The Pillars of the Earth (45 page)

“She’s a witch and a fornicator,” Remigius said, flushing with righteous indignation.

“
What
?”
Philip exploded. “With whom does she fornicate?”

“With the builder.”

“He’s her husband, you fool!”

“No, he’s not,” Remigius said triumphantly. “They’re not married, and they’ve only known one another a month.”

Philip was bowled over. He had never suspected this. Remigius had taken him completely by surprise.

If Remigius was telling the truth, the woman was a fornicator, technically. It was a type of fornication that was normally overlooked, for many couples did not get around to having their union blessed by a priest until they had been together for a while, often until the first child was conceived. Indeed, in very poor or remote parts of the country, couples often lived as man and wife for decades, and brought up children, and then startled a visiting priest by asking him to solemnize their marriage around the time their grandchildren were being born. However, it was one thing for a parish priest to be indulgent among poor peasants on the outskirts of Christendom, and quite another when an important employee of a priory was committing the same act within the precincts of the monastery.

“What makes you think they aren’t married?” Philip said skeptically, although he felt sure Remigius would have checked the facts before speaking up in front of Waleran.

“I found the sons fighting, and they told me they aren’t brothers. Then the whole story came out.”

Philip was disappointed with Tom. Fornication was a common enough sin, but it was particularly abhorrent to monks, who forsook all carnality. How could Tom do this? He should have known it was hateful to Philip. Philip felt angrier with Tom than he did with Remigius. But Remigius had been sneaky. Philip asked him: “Why did you not tell me, your prior, about this?”

“It was only this morning that I heard it.”

Philip sat back in his seat, defeated. Remigius had caught him out. Philip looked foolish. This was Remigius’s revenge for his defeat in the election. Philip looked at Waleran. The complaint had been made to Waleran: now Waleran could pronounce judgment.

Waleran did not hesitate. “The case is clear enough,” he said. “The woman must confess her sin, and do public penance for it. She must leave the priory, and live in chastity, apart from the builder, for a year. Then they may be married.”

A year apart was a harsh sentence. Philip felt she deserved it, for defiling the monastery. But he was anxious about how she would receive it. “She may not submit to your judgment,” he said.

Waleran shrugged. “Then she will burn in hell.”

“If she leaves Kingsbridge, I’m afraid Tom may go with her.”

“There are other builders.”

“Of course.” Philip would be sorry to lose Tom. But he could tell, from Waleran’s expression, that Waleran would not mind if Tom and his woman were to leave Kingsbridge and never come back; and he wondered again why she was so important.

Waleran said: “Now clear out, all of you, and let me speak to your prior.”

“Just a minute,” Philip said sharply. It was his house, and they were his monks, after all; he would summon and dismiss them, not Waleran. “I will speak to the builder myself about this matter. None of you is to mention it to anyone, do you hear? There’ll be a harsh punishment for you if you disobey me over this. Is that clear, Remigius?”

“Yes,” said Remigius.

Philip looked inquiringly at Remigius and said nothing. There was a pregnant silence.

“Yes,
Father
,”
Remigius said at last.

“All right, off you go.”

Remigius, Andrew, Milius, Cuthbert and Dean Baldwin all trooped out. Waleran helped himself to a little more hot wine and stretched his feet out to the fire. “Women always cause trouble,” he said. “When there’s a mare in heat in the stables, all the stallions start nipping the grooms, kicking their stalls and generally causing trouble. Even the geldings start to misbehave. Monks are like geldings: physical passion is denied them, but they can still smell cunt.”

Philip was embarrassed. There was no need for such explicit talk, he felt. He looked at his hands. “What about rebuilding the church?” he said.

“Yes. You must have heard that that business you came to see me about—Earl Bartholomew and the conspiracy against King Stephen—turned out well for us.”

“Yes.” It seemed a long time ago that Philip had gone to the bishop’s palace, in fear and trembling, to tell of the plot against the king whom the Church had chosen. “I heard that Percy Hamleigh attacked the earl’s castle and took him prisoner.”

“That’s right—Bartholomew is now in a dungeon at Winchester, waiting to hear his fate,” Waleran said with satisfaction.

“And Earl Robert of Gloucester? He was the more powerful conspirator.”

