by Ken Follett
The countryside was quiet.
At Combe there was always noise: herring gulls’ raucous laughter, the ring of hammers on nails, a crowd’s murmur, and the cry of a lone voice. Even at night there was the creaking of boats as they rose and fell on the restless water. But the countryside was often completely silent. If there was a wind, the trees would whisper discontentedly, but if not, it could be as quiet as the tomb.
So when Brindle barked in the middle of the night, Edgar came awake fast.
He stood up immediately and took his ax from its peg on the wall. His heart was beating hard and his breath was shallow.
Ma’s voice came out of the gloom. “Be careful.”
Brindle was in the barn, and her bark was distant but alarmed. Edgar had put her there to guard the piglet, and something had alerted her to danger.
Edgar went to the door, but Ma was there ahead of him. He saw the firelight glint ominously on the knife in her hand. He had cleaned and sharpened it himself, to save her the effort, so he knew it was deadly keen.
She hissed: “Step back from the door. One of them may be lying in wait.”
Edgar did as he was told. His brothers were behind him. He hoped that they, too, had picked up weapons of some kind.
Ma lifted the bar carefully, making almost no noise. Then she threw the door wide.
Right away a figure stepped into the doorway. Ma had been right to warn Edgar: the thieves had anticipated that the family would wake, and one thief had stood ready to ambush them if they incautiously came running out of the house. There was a bright moon, and Edgar clearly saw the long dagger in the thief’s right hand. The man thrust blindly into the darkness of the house, stabbing nothing but air.
Edgar hefted his ax, but Ma was quicker. Her knife gleamed and the thief roared in pain and fell to his knees. She stepped closer and her blade flashed across the man’s throat.
Edgar pushed past them both. As he emerged into the moonlight, he heard the piglet squeal. A moment later he saw two more figures coming out of the barn. One of them wore some kind of headgear that partly covered his face. In his arms he held the wriggling piglet.
They saw Edgar and ran.
Edgar was outraged. That pig was precious. If they lost it, they would not get another one: people would say they could not look after their livestock. In a moment of piercing anxiety Edgar acted without thinking. He swung the ax back over his head then hurled it at the back of the thief with the pig.
He thought it was going to miss, and he groaned in despair; but the sharp blade bit into the fugitive’s upper arm. He gave a high-pitched scream, dropped the pig, and fell to his knees, clutching the wound.
The second man helped him up.
Edgar dashed toward them.
They ran on, leaving the pig behind.
Edgar hesitated for a heartbeat. He wanted to catch the thieves. But if he let the pig go it might run a long way in its terror, and he might never find it. He abandoned pursuit of the men and went after the animal. It was young and its legs were short, and after a minute he caught up, threw himself on top of it, and got hold of a leg with both hands. The pig struggled but could not escape his grip.
He got the little beast securely in his arms, stood up, and walked back to the farmhouse.
He put the pig in the barn. He took a moment to congratulate Brindle, who wagged her tail proudly. He retrieved his ax from where it had fallen and wiped the blade on the grass to clean off the thief’s blood. Finally he rejoined his family.
They were standing over the other thief. “He’s dead,” said Eadbald.
Erman said: “Let’s throw him in the river.”
“No,” said Ma. “I want other thieves to know we killed him.” She was in no danger from the law: it was well established that a thief caught red-handed could be killed on the spot. “Follow me, boys. Bring the corpse.”
Erman and Eadbald picked it up. Ma led them into the woods and went a hundred yards along a just-visible path through the undergrowth until she came to a place where it crossed another almost imperceptible track. Anyone coming to the farm through the forest would have to pass this junction.
She looked at the surrounding trees in the moonlight and pointed to one with low, spreading branches. “I want to hang the body up in that tree,” she said.
Erman said: “What for?”
“To show people what happens to men who try to rob us.”
Edgar was impressed. He had never known his mother to be so harsh. But circumstances had changed.
