by Ken Follett
Dreng was startled. Clearly he had not anticipated anything like this. He looked baffled and said nothing for a moment. Then he turned on Edgar. “So you went crying to your mother, did you?” he sneered.
It was a feeble attack, and Edgar was untroubled. “That’s what mothers are for, isn’t it?”
“Right, that’s it, I’ve heard enough,” said Dreng. “You’re out of here, go home.”
But Cwenburg was not having that. “You can’t send him back to us,” she said to Dreng. “He’s another mouth, and there’s hardly enough to eat as it is.”
“Then you’ll come here.” Dreng was pretending to be in full control, but he was looking a bit desperate.
“No,” said Cwenburg. “I’m married, and I like it. And my baby needs a father.”
Dreng realized he was cornered, and he looked livid.
Cwenburg said: “You have to give Edgar more to eat, that’s all. You can afford it.”
Dreng turned to Edgar with a look loaded with malevolence. “You’re a sly little rat, aren’t you?”
“This wasn’t my idea,” Edgar said. “Sometimes I wish I were as clever as my mother.”
“You’re going to regret your mother’s cleverness, I promise you that.”
Cwenburg said: “I like something nice in my porridge.” She opened the chest where Ethel kept foodstuffs and took out a jar of butter. Using her belt knife she took a generous scoop and put it in Edgar’s bowl.
Dreng looked on helplessly.
“Tell your mother I did that,” Cwenburg said to Edgar.
“All right,” Edgar said.
He ate the buttered porridge fast, before anyone could stop him. It made him feel good. But Dreng’s sentence echoed in his mind: You’re going to regret your mother’s cleverness, I promise you that.
It was probably true.
CHAPTER 9
Mid−September 997
agna set off from Cherbourg with a heart full of happy anticipation. She had triumphed over her parents, and she was going to England to marry the man she loved.
The whole town came to the waterfront to cheer her off. Her ship, the Angel, had a single mast with a large multicolored sail, plus sixteen pairs of oars. The figurehead was a carved angel blowing a trumpet, and at the stern a long tail curved up and forward to terminate in a lion’s head. Its captain was a wiry graybeard called Guy who had crossed the Channel to England many times before.
Ragna had sailed in a ship only once: three years ago she had gone with her father to Fécamp, ninety miles across the Bay of Seine, never far from land. The weather had been good, the sea had been calm, and the sailors had been charmed to have a beautiful young noblewoman aboard. The trip had been pleasantly uneventful.
So she had been looking forward eagerly to this voyage, the first of many new adventures. She knew, in theory, that any sea voyage was hazardous, but she could not help feeling exhilarated: it was her nature. You could spoil anything by worrying too much.
She was accompanied by her maid, Cat; Agnes, her best seamstress; three other maids; plus Bern the Giant and six more men-at-arms to protect her. She and Bern had horses—hers was her favorite, Astrid—and they took four ponies to carry the baggage. Ragna had packed four new dresses and six new pairs of shoes. She also had a small personal wedding gift for Wilwulf, a belt of soft leather with a silver buckle and strap end, packed in its own special box.
The horses were tethered on board with straw underfoot, for a measure of cushioning in case the motion of the sea should cause them to fall. With a crew of twenty the ship was crowded.
Genevieve cried when the ship raised its anchor.
They set off in warm sunshine, with a brisk southwesterly wind that promised to take them to Combe in a couple of days. Now for the first time Ragna became anxious. Wilwulf loved her, but he might have changed. She was eager to make friends with his family and his subjects, but would they like her? Would she be able to win their affection? Or would they disdain her foreign ways, and even resent her wealth and beauty? Would she like England?
To banish such worries, Ragna and her maids practiced speaking Anglo-Saxon. Ragna had been taking lessons every day from an Englishwoman married to a Cherbourg man. Now she made the others giggle by telling them the words for the different male and female parts of the body.
