The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [450]
II
One morning four weeks after the great storm, Martha asked Jack for more money. Jack was surprised. He already gave her sixpence a week for housekeeping, and he knew that Aliena gave her the same. On that she had to feed four adults and two children, and supply two houses with firewood and rushes; but there were plenty of big families in Kingsbridge who only had sixpence a week for everything, food and clothing and rent too. He asked her why she needed more.
She looked embarrassed. “All the prices have gone up. The baker wants a penny for a four-pound loaf, and—”
“A penny! For a four-pounder?” Jack was outraged. “We should make an oven and bake our own.”
“Well, sometimes I do pan bread.”
“That’s right.” Jack realized they had had pan-baked bread two or three times during the last week or so.
Martha said: “But the price of flour has gone up too, so we don’t save much.”
“We should buy wheat and grind it ourselves.”
“It’s not allowed. We’re supposed to use the priory mill. Anyway, wheat is expensive also.”
“Of course.” Jack realized he was being silly. Bread was dear because flour was dear, and flour was dear because wheat was dear, and wheat was dear because the storm had wiped out the harvest, and there was no getting away from it. He saw that Martha looked troubled. She always got very upset if she thought he was displeased. He smiled to show her it was all right, and patted her shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he said.
“You sound so cross.”
“Not with you.” He felt guilty. Martha would rather cut off her hand than cheat him, he knew. He did not really understand why she was so devoted to him. If it was love, he thought, surely she would have got fed up by now, for she and the whole world knew that Aliena was the love of his life. He had once contemplated sending her away, to force her out of her rut: that way perhaps she would fall for a suitable man. But he knew in his heart that it would not work and would only make her desperately unhappy. So he let it be.
He reached inside his tunic for his purse, and took out three silver pennies. “You’d better have twelvepence a week, and see if you can manage on that,” he said. It seemed a lot. His pay was only twenty-four pennies a week, although he got perquisites as well, candles and robes and boots.
He swallowed the rest of a mug of beer and went out. It was unusually cold for early autumn. The weather was still strange. He walked briskly along the street and entered the priory close. It was still a little before sunrise and only a handful of craftsmen were here. He walked up the nave, looking at the foundations. They were almost complete, which was fortunate, as the mortar work would probably have to stop early this year because of the cold weather.
He looked up at the new transepts. His pleasure in his own creation was blighted by the cracks. They had reappeared on the day after the great storm. He was terribly disappointed. It had been a phenomenal tempest, of course, but his church was designed to survive a hundred such storms. He shook his head in perplexity, and climbed the turret stairs to the gallery. He wished he could talk to someone who had built a similar church, but nobody in England had, and even in France they had not yet gone this high.
On impulse, he did not go to his tracing floor, but continued up the staircase to the roof. The lead had all been laid, and he saw that the pinnacle that had been blocking the flow of rainwater now had a generous gutter running through its base. It was windy up on the roof, and he tried to keep hold of something whenever he was near the edge: he would not be the first builder to be blown off a roof to his death by a gust of wind. The wind always seemed stronger up here than it did on the ground. In fact, the wind seemed to increase disproportionately as you climbed....
He stood still, staring into space. That was the answer to his puzzle. It was not the weight of his vault that was causing the cracks—it was the height. He had built the church strong enough to bear