Erman said: “We haven’t got any rope.”
Ma said: “Edgar will think of something.”
Edgar nodded. He pointed to a forked branch at a height of about eight feet. “Wedge him in there, with one bough under each armpit,” he said.
While his brothers were manhandling the corpse up into the tree, Edgar found a stick a foot long and an inch in diameter and sharpened one end with his ax blade.
The brothers got the body into position. “Now pull his arms together until his hands are crossed in front.”
When the brothers were holding the arms in position, Edgar held one dead hand and stuck the stick into the wrist. He had to tap it with the head of the ax to push it through the flesh. Very little blood flowed: the man’s heart had stopped some time ago.
Edgar lined up the other wrist and hammered the stick through that, too. Now the hands were riveted together and the body was firmly hung from the tree.
It would remain there until it rotted away, he thought.
But the other thieves must have returned, for the corpse was gone in the morning.
* * *
A few days later Ma sent Edgar to the village to borrow a length of stout cord to tie up her shoes, which had broken. Borrowing was common among neighbors, but no one ever had enough string. However, Ma had told the story of the Viking raid twice, first in the priests’ house and then at the alehouse; and although peasants were never quick to accept newcomers, the inhabitants of Dreng’s Ferry had warmed to Ma on hearing of her tragedy.
It was early evening. A small group sat on the benches outside Dreng’s alehouse, drinking from wooden cups as the sun went down. Edgar still had not tasted the ale, but the customers seemed to like it.
He had met all the villagers now, and he recognized the members of the group. Dean Degbert was talking to his brother, Dreng. Cwenburg and red-faced Bebbe were listening. There were three other women present. Leofgifu, called Leaf, was Cwenburg’s mother; Ethel, a younger woman, was Dreng’s other wife or perhaps concubine; and Blod, who was filling the cups from a jug, was a slave.
As Edgar approached, the slave looked up and said to him in broken Anglo-Saxon: “You want ale?”
Edgar shook his head. “I’ve no money.”
The others looked at him. Cwenburg said with a sneer: “Why have you come to an alehouse if you can’t afford a cup of ale?”
Clearly she was still smarting from Edgar’s rejection of her advances. He had made an enemy. He groaned inwardly.
Addressing the group, rather than Cwenburg herself, he said humbly: “My mother asks to borrow a length of stout cord to mend her shoe.”
Cwenburg said: “Tell her to make her own cord.”
The others were silent, watching.
Edgar was embarrassed, but he stood his ground. “The loan would be a kindness,” he said through gritted teeth. “We will repay it when we get back on our feet.”
“If that ever happens,” Cwenburg said.
Leaf made an impatient noise. She looked about thirty, so she must have been fifteen when she gave birth to Cwenburg. She had once been pretty, Edgar guessed, but now she looked as if she drank too much of her own strong brew. However, she was sober enough to be embarrassed by her daughter’s rudeness. “Don’t be so unneighborly, girl,” she said.
Dreng said angrily:
“Leave her alone. She’s all right.”
He was an indulgent father, Edgar noted; that might account for his daughter’s behavior.
Leaf stood up. “Come inside,” she said to Edgar in a kindly tone. “I’ll see what I can find.”
He followed her into the house. She drew a cup of ale from a barrel and handed it to him. “Free of charge,” she said.
“Thank you.” He took a mouthful. It lived up to its reputation: it was tasty, and it instantly lifted his spirits. He drained the cup and said: “That’s very good.”
She smiled.
It crossed Edgar’s mind that Leaf might have the same kind of designs on him as her daughter. He was not vain and did not believe that all women must be attracted to him; but he guessed that in a small place every new man must be of interest to the women.
However, Leaf turned away and rummaged in a chest. A moment later she came up with a yard of string. “Here you are.”
She was just being kind, he realized. “It’s most neighborly of you,” he said.
She took his empty cup. “My best wishes to your mother. She’s a brave woman.”
