Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

He learned to understand the work of the joiners and carpenters who not only fashioned the supports for the roofs, but who organised the scaffolding as well. He saw the huge saw pit and the waiting piles of timber from the nearby forest of Clarendon.

  On the north-east side of the close, by the gate to the bishop’s palace grounds, he visited the glaziers, who were already preparing the huge quantities of stained glass that would be required – first painting and then firing the glass in their kilns. He smiled in delight to see the delicate designs of saints and biblical scenes that would gleam softly down from every wall.

  There were the storehouses, the painters’ workshops, the refectories, kitchens, outhouses – two decades of work had already formed a little world within a world for the builders of the great cathedral.

  But most important of all, stretching along the whole south side of the church’s long nave, was a wooden lean-to that formed the masons’ lodge.

  There were all kinds of masons – hewers, carvers, men who laid the stones, others who set the tracery; there were turners who used their lathes to polish the marble; bench masons at their tables, who fashioned the hundreds of capitals and bosses that would be needed to seal and decorate the masonry of the mighty structure. There was the place on the floor where the complex arrangements of pillars could be drawn full size. There were stacks of wooden templates that were cut to give the mason his exact cross-sections when he carved the stone.

  All these things a stonemason should thoroughly understand if he were ever to be master of his craft.

  He was fascinated.

  The stone used for Salisbury Cathedral came from two sources. The grey limestone used for most of the building came from the quarries of Chilmark, twelve miles west of the city along the valley past Wilton. It was a wonderful, cool greenish grey, soft to the touch and easy to work.

  But for the pillars that must carry the heavy roof, a very different stone was used. This was the solid Purbeck marble, quarried on the south coast near the castle of Corfe. Much of it, he knew, was the gift of a single woman, Alice Brewer, who had given the new church as much marble as they could get from her Purbeck quarries in twelve years – one of the greatest of all the sumptuous gifts the cathedral received.

  Osmund loved the grey Chilmark stone. Often he would take a small piece home with him when he walked up the valley to Avonsford, turning it over and over in his hands, feeling its texture, and studying its composition.

  “Each stone,” Bartholomew had told him, “has a grain, exactly like wood. If you want to cut it, you must know that. And also, when you place stone in a wall, it will weather better depending on how the wind and rain strikes the grain.”

  Sometimes Osmund could also detect a faint second colour in the stone: the subtlest hint of blue, or rusty red; and this too he loved.

  Part of his apprenticeship, he knew, would be spent at the great quarry at Chilmark where the stone was rough hewn before being transported to Salisbury.

  It was in August that he was sent there for the first time, and it was in a state of excitement that he set out at dawn one day to walk along the road past Wilton.

  Only the deep cart tracks scored in the road told him that anything unusual came along the western valley; and only when the tracks veered suddenly off into a wood did he guess that he must have arrived at Chilmark. In fact, there was little sign of the quarry at all until he arrived at the camp itself. He saw the miners’ quarters and those of the masons who did the rough hewing. He saw the big lean-to where the stones were being cut, and the bay beside it where the carts were loaded. But where was the mine? He looked about eagerly.

  As soon as he had explained his business, a friendly young miner pointed to a small cave entrance in the trees.

  “That’s it.”

  It seemed tiny. But when the young man took a torch and led him into the cave, he soon gasped with wonder.

  He did not know quite what he had expected, but certainly not this.

  At first, as one gently descended, the entrance opened out into a large gallery. But then, further into the rock began a huge sequence of halls, tunnels and cavernous spaces, leading in every direction – to right and left, above and far below – a labyrinth. It was only after he had been there two or three minutes, getting accustomed to the faint light from other distant torches in the shadows, that the little mason suddenly realised that the great network of halls and galleries had been so thoroughly worked that it was not so much a labyrinth, as a huge single space, subdivided by pillars of rock.

  “Why,” he cried, “it’s like the cathedral, but underground.”

  It was. The galleries disappeared into the distance like aisles. In places, the vaulted ceilings were as high as those in the great building. The quarry at Chilmark, with its soft echoing spaces, was truly like a great church.

  “It’s the cathedral’s womb,” the young man at his side remarked. “And we’ve still enough stone down here to build a second church too.”

  For two hours Osmund wandered, torch in hand, through the endless caves. It gave him a pleasure he could not explain to know that the great cathedral whose vaults would soar over him had been pulled by pick and human hand, out of the bowels of the earth.

  He spent two weeks at the quarry that first time, and on his return, the carters going back to Salisbury let him ride with them. There were six carts of stone to be transported that day, but to his surprise he saw that a further six carts, full of rubble and debris from the mine shafts and workshop had been added to the little procession.

  “What is that for?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” the carter told him. And sure enough, when they had travelled five miles the carters began, one after another, to shovel the contents of these carts on to the road. “We surface the road as we go,” his companion explained. “After all, not only stone comes out of a mine, and you’ve to put the rubbish somewhere.”

