Page 331 of The Pillars of the Earth

Jonathan nodded, his face taut with suppressed emotion.

“That’s the grave.” As Jack spoke, a drift of blossom fell from the tree and settled over the mound like a carpet of petals.

Jonathan knelt beside the grave and began to pray.

Jack stood silent. He remembered when he had discovered his relatives in Cherbourg: it had been a devastating experience. What Jonathan was going through must be even more intense.

Eventually Jonathan stood up. “When I’m prior,” he said solemnly, “I’m going to build a little monastery just here, with a chapel and a hostel, so that in future no traveler on this stretch of road will ever have to spend a cold winter’s night sleeping in the open air. I’ll dedicate the hostel to the memory of my mother.” He looked at Jack. “I don’t suppose you ever knew her name, did you?”

“It was Agnes,” Ellen said softly. “Your mother’s name was Agnes.”

Bishop Waleran made a persuasive case.

He began by telling the court about Philip’s precocious development: cellarer of his monastery when he was only twenty-one, prior of the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest at twenty-three; prior of Kingsbridge at the remarkably young age of twenty-eight. He constantly emphasized Philip’s youth and managed to suggest there was something arrogant about anyone who accepted responsibility early. Then he described St-John-in-the-Forest, its remoteness and isolation, and spoke of the freedom and independence of whoever was its prior. “Who can be surprised,” he said, “that after five years as virtually his own master, with only the lightest and most distant kind of supervision, this inexperienced, warm-blooded young man had a child?” It sounded almost inevitable. Waleran was infuriatingly credible. Philip wanted to strangle him.

Waleran went on to say how Philip had brought Jonathan and Johnny Eightpence with him when he came to Kingsbridge. The monks had been startled, Waleran said, when their new prior arrived with a baby and a nurse. That was true. For a moment Philip forgot his tension, and had to suppress a nostalgic smile.

Philip had played with Jonathan as a youngster, taught him lessons, and later made the lad his personal assistant, Waleran went on, just as any man would do with his own son, except that monks were not supposed to have sons. “Jonathan was precocious, just like Philip,” Waleran said. “When Cuthbert Whitehead died, Philip made Jonathan cellarer, even though Jonathan was only twenty-one. Was there really no one else who could be cellarer, in this monastery of more than a hundred monks; no one but a boy of twenty-one? Or was Philip giving preference to his own flesh and blood? When Milius went off to be prior at Glastonbury, Philip made Jonathan treasurer. He is thirty-four years old. Is he the wisest and most devout of all the monks here? Or is he simply Philip’s favorite?”

Philip looked around at the court. It was being held in the south transept of Kingsbridge Cathedral. Archdeacon Peter sat on a large, ornately carved chair like a throne. All of Waleran’s staff were present, as were most of the monks of Kingsbridge. There would be little work done in the monastery while the prior was on trial. Every important churchman in the county was here, even some of the humble parish priests. There were also representatives from neighboring dioceses. The entire ecclesiastical community of southern England was waiting for the verdict of this court. They were not very interested in Philip’s virtue, or lack of it, of course: they were following the final trial of strength between Prior Philip and Bishop Waleran.

When Waleran sat down Philip took the oath, then began to tell the story of that winter morning so long ago. He started with the upset caused by Peter of Wareham: he wanted everyone to know that Peter was prejudiced against him. Then he called Francis to tell how the baby was found.

Jonathan had gone off, leaving a message to say that he was on the track of new information about his parentage. Jack had disappeared too, from which Philip had concluded that the trip had something to do with Jack’s mother, the witch Ellen, and that Jonathan had been afraid that if he stayed to explain, Philip would have forbidden the journey. They had been due back this morning, but had not yet arrived. Philip did not think Ellen would have anything to add to the story Francis was telling.

When Francis had done, Philip began to speak. “That baby was not mine,” he said simply. “I swear it was not mine, in peril of my immortal soul I swear it. I have never had carnal knowledge of a woman, and I remain to this day in that state of chastity commended to us by the Apostle Paul. So why, the lord bishop asks, did I treat the babe as if it were my own?”

