Page 89 of The Pillars of the Earth

“I don’t care!” Ellen flared. “You can say what you like, but my son is badly bruised, and might have been seriously injured, andI will not allow it!”She began to cry. In a quieter voice, but still angry, she said: “He’s my child and I can’t bear to see him like that.”

Tom sympathized with her, and he was tempted to comfort her, but he was afraid to give in. He had a feeling that this conversation might be a turning point. Living with his mother and no one else, Jack had always been overprotected. Tom did not want to concede that Jack ought to be cushioned against the normal knocks of everyday life. That would set a precedent that could cause endless trouble in years to come. Tom knew, in truth, that Alfred had gone too far this time, and he was secretly resolved to make the boy leave Jack alone; but it would be a bad thing to say so. “Beatings are a part of life,” he said to Ellen. “Jack must learn to take them or avoid them. I can’t spend my life protecting him.”

“You could protect him from that bullying son of yours!”

Tom winced. He hated to hear her call Alfred a bully. “I might, but I shan’t,” he said angrily. “Jack must learn to protect himself.”

“Oh, go to hell!” Ellen said, and she turned and walked away.

Tom entered the refectory. The wooden hut where the lay workers normally ate had been damaged by the fall of the southwest tower, so they took their meals in the refectory after the monks had finished and gone. Tom sat apart from everyone else, feeling unsociable. A kitchen hand brought him a jug of ale and some slices of bread in a basket. He dipped a piece of bread in the ale to soften it and began to eat.

Alfred was a big lad with too much energy, Tom thought fondly. He sighed into his beer. The boywassomething of a bully, Tom knew in his heart; but he would calm down in time. Meanwhile, Tom was not going to make his own children give special treatment to a newcomer. They had had too much to put up with already. They had lost their mother, they had been forced to tramp the roads, they had come near to starving to death. He was not going to impose any more burdens on them if he could help it. They were due for a little indulgence. Jack would just have to keep out of Alfred’s way. It would not kill him.

A disagreement with Ellen always left Tom heavyhearted. They had quarreled several times, usually about the children, although this was their worst dispute so far. When she was hard-faced and hostile he could not remember what it had been like, just a little while earlier, to feel passionately in love with her: she seemed like an angry stranger who had intruded into his peaceful life.

He had never had such furious, bitter quarrels with his first wife. Looking back, it seemed to him that he and Agnes had agreed about everything important, and that when they disagreed it had not made them angry. That was how it should be between man and wife, and Ellen would have to realize that she could not be part of a family and yet have all her own way.

Even when Ellen was at her most infuriating he never quite wished that she would go away, but all the same he often thought of Agnes with regret. Agnes had been with him for most of his adult life, and now he had a constant sense of there being something missing. While she was alive he had never thought that he was particularly fortunate to have her, nor had he felt thankful for her; but now that she was dead he missed her, and he felt ashamed that he had taken her for granted.

At quiet moments in the day, when all his laborers had their instructions and were busy about the site, and Tom was able to get down to a skilled task, rebuilding a bit of wall in the cloisters or repairing a pillar in the crypt, he sometimes held imaginary conversations with Agnes. Mostly he told her about Jonathan, their baby son. Tom saw the child most days, being fed in the kitchen or walked in the cloisters or put to bed in the monks’ dormitory. He seemed perfectly healthy and happy, and no one but Ellen knew or even suspected that Tom had a special interest in him. Tom also talked to Agnes about Alfred and Prior Philip and even Ellen, explaining his feelings about them, just as he would have done (except in the case of Ellen) if Agnes had been alive. He told her of his practical plans for the future, too: his hope that he would be employed here for years to come, and his dream of designing and building the new cathedral himself. In his head he heard her replies and questions. She was at different times pleased, encouraging, fascinated, suspicious, or disapproving. Sometimes he felt she was right, sometimes wrong. If he had told anyone of these conversations, they would have said he was communing with a ghost, and there would have been a flurry of priests and holy water and exorcism; but he knew there was nothing supernatural about what was happening. It was just that he knew her so well that he could imagine how she would feel and what she would say in just about any situation.

She came into his mind unbidden at odd times. When he peeled a pear with his eating knife for little Martha, he remembered how Agnes had always laughed at him because he would take pains to remove the peel in one continuous strip. Whenever he had to write something he would think of her, for she had taught him everything she had learned from her father, the priest; and he would remember her teaching him how to trim a quill or how to spellcaementarius,the Latin word for “mason.” As he washed his face on Sundays he would rub soap into his beard and recall how, when they were young, she had taught him that washing his beard would keep his face free from lice and boils. Never a day went by without some such little incident bringing her vividly to mind.

