Summer was turning into autumn, and it was chilly on the riverbank at dawn. News had somehow got around that a drama would take place and, as well as the members of the parish guild, there were two or three hundred people waiting to see the clash between Merthin and Elfric. Even Caris was there. This was no longer merely an argument about an engineering problem, Merthin realized. He was the youngster challenging the authority of the old bull, and the herd understood that.
Bill Watkin produced two lads of twelve or thirteen, stripped to their undershorts and shivering. It turned out they were Mark Webber's younger sons, Dennis and Noah. Dennis, the thirteen-year-old, was short and chunky, like his mother. He had red-brown hair the color of leaves in autumn. Noah, the younger by two years, was taller, and would probably grow up to be as big as Mark. Merthin identified with the short redhead. He wondered whether Dennis was embarrassed, as Merthin himself had been at that age, to have a younger brother who was bigger and stronger.
Merthin thought Elfric might object to Mark's sons being the divers, on the grounds that they might have been briefed in advance by their father and told what to say. However, Elfric said nothing. Mark was too transparently honest for anyone to suspect him of such duplicity, and perhaps Elfric realized that - or, more likely, Godwyn realized it.
Merthin told the boys what to do. 'Swim out to the central pier, then dive. You'll find the pier is smooth for a long way down. Then there's the foundation, a great lump of stones held together with mortar. When you reach the riverbed, feel underneath the foundation. You probably won't be able to see anything - the water will be too muddy. But hold your breath for as long as you can and investigate thoroughly all around the base. Then come up to the surface and tell us exactly what you find.'
They both jumped into the water and swam out. Merthin spoke to the assembled townspeople. 'The bed of this river is not rock but mud. The current swirls around the piers of a bridge and scours the mud out from underneath the pillars, leaving a depression filled only with water. This happened to the old wooden bridge. The oak piers were not resting on the riverbed at all, but hanging from the superstructure. That's why the bridge collapsed. To prevent the same thing happening to the new bridge, I specified piles of large rough stones around the feet of the piers. Such piles break up the current so that its action is haphazard and weak. However, the piles were not installed and so the piers have been undermined. They are no longer supporting the bridge, but hanging from it - and that's why there are cracks where the pier joins the arch.'
Elfric snorted skeptically, but the other builders looked intrigued. The two boys reached midstream, touched the central pier, took deep breaths, and disappeared.
Merthin said: 'When they come back, they will tell us that the pier is not resting on the riverbed, but hanging over a depression, filled with water, large enough for a man to climb into.'
He hoped he was right.
Both boys stayed under water for a surprisingly long time. Merthin found himself feeling breathless, as it were, in sympathy with them. At last a wet head of red hair broke the surface, then a brown one. The two boys conversed briefly, nodding, as if establishing that they had both observed the same thing. Then they struck out for the shore.
Merthin was not completely sure of his diagnosis, but he could think of no other explanation for the cracks. And he had felt the need to appear supremely confident. If he now turned out to be wrong, he would look all the more foolish.
The boys reached the bank and waded out of the water, panting. Madge gave them blankets which they pulled around their shaking shoulders. Merthin allowed them a few moments to catch their breath, then said: 'Well? What did you find?'
'Nothing,' said Dennis, the elder.
'What do you mean, nothing?'
'There's nothing there, at the bottom of the pillar.'
Elfric looked triumphant. 'Just the mud of the riverbed, you mean.'
'No!' said Dennis. 'No mud - just water.'
Noah put in: 'There's a hole you could climb into - easily! That big pillar is just hanging in the water, with nothing under it.'
Merthin tried not to look relieved.
Elfric blustered: 'There's still no authority for saying a pile of loose stones would have solved the problem.' But no one was listening to him. In the eyes of the crowd, Merthin had proved his point. They gathered around him, commenting and questioning. After a few moments, Elfric walked away alone.
Merthin felt a momentary pang of compassion. Then he recalled how, when he was an apprentice, Elfric had hit him across the face with a length of timber; and his pity evaporated into the cold morning air.
