The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [360]
He was picturing himself lying on a bed of autumn leaves and passing gently into death, when he saw Mother cross the bridge. She was leading a horse.
He got to his feet and ran to her. The horse was the chestnut mare she always rode. “I want you to take my mare,” she said.
He took her hand and squeezed it by way of thanks.
Tears came to her eyes. “I never did look after you very well,” she said. “First I brought you up wild, in the forest. Then I let you nearly starve with Tom. Then I made you live with Alfred.”
“You looked after me fine, Mother,” he said. “I made love to Aliena this morning. Now I can die happy.”
“You foolish boy,” she said. “You’re just like me. If you can’t have the lover you want, you won’t have anyone else.”
“Is that how you are?” he said.
She nodded. “After your father died, I lived alone rather than take second best. I never wanted another man until I saw Tom. That was eleven years later.” She detached her hand from his. “I’m telling you this for a reason. It may take eleven years, but you will love someone else one day; I promise you.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“I know.” She looked nervously back over her shoulder at the town. “You’d better go.”
He walked over to the horse. It was loaded with two bulging saddlebags. “What’s in the bags?” he asked.
“Some food and money, and a full wineskin, in this one,” she replied. “The other contains Tom’s tools.”
Jack was moved. Mother had insisted on keeping Tom’s tools after he died, as a memento. Now she was passing them on to him. He hugged her. “Thank you,” he said.
“Where will you go?” she asked him.
He thought again of his father. “Where do jongleurs tell their tales?” he asked.
“On the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela.”
“Do you think the jongleurs might remember Jack Shareburg?”
“They might. Tell them he looked like you.”
“Where’s Compostela?”
“In Spain.”
“Then I’m going to Spain.”
“It’s a long way, Jack.”
“I’ve got time.”
She put her arms around him and hugged him tight. He wondered how many times she had done that in the last eighteen years, comforting him over a grazed knee, a lost toy, a boyish disappointment—and now a grief that was all too grown-up. He thought of the things she had done, from raising him in the forest to getting him out of the punishment cell. She had always been willing to fight like a cat for her son. It hurt to leave her.
She let him go, and he swung up onto the horse.
He looked back at Kingsbridge. It had been a sleepy village with an old, tumbledown cathedral when he first came here. He had set fire to that old cathedral, although not a soul knew it but him. Now Kingsbridge was a busy, self-important little town. Well, there were other towns. It was a wrench to go, but he was on the edge of the unknown, about to embark on an adventure, and that eased the pain of leaving everything he loved.
Mother said: “Come back, one day, please, Jack.”
“I’ll come back.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“If you run out of money before you find work, sell the horse, not the tools,” she said.
“I love you, Mother,” he said.
Her eyes overflowed. “Take care of yourself, my son.”
He kicked the horse, and it walked away. He turned and waved. She waved back. Then he kicked it into a trot, and after that he did not look back.
Richard came home just in time for the wedding.
King Stephen had generously given him two days’ leave, he explained. The king’s army was at Oxford, laying siege to the castle, where they had Maud trapped, so there was nothing much for the knights to do. “I couldn’t miss my sister’s wedding day,” Richard said, and Aliena sourly thought: You just want to make dead sure the deed is done, so that you get what Alfred has promised you.
Still, she was glad he was there to walk her to the church and give her away. Otherwise she would have had nobody.
She put on a new linen undershirt and a white dress in the latest style. There was not much