It was a cruel remark, and tears came to her eyes. “I might not be. And if I become the ealdorman’s wife you’ll have to treat me with respect.”

“All right,” said Wynstan. “As soon as cows lay eggs.”

* * *

Ragna was free at last.

She was sad, too. She would not have Alain, and she would not have Edgar. But she would not have Wigelm or Wynstan either.

She had been under their domination for almost nine years, and now she realized how repressed she had felt for almost all that time. In theory English women had more rights than Norman women—control over their own property being the major one—but in practice it had proved difficult to enforce the law.

She had told Wigelm that she would continue to rule the Vale of Outhen. She planned to stay in England at least until Aldred’s messengers returned from Normandy. When she knew what Edgar’s plans were she could make her own.

She would write to her father, telling him what had happened, and entrust the letter to the couriers who brought her money four times a year. Count Hubert was going to be angry, she felt sure, though she did not know what he would do about it.

Her maids packed. Cat, Gilda, and Winnie all wanted to go with Ragna.

She asked Den to lend her a couple of bodyguards for the journey. As soon as she was settled she would hire her own.

She was not allowed to say good-bye to Alain.

They loaded the horses and left early in the morning, with little fuss. Many of the women in the compound came out of their houses to say quiet good-byes. Everyone felt that Wigelm’s behavior had been shameful.

They rode out of the compound and took the road to King’s Bridge.

CHAPTER 40

    Summer 1006

agna moved into Edgar’s house.

It was Aldred’s idea. She asked him, as landlord, where she might set up home in King’s Bridge, and he told her he had been keeping the house empty in the hope that Edgar would return. Neither of them doubted that Edgar would want to live with Ragna—if he came home.

The place was the same size and shape as most houses, just better built. The edge-to-edge upright planks were sealed with wool soaked in tar, as in the hull of a ship, so that rain could not enter even in the stormiest weather. There was a second door, at one end of the building, leading out into an animal pen. There were smoke holes in the gable ends that made the air in the room more pleasant.

Edgar’s spirit was here, Ragna felt, in the combination of meticulousness and invention with which the house had been built.

She had been here once before. That was the occasion on which he showed her the box he had made for the book she had given him. She remembered the neat rack of tools, the wine barrel and the cheese safe, and Brindle wagging her tail—all gone now. She also remembered how he had held her hands while she wept.

She wondered where he was living now.

As she settled in, she hoped every morning that this would be the day the messengers returned with news of him, but no word came. Normandy was a big region, and Edgar might not even be there: he could have moved on to Paris or even Rome. The messengers might well have got lost. They could have been robbed and murdered. They might even have liked France better than England and decided not to come home.

Even if they found Edgar he might not want to return. He could be married. By now he could have a child learning to talk in Norman French. She knew she should not get her hopes up.

However, she was not going to live like a poor rejected woman. She was wealthy and powerful and she would show it. She hired a dressmaker, a cook, and three bodyguards. She bought three horses and employed a groom. She began to build stables and storehouses and a second house on the neighboring plot for all her extra servants. She made a trip to Combe and bought tableware, cooking equipment, and wall hangings. While there she commissioned a boatbuilder to make her a barge to take her from King’s Bridge to Outhenham. She also ordered a great hall to be built for herself at Outhenham.

She would visit Outhenham soon, to make sure Wigelm did not try to usurp her authority there; but for now she concentrated on her new life at King’s Bridge. In Edgar’s absence the main attraction of the place was Aldred’s school. Osbert was seven and the twins five, and all three had morning lessons six days a week, along with three novice monks and a handful of boys from the neighborhood. Cat did not want her daughters educated—she feared it would give them ideas above their station—but when the boys came home they shared what they had learned.

Ragna would never get used to being without Alain. She worried about him all the time: when she woke up she wondered if he was hungry, in the afternoon she hoped he was not tired, in the evening she knew he should soon be put to bed. Such hopeless thoughts gradually came to occupy her less, but her grief was always in the back of her mind. She refused to accept that her separation from her child was permanent. Something would happen. Ethelred might change his mind and order Wigelm to give the child back. Wigelm might die. Every night she thought about such happy possibilities, and every night she cried herself to sleep.

She renewed her acquaintance with Blod, Dreng’s slave. The two got on well, which was surprising: they were so far apart socially that they might have lived in different worlds. But Ragna enjoyed Blod’s no-nonsense attitude to life. And they shared a fondness for Edgar. At the alehouse Blod now brewed the beer, did the cooking, and took care of Dreng’s wife, Ethel. Happily, Blod was seldom prostituted these days, she told Ragna. “Dreng says I’m too old,” she said wryly, one day when Ragna went to the tavern to buy a barrel of ale.

“How old are you?” Ragna asked.

“Twenty-two, I think. But anyway I was always too sulky to please the men. So he’s bought a new girl, now that he’s making so much money on market days.” They were standing outside the brewhouse, and Blod pointed to a girl in a short dress who was dipping a bucket in the river. Her lack of any kind of hat or headdress marked her as a slave and a prostitute, but also revealed a head of thick, dark-red hair falling in waves to her shoulders. “That’s Mairead. She’s Irish.”

“She looks terribly young.”

“She’s about twelve—the age I was when I came here.”

“Poor girl.”

Blod was brutally practical. “If men are going to pay for sex, they want something they can’t get at home.”

Ragna studied the girl more carefully. There was a roundness to her that did not come from eating well. “Is she pregnant?”

“Yes, and she’s farther gone than she looks, but Dreng hasn’t realized yet. He’s ignorant about such things. However, he’s going to be furious. Men won’t pay as much for a pregnant woman.”

Despite Blod’s tough practicality, Ragna detected in her tone a fondness for Mairead, and she felt glad that the slave girl had someone to look out for her.

She paid Blod for the ale, and Blod rolled a barrel out of the brewhouse.

Dreng himself emerged from the henhouse with a few eggs in a basket. He was getting fat, and limping more than ever. He gave Ragna a cursory nod—he no longer troubled to toady to her, now that she had fallen from favor—and walked past. He was breathing hard even though he was hardly exerting himself.

Ethel came to the door of the alehouse. She, too, looked ill. She was in her late twenties, Ragna knew, but she appeared older. The cause was not just a decade of marriage to Dreng. According to Mother Agatha, Ethel had an internal ailment requiring that she rest.

Blod looked worried and said: “Do you need something, Ethel?” Ethel shook her head and took the eggs from Dreng, then disappeared back inside. “I have to look after her,” Blod said. “No one else will.”

“What about Edgar’s sister-in-law?”

“Cwenburg? You won’t see her taking care of her stepmother.” Blod began to push the barrel up the hill. “I’ll bring this to your house.” She leaned into her work. She was a strong woman, Ragna saw.

Across from Ragna’s house, Aldred was supervising a mixed group of monks and laborers who were pulling up tree stumps and clearing bushes on the site of the proposed new church. He saw Ragna and Blod, and came over. “You’ll have a rival soon,” he said to Blod. “I’m planning to build an alehouse here in the marketplace and lease it to a man from Mudeford.”

Blod said: “Dreng will be outraged.”

“He’s always outraged about something,” Aldred replied. “The town is big enough now for two alehouses. On market days we could do with four.”

Ragna said: “Is an alehouse an appropriate thing for a monastery to own?”

“This one will have no prostitutes,” Aldred said with a severe look.

Blod said: “Good for you.”