Page 18 of The Evening and the Morning

“Yes, yes,” said Degbert impatiently.

Despite the peevish tone Degbert had made an important concession. They could fell trees, and there was no mention of payment. Free timber was worth a lot.

The smaller building was in worse condition than the house. Ma said: “The barn is practically falling down.”

Degbert said: “At the moment you have no need of a barn. You have nothing to store there.”

“You’re right, we’re broke,” Ma said. “So we won’t be able to pay the rent come Michaelmas.”

Degbert looked foolish. He could hardly argue. “You can owe me,” he said. “Five piglets at Michaelmas next year.”

“How can I buy a sow? These oats will be barely enough to feed my sons this winter. I won’t have anything left over to trade.”

“Are you refusing to take the farm?”

“No, I’m saying that if the farm is to be viable you have to give me more help. I need a rent holiday, and I need a sow. And I need a sack of flour on credit—we have no food.”

It was a bold set of demands. Landlords expected to be paid, not to pay out. But sometimes they had to help tenants get started, and Degbert had to know that.

Degbert looked frustrated, but he gave in. “All right,” he said. “I’ll lend you flour. No rent this year. I’ll get you a female piglet, but you’ll have to owe me one from your first litter, and that’s on top of the rent.”

“I suppose I’ll have to accept that,” said Ma. She spoke with apparent reluctance, but Edgar was pretty sure she had made a good bargain.

“And I’ll have to get back to my dinner,” Degbert said grumpily, sensing that he had been defeated. He left, heading back to the hamlet.

Ma called after him: “When do we get the piglet?”

He answered without looking back. “Soon.”

Edgar surveyed his new home. It was dismal, but he felt surprisingly good. They had a challenge to meet, and that was a lot better than the despair he had felt earlier.

Ma said: “Erman, go into the forest and gather firewood. Eadbald,go to that alehouse and beg a burning stick from their fireplace—use your charm on that ferry girl. Edgar, see if you can make temporary patches for the holes in the roof—we’ve no time now to repair the thatch properly. Snap to it, boys. And tomorrow we’ll start weeding the field.”

Degbert did not bring a piglet to the farmhouse in the next few days.

Ma did not mention it. She weeded the oats with Erman and Eadbald, the three of them bending double in the long, narrow field, while Edgar repaired the house and barn with timber from the forest, using the Viking ax and a few rusty tools left behind by the previous tenant.

But Edgar worried. Degbert was no more trustworthy than his cousin Bishop Wynstan. Edgar feared that Degbert would see them settling in, decide that they were now committed, and go back on his word. Then the family would struggle to pay the rent—and once they defaulted it would be desperately difficult to catch up, as Edgar knew from observing the fate of improvident neighbors in Combe.

“Don’t fret,” Ma said when Edgar voiced his concern. “Degbert can’t escape me. The worst of priests has to go to church sooner or later.”

Edgar hoped she was right.

When they heard the church bell on Sunday morning they walked the length of their farm to the hamlet. Edgar guessed they were the last to arrive, having the farthest to come.

The church was nothing more than a square tower attached to a one-story building to the east. Edgar could see that the entire structure was leaning downhill: one day it would fall over.

To enter they had to step sideways through an entrance that was partly blocked by the tree trunk supporting the round arch. Edgar could see why the arch was collapsing. The mortared joints between the stones of a round arch formed lines that should all point to the center of one imaginary circle, like the spokes of a well-made cart wheel, but in this arch they were random. That made the structure weaker, and it looked ugly, too.

The nave was the ground floor of the tower. Its high ceiling made the place seem even more cramped. A dozen or so adults and a few small children stood waiting for the service to begin. Edgar nodded to Cwenburg and Edith, the only two he had met before.

One of the stones making up the wall was carved with an inscription. Edgar could not read, but he guessed that someone was buried here, perhaps a nobleman who had built the church to be his last resting place.

A narrow archway in the east wall led into the chancel. Edgar peered through the gap to see an altar bearing a wooden cross with a wall painting of Jesus behind it. Degbert was there with several more clergymen.

The members of the congregation were more interested in the newcomers than in the clergy. The children stared openly at Edgar and his family, while their parents sneaked furtive glances then turned away to talk in low voices about what they had observed.

Degbert went through the service rapidly. It seemed hasty to the point of irreverence, Edgar thought, and he was not a particularly devout person. Perhaps it did not matter, for the congregation did not understand the Latin words anyway; but Edgar had been used to a more measured pace in Combe. In any event it was not his problem, so long as his sins were forgiven.