Edgar went out. Degbert, evidently having been relaxed by what he was drinking, was holding forth. “According to the calendars, we are in the nine hundred and ninety-seventh year of our Lord,” he said. “Jesus is nine hundred and ninety-seven years old. In three years’ time it will be the millennium.”
Edgar understood numbers, and he could not let that pass. “Wasn’t Jesus born in the year one?” he said.
“He was,” said Degbert. He added snootily: “Every educated man knows that.”
“Then he must have had his first birthday in year two.”
Degbert began to look unsure.
Edgar went on: “In year three, he became two years old, and so on. So this year, nine hundred and ninety-seven, he becomes nine hundred and ninety-six.”
Degbert blustered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, you arrogant young pup.”
A quiet voice in the back of Edgar’s mind told him not to argue, but the voice was overwhelmed by his wish to correct an arithmetical error. “No, no,” he said. “In fact Jesus’ birthday will be on Christmas Day, so as of now he’s still only nine hundred and ninety-five and a half.”
Leaf, watching from the doorway, grinned and said: “He’s got you there, Degsy.”
Degbert was livid. “How dare you speak like that to a priest?” he said to Edgar. “Who do you think you are? You can’t even read!”
“No, but I can count,” Edgar said stubbornly.
Dreng said: “Take your string and be off with you, and don’t come back until you’ve learned to respect your elders and betters.”
“It’s just numbers,” Edgar said, backtracking when it was too late. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
Degbert said: “Get out of my sight.”
Dreng added: “Go on, get lost.”
Edgar turned and walked away, heading back along the riverbank, despondent. His family needed all the help it could get, but he had now made two enemies.
Why had he opened his fool mouth?
CHAPTER 4
Early July 997
he Lady Ragnhild, daughter of Count Hubert of Cherbourg, was sitting between an English monk and a French priest. Ragna, as she was called, found the monk interesting and the priest pompous—but the priest was the one she was supposed to charm.
It was the time of the midday meal at Cherbourg Castle. The imposing stone fort stood at the top of the hill overlooking the harbor. Ragna’s father was proud of the building. It was innovative and unusual.
Count Hubert was proud of many things. He cherished his warlike Viking heritage, but he was more gratified by the way the Vikings had become Normans, with their own version of the French language. Most of all, he valued the way they had adopted Christianity, restoring the churches and monasteries that had been sacked by their ancestors. In a hundred years the former pirates had created a law-abiding civilization the equal of anything in Europe.
The long trestle table stood in the great hall, on the upstairs floor of the castle. It was covered with white linen cloths that reached to the floor. Ragna’s parents sat at the head. Her mother’s name was Ginnlaug, but she had changed it to the more French-sounding Genevieve to please her husband.
The count and countess and their more important guests ate from bronze bowls, drank from cherrywood cups with silver rims, and held parcel-gilt knives and spoons—costly tableware, though not extravagant.
The English monk, Brother Aldred, was miraculously handsome. He reminded Ragna of an ancient Roman marble sculpture she had seen at Rouen, the head of a man with short curly hair, stained with age and lacking the tip of the nose, but clearly part of what had once been a statue of a god.
Aldred had arrived the previous afternoon, clutching to his chest a box of books he had bought at the great Norman abbey of Jumièges. “It has a scriptorium as good as any in the world!” Aldred enthused. “An army of monks copying and decorating manuscripts for the enlightenment of mankind.” Books, and the wisdom they could bring, clearly constituted Aldred’s great passion.
Ragna had a notion that this passion had taken the place in his life that might otherwise have been held by a kind of romantic love that was forbidden by his faith. He was charming to her, but a different, hungrier expression came over his face when he looked at her brother, Richard, who was a tall boy of fourteen with lips like a girl’s.
