The Evening and the Morning

Accompanied by his brother, Wigelm, Bishop Wynstan of Shiring looks at the destruction of Combe. Wynstan is 30, and Wigelm is five years younger. Their oldest brother is Wilwulf, or Wilf. He is the ealdorman of Shiring, and he rules Combe. They dismount in town and enter the church. Wynstan kneels at the altar and asks the congregation, “What have we done?” (31). He needs them to believe that the raid is God’s will, and that it is the result of sin.

Wilf holds court. Wynstan notices a beautiful woman named Meagenswith, or Mags, who runs a brothel. As she approaches, he orders her away for the sake of appearances. The three brothers know they will not receive payments from Combe for a long time. Wilf suggest that they help the peasants and postpone rent payments until the following spring.

The monk Ulfric tells them about the raid. Wigelm calls them cowards for not fighting. A fisherman named Maccus says the nearest harbor is Cherbourg, which is probably where the Vikings went. The Vikings are more peaceful with the Normans, who own Cherbourg. Edgar tells Wynstan that he has been to Cherbourg, which is ruled by Count Hubert. Wynstan asks if they could make friends with him, but he wonders how King Ethelred would feel about it.

Wynstan authorizes a communal grave. Ulfric tells them that the survivors owe Edgar their life because he rang the bell and alerted the town.

A peasant says they will need free timber to rebuild. Wilf says Wigelm will have to let them have it until Michaelmas. The crowd is dissatisfied with the situation. Mags catches Wynstan outside and says she needs money to replace her girls. He agrees, in exchange for 25 pounds the next Christmas.

Wynstan talks with Edgar, Ma, and Edgar’s brothers. He offers them a vacant, 30-acre farm. It is vacant because the bad soil could not sustain the previous family, and the wife and three children died. Wynstan’s cousin Degbert runs it. It is called Dreng’s Ferry.

Edgar’s family—and Brindle—walk for a day and a half. They tell other travelers about the Vikings and sleep outside a place called Mudeford Crossing. Edgar still has the ax. He sees his mother’s grief but knows that she will keep control of herself, like always. As they travel, Edgar contemplates life without Sungifu and remembers violent, disturbing images from the raid.

Ma asks him if he was meeting a girl on the beach; she understood that he must have been outside the house to ring the bell so quickly after seeing the ships. She guesses that the girl must have been married, since Edgar hid it. She also guesses that it was Sungifu. Though ashamed that Edgar was with a married woman, Ma lets the matter rest.

They reach Dreng’s Ferry and speak with a teenage girl named Cwenburg, whose father is Dreng. Degbert is Cwenburg’s uncle. Cwenburg charges them to take them across the river on a boat. As they travel, she says that there is a nunnery nearby on Leper Island, which is home to several lepers and other unfortunate individuals. On the other side, they go to the church on the property and meet Degbert and his wife.

Degbert shows them their land. It is poor, which is why it was cheap. Ma demands a sow and a sack of flour on credit. Over the next few days, they weed the oats while Edgar repairs the house. On Sunday, they go to the church, where Degbert holds a hasty service. Afterwards, Cwenburg invites Edgar to her house. Her sexual aggressiveness makes him uneasy, and he doesn’t want to complicate their situation.

During a bath in the river, Cwenburg arrives, strips, and joins Edgar in the water. When he resists her sexual advances, she accuses him of liking boys. She says she hates him and leaves. That night, Brindle starts barking as they sleep. There are thieves outside. Ma kills one thief with a knife. Two others try to leave with a pig Ma demanded from Degbert. Edgar throws his ax and stops one, but the other lifts his injured companion to his feet and they escape. Edgar catches the piglet. Ma has them hang the dead thief’s body from a tree as a message to other thieves. In the morning, the body is gone.

Edgar goes to the alehouse to ask for a cord, so his mother can fix her shoe. A woman named Leaf—Cwenburg’s mother—gives him a cord and a glass of ale. Outside, Edgar corrects Degbert with regard to Jesus’s birthday, as Degbert and other drunken men talk about calendars. Jesus was born in what would have been Year Two. Degbert and Dreng send him away, and Edgar regrets speaking.

The 20-year-old Lady Ragnhild—who goes by Ragna— is the daughter of Count Hubert and Genevieve. She is at Cherbourg Castle. Count Hubert, though proud of his Viking heritage, is also a proud Christian.