He looked around at the listeners. He had decided that his only chance was to tell the truth and hope that God would speak loud enough to overcome Peter’s spiritual deafness. “When I was six years old, my father and mother died. They were killed by soldiers of the old King Henry, in Wales. My brother and I were saved by the abbot of a nearby monastery, and from that day onward we were cared for by monks. I was a monastery orphan. I know what it’s like. I understand how the orphan yearns for a mother’s touch, even though he loves the brothers who care for him. I knew that Jonathan would feel abnormal, peculiar, illegitimate. I have felt that feeling of isolation, the sense that I am different from everyone else because they all have a father and a mother and I do not. Like him, I have felt ashamed of myself for being a burden on the charity of others; have wondered what was wrong with me, that I should have been deprived of what others took for granted. I knew that he would dream, in the night, of the warm, fragrant bosom and soft voice of a mother he never knew, someone who loved him utterly and completely.”

Archdeacon Peter’s face was like stone. He was the worst kind of Christian, Philip realized: he embraced all of the negatives, enforced every proscription, insisted on all forms of denial, and demanded strict punishment for every offense; yet he ignored all the compassion of Christianity, denied its mercy, flagrantly disobeyed its ethic of love, and openly flouted the gentle laws of Jesus. That’s what the Pharisees were like, Philip thought; no wonder the Lord preferred to eat with publicans and sinners.

He went on, although he understood, with a sinking heart, that nothing he could say would penetrate the armor of Peter’s righteousness. “Nobody could care for that boy as I could, unless it were his own parents; and those we never could find. What clearer indication of God’s will. ...” He tailed off. Jonathan had just come into the church, with Jack; and between them was the witch, Jack’s mother.

She had aged: her hair was snow-white, and her face was deeply lined. But she walked in like a queen, her head held high, her strange golden eyes blazing with defiance. Philip was too surprised to protest.

The court was silent as she entered the transept and stood facing Archdeacon Peter. She spoke in a voice that rang like a trumpet, and echoed from the clerestory of her son’s church. “I swear by all that is holy that Jonathan is the son of Tom Builder, my dead husband, and his first wife.”

There was an astonished clamor from the crowd of clergy. For a while nobody could be heard. Philip was completely bowled over. He stared openmouthed at Ellen. Tom Builder? Jonathan was the son of Tom Builder? When he looked at Jonathan he knew immediately that it was true: they were alike, not just in their height, but facially. If Jonathan had had a beard it would have been obvious.

His first reaction was a sense of loss. Until now, he had been the nearest Jonathan had to a father. But Tom was Jonathan’s real father, and although Tom was dead, the discovery changed everything. Philip could no longer secretly think of himself as a father; Jonathan would no longer feel like his son. Jonathan was Tom’s son now. Philip had lost him.

Philip sat down heavily. When the crowd began to quiet down, Ellen told the story of Jack hearing a cry and finding a newborn baby. Philip listened, dazed, as she told how she and Tom had hidden in the bushes, watching, as Philip and the monks came back from their morning’s work to find Francis waiting for them with a newborn baby, and Johnny Eightpence trying to feed it with a rag dipped into a bucket of goat’s milk.

Philip remembered very clearly how interested the young Tom had been, a day or so later, when they had met by accident and Philip had told him about the abandoned baby. Philip had assumed his interest was that of any compassionate man in a touching story, but in fact Tom had been learning the fate of his own child.

Then Philip recalled how fond Tom had been of Jonathan in later years, as the baby turned into a toddler and then a mischievous boy. Nobody had remarked on it: the whole monastery had treated Jonathan as a pet in those days and Tom spent all his time in the priory close, so his behavior was completely unremarkable; but now, in retrospect, Philip could see that the attention Tom paid to Jonathan was special.

As Ellen sat down, Philip realized that he had been proved innocent. Ellen’s revelations had been so devastating that he had almost forgotten he was on trial. Her story of childbirth and death, desperation and hope, ancient secrets and enduring love, made the question of Philip’s chastity seem trivial. It was not trivial, of course; the future of the priory hung on it; and Ellen had now answered the question so dramatically that it seemed impossible the trial should continue. Even Peter of Wareham can’t find me guilty after evidence like this, Philip thought. Waleran had lost again.

Waleran was not quite ready to concede defeat, however. He pointed an accusing finger at Ellen. “You say Tom Builder told you that the baby brought to the cell was his.”

“Yes,” Ellen said warily.

“But the other two people who might have been able to confirm this—the children Alfred and Martha—did not accompany you to the monastery.”

“No.”

“And Tom is dead, So we only have your word for it that Tom said this to you. Your story cannot be verified.”