The Evening and the Morning

by Ken Follett

  “Quite unnecessary.”

  Edgar conceded defeat with a nod. He had made his point.

  Degbert said: “Do you wish to call any oath helpers?”

  An oath helper was someone who would swear that someone else was telling the truth, or simply that he was an honest man. The weight of the oath was greater if the swearer was someone of high status.

  Edgar said: “I call Blod.”

  “A slave can’t testify,” said Degbert.

  Edgar had seen slaves testify in Combe, though not often, and he said: “That’s not the law.”

  “I’ll tell you what the law is and is not,” said Degbert. “You can’t even read.”

  He was right, and Edgar had to give in. He said: “In that case I call Mildred, my mother.”

  Mildred put her hand on the pyx and said: “By the Lord, the oath is pure and not false that Edgar swore.”

  Degbert said: “Any more?”

  Edgar shook his head. He had asked Erman and Eadbald, but they had refused to swear against their father-in-law. He had not even bothered to ask Leaf or Ethel, who could not testify against their husband.

  Degbert said: “What does Dreng say to the accusation?”

  Dreng stepped forward and put his hand on the pyx.

  Now, Edgar thought, will he risk his immortal soul?

  Dreng said: “By the Lord, I am guiltless both of deed and instigation of the crime with which Edgar charges me.”

  Edgar gasped. It was perjury, and his hand was on the holy object. But Dreng seemed oblivious to the damnation he was risking.

  “Any oath helpers?”

  Dreng called Leaf, Ethel, Cwenburg, Edith, and all the clergy of the minster. They formed an impressively high-status group, but they were all dependent in some way on either Dreng or Degbert. How would the villagers of the hundred weigh their oaths? Edgar could not guess.

  Degbert asked him: “Anything else to say?”

  Edgar realized that he did. “Three months ago the Vikings killed my father and the girl I loved,” he said. The crowd had not been expecting this, and they went quiet, wondering what was coming. “There was no justice, because the Vikings are savages. They worship false gods, and their gods laugh to see them murder men and rape women and steal from honest families.”

  There was a hum of agreement. Some of the crowd had direct experience of the Vikings, and most of the others probably knew people who had suffered. They all hated the Vikings.

  Edgar went on: “But we’re not like that, are we? We know the true God and we obey his laws. And he tells us: Thou shalt not kill. I ask the court to punish this murderer, in accordance with God’s will, and prove that we are not savages.”

  Degbert said quickly: “That’s the first time I’ve been lectured on God’s will by an eighteen-year-old boatbuilder.”

  It was a clever put-down, but the onlookers had been rendered solemn by the horror of the case, and they were in no mood to laugh at witticisms. Edgar felt he had won their support. People were looking at him with approval in their eyes.

  But would they defy Degbert?

  Degbert invited Dreng to speak. “I’m not guilty,” Dreng said. “The baby was stillborn. It was dead when I picked it up. That’s why I threw it in the river.”

  Edgar was outraged by this blatant lie. “He wasn’t dead!”

  “Yes, it was. I tried to say that at the time, but no one was listening: Leaf was screaming her head off and you jumped straight into the river.”

  Dreng’s confident tone made Edgar even angrier. “He cried when you threw him—I heard it! And then the crying stopped when he fell naked into the cold water.”

  A woman in the crowd murmured: “Oh, the poor mite!” It was Ebba, who did laundry for the minster, Edgar saw. Even those who depended on Degbert for their living were shocked. But would that be enough?

  Dreng continued in the same sneering tone: “How could you hear him cry, with Leaf screaming?”

  For a moment Edgar was floored by the question. How could he have heard? Then the answer came to him. “The same way you can hear two people talking. Their voices are different.”

  “No, lad.” Dreng shook his head. “You made a mistake. You thought you saw a murder when you didn’t. Now you’re too proud to admit that you were wrong.”