Brother Aldred is a 33-year-old English monk. He arrived the day before with his books. Ragna thinks he lusts after her 14-year-old brother, Richard. An insatiable scholar, Aldred is in charge of the monastery library.

A priest, Father Louis, asks Ragna if she reads, which she does. He arrived a week earlier to speak with Genevieve; he wants to see if Ragna would be suitable to marry Guillaume, the son of the count of Reims and a nephew of King Robert. Ragna is lukewarm on the idea. She wants to be a partner and not a mere ornament. Louis and Aldred question her at lunch. When Count Hubert leaves, he asks Ragna to take his place dealing with a serf named Gaston in Saint-Martin. Sensing an opportunity to impress Louis, she invites him and Aldred to come as she sorts it out.

As they ride out, they see Viking ships moored in the harbor. On the way, they discuss the Norman system of slavery. In the hamlet of Les Chenes, peasants call her Deborah, who was a wise, Israelite judge.

Gaston the serf tells her that he cannot pay his rent. Bernard’s sheep ate his grass, so his cattle—his rent is two one-year-old calves—died. She rules that Gaston must pay, but that Bernard is responsible for the death of the calves. Now, Gaston will pay only one calf. The villagers approve of her wisdom. On the way back, Ragna asks Louis about Guillaume.

That evening, Aldred leaves on a ship just as several Englishmen arrive, led by Wilwulf—known as Wilf—whose size and confidence quickly attract the ladies in the castle. Count Hubert does not want to take his side against the Vikings. Ragna is annoyed that Wilf ignores the women during most of his interactions. Count Hubert plans a boar hunt for the guest.

Ragna rides with her brother, Richard. Wilf saves Richard’s life when he falls off his horse. Ragna thanks him when they are done. He says that her father will not deny the Vikings shelter in the harbor. She also tells him that their merchants sell their wares to Combe, but the men demand bribes, and her merchants lose profits. If he could make the bribes stop, it would help her father. Wilf says he will think about it.

Wilf and Ragna encounter more boars and kill one together. Then Wilf kisses Ragna, and she returns the kiss. Later, she thinks about it and decides not to behave differently in public, but she plots to get him alone. Her mother tells Ragna that Louis approves of her, but she now has little interest in anyone but Wilf. Over the next few days, Ragna and Wilf meet in the hay store to caress each other. Genevieve knows something is happening between them. She tells Ragna that women cannot rule. Wilf keeps working on passing Norman goods through Combe without bribes, as Ragna requested, but he will have to get King Ethelred’s approval. After signing a treaty with Count Hubert, Wilf prepares to return home. First, he and Ragna have sex.

Ragna believes Wilf is the man for her and wonders if she is pregnant. At breakfast the next morning, she waits for Wilf to tell her father he is taking her with him, but he says nothing. On the shore, he thanks her for her kindness and boards the departing ship.

Aldred rides through the forest, two days away from Shiring. His superiors do not share his goal of creating a wonderful writing room known as a scriptorium, but he is confident in his mission. Aldred is one of the few monks interested in reform. As he rides singing a hymn, he meets a robber wearing an iron mask. The man asks for bread, then shares it and Aldred’s cheese with his companion. That night, he reaches Dreng’s Ferry and meets Cwenburg and her enslaved person, Blod.

Dreng offers Blod to Aldred for sex, but he refuses. Dreng says he used to have a boy Aldred could have used. Aldred remembers being caught with a boy at Glastonbury Abbey as a novice, and the ensuing conflict resulted in his transfer to Shiring. Although he still has lustful thoughts, he has never relapsed.

In the alehouse, Aldred tells Dreng about the two robbers. One is named Ironface, and he has a bounty. Aldred is appalled that Dreng has two wives and multiple enslaved people, and that he sleeps with them all.

Aldred visits Edgar’s family, and they tell him about the Viking raid. Aldred is instantly attracted to Edgar. Eadbald says the Dean (Degbert) hates Edgar because Edgar humiliated him in the conversation about the calendars and Christ’s birth year.

Aldred leaves and visits a priest named Cuthbert, who is a jeweler. Degbert enters and demands to know why Aldred is there. He reluctantly invites Aldred to stay in his large, opulent home, which Aldred thinks is unbefitting a priest who has taken a vow of poverty.

Aldred goes to the shabby church for the service, but the prayers are hasty and lazy. Degbert is the kind of priest Aldred wants to reform. He feels that something bad is happening at Dreng’s Ferry.