World Without End

On Friday, Caris took Gwenda to see Mattie Wise.

Gwenda was still in town because Wulfric was there, attending to the burial of his family. Elaine, Edmund's housemaid, had dried Gwenda's dress in front of the fire, and Caris had bandaged her feet and given her an old pair of shoes.

Caris felt that Gwenda was not telling the full truth about her adventure in the forest. She said that Sim had taken her to the outlaws, and she had escaped; he had chased after her, and he had died in the bridge collapse. John Constable was satisfied with that story: outlaws were outside the law, as their name indicated, so there was no question of Sim bequeathing his property. Gwenda was free. But something else had happened in the forest, Caris felt sure; something Gwenda did not want to talk about. Caris did not press her friend. Some things were best buried.

Funerals were the business of the town this week. The extraordinary manner of the deaths made little difference to the rituals of interment. The bodies had to be washed, the shrouds sewn for the poor, the coffins nailed for the rich, the graves dug, and the priests paid. Not all the monks were qualified as priests, but several were, and they worked in shifts, all day, every day, conducting obsequies in the cemetery on the north side of the cathedral. There were half a dozen small parish churches in Kingsbridge, and their priests were also busy.

Gwenda was helping Wulfric with the arrangements, performing the traditional woman's tasks, washing the bodies and making the shrouds, doing what she could to comfort him. He was in a kind of daze. He managed the details of the burial well enough, but spent hours gazing into space, with a slightly puzzled frown, as if trying to make sense of a massive conundrum.

By Friday the funerals were over, but the acting prior, Carlus, had announced a special service on Sunday for the souls of all those killed, so Wulfric was staying until Monday. Gwenda reported to Caris that he seemed grateful for the company of someone from his own village, but showed animation only when talking about Annet. Caris offered to buy her another love potion.

They found Mattie Wise in her kitchen, brewing medicines. The little house smelled of herbs, oil, and wine. 'I used just about everything I had on Saturday and Sunday,' she said. 'I need to restock.'

'You must have made some money, anyway,' Gwenda said.

'Yes - if I can collect it.'

Caris was shocked. 'Do people welsh on you?'

'Some do. I always try to collect the fee in advance, while they're still in pain. But if they haven't got the money there and then, it's hard to refuse them treatment. Most pay up afterwards, but not all.'

Caris felt indignant on behalf of her friend. 'What do they say?'

'All sorts of things. They can't afford it, the potion did them no good, they were given it against their will, anything. But don't worry. There are enough honest people for me to continue. What's on your mind?'

'Gwenda lost her love potion in the accident.'

'That's easily remedied. Why don't you prepare it for her?'

While Caris was making up the mixture, she asked Mattie: 'How many pregnancies end in a miscarriage?'

Gwenda knew why she was asking. Caris had told her all about Merthin's dilemma. The two girls had spent most of their time together discussing either Wulfric's indifference or Merthin's high principles. Caris had even been tempted to buy a love potion herself, and use it on Merthin; though something held her back.

Mattie gave her a sharp look, but answered noncommittally. 'No one knows. Many times, a woman misses one month but comes on again the next. Did she get pregnant and lose the baby, or was there some other reason? It's impossible to tell.'

'Oh.'

'Neither of you is pregnant, though, if that's what you're worried about.'

Gwenda said quickly: 'How do you know?'

'By looking at you. A woman changes almost immediately. Not just her belly and her breasts, but her complexion, her way of moving, her mood. I see these things better than most people - that's why they call me wise. So who is pregnant?'

'Griselda, Elfric's daughter.'

'Oh, yes, I've seen her. She's three months gone.'

Caris was astonished. 'How long?'

'Three months, or very nearly. Take a look at her. She was never a thin girl, but she's even more voluptuous now. So why are you so shocked? I suppose it's Merthin's baby, is it?'

Mattie always guessed these things.

Gwenda said to Caris: 'I thought you told me it happened recently.'

'Merthin didn't say exactly when, but he gave me the impression it was not long ago, and it only happened once. Now it seems he's been doing it to her for months!'

Mattie frowned. 'Why would he lie?'

'To make himself look not so bad?' Gwenda suggested.

'How could it be worse?'

'Men are peculiar, the way they think.'

'I'm going to ask him,' Caris said. 'Right now.' She put down the jar and the measuring spoon.

Gwenda said: 'What about my love potion?'

'I'll finish making it,' Mattie said. 'Caris is in too much of a hurry.'

'Thank you,' Caris said, and she went out.

