“Ah. And you’ve got a new boat.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Different from the old boat.” With each completed sentence the shepherd paused to enjoy the satisfaction of achievement, and Edgar wondered if that was because he normally had no one to talk to.

“Very different,” Edgar said.

“I’m Saemar, usually called Sam.”

“I hope you’re well, Sam.”

“I’m driving these hoggets to market.”

“I guessed that.” Edgar knew that hoggets were one-year-old sheep. “To cross by the ferry is a farthing for each man or beast.”

“I know.”

“For twenty sheep, two dogs, and you, that will be five pence and three farthings.”

“I know.” Saemar opened a leather purse attached to his belt. “If I give you six silver pennies, you’ll owe me a farthing.”

Edgar was not prepared for financial transactions. He had nowhere to put the money, no change, and no shears to cut coins into halves and quarters. “You can pay Dreng,” he said. “We should be able to take the herd across in one trip.”

“In the old boat, we had to transport them two at a time. It took all morning. And even then, sure enough, one or two of the stupid buggers would fall in the water, or panic and jump in, and have to be rescued. Can you swim?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. I can’t.”

“I don’t think any of your sheep will fall off this boat.”

“If there’s a way to do themselves harm, sheep’ll usually find it.”

Sam picked up a sheep and carried it onto the ferry. His dogs followed him on board and explored excitedly, sniffing the new wood. Sam then gave a distinctive trilling whistle. The dogs responded instantly. They jumped off the ferry, rounded up the sheep, and herded them to the riverbank.

This was the challenging moment.

The leading sheep hesitated, needlessly intimidated by the small watery gap between the ground and the end of the boat. It looked from side to side, searching for an alternative, but the dogs cut off its escape. The sheep looked ready to refuse the next step. Then one of the dogs growled softly, low in its throat, and the sheep jumped.

It landed sure-footedly on the interior ramp and trotted happily down onto the flat bottom of the boat.

The rest of the flock followed, and Edgar smiled with satisfaction.

The dogs followed the sheep on board and stood like sentries on either side. Sam came last. Edgar untied the rope, jumped aboard, and deployed the pole.

As they moved out into midstream, Sam said: “This is better than the old boat.” He nodded sagely. Each banality was uttered like a pearl of wisdom.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Edgar. “You’re my first passenger.”

“Used to be a girl. Cwenburg.”

“She got married.”

“Ah. They do.”

The ferry reached the north bank, and Edgar jumped out. As he was tying the rope, the sheep began to disembark. They did so with more alacrity than they had shown boarding. “They’ve seen the grass,” Sam said in explanation. Sure enough they began to graze beside the river.

Edgar and Sam went into the alehouse, leaving the dogs to mind the sheep. Ethel was preparing the midday dinner, watched by Leaf and Dreng. A moment later Blod came in with an armful of firewood.

Edgar said to Dreng: “Sam hasn’t paid yet. He owes five pence and three farthings, but I didn’t have a farthing to give him in change.”

Dreng said to Sam: “Make it a round six pence and you can fuck the slave girl.”

Sam looked eagerly at Blod.

Leaf spoke up. “She’s too far gone.” Blod was now close to nine months pregnant. No one had wanted sex with her for three or four weeks.

But Sam was keen. “I don’t mind that,” he said.

“I wasn’t worrying about you,” Leaf said scathingly. The sarcasm went over Sam’s head. “This late, the baby could be harmed.”

Dreng said: “Who cares? No one wants a slave bastard.” With a contemptuous gesture he motioned Blod to get down on the floor.

Edgar could not see how Sam could possibly lie on top of the bump of Blod’s pregnancy. But she went down on her hands and knees, then threw up the back of her grubby dress. Sam promptly knelt behind her and pulled up his tunic.

Edgar went out.

He walked down to the water and pretended to check the mooring of the ferry, though he knew perfectly well that he had tied it tight. He felt disgusted. He had never understood the men who paid for sex at Mags’s house in Combe. The whole idea seemed joyless. His brother Erman had said: “When you got to have it, you got to have it,” but Edgar had never felt that way. With Sunni, the two of them had enjoyed it equally, and Edgar thought anything less was hardly worth having.

