“The members of the guild would pay for the new church,” Aliena said.

“Then we should start a guild,” Alfred said.

Aliena wondered if she had misjudged him. He had never struck her as the pious type, but here he was trying to raise money to build a new church. Perhaps he had hidden depths. Then she realized that Alfred was the only building contractor in Kingsbridge, so he was sure to get the job of building the church. He might not be intelligent, but he was shrewd enough.

Nevertheless she still liked his idea. Kingsbridge was becoming a town, and towns always had more than one church. With an alternative to the cathedral, the town would not be so completely dominated by the monastery. At the moment Philip was the undisputed lord and master here. He was a benevolent tyrant, but she could foresee a time when it might suit the merchants of the town to have an alternative church.

Alfred said: “Would you explain about the guild to some of the others?”

Aliena had recovered her breath after the race. She was reluctant to exchange the company of Ellen and Jack for that of Alfred, but she was quite enthusiastic about his idea, and anyway it would have been a little churlish to refuse. “I’d be glad to,” she said, and she got up and went with him.

The sun was going down. The monks had lit the bonfire and were serving the traditional ale spiced with ginger. Jack wanted to ask his mother a question, now that they were alone, but he was nervous. Then someone started to sing, and he knew she would join in at any moment, so he blurted it out. “Was my father a jongleur?”

She looked at him. She was surprised but not cross. “Who taught you that word?” she said. “You’ve never seen a jongleur.”

“Aliena. She used to go to France with her father.”

Mother gazed across the darkling meadow toward the bonfire. “Yes, he was a jongleur. He told me all those poems, just the way I told them to you. And are you now telling them to Aliena?”

“Yes.” Jack felt a little bashful.

“You really love her, don’t you?”

“Is it so obvious?”

She smiled fondly. “Only to me, I think. She’s a lot older than you.”

“Five years.”

“You’ll get her, though. You’re like your father. He could have any woman he wanted.”

Jack was embarrassed to talk about Aliena but thrilled to hear about his father, and he was eager for more; but to his intense annoyance Tom came up at that moment and sat down with them. He began to speak immediately. “I’ve been talking to Prior Philip about Jack,” he said. His tone was light, but Jack sensed tension underneath, and saw trouble coming. “Philip says the boy should be educated.”

Mother’s response was predictably indignant. “He is educated,” she said. “He can read and write English and French, he knows his numbers, he can recite whole bookfuls of poetry-”

“Now, don’t misunderstand me willfully,” Tom said firmly. “Philip didn’t say that Jack is ignorant. Quite the opposite. He’s saying that Jack is so clever he should have more education.”

Jack was not pleased by these compliments. He shared his mother’s suspicion of churchmen. There was sure to be a catch in this somewhere.

“More?” Ellen said scornfully. “What more does that monk want him to learn? I’ll tell you. Theology. Latin. Rhetoric. Metaphysics. Cow shit.”

“Don’t dismiss it so quickly,” Tom said mildly. “If Jack takes up Philip’s offer, and goes to school, and learns to write at speed in a good secretary’s hand, and studies Latin and theology and all the other subjects you call cow shit, he could become a clerk to an earl or a bishop, and eventually he could be a wealthy and powerful man. Not all barons are the sons of barons, as the saying goes.”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “If he takes up Philip’s offer, you said. What is Philip’s offer, exactly?”

“That Jack becomes a novice monk-”

“Over my dead body!” Ellen shouted, leaping to her feet. “The damned Church is not having my son! Those treacherous lying priests took his father but they’re not taking him, I’ll put a knife in Philip’s belly first, so help me, I swear by all the gods.”

Tom had seen Mother in a tantrum before and he was not as impressed as he might have been. He said calmly: “What the devil is the matter with you, woman? The boy has been offered a magnificent opportunity.”

Jack was intrigued most of all by the words Those treacherous lying priests took his father. What did she mean by that? He wanted to ask her but he did not get the chance.

“He’s not going to be a monk!” she yelled.

“If he doesn’t want to be a monk, he doesn’t have to.”

Mother looked sulky. “That sly prior has a knack of getting his own way in the end,” she said.

Tom turned to Jack. “It’s about time you said something, lad. What do you want to do with your life?”

Jack had never thought about that particular question, but the answer came out with no hesitation, as if he had made up his mind long ago. “I’m going to be a master builder, like you,” he said. “I’m going to build the most beautiful cathedral the world has ever seen.”

The red edge of the sun dropped below the horizon and night fell. It was time for the last ritual of Midsummer Eve: floating wishes. Jack had a candle end and a piece of wood ready. He looked at Ellen and Tom. They were both gazing at him, somewhat nonplussed: his certainty about his future had surprised them. Well, no wonder: it had surprised him too.

Seeing that they had no more to say, he jumped to his feet and ran across the meadow to the bonfire. He lit a dry twig at the fire, melted the base of his candle a little, and stuck it to the piece of wood; then he lit the wick. Most of the villagers were doing the same. Those who could not afford a candle made a sort of boat with dried grass and rushes, and twisted the grasses together in the middle to make a wick.

Jack saw Aliena standing quite near him. Her face was outlined by the red glow of the bonfire, and she looked deep in thought. On impulse he said: “What will you wish for, Aliena?”

She answered him without pausing for thought. “Peace,” she said. Then, looking somewhat startled, she turned away.

Jack wondered if he were crazy to love her. She liked him well enough-they had become friends-but the idea of lying naked together and kissing one another’s hot skin was as far from her heart as it was close to his own.

When everyone was ready, they knelt down beside the river, or waded into the shallows. Holding their flickering lights, they all made a wish. Jack closed his eyes tight and visualized Aliena, lying in a bed with her breasts peeping over the coverlet, holding her arms out to him and saying: “Make love to me, husband.” Then they all carefully floated their lights on the water. If the float sank or the flame blew out, it meant you would never get your wish. As soon as Jack let go, and the little craft moved away, the wooden base became invisible, and only the flame could be seen. He watched it intently for a while, then he lost track of it among the hundreds of dancing lights, bobbing on the surface of the water, flickering wishes floating downstream until they disappeared around the bend of the river and were lost from view.