  Dreng’s voice was unattractive and his attitude arrogant, but his story was infuriatingly plausible, and Edgar feared that the people might believe him.

  Degbert said: “Sister Agatha, when you found the baby on the beach, was it alive or dead?”

  “He was near death, but still alive,” said the nun.

  A voice in the crowd spoke up, and Edgar recognized Theodberht Clubfoot, a sheep farmer with pastures a couple of miles downriver. He said: “Did Dreng touch the body? Afterward, I mean?”

  Edgar knew why he was asking the question. People believed that if the murderer touched the corpse it would bleed afresh. Edgar had no idea whether that was true.

  Blod shouted out: “No, he did not! I kept my baby’s body away from that monster.”

  Degbert said: “What do you say, Dreng?”

  “I’m not sure whether I did or not,” Dreng said. “I would have, if necessary, but I don’t believe I had any reason to.”

  It was inconclusive.

  Degbert turned to Leaf. “You were the only one there, other than Dreng and his accuser, when Dreng threw the baby.” That was true: Ethel had passed out in the alehouse. “You screamed, but are you now sure it was alive? Could you have made a mistake?”

  All Edgar wanted was for Leaf to tell the truth. But would she have the courage?

  She said defiantly: “The baby was born alive.”

  “But it died before Dreng threw the body into the river,” Degbert persisted. “However, at the time you imagined it was still alive. That was your mistake, wasn’t it?”

  Degbert was bullying Leaf outrageously, but no one could stop him.

  Leaf looked from Degbert to Edgar to Dreng, with panic in her eyes. Then she looked at the floor. She was silent for a long moment, and then when she spoke it was almost a whisper. “I think”—the crowd went quiet as everyone strained to hear her words—“I might have made a mistake,” she said.

  Edgar despaired. She was obviously a terrified woman giving false evidence under pressure. But she had said what Dreng needed her to say.

  Degbert looked at the crowd. “The evidence is clear,” he announced. “The baby was dead. Edgar’s accusation is not proved.”

  Edgar stared at the villagers. They looked unhappy, but he saw at once that they were not angry enough to go against the two most powerful men in the neighborhood. He felt sick. Dreng was going to get away with it. Justice had been refused.

  Degbert went on: “Dreng is guilty of the crime of improper burial.”

  That was clever, Edgar saw bitterly. The baby had now been buried in the churchyard, but at the time Dreng had, by his own account, disposed of a body illicitly. More importantly, he would now be punished for a minor offense, and that would make it a bit easier for the villagers to accept that he had got away with the greater crime.

  Degbert said: “He is fined six pence.”

  It was too little, and the villagers muttered, but they were discontented rather than rebellious.

  Then Blod cried out: “Six pence?”

  The crowd went silent. Everyone looked at Blod.

  Tears were streaming down her face. “Six pence, for my baby?” she said.

  She turned her back on Degbert eloquently. She strode away, but after half a dozen paces she stopped, turned, and spoke again. “You English,” she said, her voice choked with grief and rage.

  She spat on the ground.

  Then she walked away.

  * * *

  Dreng had won, but something shifted in the hamlet. Atti
tudes to Dreng had changed, Edgar mused as he ate his midday meal in the alehouse. People such as Edith, the wife of Degbert, and Bebbe, who supplied the minster with food, would in the past have stopped to talk to Dreng when their paths crossed, but now they just spoke a brief word and hurried on. Most evenings the alehouse was empty, or nearly so: Degbert sometimes came to drink Leaf’s strong ale, but others stayed away. People were polite to Degbert and Dreng, to the point of deference, but there was no warmth. It was as if the inhabitants were trying to make amends for their failure to insist on justice. Edgar did not think God would consider that sufficient.

  When those who had testified for Dreng walked past Edgar, as he worked on building the new brewhouse, they looked shamefaced and avoided his eye. One day on Leper Island, as he was delivering a barrel of ale to the nuns, Mother Agatha went out of her way to speak to him and tell him he had done the right thing. “Justice will be done in the next life,” she had said. Edgar had felt grateful for her support, but he wanted justice in this life, too.

