by Ken Follett
The brothers had lost father and mother in just over a year. Erman said: “As the eldest son, I’m head of the family now.” No one believed that. Edgar was the smart one, the resourceful one, the brother who came up with solutions to problems. He might never say so, but he was in practice head of the family. And that included the tiresome Cwenburg and her baby.
The rain stopped the day after the funeral, and Edgar started on the ditch. He did not know whether his plan would work. Was it an idea that would fail in practice, like the stone tiles for the roof of the brewhouse? He could only try it and see.
He used a wooden spade with a rusty iron tip. He did not want the ditch to have high banks—that would have defeated the purpose—so he had to carry the soil down to the river. He used it to raise the riverbank.
Life at the farmhouse was barely tolerable without Ma. Erman watched Edgar eat, following every morsel from the bowl to Edgar’s mouth. Cwenburg continued her campaign to make Edgar regret that he had not married her. Eadbald complained of backache from weeding. Only little Winnie was pleasant.
The ditch took two weeks. There was water in it from the start, a streamlet running slowly downhill; a hopeful sign, Edgar thought. He opened a gap in the riverbank to let the water out. A pond formed behind the bank, its surface at the same height as that of the river, and Edgar realized there was a law of nature that made all water seek the same level.
He was barefoot in the pond, reinforcing the bank with stones, when he felt something move under his toes. There were fish in this pond, he realized. He was treading on eels. How had that happened?
He looked at what he had created, imagining the life of underwater creatures. They seemed to swim more or less randomly, and clearly some would pass from the river to the pond through the gap he had made in the bank. But how would they find their way out again? They would be ensnared, at least for a while.
He began to glimpse a solution to the food problem.
Fishing with a hook and line was a slow and unreliable way to get food. The fishermen of Combe made large nets and sailed in big ships to locations where fish swam in schools of a thousand or more. But there was another way.
Edgar had seen basketwork fish traps and he thought he could make one. He went into the forest and collected long, pliable green twigs from bushes and saplings. Then he sat on the ground outside the farmhouse and began to twist the twigs into the shape he remembered.
Erman saw him and said: “When you’ve finished playing, you could help us in the fields.”
Edgar made a large basket with a narrow neck. It would catch fish the same way the pond did, by being easy to enter and difficult to leave—if it worked.
He finished it that evening.
In the morning he went to the tavern dunghill, looking for something he could use as bait. He found the head of a chicken and two decomposing rabbit feet. He put them in the bottom of the basket.
He added a stone for stability, then sank the trap in the pond he had created.
He forced himself to leave it where it was, without checking it, for twenty-four hours.
Next morning, as he was leaving the farmhouse, Eadbald said: “Where are you going?”
“To look at my fish trap.”
“Is that what you were making?”
“I don’t know if it will work.”
“I’m coming to see.”
They all followed him, Eadbald and Erman and Cwenburg with the baby.
Edgar waded into the pond, which was thigh high. He was not sure exactly where he had sunk the trap. He had to bend down and feel around in the mud. It might even have moved in the night.
“You’ve lost it!” Erman jeered.
He could not have lost it; the pond was not big enough. But another time he would mark its location with some kind of buoy, probably a piece of wood tied to the basket by a string long enough to allow the wood to float on the surface.
If there was another time.
At last his hands came in contact with the basketwork.
He sent up a silent prayer.
He found the neck of the trap and upended it so that the entrance was at the top, then he lifted.
It seemed heavy, and he worried that it might somehow have got stuck.
With a heave he pulled it above the surface, water pouring away through the small holes between the woven twigs.
When the water was gone he could see clearly into the trap. It was full of eels.
Eadbald said delightedly: “Would you look at that?”
Cwenburg clapped her hand. “We’re rich!”
“It worked,” Edgar said with profound satisfaction. This haul would allow them to eat well for a week or more.
Eadbald said: “I see a couple of river trout in there, and some smaller fish I can’t identify.”
“The tiddlers will serve as bait next time,” said Edgar.
“Next time? You think you can do this every week?”
Edgar shrugged. “I’m not certain, but I don’t see why not. Every day, even. There are millions of fish in the river.”
“We’ll have more fish than we can eat!”
“Then we’ll sell some and buy meat.”
They headed back to the house, Edgar carrying the basket on his shoulder. Eadbald said: “I wonder why no one did this before.”
“I suppose the previous owner of the farm didn’t think of it,” said Edgar. He thought some more and added: “And no one else in this place is hungry enough to try new ideas.”
They put the fish into a large bowl of water. Cwenburg cleaned and skinned a big one, then roasted it over the fire for breakfast. Brindle ate the skin.
They decided they would have the trout for dinner and prepare the rest for smoking. The eels would hang from the rafters and be preserved for the winter.
Edgar put the small fish back in the basket as bait and returned the trap to the pond. He wondered how much he would haul up the second time. If it was even half as much as today’s catch, he would have some to sell.
He sat looking at the ditch, the riverbank, and the pond. He had solved the flooding problem and might even have ensured that the family had enough to eat for the foreseeable future. So he wondered why he was not happy.
