a thing! How is it built?"
Buonaventura laughed. "Young man, I am a wool merchant. I can tell whether a fleece comes from a Cotswold sheep or a Lincoln sheep, just by rubbing the wool between my finger and thumb, but I don't know how a henhouse is built, let alone a dome."
Merthin's master, Elfric, arrived. He was a prosperous man, and he wore expensive clothes, but they always looked as if they belonged to someone else. An habitual sycophant, he ignored Caris and Merthin, but made a deep bow to Buonaventura and said: "Honoured to have you in our city once again, sir."
Merthin turned away.
"How many languages do you think there are?" Caris said to him.
She was always saying crazy things. "Five," Merthin replied without thinking.
"No, be serious," she said. "There's English, and French, and Latin, that's three. Then the Florentines and the Venetians speak differently, though they have words in common."
"You're right," he said, entering into the game. "That's five already. Then there's Flemish." Few people could make out the tongue of the traders who came to Kingsbridge from the weaving towns of Flanders: Ypres, Bruges, Ghent.
"And Danish."
"The Arabs have their own language and, when they write, they don't even use the same letters as we do."
"And Mother Cecilia told me that all the barbarians have their own tongues that no one even knows how to write down - Scots, Welsh, Irish, and probably others. That makes eleven, and there might be people we haven't even heard of!"
Merthin grinned. Caris was the only person he could do this with. Among their friends of the same age, no one understood the thrill of imagining strange people and different ways of life. She would ask a random question: What is it like to live at the edge of the world? Are the priests wrong about God? How do you know you're not dreaming, right now? And they would be off on a speculative voyage, competing to come up with the most outlandish notions.
The roar of conversation in the church suddenly quietened, and Merthin saw that the monks and nuns were seating themselves. The choirmaster, Blind Carlus, came in last. Although he could not see, he walked without assistance in the church and the monastic buildings, moving slowly, but as confident as a sighted man, familiar with every pillar and flagstone. Now he sang a note in his rich baritone, and the choir began a hymn.
Merthin was quietly sceptical about the clergy. Priests had power that was not always matched by their knowledge - rather like his employer, Elfric. However, he liked going to church. The services induced a kind of trance in him. The music, the architecture and the Latin incantations enchanted him, and he felt as if he were asleep with his eyes open. Once again he had the fanciful sensation that he could feel the rainwater flowing in torrents far beneath his feet.
His gaze roamed over the three levels of the nave - arcade, gallery and clerestory. He knew that the columns were made by placing one stone on top of another, but they gave a different impression, at least at first glance. The stone blocks were carved so that each column looked like a bundle of shafts. He traced the rise of one of the four giant piers of the crossing, from the huge square foot on which it stood, up to where one shaft branched north to form an arch across the side aisle, on up to the tribune level where another shaft branched west to form the arcade of the gallery, on up to the westward springing of a clerestory arch, until the last remaining shafts separated, like a spray of flowers, and became the curving ribs of the ceiling vault far above. From the central boss at the highest point of the vault, he followed a rib all the way down again to the matching pier on the opposite corner of the crossing.
As he did so, something odd happened. His vision seemed momentarily to blur, and it looked as if the east side of the transept moved.
There was a low rumbling sound, so deep it was almost inaudible, and a tremor underfoot, as if a tree had fallen nearby.
The singing faltered.
In the chancel, a crack appeared in the south wall, right next to the pier Merthin had been looking at.
He found himself turning towards Caris. Out of the corner of his eye he saw masonry falling in the choir