The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
lscastle, to double-check."
Aliena said: "Richard, that was dangerous."
"All the signs are there: messengers coming and going, weapons being sharpened, horses exercised, tack cleaned.... There's no doubt of it." In a voice full of hatred, Richard finished: "No amount of evildoing will satisfy that devil William--he always wants more." His hand went to his right ear, and he touched the angry scar there with an unconscious nervous gesture.
Jack studied Richard for a moment. He was an idler and a wastrel, but in one area his judgment was trustworthy: the military. If he said William was planning a raid he was probably right. "This is a catastrophe," Jack said, half to himself. Kingsbridge was just beginning to recover from the slump. Three years ago the fleece fair had burned, two years ago the cathedral had fallen on the congregation, and now this. People would say the bad luck of Kingsbridge had come back. Even if they managed to avoid bloodshed by fleeing, Kingsbridge would be ruined. No one would want to live here, come to the market or work here. It could even stop the building of the cathedral.
Aliena said: "We must tell Prior Philip--right away."
Jack nodded. "The monks will be at supper. Let's go."
Aliena picked up Tommy and they all hurried up the hill toward the monastery in the dusk.
Richard said: "When the cathedral is finished, they can hold the market inside it. That will protect it from raids."
Jack said: "But meanwhile we need the income from the market to pay for the cathedral."
Richard, Aliena and Tommy waited outside while Jack went into the monks' refectory. A young monk was reading aloud in Latin while the others ate in silence. Jack recognized an apocalyptic passage from the Book of Revelation. He stood in the doorway and caught Philip's eye. Philip was surprised to see him, but got up from the table and came out straightaway.
"Bad news," Jack said grimly. "I'll let Richard tell you."
They talked in the cavernous gloom of the repaired chancel. Richard gave Philip the details in a few sentences. When he had finished, Philip said: "But we aren't holding a fleece fair--just a little market!"
Aliena said: "At least we've got the chance to evacuate the town tomorrow. Nobody need get hurt. And we can rebuild our houses, as we did last time."
"Unless William decides to hunt down the evacuees," Richard said grimly. "I wouldn't put it past him."
"Even if we all escape, I think it means the end of the market," Philip said gloomily. "People will be afraid to set up stalls in Kingsbridge after this."
Jack said: "It may mean the end of the cathedral. In the last ten years the church has burned down once and fallen down once, and a lot of masons were killed when the town burned. Another disaster would be the last, I think. People would say it's bad luck."
Philip looked stricken. He was not yet forty years old, Jack reckoned, but his face was becoming lined, and his fringe of hair was now more gray than black. Nevertheless, there was a dangerous light in his clear blue eyes as he said: "I'm not going to accept this. I don't think it's the will of God."
Jack wondered what on earth he was talking about. How could he "not accept" it? The chickens might as well say they refused to accept the fox, for all the difference it would make to their fate. "So what are you going to do?" Jack said skeptically. "Pray that William will fall out of bed tonight and break his neck?"
Richard was excited by the idea of resistance. "Let's fight," he said. "Why not? There are hundreds of us. William will bring fifty men, a hundred at most--we could win by sheer weight of numbers."
Aliena protested: "And how many of our people will be killed?"
Philip was shaking his head. "Monks don't fight," he said regretfully. "And I can't ask townspeople to give their lives when I'm not prepared to risk my own."
Jack said: "Don't count on my masons fighting, either. It's not part of their job."
Philip looked at Richard, who was the nearest they had to a military expert. "Is there any way we can defend the town without a pitched battle?"
"Not without town walls," Richard said. "We've got nothing to put in front of the enemy but bodies."
"Town walls," Jack said thoughtfully.
Richard said: "We could challenge William to settle the issue by single combat--a fight between champions. But I don't suppose he would agree to it."
"Town walls would do it?" Jack said.
Richard said impatiently: "They might save us another time, but not now. We can't build town walls overnight."
"Can't we?"
"Of course not, don't be--"
"Shut up, Richard," Philip said forcefully. He looked expectantly at Jack. "What's on your mind?"
"A wall is not that hard to build," Jack said.
"Go on."
Jack's mind was spinning. The others were listening with bated breath. He said: "There are no arches, no vaults, no windows, no roof.... A wall can be built overnight, if you've got the men and materials."
"What would we build it of?" Philip said.
