Page 200 of The Pillars of the Earth
Mother said: “I’ve come here to ask you to be merciful, Prior Philip.”
Tom immediately looked relieved.
Philip said: “I’m listening.”
Mother said: “You’re proposing to send my son away from everything he loves—his home, his family and his work.”
And the woman he adores, Jack thought.
Philip said: “Am I? I thought he had simply been dismissed from his work.”
“He’s never learned any kind of work but building, and there’s no other building work in Kingsbridge for him. And the challenge of that vast church has got into his blood. He’ll go wherever someone is building a cathedral. He’ll go to Jerusalem if there’s stone there to be carved into angels and devils.” How does she know all this? Jack wondered. He had hardly thought it himself—but it was true. She added: “I might never see him again.” Her voice shook a little at the end, and he thought wonderingly how much she must love him. She would never plead like this for herself, he knew.
Philip looked sympathetic, but it was Tom who replied. “We can’t have Jack and Alfred working on the same site,” he said doggedly. “They’ll fight again. You know that.”
“Alfred could go,” Mother said.
Tom looked sad. “Alfred ismyson.”
“But he’s twenty years old, and he’s as mean as a bear!” Although Mother’s voice was assertive, her cheeks were wet with tears. “He doesn’t care for this cathedral any more than I do—he’d be perfectly happy building houses for butchers and bakers in Winchester or Shiring.”
“The lodge can’t expel Alfred and keep Jack,” Tom said. “Besides, the decision is already made.”
“But it’s the wrong decision!”
Philip spoke. “There might be another answer.”
Everyone looked at him.
“There might be a way for Jack to stay in Kingsbridge, and even devote himself to the cathedral, without falling foul of Alfred.”
Jack wondered what was coming. This sounded too good to be true.
“I need someone to work with me,” Philip went on. “I spend too much time making detail decisions on the building. I need a kind of assistant, who would fulfill the role of clerk of works. He would deal with most of the queries himself, referring only the most important questions to me. He would also keep track of the money and the raw materials, handling payments to suppliers and carters, and wages too. Jack can read and write, and he can add numbers faster than anyone I’ve ever met—”
“And he understands every aspect of building,” Tom put in. “I’ve seen to that.”
Jack’s mind was spinning. He could stay after all! He would be clerk of works. He would not be carving stone, but he would be supervising the entire design on Philip’s behalf. It was an astonishing proposal. He would have to deal with Tom as an equal. But he knew he was capable of it. And Tom did too.
There was one snag. Jack voiced it. “I can’t live with Alfred any longer.”
Ellen said: “It’s time Alfred had a home of his own, anyway. Perhaps if he left us he’d be more serious about finding a wife.”
Tom said angrily: “You keep thinking of reasons for getting rid of Alfred. I’m not going to throw my own son out of my house!”
“You don’t understand me, either of you,” Philip said. “You haven’t completely comprehended my proposal. Jack would not be living with you.”
He paused. Jack guessed what was coming next, and it was the last, and biggest, shock of the day.
Philip said: “Jack would have to live here, in the priory.” He looked at them with a little frown, as if he could not see why they still had not grasped his meaning.
Jack had understood him. He recalled Mother saying, on Midsummer Eve last year,That sly prior has a knack of getting his own way in the end.She had been right. Philip was renewing the offer he had made then. But this time it was different. The choice Jack now faced was stark. He could leave Kingsbridge, and abandon everything he loved. Or he could stay, and lose his freedom.
“My clerk of works can’t be a layman, of course,” Philip finished, in the tone of one who states the obvious. “Jack will have to become a monk.”
V
On the night before the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair, Prior Philip stayed up after the midnight services, as usual; but instead of reading and meditating in his house, he made a tour of the priory close. It was a warm summer night, with a clear sky and a moon, and he could see without the aid of a lantern.
