The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [423]
As Philip talked, Jack wondered what William Hamleigh was doing. Earlscastle was a day’s hard ride from Kingsbridge, but William would not try to do it in a day, for then his army would arrive exhausted. They would set out this morning at sunrise. They would not ride all together, but would separate, and cover their weapons and armor as they traveled, to avoid raising the alarm. They would rendezvous discreetly in the afternoon, somewhere just an hour or two from Kingsbridge, probably at the manor house of one of William’s larger tenants. In the evening they would drink beer and sharpen their blades and tell one another grisly stories about previous triumphs, young men mutilated, old men trampled beneath the hooves of war-horses, girls raped and women sodomized, children beheaded and babies spitted on the points of swords while their mothers screamed in anguish. Then they would attack tomorrow morning. Jack shuddered with fear. But this time we’re going to stop them, he thought. All the same he was scared.
Each team of monks located its own stretch of wall and its source of raw materials. Then, as the first hint of dawn paled the eastern horizon, they went around their assigned neighborhood, knocking on doors, waking the inhabitants while the monastery bell rang urgently.
By sunrise the operation was in full swing. The younger men and women did the laboring while the older ones supplied food and drink and the children ran errands and carried messages. Jack toured the site constantly, monitoring progress anxiously. He told a mortar maker to use less lime, so that the mortar would set faster. He saw a carpenter making a fence with scaffolding poles, and told his laborers to use cut timber from a different stockpile. He made sure that the different sections of the wall would meet in a clean join. And he joked, smiled, and encouraged people constantly.
The sun came up into a clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. The priory kitchen supplied barrels of beer, but Philip ordered it to be watered, and Jack approved, for people who were working hard would drink a lot in this weather, and he did not want them falling asleep.
Despite the awful danger there was an incongruous air of jollity. It was like a holiday, when the whole town did something together, like making bread on Lammas Day or floating candles downstream on Midsummer Eve. People seemed to forget the peril which was the reason for their activity. However, Philip did see a few people discreetly leaving town. Either they were going to take their chances in the forest, or more likely they had relations in outlying villages who would take them in. Nevertheless, nearly everyone stayed.
At noon Philip rang the bell again, and work stopped for dinner. Philip made a tour of the wall with Jack while the workers were eating. Despite all the activity they did not seem to have achieved much. The stone walls had only reached ground level, the earth ramparts were still low mounds, and there were vast gaps in the wooden fence.
At the end of their tour Philip said: “Are we going to finish in time?”
Jack had been purposely cheerful and optimistic all morning, but now he forced himself to make a realistic assessment. “At this rate, no,” he said despondently.
“What can we do to speed things up?”
“The only way to build faster is to build worse, normally.”
“Then let’s build worse—but how?”
Jack considered. “At the moment we’ve got masons building walls, carpenters building fences, laborers making earthworks, and townspeople fetching and carrying. But most carpenters can build a straightforward wall, and most laborers can put up a wooden fence. So let’s get the carpenters to help the masons with the stonework, have the laborers build the fences, and let the townspeople dig the ditch and throw up