too late to report to Caris – the nuns, like the monks, went to bed at nightfall and got up in the early hours of the morning. However, there was a figure wrapped in a big wool cloak waiting outside the guild hall, and to his surprise his torch revealed the troubled face of Caris. “What happened?” she said anxiously.
“I failed,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
In the torchlight she looked wounded. “What did they say?”
“They won’t intervene. They believed the sermon.”
“Fools.”
Together they walked down the main street. At the priory gates, Merthin said: “Leave the nunnery, Caris. Not for my sake, but for your own. You can’t work under Elizabeth. She hates you, and she’ll block everything you want to do.”
“She hasn’t won yet.”
“She will, though – you said so yourself. Renounce your vows, and marry me.”
“Marriage is a vow. If I break my vow to God, why would you trust me to keep my promise to you?”
He smiled. “I’ll risk it.”
“Let me think about it.”
“You’ve been thinking about it for months,” Merthin said with resentment. “If you don’t leave now, you never will.”
“I can’t leave now. People need me more than ever.”
He began to feel angry. “I won’t keep asking for ever.”
“I know.”
“In fact, I won’t ask you again, after tonight.”
She began to cry. “I’m sorry, but I can’t abandon the hospital in the midst of a plague.”
“The hospital.”
“And the people of the town.”
“But what about yourself?”
The flame of his torch made her tears glisten. “They need me so badly.”
“They’re ungrateful, all of them – nuns, monks, townspeople. I should know, by God.”
“It makes no difference.”
He nodded, accepting her decision, suppressing his selfish anger. “It that’s how you feel, you must do your duty.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
“I wish this had turned out differently.”
“So do I.”
“You’d better take this torch.”
“Thank you.”
She took the burning branch from his hand and turned away. He watched her, thinking: Is this how it ends? Is this all? She walked away with her characteristic stride, determined and confident, but her head was bowed. She passed through the gateway and disappeared.
The lights of the Bell shone cheerfully through the gaps around the shutters and the door. He went inside.
The last few customers were saying drunken farewells, and Sairy was collecting tankards and wiping tables. Merthin checked on Lolla, who was fast asleep, and paid the girl who had been watching her. He thought of going to bed, but he knew he would not sleep. He was too upset. Why had he run out of patience tonight, as opposed to any other time? He had got angry. But his anger came from fear, he realized as he calmed down. Underneath it all, he was terrified that Caris would catch the plague and die.
He sat on a bench in the parlour of the inn and took off his boots. He stayed there, staring into the fire, wondering why he could not have the one thing in life that he wanted most.
Bessie came in and hung up her cloak. Sairy left, and Bessie locked up. She sat opposite Merthin, taking the big chair that her father had always used. “I’m sorry about what happened at the guild,” she said. “I’m not sure who’s right, but I know you’re disappointed.”
“Thank you for supporting me, anyway.”
“I’ll always support you.”
“Perhaps it’s time for me to stop fighting Caris’s battles.”
“I agree with that. But I can see that it makes you sad.”
“Sad and angry. I seem to have wasted half my life waiting for Caris.”
“Love is never wasted.”
He looked up at her, surprised. After a pause, he said: “You’re a wise person.”
“There’s no one else in the house, except for Lolla,” she said. “All the Christmas guests have left.” She got up from her chair and knelt in front of him. “I’d like to comfort you,” she said. “Any way I can.”
He looked at her round, friendly face and felt his body stir in response. It was such a long time since he had held the soft body of a woman in his arms. But he shook his head. “I don’t want to use you.”
She smiled. “I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m not even asking you to love me. I’ve just buried my father, and you’ve been disappointed by Caris, and we’re both in need of someone warm to hold on to.”
“To dull the pain, like a jug of wine.”
She took his hand and kissed the palm. “Better than wine,” she said. She pressed his hand to her breast. It was big and soft, and he sighed as he caressed it. She turned her face up, and he leaned down and kissed her lips. She gave a little moan of pleasure. The kiss was delicious, like a cold drink on a hot day, and he did not want to stop.
Eventually she broke away from him, panting. She stood upright and pulled her woollen dress over her head. Her naked body looked rosy in the firelight. She was all curves: round hips, round belly, round breasts. Still seated, he put his hands on her waist and drew her to him. He kissed the warm skin of her belly, then the pink tips of her breasts. He looked up at her flushed face. “Do you want to go upstairs?” he murmured.
“No,” she said breathlessly. “I can’t wait that long.”
