Philip was shaking his head. “Monks don’t fight,” he said regretfully. “And I can’t ask townspeople to give their lives when I’m not prepared to risk my own.”
Jack said: “Don’t count on my masons fighting, either. It’s not part of their job.”
Philip looked at Richard, who was the nearest they had to a military expert. “Is there any way we can defend the town without a pitched battle?”
“Not without town walls,” Richard said. “We’ve got nothing to put in front of the enemy but bodies.”
“Town walls,” Jack said thoughtfully.
Richard said: “We could challenge William to settle the issue by single combat—a fight between champions. But I don’t suppose he would agree to it.”
“Town walls would do it?” Jack said.
Richard said impatiently: “They might save us another time, but not now. We can’t build town walls overnight.”
“Can’t we?”
“Of course not, don’t be—”
“Shut up, Richard,” Philip said forcefully. He looked expectantly at Jack. “What’s on your mind?”
“A wall is not that hard to build,” Jack said.
“Go on.”
Jack’s mind was spinning. The others were listening with bated breath. He said: “There are no arches, no vaults, no windows, no roof, ... A wallcanbe built overnight, if you’ve got the men and materials.”
“What would we build it of?” Philip said.
“Look around you,” Jack said. “Here are ready-cut stone blocks intended for the foundations. There is a stack of timber bigger than a house. In the graveyard is a heap of rubble from the collapse. Down at the riverside there’s another huge stack of stone from the quarry. There’s no shortage of materials.”
“And the town is full of builders,” Philip said.
Jack nodded. “The monks can do the organizing. The builders can do the skilled work. And for laborers we’ll have the entire population of the town.” He was thinking rapidly. “The wall would have to run all along the nearside bank of the river. We’d dismantle the bridge. Then we’d have to take the wall up the hill alongside the poor quarter to join up with the east wall of the priory ... out to the north ... and down the hill to the riverbank again. I don’t know whether there’s enough stone for that. ...”
Richard said: “It doesn’t have to be stone to be effective. A simple ditch, with an earth rampart made of the mud dug out of the ditch, will serve the purpose, especially in a place where the enemy is attacking uphill.”
“Surely stone is better,” Jack said.
“Better, but not essential. The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he’s in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position.”
“Bombard him?” Aliena said. “With what?”
“Stones, boiling oil, arrows—there’s a bow in most households in the town—”
Aliena shuddered and said: “So we still end up fighting, after all.”
“But not hand to hand, not quite.”
Jack felt torn. The safest course, in all probability, was for everyone to take refuge in the forest, in the hope that William would be satisfied with burning the houses. But even then there was a risk that he and his men would hunt the townspeople down. Would the danger be greater if they all stayed here, behind a town wall? If something went wrong, and William and his men found a way to breach the wall, the carnage would be appalling. Jack looked at Aliena and Tommy, and thought of the new child growing inside Aliena. “Is there a middle course?” he said. “We could evacuate the women and children, and the men could stay and defend the walls.”
“No, thank you,” Aliena said firmly. “That’s the worst of both worlds. We would have no town walls and no menfolk to fight for us either.”
She was right, Jack realized. Town walls were no good without people to defend them, and the women and children could not be left unguarded in the forest: William might leave the town alone and kill the women.
Philip said: “Jack, you’re the builder. Can we put up a town wall in one day?”
“I’ve never built a town wall,” Jack said. “There’s no question of drawing plans, of course. We’d have to assign a craftsman to each section and let him use his judgment. The mortar will hardly be set by Sunday morning. It will be the worst-built wall in England. But yes, we can do it.”
