Page 346 of The Pillars of the Earth

William’s men had tried to steal the corpse from the cathedral, but the monks had been forewarned and had hidden it; and now it was secure within a stone vault, and pilgrims had to put their heads through a hole in the wall to kiss the marble coffin.

It was William’s last crime. He had come scurrying back to Shiring, but Tommy had arrested him, and accused him of sacrilege, and he had been found guilty by Bishop Philip’s court. Normally no one would dare to sentence a sheriff, for he was an officer of the Crown, but in this case the reverse was true: no one, not even the king, would dare to defend one of Becket’s killers.

William was going to make a bad end.

His eyes were wild and staring, his mouth was open and drooling, he was moaning incoherently, and there was a stain on the front of his tunic where he had wet himself.

Aliena watched her old enemy stagger blindly toward the gallows. She remembered the young, arrogant, heartless lad who had raped her thirty-five years ago. It was hard to believe he had become the moaning, terrified subhuman she saw now. Even the fat, gouty, disappointed old knight he had been in later life was nothing like this. He began to struggle and scream as he got closer to the scaffold. The men-at-arms pulled him along like a pig going to the slaughterhouse. Aliena found no pity in her heart: all she could feel was relief. William would never terrorize anyone again.

He kicked and screamed as he was lifted up onto the ox cart. He looked like an animal, red-faced, wild and filthy; but he sounded like a child as he gibbered and moaned and cried. It took four men to hold him while a fifth put the noose around his neck. He struggled so much that the knot tightened before he dropped, and he began to strangle by his own efforts. The men-at-arms stepped back. William writhed, choking, his fat face turning purple.

Aliena stared aghast. Even at the height of her rage and hatred she had not wished a death like this on him.

There was no noise, now that he was choking; and the crowd stood still. Even the small boys were silenced by the horrible sight.

Someone struck the ox’s flank with a switch and the beast moved forward. At last William fell, but the fall did not break his neck, and he dangled at the end of the rope, slowly suffocating. His eyes remained open. Aliena felt he was looking at her. The grimace on his face as he hung there writhing in agony was familiar to Aliena, and she realized that he had looked like that when he was raping her, just before he reached his climax. The memory stabbed her like a knife, but she would not let herself look away.

It took a long time but the crowd remained quiet throughout. His face turned darker and darker. His agonized writhing became a mere twitching. At last his eyes rolled up into his head, his eyelids closed, he became still, and then, gruesomely, his tongue stuck out, black and swollen, between his teeth.

He was dead.

Aliena felt drained. William had changed her life—at one time she would have said he had ruined her life—and now he was dead, powerless to hurt her or anyone else ever again.

The crowd began to move away. The small boys mimicked the death throes to one another, rolling up their eyes and poking out their tongues. A man-at-arms climbed up on the scaffold and cut William down.

Aliena caught her son’s eye. He looked surprised to see her. He came over immediately, and bent down to kiss her. My son, she thought; my big son. Jack’s son. She remembered how terrified she had been that she might have William’s child. Well, some things had turned out right.

“I thought you didn’t want to come here today,” Tommy said.

“I had to,” she said. “I had to see him dead.”

He looked startled. He did not understand, not really. She was glad. She hoped he would never have to understand such things.

He put his arm around her and they walked out of the square together.

Aliena did not look back.

On a hot day in high summer, Jack ate dinner with Aliena and Sally in the cool of the north transept, up in the gallery, sitting on the scratched plaster of his tracing floor. The sound of the monks chanting the service of sext in the chancel was a low murmur like the rushing of a distant waterfall. They had cold lamb chops with fresh wheat bread and a stone jug of golden beer. Jack had spent the morning sketching the layout of the new chancel which he would begin building next year. Sally was looking at his drawing while she tore into a chop with her pretty white teeth. In a moment she would say something critical about it, he knew. He glanced at Aliena. She too had read Sally’s face and knew what was coming. They exchanged a knowing parental look, and smiled.

“Why do you want the east end to be rounded?” Sally said.

“I based it on the design of Saint-Denis,” Jack said.

“But is there any advantage?”

“Yes. You can keep the pilgrims moving.”

“So you just have this row of little windows.”

Jack had thought windows would come up soon, for Sally was a glazier. “Littlewindows?” he said, pretending to be indignant. “Those windows are huge! When I first put windows that size into this church the people thought the whole building would fall down for lack of structural support.”

“If the chancel were square-ended, you would have an enormous flat wall,” Sally persisted. “You could put inreallybig windows.”

She had a point, Jack thought. With the round-ended layout the entire chancel had to have the same continuous elevation, divided into the traditional three layers of arcade, gallery and clerestory, all the way around. A square end offered the chance to change the design. “There might be another way to keep the pilgrims moving,” he said thoughtfully.

“And the rising sun would shine through the big windows,” Sally said.

Jack could imagine it. “There could be a row of tall lancets, like spears in a rack.”