Page 53 of The Pillars of the Earth

“We’ll have to find a way to look around Bartholomew’s castle,” Mother said with a frown. “It won’t be easy. Nobody would credit us making a social call—everyone knows we hate Bartholomew.”

William was struck by a thought. “I could go,” he said.

His parents were both a little startled. Mother said: “You’d arouse less suspicion than your father, I suppose. But what pretext would you have?”

William had thought of that. “I could go to see Aliena,” he said, and his pulse raced at the idea. “I could beg her to reconsider her decision. After all, she doesn’t really know me. She misjudged me when we met. I could make her a good husband. Perhaps she just needs to be wooed a little harder.” He gave what he hoped was a cynical smile, so that they would not know that he meant every word.

“A perfectly credible excuse,” said Mother. She looked hard at William. “By Christ, I wonder whether the boy might have some of his mother’s brains after all.”

William felt optimistic, for the first time in months, when he set out for Earlscastle on the day after Epiphany. It was a clear, cold morning. The north wind stung his ears and the frosted grass crunched under the hooves of his war-horse. He wore a gray cloak of fine Flanders cloth trimmed with rabbit fur over a scarlet tunic.

He was accompanied by Walter, his groom. When William was twelve years old Walter had become his tutor in arms, and had taught him to ride, hunt, fence and wrestle. Now Walter was his groom, companion and bodyguard. He was as tall as William but broader, a formidable barrel of a man. Nine or ten years older than William, he was young enough to go drinking and chasing girls but old enough to keep the boy out of trouble when necessary. He was William’s closest friend.

William was strangely excited by the prospect of seeing Aliena again, even though he knew he faced rejection and humiliation once more. That glimpse of her in Kingsbridge Cathedral, when for an instant he had looked into her dark, dark eyes, had rekindled his desire for her. He looked forward eagerly to talking to her, getting close to her, seeing her mass of curls tumble and shake as she talked, watching her body move under her dress.

At the same time, the opportunity for revenge had sharpened William’s hatred. He was tense with excitement at the thought that now he might wipe out the humiliation he and his family had suffered.

He wished he had a clearer idea of what he was looking for. He was fairly confident he would find out whether Waleran’s story was true, for there would surely be signs of preparation for war at the castle—horses being mustered, weapons being cleaned, food being stockpiled—even though the activity would naturally be masked as something else, preparations for an expedition perhaps, to deceive the casual observer. However, convincing himself of the existence of a plot was not the same as finding proof. William could not think of anything that would count as proof. He planned to keep his eyes open and hope that something would suggest itself. This was not much of a plan, however, and he suffered a nagging worry that the opportunity for revenge might yet slip through his fingers.

As he came nearer he began to feel tense. He wondered whether he might be refused admittance to the castle, and he suffered a moment of panic, until he realized how unlikely it was: the castle was a public place, and for the earl to close it to the local gentry would be as good as an announcement that treachery was afoot.

Earl Bartholomew lived a few miles from the town of Shiring. The castle of Shiring itself was occupied by the sheriff of the county, so the earl had a castle of his own outside the town. The small village that had grown up around the castle walls was known as Earlscastle. William had been there before, but now he looked at it through the eyes of an attacker.

There was a wide, deep moat in the shape of the number eight, with the upper circle smaller than the lower. The earth that had been dug out to form the moat was piled up inside the twin circles, forming ramparts.

At the foot of the eight was a bridge across the moat and a gap in the earth wall, giving admittance to the lower circle. This was the only entrance. There was no way into the upper circle except by going through the lower circle and crossing another bridge over the moat that divided the two circles. The upper circle was the inner sanctum.

As William and Walter trotted across the open fields that surrounded the castle they could see a lot of coming and going. Two men-at-arms crossed the bridge on fast horses and rode off in different directions, and a group of four horsemen preceded William across the bridge as he and Walter entered.

William noted that the last section of the bridge could be drawn up into the massive stone gatehouse that formed the entrance to the castle. There were stone towers at intervals all around the earth wall, so that every part of the perimeter could be covered by defending archers. To take this castle by frontal assault would be a long and bloody business, and the Hamleighs could not muster enough men to be sure of success, William concluded gloomily.