56
The following morning, a monk came to see Merthin at the Bell. When he pulled back his hood, Merthin did not at first recognize him. Then he saw that the monk's left arm was cut off at the elbow, and he realized it was Brother Thomas, now in his forties, with a gray beard and deep-set lines around his eyes and mouth. Was his secret still dangerous after all these years? Merthin wondered. Would Thomas's life be in danger, even now, if the truth came out?
But Thomas had not come to talk about that. 'You were right about the bridge,' he said.
Merthin nodded. There was a sour satisfaction in it. He had been right, but Prior Godwyn had fired him, and in consequence his bridge would never be perfect. 'I wanted to explain the importance of the rough stones, back then,' he said. 'But I knew Elfric and Godwyn would never listen to me. So I told Edmund Wooler, then he died.'
'You should have told me.'
'I wish I had.'
'Come with me to the church,' Thomas said. 'Since you can read so much from a few cracks, I'd like to show you something, if I may.'
He led Merthin to the south transept. Here and in the south aisle of the choir Elfric had rebuilt the arches, following the partial collapse eleven years ago. Merthin saw immediately what Thomas was worrying about: the cracks had reappeared.
'You said they would come back,' Thomas said.
'Unless you discovered the root cause of the problem, yes.'
'You were right. Elfric was wrong twice.'
Merthin felt a spark of excitement. If the tower needed to be rebuilt...'You understand that, but does Godwyn?'
Thomas did not answer the question. 'What do you think the root cause might be?'
Merthin concentrated on the immediate problem. He had thought about this, on and off, for years. 'This is not the original tower, is it?' he said. 'According to Timothy's Book, it has been rebuilt, and made higher.'
'About a hundred years ago, yes - when the raw wool business was booming. Do you think they made it too high?'
'It depends on the foundations.' The site of the cathedral sloped gently to the south, toward the river, and that might be a factor. He walked through the crossing, under the tower, to the north transept. He stood at the foot of the massive pillar at the northeast corner of the crossing and looked up at the arch that stretched over his head, across the north aisle of the choir, to the wall.
'It's the south aisle I'm worried about,' Thomas said, slightly peevishly. 'There are no problems here.'
Merthin pointed up. 'There's a crack on the underside of the arch - the intrados - at the crown,' he said. 'You get that in a bridge, when the piers are inadequately grounded, and start to splay apart.'
'What are you saying - that the tower is moving away from the north transept?'
Merthin went back through the crossing and looked at the matching arch on the south side. 'This one is cracked, too, but on the upper side, the extrados, do you see? The wall above it is cracked, too.'
'They aren't very big cracks.'
'But they tell us what is happening. On the north side, the arch is being stretched; on the south side, it's being pinched. That means the tower is moving south.'
Thomas looked up warily. 'It seems straight.'
'You can't see it with the eye. But if you climb up into the tower, and drop a plumb line from the top of one of the columns of the crossing, just below the springing of the arch, you will see that by the time the line touches the floor it will be adrift of the column to the south by several inches. And, as the tower leans, it's separating from the wall of the choir, which is where the damage shows worst.'
'What can be done?'
Merthin wanted to say: You have to commission me to build a new tower. But that would have been premature. 'A lot more investigation, before any building,' he said, suppressing his excitement. 'We have established that the cracks have appeared because the tower is moving - but why is it moving?'
'And how will we learn that?'
'Dig a hole,' Merthin said.
In the end Jeremiah dug the hole. Thomas did not want to employ Merthin directly. It was difficult enough as it was, he said, to get the money for the investigation out of Godwyn, who seemed never to have any money to spare. But he could not give the job to Elfric, who would have said there was nothing to investigate. So the compromise was Merthin's old apprentice.
Jeremiah had learned from his master and liked to work fast. On the first day, he lifted the paving stones in the south transept. Next day, his men started excavating the earth around the huge southeast pier of the crossing.
As the hole got deeper, Jeremiah built a timber hoist for lifting out loads of earth. By the second week he had to build wooden ladders down the sides of the hole so that the laborers could get to the bottom.
Meanwhile, the parish guild gave Merthin the contract for the repair of the bridge. Elfric was against the decision, of course, but he was in no position to claim that he was the best man for the job, and he hardly bothered to argue.
