Page 167 of The Pillars of the Earth

At Christmas the city had been seized by Ranulf of Chester, the most powerful man in the north of England and a relative of the Empress Maud. King Stephen had since retaken the city, but Ranulf’s forces still held the castle. Now, Philip and Richard had learned as they drew nearer, Lincoln was in the peculiar position of having two rival armies camped within its walls.

Philip had not warmed to Richard in their four weeks together. Aliena’s brother was an angry youth, who hated the Hamleighs and was set on revenge; and he talked as if Philip felt the same. But there was a difference. Philip hated the Hamleighs for what they did to their subjects: getting rid of them would make the world a better place. Richard could not feel good about himself until he had defeated the Hamleighs: his motive was entirely selfish.

Richard was physically brave, always ready for a fight; but in other ways he was weak. He confused his men-at-arms by sometimes treating them as equals and sometimes ordering them around like servants. In taverns he would try to make an impression by buying beer for strangers. He pretended to know the way when he was not really sure, and sometimes led the party far astray because he could not admit that he had made a mistake. By the time they reached Lincoln, Philip knew that Aliena was worth ten of Richard.

They passed a large lake teeming with ships; then at the foot of the hill they crossed the river that formed the southern boundary of the city proper. Lincoln obviously lived by shipping. Beside the bridge there was a fish market. They went through another guarded gate. Now they left behind the sprawl of the suburbs and entered the teeming city. A narrow, impossibly crowded street ran steeply up the hill directly in front of them. The houses that jostled shoulder to shoulder on either side were made partly or wholly of stone, a sign of considerable wealth. The hill was so steep that most houses had their main floor several feet above ground level at one end and below the surface at the other. The area underneath the downhill end was invariably a craftsman’s workplace or a shop. The only open spaces were the graveyards next to the churches, and on each of these there was a market: grain, poultry, wool, leather and others. Philip and Richard, with Richard’s small entourage, fought their way through the dense crowd of townspeople, men-at-arms, animals and carts. Philip realized with astonishment that there were stones beneath his feet. The whole street was paved! What wealth there must be here, he thought, for stones to be laid in the street as if it were a palace or a cathedral. The way was still slippery with refuse and animal dung, but it was much better than the river of mud that constituted most city streets in winter.

They reached the crest of the hill and passed through yet another gate. Now they entered the inner city, and the atmosphere was suddenly different: quieter, but very tense. Immediately to their left was the entrance to the castle. The great ironbound door in the archway was shut tight. Dim figures moved behind the arrow-slit windows in the gatehouse, and sentries in armor patrolled the castellated ramparts, the feeble sunshine glinting off their burnished helmets. Philip watched them pacing to and fro. There was no conversation between them, no joshing and laughter, no leaning on the balustrade to whistle at passing girls: they were upright, eagle-eyed, and fearful.

To Philip’s right, no more than a quarter of a mile from the castle gate, was the west front of the cathedral, and Philip saw instantly that despite its proximity to the castle it had been taken over as the king’s military headquarters. A line of sentries barred the narrow road that led between the canons’ houses to the church. Beyond the sentries, knights and men-at-arms were passing in and out through the three doorways to the cathedral. The graveyard was an army camp, with tents and cooking fires and horses grazing the turf. There were no monastic buildings: Lincoln Cathedral was not run by monks, but by priests called canons, who lived in ordinary town houses near the church.

The space between the cathedral and the castle was empty except for Philip and his companions. Philip suddenly realized that they had the full attention of the guards on the king’s side and the sentries on the opposing ramparts. He was in the no-man’s-land between the two armed camps, probably the most dangerous spot in Lincoln. Looking around, he saw that Richard and the others had already moved on, and he followed them hastily.

The king’s sentries let them through immediately: Richard was well known. Philip admired the west facade of the cathedral. It had an enormously tall entrance arch, and subsidiary arches on either side, half the size of the central one but still awesome. It looked like the gateway to heaven—which it was, of course, in a way. Philip immediately decided he wanted tall arches in the west front of Kingsbridge Cathedral.

Leaving the horses with the squire, Philip and Richard made their way through the encampment and entered the cathedral. It was even more crowded inside than out. The aisles had been turned into stables, and hundreds of horses were tied to the columns of the arcade. Armed men thronged the nave, and here too there were cooking fires and bedding. Some spoke English, some French, and a few spoke Flemish, the guttural tongue of the wool merchants of Flanders. By and large the knights were in here and the men-at-arms were outside. Philip was sorry to see several men playing at ninemen’s morris for money, and he was even more disturbed by the appearance of some of the women, who were dressed very skimpily for winter and appeared to be flirting with the men—almost, he thought, as if they were sinful women, or even, God forbid, whores.

