World Without End

  Today was only the third or fourth time the two brothers had met since the death of Tilly. On previous occasions, such as Ralph's wedding to Philippa, there had hardly been time to talk. All the same Ralph knew, from the way his brother looked at him, that Merthin suspected him of being Tilly's killer. The unspoken thought was a looming presence, never addressed but impossible to ignore, like the cow in the cramped one-room hovel of a poor peasant. If it was mentioned, Ralph felt that would be the last time they ever spoke.

  So tonight, as if by mutual consent, they once again exchanged a few meaningless platitudes, then Merthin left, saying he had work to do. Ralph wondered briefly what work he was going to do at dusk on a December evening. He really had no idea how Merthin spent his time. He did not hunt, or hold court, or attend on the king. Was it possible to spend all day, every day, making drawings and supervising builders? Such a life would have driven Ralph mad. And he was baffled by how much money Merthin seemed to make from his enterprises. Ralph himself had been short of money even when he had been lord of Tench. Merthin never seemed to lack it.

  Ralph turned his attention back to Ella. "My brother's a bit grumpy," he said apologetically.

  "It's because he hasn't had a woman for half a year." She giggled. "He used to shag the prioress, but she had to throw him out after Philemon came back."

  Ralph pretended to be shocked. "Nuns aren't supposed to be shagged."

  "Mother Caris is a wonderful woman--but she's got the itch, you can tell by the way she walks."

  Ralph was aroused by such frank talk from a woman. "It's very bad for a man," he said, playing along. "To go for so long without a woman."

  "I think so, too."

  "It leads to...swelling."

  She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows. He glanced down at his own lap. She followed his gaze. "Oh, dear," she said. "That looks uncomfortable." She put her hand on his erect penis.

  At that moment, Philippa appeared

  Ralph froze. He felt guilty and scared, and at the same time he was furious with himself for caring whether Philippa saw what he was doing or not.

  She said: "I'm going upstairs--oh."

  Ella did not release her hold. In fact she squeezed Ralph's penis gently, while looking up at Philippa and smiling triumphantly.

  Philippa flushed red, her face registering shame and distaste.

  Ralph opened his mouth to speak, then did not know what to say. He was not willing to apologize to his virago of a wife, feeling that she had brought this humiliation on herself. But he also felt somewhat foolish, sitting there with a tavern tart holding his prick while his wife, the countess, stood in front of them looking embarrassed.

  The tableau lasted only a moment. Ralph made a strangled sound, Ella giggled, and Philippa said, "Oh!" in a tone of exasperation and disgust. Then Philippa turned and walked away, head held unnaturally high. She approached the broad staircase and went up, as graceful as a deer on a hillside, and disappeared without looking back.

  Ralph felt both angry and ashamed, though he reasoned that he had no need to feel either. However, his interest in Ella diminished visibly, and he took her hand away.

  "Have some more wine," she said, pouring from the jug on the table, but Ralph felt the onset of a headache, and pushed the wooden cup away.

  Ella put a restraining hand on his arm and said in a low, warm voice: "Don't leave me in the lurch now that you've got me all, you know, excited."

  He shook her off and stood up.

  Her face hardened and she said: "Well, you'd better give me something by way of compensation."

  He dipped into his purse and took out a handful of silver pennies. Without looking at Ella, he dumped the money on the table, not caring whether it was too much or too little.

  She began to scoop up the coins hastily.

  Ralph left her and went upstairs.

  Philippa was on the bed, sitting upright with her back against the headboard. She had taken off her shoes but was otherwise fully dressed. She stared accusingly at Ralph as he walked in.

  He said: "You have no right to be angry with me!"

  "I'm not angry," she said. "But you are."

  She could always twist words around so that she was in the right and he in the wrong.

  Before he could think of a reply, she said: "Wouldn't you like me to leave you?"

  He stared at her, astonished. This was the last thing he had expected. "Where would you go?"