"Look around you," Jack said. "Here are ready-cut stone blocks intended for the foundations. There is a stack of timber bigger than a house. In the graveyard is a heap of rubble from the collapse. Down at the riverside there's another huge stack of stone from the quarry. There's no shortage of materials."
"And the town is full of builders," Philip said.
Jack nodded. "The monks can do the organizing. The builders can do the skilled work. And for laborers we'll have the entire population of the town." He was thinking rapidly. "The wall would have to run all along the nearside bank of the river. We'd dismantle the bridge. Then we'd have to take the wall up the hill alongside the poor quarter to join up with the east wall of the priory... out to the north ... and down the hill to the riverbank again. I don't know whether there's enough stone for that...."
Richard said: "It doesn't have to be stone to be effective. A simple ditch, with an earth rampart made of the mud dug out of the ditch, will serve the purpose, especially in a place where the enemy is attacking uphill."
"Surely stone is better," Jack said.
"Better, but not essential. The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he's in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position."
"Bombard him?" Aliena said. "With what?"
"Stones, boiling oil, arrows--there's a bow in most households in the town--"
Aliena shuddered and said: "So we still end up fighting, after all."
"But not hand to hand, not quite."
Jack felt torn. The safest course, in all probability, was for everyone to take refuge in the forest, in the hope that William would be satisfied with burning the houses. But even then there was a risk that he and his men would hunt the townspeople down. Would the danger be greater if they all stayed here, behind a town wall? If something went wrong, and William and his men found a way to breach the wall, the carnage would be appalling. Jack looked at Aliena and Tommy, and thought of the new child growing inside Aliena. "Is there a middle course?" he said. "We could evacuate the women and children, and the men could stay and defend the walls."
"No, thank you," Aliena said firmly. "That's the worst of both worlds. We would have no town walls and no menfolk to fight for us either."
She was right, Jack realized. Town walls were no good without people to defend them, and the women and children could not be left unguarded in the forest: William might leave the town alone and kill the women.
Philip said: "Jack, you're the builder. Can we put up a town wall in one day?"
"I've never built a town wall," Jack said. "There's no question of drawing plans, of course. We'd have to assign a craftsman to each section and let him use his judgment. The mortar will hardly be set by Sunday morning. It will be the worst-built wall in England. But yes, we can do it."
Philip turned to Richard. "You've seen battles. If we build a wall, can we hold William off?"
"Certainly," Richard said. "He will come prepared for a lightning raid, not a siege. If he finds a fortified town here there will be nothing he can do."
Finally Philip looked at Aliena. "You're one of the vulnerable people, with a child to protect. What do you think? Should we run to the forest, and hope William doesn't come after us, or stay here and build a wall to keep him out?"
Jack held his breath.
"It's not just a question of safety," Aliena said after a pause. "Philip, you've dedicated your life to this priory. Jack, the cathedral is your dream. If we run away, you'll lose everything you've lived for. And as for me ... Well, I have a special reason for wanting to see William Hamleigh's power curbed. I say we stay."
"All right," Philip said. "We build a wall."
As night fell, Jack, Richard and Philip walked the boundaries of the town with lanterns, deciding where the wall should go. The town was built on a low hill, and the river wound around two sides of it. The riverbanks were too soft to hold a stone wall without good foundations, so Jack proposed a wooden fence there. Richard was quite satisfied with that. The enemy could not attack the fence except from the river, which was almost impossible.
On the other two sides, some stretches of wall would be simple earth ramparts with a ditch. Richard declared that this would be effective where the ground was sloping and the enemy was forced to attack uphill. However, where the ground was level a stone wall would be needed.
Jack then went around the village gathering his builders together, getting them out of their homes--out of their beds, in some cases--and out of the alehouse. He explained the emergency and how the town was going to deal with it; then he walked around the boundaries with them and assigned a section of wall to each man: wooden fencing to carpenters, stone wall to masons, and ramparts to apprentices and laborers. He asked each man to mark out his own section with stakes and string before going to bed, and to give some thought, as he went to sleep, to how he would build it. Soon the perimeter of the town was marked by a dotted line of twinkling lights as the craftsmen did their laying out by lanternshine. The blacksmith lit his fire and settled down to spend the rest of the night making spades. The unusual after-dark activity disturbed the bedtime rituals of most of the townspeople, and the craftsmen spent a good deal of time explaining what they were doing to drowsy inquirers. Only the monks, who had gone to bed at nightfall, slept on in blissful ignorance.
