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.”

“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.