by Ken Follett
“Let me think about that.”
Ragna suspected she knew more about the farming cycle than he did. “You see, there’s always something urgent to be done in the fields.”
“Yes, but—”
“After the ploughing comes the sowing.”
“Yes—”
“Then the weeding, then the reaping, then the threshing, then the grinding.”
“I know.”
“And then it’s time for winter ploughing.”
He looked irritated. “I’ll let you know when the time is right.”
Ragna shook her head firmly. “I have a better idea. I’ll visit Outhen on Lady Day. It’s a holiday, so they won’t be working anyway.”
He hesitated, but apparently could not think of a rejoinder. “Very well,” he said tersely, and as he walked away, Ragna knew she had not heard the last of this.
But she was not intimidated. On Lady Day she would receive her rents in Outhenham. And there she would ambush Gab the quarrymaster.
She wanted to take Edgar with her for the confrontation. She sent a messenger to summon him from Dreng’s Ferry, pretending she needed him to do more carpentry.
An extra reason for her wanting to go away was that there was a tiresome atmosphere in the compound with the husbands away. The only males left were either too young to fight or too old. Ragna found that the women behaved badly when their men could not see them. They squabbled, shrieked, and ran one another down in ways that their husbands would have derided. No doubt men, too, misbehaved when the opposite sex was not there to be disdainful. She would have to ask Wilf about that.
She decided she would stay in the Vale of Outhen for a week or so after Lady Day. She was determined to make a personal tour of her property and find out in detail what she owned. She would show herself to her tenants and her subjects, getting to know them. She would hold court in each village and begin to establish a reputation as a fair judge.
When she spoke to the head groom, Wignoth, he shook his head and sucked in the air between his brown teeth. “We haven’t got enough horses,” he pointed out. “Every spare mount has been commandeered for the harrying of the Welsh.”
Ragna could not possibly arrive on foot. People judged by appearances, and a noble who did not have a horse would be seen as lacking authority. “But Astrid is still here,” she said. She had brought her favorite horse from Cherbourg.
“You’ll have several people with you on your visit, of course,” said Wignoth.
“Yes.”
“Apart from Astrid, all we have is an elderly mare, a pony with one eye, and a packhorse that’s never been ridden.”
There were other horses in the town: both the bishop and the abbot had several mounts, and the sheriff had a large stable. But they needed them for their own purposes. “What we have here must suffice,” Ragna said firmly. “It’s not ideal, but I’ll manage.”
As she walked away from the stable she saw two young townsmen lounging near the kitchen, talking to Gilda and the other kitchen maids. Ragna stopped and frowned. She had no moral objection to flirting—in fact she was good at it herself when it suited her purpose. But with husbands away fighting, dalliances could be dangerous. Illicit affairs did not usually remain secret for long, and soldiers returning from battle could be quick to resort to violence.
Ragna changed direction and approached the two men.
A cook called Eadhild was skinning fish with a sharp knife and bloody hands. None of the maids noticed Ragna’s approach. Eadhild was telling the men to go away, but in a playful tone that clearly showed she did not mean it. “We don’t want your sort here,” she said, but then she giggled.
Ragna noticed that Gilda looked disapproving.
One of the men said: “Women never want our sort—until they do!”
“Oh, go on with you,” said Eadhild.
Ragna said abruptly: “Who are you men?”
They looked startled and said nothing for a moment.
Ragna said: “Give me your names or I’ll have you both thrashed.”
Gilda pointed with a skewer. “He’s Wiga and the other one is Tata. They work at the Abbey Alehouse.”
Ragna said: “And what do you think will happen, Wiga and Tata, when these women’s husbands come home, with their swords as bloody as that fish knife of Eadhild’s, and find out what you’ve been saying to their wives?”
Wiga and Tata looked shamefaced and made no answer.
“Murder,” Ragna said. “That’s what will happen. Now go back to your alehouse, and don’t let me see you inside this compound until Ealdorman Wilf comes home.”
They scurried off.
Gilda said: “Thank you, my lady. I’m glad to see the backs of those two.”
Ragna went to her house and turned her mind back to the Vale of Outhen. She decided to ride there on the eve of Lady Day. It was a morning’s journey. She would spend the afternoon talking to villagers, then hold court the following morning.
One day before she was due to leave, Wignoth came to her, bringing the smell of the stables into her house. He looked insincerely mournful and said: “The road to Outhenham has been washed out by a flood.”
She stared hard at him. He was a big man, but awkward. She said: “Is it completely impassable?”
“Yes, completely,” he said. He was not a good liar, and he looked shifty.
“Who told you that?”
“Um, the lady Gytha.”
Ragna was not surprised. “I shall go to Outhenham,” she said. “If there’s a flood I’ll find a way around it.”
Wynstan seemed determined to prevent her visit, she reflected. He had recruited both Gytha and Wignoth to dissuade her. That made her all the more determined to go.
She was expecting Edgar from Dreng’s Ferry that day, but he did not arrive. She was disappointed: she felt she needed him to give credence to her accusation. Could she charge Gab without Edgar’s testimony? She was not sure.
