Algunas segundas partes sí son buenas

"Nunca es tarde para ser lo que deberías haber sido".

George Elliot

* * * * *

For a moment no one spoke. In the silence, they heard a man shout. Merthin sprang to his feet, heart thudding. He heard another shout, a different voice: there was more than one person. Both sounded aggressive and angry. Some kind of fight was going on. He was terrified, and so were the others. As they stood frozen, listening, they heard another sound, the noise made by a man running headlong through woodland, snapping fallen branches, flattening saplings, trampling dead leaves.

He was coming their way.

Caris spoke first. ‘The bush,’ she said, pointing to a big cluster of evergreen shrubs – probably the home of the hare Ralph had shot, Merthin thought. A moment later she was flat on her belly, crawling into the thicket. Gwenda followed, cradling the body of Hop. Ralph picked up the dead hare and joined them. Merthin was on his knees when he realized that they had left a tell-tale arrow sticking out of the tree trunk. He dashed across the clearing, pulled it out, ran back and dived under the bush.

They heard the man breathing before they saw him. He was panting hard as he ran, drawing in ragged lungfuls of air in a way that suggested he was almost done in. The shouts were coming from his pursuers, calling to each other: ‘This way – over here!’ Merthin recalled that Caris had said they were not far from the road. Was the fleeing man a traveller who had been set upon by thieves?

A moment later he burst into the clearing.

He was a knight in his early twenties, with both a sword and a long dagger attached to his belt. He was well dressed, in a leather travelling tunic and high boots with turned-over tops. He stumbled and fell, rolled over, got up, then stood with his back to the oak tree, gasping for breath, and drew his weapons.

Merthin glanced at his playmates. Caris was white whit fear, biting her lip. Gwenda was hugging the corpse of her dog as if that made her feel safer. Ralph looked scared, too, but he was not too frightened to pull the arrow out of the hare’s rump and stuff the dead animal down the front of his tunic.

For a moment the knight seemed to stare at the bush, and Merthin felt, with terror, that he must have seen the hiding children. Or perhaps he had noticed broken branches and crushed leaves where they had pushed through the foliage. Out of the corner of his eye, Merthin saw Ralph notch an arrow to the bow.

Then the pursuers arrived. They were two men-at-arms, strongly built and thuggish-looking, carrying drawn swords. They wore distinctive two-coloured tunics, the left side yellow and the right green. One had a surcoat of cheap brown wool, the other a grubby black cloak. All three men paused, catching their breath. Merthin was sure he was about to see the knight hacked to death, and he suffered a shameful impulse to burst into tears. Then, suddenly, the knight reversed his sword and offered it, hilt first, in a gesture of surrender.

The older man-at-arms, in the black cloak, stepped forward and reached out with his left hand. Warily, he took the proffered sword, handed it to his partner, then accepted the knight’s dagger. Then he said: ‘It’s not your weapons I want, Thomas Langley.’

‘You know me, but I don’t know you,’ said Thomas. If he was feeling any fear, he had it well under control. ‘By your coats, you must be the queen’s men.’

The older man put the point of his sword to Thomas’s throat and pushed him up against the tree. ‘You’ve got a letter.’

‘Instructions from the earl to the sheriff on the subject of taxes. You’re welcome to read it.’ This was a joke. The men-at-arms were almost certainly unable to read. Thomas had a cool nerve, Merthin thought, to mock men who seemed ready to kill him.

The second man-at-arms reached under the sword of the first and grasped the wallet attached to Thomas’s belt. Impatiently, he cut the belt with his sword. He threw the belt aside and opened the wallet. He took out a smaller bag made of what appeared to be oiled wool, and drew from that a sheet of parchment, rolled into a scroll and sealed with wax.

Could this fight be about nothing more than a letter? Merthin wondered. If so, what was written on the scroll? It was not likely to be routine instructions about taxes. Some terrible secret must be inscribed there.

‘If you kill me,’ the knight said, ‘the murder will be witnessed by whoever is hiding in that bush.’

The tableau froze for a split second. The man in the black cloak kept his sword point pressed to Thomas’s throat and resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder. The one in green hesitated, then looked at the bush.

At that point, Gwenda screamed.

The man in the green surcoat raised his sword and took two long strides across the clearing to the bush. Gwenda stood up and ran, bursting out the foliage. The man-at-arms leaped after her, reaching out to grab her.

Ralph stood up suddenly, raised the bow and drew it in one fluid motion, and shot an arrow at the man. It went through his eye and sank several inches into his head. His left hand came up, as if to grasp the arrow and pull it out; then he went limp and fell like a dropped sack of grain, hitting the ground with a thump Merthin could feel.

Ralph ran out of the bush and followed Gwenda. At the edge of his vision Merthin perceived Caris going after them. Merthin wanted to flee too, but his feet seemed stuck to the ground.

