by Ken Follett
This was the challenging moment.
The leading sheep hesitated, needlessly intimidated by the small watery gap between the ground and the end of the boat. It looked from side to side, searching for an alternative, but the dogs cut off its escape. The sheep looked ready to refuse the next step. Then one of the dogs growled softly, low in its throat, and the sheep jumped.
It landed sure-footedly on the interior ramp and trotted happily down onto the flat bottom of the boat.
The rest of the flock followed, and Edgar smiled with satisfaction.
The dogs followed the sheep on board and stood like sentries on either side. Sam came last. Edgar untied the rope, jumped aboard, and deployed the pole.
As they moved out into midstream, Sam said: “This is better than the old boat.” He nodded sagely. Each banality was uttered like a pearl of wisdom.
“I’m glad you like it,” said Edgar. “You’re my first passenger.”
“Used to be a girl. Cwenburg.”
“She got married.”
“Ah. They do.”
The ferry reached the north bank, and Edgar jumped out. As he was tying the rope, the sheep began to disembark. They did so with more alacrity than they had shown boarding. “They’ve seen the grass,” Sam said in explanation. Sure enough they began to graze beside the river.
Edgar and Sam went into the alehouse, leaving the dogs to mind the sheep. Ethel was preparing the midday dinner, watched by Leaf and Dreng. A moment later Blod came in with an armful of firewood.
Edgar said to Dreng: “Sam hasn’t paid yet. He owes five pence and three farthings, but I didn’t have a farthing to give him in change.”
Dreng said to Sam: “Make it a round six pence and you can fuck the slave girl.”
Sam looked eagerly at Blod.
Leaf spoke up. “She’s too far gone.” Blod was now close to nine months pregnant. No one had wanted sex with her for three or four weeks.
But Sam was keen. “I don’t mind that,” he said.
“I wasn’t worrying about you,” Leaf said scathingly. The sarcasm went over Sam’s head. “This late, the baby could be harmed.”
Dreng said: “Who cares? No one wants a slave bastard.” With a contemptuous gesture he motioned Blod to get down on the floor.
Edgar could not see how Sam could possibly lie on top of the bump of Blod’s pregnancy. But she went down on her hands and knees, then threw up the back of her grubby dress. Sam promptly knelt behind her and pulled up his tunic.
Edgar went out.
He walked down to the water and pretended to check the mooring of the ferry, though he knew perfectly well that he had tied it tight. He felt disgusted. He had never understood the men who paid for sex at Mags’s house in Combe. The whole idea seemed joyless. His brother Erman had said: “When you got to have it, you got to have it,” but Edgar had never felt that way. With Sunni, the two of them had enjoyed it equally, and Edgar thought anything less was hardly worth having.
What Sam was doing was worse than joyless, of course.
Edgar sat on the riverbank and looked across the calm gray water, hoping for more passengers to take his mind off what was going on in the alehouse. Brindle sat beside him, waiting patiently to see what he would do next. After a few minutes she went to sleep.
It was not long before the shepherd emerged from the alehouse and drove his flock up the hill between the houses onto the westbound road. Edgar did not wave.
Blod came down to the river.
Edgar said: “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Blod did not look at him. She stepped into the shallows and washed between her legs.
Edgar looked away. “It’s very cruel,” he said.
He suspected that Blod understood English. She pretended not to: when something went wrong she cursed in the liquid Welsh tongue. Dreng gave her orders with gestures and snarls. But sometimes Edgar had the feeling she was following the conversation in the alehouse, albeit furtively.
Now she confirmed his suspicion. “It’s nothing,” she said. Her English was accented but clear, her voice melodic.
“You’re not nothing,” he said.
She finished washing and stepped onto the bank. He met her eye. She was looking suspicious and hostile. “Why so nice?” she demanded. “You think you’ll get a free fuck?”
He looked away again, directing his gaze across the water to the far trees, and made no reply. He thought she would walk away, but she stayed where she was, waiting for an answer.
Eventually he said: “This dog used to belong to a woman I loved.”
Brindle opened one eye. Strange. Edgar thought, how dogs know when you are talking about them.
“The woman was a little older than me, and married,” Edgar said to Blod. She showed no emotion, but seemed to be listening attentively. “When her husband was drunk she would meet me in the woods and we would make love on the grass.”
“Make love,” she repeated, as if unsure what it meant.
“We decided to run away together.” To his surprise he found himself close to tears, and he realized it was the first time he had spoken about Sunni since talking to Ma on the journey from Combe. “I had the promise of work and a house in another town.” He was telling Blod things even his family did not know. “She was beautiful and clever and kind.” He began to feel choked up, but now that he had started the story, he wanted to go on. “I think we would have been very happy,” he said.
“What happened?”
“On the day we planned to go, the Vikings came.”
“Did they take her?”
Edgar shook his head. “She fought them, and they killed her.”
“She was lucky,” Blod said. “Believe me.”
Thinking about what Blod had just done with Sam, Edgar almost agreed. “Her name . . .” He found it hard to say. “Her name was Sunni.”
“When?”