She marched down to the riverside, but for once Merthin was not there. She failed to find him at Elfric's house either. She decided he must be in the mason's loft.

In the west front of the cathedral, neatly fitted into one of the towers, was a workroom for the master mason. Caris reached it by climbing a narrow spiral staircase in a buttress of the tower. It was a wide room, well lit by tall lancet windows. All along one wall were stacked the beautifully shaped wooden templates used by the original cathedral stone carvers, carefully preserved and used now for repairs.

Underfoot was the tracing floor. The floorboards were covered with a layer of plaster, and the original master mason, Jack Builder, had scratched his plans in the mortar with iron drawing instruments. The marks thus made were white at first, but they faded over time, and new drawings could be scratched on top of the old. When there were so many designs that it became hard to tell the new from the old, a fresh layer of plaster was laid on top, and the process began again.

Parchment, the thin leather on which monks copied out the books of the Bible, was much too expensive to be used for drawings. In Caris's lifetime a new writing material had appeared, paper, but it came from the Arabs, so monks rejected it as a heathen Muslim invention. Anyway, it had to be imported from Italy and was no cheaper than parchment. And the tracing floor had another advantage: a carpenter could lay a piece of wood on the floor, on top of the drawing, and carve his template exactly to the lines drawn by the master mason.

Merthin was kneeling on the floor, carving a piece of oak in accordance with a drawing, but he was not making a template. He was carving a cogwheel with sixteen teeth. On the floor close by was another, smaller wheel, and Merthin stopped carving for a moment to put the two together and see how well they fitted. Caris had seen such cogs, or gears, in water mills, connecting the mill paddle to the grindstone.

He must have heard her footsteps on the stone staircase, but he was too absorbed in his work to glance up. She regarded him for a second, anger competing with love in her heart. He had the look of total concentration that she knew so well: his slight body bent over his work, his strong hands and dextrous fingers making fine adjustments, his face immobile, his gaze unwavering. He had the perfect grace of a young deer bending its head to drink from a stream. This was what a man looked like, she thought, when he was doing what he was born to do. He was in a state like happiness, but more profound. He was fulfilling his destiny.

She burst out: 'Why did you lie to me?'

His chisel slipped. He cried out in pain and looked at his finger. 'Christ,' he said, and put his finger in his mouth.

'I'm sorry,' Caris said. 'Are you hurt?'

'Nothing much. When did I lie to you?'

'You gave me the impression that Griselda seduced you one time. The truth is that the two of you have been at it for months.'

'No, we haven't.' He sucked his bleeding finger.

'She's three months pregnant.'

'She can't be, it happened two weeks ago.'

'She is, you can tell by her figure.'

'Can you?'

'Mattie Wise told me. Why did you lie?'

He looked her in the eye. 'But I didn't lie,' he said. 'It happened on the Sunday of Fleece Fair week. That was the first and only time.'

'Then how could she be sure she's pregnant, after only two weeks?'

'I don't know. How soon can women tell, anyway?'

'Don't you know?'

'I've never asked. Anyway, three months ago Griselda was still with...'

'Oh, God!' Caris said. A spark of hope flared in her breast. 'She was still with her old boyfriend - Thurstan.' The spark blazed into a flame. 'It must be his baby, Thurstan's - not yours. You're not the father!'

'Is it possible?' Merthin seemed hardly to dare to hope.

'Of course - it explains everything. If she had suddenly fallen in love with you, she'd be after you every chance she gets. But you said she hardly speaks to you.'

'I thought that was because I was reluctant to marry her.'

'She's never liked you. She just needed a father for her baby. Thurstan ran away - probably when she told him she was pregnant - and you were right there in the house, and stupid enough to fall for her trick. Oh, thank God!'

'Thank Mattie Wise,' said Merthin.

She caught sight of his left hand. Blood was welling from a finger. 'Oh, I made you hurt yourself!' she cried. She took his hand and examined the cut. It was small, but deep. 'I'm so sorry.'

'It's not that bad.'

'But it is,' she said, not knowing whether she was talking about the cut or something else. She kissed his hand, feeling his hot blood on her lips. She put his finger in her mouth, sucking the wound clean. It was so intimate that it felt like a sexual act, and she closed her eyes, feeling ecstatic. She swallowed, tasting his blood, and shuddered with pleasure.

A week after the bridge collapsed, Merthin had built a ferry.

It was ready at dawn on Saturday morning, in time for the weekly Kingsbridge market. He had worked on it by lamplight all Friday night, and Caris guessed he had not had time to speak to Griselda and tell her he knew the baby was Thurstan's. Caris and her father came down to the riverside to see the new sensation as the first traders arrived - women from the surrounding villages with baskets of eggs, peasants with cartloads of butter and cheese, and shepherds with flocks of lambs.

