World Without End

77

Easter came early in the year 1350, and there was a big fire blazing in Merthin's hearth on the evening of Good Friday. The table was laid with a cold supper: smoked fish, soft cheese, new bread, pears, and a flagon of Rhenish wine. Merthin was wearing clean underclothes and a new yellow robe. The house had been swept, and there were daffodils in a jug on the sideboard.

Merthin was alone. Lolla was with his servants, Arn and Em. Their cottage was at the end of the garden but Lolla, who was five, loved to stay there overnight. She called it going on pilgrimage, and took a traveling bag containing her hairbrush and a favorite doll.

Merthin opened a window and looked out. A cold breeze blew across the river from the meadow on the south side. The last of the evening was fading, the light seeming to fall out of the sky and sink into the water, where it disappeared in the blackness.

He visualized a hooded figure emerging from the nunnery. He saw it tread a worn diagonal across the cathedral green, hurry past the lights of the Bell, and descend the muddy main street, the face shadowed, speaking to no one. He imagined it reaching the foreshore. Did it glance sideways into the cold, black river, and remember a moment of despair so great as to give rise to thoughts of self-destruction? If so, the recollection was quickly dismissed, and it stepped forward onto the cobbled roadbed of his bridge. It crossed the span and made landfall again on Leper Island. There it diverted from the main road and passed through low shrubbery, across scrubby grass cropped by rabbits, and around the ruins of the old lazar house until it came to the southwest shore. Then it tapped on Merthin's door.

He closed the window and waited. No tap came. He was wishfully a little ahead of schedule.

He was tempted to drink some wine, but he did not: a ritual had developed, and he did not want to change the order of events.

The knock came a few moments later. He opened the door. She stepped inside, threw back her hood, and dropped the heavy gray cloak from her shoulders.

She was taller than he by an inch or more, and a few years older. Her face was proud, and could be haughty, although now her smile radiated warmth like the sun. She wore a robe of bright Kingsbridge scarlet. He put his arms around her, pressing her voluptuous body to his own, and kissed her wide mouth. 'My darling,' he said. 'Philippa.'

They made love immediately, there on the floor, hardly undressing. He was hungry for her, and she was if anything more eager. He spread her cloak on the straw, and she lifted the skirt of her robe and lay down. She clung to him like one drowning, her legs wrapped around his, her arms crushing him to her soft body, her face buried in his neck.

She had told him that, after she left Ralph and moved into the priory, she had thought no one would ever touch her again until the nuns laid out her cold body for burial. The thought almost made Merthin cry.

For his part, he had loved Caris so much that he felt no other woman would ever arouse his affection. For him as well as Philippa, this love had come as an unexpected gift, a spring of cold water bubbling up in a baking-hot desert, and they both drank from it as if they were dying of thirst.

Afterward they lay entwined by the fire, panting, and he recalled the first time. Soon after she moved to the priory, she had taken an interest in the building of the new tower. A practical woman, she had trouble filling the long hours that were supposed to be spent in prayer and meditation. She enjoyed the library but could not read all day. She came to see him in the mason's loft, and he showed her the plans. She quickly got into the habit of visiting every day, talking to him while he worked. He had always admired her intelligence and strength, and in the intimacy of the loft he came to know the warm, generous spirit beneath her stately manner. He discovered that she had a lively sense of humor, and he learned how to make her laugh. She responded with a rich, throaty chuckle that, somehow, led him to think of making love to her. One day she had paid him a compliment. 'You're a kind man,' she had said. 'There aren't enough of them.' Her sincerity had touched him, and he had kissed her hand. It was a gesture of affection, but one she could reject, if she wished, without drama: she simply had to withdraw her hand and take a step back, and he would have known he had gone a little too far. But she had not rejected it. On the contrary, she had held his hand and looked at him with something like love in her eyes, and he had wrapped his arms around her and kissed her lips.

They had made love on the mattress in the loft, and he had not remembered until afterward that Caris had encouraged him to put the mattress there, with a joke about masons needing a soft place for their tools.

Caris did not know about him and Philippa. No one did except Philippa's maid and Arn and Em. She went to bed in her private room on the upper floor of the hospital soon after nightfall, at the same time as the nuns retired to their dormitory. She slipped out while they were asleep, using the outside steps that permitted important guests to come and go without passing through the common people's quarters. She returned by the same route before dawn, while the nuns were singing Matins, and appeared at breakfast as if she had been in her room all night.