  In the alehouse Dreng was more bad-tempered than ever. He slapped Leaf for giving him a cup of ale with dregs in it, punched Ethel in the stomach when his porridge was cold, and knocked Blod to the ground with a blow to the head for no reason at all. Each time he acted quickly, giving Edgar no chance to intervene; and then, after the blow was struck, he directed a challenging look at Edgar, defying him to do something about it. Unable to prevent what had already been done, Edgar would just look away.

  Dreng never hit Edgar. Edgar was glad. He had within him such a buildup of rage that if a fight started it might not stop until Dreng was dead. And Dreng seemed to sense that and hold back.

  Blod was oddly calm. She did her work and obeyed orders without protest. Dreng continued to treat her with contempt. However, when she looked at him her eyes blazed with hatred, and as the days went by Edgar could see that Dreng was scared of her. Perhaps he feared she would kill him. Perhaps she would.

  While Edgar was eating, Brindle barked a warning. A stranger was approaching. As it was probably a ferry passenger, Edgar got up from the table and went outside. Two poorly dressed men with a packhorse were approaching from the north. Tanned hides were piled high on the back of the horse.

  Edgar greeted them and said: “Do you want to cross the river?”

  “Yes,” said the older of the two. “We’re going to Combe to sell our leather to an exporter.”

  Edgar nodded. The English killed many cows, and their hides were often sold to France. But something about the men made Edgar wonder whether they had acquired the leather honestly. “The fare is a farthing per person or animal,” he said, not sure they could afford it.

  “All right, but we’ll take a bite to eat and a pot of ale first, if this is an alehouse.”

  “It is.”

  They unloaded the beast, to give it a rest, and put it to graze while they went inside. Edgar returned to his dinner, and Leaf gave the travelers ale while Ethel served them from the stew pot. Dreng asked them what was the news.

  “The ealdorman’s bride has arrived from Normandy,” said the older visitor.

  “We knew that—the lady Ragna spent a night here on the way,” Dreng said proudly.

  Edgar said: “When’s the wedding?”

  “All Saints’ Day.”

  “So soon!”

  “Wilwulf is impatient.”

  Dreng sniggered. “I’m not surprised. She’s a beauty.”

  “That, too, but he needs to ride against the Welsh raiders, and he won’t go until he’s married.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Dreng said. “It would be a shame to die and leave her a virgin.”

  “The Welsh have taken advantage of his delay.”

  “I’m sure they have, the barbarians.”

  Edgar almost laughed. He wanted to ask whether the Welsh were so barbaric as to murder newborn babies, but he held his tongue. He shot a look at Blod, but she seemed oblivious to the slur on her people.

  The older traveler continued: “They’ve already penetrated farther than anyone can remember. There’s a lot of discontent about it. Some say it’s the ealdorman’s duty to protect people first and get married after.”

  “None of their damn business,” Dreng said. He did not like to hear people criticize the nobility. “I don’t know who these people think they are.”

  “We hear the Welsh have reached Trench.”

  Edgar was startled, as was Dreng. “That’s only a couple of days from here!” said Dreng.

  “I know. I’m glad we’re headed in the opposite direction, with our valuable load.”

  Edgar finished his food and went back to work. The brewhouse was rising quickly, one course of stones on top of another. Soon he would have to shape timbers for the roof.

  Dreng’s Ferry had no defenses of any kind against a Welsh incursion, he reflected; nor, for that matter, against a Viking raid should the Vikings ever get this far upriver. On the other hand, raiders might think there was not much for them in a little place such as this—unless they knew about Cuthbert and his jewelry workshop. England was a dangerous place, Edgar thought, with the Vikings in the east and the Welsh in the west, and men such as Dreng in the middle.

  After an hour the travelers reloaded their horse and Edgar poled them across the river.