The election for prioress was held on the day after Christmas. That morning, Caris felt so depressed she could hardly get out of bed. When the bell rang for Matins in the early hours, she was strongly tempted to put her head under the blankets and say that she did not feel well. But she could not pretend when so many were dying, so in the end she forced herself.
She shuffled around the ice-cold flagstones of the cloisters side by side with Elizabeth, the two of them at the head of the procession to the church. This protocol had been agreed because neither would yield precedence to the other while they were competing in the election. But Caris no longer cared. The result was a foregone conclusion. She stood yawning and shivering in the choir through the psalms and readings. She was angry. Later today, Elizabeth would be elected prioress. Caris resented the nuns for rejecting her, she hated Godwyn for his enmity, and she despised the town’s merchants for refusing to intervene.
She felt as if her life had been a failure. She had not built the new hospital she had dreamed of, and now she never would.
She also resented Merthin, for making her an offer she could not accept. He did not understand. For him, their marriage would be an adjunct to his life as an architect. For her, marriage would have to replace the work to which she had dedicated herself. That was why she had vacillated for so many years. It was not that she did not want him. She longed for him with a hunger that she could hardly bear.
She mumbled the last of the responses and then, mechanically, walked out of the church at the front of the line. As they walked around the cloisters again, someone behind her sneezed. She was too dispirited even to look and see who it was.
The nuns climbed the stairs to their dormitory. When Caris entered the room she heard heavy breathing, and realized that someone had stayed behind. Her candle revealed the novice mistress, Sister Simone – a dour middle-aged woman, normally a conscientious nun, not one to malinger. Caris bound a strip of linen around her own face then knelt by Simone’s mattress. Simone was perspiring and looking scared.
Caris said: “How do you feel?”
“Awful,” Simone said. “I’ve had strange dreams.”
Caris touched her forehead. She was burning hot.
Simone said: “Can I have something to drink?”
“In a moment.”
“It’s just a cold, I expect.”
“You’re certainly running a fever.”
“I haven’t got the plague, though, have I? It’s not that bad.”
“We’ll take you to the hospital anyway,” Caris said evasively. “Can you walk?”
Simone struggled to her feet. Caris took a blanket off the bed and wrapped it around Simone’s shoulders.
As they were heading for the door, Caris heard a sneeze. This time she could see that it came from Sister Rosie, the plump matricularius. Caris looked hard at Rosie, who appeared scared.
Caris picked another nun at random. “Sister Cressie, take Simone to the hospital while I look at Rosie.”
Cressie took Simone’s arm and led her down the stairs.
Caris held her candle up to Rosie’s face. She, too, was perspiring. Caris pulled down the neck of her robe. There was a rash of small purple spots over her shoulders and breasts.
“No,” Rosie said. “No, please.”
“It may be nothing at all,” Caris lied.
“I don’t want to die of the plague!” Rosie said, her voice cracking.
Caris said quietly: “Just keep calm and come with me.” She took Rosie’s arm firmly.
Rosie resisted. “No, I’ll be all right!”
“Try saying a prayer,” Caris said. “Ave Maria, come on.”
Rosie began to pray, and a moment later Caris was able to lead her away.
The hospital was crammed with dying people and their families, most of them awake despite the hour. There was a strong odour of sweaty bodies, vomit and blood. The place was dimly lit by tallow lamps and the candles on the altar. A handful of nuns attended to the patients, bringing water and cleaning up. Some wore the mask, others did not.
Brother Joseph was there, the oldest of the monk-physicians and the most well liked. He was giving the last rites to Rick Silvers, the head of the jewellers’ guild, bending to hear the man’s whispered confession, surrounded by the children and grandchildren.
Caris made a space for Rosie and persuaded her to lie down. One of the nuns brought her a cup of clear fountain water. Rosie lay still, but her eyes shifted restlessly this way and that. She knew her fate, and she was frightened. “Brother Joseph will come and see you shortly,” Caris told her.
“You were right, Sister Caris,” said Rosie.
“What do you mean?”
“Simone and I were among the original friends of Sister Elizabeth who refused to wear the mask – and look what has happened to us.”
Caris had not thought of this. Would she be proved horribly right by the deaths of those who disagreed with her? She would rather be wrong.
She went to look at Simone. She was lying down and holding the hand of Cressie. Simone was older and calmer than Rosie, but there was fear in her eyes, and she was gripping Cressie’s hand hard.
Caris glanced at Cressie. There was a dark stain above her lip. Caris reached out and wiped it with her sleeve.