He was surprised to find that he could love another woman less than a year after Caris had left him for the final time. He certainly had not forgotten Caris. On the contrary, he thought about her every day. He felt the urge to tell her about something amusing that had happened, or he wanted her opinion on a knotty problem, or he found himself performing some task the way she would want it done, such as carefully bathing Lolla's grazed knee with warm wine. And then he saw her most days. The new hospital was almost finished, but the cathedral tower was barely begun, and Caris kept a close eye on both building projects. The priory had lost its power to control the town merchants, but nevertheless Caris took an interest in the work Merthin and the guild were doing to create all the institutions of a borough - establishing new courts, planning a wool exchange, and encouraging the craft guilds to codify standards and measures. But his thoughts about her always had an unpleasant aftertaste, like the bitterness left at the back of the throat by sour beer. He had loved her totally, and she had, in the end, rejected him. It was like remembering a happy day that had ended with a fight.

'Do you think I'm peculiarly attracted to women who aren't free?' he said idly to Philippa.

'No, why?'

'It does seem odd that after twelve years of loving a nun, and nine months of celibacy, I should fall for my brother's wife.'

'Don't call me that,' she said quickly. 'It was no marriage. I was wedded against my will, I shared his bed for no more than a few days, and he will be happy if he never sees me again.'

He patted her shoulder apologetically. 'But still, we have to be secretive, just as I did with Caris.' What he was not saying was that a man was entitled, by law, to kill his wife if he caught her committing adultery. Merthin had never known it to happen, certainly not among the nobility, but Ralph's pride was a terrible thing. Merthin knew, and had told Philippa, that Ralph had killed his first wife, Tilly.

She said: 'Your father loved your mother hopelessly for a long time, didn't he?'

'So he did!' Merthin had almost forgotten that old story.

'And you fell for a nun.'

'And my brother spent years pining for you, the happily married wife of a nobleman. As the priests say, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. But enough of this. Do you want some supper?'

'In a moment.'

'There's something you want to do first?'

'You know.'

He did know. He knelt between her legs and kissed her belly and her thighs. It was a peculiarity of hers that she always wanted to come twice. He began to tease her with his tongue. She groaned, and pressed the back of his head. 'Yes,' she said. 'You know how I like that, especially when I'm full of your seed.'

He lifted his head. 'I do,' he said. Then he bent again to his task.

The spring brought a respite in the plague. People were still dying, but fewer were falling ill. On Easter Sunday, Bishop Henri announced that the Fleece Fair would take place as usual this year.

At the same service, six novices took their vows and so became full-fledged monks. They had all had an extraordinarily short novitiate, but Henri was keen to raise the number of monks at Kingsbridge, and he said the same thing was going on all over the country. In addition five priests were ordained - they, too, benefiting from an accelerated training program - and sent to replace plague victims in the surrounding countryside. And two Kingsbridge monks came down from university, having received their degrees as physicians in three years instead of the usual five or seven.

The new doctors were Austin and Sime. Caris remembered both of them rather vaguely: she had been guest master when they left, three years ago, to go to Kingsbridge College in Oxford. On the afternoon of Easter Monday she showed them around the almost-completed new hospital. No builders were at work as it was a holiday.

Both had the bumptious self-confidence that the university seemed to instill in its graduates along with medical theories and a taste for Gascon wine. However, years of dealing with patients had given Caris a confidence of her own, and she described the hospital's facilities and the way she planned to run it with brisk assurance.

Austin was a slim, intense young man with thinning fair hair. He was impressed with the innovative new cloisterlike layout of the rooms. Sime, a little older and round-faced, did not seem eager to learn from Caris's experience: she noticed that he always looked away when she was talking.

'I believe a hospital should always be clean,' she said.

'On what grounds?' Sime inquired in a condescending tone, as if asking a little girl why Dolly had to be spanked.

'Cleanliness is a virtue.'

'Ah. So it has nothing to do with the balance of humors in the body.'

'I have no idea. We don't pay too much attention to the humors. That approach has failed spectacularly against the plague.'

'And sweeping the floor has succeeded?'

'At a minimum, a clean room lifts patients' spirits.'

Austin put in: 'You must admit, Sime, that some of the masters at Oxford share the mother prioress's new ideas.'

'A small group of the heterodox.'

Caris said: 'The main point is to take patients suffering from the type of illnesses that are transmitted from the sick to the well and isolate them from the rest.'

'To what end?' said Sime.

'To restrict the spread of such diseases.'

'And how is it that they are transmitted?'

'No one knows.'

A little smile of triumph twitched Sime's mouth. 'Then how do you know by what means to restrict their spread, may I ask?'

