Ken Follett - The Pillars Of The Earth

“Philip thinks she’s a witch,” Jack pointed out. “Would he let her testify?”

“We could spring it on him. But she hates him, too. Will she testify?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Let’s ask her.”

“Fornication and nepotism?” Jack’s mother cried. “Philip?” She started to laugh. “It’s too absurd!”

“Mother, this is serious,” Jack said.

“Philip couldn’t fornicate if you put him in a barrel with three whores,” she said. “He wouldn’t know what to do!”

Jonathan was looking embarrassed. “Prior Philip is in real trouble, even if the charge is absurd,” he said.

“And why would I help Philip?” she said. “He’s caused me nothing but heartache.”

Jack had been afraid of this. His mother had never forgiven Philip for splitting her and Tom. “Philip did the same to me as he did to you-if I can forgive him, you can.”

“I’m not the forgiving type,” she said.

“Don’t do it for Philip, then-do it for me. I want to continue building at Kingsbridge.”

“Why? The church is finished.”

“I’d like to pull down Tom’s chancel and rebuild it in the new style.”

“Oh, for God’s sake-”

“Mother. Philip is a good prior, and when he goes Jonathan will take over-if you come to Kingsbridge and tell the truth at the trial.”

“I hate courts,” she said. “No good ever comes out of them.”

It was maddening. She held the key to Philip’s trial: she could ensure that he was cleared. But she was a stubborn old woman. Jack was seriously afraid he would not be able to talk her into it.

He decided to try stinging her into consenting. “I suppose it’s a long way to travel, for someone of your age,” he said slyly. “How old are you now-sixty-eight?”

“Sixty-two, and don’t try to provoke me,” she snapped. “I’m fitter than you, my boy.”

It could be true, Jack thought. Her hair was white as snow, and her face was deeply lined, but her startling golden eyes saw just as much as ever they had: as soon as she looked at Jonathan she had known who he was, and she had said: “Well, I’ve no need to ask why you’re here. You’ve found out where you come from, have you? By God, you’re as tall as your father and nearly as broad.” She was also as independent and self-willed as ever.

“Sally is like you,” Jack said.

She was pleased. “Is she?” She smiled. “In what way?”

“In her mulish obstinacy.”

“Huh.” Mother looked cross. “She’ll be all right then.”

Jack decided he might as well beg. “Mother, please-come to Kingsbridge with us and tell the truth.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Jonathan said: “I have something else to ask you.”

Jack wondered what was coming. He was afraid Jonathan might say something to antagonize his mother: it was easily done, especially by clergymen. He held his breath.

Jonathan said: “Could you show me where my mother is buried?”

Jack let his breath out silently. There was nothing wrong with that . Indeed, Jonathan could hardly have thought of anything more likely to soften her.

She dropped her scornful manner immediately. “Of course I’ll show you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I could find it.”

Jack was reluctant to spend the time. The trial would start in the morning and they had a long way to go. But he sensed that he should let fate take its course.

Mother said to Jonathan: “Do you want to go there now?”

“Yes, please, if it’s possible.”

“All right.” She stood up. She picked up a short cape of rabbit fur and slung it across her shoulders. Jack was about to tell her she would be too warm in that, but he held back: old people always felt colder.

They left the cave, with its smell of stored apples and wood smoke, and pushed through the concealing vegetation around its mouth to emerge into the spring sunshine. Mother set off without hesitation. Jack and Jonathan untied their horses and followed. They had to lead their mounts, for the terrain was too overgrown for riding. Jack noticed that his mother walked more slowly than she used to. She was not as fit as she pretended.

Jack could not have found the site on his own. There had been a time when he could find his way around this forest as easily as he could now move around Kingsbridge. But one clearing looked very much like another to him these days, just as the houses of Kingsbridge would all look the same to a stranger. Mother followed a chain of animal trails through the dense woodland. Now and again Jack would recognize a landmark associated with some childhood memory: an enormous old oak where he had once taken refuge from a wild boar; a rabbit warren that had provided many a dinner; a trout stream where, it seemed in retrospect, he had been able to catch fat fish in no time. For a while he would know where he was, then he would be lost again. It was amazing to think he had once felt totally at home in what was now an alien place, its brooks and thickets as meaningless to him as his voussoirs and templates were to peasants. If he had ever wondered, in those days, how his life would turn out, his best guess would have been nowhere near the truth.

They walked several miles. It was a warm spring day, and Jack found himself sweating, but Mother kept the rabbit fur on. Toward midafternoon she came to a halt in a shady clearing. Jack noticed she was breathing hard and looking a little gray. It was definitely time she left the forest, and came to live with him and Aliena. He resolved that he would make a big effort to persuade her.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Of course I’m all right,” she snapped. “We’re there.”

Jack looked around. He did not recognize it.

Jonathan said: “Is this it?”

“Yes,” Mother said.

Jack said: “Where’s the road?”

“Over there.”

When Jack had oriented himself with the road, the clearing began to look familiar, and he was flooded with a powerful sense of the past. There was the big horse-chestnut tree: it had been bare of leaves, then, and there had been conkers all over the forest floor, but now the tree was in blossom, with big white flowers like candles all over it. The blossom had started to fall already, and every few moments a cloud of petals drifted down.

“Martha told me what had happened,” Jack said. “They stopped here because your mother could go no farther. Tom made a fire and boiled some turnips for supper: there was no meat. Your mother gave birth to you right here, on the ground. You were perfectly healthy, but something went wrong, and she died.” There was a slight rise in the ground a few feet from the base of the tree. “Look,” Jack said. “See the mound?”

Jonathan nodded, his face taut with suppressed emotion.

“That’s the grave.” As Jack spoke, a drift of blossom fell from the tree and settled over the mound like a carpet of petals.

Jonathan knelt beside the grave and began to pray.

Jack stood silent. He remembered when he had discovered his relatives in Cherbourg: it had been a devastating experience. What Jonathan was going through must be even more intense.

Eventually Jonathan stood up. “When I’m prior,” he said solemnly, “I’m going to build a little monastery just here, with a chapel and a hostel, so that in future no traveler on this stretch of road will ever have to spend a cold winter’s night sleeping in the open air. I’ll dedicate the hostel to the memory of my mother.” He looked at Jack. “I don’t suppose you ever knew her name, did you?”

“It was Agnes,” Ellen said softly. “Your mother’s name was Agnes.”

Bishop Waleran made a persuasive case.

He began by telling the court about Philip’s precocious development: cellarer of his monastery when he was only twenty-one, prior of the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest at twenty-three; prior of Kingsbridge at the remarkably young age of twenty-eight. He constantly emphasized Philip’s youth and managed to suggest there was something arrogant about anyone who accepted responsibility early. Then he described St-John-in-the-Forest, its remoteness and isolation, and spoke of the freedom and independence of whoever was its prior. “Who can be surprised,” he said, “that after five years as virtually his own master, with only the lightest and most distant kind of supervision, this inexperienced, warm-blooded young man had a child?” It sounded almost inevitable. Waleran was infuriatingly credible. Philip wanted to strangle him.