It's a trick so corny I last saw it in Tintin's Prisoners of the Sun. Faced with the end of his cathedral dream when denied the necessary stone at a quarry, Philip faces down young rapist William Hamleigh by raising a crucifix just as the sun comes up. Myself, I was already frothing several minutes previously at the appearance of such a ludicrous plot device. When all these events conspire to occur within seconds of each other during an inspection of Kingsbridge cathedral, it all proves too much for Stephen who falls frothing at the mouth to the floor.
And it doesn't cry blood – it cries paint. Finally the skull that cries blood is the one Philip purloined from an ossuary in order to replace his knackered relic of St Adolphus. Jack, naturally, is the artist, while Maud has been pierced by an arrow but still managed to beat Stephen's forces at Lincoln.
Each of these predictions comes spectacularly – spectrally? – true within minutes. Arriving in Stephen's bedroom with blood oozing down his face (a wound I don't remember being sustained when he drowned in his lampreys), the ghost tells Stephen that he will rule for "ill good" until a skull cries blood, that peace will arrive when arrows pierce Maud's chest, and that a boy artist will both unmake a king and crown one too. Most significant is the appearance of the ghost of the former King Henry. But acts only marginally less preposterous were crucial to this second episode of The Pillars of the Earth. OK, I confess, there's nothing phantasmagorical going on in King Stephen's bottom. Did the piles know what was to come? Have they seen visions? What is more, are they in league with Prior Philip? "How much further? My piles are murdering me!" – King StephenĪre the King's piles prescient? That's the question being asked by doctors of medieval proctology tonight, after the monarch's haemorrhoids went wild mere moments before the kingly form was beset by a fit at the foot at St Adolphus's statue in Kingsbridge. Don't read ahead if you haven't seen episode two yet – and if you have seen later episodes please remember that UK viewers may not.
Spoiler alert: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching The Pillars of the Earth.
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