Cressie, too, was among the original group who had abandoned the mask.
She looked at the mark on Caris’s sleeve. “What is it?” she said.
“Blood,” said Caris.
The election took place in the refectory an hour before dinner time. Caris and Elizabeth were side by side behind a table at one end of the room, and the nuns sat on benches in rows.
Everything had changed. Simone, Rosie and Cressie lay in the hospital, stricken by the plague. Here in the refectory the other two who had originally refused the mask, Elaine and Jeannie, were both showing early symptoms, Elaine sneezing and Jeannie sweating. Brother Joseph, who had been treating plague victims without a mask since the beginning, had at last succumbed. All the remaining nuns had resumed wearing the masks in the hospital. If the mask was still a sign of support for Caris, she had won.
They were tense and restless. Sister Beth, the former treasurer and now the oldest nun, read a prayer to open the meeting. Almost before she had finished, several nuns spoke at once. The voice that prevailed was that of Sister Margaret, the former cellarer. “Caris was right, and Elizabeth was wrong!” she cried. “Those who refused the mask are now dying.”
There was a collective rumble of agreement.
Caris said: “I wish it were otherwise. I’d rather have Rosie and Simone and Cressie sitting here voting against me.” She meant it. She was sick of seeing people die. It made her think how trivial everything else was.
Elizabeth stood up. “I propose we postpone the election,” she said. “Three nuns are dead and three more are in the hospital. We should wait until the plague is over.”
That took Caris by surprise. She had thought there was nothing Elizabeth could do to avoid defeat – but she had been wrong. No one would now vote for Elizabeth, but her supporters might prefer to avoid making any choice at all.
Caris’s apathy vanished. Suddenly she remembered all the reasons why she wanted to be prioress: to improve the hospital, to teach more girls to read and write, to help the town prosper. It would be a catastrophe if Elizabeth were elected instead.
Elizabeth was immediately supported by old Sister Beth. “We shouldn’t hold the election in a panic, and make a choice we might regret later when things have calmed down.” Her statement sounded rehearsed: Elizabeth had obviously planned this. But the argument was not unreasonable, Caris thought with some trepidation.
Margaret said indignantly: “Beth, you only say that because you know Elizabeth is going to lose.”
Caris held back from speaking, for fear of prompting the same argument against herself.
Sister Naomi, who was not committed to either side, said: “The trouble is, we have no leader. Mother Cecilia, rest her soul, never appointed a sub-prioress after Natalie died.”
“Is that so bad?” Elizabeth said.
“Yes!” Margaret said. “We can’t even make up our minds who is to go first in the procession!”
Caris decided to risk making a practical point. “There is a long list of decisions that need to be taken, especially about inheritance of nunnery properties whose tenants have died of the plague. It would be difficult to go much longer with no prioress.”
Sister Elaine, one of the original five friends of Elizabeth, now argued against postponement. “I hate elections,” she said. She sneezed, then went on: “They set sister against sister and cause acrimony. I want to get this over with so that we can be united in the face of this dreadful plague.”
That raised a cheer of support.
Elizabeth glared angrily at Elaine. Elaine caught her eye and said: “You see, I can’t even make a pacific remark like that without Elizabeth looking at me as if I’ve betrayed her!”
Elizabeth dropped her gaze.
Margaret said: “Come on, let’s vote. Whoever is for Elizabeth, say: ‘Aye.’ ”
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Beth said quietly: “Aye.”
Caris waited for someone else to speak, but Beth was the only one.
Caris’s heart beat faster. Was she about to achieve her ambition?
Margaret said: “Who is for Caris?”
The response was instant. There was a shout of “Aye!” It seemed to Caris that almost all the nuns voted for her.
I’ve done it, she thought. I’m prioress. Now we can really begin.
Margaret said: “In that case-”
A male voice suddenly said: “Wait!”
Several nuns gasped, and one screamed. They all looked at the door. Philemon stood there. He must have been listening outside, Caris thought.
He said: “Before you go any farther-”
Caris was not having this. She stood up and interrupted him. “How dare you enter the nunnery?” she said. “You do not have permission and you are not welcome. Leave now!”
“I’m sent by the lord prior-”
“He has no right-”
“He is the senior religious in Kingsbridge, and in the absence of a prioress or a sub-prioress he has authority over the nuns.”
“We are no longer without a prioress, Brother Philemon.” Caris advanced towards him. “I have just been elected.”
