really important, speaking to Aliena. He kept saying: "Let me go, you stupid fools!" The two deputies sat on him. Pierre stood upright, wiping his bleeding nose on the sleeve of his habit. Philip appeared beside him.
Despite his own rage, Jack could see that Philip too was angry, angrier than Jack had ever seen him. "I will not tolerate this behavior from anyone," he said in a voice like iron. "You're a novice monk, and you will obey me." He turned to Pierre. "Put him in the obedience room."
"No!" Jack shouted. "You can't!"
"I most certainly can," Philip said wrathfully.
The obedience room was a small, windowless cell in the undercroft beneath the dormitory, at the south end, next to the latrines. It was mainly used to imprison lawbreakers who were waiting to be dealt with at the prior's court, or to be transferred to the sheriffs jail at Shiring; but it did occasional service as a punishment cell for monks who committed serious disciplinary offenses, such as acts of impurity with priory servants.
It was not the solitary confinement that scared Jack-it was the fact that he would not be able to get out to see Aliena. "You don't understand!" he yelled at Philip. "I have to speak to Aliena!"
It was the worst thing he could have said. Philip got angrier. "It was for speaking to her that you were originally punished," he said furiously.
"But I must!"
"The only thing you must do is learn to fear God and obey your superiors."
"You're not my superior, you silly ass! You're nothing to me. Let me go, damn you all!"
"Take him away," Philip said grimly.
A little crowd had gathered by now, and several monks lifted Jack by his arms and legs. He wriggled like a fish on a hook but there were too many of them. He could not believe that this was happening. They carried him, kicking and struggling, along the passage to the door of the obedience room. Someone opened it. Brother Pierre's voice said vengefully: "Throw him in!" They swung him back, then he was hurled through the air. He landed in a heap on the stone floor. He scrambled to his feet, numb to his bruises, and rushed at the door, but it slammed shut just as he crashed into it, and a moment later the heavy iron bar thudded down outside and the key turned in the lock.
Jack hammered on the door with all his might. "Let me out!" he yelled hysterically. "I have to stop her from marrying him! Let me out!" There was no sound from outside. He kept on calling, but his demands turned into pleas, and his voice dropped to a whine, then eventually to a whisper, and he wept tears of frustrated rage.
At last his eyes dried up and he could cry no more.
He turned from the door. The cell was not quite pitch-Mack: a little light came under the door and he could make out his surroundings vaguely. He went around the walls, feeling with his hands. He could tell by the pattern of chisel marks on the stones that the cell had been built a long time ago. The room was almost featureless. It was about six feet square, with a column in one corner and an upward-arching ceiling: clearly it had once been part of a larger room and had been walled off for use as a prison. In one wall there was a space like an opening for a slit window, but it was tightly shuttered, and would have been too small for anyone to crawl through even if it had been open. The stone floor felt damp. Jack became aware of a constant rushing noise, and realized that the water channel, which ran through the priory from the millpond to the latrines, must pass beneath the cell. That would explain why the floor was of stone instead of beaten earth.
He felt drained. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and stared at the crack of light under the door, the tantalizing reminder of where he wanted to be. How had he got into this fix? He had never believed in the monastery, never intended to dedicate his life to God-he did not really believe in God. He had become a novice as a "solution to an immediate problem, a way of staying in Kingsbridge, close to what he loved. He had thought: I can always leave if I want to. But now he did want to