Next day she got up early.
She dressed in rich fabrics of somber colors, dark brown and deep black, to emphasize her seriousness. She felt tense. She told herself she was simply going to meet her people, something she had done dozens of times before—but never in England. Nothing would be quite as she expected; things never were here, she knew from experience. And it was so important to make a good first impression. Peasants had infuriatingly long memories. It could take years to recover from a false start.
She was pleased when Edgar showed up. He apologized for not appearing the day before but said he had arrived late and gone straight to the abbey for the night. Ragna was relieved that she did not have to confront Gab alone.
They went to the stable. Bern and Cat were loading the packhorse and saddling the old mare and the one-eyed pony. Ragna took Astrid from her stall—and saw immediately that something was wrong.
As the horse walked she was bobbing her head in an unusual way. A moment’s observation revealed that she lifted her head and neck as her left foreleg touched the ground. Ragna knew that this was a horse’s way of reducing the weight bearing on an injury.
She knelt beside Astrid and touched the lower half of the leg with both hands. She palpitated gently at first and then with increasing pressure. When she pressed hard, Astrid twitched and tried to free her leg from Ragna’s grasp.
In this condition the horse could not carry her.
Ragna was furious. She stood up and looked hard at Wignoth. Controlling her anger with an effort she said: “My horse has been injured.”
Wignoth looked scared. “One of the other beasts must have kicked her.”
Ragna looked at the other horses. They were a sorry lot. “Which of these feisty creatures do you suspect?” she said sarcastically.
His voice took on a pleading tone. “All horses kick sometimes.”
Ragna looked ar
ound. Her eye fell on a box of tools. Horses’ hooves were protected by iron shoes nailed to their feet. One of the tools was a short, heavy wooden mallet. Her instinct told her that Wignoth had hit Astrid’s foreleg with the mallet. But she could not prove it.
“Poor horse,” she said quietly to Astrid. Then she turned to Wignoth. “If you can’t keep the horses safe, you can’t be in charge of the stable,” she said to him coldly.
He looked mulishly obstinate, as if he felt he was unjustly treated.
Ragna needed time to think. She said to Bern and Cat: “Stay here. Don’t unload the horses.” She left the stable and headed for her own house.
Edgar followed her.
As they passed the pond, she said to him: “That pig Wignoth deliberately lamed my horse. He must have hit her with his shoeing mallet. The bone isn’t broken, but she’s badly bruised.”
“Why would Wignoth do that?”
“He’s a coward. Someone told him to do it, and he didn’t have the guts to refuse.”
“Who would have given him that order?”
“Wynstan doesn’t want me to go to Outhen. He’s been putting obstacles in my way. He has always collected the rents for Wilf, and he wants to continue to do so for me.”
“And skim off the cream for himself, I suppose.”
“Yes. I suspect he’s already on his way there.”
They went into her house, but she did not sit down. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I hate to give up.”
“Who might help you?”
Ragna recalled her conversation with Aldred about allies. She had some. “Aldred would help me, if he could,” she said. “So would Sheriff Den.”
“The abbey has horses, and so does Den.”
Ragna was thoughtful. “If I go to Outhen now there will be a confrontation. Wynstan is very determined: I fear he will refuse to let me receive my own rents, and I will have to find a way to enforce the law.”
“In that case you would have to appeal to the shire court.”
She shook her head. Ties of blood could matter more than the letter of the law in Normandy, and she had seen no sign that the legal system in England was any better. “The shire court is presided over by Wilf.”
“Your husband.”
Ragna thought of Inge, and shrugged. Would Wilf side with his wife or his brother? She was not sure. The thought made her sad for a moment, but she shook off the feeling and said something different. “I hate to play the role of moaner.”
Edgar said logically: “Then you must make sure you receive the rents, not Wynstan, and let him be the complainer.”
That was a counsel of perfection. “I’d need to be backed up by force.”
“Aldred might go with us. A monk has moral authority.”
“I’m not sure the abbot would let him. Osmund is timid. He doesn’t want a quarrel.”
“Let me talk to Aldred. He likes me.”
“It’s worth a try. But moral authority may not be enough. I need men-at-arms. All I’ve got is Bern.”
“What about Sheriff Den? He has men. If he backed you he would be doing no more than enforcing the king’s laws—which is his duty.”
This was a possibility, Ragna thought. As she had belatedly discovered, Wilf and Wynstan had defied the king over the Cherbourg treaty and her marriage. The sheriff might well be smarting from that. “Den would probably relish an opportunity to restrain Bishop Wynstan.”
“I’m sure of it.”
Ragna felt she was beginning to see a way forward. “You talk to Aldred. I’ll go and see Den.”
“We should leave separately, so that it doesn’t look like a conspiracy.”
“Good point. I’ll go first.”
Ragna strode out of the house and across the compound. She spoke to no one: let them guess, fearfully, what her rage might bring about.
She went down the hill and turned toward the edge of town where Den lived.