“A week before Midsummer.”
“I am very sorry, Edgar.”
“Thank you.”
“You still love her.”
“Oh, yes,” said Edgar. “I’ll always love her.”
* * *
The weather turned stormy. One night in the second week of September there was a terrific gale. Edgar thought the church tower might be blown down. However, all the buildings in the hamlet survived except one, the flimsiest—Leaf’s brewhouse.
She lost more than the building. She had had a cauldron brewing on the fire, but the huge pot had been overturned, the fire extinguished, and the ale lost. Worse than that, barrels of new ale had been smashed by falling timbers, and sacks of malted barley were soaked beyond rescue by torrential rain.
Next morning, in the calm after the storm, they went out to inspect the damage, and some of the villagers—curious as ever—gathered around the ruins.
Dreng was furious, and raged at Leaf. “That shack was barely standing before the storm. You should have moved the ale and the barley somewhere safer!”
Leaf was not impressed by Dreng’s tantrum. “You could have moved it yourself, or told Edgar to do it,” she said. “Don’t blame me.”
He was impervious to her logic. “Now I’m going to have to buy ale in Shiring and pay to have it carted here,” he went on.
“People will appreciate my ale more when they’ve had to drink Shiring ale for a few weeks,” Leaf said complacently.
Her unconcern drove Dreng wild. “And this isn’t the first time!” he raved. “You’ve burned the brewhouse down twice. Last time you passed out dead drunk and nearly burned yourself to death.”
Edgar had a brainstorm. He said: “You should build a stone brewhouse.”
“Don’t be daft,” Dreng said without looking at him. “You don’t put up a palace to make ale in.”
Cuthbert, the portly jeweler, was in the crowd, and Edgar
now noticed that he was shaking his head in disagreement with Dreng. Edgar said: “What do you think, Cuthbert?”
“Edgar’s right,” Cuthbert said. “This will be the third time in five years that you’ve rebuilt the brewhouse, Dreng. A stone building would withstand storms and wouldn’t burn down. You’d save money in the long run.”
Dreng said scornfully: “Who’s going to build it, Cuthbert? You?”
“No, I’m a jeweler.”
“We can’t make ale in a brooch.”
Edgar knew the answer. “I can build it.”
Dreng gave a scornful grunt. “What do you know about building in stone?”
Edgar knew nothing about building in stone, but he felt he could turn his hand to just about any type of construction. And he yearned for the opportunity to show what he could do. Displaying more confidence than he felt, he said: “Stone is just like wood, only a bit harder.”
Dreng’s default position was scorn, but now he hesitated. His gaze flickered to the riverside and the sturdy moneymaking ferryboat tied up there. He turned to Cuthbert. “What would that cost?”
Edgar felt hopeful. Pa had always said: “When the man asks the price, he’s halfway to buying the boat.”
Cuthbert thought for a moment, then said: “Last time repairs were done to the church, the stone came from the limestone quarry at Outhenham.”
Edgar said: “Where’s that?”
“A day’s journey upriver.”
“Where did you get the sand?”
“There’s a sandpit in the woods about a mile from here. You just have to dig it up and carry it.”
“And the lime for the mortar?”
“That’s difficult to make, so we bought ours in Shiring.”
Dreng repeated: “What would it cost?”
Cuthbert said: “The standard rough stones cost a penny each at the quarry, if I remember rightly, and they charged us a penny per stone for delivery.”
Edgar said: “I’ll make a plan, and work it out exactly; but I would probably need about two hundred stones.”
Dreng pretended to be shocked. “Why, that’s almost two pounds of silver!”
“It would still be cheaper than rebuilding in wood and thatch again and again.” Edgar held his breath.
“Work it out exactly,” said Dreng.
* * *
Edgar set off for Outhenham at sunrise on a cool morning, with a chill September breeze wafting along the river. Dreng had agreed to pay for a stone brewhouse. Now Edgar had to make good on his boasting and build it well.
He took his ax with him on the journey. He would have preferred to go with one of his brothers, but both were busy on the farm, so he had to take the risk of traveling alone. On the other hand, he had already met the outlaw Ironface, who had gone away the worse for the encounter and might hesitate to attack him again. All the same, he carried the ax in his hand, for readiness, and he was glad to have Brindle to give him early warning of danger.
The trees and bushes along the bank were luxuriant after a fine summer, and it was often a struggle to make progress. Around midmorning he came to a place where he had to detour inland. Fortunately the sky was mostly clear, so he could usually see the sun, and this helped him to keep his bearings, so that eventually he was able to find his way back to the river.
Every few miles he passed through a large or small settlement, the same timber-and-thatch houses clustered on the riverbank or inland around a crossroads, a pond, or a church. He slung his ax in his belt as he approached, to make a peaceable impression, but drew it out as soon as he found himself alone again. He would have liked to stop and rest, drink a cup of ale and eat something, but he had no money, so he just exchanged a few words with the villagers, checked that he was on the right road, and walked on.
He had thought it a simple matter to follow the river. However, numerous streams flowed into it and he could not always be sure which was the main river and which the tributary. On one occasion he made the wrong choice, and learned at the next settlement he came to—a village called Bathford—that he needed to retrace his steps.
