25
The day after Godwyn was confirmed as prior of Kingsbridge, Edmund Wooler came to Merthin's parents' house early in the morning.
Merthin tended to forget what an important personage Edmund was, for Edmund treated him as a member of the family; but Gerald and Maud acted as if receiving an unexpected royal visitation. They were embarrassed that Edmund should see how poor their house was. There was only one room. Merthin and his parents slept on straw mattresses on the floor. There was a fireplace and a table and a small yard at the back.
Fortunately, the family had been up since sunrise, and had washed and dressed and tidied the place. All the same, when Edmund came stomping into the house with his uneven gait, Merthin's mother dusted a stool, patted her hair, closed the back door then opened it again, and put a log on the fire. His father bowed several times, put on a surcoat, and offered Edmund a cup of ale.
'No, thank you, Sir Gerald,' said Edmund, no doubt knowing that the family had none to spare. 'However, I'll take a small bowl of your pottage, Lady Maud, if I may.' Every family kept a pot of oats on the fire to which they added bones, apple cores, pea pods, and other scraps, to be slow-cooked for days. Flavored with salt and herbs, the result was a soup that never tasted the same twice. It was the cheapest food.
Pleased, Maud ladled some pottage into a bowl and put it on the table with a spoon and a plate of bread.
Merthin was still feeling the euphoria of the previous afternoon. It was like being slightly drunk. He had gone to sleep thinking of Caris's naked body and woken up smiling. But he was suddenly reminded of his confrontation with Elfric over Griselda. A false instinct told him that Edmund was going to scream, 'You defiled my daughter!' and hit him across the face with a length of timber.
It was only a momentary vision, and it vanished as Edmund sat at the table. He picked up the spoon but, before he began to eat, he said to Merthin: 'Now that we've got a prior, I want to start work on the new bridge as soon as possible.'
'Good,' said Merthin.
Edmund swallowed a spoonful and smacked his lips. 'This is the best pottage I've ever tasted, Lady Maud.' Merthin's mother looked pleased.
Merthin was grateful to Edmund for being charming to his parents. They felt the humiliation of their reduced status, and it was balm to the wound to have the town's alderman eating at their table and calling them Sir Gerald and Lady Maud.
Now his father said: 'I almost didn't marry her, Edmund - did you know that?'
Merthin was sure Edmund had heard the story before, but he replied: 'Good lord, no - how did that happen?'
'I saw her in church on Easter Sunday, and fell in love with her instantly. There must have been a thousand people in Kingsbridge Cathedral, and she was the most beautiful woman there.'
'Now, Gerald, no need to exaggerate,' Maud said crisply.
'Then she disappeared into the crowd, and I couldn't find her! I didn't know her name. I asked people who was the pretty girl with the fair hair, and they said all the girls were pretty and fair.'
Maud said: 'I hurried away after the service. We were staying at the Holly Bush Inn, and my mother was unwell, so I went back to take care of her.'
Gerald said: 'I looked all over town, but I couldn't find her. After Easter, everyone went home. I was living in Shiring, and she in Casterham, though I didn't know that. I thought I'd never see her again. I imagined she might have been an angel, come to earth to make sure everyone was attending the service.'
She said: 'Gerald, please.'
'But my heart was lost. I took no interest in other women. I expected to spend my life longing for the Angel of Kingsbridge. This went on for two years. Then I saw her at a tournament in Winchester.'
She said: 'This complete stranger came up to me and said: 'It's you - after all this time! You must marry me before you disappear again.' I thought he was mad.'
'Amazing,' said Edmund.
Merthin thought Edmund's goodwill had been stretched far enough. 'Anyway,' he said, 'I've drawn some designs on the tracing floor in the mason's loft at the cathedral.'
Edmund nodded. 'A stone bridge wide enough for two carts?'
'As you specified - and ramped at both ends. And I've found a way to reduce the price by about a third.'
'That's astonishing! How?'
'I'll show you, as soon as you've finished eating.'
Edmund spooned up the last of the pottage and stood. 'I'm done. Let's go.' He turned to Gerald and inclined his head in a slight bow. 'Thank you for your hospitality.'
'It's a pleasure to have you here, alderman.'
Merthin and Edmund stepped out into a light drizzle. Instead of heading for the cathedral, Merthin led Edmund toward the river. Edmund's lopsided stride was instantly recognizable, and every second person on the street greeted him with a friendly word or a respectful bow.
Merthin suddenly felt nervous. He had been thinking about the bridge design for months. While he worked at St Mark's, supervising the carpenters who were constructing the new roof as the old was demolished, he mulled over the greater challenge of the bridge. Now for the first time his ideas would come under scrutiny by someone else.
As yet, Edmund had no idea how radical Merthin's plan was.
The muddy street wound downhill through houses and workshops. The city ramparts had fallen into disrepair during two centuries of civil peace, and in some places all that remained were humps of earth that now formed parts of garden walls. At the river's edge were industries that used large quantities of water, especially wool dyers and leather tanners.
Merthin and Edmund emerged onto the muddy foreshore between a slaughterhouse that gave off a strong smell of blood and a smithy where hammers clanged on iron. Directly in front of them, across a narrow stretch of water, was Leper Island. Edmund said: 'Why are we here? The bridge is a quarter of a mile upstream.'
'It was,' said Merthin. He took a breath and said: 'I think we should build the new one here.'
'A bridge to the island?'
'And another from the island to the far shore. Two small bridges instead of one big one. Much cheaper.'
'But people will have to walk across the island from one bridge to the other.'
'Why not?'
'Because it's a leper colony!'
