the long winter evenings.
She sat up, quite excited by her new idea. Ellen was lying right next to her. Jack was sitting on the other side of Ellen. He caught Aliena's eye, smiled faintly, and looked away, as if he was a little embarrassed at having been caught looking at her. He was a funny boy, with a head full of ideas. Aliena could remember him as a small, peculiar-looking child who did not know how babies were conceived. But she had hardly noticed him when he came to live in Kingsbridge. And now he seemed so different, so completely a new person, that it was as if he had sprung up from nowhere, a flower that appears one morning where the previous day there was nothing but bare earth. For a start he was no longer peculiar-looking. In fact, she thought, regarding him with a faint smile of amusement, the girls probably thought he was terribly handsome. He certainly had a nice smile. She herself paid no attention to his looks, but she was a little intrigued by his astonishing imagination. She had discovered that not only did he know several verse narratives in full-some of them thousands and thousands of lines long-but he could also make them up as he went along, so that she was never sure whether he was remembering or extemporizing. And the stories were not the only surprising thing about him. He was curious about everything and puzzled by things that everyone else took for granted. One day he had asked where all the water in the river came from. "Every hour, thousands and thousands of gallons of water flow past Kingsbridge, night and day, all the year round. It's been going on since before we were born, since before our parents were born, since before their parents were born. Where does it all come from? Is there a huge lake somewhere that feeds it? That lake must be as big as all England! What if one day it dries up?" He was always saying things like that, some of them less fanciful, and it made Aliena realize that she was starved of intelligent conversation. Most people in Kingsbridge could talk only about agriculture and adultery, neither of which interested her. Prior Philip was different, of course, but he did not often allow himself to indulge in idle talk: he was always busy, dealing with the building site, the monks, or the town. Aliena suspected that Tom Builder was also highly intelligent, but he was a thinker rather than a talker. Jack was the first real friend she had made. He was a marvelous discovery, despite his youth. Indeed, when she was away from Kingsbridge she had found herself looking forward to returning so that she could talk to him.
She wondered where he got his ideas from. That thought had made her notice Ellen. What a strange woman she must be, to raise a child in the forest! Aliena had talked to Ellen and found in her a kindred spirit, an independent and self-sufficient woman somewhat angry at the way life had treated her. Now, on impulse, Aliena said: "Ellen, where did you learn the stories?"
"From Jack's father," Ellen said without thinking, and then a guarded look came over her face, and Aliena knew she should not ask any more questions.
Another thought occurred to her. "Do you know how to weave?"
"Of course," Ellen said. "Doesn't everyone?"
"Would you like to do some weaving for money?"
"Perhaps. What have you got in mind?"
Aliena explained. Ellen was not short of money, of course, but it was Tom who earned it, and Aliena had a suspicion that Ellen might like to make some for herself.
The suspicion turned out to be right. "Yes, I'll give that a try," Ellen said.
At that moment Ellen's stepson, Alfred, came along. Like his father, Alfred was something of a giant. Most of his face was concealed behind a bushy beard, but the eyes above it were narrow-set, giving him a cunning look. He could read and write and add up, but despite that he was rather stupid. Nevertheless he had prospered, and he had his own gang of masons, apprentices and laborers. Aliena had observed that big men often gained positions of power regardless of their intelligence. As a ganger Alfred had another advantage, of course: he could always be sure of getting work for his men because his father was the master builder of Kingsbridge Cathedral.
He sat on the grass beside her. He