The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [47]
“Philip.”
“Ah, yes, I remember. And your brother’s?”
“Francis.”
“That’s right.” The abbot looked at the bleeding bodies on the earth floor. “That’s your Mam, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Philip, and he felt panic come over him as he pointed to the mutilated body of his father and said: “And that’s my Da!”
“I know,” the monk said soothingly. “You mustn’t scream anymore, you must answer my questions. Do you understand that they’re dead?”
“I don’t know,” Philip said miserably. He knew what it meant when animals died, but how could that happen to Mam and Da?
Abbot Peter said: “It’s like going to sleep.”
“But their eyes are open!” Philip yelled.
“Hush. We’d better close them, then.”
“Yes,” Philip said. He felt as if that would resolve something.
Abbot Peter stood up, took Philip and Francis by the hand, and led them across the floor to their father’s body. He knelt down and took Philip’s right hand in his. “I’ll show you how,” he said. He moved Philip’s hand over his father’s face, but suddenly Philip was afraid to touch his father, because the body looked so strange, pale and slack and hideously wounded, and he snatched his hand away. Then he looked anxiously at Abbot Peter—a man no one disobeyed—but the abbot was not angry with him. “Come,” he said gently, and took Philip’s hand again. This time Philip did not resist. Holding Philip’s forefinger between his own thumb and finger, the monk made the boy touch his father’s eyelid and bring it down until it covered the dreadfully staring eyeball. Then the abbot released Philip’s hand and said: “Close his other eye.” Unaided now, Philip reached out, touched his father’s eyelid, and closed it. Then he felt better.
Abbot Peter said: “Shall we close your Mam’s eyes, too?”
“Yes.”
They knelt beside her body. The abbot wiped blood off her face with his sleeve. Philip said: “What about Francis?”
“Perhaps he should help, too,” said the abbot.
“Do what I did, Francis,” Philip said to his brother. “Close Mam’s eyes, like I closed Da’s, so she can sleep.”
“Are they asleep?” said Francis.
“No, but it’s like sleeping,” Philip said authoritatively, “so she should have her eyes shut.”
“All right, then,” said Francis, and without hesitation he reached out a chubby hand and carefully closed his mother’s eyes.
Then the abbot picked them both up, one in each arm, and without another glance at the men-at-arms he carried them out of the house and all the way up the steep hillside path to the sanctuary of the monastery.
He fed them in the monastery kitchen; then, so that they should not be left idle with their thoughts, he told them to help the cook prepare the monks’ supper. On the following day he took them to see their parents’ bodies, washed and dressed and with the wounds cleaned and repaired and partly concealed, lying in coffins side by side in the nave of the church. There too were several of their relatives, for not all the villagers had made it to the monastery in time to escape the invading army. Abbot Peter took them to the funeral, and made sure they watched the two coffins being lowered into the single grave. When Philip cried, Francis cried too. Someone hushed them, but Abbot Peter said: “Let them weep.” Only after that, when they had taken to their hearts the knowledge that their parents had really gone and were never coming back, did he at last talk about the future.
Among their relatives there was not a single family left entire: in every case, either the father or the mother had been killed. There were no relations to look after the boys. That left two options. They could be given, or even sold, to a farmer who would use them as