The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [295]
In the last few weeks he had become dissatisfied and depressed with this hopeless daydreaming. Seeing her from a distance and overhearing her conversations with other people and imagining making love to her were no longer enough. He needed the real thing.
There were several girls his own age who might have given him the real thing. Among the apprentices there was much talk about which of the young women in Kingsbridge were randy and exactly what each of them would let a young man do. Most of them were determined to remain virgins until they were married, according to the teachings of the Church, but there were certain things you could do and still remain a virgin, or so the apprentices said. The girls all thought Jack was a little strange—they were probably right, he felt—but one or two of them found his strangeness appealing. One Sunday after church he had struck up a conversation with Edith, the sister of a fellow apprentice; but when he had talked about how he loved to carve stone, she had started to giggle. The following Sunday he had gone walking in the fields with Ann, the blond daughter of the tailor. He had not said much to her, but he had kissed her, and then suggested they lie down in a field of green barley. He had kissed her again and touched her breasts, and she had kissed him back, enthusiastically; but after a while she had pulled away from him and said: “Who is she?” Jack had been thinking about Aliena at that very moment and he was thunderstruck. He had tried to brush it aside, and kiss her again, but she turned her face away, and said: “Whoever she is, she’s a lucky girl.” They had walked back to Kingsbridge together, and when they separated Ann had said: “Don’t waste time trying to forget her. It’s a lost cause. She’s the one you want, so you’d better try and get her.” She had smiled at him fondly and added: “You’ve got a nice face. It might not be as difficult as you think.”
Her kindness made him feel bad, the more so because she was one of the girls the apprentices said were randy, and he had told everyone that he was going to try to feel her up. Now such talk seemed so juvenile that it made him squirm. But if he had told her the name of the woman who was on his mind, Ann might not have been so encouraging. Jack and Aliena were about the most unlikely match conceivable. Aliena was twenty-two years old and he was seventeen; she was the daughter of an earl and he was a bastard; she was a wealthy wool merchant and he was a penniless apprentice. Worse still, she was famous for the number of suitors she had rejected. Every presentable young lord in the county, and every prosperous merchant’s eldest son, had come to Kingsbridge to pay court to her, and all had gone away disappointed. What chance was there for Jack, who had nothing to offer, unless it was “a nice face”?
He and Aliena had one thing in common: they liked the forest. They were peculiar in this: most people preferred the safety of the fields and villages, and stayed away from the forest. But Aliena often walked in the woodlands near Kingsbridge, and there was a particular secluded spot where she liked to stop and sit down. He had seen her there once or twice. She had not seen him: he walked silently, as he had learned to in childhood, when he had had to find his dinner in the forest.
He was heading for her clearing without any idea of what he would do if he found her there. He knew what he would like to do: lie down beside her and stroke her body. He could talk to her, but what would he say? It was easy to talk to girls of his own age. He had teased Edith, saying: “I don’t believe any of the terrible things your brother says about you,” and of course she had wanted to know what the terrible things were. With Ann he had been direct: “Would you like to walk in the fields with me this afternoon?” But when he tried to come up with an