But at midnight, when the craftsmen were finishing their preparations and most of the townspeople had retired--if only to discuss the news in hushed excitement under the blankets--the monks were awakened. Their services were cut short, and they were given bread and ale in the refectory while Philip briefed them. They were to be tomorrow's organizers. They were divided into teams, each team working for one builder. They would take orders from him and supervise the digging, lifting, fetching and carrying. Their first priority, Philip emphasized in his talk, was to make sure that the builder had a never-failing supply of the raw materials he needed: stones and mortar, timber and tools.
As Philip talked, Jack wondered what William Hamleigh was doing. Earlscastle was a day's hard ride from Kingsbridge, but William would not try to do it in a day, for then his army would arrive exhausted. They would set out this morning at sunrise. They would not ride all together, but would separate, and cover their weapons and armor as they traveled, to avoid raising the alarm. They would rendezvous discreetly in the afternoon, somewhere just an hour or two from Kingsbridge, probably at the manor house of one of William's larger tenants. In the evening they would drink beer and sharpen their blades and tell one another grisly stories about previous triumphs, young men mutilated, old men trampled beneath the hooves of war-horses, girls raped and women sodomized, children beheaded and babies spitted on the points of swords while their mothers screamed in anguish. Then they would attack tomorrow morning. Jack shuddered with fear. But this time we're going to stop them, he thought. All the same he was scared.
Each team of monks located its own stretch of wall and its source of raw materials. Then, as the first hint of dawn paled the eastern horizon, they went around their assigned neighborhood, knocking on doors, waking the inhabitants while the monastery bell rang urgently.
By sunrise the operation was in full swing. The younger men and women did the laboring while the older ones supplied food and drink and the children ran errands and carried messages. Jack toured the site constantly, monitoring progress anxiously. He told a mortar maker to use less lime, so that the mortar would set faster. He saw a carpenter making a fence with scaffolding poles, and told his laborers to use cut timber from a different stockpile. He made sure that the different sections of the wall would meet in a clean join. And he joked, smiled, and encouraged people constantly.
The sun came up into a clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. The priory kitchen supplied barrels of beer, but Philip ordered it to be watered, and Jack approved, for people who were working hard would drink a lot in this weather, and he did not want them falling asleep.
Despite the awful danger there was an incongruous air of jollity. It was like a holiday, when the whole town did something together, like making bread on Lammas Day or floating candles downstream on Midsummer Eve. People seemed to forget the peril which was the reason for their activity. However, Philip did see a few people discreetly leaving town. Either they were going to take their chances in the forest, or more likely they had relations in outlying villages who would take them in. Nevertheless, nearly everyone stayed.
At noon Philip rang the bell again, and work stopped for dinner. Philip made a tour of the wall with Jack while the workers were eating. Despite all the activity they did not seem to have achieved much. The stone walls had only reached ground level, the earth ramparts were still low mounds, and there were vast gaps in the wooden fence.
At the end of their tour Philip said: "Are we going to finish in time?"
Jack had been purposely cheerful and optimistic all morning, but now he forced himself to make a realistic assessment. "At this rate, no," he said despondently.
"What can we do to speed things up?"
"The only way to build faster is to build worse, normally."
"Then let's build worse--but how?"
Jack considered. "At the moment we've got masons building walls, carpenters building fences, laborers making earthworks, and townspeople fetching and carrying. But most carpenters can build a straightforward wall, and most laborers can put up a wooden fence. So let's get the carpenters to help the masons with the stonework, have the laborers build the fences, and let the townspeople dig the ditch and throw up the ramparts. And as soon as the operation is running smoothly, the younger monks can forget about organization and help with the laboring."
"All right."
They gave the new orders as people were finishing dinner. Not only would this be the worst-built wall in England, Jack thought; it would probably be the shortest-lived. If all of it was still standing in a week's time, it would be a miracle.
During the afternoon, people began to get tired, especially those who had been up in the night. The holiday atmosphere evaporated and the workers became grimly determined. The stone walls rose, the ditch got deeper, and the gaps in the fence began to close. They stopped work for supper, as the sun dipped toward the western skyline, then began again.
At nightfall the wall was not complete.
Philip set a watch, ordered everyone except the guards to get a few hours of sleep, and said he would ring the bell at midnight. The exhausted townspeople went to their beds.
Jack went to Aliena's house. She and Richard were still awake.
Jack said to Aliena: "I want you to take Tommy and go and hide in the woods."
