Life at the farmhouse was barely tolerable without Ma. Erman watched Edgar eat, following every morsel from the bowl to Edgar’s mouth. Cwenburg continued her campaign to make Edgar regret that he had not married her. Eadbald complained of backache from weeding. Only little Winnie was pleasant.

The ditch took two weeks. There was water in it from the start, a streamlet running slowly downhill; a hopeful sign, Edgar thought. He opened a gap in the riverbank to let the water out. A pond formed behind the bank, its surface at the same height as that of the river, and Edgar realized there was a law of nature that made all water seek the same level.

He was barefoot in the pond, reinforcing the bank with stones, when he felt something move under his toes. There were fish in this pond, he realized. He was treading on eels. How had that happened?

He looked at what he had created, imagining the life of underwater creatures. They seemed to swim more or less randomly, and clearly some would pass from the river to the pond through the gap he had made in the bank. But how would they find their way out again? They would be ensnared, at least for a while.

He began to glimpse a solution to the food problem.

Fishing with a hook and line was a slow and unreliable way to get food. The fishermen of Combe made large nets and sailed in big ships to locations where fish swam in schools of a thousand or more. But there was another way.

Edgar had seen basketwork fish traps and he thought he could make one. He went into the forest and collected long, pliable green twigs from bushes and saplings. Then he sat on the ground outside the farmhouse and began to twist the twigs into the shape he remembered.

Erman saw him and said: “When you’ve finished playing, you could help us in the fields.”

Edgar made a large basket with a narrow neck. It would catch fish the same way the pond did, by being easy to enter and difficult to leave—if it worked.

He finished it that evening.

In the morning he went to the tavern dunghill, looking for something he could use as bait. He found the head of a chicken and two decomposing rabbit feet. He put them in the bottom of the basket.

He added a stone for stability, then sank the trap in the pond he had created.

He forced himself to leave it where it was, without checking it, for twenty-four hours.

Next morning, as he was leaving the farmhouse, Eadbald said: “Where are you going?”

“To look at my fish trap.”

“Is that what you were making?”

“I don’t know if it will work.”

“I’m coming to see.”

They all followed him, Eadbald and Erman and Cwenburg with the baby.

Edgar waded into the pond, which was thigh high. He was not sure exactly where he had sunk the trap. He had to bend down and feel around in the mud. It might even have moved in the night.