She was deeply disappointed that Wynstan had been able to turn Wignoth against her. She had worked hard to win the loyalty of the servants in the compound, and she had imagined that she had succeeded. Gilda had been the first to adhere to Ragna, and the kitchen maids had followed her lead. The men-at-arms liked Garulf—they grinned and said he was a hell of a boy—and there was nothing she could do about that. But she had gone out of her way to befriend the stable hands, and now it seemed she had failed. People liked her better than Wynstan, she reflected, but they feared him more.
Now she needed all the support she could get. Would Den come to her aid? She thought there was a chance. He had no reason to fear Wynstan. And Aldred? He would help if he could. But if they failed her, she would be alone.
The sheriff’s domestic establishment looked as formidable as the ealdorman’s, an impression that was surely intentional. He had a stockaded compound with barracks, stables, a great hall, and several smaller buildings.
Den had refused to join Wilf’s army, saying that his responsibility was to maintain the king’s peace within the district of Shiring, and he was needed all the more while the ealdorman was away—a view that was proved right by Wynstan’s behavior.
Ragna found Den in the great hall. He was pleased to see her, as men generally were. His wife and daughter were with him, and so was the grandson of whom he was so proud. Ragna spent a few minutes cooing over the baby, who smiled and babbled back at her. Then she got down to business.
“Wynstan is trying to rob me of my rents from the Vale of Outhen,” she said.
Den’s answer made her exultant.
“Is he, now?” Den said with a pleased smile. “Then we must do something about that.”
* * *
Ragna and her allies were careful not to speak about their plans beforehand, so their departure at dawn was unexpected, and no one had the chance to ride ahead and warn Wynstan. He was in for a shock.
Lady Day was the twenty-fifth day of March, the anniversary of the archangel Gabriel telling Mary that she was going to conceive a child miraculously. The air was cold but the sun was shining. This was the perfect moment, Ragna felt, to announce to the people of the valley that she was their new lord.
She left Shiring on a gray mare belonging to Den. The sheriff rode with her, and brought along a dozen men-at-arms led by their captain, Wigbert. She was thrilled by Sheriff Den’s support. It proved to her that she was not a weakling, totally in the power of her husband’s family. The conflict was not over yet, but she had already proved she was no pushover.
Bern, Cat, and Edgar walked alongside the horses. Outside the town they met up with Aldred, who had sneaked away from the abbey without telling Osmund.
Ragna felt triumphant. She had overcome every problem, negotiated every impediment put in her way. She had refused to give in to discouragement.
She recalled Wigelm’s rude intervention at her wedding. He had objected to her being given the Vale of Outhen, and had been quickly slapped down by Wilf. Ragna had wondered why Wigelm had troubled to make such an unwarranted protest, but now she thought she understood. He had been putting down a marker. He and Wynstan had a long-term plan to take Outhen from her, and they wanted to be able to say they had never accepted the legitimacy of the gift.
This had to be Wynstan’s plan. Wigelm was not smart enough. She felt a surge of loathing for the bishop. He abused his priestly robes by using his position to gratify his greed. The thought made her momentarily nauseated.
She had defeated them so far, but she told herself not to celebrate yet. She had frustrated Wynstan’s efforts to keep her at home, but that was only the start.
She turned her mind to what she needed to achieve with this visit. Endearing herself to the people was no longer the main objective. She first needed to make sure they understood that she was their lord, not Wynstan. She might not get another chance this good. The sheriff was not going t
o accompany her on every visit.
She questioned Edgar about the people of Outhenham, and memorized the names of the principal characters. Then she told him to walk at the back of the group entering the village, and remain inconspicuous until she called him forward.
As they arrived Ragna noted with pleasure that the place was affluent. Most houses had a pigsty, a henhouse, or a cowshed, and some had all three. Where there was prosperity there was always trade, she knew, and she guessed that Outhenham’s position at the mouth of the valley made it the natural marketplace for the district.
It would be her responsibility to maintain and increase that prosperity, for her own benefit as well as that of the people. Her father always said that nobles had duties as well as privileges.
The outskirts of the village had been almost deserted, and a minute later Ragna saw that most of the inhabitants had gathered on the green in the center, between the church and the alehouse.
In the middle of the space, Wynstan sat on a broad four-legged stool with a cushion, the type of seat used on formal occasions. Two men stood on either side of him. The one with the shaved head would be village priest, whose name—Ragna now recalled from her conversation with Edgar—was Draca. The other, a heavy, red-faced person, would be Dudda, the headman.
They were surrounded by goods. Some coins circulated in the countryside, but many peasants paid their rents in kind. Two large carts were being loaded with barrels and sacks, chickens in cages, and smoked and salted fish and meat. Piglets and young sheep were confined in temporary pens up against the wall of the church.
On a trestle table were numerous notched sticks and several piles of silver pennies. Wynstan’s assistant, Ithamar, sat at the table, holding in his hand a long sheet of parchment, old and stained and worn at the edges, covered with close-packed writing in neat lines, possibly in Latin. That would be a list of payments due from each man. Ragna resolved to seize that parchment.
This was a familiar sight, no different in Normandy, and she took it all in at a glance, then focused on Wynstan.
