London - Edward Rutherfurd [114]
“It’ll be just a slit,” he answered the boy, “no wider than a man’s hand. No one will get in or out through there.”
Two other features of the cellar also concerned Osric. The first was a large hole in the floor of the main, western chamber. At first he had been puzzled by this, but he soon learned its purpose, for since he was one of the smallest labourers, Ralph had promptly chosen him to go down into it. “Dig,” he had curtly ordered. And when the boy had foolishly asked “How far?”, Ralph had cursed him and explained: “Until you find water, you fool.” Although the Thames flowed nearby, and there was also a well not far from the bank, it was essential that the king’s castle should have its own secure water supply within its mighty walls. Day after day, therefore, Osric had gone down with pick and shovel, lowered by ropes, sending the earth and gravel he dug up to the surface in a bucket. Deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Tower’s mound he had gone until at last he had come to water. When they measured the well he had dug, they found it was forty feet deep.
But it was the other feature that filled his heart with dread.
The very day after refusing to let him be a carpenter, Ralph had suddenly called out, “Osric, since you are good at working down holes, I have a new job for you.” And before the little fellow’s face even had time to fall: “The tunnel, Osric. That’s the place for you.”
A necessary feature of any large fortified building was its drain, and the Tower of London’s was intelligently conceived. Beginning in the corner, below a hole in the floor not far from the well, it was to run underground, sloping gently down for some fifty yards until it reached the river. At low tide the drain would be tolerably dry, but at high tide, the Thames water would flood the drain and flush it out.
It was a low and narrow space, with just enough room for a few small fellows like Osric to use their picks in a crouching position. Each day he went down and dug away for hours while the loosened earth was dragged back up the tunnel in open sacks, and carpenters put up supports to keep the roof from collapsing. How many days or weeks it would take to bore this hole before the masons could move in to wall and roof it, Osric did not know. All he knew was that he felt like a mole in the ground and that his back was continually aching.
It was after a week of this that he made a second, hopeful attempt at freedom.
Bishop Gundulf of Rochester was a large man. His head was bald. His face was fleshy. Both his body and his manner of speech could best be described as rotund. But there was also a certain briskness in his movements, giving an indication of the very quick mind that made him an excellent administrator. If he experienced any distaste or amusement that late August afternoon as he stood facing the slow-witted overseer, nothing of it showed on his face. It was time to be tactful.
He had just changed the design of the Tower of London, and Ralph Silversleeves was going to have to rebuild it.
At first Ralph could not believe it. He gazed at the huge foundations already rising. Could it really be that the fat bishop wanted him to remove the tremendous mass of stone and begin all over again?
“It is only the south-east corner, my friend,” the bishop said in a soothing tone.
“It’s twenty-five bargeloads of stone,” Ralph retorted furiously. “And for God’s sake why?”
The reason for the alteration was simple enough. The sister castle at Colchester had a semicircular projection towards the east at this same corner. The designer of the London Tower, seeing how well it looked, had decided to do the same thing here as well.
“It will form the apse of the royal chapel, you see,” Gundulf continued blandly. “It will be a noble construction. And the king is delighted,” he added.
If the slow brain of the overseer had registered this last hint, it did not show.
“It will add weeks to the work. Months more likely,” he said sullenly.
“The king is anxious that the work should proceed