“You are the last,” Alfred said candidly. “I’ve tried everywhere. Nobody’s hiring. It’s the famine.”
Jack thought of all the times Alfred had mistreated him, tormented him, and beaten him. Alfred had driven him into the monastery and then had driven him away, from his home and family. He had no reason to help Alfred: indeed, he had cause to gloat over Alfred’s misfortune. He said: “I wouldn’t take you on even if I was needing men.”
“I thought you might,” Alfred said with bullheaded persistence. “After all, my father taught you everything you know. It’s because of him that you’re a master builder. Won’t you help me for his sake?”
For Tom. Suddenly Jack felt a twinge of conscience. In his own way, Tom had tried to be a good stepfather. He had not been gentle or understanding, but he had treated his own children much the same as Jack, and he had been patient and generous in passing on his knowledge and skills. He had also made Jack’s mother happy, most of the time. And after all, Jack thought, here I am, a successful and prosperous master builder, well on the way to achieving my ambition of building the most beautiful cathedral in the world, and there’s Alfred, poor and hungry and out of work. Isn’t that revenge enough?
No, it’s not, he thought.
Then he relented.
“All right,” he said. “For Tom’s sake, you’re hired.”
“Thank you,” Alfred said. His expression was unreadable. “Shall I start right away?”
Jack nodded. “We’re laying foundations in the nave. Just join in.”
Alfred held out his hand. Jack hesitated momentarily, then shook it. Alfred’s grip was as strong as ever.
Alfred disappeared. Jack stood staring down at his drawing of a nave plinth. It was life-size, so that when it was finished a master carpenter could make a wooden template directly from the drawing. The template would then be used by the masons to mark the stones for carving.
Had he made the right decision? He recalled that Alfred’s vault had collapsed. However, he would not use Alfred on difficult work such as vaulting or arches: straightforward walls and floors were his métier.
While Jack was still pondering, the noon bell rang for dinner. He put down his sharpened-wire drawing instrument and went down the turret staircase to ground level.”
The married masons went home to dinner and the single ones ate in the lodge. On some building sites dinner was provided, as a way of preventing afternoon lateness, absenteeism and drunkenness; but monks’ fare was often Spartan and most building workers preferred to provide their own. Jack was living in Tom Builder’s old house with Martha, his stepsister, who acted as his housekeeper. Martha also minded Tommy and Jack’s second child, a girl whom they had named Sally, while Aliena was busy. Martha usually made dinner for Jack and the children, and Aliena sometimes joined them.
He left the priory close and walked briskly home. On the way a thought struck him. Would Alfred expect to move back into the house with Martha? She was his natural sister, after all. Jack had not thought of that when he gave Alfred the job.
It was a foolish fear, he decided a moment later. The days when Alfred could bully him were long past. He was the master builder of Kingsbridge, and if he said Alfred could not move into the house, then Alfred would not move into the house.
He half expected to find Alfred at the kitchen table, and was relieved to find he was not. Aliena was watching the children eat, while Martha stirred a pot on the fire. The smell of lamb stew was mouth-watering.
He kissed Aliena’s forehead briefly. She was thirty-three years old now, but she looked as she had ten years ago: her hair was still a rich dark-brown mass of curls, and she had the same generous mouth and fine, dark eyes. Only when she was naked did she show the physical effects of time and childbirth: her marvelous deep breasts were lower, her hips were broader, and her belly had never reverted to its original taut flatness.
Jack looked affectionately at the two offspring of Aliena’s body: nine-year-old Tommy, a healthy red-haired boy, big for his age, shoveling lamb stew into his mouth as if he had not eaten for a week; and Sally, age seven, with dark curls like her mother’s, smiling happily and showing a gap between her front teeth just like the one Martha had had when Jack first saw her seventeen years ago. Tommy went to the school in the priory every morning to learn to read and write, but the monks would not take girls, so Aliena was teaching Sally.
Jack sat down, and Martha took the pot off the fire and set it on the table. Martha was a strange girl. She was past twenty years old, but she showed no interest in getting married. She had always been attached to Jack, and now she seemed perfectly content to be his housekeeper.
Jack presided over the oddest household in the county, without a doubt. He and Aliena were two of the leading citizens of the town: he the master builder at the cathedral and she the largest manufacturer of cloth outside Winchester. Everyone treated them as man and wife, yet they were forbidden to spend nights together, and they lived in separate houses, Aliena with her brother and Jack with his stepsister. Every Sunday afternoon, and on every holiday, they would disappear, and everyone knew what they were doing except, of course, Prior Philip. Meanwhile, Jack’s mother lived in a cave in the forest because she was supposed to be a witch.
Every now and again Jack got angry about not being allowed to marry Aliena. He would lie awake, listening to Martha snoring in the next room, and think: I’m twenty-eight years old—why am I sleeping alone? The next day he would be bad-tempered with Prior Philip, rejecting all the chapter’s suggestions and requests as impracticable or overexpensive, refusing to discuss alternatives or compromises, as if there were only one way to build a cathedral and that was Jack’s way. Then Philip would steer clear of him for a few days and let the storm blow over.
Aliena, too, was unhappy, and she took it out on Jack. She would become impatient and intolerant, criticizing everything he did, putting the children to bed as soon as he came in, saying she was not hungry when he ate. After a day or two of this mood she would burst into tears and say she was sorry, and they would be happy again, until the next time the strain became too much for her.
Jack ladled some stew into a bowl and began to eat. “Guess who came to the site this morning,” he said. “Alfred.”
Martha dropped an iron pot lid on the hearthstone with a loud clang. Jack looked at her and saw fear on her face. He turned to Aliena and saw that she had turned white.
Aliena said: “What’s he doing in Kingsbridge?”
“Looking for work. The famine has impoverished the merchants of Shiring, I guess, and they aren’t building stone houses like they used to. He’s dismissed his gang and he can’t find work.”
“I hope you threw him out on his tail,” Aliena said.
“He said I should give him a job for Tom’s sake,” Jack said nervously. He had not anticipated such a strong reaction from the two women. “After all, I owe everything to Tom.”
“Cow shit,” Aliena said, and Jack thought: she got that expression from my mother.
