She entered Outhenham with a smile on her face and a stone in her heart. However, the village raised her spirits. It had prospered in the three years of her rule. They called her Ragna the Just. No one had done well when everyone was cheating and stealing. Now, with Seric in charge, people were more willing to pay their dues, knowing they were not being robbed, and they worked harder when they felt confident they would reap the rewards.

She slept at Seric’s house and held court in the morning. She ate a light midday meal, for there would be a feast later. She had arranged to visit the quarry in the afternoon, and when she was ready, she found Edgar waiting for her, wearing a blue cloak. He had his own horse now, a sturdy black mare called Buttress. “May I show you something on the way?” he asked as she got on her own mount.

“Of course.”

She thought he seemed uncharacteristically nervous. Whatever he had to say to her must be important to him, she guessed. Everyone had important things to say to the ealdorman’s wife, but Edgar was special, and Ragna was intrigued.

They rode to the riverside, then followed the cart track that led to the quarry. On one side were the backs of village houses, each with its small plot of land containing a vegetable garden, some fruit trees, one or two animal shelters, and a dunghill. On the other side was the East Field, partly ploughed, the damp clay furrows gleaming, though no work was being done as it was a holiday.

Edgar said: “Notice that the gap between the East Field and the village gardens is wide.”

“Much wider than necessary, enough for two roads.”

“Exactly. Now, it takes most of a day for two men to bring a boatload of stone from the quarry along this track to the river. That makes our stone more expensive. If they use a cart it’s easier, but it takes about the same length of time.”

She guessed he was making an important point, but she did not yet see it. “Is this what you want to show me?”

“When I tried to sell stone to the monastery at Combe, they told me they have started to buy it from Caen, in Normandy, because that’s cheaper.”

She was interested. “How can that be?”

“It travels all the way on one ship, down the Orne River to the sea, and across the Channel to Combe harbor.”

“And our problem is that our quarry isn’t on a river.”

“Not quite.”

“What does that mean?”

“The river is only half a mile away.”

“But we can’t make that half mile disappear.”

“I think we can.”

She smiled. She could see that he was enjoying this gradual revelation. “How?”

“Dig our own channel.”

That surprised her. “What?”

“They’ve done it at Glastonbury,” he said with the air of one who produces a winning card. “Aldred told me.”

“Dig our own river?”

“I’ve worked it out. Ten men with picks and shovels would take about twenty days to dig a channel three feet deep and a bit wider than my raft, from the river to the quarry.”

“Is that all?”

“The digging is the easy part. We might need to reinforce the banks, depending on the consistency of the soil as we dig down, but I can do that myself. More difficult is getting the depth right. Obviously it has to go down far enough to make sure water flows in from the river. But I think I can work that out.”

He was smarter than Wilf and perhaps even than Aldred, she thought, but all she said was: “What would it cost?”

“Assuming we don’t use slaves—”

“I’d rather not.”

“Then a halfpenny a day for each man plus a penny a day for a ganger, so one hundred and twenty pennies, which is half a pound of silver; and we’d have to feed them, as most of them would be away from home.”

“And it would save money in the long term.”

“A lot of money.”

Ragna felt bucked up by Edgar and his project. It would be a great new thing. It was costly, but she could afford it.

They arrived at the quarry. There were two houses now. Edgar had built a place for himself so that he did not have to share with Gab and his family. It was a fine house, with walls of vertical planks linked by tongue-and-groove joints. It had two shuttered windows, and the door was made of a single piece of oak. The door had a lock, and Edgar inserted a key and turned it to open the door.

Inside, it was a masculine domain, with pride of place given to tools, coils of rope and balls of cord, and harness. There was a barrel of ale but no wine, a truckle of hard cheese but no fruit, no flowers.

On the wall Ragna noticed a sheet of parchment hanging from a nail. Looking more closely she saw a list of customers, with details of the stones they had received and the money they had paid. Most craftsmen kept track of such things with notches on sticks. “You can write?” she said to Edgar.

He looked proud. “Aldred taught me.”

He had kept that quiet. “And obviously you can read.”

“I could if I had a book.”

Ragna resolved to give him a present of a book when his canal was finished.

She sat on the bench and he drew a cup of ale from the barrel for her. “I’m glad you don’t want to use slave labor,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s something about having slaves that brings out the worst in people. Slave owners become savage. They beat and kill and rape as if it were all right.”

Ragna sighed. “I wish all men were like you.”

He laughed.

She said: “What?”

“I remember having exactly the same thought about you. I asked you to find me a farm, and you just said yes, without hesitation, and I said to myself: Why aren’t they all like her?”

Ragna smiled. “You’ve cheered me up,” she said. “Thank you.” Impulsively she sprang to her feet and kissed him.

She meant to kiss his cheek but somehow she kissed his mouth. Her lips were on his for only a moment, and she would have thought nothing of it, but he was startled. He jumped back, away from her, and his face turned deep red.

She realized right away that she had made a mistake. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was just grateful to you for making me feel better.”

“I didn’t know you were feeling bad,” he said. He was beginning to recover his composure, but she noticed that he touched his mouth with his fingertips.

She was not going to explain to him about Carwen. “I’m missing my husband,” she said. “He’s raising an army to fight the Vikings. They’ve sailed up the river Exe. Wilf is very worried.” She saw a shadow cross his face at the mention of Vikings, and she remembered that they had killed his lover. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

He shook his head. “It’s all right. But there’s something else I need to mention to you.”

Ragna was grateful for the change of subject. “Go on.”

“Your maid Agnes is wearing a new ring.”

“Yes. Her husband gave it to her.”

“It’s made of silver wires twisted together, and has an amber stone.”

“It’s rather pretty.”

“It put me in mind of the pendant that was stolen from your courier Adelaide. It was made of silver wires with an amber stone.”

Ragna was startled. “I never noticed that!”

“I remember thinking that the amber would have suited you.”

“But how could Agnes have a ring made of Adelaide’s pendant?”

“The pendant was stolen and refashioned to disguise it. The question is how her husband got it.”

“She’s married to Offa, the reeve of Mudeford.” Ragna began to see the connections. “He probably bought it from a jeweler in Combe. That jeweler knows the go-between, and the go-between knows where Ironface is to be found.”

“Yes,” said Edgar.

“The sheriff needs to question Offa.”

“Yes,” said Edgar.

“Offa may have bought the ring innocently.”

“Yes,” said Edgar.

“I don’t want to risk getting Agnes’s husband in trouble.”

“You have to,” said Edgar.

* * *

Edgar escorted Ragna back to the center of the village and left her surrounded by a crowd. He slipped away and returned to the quarry. He set Buttress to graze at the edge of the wood. Then, at last, he lay down in his house and thought about that kiss.

He had been surprised and discomfited. He knew he must have blushed. He had jumped away. She had seen all of that, and had apologized for embarrassing him. But what she saw was only the surface. Something else happened, deep down, and he had managed to keep it hidden. When Ragna’s lips touched his, he had found himself instantly and totally overwhelmed by love for her.

A clap of thunder, a bolt of lightning, a man stricken in a second—

No, it had only seemed that way. Lying in the rushes by his fireplace, alone, eyes closed, he examined his soul and saw that he had fallen in love with her long ago. For years he had told himself that he had lost his heart to Sungifu, and no one could take her place. But at some point—he could not tell when—he had begun to love Ragna. He had not known it at the time, but it seemed obvious now.