Ragna took him to his usual chair, then sat beside him. Someone poured him a cup of wine. He drank it down and asked for more.

He ate heartily and guffawed at all the usual jokes the men made, seeming like his old self. Ragna knew this was an illusion that would not survive any attempt at serious conversation, and she found herself trying to protect him. When he said something foolish she laughed, as if he were just being amusing; and if it was extremely foolish she hinted that he was drinking too much. It was amazing how much idiocy could be passed off as men’s drunken humor.

Toward the end of the meal he became amorous. He put his hand under the table and stroked her thigh through the wool of her dress, moving slowly higher.

Here it comes, she thought.

Even though she had not held a man in her arms for almost a year, she was dismayed by the prospect. But she would do it. This was her life now, and she had to get used to it.

Then Carwen came in.

She must have slipped away from the dinner table and gone to change her clothes, Ragna thought, for now she was wearing a black dress that made her look older and red shoes that would have suited a whore. She had washed her face, too, and now she glowed with youthful health and vigor.

She caught Wilf’s eye immediately.

He smiled broadly, and then looked puzzled, as if trying to remember who she was.

Standing in the doorway she smiled back, then turned to leave, and with a slight motion of her head invited him to follow.

Wilf looked unsure. So he should, Ragna thought. He is sitting next to the wife who has cared for him constantly for the last five months; he can hardly walk away from her to chase a slave girl.

Wilf stood up.

Ragna stared at him with her mouth open, horrified. She could not conceal her distress: this was too much. I can’t bear it, she thought.

“Sit down, for God’s sake,” she hissed. “Don’t be a fool.”

He looked at her and seemed surprised; then he looked away and addressed the assembled diners. “Unexpectedly,” he began, and they all started to laugh. “Unexpectedly, I find I am called away.”

No, Ragna thought; this can’t be happening.

But it was. She struggled to hold back tears.

“I shall return later,” Wilf said, walking to the exit.

At the door he paused and turned back, with the instinctive feeling for dramatic timing that he had always had.

He said: “Much later.”

The men roared with laughter, and he went out.

* * *

Wynstan, Degbert, and Dreng left Shiring quietly, in the dark, leading their horses until they were outside the town. Only a few trusted servants knew they were leaving, and Wynstan was determined that no one else should find out. They had a packhorse loaded with a small barrel and a sack as well as food and drink, but they took no men-at-arms with them. Their mission was a dangerous secret.

They were careful not to be recognized on the road. Even with no entourage, anonymity was not easy. Degbert’s bald head was conspicuous, Dreng had a distinctive reedy voice, and Wynstan was one of the best-known men in the region. So they wrapped up in heavy cloaks, buried their chins in the folds, and shrouded their faces by pulling forward their hoods—none of which was unusual in the cold, wet February weather. They hurried past other travelers, spurning the usual exchanges of information. Rather than seek hospitality at an alehouse or monastery where they would have had to reveal their faces, they spent the first night at the home of a family of charcoal burners in the forest—surly, unsociable people who paid Wynstan a fee for the license to follow their occupation.

The nearer they got to Dreng’s Ferry, the greater the danger that they would be recognized. They had a mile or two to go on the second day when they suffered a tense moment. They met a group coming in the opposite direction: a family on foot, the woman holding a baby, the man with a bucket of eels that he must have bought from Bucca Fish, and two more children trailing behind. Dreng murmured: “I know that family.”

“So do I,” said Degbert.

Wynstan kicked his horse into a trot, and his companions did likewise. The family scattered to the sides of the road. Wynstan and the others rode past without speaking. The family were too busy getting out of the way of the flying hooves to take a good look at the riders. Wynstan thought they had got away with it.

Soon afterward, they turned off the road onto a near-invisible track through the trees.

Now Degbert took the lead. The woods thickened, and they had to dismount and walk the horses. Degbert found his way to an old ruined house, probably once the home of a forester, long abandoned. Its broken walls and half-collapsed roof would provide some shelter for their second night.

Dreng gathered an armful of deadfalls and lit a fire with a spark from a flint. Degbert unloaded the packhorse. The three men made themselves as comfortable as they could as night fell.

Wynstan took a long pull from a flask and passed it around. Then he gave instructions. “You’ll have to carry the barrel of tar with you to the village,” he said. “You can’t take the horse—it might make a noise.”

Dreng said: “I can’t carry a barrel. I’ve got a bad back. A Viking—”

“I know. Degbert can take it. You’ll carry the sack of rags.”

“That looks heavy enough.”

Wynstan ignored his grumbling. “What you have to do is simple. You dip the rags in the tar, then tie them to the bridge, ideally to the ropes and the smaller wooden components. Take your time, tie them tight, don’t rush the job. When they’re all attached, light a good, dry stick, then use that to ignite all the rags, one by one.”

“This is the part that worries me,” said Degbert.

“It will be the middle of the night. A few burning rags won’t wake anyone. You’ll have all the time in the world. When the rags are alight, walk quietly back up the hill. Don’t make a noise, don’t run until you’re out of earshot. I’ll be waiting for you here with the horses.”

“They’ll know it was me,” said Dreng.

“They’ll suspect you, perhaps. You were foolish enough to oppose the building of the bridge, a protest that was doomed to be ignored, as you should have known.” Wynstan was often infuriated by the stupidity of men such as Dreng. “But then they’ll recall that you were in Shiring when the bridge was set on fire. You were seen in the great hall two days ago, and you’ll be seen there again the day after tomorrow. If anyone is smart enough to realize that you were out of sight during a period long enough to get to Dreng’s Ferry and back, I will swear that the three of us were at my residence the whole time.”

Degbert said: “They’ll blame outlaws.”

Wynstan nodded. “Outlaws are useful scapegoats.”

Dreng said: “I could hang for this.”

“So could I!” said Degbert. “Stop whining—we’re doing it for you!”

“No, you’re not. You’re doing it because you hate Aldred, both of you.”

It was true.

Degbert detested Aldred for getting him kicked out of his comfortable minster. Wynstan’s hatred was more complex. Aldred had challenged him again and again. Each time, Wynstan had punished him; but Aldred never learned his lesson. This maddened Wynstan. People were supposed to be afraid of him. Someone who had defied him should never be seen to prosper. Wynstan’s curse had to be fatal. If Aldred could oppose him, others might get the same idea. Aldred was a crack in the wall that might one day bring down the whole building.

Wynstan made himself calm. “Who cares why we’re doing it?” he said, and his fury sounded in his voice despite his effort at self-control, so that the other two looked scared. “None of us is going to hang,” he said in a more emollient tone. “If necessary I shall swear that we’re innocent, and the oath of a bishop is too powerful.” He passed the wineskin around again.

After a while he put more wood on the fire and told the others to settle down to rest. “I’ll stay awake,” he said.

They lay down, wrapped in their cloaks, but Wynstan remained sitting upright. He would have to guess when it was the middle of the night. Perhaps the exact hour did not matter, but he needed to feel sure the villagers were in the deepest trough of slumber, and the monks were a few hours away from their predawn service of Matins.

He was uncomfortable, feeling the aches and pains of a body almost forty years old, and he asked himself whether it had really been necessary for him to sleep rough in the forest with Degbert and Dreng; but he knew the answer. He had to make sure they did the job thoroughly and at the same time discreetly. As with all the most important tasks, his hands-on supervision was the only guarantee of success.