Page 64 of The Evening and the Morning

“When I’m working, and have a problem to solve, a joint that won’t close or a blade that won’t come sharp, I think: ‘I’ll ask Pa.’ Then I remember that I can’t. It happens almost every day.”

“What do you do then?”

Edgar hesitated. He was afraid of seeming to claim that he had miraculous experiences. People who saw visions were sometime revered, but they might just as easily be stoned as agents of the devil. However, Ma would comprehend. “I ask him anyway,” he said. “I say: ‘Pa, what should I do about this?’—in my head.” He added hastily: “I don’t see an apparition, or anything like that.”

She nodded calmly, unsurprised. “And then what?”

“Usually, the answer comes to me.”

She said nothing.

A bit nervously he said: “Does that sound peculiar?”

“Not at all,” she said. “That’s how spirits work.” She turned away and spoke to Bebbe about eggs.

Edgar was intrigued.That’s how spirits work.It would bear thinking about.

But his reflections were interrupted. Erman came to him and said: “We’re going to make a plough.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

Edgar was jerked from mysticism back into everyday practicalities. He guessed they had chosen to do this on a Sunday so that he would be available. None of them had ever made a plough, but Edgar could build anything. “Shall I come and help you?” he said.

“If you want.” Erman did not like to acknowledge that he needed assistance.

“Have you got the timber ready?”

“Yes.”

It seemed that anyone could take timber from the forest. At Combe the thane, Wigelm, had made Pa pay for felling an oak. But there, Edgar reflected, it was easier to police the woodcutters, for they had to bring the timber into the town in full view. Here it was not clear whether the forest belonged to Degbert Baldhead or the reeve of Mudeford, Offa, and neither of them claimed payment: no doubt it would involve much surveillance for little reward. In practice timber was free to anyone willing to chop down the trees.

Everyone was moving out of the little church. “We’d better get on with it,” Erman said.

They walked to the farmhouse together: Ma, the three brothers, and Cwenburg. Edgar noticed that the bond between Erman and Eadbald seemed unchanged: they were basically in harmony, despite a continuous low level of petty squabbling. Their uncommon marriage clearly worked.

Cwenburg kept giving Edgar triumphant looks. “You turned me down,” her expression seemed to say, “but see what I got instead!” Edgar did not mind. She was happy and so were his brothers.

Edgar himself was not unhappy, for that matter. He had built a ferry and was working on a brewhouse. His wages were so low they amounted to theft, but he had escaped from farming.

Well, almost.

He looked at the wood his brothers had piled up outside the barn and visualized a plough. Even town dwellers knew what one of those looked like. It would have an upright pointed stick to loosen the soil, and an angled moldboard to undercut the furrowand turn the soil over. Both had to be attached to a frame that could be pulled from the front and guided from behind.

Erman said: “Eadbald and I will draw the plough and Ma will steer it.”

Edgar nodded. The loamy soil here was soft enough to yield to a man-drawn plough. The clay soil of a place such as Outhenham required the strength of oxen.

Edgar drew his belt knife, knelt down, and began to mark the wood for Erman and Eadbald to shape. Although the youngest brother was taking charge, the other two made no protest. They recognized Edgar’s superior skill, though they never admitted it aloud.

While they went to work on the timbers, Edgar began to make the ploughshare, a blade fixed to the front of the moldboard to cut more easily through the soil. The others had found a rusting iron spade in the barn. Edgar heated it in the house fire, then beat it into shape with a rock. The result looked a bit rough. He could have done better with an iron hammer and an anvil.

He sharpened the blade with a stone.

When they got thirsty they went down to the river and drank from their cupped hands. They had no ale and no cups either.

They were almost ready to join the pieces together with pegs when Ma called them for the midday meal.