by Ken Follett
Aldred’s spirits lifted. He turned from the river and set off up the hill at a fast walk.
Edgar had decided to build his new house opposite the site of the new church, even though there was no church there yet and might never be. The walls of the house were up but the roof was not yet thatched. Edgar sat on a bale of straw, writing with a stone on a large piece of slate that he had fixed into a wooden frame. He was making a calculation, frowning with his tongue between his teeth, perhaps adding up the materials he would need to rebuild the saint’s chapel in stone.
Aldred said: “Where’s your raft?”
“On the riverbank by the tavern. Has something happened?”
“The raft is not there now.”
“Damn.” Edgar stepped outside to see, and Aldred followed. They both looked down the hill to the riverside. There were no vessels of any kind in sight. “That’s odd,” said Edgar. “They can’t both have come untied accidentally.”
“No. We’re not talking about an accident here.”
“Who . . . ?”
“Dreng has vanished. The tavern is empty.”
“He must have taken the ferry . . . and taken my raft, too, to prevent us using it.”
“Exactly. He will have set it adrift several miles away. He’ll claim he has no idea what happened to it.” Aldred felt defeated. “With no ferry and no raft, we can’t bring the visitors across the river.”
Edgar snapped his fingers. “Mother Agatha has a boat,” he said. “It’s very small—with one person rowing and two passengers it’s crowded—but it floats.”
Aldred’s hopes rose again. “A little boat is better than nothing.”
“I’ll swim across and beg a loan. Agatha will be happy to help, especially when she finds out what Dreng and Wynstan are trying to do.”
“If you’ll start rowing the visitors over, I’ll send a monk to relieve you after an hour.”
“They’re also going to want to buy food and drink at the alehouse.”
“There’s nothing there, but we can sell them everything in the priory stores. We’ve got ale and bread and fish. We’ll manage.”
Edgar ran down the hill to the riverside and Aldred hurried to the monks’ house. It was still early: there was time to get passengers across the river and turn the monastery into a tavern.
Fortunately it was a fine day. Aldred told the monks to set up trestle tables outside and round up all the cups and bowls in the hamlet. He mustered barrels of ale from the stores and loaves of bread both fresh and stale. He sent Godleof to buy all the stock Bucca Fish had in his store. He built a fire, spitted some of the fresh fishes, and started cooking them. He was run off his feet, but he was happy.
Soon the pilgrims began to come up the hill from the river. More arrived from the opposite direction. The monks started selling. There were rumbles of discontent from people who had been looking forward to meat and strong ale, but most of them cheerfully entered into the spirit of emergency arrangements.
When Edgar was relieved, he reported that the queue for the boat was getting longer, and some people were turning around and going home rather than waiting. Aldred’s fury with Dreng surged up again, but he forced himself to be calm. “Nothing we can do about that,” he said, pouring ale into wooden cups.
An hour before midday the monks herded the pilgrims into the church. Aldred had hoped the nave would be packed shoulder to shoulder, and was prepared to repeat the service for a second congregation, but that was not necessary.
With an effort he turned his mind from managing an improvised alehouse to conducting Mass. The familiar Latin phrases soon calmed his soul. They had the same effect on the congregation, who were remarkably quiet.
At the end, Aldred told the now-familiar story of the life of Saint Adolphus, and the congregation watched the effigy rise. By now most people knew what to expect, and few were actually terrified, but it was still an impressive and marvelous sight.
Afterward, they all wanted dinner.
Several people asked about staying the night. Aldred told them they could sleep in the monks’ house. Alternatively they could take shelter in the alehouse, even though the owner was away and there would be no food or drink.
They did not like either option. A pilgrimage was a holiday, and they looked forward to convivial evenings with other pilgrims, drinking and singing and, sometimes, falling in love.
In the end, most of them set out for home.
At the end of the day Aldred sat on the ground between the church and the monks’ house, looking downstream, watching a red sun sink to meet its reflection in the water. After a few minutes Edgar joined him. They sat in silence for a while, then Edgar said: “It didn’t work, did it?”
“It worked, but not well enough. The idea is sound, but it was undermined.”
“Will you try again?”
“I don’t know. Dreng operates the ferry, and that makes it difficult. What do you think?”
“I have an idea.”
Aldred smiled. Edgar always had ideas, and they were usually good. “Tell me.”
“We wouldn’t need the ferry if we had a bridge.”
Aldred stared at him. “I never thought of that.”
“You want your church to become a pilgrim destination. The river is a major obstacle, especially with Dreng in charge of the ferry. A bridge would make this place easy to reach.”
It had been a day of emotional ups and downs, but now Aldred’s mood went from deeply pessimistic to wildly hopeful in the biggest switch yet. “Can it be done?” he said eagerly.
Edgar shrugged. “We have plenty of timber.”
“More than we know what to do with. But do you know how to build a bridge?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. The hard part will be making the pillars secure in the riverbed.”
“It must be possible, because bridges exist!”
