The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [441]
William was frightened by her great shuddering gasps and her staring eyes. She kept looking at him, as if she expected him to do something. He was so scared he decided to leave the room, and he turned away; then he saw the maid standing at the door, and he felt ashamed of his fear. He forced himself to look at Mother again. Her face seemed to change shape continually in the inconstant light of the one candle. Her hoarse, ragged breathing got louder and louder until it seemed to fill his head. He could not understand why it had not woken the whole castle. He put his hands over his ears to shut out the noise but he could still hear it. It was as if she was shouting at him, the way she had when he was a boy, a mad furious scolding tirade, and her face looked angry too, the mouth wide, the eyes staring, the hair disarrayed. The conviction that she was demanding something grew, and he felt himself becoming younger and smaller, until he was possessed by a blind terror he had not felt since childhood, a terror that came from knowing that the only person he loved was a raging monster. It had always been like this: she would tell him to come to her, or go away, or get on his pony, or get off; and he would be slow to respond, so she would yell; and then he would be so frightened that he could not understand what she was asking him to do; and there would be a hysterical deadlock, with her screaming louder and louder and him becoming blind, deaf and dumb with terror.
But this time it was different.
This time, she died.
First her eyes closed. William began to feel calmer then. Gradually her breathing became shallower. Her face went grayish despite the boils. Even the candle seemed to burn more weakly, and the moving shadows no longer frightened William. At last her breathing just stopped.
“There,” William said, “she’s all right, now, isn’t she?”
The maid burst into tears.
He sat beside the bed looking at her still face. The maid fetched the priest, who said angrily: “Why didn’t you call me earlier?” William hardly heard him. He stayed with her until sunrise; then the women servants asked him to leave so they could “lay her out.” William went down to the hall where the inhabitants of the castle—knights, men-at-arms, clergymen and servants—were eating a subdued breakfast. He sat at the table beside his young wife and drank some wine. One or two of the knights and the household steward spoke to him, but he did not reply. Eventually Walter came in and sat beside him. Walter had been with him for many years and he knew when to be silent.
After a while William said: “Are the horses ready?”
Walter looked surprised. “For what?”
“For the journey to Kingsbridge. It takes two days—we have to leave this morning.”
“I didn’t think we would go—under the circumstances....”
For some reason this made William angry. “Did I say we wouldn’t go?”
“No, lord.”
‘Then we’re going!”
“Yes, lord.” Walter stood up. “I’ll see to it at once.” They set off at midmorning, William and Elizabeth and the usual entourage of knights and grooms. William felt as if he was in a dream. The landscape seemed to move past him, instead of the other way around. Elizabeth rode beside him, bruised and silent. When they stopped Walter took care of everything. At each meal William ate a little bread and drank several cups of wine. In the night he dozed fitfully.
They could see the cathedral from a distance, across the green fields, as they approached Kingsbridge. The old cathedral had been a squat, broad-shouldered building with small windows like beady eyes under round-arched eyebrows. The new church looked radically different, even though it was not finished yet. It was tall and slender, and the windows seemed impossibly big. As they came closer, William saw that it dwarfed the priory buildings around it in a way that the old cathedral never had.
The road was busy with riders and pedestrians all heading for Kingsbridge: the Whitsunday service was