Now Aldred was waiting for a favorable wind to take him back across the Channel to England. “I can’t wait to get home to Shiring and show my brethren how the Jumièges monks illuminate their letters,” he said. He spoke French with some Latin and Anglo-Saxon words thrown in. Ragna knew Latin, and she had picked up some Anglo-Saxon from an English nursemaid who had married a Norman sailor and come to live in Cherbourg. “And two of the books I bought are works that I’ve never previously heard of!” Aldred went on.
“Are you prior of Shiring?” Ragna asked. “You seem quite young.”
“I’m thirty-three, and no, I’m not the prior,” he said with a smile. “I’m the armarius, in charge of the scriptorium and the library.”
“Is it a big library?”
“We have eight books, but when I get home we’ll have sixteen. And the scriptorium consists of me and an assistant, Brother Tatwine. He colors the capital letters. I do the plain writing—I’m more interested in words than colors.”
The priest interrupted their conversation, reminding Ragna of her duty to make a good impression. Father Louis said: “Tell me, Lady Ragnhild, do you read?”
“Of course I do.”
He raised an eyebrow in faint surprise. There was no “of course” about it: by no means could all noblewomen read.
Ragna realized she had just made the kind of remark that gave her a reputation for haughtiness. Trying to be more amiable, she added: “My father taught me to read when I was small, before my brother was born.”
When Father Louis had arrived a week ago, Ragna’s mother had drawn her into the private quarters of the count and countess and said: “Why do you think he’s here?”
Ragna had frowned. “I don’t know.”
“He’s an important man, secretary to the count of Reims and a canon of the cathedral.” Genevieve was statuesque but, despite her imposing appearance, she was easily overawed.
“So what brings him to Cherbourg?”
“You,” Genevieve had said.
Ragna had begun to see.
Her mother went on: “The count of Reims has a son, Guillaume, who is your age and unmarried. The count is looking for a wife for his son. And Father Louis is here to see whether you might be suitable.”
Ragna felt a twinge of resentment. This kind of thing was normal, but all the same it made her feel like a cow being appraised
by a prospective purchaser. She suppressed her indignation. “What’s Guillaume like?”
“He’s a nephew of King Robert.” Robert II, twenty-five years old, was king of France. For Genevieve the greatest asset a man could have was a royal connection.
Ragna had other priorities. She was impatient to know what he was like, regardless of his social status. “Anything else?” she said, in a tone of voice that, she realized immediately, was rather arch.
“Don’t be sarcastic. It’s just the kind of thing that puts men off you.”
That shot hit home. Ragna had already discouraged several perfectly appropriate suitors. Somehow she scared them. Being so tall did not help—she had her mother’s figure—but there was more to it than that.
Genevieve went on: “Guillaume is not diseased, or mad, or depraved.”
“He sounds like every girl’s dream.”
“There you go again.”
“Sorry. I’ll be nice to Father Louis, I promise.”
Ragna was twenty years old, and she could not remain single indefinitely. She did not want to end up in a nunnery.
Her mother was getting anxious. “You want a grand passion, a lifelong romance, but those exist only in poems,” Genevieve said. “In real life we women settle for what we can get.”
Ragna knew she was right.
She would probably marry Guillaume, provided he was not completely repugnant; but she wanted to do it on her own terms. She wanted Louis to approve of her, but she also needed him to understand what sort of wife she would be. She did not plan to be purely decorative, like a gorgeous tapestry her husband would be proud to show to guests; nor would she be merely a hostess, organizing banquets and entertaining distinguished visitors. She would be her husband’s partner in the management of his estate. It was not unusual for wives to play such a role: every time a nobleman went off to war he had to leave someone in charge of his lands and his fortune. Sometimes his deputy would be a brother or a grown-up son, but often it was his wife.
Now, over a dish of bass, fresh from the sea, cooked in cider, Louis started to probe her intellectual abilities. With a distinct touch of skepticism he asked: “And what kind of thing do you read, my lady?” His tone said he could hardly believe that an attractive young woman would understand literature.