The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) Read Online Free PDF

even all the stone-workers, let alone the members of the other crafts. Saul was a foreigner, Thomas remembered hearing. One of those who’d been working on some other project with Robert de Cantebrigge and had been brought here with him. That was how Master Masons made sure that their work was up to scratch. They kept a stable of good workers with them, taking them from one job to another, so that hopefully when the Master Mason had to go to another site, he could leave his men working together, knowing what he would expect them to do.
    It was a hard life, building churches and cathedrals. Saul had been too young to know the misery associated with growing older in the trade: the bones that ached in the mornings on a winter’s day, the sudden cramps in the legs, the back that locked and wouldn’t move, the weariness at the end of a summer’s day when every moment of daylight had to be used to the full; no matter that your fingers were scratched and bruised, the nails ripped out from the last falling rock you tried to lift onto the wall, nor that your arms refused to lift another pebble, they were so exhausted. The work was the thing. Any man here on the site must work as quickly as possible to bring to fruition the creation that men would look on for evermore, thinking, That, that is God’s House.
    But a Master Mason didn’t only have one project on the go at a time. He was a skilled engineer, hence much of a man like Robert de Cantebrigge’s life was spent on horseback travellingfrom one city to another, monitoring each of his building projects and making sure that they remained on target.
    Saul had been with him longer than Thomas. That was the thing. It was why Robert would probably never forgive Thomas. He had taken away one of Robert’s best, youngest, strongest men, and finding a suitable willing replacement would prove a considerable headache.
    And now Thomas had come to see the Almoner at St Nicholas’s Priory, to trace the whereabouts of Saul’s wife.
    ‘You wished to know where a certain woman lives?’
    The Almoner was an austere-looking man who listened gravely as Thomas explained his mission.
    ‘What a tragic event,’ he said when Thomas was finished. ‘I knew Saul slightly. A good man – he often gave to the poor. And his woman seems good, too. They have two children. Little boys, both of them. This will be grave news for her, poor Sara.’
    ‘I would do anything I could to escape telling her,’ Thomas muttered. ‘Even if it meant taking his place. It’s not right for a boy to grow without a father.’
    ‘It’s not right for a man to consider self-murder, either,’ the Almoner said sharply. ‘I hope you are not speaking in earnest. Saul is dead because God thought this was his time; when it is
your
time, God will call you too.’
    ‘I wouldn’t kill myself,’ Thomas declared. ‘But I wish he wasn’t dead.’
    ‘That is good. You shouldn’t hanker after the death of another, no matter who he might be,’ the Almoner said approvingly.
    He began to give directions. Apparently Saul and his wife had lived in the easternmost corner of the city, in the area vacated by the Franciscans when they moved to their new six-acre site down outside the southern wall.
    ‘As soon as the friars were gone, a small army of the poorer elements of the city took it over, building their own sheds from dung and straw and roofing them with thatch. Now they live there in their own little vill, made by themselves for themselves.’
    ‘I have never been there,’ Thomas admitted. ‘I live at the Cathedral while the works go on.’
    ‘You have a local man’s accent, though,’ the Almoner noted.
    ‘I used to live near here, but I left when I took up my trade,’ Thomas said quickly. He still feared being discovered. For all he knew, he could still be taken and hanged.
    The Almoner was too rushed with other work to notice his defensiveness. ‘Well, go back to Fore Street, take the first street on the right,