Page 236 of The Pillars of the Earth

Josef said: “But you could perform all these geometric operations before you read Euclid—so I don’t see that you’re any better off now.”

Raschid protested: “A man is always better off for understanding something!”

Jack said: “Besides, now that I understand the principles of geometry I may be able to devise solutions to new problems that baffled my stepfather.” He felt rather frustrated by the conversation: Euclid had come to him like the blinding flash of a revelation, but he was failing to communicate the thrilling importance of these new discoveries. He changed tack somewhat. “It’s Euclid’s method that is the most interesting,” he said. “He takes five axioms—self-evident truths—and deduces everything else logically from them.”

“Give me an example of an axiom,” Raschid said.

“A line can be prolonged indefinitely.”

“No it can’t,” said Aysha, who was handing round a bowl of figs.

The guests were somewhat startled to hear a girl joining in the argument, but Raschid laughed indulgently: Aysha was his favorite. “And why not?” he said.

“It has to come to an end sometime,” she said.

Jack said: “But in your imagination, it could go on indefinitely.”

“In my imagination, water could flow uphill and dogs speak Latin,” she retorted.

Her mother came into the room and heard that rejoinder. “Aysha!” she said in a steely voice. “Out!”

All the men laughed. Aysha made a face and went out. Josef’s father said: “Whoever marries her will have his hands full!” They laughed again. Jack laughed too; then he noticed they were all looking at him, as if the joke was on him.

After dinner, Raschid showed off his collection of mechanical toys. He had a tank in which you could mix water and wine and they would come out separately; a marvelous water-driven clock, which kept track of the hours in the day with phenomenal accuracy; a jug that would refill itself but never overflow; and a small wooden statue of a woman with eyes made of some kind of crystal that absorbed water in the warmth of the day and then shed it in the cool of the evening, so that she appeared to be weeping. Jack shared Raschid’s fascination with these toys, but he was most intrigued by the weeping statue, for whereas the mechanisms of the others were simple once they had been explained, no one really understood how the statue worked.

They sat in the arcades around the courtyard in the afternoon, playing games, dozing, or talking idly. Jack wished he belonged to a big family like this one, with sisters and uncles and in-laws, and a family home they could all visit, and a position of respect in a small town. Suddenly he recalled the conversation he had had with his mother the night she rescued him from the priory punishment cell. He had asked her about his father’s relations, and she had saidYes, he had a big family, back in France. I have got a family like this one, somewhere, Jack realized. My father’s brothers and sisters are my uncles and aunts. I might have cousins of my own I wonder if I will ever find them?

He felt adrift. He could survive anywhere but he belonged nowhere. He had been a carver, a builder, a monk and a mathematician, and he did not know which was the real Jack, if any. He sometimes wondered if he should be a jongleur like his father, or an outlaw like his mother. He was nineteen years old, homeless and rootless, with no family and no purpose in life.

He played chess with Josef and won; then Raschid came up and said: “Give me your chair, Josef—I want to hear more about Euclid.”

Josef obediently gave up his chair to his prospective father-in-law, then moved away—he had already heard everything he ever wanted to know about Euclid. Raschid sat down and said to Jack: “You’re enjoying yourself?”

“Your hospitality is matchless,” Jack said smoothly. He had learned courtly manners in Toledo.

“Thank you; but I meant with Euclid.”

“Yes. I don’t think I succeeded in explaining the importance of this book. You see—”

“I think I understand,” Raschid said. “Like you, I love knowledge for its own sake.”

“Yes.”

“Even so, every man has to make a living.”

Jack did not see the relevance of that remark, so he waited for Raschid to say more. However, Raschid sat back with his eyes half closed, apparently content to enjoy a companionable silence. Jack began to wonder whether Raschid was reproaching him for not working at a trade. Eventually Jack said: “I expect I shall go back to building, one day.”

“Good.”

Jack smiled. “When I left Kingsbridge, riding my mother’s horse, with my stepfather’s tools in a satchel slung across my shoulder, I thought there was only one way to build a church: thick walls with round arches and small windows topped by a wooden ceiling or a barrel-shaped stone vault. The cathedrals I saw on my way from Kingsbridge to Southampton taught me no different. But Normandy changed my life.”

“I can imagine,” Raschid said sleepily. He was not very interested, so Jack recalled those days in silence. Within hours of landing at Honfleur he was looking at the abbey church of Jumièges. It was the highest church he had ever seen, but otherwise it had the usual round arches and wooden ceiling—except in the chapter house, where Abbot Urso had built a revolutionary stone ceiling. Instead of a smooth, continuous barrel, or a creased groin vault, this ceiling had ribs which sprang up from the tops of the columns and met at the apex of the roof. The ribs were thick and strong, and the triangular sections of ceiling between the ribs were thin and light. The monk who was keeper of the fabric explained to Jack that it was easier to build that way: the ribs were put up first, and the sections between were then simpler to make. This type of vault was also lighter. The monk was hoping to hear news from Jack of technical innovations in England, and Jack had to disappoint him. However, Jack’s evident appreciation of rib-vaulting pleased the monk, and he told Jack that there was a church at Lessay, not far away, that had rib-vaulting throughout.

Jack went to Lessay the next day, and spent all afternoon in the church, staring in wonder at the vault. What was so striking about it, he finally decided, was the way the ribs, coming down from the apex of the vault to the capitals on top of the columns, seemed todramatizethe way the weight of the roof was being carried by the strongest members. The ribs made the logic of the building visible.

Jack traveled south, to the county of Anjou, and got a job doing repair work at the abbey church in Tours. He had no trouble persuading the master builder to give him a trial. The tools he had in his possession showed that he was a mason, and after a day at work the master knew he was a good one. His boast to Aliena, that he could get work anywhere in the world, was not entirely vain.

Among the tools he had inherited was Tom’s foot rule. Only master builders owned these, and when the others discovered Jack had one, they asked him how he had become a master at such a young age. His first inclination was to explain that he was not really a master builder; but then he decided to say he was. After all, he had effectively run the Kingsbridge site while he was a monk, and he could draw plans just as well as Tom. But the master he was working for was annoyed to discover that he had hired a possible rival. One day Jack suggested a modification to the monk in charge of the building, and drew what he meant on the tracing floor. That was the beginning of his troubles. The master builder became convinced that Jack was after his job. He began to find fault with Jack’s work, and put him on the monotonous task of cutting plain blocks.