Today, of course, the castle was open for business. William gave his name to the sentry in the gatehouse and was admitted without further ado. Within the lower circle, shielded from the outside world by the earth walls, was the usual range of domestic buildings: stables, kitchens, workshops, a privy tower and a chapel.

A sense of excitement was in the air. The grooms, squires, servants and maids all walked briskly and talked loudly, calling greetings to one another and making jokes. To an unsuspecting mind the excitement and the coming and going might be no more than a normal reaction to the return of the master, but to William it seemed more than that.

He left Walter at the stable with the horses and crossed to the far side of the compound where, exactly opposite the gatehouse, there was a bridge across the moat to the upper circle. When he had crossed the bridge he was challenged by another guard in another gatehouse. This time he was asked his business, and he said: “I’ve come to see the Lady Aliena.”

The guard did not know him, but he looked him up and down, noting his fine cloak and red tunic, and took him at face value, as a hopeful suitor. “You may find the young lady in the great hall,” he said with a smirk.

In the center of the upper circle was a square stone building, three stories high, with thick walls. This was the keep. As usual the ground floor was a store. The great hall was above the store, reached by a wooden exterior staircase which could be drawn up into the building. On the top floor would be the earl’s bedroom, and that was where he would make his last stand when the Hamleighs came to get him.

The whole layout presented a formidable series of obstacles to the attacker. That was the point, of course, but now that William was trying to work out how to get past the obstacles he saw the function of the different elements of the design very clearly. Even if the attackers gained the lower circle, they still had to pass another bridge and another gatehouse, and then assault the sturdy keep. They would have to get to the upper floor somehow—presumably by building their own staircase—and even then there would be yet another fight, in all probability, to get from the hall up the stairs to the earl’s bedroom. The only way to take this castle was by stealth, William realized, and he began to toy with ideas of sneaking in somehow.

He mounted the stairs and entered the hall. It was full of people, but the earl was not among them. In the far left-hand corner was the staircase leading to his bedroom, and fifteen or twenty knights and men-at-arms sat around the foot of the stairs, talking together in low tones. This was unusual. Knights and men-at-arms formed separate social classes. The knights were landowners who supported themselves by rents, whereas the men-at-arms were paid by the day. The two groups became comradely only when the smell of war was in the wind.

William recognized some of them: there was Gilbert Catface, a bad-tempered old fighter with an unfashionable beard and long whiskers, past forty years but still tough; Ralph of Lyme, who spent more on clothes than on a bride, today wearing a blue cloak with a red silk lining; Jack fitz Guillaume, already a knight although hardly older than William; and several others whose faces were vaguely familiar. He nodded in their general direction, but they took little notice of him—he was well known, but he was too young to be important.

He turned and looked around the other side of the hall, and saw Aliena immediately.

She looked quite different today. Yesterday she had been dressed up for the cathedral, in silk and fine wool and linen, with rings and ribbons and pointed boots. Today she wore the short tunic of a peasant woman or a child, and her feet were bare. She was sitting on a bench, studying a game board on which were counters of different colors. As William watched, she hitched up her tunic and crossed her legs, revealing her knees, and then wrinkled her nose in a frown. Yesterday she had been formidably sophisticated; today she was a vulnerable child, and William found her even more desirable. He suddenly felt ashamed that this child had been able to cause him so much distress, and he yearned for some way of showing her that he could master her. It was a feeling almost like lust.

She was playing with a boy three years or so younger than she. He had a restless, impatient look: he did not like the game. William could see a family resemblance between the two players. Indeed, the boy looked like Aliena as William remembered her from childhood, with a snub nose and short hair. This must be her younger brother Richard, the heir to the earldom.

William went closer. Richard glanced up at him, then returned his attention to the board. Aliena was concentrating. Their painted wooden board was shaped like a cross and divided into squares of different colors. The counters appeared to be made of ivory, white and black. The game was obviously a variant of merels, or ninemen’s morris, and probably a gift brought back from Normandy by Aliena’s father. William was more interested in Aliena. When she leaned forward over the board, the neck of her tunic bowed out, and he could see the tops of her breasts. They were as large as he had imagined. His mouth went dry.

Richard moved a counter on the board, and Aliena said: “No, you can’t do that.”

The boy was put out. “Why not?”