The thought had been in the back of his mind all day. At first he had rejected the idea; but as time went on he kept returning to the dreadful memory of the day William burned the fleece fair; and in the end he decided to send her away.
"I'd rather stay," she said firmly.
Jack said: "Aliena, I don't know if this is going to work, and I don't want you to be here if William Hamleigh gets past this wall."
"But I can't leave while you're organizing everyone else to stay and fight," she said reasonably.
He was long past worrying about what was reasonable. "If you go now they won't know."
"They'll realize eventually."
"By then it will be over."
"But think about the disgrace."
"To hell with the disgrace!" he shouted. He was mad with frustration at not being able to find the words to persuade her. "I want you to be safe!"
His angry voice woke Tommy, who started to cry. Aliena picked him up and rocked him. She said: "I'm not even sure I'd be safer in the forest."
"William won't be searching the forest. It's the town he's interested in."
"He might be interested in me."
"You could hide in your glade. Nobody ever goes there."
"William might find it by accident."
"Listen to me. You'll be safer there than here. I know it."
"All the same I want to stay here."
"I don't want you here," he said harshly.
"Well, I'm staying anyway," she replied with a smile, ignoring his deliberate rudeness.
Jack suppressed a curse. There was no arguing with her once she had made up her mind: she was as stubborn as a mule. He pleaded with her instead. "Aliena, I'm scared of what's going to happen tomorrow."
"I'm scared, too," she said. "And I think we should be scared together."
He knew he should give in gracefully, but he was too worried. "Damn you, then," he said angrily, and he stormed out.
He stood outside, breathing the night air. After a few moments he cooled down. He was still terribly worried, but it was foolish to be angry with her: they might both die in the morning.
He went back inside. She was standing where he had left her, looking sad. "I love you," he said. They embraced, and stood like that for a long while.
When he went out again the moon was up. He calmed himself with the thought that Aliena might even be right: she could be safer here than in the woods. At least this way he would know if she was in trouble, and could do his best to protect her.
He knew he would not sleep, even if he went to bed. He had a foolish fear that everyone might sleep past midnight, and nobody would wake until dawn when Willi
Aliena said: "Richard, that was dangerous."
"All the signs are there: messengers coming and going, weapons being sharpened, horses exercised, tack cleaned.... There's no doubt of it." In a voice full of hatred, Richard finished: "No amount of evildoing will satisfy that devil William--he always wants more." His hand went to his right ear, and he touched the angry scar there with an unconscious nervous gesture.
Jack studied Richard for a moment. He was an idler and a wastrel, but in one area his judgment was trustworthy: the military. If he said William was planning a raid he was probably right. "This is a catastrophe," Jack said, half to himself. Kingsbridge was just beginning to recover from the slump. Three years ago the fleece fair had burned, two years ago the cathedral had fallen on the congregation, and now this. People would say the bad luck of Kingsbridge had come back. Even if they managed to avoid bloodshed by fleeing, Kingsbridge would be ruined. No one would want to live here, come to the market or work here. It could even stop the building of the cathedral.
Aliena said: "We must tell Prior Philip--right away."
Jack nodded. "The monks will be at supper. Let's go."
Aliena picked up Tommy and they all hurried up the hill toward the monastery in the dusk.
Richard said: "When the cathedral is finished, they can hold the market inside it. That will protect it from raids."
Jack said: "But meanwhile we need the income from the market to pay for the cathedral."
Richard, Aliena and Tommy waited outside while Jack went into the monks' refectory. A young monk was reading aloud in Latin while the others ate in silence. Jack recognized an apocalyptic passage from the Book of Revelation. He stood in the doorway and caught Philip's eye. Philip was surprised to see him, but got up from the table and came out straightaway.
"Bad news," Jack said grimly. "I'll let Richard tell you."
They talked in the cavernous gloom of the repaired chancel. Richard gave Philip the details in a few sentences. When he had finished, Philip said: "But we aren't holding a fleece fair--just a little market!"
Aliena said: "At least we've got the chance to evacuate the town tomorrow. Nobody need get hurt. And we can rebuild our houses, as we did last time."
"Unless William decides to hunt down the evacuees," Richard said grimly. "I wouldn't put it past him."
"Even if we all escape, I think it means the end of the market," Philip said gloomily. "People will be afraid to set up stalls in Kingsbridge after this."
