World Without End

She considered. She could insist on Philemon’s leaving the building immediately. If necessary, she could have him thrown out: Thomas and the novices would obey her, not Philemon. But what then? Philemon would do all he could to call attention to what Merthin and she were up to in the palace. He would create a controversy, and leading townspeople would take sides. Most would support Caris, almost whatever she did, such was her reputation; but there would be some who would censure her behaviour. The conflict would weaken her authority and undermine everything else she wanted to do. It would be better to admit defeat.

“You may have the bedroom,” she said. “But not the hall. I use that for meetings with leading townspeople and visiting dignitaries. When you’re not attending services in the church, you will be in the cloisters, not here. A sub-prior does not have a palace.” She left without giving him a chance to argue. She had saved face, but he had won.

She had been reminded last night of how wily Philemon was. Questioned by Bishop Henri, he seemed to have a plausible explanation for everything dishonourable that he had done. How did he justify deserting his post at the priory and ru

Caris concluded that Philemon had run from the plague until he had realized he must be one of those fortunate people who were not prone to catch it. Then he had learned from Murdo that Caris was sleeping with Merthin in the prior’s palace, and he had immediately seen how he could exploit that situation to restore his own fortunes. God had nothing to do with it.

But Bishop Henri had believed Philemon’s tale. Philemon was careful to appear humble to the point of obsequiousness. Henri did not know the man, and failed to see beneath the surface.

She left Philemon in the palace and walked to the cathedral. She climbed the long, narrow spiral staircase in the north-west tower and found Merthin in the mason’s loft, drawing designs on the tracing floor in the light from the tall north-facing windows.

She looked with interest at what he had done. It was always difficult to read plans, she found. The thin lines scratched in the mortar had to be transformed, in the viewer’s imagination, into thick walls of stone with windows and doors.

Merthin regarded her expectantly as she studied his work. He was obviously anticipating a big reaction.

At first she was baffled by the drawing. It looked nothing like a hospital. She said: “But you’ve drawn… a cloister!”

“Exactly,” he said. “Why should a hospital be a long narrow room like the nave of a church? You want the place to be light and airy. So, instead of cramming the rooms together, I’ve set them around a quadrangle.”

She visualized it: the square of grass, the building around, the doors leading to rooms of four or six beds, the nuns moving from room to room in the shelter of the covered arcade. “It’s inspired!” she said. “I would never have thought of it, but it will be perfect.”

“You can grow herbs in the quadrangle, where the plants will have sunshine but be sheltered from the wind. There will be a fountain in the middle of the garden, for fresh water, and it can drain through the latrine wing to the south and into the river.”

She kissed him exuberantly. “You’re so clever!” Then she recalled the news she had to tell him.

He must have seen her face fall, for he said: “What’s the matter?”

“We have to move out of the palace,” she said. She told him about her conversation with Philemon, and why she had given in. “I foresee major conflicts with Philemon – I don’t want this to be the one on which I make my stand.”

“That makes sense,” he said. His tone of voice was reasonable, but she knew by his face that he was angry. He stared at his drawing, though he was not really thinking about it.

“And there’s something else,” she said. “We’re telling everyone they have to live as normally as possible – order in the streets, a return to real family life, no more drunken orgies. We ought to set an example.”

He nodded. “A prioress living with her lover is about as abnormal as could be, I suppose,” he said. Once again his equable tone was contradicted by his furious expression.

“I’m very sorry,” she said.

“So am I.”

“But we don’t want to risk everything we both want – your tower, my hospital, the future of the town.”

“No. But we’re sacrificing our life together.”

“Not entirely. We’ll have to sleep separately, which is painful, but we’ll have plenty of opportunities to be together.”

“Where?”

She shrugged, “Here, for example.” An imp of mischief possessed her. She walked away from him across the room, slowly lifting the skirt of her robe, and went to the doorway at the top of the stairs. “I don’t see anyone coming,” she said as she raised her dress to her waist.

“You can hear them, anyway,” he said. “The door at the foot of the stairs makes a noise.”

She bent over, pretending to look down the staircase. “Can you see anything unusual, from where you are?”

He chuckled. She could usually pull him out of an angry mood by being playful. “I can see something winking at me,” he laughed.

She walked back towards him, still holding her robe up around her waist, smiling triumphantly. “You see, we don’t have to give up everything.”

He sat on a stool and pulled her towards him. She straddled his thighs and lowered herself on to his lap. “You’d better get a straw mattress up here,” she said, her voice thick with desire.

He nuzzled her breasts. “How would I explain the need for a bed in a mason’s loft?” he murmured.

“Just say that masons need somewhere soft to put their tools.”

A week later Caris and Thomas Langley went to inspect the rebuilding of the city wall. It was a big job but simple and, once the line had been agreed, the actual stonework could be done by inexperienced young masons and apprentices. Caris was glad the project had begun so promptly. It was necessary that the town be able to defend itself in troubled times – but she had a more important motive. Getting the townspeople to guard against disruption from outside would lead naturally, she hoped, to a new awareness of the need for order and good behaviour among themselves.

She found it deeply ironic that fate had cast her in this role. She had never been a rule keeper. She had always despised orthodoxy and flouted convention. She felt she had the right to make her own rules. Now here she was clamping down on merrymakers. It was a miracle that no one had yet called her a hypocrite.

The truth was that some people flourished in an atmosphere of anarchy, and others did not. Merthin was one of those who were better off without constraints. She recalled the carving he had made of the wise and foolish virgins. It was different from anything anyone had seen before – so Elfric had made that his excuse for destroying it. Regulation only served to handicap Merthin. But men such as Barney and Lou, the slaughterhouse workers, had to have laws to stop them maiming one another in drunken fights.