The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [145]
Philip walked back toward the church. Remigius had been very quick off the mark. Why had he and the sacrist been in such a hurry? It was enough to make Philip a little uneasy. Was the letter just about the burning of the church? Or was there something else in it?
Philip stopped halfway across the green and turned to look back. He would be perfectly within his rights to take the letter from Alan and read it. But he was too late: Alan was trotting through the gate. Philip stared after him, feeling mildly frustrated. At that moment, Tom’s wife stepped out of the guesthouse, carrying a scuttle which presumably contained ashes from the fireplace. She turned toward the dunghill near the stable. Philip watched her. The way she walked was pleasing, like the gait of a good horse.
He thought again about Remigius’s letter to Waleran. Somehow he could not shake off an intuitive, but nonetheless worrying, suspicion that the main burden of the message was not, in fact, the fire.
For no very good reason he felt sure the letter was about the stonemason’s wife.
III
Jack woke up at first cockcrow. He opened his eyes and saw Tom getting up. He lay still and listened to Tom pissing on the ground outside the door. He longed to move to the warm place Tom had vacated and cuddle up to his mother, but he knew Alfred would mock him mercilessly if he did, so he stayed where he was. Tom came back in and shook Alfred awake.
Tom and Alfred drank the ale remaining from last night’s dinner and ate some stale horsebread, then they went out. There was some bread left over, and Jack hoped that today they would leave it behind, but he was disappointed: Alfred took it with him, as usual.
Alfred worked all day on the site with Tom. Jack and his mother sometimes went into the forest for the day. Mother would set traps while Jack went after duck with his slingshot. Whatever they caught they would sell to villagers or to the cellarer, Cuthbert. This was their only source of cash, since Tom was not being paid. With the money, they bought cloth or leather or tallow, and on the days when they did not go into the forest Mother would make shoes, undershirts, candles or a cap while Jack and Martha played with the village children. On Sundays, after the service, Tom and Mother liked to sit by the fire, talking. Sometimes they would start kissing, and Tom would put his hand inside Mother’s robe, and then they would send the children out for a while and bar the door. This was the worst time of the entire week, for Alfred would be bad-tempered and would persecute the younger ones.
Today was an ordinary day, however, and Alfred would be busy from dawn to dusk. Jack got up and went outside. It was cold but dry. Martha came out a few moments later. The cathedral ruins were already aswarm with workers carrying stones, shoveling rubble, building wooden supports for unsteady walls and demolishing those which were too far gone to save.
There was general agreement, among the villagers and monks, that the fire had been started by the devil, and for long periods Jack actually forgot that he had started it himself. When he remembered, he would be brought up with a start, and then he would feel extraordinarily pleased with himself. He had taken a terrible risk, but he had got away with it, and he had saved the family from starvation.
The monks had their breakfast first, and the lay workers got nothing until the monks went into chapter. It was an awfully long wait for Martha and Jack. Jack always woke up hungry, and the cold morning air increased his appetite.
“Let’s go to the kitchen courtyard,” Jack said. The kitchen hands might give them some scraps. Martha agreed readily: she thought Jack was wonderful, and would go along with anything he suggested.
When they got to the kitchen area they found that Brother Bernard, who was in charge of the bakehouse, was making bread today. Because his helpers were all working on the site, he was carrying firewood for himself. He was a young man, but rather fat, and he was puffing and sweating under a load of logs. “We’ll fetch your