The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [258]
The sly prior had a crafty setup, William observed enviously. The people who came to work on the cathedral would spend money at the market. People who came to the market would give a few hours to the cathedral, for their sins. Each hand washed the other.
He kicked his horse forward and rode across the graveyard to the building site, curious to see it more closely.
The eight massive piers of the arcade marched down either side of the site in four opposed pairs. From a distance, William had thought he could see the round arches joining one pier with the next, but now he realized the arches were not built yet—what he had seen was the wooden falsework, made in the same shape, upon which the stones would rest while the arches were being constructed and the mortar was drying. The falsework did not rest on the ground, but was supported on the out-jutting moldings of the capitals on top of the piers.
Parallel with the arcade, the outer walls of the aisles were going up, with regular spaces for the windows. Midway between each window opening, a buttress jutted out from the line of the wall. Looking at the open ends of the unfinished walls, William could see that they were not solid stone: they were in fact double walls with a space in between. The cavity appeared to be filled with rubble and mortar.
The scaffolding was made of stout poles roped together, with trestles of flexible saplings and woven reeds laid across the poles.
A lot of money had been spent here, William noted.
He rode on around the outside of the chancel, followed by his knights. Against the walls were wooden lean-to huts, workshops and lodges for the craftsmen. Most of them were locked shut now, for there were no masons laying stones or carpenters making falsework today. However, the supervising craftsmen—the master masons and the master carpenter—were directing the volunteer laborers, telling them where to stack the stones, timber, sand and lime they were carrying up from the riverside.
William rode around the east end of the church to the south side, where his way was blocked by the monastic buildings. Then he turned back, marveling at the cunning of Prior Philip, who had his master craftsmen busy on a Sunday and his laborers working for no pay.
As he reflected on what he was seeing, it seemed devastatingly clear that Prior Philip was largely responsible for the decline in the fortunes of the Shiring earldom. The farms were losing their young men to the building site, and Shiring—jewel of the earldom—was being eclipsed by the growing new town of Kingsbridge. Residents here paid rent to Philip, not William, and people who bought and sold goods at this market generated income for the priory, not the earldom. And Philip had the timber, the sheep farms and the quarry that had once enriched the earl.
William and his men rode back across the close to the market. He decided to take a closer look. He urged his horse into the crowd. It inched forward. The people did not scatter fearfully out of his path. When the horse nudged them, they looked up at William with irritation or annoyance rather than dread, and moved out of the way in their own good time, with a somewhat condescending air. Nobody here was frightened of him. It made him nervous. If people were not scared there was no telling what they might do.
He went down one row and back up the next, with his knights trailing behind him. He became frustrated with the slow movement of the crowd. It would have been quicker to walk; but then, he felt sure, these insubordinate Kingsbridge people would probably have been cocky enough to jostle him.
He was halfway along the return aisle when he saw Aliena.
He reined in abruptly and stared at her, transfixed.
She was no longer the thin, strained, frightened girl in clogs that he had seen here on Whitsunday three years ago. Her face, then drawn with tension, had filled out again, and she had a happy, healthy look. Her dark eyes flashed with humor and her curls tumbled about