The Pillars of the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

direction: the thief with the pig was nowhere in sight. He breathed a bitter, blasphemous curse: that pig represented half of what he had saved this summer. He sank to the ground, breathing hard.
    “We beat three of them!” Alfred said excitedly.
    Tom looked at him. “But they got our pig,” he said. Anger burned his stomach like sour cider. They had bought the pig in the spring, as soon as they had saved enough pennies, and they had been fattening it all summer. A fat pig could be sold for sixty pence. With a few cabbages and a sack of grain it could feed a family all winter and make a pair of leather shoes and a purse or two. Its loss was a catastrophe.
    Tom looked enviously at Alfred, who had already recovered from the chase and the fight, and was waiting impatiently. How long ago was it, Tom thought, when I could run like the wind and hardly feel my heart race? Since I was that age ... twenty years. Twenty years. It seemed like yesterday.
    He got to his feet.
    He put his arm around Alfred’s broad shoulders as they walked back along the path. The boy was still shorter than his father by the span of a man’s hand, but soon he would catch up, and he might grow even bigger. I hope his wit grows too, Tom thought. He said: “Any fool can get into a fight, but a wise man knows how to stay out of them.” Alfred gave him a blank look.
    They turned off the path, crossed the boggy patch, and began to climb the slope, following in reverse the trail the thief had made. As they pushed through the birch thicket, Tom thought of Martha, and once again rage curdled in his belly. The outlaw had lashed out at her senselessly, for she had been no threat to him.
    Tom quickened his pace, and a moment later he and Alfred emerged onto the road. Martha lay there in the same place, not having moved. Her eyes were closed and the blood was drying in her hair. Agnes knelt beside her—and with them, to Tom’s surprise, were another woman and a boy. The thought struck him that it was no wonder he had felt watched, earlier in the day, for the forest seemed to be teeming with people. He bent down and rested his hand on Martha’s chest again. She was breathing normally.
    “She will wake up soon,” said the strange woman in an authoritative voice. “Then she will puke. After that she’ll be all right.”
    Tom looked at her curiously. She was kneeling over Martha. She was quite young, perhaps a dozen years younger than Tom. Her short leather tunic revealed lithe brown limbs. She had a pretty face, with dark brown hair that came to a devil’s peak on her forehead. Tom felt a pang of desire. Then she raised her glance to look at him, and he gave a start: she had intense, deep-set eyes of an unusual honey-gold color that gave her whole face a magical look, and he felt sure that she knew what he had been thinking.
    He looked away from her to cover his embarrassment, and he caught Agnes’s eye. She was looking resentful. She said: “Where’s the pig?”
    “There were two more outlaws,” Tom said.
    Alfred said: “We beat them, but the one with the pig got away.”
    Agnes looked grim, but said nothing more.
    The strange woman said: “We could move the girl into the shade, if we’re gentle.” She stood up, and Tom realized that she was quite small, at least a foot shorter than he. He bent down and picked Martha up carefully. Her childish body was almost weightless in his arms. He carried her a few yards along the road and put her down on a patch of grass in the shadow of an old oak. She was still quite limp.
    Alfred was picking up the tools that had been scattered on the road during the fracas. The strange woman’s boy was watching, his eyes wide and his mouth open, not speaking. He was about three years younger than Alfred, and a peculiar-looking child, Tom observed, with none of his mother’s sensual beauty. He had very pale skin, orange-red hair, and blue eyes that bulged slightly. He had the alertly stupid look of a dullard, Tom