The nuns hated Philemon, and they all cheered.
He said: “Father Godwyn refuses to permit this election.”
“Too late. Tell him Mother Caris is now in charge of the nunnery – and she threw you out.”
Philemon backed away. “You are not prioress until your election has been ratified by the bishop!”
“Out!” said Caris.
The nuns took up the chant. “Out! Out! Out!”
Philemon was intimidated. He was not used to being defied. She took another step towards him, and he took another back. He looked amazed by what was happening, but also scared. The chanting got louder. Suddenly he turned around and scurried out.
The nuns laughed and cheered.
But Caris realized that his parting remark had been true. Her election would have to be ratified by Bishop Henri.
And Godwyn would do everything in his power to prevent that.
A team of volunteers from the town had cleared an acre of rough woodland on the far side of the river, and Godwyn was in the process of consecrating the new land as a cemetery. Every churchyard within the town walls was full, and the available space in the cathedral graveyard was shrinking fast.
Godwyn paced the borders of the plot in a biting cold wind, sprinkling holy water that froze when it hit the ground, while monks and nuns marched behind him, singing a psalm. Although the service was not yet over, the gravediggers were already at work. Humps of raw earth stood in neat lines beside straight-sided pits, placed as close together as possible to save space. But an acre would not last long, and men were already at work clearing the next patch of woodland.
At moments such as this, Godwyn had to struggle to keep his composure. The plague was like an incoming tide, submerging everyone in its path, unstoppable. The monks had buried a hundred people during the week before Christmas and the numbers were still rising. Brother Joseph had died yesterday, and two more monks were now ill. Where would it end? Would everyone in the world die? Would Godwyn himself die?
He was so scared that he stopped, staring at the gold aspergillum with which he was sprinkling the holy water as if he had no idea how it had got into his hand. For a moment he was so panicked that he could not move. Then Philemon, at the head of the procession, pushed him gently from behind. Godwyn stumbled forward and resumed his march. He had to thrust these frightening thoughts from his mind.
He turned his brain to the problem of the nuns’ election. Reaction to his sermon had been so favourable that he had thought Elizabeth’s victory secure. The tide had turned with shocking rapidity, and the infuriating revival in Caris’s popularity had taken him by surprise. Philemon’s last-ditch intervention had been a desperate measure taken just too late. When he thought of it, Godwyn wanted to scream.
But it was not yet over. Caris had mocked Philemon, but the truth was that she could not consider her position safe until she had Bishop Henri’s approval.
Unfortunately, Godwyn had not yet had a chance to ingratiate himself with Henri. The new bishop, who spoke no English, had visited Kingsbridge only once. Because he was so new, Philemon had not yet learned whether he had any fatal weaknesses. But he was a man, and a priest, so he ought to side with Godwyn against Caris.
Godwyn had written to Henri saying that Caris had bewitched the nuns into thinking she could save them from the plague. He had detailed Caris’s history: the accusation of heresy, the trial and sentence eight years ago, the rescue by Cecilia. He hoped Henri would arrive in Kingsbridge with his mind firmly prejudiced against Caris.
But when would Henri come? It was extraordinary for the bishop to miss the Christmas service in the cathedral. A letter from the efficient, unimaginative Archdeacon Lloyd had explained that Henri was busy appointing clergy to replace those who had died of the plague. Lloyd might be against Godwyn: he was Earl William’s man, owing his position to William’s late brother Richard; and the father of William and Richard, Earl Roland, had hated Godwyn. But Lloyd would not make the decision, Henri would. It was hard to know what might happen. Godwyn felt he had lost control. His career was threatened by Caris and his life was threatened by a remorseless plague.
A light snowfall began as the ceremony of consecration came to an end. Just beyond the cleared plot, seven funeral processions were at a standstill, waiting for the cemetery to be ready. At Godwyn’s signal, they moved forward. The first body was in a coffin, but the rest were in shrouds on biers. In the best of times coffins were a luxury for the prosperous, but now that timber had become expensive and coffin-makers were overworked it was only the very rich who could afford to be buried in a wooden casket.
At the head of the first procession was Merthin, with snowflakes caught in his copper-red hair and beard. He was carrying his little girl. The wealthy deceased in the coffin must be Bessie Bell, Godwyn deduced. Bessie had died without relatives and left the tavern to Merthin. Money sticks to that man like wet leaves, Godwyn thought sourly. Merthin already had Leper Island and the fortune he had made in Florence. Now he owned the busiest tavern in Kingsbridge.