Along the way he thought about the brewhouse he would construct for Leaf. Perhaps it should have two rooms, like the nave and chancel of a church, so that valuable stores could be kept away from the fire. The hearth should be made of trimmed stones mortared together, so that it would easily bear the weight of the cauldron and be less likely to collapse.
He had hoped to reach Outhenham by midafternoon, but his detours had delayed him, so the sun was low in the western sky when he thought he might be approaching the end of his journey.
He was in a fertile valley of heavy clay soil that he thought must be the Vale of Outhen. In the surrounding fields peasants were harvesting barley, working late to make the most of dry weather. At a place where a tributary joined the river, he came to a large village of more than a hundred houses.
He was on the wrong side of the water, and there was no bridge or ferry, but he easily swam across, holding his tunic above his head and using only one hand to propel himself. The water was cold and he shivered when he got out.
At the edge of the village was a small orchard where a gray-haired man was picking fruit. Edgar approached with some trepidation, fearing he might be told he was far from his destination. “Good day, friend,” he said. “Is this Outhenham?”
“It is,” the man said amiably. He was a bright-eyed fifty-year-old with a friendly smile and an intelligent look.
“Thank heaven,” said Edgar.
“Where have you come from?”
“Dreng’s Ferry.”
“A godless place, I’ve heard.”
Edgar was surprised that Degbert’s laxity was known about so far away. He was not sure how to respond to that, so he said: “My name is Edgar.”
“And I’m Seric.”
“I’ve come here to buy stone.”
“If you go east to the edge of the village, you’ll see a well-worn track. The quarry is about half a mile inland. There you’ll find Gaberht, called Gab, and his family. He’s the quarrymaster.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
Seric gave him a handful of small pears. Edgar thanked him and went on. He ate the pears, cores and all, right away.
The village was relatively prosperous, with well-built houses and outbuildings. At its center, a stone church faced an alehouse across a green where cows grazed.
A big man in his thirties came out of the alehouse, spotted Edgar, and took up a confrontational stance in the middle of the pathway. “Who the hell are you?” he said as Edgar approached him. He was heavy and red-eyed, and his speech was slurred.
Edgar stopped and said: “Good day to you, friend. I’m Edgar, from Dreng’s Ferry.”
“And where do you think you’re going?”
“To the quarry,” Edgar said mildly. He did not want a quarrel.
But the man was belligerent. “Who said you could go there?”
Edgar’s patience began to wear thin. “I don’t believe I need permission.”
“You need my permission to do anything in Outhenham, because I’m Dudda, the headman of the village. Why are you going to the quarry?”
“To buy fish.”
Dudda looked mystified, then it dawned on him that he was being mocked, and he reddened. Edgar realized he had been too clever for his own good—again—and regretted his wit. Dudda said: “You cheeky dog.” Then he swung a big fist at Edgar’s head.
Edgar stepped back nimbly.
Dudda’s swing failed to connect, and he overbalanced, stumbled, and fell to the ground.
Edgar wondered what the hell to do next. He had no doubt he could beat Dudda in a fight, but what good would that do him? If he antagonized people here, they might refuse to sell stone to him, and
his building project would be in trouble when it had barely got started.
He was relieved to hear the calm voice of Seric behind him. “Now, Dudda, let me help you home. You might want to lie down for an hour.” He took Dudda’s arm and helped him to his feet.
Dudda said: “That boy hit me!”
“No, he didn’t, you fell down, because you drank too much ale with your dinner again.” Seric jerked his head at Edgar, indicating that he should make himself scarce, and walked Dudda away. Edgar took the hint.
He found the quarry easily. Four people were working there: an older man who was evidently in charge and therefore must be Gab, two others who might have been his sons, and a boy who was either a late addition to the family or a slave. The quarry rang with the sound of hammers, punctuated at intervals by a dry cough that came from Gab. There was a timber house, presumably their home, and a woman standing in the doorway watching the sun go down. Stone dust hung in the air like a mist, the specks glittering golden in the rays of the evening light.
Another customer was ahead of Edgar. A sturdy four-wheeled cart stood in the middle of the clearing. Two men were carefully loading it with cut stones, while two oxen—presumably there to pull the cart—grazed nearby, their tails flicking at flies.
The boy was sweeping up stone chips, probably to be sold as gravel. He approached Edgar and spoke with a foreign accent, which made Edgar think he was a slave. “Have you come to buy stone?”
“Yes. I need enough for a brewhouse. But there’s no rush.”
Edgar sat on a flat stone, observed Gab for a few minutes, and quickly understood how he worked. He would insert an oak wedge into a small crack in the rock, then hammer the wedge in, widening the crack until it turned into a split and a section of rock fell away. Failing the convenience of a naturally formed crack, Gab would make one with his iron chisel. Edgar guessed that a quarryman would have learned from experience how to locate the weaknesses in the rock that would make the work easier.
Gab split the larger stones into two or sometimes three pieces, just to make them easier to transport.
