The Pillars Of The Earth Page 0,96

as he likes and you will do nothing about it."

"He doesn't bully them," Tom said. "Children always fight."

She shook her head, seeming bewildered. "I don't understand you. In every other way you're a kind man. But where Alfred is concerned, you're just blind."

She was exaggerating, Tom felt, but he did not want to displease her, so he said: "Give the little ones some meat, then."

Ellen opened her bag. She still looked cross. She cut off a strip of dried venison for Martha and another for Jack. Alfred held out his hand for some, but Ellen ignored him. Tom thought she should have given him some. There was nothing wrong with Alfred. Ellen just did not understand him. He was a big boy, Tom thought proudly, and he had a big appetite and a quick temper, and if that was a sin, then half the adolescent boys in the world were damned.

They rested for a while and then walked on. Jack and Martha went ahead, still chewing the leathery meat. The two young ones got on well, despite the difference in their ages-Martha was six and Jack was probably eleven or twelve. But Martha thought Jack was utterly fascinating, and Jack seemed to be enjoying the novel experience of having another child to play with. It was a pity that Alfred did not like Jack. This surprised Tom: he would have expected that Jack, who was not yet becoming a man, would be beneath Alfred's contempt; but it was not so. Alfred was the stronger, of course, but little Jack was clever.

Tom refused to worry about it. They were just boys. He had too much on his mind to waste time fretting over children's squabbles. Sometimes he wondered secretly whether he would ever get work again. He might go on tramping the roads day after day until one by one they died off: a child found cold and lifeless one frosty morning, another too weak to fight off a fever, Ellen ravished and killed by a passing thug like William Hamleigh, and Tom himself becoming thinner and thinner until one day he was too weak to stand up in the morning, and lay on the forest floor until he slipped into unconsciousness.

Ellen would leave him before that happened, of course. She would return to her cave, where there was still a barrel of apples and a sack of nuts, enough to keep two people alive until the spring, but not enough for five. Tom would be heartbroken if she did that.

He wondered how the baby was. The monks had called him Jonathan. Tom liked the name. It meant a gift from God, according to the monk with the cheese. Tom pictured little Jonathan, red and wrinkled and bald, the way he was born. He would be different now: a week was a long time for a newborn baby. He would be bigger already, and his eyes would open wider. Now he would no longer be oblivious to the world around him: a loud noise would make him jump and a lullaby would soothe him. When he needed to burp, his mouth would curl up at the corners. The monks probably would not know that it was wind, and would take it for a real smile.

Tom hoped they were caring for him well. The monk with the cheese had given the impression that they were kindly and capable men. Anyway, they were certainly better able to look after the baby than Tom, who was homeless and penniless. If I ever become master of a really big construction project, and earn forty-eight pence a week plus allowances, I'll give money to that monastery, he thought.

They emerged from the forest and soon afterward they came within sight of the castle.

Tom's spirits lifted, but he repressed his enthusiasm fiercely: he had suffered months of disappointment, and he had learned that the more hopeful he was at the start, the more painful was the rejection at the end.

They approached the castle on a path through bare fields. Martha and Jack came upon an injured bird, and they all stopped to look. It was a wren, so small that they might easily have missed it. Martha stooped over it, and it hopped away, apparently unable to fly. She caught it and picked it up, cradling the tiny creature in her cupped hands.

"It's trembling!" she said. "I can feel it. It must be frightened."

The bird made no further attempt to escape, but sat still in Martha's hands, its