  "Here," she said. "I won't become a nun, but I could live in the convent nevertheless. I would bring just a few servants: a maid, a clerk, and my confessor. I've already spoken to Mother Caris, and she is willing."

  "My last wife did that. What will people think?"

  "A lot of noblewomen retire to nunneries, either temporarily or permanently, at some point in their lives. People will think you've rejected me because I'm past the age for conceiving children--which I probably am. Anyway, do you care what people say?"

  The thought briefly flashed across his mind that he would be sorry to see Gerry lose Odila. But the prospect of being free of Philippa's proud, disapproving presence was irresistible. "All right, what's stopping you? Tilly never asked permission."

  "I want to see Odila married first."

  "Who to?"

  She looked at him as if he were stupid.

  "Oh," he said. "Young David, I suppose."

  "He is in love with her, and I think they would be well suited."

  "He's underage--he'll have to ask the king."

  "That's why I've raised it with you. Will you go with him to see the king, and speak in support of the marriage? If you do this for me, I swear I will never ask you for anything ever again. I will leave you in peace."

  She was not asking him to make any sacrifices. An alliance with Monmouth could do Ralph nothing but good. "And you'll leave Earlscastle, and move into the nunnery?"

  "Yes, as soon as Odila is married."

  It was the end of a dream, Ralph realized, but a dream that had turned into a sour, bleak reality. He might as well acknowledge the failure and start again.

  "All right," he said, feeling regret mingled with liberation. "It's a bargain."

  77

  Easter came early in the year 1350, and there was a big fire blazing in Merthin's hearth on the evening of Good Friday. The table was laid with a cold supper: smoked fish, soft cheese, new bread, pears, and a flagon of Rhenish wine. Merthin was wearing clean underclothes and a new yellow robe. The house had been swept, and there were daffodils in a jug on the sideboard.

  Merthin was alone. Lolla was with his servants, Arn and Em. Their cottage was at the end of the garden but Lolla, who was five, loved to stay there overnight. She called it going on pilgrimage, and took a traveling bag containing her hairbrush and a favorite doll.

  Merthin opened a window and looked out. A cold breeze blew across the river from the meadow on the south side. The last of the evening was fading, the light seeming to fall out of the sky and sink into the water, where it disappeared in the blackness.

  He visualized a hooded figure emerging from the nunnery. He saw it tread a worn diagonal across the cathedral green, hurry past the lights of the Bell, and descend the muddy main street, the face shadowed, speaking to no one. He imagined it reaching the foreshore. Did it glance sideways into the cold, black river, and remember a moment of despair so great as to give rise to thoughts of self-destruction? If so, the recollection was quickly dismissed, and it stepped forward onto the cobbled roadbed of his bridge. It crossed the span and made landfall again on Leper Island. There it diverted from the main road and passed through low shrubbery, across scrubby grass cropped by rabbits, and around the ruins of the old lazar house until it came to the southwest shore. Then it tapped on Merthin's door.

  He closed the window and waited. No tap came. He was wishfully a little ahead of schedule.

  He was tempted to drink some wine, but he did not: a ritual had developed, and he did not want to change the order of events. r />
  The knock came a few moments later. He opened the door. She stepped inside, threw back her hood, and dropped the heavy gray cloak from her shoulders.

  She was taller than he by an inch or more, and a few years older. Her face was proud, and could be haughty, although now her smile radiated warmth like the sun. She wore a robe of bright Kingsbridge scarlet. He put his arms around her, pressing her voluptuous body to his own, and kissed her wide mouth. "My darling," he said. "Philippa."

  They made love immediately, there on the floor, hardly undressing. He was hungry for her, and she was if anything more eager. He spread her cloak on the straw, and she lifted the skirt of her robe and lay down. She clung to him like one drowning, her legs wrapped around his, her arms crushing him to her soft body, her face buried in his neck.

  She had told him that, after she left Ralph and moved into the priory, she had thought no one would ever touch her again until the nuns laid out her cold body for burial. The thought almost made Merthin cry.

