He felt oddly detached, as if he were watching himself from a corner of the room. He did not know how he felt. He looked at her and saw again how lovely she was. He asked himself what was so striking about her, and realized immediately that everything was in harmony, like the parts of a beautiful church. Her mouth, her chin, her cheekbones and her forehead were just as he would have drawn them if he had been God creating a woman.
She looked back at him with calm blue eyes. “Touch me,” she said. She opened her cloak.
He took her breast gently in his hand. He remembered doing this, too. Her breasts were firm and flat against her chest. Her nipple hardened immediately to his touch, betraying her calm demeanour.
“I want to be in your dream house,” she said, and she kissed him again.
She was not acting on the spur of the moment; Elizabeth never did. She had been thinking about this. While he had been casually visiting her, enjoying her company without thinking any farther, she had been imagining their life together. Perhaps she had even planned this scene. That would explain why her mother had left them with an excuse about a pie. He had almost spoiled her plan by proposing to show her Dick Brewer’s house, but she had improvised.
There was nothing wrong with such an unemotional approach. She was a reasoning person. It was one of the things he liked about her. He knew that passions burned nonetheless beneath the surface.
What seemed wrong was his own lack of feeling. It was not his way to be coolly rational about women – quite the reverse. When he had felt We, it had taken him over, making him feel rage and resentment as well as lust and tenderness. Now he felt interested, flattered and titillated, but he was not out of control.
She sensed that his kiss was lukewarm, and drew back. He saw the ghost of an emotion on her face, fiercely suppressed, but he knew there was fear behind the mask. She was so poised, by nature, that it must have cost her a lot to be so forward, and she dreaded rejection.
She drew away from him, stood up and lifted the skirt of her dress. She had long, shapely legs covered with nearly invisible fine blonde hair. Although she was tall and slim, her body widened just below the hips in a delightfully womanly way. His gaze homed in helplessly on the delta of her sex. Her hair was so fair that he could see through it, to the pale swelling of the lips and the delicate line between them.
He looked up to her face and read desperation there. She had tried everything, and she saw that it had not worked.
Merthin said: “I’m sorry.”
She dropped her skirts.
“Listen,” he said. “I think-”
She interrupted him. “Don’t speak.” Her desire was turning to anger. “Whatever you say now will be a lie.”
She was right. He had been trying to formulate some soothing half-truth: he was not feeling well, or Jimmie might be back at any moment. But she did not want to be mollified. She had been rebuffed, and feeble excuses would only make her feel patronized as well.
She stared at him, grief struggling with rage on the battleground of her beautiful face. Tears of frustration came to her eyes. “Why not?” she cried; but when he opened his mouth to reply she said: “Don’t answer! It won’t be the truth”; and again she was right.
She turned to go, then came back. “It’s Caris,” she said, her face working with emotion. “That witch has cast a spell on you. She won’t marry you, but no one else can have you. She’s evil!”
At last she walked away. She flung open the door and stepped out. He heard her sob once, then she was gone.
Merthin stared into the fire. “Oh, hell,” he said.
“There’s something I need to explain to you,” Merthin said to Edmund a week later, as they were leaving the cathedral.
Edmund’s face took on a look of mild amusement that was familiar to Merthin. I’m thirty years older than you, the look said, and you should be listening to me, not giving me lessons; but I enjoy youthful enthusiasm. Besides, I’m not yet too old to learn something. “All right,” he said. “But explain it in the Bell. I want a cup of wine.”
They went into the tavern and sat close to the fire. Elizabeth’s mother brought their wine, but she stuck her nose in the air and did not talk to them. Edmund said: “Is Sairy angry with you or me?”
“Never mind that,” said Merthin. “Have you ever stood at the edge of the ocean, with your bare feet on the sand, and felt the sea wash over your toes?”
“Of course. All children play in water. Even I was a boy once.”
“Do you remember how the action of the waves, flowing in and out, seems to scour the sand from under the edges of your feet, making a little channel?”
“Yes. It’s a long time ago, but I think I know what you mean.”
“That’s what happened to the old wooden bridge. The flowing river scoured the earth from under the central pier.”
“How do you know?”
“By the pattern of cracks in the woodwork just before the collapse.”
“What’s your point?”
“The river hasn’t changed. It will undermine the new bridge just as surely as it did the old – unless we prevent it.”
“How?”
“In my drawing, I showed a pile of large, loose stones surrounding each of the piers of the new bridge. They will break up the current and enfeeble its effect. It’s the difference between being tickled by loose thread and being flogged with a tightly woven rope.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked Buonaventura about it, immediately after the bridge collapsed, before he went back to London. He said he had seen such piles of stones around the piers of bridges in Italy, and he had often wondered what they were for.”
“Fascinating. Are you telling me this for general enlightenment, or is there some more specific purpose?”
“People like Godwyn and Elfric don’t understand this, and wouldn’t listen if I told them. Just in case Elfric takes it into his fool head not to follow my design exactly, I want to be sure that at least one person in town knows the reason for the pile of stones.”
“But one person does – you.”
“I’m leaving Kingsbridge.”
That shocked him. “Leaving?” he said. “You?”
At that moment, Caris appeared. “Don’t stay here too long,” she said to her father. “Aunt Petranilla is preparing dinner. Do you want to join us, Merthin?”
Edmund said: “Merthin’s leaving Kingsbridge.”
Caris paled.
Seeing her reaction, Merthin felt a jolt of satisfaction. She had rejected him, but she was dismayed to hear that he was leaving town. He immediately felt ashamed of such an unworthy emotion. He was too fond of her to want her to suffer. All the same, he would have felt worse if she had received the news with equanimity.
“Why?” she said.
“There’s nothing for me here. What am I going to build? I can’t work on the bridge. The town already has a cathedral. I don’t want to do nothing but merchants’ houses for the rest of my life.”
In a quiet voice, she said: “Where will you go?”
“Florence. I’ve always wanted to see the buildings of Italy. I’ll ask Buonaventura Caroli for letters of introduction. I might even be able to travel with one of his consignments.”
“But you own property here in Kingsbridge.”
“I wanted to speak to you about that. Would you manage it for me? You could collect my rents, take a commission and give the balance to Buonaventura. He can transfer money to Florence by letter.”
“I don’t want a damn commission,” she said huffily.
Merthin shrugged. “It’s work, you should be paid.”
“How can you be so cold about it?” she said. Her voice was shrill, and around the parlour of the Bell several people looked up. She took no notice. “You’ll be leaving all your friends!”
“I’m not cold about it. Friends are great. But I’d like to get married.”
Edmund put in: “Plenty of girls in Kingsbridge would marry you. You’re not handsome, but you’re prosperous, and that’s worth more than good looks.”