Page 261 of The Evening and the Morning

They walked up and down to keep warm, and Elfgar walked with them. Cat asked him: “What’s wrong with Agnes?”

“Some kind of pox,” he said.

“I hope she dies of it.”

There was a pause, then Elfgar said conversationally: “I won’t be here much longer, I shouldn’t think.”

Ragna said: “Why? We’d be sorry to lose you.”

“I shall have to go and fight the Vikings.” He was pretending to be pleased, but Ragna detected an undertone of fear beneath his bravado. “The king is raising an army to come and defeat Swein Forkbeard.”

Ragna stopped walking. “Are you sure?” she said. “King Ethelred is coming to the West Country?”

“So they say.”

Ragna’s heart leaped with hope. “Then he must surely learn of our imprisonment,” she said.

Elfgar shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Our friends will tell him: Prior Aldred, and Sheriff Den, and Bishop Modulf.”

“Yes!” said Cat. “And then King Ethelred is bound to free us!”

Ragna was not sure.

“Isn’t he, my lady?”

Ragna said nothing.

“This is our chance to find Ragna,” Prior Aldred said to Sheriff Den. “We must not let the opportunity slip through our fingers.”

Aldred had come from Dreng’s Ferry to Shiring specifically to talk to Den about this. Now he studied the sheriff for his reaction. Den was fifty-eight, exactly twenty years older than Aldred, but they had much in common. Both were rule keepers. Den’s compound testified to his liking for order: his stockade was well built, the houses stood in lines, and the kitchen and dunghill were in opposite corners, as far from each other as possible. Dreng’s Ferry had acquired a similar orderly look since Aldred had taken over. But there were differences, too: Den served the king; Aldred served God.

Aldred went on: “We now know for sure that Ragna never went to Cherbourg. Count Hubert has confirmed that to us and has sent a formal complaint to King Ethelred. Wynstan and Wigelm lied.”

Den’s response was cautious. “I’d like to see Ragna safe and well, and I believe King Ethelred would, too,” he said. “But a king has multiple needs, and the different pressures on him sometimes conflict with one another.”

Den’s wife, Wilburgh, a middle-aged woman with gray hair under her cap, had a more trenchant opinion. “The king should put that devil Wigelm in a prison.”

Aldred agreed with her, but took a more practical line. “Will the king hold court in the West Country?”

“He must,” said Den. “Everywhere he goes, his subjects come to him with demands, accusations, pleas, proposals. He cannot help but hear them, and then people want decisions.”

“In Shiring?”

“If he comes here, yes.”

“Here or elsewhere, he must dosomethingabout Ragna, surely!”

“Sooner or later. His authority has been defied, and he can’t let that stand. But the timing is another matter.”

Every answer was maybe, Aldred thought with frustration, but perhaps that was normal with royalty. In a monastery, by contrast, a sin was a sin, and there was nothing to dither about. He said: “Ethelred’s new wife, Queen Emma, will surely be a strong ally to Ragna. They’re both Norman aristocrats, they knew each other when younger, they both married powerful English noblemen. They must have experienced similar joys and sorrows in our country. Queen Emma will want Ethelred to rescue Ragna.”

“And Ethelred would do so, were it not for Swein Forkbeard. Ethelred is gathering armies to do battle, and as always he relies on the thanes to muster men from the towns and villages. It’s a bad time for him to quarrel with powerful magnates such as Wigelm and Wynstan.”

Which boiled down to another maybe, Aldred thought. “Is there anything that could sway the decision?”

Den thought for a moment, then said: “Ragna herself.”