Epic Historial Collection (306 page)

He was surprised to find that he could love another woman less than a year after Caris had left him for the final time. He certainly had not forgotten Caris. On the contrary, he thought about her every day. He felt the urge to tell her about something amusing that had happened, or he wanted her opinion on a knotty problem, or he found himself performing some task the way she would want it done, such as carefully bathing Lolla's grazed knee with warm wine. And then he saw her most days. The new hospital was almost finished, but the cathedral tower was barely begun, and Caris kept a close eye on both building projects. The priory had lost its power to control the town merchants, but nevertheless Caris took an interest in the work Merthin and the guild were doing to create all the institutions of a borough—establishing new courts, planning a wool exchange, and encouraging the craft guilds to codify standards and measures. But his thoughts about her always had an unpleasant aftertaste, like the bitterness left at the back of the throat by sour beer. He had loved her totally, and she had, in the end, rejected him. It was like remembering a happy day that had ended with a fight.

“Do you think I'm peculiarly attracted to women who aren't free?” he said idly to Philippa.

“No, why?”

“It does seem odd that after twelve years of loving a nun, and nine months of celibacy, I should fall for my brother's wife.”

“Don't call me that,” she said quickly. “It was no marriage. I was wedded against my will, I shared his bed for no more than a few days, and he will be happy if he never sees me again.”

He patted her shoulder apologetically. “But still, we have to be secretive, just as I did with Caris.” What he was not saying was that a man was entitled, by law, to kill his wife if he caught her committing adultery. Merthin had never known it to happen, certainly not among the nobility, but Ralph's pride was a terrible thing. Merthin knew, and had told Philippa, that Ralph had killed his first wife, Tilly.

She said: “Your father loved your mother hopelessly for a long time, didn't he?”

“So he did!” Merthin had almost forgotten that old story.

“And you fell for a nun.”

“And my brother spent years pining for you, the happily married wife of a nobleman. As the priests say, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. But enough of this. Do you want some supper?”

“In a moment.”

“There's something you want to do first?”

“You know.”

He did know. He knelt between her legs and kissed her belly and her thighs. It was a peculiarity of hers that she always wanted to come twice. He began to tease her with his tongue. She groaned, and pressed the back of his head. “Yes,” she said. “You know how I like that, especially when I'm full of your seed.”

He lifted his head. “I do,” he said. Then he bent again to his task.

 

The spring brought a respite in the plague. People were still dying, but fewer were falling ill. On Easter Sunday, Bishop Henri announced that the Fleece Fair would take place as usual this year.

At the same service, six novices took their vows and so became full-fledged monks. They had all had an extraordinarily short novitiate, but Henri was keen to raise the number of monks at Kingsbridge, and he said the same thing was going on all over the country. In addition five priests were ordained—they, too, benefiting from an accelerated training program—and sent to replace plague victims in the surrounding countryside. And two Kingsbridge monks came down from university, having received their degrees as physicians in three years instead of the usual five or seven.

The new doctors were Austin and Sime. Caris remembered both of them rather vaguely: she had been guest master when they left, three years ago, to go to Kingsbridge College in Oxford. On the afternoon of Easter Monday she showed them around the almost-completed new hospital. No builders were at work as it was a holiday.

Both had the bumptious self-confidence that the university seemed to instill in its graduates along with medical theories and a taste for Gascon wine. However, years of dealing with patients had given Caris a confidence of her own, and she described the hospital's facilities and the way she planned to run it with brisk assurance.

Austin was a slim, intense young man with thinning fair hair. He was impressed with the innovative new cloisterlike layout of the rooms. Sime, a little older and round-faced, did not seem eager to learn from Caris's experience: she noticed that he always looked away when she was talking.

“I believe a hospital should always be clean,” she said.

“On what grounds?” Sime inquired in a condescending tone, as if asking a little girl why Dolly had to be spanked.

“Cleanliness is a virtue.”

“Ah. So it has nothing to do with the balance of humors in the body.”

“I have no idea. We don't pay too much attention to the humors. That approach has failed spectacularly against the plague.”

“And sweeping the floor has succeeded?”

“At a minimum, a clean room lifts patients' spirits.”

Austin put in: “You must admit, Sime, that some of the masters at Oxford share the mother prioress's new ideas.”

“A small group of the heterodox.”

Caris said: “The main point is to take patients suffering from the type of illnesses that are transmitted from the sick to the well and isolate them from the rest.”

“To what end?” said Sime.

“To restrict the spread of such diseases.”

“And how is it that they are transmitted?”

“No one knows.”

A little smile of triumph twitched Sime's mouth. “Then how do you know by what means to restrict their spread, may I ask?”

He thought he had trumped her in argument—it was the main thing they learned at Oxford—but she knew better. “From experience,” she said. “A shepherd doesn't understand the miracle by which lambs grow in the womb of a ewe, but he knows it won't happen if he keeps the ram out of the field.”

“Hm.”

Caris disliked the way he said: “Hm.” He was clever, she thought, but his cleverness never touched the world. She was struck by the contrast between this kind of intellectual and Merthin's kind. Merthin's learning was wide, and the power of his mind to grasp complexities was remarkable—but his wisdom never strayed far from the realities of the material world, for he knew that if he went wrong his buildings would fall down. Her father, Edmund, had been like that, clever but practical. Sime, like Godwyn and Anthony, would cling to his faith in the humors of the body regardless of whether his patients lived or died.