  A month later, Osmund made a second, and more ambitious expedition for himself, this time down the river to the harbour. The little town by the coast now boasted both a tiny stone castle on a mound by the river, and a fine Norman priory church whose name, Christchurch, was generally applied to the town itself in preference to the old Saxon name of Twyneham. Here, looking across to the empty headland with its low protecting hill and its deserted earthwork walls, he saw the huge wooden barges enter the still harbour waters, bearing their precious load of marble from the western quarries along the coast, and begin to make their slow way up the river Avon to Sarum.

  Always there was so much to learn. As the cathedral’s walls slowly rose, the labourers hauled up huge barrels of chalk, lime and flint which were poured into the gap between the inner and outer stone.

  “It’s not only quicker than making the walls of solid stone,” Bartholomew explained, “but the lime rubble binds with the stone. It’s as solid as can be.”

  And the mason marvelled as he realised that the rising cathedral was not only made of stone, but contained, locked within its walls, great cliffs of lime and chalk.

  Another discovery he made one day, soon after his journey down the river, concerned the cathedral’s windows. Why he should have begun, during one of his daily inspections of the model, to count them he could not say, unless it was that there was no other feature of the model he did not know by heart. But count them he did; and so it was that, to his surprise, he discovered that there were three hundred and sixty-five.

  “One for each day of the year!” he cried aloud with delight. And thinking he must have made a mistake, he counted again, keeping tally on a slate. It was exact: 365.

  Was it by Elias’s design, or by accident? He did not dare to ask him. But one thing he was certain of: “It’s a sign from God,” he murmured, “that’s for sure.” And he crossed himself.

  Osmund was a humble soul, and the more he learned, the more conscious he became of his own ignorance and of the greatness of those who had designed and organised the great cathedral. Often at the end of the d
ay he would go to the little chapel and pray beside the model, whispering: “Blessed Mary, make me worthy to be a mason.”

  And it was here, one evening a few months later that he had his second and last encounter with the great Elias. The canon had just walked over from the Leadenhall, the fine house with its leaded roof that he had built for himself beside the river; and he had entered the chapel quietly. But he stopped with surprise at the sight of the young mason who, not knowing he was being watched, had just fallen to his knees and crossed himself as he gazed up at the model of the great building. When he asked kindly “What is it, my son?” the intense young fellow with his oversized head and his solemn grey eyes looked up at him, and, echoing the words that Canon Portehors had spoken to him before, announced: “Oh father, I am unworthy; I am dust.”

  To which the architect had replied with a smile: “You forget the words of Our Lord, my son: God the Father sees even the sparrows – and the sparrows, my young friend, have eyes themselves.” He tapped him on the shoulder. “Not dust, young mason: a sparrow – who uses his eyes.” And Elias de Dereham passed on.

  Then for a moment Osmund knew an ecstasy of happiness he had never known before. And he had almost forgotten the deadly sins.

  It was nearly the middle of the night.

  In the market place, the brightly-coloured awnings on the stalls were folded tight; the sheep and cattle pens were empty; the streets were silent.

  Or almost so. For along the edge of the cheesemarket, where the trestle tables were stacked in piles, neatly chained beside the walls of the squat parish church of St Thomas, a single figure, dressed in a grey cloak with the long capuchon hood pulled over his head, was moving unsteadily through the shadows. There was only starlight to see by that night, but the stars were very bright. The figure moved along the western edge of the market, detached itself from the shadows, and moved up the centre of the street that led north past Blue Boar Row.

  Peter Shockley was drunk.

  Slowly he made his way up Castle Street.

  Only when he reached the tall, severe house of Le Portier the aulnager did he stop, look for a stone in the road and finally begin to cast it up at the topmost window of the house’s pale, blank front.

  Alicia was in there. It was her last night in her father’s house.

  At the third attempt, he succeeded in hitting her window and a few moments later it opened and her face appeared, staring down into the starlit street.

  He pulled back his hood. Her hair was a little longer than before. He could make it out, falling to her shoulders, and see her white nightshirt beneath. It seemed to him that, even from that distance, he could sense the warmth and even the scent of her body beneath.

  “Alicia.”

  She sighed. It was the third visit that week.

  “Go home Peter, I can’t see you.”

  He did not move.

  “Come down,” he whispered urgently.

  “No.”

  Three times he had begged her to run away with him. “And then what would you do?” she demanded.

  “Something,” he replied defiantly.

  It was absurd. She was beginning to find him ridiculous. And yet – because she was almost tempted, because she was angry with herself for giving way to her father, because she knew that it was useless and because she was trying to make herself believe that she was going to be happy with the pleasant, middle-aged knight from Winchester who was such a fine catch for her – she treated Peter with scorn.

  “Go away and forget about me,” she hissed into the darkness.

  “Will you forget me?” he cried aloud.

  “I already have. I’m in love with Geoffrey de Whiteheath.” She withdrew her head and he saw the window close.

  He did not leave. He threw the stone up again, and again, but she did not appear. He threw it harder; and then a little too hard. He heard a pane of glass break. But still he did not move away.

  A moment later the door of the house opened and the tall thin form of Alan Le Portier strode out of his house. He was carrying a stick.