“Yes. You have to fix the foot of the pillar into a large box of stones on the riverbed. The box has to have sharp corners pointing upstream and downstream and be firmly fixed on the riverbed, so that the current can’t dislodge it.”
“How do you know such things?”
“By looking at existing structures.”
“But you’ve already thought about this.”
“I have time to think. There’s no wife to talk to me.”
“We must do this!” Aldred said excitedly. Then he thought of a snag. “But I can’t pay you.”
“You’ve never paid me for anything. But I’m still taking lessons.”
“How long would the bridge take?”
“Give me a couple of strong young monks as laborers and I think I can probably do it in six months to a year.”
“Before next Whitsunday?”
“Yes,” said Edgar.
* * *
The hundred court took place on the following Saturday. It almost turned into a riot.
The pilgrims were not the only people who had been inconvenienced by Dreng’s disappearance. Sam the shepherd had attempted to cross the river with hoggets, year-old sheep, to sell at Shiring; but he had been obliged to turn around and drive the flock home. Several more inhabitants on the far side of the river had been unable to take their produce to market. Others who liked to come to Dreng’s Ferry just on special holy days had returned home dissatisfied. Everyone felt they had been let down by someone they were entitled to rely upon. The head men of the villages berated Dreng.
“Am I a prisoner here?” Dreng protested. “Am I forbidden to leave?”
Aldred was sitting outside the church on the big wooden stool, presiding over the court. He said to Dreng: “Where did you go, anyway?”
“What business is that of yours?” Dreng said. There were shouts of protest, and he backed down. “All right, all right, I went to Mudeford Crossing with three barrels of ale to sell.�
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“On the very day when you knew there would be hundreds of ferry passengers?”
“No one told me.”
Several people shouted: “Liar!”
They were right: it was impossible that the alehouse keeper should be ignorant of the special Whitsunday service.
Aldred said: “When you go to Shiring you normally leave your family in charge of the ferry and tavern.”
“I needed the boat to transport the ale, and I needed the women to help me manhandle the barrels. I’ve got a bad back.”
Several people groaned mockingly: they had all heard about Dreng’s bad back.
Edgar said: “You’ve got a daughter and two strong sons-in-law. They could have opened the alehouse.”
“There’s no point in opening the alehouse if there’s no ferry.”
“They could have borrowed my raft. Except that the raft disappeared at the same time as you did. Wasn’t that strange?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Was my raft tied up alongside the ferry when you left?”
Dreng looked hunted. He could not figure out whether to say yes or no. “I don’t remember.”
“Did you pass the raft on your way downstream?”
“I might have.”
“Did you untie my raft and set it adrift?”
“No.”
Once again there were shouts of: “Liar!”
Dreng said: “Look! There’s nothing that says I have to operate the ferry every day. I was given this job by Dean Degbert. He was lord of this place and he never said anything about a seven-day-a-week service.”
Aldred said: “Now I’m lord, and I say it is essential that people are able to cross the river every day. There’s a church here and a fish shop, and it’s on the road between Shiring and Combe. Your unreliable service is not acceptable.”
“So are you saying you’ll give the service to someone else?”
Several people shouted: “Yes!”
Dreng said: “We’ll see what my powerful relatives in Shiring have to say about that.”
Aldred said: “No, I’m not going to give the ferry to someone else.”
There were groans, and someone said: “Why not?”
“Because I have a better idea.” Aldred paused. “I’m going to build a bridge.”
The crowd went quiet as people took that in.
Dreng was the first to react. “You can’t do that,” he said. “You’ll ruin my business.”
“You don’t deserve your business,” Aldred said. “But as it happens, you’ll be better off. The bridge will bring more people to the village and more customers to your alehouse. You’ll probably get rich.”
“I don’t want a bridge,” he said stubbornly. “I’m a ferryman.”
Aldred looked at the crowd. “How does everyone else feel? Do you want a bridge?”
There was a chorus of cheers. Of course they wanted a bridge. It would save them time. And no one liked Dreng.
Aldred looked at Dreng. “Everyone else wants a bridge. I’m going to build one.”
Dreng turned and stamped away.
CHAPTER 29
August and September 1001
agna was looking at her three sons when she heard the noise.
The twins were asleep side by side in a wooden cradle, seven months old, Hubert plump and contented, Colinan small and agile. Osbert, two years old and toddling, was sitting on the ground, stirring a wooden spoon around an empty bowl in imitation of Cat making porridge.
The sound from outside caused Ragna to glance through the open door. It was the afternoon of a summer day: the cooks were sweating in the kitchen, the dogs were sleeping in the shade, and the children were splashing at the edges of the duck pond. Just visible in the distance, beyond the outskirts of the town, fields of yellow wheat ripened in the sun.
It looked peaceful, but there was a rising hullabaloo from the town, shouts and cries and neighing, and she knew immediately that the army was home. Her heart beat faster.
She was wearing a teal-blue gown of lightweight summer cloth: she always dressed carefully, a habit for which she was now grateful, for there was no time to change. She stepped outside and stood in front of the great hall to welcome her husband. Others quickly joined her.