Godwyn knew about Bessie’s will because the priory was entitled to an inheritance tax and had taken a fat percentage of the value of the place. Merthin had paid the money in gold florins without hesitation.
The one good consequence of the plague was that the priory suddenly had plenty of cash.
Godwyn conducted one burial service for all seven bodies. This was now the norm: one funeral in the morning and one in the afternoon, regardless of the number of dead. There were not enough priests in Kingsbridge to bury each person individually.
That thought renewed Godwyn’s feeling of dread. He stumbled over the words of the service, seeing himself in one of the graves; then he managed to take hold of himself and continue.
At last the service was over, and he led the procession of monks and nuns back to the cathedral. They entered the church and fell out of formation in the nave. The monks returned to their normal duties. A novice nun approached Godwyn nervously and said: “Father Prior, would you kindly come to the hospital?”
Godwyn did not like to receive bossy messages via novices. “What for?” he snapped.
“I’m sorry, father, I don’t know – I was just told to ask you.”
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” he said irritably. He did not have anything urgent to do, but just to make the point he delayed in the cathedral, speaking to Brother Eli about the monks’ robes.
A few minutes later he crossed the cloisters and entered the hospital.
Nuns were crowded around a bedstead that had been set up in front of the altar. They must have an important patient, he thought. He wondered who it was. One ol the attendant nuns turned to him. She wore a linen mask over her nose and mouth, but he recognized the gold-flecked green eyes that he and all his family shared: it was Caris. Although he could see so little of her face, he read an odd expression in her look. He expected dislike and contempt, but instead he saw compassion.
He moved closer to the bed with a feeling of trepidation. When the other nuns saw him they moved aside deferentially. A moment later, he saw the patient.
It was his mother.
Petranilla’s large head lay on a white pillow. She was sweating, and there was a steady trickle of blood from her nose. A nun was in the act of wiping it away, but it reappeared. Another nun offered the patient a cup of water. There was a rash of purple spots on the wrinkled skin of Petranilla’s throat.
Godwyn cried out as if he had been struck. He stared in horror. His mother gazed at him with suffering eyes. There was no room for doubt: she had fallen victim to the plague. “No!” he shouted. “No! No!” He felt an unbearable pain in his chest, as if he had been stabbed.
He heard Philemon, beside him, say in a frightened voice: “Try to stay calm, Father Prior,” but he could not. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. He suddenly felt detached from his body, with no control over his movements. Then a black mist arose from the floor and engulfed him, gradually rising up his body until it covered his nose and mouth, so that he could not breathe, and then his eyes, so that he was blind; and at last he lost consciousness.
Godwyn was in bed for five days. He ate nothing and drank only when Philemon put a cup to his lips. He could not think straight. He could not move, for it seemed he had no way of deciding what to do. He sobbed, and slept, then woke up and sobbed again. He was vaguely aware of a monk feeling his forehead, taking a urine sample, diagnosing brain fever and bleeding him.
Then, on the last day of December, a scared-looking Philemon brought him the news that his mother was dead.
Godwyn got up. He had himself shaved, put on a new robe and went to the hospital.
The nuns had washed and dressed the body. Petranilla’s hair was brushed and she wore a dress of costly Italian wool. Seeing her like that, with the pallor of death on her face and her eyes forever closed, Godwyn felt a resurgence of the panic that had overwhelmed him; but this time he was able to fight it down. “Take her body to the cathedral,” he ordered. Normally the honour of lying in state in the cathedral was reserved for monks, nuns, senior clergymen and the aristocracy; but Godwyn knew that no one would dare to contradict him.
When she had been moved into the church and placed in front of the altar, he knelt beside her and prayed. Prayer helped him calm his terror, and gradually he figured out what to do. When at last he stood up, he ordered Philemon to call a meeting in the chapter house immediately.
He felt shaky, but he knew he had to pull himself together. He had always been blessed with the power of persuasion. Now he had to use it to the utmost.
When the monks had gathered, he read to them from the Book of Genesis. “And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.”
Godwyn looked up from the book. The monks were watching him intently. They all knew the story of Abraham and Isaac. They were more interested in him, Godwyn. They were alert, wary, wondering what would come next.
