A moment after that thought had crossed William’s mind his eye fell on the builder in question, Jack Jackson. He was a handsome devil, with his mane of red hair, and he wore a dark red tunic, embroidered at the hem and neckline, just like a nobleman. He looked rather pleased with himself, no doubt because he had built the transepts so fast and everyone was so astonished by his design. He was holding the hand of a boy of about nine years who looked just like him. William realized with a shock that that must be Aliena’s child, and he felt a sharp pang of envy. A moment later he caught sight of Aliena herself. She was standing a little behind Jack and to one side, with a faint smile of pride on her face. William’s heart leaped: she was as lovely as ever. Elizabeth was a poor substitute, a pallid imitation of the real, red-blooded Aliena. In her arms Aliena held a little girl about seven years old, and William recalled that she had had a second child by Jack even though they were not married.
William looked more closely at Aliena. She was not quite as lovely as ever, after all: there were lines of strain around her eyes, and behind the proud smile was a hint of sadness. After all these years she still could not marry Jack, of course, William thought with satisfaction: Bishop Waleran had kept his promise and had repeatedly blocked the annulment. That thought often gave William consolation.
It was Waleran, William now realized, who was standing at the altar, lifting the Host above his head so that the entire congregation could see it. Hundreds of people went down on their knees. The bread became Christ at that moment, a transformation that struck awe into William even though he had no idea what was involved.
He concentrated on the service for a while, watching the mystical actions of the priests, listening to the meaningless Latin phrases and muttering familiar fragments of the responses. The dazed feeling that had been with him for the last day or so persisted, and the magical new church, with sunlight playing on its impossible columns, served to intensify the sense that he was in a dream.
The service was coming to an end. Bishop Waleran turned to address the congregation, “We will now pray for the soul of Countess Regan Hamleigh, the mother of Earl William of Shiring, who died on Friday night.”
There was a buzz of comment as people heard the news, but William was staring at the bishop in horror. He had realized at last what she had been trying to say while she died. She had been asking for the priest—but William had not sent for him.He had watched her weaken, he had seen her eyes close, he had heard her breathing stop, and he had let her die unshriven. How could he have done something like that? Ever since Friday night her soul had been in Hell, suffering the torments that she had described to him so graphically many times, with no prayers to relieve her! His heart was so laden with guilt that he seemed to feel it slow its pace and for a moment he felt that he, too, would die. How could he have let her languish in that dread place, her soul disfigured by sins as her face was with boils, while she longed for the peace of Heaven? “What am I going to do?” he said aloud, and the people around him looked at him in surprise.
When the prayer ended and the monks filed out in procession, William remained on his knees in front of the altar. The rest of the congregation drifted out into the sunshine, ignoring him; all except Walter, who stayed nearby, watching and waiting. William was praying with all his might, keeping a picture of his mother in his head while he repeated the Paternoster and all the other bits of prayers and services he could remember. After a while he realized there were other things he could do. He could light candles; he could pay priests and monks to say masses for her regularly; he could even have a special chapel built for the benefit of her soul. But everything he thought of seemed insufficient. It was as if he could see her, shaking her head, looking hurt and disappointed in him, saying: “How long will you let your mother suffer?”
He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. Bishop Waleran stood in front of him, still wearing the gorgeous red robe he used for Whitsun. His black eyes looked deep into William’s, and William felt as if he had no secrets from that penetrating gaze. Waleran said: “Why do you weep?”
William realized his face was wet with tears. He said: “Where is she?”
“She has gone to be purified by fire.”
“Is she in pain?”
“Terrible pain. But we can speed the souls of our loved ones as they pass through that dread place.”
“I’ll do anything!” William sobbed. “Just tell me what!”
Waleran’s eyes glittered with greed. “Build a church,” he said. “Just like this one. But in Shiring.”
A cold fury possessed Aliena whenever she traveled around the estates that had been part of her father’s earldom. All the blocked ditches and broken fences and empty, tumbledown cow sheds angered her; the meadows running to seed made her sad; and the deserted villages broke her heart. It was not just the bad harvests. The earldom could have fed its people, even this year, if it had been properly run. But William Hamleigh had no notion of husbanding his land. For him, the earldom was a private treasure chest, not an estate that fed thousands of people. When his serfs had no food, they starved. When his tenants could not pay their rents, he threw them out. Since William became earl the acreage under cultivation had shrunk, because the lands of some dispossessed tenants had returned to their natural state. And he did not have the brains to see that this was not even in his own interest in the long term.
The worst of it was, Aliena felt partly responsible. It was her father’s estate, and she and Richard had failed to win it back for the family. They had given up, when William became earl and Aliena lost all her money; but the failure still rankled, and she had not forgotten her vow to her father.
