The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [282]
They all went carefully down the long, narrow spiral staircase and emerged in the nave of the church at the west end. There were already a hundred or so citizens in the church, and more pouring through the three great doorways. As Philip looked out, two knights came into the cathedral courtyard, bloodstained and muddy, riding hard, obviously having come from the battle. They rode straight into the church without dismounting. When they saw the bishop one of them shouted: “The king is captured!”
Philip’s heart leaped. King Stephen was not just beaten, he was taken prisoner! The royalist forces throughout the kingdom would surely collapse now. The implications tumbled over one another in Philip’s imagination, but before he could sort them out he heard Bishop Alexander shout: “Close the doors!”
Philip could hardly believe his ears. “No!” he shouted. “You can’t do that!”
The bishop stared at him, white with fear and panic. He was not sure who Philip was. Philip had made a formal call on him, out of courtesy, but they had not spoken since. Now, with a visible effort, Alexander remembered him. “This is not your cathedral, Prior Philip, it’s mine. Close the doors!” Several priests went to do his bidding.
Philip was horrified at this display of naked self-interest by a clergyman. “You can’t lock people out,” he shouted angrily. “They might be killed!”
“If we don’t lock the doors we’ll all be killed!” Alexander screeched hysterically.
Philip grabbed him by the front of the robe. “Remember who you are,” he hissed. “We’re not supposed to be afraid—especially of death. Pull yourself together.”
“Get him off me!” Alexander screamed.
Several canons pulled Philip away.
Philip shouted at them: “Don’t you see what he’s doing?”
A canon said: “If you’re so brave, why don’t you go out there and protect them yourself?”
Philip tore himself free. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he said.
He turned around. The big central door was just closing. He dashed across the nave. Three priests were pushing it shut as more people fought to get through the narrowing gap. Philip squeezed out just before the door closed.
In the next few moments a small crowd gathered in the porch. Men and women banged on the door and screamed to be let in, but there was no response from inside the church.
Suddenly Philip was afraid. The panic on the faces of the people locked out scared him. He felt himself trembling. He had encountered a victorious army once before, at the age of six, and the horror he had felt then returned to him now. The moment when the men-at-arms had burst into his parents’ house came back as vividly as if it had happened yesterday. He stood rooted to the spot, and tried to stop shaking, while the crowd boiled around him. It was a long time since he had been tormented by this nightmare. He saw the bloodlust on the men’s faces, and the way the sword had transfixed his mother, and the awful sight of his father’s guts spilling out of his belly; and he felt again that uncomprehending, overwhelming, insane hysterical terror. Then he saw a monk come through the door with a cross in his hand, and the screaming stopped. The monk showed him and his brother how to close the eyes of his mother and father, so that they could sleep the long sleep. He remembered, as if he had just awakened from a dream, that he was not a frightened child anymore, he was a grown man and a monk; and just as Abbot Peter had rescued him and his brother on that dreadful day twenty-seven years ago, so today the grown-up Philip, strengthened by faith and protected by God, would come to the help of those in fear of their lives.
He forced himself to take a single step forward; and once he had done that the second was a little less difficult, and the third was almost easy.
When he reached the street that led to