The Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follett

  A few days after his conversation with Remigius, he was sitting in the same hard chair, by the same smoky fire, when Bishop Waleran walked in.

  William was startled. He had heard horses, but he had assumed it was Walter, coming back from the mill. He did not know what to do when he saw the bishop. Waleran had always been arrogant and superior, and time and time again he had made William feel foolish, clumsy and coarse. It was humiliating that Waleran should see the humble surroundings in which he now lived.

  William did not get up to greet his visitor. "What do you want?" he said curtly. He had no reason to be polite: he wanted Waleran to get out as soon as possible.

  The bishop ignored his rudeness. "The sheriff is dead," he said.

  At first William did not see what he was getting at. "What's that to me?"

  "There will be a new sheriff."

  William was about to say So what? but he stopped himself. Waleran was concerned about who would be the new sheriff. And he had come to talk to William about it. That could only mean one thing, couldn't it? Hope rose in his breast, but he suppressed it fiercely: where Waleran was involved, high hopes often ended in frustration and disappointment. He said: "Who have you got in mind?"

  "You."

  It was the answer William had not dared to hope for. He wished he could believe in it. A clever and ruthless sheriff could be almost as important and influential as an earl or a bishop. This could be his way back to wealth and power. He forced himself to consider the snags. "Why would King Stephen appoint me?"

  "You supported him against Duke Henry, and as a result you lost your earldom. I imagine he would like to recompense you."

  "Nobody ever does anything out of gratitude," William said, repeating a saying of his mother's.

  Waleran said: "Stephen can't be happy that the earl of Shiring is a man who fought against him. He might want his sheriff to be a countervailing force against Richard."

  Now that made more sense. William felt excited against his will. He began to believe that he might actually get out of this hole in the ground called Hamleigh village. He would have a respectable force of knights and men-at-arms again, instead of the pitiful handful he now supported. He would preside over the county court at Shiring, and frustrate Richard's will. "The sheriff lives at Shiring Castle," he said longingly.

  "You'd be rich again," Waleran added.

  "Yes." Properly exploited, the sheriffs post could be hugely profitable. William would make almost as much money as he had when he was earl. But he wondered why Waleran had mentioned it.

  A moment later Waleran answered the question. "You would be able to finance the new church, after all."

  So that was it. Waleran never did anything without an ulterior motive. He wanted William to be sheriff so that William could build him a church. But William was willing to go along with the plan. If he could finish the church in memory of his mother, perhaps the nightmares would stop. "Do you really think it can be done?" he said eagerly.

  Waleran nodded. "It will cost money, of course, but I think it can be done."

  "Money?" William said with sudden anxiety. "How much?"

  "It's hard to say. In somewhere like Lincoln or Bristol, the shrievalty would cost you five or six hundred pounds; but the sheriffs of those towns are richer than cardinals. For a little place such as Shiring, if you're the candidate the king wants--which I can take care of--you can probably get it for a hundred pounds."

  "A hundred pounds!" William's hopes collapsed. He had been afraid of disappointment, right from the start. "If I had a hundred pounds I wouldn't be living like this!" he said bitterly.

  "You can get it," Waleran said lightly.

  "Who from?" William was struck by a thought. "Will you give it to me?"

  "Don't be stupid," Waleran said with infuriating condescension. "That's what Jews are for."

  William realized, with a familiar mixture of hope and resentment, that once again the bishop was right.

  It was two years since the first cracks had appeared, and Jack had not found a solution to the problem. Worse still, identical cracks had appeared in the first bay of the nave. There was something crucially wrong with his design. The structure was strong enough to support the weight of the vault, but not to resist the winds that blew so hard against the high walls.

  He stood on the scaffolding far above the ground, staring close-range at the new cracks, brooding. He needed to think of a way of bracing the upper part of the wall so that it would not move with the wind.

  He reflected on the way the lower part of the wall was strengthened. In the outer wall of the aisle were strong, thick piers which were connected to the nave wall by half-arches hidden in the aisle roof. The half-arches and the piers propped up the wall at a distance, like remote buttresses. Because the props were hidden, the nave looked light and graceful.

  He needed to devise a similar system for the upper part of the wall. He could make a two-story side aisle, and simply repeat the remote buttressing; but that would block the light coming in through the clerestory--and the whole idea of the new style of building was to bring more light into the church.

  Of course, it was not the aisle as such that did the work: the support came from the heavy piers in the side wall and the connecting half-arches. The aisle concealed these structural elements. If only he could build piers and half-arches to support the clerestory without incorporating them into an aisle, he could solve the problem at a stroke.

  A voice called him from the ground.

  He frowned. He had been on to something before he was interrupted, he felt, but now it had gone. He looked down. Prior Philip was calling him.

  He went into the turret and descended the spiral staircase. Philip was waiting for him at the bottom. The prior was so angry he was steaming. "Richard has betrayed me!" he said without preamble.

  Jack was surprised. "How?"

