The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [63]
Waleran did not press him to stay. “That will take you to the village of Bassingbourn. You’ll find a bed there. If you set out early in the morning you can be at Kingsbridge by midday.”
“Yes.” Philip turned from the window and looked at Waleran. The archdeacon was frowning into the fire, deep in thought. Philip watched him for a moment. Waleran did not share his thoughts. Philip wished he knew what was going on in that clever head. “I’ll go right away,” he said.
Waleran came out of his reverie and grew charming again. He smiled and stood up. “All right,” he said. He walked with Philip to the door and then followed him down the stairs to the yard.
A stableboy brought Philip’s horse and saddled it. Waleran might have said goodbye then and returned to his fire, but he waited. Philip guessed that he wanted to make sure Philip took the road to Kingsbridge, not the road to Shiring.
Philip mounted, feeling happier than he had when he had arrived. He was about to take his leave when he saw Tom Builder come through the gate with his family in tow. Philip said to Waleran: “This man is a builder I met on the road. He seems like an honest fellow fallen on hard times. If you need any repairs you’ll be glad of him.”
Waleran made no reply. He was staring at the family as they walked across the compound. All his poise and composure had deserted him. His mouth was open and his eyes were staring. He looked like a man suffering a shock.
“What is it?” Philip said anxiously.
“That woman!” Waleran’s voice was just above a whisper.
Philip looked at her. “She’s rather beautiful,” he said, realizing it for the first time. “But we’re taught that it is better for a priest to be chaste. Turn your eyes away, Archdeacon.”
Waleran was not listening. “I thought she was dead,” he muttered. He seemed to remember Philip suddenly. He tore his gaze from the woman and looked up at Philip, collecting his wits. “Give my regards to the prior of Kingsbridge,” he said. Then he slapped Philip’s horse’s rump, and the animal sprang forward and trotted out through the gate; and by the time Philip had shortened his reins and got the horse under control he was too far away to say goodbye.
III
Philip came within sight of Kingsbridge at about noon on the following day, as Archdeacon Waleran had forecast. He emerged from a wooded hillside and looked out across a landscape of lifeless, frozen fields relieved only by the occasional bare skeleton of a tree. There were no people to be seen, for in the dead of winter there was no work to do on the land. A couple of miles away across the cold countryside, Kingsbridge Cathedral stood on a rise; a huge, squat building like a tomb on a burial mound.
Philip followed the road into a dip and Kingsbridge disappeared from view. His placid pony picked her way carefully along the frosted ruts. Philip was thinking about Archdeacon Waleran. Waleran was so poised and confident and capable that he made Philip feel young and naive, although there was not much difference in age between them. Waleran had effortlessly controlled the whole meeting: he had got rid of his guests graciously, listened attentively to Philip’s tale, homed in immediately on the crucial problem of lack of evidence, swiftly realized that that line of inquiry was fruitless, and then promptly sent Philip on his way—without, Philip now realized, any guarantee that action would be taken.
Philip grinned ruefully as he saw how well he had been manipulated. Waleran had not even promised to tell the bishop what Philip had reported. But Philip felt confident that the large vein of ambition he detected in Waleran would ensure that the information was used somehow. He even had a notion that Waleran might feel a little indebted to him.
Because he was impressed by Waleran, he was all the more intrigued by the archdeacon’s single sign of weakness—his reaction to the wife of Tom Builder. To Philip she