Tom was standing in the aisle at the open end of the half-built chancel, where the crossing would be. He took the pole and laid it on the ground so that it spanned the aisle. “From the outside wall to the middle of the pier of the arcade is a pole.” He turned the pole end over end. “From there to the middle of the nave is a pole.” He turned it over again, and it reached the middle of the opposite pier. “The nave is two poles wide.” He turned it over again, and it reached to the wall of the far aisle. “The whole church is four poles wide.”
“Yes,” said Jack. “And each bay must be a pole long.”
Tom looked faintly annoyed. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody. The bays of the aisles are square, so if they’re a pole wide they must be a pole long. And the bays of the nave are the same length as the bays of the aisles, obviously.”
“Obviously,” said Tom. “You should be a philosopher.” In his voice was a mixture of pride and irritation. He was pleased that Jack was quick to understand, irritated that the mysteries of masonry should be so easily grasped by a mere boy.
Jack was too caught up in the splendid logic of it all to pay attention to Tom’s sensitivities. “The chancel is four poles long, then,” he said. “And the whole church will be twelve poles when it’s finished.” He was struck by another thought. “How high will it be?”
“Six poles high. Three for the arcade, one for the gallery, and two for the clerestory.”
“But what’s the point of having everything measured by poles? Why not build it all higgledy-piggledy, like a house?”
“First, because it’s cheaper this way. All the arches of the arcade are identical, so we can reuse the falsework arches. The fewer different sizes and shapes of stone we need, the fewer templates I have to make. And so on. Second, it simplifies every aspect of what we’re doing, from the original laying-out-everything is based on a pole square-to painting the walls-it’s easier to estimate how much whitewash we’ll need. And when things are simple, fewer mistakes are made. The most expensive part of a building is the mistakes. Third, when everything is based on a pole measure, the church just looks right. Proportion is the heart of beauty.”
Jack nodded, enchanted. The struggle to control an operation as ambitious and intricate as building a cathedral was endlessly fascinating. The notion that the principles of regularity and repetition could both simplify the construction and result in a harmonious building was a seductive idea. But he was not sure whether proportion was the heart of beauty. He had a taste for wild, spreading, disorderly things: high mountains, aged oaks, and Aliena’s hair.
He ate his dinner ravenously but quickly, then he left the village, heading north. It was a warm early-summer day, and he was barefoot. Ever since he and his mother had come to live in Kingsbridge for good, and he had become a worker, he had enjoyed returning to the forest periodically. At first he had spent the time getting rid of surplus energy, running and jumping, climbing trees and shooting ducks with his sling. That was when he was getting used to the new, taller, stronger body he now had. The novelty of that had worn off. Now when he walked in the forest he thought about things: why proportion should be beautiful, how buildings stayed standing, and what it would be like to stroke Aliena’s breasts.
He had worshiped her from a distance for years. His abiding picture of her was from the first time he had seen her, as she came down the stairs to the hall at Earlscastle, and he had thought she must be a princess in a story. She had continued to be a remote figure. She talked to Prior Philip, and Tom Builder, and Malachi the Jew, and the other wealthy and powerful people of Kingsbridge; and Jack never had a reason to address her. He just looked at her, praying in church or riding her palfrey across the bridge, or sitting in the sun outside her house; wearing costly furs in winter and the finest linen in summer, her wild hair framing her beautiful face. Before he went to sleep he would think about what it would be like to take those clothes off her, and see her naked, and kiss her soft mouth gently.
In the last few weeks he had become dissatisfied and depressed with this hopeless daydreaming. Seeing her from a distance and overhearing her conversations with other people and imagining making love to her were no longer enough. He needed the real thing.
There were several girls his own age who might have given him the real thing. Among the apprentices there was much talk about which of the young women in Kingsbridge were randy and exactly what each of them would let a young man do. Most of them were determined to remain virgins until they were married, according to the teachings of the Church, but there were certain things you could do and still remain a virgin, or so the apprentices said. The girls all thought Jack was a little strange-they were probably right, he felt-but one or two of them found his strangeness appealing. One Sunday after church he had struck up a conversation with Edith, the sister of a fellow apprentice; but when he had talked about how he loved to carve stone, she had started to giggle. The following Sunday he had gone walking in the fields with Ann, the blond daughter of the tailor. He had not said much to her, but he had kissed her, and then suggested they lie down in a field of green barley. He had kissed her again and touched her breasts, and she had kissed him back, enthusiastically; but after a while she had pulled away from him and said: “Who is she?” Jack had been thinking about Aliena at that very moment and he was thunderstruck. He had tried to brush it aside, and kiss her again, but she turned her face away, and said: “Whoever she is, she’s a lucky girl.” They had walked back to Kingsbridge together, and when they separated Ann had said: “Don’t waste time trying to forget her. It’s a lost cause. She’s the one you want, so you’d better try and get her.” She had smiled at him fondly and added: “You’ve got a nice face. It might not be as difficult as you think.”
Her kindness made him feel bad, the more so because she was one of the girls the apprentices said were randy, and he had told everyone that he was going to try to feel her up. Now such talk seemed so juvenile that it made him squirm. But if he had told her the name of the woman who was on his mind, Ann might not have been so encouraging. Jack and Aliena were about the most unlikely match conceivable. Aliena was twenty-two years old and he was seventeen; she was the daughter of an earl and he was a bastard; she was a wealthy wool merchant and he was a penniless apprentice. Worse still, she was famous for the number of suitors she had rejected. Every presentable young lord in the county, and every prosperous merchant’s eldest son, had come to Kingsbridge to pay court to her, and all had gone away disappointed. What chance was there for Jack, who had nothing to offer, unless it was “a nice face”?
He and Aliena had one thing in common: they liked the forest. They were peculiar in this: most people preferred the safety of the fields and villages, and stayed away from the forest. But Aliena often walked in the woodlands near Kingsbridge, and there was a particular secluded spot where she liked to stop and sit down. He had seen her there once or twice. She had not seen him: he walked silently, as he had learned to in childhood, when he had had to find his dinner in the forest.
He was heading for her clearing without any idea of what he would do if he found her there. He knew what he would like to do: lie down beside her and stroke her body. He could talk to her, but what would he say? It was easy to talk to girls of his own age. He had teased Edith, saying: “I don’t believe any of the terrible things your brother says about you,” and of course she had wanted to know what the terrible things were. With Ann he had been direct: “Would you like to walk in the fields with me this afternoon?” But when he tried to come up with an opening line for Aliena his mind went blank. He could not help thinking of her as belonging to the older generation. She was so grave and responsible. She had not always been like that, he knew: at seventeen she had been quite playful. She had suffered terrible troubles since then, but the playful girl must still be there somewhere inside the solemn woman. For Jack that made her even more fascinating.