“You can’t find her, of course,” Aldred said.

Odo threw up his hands in a gesture of frustration. “In Shiring they say she has gone to Outhenham, and at Outhenham they say she is in Combe, but we came via Combe and she was not there.”

Aldred nodded. “No one can find her. Of course I will take care of her money, if that is your wish. But our latest information is that she has gone home to Cherbourg.”

Odo was astonished. “But she is not there! If she were, we would not have come to England!”

“Of course not,” said Aldred.

Edgar said: “Then where on earth is she?”

* * *

Ragna and Cat and their children had been grabbed in their house and tied up and gagged by Wigelm and a group of men-at-arms. Under cover of darkness they had been carried out of the compound then bundled onto a four-wheeled cart and covered with blankets.

The children had been terrified, and the worst of it was that Ragna could not speak words of comfort to them.

The cart had jolted along dry-rutted dirt roads for hours. From what Ragna could hear, it had an escort of half a dozen men on horseback. However, they were quiet, speaking as little as possible and doing so in low voices.

The children had cried themselves to sleep.

When the cart stopped and the blankets were removed, it was daylight. Ragna saw that they were in a clearing in the forest. Agnes was with the escort, and that was when Ragna realized that she was a traitor. Agnes must have betrayed Ragna by telling Wynstan of Ragna’s plan to flee with Edgar. All this time the seamstress had been nursing a secret hatred of Ragna for the execution of her husband, Offa. Ragna cursed the merciful impulse that had led her to reemploy the woman.

She now saw that the children’s cots were on the cart with the prisoners. But everything was covered up. What had this looked like to villagers who saw the group pass by? Certainly not a kidnapping, for the women and children had not been visible. Ragna herself would have assumed, from the armed escort, that the blankets hid a large quantity of silver or other valuables that a wealthy nobleman or clergyman was transferring from one place to another.

Now, with no one around to see, Agnes untied the children and let them pee at the edge of the clearing. They would not run off, of course, for that would mean leaving their mothers behind. They were given bread soaked in milk, then tied up and gagged again. Then the mothers were released, one at a time, and watched carefully by the men as they relieved themselves then ate and drank a little. When all that was done, the prisoners were covered up again and the cart jolted on.

They stopped twice more at intervals of several hours.

That evening they arrived at Wilwulf’s hunting lodge in the forest.

Ragna had been there before, in the happy, early days of her marriage. She had always loved hunting, and it had reminded her of when she had hunted with Wilf in Normandy, and they had killed a boar together and then kissed passionately for the first time. But after the marriage started to go wrong, she had lost her enthusiasm for the chase.

The lodge was remote and isolated, she recalled. There were stables, kennels, stores, and a large house. A caretaker and his wife lived in one of the smaller buildings, but other than them no one had any reason to come here unless there was a hunting party.

Ragna and the others were carried into the big house and untied. The caretaker nailed boards over the two windows, making it impossible to open the shutters, and fixed a bar to the outside of the door. His wife brought a pot of porridge for their supper. Then they were left until morning.

That had been two months ago.

Agnes always brought them their food. They were allowed to exercise once a day, but Ragna was never let out at the same time as the children. There were always two of Wigelm’s personal bodyguard outside, Fulcric and Elfgar. As far as Ragna could tell there were never visitors.

Wigelm and Wynstan could not have done this to an English noblewoman. She would have had a powerful family, parents and siblings and cousins with money and men-at-arms, who would have come looking for her, would have demanded that the king enforce her rights, and failing that would have come to Shiring with an army. Ragna was vulnerable because her family was too far away to intervene.

Agnes enjoyed bringing bad news with the food. “Your boyfriend Edgar kicked up a fuss,” she had said early on.

“I knew he would,” Ragna had replied.

Cat had added: “He is a loyal friend.”

Agnes ignored that jibe. “He got beaten black and blue,” she said with malign satisfaction. “Fulcric held him still while Wigelm beat him with a club.”

Ragna whispered: “God save him.”

“I don’t know about God, but Gilda took him to Sheriff Den’s place. He couldn’t stand upright for twenty-four hours.”

At least he was alive, Ragna thought. Wigelm had not killed him. Already in trouble with the king, Wigelm had perhaps not wanted to add to his list of offenses.

Agnes was malign, but Ragna could beguile her into revealing information. “They can’t hide us here long,” she had said one day. “People know Wilwulf had a hunting lodge here—soon someone will show up looking for us.”

“No, they won’t,” Agnes had said with a triumphant look. “Wigelm has told people that this place burned down. He has even built a new hunting lodge near Outhenham. He says the game is more abundant there.”

That had been Wynstan’s idea, Ragna thought in despair; Wigelm was not clever enough to have thought of it.

All the same, there was a limit to how long their imprisonment could be kept secret. The forest was not empty of people: there were charcoal burners, horse catchers, woodcutters, miners, and outlaws. They might be frightened off by the men-at-arms, but it was impossible to stop them peeping from the bushes. Sooner or later someone would wonder whether prisoners were being kept at the hunting lodge.

Then rumors would start. People would say the house held a monster with two heads, or a coven of witches, or a corpse that came back to life at the full moon and tried to break open its coffin. But someone would connect the prison with the missing noblewoman.

How long would that take? The forest folk’s way of life meant they had little contact with ordinary peasants or townspeople. They did not speak to strangers for months on end. At some point they had to go to market with a string of newly broken horses or a cartload of iron ore, but that would most likely happen next spring.

As the weeks turned into months Ragna sank into depression. The children grizzled all the time, Cat was bad-tempered, and Ragna found she could not think of a reason to wash her face in the morning.

And then she found out that there was worse in store; much worse.

She was making scratch marks on the wall to count the days, and it was not long before Halloween when Wigelm arrived.

It was dark outside, and the children were already asleep. Ragna and Cat were sitting on a bench by the fire. The room was lit by a single rush lamp—they were allowed only one at a time. Fulcric opened the door for Wigelm then closed it, remaining outside.

Ragna looked carefully and saw that Wigelm was not armed.

“What do you want?” she said, and she immediately felt ashamed of the note of fear she heard in her own voice.

With a gesture of his thumb Wigelm ordered Cat to get up, then he took her place. Ragna shifted along the bench to be as far from him as possible.

He said: “You’ve had plenty of time to think about your position.”

With an effort, she summoned some of her old spirit. “I’ve been illegally imprisoned. I worked that out in no time at all.”

“You’re powerless and penniless.”

“I’m penniless because you stole my money. By the way, a widow is entitled to the return of her dowry. Mine was twenty pounds of silver. You stole Wilf’s treasury, too, so you owe me twenty pounds from that. How soon can you let me have the money?”

Wigelm said: “If you marry me you can have it all.”

“And lose my soul. No, thank you, I’ll just take my money.”

He shook his head as if saddened. “Why do you have to be such a bitch? What’s wrong with being nice to a man?”

“Wigelm, why have you come here?”

He sighed theatrically. “I made you a good offer. I will marry you—”

“So condescending!”

“—and together we will ask the king to appoint us to rule Shiring. I was hoping that by now you might have seen the sense of accepting my proposal.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You won’t get a better one.” He grasped her upper arm with a strong hand. “Come, now, you can’t pretend to find me unattractive.”

“Pretend? Let go of me.”

“I promise you, after one shag with me you’ll be begging for more.”

She wrenched her arm from his grasp and stood up. “Never!”

To Ragna’s surprise he went to the door and tapped on it, then turned back to her. “Never is a long time,” he said. The guard opened the door and Wigelm went out.