'There's only one leper left. He can be moved elsewhere. The disease seems to be dying out.'
Edmund looked thoughtful. 'So everyone who comes to Kingsbridge will arrive at this spot, where we're standing.'
'We'll have to build a new street, and knock down some of these buildings - but the cost will be small by comparison with the money saved on the bridge.'
'And on the other side...'
'A pasture that belongs to the priory. I can see the whole layout when I'm on the roof of St. Mark's. That's how come I thought of it.'
Edmund was impressed. 'That's very clever. I wonder why the bridge wasn't put here originally.'
'The first bridge was erected hundreds of years ago. The river probably had a different shape then. Riverbanks must move their position as the centuries go by. The channel between the island and the pasture could have been wider at one time. Then there would have been no advantage in building here.'
Edmund peered across the water, and Merthin followed his gaze. The leper colony was a scatter of tumbledown wooden buildings spread over three or four acres. The island was too rocky for cultivation, but there were some trees and scrubby grass. The place was infested with rabbits, which the townspeople would not eat because of a superstition that they were the souls of dead lepers. At one time the ostracized inhabitants had kept their own chickens and pigs. Now, however, it was simpler for the priory to supply food to the last remaining inhabitant. 'You're right,' Edmund said. 'There hasn't been a new case of leprosy in the town for at least ten years.'
'I've never seen a leper,' Merthin said. 'As a child, I thought people were saying 'leopard.' I imagined that island to be occupied by spotted lions.'
Edmund laughed. Turning his back on the river, he looked at the buildings around. 'There will be some political work to do,' he mused. 'The people whose homes must be demolished will have to be convinced that they're the lucky ones, being moved to new and better houses while their neighbors missed out. And the island may have to be cleansed with holy water to convince people that it's safe. But we can handle all that.'
'I've drawn both bridges with pointed arches, like the cathedral,' Merthin said. 'They will be beautiful.'
'Show me.'
They left the riverside and walked uphill through the town to the priory. The cathedral dripped with rain under a layer of low cloud like smoke from a damp fire. Merthin was looking forward to seeing his drawings again - he had not been to the loft for a week or so - and to explaining them to Edmund. He had thought a great deal about the way the current had undermined the old bridge, and how he could protect the new one from the same fate.
He led Edmund through the north porch and up the spiral staircase. His wet shoes slipped on the worn stone steps. Edmund energetically hauled his withered leg up behind him.
Several lamps were burning in the mason's loft. At first Merthin was pleased, for that meant they would be able to see his drawings more clearly. Then he saw Elfric working on the tracing floor.
He felt momentarily frustrated. The enmity between himself and his former master was as great as ever. Elfric had failed to prevent townspeople from employing Merthin, but he continued to block Merthin's application to join the carpenters' guild - leaving Merthin in an anomalous position, illegitimate but accepted. Elfric's attitude was pointless, but spiteful.
Elfric's presence here would put a damper on Merthin's conversation with Edmund. He told himself not to be so sensitive. Why should it not be Elfric who was made uncomfortable?
He held the door for Edmund, and together they crossed the room to the tracing floor. Then he suffered a shock.
Elfric was bent over the tracing floor, drawing with a pair of compasses - on a fresh layer of plaster. He had re-covered the floor, totally obliterating Merthin's drawings.
Merthin said incredulously: 'What have you done?'
Elfric looked contemptuously at him and went on with his drawing, saying nothing.
'He's wiped out my work,' Merthin said to Edmund.
'What's your explanation, man?' Edmund demanded.
Elfric could not ignore his father-in-law. 'There's nothing to explain,' he said. 'A tracing floor has to be renewed at intervals.'
'But you've covered over important designs!'
'Have I? The prior has not commissioned this boy to make any drawings, and the boy has not asked permission to use the tracing floor.'
Edmund was never slow to anger, and Elfric's cool insolence was getting under his skin. 'Don't act stupid,' he said. 'I asked Merthin to prepare drawings for the new bridge.'
'I'm sorry, but only the prior has authority to do that.'
'Damn it, the guild is providing the money.'
'A loan, to be repaid.'
'It still gives us the right to a say on the design.'
'Does it? You'll have to speak to the prior about that. I don't think he'll be impressed by your choice of an inexperienced apprentice as your designer, though.'
Merthin was looking at the drawings Elfric had scratched in the new plaster. 'I suppose this is your bridge design,' he said.
'Prior Godwyn has commissioned me to build it,' Elfric said.
Edmund was shocked. 'Without asking us?'
Elfric said resentfully: 'What's the matter - don't you want the work to go to your own daughter's husband?'
'Round arches,' Merthin said, still studying Elfric's drawing. 'And narrow openings. How many piers will you have?'
Elfric was reluctant to answer, but Edmund was staring expectantly at him. 'Seven,' he said.
'The wooden bridge only had five!' Merthin said. 'Why are they so thick, and the openings so narrow?'
'To bear the weight of a stone-paved roadway.'
'You don't need thick piers for that. Look at this cathedral - its columns bear the entire weight of the roof, but they're slim and widely spaced.'
Elfric sneered. 'No one's going to drive a cart across the roof of a church.'
'That's true, but - ' Merthin stopped. The rain on the cathedral's vast expanse of roof probably weighed more than an oxcart loaded with stone, but why should he explain this to Elfric? It was not his role to educate an incompetent builder. Elfric's design was poor, but Merthin did not want to improve it, he wanted to replace it with his own, so he shut up.
Edmund also realized he was wasting his breath. 'This decision is not going to be made by you two,' he said, and he stomped off.