Earlscastle has not changed

Earlscastle has not changed. Tywelve years ago, Merthin recalled , he had been asked to demolish the old fortress and build a new one, modern palace fit for an earl in a peaceful country. But he had refused, preferring to design the new bridge at Kingsbridge. Since then, it seemed, the project had languished , for here was the same figure – eight wall with two drawbridges, and the old fashioned keep ensconced in the upper loop, where the family lived like frightened rabbits at the end of the burrow, unaware that there was no longer any danger from the fox. The place must have been much the same in the days of Lady Aliena and Jack Builder.
Merthin was with Caris, who had been summoned hare by the countess, lady philippa, Earl William had fallen sick and Philippa thought her husband had the plague. Caris had been dismayed. She had thought the plague was over. No one had died of it in Kinsbridge for six weeks.
Caris and Merthin had set out immediately. However, the messenger had taken two days to travel from Earlscastle to Kingsbridge, and they had taken the same time to get there, so the likehood was that the earl would now be dead, or nearly so. ‘All I will be able to do is give him so poppy essence to ease the final agony,’ Caris had said as they rode along.
‘You do more than that,’ Merthin had said. ‘Your presence comforts people. You’re calm and knowledgeable, and you talk about things they understand, swelling and confusion and pain – you don’t try to impress them with jargon about humours, which just makes them feel more ignorant and powerless and frightened. When you’re there they feel more ignorant and powerless and frightened . When you’re there, they feel that
everything possible is being done; and that’s what they want.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

Soon after Godwyn fled, Elfric died of the plague.

Caris was sorry for Alice, his widow, but aside from that she could hardly help rejoicing he was gone. He had bullied the weak and toadied to the strong, and the lies he had told at her trial almost get her hanged. The world was a better place without him. Even his building business would be better off run by his son-in-law, Harold Mason.
The parish guild elected Merthin as alderman in Elfric’s place. Merthin said it was like being made captain of a sinking ship.
As the deaths went on and on, and people buried their relatives, neighbours, friends, customers and employees, the constant horror seemed to brutalize many of them, until no violence or cruelty seemed shocking. People who thought they were about to die lost all restraint and followed their impulses regardless of the consequences.
Together, Merthin and Caris struggled to preserve something like normal life in Kingsbrige. The orphanage was the most successful part of Carir’s programme. The children were grateful for the security of the nunnery, after the ordeal of losing their parents to the plague. Taking care of them , and teaching them to read and sing hymns, brought out a long suppressed maternal instincts in some of the nuns. There was plenty of food with fewer people competing for the winter stores. And Kings bridge Priory was full of the sound of children.
In the town things were more difficult. There continued to be violent quarrels over the propriety of the dead. People just walked into empty houses and picked up whatever took their fancy. Children who had inherited money, or a warehouse full of cloth or corn, were sometimes adopted by unscrupulous neighbours greedy to get their hands on the legacy. The prospect of something for nothing brought out the worst in people.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

Hundreds of people came to marks Webber’s funeral

Hundreds of people came to marks Webber’s funeral. He had been one of the town’s leading citizens, but it was more than that. Poor weavers arrived from the surroundings villages, some of them having walked for hours. He had been unusually well loved, Merthin reflected. The combination of his giant’s body and his gentle temperament cast a spell.
It was a date a wet day, and the bared heads of rich and poor men were soaked as they stood around the grave. Cold rain mingled with hot tears on the faces of the mourners. Madge stood with her arms around the shoulders of her two younger sons, Dennis and Noah. They were flanked by the eldest son, John, and the daughter, Dora, who were both much taller than their mother, and looked as if they might be the parents of the three short people in the middle.
Merthin wondered grimly whether Madge or one of her children would be the next to die.
Six string men grunted with the effort of lowering the extra large coffin into the grave. Madge sobbed helplessly as the monks sang the last hymn. Then the gravediggers started to shovel the sodden earth back into the hole, ant the crowd began to disperse.
That afternoon, Elfric was re-elected alderman of the parish guild. After the meeting Merthin sought out Bill Watkin, the largest builder in town after Elric. ‘Once the foundations of the tower are repaired, it could be built even higher,’ he said.
‘No reason why not,’ Bill agreed. ‘But what would be the point?’
‘So that it could be seen from Mudeford Crossing. Many travellers – pilgrims. Merchants and so on – miss the road for Kingsbridge, and go on to Shiring. The town loses a lot of custom that way’.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