Austin was smiling broadly. “She's got you there, Sime,” he said, evidently amused that his smug friend had failed to overwhelm this uneducated woman. “We may not know exactly how illnesses spread, but it can't do any harm to separate the sick from the well.”

Sister Joan, the nuns' treasurer, interrupted their conversation. “The bailiff of Outhenby is asking for you, Mother Caris.”

“Did he bring a herd of calves?” Outhenby was obliged to supply the nuns with twelve one-year-old calves every Easter.

“Yes.”

“Pen the beasts and ask the bailiff to come here, please.”

Sime and Austin took their leave, and Caris went to inspect the tiled floor in the latrines. The bailiff found her there. It was Harry Plowman. She had sacked the old bailiff, who was too slow to respond to change, and she had promoted the brightest young man in the village.

He shook her hand, which was overfamiliar of him, but Caris liked him and did not mind.

She said: “It must be a nuisance, your having to drive a herd all the way here, especially when the spring plowing is under way.”

“It is that,” he said. Like most plowmen, he was broad-shouldered and strong-armed. Strength as well as skill was required for driving the communal eight-ox team as they pulled the heavy plow through wet clay soil. He seemed to carry with him the air of the healthy outdoors.

“Wouldn't you rather make a money payment?” Caris said. “Most manorial dues are paid in cash these days.”

“It would be more convenient.” His eyes narrowed with peasant shrewdness. “But how much?”

“A year-old calf normally fetches ten to twelve shillings at market, though prices are down this season.”

“They are—by half. You can buy twelve calves for three pounds.”

“Or six pounds in a good year.”

He grinned, enjoying the negotiation. “There's your problem.”

“But you would prefer to pay cash.”

“If we can agree the amount.”

“Make it eight shillings.”

“But then, if the price of a calf is only five shillings, where do we villagers get the extra money?”

“I tell you what. In future, Outhenby can pay the nunnery either five pounds or twelve calves—the choice is yours.”

Harry considered that, looking for snags, but could find none. “All right,” he said. “Shall we seal the bargain?”

“How should we do that?”

To her surprise, he kissed her.

He held her slender shoulders in his rough hands, bent his head, and pressed his lips to hers. If Brother Sime had done this she would have recoiled. But Harry was different, and perhaps she had been titillated by his air of vigorous masculinity. Whatever the reason, she submitted to the kiss, letting him pull her unresisting body to his own, and moving her lips against his bearded mouth. He pressed up against her so that she could feel his erection. She realized that he would cheerfully take her here on the newly laid tiles of the latrine floor, and that thought brought her to her senses. She broke the kiss and pushed him away. “Stop!” she said. “What do you think you're doing?”

He was unabashed. “Kissing you, my dear,” he said.

She realized that she had a problem. No doubt gossip about her and Merthin was widespread: they were probably the two best-known people in Shiring. While Harry surely did not know the truth, the rumors had been enough to embolden him. This kind of thing could undermine her authority. She must squash it now. “You must never do anything like that again,” she said as severely as she could.

“You seemed to like it!”

“Then your sin is all the greater, for you have tempted a weak woman to perjure her holy vows.”

“But I love you.”

It was true, she realized, and she could guess why. She had swept into his village, reorganized everything, and bent the peasants to her will. She had recognized Harry's potential and elevated him above his fellows. He must think of her as a goddess. It was not surprising that he had fallen in love with her. He had better fall out of love as soon as possible. “If you ever speak to me like that again, I'll have to get another bailiff in Outhenby.”

“Oh,” he said. That stopped him short more effectively than the accusation of sin.

“Now, go home.”

“Very well, Mother Caris.”

“And find yourself another woman—preferably one who has not taken a vow of chastity.”

“Never,” he said, but she did not believe him.

He left, but she stayed where she was. She felt restless and lustful. If she could have felt sure of being alone for a while, she would have touched herself. This was the first time in nine months that she had been bothered by physical desire. After finally splitting up with Merthin she had fallen into a kind of neutered state, in which she did not think about sex. Her relationships with other nuns gave her warmth and affection: she was fond of both Joan and Oonagh, though neither loved her in the physical way Mair had. Her heart beat with other passions: the new hospital, the tower, and the rebirth of the town.

Thinking of the tower, she left the hospital and walked across the green to the cathedral. Merthin had dug four enormous holes, the deepest anyone had ever seen, outside the church around the foundations of the old tower. He had built great cranes to lift the earth out. Throughout the wet autumn months, oxcarts had lumbered all day long down the main street and across the first span of the bridge to dump the mud on rocky Leper Island. There they had picked up building stones from Merthin's wharf, then climbed the street again, to stack the stones around the grounds of the church in ever-growing piles.

As soon as the winter frost was over, his masons had begun laying the foundations. Caris went to the north side of the cathedral and looked into the hole in the angle formed by the outside wall of the nave and the outside wall of the north transept. It was dizzyingly deep. The bottom was already covered with neat masonry, the squared-off stones laid in straight lines and joined by thin layers of mortar. Because the old foundations were inadequate, the tower was being built on its own new, independent foundations. It would rise outside the existing walls of the church, so no demolition would be needed over and above what Elfric had already done in taking down the upper levels of the old tower. Only when it was finished would Merthin remove the temporary roof Elfric had built over the crossing. It was a typical Merthin design: simple yet radical, a brilliant solution to the unique problems of the site.