Page 326 of The Pillars of the Earth

Philip nodded. “But everything is against us. There’s nothing we can do to alter the political situation. The only possibility ...”

“What?” Jonathan said impatiently.

The case seemed so hopeless that Philip felt there was no point in toying with desperate ideas: it would excite Jonathan’s optimism only to disappoint him. “Nothing,” Philip said.

“What were you going to say?”

Philip was still working it out. “If there was a way to prove my innocence beyond doubt, it would be impossible for Peter to find me guilty.”

“But what would count as proof?”

“Exactly. You can’t prove a negative. We would have to find your real father.”

Jonathan was instantly enthusiastic. “Yes! That’s it! That’s what we’ll do!”

“Slow down,” Philip said. “I tried at the time. It’s not likely to be any easier so many years later.”

Jonathan was not to be discouraged. “Were there no clues at all to where I might have come from?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid.” Philip was now worried that he had raised hopes in Jonathan which could not be fulfilled. Although the boy had no memories of his parents, the fact that they had abandoned him had always troubled him. Now he thought he might solve the mystery and find some explanation which proved they had loved him really. Philip felt sure this could only lead to frustration.

“Did you question people living nearby?” Jonathan said.

“There was nobody living nearby. That cell is deep in the forest. Your parents probably came from miles away, Winchester perhaps. I’ve been over all this ground already.”

Jonathan persisted. “You didn’t see any travelers in the forest around that time?”

“No.” Philip frowned. Was that true? A stray thought tugged at his memory. The day the baby was found, Philip had left the priory to go to the bishop’s palace, and on his way he had spoken to some people. Suddenly it came back to him. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, Tom Builder and his family were passing through.”

Jonathan was astonished. “You never told me that!”

“It never seemed important. It still doesn’t. I met them a day or two later. I questioned them, and they said they hadn’t seen anyone who might have been the mother or father of an abandoned baby.”

Jonathan was crestfallen. Philip was afraid this whole line of inquiry was going to prove doubly disappointing to him: he would not find out about his parents and he would fail to prove Philip’s innocence. But there was no stopping him now. “What were they doing in the forest, anyway?” he persisted.

“Tom was on his way to the bishop’s palace. He was looking for work. That’s how they ended up here.”

“I want to question them again.”

“Well, Tom and Alfred are dead. Ellen is living in the forest, and only God knows when she will reappear. But you could talk to Jack or Martha.”

“It’s worth a try.”

Perhaps Jonathan was right. He had the energy of youth. Philip had been pessimistic and discouraging. “Go ahead,” he said to Jonathan. “I’m getting old and tired; otherwise I would have thought of it myself. Talk to Jack. It’s a slender thread to hang on to. But it’s our only hope.”

The design of the window had been drawn, full size, and painted, on a huge wooden table which had been washed with ale to prevent the colors from running. The drawing showed the Tree of Jesse, a genealogy of Christ in picture form. Sally picked up a small piece of thick ruby-colored glass and placed it on the design over the body of one of the kings of Israel—Jack was not sure which king: he had never been able to remember the convoluted symbolism of theological pictures. Sally dipped a fine brush in a bowl of chalk ground up in water, and painted the shape of the body onto the glass: shoulders, arms, and the skirt of the robe.

In the fire on the ground beside her table was an iron rod with a wooden handle. She took the rod out of the fire and then, quickly but carefully, she ran the red-hot end of the rod around the outline she had painted. The grass cracked neatly along the line. Her apprentice picked up the piece of glass and began to smooth its edges with a grozing iron.

Jack loved to watch his daughter work. She was quick and precise, her movements economical. As a little girl she had been fascinated by the work of the glaziers Jack had brought over from Paris, and she always said that was what she wanted to do when she grew up. She had stuck by that choice. When people came to Kingsbridge Cathedral for the first time, they were more struck by Sally’s glass than her father’s architecture, Jack thought ruefully.

The apprentice handed the smoothed glass to her, and she began to paint the folds of the robe onto the surface, using a paint made of iron ore, urine, and gum arabic for adhesion. The flat glass suddenly began to look like soft, carelessly draped cloth. She was very skillful. She finished it quickly, then put the painted glass alongside several others in an iron pan, the bottom of which was covered with lime. When the pan was full it would go into an oven. The heat would fuse the paint to the glass.

She looked up at Jack, gave him a brief, dazzling smile, then picked up another piece of glass.

He moved away. He could watch her all day, but he had work to do. He was, as Aliena would say, daft about his daughter. When he looked at her it was often with a kind of amazement that he was responsible for the existence of this clever, independent, mature young woman. He was thrilled that she was such a good craftswoman.

Ironically, he had always pressured Tommy to be a builder. He had actually forced the boy to work on the site for a couple of years. But Tommy was interested in farming, horsemanship, hunting and swordplay, all the things that left Jack cold. In the end Jack had conceded defeat. Tommy had served as a squire to one of the local lords and had eventually been knighted. Aliena had granted him a small estate of five villages. And Sally had turned out to be the talented one. Tommy was married now, to a younger daughter of the earl of Bedford, and they had three children. Jack was a grandfather. But Sally was still single at the age of twenty-five. There was a lot of her grandmother Ellen in her. She was aggressively self-reliant.