World Without End

Gwenda knew why she was asking. Caris had told her all about Merthin’s dilemma. The two girls had spent most of their time together discussing either Wulfric’s indifference or Merthin’s high principles. Caris had even been tempted to buy a love potion herself, and use it on Merthin; though something held her back.

Mattie gave her a sharp look, but answered noncommittally. “No one knows. Many times, a woman misses one month but comes on again the next. Did she get pregnant and lose the baby, or was there some other reason? It’s impossible to tell.”

“Oh.”

“Neither of you is pregnant, though, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Gwenda said quickly: “How do you know?”

“By looking at you. A woman changes almost immediately. Not just her belly and her breasts, but her complexion, her way of moving, her mood. I see these things better than most people – that’s why they call me wise. So who is pregnant?”

“Griselda, Elfric’s daughter.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve seen her. She’s three months gone.”

Caris was astonished. “How long?”

“Three months, or very nearly. Take a look at her. She was never a thin girl, but she’s even more voluptuous now. So why are you so shocked? I suppose it’s Merthin’s baby, is it?”

Mattie always guessed these things.

Gwenda said to Caris: “I thought you told me it happened recently.”

“Merthin didn’t say exactly when, but he gave me the impression it was not long ago, and it only happened once. Now it seems he’s been doing it to her for months!”

Mattie frowned. “Why would he lie?”

“To make himself look not so bad?” Gwenda suggested.

“How could it be worse?”

“Men are peculiar, the way they think.”

“I’m going to ask him,” Caris said. “Right now.” She put down the jar and the measuring spoon.

Gwenda said: “What about my love potion?”

“I’ll finish making it,” Mattie said. “Caris is in too much of a hurry.”

“Thank you,” Caris said, and she went out.

She marched down to the riverside, but for once Merthin was not there. She failed to find him at Elfric’s house either. She decided he must be in the mason’s loft.

In the west front of the cathedral, neatly fitted into one of the towers, was a work room for the master mason. Caris reached it by climbing a narrow spiral staircase in a buttress of the tower. It was a wide room, well lit by tall lancet windows. All along one wall were stacked the beautifully shaped wooden templates used by the original cathedral stone carvers, carefully preserved and used now for repairs.

Underfoot was the tracing floor. The floorboards were covered with a layer of plaster, and the original master mason, Jack Builder, had scratched his plans in the mortar with iron drawing instruments. The marks thus made were white at first, but they faded over time, and new drawings could be scratched on top of the old. When there were so many designs that it became hard to tell the new from the old, a fresh layer of plaster was laid on top, and the process began again.

Parchment, the thin leather on which monks copied out the books of the Bible, was much too expensive to be used for drawings. In Caris’s lifetime a new writing material had appeared, paper, but it came from the Arabs, so monks rejected it as a heathen Muslim invention. Anyway, it had to be imported from Italy and was no cheaper than parchment. And the tracing floor had another advantage: a carpenter could lay a piece of wood on the floor, on top of the drawing, and carve his template exactly to the lines drawn by the master mason.

Merthin was kneeling on the floor, carving a piece of oak in accordance with a drawing, but he was not making a template. He was carving a cog wheel with sixteen teeth. On the floor close by was another, smaller wheel, and Merthin stopped carving for a moment to put the two together and see how well they fitted. Caris had seen such cogs, or gears, in water mills, co

He must have heard her footsteps on the stone staircase, but he was too absorbed in his work to glance up. She regarded him for a second, anger competing with love in her heart. He had the look of total concentration that she knew so well: his slight body bent over his work, his strong hands and dextrous fingers making fine adjustments, his face immobile, his gaze unwavering. He had the perfect grace of a young deer bending its head to drink from a stream. This was what a man looked like, she thought, when he was doing what he was born to do. He was in a state like happiness, but more profound. He was fulfilling his destiny.

She burst out: “Why did you lie to me?”

His chisel slipped. He cried out in pain and looked at his finger. “Christ,” he said, and put his finger in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Caris said. “Are you hurt?”

“Nothing much. When did I lie to you?”

“You gave me the impression that Griselda seduced you one time. The truth is that the two of you have been at it for months.”

“No, we haven’t.” He sucked his bleeding finger.

“She’s three months pregnant.”

“She can’t be, it happened two weeks ago.”

“She is, you can tell by her figure.”

“Can you?”

“Mattie Wise told me. Why did you lie?”

He looked her in the eye. “But I didn’t lie,” he said. “It happened on the Sunday of Fleece Fair week. That was the first and only time.”

“Then how could she be sure she’s pregnant, after only two weeks?”

“I don’t know. How soon can women tell, anyway?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I’ve never asked. Anyway, three months ago Griselda was still with…”

“Oh, God!” Caris said. A spark of hope flared in her breast. “She was still with her old boyfriend – Thurstan.” The spark blazed into a flame. “It must be his baby, Thurstan’s – not yours. You’re not the father!”

“Is it possible?” Merthin seemed hardly to dare to hope.

“Of course – it explains everything. If she had suddenly fallen in love with you, she’d be after you every chance she gets. But you said she hardly speaks to you.”

“I thought that was because I was reluctant to marry her.”

“She’s never liked you. She just needed a father for her baby. Thurstan ran away – probably when she told him she was pregnant – and you were right there in the house, and stupid enough to fall for her trick. Oh, thank God!”

“Thank Mattie Wise,” said Merthin.

She caught sight of his left hand. Blood was welling from a finger. “Oh, I made you hurt yourself!” she cried. She took his hand and examined the cut. It was small, but deep. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“But it is,” she said, not knowing whether she was talking about the cut or something else. She kissed his hand, feeling his hot blood on her lips. She put his finger in her mouth, sucking the wound clean. It was so intimate that it felt like a sexual act, and she closed her eyes, feeling ecstatic. She swallowed, tasting his blood, and shuddered with pleasure.

A week after the bridge collapsed, Merthin had built a ferry.

It was ready at dawn on Saturday morning, in time for the weekly Kingsbridge market. He had worked on it by lamplight all Friday night, and Caris guessed he had not had time to speak to Griselda and tell her he knew the baby was Thurstan’s. Caris and her father came down to the riverside to see the new sensation as the first traders arrived – women from the surrounding villages with baskets of eggs, peasants with cartloads of butter and cheese, and shepherds with flocks of lambs.

Caris admired Merthin’s work. The raft was large enough to carry a horse and cart without taking the beast out of the shafts, and it had a firm wooden railing to keep sheep from falling overboard. New wooden platforms at water level on both banks made it easy for carts to roll on and off. Passengers paid a pe