The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [169]
There were dozens of churches. They were all shapes and sizes, some of wood and others of stone, each serving its own small neighborhood. The city had to be very rich to support so many priests.
Walking along Fleshmonger Street made him feel faintly ill. He had never seen so much raw meat all in one place. Blood flowed out of the butchers’ shops into the street, and fat rats dodged between the feet of the people who came to buy.
The south end of Fleshmonger Street opened out on to the middle of the High Street, opposite the old royal palace. The palace had not been used by kings since the new keep had been built in the castle, Philip had been told, but the royal moneyers still minted silver pennies in the undercroft of the building, protected by thick walls and iron-barred gates. Philip stood at the bars for a while, watching the sparks fly as the hammers pounded the dies, awestruck by the sheer wealth in front of his eyes.
There was a handful of other people watching the same sight. No doubt it was something all visitors to Winchester looked at. A young woman standing nearby smiled at Philip, and he smiled back. She said: “You can do anything you like for a penny.”
He wondered what she meant, and smiled vaguely again. Then she opened her cloak, and he saw to his horror that underneath it she was completely naked. “Anything you like, for a silver penny,” she said.
He felt a faint stirring of desire, like the ghost of a memory long submerged; then he realized that she was a whore.
He felt his face go bright red with embarrassment. He turned quickly and hurried away. “Don’t be afraid,” she called. “I like a nice round head.” Her mocking laughter followed him.
Feeling hot and bothered, he turned down an alley off the High Street and found himself in the marketplace. He could see the towers of the cathedral rising above the market stalls. He hurried through the crowds, oblivious to the blandishments of the vendors, and found his way back into the close.
He felt the ordered calm of the church precincts like a cool breeze. He paused in the graveyard to collect his thoughts. He felt ashamed and outraged. How dare she tempt a man in monk’s robes? She had obviously identified him as a visitor.... Was it possible that monks who were away from their home monastery could be customers of hers? Of course it was, he realized. Monks committed all the same sins that ordinary people did. He had just been shocked by the woman’s shamelessness. The sight of her nakedness remained with him, the way the hot heart of a candle flame, stared at for a few moments, would burn on behind closed eyelids.
He sighed. It had been a morning of vivid images: the man-made streams, the rats in the butchers’ shops, the stacks of new-minted silver pennies, and then the woman’s private parts. For a while, he knew, those pictures would come back to him to unsettle his meditations.
He went into the cathedral. He felt too grubby to kneel and pray, but just walking down the nave and out through the south door purified him somewhat. He passed through the priory and went to the bishop’s palace.
The ground floor was a chapel. Philip went up the stairs to the hall and stepped inside. There was a small group of servants and young clergymen near the door, standing around or sitting on the bench up against the wall. At the far end of the room Waleran and Bishop Henry were sitting at a table. Philip was stopped by a steward who said: “The bishops are at breakfast,” as if that meant Philip could not see them.
“I’ll join them at table,” Philip said.
“You’d better wait,” the steward said.
Philip decided that the steward had taken him for an ordinary monk. “I’m the prior of Kingsbridge,” he said.
The steward shrugged and stood aside.
Philip approached the table. Bishop Henry was at the head, with Waleran on his right. Henry was a short, broad-shouldered man with a pugnacious face. He was about the same age as Waleran, a year or two older than Philip; no more than thirty. However, by contrast with Waleran