Page 154 of The Evening and the Morning

They headed back to the house, Edgar carrying the basket on his shoulder. Eadbald said: “I wonder why no one did this before.”

“I suppose the previous owner of the farm didn’t think of it,” said Edgar. He thought some more and added: “And no one else in this place is hungry enough to try new ideas.”

They put the fish into a large bowl of water. Cwenburg cleaned and skinned a big one, then roasted it over the fire for breakfast. Brindle ate the skin.

They decided they would have the trout for dinner and prepare the rest for smoking. The eels would hang from the rafters and be preserved for the winter.

Edgar put the small fish back in the basket as bait and returned the trap to the pond. He wondered how much he would haul up the second time. If it was even half as much as today’s catch, he would have some to sell.

He sat looking at the ditch, the riverbank, and the pond. He had solved the flooding problem and might even have ensured that the family had enough to eat for the foreseeable future. So he wondered why he was not happy.

It did not take him long to figure out the answer.

He did not want to be a fisherman. Nor a farmer. When he had dreamed about the life ahead of him, he had never envisaged that his great achievement would be a fish trap. He felt like one of the eels, swimming round and round in the basket and always missing the narrow way out.

He knew he had a gift. Some men could fight, and some could recite a poem that went on for hours, and some could steer a ship bythe stars. Edgar’s gift had to do with shapes, and something about numbers; and somewhere in there was an intuitive grasp of weights and stress, pressure and tension, and the twisting strain for which there was no word.

There had been a time when he had not realized he was exceptional in this way, and he had caused offense sometimes, especially with older men, by saying things such as: “Isn’t that obvious?”

He just saw certain things. He had imagined the excess rain running off the field into his ditch, and down the ditch into the river; and his vision had come true.

And he could do more. He had built a Viking boat and a stone brewhouse and a drainage ditch, but that was only the start. His gift had to be used for greater things. He knew that, the way he had known that the fish would get caught in the trap.

It was his destiny.

CHAPTER 21

September 998

ldred was playing a dangerous game: trying to bring down a bishop. All bishops were powerful, but Wynstan was also ruthless and brutal. Abbot Osmund was right to be scared of him. To offend him was to put your head into the mouth of a lion.

But Christians had to do that sort of thing.

The more Aldred thought about it, the more sure he was that the man to prosecute Wynstan was Sheriff Den. First, the sheriff was the king’s representative, and forgery was an offense against the king, whose duty it was to keep the currency sound. Second, the sheriff and his men formed a power group that rivaled Wilwulf and his brothers: each restrained the other, which caused animosity on both sides. Aldred was sure Den hated Wilf. Third, the successful prosecution of a high-ranking forger would be a personal triumph for the sheriff. It would please the king, who would surely reward Den handsomely.

Aldred spoke to Den after Mass on Sunday. He made it look casual, just two of the important men of the town exchangingcourtesies: he was keen to avoid the appearance of conspiracy. Smiling amiably, he said quietly: “I need to speak to you privately. May I call at your compound tomorrow?”

Den’s eyes widened in surprise. He had an alert intelligence, and no doubt he could guess that this was no merely social request. “Of course,” he replied, in the same tone of polite small talk. “A pleasure.”

“In the afternoon, if that suits you.” That was the time when the monks’ religious duties were light.

“Certainly.”

“And the fewer people who know, the better.”

“I understand.”

Next day Aldred slipped out of the abbey after the midday meal, when the townspeople were sleepily digesting their mutton and ale, and few people were on the streets to notice him. Now that he was about to tell the sheriff everything, he began to worry about what reaction he would get. Would Den have the nerve to go up against the mighty Wynstan?

He found Den alone in his great hall, using a handheld whetstone to sharpen a favorite sword. Aldred began his story with his first visit to Dreng’s Ferry: the unfriendliness of the inhabitants, the decadent atmosphere at the minster, and his instinct that there was a guilty secret there. Den looked intrigued by Wynstan’s quarterly visits, and the gifts he brought; then he was amused at the idea of Aldred sending someone to follow Wynstan around the pleasure houses of Combe. But when Aldred began on the weighing of coins, Den put down his sword and the stone, listening avidly.

“Clearly Wynstan and Degbert go to Combe to spend some of their forgeries and change others for genuine money in a large townwhere there is lots of commerce and the counterfeits are unlikely to be noticed.”

Den nodded. “That makes sense. Pennies move from one person to another quickly in a town.”

“But the coins must be produced in Dreng’s Ferry. To make perfect copies of the dies used in the royal mints requires the skill of a jeweler—and there is a jeweler in the minster at Dreng’s Ferry. His name is Cuthbert.”

Den was both appalled and eager. He seemed genuinely shocked by the enormity of the crime. “A bishop!” he said in an excited whisper. “Counterfeiting the king’s currency!” But he was also thrilled. “If I expose this crime, King Ethelred will never forget my name!”