Page 292 of The Evening and the Morning
He got up from his perch on the wood pile and went back to his work. Clothild had gone. Giorgio was working on a sample voussoir, and had drawn the circle and radii he had described earlier. Edgar was about to resume his current task, which was to make the wooden support, called formwork, that would hold the stones in place while the mortar hardened, but Giorgio detained him.
“They asked you to go home,” Giorgio said.
“How did you know?”
Giorgio shrugged. “Why else would they come from England?”
“They want me to build a new church.”
“Will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
To Edgar’s surprise, Giorgio put down his tools. “Let me tell you something,” he said. His tone changed, and suddenly he seemed vulnerable. Edgar had never seen him like this. “I married late,” Giorgio said, as if reminiscing. “I was thirty when I met Clothild’s mother, rest her soul.” He paused, and for a moment Edgar thought he might weep; then Giorgio shook his head and carried on. “Thirty-five when Clothild was born. Now I’m fifty-six. I’m an old man.”
Fifty-six was not ancient, but this was not a moment to quibble.
Giorgio said: “I get pains in my stomach.”
That would account for the bad temper, Edgar thought.
“I can’t keep food down,” Giorgio said. “I live on sops.”
Edgar had thought Giorgio soaked his bread because he liked it that way.
“I probably won’t die tomorrow,” Giorgio went on. “But I may have only a year or so.”
I should have known, Edgar thought. All the clues were there. I could have guessed. Ragna would have figured it out long ago. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t come true.”
Giorgio dismissed that possibility with a wave of his hand. “As I think about the life to come, I realize that two things on earth are precious to me,” he said. He looked around the site. “One is this church.” His gaze came back to Edgar. “The other is Clothild.”
Giorgio’s face changed again, and Edgar saw naked emotion. The man was revealing his soul.
Giorgio said: “I want someone to take care of them both when I’m gone.”
Edgar stared, thinking: He’s offering me his job and his daughter.
“Don’t go home,” Giorgio said. “Please.”
It was a heartfelt appeal, and hard to resist, but Edgar managed to say: “I have to think about this.”
Giorgio nodded. “Of course.” The moment of intimacy was over. He turned away and resumed his work.
Edgar thought about it for the rest of the day and most of the night.
It never rains but it pours, he thought. To be a master builder was the summit of his ambition, and he had been offered two such posts in one day. He could be master mason here or at home. Both would give him profound satisfaction. But the other half of the choice was what kept him awake: Clothild or Ragna?
It was not a real choice. Ragna might be married to Wigelm for the next twenty years. Even if Wigelm died young, she might again be forced to remarry to a nobleman chosen by the king. As dawn approached, Edgar realized that back in England he might well spend the rest of his life longing for someone he could never have.
He had spent too many years living like that, he thought. If he stayed in Normandy and married Clothild he would not be happy, but he might be tranquil.
In the morning he told the monks he was staying.
Wigelm came to Ragna’s bed on a warm spring night when the trees were in bud. The opening of the door awakened her and her servants. She heard the maids shift in the rushes on the floor, and Grimweald, her bodyguard, grunted, but the children remained asleep.
With no forewarning she did not have the chance to oil herself. Wigelm lay beside her and pushed her shift up around her waist. She hastily spat on her hand and moistened her vagina, then opened her legs obediently.
She was resigned to this. It happened only a few times a year. She just hoped she would not become pregnant again. She loved Alain, but she did not want another child by Wigelm.
