army-how should I arrest him?" Sheriff Eustace had said. "The king needs knights to fight against Maud-what will he say if I incarcerate one of his best men? If I brought a charge of murder against William, I'd either be killed immediately by his knights or hanged for a traitor later by King Stephen."
The first casualty of a civil war was justice, Philip had realized.
Then the sheriff had told him that William had made a formal complaint about the Kingsbridge market.
It was ludicrous, of course, that William could get away with murder and at the same time charge Philip on a technicality; but Philip felt helpless. It was true that he did not have permission to hold a market, and he was in the wrong, strictly speaking. But he could not remain in the wrong. He was the prior of Kingsbridge. All he had was his moral authority. William could call up an army of knights; Bishop Waleran could use his contacts in high places; the sheriff could claim royal authority; but all Philip could do was to say this is right and that is wrong; and if he were to forfeit that position he really would be helpless. So he had ordered the market to cease.
That left him in a truly desperate position.
The priory's finances had improved dramatically, thanks to stricter controls on the one hand, and on the other, ever-rising earnings from the market and from sheep farming; but Philip always spent every penny on the building, and he had borrowed heavily from the Jews of Winchester, a loan he had yet to repay. Now, at a stroke, he had lost his supply of cost-free stone, his income from the market had dried up, and his volunteer laborers-many of whom came mainly for the market-were likely to dwindle. He would have to lay off half the builders, and abandon hope of finishing the cathedral in his own lifetime. He was not prepared to do that.
He wondered if the crisis was his own fault. Had he been too confident, too ambitious? Sheriff Eustace had said as much. "You're too big for your boots, Philip," he had said angrily. "You run a little monastery, and you're a little prior, but you want to rule the bishop and the earl and the sheriff. Well, you can't. We're too powerful for you. All you do is cause trouble." Eustace was an ugly man with uneven teeth and a cast in one eye, and he was wearing a dirty yellow robe; but unimpressive though he was, his words had stabbed Philip's heart. He was painfully aware that the quarrymen would not have died if he had not made an enemy of William Hamleigh. But he could not do other than be William's enemy. If he gave up, even more people would suffer, people such as the miller William had killed and the serfs daughter he and his knights had raped. Philip had to fight on.
And that meant he had to go to see the king.
He hated the idea. He had approached the king once before, at Winchester four years ago, and although he had got what he wanted, he had been dreadfully ill-at-ease at the royal court. The king was surrounded by wily and unscrupulous people jostling for his attention and squabbling over his favors, and Philip found such people contemptible. They were trying to acquire wealth and position they did not merit. He did not really understand the game they were playing: in his world, the best way to get something was to deserve it, not to toady to the giver. But now he had no alternative but to enter their world and play their game. Only the king could grant Philip permission to hold a market. Only the king could now save the cathedral.
He finished his prayers and left the crypt. The sun was coming up, and there was a pink flush on the gray stone walls of the rising cathedral. The builders, who worked from sunrise to sunset, were just beginning, opening their lodges and sharpening their tools and mixing up the first batch of mortar. The loss of the quarry had not yet affected the building: they had always quarried stone faster than they could use it, from the beginning, and now they had a stockpile that would last many months.
It was time for Philip to leave. All the arrangements were made. The king was at Lincoln. Philip would have a traveling companion: Richard, the brother of Aliena. After