Jack said: "It may mean the end of the cathedral. In the last ten years the church has burned down once and fallen down once, and a lot of masons were killed when the town burned. Another disaster would be the last, I think. People would say it's bad luck."
Philip looked stricken. He was not yet forty years old, Jack reckoned, but his face was becoming lined, and his fringe of hair was now more gray than black. Nevertheless, there was a dangerous light in his clear blue eyes as he said: "I'm not going to accept this. I don't think it's the will of God."
Jack wondered what on earth he was talking about. How could he "not accept" it? The chickens might as well say they refused to accept the fox, for all the difference it would make to their fate. "So what are you going to do?" Jack said skeptically. "Pray that William will fall out of bed tonight and break his neck?"
Richard was excited by the idea of resistance. "Let's fight," he said. "Why not? There are hundreds of us. William will bring fifty men, a hundred at most--we could win by sheer weight of numbers."
Aliena protested: "And how many of our people will be killed?"
Philip was shaking his head. "Monks don't fight," he said regretfully. "And I can't ask townspeople to give their lives when I'm not prepared to risk my own."
Jack said: "Don't count on my masons fighting, either. It's not part of their job."
Philip looked at Richard, who was the nearest they had to a military expert. "Is there any way we can defend the town without a pitched battle?"
"Not without town walls," Richard said. "We've got nothing to put in front of the enemy but bodies."
"Town walls," Jack said thoughtfully.
Richard said: "We could challenge William to settle the issue by single combat--a fight between champions. But I don't suppose he would agree to it."
"Town walls would do it?" Jack said.
Richard said impatiently: "They might save us another time, but not now. We can't build town walls overnight."
"Can't we?"
"Of course not, don't be--"
"Shut up, Richard," Philip said forcefully. He looked expectantly at Jack. "What's on your mind?"
"A wall is not that hard to build," Jack said.
"Go on."
Jack's mind was spinning. The others were listening with bated breath. He said: "There are no arches, no vaults, no windows, no roof.... A wall can be built overnight, if you've got the men and materials."
"What would we build it of?" Philip said.
"Look around you," Jack said. "Here are ready-cut stone blocks intended for the foundations. There is a stack of timber bigger than a house. In the graveyard is a heap of rubble from the collapse. Down at the riverside there's another huge stack of stone from the quarry. There's no shortage of materials."
"And the town is full of builders," Philip said.
Jack nodded. "The monks can do the organizing. The builders can do the skilled work. And for laborers we'll have the entire population of the town." He was thinking rapidly. "The wall would have to run all along the nearside bank of the river. We'd dismantle the bridge. Then we'd have to take the wall up the hill alongside the poor quarter to join up with the east wall of the priory... out to the north ... and down the hill to the riverbank again. I don't know whether there's enough stone for that...."
Richard said: "It doesn't have to be stone to be effective. A simple ditch, with an earth rampart made of the mud dug out of the ditch, will serve the purpose, especially in a place where the enemy is attacking uphill."
"Surely stone is better," Jack said.
"Better, but not essential. The purpose of a wall is to force a delay on the enemy while he's in an exposed position, and enable the defender to bombard him from a sheltered position."
"Bombard him?" Aliena said. "With what?"
"Stones, boiling oil, arrows--there's a bow in most households in the town--"
Aliena shuddered and said: "So we still end up fighting, after all."
"But not hand to hand, not quite."
Jack felt torn. The safest course, in all probability, was for everyone to take refuge in the forest, in the hope that William would be satisfied with burning the houses. But even then there was a risk that he and his men would hunt the townspeople down. Would the danger be greater if they all stayed here, behind a town wall? If something went wrong, and William and his men found a way to breach the wall, the carnage would be appalling. Jack looked at Aliena and Tommy, and thought of the new child growing inside Aliena. "Is there a middle course?" he said. "We could evacuate the women and children, and the men could stay and defend the walls."
"No, thank you," Aliena said firmly. "That's the worst of both worlds. We would have no town walls and no menfolk to fight for us either."
She was right, Jack realized. Town walls were no good without people to defend them, and the women and children could not be left unguarded in the forest: William might leave the town alone and kill the women.
Philip said: "Jack, you're the builder. Can we put up a town wall in one day?"
"I've never built a town wall," Jack said. "There's no question of drawing plans, of course. We'd have to assign a craftsman to each section and let him use his judgment. The mortar will hardly be set by Sunday morning. It will be the worst-built wall in England. But yes, we can do it."