“What does the story of Abraham and Isaac teach us?” he asked rhetorically. “God tells Abraham to kill his son – not just his eldest son, but his only son, born when he was a hundred years old. Did Abraham protest? Did he plead for mercy? Did he argue with God? Did he point out that to kill Isaac would be murder, infanticide, a terrible sin?” Godwyn let the question hang for a moment, then looked down at the book and read: “And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass…”
He looked up again. “God may tempt us, too. He may order us to perform acts which seem wrong. Perhaps he will tell us to do something that appears to be a sin. When that happens, we must remember Abraham.”
Godwyn was speaking in what he knew was his most persuasive preaching style, rhythmic yet conversational. He could tell that he had their rapt attention by the quiet in the octagonal chapter house: no one fidgeted, whispered or shuffled.
“We must not question,” he said. “We must not argue. When God leads us, we must follow – no matter how foolish, sinful or cruel his wishes may seem to our feeble human minds. We are weak and humble. Our understanding is fallible. It is not given to us to make decisions or choices. Our duty is simple. It is to obey.”
Then he told them what they had to do.
The bishop arrived after dark. It was almost midnight when the entourage entered the precinct: they had ridden by torchlight. Most of the priory had been in bed for hours, but there was a group of nuns at work in the hospital, and one of them came to wake Caris. “The bishop is here,” she said.
“Why does he want me?” Caris asked sleepily.
“I don’t know, Mother Prior.”
Of course she didn’t. Caris pulled herself out of bed and put on a cloak.
She paused in the cloisters. She took a long drink of water, and for a few moments she breathed deeply of the cold night air, clearing her head of sleep. She wanted to make a good impression on the bishop, so that there would be no trouble about his ratifying her election as prioress.
Archdeacon Lloyd was in the hospital, looking tired, the pointed tip of his long nose red with cold. “Come and greet your bishop,” he said crossly, as if she ought to have been up and waiting.
She followed him out. A servant stood outside the door with a burning torch. They walked across the green to where the bishop sat on his horse.
He was a small man in a big hat, and he looked thoroughly fed up.
Caris said in Norman French: “Welcome to Kingsbridge Priory, my lord bishop.”
Henri said peevishly: “Who are you?”
Caris had seen him before but had never spoken to him. “I am Sister Caris, prioress-elect.”
“The witch.”
Her heart sank. Godwyn must have already tried to poison Henri’s mind against her. She felt indignant. “No, my lord bishop, there are no witches here,” she said with more acerbity than was prudent. “Just a group of ordinary nuns doing their best for a town that has been stricken by the plague.”
He ignored that. “Where is Prior Godwyn?”
“In his palace.”
“No, he’s not!”
Archdeacon Lloyd explained: “We’ve been there. The building is empty.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the archdeacon said irritably. “Really.”
At that moment, Caris spotted Godwyn’s cat, with the distinctive white tip to its tail. The novices called it Archbishop. It walked across the west front of the cathedral and looked into the spaces between the pillars, as if searching for its master.
Caris was taken aback. “How strange… perhaps Godwyn decided to sleep in the dormitory with the other monks.”
“And why would he do that? I hope there’s no impropriety going on.”
Caris shook her head dismissively. The bishop suspected unchastity, but Godwyn was not prone to that particular sin. “He reacted badly when his mother caught the plague. He had some kind of fit and collapsed. She died today.”
“If he’s been unwell I should have thought he was all the more likely to sleep in his own bed.”
Anything might have happened. Godwyn was slightly unhinged by Petranilla’s illness. Caris said: “Would the lord bishop like to speak to one of his deputies?”
Henri answered crossly: “If I could find one, yes!”
“Perhaps if I take Archdeacon Lloyd to the dormitory…”
“As soon as you like!”
Lloyd got a torch from a servant, and Caris led him quickly through the cathedral into the cloisters. The place was silent, as monasteries generally were at this time of night. They reached the foot of the staircase that led up to the dormitory, and Caris stopped. “You’d better go up alone,” she said. “A nun should not see monks in bed.”
“Of course.” Lloyd went up the stairs with his torch, leaving her in darkness. She waited, curious. She heard him shout: “Hello?” There was a strange silence. Then, after a few moments, he called down to her in an odd voice: “Sister?”
“Yes?”
“You can come up.”
Mystified, she climbed the stairs and entered the dormitory. She stood beside Lloyd and peered into the room by the unsteady light or the burning torch. The monks’ straw mattresses lay neatly in their places along either side of the room – but not one of them was occupied. “There’s no one here,” Caris said.
“Not a soul,” Lloyd agreed. “What on earth has happened?”
“I don’t know, but I can guess,” said Caris.
“Then enlighten me, please.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she said. “They’ve run away.”