Epic Historial Collection (124 page)

“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 William's men rode in slashing and burning. He walked restlessly around the edge of the town. It was odd: Kingsbridge had never had a perimeter until today. The stone walls were waist-high, which was not enough. The fences were high but there were still enough gaps for a hundred men to ride through in a few moments. The earth ramparts were not too high for a good horse to surmount. There was a lot to do.

He stopped at the place where the bridge used to be. It had been taken to pieces, and the parts had been stored in the priory. He looked over the moonlit water. He saw a shadowy figure approach along the line of the wooden fence, and felt a shiver of superstitious apprehension, but it was only Prior Philip, as sleepless as Jack.

For the moment Jack's grudge against Philip had been overshadowed by the threat from William, and Jack did not feel unfriendly toward Philip. He said: “If we survive this, we should rebuild the wall, bit by bit.”

“I agree,” Philip said fervently. “We should aim to have a stone wall right around the town within a year.”

“Just here, where the bridge crosses the river, I would put a gate and a barbican, so that we could keep people out without dismantling the bridge.”

“It's not the kind of thing we monks are good at—organizing town defenses.”

Jack nodded. They were not supposed to be involved in any kind of violence. “But if you don't organize it, who will?”

“How about Aliena's brother, Richard?”

Jack was startled by that idea, but a moment's reflection led him to realize that it was brilliant. “He'd do it well, it would keep him from idleness, and I wouldn't have to support him any longer,” he said enthusiastically. He looked at Philip with reluctant admiration. “You never stop, do you?”

Philip shrugged. “I wish all our problems could be solved so simply.”

Jack's mind returned to the wall. “I suppose Kingsbridge will now be a fortified town forevermore.”

“Not forever, but certainly until Jesus comes again.”

“You never know,” Jack said speculatively. “There may come a time when savages like William Hamleigh aren't in power; when the laws protect the ordinary people instead of enslaving them; when the king makes peace instead of war. Think of that—a time when towns in England don't need walls!”

Philip shook his head. “What an imagination,” he said. “It won't happen before Judgment Day.”

“I suppose not.”

“It must be almost midnight. Time to start again.”

“Philip. Before you go.”

“What?”

Jack took a deep breath. “There's still time to change our plan. We could evacuate the town now.”

“Are you afraid, Jack?” Philip said, not unkindly.

“Yes. But not for myself. For my family.”

Philip nodded. “Look at it this way. If you leave now, you will probably be safe—tomorrow. But William may come another day. If we let him have his way tomorrow, we will
always
live in fear. You, me, Aliena, and little Tommy, too: he'll grow up in fear of William, or someone like William.”

He was right, Jack thought. If children such as Tommy were to grow up free, their parents had to stop running away from William.