Philip turned to Richard. "You've seen battles. If we build a wall, can we hold William off?"
"Certainly," Richard said. "He will come prepared for a lightning raid, not a siege. If he finds a fortified town here there will be nothing he can do."
Finally Philip looked at Aliena. "You're one of the vulnerable people, with a child to protect. What do you think? Should we run to the forest, and hope William doesn't come after us, or stay here and build a wall to keep him out?"
Jack held his breath.
"It's not just a question of safety," Aliena said after a pause. "Philip, you've dedicated your life to this priory. Jack, the cathedral is your dream. If we run away, you'll lose everything you've lived for. And as for me ... Well, I have a special reason for wanting to see William Hamleigh's power curbed. I say we stay."
"All right," Philip said. "We build a wall."
As night fell, Jack, Richard and Philip walked the boundaries of the town with lanterns, deciding where the wall should go. The town was built on a low hill, and the river wound around two sides of it. The riverbanks were too soft to hold a stone wall without good foundations, so Jack proposed a wooden fence there. Richard was quite satisfied with that. The enemy could not attack the fence except from the river, which was almost impossible.
On the other two sides, some stretches of wall would be simple earth ramparts with a ditch. Richard declared that this would be effective where the ground was sloping and the enemy was forced to attack uphill. However, where the ground was level a stone wall would be needed.
Jack then went around the village gathering his builders together, getting them out of their homes--out of their beds, in some cases--and out of the alehouse. He explained the emergency and how the town was going to deal with it; then he walked around the boundaries with them and assigned a section of wall to each man: wooden fencing to carpenters, stone wall to masons, and ramparts to apprentices and laborers. He asked each man to mark out his own section with stakes and string before going to bed, and to give some thought, as he went to sleep, to how he would build it. Soon the perimeter of the town was marked by a dotted line of twinkling lights as the craftsmen did their laying out by lanternshine. The blacksmith lit his fire and settled down to spend the rest of the night making spades. The unusual after-dark activity disturbed the bedtime rituals of most of the townspeople, and the craftsmen spent a good deal of time explaining what they were doing to drowsy inquirers. Only the monks, who had gone to bed at nightfall, slept on in blissful ignorance.
But at midnight, when the craftsmen were finishing their preparations and most of the townspeople had retired--if only to discuss the news in hushed excitement under the blankets--the monks were awakened. Their services were cut short, and they were given bread and ale in the refectory while Philip briefed them. They were to be tomorrow's organizers. They were divided into teams, each team working for one builder. They would take orders from him and supervise the digging, lifting, fetching and carrying. Their first priority, Philip emphasized in his talk, was to make sure that the builder had a never-failing supply of the raw materials he needed: stones and mortar, timber and tools.
As Philip talked, Jack wondered what William Hamleigh was doing. Earlscastle was a day's hard ride from Kingsbridge, but William would not try to do it in a day, for then his army would arrive exhausted. They would set out this morning at sunrise. They would not ride all together, but would separate, and cover their weapons and armor as they traveled, to avoid raising the alarm. They would rendezvous discreetly in the afternoon, somewhere just an hour or two from Kingsbridge, probably at the manor house of one of William's larger tenants. In the evening they would drink beer and sharpen their blades and tell one another grisly stories about previous triumphs, young men mutilated, old men trampled beneath the hooves of war-horses, girls raped and women sodomized, children beheaded and babies spitted on the points of swords while their mothers screamed in anguish. Then they would attack tomorrow morning. Jack shuddered with fear. But this time we're going to stop them, he thought. All the same he was scared.
Each team of monks located its own stretch of wall and its source of raw materials. Then, as the first hint of dawn paled the eastern horizon, they went around their assigned neighborhood, knocking on doors, waking the inhabitants while the monastery bell rang urgently.
By sunrise the operation was in full swing. The younger men and women did the laboring while the older ones supplied food and drink and the children ran errands and carried messages. Jack toured the site constantly, monitoring progress anxiously. He told a mortar maker to use less lime, so that the mortar would set faster. He saw a carpenter making a fence with scaffolding poles, and told his laborers to use cut timber from a different stockpile. He made sure that the different sections of the wall would meet in a clean join. And he joked, smiled, and encouraged people constantly.
The sun came up into a clear blue sky. It was going to be a hot day. The priory kitchen supplied barrels of beer, but Philip ordered it to be watered, and Jack approved, for people who were working hard would drink a lot in this weather, and he did not want them falling asleep.