The return of the army was a moment of agonizing tension for the women. They longed to see their men, but they knew that not all the combatants would return from the battlefield. They looked at one another, wondering which of them would soon be weeping tears of grief.
Ragna’s own feelings were even more mixed. In the five months that he had been away, her feelings for Wilf had hardened from disappointment and sadness to anger and disgust. She had tried not to hate him, tried to remember how much they had loved each other once; then something had happened that tipped the balance. During his absence Wilf sent her no message, but a wounded soldier had returned to Shiring with a looted Viking bangle as a gift from Wilf to his slave girl, Carwen. Ragna had wept, she had stormed and raged, and finally she had just felt numb.
Yet she feared his death. He was the father of her three sons, and they needed him.
Wilf’s stepmother, Gytha, well-dressed in her habitual red, came and stood a yard away from Ragna. Inge, his first wife, and Carwen, his slave girl, followed close behind. Inge had made the mistake of dressing down while the men were away, and now she looked shabby. Young Carwen, who felt constrained in the floor-length dresses of English women, wore a colorless shift as short as a man’s tunic, and her bare feet were dirty: the poor girl looked as if she would be more at home with the children playing in the pond.
If Wilf was alive, Ragna felt sure he would greet her first: anything else would be a gross insult to his official wife. But who would he spend tonight with? No doubt they were all wondering that. The thought further soured Ragna’s mood.
The noise from the town had at first sounded like a celebration, male roars of welcome and female squeals of delight, but now Ragna realized that there was no triumphant braying of horns or thudding of vainglorious drums, and there was a discouraged feel to the hoofbeats. The exultant greetings turned into exclamations of dismay.
She frowned, concerned. Something had gone wrong.
The army appeared at the entrance to the compound. Ragna saw a cart drawn by an ox, with two men riding on each side. A driver sat at the front of the vehicle. Behind him on the flat bed of the cart was a supine form. It was a man, Ragna saw, and she recognized the fair hair and beard of Wilf. She let out a short scream: was he dead?
The entourage was moving slowly, and Ragna could not wait. She ran across the compound, and heard the other women behind her. All her resentment of Wilf for his infidelity faded into the background, and she felt nothing but excruciating worry.
She reached the cart and the procession stopped. She stared at Wilf: his eyes were closed.
She hitched up her skirts and leaped onto the cart. Kneeling beside Wilf she leaned over him, touched his face, and looked at his closed eyes. His face was deathly pale. She could not tell whether he was breathing. “Wilf,” she said. “Wilf.”
There was no response.
He was lying on a stretcher placed on top of a pile of blankets and cushions. Ragna scanned his body. The shoulders of his tunic were dark with old blood. She looked more closely at his head and saw that it seemed misshapen. He had a swelling, or perhaps more than one, on his skull. He had suffered a head injury. That was ominous.
She looked at the outriders but they said nothing and she could not read their expressions. Perhaps they did not know whether he was alive or dead.
“Wilf,” she said. “It’s me, Ragna.”
The corners of his mouth were touched by the ghost of a smile. His lips opened and he murmured: “Ragna.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s me. You’re alive,
thank God!”
He opened his mouth to speak again. She leaned closer to hear. He said: “Am I home?”
“Yes,” she said, weeping. “You’re home.”
“Good.”
She looked up. Everyone seemed to be waiting. She realized she was the one who must decide what should be done next.
In the next instant she realized something more: while Wilwulf was incapacitated, whoever had his body also had his power.
“Drive the cart to my house,” she said.
The carter cracked his whip and the ox lumbered forward. The cart was drawn across the compound to Ragna’s house. Cat, Agnes, and Bern stood at the door, and Osbert was half hiding in Cat’s skirts. The escort dismounted, and the four men gently picked up the stretcher and Wilf.
“Stop!” said Gytha.
The four men stood still and looked at her.
She said: “He must go to my house. I will take care of him.”
She had come to the same realization as Ragna, but not so quickly.
Gytha gave Ragna an insincere smile and said: “You have so much else to do.”
Ragna said: “Don’t be ridiculous.” She could hear the venom in her own voice. “I am his wife.” She turned to the four men. “Take him inside.”
They obeyed Ragna. Gytha said no more.
Ragna followed them in. They put the stretcher down in the rushes on the floor. Ragna knelt beside him and touched his forehead: he was too warm. “Give me a bowl of water and a clean rag,” she said without looking up.
She heard little Osbert say: “Who’s that man?”
“This is your father,” she said. Wilf had been away for almost half a year and Osbert had forgotten him. “He would kiss you, but he’s hurt.”
Cat put a bowl on the floor beside Wilf and handed Ragna a cloth. Ragna dipped the cloth in the water and dampened Wilf’s face. After a minute she thought he looked relieved, though that might have been her imagination.
Ragna said: “Agnes, go into town and fetch Hildi, the midwife who attended me when I gave birth to the twins.” Hildi was the most sensible medical practitioner in Shiring.