Ken Follett: The Pillars Of The Earth

Tom quickened his pace, and a moment later he and Alfred emerged onto the road. Martha lay there in the same place, not having moved. Her eyes were closed and the blood was drying in her hair. Agnes knelt beside her-and with them, to Tom’s surprise, were another woman and a boy. The thought struck him that it was no wonder he had felt watched, earlier in the day, for the forest seemed to be teeming with people. He bent down and rested his hand on Martha’s chest again. She was breathing normally.

“She will wake up soon,” said the strange woman in an authoritative voice. “Then she will puke. After that she’ll be all right.”

Tom looked at her curiously. She was kneeling over Martha. She was quite young, perhaps a dozen years younger than Tom. Her short leather tunic revealed lithe brown limbs. She had a pretty face, with dark brown hair that came to a devil’s peak on her forehead. Tom felt a pang of desire. Then she raised her glance to look at him, and he gave a start: she had intense, deep-set eyes of an unusual honey-gold color that gave her whole face a magical look, and he felt sure that she knew what he had been thinking.

He looked away from her to cover his embarrassment, and he caught Agnes’s eye. She was looking resentful. She said: “Where’s the pig?”

“There were two more outlaws,” Tom said.

Alfred said: “We beat them, but the one with the pig got away.”

Agnes looked grim, but said nothing more.

The strange woman said: “We could move the girl into the shade, if we’re gentle.” She stood up, and Tom realized that she was quite small, at least a foot shorter than he. He bent down and picked Martha up carefully. Her childish body was almost weightless in his arms. He carried her a few yards along the road and put her down on a patch of grass in the shadow of an old oak. She was still quite limp.

Alfred was picking up the tools that had been scattered on the road during the fracas. The strange woman’s boy was watching, his eyes wide and his mouth open, not speaking. He was about three years younger than Alfred, and a peculiar-looking child, Tom observed, with none of his mother’s sensual beauty. He had very pale skin, orange-red hair, and blue eyes that bulged slightly. He had the alertly stupid look of a dullard, Tom thought; the kind of child that either dies young or grows up to be the village idiot. Alfred was visibly uncomfortable under his stare.

As Tom watched, the child snatched the saw from Alfred’s hand, without saying anything, and examined it as if it were something amazing. Alfred, offended by the discourtesy, snatched it back, and the child let it go with indifference. The mother said: “Jack! Behave yourself.” She seemed embarrassed.

Tom looked at her. The boy did not resemble her at all. “Are you his mother?” Tom asked.

“Yes. My name is Ellen.”

“Where’s your husband?”

“Dead.”

Tom was surprised. “You’re traveling alone?” he said incredulously. The forest was dangerous enough for a man such as he: a woman alone could hardly hope to survive.

“We’re not traveling,” said Ellen. “We live in the forest.”

Tom was shocked. “You mean you’re-” He stopped, not wanting to offend her.

“Outlaws,” she said. “Yes. Did you think that all outlaws were like Faramond Openmouth, who stole your pig?”

“Yes,” said Tom, although what he wanted to say was I never thought an outlaw might be a beautiful woman . Unable to restrain his curiosity, he asked: “What was your crime?”

“I cursed a priest,” she said, and looked away.

It did not sound like much of a crime to Tom, but perhaps the priest had been very powerful, or very touchy; or perhaps Ellen just did not want to tell the truth.

He looked at Martha. A moment later she opened her eyes. She was confused and a little frightened. Agnes knelt beside her. “You’re safe,” she said. “Everything’s all right.”

Martha sat upright and vomited. Agnes hugged her until the spasms passed. Tom was impressed: Ellen’s prediction had come true. She had also said that Martha would be all right, and presumably that was reliable too. Relief washed over him, and he was a little surprised at the strength of his own emotion. I couldn’t bear to lose my little girl, he thought; and he had to fight back tears. He caught a look of sympathy from Ellen, and once again he felt that her pale gold eyes could see into his heart.

He broke off an oak twig, stripped its leaves, and used them to wipe Martha’s face. She still looked pale.

“She needs to rest,” said Ellen. “Let her lie down for as long as it takes a man to walk three miles.”

Tom glanced at the sun. There was plenty of daylight left. He settled down to wait. Agnes rocked Martha gently in her arms. The boy Jack now switched his attention to Martha, and stared at her with the same idiot intensity. Tom wanted to know more about Ellen. He wondered whether she might be persuaded to tell her story. He did not want her to go away. “How did it all come about?” he asked her vaguely.

She looked into his eyes again, and then she began to talk.

Her father had been a knight, she told them; a big, strong, violent man who wanted sons with whom he could ride and hunt and wrestle, companions to drink and carouse into the night with him. In these matters he was as unlucky as a man could be, for he got Ellen, and then his wife died; and he married again, but his second wife was barren. He came to despise Ellen’s stepmother, and eventually sent her away. He must have been a cruel man, but he never seemed so to Ellen, who adored him and shared his scorn for his second wife. When the stepmother left, Ellen stayed, and grew up in what was almost an all-male household. She cut her hair short and carried a dagger, and learned not to play with kittens or care for blind old dogs. By the time she was Martha’s age she could spit on the ground and eat apple cores and kick a horse in the belly so hard that it would draw in its breath, allowing her to tighten its girth one more notch. She knew that all men who were not part of her father’s band were called cocksuckers and all women who would not go with them were called pigfuckers, although she was not quite sure-and did not much care-what these insults really meant.

Listening to her voice in the mild air of an autumn afternoon, Tom closed his eyes and pictured her as a flat-chested girl with a dirty face, sitting at the long table with her father’s thuggish comrades, drinking strong ale and belching and singing songs about battle and looting and rape, horses and castles and virgins, until she fell asleep with her little cropped head on the rough board.

If only she could have stayed flat-chested forever she would have lived a happy life. But the time came when the men looked at her differently. They no longer laughed uproariously when she said: “Get out of my way or I’ll cut off your balls and feed them to the pigs.” Some of them stared at her when she took off her wool tunic and lay down to sleep in her long linen undershirt. When relieving themselves in the woods, they would turn their backs to her, which they never had before.

One day she saw her father deep in conversation with the parish priest-a rare event-and the two of them kept looking at her, as if they were talking about her. On the following morning her father said to her: “Go with Henry and Everard and do as they tell you.” Then he kissed her forehead. She wondered what on earth had come over him-was he going soft in his old age? She saddled her gray courser-she refused to ride the ladylike palfrey or a child’s pony-and set off with the two men-at-arms.

They took her to a nunnery and left her there.

The whole place rang with her obscene curses as the two men rode away. She knifed the abbess and walked all the way back to her father’s house. He sent her back, bound hand and foot and tied to the saddle of a donkey. They put her in the punishment cell until the abbess’s wound healed. It was cold and damp and as black as the night, and there was water to drink but nothing to eat. When they let her out she walked home again. Her father sent her back again, and this time she was flogged before being put in the cell.