He knew he was lucky to have Ellen. There was no danger of his takingherfor granted. She was unique: there was something abnormal about her, and it was that abnormal something that made her magnetic. He was grateful to her for consoling him in his grief, the morning after Agnes died; but sometimes he wished he had met her a few days—instead of a few hours—after he had buried his wife, just so that he would have had time to be heartbroken alone. He would not have observed a period of mourning—that was for lords and monks, not ordinary folk—but he would have had time to become accustomed to the absence of Agnes before he started to get used to living with Ellen. Such thoughts had not occurred to him during the early days, when the threat of starvation had combined with the sexual excitement of Ellen to produce a kind of hysterical end-of-the-world elation. But since he had found work and security, he had begun to feel pangs of regret. And sometimes it seemed that when he thought like this about Agnes, he was not only missing her, but mourning the passing of his own youth. Never again would he be as naive, as aggressive, as hungry or as strong as he had been when he had first fallen in love with Agnes.

He finished his bread and left the refectory ahead of the others. He went into the cloisters. He was pleased with his work here: it was now hard to imagine that the quadrangle had been buried under a mass of rubble three weeks earlier. The only remaining signs of the catastrophe were some cracked paving stones for which he had been unable to find replacements.

There was a lot of dust about, though. He would have the cloisters swept again and then sprinkled with water. He walked through the ruined church. In the north transept he saw a blackened beam with words written in the soot. Tom read it slowly. It said: “Alfred is a pig.” So that was what had infuriated Alfred. Quite a lot of the wood from the roof had not burned to ashes, and there were blackened beams like this lying all around. Tom decided he would detail a group of workers to collect all the timber and take it to the firewood store. “Make the site look tidy,” Agnes would say when someone important was coming to visit. “You want them to feel glad that Tom’s in charge.” Yes, dear, Tom thought, and he smiled to himself as he went about his work.

Waleran Bigod’s party was sighted a mile or so away across the fields. There were three of them, riding quite hard. Waleran himself was in the lead, on a black horse, his black cloak flying behind. Philip and the senior monastic officials waited by the stable to welcome them.

Philip was not sure how to treat Waleran. Waleran had deceived him, indisputably, by not telling him that the bishop was dead; but when the truth came out Waleran had not appeared in the least ashamed; and Philip had not known what to say to him. He still did not know, but he suspected that there was nothing to be gained by complaining. Anyway, that whole episode had been overshadowed by the catastrophe of the fire. Philip would just be extremely wary of Waleran in future.

Waleran’s horse was a stallion, skittish and excitable despite having been ridden several miles. He held its head down hard as he walked it to the stable. Philip disapproved: there was no need for a clergyman to cut a dash on horseback, and most men of God chose quieter mounts.

Waleran swung off the horse with a fluid motion and gave the reins to a stable hand. Philip greeted him formally. Waleran turned and surveyed the ruins. A bleak look came into his eyes, and he said: “This was an expensive fire, Philip.” He seemed genuinely distressed, somewhat to Philip’s surprise.

Before Philip could reply, Remigius spoke up. “The devil’s work, my lord bishop,” he said.

“Was it, now?” said Waleran. “In my experience, the devil is usually assisted in such work by monks who light fires in church to take the chill off matins, or carelessly leave burning candles in the bell tower.”

Philip was amused to see Remigius crushed, but he could not let Waleran’s insinuations pass. “I’ve held an investigation into possible causes of the conflagration,” he said. “No one lit a fire in the church that night—I can be sure because I was present at matins myself. And no one had been up in the roof for months beforehand.”

“So what is your explanation—lightning?” Waleran said skeptically.

Philip shook his head. “There was no storm. The fire seems to have started in the vicinity of the crossing. We did leave a candle burning on the altar after the service, as usual. It’s possible that the altar cloth caught fire, and a spark was taken by an updraft to the wooden ceiling, which was very old and dry.” Philip shrugged. “It’s not a very satisfactory explanation, but it’s the best we have.”

Waleran nodded. “Let’s have a closer look at the damage.”

They moved off toward the church. Waleran’s two companions were a man-at-arms and a young priest. The man-at-arms stayed behind to see to the horse. The priest accompanied Waleran, and was introduced to Philip as Dean Baldwin. As they all crossed the green to the church, Remigius put a hand on Waleran’s arm, stopping him, and said: “The guesthouse is undamaged, as you can see.”

Everyone stopped and turned around. Philip wondered irritably what Remigius was thinking of. If the guesthouse was undamaged, why make everyone stop and look at it? The builder’s wife was walking up from the kitchens, and they all watched her enter the house. Philip glanced at Waleran. He was looking slightly shocked. Philip remembered the moment, back at the bishop’s palace, when Waleran had seen the builder’s wife, and had looked almost frightened. What was it about that woman?

Waleran gave Remigius a swift look and an almost imperceptible nod, then he turned to Philip and said: “Who is living there?”

Philip was quite sure Waleran had recognized her, but he said: “A master builder and his family.”

Waleran nodded and they all moved on. Philip knew now why Remigius had called attention to the guesthouse: he had wanted to make sure Waleran saw the woman. Philip made up his mind to question her at the earliest opportunity.