Page 147 of The Pillars of the Earth

“How many men will the two of you need to help you?” Philip asked.

“Alfred will need two laborers to bring the stones to him. He’ll be using material from the ruins of the old church. He’ll also need someone to make mortar. I’ll also need a mortar maker and two laborers. Alfred can use misshapen stones in the foundations, as long as they’re flat top and bottom; but my stones will have to be properly dressed, since they will be visible aboveground, so I’ve brought two stonecutters back from the quarry to help me.”

Philip said: “All that is very important for impressing Bishop Henry, but most of the volunteers will be digging the foundations.”

“That’s right. The foundations are marked out for the whole of the chancel of the cathedral, and most of them are still only a few feet deep. Monks must man the winding gear—I’ve instructed several of you how to do it—and the volunteers can fill the barrels.”

Remigius said: “What if we get more volunteers than we can use?”

“We can employ just about any number,” Tom said. “If we haven’t enough lifting devices, people can carry earth out of the holes in buckets and baskets. The carpenter will have to stand by to make extra ladders—we’ve got the timber.”

“But there’s a limit to the number of people who can get down in that foundation hole,” Remigius persisted.

Tom had the feeling that Remigius was just argumentative. “It will take several hundred,” he said testily. “It’s a big hole.”

Philip said: “And there’s other work to be done, besides digging.”

“Indeed,” Tom said. “The other main area of work is carrying timber and stone up to the site from the riverside. You monks must make sure the materials are stacked in the right places on the site. The stones should go beside the foundation holes, but on theoutsideof the church, where they won’t get in the way. The carpenter will tell you where to put the timber.”

Philip said: “Will all the volunteers be unskilled?”

“Not necessarily. If we get people from the towns, there may be some craftsmen among them—I hope so. We must find out who they are and use them. Carpenters can build lodges for winter work. Any masons can cut stones and lay foundations. If there’s a blacksmith, we’ll put him to work in the village forge, making tools. All that sort of thing will be tremendously useful.”

Milius the bursar said: “That’s all quite clear. I’d like to get started. Some of the villagers are here already, waiting to be told what to do.”

There was something else Tom needed to tell them, something important but subtle, and he was searching for the right words. Monks could be arrogant, and might alienate the volunteers. Tom wanted today’s operation to be easygoing and cheerful. “I’ve worked with volunteers before,” he began. “It’s important not to ... not to treat them like servants. We may feel that they are laboring to obtain a heavenly reward, and should therefore work harder than they would for money; but they don’t necessarily take that attitude. They feel they’re working for nothing, and doing a great kindness to us thereby; and if we seem ungrateful they will work slowly and make mistakes. It will be best to rule them with a light touch.”

He caught Philip’s eye and saw that the prior was suppressing a smile, as if he knew what misgivings underlay Tom’s honeyed words. “A good point,” Philip said. “If we handle them right, these people will feel happy and uplifted, and that will create a good atmosphere, which will make a positive impression on Bishop Henry.” He looked around at the assembled monks. “If there are no more questions, let’s begin.”

Aliena had enjoyed a year of security and prosperity under the wing of Prior Philip.

All her plans had worked. She and Richard had toured the countryside buying fleeces from peasants all last spring and summer, selling to Philip every time they had a standard woolsack. They had ended the season with five pounds of silver.

Father had died just a few days after they saw him, although Aliena did not find out until Christmas. She had located his grave, after spending much hard-earned silver on bribes, in a pauper’s cemetery in Winchester. She cried hard, not just for him but for the life they had lived together, secure and carefree, the life that would never come back. In a way she had said goodbye to him before he died: when she left the jail she knew she would never see him again. In another way he was still with her, for she was bound by the oath he had made her swear, and she was resigned to spending her life doing his will.

During the winter she and Richard lived in a small house up against the wall of Kingsbridge Priory. They had built a cart, buying the wheels from the Kingsbridge cartwright, and in the spring they had bought a young ox to pull it. The shearing season was now in full swing and already they had made more than the cost of the ox and the new cart. Next year, perhaps she would employ a man to help her, and find Richard a place as a page in the household of a minor noble, so that he could begin his knightly training.

But it was all dependent on Prior Philip.

As an eighteen-year-old girl on her own, she was still considered fair game by every thief and many legitimate traders. She had tried to sell a sack of wool to merchants in Shiring and Gloucester, just to see what would happen, and both times she had been offered half price. There was never more than one merchant in a town so they knew she had no alternative. Eventually she would have her own storehouse, and sell her entire stock to the Flemish buyers; but that time was a long way off. Meanwhile she was dependent on Philip.

And Philip’s position had suddenly become precarious.

She was constantly alert to danger from outlaws and thieves, but it had come as a great shock to her, when everything was going smoothly, to have her whole livelihood threatened in such an unexpected way.

Richard had not wanted to work on the cathedral building site on Whitsunday—he was nothing if not ungrateful—but Aliena had bullied him into agreeing, and the two of them walked the few yards to the priory close soon after sunrise. Almost the whole village had turned out: thirty or forty men, some of them with their wives and children. Aliena was surprised, until she reflected that Prior Philip was their lord, and when your lord asked for volunteers it was probably unwise to refuse. In the past year she had gained a startling new perspective on the lives of ordinary people.

Tom Builder was giving the villagers their assignments. Richard immediately went to speak to Tom’s son Alfred. They were almost the same age—Richard was fifteen and Alfred about a year older—and they played football with the other boys in the village every Sunday. The little girl, Martha, was here too, but the woman, Ellen, and the funny-looking boy with red hair had disappeared, no one knew where. Aliena remembered when Tom’s family had come to Earlscastle. They had been destitute then. Like Aliena, they had been saved by Prior Philip.

Aliena and Richard were given a shovel each and told to dig foundations. The ground was damp but the sun was out and it would soon dry the surface. Aliena began to dig energetically. Even with fifty people working, it took a long time to make the holes noticeably deeper. Richard rested on his shovel rather frequently. One time Aliena said: “If you ever want to be a knight, dig!” But it made no difference.

She was thinner and stronger than she had been a year ago, thanks to tramping the roads and lifting heavy loads of raw wool, but now she found that digging could still make her back ache. She was grateful when Prior Philip rang a bell and declared a break. Monks brought hot bread from the kitchen and served weak beer. The sun was growing stronger, and some of the men stripped to the waist.

While they were resting, a group of strangers came through the gate. Aliena looked at them hopefully. There were just a handful of them, but perhaps they were the forerunners of a large crowd. They came over to the table where the bread and beer was being handed out, and Prior Philip welcomed them.

“Where are you from?” he asked as they gulped gratefully at their pots of beer.

“From Horsted,” one of them replied, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. That was promising: Horsted was a village of two or three hundred people a few miles west of Kingsbridge. They might hope for another hundred volunteers from there, with luck.