The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [337]
William heard his name called over the screams of the crowd. He reined in his horse and met Philip’s eye.
Philip yelled: “You’ll go to hell for this!”
William’s face was suffused with bloodlust. Even the threat of what he feared most had no effect on him today. He was like a madman. He waved his firebrand in the air like a banner. “This is hell, monk!” he shouted back; and he wheeled his horse and rode on.
Suddenly everyone had disappeared, the riders and the crowds. Jack released his hold on Aliena and stood up. His right hand felt numb. He remembered that he had taken the blow aimed at Aliena’s head. He was glad his hand hurt. He hoped it would hurt for a long time, to remind him.
The storehouse was an inferno, and smaller fires burned all around. The ground was littered with bodies, some moving, some bleeding, some limp and still. Apart from the crackle of the flames it was quiet. The mob had got out, one way or another, leaving their dead and wounded behind. Jack felt dazed. He had never seen a battlefield but he imagined it must look like this.
Aliena started to cry. Jack put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She pushed it off. He had saved her life, but she did not care for that: she cared only for her damned wool, which was now irretrievably lost in smoke. He looked at her for a moment, feeling sad. Most of her hair had burned away, and she no longer looked beautiful, but he loved her all the same. It hurt him to see her so distraught, and not to be able to comfort her.
He felt sure she would not try to go into the storehouse now. He was worried about the rest of his family, so he left Aliena and went looking for them.
His face hurt. He put a hand to his cheek, and his own touch stung him. He must have got burned too. He looked at the bodies on the ground. He wanted to do something for the wounded, but he did not know where to begin. He searched for familiar faces among the strangers, hoping not to see any. Mother and Martha had gone to the cloisters—they had been well ahead of the mob, he thought. Had Tom found Alfred? He turned toward the cloisters. Then he saw Tom.
His stepfather’s tall body was stretched out full length on the muddy ground. It was perfectly still. His face was recognizable, even peaceful-looking, up to the eyebrows; but his forehead was open and his skull was completely smashed. Jack was appalled. He could not take it in. Tom could not be dead. But this thing could not be alive. He looked away, then looked back. It was Tom, and he was dead.
Jack knelt beside the body. He felt the urge to do something, or say something, and for the first time he understood why people liked to pray for the dead. “Mother is going to miss you terribly,” he said. He remembered the angry speech he had made to Tom on the day of his fight with Alfred. “Most of that wasn’t true,” he said, and the tears started to flow. “You didn’t fail me. You fed me and took care of me, and you made my mother happy, truly happy.” But there was something more important than all that, he thought. What Tom had given him was nothing so commonplace as food and shelter. Tom had given him something unique, something no other man had to give, something even his own father could not have given him; something that was a passion, a skill, an art, and a way of life. “You gave me the cathedral,” Jack whispered to the dead man. “Thank you.”
PART FOUR
1142-1145
Chapter 11
WILLIAM’S TRIUMPH WAS RUINED by Philip’s prophecy: instead of feeling satisfied and jubilant, he was terrified that he would go to hell for what he had done.
He had answered Philip bravely enough, jeering “This is hell, monk!” but that had been in the excitement of the attack. When it was over, and he had led his men away from the blazing town; when their horses and their heartbeats had slowed down; when he had time to look back over the raid, and think of how many people he had wounded and burned and killed; then he recalled Philip’s angry