Caris admired Merthin's work. The raft was large enough to carry a horse and cart without taking the beast out of the shafts, and it had a firm wooden railing to keep sheep from falling overboard. New wooden platforms at water level on both banks made it easy for carts to roll on and off. Passengers paid a penny, collected by a monk - the ferry, like the bridge, belonged to the priory.

Most ingenious was the system Merthin had devised for moving the raft from one bank to the other. A long rope ran from the south end of the raft across the river, around a post, back across the river, around a drum, and back to the raft, where it was attached again at the north end. The drum was connected by wooden gears to a wheel turned by a pacing ox: Caris had seen Merthin carving the gears yesterday. A lever altered the gears so that the drum turned in either direction, depending on whether the raft was going or coming back - and there was no need to take the ox out of its traces and turn it around.

'It's quite simple,' Merthin said when she marveled at it - and it was, when she looked closely. The lever simply lifted one large cogwheel up out of the chain and moved into its place two smaller wheels, the effect being to reverse the direction in which the drum turned. All the same, no one in Kingsbridge had seen anything like it.

During the course of the morning, half the town came to look at Merthin's amazing new machine. Caris was bursting with pride in him. Elfric stood by, explaining the mechanism to anyone who asked, taking the credit for Merthin's work.

Caris wondered where Elfric got the nerve. He had destroyed Merthin's door - an act of violence that would have scandalized the town, had it not been overtaken by the greater tragedy of the bridge collapse. He had beaten Merthin with a stick, and Merthin still had the bruise on his face. And he had colluded in a deception intended to make Merthin marry Griselda and raise another man's child. Merthin had continued to work with him, feeling that the emergency outweighed their quarrel. But Caris did not know how Elfric could continue to hold his head up.

The ferry was brilliant - but inadequate.

Edmund pointed this out. On the far side of the river, carts and traders were queuing all along the road through the suburbs as far as the eye could see.

'It would go faster with two oxen,' Merthin said.

'Twice as fast?'

'Not quite, no. I could build another ferry.'

'There's already a second one,' Edmund said, pointing. He was right: Ian Boatman was rowing foot passengers across. Ian could not take carts, he refused livestock, and he charged twopence. Normally he had trouble scraping a living: he took a monk across to Leper Island twice a day and found little other business. But today he, too, had a queue.

Merthin said: 'Well, you're right. In the end, a ferry is not a bridge.'

'This is a catastrophe,' Edmund said. 'Buonaventura's news was bad enough. But this - this could kill the town.'

'Then you must have a new bridge.'

'It's not me, it's the priory. The prior is dead, and there's no telling how long they will take to elect a new one. We'll just have to pressure the acting prior to make a decision. I'll go and see Carlus now. Come with me, Caris.'

They walked up the street and entered the priory. Most visitors had to go to the hospital, and tell one of the servants that they wanted to speak to a monk; but Edmund was too important a personage, and too proud, to beg the favor of an audience in that way. The prior was lord of Kingsbridge, but Edmund was alderman of the guild, leader of the merchants who made the town what it was, and he treated the prior as a partner in the governance of the town. Besides, for the last thirteen years the prior had been his younger brother. So he went straight to the prior's house on the north side of the cathedral.

It was a timber-framed house like Edmund's, with a hall and a parlor on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. There was no kitchen, for the prior's meals were prepared in the monastery kitchen. Many bishops and priors lived in palaces - and the bishop of Kingsbridge had a fine place in Shiring - but the prior of Kingsbridge lived modestly. However, the chairs were comfortable, the wall was hung with tapestries of Bible scenes, and there was a big fireplace to keep the house cozy in winter.

Caris and Edmund arrived mid-morning, the time when younger monks were supposed to labor, and their elders to read. Edmund and Caris found Blind Carlus in the hall of the prior's house, deep in conversation with Simeon, the treasurer. 'We must talk about the new bridge,' Edmund said immediately.

'Very well, Edmund,' Carlus said, recognizing him by his voice. The welcome was not warm, Caris noted, and she wondered if they had come at a bad time.

Edmund was just as sensitive as she to atmosphere, but he always blustered through. Now he took a chair and said: 'When do you think you'll hold the election for the new prior?'

'You can sit down, too, Caris,' said Carlus. She had no idea how he knew she was there. 'No date has been set for the election,' he went on. 'Earl Roland has the right to nominate a candidate, but he has not yet recovered consciousness.'

