She was not to be fobbed off. “What’s the soil like?”

“Much as you’d expect: a bit swampy beside the river, light and loamy farther up the slope. And there’s a crop of oats in the ground, just shooting green. All you’ll have to do is reap it, and you’ll be set for the winter.”

“Any oxen?”

“No, but you won’t need them. A heavy plough is unnecessary on that light soil.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why is it vacant?”

It was a shrewd question. The truth was that the last tenant had been unable to grow enough on the poor soil to feed his family. The wife and three small children had died, and the tenant had fled. But this family was different, with three good workers and only four mouths to feed. It would still be a challenge, but Wynstan had a feeling they would manage. However, he was not going to tell them the truth. “The tenant died of a fever and his wife went back to her mother,” he lied.

“The place is unhealthy, then.”

“Not in the least. It’s by a small hamlet with a minster. A minster is a church served by a community of priests living together, and—”

“I know what a minster is. It’s like a monastery but not as strict.”

“My cousin Degbert is the dean, and also landlord of the hamlet, including the farm.”

“What buildings does the farm have?”

“A house and a barn. And the previous tenant left his tools.”

“What’s the rent?”

“You’ll have to give Degbert four fat piglets at Michaelmas, for the priests’ bacon. That’s all!”

“Why is the rent so low?”

Wynstan smiled. She was a suspicious cow. “Because my cousin is a kindly man.”

Mildred snorted skeptically.

There was a silence. Wynstan watched her. She did not want the farm, he could see; she did not trust him. But there was desperation in her eyes, for she had nothing else. She would take it. She had to.

She said: “Where is this place?”

“A day and a half’s journey up the river.”

“What’s it called?”

“Dreng’s Ferry.”

CHAPTER 3

    Late June 997

hey walked for a day and a half, following a barely visible footpath beside the meandering river, three young men, their mother, and a brown-and-white dog.

Edgar felt disoriented, bewildered, and anxious. He had planned a new life for himself, but not this one. Destiny had taken a turn that was completely unexpected, and he had had no time to prepare for it. In any case, he and his family still had little idea of what was ahead of them. They knew almost nothing of the place called Dreng’s Ferry. What would it be like? Would the people be suspicious of newcomers, or welcome them? How about the farm? Would the ground be light soil, easy to cultivate, or recalcitrant heavy clay? Were there pear trees or honking wild geese or wary deer? Edgar’s family believed in plans. His father had often said that you had to build the entire boat in your imagination before picking up the first piece of timber.

There would be a lot of work to do to reinvigorate an abandoned farm, and Edgar found it difficult to summon up enthusiasm. This was the funeral of his hopes. He was never going to have his own boatyard, never build ships. He felt sure he would never marry.

He tried to interest himself in his surroundings. He had never walked this far before. He had once sailed many miles, to Cherbourg and back, but in between he had looked at nothing but water. Now for the first time he was discovering England.

There was a lot of forest, just like the one in which the family had been felling trees for as long as he could remember. The woodland was broken up by villages and a few large estates. The landscape became more undulating as they trudged farther inland. The woods grew thicker but there were still habitations: a hunting lodge, a lime pit, a tin mine, a horse-catcher’s hut, a small family of charcoal burners, a vineyard on a south-facing slope, a flock of sheep grazing a hilltop.

They met a few travelers: a fat priest on a skinny pony, a well-dressed silversmith with four grim-faced bodyguards, a burly farmer driving a big black sow to market, and a bent old woman with brown eggs to sell. They stopped and talked to each one, exchanging news and information about the road ahead.

Everyone they met had to be told about the Viking raid on Combe: this was how people got their news, from travelers. Ma gave most people a short version, but in affluent settlements she sat down and told the whole story, and the four of them got food and drink in return.

They waved at passing boats. There were no bridges, and just one ford, at a place called Mudeford Crossing. They could have spent the night in the alehouse there, but the weather was fine and Ma decided they would sleep outside and save money. However, they made their beds within shouting distance of the building.

The forest could be dangerous, Ma said, and she warned the boys to be alert, increasing Edgar’s sense of a world suddenly without rules. Lawless men lived rough here and stole from travelers. At this time of year such men could easily hide in the summer foliage and spring out unexpectedly.

Edgar and his brothers could fight back, he told himself. He still carried the ax he had taken from the Viking who killed Sunni. And they had a dog. Brindle was no use in a fight, as she had shown during the Viking raid, but she might sniff out a robber in a bush and bark a warning. More important, the four of them evidently had little worth stealing: no livestock, no fancy swords, no ironbound chest that might contain money. Nobody robs a pauper, Edgar thought. But he was not really sure even of that.

Ma set the walking pace. She was tough. Few women lived to her age, which was forty: most died in the prime childbearing years between marriage and midthirties. It was different for men. Pa had been forty-five, and there were plenty of men even older.

Ma was herself when dealing with practical problems, making decisions, and giving advice; but in the long miles of silent walking Edgar could see that she was possessed by grief. When she thought no one was looking she let down her guard and her face became drawn with sorrow. She had been with Pa more than half her life. Edgar found it hard to imagine that they had once experienced the storm of passion that he and Sunni had had for each other, but he supposed it must be so. They had produced three sons and raised them together. And after all those years they had still woken up to embrace each other in the middle of the night.

He would never know such a relationship with Sunni. While Ma mourned for what she had lost, Edgar grieved for what he would never have. He would never marry Sunni, or raise children with her, or wake up in the night for middle-aged sex; there would never be time for him and Sunni to grow accustomed to each other, to fall into routines, to take each other for granted; and he felt so sad he could hardly bear it. He had found buried treasure, something worth more than all the gold in the world, and then he had lost it. Life stretched ahead of him, empty.

On the long walk, when Ma sank into bereavement, Edgar was assaulted by flashes of remembered violence. The lush abundance of oak and hornbeam leaves around him seemed to vanish. Instead he saw the opening in Cyneric’s neck, like something on a butcher’s block; he felt Sunni’s soft body cooling in death; and he was appalled all over again to look at what he had done to the Viking, the blond-bearded Nordic face a bloody mess, disfigured by Edgar himself in a fit of uncontrollable, insane hatred. He saw the field of ash where there had been a town, the scorched bones of the old mastiff Grendel, and his father’s severed arm on the beach like jetsam. He thought of Sunni now lying in a mass grave in Combe cemetery. Although he knew her soul was with God, still he found it horrible to think that the body he loved was buried in the cold ground, tumbled with hundreds of others.

On the second day, when by chance Edgar and Ma were walking fifty yards or so ahead, she said thoughtfully: “Obviously you were some distance away from home when you saw the Viking ships.”

He had been waiting for this. Erman had asked puzzled questions, and Eadbald had guessed that something clandestine had been going on, but Edgar did not have to explain himself to them. However, Ma was different.

All the same, he was not sure where to begin, so he just said: “Yes.”

“I suppose you were meeting some girl.”

He felt embarrassed.

She went on: “No other reason for you to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night.”

He shrugged. It had always been hard to hide things from her.

“But why were you secretive about it?” she asked, following the chain of logic. “You’re old enough to woo a girl. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She paused. “Unless she was already married.”

He said nothing, but he felt his cheeks flame red.