Then, with hardly any warning, the summer breeze turned into an autumn storm, and cold rain whipped the ship and all its passengers.
There was no shelter. Ragna had once seen a gaily painted river barge with a canopy to shade noble ladies from the heat of the sun, but apart from that she had never come across a ship with any kind of cabin or protective roof. When it rained, passengers and crew and cargo alike all got wet. Ragna and her maids huddled together, pulling the hoods of their cloaks over their heads, trying to keep their feet out of the pools that gathered in the bottom.
But that was only the beginning. They stopped smiling as the wind turned into a gale. Captain Guy seemed calm, but he lowered the sail for fear of capsizing. Now the ship went where the weather took it. The stars were hidden behind clouds, and even the crew did not know which way they were heading. Ragna began to be scared.
The crew dropped a sea anchor off the stern. This was a big sack that filled with water and acted as a drag on the ship, moderating its motion and keeping the stern to the wind. But the swells grew. The ship pitched violently: the angel blew his trumpet up at the black sky then, a second later, down into the roiling deeps. The horses could not keep their footing and fell to their knees, neighing in terror. The men-at-arms tried to calm them, without success. Water slopped over the sides. Some of the crew began to say prayers.
Ragna began to think she would never get to England. Perhaps she was not destined to marry Wilwulf and have his children. She might die and go to hell to be punished for the sin she had committed in making love to him before they were husband and wife.
She made the mistake of picturing what it would be like to drown. She recalled a childhood game of holding her breath to see how long she could keep it up, and she felt the panic that had come over her after a minute or two. She imagined the terror of being so desperate to breathe that she inhaled lungfuls of water. How long did it take to die? The thought made her feel ill, and she threw up the dinner she had enjoyed in sunshine only a couple of hours earlier. Vomiting failed to quiet her stomach, but nausea took away her fear, for now she hardly cared whether she lived or died.
She felt as if it would go on forever. When she could no longer see the rain falling she realized it was night. The temperature dropped and she shivered in her sodden clothing.
She had no idea how long the storm had continued when, at last, it eased. The downpour became a drizzle and the wind dropped. The ship drifted in the dark: it carried lamps and a jar of oil in a waterproof chest, but there was no fire with which to light them. Captain Guy said he might have raised the sail if he had known for sure that they were far from land, but with no knowledge of the ship’s position and no light by which to see signs that land was near, it was too dangerous. They had to wait for day to restore their vision.
When dawn came Ragna saw that his caution had been wise: they were within sight of cliffs. The sky was clouded, but the clouds were brighter in one direction, which must therefore be east. The land to the north of them was England.
The crew went quickly to work despite the continuing rain: first they raised the sail, then they gave out cider and bread for breakfast, then they baled the water from the bottom of the ship.
Ragna was amazed that they could simply resume their duties. They had all nearly died: how could they act normally? She could hardly think of anything but the fact that she was still, miraculously, alive.
They sailed along the coast until they saw a small harbor with a few boats. The captain did not know the place, but he guessed they might be forty or fifty miles east
of Combe. He turned the ship landward and sailed into the harbor.
Suddenly Ragna longed for the feeling of firm ground beneath her feet.
The ship was taken into shallow water, then Ragna was carried through the shallows to a pebble beach. With her maids and bodyguards she climbed the slope to the waterfront village and went into an alehouse. Ragna was hoping for a roaring fire and a hot breakfast, but it was early in the day. The fire was low and the hostess was tousled and grumpy, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she tossed sticks onto a feeble flame.
Ragna sat shivering, waiting for her luggage to be unloaded so that she could put on dry clothing. The hostess brought stale bread and weak ale. “Welcome to England,” she said.
* * *
Ragna’s self-confidence was rocked. In her whole life she had never been so frightened for so long. When Captain Guy said they should wait until the weather changed and then sail west along the English coast to Combe, she refused firmly. She wished never to step on board a ship again. There might be more rude shocks ahead for her, and if so she wanted to meet them on dry land.
