Ken Follett - World Without End

“Let me think,” Edmund said, frowning. “Every substantial trader has one… so it must come to a couple of hundred, at least.”

“Suppose we were to go around the town tonight and ask every one of them to drive to the quarry tomorrow and pick up stones.”

Edmund stared at Merthin, and a grin slowly spread across his face. “Now,” he said delightedly, “that’s an idea!”

“We’ll tell each one that everybody else is going,” Merthin went on. “It will be like a holiday. Their families can go along, and they can take food and beer. If each one brings back a cartload of stone or rubble, in two days’ time we’ll have enough to build the piers of the bridge.”

That was brilliant, Caris thought wonderingly. It was typical of him, to think of something no one else could have imagined. But would it work?

“What about the weather?” said Godwyn.

“The rain has been a curse for the peasants, but it’s held off the deep cold. We’ve a week or two yet, I think.”

Edmund was excited, stomping up and down the loft with his lopsided gait. “But if you can build the piers in the next few days…”

“By the end of next year we can finish the bulk of the work.”

“Could we use the bridge the following year?”

“No… but wait. We could put a temporary wooden roadbed on top in time for the Fleece Fair.”

“So we would have a usable bridge by the year after next – and miss only one Fleece Fair!”

“We’d have to finish the stone roadbed after the Fleece Fair, then it would harden in time to be used normally in the third year.”

“Damn it, we’ve got to do it!” Edmund said excitedly.

Godwyn said cautiously: “You have yet to empty the water out of the coffer dams.”

Merthin nodded. “That’s hard work. In my original plan I allowed two weeks for it. But I’ve got an idea about that, too. However, let’s get the carts organized first.”

They all moved to the door, animated with enthusiasm. As Godwyn and Edmund started down the narrow spiral staircase, Caris caug ht Merthin by the sleeve and held him back. He thought she wanted to kiss, and he put his arms around her, but she pushed him away. “I’ve got some news,” she said.

“More?”

“I’m pregnant.”

She watched his face. He was startled at first, and his red-brown eyebrows rose. Then he blinked, tilted his head to one side and shrugged, as if to say: Nothing surprising about that. He grinned, at first ruefully, then with unmixed happiness. At the end he was beaming. “That’s wonderful!” he said.

She hated him momentarily for his stupidity. “No, it’s not!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to spend my life as a slave to anyone, even if it is my own child.”

“A slave? Is every mother a slave?”

“Yes! How could you possibly not know that I feel that way?”

He looked baffled and hurt, and a part of her wanted to back off, but she had been nursing her anger too long. “I did know, I suppose,” he said. “But then you lay with me, so I thought…” He hesitated. “You must have known it might happen – would happen, sooner or later.”

“Of course I knew, but I acted as if I didn’t.”

“Yes, I can understand that.”

“Oh, stop being so understanding. You’re such a weakling.”

His face froze. After a long pause he said: “All right, then, I’ll stop being so understanding. Just give me the information. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have a plan, you fool. I just know I don’t want to have a baby.”

“So you don’t have a plan, and I’m a fool and a weakling. Do you want anything from me?”

“No!”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Don’t be so logical!”

He sighed. “I’m going to stop trying to be what you tell me to be, because you make no sense.” He went around the room putting out the lamps. “I’m glad we’re having a baby, and I’d like us to be married and look after the child together – assuming this mood you’re in is only temporary.” He put his drawing implements in a leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. “But for now, you’re so cantankerous that I’d rather not speak to you at all. And besides, I have work to do.” He went to the door, then paused. “On the other hand, we could kiss and make up.”

“Go away!” she yelled.

He ducked through the low door and disappeared into the stairwell.

Caris began to cry.

Merthin had no idea whether the people of Kingsbridge would rally to the cause. They all had work and worries of their own: would they see the communal effort to build the bridge as being more important? He was not sure. He knew, from his reading of Timothy’s Book, that at moments of crisis Prior Philip had often prevailed by calling on the ordinary people to make a massive effort. But Merthin was not Philip. He had no right to lead people. He was just a carpenter.

They made a list of cart owners and divided it up by streets. Edmund rounded up ten leading citizens and Godwyn picked ten senior monks, and they went around in pairs. Merthin was teamed with Brother Thomas.

The first door they knocked on was Lib Wheeler’s. She was continuing Ben’s business with hired labour. “You can have both my carts,” she said. “And the men to drive them. Anything to give that damned earl a poke in the eye.”

But their second call brought a refusal. “I’m not well,” said Peter Dyer, who had a cart for delivering the bales of woollen cloth he dyed yellow and green and pink. “I can’t travel.”

He looked perfectly all right, Merthin thought; he was probably scared of a confrontation with the earl’s men. There would be no fight, Merthin felt sure; but he could understand the fear. What if all the citizens felt that way?

Their third call was on Harold Mason, a young builder who was hoping for several years of work building the bridge. He agreed immediately. “Jake Chepstow will come, too,” he said. “I’ll make sure of that.” Harold and Jake were pals.

After that, almost everybody said yes.

They did not need to be told how important the bridge was – everyone who had a cart was a trader, obviously – and they had the additional incentive of a pardon for their sins. But the most important factor seemed to be the promise of an unexpected holiday. Most people said: “Is so-and-so going?” When they heard that their friends and neighbours had volunteered, they did not want to be left out.

When they had made all their calls, Merthin left Thomas and went down to the ferry. They had to take the carts across overnight, to be ready to leave at sunrise. The ferry carried only one cart at a time – two hundred carts would take several hours. That was why they needed a bridge, of course.

An ox was revolving the great wheel, and carts were already crossing the river. On the other side, the owners turned their beasts out to graze in the pasture, then came back on the ferry and went to bed. Edmund had got John Constable and half a dozen of his deputies to spend the night in Newtown, guarding carts and beasts.

The ferry was still working when Merthin went to bed an hour or so after midnight. He lay thinking about Caris for a while. Her quirkiness and unpredictability were part of what he loved, but sometimes she was impossible. She was the cleverest individual in Kingsbridge, but also hopelessly irrational at times.

Most of all, though, he hated to be called weak. He was not sure he would ever forgive Caris for that jibe. Earl Roland had humiliated him, ten years ago, by saying he could not be a squire, and was fit only to be apprenticed to a carpenter. But he was not weak. He had defied Elfric’s tyranny, he had routed Prior Godwyn over the bridge design, and he was about to save the entire town. I might be small, he thought, but by God I’m strong.