Epic Historial Collection (121 page)

“Where did you go?” she said.

“All the way to Compostela, and even farther, to Toledo.”

“Aliena went after you—”

“She found me. Thanks to you.”

“I'm glad.” She closed her eyes as if sending up a prayer of thanks. “I'm so glad.”

She led him through the forest to the cave, which was less than a mile away: his memory had not been so bad after all. She had a blazing log fire and three sputtering rushlights. She gave him a mug of the cider she made with crab apples and wild honey, and they roasted some chestnuts. Jack could remember the items that a forest dweller could not make for herself, and he had brought his mother knives, cord, soap and salt. She began to skin a coney for the cooking pot. He said: “How are you, Mother?”

“Fine,” she said; then she looked at him and realized the question was serious. “I grieve for Tom Builder,” she said. “But he's dead and I don't care to take another husband.”

“And are you happy here, otherwise?”

“Yes and no. I'm used to living in the forest. I like being alone. I never did get used to busybody priests telling me how to behave. But I miss you, and Martha, and Aliena; and I wish I could see more of my grandson.” She smiled. “But I can never go back to live in Kingsbridge, not after cursing a Christian wedding. Prior Philip will never forgive me for that. However, it's all worth it if I've brought you and Aliena together at last.” She looked up from her work with a pleased smile. “So how do you like married life?”

“Well,” he said hesitantly, “we're not married. In the eyes of the Church, Aliena is still married to Alfred.”

“Don't be stupid. What does the Church know about it?”

“Well, they know who they've married, and they wouldn't let me build the new cathedral while I was living with another man's wife.”

Her eyes flashed anger. “So you've left her?”

“Yes. Until she can get an annulment.”

Mother put the rabbit's skin to one side. With a sharp knife in her bloody hands she began to joint the carcass, dropping the pieces into the cooking pot bubbling on the fire. “Prior Philip did that to me, once, when I was with Tom,” she said, slicing the raw meat with swift strokes. “I know why he gets so frantic about people making love. It's because he's not allowed to do it himself, and he resents other people's freedom to enjoy what is forbidden to him. Of course, there's nothing he can do about it when they're married by the Church. But if they're not, he gets the chance to spoil things for them, and that makes him feel better.” She cut off the rabbit's feet and threw them into a wooden bucket full of rubbish.

Jack nodded. He had accepted the inevitable, but every time he said good night to Aliena and walked away from her door he felt angry with Philip, and he understood his mother's persistent resentment. “It's not forever, though,” he said.

“How does Aliena feel about it?”

Jack grimaced. “Not good. But she thinks it's her fault, for marrying Alfred in the first place.”

“So it is. And it's your fault for being determined to build churches.”

He was sorry that she could not share his vision. “Mother, it's not worth building anything else. Churches are bigger and higher and more beautiful and more difficult to build, and they have more decoration and sculpture than any other kind of building.”

“And you won't be satisfied with anything less.”

“Right.”

She shook her head in perplexity. “I'll never know where you got the idea that you were destined for greatness.” She dropped the rest of the rabbit in the pot and began to clean the underside of its skin. She would use the fur. “You certainly didn't inherit it from your forebears.”

That was the cue he had been waiting for. “Mother, when I was overseas I learned some more about my forebears.”

She stopped scraping and looked at him. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I found my father's family.”

“Good God!” She dropped the rabbit skin. “How did you do that? Where are they? What are they like?”

“There's a town in Normandy called Cherbourg. That's where he came from.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I look so much like him, they thought I was a ghost.”

Mother sat down heavily on a stool. Jack felt guilty about having shocked her so badly, but he had not expected her to be so shaken by the news. She said: “What…what are his people like?”

“His father's dead, but his mother's still alive. She was kind, once she was convinced I wasn't the ghost of my father. His older brother is a carpenter with a wife and three children. My cousins.” He smiled. “Isn't that nice? We've got relations.”

The thought seemed to upset her, and she looked distressed. “Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry I didn't give you a normal upbringing.”

“I'm not,” he said lightly. He was embarrassed when his mother showed remorse: it was so out of character for her. “But I'm glad I met my cousins. Even if I never see them again, it's good to know they're there.”

She nodded sadly. “I understand.”

Jack took a deep breath. “They thought my father had drowned in a shipwreck twenty-four years ago. He was aboard a vessel called the White Ship which went down just out of Barfleur. Everyone was thought to have drowned. Obviously my father survived. But somehow they never knew that, because he never went back to Cherbourg.”

“He went to Kingsbridge,” she said.

“But
why
?”

She sighed. “He clung to a barrel and was washed ashore near a castle,” she said. “He went to the castle to report the shipwreck. There were several powerful barons at the castle, and they showed great consternation when he turned up. They took him prisoner and brought him to England. After some weeks or months—he got rather confused—he ended up in Kingsbridge.”

“Did he say anything else about the wreck?”

“Only that the ship went down very fast, as if it had been holed.”

“It sounds as if they needed to keep him out of the way.”

She nodded. “And then, when they realized they couldn't hold him prisoner forever, they killed him.”

