Jack wondered what was coming. This sounded too good to be true.

“I need someone to work with me,” Philip went on. “I spend too much time making detail decisions on the building. I need a kind of assistant, who would fulfill the role of clerk of works. He would deal with most of the queries himself, referring only the most important questions to me. He would also keep track of the money and the raw materials, handling payments to suppliers and carters, and wages too. Jack can read and write, and he can add numbers faster than anyone I’ve ever met-”

“And he understands every aspect of building,” Tom put in. “I’ve seen to that.”

Jack’s mind was spinning. He could stay after all! He would be clerk of works. He would not be carving stone, but he would be supervising the entire design on Philip’s behalf. It was an astonishing proposal. He would have to deal with Tom as an equal. But he knew he was capable of it. And Tom did too.

There was one snag. Jack voiced it. “I can’t live with Alfred any longer.”

Ellen said: “It’s time Alfred had a home of his own, anyway. Perhaps if he left us he’d be more serious about finding a wife.”

Tom said angrily: “You keep thinking of reasons for getting rid of Alfred. I’m not going to throw my own son out of my house!”

“You don’t understand me, either of you,” Philip said. “You haven’t completely comprehended my proposal. Jack would not be living with you.”

He paused. Jack guessed what was coming next, and it was the last, and biggest, shock of the day.

Philip said: “Jack would have to live here, in the priory.” He looked at them with a little frown, as if he could not see why they still had not grasped his meaning.

Jack had understood him. He recalled Mother saying, on Midsummer Eve last year, That sly prior has a knack of getting his own way in the end. She had been right. Philip was renewing the offer he had made then. But this time it was different. The choice Jack now faced was stark. He could leave Kingsbridge, and abandon everything he loved. Or he could stay, and lose his freedom.

“My clerk of works can’t be a layman, of course,” Philip finished, in the tone of one who states the obvious. “Jack will have to become a monk.”

On the night before the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair, Prior Philip stayed up after the midnight services, as usual; but instead of reading and meditating in his house, he made a tour of the priory close. It was a warm summer night, with a clear sky and a moon, and he could see without the aid of a lantern.

The entire close had been taken over by the fair, with the exception of the monastic buildings and the cloisters, which were sacred. In each of the four corners a huge latrine pit had been dug, so that the rest of the close would not become completely foul, and the latrines had been screened off to safeguard the sensibilities of the monks. Literally hundreds of market stalls had been erected. The simplest were nothing more than crude wooden counters on trestles. Most were a little more elaborate: they had a signboard with the name of the stall holder and a picture of his wares, a separate table for weighing, and a locked cupboard or shed to keep the goods in. Some stalls incorporated tents, either to keep the rain off or so that business could be done in private. The most elaborate stalls were small houses, with large storage areas, several counters, and tables and chairs where the merchant could offer hospitality to his important customers. Philip had been surprised when the first of the merchants’ carpenters had arrived a full week before the fair and demanded to be shown where to erect his stall, but the structure that went up had taken four days to build and two to stock.

Philip had originally planned the layout of the stalls in two wide avenues on the west side of the close, in much the same configuration as the stalls of the weekly market; but he had soon realized that that would not be enough. The two avenues of stalls now ran all along the north side of the church as well, and then turned down the east end of the close as far as Philip’s house; and there were more stalls actually inside the unfinished church, in the aisles between the piers. The stall holders were not all wool merchants by any means: everything was sold at a fair, from horsebread to rubies.

Philip walked along the moonlit rows. They were all ready now, of course: no stall building would be allowed today. Most of them were also stocked with goods. The priory had already collected more than ten pounds in fees and duties. The only goods that could be brought in on the day of the fair were freshly cooked foods, bread and hot pies and baked apples. Even the barrels of beer had been brought in yesterday.

As Philip walked around, he was watched by dozens of half-open eyes, and greeted by several sleepy grunts. The stall holders would not leave their precious goods unguarded: most of them were sleeping at their stalls, and the wealthier merchants had left servants on guard.

He was not yet certain exactly how much money he would make from the fair, but it was virtually guaranteed to be a success, and he was confident of reaching his original estimate of fifty pounds. There had been moments, in the past few months, when he had feared that the fair would not take place at all. The civil war dragged on, with neither Stephen nor Maud gaining the upper hand, but his license had not been revoked. William Hamleigh had tried to sabotage the fair in various ways. He had told the sheriff to ban it, but the sheriff had asked for authority from one of the two rival monarchs, and it had not been forthcoming. William had forbidden his tenants to sell wool at Kingsbridge; but most of them were anyway in the habit of selling to merchants such as Aliena, rather than marketing the fleeces themselves, so the main effect of the ban was to create more business for her. Finally, he had announced that he was reducing the rents and duties at the Shiring Fleece Fair to the levels Philip was charging; but his announcement came too late to make much difference, for the big buyers and sellers had already made their plans.

Now, with the sky growing perceptibly lighter in the east on the morning of the big day, William could do no more. The sellers were here with their wares, and in a little while the buyers would begin to arrive. Philip thought William would find that in the end the Kingsbridge Fleece Fair damaged the Shiring fair less than he reared. Sales of wool seemed to go up every year without fail: there was enough business for two fairs anyway.

He had walked all the way around the close to the southwest corner, where the mills and the fishpond were. He stood there for a while, watching the water flow past the two silent mills. One was now used exclusively for felting cloth, and it made a lot of money. Young Jack was responsible for that. He had an ingenious mind. He was going to be a tremendous asset to the priory. He seemed to have settled quite well as a novice, although he tended to regard the services as a distraction from cathedral building, rather than the other way around. However, he would learn. The monastic life was a sanctifying influence. Philip thought God had a purpose for Jack. In the very back of Philip’s mind was a secret long-term hope: that one day Jack would take his place as prior of Kingsbridge.

Jack got up at dawn and slipped out of the dormitory before the service of prime to make one last inspection tour of the building site. The morning air was cool and clear, like pure water from a spring. It would be a warm, sunny day, good for business, good for the priory.

He walked around the cathedral walls, making sure that all the tools and work-in-progress were safely locked inside the lodges. Tom had built light wooden fences around the stockpiles of timber and stone, to guard the raw materials against accidental damage by careless or drunken visitors. They did not want any daredevils climbing the structure, so all the ladders were safely hidden away, the spiral staircases in the thickness of the walls were closed off with temporary doors, and the stepped ends of the part-built walls were obstructed by wooden blocks. Some of the master craftsmen would be patrolling the site throughout the day to make sure there was no damage.