“You’d better unload before you drag the raft across the shallows,” Edgar said. “Otherwise you might get stuck.”

“Then reload again—that’s a lot of work,” Erman grumbled.

Eadbald said: “And we’ll have to unload the stones again at the other end!”

“You’d damn well better—you’re being paid to.”

“All right, all right.”

Edgar untied the raft and the three boarded. “Pole across and drop me on the opposite bank,” Edgar said.

They crossed the river. Edgar got off in the shallows. His brothers returned the vessel to midstream, and slowly the current caught it and took it away.

Edgar watched it out of sight, then set off on the road to Shiring.

The town was busy. The farriers were shoeing horses; the saddlers were sold out of tack; two men with rotating grindstones were sharpening every blade; and the fletchers were selling arrows as fast as they could make them. Edgar soon discovered the reason: Ealdorman Wilwulf was about to harry the Welsh.

The wild men of the west had raided into Wilf’s territory in the autumn, but he had been busy with his wedding and had not retaliated. However, he had not forgotten, and now he was mustering a small army to punish them.

An English attack would be devastating to the Welsh. It would disrupt the agricultural cycle. Men and women would be killed, so there would be fewer to plough and sow. Adolescent boys and girls would be captured and sold as slaves, making money for the ealdorman and his men-at-arms, and leaving fewer fecund couples, and therefore in the long term fewer Welsh raiders, theoretically.

Harrying was meant to discourage raids, but since the Welsh generally raided only when they were starving, the punishment was a feeble deterrent, in Edgar’s opinion. Revenge was the real motive, he thought.

He made his way to the abbey, where he planned to spend the night. It was a pale stone monument of peace in the middle of a town preparing for war. Aldred seemed pleased to see Edgar. The monks were about to go in procession to the church for the midafternoon services of Nones, but Aldred was allowed to skip it.

Edgar had had a long walk in the February cold, and Aldred said: “You need to warm up. There’s a fire in Osmund’s room—let’s sit there.” Edgar accepted gratefully.

All the other monks had left, and the monastery was silent. Edgar felt a moment of unease: Aldred’s affection for him was a little too intense. He hoped this was not going to be the scene of an embarrassing interaction. He did not want to offend Aldred, but nor did he want to be embraced by him.

He need not have worried. Aldred had other things on his mind. “It turns out that Ragna did not know about Wilf’s first wife, Inge,” he said.

Edgar remembered a conversation with Agnes the seamstress. “They thought she was dead,” he recalled.