The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [558]
He began to feel frightened and decided it was a mistake to think about spirits. He was hungry. Was it time for his snap? He had no idea, but he thought he might as well eat it. He found his way to the place where he had hung his clothes, fumbled on the ground below, and found his flask and tin.
He sat with his back against the wall and took a long drink of cold, sweet tea. As he was eating his bread and dripping, he heard a faint noise. He hoped it might be the creaking of Rhys Price’s boots, but that was wishful thinking. He knew that squeak: it was rats.
He was not afraid. There were plenty of rats in the ditches that ran along every street in Aberowen. But they seemed bolder in the dark, and a moment later one ran over his bare legs. Transferring his food to his left hand, he picked up his shovel and lashed out. It did not even scare them, and he felt the tiny claws on his skin again. This time one tried to run up his arm. Obviously they could smell the food. The squeaking increased, and he wondered how many there were.
He stood up and crammed the last of his bread into his mouth. He drank some more tea, then ate his cake. It was delicious, full of dried fruit and almonds; but a rat ran up his leg, and he was forced to gobble the cake.
They seemed to know the food was gone, for the squeaking gradually died down and then stopped altogether.
Eating gave Billy renewed energy for a while, and he went back to work, but he had a burning ache in his back. He kept going more slowly, stopping for frequent rests.
To cheer himself up, he told himself it might be later than he thought. Perhaps it was noon already. Someone would come to fetch him at the end of the shift. The lamp man checked the numbers, so they always knew if a man had not come back up. But Price had taken Billy’s lamp and substituted a different one. Could he be planning to leave Billy down here overnight?
It would never work. Da would raise the roof. The bosses were afraid of Da—Perceval Jones had more or less admitted it. Sooner or later, someone was sure to look for Billy.
But when he got hungry again, he felt sure many hours must have passed. He started to get scared, and this time he could not shake it off. It was the darkness that unnerved him. He could have borne the waiting if he had been able to see. In the complete blackness he felt he was losing his mind. He had no sense of direction, and every time he walked back from the dram, he wondered if he was about to crash into the tunnel side. Earlier he had worried about crying like a child. Now he had to stop himself from screaming.
Then he recalled what Mam had said to him: “Jesus is always with you, even down the pit.” At the time he had thought she was just telling him to behave well. But she had been wiser than that. Of course Jesus was with him. Jesus was everywhere. The darkness did not matter, nor the passage of time. Billy had someone taking care of him.
To remind him of that, he sang a hymn. He disliked his voice, which was still a treble, but there was no one to hear him, so he sang as loud as he could. When he had sung all the verses, and the scary feeling began to return, he imagined Jesus standing just on the other side of the dram, watching, with a look of grave compassion on his bearded face.
Billy sang another hymn. He shoveled and paced to the time of the music. Most of the hymns went with a swing. Every now and then, he suffered again the fear that he might have been forgotten, the shift might have ended and he might be alone down there; then he would just remember the robed figure standing with him in the dark.
He knew plenty of hymns. He had been going to the Bethesda Chapel three times every Sunday since he was old enough to sit quietly. Hymnbooks were expensive, and not all the congregation could read, so everyone learned the words.
When he had sung twelve hymns, he reckoned an hour had passed. Surely