  For his part, he had loved Caris so much that he felt no other woman would ever arouse his affection. For him as well as Philippa, this love had come as an unexpected gift, a spring of cold water bubbling up in a baking-hot desert, and they both drank from it as if they were dying of thirst.

  Afterward they lay entwined by the fire, panting, and he recalled the first time. Soon after she moved to the priory, she had taken an interest in the building of the new tower. A practical woman, she had trouble filling the long hours that were supposed to be spent in prayer and meditation. She enjoyed the library but could not read all day. She came to see him in the mason's loft, and he showed her the plans. She quickly got into the habit of visiting every day, talking to him while he worked. He had always admired her intelligence and strength, and in the intimacy of the loft he came to know the warm, generous spirit beneath her stately manner. He discovered that she had a lively sense of humor, and he learned how to make her laugh. She responded with a rich, throaty chuckle that, somehow, led him to think of making love to her. One day she had paid him a compliment. "You're a kind man," she had said. "There aren't enough of them." Her sincerity had touched him, and he had kissed her hand. It was a gesture of affection, but one she could reject, if she wished, without drama: she simply had to withdraw her hand and take a step back, and he would have known he had gone a little too far. But she had not rejected it. On the contrary, she had held his hand and looked at him with something like love in her eyes, and he had wrapped his arms around her and kissed her lips.

  They had made love on the mattress in the loft, and he had not remembered until afterward that Caris had encouraged him to put the mattress there, with a joke about masons needing a soft place for their tools.

  Caris did not know about him and Philippa. No one did except Philippa's maid and Arn and Em. She went to bed in her private room on the upper floor of the hospital soon after nightfall, at the same time as the nuns retired to their dormitory. She slipped out while they were asleep, using the outside steps that permitted important guests to come and go without passing through the common people's quarters. She returned by the same route before dawn, while the nuns were singing Matins, and appeared at breakfast as if she had been in her room all night.

  He was surprised to find that he could love another woman less than a year after Caris had left him for the final time. He certainly had not forgotten Caris. On the contrary, he thought about her every day. He felt the urge to tell her about something amusing that had happened, or he wanted her opinion on a knotty problem, or he found himself performing some task the way she would want it done, such as carefully bathing Lolla's grazed knee with warm wine. And then he saw her most days. The new hospital was almost finished, but the cathedral tower was barely begun, and Caris kept a close eye on both building projects. The priory had lost its power to control the town merchants, but nevertheless Caris took an interest in the work Merthin and the guild were doing to create all the institutions of a borough--establishing new courts, planning a wool exchange, and encouraging the craft guilds to codify standards and measures. But his thoughts about her always had an unpleasant aftertaste, like the bitterness left at the back of the throat by sour beer. He had loved her totally, and she had, in the end, rejected him. It was like remembering a happy day that had ended with a fight.

  "Do you think I'm peculiarly attracted to women who aren't free?" he said idly to Philippa.

  "No, why?"

  "It does seem odd that after twelve years of loving a nun, and nine months of celibacy, I should fall for my brother's wife."

  "Don't call me that," she said quickly. "It was no marriage. I was wedded against my will, I shared his bed for no more than a few days, and he will be happy if he never sees me again."

  He patted her shoulder apologetically. "But still, we have to be secretive, just as I did with Caris." What he was not saying was that a man was entitled, by law, to kill his wife if he caught her committing adultery. Merthin had never known it to happen, certainly not among the nobility, but Ralph's pride was a terrible thing. Merthin knew, and had told Philippa, that Ralph had killed his first wife, Tilly.

  She said: "Your father loved your mother hopelessly for a long time, didn't he?"

  "So he did!" Merthin had almost forgotten that old story.

  "And you fell for a nun."

  "And my brother spent years pining for you, the happily married wife of a nobleman. As the priests say, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons. But enough of this. Do you want some supper?"

  "In a moment."

  "There's something you want to do first?"