“And therefore gets the lighter punishment. In fact no punishment at all. He has pledged allegiance to King Stephen, and his part in the plot has been ... overlooked.”

“But what has this got to do with our cathedral?”

Waleran stood up and went to the window. When he looked out at the ruined church, there was real sadness in his eyes, and Philip realized that there was a core of genuine piety in Waleran, for all his worldly ways. “Our part in the defeat of Bartholomew puts King Stephen in our debt. Before too long, you and I will go and see him.”

“See the king!” Philip said. He was a little intimidated by the prospect.

“He will ask us what we want as our reward.”

Philip saw what Waleran was getting at, and he was thrilled to the core. “And we’ll tell him ...”

Waleran turned back from the window and looked at Philip, and his eyes looked like black jewels, glittering with ambition. “We’ll tell him we want a new cathedral for Kingsbridge,” he said.

Tom knew Ellen was going to hit the roof.

She was already angry about what had happened to Jack. Tom needed to soothe her. But the news of her “penance” was going to inflame her. He wished he could postpone telling her for a day or two, to give her time to cool off; but he could not, for Prior Philip had said she must be off the premises by nightfall. He had to tell her immediately, and since it was midday when Philip told Tom, Tom told Ellen at dinner.

They went into the refectory with the other priory employees when the monks had finished their dinner and gone. The tables were crowded, but Tom thought that might not be a bad thing: the presence of other people might restrain her a little, he thought.

He was wrong about that, he soon learned.

He tried to break the news gradually. First he said: “They know we’re not married.”

“Who told them?” she said angrily. “Some troublemaker?”

“Alfred. Don’t blame him—that sly monk Remigius got it out of him. Anyway, we never told the children to keep it secret.”

“I don’t blame the boy,” she said more calmly. “So what do they say?”

He leaned across the table and spoke in a low voice. “They say you’re a fornicator,” he said, hoping no one else would hear.

“A fornicator?” she said loudly. “What about you? Don’t these monks know that it takes two to fornicate?”

The people sitting nearby started to laugh.

“Hush,” Tom said. “They say we have to get married.”

She looked at him hard. “If that was all, you wouldn’t be looking so hangdog, Tom Builder. Tell me the rest.”

“They want you to confess your sin.”

“Hypocritical perverts,” she said disgustedly. “They spend all night up one another’s arseholes and then they have the nerve to call what we’re doing a sin.”

There was more laughter at that. People stopped their own conversations to listen to Ellen.

“Just talk quietly,” Tom pleaded.

“I suppose they want me to do penance, too. Humiliation is all part of it. What do they want me to do? Come on, tell the truth, you can’t lie to a
witch
.”

“Don’t say that!” Tom hissed. “It makes things worse.”

“Then tell me.”

“We have to live apart for a year, and you have to remain chaste—”

“Piss on that!” Ellen shouted.

Now everyone was looking.

“Piss on you, Tom Builder!” she said. She realized she had an audience. “Piss on all of you, too,” she said. Most people grinned. It was hard to take offense, perhaps because she looked so lovely with her face flushed red and her golden eyes wide. She stood up. “Piss on Kingsbridge Priory!” She jumped up on to the table, and there was a burst of applause. She walked along the board. The diners snatched their bowls of soup and mugs of ale out of her way and sat back, laughing. “Piss on the prior!” she said. “Piss on the sub-prior, and the sacrist, and the cantor and the treasurer, and all their deeds and charters, and their chests full of silver pennies!” She reached the end of the table. Beyond it was another, smaller table where someone would sit and read aloud during the monks’ dinner. There was an open book on the table. Ellen jumped from the dining table to the reading table.

Suddenly Tom knew what she was going to do. “Ellen!” he called. “Don’t, please—”

“Piss on the Rule of Saint Benedict!” she yelled at the top of her voice. Then she hitched up her skirt, bent her knees, and urinated on the open book.

The men roared with laughter, banged on the tables, hooted and whistled and cheered. Tom was not sure whether they shared Ellen’s contempt for the Rule or they just enjoyed seeing a beautiful woman expose herself. There was something erotic about her shameless vulgarity, but it was also exciting to see someone openly abuse the book that the monks were so tediously solemn about. Whatever the reason, they loved it.

