The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [490]
Waleran nodded. “It will cost money, of course, but I think it can be done.”
“Money?” William said with sudden anxiety. “How much?”
“It’s hard to say. In somewhere like Lincoln or Bristol, the shrievalty would cost you five or six hundred pounds; but the sheriffs of those towns are richer than cardinals. For a little place such as Shiring, if you’re the candidate the king wants—which I can take care of—you can probably get it for a hundred pounds.”
“A hundred pounds!” William’s hopes collapsed. He had been afraid of disappointment, right from the start. “If I had a hundred pounds I wouldn’t be living like this!” he said bitterly.
“You can get it,” Waleran said lightly.
“Who from?” William was struck by a thought. “Will you give it to me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Waleran said with infuriating condescension. “That’s what Jews are for.”
William realized, with a familiar mixture of hope and resentment, that once again the bishop was right.
It was two years since the first cracks had appeared, and Jack had not found a solution to the problem. Worse still, identical cracks had appeared in the first bay of the nave. There was something crucially wrong with his design. The structure was strong enough to support the weight of the vault, but not to resist the winds that blew so hard against the high walls.
He stood on the scaffolding far above the ground, staring close-range at the new cracks, brooding. He needed to think of a way of bracing the upper part of the wall so that it would not move with the wind.
He reflected on the way the lower part of the wall was strengthened. In the outer wall of the aisle were strong, thick piers which were connected to the nave wall by half-arches hidden in the aisle roof. The half-arches and the piers propped up the wall at a distance, like remote buttresses. Because the props were hidden, the nave looked light and graceful.
He needed to devise a similar system for the upper part of the wall. He could make a two-story side aisle, and simply repeat the remote buttressing; but that would block the light coming in through the clerestory—and the whole idea of the new style of building was to bring more light into the church.
Of course, it was not the aisle as such that did the work: the support came from the heavy piers in the side wall and the connecting half-arches. The aisle concealed these structural elements. If only he could build piers and half-arches to support the clerestory without incorporating them into an aisle, he could solve the problem at a stroke.
A voice called him from the ground.
He frowned. He had been on to something before he was interrupted, he felt, but now it had gone. He looked down. Prior Philip was calling him.
He went into the turret and descended the spiral staircase. Philip was waiting for him at the bottom. The prior was so angry he was steaming. “Richard has betrayed me!” he said without preamble.
Jack was surprised. “How?”
Philip did not answer the question at first. “After all I’ve done for him,” he raged. “I bought Aliena’s wool when everyone else was bent on cheating her—if it hadn’t been for me she might never have got started. Then when that fell apart I got him a job as Head of the Watch. And last November I tipped him off about the peace treaty, and that enabled him to seize Earlscastle. And now that he’s won back the earldom, and he’s ruling in splendor, he has turned his back on me.”
Jack had never seen Philip quite so livid. The prior’s shaved head was red with indignation and he was spluttering as he spoke. “In what way has Richard betrayed you?” Jack said.
Once again Philip ignored the question. “I always knew Richard was a weak character. He gave Aliena very little support, over the years—just took from her what he wanted and never considered her needs. But I didn’t think he was an out-and-out villain.”
“What exactly has he done?