There was a shout from the other side of the clearing, and Merthin saw that Thomas had knocked aside the sword that threatened him and had drawn, from somewhere about his person, a small knife with a blade as long as a man’s hand. But the man-at-arms in the black cloak was alert, and jumped back out of reach. Then he raised his sword and swung at the knight’s head.

Thomas dodged aside, but not fast enough. The edge of the blade came down on his left forearm, slicing through the leather jerkin and sinking into his flesh. He roared with pain, but did not fall. With a quick motion that seemed extraordinarily graceful, he swung his right hand up and thurst the knife into his opponent’s throat; then, his hand continuing in an arc, he pulled the knife sideways, severing most of the neck.

Blood came like a fountain from the man’s throat. Thomas staggered back, dodging the splash. The man in black fell to the ground, his head hanging from his body by a strip.

Thomas dropped the knife from his right hand and clutched his wounded left arm. He sat on the ground, suddenly looking weak.

Merthin was alone with the wounded knight, two dead men-at-arms, and the corpse of a three-legged dog. He knew he should run after the other children, but his curiosity kept him there. Thomas now seemed harmless, he told himself.

The knight had sharp eyes. ‘You can come out,’ he called. ‘I’m no danger to you in this state.’

Hesitantly, Merthin got to his feet and pushed his way out of the bush. He crossed the clearing and stopped several feet away from the sitting knight.

Thomas said: ‘If they find out you’ve been playing in the forest, you’ll be flogged.’

Merthin nodded.

‘I’ll keep your secret, if you’ll keep mine.’

Ken Follett (World without end)

* * * * *

La acción transcurre un par de siglos más tarde que la del primer libro de la saga "Los pilares de la tierra" en el mismo pueblo de Kingsbridge, y nuevamente la catedral juega un papel protagonista.

En el día de Todos los Santos del año 1327, los que serán los protagonistas de la historia se conocen siendo aún niños: Caris, la hija de Edmund Wooler, un rico comerciante de lana; Gwenda, hija de una familia de pobres campesinos sin tierras y los hermanos Merthin y Ralph, hijos de un caballero venido a menos, Sir Gerald.

Esa tarde, los niños se adentran en el bosque que rodea el pueblo entre juegos y risas pero se verán envueltos en un combate a muerte entre caballeros que acabará con la promesa de silencio por parte de los niños de lo que acaban de presenciar y con el ingreso del caballero superviviente, Sir Thomas de Langley, como monje en el priorato de Kingsbridge.

Este es el punto de partida de una intrincada trama de amor y de odio, de ambición y de venganza, de lucha sin fin por defender unos ideales y conseguir unas metas que se encontrarán con una infinidad de obstáculos en el camino, y que tiene como fondo amenazador la Peste Negra que aniquiló a la mitad de la población europea.

No es posible hacer un resumen más extenso y detallado de la historia sin desvelar al futuro lector algunas de sus partes de más intriga y emoción. Este es un libro para devorar y destripar sin saber que es lo que va a ocurrir en la siguiente página. Cierto es que su volumen puede desanimar a lectores ocasionales, pero he de decir que, como “Los pilares de la tierra”, esta es una novela de mucha agilidad y con muy buen ritmo, lo cual ayuda al lector a no caer en el desaliento.

A pesar de otras opiniones, en principio de gente más docta en el tema que yo, me ha parecido una novela muy bien ambientada que retrata de manera admirable una clara imagen del medievo y en la que están representados todos los estamentos sociales de la época, lo que da mucha más riqueza y profundidad al marco histórico. Es evidente que el autor introduce elementos ficticios en la ambientación de la época, pero estos casan muy bien con la atmósfera general de la historia evitando perder rigurosidad.

Mucha gente se queja de que los personajes son demasiado extraordinarios, demasiado heroicos, y que eso hace que la historia pierda credibilidad. A mí me parece que aunque obviamente perteneciesen a una minoría, personas tan progresistas para la época como Caris o tan innovadoras como Merthin fueron precisamente los que impulsaron un cambio en la mentalidad que, como tantos otros a lo largo de la historia, fue necesario para que la sociedad de hoy en día haya llegado a ser lo que es.

También he oído decir que es una burda copia que el autor ha utilizado para sacarse un dinero a costa del éxito que en su día tuvo “Los pilares de la tierra”, que ha cambiado los nombres de los personajes y algunas pinceladas de la historia, pero que el libro viene a ser lo mismo. Sobre esto tengo que decir que en parte es cierto, son novelas muy parecidas. Si no disfrutaste con “Los pilares de la tierra”, ni te molestes en intentarlo con esta. Sin embargo, la similitud no es la que caracteriza al plagio sino más bien la que tienen dos discos de un mismo artista: si la fórmula del primero engancha al público, ¿por qué no repetir el mismo estilo musical? Yo sinceramente, no esperaba ni más ni menos que lo que he leído. Para mí, la fórmula magistral sigue teniendo el mismo exitoso efecto.