To avoid looking at them he raised his eyes to the ceiling. It was of wood, and beautifully painted in glowing colors, but it was a terrible fire risk with all those people cooking in the nave. He followed Richard through the crowd. Richard seemed at ease here, assured and confident, calling out greetings to barons and lords, and slapping knights on the back.

The crossing and the east end of the cathedral had been roped off. The east end appeared to have been reserved for the priests—I should think so, too, Philip thought—and the crossing had become the king’s quarters.

There was another line of guards behind the rope, then a crowd of courtiers, then an inner circle of earls, with King Stephen at the center on a wooden throne. The king had aged since the last time Philip saw, him, five years ago in Winchester. There were lines of anxiety on his handsome face and a little gray in his tawny hair, and a year of fighting had made him thinner. He seemed to be having an amiable argument with his earls, disagreeing without anger. Richard went to the edge of the inner circle and made a deep ceremonial bow. The king glanced over, recognized him, and said in a booming voice: “Richard of Kingsbridge! Glad to have you back!”

“Thank you, my lord king,” said Richard.

Philip stepped up beside him and bowed in the same way.

Stephen said: “Have you brought a monk as your squire?” All the courtiers laughed.

“This is the prior of Kingsbridge, lord,” said Richard.

Stephen looked again, and Philip saw the light of recognition in his eye. “Of course, I know Prior ... Philip,” he said, but his tone was not as warm as when he greeted Richard. “Have you come to fight for me?” The courtiers laughed again.

Philip was pleased the King had remembered his name. “I’m here because God’s work of rebuilding Kingsbridge Cathedral needs urgent help from my lord king.”

“I must hear all about it,” Stephen interrupted hastily. “Come and see me tomorrow, when I’ll have more time.” He turned back to the earls, and resumed his conversation in a lower voice.

Richard bowed and withdrew, and Philip did the same.

Philip did not speak to King Stephen on the following day, nor the day after, nor the day after that.

On the first night he stayed at an alehouse, but he felt oppressed by the constant smell of roasting meat and the laughter of loose women. Unfortunately, there was no monastery in the town. Normally the bishop would have offered him accommodation, but the king was living in the bishop’s palace and all the houses around the cathedral were crammed full with members of Stephen’s entourage. On the second night Philip went right outside the town, beyond the suburb of Wigford, where there was a monastery that ran a home for lepers. There he got horsebread and weak beer for supper, a hard mattress on the floor, silence from sundown to midnight, services in the small hours of the morning, and a breakfast of thin porridge without salt; and he was happy.

He went to the cathedral early every morning, carrying the precious charter that gave the priory the right to take stone from the quarry. Day after day the king failed to notice him. When the other petitioners talked among themselves, discussing who was in favor and who was out, Philip remained aloof.

He knew why he was being kept waiting. The entire Church was at odds with the king. Stephen had not kept the generous promises that had been extracted from him at the start of his reign. He had made an enemy of his brother, the wily Bishop Henry of Winchester, by supporting someone else for the job of archbishop of Canterbury; a move which had also disappointed Waleran Bigod, who wanted to rise on Henry’s coattails. But Stephen’s greatest sin, in the eyes of the Church, had been to arrest Bishop Roger of Salisbury and Roger’s two nephews, who were bishops of Lincoln and Ely, all on one day, on charges of unlicensed castle building. A chorus of outrage had gone up from cathedrals and monasteries all over the country at this act of sacrilege. Stephen was hurt. As men of God the bishops had no need of castles, he said; and if they built castles they could not expect to be treated purely as men of God. He was sincere, but naive.

The split had been patched up, but King Stephen was no longer eager to hear the petitions of holy men, so Philip had to wait. He used the opportunity to meditate. It was something he had little time for as prior, and he missed it. Now, suddenly, he had nothing to do for hours on end, and he spent the time lost in thought.

Eventually the other courtiers left a space around him, making him quite conspicuous, and it must have been increasingly difficult for Stephen to ignore him. He was deep in contemplation of the sublime mystery of the Trinity on the morning of his seventh day in Lincoln when he realized that someone was standing right in front of him, looking at him and speaking to him, and that person was the king.

“Are you asleep with your eyes open, man?” Stephen was saying in a tone halfway between amusement and irritation.

“I’m sorry, lord, I was thinking,” Philip said, and bowed belatedly.

“Never mind. I want to borrow your clothes.”

“What?” Philip was too surprised to mind his manners.