He thought he had trumped her in argument - it was the main thing they learned at Oxford - but she knew better. 'From experience,' she said. 'A shepherd doesn't understand the miracle by which lambs grow in the womb of a ewe, but he knows it won't happen if he keeps the ram out of the field.'

'Hm.'

Caris disliked the way he said: 'Hm.' He was clever, she thought, but his cleverness never touched the world. She was struck by the contrast between this kind of intellectual and Merthin's kind. Merthin's learning was wide, and the power of his mind to grasp complexities was remarkable - but his wisdom never strayed far from the realities of the material world, for he knew that if he went wrong his buildings would fall down. Her father, Edmund, had been like that, clever but practical. Sime, like Godwyn and Anthony, would cling to his faith in the humors of the body regardless of whether his patients lived or died.

Austin was smiling broadly. 'She's got you there, Sime,' he said, evidently amused that his smug friend had failed to overwhelm this uneducated woman. 'We may not know exactly how illnesses spread, but it can't do any harm to separate the sick from the well.'

Sister Joan, the nuns' treasurer, interrupted their conversation. 'The bailiff of Outhenby is asking for you, Mother Caris.'

'Did he bring a herd of calves?' Outhenby was obliged to supply the nuns with twelve one-year-old calves every Easter.

'Yes.'

'Pen the beasts and ask the bailiff to come here, please.'

Sime and Austin took their leave, and Caris went to inspect the tiled floor in the latrines. The bailiff found her there. It was Harry Plowman. She had sacked the old bailiff, who was too slow to respond to change, and she had promoted the brightest young man in the village.

He shook her hand, which was overfamiliar of him, but Caris liked him and did not mind.

She said: 'It must be a nuisance, your having to drive a herd all the way here, especially when the spring plowing is under way.'

'It is that,' he said. Like most plowmen, he was broad-shouldered and strong-armed. Strength as well as skill was required for driving the communal eight-ox team as they pulled the heavy plow through wet clay soil. He seemed to carry with him the air of the healthy outdoors.

'Wouldn't you rather make a money payment?' Caris said. 'Most manorial dues are paid in cash these days.'

'It would be more convenient.' His eyes narrowed with peasant shrewdness. 'But how much?'

'A year-old calf normally fetches ten to twelve shillings at market, though prices are down this season.'

'They are - by half. You can buy twelve calves for three pounds.'

'Or six pounds in a good year.'

He grinned, enjoying the negotiation. 'There's your problem.'

'But you would prefer to pay cash.'

'If we can agree the amount.'

'Make it eight shillings.'

'But then, if the price of a calf is only five shillings, where do we villagers get the extra money?'

'I tell you what. In future, Outhenby can pay the nunnery either five pounds or twelve calves - the choice is yours.'

Harry considered that, looking for snags, but could find none. 'All right,' he said. 'Shall we seal the bargain?'

'How should we do that?'

To her surprise, he kissed her.

He held her slender shoulders in his rough hands, bent his head, and pressed his lips to hers. If Brother Sime had done this she would have recoiled. But Harry was different, and perhaps she had been titillated by his air of vigorous masculinity. Whatever the reason, she submitted to the kiss, letting him pull her unresisting body to his own, and moving her lips against his bearded mouth. He pressed up against her so that she could feel his erection. She realized that he would cheerfully take her here on the newly laid tiles of the latrine floor, and that thought brought her to her senses. She broke the kiss and pushed him away. 'Stop!' she said. 'What do you think you're doing?'

He was unabashed. 'Kissing you, my dear,' he said.

She realized that she had a problem. No doubt gossip about her and Merthin was widespread: they were probably the two best-known people in Shiring. While Harry surely did not know the truth, the rumors had been enough to embolden him. This kind of thing could undermine her authority. She must squash it now. 'You must never do anything like that again,' she said as severely as she could.

'You seemed to like it!'

'Then your sin is all the greater, for you have tempted a weak woman to perjure her holy vows.'

'But I love you.'

It was true, she realized, and she could guess why. She had swept into his village, reorganized everything, and bent the peasants to her will. She had recognized Harry's potential and elevated him above his fellows. He must think of her as a goddess. It was not surprising that he had fallen in love with her. He had better fall out of love as soon as possible. 'If you ever speak to me like that again, I'll have to get another bailiff in Outhenby.'

'Oh,' he said. That stopped him short more effectively than the accusation of sin.

'Now, go home.'

'Very well, Mother Caris.'

