Page 58 of The Evening and the Morning

Edgar could not see how Sam could possibly lie on top of the bump of Blod’s pregnancy. But she went down on her hands and knees, then threw up the back of her grubby dress. Sam promptly knelt behind her and pulled up his tunic.

Edgar went out.

He walked down to the water and pretended to check the mooring of the ferry, though he knew perfectly well that he had tied it tight. He felt disgusted. He had never understood the men who paid for sex at Mags’s house in Combe. The whole idea seemed joyless. His brother Erman had said: “When you got to have it, you got to have it,” but Edgar had never felt that way. With Sunni, the two of them had enjoyed it equally, and Edgar thought anything less was hardly worth having.

What Sam was doing was worse than joyless, of course.

Edgar sat on the riverbank and looked across the calm gray water, hoping for more passengers to take his mind off what was going on in the alehouse. Brindle sat beside him, waiting patiently to see what he would do next. After a few minutes she went to sleep.

It was not long before the shepherd emerged from the alehouse and drove his flock up the hill between the houses onto the westbound road. Edgar did not wave.

Blod came down to the river.

Edgar said: “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Blod did not look at him. She stepped into the shallows and washed between her legs.

Edgar looked away. “It’s very cruel,” he said.

He suspected that Blod understood English. She pretended not to:when something went wrong she cursed in the liquid Welsh tongue. Dreng gave her orders with gestures and snarls. But sometimes Edgar had the feeling she was following the conversation in the alehouse, albeit furtively.

Now she confirmed his suspicion. “It’s nothing,” she said. Her English was accented but clear, her voice melodic.

“You’re not nothing,” he said.

She finished washing and stepped onto the bank. He met her eye. She was looking suspicious and hostile. “Why so nice?” she demanded. “You think you’ll get a free fuck?”

He looked away again, directing his gaze across the water to the far trees, and made no reply. He thought she would walk away, but she stayed where she was, waiting for an answer.

Eventually he said: “This dog used to belong to a woman I loved.”

Brindle opened one eye. Strange. Edgar thought, how dogs know when you are talking about them.

“The woman was a little older than me, and married,” Edgar said to Blod. She showed no emotion, but seemed to be listening attentively. “When her husband was drunk she would meet me in the woods and we would make love on the grass.”

“Make love,” she repeated, as if unsure what it meant.

“We decided to run away together.” To his surprise he found himself close to tears, and he realized it was the first time he had spoken about Sunni since talking to Ma on the journey from Combe. “I had the promise of work and a house in another town.” He was telling Blod things even his family did not know. “She was beautiful and clever and kind.” He began to feel choked up, but now that he had started the story, he wanted to go on. “I think we would have been very happy,” he said.

“What happened?”

“On the day we planned to go, the Vikings came.”

“Did they take her?”

Edgar shook his head. “She fought them, and they killed her.”

“She was lucky,” Blod said. “Believe me.”

Thinking about what Blod had just done with Sam, Edgar almost agreed. “Her name...” He found it hard to say. “Her name was Sunni.”

“When?”

“A week before Midsummer.”

“I am very sorry, Edgar.”

“Thank you.”