Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [353]
After a time, since Osmund appeared to be circulating the place indefinitely, Edward sat on the parapet to let him go about his business. The morning sun was surprisingly warm.
And it was only after several minutes on one of Osmund’s slow circuits that Edward realised he had disappeared. Assuming the old man must have started to descend, he inspected the four staircases, but found his father on none of them. Only then did he run round the base of the great octagonal spire and look up.
The iron rings were set a little further apart than Osmund would have liked. They stretched in a straight, but dizzying line from the base to the cross nearly two hundred feet above. But by treating each ring as a small individual obstacle, he was able to mount slowly, resting his feet on one ring and pulling his body up to the next with both his small hands together clutching one of the rings above. Gently, calmly, he mounted the steep, sheer face of the cone, pausing frequently. Twenty feet, thirty feet: he was already thirty feet up when Edward saw him.
Edward gazed up at his father. What should he do? His first thought was to hurry up the daunting spire after him; but then he considered – if the old man were to slip, could he really hope to catch him?
Then he shrugged. If his father was determined, in his eightieth year, to break his neck in this spectacular way, why should he stop him? With a rueful grin he watched the determined little figure make his solitary way towards his objective. His instinct told him that, despite his age, the mason would not fall. He hoped his instinct was right.
“He’ll go up and come down again just like he said,” he said aloud, to reassure himself. And if the old man succeeded, it would be something to tell his grandchildren about. Behind him, the great bells in the belfry sounded the hour. It was ten o’clock.
How silent the air was. The soaring octagon of the spire rose majestically, straight at the blue sky, in its separate region above the world to which it was obviously so serenely indifferent: indifferent to the Shockleys and their mill, to Godefroi in his manor, to the sheep on the high ground that had paid for its very stones; it was indifferent to the market, the close, to even the bishop himself; to drought and flood below, seed time and harvest; the spire was above these things.
Osmund took his time. He rested when he wanted. And at last, a little before the bells sounded the half hour, he came to the dizzy point where he could stretch his little arms right round the spire, as he touched the silent capstone in the sky. He was aware that, far below, people in the close were staring up. There was now a faint, just discernible breeze in his face coming from the west.
He had done it. The cathedral, and all that was in it, was his.
His long-sighted eyes were an advantage. Below, he could see every detail of the houses in the close. He could see the market place. Behind the city, on the ancient hill, he could make out individual figures moving about on the castle walls. On the rolling ridges, everywhere, he could see the tiny dots of the sheep. Eight miles away, directly in line with the old castle hill, he could even make out the broken circle of grey sarsens at Stonehenge. And beyond that, ridge after ridge, extending northwards like a sea.
And as he gazed over Sarum, so high in the sky, even the old mason’s newfound sin of pride dissolved in the air, lost at the wonder of the place.
After a little time, he came down.
THE DEATH
1348
On a warm August morning, a little after dawn, the small ship had passed the low headland and come slowly through the sheltered harbour waters to tie up beside the quay at Christchurch. The ship contained a cargo of wine, from the English province of Gascony in south west France. The sailors, eight bluff, healthy fellows,