Jack knelt in front of her and forced her to look at him. In a voice shaking with emotion he said: “But who were
they
, Mother?”

“You've asked me that before.”

“And you've never told me.”

“Because I don't want you to spend your life trying to avenge the death of your father!”

She was still treating him like a child, withholding information that might not be good for him, he felt. He tried to be calm and adult. “I'm going to spend my life building Kingsbridge Cathedral and making babies with Aliena. But I want to know why they hanged my father. And the only people who have the answer are the men who gave false testimony against him. So I have to know who they were.”

“At the time I didn't know their names.”

He knew she was being evasive and it made him angry. “
But you know now!
”

“Yes, I do,” she said tearfully, and he realized that this was as painful for her as it was for him. “And I'll tell you, because I can see you'll never stop asking.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes.

He waited in suspense.

“There were three of them: a monk, a priest and a knight.”

Jack looked at her hard. “Their names.”

“You're going to ask them why they lied under oath?”

“Yes.”

“And you expect them to tell you?”

“Perhaps not. I'll look into their eyes when I ask them, and that may tell me all I need to know.”

“Even that may not be possible.”

“I want to try, Mother!”

She sighed. “The monk was the prior of Kingsbridge.”

“Philip!”

“No, not Philip. This was before Philip's time. It was his predecessor, James.”

“But he's dead.”

“I told you it might not be possible to question them.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Who were the others?”

“The knight was Percy Hamleigh, the earl of Shiring.”

“William's father!”

“Yes.”

“He's dead, too!”

“Yes.”

Jack had a terrible feeling that all three would turn out to be dead men, and the secret buried with their bones. “Who was the priest?” he said urgently.

“His name was Waleran Bigod. He's now the bishop of Kingsbridge.”

Jack gave a sigh of profound satisfaction. “And he's still alive,” he said.

 

Bishop Waleran's castle was finished at Christmas. William Hamleigh and his mother rode to it on a fine morning early in the new year. They saw it from a distance, across the valley. It was at the highest point of the opposite ridge, overlooking the surrounding countryside with a forbidding regard.

As they crossed the valley they passed the old palace. It was now used as a storehouse for fleeces. Income from wool was paying for much of the new castle.

They trotted up the gentle slope on the far side of the valley and followed the road through a gap in the earth ramparts and across a deep dry moat to a gateway in a stone wall. With ramparts, a moat
and
a stone wall, this was a highly secure castle, superior to William's own and to many of the king's.

The inner courtyard was dominated by a massive square keep three stories high which dwarfed the stone church that stood alongside it. William helped his mother dismount. They left their knights to stable the horses and mounted the steps that led to the hall.

It was midday, and in the hall Waleran's servants were preparing the table. Some of his archdeacons, deans, employees and hangers-on were standing around waiting for dinner. William and Regan waited while a steward went up to the bishop's private quarters to announce their arrival.

William was burning inside with a fierce, agonizing jealousy. Aliena was in love, and the whole county knew it. She had given birth to a love child, and her husband had thrown her out of his house. With her baby in her arms, she had gone off to look for the man she loved, and had found him after searching half of Christendom. The story was being told and retold all over southern England. It made William sick with hatred every time he heard it. But he had thought of a way to get revenge.

They were taken up the stairs and shown into Waleran's chamber. They found him sitting at a table with Baldwin, who was now an archdeacon. The two clerics were counting money on a checkered cloth, building the silver pennies into piles of twelve and moving them from black squares to white. Baldwin stood up and bowed to Lady Regan, then quickly put away the cloth and the coins.

Waleran got up from the table and went to the chair by the fire. He moved quickly, like a spider, and William felt the old familiar loathing. Nevertheless he resolved to be unctuous. He had heard recently of the dreadful death of the earl of Hereford, who had quarreled with the bishop of Hereford and died in a state of excommunication. His body had been buried in unconsecrated ground. When William imagined his own body lying in undefended earth, vulnerable to all the imps and monsters that inhabited the underworld, he shook with fright. He would never quarrel with
his
bishop.

Waleran was as pale and thin as ever, and his black robes hung on him like laundry drying on a tree. He never seemed to change. William knew that he himself had changed. Food and wine were his principal pleasures, and each year he grew a little stouter, despite the active life he led, so that the expensive chain mail that had been made for him when he turned twenty-one had been replaced twice over in the succeeding seven years.

Waleran was just back from York. He had been away for almost half a year, and William politely asked him: “Did you have a successful trip?”

“No,” he replied. “Bishop Henry sent me there to attempt to resolve a four-year-old dispute over who is to be archbishop of York. I failed. The row goes on.”

The less said about that the better, William thought. He said: “While you've been away, there have been a lot of changes here. Especially at Kingsbridge.”

“At Kingsbridge?” Waleran was surprised. “I thought that problem had been solved once and for all.”

William shook his head. “They've got the Weeping Madonna.”

Waleran looked irritated. “What the devil are you talking about?”

William's mother answered. “It's a wooden statue of the Virgin that they use in processions. At certain times, water comes from its eyes. The people think it's miraculous.”

“It
is
miraculous!” William said. “A statue that weeps!”

Waleran gave him a scornful look.