She jumped off the table and, amid a thunder of applause, ran out of the door.

Everyone began to talk at the same time. No one had ever seen anything quite like that before. Tom was horrified and embarrassed: the consequences would be dire, he knew. Yet a part of him was thinking: What a woman!

Jack got up after a moment and followed his mother out, with the trace of a grin on his swollen face.

Tom looked at Alfred and Martha. Alfred had a bewildered air but Martha was giggling. “Come on, you two,” Tom said, and the three of them left the refectory.

When they got outside Ellen was nowhere to be seen. They went across the green to the guesthouse and found her there. She was sitting in the chair waiting for him. She was wearing her cloak, and holding her big leather satchel. She looked cool, calm and collected. Tom’s heart went cold when he saw the bag, but he pretended not to have noticed it. “There’s going to be hell to pay,” he said.

“I don’t believe in hell,” she said.

“I hope they’ll let you confess, and do penance.”

“I’m not going to confess.”

His self-control broke. “Ellen, don’t leave!”

She looked sad. “Listen, Tom. Before I met you I had food to eat and a place to live. I was safe and secure and self-sufficient: I needed nobody. Since I’ve been with you I’ve come closer to starvation than at any time in my life. You’ve got work now, but there’s no security in it: the priory has no money to build a new church, and you could be on the road again next winter.”

“Philip will raise the money somehow,” Tom said. “I’m sure he will.”

“You can’t be sure,” she said.

“You don’t believe,” Tom said bitterly. Then, before he could stop himself, he added: “You’re just like Agnes, you don’t believe in my cathedral.”

“Oh, Tom, if it was just me, I’d stay,” she said sadly. “But look at my son.”

Tom looked at Jack. His face was purple with bruising, his ear was swollen to twice its normal size, his nostrils were full of dried blood and he had a broken front tooth.

Ellen said: “I was afraid he would grow up like an animal if we stayed in the forest. But if this is the price of teaching him to live with other people, it’s too much to pay. So I’m going back to the forest.”

“Don’t say that,” Tom said desperately. “Let’s talk about it. Don’t make a rash decision—”

“It’s not rash, it’s not rash, Tom,” she said sorrowfully. “I’m so sad that I can’t even be angry anymore. I really wanted to be your wife. But not at any cost.”

If Alfred had not chased Jack, none of this would have happened, Tom thought. But it was only a boyish scrap, wasn’t it? Or was Ellen right when she said Tom had a blind spot about Alfred? Tom began to feel he had been wrong. Perhaps he should have taken a firmer line with Alfred. Boys fighting was one thing, but Jack and Martha were smaller than Alfred. Perhaps he was a bully.

But it was too late to change that now. “Stay in the village,” Tom said desperately. “Wait a while and see what happens.”

“I don’t suppose the monks will let me, now.”

He realized she was right. The village was owned by the priory and all the householders paid rent to the monks—usually in the form of days of work’—and the monks could refuse to house anyone they did not like. They could hardly be blamed if they rejected Ellen. She had made her decision and she had literally pissed on her chances of retracting it.

“I’ll go with you, then,” he said. “The monastery owes me seventy-two pennies already. We’ll go on the road again. We survived before. ...”

“What about your children?” she said gently.

Tom remembered how Martha had cried from hunger. He knew he could not make her go through that again. And there was his baby son, Jonathan, living here with the monks. I don’t want to leave him again, Tom thought; I did it once, and hated myself for it.

But he could not bear the thought of losing Ellen.

“Don’t tear yourself apart,” she said. “I won’t tramp the roads with you again. That’s no solution—we’d be worse off than we are now, in every way. I’m going back to the forest, and you’re not coming with me.”

He stared at her. He wanted to believe that she did not mean it, but the look on her face told him she did. He could not think of anything more to say to stop her. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He felt helpless. She was breathing hard, her bosom rising and falling with emotion. He wanted to touch her, but he felt she did not want him to. I may never embrace her again, he thought. It was hard to believe. For weeks he had lain with her every night, and touched her as familiarly as he would touch himself; and now suddenly it was forbidden, and she was like a stranger.