Page 106 of The Pillars of the Earth

Philip was taken aback by his hostile tone: he had done nothing to deserve it, and he resented it. Consequently his reply was sharp. “From you?” he said. “You aren’t going to get it, boy. I might get it, or your father might, or Bishop Waleran might. But nobody has asked the king to give it toyou.The very idea is a joke.”

“I shall inherit it.”

“We’ll see.” Philip decided there was no point in quarreling with William. “I don’t mean you any harm,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “I just want to build a new cathedral.”

“Then take someone else’s earldom,” William said. “Why do people always pick on us?”

There was a lot of bitterness in the boy’s voice, Philip noted. He said: “Do people always pick on you?”

“You’d think they’d learn a lesson from what happened to Bartholomew. He insulted our family, and look where he is now.”

“I thought it was his daughter who was responsible for the insult.”

“The bitch is as proud and arrogant as her father. But she’ll suffer, too. They’ll all kneel to us in the end, you’ll see.”

These were not the usual emotions of a twenty-year-old, Philip thought. William sounded more like an envious and venomous middle-aged woman. Philip was not enjoying the conversation. Most people would dress up their naked hatred in reasonable clothes, but William was too naive to do that. Philip said: “Revenge is best left until the Day of Judgment.”

“Why don’t you wait until the Day of Judgment to build your church?”

“Because by then it will be too late to save the souls of sinners from the torments of hell.”

“Don’t start on about that!” William said, and there was a note of hysteria in his voice. “Save it for your sermons.”

Philip was tempted to make another sharp retort, but he bit it back. There was something very odd about this boy. Philip had the feeling that William could fly into an uncontrollable rage at any moment, and that when enraged he would be lethally violent. Philip was not afraid of him. He had no fear of violent men, perhaps because as a child he had seen the worst they could do and survived it. But there was nothing to be gained by infuriating William with reprimands, so he said gently: “Heaven and hell is what I deal in. Virtue and sin, forgiveness and punishment, good and evil. I’m afraid I can’t shut up about them.”

“Then talk to yourself,” William said, and he spurred his horse into a trot and pulled ahead.

When he was forty or fifty yards in front he slowed down again. Philip wondered whether the boy would relent and return to ride side by side, but he did not, and for the rest of the morning they traveled apart.

Philip felt anxious and somewhat depressed. He had lost control of his destiny. He had let Waleran Bigod take charge in Winchester, and now he was letting William Hamleigh take him on a mystery journey. They’re all trying to manipulate me, he thought; why am I letting them? It’s time I started to take the initiative. But there was nothing he could do, right away, except turn around and go back to Winchester, and that seemed like a futile gesture, so he continued to follow William, staring gloomily at William’s horse’s rear end as they jogged along.

A little before noon they reached the valley where the bishop’s palace was. Philip recalled coming here at the beginning of the year, full of trepidation, bringing with him a deadly secret. An awful lot had changed since then.

To his surprise, William rode past the palace and on up the hill. The road narrowed to a simple path between fields: it led nowhere important, Philip knew. As they approached the top of the hill, Philip saw that some kind of building work was going on. A little below the summit they were stopped by a bank of earth that looked as if it had been dug up recently. Philip was struck by an awful suspicion.

They turned aside and rode alongside the bank until they found a gap. They went through. Inside the bank was a dry moat, filled in at this point to allow people to cross.

Philip said: “Is this what we came to see?”

William just nodded.

Philip’s suspicion was confirmed. Waleran was building a castle. He was devastated.

He kicked his horse forward and crossed the ditch, with William following. The ditch and the bank encircled the top of the hill. On the inside rim of the ditch a thick stone wall had been built to a height of two or three feet. The wall was clearly unfinished, and judging by its thickness it was intended to be very high.

Waleran was building a castle, but there were no workmen on the site, no tools to be seen, and no stacks of stone or timber. A great deal had been done in a short time; then work had stopped suddenly. Obviously Waleran had run out of money.

Philip said to William: “I suppose there’s no doubt that it is the bishop who is building this castle.”

William said: “Would Waleran Bigod allow anyoneelseto build a castle next to his palace?”

Philip felt hurt and humiliated. The picture was crystal clear: Bishop Waleran wanted the Shiring earldom, with its quarry and its timber, to build his own castle, not the cathedral. Philip was merely a tool, the burning of Kingsbridge Cathedral just a convenient excuse. Their role was to enliven the king’s piety so that he would grant Waleran the earldom.

Philip saw himself as Waleran and Henry must see him: naive, compliant, smiling and nodding as he was led to the slaughter. They had judged him so well! He had trusted them and deferred to them, he had even borne their slights with a brave smile, because he thought they were helping him, when all the time they were double-crossing him.

He was shocked by Waleran’s unscrupulousness. He recalled the look of sadness in Waleran’s eyes as he looked at the ruined cathedral. Philip had glimpsed the deep-rooted piety in Waleran at that moment. Waleran must think that pious ends justified dishonest means in the service of the Church. Philip had never believed that. I would never do to Waleran what Waleran is trying to do to me, he thought.

He had never before thought of himself as gullible. He wondered where he had gone wrong. It occurred to him that he had let himself be overawed—by Bishop Henry and his silk robes, by the magnificence of Winchester and its cathedral, by the piles of silver in the mint and the heaps of meat in the butchers’ shops, and by the thought of seeing the king. He had forgotten that God saw through the silk robes to the sinful heart, that the only wealth worth having was treasure in heaven, and that even the king had to kneel down in church. Feeling that everyone else was so much more powerful and sophisticated than he was, he had lost sight of his true values, suspended his critical faculties, and placed his trust in his superiors. His reward had been treachery.