Page 237 of The Pillars of the Earth

Soon Jack set off again. He went to the abbey of Cluny, the headquarters of a monastic empire that spread all across Christendom. It was the Cluniac order that had initiated and fostered the now-famous pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint James at Compostela. All along the Compostela road there were churches dedicated to Saint James and Cluniac monasteries to take care of pilgrims. As Jack’s father had been a jongleur on the pilgrim road, it seemed likely he had visited Cluny.

However, he had not. There were no jongleurs at Cluny. Jack learned nothing about his father there.

Nevertheless, the journey was by no means wasted. Every arch Jack had ever seen, until the moment he entered the abbey church of Cluny, had been semicircular; and every vault had been either tunnel-shaped, like a long line of round arches all stuck together, or groined, like the crossing where two tunnels met. The arches at Cluny were not semicircular.

They rose to a point.

There were pointed arches in the main arcades; the groined vaults of the side aisles had pointed arches; and—most startling of all—above the nave there was a stone ceiling that could only be described as a pointed barrel vault. Jack had always been taught that a circle was strong because it was perfect, and a round arch was strong because it was part of a circle. He would have thought that pointed arches were weak. In fact, the monks told him, the pointed arches were considerably stronger than the old round ones. The church at Cluny seemed to prove it, for despite the great weight of stonework in its peaked vault, it was very high.

Jack did not stay long at Cluny. He continued south, following the pilgrim road, diverging whenever the whim took him. In the early summer there were jongleurs all along the route, in the larger towns or near the Cluniac monasteries. They recited their verse narratives to crowds of pilgrims in front of churches and shrines, sometimes accompanying themselves on the viol, just the way Aliena had told him. Jack approached every one and asked if he had known Jack Shareburg. They all said no.

The churches he saw on his way through southwest France and northern Spain continued to astonish him. They were all much higher than the English cathedrals. Some of them had banded barrel vaults. The bands, reaching from pier to pier across the vault of the church, made it possible to build in stages, bay by bay, instead of all at once. They also changed the look of a church. By emphasizing the divisions between bays, they revealed that the building was a series of identical units, like a sliced loaf; and this imposed order and logic on the huge interior space.

He was in Compostela at midsummer. He had not known there were places in the world that were so hot. Santiago was another breathtakingly tall church, and the nave, still under construction, also had a banded barrel vault. From there he went farther south.

The kingdoms of Spain had been under Saracen rule until recently; indeed, most of the country south of Toledo was still Muslim-dominated. The appearance of Saracen buildings fascinated Jack: their high, cool interiors, their arcades of arches, their stonework blinding white in the sun. But most interesting of all was the discovery that both rib-vaulting and pointed arches featured in Muslim architecture. Perhaps this was where the French had got their new ideas.

He could never work on another church like Kingsbridge Cathedral, he thought as he sat in the warm Spanish afternoon, listening vaguely to the laughter of the women somewhere deep in the big cool house. He still wanted to build the most beautiful cathedral in the world, but it would not be a massive, solid, fortress-like structure. He wanted to use the new techniques, the rib-vaults and the pointed arches. However, he thought he would not use them in quite the way they had been used so far. None of the churches he had seen had made the most of the possibilities. A picture of a church was forming in his mind. The details were hazy but the overall feeling was very strong: it was a spacious, airy building, with sunlight pouring through its huge windows, and an arched vault so high it seemed to reach heaven.

“Josef and Raya will need a house,” Raschid said suddenly. “If you were to build it, other work would follow.”

Jack was startled. One thing he had not thought of building was houses. “Do you think they want me to build their house?” he said.

“They might.”

There was another long silence, during which Jack contemplated life as a housebuilder for wealthy merchants in Toledo.

Eventually Raschid seemed to come awake. He sat upright and opened his eyes wide. “I like you, Jack,” he said. “You’re an honest man, and you’re worth talking to, which is more than can be said for most people I’ve met. I hope we will always be friends.”

“So do I,” said Jack, somewhat surprised by this unprompted tribute.

“I’m a Christian, so I don’t keep my women locked away, as some of my Muslim brothers do. On the other hand, I’m Arab; which means I don’t give them quite the ... forgive me, the license, that other women are used to. I allow them to meet and talk with male guests at the house. I even allow friendships to develop. But at the point where friendship begins to ripen into something more—as happens so naturally among young people—then I expect the man to make a formal move. Anything else would be an insult.”

“Of course,” Jack said.

“I knew you’d understand.” Raschid stood up and put an affectionate hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’ve never been blessed with a son; but if I had, I think he would have been like you.”

On impulse, Jack said: “But darker, I hope.”

Raschid looked blank for a moment, then he roared with laughter, startling the other guests around the courtyard. “Yes!” he said merrily. “Darker!” And he went into the house, still guffawing.

The older guests began to take their leave. Jack sat by himself, thinking over what had been said to him, as the afternoon cooled. He was being offered a deal, there was no question of that. If he married Aysha, Raschid would launch him as housebuilder to the wealthy of Toledo. There was also a warning: if he did not intend to marry her, he should stay away. The people of Spain had more elaborate manners than the English, but they could make their meaning plain when necessary.

When Jack reflected on his situation he sometimes found it incredible. Is this me? he thought. Is this Jack Jackson, bastard son of a man who was hanged, brought up in the forest, apprentice mason, escaped monk? Am I really being offered the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Arab merchant, plus a guaranteed living as a builder, in this balmy city? It sounds too good to be true. I even like the girl!

The sun was going down, and the courtyard was in shadow. There were only two people left in the arcade—himself and Josef. He was just wondering whether this situation could have been contrived when Raya and Aysha appeared, proving that it had. Despite the theoretical strictness about physical contact between girls and young men, their mother knew exactly what was happening, and Raschid probably did too. They would give the sweethearts a few moments of solitude; then, before they had time to do anything serious, the mother would come out into the courtyard, pretending to be outraged, and order the girls back inside.

On the other side of the courtyard Raya and Josef immediately started kissing. Jack stood up as Aysha approached him. She was wearing a floor-length white dress of Egyptian cotton, a fabric Jack had never seen before he came to Spain. Softer than wool and finer than linen, it clung to Aysha’s limbs as she moved, and its white color seemed to glow in the twilight. It made her brown eyes look almost black. She stood close to him, grinning impishly. “What did he say to you?” she said.

Jack guessed she meant her father. “He offered to set me up as a housebuilder.”

“What a dowry!” she said scornfully. “I can’t believe it! At least he might have offered you money.”

She had no patience with traditional Saracen indirection, Jack observed wryly. He found her frankness refreshing. “I don’t think I want to build houses,” he said.

She suddenly became solemn. “Do you like me?”

“You know I do.”