On the road from Winchester to Shiring, with a wagon-load of yarn and a brawny carter with a sword at his belt, she remembered riding along the very same road with her father. He had constantly brought new land into cultivation, by clearing areas of forest, draining marshland, or plowing hillsides. In bad years he always put aside enough seed to supply the needs of those who were too improvident, or just too hungry, to save their own. He never forced tenants to sell their beasts or their plows to pay rent, for he knew that if they did that, they would be unable to farm the following year. He had treated the land well, maintaining its capacity to produce, the way a good farmer would take care of a dairy cow.
Whenever she thought of those old days, with her clever, proud, rigid father beside her, she felt the pain of loss like a wound. Life had started to go wrong when he had been taken away. Everything she had done since then seemed, in retrospect, to have been hollow: living at the castle with Matthew, in a dreamworld; going to Winchester in the vain hope of seeing the king; even struggling to support Richard while he fought in the civil war. She had achieved what other people saw as success: she had become a prosperous wool merchant. But that had brought her only a semblance of happiness. She had found a way of life and a place in society that gave her security and stability, but in her heart she had still been hurt and lost—until Jack came into her life.
Her inability to marry Jack had blighted everything since. She had come to hate Prior Philip, whom she had once looked up to as her savior and mentor. She had not had a happy, amiable conversation with Philip for years. Of course, it was not his fault that they could not get an annulment; but it was he who had insisted they live apart, and Aliena could not help resenting him for that.
She loved her children, but she worried about them, being brought up in such an unnatural household, with a father who went away at bedtime. So far, happily, they showed no ill effects: Tommy was a strapping, good-looking boy who liked football, races and playing soldiers; and Sally was a sweet, thoughtful girl who told stories to her dolls and loved to watch Jack at his tracing floor. Their constant needs and their simple love were the one solidly normal element in Aliena’s eccentric life.
She still had her work, of course. She had been a merchant of some kind for most of her adult life. At present she had dozens of men and women in scattered villages spinning and weaving for her in their homes. A few years ago there had been hundreds, but she was feeling the effects of the famine like everyone else, and there was no point in making more cloth than she could sell. Even if she were married to Jack she would still want to have her own independent work.
Prior Philip kept saying the annulment could be granted any day, but Aliena and Jack had now been living this infuriating life for seven long years, eating together and bringing up their children and sleeping apart.
She felt Jack’s unhappiness more painfully than her own. She adored him. Nobody knew how much she loved him, except perhaps his mother, Ellen, who saw everything. She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly. She would have spent her entire life numb to the joys and pains of love, if he had not walked into her secret glade, and shared his story-poems with her, and kissed her so lightly, and then slowly, gently, awakened the love that lay dormant in her heart. He had been so patient, so tolerant, despite his youth. For that she would always love him.
As she passed through the forest she wondered whether she would run into Jack’s mother, Ellen. They saw her occasionally, at a fair in one of the towns; and about once a year she would sneak into Kingsbridge at dusk and spend the night with her grandchildren. Aliena felt an affinity for Ellen: they were both oddities, women who did not fit into the mold. However, she emerged from the forest without seeing Ellen.
As she traveled through farmland she checked the crops ripening in the fields. It would be a fair harvest, she estimated. They had not had a good summer, for there had been some rain and it had been cold. But they had not had the floods and crop diseases which had blighted the last three harvests. Aliena was thankful. There were thousands of people living right on the edge of starvation, and another bad winter would kill most of them.
She stopped to water her oxen at the pond in the middle of a village called Monksfield, which was part of the earl’s estate. It was a fairly large place, surrounded by some of the best land in the county, and it had its own priest and a stone church. However, only about half the fields round about had been sown this year. Those that had been were now covered with yellow wheat, and the rest were sprouting weeds.
Two other travelers had stopped at the pond in the middle of the village to water their horses. Aliena looked at them warily. Sometimes it was good to team up with other people, for mutual protection; but it could be risky, too, for a woman. Aliena found that a man such as her carter was perfectly willing to do what she told him when they were alone, but if other men were present he was liable to become insubordinate.
However, one of the two travelers at Monksfield pond was a woman. Aliena looked more closely and revisedwomantogirl.Aliena recognized her. She had last seen this girl in Kingsbridge Cathedral on Whitsunday. It was Countess Elizabeth, the wife of William Hamleigh.
She looked miserable and cowed. With her was a surly man-at-arms, obviously her bodyguard. That could have been my fate, Aliena thought, if I had married William. Thank God I rebelled.
The man-at-arms nodded curtly to the carter and ignored Aliena. She decided not to suggest teaming up.
