The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [119]
Cuthbert picked up a ladle and a small jug, and filled the jug from a bucket of milk. Ellen said to the young monk: “May I hold the baby?” She held out her arms and the monk handed the child to her. Tom envied her. He longed to hold that tiny hot bundle close to his heart. Ellen rocked the baby, and he was quiet for a moment.
Cuthbert looked up and said: “Ah. Johnny Eightpence is a fair nursemaid, but he doesn’t have the woman’s touch.”
Ellen smiled at the boy. “Why do they call you Johnny Eightpence?”
Cuthbert answered for him. “Because he’s only eight pence to the shilling,” he said, tapping the side of his head to indicate that Johnny was half-witted. “But he seems to understand the needs of poor dumb creatures better than us wise folk. All part of God’s wider purpose, I’m sure,” he finished vaguely.
Ellen had edged over to Tom, and now she held the baby out to him. She had read his thoughts. He gave her a look of profound gratitude, and took the tiny child in his big hands. He could feel the baby’s heartbeat through the blanket in which it was wrapped. The material was fine: he wondered briefly where the monks had got such soft wool. He held the baby to his chest and rocked. His technique was not as good as Ellen’s, and the child started to cry again, but Tom did not mind: that loud, insistent yell was music to his ears, for it meant that the child he had abandoned was fit and strong. Hard though it was, he felt he had made the right decision in leaving the baby at the monastery.
Ellen asked Johnny: “Where does he sleep?”
Johnny answered for himself this time. “He has a crib in the dormitory with the rest of us.”
“He must wake you all in the night.”
“We get up at midnight anyway, for matins,” Johnny said.
“Of course! I was forgetting that monks’ nights are as sleepless as mothers’.”
Cuthbert handed Johnny the jug of milk. Johnny took the baby from Tom with a practiced one-arm movement. Tom was not ready to give the baby up, but in the monks’ eyes he had no rights at all, so he had to let him go. A moment later Johnny and the baby were gone, and Tom had to resist the impulse to go after them and say Wait, stop, that’s my son, give him back to me. Ellen stood beside him and squeezed his arm in a discreet gesture of sympathy.
Tom realized he had new reason to hope. If he could get work here, he could see baby Jonathan all the time, and it would be almost as if he had never abandoned him. It seemed almost too good to be true, and he did not dare to wish for it.
Cuthbert was looking shrewdly at Martha and Jack, who had both gone big-eyed at the sight of the jug full of creamy milk that Johnny had taken away. “Would the children like some milk?” he asked.
“Yes, please, Father, they would,” Tom said. He would have liked some himself.
Cuthbert ladled milk into two wooden bowls and gave them to Martha and Jack. They both drank quickly, leaving big white rings around their mouths. “Some more?” Cuthbert offered.
“Yes, please,” they replied in unison. Tom looked at Ellen, knowing that she must feel as he did, deeply thankful to see the little ones fed at last.
As Cuthbert refilled the bowls he said casually: “Where have you folks come from?”
“Earlscastle, near Shiring,” said Tom. “We left there yesterday morning.”
“Have you eaten since?”
“No,” Tom said flatly. He knew that Cuthbert’s inquiry was kindly, but he hated to admit that he had been unable to feed his children himself.
“Have some apples to keep you going until suppertime, then,” Cuthbert said, pointing to the barrel near the door.
Alfred, Ellen and Tom went to the barrel while Martha and Jack were drinking their second bowl of milk. Alfred tried to