  Philip did not answer the question at first. "After all I've done for him," he raged. "I bought Aliena's wool when everyone else was bent on cheating her--if it hadn't been for me she might never have got started. Then when that fell apart I got him a job as Head of the Watch. And last November I tipped him off about the peace treaty, and that enabled him to seize Earlscastle. And now that he's won back the earldom, and he's ruling in splendor, he has turned his back on me."

  Jack had never seen Philip quite so livid. The prior's shaved head was red with indignation and he was spluttering as he spoke. "In what way has Richard betrayed you?" Jack said.

  Once again Philip ignored the question. "I always knew Richard was a weak character. He gave Aliena very little support, over the years--just took from her what he wanted and never considered her needs. But I didn't think he was an out-and-out villain."

  "What exactly has he done?"

  At last Philip told him. "He has refused to give us access to the quarry."

  Jack was shocked. That was an act of astonishing ingratitude. "But how does he justify himself?"

  "Everything is supposed to revert to those who possessed it in the time of the first King Henry. And the quarry was granted to us by King Stephen."

  Richard's greed was remarkable, but Jack could not get as angry as Philip. They had built half the cathedral now, mostly with stone they had had to pay for, and they would continue to get by somehow. "Well, I suppose Richard is in the right, strictly speaking," he said argumentatively.

  Philip was outraged. "How can you say such a thing?"

  "It's a bit like what you did to me," Jack said. "After I brought you the Weeping Madonna, and produced a wonderful design for your new cathedral, and built a town wall to protect you from William, you announced that I couldn't live with the woman who is the mother of my children. There's ingratitude."

  Philip was shocked by this parallel. "That's completely different!" he protested. "I don't want you to live apart. It's Waleran who has blocked the annulment. But God's law says you must not commit adultery."

  "I'm sure Richard would say something similar," Jac
k persisted. "It's not Richard who has ordered the reversion of property. He is just enforcing the law."

  The noon bell rang.

  "There's a difference between God's laws and men's laws," Philip said.

  "But we must live by both," Jack countered. "And now I'm going to have dinner with the mother of my children."

  He walked away and left Philip standing there looking upset. He did not really think Philip was as ungrateful as Richard, but it had relieved his feelings to pretend that he did. He decided he would ask Aliena about the quarry. It might be that Richard could be persuaded to hand it over after all. She would know.

  He left the priory close and walked through the streets to the house where he lived with Martha. Aliena and the children were in the kitchen, as usual. The famine had ended with a good harvest last year, and food was no longer desperately scarce: there was wheat bread and roast mutton on the table.

  Jack kissed the children. Sally gave him a soft childish kiss, but Tommy, now eleven years old and impatient to grow up, offered his cheek and looked embarrassed. Jack smiled but said nothing: he remembered when he had thought kissing was silly.

  Aliena looked troubled. Jack sat on the bench beside her and said: "Philip's in a rage because Richard won't give him the quarry."

  "That's terrible," Aliena said mildly. "How ungrateful of Richard."

  "Do you think he might be persuaded to change his mind?"

  "I really don't know," she said. She had a distracted air.

  Jack said: "You don't seem very interested in the problem."

  She looked at him challengingly. "No, I'm not."

  He knew this mood. "You'd better tell me what's on your mind."

  She stood up. "Let's go into the back room."

  With a regretful look at the leg of mutton, Jack left the table and followed her into the bedroom. They left the door open, as usual, to avoid suspicion if someone should come into the house. Aliena sat on the bed and folded her arms across her chest. "I've made an important decision," she began.

  She looked so grave that Jack wondered what on earth it could be.

  "I've lived most of my adult life under two shadows," she began. "One was the vow I made to my father when he was dying. The other is my relationship with you."

  Jack said: "But now you've fulfilled your vow to your father."

  "Yes. And I want to be free of the other burden, too. I've decided to leave you."

  Jack's heart seemed to stop. He knew she did not say such things lightly: she was serious. He stared at her, speechless. He was disoriented by the announcement: he had never dreamed she could leave him. How had this dreadful thing crept up on him? He said the first thing that came into his head: "Is there someone else?"

  "Don't be daft."

  "Then why?"

  "Because I can't take it anymore," she said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. "We've been waiting ten years for this annulment. It's never going to come, Jack. We're doomed to live this way forever--unless we part."

  "But ..." He cast around for something to say. Her announcement was so devastating that arguing with it seemed hopeless, like trying to walk away from a hurricane. Nevertheless he tried. "Isn't this better than nothing, better than separation?"

  "In the end, no."

  "But how will it change anything if you move away?"

  "I might meet someone else, and fall in love again, and live a normal life," she said, but she was crying.

  "You'll still be married to Alfred."

  "But nobody will know or care. I could be married by a parish priest who has never heard of Alfred Builder and who wouldn't consider the marriage valid if he knew of it."

  "I don't believe you're saying this. I can't take it in."

  "Ten years, Jack. I've been waiting ten years to have a normal life with you. I won't wait any longer."

  The words fell on him like blows. She carried on talking, but he no longer understood her. All he could think about was life without her. He interrupted her: "I've never loved anyone else, you see."

