World Without End

Ken Follett’s World without End is a sequel to his best seller, The Pillars of the Earth.
While The Pillars of the Earth was the story of the 12th century England, the sequel brings alive the 14th century England. The setting is the same as in The Pillars of the Earth: Kingsbridge Priory and its town along with the adjacent towns of Shiring, Wigleigh, and the countryside. But Kingsbridge has undergone much change from the days of the great Prior Philip (The Pillars of the Earth). The present prior is Godwyn who reaches that position through vicious machinations. Godwyn’s most trusted assistant is Philemon who had been brought up by his father as a pickpocket and a thief. The monastery has little transformative impact on the character of this juvenile delinquent. He remains an intractable villain throughout the novel and hence an able accomplice of the Machiavellian Godwyn.
Interestingly the greatest challenge to Godwyn’s venal machinations is a woman. Women were given little importance in the medieval period even at home, let alone the society. Caris is a very independent woman with a strong will of her own and stronger views on most issues that matter. When she becomes a serious threat to Godwyn’s manoeuvres, the prior pulls all the string available to him in order to portray Caris as a heretic and a witch and cunningly make sure that she won’t escape the trial as her friend and mentor, Mattie Wise, managed to do in the nick of time.
Caris defends herself admirably well in the trial and is about to be exonerated when Friar Murdo, a wretched pervert, nails her with his theory that witches carry the devil’s mark on their bodies. He demands that Caris’ body should be examined for “devil’s nipple”. Caris is sure that she will be burnt at the stakes because she has a mole in the wrongest of places: near her vagina.
Mother Cecilia who is to examine Caris becomes her saviour. The prioress of the nunnery manipulates the truth a little in order to save Caris’ life because the nun knows well about the brilliant qualities possessed by Caris. But Caris is not set free unconditionally. She is ordered to live in the nunnery as a nun for the rest of her life.
It is Merthin whose heart is broken. He has been in love with Caris. He leaves Kingsbridge to return about a decade later with a three-year old daughter whose mother died in the terrible plague that devastated most parts of Europe in the 14th century. The plague reaches England too. Caris dedicates her life to the treatment of the plague patients and becomes a heroine in Kingsbridge. Her love for Merthin culminates in passionate physical encounters when Martin returns to Kingsbridge. Caris remains a nun, however, vowed to celibacy!
Caris is a very fascinating character. In the words of the novel, “... but then she was an extraordinary woman: a prioress who doubted much of what the church taught; an acclaimed healer who rejected medicine as practised by physicians; and a nun who made enthusiastic love to her man whenever she could get away with it.” (Page 930)
Eventually Caris leaves the nunnery with due permission of the church authorities (some of whom are also involved in clandestine sexual relationships with people of both the sexes!) to marry Merthin. Still she remains an angel in the eyes of the general public of Kingsbridge.
There are many other intriguing characters and sub-plots in this epic novel that run to over 1200 pages of very small letters. Queen Isabella and her shocking political manoeuvres, the medieval earls with their mean and vile attitudes, the helpless common people of England and certain interesting historical details about the period and its religious practices that are highlighted casually make the novel extremely interesting to read. Binding them all together is a secret, a secret document that gets buried in the very first chapter of the novel under mysterious circumstances and is revealed only at the end. I shall leave that secret to the reader to find out.