What Sam was doing was worse than joyless, of course.

Edgar sat on the riverbank and looked across the calm gray water, hoping for more passengers to take his mind off what was going on in the alehouse. Brindle sat beside him, waiting patiently to see what he would do next. After a few minutes she went to sleep.

It was not long before the shepherd emerged from the alehouse and drove his flock up the hill between the houses onto the westbound road. Edgar did not wave.

Blod came down to the river.

Edgar said: “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Blod did not look at him. She stepped into the shallows and washed between her legs.

Edgar looked away. “It’s very cruel,” he said.

He suspected that Blod understood English. She pretended not to: when something went wrong she cursed in the liquid Welsh tongue. Dreng gave her orders with gestures and snarls. But sometimes Edgar had the feeling she was following the conversation in the alehouse, albeit furtively.

Now she confirmed his suspicion. “It’s nothing,” she said. Her English was accented but clear, her voice melodic.

“You’re not nothing,” he said.

She finished washing and stepped onto the bank. He met her eye. She was looking suspicious and hostile. “Why so nice?” she demanded. “You think you’ll get a free fuck?”

He looked away again, directing his gaze across the water to the far trees, and made no reply. He thought she would walk away, but she stayed where she was, waiting for an answer.

Eventually he said: “This dog used to belong to a woman I loved.”

Brindle opened one eye. Strange. Edgar thought, how dogs know when you are talking about them.

“The woman was a little older than me, and married,” Edgar said to Blod. She showed no emotion, but seemed to be listening attentively. “When her husband was drunk she would meet me in the woods and we would make love on the grass.”

“Make love,” she repeated, as if unsure what it meant.

“We decided to run away together.” To his surprise he found himself close to tears, and he realized it was the first time he had spoken about Sunni since talking to Ma on the journey from Combe. “I had the promise of work and a house in another town.” He was telling Blod things even his family did not know. “She was beautiful and clever and kind.” He began to feel choked up, but now that he had started the story, he wanted to go on. “I think we would have been very happy,” he said.

“What happened?”

“On the day we planned to go, the Vikings came.”

“Did they take her?”

Edgar shook his head. “She fought them, and they killed her.”

“She was lucky,” Blod said. “Believe me.”

Thinking about what Blod had just done with Sam, Edgar almost agreed. “Her name . . .” He found it hard to say. “Her name was Sunni.”

“When?”

“A week before Midsummer.”

“I am very sorry, Edgar.”

“Thank you.”

“You still love her.”

“Oh, yes,” said Edgar. “I’ll always love her.”

* * *

The weather turned stormy. One night in the second week of September there was a terrific gale. Edgar thought the church tower might be blown down. However, all the buildings in the hamlet survived except one, the flimsiest—Leaf’s brewhouse.

She lost more than the building. She had had a cauldron brewing on the fire, but the huge pot had been overturned, the fire extinguished, and the ale lost. Worse than that, barrels of new ale had been smashed by falling timbers, and sacks of malted barley were soaked beyond rescue by torrential rain.

Next morning, in the calm after the storm, they went out to inspect the damage, and some of the villagers—curious as ever—gathered around the ruins.

Dreng was furious, and raged at Leaf. “That shack was barely standing before the storm. You should have moved the ale and the barley somewhere safer!”

Leaf was not impressed by Dreng’s tantrum. “You could have moved it yourself, or told Edgar to do it,” she said. “Don’t blame me.”

He was impervious to her logic. “Now I’m going to have to buy ale in Shiring and pay to have it carted here,” he went on.

“People will appreciate my ale more when they’ve had to drink Shiring ale for a few weeks,” Leaf said complacently.

Her unconcern drove Dreng wild. “And this isn’t the first time!” he raved. “You’ve burned the brewhouse down twice. Last time you passed out dead drunk and nearly burned yourself to death.”