“But it belongs to the monks,” Roland growled. “The king gave it to them centuries ago. We can’t stop them taking stone.”
“You could tax them, though,” Ralph said. He felt guilty: he was sabotaging a project dear to his brother’s heart. But it had to be done, and he quelled his conscience. They will be transporting their stone through your earldom. Their heavy carts will wear away your roads and churn up your river fords. They ought to pay.”
“They’ll squeal like pigs. They’ll go to the king.”
“Let them,” Ralph said, sounding more confident than he felt. “It will take time. There are only two months left of this year’s building season – they have to stop work before the first frost. With luck, you could delay the start of the bridge until next year.”
Roland gave Ralph a hard look. “I may have underestimated you,” he said. “Perhaps you’re good for more than pulling drowning earls out of rivers.”
Ralph concealed a triumphant smile. “Thank you, my lord.”
“But how shall we enforce this tax? Usually there’s a crossroads, a ford in a river, some place every cart has to pass through.”
“Since we’re only interested in blocks of stone, we could simply camp a troop of men outside the quarry.”
“Excellent,” said the earl. “And you can lead them.”
Two days later Ralph was approaching the quarry with four men-at-arms on horseback and two boys leading a string of packhorses carrying tents and food for a week. He was pleased with himself, so far. He had been given an impossible task and turned it around. The earl thought he was good for more than river rescue work. Things were looking up.
He was deeply uncomfortable about what he was doing to Merthin. He had lain awake much of the night recalling their childhood together. He had always revered his clever older brother. They had often fought, and Ralph had felt worse when he won than when he lost. They had always made friends afterwards, in those days. But grown-up fights were harder to forget.
He was not very anxious about the coming confrontation with the monks’ quarrymen. It should not prove too challenging for a group oi military men. He had no knights with him – such work was beneath their dignity – but he had Joseph Woodstock, whom he knew to be a hard man, and three others. All the same, he would be glad when it was over and he had achieved his aim.
It was just after dawn. They had camped the night before in the forest a few miles from the quarry. Ralph planned to get there in time to challenge the first cart that attempted to leave this morning.
The horses stepped daintily along a road muddied by the hooves of oxen and deeply rutted by the wheels of heavy carts. The sun rose into a sky of rain clouds broken by scraps of blue. Ralph’s group were in a good mood, looking forward to exercising their power over unarmed men, with no serious risk to themselves.
Ralph smelled wood burning, then saw the smoke of several fires rising over the trees. A few moments later, the road widened into a muddy clearing in front of the largest hole in the ground he had ever seen. It was a hundred yards wide and stretched for at least a quarter of a mile. A mud ramp led down to the tents and wooden huts of the quarrymen, who were clustered around their fires cooking breakfast. A few were already at work, farther along the site, and Ralph could hear the dull thud of hammers driving wedges into cracks in the rock, splitting great slabs from the mass of stone.
The quarry was a day’s journey from Kingsbridge, so most carters arrived in the evening and left the following morning. Ralph could see several carts dotted about the quarry, some being loaded with stone, and one already making its slow way along the track through the diggings towards the exit ramp.
The men in the quarry looked up, alerted by the sound of horses, but no one approached. Workers were never in a hurry to converse with men-at-arms. Ralph waited patiently. There appeared to be only one way out of the quarry, the long slope of mud that led to where he was.
The first cart lumbered slowly up the ramp, the carter urging the ox on with a long-tailed whip, the ox putting one foot in front of the other with mute resentment. Four huge stones were piled on its flatbed, rough-hewn and incised with the mark of the man who had quarried them. Each man’s output was counted once at the quarry and again at the building site, and he was paid per stone.
As the cart came closer, Ralph saw that the carter was a Kingsbridge man, Ben Wheeler. He looked a bit like his ox, with a thick neck and massive shoulders. His face wore a similar expression of dull hostility. He might try to make trouble, Ralph guessed. However, he could be subdued.
Ben drove his ox towards the line of horses blocking the road. Instead of halting at a distance, he let the beast come closer and closer. The horses were not combat-trained destriers but everyday hacks, and they snorted nervously and backed. The ox stopped of its own accord.
Ben’s attitude angered Ralph, who called out: “You’re a cocksure oaf.”
Ben said: “Why do you stand in my way?”
“To collect the tax.”
“There’s no tax.”
“To carry stone across the territory of the earl of Shiring, you must pay a penny per cartload.”
“I have no money.”
“Then you must get some.”
“Do you bar my passage?”
The fool was not as scared as he should have been, which infuriated Ralph. “Don’t presume to question me,” Ralph said. “The stone stays here until someone has paid tax for it.”
Ben glared back at him for a long moment, and Ralph had the strongest feeling that the man was wondering whether to knock him off his horse. “But I have no money,” he said eventually.
Ralph wanted to run him through with his sword, but he reined in his temper. “Don’t pretend to be even more stupid than you are,” he said contemptuously. “Just go to the master quarryman and tell him the earl’s men will not let you leave.”
Ben stared at him a little longer, mulling this over; then, without speaking, he turned and walked back down the ramp, leaving his cart.
Ralph waited, fuming, staring at the ox.
Ben entered a wooden hut half way along the quarry. He emerged a few minutes later accompanied by a slight man in a brown tunic. At first, Ralph presumed the second man was the quarrymaster. However, the figure looked familiar and, as the two came closer, Ralph recognized his brother, Merthin.
“Oh, no,” he said aloud.
He was not prepared for this. He felt tortured by shame as he watched Merthin walk up the long ramp. He knew he was here to betray his brother, but he had not expected Merthin to be here to see it.
“Hello, Ralph,” said Merthin as he came closer. “Ben says you won’t let him pass.”
Merthin had always been able to overcome him in an argument, Ralph recalled dismally. He decided to be formal. It would hide his emotions, and he could hardly get into trouble if he simply repeated his instructions. He said stiffly: “The earl has decided to exercise his right to collect taxes from consignments of stone using his roads.”
Merthin ignored that. “Aren’t you going to get down off your horse to talk to your brother?”
Ralph would have preferred to stay mounted, but he did not want to refuse what seemed like some kind of challenge, so he got down. Then he felt as if he had already been bested.
“There’s no tax on stone from here,” Merthin said.
“There is now.”
“The monks have been working this quarry for hundreds of years. Kingsbridge Cathedral is build of this stone. It has never been taxed.”
“Perhaps the earl forgave the tax for the sake of the church,” Ralph said, improvising. “But he won’t do it for a bridge.”
“He just doesn’t want the town to have a new bridge. That’s the reason for this. First he sends you to bribe me, then when that fails he invents a new tax.” Merthin looked thoughtfully at Ralph. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”