Merthin went to work with speed and energy. He built cofferdams around the two problem piers, drained the dams, and began to fill the holes under the piers with rubble and mortar. Next he would surround the piers with the piles of large rough stones he had envisaged from the start. Finally, he would remove Elfric's ugly iron braces and fill the cracks with mortar. Provided the repaired foundations were sound, the cracks would not reopen.
But the job he really wanted was the rebuilding of the tower.
It would not be easy. He would have to get his design accepted by the priory and the parish guild, currently run by his two worst enemies, Godwyn and Elfric. And Godwyn would have to find the money.
As a first step, Merthin encouraged Mark to put himself forward for election as alderman, to replace Elfric. The alderman was elected once a year, on All Hallows Day, the first of November. In practice, most aldermen were reelected unopposed until they retired or died. However, there was no doubt that a contest was permitted. Indeed, Elfric himself had put his name forward while Edmund Wooler was still in office.
Mark required little prompting. He was itching to put an end to Elfric's rule. Elfric was so close to Godwyn that there was not much point in having a parish guild at all. The town was in effect run by the priory - narrow, conservative, mistrustful of new ideas, careless of the interests of the townspeople.
So the two candidates began drumming up support. Elfric had his followers, mainly people he either employed or bought materials from. However, he had lost face badly in the argument over the bridge, and those who took his side were downcast. Mark's supporters, by contrast, were ebullient.
Merthin visited the cathedral every day and examined the foundations of the mighty column as they were exposed by Jeremiah's digging. The foundations were made of the same stone as the rest of the church, laid in mortared courses, but less carefully trimmed, as they would not be visible. Each course was a little wider than the one above, in a pyramid shape. As the excavation went deeper, he examined every layer for weakness, and found none. But he felt confident that eventually he would.
Merthin told no one what was in his mind. If his suspicions were correct, and the thirteenth-century tower was simply too heavy for the twelfth-century foundations, the solution would be drastic: the tower would have to be demolished - and a new one built. And the new tower could be the tallest in England...
One day in the middle of October, Caris appeared at the digging. It was early in the morning, and a winter sun was shining through the great east window. She stood on the edge of the hole with her hood around her head like a halo. Merthin's heart beat faster. Perhaps she had an answer for him. He climbed up the ladder eagerly.
She was as beautiful as ever, though in the strong sunlight he could see the little differences that nine years had made to her face. Her skin was not quite as smooth, and there were now the tiniest of creases at the corners of her lips. But her green eyes still shone with that alert intelligence that he loved so much.
They walked together down the south aisle of the nave and stopped near the pillar that always reminded him of how he had once felt her up here. 'I'm happy to see you,' he said. 'You've been hiding away.'
'I'm a nun, I'm supposed to hide away.'
'But you're thinking about renouncing your vows.'
'I haven't made a decision.'
He was crestfallen. 'How much time do you need?'
'I don't know.'
He looked away. He did not want to show her how badly he was hurt by her hesitation. He said nothing. He could have told her she was being unreasonable, but what was the point?
'You'll be going to visit your parents in Tench at some point, I suppose,' she said.
He nodded. 'Quite soon - they will want to see Lolla.' He was eager to see them, too, and had delayed only because he had become so deeply involved in his work on the bridge and the tower.
'In that case, I wish you would talk to your brother about Wulfric in Wigleigh.'
Merthin wanted to talk about himself and Caris, not Wulfric and Gwenda. His response was cool. 'What do you want me to say to Ralph?'
'Wulfric is laboring for no money - just food - because Ralph won't give him even a small acreage to farm.'
Merthin shrugged. 'Wulfric broke Ralph's nose.' He felt the conversation begin to descend into a quarrel, and he asked himself why he was angry. Caris had not spoken to him for weeks, but she had broken her silence for the sake of Gwenda. He resented Gwenda's place in her heart, he realized. That was an unworthy emotion, he told himself; but he could not shake it.
Caris flushed with annoyance. 'That was twelve years ago! Isn't it time Ralph stopped punishing him?'
Merthin had forgotten the abrasive disagreements he and Caris used to have, but now he recognized this friction as familiar. He spoke dismissively. 'Of course he should stop - in my opinion. But Ralph's opinion is the one that counts.'
