The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [374]
Alfred looked blank for a moment; then his face cleared. “Yes. Right. We’ll start at the west end and clear rubble out into the open space.”
“Good.” Philip left him and pushed through the crowd to Milius. He heard Milius say: “Carry the wounded well clear of the church and put them on the grass. Take the dead bodies out to the north side.” He moved away, content as always to trust Milius to do the right thing. He saw Randolph Infirmarer clambering over the rubble and hurried after him. They both picked their way across the piles of ruined stonework. Outside the church at the west end was a crowd of people who had managed to get out before the worst of the collapse and so escaped injury. “Use those people,” Philip said to Randolph. “Send someone to the infirmary to fetch your equipment and supplies. Have a few of them go to the kitchen for hot water. Ask the cellarer for strong wine for those who need reviving. Make sure you lay the dead and injured out in neat lines with spaces between them, so that your helpers don’t fall over the bodies.”
He looked around. The survivors were going to work. Many of those who had been sheltered by the intact east end had followed Philip across the rubble and had already started to remove the bodies. One or two of the injured who had only been dazed or stunned were getting to their feet unaided. Philip saw an old woman sitting on the floor looking bewildered. He recognized her as Maud Silver, the widow of a silversmith. He helped her up and led her away from the wreckage. “What happened?” she said, not looking at him. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Nor do I, Maud,” he said.
As he returned to help someone else, Bishop Waleran’s words sounded again in his mind: This is what comes of your damned arrogance, Philip. The accusation cut him to the quick because he thought it might be true. He was always pushing for more, better, faster. He had pushed Alfred to finish the vault just as he had pushed for a fleece fair and pushed to get the earl of Shiring’s quarry. In each case the result had been tragedy: the slaughter of the quarrymen, the burning of Kingsbridge, and now this. Clearly ambition was to blame. Monks did better to live a life of resignation, accepting the tribulations and setbacks of this world as lessons in patience, taught by the Almighty.
As Philip helped to carry the groaning wounded and the unresisting dead out of the ruins of his cathedral, he resolved that in the future he would leave it to God to be ambitious and pushing: he, Philip, would passively accept whatever happened. If God wanted a cathedral, God would provide a quarry; if the town was burned, it should be taken as a sign that God did not want a fleece fair; and now that the church had fallen down, Philip would not rebuild it.
As he reached that decision, he saw William Hamleigh.
The new earl of Shiring was sitting on the floor in the third bay, near the north aisle, ashen-faced and trembling with pain, with his foot trapped under a big stone. Philip wondered, as he helped roll the stone away, why God had chosen to let so many good people die but had spared an animal such as William.
William was making a great fuss about the pain in his foot but was otherwise all right. They helped him to his feet. He leaned on the shoulder of a big man about his own size and began to hop away. Then a baby cried.
Everyone heard it. There were no babies in sight. They all looked around, mystified. The crying came again, and Philip realized it was coming from beneath a massive pile of stones in the aisle. “Over here!” he called. He caught Alfred’s eye and beckoned him. “There’s a baby alive under all that,” he said.
They all listened to the crying. It sounded like a very small baby, not yet a month old. “You’re right,” Alfred said. “Let’s shift some of those big stones.” He and his helpers began to move rubble from a pile that completely blocked the arch of the third bay. Philip joined in. He could not think which of the townswomen had given