'And find yourself another woman - preferably one who has not taken a vow of chastity.'

'Never,' he said, but she did not believe him.

He left, but she stayed where she was. She felt restless and lustful. If she could have felt sure of being alone for a while, she would have touched herself. This was the first time in nine months that she had been bothered by physical desire. After finally splitting up with Merthin she had fallen into a kind of neutered state, in which she did not think about sex. Her relationships with other nuns gave her warmth and affection: she was fond of both Joan and Oonagh, though neither loved her in the physical way Mair had. Her heart beat with other passions: the new hospital, the tower, and the rebirth of the town.

Thinking of the tower, she left the hospital and walked across the green to the cathedral. Merthin had dug four enormous holes, the deepest anyone had ever seen, outside the church around the foundations of the old tower. He had built great cranes to lift the earth out. Throughout the wet autumn months, oxcarts had lumbered all day long down the main street and across the first span of the bridge to dump the mud on rocky Leper Island. There they had picked up building stones from Merthin's wharf, then climbed the street again, to stack the stones around the grounds of the church in ever-growing piles.

As soon as the winter frost was over, his masons had begun laying the foundations. Caris went to the north side of the cathedral and looked into the hole in the angle formed by the outside wall of the nave and the outside wall of the north transept. It was dizzyingly deep. The bottom was already covered with neat masonry, the squared-off stones laid in straight lines and joined by thin layers of mortar. Because the old foundations were inadequate, the tower was being built on its own new, independent foundations. It would rise outside the existing walls of the church, so no demolition would be needed over and above what Elfric had already done in taking down the upper levels of the old tower. Only when it was finished would Merthin remove the temporary roof Elfric had built over the crossing. It was a typical Merthin design: simple yet radical, a brilliant solution to the unique problems of the site.

As at the hospital, no builders were at work on Easter Monday, but she saw movement in the hole and realized someone was walking around on the foundations. A moment later she recognized Merthin. She went to one of the surprisingly flimsy rope-and-branch ladders the masons used, and clambered shakily down.

She was glad to reach the bottom. Merthin helped her off the ladder, smiling. 'You look a little pale,' he said.

'It's a long way down. How are you getting on?'

'Fine. It will take many years.'

'Why? The hospital seems more complicated, and that's finished.'

'Two reasons. The higher we go, the fewer masons will be able to work on it. Right now I've got twelve men laying the foundations. But as it rises it will get narrower, and there just won't be room for them all. The other reason is that mortar takes so long to set. We have to let it harden over a winter before we put too much weight on it.'

She was hardly listening. Watching his face, she was remembering making love to him in the prior's palace, between Matins and Lauds, with the first gleam of daylight coming in through the open window and falling over their naked bodies like a blessing.

She patted his arm. 'Well, the hospital isn't taking so long.'

'You should be able to move in by Whitsun.'

'I'm glad. Although we're having a slight respite from the plague: fewer people are dying.'

'Thank God,' he said fervently. 'Perhaps it may be coming to an end.'

She shook her head bleakly. 'We thought it was over once before, remember? About this time last year. Then it came back worse.'

'Heaven forbid.'

She touched his cheek with her palm, feeling his wiry beard. 'At least you're safe.'

He looked faintly displeased. 'As soon as the hospital is finished we can start on the wool exchange.'

'I hope you're right to think that business must pick up soon.'

'If it doesn't, we'll all be dead anyway.'

'Don't say that.' She kissed his cheek.

'We have to act on the assumption that we're going to live.' He said it irritably, as if she had annoyed him. 'But the truth is that we don't know.'

'Let's not think about the worst.' She put her arms around his waist and hugged him, pressing her breasts against his thin body, feeling his hard bones against her yielding flesh.

He pushed her away violently. She stumbled backward and almost fell. 'Don't do that!' he shouted.

She was as shocked as if he had slapped her. 'What's the matter?'

'Stop touching me!'

'I only...'

'Just don't do it! You ended our relationship nine months ago. I said it was the last time, and I meant it.'

She could not understand his anger. 'But I only hugged you.'

'Well, don't. I'm not your lover. You have no right.'

'I have no right to touch you?'

'No!'

'I didn't think I needed some kind of permission.'

'Of course you knew. You don't let people touch you.'

'You're not people. We're not strangers.' But as she said these things she knew she was wrong and he was right. She had rejected him, but she had not accepted the consequences. The encounter with Harry from Outhenby had fired her lust, and she had come to Merthin looking for release. She had told herself she was touching him in affectionate friendship, but that was a lie. She had treated him as if he were still available to her, as a rich and idle lady might put down a book and pick it up again. Having denied him the right to touch her all this time, it was wrong of her to try to reinstate the privilege just because a muscular young plowman had kissed her.

