The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [449]
“You make it sound easy,” Elizabeth said wistfully.
“No, it’s not easy, but if you’re patient, and don’t get discouraged too easily, you can do it.”
“I think I can,” she said determinedly. “I really think I can.”
Eventually they began to doze. Every now and again the wind would howl and wake Aliena. Looking around in the fitful candlelight she saw that most of the adults were doing the same, sitting upright, nodding off for a while, then waking up suddenly.
It must have been around midnight that she woke with a start and realized that she had slept for an hour or more this time. Almost everyone around her was fast asleep. She shifted her position, lying flat on the floor, and wrapped her cloak tightly around her. The storm was not letting up, but people’s need for sleep had overcome their anxiety. The sound of the rain blowing against the walls of the church was like waves crashing on a beach, and instead of keeping her awake it now lulled her to sleep.
Once again she woke with a start. She wondered what had disturbed her. She listened: silence. The storm had ended. A faint gray light seeped in through the windows. All the villagers were fast asleep.
Aliena got up. Her movement disturbed Elizabeth, who came awake instantly.
They both had the same thought. They went to the church door, opened it, and stepped outside.
The rain had stopped and the wind was no more than a breeze. The sun had not yet risen, but the dawn sky was pearl-gray. Aliena and Elizabeth looked around them in the clear, watery light.
The village was gone.
Other than the church there was not a single building left standing. The entire area had been flattened. A few heavy timbers had come to rest up against the side of the church, but otherwise only the hearthstones dotted around in the sea of mud showed where there had been houses. At the edges of what had been the village, there were five or six mature trees, oaks and chestnuts, still standing, although each of them appeared to have lost several boughs. There were no young trees left at all.
Stunned by the completeness of the devastation, Aliena and Elizabeth walked along what had been the street. The ground was littered with splintered wood and dead birds. They came to the first of the wheat fields. It looked as if a large herd of cattle had been penned there for the night. The ripening stalks of wheat had been flattened, broken, uprooted and washed away. The earth was churned up and waterlogged.
Aliena was horrified. “Oh, God,” she muttered. “What will the people eat?”
They struck out across the field. The damage was the same everywhere. They climbed a low hill and surveyed the surrounding countryside from the top. Every way they looked, they saw ruined crops, dead sheep, blasted trees, flooded meadows and flattened houses. The destruction was appalling, and it filled Aliena with a dreadful sense of tragedy. It looked, she thought, as if the hand of God had come down over England and struck the earth, destroying everything men had made except churches.
The devastation had shocked Elizabeth too. “It’s terrible,” she said. “I can’t believe it. There’s nothing left.”
Aliena nodded grimly. “Nothing,” she echoed. “There’ll be no harvest this year.”
“What will the people do?”
“I don’t know.” Feeling a mixture of compassion and fear, Aliena