“I am not permitted to converse with you,” the man said in a monotone. However, Jack recognized the voice: it was an old monk called Luke.
“Luke, have they said how long I have to stay in here?” Jack cried.
He repeated the formula: “I am not permitted to converse with you.”
“Please, Luke, tell me if you know!” Jack pleaded, not caring how pathetic he might sound.
Luke replied in a whisper. “Pierre said a week, but Philip made it two days.” The shutter slammed.
“Two days!” Jack said desperately. “But she’ll be married by then!”
There was no reply.
Jack stood still, staring at nothing. The light coming through the slit had been strong by comparison with the near-dark inside, and he could not see for a few moments, until his sight readjusted to the gloom; then his eyes filled with new tears, and he was blind again.
He lay down on the floor. There was nothing more to be done. He was locked in here until Monday, and by Monday Aliena would be Alfred’s wife, waking up in Alfred’s bed, with Alfred’s seed inside her. The thought nauseated him.
Soon it was pitch-black. He fumbled his way to the sill and drank from the bowl. It contained plain water. He took a small piece of bread and put it in his mouth, but he was not hungry and he could hardly swallow it. He drank the rest of the water and lay down again.
He did not sleep, but he went into a kind of doze, almost like a trance, in which he relived, as in a dream or a vision, the Sunday afternoons he had spent with Aliena last summer, when he had told her the story of the squire who loved the princess, and went in search of the vine that bore jewels.
The midnight bell brought him out of the doze. He was used to the monastic timetable now, and he felt wide awake at midnight, though he often needed to sleep in the afternoons, especially if there had been meat for dinner. The monks would be getting out of their beds and forming up in lines for the procession from dormitory to church. They were immediately above Jack, but he could hear nothing: the cell was soundproof. It seemed very soon afterward that the bell rang again for lauds, which took place an hour after midnight. Time was passing quickly, too quickly, for tomorrow Aliena would be married.
In the small hours, despite his misery, he fell asleep.
He came awake with a start. There was someone in the cell with him.
He was terrified.
The cell was pitch-black. The sound of water seemed louder. “Who is it?” he said in a trembling voice.
“It’s me—don’t be afraid.”
“Mother!” He almost fainted with relief. “How did you know I was in here?”
“Old Joseph came to tell me what had happened,” she replied in a normal voice.
“Quiet! The monks will hear you.”
“No, they won’t. You can sing and shout in here without being heard above. I know—I’ve done it.”
His head was so full of questions that he did not know which to ask first. “How did you get in here? Is the door open?” He moved toward her, holding his hands out in front of him. “Oh—you’re wet!”
“The water channel runs right under here. There’s a loose stone in the floor.”
“How did you know that?”
“Your father spent ten months in this cell,” she said, and in her voice there was the bitterness of years.
“My father?Thiscell? Ten months?”
“That’s when he taught me all those stories.”
“But why was he in here?”
“We never found out,” she said resentfully. “He was kidnapped, or arrested—he never knew which—in Normandy, and he was brought here. He didn’t speak English or Latin and he had no idea where he was. He worked in the stables for a year or so—that’s how I met him.” Her voice softened with nostalgia. “I loved him from the moment I set eyes on him. He was so gentle, and he looked so frightened and unhappy, yet he sang like a bird. Nobody had spoken to him for months. He was so pleased when I said a few words in French, I think he fell in love with me just for that.” Anger made her voice hard again. “After a while they put him in this cell. That’s when I discovered how to get in here.”
It occurred to Jack that he must have been conceived right here on the cold stone floor. The thought embarrassed him and he was glad it was too dark for him and his mother to see each other. He said: “But my father must have done something to be arrested like that.”