'We can't wait,' Edmund said. Caris thought he was being too abrupt, but this was his way, so she said nothing. 'We have to start work on the new bridge right away,' her father continued. 'Timber's no good, we have to build in stone. It's going to take three years - four, if we delay.'

'A stone bridge?'

'It's essential. I've been talking to Elfric and Merthin. Another wooden bridge would fall down like the old.'

'But the cost!'

'About two hundred and fifty pounds, depending on the design. That's Elfric's calculation.'

Brother Simeon said: 'A new wooden bridge would cost fifty pounds, and Prior Anthony rejected that last week because of the price.'

'And look at the result! A hundred people dead, many more injured, livestock and carts lost, the prior dead, and the earl at death's door.'

Carlus said stiffly: 'I hope you don't mean to blame all that on the late Prior Anthony.'

'We can't pretend his decision worked out well.'

'God has punished us for sin.'

Edmund sighed. Caris felt frustrated. Whenever they were in the wrong, monks would bring God into the argument. Edmund said: 'It is hard for us mere men to know God's intentions. But one thing we do know is that, without a bridge, this town will die. We're already losing out to Shiring. Unless we build a new stone bridge as fast as we possibly can, Kingsbridge will soon become a small village.'

'That may be God's plan for us.'

Edmund began to show his exasperation. 'Is it possible that God is so displeased with you monks? For, believe me, if the Fleece Fair and the Kingsbridge market die, there will not be a priory here with twenty-five monks and forty nuns and fifty employees, and a hospital and a choir and a school. There may not be a cathedral, either. The bishop of Kingsbridge has always lived in Shiring - what if the prosperous merchants there offer to build him a splendid new cathedral in their own town, out of the profits from their ever-growing market? No Kingsbridge market, no town, no cathedral, no priory - is that what you want?'

Carlus looked dismayed. Clearly it had not occurred to him that the long-term consequences of the bridge collapse could actually affect the status of the priory.

But Simeon said: 'If the priory can't afford to build a wooden bridge, there's certainly no prospect of a stone one.'

'But you must!'

'Will the masons work free?'

'Certainly not. They have to feed their families. But we've already explained how the townspeople could raise the money and lend it to the priory against the security of the bridge tolls.'

'And take away our income from the bridge!' Simeon said indignantly. 'You're back to that swindle, are you?'

Caris put in: 'You've got no bridge tolls at all now.'

'On the contrary, we're collecting fares on the ferry.'

'You found the money to pay Elfric for that.'

'A lot less than a bridge - and even so it emptied our coffers.'

'The fares will never amount to much - the ferry is too slow.'

'The time may come, in the future, when the priory is able to build a new bridge. God will send the means, if he wishes it. And then we will still have the tolls.'

Edmund said: 'God has already sent the means. He inspired my daughter to dream up a way of raising the money that has never been thought of before.'

Carlus said primly: 'Please leave it to us to decide what God has done.'

'Very well.' Edmund stood up, and Caris did the same. 'I'm very sorry you're taking this attitude. It's a catastrophe for Kingsbridge and everyone who lives here, including the monks.'

'I must be guided by God, not you.'

Edmund and Caris turned to leave.

'One more thing, if I may,' said Carlus.

Edmund turned at the door. 'Of course.'

'It's not acceptable for laypeople to enter priory buildings at will. Next time you wish to see me, please come to the hospital, and send a novice or a priory servant to seek me out, in the usual way.'

'I'm alderman of the parish guild!' Edmund protested. 'I've always had direct access to the prior.'

'No doubt the fact that Prior Anthony was your brother made him reluctant to impose the usual rules. But those days are over.'

Caris looked at her father's face. He was repressing fury. 'Very well,' he said tightly.

'God bless you.'

Edmund went out, and Caris followed.

They walked across the muddy green together, passing a pitifully small cluster of market stalls. Caris felt the weight of her father's obligations. Most people just worried about feeding their families. Edmund worried about the entire town. She glanced at him and saw that his expression was twisted into an anxious frown. Unlike Carlus, Edmund would not throw his hands in the air and say that God's will would be done. He was racking his brains for a solution to the problem. She felt a surge of compassion for him, straining to do the right thing with no help from the powerful priory. He never complained of the responsibility, he just took it on. It made her want to weep.

They left the precincts and crossed the main street. As they came to their front door, Caris said: 'What are we going to do?'

'It's obvious, isn't it?' said her father. 'We've got to make sure Carlus doesn't get elected prior.'