Page 198 of The Evening and the Morning

Agnes sat. “Revenge on the sheriff, who prosecuted Offa? Or Ragna, who condemned him to death? Or Wigbert, who hanged him?”

“Whom do you hate most?”

“Ragna. I’d like to claw her eyes out.”

“Try to stay calm.”

“I’m going to kill her.”

“No, you’re not.” A plan had been forming gradually in Wynstan’smind, and now he saw it entire. But would it work? He said: “You’re going to do something much smarter,” he said. “You’re going to take revenge on her in ways that she will never know about.”

“Tell me, tell me,” said Agnes breathlessly. “If it hurts her, I’ll do it.”

“You’re going to go back to her house and return to your old position of seamstress there.”

“No!” Agnes protested. “Never!”

“Oh, yes. You’re going to be my spy in Ragna’s house. You’ll tell me everything that goes on there, including those things that are meant to be kept secret—especially those things.”

“She’ll never take me back. She’ll suspect my motives.”

That was what Wynstan feared. Ragna was no fool. But her instinct was to look for the best in people, not the worst. Besides, she was terribly sorry about what had happened to Agnes—he had seen that at the trial. “I think Ragna feels horribly guilty about sentencing your husband to death. She’s desperate to make up for that somehow.”

“Is she?”

“She may hesitate, but she’ll do it.” Even as he said it, he wondered if it was true. “And then you will betray her, just as she betrayed you. You will ruin her life. And she will never know.”

Agnes’s face shone. She looked like a woman in the ecstasy of sexual intercourse. “Yes!” she said. “Yes, I’ll do it!”

“Good girl,” said Wynstan.

Ragna looked at Agnes, feeling an agony of conscience and regret.

Yet it was Agnes who apologized. “I have done you a terrible wrong, my lady,” she said.

Ragna was sitting on a four-legged stool by the fire. She felt thatit was she who had done Agnes a wrong. She had killed the woman’s husband. It had been the right decision, but it felt dreadfully cruel.

She hesitated to show her feelings. She let Agnes remain standing. She thought: What should I do?

Agnes said: “You might have had me flogged for the things I said to you, but you did nothing, which was more kindness than I deserved.”

Ragna waved a dismissive hand. Insults uttered in anger were the least of her concerns.

Cat, who was listening, took a different view. She said severely: “It was a lot more kindness than you deserved, Agnes.”

Ragna said: “That’s enough, Cat. I can speak for myself.”

“I beg your pardon, my lady.”

Agnes said: “I have come to ask your forgiveness, my lady, even though I know I don’t merit it.”

Ragna felt that they both needed forgiveness.

Agnes said: “I have lain awake nights thinking and I can see, now, that you did the right thing, the only thing you could. I’m so sorry.”

Ragna did not like apologies. When there was a rift between people it could not be mended by the utterance of a form of words. But she wanted to heal this rift.

Agnes went on: “I couldn’t think straight at the time, I was too distraught.”