  "You know."

  He did know. He knelt between her legs and kissed her belly and her thighs. It was a peculiarity of hers that she always wanted to come twice. He began to tease her with his tongue. She groaned, and pressed the back of his head. "Yes," she said. "You know how I like that, especially when I'm full of your seed."

  He lifted his head. "I do," he said. Then he bent again to his task.

  The spring brought a respite in the plague. People were still dying, but fewer were falling ill. On Easter Sunday, Bishop Henri announced that the Fleece Fair would take place as usual this year.

  At the same service, six novices took their vows and so became full-fledged monks. They had all had an extraordinarily short novitiate, but Henri was keen to raise the number of monks at Kingsbridge, and he said the same thing was going on all over the country. In addition five priests were ordained--they, too, benefiting from an accelerated training program--and sent to replace plague victims in the surrounding countryside. And two Kingsbridge monks came down from university, having received their degrees as physicians in three years instead of the usual five or seven.

  The new doctors were Austin and Sime. Caris remembered both of them rather vaguely: she had been guest master when they left, three years ago, to go to Kingsbridge College in Oxford. On the afternoon of Easter Monday she showed them around the almost-completed new hospital. No builders were at work as it was a holiday.

  Both had the bumptious self-confidence that the university seemed to instill in its graduates along with medical theories and a taste for Gascon wine. However, years of dealing with patients had given Caris a confidence of her own, and she described the hospital's facilities and the way she planned to run it with brisk assurance.

  Austin was a slim, intense young man with thinning fair hair. He was impressed with the innovative new cloisterlike layout of the rooms. Sime, a little older and round-faced, did not seem eager to learn from Caris's experience: she noticed that he always looked away when she was talking.

  "I believe a hospital should always be clean," she said.

  "On what grounds?" Sime inquired in a condescending tone, as if asking a little girl why Dolly had to be spanked.

  "Cleanliness is a virtue."

  "Ah. So it has nothing to do with the balance of humors in the body."

  "I have no idea. We don't pay too much attention to the humors
. That approach has failed spectacularly against the plague."

  "And sweeping the floor has succeeded?"

  "At a minimum, a clean room lifts patients' spirits."

  Austin put in: "You must admit, Sime, that some of the masters at Oxford share the mother prioress's new ideas."

  "A small group of the heterodox."

  Caris said: "The main point is to take patients suffering from the type of illnesses that are transmitted from the sick to the well and isolate them from the rest."

  "To what end?" said Sime.

  "To restrict the spread of such diseases."

  "And how is it that they are transmitted?"

  "No one knows."

  A little smile of triumph twitched Sime's mouth. "Then how do you know by what means to restrict their spread, may I ask?"

  He thought he had trumped her in argument--it was the main thing they learned at Oxford--but she knew better. "From experience," she said. "A shepherd doesn't understand the miracle by which lambs grow in the womb of a ewe, but he knows it won't happen if he keeps the ram out of the field."

  "Hm."

  Caris disliked the way he said: "Hm." He was clever, she thought, but his cleverness never touched the world. She was struck by the contrast between this kind of intellectual and Merthin's kind. Merthin's learning was wide, and the power of his mind to grasp complexities was remarkable--but his wisdom never strayed far from the realities of the material world, for he knew that if he went wrong his buildings would fall down. Her father, Edmund, had been like that, clever but practical. Sime, like Godwyn and Anthony, would cling to his faith in the humors of the body regardless of whether his patients lived or died.

  Austin was smiling broadly. "She's got you there, Sime," he said, evidently amused that his smug friend had failed to overwhelm this uneducated woman. "We may not know exactly how illnesses spread, but it can't do any harm to separate the sick from the well."

  Sister Joan, the nuns' treasurer, interrupted their conversation. "The bailiff of Outhenby is asking for you, Mother Caris."

  "Did he bring a herd of calves?" Outhenby was obliged to supply the nuns with twelve one-year-old calves every Easter.