Despite the awful danger there was an incongruous air of jollity. It was like a holiday, when the whole town did something together, like making bread on Lammas Day or floating candles downstream on Midsummer Eve. People seemed to forget the peril which was the reason for their activity. However, Philip did see a few people discreetly leaving town. Either they were going to take their chances in the forest, or more likely they had relations in outlying villages who would take them in. Nevertheless, nearly everyone stayed.
At noon Philip rang the bell again, and work stopped for dinner. Philip made a tour of the wall with Jack while the workers were eating. Despite all the activity they did not seem to have achieved much. The stone walls had only reached ground level, the earth ramparts were still low mounds, and there were vast gaps in the wooden fence.
At the end of their tour Philip said: "Are we going to finish in time?"
Jack had been purposely cheerful and optimistic all morning, but now he forced himself to make a realistic assessment. "At this rate, no," he said despondently.
"What can we do to speed things up?"
"The only way to build faster is to build worse, normally."
"Then let's build worse--but how?"
Jack considered. "At the moment we've got masons building walls, carpenters building fences, laborers making earthworks, and townspeople fetching and carrying. But most carpenters can build a straightforward wall, and most laborers can put up a wooden fence. So let's get the carpenters to help the masons with the stonework, have the laborers build the fences, and let the townspeople dig the ditch and throw up the ramparts. And as soon as the operation is running smoothly, the younger monks can forget about organization and help with the laboring."
"All right."
They gave the new orders as people were finishing dinner. Not only would this be the worst-built wall in England, Jack thought; it would probably be the shortest-lived. If all of it was still standing in a week's time, it would be a miracle.
During the afternoon, people began to get tired, especially those who had been up in the night. The holiday atmosphere evaporated and the workers became grimly determined. The stone walls rose, the ditch got deeper, and the gaps in the fence began to close. They stopped work for supper, as the sun dipped toward the western skyline, then began again.
At nightfall the wall was not complete.
Philip set a watch, ordered everyone except the guards to get a few hours of sleep, and said he would ring the bell at midnight. The exhausted townspeople went to their beds.
Jack went to Aliena's house. She and Richard were still awake.
Jack said to Aliena: "I want you to take Tommy and go and hide in the woods."
The thought had been in the back of his mind all day. At first he had rejected the idea; but as time went on he kept returning to the dreadful memory of the day William burned the fleece fair; and in the end he decided to send her away.
"I'd rather stay," she said firmly.
Jack said: "Aliena, I don't know if this is going to work, and I don't want you to be here if William Hamleigh gets past this wall."
"But I can't leave while you're organizing everyone else to stay and fight," she said reasonably.
He was long past worrying about what was reasonable. "If you go now they won't know."
"They'll realize eventually."
"By then it will be over."
"But think about the disgrace."
"To hell with the disgrace!" he shouted. He was mad with frustration at not being able to find the words to persuade her. "I want you to be safe!"
His angry voice woke Tommy, who started to cry. Aliena picked him up and rocked him. She said: "I'm not even sure I'd be safer in the forest."
"William won't be searching the forest. It's the town he's interested in."
"He might be interested in me."
"You could hide in your glade. Nobody ever goes there."
"William might find it by accident."
"Listen to me. You'll be safer there than here. I know it."
"All the same I want to stay here."
"I don't want you here," he said harshly.
"Well, I'm staying anyway," she replied with a smile, ignoring his deliberate rudeness.
Jack suppressed a curse. There was no arguing with her once she had made up her mind: she was as stubborn as a mule. He pleaded with her instead. "Aliena, I'm scared of what's going to happen tomorrow."
"I'm scared, too," she said. "And I think we should be scared together."
He knew he should give in gracefully, but he was too worried. "Damn you, then," he said angrily, and he stormed out.
He stood outside, breathing the night air. After a few moments he cooled down. He was still terribly worried, but it was foolish to be angry with her: they might both die in the morning.
He went back inside. She was standing where he had left her, looking sad. "I love you," he said. They embraced, and stood like that for a long while.
When he went out again the moon was up. He calmed himself with the thought that Aliena might even be right: she could be safer here than in the woods. At least this way he would know if she was in trouble, and could do his best to protect her.
He knew he would not sleep, even if he went to bed. He had a foolish fear that everyone might sleep past midnight, and nobody would wake until dawn when Willi