The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [545]
Jack studied Waleran’s pale, thin face, searching for evidence of guile. The old man just looked weary, beaten and remorseful. If he was up to something, Jack could see no sign of it. “But William died in the wreck of the White Ship,” Jack said.
“That shipwreck was no accident,” Waleran said.
Jack was jolted. Could this be true? The heir to the throne, murdered just because a group of barons wanted a weak monarchy? But it was no more shocking than the murder of an archbishop. “Go on,” he said.
“The barons’ men scuttled the ship and escaped in a boat. Everybody else drowned, except for one man who clung to a spar and floated ashore.”
“That was my father,” Jack said. He was beginning to see where this was leading.
Waleran’s face was white and his lips were bloodless. He spoke without emotion, and did not meet Jack’s eyes. “He was beached near a castle that belonged to one of the conspirators, and they caught him. The man had no interest in exposing them. Indeed, he never realized that the ship had been scuttled. But he had seen things which would have revealed the truth to others, if he had been allowed to go free and talk about his experience. So they kidnapped him, brought him to England, and put him in the care of some people they could trust.”
Jack felt profoundly sad. All his father had ever wanted to do was entertain people, Mother said. But there was something strange about Waleran’s story. “Why didn’t they kill him right away?” Jack said.
“They should have,” Waleran said unemotionally. “But he was an innocent man, a jongleur, someone who gave everyone pleasure. They couldn’t bring themselves to do it.” He gave a mirthless smile. “Even the most ruthless people have some scruples, ultimately.”
“Then why did they change their minds?”
“Because eventually he became dangerous, even here. At first he threatened no one—he couldn’t even speak English. But he learned, of course, and he began to make friends. So they locked him in the prison cell below the dormitory. Then people began to ask why he was locked away. He became an embarrassment. They realized they would never rest easy while he was alive. So in the end they told us to kill him.”
So easy, thought Jack. “But why did you obey them?”
“We were ambitious, all three of us,” Waleran said, and for the first time his face showed emotion, as his mouth twisted in a grimace of remorse. “Percy Hamleigh, Prior James, and me. Your mother told the truth—we all were rewarded. I became an archdeacon, and my career in the church was off to a splendid start. Percy Hamleigh became a substantial landowner. Prior James got a useful addition to the priory property.”
“And the barons?”
“After the shipwreck, Henry was attacked, in the following three years, by Fulk of Anjou, William Clito in Normandy, and the king of France. For a while he looked very vulnerable. But he defeated his enemies and ruled for another ten years. However, the anarchy the barons wanted did come in the end, when Henry died without a male heir, and Stephen came to the throne. While the civil war raged for the next two decades, the barons ruled like kings in their own territories, with no central authority to curb them.”
“And my father died for that.”
“Even that turned sour. Most of those barons died in the fighting, and some of their sons did too. And the little lies we had told in this part of the country, to get your father killed, eventually came back to haunt us. Your mother cursed us, after the hanging, and she cursed us well. Prior James was destroyed by the knowledge of what he had done, as Remigius said at the nepotism trial. Percy Hamleigh died before the truth came out, but his son was hanged. And look at me: my act of perjury was thrown back at me almost fifty years later, and it ended my career.” Waleran was looking gray-faced and exhausted, as if his rigid self-control was a terrible strain. “We were all afraid of your mother, because we weren’t sure what she knew. In the end it wasn’t much at all, but it was enough.”
Jack felt as drained as Waleran appeared. At last he had learned