In the spring of 1348

In the spring of 1348, Merthin woke up as if from a nightmare he could not remember. He felt frightened and weak. He opened his eyes to a room lit by bars of bright sunshine coming through half open shutters. He saw a high ceiling, white walls, red tiles. The air was mild. Reality returned slowly. He was in his bedroom, in his house, in Florence. He had been ill.
The illness came back to him first. It had began with a skin rash, purplish black blotches on his chest, then his arms, then everywhere. Soon afterwards he developed a painful lump or bubo in his armpit. He had a fever, sweating in his bed, tangling the sheets as he writhed. He had vomited and coughed blood. He had thought he would die. Worst of all was a terrible unquenchable thirst that had made him want to throw himself into the river Arno with his mouth open.
He was not the only sufferer. Thousands of Italians had fallen ill with this plague, tens of thousands. Half the workmen on his building sites had disappeared, as had most of his household servants. Almost everyone who caught it died within five days. They called it la moria grande, the big death.
But he was alive.
He had a nagging feeling that while ill he ha reached a momentous decision, but he could not remember it. He concentrated for a moment. He harder he thought, the more elusive the memory became, until it vanished.
He sat up in bed. His limbs felt feeble and his head spun for a moment. He was wearing a clean linen nightshirt, and he wondered who had put it on him. After a pause, he stood.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

The deer was a young female

The deer was a young female, a year or two old, sleek across the haunches, well muscled under a soft leather skin.
She was on the far side of a clearing, pushing her long neck through the branches of a bush to reach a patch of scrubby grass. Ralp Tizgerald and Alan Fernhill were on horseback, the hooves of their mounts muffled by the carpet of wet autumn leaves, and their dogs were trained to silence. Because of this, and perhaps because she was concentrating on straining to reach her fodder, the deer did not hear their approach until it was too late.
Ralph saw her first, and pointed across the clearing. Alan was carrying his longbow, grasping it and the reins in his left hand. With the speed of long practice, he fitted an arrow to the string in a heartbeat, and shot.
The dogs were slower. Only when they heard the thrum of the bowstring, and the whistle of the arrow as it flew through the air, did they react. Barley, the bitch, froze in place, head up, ears erect, and Blade, her puppy, now grown larger than his mother, uttered a low, startled woof.
The arrow was a yard long, lighted with swan feathers. Its tip was two inches of solid iron with a socket into which the shaft fitted tightly. It was a hunting arrow, with a sharp point: a battle arrow would have had a square head, so that it would punch through an armour without being deflected.
Alan’s shoot was good, but not perfect. It struck the deer low in the neck. She jumped with all four feet – shocked, presumably by the sudden, agonizing stab. Her head came up out of the bush. For an instant, Ralph thought she was going to fall down dead, but a moment later she bounded away. The arrow was still buried in her neck, but the blood was oozing rather than spurting from the wound, so it must have lodged in her muscles, missing the major blood vessels.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

St John in he Forest was a miniature version of Kingsbridge Priory

St John in he Forest was a miniature version of Kingsbridge Priory. The church was small, as were the stone-built cloisters and dormitory; the rest of the buildings were simple wood- frame structures. They were eight monks and no nuns. In addition to their lives of prayer and meditation, they grew most of their own food and made a goat’s cheese that was famous throughout south west England.
Godwyn and Philemon had been riding for two days an it was early evening when the road emerged from the forest and they saw a wide acreage of cleared land with the church in the middle. Godwyn knew at once that his fears were true, and reports that Saul Whitehead was doing a good job as prior of this cell were, if anything understated. There was a look of order and neatness about everything; the hedges trimmed, the ditches straight, the trees planted at measured intervals in the orchard, the fields of ripening grain free of weeds. He felt sure he would find that the services were held at the correct times and conducted reverently. He had to hope that Saul’s evident fiftness for leadership had not made him ambitious.
Hey rode into the farmyard and dismounted. The horses immediately drank from the through. There was no one but a monk with his robe hitched up mucking aout a pigsty behind the stables. He was sure to be a youngster, doing a job like that. Godwyn called to him. ‘Hey, you, lad! Come and help us with our horses.’
‘Rightho!’ the monk called back. He finished cleaning out the sty with a few more passes of his rake, then leaned the tool up against the stable wall and walked towards the newcomers. Godwyn was about to tell him to get a move on when he recognized the blond fringe of Saul.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet

They arrived in Wigleihg early in the evening.

They arrived in Wigleihg early in the evening. The village stood in a rise,its fields sloping away to all sides, and it was always windy. After two weeks in the bustle of Kingsbridge, the familiar place seemed small and quiet, just a scatter of rough dwellings along the road that lead to the manor house and the church. The manor was as large as a Kingsbridge merchant’s home, with bedrooms on an upper floor. The priest’s house was also a fine dwelling, and a few of the peasants houses were substantial. But most of the homes were two-rooms hovels, one room normally being occupied by livestock and the other serving as kitchen and bedroom for all the family. Only he curch was built of stone.
On the far side of the hundred acre field, half hidden in the trees at the edge of he forest, was her home. It was even smaller than the peasant’s hovels, having only one room, which was shared with the cow at night. It was made of wattle and daub: tree branches stuck upright in the ground, with twigs interwoven basket fashion, the gaps plugged with a sticky mixture of mud, straw and cow dung. There was a hole in the thatched roof to let out the smoke of the fire in the middle of the earth floor. Such houses lasted only a few years then had to be rebuilt. It now seemed meaner then ever to Gwenda. She was determined not to spend her life in such aplace, having babies every year or two, most of whom died for lack of food. She would not live like her mother. She would rather die.
From the book ‘World without end’ by Ken Follet