The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online Page B

cathedral.”
    “New? I heard they were just enlarging the old one.”
    The carter nodded. “That’s what they said, ten years ago. But there’s more new than old, now.”
    This was further good news. “Who’s the master builder?”
    “John of Shaftesbury, though Bishop Roger has a lot to do with the designs.”
    That was normal. Bishops rarely left builders alone to do the job. One of the master builder’s problems was often to calm the fevered imaginations of the clerics and set practical limits to their soaring fantasies. But it would be John of Shaftesbury who hired men.
    The carter nodded at Tom’s satchel of tools. “Mason?”
    “Yes. Looking for work.”
    “You may find it,” the carter said neutrally. “If not on the cathedral, perhaps on the castle.”
    “And who governs the castle?”
    “The same Roger is both bishop and castellan.”
    Of course, Tom thought. He had heard of the powerful Roger of Salisbury, who had been close to the king for as long as anyone could remember.
    They passed through the gateway into the town. The place was crammed so full of buildings, people and animals that it seemed in danger of bursting its circular ramparts and spilling out into the moat. The wooden houses were jammed together shoulder to shoulder, jostling for space like spectators at a hanging. Every tiny piece of land was used for something. Where two houses had been built with an alleyway between them, someone had put up a half-size dwelling in the alley, with no windows because its door took up almost all the frontage. Wherever a site was too small even for the narrowest of houses, there was a stall on it selling ale or bread or apples; and if there was not even room for that, then there would be a stable, a pigsty, a dunghill or a water barrel.
    It was noisy, too. The rain did little to deaden the clamor of craftsmen’s workshops, hawkers calling their wares, people greeting one another and bargaining and quarreling, animals neighing and barking and fighting.
    Raising her voice above the noise, Martha said: “What’s that stink?”
    Tom smiled. She had not been in a town for a couple of years. “That’s the smell of people,” he told her.
    The street was only a little wider than the ox cart, but the carter would not let his beasts stop, for fear they might not start again; so he whipped them on, ignoring all obstacles, and they shouldered their dumb way through the multitude, indiscriminately shoving aside a knight on a war-horse, a forester with a bow, a fat monk on a pony, men-at-arms and beggars and housewives and whores.
    The cart came up behind an old shepherd struggling to keep a small flock together. It must be market day, Tom realized. As the cart went by, one of the sheep plunged through the open door of an alehouse, and in a moment the whole flock was in the house, bleating and panicking and upsetting tables and stools and alepots.
    The ground underfoot was a sea of mud and rubbish. Tom had an eye for the fall of rain on a roof, and the width of gutter required to take the rain away; and he could see that all the rain falling on all the roofs of this half of the town was draining away through this street. In a bad storm, he thought, you would need a boat to cross the street.
    As they approached the castle at the summit of the hill, the street widened. Here there were stone houses, one or two of them in need of a little repair. They belonged to craftsmen and traders, who had their shops and stores on the ground floor and living quarters above. Looking with a practiced eye at what was on sale, Tom could tell that this was a prosperous town. Everyone had to have knives and pots, but only prosperous people bought embroidered shawls, decorated belts and silver clasps.
    In front of the castle the carter turned his ox team to the right, and Tom and his family followed. The street led around a quarter-circle, skirting the castle ramparts. Passing through another gate they left the hurly-burly of the