Page 93 of The Pillars of the Earth

Now everyone was looking.

“Piss on you, Tom Builder!” she said. She realized she had an audience. “Piss on all of you, too,” she said. Most people grinned. It was hard to take offense, perhaps because she looked so lovely with her face flushed red and her golden eyes wide. She stood up. “Piss on Kingsbridge Priory!” She jumped up on to the table, and there was a burst of applause. She walked along the board. The diners snatched their bowls of soup and mugs of ale out of her way and sat back, laughing. “Piss on the prior!” she said. “Piss on the sub-prior, and the sacrist, and the cantor and the treasurer, and all their deeds and charters, and their chests full of silver pennies!” She reached the end of the table. Beyond it was another, smaller table where someone would sit and read aloud during the monks’ dinner. There was an open book on the table. Ellen jumped from the dining table to the reading table.

Suddenly Tom knew what she was going to do. “Ellen!” he called. “Don’t, please—”

“Piss on the Rule of Saint Benedict!” she yelled at the top of her voice. Then she hitched up her skirt, bent her knees, and urinated on the open book.

The men roared with laughter, banged on the tables, hooted and whistled and cheered. Tom was not sure whether they shared Ellen’s contempt for the Rule or they just enjoyed seeing a beautiful woman expose herself. There was something erotic about her shameless vulgarity, but it was also exciting to see someone openly abuse the book that the monks were so tediously solemn about. Whatever the reason, they loved it.

She jumped off the table and, amid a thunder of applause, ran out of the door.

Everyone began to talk at the same time. No one had ever seen anything quite like that before. Tom was horrified and embarrassed: the consequences would be dire, he knew. Yet a part of him was thinking: What a woman!

Jack got up after a moment and followed his mother out, with the trace of a grin on his swollen face.

Tom looked at Alfred and Martha. Alfred had a bewildered air but Martha was giggling. “Come on, you two,” Tom said, and the three of them left the refectory.

When they got outside Ellen was nowhere to be seen. They went across the green to the guesthouse and found her there. She was sitting in the chair waiting for him. She was wearing her cloak, and holding her big leather satchel. She looked cool, calm and collected. Tom’s heart went cold when he saw the bag, but he pretended not to have noticed it. “There’s going to be hell to pay,” he said.

“I don’t believe in hell,” she said.

“I hope they’ll let you confess, and do penance.”

“I’m not going to confess.”

His self-control broke. “Ellen, don’t leave!”

She looked sad. “Listen, Tom. Before I met you I had food to eat and a place to live. I was safe and secure and self-sufficient: I needed nobody. Since I’ve been with you I’ve come closer to starvation than at any time in my life. You’ve got work now, but there’s no security in it: the priory has no money to build a new church, and you could be on the road again next winter.”

“Philip will raise the money somehow,” Tom said. “I’m sure he will.”

“You can’t be sure,” she said.

“You don’t believe,” Tom said bitterly. Then, before he could stop himself, he added: “You’re just like Agnes, you don’t believe in my cathedral.”

“Oh, Tom, if it was just me, I’d stay,” she said sadly. “But look at my son.”

Tom looked at Jack. His face was purple with bruising, his ear was swollen to twice its normal size, his nostrils were full of dried blood and he had a broken front tooth.

Ellen said: “I was afraid he would grow up like an animal if we stayed in the forest. But if this is the price of teaching him to live with other people, it’s too much to pay. So I’m going back to the forest.”

“Don’t say that,” Tom said desperately. “Let’s talk about it. Don’t make a rash decision—”

“It’s not rash, it’s not rash, Tom,” she said sorrowfully. “I’m so sad that I can’t even be angry anymore. I really wanted to be your wife. But not at any cost.”

If Alfred had not chased Jack, none of this would have happened, Tom thought. But it was only a boyish scrap, wasn’t it? Or was Ellen right when she said Tom had a blind spot about Alfred? Tom began to feel he had been wrong. Perhaps he should have taken a firmer line with Alfred. Boys fighting was one thing, but Jack and Martha were smaller than Alfred. Perhaps he was a bully.

But it was too late to change that now. “Stay in the village,” Tom said desperately. “Wait a while and see what happens.”

“I don’t suppose the monks will let me, now.”

He realized she was right. The village was owned by the priory and all the householders paid rent to the monks—usually in the form of days of work’—and the monks could refuse to house anyone they did not like. They could hardly be blamed if they rejected Ellen. She had made her decision and she had literally pissed on her chances of retracting it.

“I’ll go with you, then,” he said. “The monastery owes me seventy-two pennies already. We’ll go on the road again. We survived before. ...”

“What about your children?” she said gently.

Tom remembered how Martha had cried from hunger. He knew he could not make her go through that again. And there was his baby son, Jonathan, living here with the monks. I don’t want to leave him again, Tom thought; I did it once, and hated myself for it.