Page 116 of The Evening and the Morning

“So it’s a divorce?”

“Of sorts.”

“Then why is she here?”

“Just because she’s no longer his wife doesn’t mean he can’t see her. After all, they have a child together.”

Ragna was horrified. The man she had just married already had afamily: a wife of many years, from whom he had had a divorce “of sorts,” and a son who was almost a man. And he was clearly fond of them both. And they had now moved into the compound.

She felt as if the world had shifted under her feet, and she struggled to keep her equilibrium. She kept thinking that surely this could not be true. It could not be that everything she had believed about Wilf was wrong.

Surely he could not have deceived her so badly.

She now felt she had to get away from Gytha’s exultant gaze. She could not bear that woman’s knowing eyes on her. She went to the door, then turned back. An even worse thought had struck her.

She said: “But Wilf cannot continue to have marital relations with Inge.”

“Can’t he?” Gytha shrugged. “My dear, you must ask him aboutthat.”

CHAPTER 16

January 998

t was long past midnight when Ragna at last managed to stop crying.

She spent the night at her own house. She felt unable even to speak to Wilf. She ordered Cat to tell him that Ragna could not sleep with him because the woman’s monthly curse was upon her. That bought her time.

Her servants watched her fearfully by the firelight, but she could not bring herself to explain her anguish. “Tomorrow,” she kept saying. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

She thought she would never sleep again, but when her tears dried up, like an overused well, she did fall into a fitful doze. However, in her dreams she remembered the tragedy that had ruined her life, and she came wide awake with sudden horror and wept again.

At this time of year the compound began to stir well before the late-arriving dawn. Morning sounds brought Ragna to full alertness: men shouting to one another, dogs barking, birdsong, and the clang and clatter of a big kitchen gearing up to feed a hundred people.

It’s a new day, Ragna thought, and I don’t know what to do. I’m lost.

If only she had learned the truth a day earlier, she might have gone home to Cherbourg with her men-at-arms, she thought; but immediately she realized that was not true. Wilf would have sent an army after her, and she would have been captured and brought back to Shiring. No nobleman would permit his wife to leave him. It would be too humiliating.

Could she sneak away unnoticed and get a few days’ start? It was impossible, she saw. She was the ealdorman’s wife: her absence would be remarked within hours if not minutes. And she did not know the country well enough to evade pursuit.

What was more, to her dismay she found she did not really want to leave. She loved Wilf and desired him. He had deceived her and betrayed her, but still she could not bear the thought of living without him. She cursed her weakness.

She needed someone to talk to.

She sat up and threw off her blanket. Cat, Agnes, and Bern were staring at her, waiting apprehensively to see what she would do or say.

“Bishop Wynstan deceived us all,” she said. “Wilf’s first wife is not dead. Her name is Inge, and she has been ‘set aside,’ which seems to be a strange kind of divorce, for she has moved into the house that our men-at-arms vacated yesterday.”

Bern said: “Nobody told us!”

“People probably assumed we knew. These English don’t seem very shocked when a man has more than one wife. Remember Dreng the ferryman.”

Cat was looking thoughtful. She said: “Edgar told me, more or less.”

“Did he?”

“The first time we met him, when he took us across the river, I said my lady was going to marry the ealdorman, and he said: ‘I thought he was already married.’ And I said: ‘He was, but his wife died.’ And Edgar said he had not realized that.”

Ragna said: “The other thing they didn’t tell us was that Inge has a son by Wilf, a young man called Garulf, who has moved in with his mother.”