The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett Page B

Besides, it would do them all good to keep moving.
    Tom set a fast pace, but his thoughts were now free, and he could no longer control them. There was nothing to do but walk: no arrangements to make, no jobs to do, nothing to be organized, nothing to look at but the gloomy forest and the shadows fidgeting in the light of the torches. He would think of Agnes, and follow the trail of some memory, and smile to himself, then turn to tell her what he had remembered; then the shock of realizing that she was dead would strike like a physical pain. He felt bewildered, as if something totally incomprehensible had happened, although of course it was the most ordinary thing in the world for a woman of her age to die in childbirth, and for a man of his age to be left a widower. But the sense of loss was like a wound. He had heard that people who had the toes chopped off one foot could not stand up, but fell over constantly until they learned to walk again. He felt like that, as if part of him had been amputated, and he could not get used to the idea that it was gone forever.
    He tried not to think about her, but he kept remembering how she had looked before she died. It seemed incredible that she had been alive just a few hours ago, and now she was gone. He pictured her face as she strained to give birth, and then her proud smile as she looked at the baby boy. He recalled what she had said to him afterward: I hope you build your cathedral ;and then, Build a beautiful cathedral for me .She had spoken as if she knew she was dying.
    As he walked on, he thought more and more about the baby he had left, wrapped in half a cloak, lying on top of a new grave. He was probably still alive, unless a fox had smelled him already. He would die before morning, however. He would cry for a while, then close his eyes, and his life would slip away as he grew cold in his sleep.
    Unless a fox smelled him.
    There was nothing Tom could do for the baby. He needed milk to survive, and there was none: no villages where Tom could seek a wet-nurse, no sheep or goat or cow that could provide the nearest equivalent. All Tom had to give him were turnips, and they would kill him as surely as the fox.
    As the night wore on, it seemed to him more and more dreadful that he had abandoned the baby. It was a common enough thing, he knew: peasants with large families and small farms often exposed babies to die, and sometimes the priest turned a blind eye; but Tom did not belong to that kind of people. He should have carried it in his arms until it died, and then buried it. There was no purpose to that, of course, but all the same it would have been the right thing to do.
    He realized that it was daylight.
    He stopped suddenly.
    The children stood still and stared at him, waiting. They were ready for anything; nothing was normal anymore.
    “I shouldn’t have left the baby,” Tom said.
    Alfred said: “But we can’t feed him. He’s bound to die.”
    “Still I shouldn’t have left him,” Tom said.
    Martha said: “Let’s go back.”
    Still Tom hesitated. To go back now would be to admit he had done wrong to abandon the baby.
    But it was true. He had done wrong.
    He turned around. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go back.”
    Now all the dangers which he had earlier tried to discount suddenly seemed more probable. For sure a fox had smelled the baby by now, and dragged him off to its lair. Or even a wolf. The wild boars were dangerous, even though they did not eat meat. And what about owls? An owl could not carry off a baby, but it might peck out its eyes—
    He walked faster, feeling light-headed with exhaustion and starvation. Martha had to run to keep up with him, but she did not complain.
    He dreaded what he might see when he returned to the grave. Predators were merciless, and they could tell when a living creature was helpless.
    He was not sure how far they had walked: he had lost his sense of time. The forest on either side looked unfamiliar, even though he