World Without End

The time flew by, with hardly a moment to rest. Then, late on Sunday afternoon, Mother Cecilia told Caris to take a break. She looked around and realized that most of the work was done. That was when she started to think of the future.

Until that moment she had felt, unconsciously, that ordinary life was over, and she was living in a new world of horror and tragedy. Now she realized that this, like everything else, would pass. The dead would be buried, the injured would heal, and somehow the town would struggle back to normal. And she remembered that, just before the bridge collapsed, there had been another tragedy, violent and devastating in its own way.

She found Merthin down by the river, with Elfric and Thomas Langley, organizing the clean-up with the help of fifty or more volunteers. Merthin’s quarrel with Elfric had clearly been set aside in the emergency. Most of the loose timber had been retrieved from the water and stacked on the bank. But much of the woodwork was still joined together, and a mass of interlocked timber floated on the surface, moving slightly on the rise and fall of the water, with the i

The men were trying to break up the wreckage into manageable proportions. It was a dangerous job, with a constant risk that the bridge would collapse further and injure the volunteers. They had tied a rope around the central part of the bridge, now partly submerged, and a team of men stood on the bank hauling on the rope. In a boat in midstream were Merthin and giant Mark Webber with an oarsman. When the men on the bank rested, the boat was rowed in close to the wreckage, and Mark, directed by Merthin, attacked the beams with a huge forester’s axe. Then the boat moved to a safe distance, Elfric gave a command, and the rope team pulled again.

As Caris watched, a big section of the bridge came free. Everyone cheered, and the men dragged the tangled woodwork to the shore.

The wives of some of the volunteers arrived with loaves of bread and jugs of ale. Thomas Langley ordered a break. While the men were resting, Caris got Merthin on his own. “You can’t marry Griselda,” she said without preamble.

The sudden assertion did not surprise him. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I keep thinking about it.”

“Will you walk with me?”

“All right.”

They left the crowd at the riverside and went up the main street. After the bustle of the Fleece Fair, the town was graveyard quiet. Everyone was staying indoors, tending the sick or mourning the dead. “There can’t be many families in town that don’t have someone dead or injured,” she said. “There must have been a thousand people on the bridge, either trying to leave town or tormenting Crazy Nell. There are more than a hundred bodies in the church, and we’ve treated about four hundred wounded.”

“And five hundred lucky ones,” Merthin said.

“We could have been on the bridge, or near it. You and I might be lying on the floor of the chancel, now, cold and still. But we’ve been given a gift – the rest of our lives. And we mustn’t waste that gift because of one mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake,” he said sharply. “It’s a baby – a person, with a soul.”

“You’re a person with a soul, too – an exceptional one. Look at what you’ve been doing just now. Three people are in charge down there at the river. One is the town’s most prosperous builder. Another is the matricularius at the priory. And the third is… a mere apprentice, not yet twenty-one. Yet the townsmen obey you as readily as they obey Elfric and Thomas.”

“That doesn’t mean I can shirk my responsibilities.”

They turned into the priory close. The green in front of the cathedral was rutted and trampled by the fair, and there were boggy patches and wide puddles. In the three great west windows of the church Caris could see the reflection of a watery sun and ripped clouds, a picture divided, like a three-sided altarpiece. A bell began to ring for Evensong.

Caris said: “Think how often you’ve talked of going to see the buildings of Paris and Florence. Will you give all that up?”

“I suppose so. A man can’t abandon his wife and child.”

“So you’re already thinking of her as your wife.”

He rounded on her. “I’ll never think of her as my wife,” he said bitterly. “You know who I love.”

For once she could not think of a clever answer. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came to her. Instead, she felt a constriction in her throat. She blinked away tears, and looked down to hide her emotions.

He grasped her arms and pulled her close to him. “You know, don’t you?”

She forced herself to meet his eye. “Do I?” Her vision blurred.

He kissed her mouth. It was a new kind of kiss, different from anything she had experienced before. His lips moved gently but insistently against hers, as if he was determined to remember the moment; and she realized, with dread, that he was thinking this would be their last kiss.

She clung to him, wanting it to go on for ever, but all too soon he drew away.

“I love you,” he said. “But I’m going to marry Griselda.”

Life and death went on. Children were born and old people died. On Sunday Emma Butcher attacked her adulterous husband Edward with his largest cleaver in a fit of jealous rage. On Monday one of Bess Hampton’s chickens went missing, and was found boiling in a pot over Gly

By Wednesday the wreckage of the bridge had been cleared, all but the stumps of two of the main piers, and the timber was stacked on the bank. The waterway was open, and barges and rafts were able to leave Kingsbridge for Melcombe with wool and other goods from the Fleece Fair consigned to Flanders and Italy.

When Caris and Edmund went to the riverside to check on progress, Merthin was using the salvaged timbers to build a raft to ferry people across the river. “It’s better than a boat,” he explained. “Livestock can walk on and off, and carts can be driven on, too.”

Edmund nodded gloomily. “It will have to do, for the weekly market. Fortunately, we should have a new bridge by the time of the next Fleece Fair.”

“I don’t think so,” Merthin said.

“But you told me it would take nearly a year to build a new bridge!”

“A wooden bridge, yes. But if we build another wooden one it, too, will fall down.”

“Why?”

“Let me show you.” Merthin took them to a pile of timber. He pointed to a group of mighty posts. “These formed the piers – they’re probably the famous twenty-four best oak trees in the land, given to the priory by the king. Notice the ends.”

Caris could see that the huge posts had originally been sharpened into points, though their outlines had been softened by years under water.

Merthin said: “A timber bridge has no foundations. The posts are simply driven into the river bed. That’s not good enough.”

“But this bridge has stood for hundreds of years!” Edmund said indignantly. He always sounded quarrelsome when he argued.

Merthin was used to him, and paid no attention to his tone of voice. “And now it has fallen down,” he said patiently. “Something has changed. Wooden piers were once firm enough, but no longer.”

“What can have changed? The river is the river.”

“Well, for one thing you built a barn and a jetty on the bank, and protected the property with a wall. Several other merchants did the same. The old mud beach where I used to play on the south shore has mostly gone. So the river can no longer spread itself into the fields. As a result, the water flows faster than it used to – especially after the kind of heavy rain we’ve had this year.”