  When he got back he found Blod hiding inside the half-built brewhouse. She was crying, and there was blood on her dress. “What happened?” he said.

  “Those two men paid to fuck me,” she said.

  Edgar was shocked. “But it’s not two weeks since you had the baby!” He was not sure how long women were supposed to abstain, but surely it would take a month or two to recover from what he had seen Blod go through.

  “That’s why it hurt so much,” she said. “Then the second one wouldn’t pay the full amount because he said I spoiled it by crying. So now Dreng is going to beat me.”

  “Oh, merciful Jesus,” Edgar said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to kill him before he kills me.”

  Edgar did not think she should do that, but he asked a practical question. “How?” Blod had a knife, as did everyone over the age of about five, but hers was small, like a child’s, and she was not allowed to keep it too sharp. She could not kill anyone with that.

  She said: “I’m going to get up in the night, take your ax off its hook, and sink the blade into Dreng’s heart.”

  “They’ll execute you.”

  “But I’ll die satisfied.”

  “I’ve got a better idea,” said Edgar. “Why don’t you run away? You could sneak out when they go to sleep—they’re usually drunk by nightfall, they won’t wake. This is a good time: the Welsh raiders are only two days away. Travel by night and hide by day. You could join up with your own people.”

  “What about the hue and cry?”

  Edgar nodded. The hue and cry was the means by which offenders were arrested. All men were obliged, by law, to chase after anyone who committed a crime within the hundred. If they refused, they were liable for the cost of the damage caused by the crime, usually the value of the goods stolen. Men rarely refused: it was in their interest to capture criminals, and anyway the chase was exciting. If Blod ran away, Dreng would start a hue and cry, and in all probability Blod would be recaptured.

  But Edgar had thought of that. “After you’ve gone, I’ll take the ferryboat downstream and beach it somewhere, then walk back. When they see that it’s gone they’ll think you must have used it to escape, and they’ll assume you will have gone downstream, to travel faster and put the maximum distance between yourself and them. So they’ll search for you along the river to the east. Meanwhile, you’ll be headed the opposite way.”

  Blod’s pinched face lit up with hope. “Do you really believe I could escape?”

  “I don’t know,” said Edgar.

 
; * * *

  It was not until later that Edgar realized what he had done.

  If he helped Blod escape he would be committing a crime. Just days ago he had stood up in the hundred court and insisted that the law must be obeyed. Now he was about to break it. If he was found out, his neighbors would have little mercy on him; they would call him a hypocrite. He would be sentenced to pay Dreng the price of a new slave. He would be in debt for years. He might even have to become a slave himself.

  But he could not go back on his word. He did not even want to. He was sickened by Dreng’s treatment of Blod and he felt he could not let it continue. Perhaps there were principles more important than the rule of law.

  He would just have to make sure he did not get caught.

  Dreng had been drinking more than usual since the hundred court, and that evening was no exception. By dusk he was slurring his speech. His wives encouraged him, for when he was drunk his punches often missed their target. At nightfall he just about managed to undo his belt and wrap himself in his cloak before passing out in the rushes on the floor.

  Leaf always drank a lot. Edgar suspected she did it to make herself unattractive to Dreng. Edgar had never seen the two of them embrace. Ethel was Dreng’s choice for sex when he was sober enough, but that was not often.

  Ethel was not as quick as the others to fall asleep, and Edgar listened to her breathing, waiting for it to fall into the steady rhythm of slumber. He was reminded of the night four months ago when he had lain awake in his family’s house at Combe. He felt the pain of grief as he remembered how exciting the future had seemed with Sunni, and how bleak it turned out to be without her.

  Both Leaf and Dreng were snoring, Leaf in a steady drone, Dreng in great snorts followed by gasps. At last Ethel’s breathing became regular. Edgar looked across the room at Blod. He could see her face in the firelight. Her eyes were open, and she was waiting for a signal from him.