Three days later she was not sure that had been the right decision. The rain had not stopped. Every road was a swamp. Wading through the mud exhausted the horses, and being perpetually cold and wet made everyone bad-tempered. The alehouses where they stopped for refreshment were dark and dismal, offering scant respite from the discomfort outdoors, and people hearing her foreign accent would shout at her, as if that would make it easier for her to understand their language. One night the group was welcomed into the comfortable home of a minor nobleman, Thurstan of Lordsborough, but on the other two they stayed overnight at monasteries, clean but cold and cheerless.
On the road Ragna huddled in her cloak, swaying as Astrid trudged wearily on, and reminded herself that waiting at the end of her journey was the most wonderful man in the world.
On the afternoon of the third day a baggage pony slipped on a slope. It fell to its knees, and its load slid to one side. It tried to rise, but the lopsided burden caused it to overbalance again. It skidded down a mudslide, neighing frantically, and fell into a stream. Ragna cried: “Oh, the poor beast! Save it, you men!”
Several men-at-arms jumped into the water, which was about three feet deep. But they could not get the animal onto its feet. Ragna said: “You’ll have to take the bags off its back!”
That worked. One man held the horse’s head in an attempt to stop it thrashing around, and two others undid the straps. They grabbed the bags and chests and passed them to others waiting. When the pony was unloaded it came upright without help.
Looking at the baggage stacked beside the stream, Ragna said: “Where’s the little box with Wilwulf’s present?”
Everyone looked around but no one could see it.
Ragna was dismayed. “We can’t have lost it—it’s his wedding gift!” English jewelry was famous, and Wilwulf probably had high standards, so Ragna had had the buckle and strap end made by the best jeweler in Rouen.
The men who had got wet rescuing the pony now went back into the water and scrabbled around the bottom of the stream, searching for the package. But it was sharp-eyed Cat who spotted it. “There!” she cried, pointing.
Ragna saw the box a hundred yards away, floating downstream.
Suddenly a figure appeared from the bushes. Ragna had a glimpse of a head wearing some kind of helmet as the man took one step into the water and snatched up the box. “Oh, well done!” Ragna called.
For a split second he turned and looked at her, and she got a full view of a rusty old battle helmet with holes for the eyes and mouth, then the man bounded back to dry land and vanished into the vegetation.
Ragna realized she had been robbed.
She yelled: “Go after him!”
The men went in pursuit. Ragna heard them calling to one another in the woods, then their cries became muffled by the trees and the rain. After a while the riders returned one by one. The forest was too thickly overgrown for them to make any speed, they said. Ragna began to feel pessimistic. As the last man appeared, Bern said: “He eluded us.”
Ragna tried to put a brave face on it. “Let’s move on,” she said briskly. “What’s gone is gone.” They trudged forward through the mire.
But the loss of the gift was too much for Ragna to bear, on top of the storm at sea and three days of rain and dismal lodgings. Her parents had been right in their dire warnings: this was a horrible country and she had doomed herself to live in it. She could not hold back the tears. They ran hot down her face, mingling with the cold rain. She pulled her hood forward and turned her face down in the hope that others would not see.
An hour after the loss of the gift, the group came to the bank of a river and saw a hamlet on the far side. Peering through the weather, Ragna made out a few houses and a stone church. A sizable boat was moored on the opposite bank. According to the inhabitants of the last village they had passed through, the hamlet with the ferry was two days’ journey from Shiring. Two more days of misery, she thought woefully.
The men shouted over the water, and quite promptly a young man appeared and untied the ferryboat. A brown-and-white dog followed him and jumped into the boat, but the man spoke a word and the dog jumped out again.
Seeming not to care about the rain, he stood in the prow of the vessel and poled across the water. Ragna heard Agnes the seamstress murmur, “Strong boy.”