'Then see if you can change his mind,' she said.
He resented her imperious attitude. 'I'm yours to command,' he said facetiously.
'Why the irony?'
'Because I'm not yours to command, of course, but you seem to think I am. And I feel a bit foolish for going along with you.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake,' she said. 'You're offended that I've asked you?'
For some reason, he felt sure she had made up her mind to reject him, and stay in the nunnery. He tried to control his emotions. 'If we were a couple, you could ask me anything. But while you're keeping open the option of rejecting me, it seems a bit presumptuous of you.' He knew he was sounding pompous, but he could not stop. If he revealed his true feelings he would burst into tears.
She was too wrapped up in her indignation to notice his distress. 'But it's not even for myself!' she protested.
'I realize it's your generosity of spirit that makes you do it, but I still feel you're using me.'
'All right, then, don't do it.'
'Of course I'll do it.' Suddenly he could no longer contain himself. He turned and walked away from her. He was shaking with some passion he could not identify. As he strode up the aisle of the great church, he struggled to get himself under control. He reached the excavation. This was stupid, he thought. He turned and looked back, but Caris had vanished.
He stood at the lip of the hole, looking down, waiting for the storm inside him to subside.
After a while he realized that the excavation had reached a crucial stage. Thirty feet below him, the men had dug down past the masonry foundations and were beginning to reveal what was beneath. There was nothing more he could do about Caris right now. It would be best to concentrate on his work. He took a deep breath, swallowed, and went down the ladder.
This was the moment of truth. His distress over Caris began to ease as he watched the men dig farther down. Shovelful after shovelful of heavy mud was dug up and taken away. Merthin studied the stratum of earth that was revealed below the foundations. It looked like a mixture of sand and small stones. As the men removed the mud, the sandy stuff dribbled into the hole they were making.
Merthin ordered them to stop.
He knelt down and picked up a handful of the sandy material. It was nothing like the soil all around. It was not natural to the site, therefore it must be something that had been put there by builders. The excitement of discovery rose inside him, overmastering his grief about Caris. 'Jeremiah!' he called. 'See if you can find Brother Thomas - quick as you like.'
He told the men to carry on digging, but to make a narrower hole: at this point the excavation itself could be dangerous to the structure. After a while Jeremiah returned with Thomas, and the three of them watched as the men took the hole farther down. Eventually the sandy layer came to an end, and the next stratum was revealed to be the natural muddy earth.
'I wonder what that sandy stuff is,' Thomas said.
'I think I know,' Merthin said. He tried not to look triumphant. He had predicted, years ago, that Elfric's repairs would not work unless the root of the problem was discovered, and he had been right - but it was never wise to say 'I told you so.'
Thomas and Jeremiah looked at him in anticipation.
He explained. 'When you've dug a foundation hole, you cover the bottom with a mixture of rubble and mortar. Then you lay the masonry on top of that. It's a perfectly good system, as long as the foundations are proportional to the building above.'
Thomas said impatiently: 'We both know this.'
'What happened here was that a much higher tower was erected on foundations that were not designed for it. The extra weight, acting over a hundred years, has crushed that layer of rubble-and-mortar to sand. The sand has no cohesion, and under pressure it has spread outward into the surrounding soil, allowing the masonry above it to sink down. The effect is worse on the south side simply because the site naturally slopes that way.' He felt a profound satisfaction at having figured this out.
The other two looked thoughtful. Thomas said: 'I suppose we will have to reinforce the foundations.'
Jeremiah shook his head. 'Before we can put any reinforcement under the stonework, we'd have to remove the sandy stuff, and that would leave the foundations unsupported. The tower would fall down.'
Thomas was perplexed. 'So what can we do?'
They both looked at Merthin. He said: 'Build a temporary roof over the crossing, erect scaffolding, and take down the tower, stone by stone. Then reinforce the foundations.'
'Then we'd have to build a new tower.'
That was what Merthin wanted, but he did not say so. Thomas might suspect that his judgment had been colored by his aspiration. 'I'm afraid so,' he said with feigned regret.
'Prior Godwyn won't like that.'
'I know,' Merthin said. 'But I don't think he's got any choice.'