  She winced, as if she was in pain, but she went on with what she was saying. "I need a few weeks to arrange everything. I'll get a house in Winchester. I want the children to get used to the idea before their new life begins--"

  "You're going to take my children," he said stupidly.

  She nodded. "I'm sorry," she said. For the first time her resolve seemed to waver. "I know they'll miss you. But they need a normal life too."

  Jack could not take any more. He turned away.

  Aliena said: "Don't walk out on me. We ought to talk some more. Jack--"

  He went out without replying.

  He heard her cry out after him: "Jack!"

  He walked through the living room, not looking at the children, and left the house. In a daze he walked back to the cathedral, not knowing where else to go. The builders were still at lunch. He was unable to weep: this was too bad for mere tears. Without thinking, he climbed the staircase in the north transept, all the way up to the top, and stepped out onto the roof.

  There was a stiff breeze up here, although at ground level it had hardly been noticeable. Jack looked down. If he fell from here he would land on the lean-to roof of the aisle alongside the transept. He would probably die, but it was not certain. He walked to the crossing and stood where the roof suddenly ended in a sheer drop. If the new-style cathedral was not structurally sound, and Aliena was leaving him, he had nothing left to live for.

  Her decision was not as sudden as it seemed, of course. She had been discontented for years--they both had. But they had got accustomed to unhappiness. Winning back Earlscastle had shaken Aliena's torpor, and reminded her that she was in charge of her own life. It had destabilized a situation that was already unsteady; rather in the way that the storm had caused cracks in the cathedral walls.

  He looked at the wall of the transept and the roof of the side aisle. He could see the heavy buttresses jutting out from the wall of the side aisle, and he could visualize the half-arch, under the roof of the aisle, connecting the buttress to the foot of the clerestory. What would solve the problem, he had thought just before Philip had distracted him this morning, was a taller buttress, perhaps another twenty feet high, with a second half-arch leaping across the gap to the point on the wall where the cracks were appearing. The arch and the tall buttress would brace the top half of the church and keep the wall rigid when the wind blew.

  That would probably solve the problem. The trouble was, if he built a two-story aisle to hide the extended buttress and the secondary half-arch, he would lose light; and if he did not . . .

  If I don't, he thought, so what?

  He was possessed by a feeling that nothing mattered very much, since his life was falling apart; and in that mood he could not see anything wrong with the idea of naked buttressing. Standing up here on the roof, he could easily picture what it would look like. A line of sturdy stone columns would rise up from the side wall of the aisle. From the top of each column, a half-arch would spring across empty space to the clerestory. Perhaps he would put a decorative pinnacle on top of each column, above the springing of the arch. Yes, that would look better.

  It was a revolutionary idea, to build big strengthening members in a position where they would be starkly visible. But it was part of the new style to show how the building was being held up.

  Anyway, his instinct said this was right.

  The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. He visualized the church from the west. The half-arches would look like the wings of a flight of birds, all in a line, just about to take off. They need not be massive. As long as they were well made they could be slender and elegant, light yet strong, just like a bird's wing. Winged buttresses, he thought, for a church so light it could fly.

  I wonder, he thought. I wonder if it would work.

  A gust of wind suddenly unbalanced him. He teetered on the edge of the roof. For a moment he thought he was going to fall to his death. Then he regained his balance and s
tepped back from the edge, his heart pounding.

  Slowly and carefully, he made his way back along the roof to the turret door, and went down.

  II

  Work had stopped completely on the church at Shiring. Prior Philip caught himself gloating a little over that. After all the times he had looked out disconsolately onto a deserted building site, he could not help feeling pleased that the same thing had now happened to his enemies. Alfred Builder had only had time to demolish the old church and lay the foundations for the new chancel before William had been deposed and the money had dried up. Philip told himself that it was sinful to be glad about the ruin of a church. However, it was obviously God's will that the cathedral should be built in Kingsbridge, not Shiring--the bad fortune that had dogged Waleran's project seemed a very clear sign of divine intentions.

  Now that the town's biggest church had been knocked down, the county court was held in the great hall at the castle. Philip rode up the hill with Jonathan by his side. He had made Jonathan his personal assistant, in the shake-up that had followed the defection of Remigius. Philip had been shocked by Remigius's perfidy, but he had been glad to see the back of him. Ever since Philip had beaten Remigius in the election, Remigius had been a thorn in his flesh. The priory was a nicer place to live now that he had gone.

  Milius was the new sub-prior. However, he continued to fulfill the role of treasurer, and had a staff of three under him in the treasury. Since Remigius had gone, nobody could figure out what he used to do all day.

  Philip got deep satisfaction out of working with Jonathan. He enjoyed explaining to him how the monastery was run, educating him in the ways of the world, and showing him how best to deal with people. The lad was generally well liked, but he could sometimes be abrasive, and he could easily raise the hackles of unself-confident people. He had to learn that those who treated him in a hostile way did so out of weakness. He saw the hostility and reacted angrily, instead of seeing the weakness and giving reassurance.

  Jonathan had a quick brain, and often surprised Philip by the rapidity with which he picked things up. Philip sometimes caught himself in the sin of pride, thinking how like himself Jonathan was.