The boat bumped into the near bank. “Wait for me to tie up before you board,” said the young ferryman. “It’s safer that way.” He was pleasant and polite, but unintimidated by the arrival of a noblewoman with a large escort. He looked directly at Ragna and smiled, as if recognizing her, but she had no recollection of seeing him before.
When he had secured the boat, he said: “It’s a farthing for each person and animal. I see thirteen people and six horses, so that makes four pence and three farthings, if you please.”
Ragna nodded to Cat, who kept a purse on her belt with a small amount of money for incidental expenses. One of the ponies was carrying a locked ironbound chest with most of Ragna’s money in it, but that was opened only in private. Cat gave the ferryman five English pennies, small and light, and he gave her back a tiny quarter-disk of silver in change.
“You can ride straight on board, if you’re careful,” he said. “But if you feel nervous, dismount and lead your horse. I’m Edgar, by the way.”
Cat said: “And this is the lady Ragna, from Cherbourg.”
“I know,” he said. He bowed to Ragna. “I’m honored, my lady.”
She rode onto the boat, and the others followed.
The vessel was remarkably steady on the river, and seemed well made, with close-fitting strakes. There was no water in the bottom. “Fine boat,” Ragna said. She did not add for a dump like this, but it was implied, and for a moment she wondered whether she might have given offense.
But Edgar showed no sign that he had noticed. “You’re very kind,” he said. “I built this boat.”
“On your own?” she said skeptically.
Once again he might have felt slighted. Ragna realized she was forgetting her resolution to befriend the English. This was not like her: normally she was quick to bond with strangers. The wretchedness of the journey and the strangeness of the new country had made her short-tempered. She resolved to be nice.
But Edgar apparently did not feel put down. He smiled and said, “There aren’t two boatbuilders in this little place.”
“I’m astonished there’s one.”
“I’m a bit startled myself.”
Ragna laughed. This boy was quick-witted and did not take himself too seriously. She liked that.
Edgar saw the people and animals onto the vessel then untied it and began to pole across. Ragna was amused to see Agnes the seamstress begin a conversation with him in halting Anglo-Saxon. “My lady is to marry the ealdorman o
f Shiring.”
“Wilwulf?” said Edgar. “I thought he was already married.”
“He was, but his wife died.”
“So your mistress is going to be everyone’s mistress.”
“Unless we all drown in the rain on the way to Shiring.”
“Doesn’t it rain in Cherbourg?”
“Not like this.”
Ragna smiled. Agnes was single and eager to marry. She could do worse than this resourceful young Englishman. It would be no great surprise if one or more of Ragna’s maids found a husband here: among small groups of women, marriage was infectious.
She looked ahead. The church on the hill was built of stone but was nevertheless small and mean-looking. Its tiny windows, all different shapes, were placed haphazardly in its thick walls. In a Norman church the windows were no bigger, but they were generally all the same shape and set in regular rows. Such consistency spoke more eloquently of the orderly god who had created the hierarchical world of plants, fish, animals, and people.
The boat reached the north bank. Once again Edgar jumped out and tied it up, then invited the passengers to disembark. Again Ragna went first, and her horse gave confidence to the rest.
She dismounted outside the alehouse door. The man who came out reminded her momentarily of Wilwulf. He was the same size and build, but his face was different. “I can’t accommodate all these people,” he said in a tone of resentment. “How am I going to feed them?”
Ragna said: “How far is it to the next village?”
“Foreigner, are you?” he said, noticing her accent. “The place is called Wigleigh, and you won’t get there today.”
He was probably just working up to asking outrageous prices. Ragna became exasperated. “Well, then, what do you suggest?”
Edgar intervened. “Dreng, this is the lady Ragna from Cherbourg. She’s going to marry Ealdorman Wilwulf.”
Dreng immediately became obsequious. “Forgive me, my lady, I had no idea,” he said. “Please step inside, and welcome. You’re going to be my cousin-in-law, you may not know.”