It did not take him long to figure out the answer.
He did not want to be a fisherman. Nor a farmer. When he had dreamed about the life ahead of him, he had never envisaged that his great achievement would be a fish trap. He felt like one of the eels, swimming round and round in the basket and always missing the narrow way out.
He knew he had a gift. Some men could fight, and some could recite a poem that went on for hours, and some could steer a ship by the stars. Edgar’s gift had to do with shapes, and something about numbers; and somewhere in there was an intuitive grasp of weights and stress, pressure and tension, and the twisting strain for which there was no word.
There had been a time when he had not realized he was exceptional in this way, and he had caused offense sometimes, especially with older men, by saying things such as: “Isn’t that obvious?”
He just saw certain things. He had imagined the excess rain running off the field into his ditch, and down the ditch into the river; and his vision had come true.
And he could do more. He had built a Viking boat and a stone brewhouse and a drainage ditch, but that was only the start. His gift had to be used for greater things. He knew that, the way he had known that the fish would get caught in the trap.
It was his destiny.
CHAPTER 21
September 998
ldred was playing a dangerous game: trying to bring down a bishop. All bishops were powerful, but Wynstan was also ruthless and brutal. Abbot Osmund was right to be scared of him. To offend him was to put your head into the mouth of a lion.
But Christians had to do that sort of thing.
The more Aldred thought about it, the more sure he was that the man to prosecute Wynstan was Sheriff Den. First, the sheriff was the king’s representative, and forgery was an offense against the king, whose duty it was to keep the currency sound. Second, the sheriff and his men formed a power group that rivaled Wilwulf and his brothers: each restrained the other, which caused animosity on both sides. Aldred was sure Den hated Wilf. Third, the successful prosecution of a high-ranking forger would be a personal triumph for the sheriff. It would please the king, who would surely reward Den handsomely.
Aldred spoke to Den after Mass on Sunday. He made it look casual, just two of the important men of the town exchanging courtesies: he was keen to avoid the appearance of conspiracy. Smiling amiably, he said quietly: “I need to speak to you privately. May I call at your compound tomorrow?”
Den’s eyes widened in surprise. He had an alert intelligence, and no doubt he could guess that this was no merely social request. “Of course,” he replied, in the same tone of polite small talk. “A pleasure.”
“In the afternoon, if that suits you.” That was the time when the monks’ religious duties were light.
“Certainly.”
“And the fewer people who know, the better.”
“I understand.”
Next day Aldred slipped out of the abbey after the midday meal, when the townspeople were sleepily digesting their mutton and ale, and few people were on the streets to notice him. Now that he was about to tell the sheriff everything, he began to worry about what reaction he would get. Would Den have the nerve to go up against the mighty Wynstan?
He found Den alone in his great hall, using a handheld whetstone to sharpen a favorite sword. Aldred began his story with his first visit to Dreng’s Ferry: the unfriendliness of the inhabitants, the decadent atmosphere at the minster, and his instinct that there was a guilty secret there. Den looked intrigued by Wynstan’s quarterly visits, and the gifts he brought; then he was amused at the idea of Aldred sending someone to follow Wynstan around the pleasure houses of Combe. But when Aldred began on the weighing of coins, Den put down his sword and the stone, listening avidly.
“Clearly Wynstan and Degbert go to Combe to spend some of their forgeries and change others for genuine money in a large town where there is lots of commerce and the counterfeits are unlikely to be noticed.”
Den nodded. “That makes sense. Pennies move from one person to another quickly in a town.”
“But the coins must be produced in Dreng’s Ferry. To make perfect copies of the dies used in the royal mints requires the skill of a jeweler—and there is a jeweler in the minster at Dreng’s Ferry. His name is Cuthbert.”
Den was both appalled and eager. He seemed genuinely shocked by the enormity of the crime. “A bishop!” he said in an excited whisper. “Counterfeiting the king’s currency!” But he was also thrilled. “If I expose this crime, King Ethelred will never forget my name!”
When he had calmed down Aldred got him to focus on just how they would pounce.
“We need to catch them at it,” Den said. “I need to see the materials, the tools, the process. I need to see the false money being manufactured.”
“I think that can be arranged,” said Aldred, sounding more confident than he felt. “They do it at regular times, always a few days after the quarter day. Wynstan collects his rents, takes genuine money to Dreng’s Ferry, and there turns it into twice as many counterfeit coins.”
“It’s diabolical. But for us to catch them, they mustn’t be forewarned.” Den became thoughtful. “I would have to leave Shiring before Wynstan, so that he wouldn’t get the idea he was being followed. I’d need a pretext: I could pretend we’re going to search for Ironface in, say, the woods around Bathford.”
“Good idea. I heard a report of goats being stolen there a few weeks ago.”
“Then we would have to hide out in the forest near Dreng’s Ferry, well away from the road. However, we would need someone to tell us when Wynstan arrives at the minster.”
“I can arrange that. I have an ally in the village.”