  “Go home at once, young man,” he ordered angrily. “You’ll pay for my window tomorrow.” He glared at him contemptuously as though he was a child. Peter felt his resentment rising.

  “You’ve sold her,” he shouted, “you’ve sold her to a knight!” As his words echoed down the street, several heads appeared at other windows.

  Le Portier stiffened. The charge was quite untrue, but it infuriated him to have such insults thrown at him.

  “You brat.”

  In the darkness and his fuddled state, Peter did not see him swing the stick; it caught him sharply on the arm.

  “Be off,” the aulnager shouted.

  Peter felt a surge of anger. He staggered towards Le Portier, and would have aimed a blow at him, except that at that moment, he saw behind him the figure of Alicia. She was standing in the doorway with a candle in her hand; and her face which suddenly looked older, was gazing at him with scorn.

  He stood quite still.

  “Go away, you child,” she said coldly, and then turned back into the house.

  He stared at her, then her father. And then with a shrug he moved away down the street, watched by faces at every window.

  It was his great misfortune that there was an unexpected witness to the whole business standing in the shadows fifty feet away.

  William atte Brigge had lingered at a merchant’s lodgings near the northern gate until late that night and he had just begun to make his way through the town when he saw the young man loitering in the street. After pausing to observe him, he had seen with interest that it was young Shockley; and within minutes, his interest had turned to a malicious grin of pleasure. The boy had already broken a window and tried to assault the aulnager. Wondering what else he might do, he followed him.

  At the market place he saw the youth kick the trestle tables by the cheesemarket moodily. He watched him pick up a stone and hurl it across the empty market place. He heard him cry out in rage.

  The chance was too good to miss. Casting about, William found a large piece of wood that had been used to prop up one of the stalls. A moment later he had moved swiftly through the shadows, hurled the lump of wood through one of the windows of St Thomas’s church, and run quickly through the shadows towards the house of the bishop’s bailiff.

  His satisfaction was complete when, a few minutes later, the bailiff strode into the market place and arrested the young man who was still mooning about near the stalls.

  “I saw him throw a stone through Le Portier’s window,” he assured the official, “and then he came down here and broke the window of the church as well. Ask in Castle Street if you want witnesses.”

  “I will,” the bailiff promised.

  Ten days later Peter Shockley, brought before the Lord Bishop’s Court, was accused and promptly found guilty of causing a nuisance in the bishop’s market place and breaking a church window; he was sentenced to a morning in the stocks.

  As the bailiff said to Edward Shockley afterwards: “I’m sorry about your boy, Shockley, but I can’t make exceptions.”

  The Wilton merchant’s revenge was satisfactory; but it was not yet complete.

  Punishment in the stocks was an unpredictable affair. A man could stand there all day and leave without a mark, or if he were unpopular, he might find all manner of objects thrown at him. With his hands and head locked in the heavy wooden yoke, he could not defend himself so he would probably emerge badly cut and bruised. Above all however, it was an undignified business, and when Edward Shockley heard the sentence he was filled with rage.

  “You’ve disgraced the family,” he thundered. “After this, you’ll work at the fulling mill, but by God you’ll not be in charge.”

  The following morning, when Peter Shockley was led out by two of the bailiff’s men and placed in the stocks, it seemed to him that his life, which two months before had appeared so full of promise, was now in ruins. I’ve lost the mill, he thoug
ht bleakly, and I’ve lost Alicia. As he stared across the market place and thought of Alicia in the arms of the knight from Winchester, his eyes filled with tears; a street urchin, not out of malice but for amusement, threw an apple at him which struck him in the mouth and made his lip bleed. He had never felt so without friends.

  Yet his morning in the stocks did bring him one unexpected friend.

  It was mid-morning when he became aware of a figure standing quietly by his side; and though the yoke over his neck prevented him from turning his head to look, he could see a pair of feet in rough sandals and the edge of a grey robe that was none too clean. This told him that his companion must be a Franciscan.

  There were two orders of friars who had become a familiar sight at Sarum during his lifetime; the Dominicans – the black-robed order of preachers and intellectuals, who had set up their first house near Wilton – and the grey friars, followers of one of the church’s newest saints, Francis of Assisi. Unlike most of the priesthood or the monks, the grey friars were dedicated to a life of simplicity. They usually lived and worked amongst the poor, and they had already earned the respect of the people of Salisbury by their devotion to such humble tasks. When the first group from Italy had arrived at Sarum fifteen years before, the bishop had given them a modest house in St Ann Street just outside the close, and the king, too, was known to favour them.

  Though he knew their reputation, Peter had never spoken with one of the friars before and he stared with curiosity as the grey figure now moved round the stocks and came to face him.

  He was a young man – little older than himself – with dark hair and a clean-shaven, sallow face.

  “What brings you to the stocks?” He spoke with a strong Italian accent.

  “My sins,” Peter replied dismally. “And a girl,” he added. “What about you?”

  The sallow young man smiled. He had very white, even teeth.

  “The same two things,” he laughed. “I am Brother Giovanni.” And without being asked, he sat comfortably on the ground in front of the stocks. “What’s your story?” he demanded.