All the same, she would have expected Merthin to point this out in a gentle and affectionate way. But he had been hostile and brutal. Had she thrown away his friendship as well as his love? Tears came to her eyes. She turned away from him and went back to the ladder.

She found it hard to climb up. It was tiring, and she seemed to have lost her energy. She stopped for a rest, and looked down. Merthin was standing on the bottom of the ladder, steadying it with his weight.

When she was almost at the top, she looked down again. He was still there. It occurred to her that her unhappiness would be over if she fell. It was a long drop to those unforgiving stones. She would die instantly.

Merthin seemed to sense what she was thinking, for he gave an impatient wave, indicating that she should hurry up and get off the ladder. She thought of how devastated he would be if she killed herself, and for a moment she enjoyed imagining his misery and guilt. She felt sure God would not punish her in the afterlife, if there was an afterlife.

Then she climbed the last few rungs and stood on solid ground. How foolish she had been, just for a moment. She was not going to end her life. She had too much to do.

She returned to the nunnery. It was time for Evensong, and she led the procession into the cathedral. As a young novice she had resented the time wasted in services. In fact Mother Cecilia had taken care to give her work that permitted her to be excused for much of the time. Now she welcomed the chance to rest and reflect.

This afternoon had been a low moment, she decided, but she would recover. All the same she found herself fighting back tears as she sang the psalms.

For supper the nuns had smoked eel. Chewy and strongly flavored, it was not Caris's favorite dish. Tonight she was not hungry, anyway. She ate some bread.

After the meal she retired to her pharmacy. Two novices were there, copying out Caris's book. She had finished it soon after Christmas. Many people had asked for copies: apothecaries, prioresses, barbers, even one or two physicians. Copying the book had become part of the training of nuns who wanted to work in the hospital. The copies were cheap - the book was short, and there were no elaborate drawings or costly inks - and the demand seemed never-ending.

Three people made the room feel crowded. Caris was looking forward to the space and light of the pharmacy in the new hospital.

She wanted to be alone, so she sent the novices away. However, she was not destined to get her wish. A few moments later Lady Philippa came in.

Caris had never warmed to the reserved countess, but sympathized with her plight, and was glad to give sanctuary to any woman fleeing from a husband such as Ralph. Philippa was an easy guest, making few demands, spending a lot of time in her room. She had only a limited interest in sharing the nuns' life of prayer and self-denial - but Caris of all people could understand that.

Caris invited her to sit on a stool at the bench.

Philippa was a remarkably direct woman, despite her courtly manners. Without preamble, she said: 'I want you to leave Merthin alone.'

'What?' Caris was astonished and offended.

'Of course you have to talk to him, but you should not kiss or touch him.'

'How dare you.' What did Philippa know - and why did she care?

'He's not your lover anymore. Stop bothering him.'

Merthin must have told her about their quarrel this afternoon. 'But why would he tell you...?' Before the question was out of her mouth, she guessed the answer.

Philippa confirmed it with her next utterance. 'He's not yours, now - he's mine.'

'Oh, my soul!' Caris was flabbergasted. 'You and Merthin?'

'Yes.'

'Are you...Have you actually...'

'Yes.'

'I had no idea!' She felt betrayed, though she knew she had no right. When had this happened? 'But how...where...?'

'You don't need to know the details.'

'Of course not.' At his house on Leper Island, she supposed. At night, probably. 'How long...?'

'It doesn't matter.'

Caris could work it out. Philippa had been here less than a month. 'You moved fast.'

It was an unworthy jibe, and Philippa had the grace to ignore it. 'He would have done anything to keep you. But you threw him over. Now let him go. It's been difficult for him to love anyone else, after you - but he has managed it. Don't you dare interfere.'

Caris wanted to rebuff her furiously, tell her angrily that she had no right to give orders and make moral demands - but the trouble was that Philippa was in the right. Caris had to let Merthin go, forever.

She did not want to show her heartbreak in front of Philippa. 'Would you leave me now, please?' she said with an attempt at Philippa's style of dignity. 'I would like to be alone.'

Philippa was not easily pushed around. 'Will you do as I say?' she persisted.

Caris did not like to be cornered, but she had no spirit left. 'Yes, of course,' she said.

'Thank you.' Philippa left.

When she was sure Philippa was out of earshot, Caris began to cry.