“Trustworthy?”
“He already knows everything. It’s Edgar the builder.”
“Good choice. He helped the lady Ragna in Outhenham. Young, but smart. He would have to alert us as soon as they begin making the coins. Do you think he would do that?”
“Yes.”
“I believe we have the beginnings of a plan. But I need to think this over carefully. We’ll talk more later.”
“Whenever you like, sheriff.”
* * *
On Michaelmas, the twenty-ninth day of September, Bishop Wynstan sat in his residence at Shiring, receiving his rents.
Wealth poured into his treasury all day long, giving him a pleasure that was every bit as good as sex. The head men of nearby villages appeared in the morning, driving livestock, steering loaded carts, and carrying bags and chests of silver pennies. Tribute from more distant places within Shiring arrived in the afternoon. Wynstan as bishop was also lord of villages in other shires, and their payments would arrive over the next day or two. He tallied it all as carefully as a hungry peasant counted the baby chicks in the henhouse. He liked the silver pennies best of all, for he could take them to Dreng’s Ferry where they would miraculously be doubled.
The headman of Meddock was twelve pence short. The defaulter was Godric, the son of the priest, who had come to explain. “My lord bishop, I beg your gracious mercy,” said Godric.
“Never mind that, where’s my money?” said Wynstan.
“The rain has been terrible, before and after Midsummer. I have a wife and two children, and I don’t know how I’m going to feed them this winter.”
This was not like last year’s calamity at Combe, where everyone in town had been impoverished. Wynstan said: “Everyone else in Meddock has paid their dues.”
“My land is on a west-facing slope, and my crops were washed out. I will pay you double next year.”
“No, you won’t, you’ll tell me another story.”
“I swear it.”
“If I accepted oaths instead of rents, I’d be poor and you’d be rich.”
“Then what am I to do?”
“Borrow.”
“I asked my father, the priest, but he doesn’t have the money.”
“If your own father has refused you, why should I help you?”
“Then what can I do?”
“Get the money somehow. If you can’t borrow it, sell yourself and your family into slavery.”
“Would you take us as slaves, my lord?”
“Is your family here?”
Godric pointed. A woman and two children were waiting anxiously in the background.
Wynstan said: “Your wife is too old to be worth much, and your children are too small. I won’t take any of you. Try someone else. Widow Ymma, the furrier, is rich.”
“My lord—”
“Get out of my sight. Headman, if Godric hasn’t paid by the end of today, find another peasant for the west-sloping land. And make sure the new man understands the need for drainage furrows. This is the west of England, for heaven’s sake—it rains here.”
There were several like Godric during the day, and Wynstan gave each the same treatment. If peasants were allowed to skip payments, they would all show up on quarter days with empty hands and sad stories.
Wynstan was also collecting rents for Wilwulf, and beside him Ithamar was carefully keeping the two sets of accounts separate. Wynstan took a modest rake-off from Wilf’s money. The bishop was keenly aware that his wealth and power were magnified by his relationship to the ealdorman, and he was not going to endanger that relationship.
At the end of the afternoon Wynstan summoned servants to transport Wilf’s rents in kind to the compound, but Wynstan carried the silver himself, liking to deliver it pe
rsonally, so that it looked like a gift from him. He found Wilf in the great hall. “There’s not as much in the chest as there used to be, before you gave the Vale of Outhen to the lady Ragna,” he said.
“She’s there now,” Wilf said.
Wynstan nodded. This was the third quarter-day on which Ragna had collected her rents personally. After her showdown with him on Lady Day she clearly was in no hurry to delegate to an underling. “She’s remarkable,” he said, speaking as if he liked her. “So beautiful, and so smart. I understand why you seek her advice so often—even though she’s a woman.”
The compliment was barbed. A man who was dominated by his wife was subject to many jibes, most of them obscene. Wilf did not miss the nuance. He said: “I seek your advice, and you’re a mere priest.”
“True.” Wynstan smiled, acknowledging the riposte. He sat down, and a servant poured him a glass of wine. “She made a fool of your son over that ball game.”
Wilf made a sour face. “Garulf is a fool, I’m sorry to say. He showed that in Wales. He’s no coward—he’ll fight against any odds. But he’s no general either. His notion of strategy is to charge into battle yelling at the top of his voice. However, the men follow him.”
They moved on to talk about the Vikings. This year the raids had been farther east, in Hampshire and Sussex, and Shiring had largely escaped, by contrast with the previous year, when Combe and other places in Wilf’s domain had been ravaged. However, Shiring had suffered from this year’s unseasonal rain. “Perhaps God is displeased with the people of Shiring,” Wilf said.
“For not giving enough of their money to the church, probably,” said Wynstan, and Wilf laughed.
Before returning to his residence, Wynstan went to see his mother, Gytha. He kissed her and sat by her fire. She said: “Brother Aldred went to see Sheriff Den.”
Wynstan was intrigued. “Did he, now?”
“He went alone, and was quite discreet. He probably thinks no one noticed. But I heard about it.”